Mark Steyn comments on the anti-Cheney chickenhawks.
Hillary The Feminist
Rich Lowry has more thoughts about Hillary’s past.
Distasteful though it might be, Democrats would be well-advised to revisit Bill Clinton
Beyond Incompetence
You want to see some legitimate criticism of the administration over managing the war? Here it is:
…the decision by the Bush administration to prioritize the drug war ahead of the war against the Taliban is of course, madness. It’s time for the Brits to take a stand, and announce that either Bush’s drug warriors leave Afghanistan or Britain’s troops do. Ninety days would seem to be adequate warning.
I wish they would.
Almost Sane
Dean Barnett says that Markos is going soft. Or, rather, to be more fair, growing up.
Ah, well, it was great while it lasted, and we’ll always have Fallujah. And we still have the Huffpo. Not to mention Metafilter.
Just Like Teenagers
Well, OK, psychopathic teenagers:
Washington and Brussels cut what is estimated to be hundreds of millions of dollars in direct aid to the Palestinian government after Hamas’ parliamentary victory.
Both have said they will not resume monetary support of the Palestinian government until Hamas recognizes Israel, renounces violence and fulfills past promises.
Mashaal demanded in tougher terms that Washington resume its aid funding: “The American administration’s insistence on the continuation of the blockade will give birth to more hatred toward America not only … on a Palestinian level but on an Arab, Islamic level.”
Right. “Give us money, or we’ll hate you.”
I don’t mind it so much that, in their permanent adolescent angst, they’re suicidal. I just wish that they wouldn’t take innocents with them when they do it.
Probably A Roll Back To The VAB
If hail damaged the foam insulation that much, what did it do to the TPS?
Anachronism?
Forty-nine years after its founding, Chair Force Engineer asks if NASA should get out of the manned spaceflight business. I think that’s inevitable, at least for earth to orbit segment (probably beyond as well, once access gets cheap enough for the Planetary or Mars Societies to sponsor their own expeditions, as the National Geographic Society does on earth), but there’s too much political inertia for it to happen before it becomes clear to everyone how absurd its proposed architecture is. That won’t happen, as he notes, until the private sector is launching people into space.
Conventional Unwisdom
I know that this is conventional reporting wisdom, particularly at the WaPo, but I think that there were many other reasons for the Republicans losing the Congress last fall:
Swept into power by voters clamoring for an end to the war, Democrats have seen their efforts stymied under realities more complicated than they found on the campaign trail.
Emphasis mine. In fact, if that were the case, the Dems wouldn’t be having so much dissension in the ranks, and difficulty in coming up with a politically palatable position. If the voters really wanted to simply end the war, then the Dems could simply defund it. But despite reporter Julie Davis’ breezy assertion, the Republicans lost for lots of reasons, some of them war related, some not, and it’s politically perilous to make such assumptions about what the voters wanted, other than that they were tired of Republicans.
The Donks’ problem was in fact nailed by the President in the State of the Union, in which he noted that while he wasn’t sure what the voters had voted for, he was confident that they weren’t voting for failure. Yet that is exactly what the Dems seem to want, or at least accept as a fait accompli.
They Should Do Better Than That
Dan Schrimpsher has a comment on Scaled’s test flight schedule for SS2:
…the test flights are going to have to start soon, perhaps later this year. At 1 flight/week, it would take two years to make 100 test flights.
I see no reason that they shouldn’t have a much higher flight rate than that. I’d think that they could probably fly every day, as long as they make the hybrid motor easy to refuel. I suspect that the only constraint on their test flight rate would be data analysis, and modifications resulting from test flight results. And I also suspect that the high number of “test” flights won’t really be test flights, but rather demonstration flights, to establish reliability confidence. Those could go every day, as long as nothing goes wrong. I doubt if flight test (or at least intrinsic flight rate ability) will be the long pole in the schedule tent–I think that just delivering the initial hardware to be tested will be have much more schedule uncertainty.
[Update in the late afternoon]
Dan follows up:
I assume that in the beginning the flights will be less often as problems will show themselves up front. I see more of an exponential cure of flights starting with one every few weeks to get the kinks out. And closer to once per day when they are close to starting service.
I think we’re now in violent a agreement.
Also, based on history, SS1 was flown months apart except for the X-Prize run, so I am trying to be conservative.
Well, I’m not sure how good a guide history is here. In the one case, they were trying to win a prize, and didn’t need a high-rate vehicle to do it (twice in two weeks, and that was it). I suspect that they’re spending more money this time, in order to hit a market, and get it to market as soon as they can within safety constraints to maximize payback. I’ll be surprised if it’s weeks before the first and second flights.
But I’ve been surprised before. After all, I didn’t think that the stand down after Columbia would be nearly as long as that after Challenger (and neither of them should have been as long as they were), so what do I know?
[Another update a few minutes later]
One other point (see, Anonymous Moron in comments isn’t completely useless–but mostly)…
The other difference (which I didn’t mention, though I also didn’t assume otherwise, contra Anonymous Moron) was that there will be a fleet of vehicles for SS2, though the initial test flights will be only for one, because they’ll want to learn a lot of lessons early to incorporate into the other vehicle builds. So the initial test flight series will be with a single version of each vehicle (White Knight and SS2), and only later, when they’re doing reliability demo flights and building flight experience, will there be multiple vehicles. And the transition from one to a fleet will be part of the exponential increase that Dan described in his follow-up post.
And in the way of disclosure, I should also add that, despite the fact that I occasionally talk to the Virgin consultant responsible for overseeing the vehicle development (who is an old friend of mine), and Alex Tai himself, this is all speculation on my part.
Did They Or Didn’t They?
NORAD didn’t see the Iranians launch anything.
It’s possible that they managed to launch something without our detecting it (though if so, as Allen Thompson notes over at sci.space.policy, I want a tax refund), but I think it’s more likely that they just said they launched, but didn’t, for propaganda purposes. Did they actually provide any time-stamped evidence of an actual launch?