Space

Costing Shuttle Rides

Tariq Malik has a piece on the new space prize today, in which he writes:

Former astronaut and U.S. senator John Glenn’s 1998 space shuttle seat cost NASA $50 million, and private orbital passengers like Dennis Tito and Mark Shuttleworth have paid about $20 million for jaunts to the International Space Station, McCurdy added. At present, British millionaire Sir Richard Branson’s announcement of suborbital flights on his newly christened Virgin Galactic venture will cost around $190,000.

I’d be curious to know where he got the fifty-million number. There is no accepted cost for a Shuttle seat–it all depends on how one wants to do the accounting. I’m guessing that he (or whoever gave him the number) came up with an average cost for a Shuttle flight in the year that he flew (perhaps $350M, itself a contentious number, and probably low), and then divided by the number of crew.

But this is a completely arbitrary way to do it, and in fact extremely overprices it, since it values the cost of delivering a payload bay full of tons of cargo at zero.

The reality is that John Glenn’s flight cost virtually nothing, at the margin. They could have flown seat full of John Glenn, or seat empty, and the cost of the flight would have been identical, other than training costs. Unless the services of the Shuttle are “unbundled,” there’s no definitive way to put a cost on a seat.

War Commentary

Emptying Prisons In Cuba

No, the headline isn’t about a repeat performance by Castro, but about releasing most of the prisoners from Guantanamo. But the story has me scratching my head:

Most of the alleged al Qaeda and Taliban inmates at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are likely to be freed or sent to their home countries for further investigation because many pose little threat and are not providing much valuable intelligence, the facility’s deputy commander has said.

OK, seems reasonable to me. But I emphasized those three words to put them in contrast with this:

“We don’t have a level of evidence to feel that we can be confident to prosecute them” all, he added, according to the newspaper. “We have guys here who have never told us anything, except to say that they want to cut off the heads of the infidels if they get a chance.”

Can someone help me reconcile this? Does someone who “wants to cut off the heads of infidels if they get a chance” really “pose little threat”? I mean, it’s not like these are exactly idle desires, as we’ve seen from the videos recently at various Islamic web sites. They really do it. And last time I checked, I was an infidel, by almost anyone’s definition, but certainly by these guys’. So is it unreasonable for me to feel safer if they remain caged up in Guantanamo?

Now I understand that we may not have any legal grounds for holding them within our criminal justice system (though even that’s kind of surprising–is it standard practice to parole someone who cheerfully admits that he’ll decapitate innocent folks given half a chance?), but we are at war. Frankly, if it were feasible, I’d be happy to cage up everyone who wants to lop off infidels’ heads, no matter how many million of them there are. We obviously can’t go out and find them all, or read their minds, but if we already have some in custody, and they admit that they’re going to try to murder us upon release, does it really make sense to release them?

Of course, it may not make sense to feed and clothe and guard them the rest of their days either. So I’ve got a modest proposal. How about we shorten a few of them by a few inches? With a pork-fat laden blade? Not all of them, just the ones who profess to think that a fitting fate for us infidels? It might serve as a salutory example, and at least they might quit being stupid and brazen enough to brag about their evil intentions toward us.

Obviously, we’re not going to do this, but sometimes I despair of any way of winning this war without resorting to such measures. How do we share a planet with people (and right now there are thousands, perhaps millions) who want nothing except, as the alien said in Independence Day, for us to die? If their minds cannot be changed, and changed in a way that we can feel confident that they’ve been changed, what can we do short of imprisoning or killing them?

Other than converting, or dying, I mean.

[Via Orin Kerr]

Political Commentary

What He Said

Joe Katzman has one of the best explanations that I’ve seen for my reasons in thinking that a President Kerry would be a disaster, even though I too think that it’s vital that we somehow, despite the odds, develop a second major party that has the defense of the country foremost in its mind:

I…understand the impetus to look at two candidates who offer less than the times demand, and see the stakes before us, and tell oneself that Kerry will have to do the right thing.

But you know what? He absolutely does not.

Look at Europe now, or look back into human history – illusion and passivity in the face of real threats is an option, and some leaders and states will take it.

One question: is Kerry one of those people? Simple question. Simple answer.

Kerry’s positions on issues like Iran are clear, and were openly stated in the debate: normalize relations with the world’s #1 terrorist sponsors while they undermine Iraq & Afghanistan, offer them nuclear fuel, propose sanctions the Europeans will drag their feet on in order to stop a late-stage nuclear program that’s impervious to sanctions anyway, and oppose both missile defense and the nuclear bunker-buster weapons that would give the USA defensive or offensive options in a crisis.

Gee, I’m sleeping better already.

Despite the fact that I think that George Bush is in many ways disastrous, and wish that there were a viable alternative, I remain convinced that the only realistic alternative would be even worse. And I think that the best way to slap the Dems in the face, to throw the bucket of icewater on them, to wake them up from their hysterical dreamland, is to repudiate them thoroughly at the polls–to force them to face reality, and shed themselves of their delusions about the enemy we face.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!