Space

Another Launch Attempt

They scrubbed yesterday, but they’re going to attempt to launch those evil spy satellites to watch over innocent Iranian peace ships again today at 11:04 AM EDT.

The sky is clear right now, and if it’s like this in three hours, I’ll have a good view. But if it’s anything like yesterday, by 11 the sky will have clouded up. Of course, they’ve been warning us for the last two days about heavy afternoon thunderstorms that never arrived. Anyway, we’ll see, won’t we?

[Update at 9:50 AM EDT]

It had clouded up to the north earlier, but now they’ve cleared, and an hour and a quarter before scheduled launch, it’s looking good if it holds up. The Cape is north-northwest of me, and I have a pretty good view of that direction from my yard, at least once it gets to altitude.

[Update about an hour before scheduled launch]

I just got a text message from Florida Today that range issues are once again threatening the launch.

We really need to break out of this antiquated “range” paradigm, but it will take radically new vehicle designs to do so.

[Update about 10:30]

Looks like they resolved the range issue, and are go for launch in a little over half an hour. Skies to the north still clear.

[Update about five minutes until original launch schedule]

It’s always something. Now there’s an eight-minute delay due to a technical glitch. Listening to USA ground chatter, it sounds like a problem with a propellant fill/drain valve on the Centaur (the upper stage). New launch time: 11:12 AM. Polling at 11:05 (in about five minutes).

[Update after launch]

Well, it seems to have gone successfully, but I couldn’t see a thing. I wonder if the Atlas just burns too cleanly to be seen from a distance in the daylight?

[Update just after first Centaur burn]

I see over that The Flame Trench that they’re pointing out that this week is the fiftieth anniversary of the first Atlas launch. It’s not as significant as it seems. There’s almost nothing in common between this vehicle and that first ICBM except the name, and the fact that it’s an expendable rocket. Different fuel, different engines, different type of structure, different everything. It’s really an all-new design that came out of the EELV program.

[Update in the afternoon]

As noted in comments, it doesn’t use a different fuel. I was thinking Delta 4 when I wrote that, not Atlas V.

Media Criticism

Elite Journalists

Who apparently don’t know what the word “elite” means (as in Saddam’s “elite Republican Guard”). Or maybe it’s all just relative. Donald Sensing explains. Why do they do this? It can’t be simple cluelessness, because somehow, the cluelessness always ends up going in a certain direction.

David Blue also makes a good point in comments: that armies win battles, but people or nations win wars. And it’s very hard to win a war when half the people in the country don’t even really believe that we’re in one, and/or believe that their own government is the enemy.

Technology and Society

But Other Than That, It’s Perfect

Iain Murray doesn’t think much of the energy bill:

It will raise energy prices, raise food prices, increase hunger, worsen appliance performance, make the roads more dangerous and bring back Carter-era gas lines and shortages just when we need them the least – after disasters. It’s a horrendous concoction of every bad energy idea imaginable and will impact every family trying to make ends meet around the country. It’s unbelievably stupid in its rehashing of failed ideas and do-it-yourself economics. It needs to go down in flames, and soon.

[Update about 2:30 eastern]

There’s a request in comments for a link to the bill itself. I’m guessing that it’s this one (thank Newt Gingrich for Thomas).

Also, the editors of National Review are pretty unimpressed as well.

[Late afternoon update]

Thomas links seem to have a finite (and short) lifetime. Just go to Thomas, and search for S.1115.

Technology and Society

But Other Than That, It’s Perfect

Iain Murray doesn’t think much of the energy bill:

It will raise energy prices, raise food prices, increase hunger, worsen appliance performance, make the roads more dangerous and bring back Carter-era gas lines and shortages just when we need them the least – after disasters. It’s a horrendous concoction of every bad energy idea imaginable and will impact every family trying to make ends meet around the country. It’s unbelievably stupid in its rehashing of failed ideas and do-it-yourself economics. It needs to go down in flames, and soon.

[Update about 2:30 eastern]

There’s a request in comments for a link to the bill itself. I’m guessing that it’s this one (thank Newt Gingrich for Thomas).

Also, the editors of National Review are pretty unimpressed as well.

[Late afternoon update]

Thomas links seem to have a finite (and short) lifetime. Just go to Thomas, and search for S.1115.

Technology and Society

But Other Than That, It’s Perfect

Iain Murray doesn’t think much of the energy bill:

It will raise energy prices, raise food prices, increase hunger, worsen appliance performance, make the roads more dangerous and bring back Carter-era gas lines and shortages just when we need them the least – after disasters. It’s a horrendous concoction of every bad energy idea imaginable and will impact every family trying to make ends meet around the country. It’s unbelievably stupid in its rehashing of failed ideas and do-it-yourself economics. It needs to go down in flames, and soon.

[Update about 2:30 eastern]

There’s a request in comments for a link to the bill itself. I’m guessing that it’s this one (thank Newt Gingrich for Thomas).

Also, the editors of National Review are pretty unimpressed as well.

[Late afternoon update]

Thomas links seem to have a finite (and short) lifetime. Just go to Thomas, and search for S.1115.

War Commentary

Let’s Give Them A Country!

Mark Steyn, on the mythical “Palestinians”:

Seasoned observers have been making droll cracks about a “two-state solution” – Hamas gets Gaza, Fatah gets the West Bank. But even that cynical jest is wishful thinking. The better bet is that the West Bank will eventually fall Hamas’ way, too.

This is the logical consequence of the fraudulence of “Palestinian nationalism”. There has never been any such thing. There is no evidence anywhere in the “Palestinian Authority” that anyone there is interested in building a state and running it. In conventional post-colonial scenarios of the Sixties and Seventies, liberation movements used terrorism as a means to advance nationalism. By contrast, Arafat’s gang used nationalism as a means to advance terrorism. With him out of the way, it was deluded to assume that the “Palestinian people” would stick with a bunch of corrupt secular socialists with little appeal to anyone other than French intellectuals and Swiss bankers.

Want to see what Iraq will look like if we abandon it to the Islamists? Just look at Gaza.

War Commentary

Let’s Give Them A Country!

Mark Steyn, on the mythical “Palestinians”:

Seasoned observers have been making droll cracks about a “two-state solution” – Hamas gets Gaza, Fatah gets the West Bank. But even that cynical jest is wishful thinking. The better bet is that the West Bank will eventually fall Hamas’ way, too.

This is the logical consequence of the fraudulence of “Palestinian nationalism”. There has never been any such thing. There is no evidence anywhere in the “Palestinian Authority” that anyone there is interested in building a state and running it. In conventional post-colonial scenarios of the Sixties and Seventies, liberation movements used terrorism as a means to advance nationalism. By contrast, Arafat’s gang used nationalism as a means to advance terrorism. With him out of the way, it was deluded to assume that the “Palestinian people” would stick with a bunch of corrupt secular socialists with little appeal to anyone other than French intellectuals and Swiss bankers.

Want to see what Iraq will look like if we abandon it to the Islamists? Just look at Gaza.

War Commentary

Let’s Give Them A Country!

Mark Steyn, on the mythical “Palestinians”:

Seasoned observers have been making droll cracks about a “two-state solution” – Hamas gets Gaza, Fatah gets the West Bank. But even that cynical jest is wishful thinking. The better bet is that the West Bank will eventually fall Hamas’ way, too.

This is the logical consequence of the fraudulence of “Palestinian nationalism”. There has never been any such thing. There is no evidence anywhere in the “Palestinian Authority” that anyone there is interested in building a state and running it. In conventional post-colonial scenarios of the Sixties and Seventies, liberation movements used terrorism as a means to advance nationalism. By contrast, Arafat’s gang used nationalism as a means to advance terrorism. With him out of the way, it was deluded to assume that the “Palestinian people” would stick with a bunch of corrupt secular socialists with little appeal to anyone other than French intellectuals and Swiss bankers.

Want to see what Iraq will look like if we abandon it to the Islamists? Just look at Gaza.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!