Screw The Future

Jeff Foust rounds up more stories on the House cuts to the NASA budget request. A quote from Congressman Weldon:

This bill takes care of most of our needs at Kennedy Space Center, so I’m hard pressed not to support my chairman when he’s taking care of Florida.

Yup.

I’ve got mine. What did posterity ever do for me?

I also always wonder if they understand the impact of “delaying” a program for a year. A contractor has a team put together, and they can’t just put them in cold storage until Congress decides to finally fund the program. They get reassigned to other projects, and it’s hard to reassemble them later, resulting in putting together a new team, with associated learning curve. This is one of the reasons that government space programs are so inefficient and costly.

Excellent stuff over at RLV News

Over at RLV News Clark Lindsey takes an uncharacteristicaly blunt swing at a particularly stupid article on SpaceDaily. I can’t say it any better than Clark, so go on over there and read his take.

There’s also a good item on the state of sounding rocket research (dismal). I’m a fan of sounding rockets since they offer a low cost means of doing simple space research. In science it’s often the simple experiments that have the most dramatic impact (in part because it’s harder to quibble about simple results, but that’s another post entirely). Unfortunately simple isn’t sexy, and sexy is what NASA is most interested in. Another point about sounding rockets that’s not generally well understood is that there’s a region of the atmosphere between about 50 km and 100 km which is too high for balloon research but to low for satellite research. There’s some important processes that take place in this region, and sounding rockets are really the only way to study them directly.

She Doesn’t Like Singing For Muslims

That’s what Linda Ronstadt said.

Oh, what’s that? She said it about Christians?

My mistake. No wonder the politically correct harpies aren’t trumpeting it from the front pages.

You know, it’s really sad that so many artists that I enjoy have to indulge themselves in this mindless politics. I used to love her stuff, particularly the torch songs with Nelson Riddle, but she’ll never sound the same again.

She Doesn’t Like Singing For Muslims

That’s what Linda Ronstadt said.

Oh, what’s that? She said it about Christians?

My mistake. No wonder the politically correct harpies aren’t trumpeting it from the front pages.

You know, it’s really sad that so many artists that I enjoy have to indulge themselves in this mindless politics. I used to love her stuff, particularly the torch songs with Nelson Riddle, but she’ll never sound the same again.

She Doesn’t Like Singing For Muslims

That’s what Linda Ronstadt said.

Oh, what’s that? She said it about Christians?

My mistake. No wonder the politically correct harpies aren’t trumpeting it from the front pages.

You know, it’s really sad that so many artists that I enjoy have to indulge themselves in this mindless politics. I used to love her stuff, particularly the torch songs with Nelson Riddle, but she’ll never sound the same again.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!