Well, I’m well on the road to recovery (fortunately, it never got much worse than a drippy schnoz and a slight cough–no sore throat, fever, aches or other debilitating symptoms), but I’m also on the road to Washington, DC on an early flight, and won’t be back until Friday night. I don’t know if I’ll be posting much from there, but the room I’ve rented claims to have broadband, so we’ll see.
I Wonder
…how many other people will be put off (as I am) from donating to any cause with which a notorious con man like Bill Clinton is associated?
Suppressed Dissidents
Here’s a new blog, from non-liberal non-Democrat non-socialists at the State Department. Will they be able to come in from the cold in the new Rice regime?
Stupefying Ignorance
Brits think that Israel is the worst country in the world. Imagine how bad it must be. Worse than North Korea. Worse than Zimbabwe or, for that matter, every country in Africa. Worse than Syria.
Simply amazing. The BBC has done its propaganda job well.
[Update a few minutes later]
It’s not quite as bad as I thought–it was an on-line survey. Still it amazes me that anyone can have such a stupid opinion.
[Update on Wednesday morning]
Melanie Phillips has a more comprehensive explanation:
Britain is gripped by an unprecedented degree of irrationality, prejudice and hysteria over the issues of Iraq, the terrorist jihad and Israel. All three are intimately linked; all three, however, are thought by public opinion to be linked in precisely the wrong way. This is because all three have been systematically misreported, distorted and misrepresented through a lethal combination of profound ignorance, political malice and ancient prejudices.
This systematic abuse by the media is having a devastating impact in weakening the ability of the west to defend itself against the unprecedented mortal threat that it faces from the Islamic jihad. People cannot and will not fight if they don
Head Code
That’s how I’m currently pronouncing my new ailment, which is a “head cold.” I feel like someone scooped all the gray stuff out of my noggin and replaced it with moldy cotton. Probably little blogging for the time being.
Rocketplane Man
I’ve done interviews in the past with Gary Hudson and Jeff Greason, but Mitchell Burnside Clapp, of Rocketplane Ltd. Inc., has eluded me up until now (primarily because my pursuit has been inexplicably less than hot).
Mitchell Burnside Clapp is the CEO and founder of Pioneer Rocketplane and the Director of Flight Systems at Rocketplane Limited. He graduated from MIT in 1984 with two degrees in Aerospace Engineering, one in Physics, and another in Russian, establishing an apparent trend of being constitutionally unable to limit himself to just one field of endeavor. During 1988 he attended the USAF Test Pilot School, whence he graduated in that year to work on the YA-7F program, serve as an instructor on the school’s staff, and later as the Air Force’s flight test person on the DC-X program. It was this experience that led to his initial involvement with the alt.space community, and indirectly to his development of aerial propellant transfer technology to enable horizontal takeoff, horizontal landing spaceplanes.
When I first met Mitchell, he was a major assigned to the USAF Phillips Laboratory, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Shortly after that (but hopefully not as a result of our meeting), he left active-duty military service in 1996 to found Pioneer Rocketplane, which won a series of contracts from NASA, the DoD, and the state of California as well as significant private investment and contracted efforts. He is also the CEO of another technology startup called Short Order Video.
He claims (with some reason, I might add) to have a wife, several patents, three children (two beautiful daughters, and a son, of whom Mitchell is apparently too charitable to provide a physical description, though I’m sure he’s probably a strapping handsome lad as well), two houses, a dog, a cat, many songwriting credits, a growing expertise in wine, and (as he apparently attempted to demonstrate here) pitiably little skill at writing biographical information about himself. I should add that in addition to Russian, and almost-passable English, as a result of misspending much of his youth in one of the most lord-forsaken corners of the Outback, he speaks the most difficult language of all, so well that it’s totally incomprehensible when the listener is not under the influence of heavy drink.
Over the past couple weeks, I’ve belatedly engaged Mitchell in an email give and take, and hope that you find the results interesting and worth the wait.
It Was A Very Good Year
Jim Muncy says that the biggest breakthroughs last year, in a spectacular year for space activities both public and private, were not technological, but political.
Happy New Year
With the appropriate qualifications, of course.
Phantom Book
A few years ago, under commission from the Sophron Foundation, headed by Tom Rogers, who was (and I hope still is, given his time on this earth) a noted proponent of space tourism, I wrote a long essay on the near-term prospects for space tourism. It was printed, but just a few copies only for the use of the foundation as a printout of a Microsoft Word file. To the degree it was published at all, it was on the web, at one of my own websites, and at Space Future.
Subsequently, somehow, Amazon has decided that it’s actually a book, out of print.
I’ve already received notification from an emailer that they’ve backordered a copy, whenever Amazon gets some in st0ck.
How did this happen? Does anyone have enough insight into the workings of Amazon to know?
Timeline
Clark Lindsey has helpfully put one together for the significant events in space actitivities over the past very eventful (and probably historic) year.