Go check out this comment on my TechCentralStation piece on the relative merits of John Kerry and George W. Bush’s space policy (it’s the first one by “jen larson,” in case others have been put up since I published this post).
Surprise, Surprise, Surprise
Costs of the robotic Hubble repair mission have been skyrocketing.
The estimated price tag of a robotic rescue mission — between $1 billion and $2 billion — is raising eyebrows and questions about whether Hubble is worth the investment amid tight budgets and periodic reports of technical woes that could cripple the spacecraft before the robot gets there.
I’ve never taken this mission seriously. I don’t think that NASA ever really intended to do it. The initial studies were just a fig leaf to distract attention from the fact that they weren’t willing to send a Shuttle to it, and assuage Hubble fans. The problem that they have now is that just safely deorbiting the thing is going to be impossible to do for a reasonable amount of money. I still think they should do the Shuttle servicing mission, because the marginal cost of that is the absolute cheapest thing they can do, and the risk is overblown (though even if it’s as dangerous as some think, it’s still one of the few things that Shuttle could do that would actually be useful).
By the way, they (like almost everyone) gets this part wrong:
If the cost hits $2 billion, that’s three to four times what it would cost to send astronauts to do the job as they have four times before and as NASA planned before the Columbia disaster.
That’s not what it would cost to send the Shuttle. The marginal cost of a Shuttle flight is somewhere between a hundred and hundred fifty million dollars. They’re basing this assessment on the average cost, which is more than half a billion, but that’s not the number one would properly use to make that decision.
“Obesity Tourism”
Robert Mugabe’s lunatic government “…wants to bring in obese tourists from overseas so that they can shed pounds doing manual labour on land seized from white farmers.”
I’ll be interested to see the brochure for that one.
You couldn’t make this stuff up–no one would believe you.
“Obesity Tourism”
Robert Mugabe’s lunatic government “…wants to bring in obese tourists from overseas so that they can shed pounds doing manual labour on land seized from white farmers.”
I’ll be interested to see the brochure for that one.
You couldn’t make this stuff up–no one would believe you.
“Obesity Tourism”
Robert Mugabe’s lunatic government “…wants to bring in obese tourists from overseas so that they can shed pounds doing manual labour on land seized from white farmers.”
I’ll be interested to see the brochure for that one.
You couldn’t make this stuff up–no one would believe you.
A Tipping Point?
I haven’t been tracking the news from Ukraine closely, but this seems like big news, and good news.
Journalists on Ukraine’s state-owned channel – which had previously given unswerving support to Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych – have joined the opposition, saying they have had enough of “telling the government’s lies”.
Good News From Iraq
Zarquawi is running scared:
For his part, Al Zarqawi has also expressed concern over the U.S. military operation against Fallujah, Mosul and other insurgency strongholds.
On Wednesday, an audio tape posted on an Islamic website and purportedly from Al Zarqawi accused Muslim clerics of failing to support the insurgency in Iraq.
“You have let us down in the darkest circumstances and handed us over to the enemy,” the message said. “You have stopped supporting the holy warriors. Hundreds of thousands of the nation’s sons are being slaughtered at the hands of the infidels because of your silence.”
“Hundreds of thousands”?
Is such exaggeration really helpful to his cause? If I were an incipient Jihadi, I might have second thoughts about joining up upon hearing that. If, that is, they subscribe to bin Laden’s “strong horse” theory (that is, “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.”). The message is, “we’re losing, folks.”
Che Chic
This is pretty disgusting. As one commenter says, that’s one store chain to knock off my shopping list this year.
That it can be hip to wear something like this is a testament to the failure of our educational system, from K-12 through the academy.
[Via Laughing Wolf]
Only Thirty Shopping Days Left
On this busiest shopping day of the year, Alan Boyle has a good roundup of gifts for space geeks.
Let Us Give Thanks
…that at least one major MSM publication, The Economist, seems to actually understand the blogosphere.
The erosion of the old media establishment probably does entail some shift to the right, if only because so many of the newer voices are more reliably pro-Republican than Mr Rather. But the new media are simply too anarchic and subversive for any single political faction to take control of them. There are plenty of leftish bloggers too: such people helped Howard Dean’s presidential campaign. And the most successful conservative bloggers are far from being party loyalists: look at the way in 2002 that they kept the heat on the Republicans’ then Senate leader, Trent Lott, for racist remarks that the New York Times originally buried. It is a safe bet that, if the current Bush administration goes the way of previous second-term administrations and becomes consumed by scandals, conservative bloggers will be in the forefront of the scandal-mongering.
Mr Rather’s passing does not mean that the liberal orthodoxy is about to give way to a new conservative one. It means that all orthodoxies are being chewed up by a voraciously unpredictable news media, which is surely all to the good.