Space

Now That’s Marketing

Now these are what I call hot rockets. Question is, which are the rocket geeks going to pay more attention to, the rockets, or Sheri?

It reminds me of the old engineer joke. An engineering student sees one of his buddies, a fellow engineering student, riding a bike toward him.

“Hey,” he says. “When did you get the bike?”

“It’s a weird story,” he replies. “I was just walking on the quad, and this girl rides up to me, gets off, drops the bike, takes off all her clothes and lies there, saying ‘take what you want.'”

“Good choice,” says his friend. “The clothes probably wouldn’t have fit.”

Space

Now That’s Marketing

Now these are what I call hot rockets. Question is, which are the rocket geeks going to pay more attention to, the rockets, or Sheri?

It reminds me of the old engineer joke. An engineering student sees one of his buddies, a fellow engineering student, riding a bike toward him.

“Hey,” he says. “When did you get the bike?”

“It’s a weird story,” he replies. “I was just walking on the quad, and this girl rides up to me, gets off, drops the bike, takes off all her clothes and lies there, saying ‘take what you want.'”

“Good choice,” says his friend. “The clothes probably wouldn’t have fit.”

Space

Now That’s Marketing

Now these are what I call hot rockets. Question is, which are the rocket geeks going to pay more attention to, the rockets, or Sheri?

It reminds me of the old engineer joke. An engineering student sees one of his buddies, a fellow engineering student, riding a bike toward him.

“Hey,” he says. “When did you get the bike?”

“It’s a weird story,” he replies. “I was just walking on the quad, and this girl rides up to me, gets off, drops the bike, takes off all her clothes and lies there, saying ‘take what you want.'”

“Good choice,” says his friend. “The clothes probably wouldn’t have fit.”

Space

More From Houston

Keith Cowing continues to live blog the Exploration conference today:

Cooke is going through a standard recitation of why we explore, why go back to the Moon, etc. It is fine for NASA folks do this once or twice at a meeting of the faithful (such as this), but I have to wonder why NASA folks feel compelled to spend so much time on this with an audience that is already convinced – except, perhaps, to serve as cheerleaders, I suppose. This is the fourth time the VSE story has been told here.

…Tony Lavoie is speaking now. He opened by making sure everyone knew that these architectural depictions in the fancy graphics were “notional” (NASA’s favorite word to make sure they can wiggle out of something later), “points of departure”, “Point in the sand” a “Point at which to engage” etc. This is one of NASA’s odd habits – on one hand they wave this new architecture around so as to demonstrate to the external world that they have done something and that they can make decisions – and then they turn around and warn people that what they see on the screen (to illustrate the very same architecture) is not what they may get. Hardly what you do to inspire confidence among external observers.

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

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!