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.

Space

Hadn’t Noticed This

There’s an Atlas V launch this morning, scheduled for 11:18 AM EDT. I may go out and look if it hasn’t clouded up down here–we’re expecting a lot of rain in south Florida this afternoon (and tomorrow, and into the weekend).

[Update a few minutes before scheduled launch]

Flight’s been delayed four minutes, to 11:22, to resolve some (almost literally) last-minute issues. Unfortunately it’s clouding up here, so I don’t think I’ll see it.

[Update at 11:19 AM]

Range just went red. Launch has been rescheduled for 11:45. I guess they don’t have a tight window on it. There’s not much info available on the orbit or constraints–the payloads are classified.

[Update at 11:38 AM]

Apparently, they have until noon, and then they’ll have to push it to tomorrow. The weather’s supposed to be even worse tomorrow, at least down here, though it may be all right up at the Cape.

[Update a minute later]

Scrubbed for today.

Space

Hadn’t Noticed This

There’s an Atlas V launch this morning, scheduled for 11:18 AM EDT. I may go out and look if it hasn’t clouded up down here–we’re expecting a lot of rain in south Florida this afternoon (and tomorrow, and into the weekend).

[Update a few minutes before scheduled launch]

Flight’s been delayed four minutes, to 11:22, to resolve some (almost literally) last-minute issues. Unfortunately it’s clouding up here, so I don’t think I’ll see it.

[Update at 11:19 AM]

Range just went red. Launch has been rescheduled for 11:45. I guess they don’t have a tight window on it. There’s not much info available on the orbit or constraints–the payloads are classified.

[Update at 11:38 AM]

Apparently, they have until noon, and then they’ll have to push it to tomorrow. The weather’s supposed to be even worse tomorrow, at least down here, though it may be all right up at the Cape.

[Update a minute later]

Scrubbed for today.

Space

Hadn’t Noticed This

There’s an Atlas V launch this morning, scheduled for 11:18 AM EDT. I may go out and look if it hasn’t clouded up down here–we’re expecting a lot of rain in south Florida this afternoon (and tomorrow, and into the weekend).

[Update a few minutes before scheduled launch]

Flight’s been delayed four minutes, to 11:22, to resolve some (almost literally) last-minute issues. Unfortunately it’s clouding up here, so I don’t think I’ll see it.

[Update at 11:19 AM]

Range just went red. Launch has been rescheduled for 11:45. I guess they don’t have a tight window on it. There’s not much info available on the orbit or constraints–the payloads are classified.

[Update at 11:38 AM]

Apparently, they have until noon, and then they’ll have to push it to tomorrow. The weather’s supposed to be even worse tomorrow, at least down here, though it may be all right up at the Cape.

[Update a minute later]

Scrubbed for today.

Space

Astrium Thoughts

Burt Rutan thinks that the operating cost of EADS’s proposal will be too high. I’m actually much more concerned (as is he) with the development costs. I’ve seen an estimate of a billion Euros. At 200,000 euros a ticket, you’ll have to sell about five thousand rides just to get back the non-recurring costs, and that doesn’t even include the cost of the money.

I think that the suborbital market makes sense, but not if you have to spend that much money up front. I think a smart entrepreneur could get to orbit for that amount (Elon has only spent a tenth of that amount, though he’s not returning). I just don’t think that a conventional player, like EADS (or Boeing, or Lockheed Martin) has either the cost structure or the risk acceptance to take on a program like this and make it successful. I suppose, though, it’s possible that they’re willing to take a bath on it if they expect it to give them a pre-cursor for a much larger point-to-point market, or military applications.

[Reading a few more articles]

Ah, they’re not committed to it. They’re just floating a trial balloon:

“We are offering a profitable system and have given ourselves until early 2008 to find industrial partners to share the risk, private investment of around

Space

Hubris

I hadn’t noticed this before, but apparently Mark Wade has put up a little history of the CEV and Constellation program, which describes how Mike Griffin’s NASA, for whatever reasons, completely ignored the advice of its contractors, to whom it had paid millions of dollars to provide potential solutions, and came up with an architecture that, in “synthesizing their suggestions,” bore no resemblance to any of them. Of course, they were just doing their job, trying to follow the dictates of the Aldridge Commission (including affordability and sustainability, and synergy with national security), which NASA seems to think no longer matters.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!