Political Commentary

Yet More On Liberaltarianism

From La Postrel, here and here:

On the old political spectrum, socialism defined the left. That meant that the more you opposed socialism, for whatever reason, the further right you were. On the old spectrum, therefore, classical liberals were on the right, which makes us the right wing of the dynamist coalition.

It matters a lot whether we define our central challenge today as opposing socialism or as protecting dynamism. If we declare “the left” our enemies and “the right” our allies, based on anti-socialist assumptions, we will ignore the emerging left-right alliance against markets. We will miss the symbolic and practical importance of such cutting-edge issues as biotechnology, popular culture, international trade, and Internet governance. We will sacrifice whole areas of research and innovation to stay friendly with people who’ll agree to cut taxes just a little bit, and only for families with children. We will miss the chance to deepen the appreciation for market processes among people who lack the proper political pedigree. We will sacrifice the future of freedom in order to preserve the habits of the past.

Political Commentary

Ex-Presidential Mendacity

A noted historian has resigned from his long-time association with the Carter Center over Jimmy Carter’s Middle East fantasies and lies:

President Carter’s book on the Middle East, a title too inflammatory to even print, is not based on unvarnished analyses; it is replete with factual errors, copied materials not cited, superficialities, glaring omissions, and simply invented segments. Aside from the one-sided nature of the book, meant to provoke, there are recollections cited from meetings where I was the third person in the room, and my notes of those meetings show little similarity to points claimed in the book. Being a former President does not give one a unique privilege to invent information or to unpack it with cuts, deftly slanted to provide a particular outlook.

A lot of people can argue over who is the worst president, but Carter has to be the worst former President, hands down.

Space

Crunching The Numbers

Jonah Goldberg has been discussing the probability of a catastrophic asteroid impact with the earth, based on this post by Ron Bailey. He has an email from one of his very confused readers:

You probably have a lot of others e-mailing as well to point this out, but while that 0.3% seems like a small probability it is wholly implausible. Just as a point of comparison given what I

Space

The New Congress And Space

Mark Whittington has a largely reasonable assessment of the implications of the Democrat takeover for space activities. I’d just add (though it’s not really associated with the takeover per se) that one other interesting potential change in the new Congress would be the return of Jim Sensenbrenner to the House Science Committee, as ranking member (he would have presumably gone for the chairmanship if the Republicans had retained control). As noted in comments at the link, he will be much more skeptical of NASA, and welcoming of commercial activities, than many of his predecessors.

Space

One Other Propellant Depot Thought

In this post, Jay Manifold comments:

…my (possibly incorrect) understanding is that LH2 can only be stored for a few hours.

It is incorrect. There’s no intrinsic limit on how long you can store LH2. It’s just a matter of how much weight and power you’re willing to devote to insulation and/or refrigeration systems.

In fact, the concept I have for a cis-lunar infrastructure is a series of combination depots/tankers. You’d have at least four of them (probably five, for backup purposes). One would be sitting in LEO, being filled up. One would be sitting at L1 to provide propellant for returning and lunar-bound vehicles. There would always be (at least) two in transit, one heading toward LEO, and the other heading toward L1. When one arrived, the one already there would depart to the other destination.

I’m envisioning them with plenty of power, both to run high-Isp thrusters, and to keep propellants continuously chilled. You might be able to do it with solar (though the panels would take repeated beatings going through the Van Allen belts). The obvious technical solution would be nuclear, but that’s probably still politically unacceptable, despite its reasonableness.

[One further evening thought]

If they were powered with nukes, there’d be plenty of power to not only keep the hydrogen chilled, but to actually crack it from water. The marginal cost of doing so, given the initial investment of the nuclear tankers, would be pretty low, and it could dramatically affect the cost of delivering the propellants to orbit, since they could be delivered in a more dense form that doesn’t require cryogenic tankage, and is much safer. Of course, the vehicles would either have to operate at a stoichiometric ratio of 8:1 oxygen/hydrogen (which is suboptimal in terms of specific impulse–ideal is 6:1)) or throw away or find other uses for the excess O2.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!