Clark Lindsey, on more clueless commentating from the MSM:
In science it is not considered a valid technique to generalize from a single data point. The same is true for judging RLVs. The Space Shuttle, which is not really reused but rather is rebuilt between flights, has innumerable design flaws and shortcomings far too extensive and numerous to go into here. Predicted to become the DC-3 of launchers, to call it even the Ford Tri-Motor of launchers would be an insult to that historic plane. (Ball also mentions the X-15 but it was a experimental development program, not an operational system. It should be compared to the SS1 not the SS2.)
Commercial spaceflight vehicles are being designed and built with the goal of low cost operations rather than highest possible performance. Low cost operations can only arise when high reliability and robustness are designed into the systems from the ground up. Those features in turn will produce safe rides for the crews and passengers. (I’ll note that it will be easier to achieve safe and routine operations for suborbital spaceflight but eventually the lessons learned there will be applied to orbital systems.)
One runs into this illogic often in space discussions, as though the Shuttle proves anything at all about reusable vehicles in general.
Though it’s not as bad as that Alex Tabarrok piece a while back.
I just switched to using my web host for mail. I should have done this years ago, but I didn’t realize that I could (and still authenticate SMTP from the road). I’ve now abandoned Bell South for DNS, for Usenet, and for email. All I use them for now is just a data pipe. I have to say, though, that it did have a good spam filter, which my new mail host doesn’t. On the other hand, the spam filter may have been one of the reasons I was missing legitimate mail.
Charles Krauthammer goes to bat for them. I do think that this story is overblown, but he overstates the “spam in a can” argument. Like airline pilots, Shuttle pilots need to have a clear head at launch, in the event of an abort. As for the rest of the crew, it probably wouldn’t hurt much if they were mildly intoxicated, but the notion that one has to have a couple stiff ones to climb into the Shuttle (or the Soyuz) seems a little silly to me, regardless of how many times the joke is repeated, and he seems to be serious about it. Maybe some of the pilots in the Battle of Britain wouldn’t have been able to pass a breathalyzer test, but if so, their chances of killing the enemy, or getting home, would have been sharply reduced compared to their sober colleagues.
And he has entirely much too much faith in NASA to execute the vision, even if it gets support from the politicians.
Well, actually a pre-dawn launch, but it should still be a nice sight if/when the Delta II takes off with the Mars Phoenix lander tomorrow morning, from the Cape. I don’t know if I can work up the gumption to drive up there for it, though. Particularly if we plan to see Endeavour launch on Tuesday, which seems to be back on track with the valve replacement in the crew cabin.
I haven’t been getting email notification of comments. This isn’t just an inconvenience–it means that the spammers can have their way with the blog, and I don’t even know about it. I’m putting this post up as a place for testing and troubleshooting for me and the sysadmin.