…and probably even get well paid for it, in an influential publication, if I didn’t want to lose my job. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t pay that well…
Proposition (with which I don’t necessarily agree):
NASA’s approach, a return to Apollo (both in terms of the “we need to set a goal and get there,” and the actual hardware concepts) represents the mindset of a cargo cult.
As Rusty Barton noted over at sci.space.policy, in response to this story, “When Boeing started designing the 787, did its engineers go to the Udvar-Hazy Museum and start pulling parts off the Dash-80?”
OK, my question to Dr. Stanley is, if it’s a good idea for Mars, why isn’t it a good idea for the moon?
“If you refilled the EDS in orbit [using commercial LEO fuel depots] it could act as the MTV,” says Georgia Institute of Technology aerospace professor Douglas Stanley, manager of the November 2005 NASA exploration systems architecture study (ESAS).
I think people tend to draw far too many generalizations on the basis of far too few examples in the launch business.
There is a long essay to be written on this subject.
I agree with this as well:
Ironically, most SpaceX personnel come from Boeing, Northrop and other space companies. It is the sometimes Dilbertian environment, not the individual engineers, that holds those organizations back.
Those of us who recognize these important benefits of capitalism — those of us who understand that capitalism’s true greatness lies not (as many critics insinuate) in producing oceans of pointless trinkets and baubles but in making the lives of ordinary people richer and fuller and longer — are reluctant to yield power to governments to tackle global warming. We worry that this power will kill the goose that’s laying this golden egg.
If you think that such a worry is exaggerated, recall the language Al Gore used in his book “Earth in the Balance.” The former Vice President asserted that we are suffering an “environmental crisis” that can be avoided only if we “drastically change our civilization and our way of thinking.”
“Drastically change our civilization.” Hmmm. This sounds like a call to significantly scale back markets, trade and industrial activities in order to lessen humankind’s “footprint” on the Earth and its environment. We can, no doubt, make our environmental footprint smaller — but how great a benefit will this achievement be if it returns us to the ages-old condition of high mortality and morbidity?
I wasn’t sure whether to file this under “Science And Society,” or “Economics.” Had to go with the latter (particularly since so much of the global warming debate is entirely devoid of this topic).
Blond goddesses with gigantic breasts and gorgeous bodies are all secretly in love with nerdy computer geeks, and their ambition is to move into the apartment next door to a computer geek.
The Superbowl is every wife’s big chance to finally get to f**k 2-4 of her husband’s closest friends, and these friends are always attractive.
There are several Trek-s3x-related ones as well:
Odo quite simply IS the best f**k in the galaxy (he’s a shape shifter, do the math).
A long, but must-read piece, particularly for the White House, which seems to be going wobbly (I have to say that I’ve been extremely unimpressed with Dr. Rice for the last few months).
President Bush set out a series of policy changes from the weeks after 9/11 to his second Inaugural in 2005. Threats would be confronted before they arrive, the sponsors of terror would be held equally accountable for terrorist murders and America would promote democracy as an alternative to Islamic fascism, the exploitation of religion to impose a violent political utopia. Every element of the Bush doctrine was directed toward a vision: a reformed Middle East that joins the world instead of resenting and assaulting it.
That vision has been tested on nearly every front, by Katyusha rockets in Haifa, car bombs in Baghdad and a crackdown on dissent in Cairo. Condoleezza Rice calls this the “birth pangs” of a new Middle East, and it is a complicated birth. As this violent global conflict proceeds, and its length and costs become more obvious, Americans should keep a few things in mind.
First, the nation may be tired, but history doesn’t care. It is not fair that the challenge of Iran is rising with Iraq, bloody and unresolved. But, as President Kennedy used to say, “Life is not fair.”
…In foreign-policy circles, it is sometimes claimed that past nuclear proliferation
A long, but must-read piece, particularly for the White House, which seems to be going wobbly (I have to say that I’ve been extremely unimpressed with Dr. Rice for the last few months).
President Bush set out a series of policy changes from the weeks after 9/11 to his second Inaugural in 2005. Threats would be confronted before they arrive, the sponsors of terror would be held equally accountable for terrorist murders and America would promote democracy as an alternative to Islamic fascism, the exploitation of religion to impose a violent political utopia. Every element of the Bush doctrine was directed toward a vision: a reformed Middle East that joins the world instead of resenting and assaulting it.
That vision has been tested on nearly every front, by Katyusha rockets in Haifa, car bombs in Baghdad and a crackdown on dissent in Cairo. Condoleezza Rice calls this the “birth pangs” of a new Middle East, and it is a complicated birth. As this violent global conflict proceeds, and its length and costs become more obvious, Americans should keep a few things in mind.
First, the nation may be tired, but history doesn’t care. It is not fair that the challenge of Iran is rising with Iraq, bloody and unresolved. But, as President Kennedy used to say, “Life is not fair.”
…In foreign-policy circles, it is sometimes claimed that past nuclear proliferation
