When we went to San Diego County last week, we explored some parts of California where we’d never been, even though I’ve lived here for four decades, and it’s not that far. We took a road through the desert from Highway 78 east of Julian south to I-8 at Ocatillo, and we passed by an historical monument for the stage route that ran from St. Louis to San Francisco from 1858 to 1861. It was a 25-day trip, stopping only to change horses and drivers. The monument pointed out that some Mormons had hacked their way through rock to get through the mountains west of Yuma, and then the route had headed north from there to Chino Hills and Los Angeles, then up to San Francisco taking the route of what is now I-5. When we cut across from Perris to I-15 to see the flowers in Riverside County, we ran across more signs for the stage route. Interesting bit of history.
To The Moon, Alice
Mike Pence just gave a speech in Huntsville in which he stated as an administration goal to get back to the moon in not nine years, but in five (I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that this would be at the end of Trump’s second term). And he doesn’t care how it happens, even if it takes commercial rockets. That’s a shot over Dick Shelby’s bow. And he threw a lot of shade at Boeing over SLS.
That will either require a budget increase, or SLS/Orion cancellation. I imagine that if he’s not already doing so, Elon will put people on 24/7 shifts in Boca Chica.
[Update mid-afternoon]
Here‘s the story from Loren Grush.
The Spacesuit Mess
This has been an issue for decades, largely as a result of lack of competition, when NASA stove piped the EMUs to JSC and Hamilton Standard, instead of having more innovation from Vykukal and Webbon at Ames.
The Chicago Way
The charges against Smollett have been dropped. Same with my jaw.
[Update a while later]
[Update mid-afternoon]
“This has never been about justice. It’s been about social justice.”
A Space Program For The Rest Of Us
In the process of looking for something else, I ended up rereading this essay I wrote a decade ago, as an open letter to the Augustine panel. I have to confess pleasure at how well it’s held up, and how things are proceeding as I foretold, despite Congress. Note that it also presaged my book, which I wrote a few years later.
[Update a few minutes later]
Heh, I just got to this part; I anticipated and advocated for the new Space Development Agency:
Just as war is too important to be left to the generals, man’s future in space is too important to be left to NASA. After President Reagan proposed the creation of a national missile defense system in 1983, it became clear that the U.S. Air Force was not properly organized or motivated — and so a new agency was created to pursue the president’s vision. The new agency, today called the Missile Defense Agency, was very innovative and made great progress because it could focus on its one goal. Along those lines, the Bush administration might have done well to establish an Office of Space Development (with “exploration” being merely a means to an end) that could draw on other federal resources — not just NASA, but the Departments of Defense and Energy — as well as the private sector.
It’s also ironic, in light of criticism of him in the essay, that Mike Griffin is heading it up.
Starlink
SpaceX claims that it has redesigned the satellites to ensure that they’ll burn up in the atmosphere.
Hopefully at end of life, and not on the way up. Seriously, if true, this is good housekeeping.
How Americans Used To Eat
Hint: It wasn’t plants:
Early Americans settlers were “indifferent” farmers, according to many accounts. They were fairly lazy in their efforts at both animal husbandry and agriculture, with “the grain fields, the meadows, the forests, the cattle, etc, treated with equal carelessness,” as one 18th-century Swedish visitor described—and there was little point in farming since meat was so readily available.
Settlers recorded the extraordinary abundance of wild turkeys, ducks, grouse, pheasant, and more. Migrating flocks of birds would darken the skies for days. The tasty Eskimo curlew was apparently so fat that it would burst upon falling to the earth, covering the ground with a sort of fatty meat paste. (New Englanders called this now-extinct species the “doughbird.”)
In the woods, there were bears (prized for their fat), raccoons, bobolinks, opossums, hares, and virtual thickets of deer—so much that the colonists didn’t even bother hunting elk, moose, or bison, since hauling and conserving so much meat was considered too great an effort. A European traveler describing his visit to a Southern plantation noted that the food included beef, veal, mutton, venison, turkeys, and geese, but he does not mention a single vegetable.
Infants were fed beef even before their teeth had grown in. The English novelist Anthony Trollope reported, during a trip to the United States in 1861, that Americans ate twice as much beef as did Englishmen. Charles Dickens, when he visited, wrote that “no breakfast was breakfast” without a T-bone steak. Apparently, starting a day on puffed wheat and low-fat milk—our “Breakfast of Champions!”—would not have been considered adequate even for a servant.
Indeed, for the first 250 years of American history, even the poor in the United States could afford meat or fish for every meal. The fact that the workers had so much access to meat was precisely why observers regarded the diet of the New World to be superior to that of the Old.
Lobster used to be fed to prisoners, because it was considered inferior to other meats. The notion that we ate plants is all part of the junk science of nutrition.
Michael Avenatti
In the past 24 hours, Trump has been cleared of the collusion charges, and Democrat hero Avenatti has been arrested for wire fraud. Gotta think this puts a damper on his presidential ambitions, even for a Democrat.
[Late-afternoon update]
Scumbag attorney (going at least back to Susan McDougal) Mark Geragos is allegedly a co-conspirator. It’s like a critical mass of scumbaggery.
Writing Sex For Money
…is hard fcking work.
I can imagine.
The Mueller Report
[Update a few minutes later]
[Monday-morning update, after the Barr letter was released on Sunday]
Glenn Reynolds has some links.
My brief thoughts: Both in refusing to properly administer the law in the case of the Clinton server to keep her campaign viable, and in concocting a false case against first a presidential candidate of the opposing party, and then the president, weaponizing all the legal and intelligence tools against him, this was the greatest abuse of federal power in American history. Those responsible, at the highest levels of government, even into the Obama White House, must be held to account, or the people will no longer be able to trust the most powerful institutions of the Republic. The continuous lies from the Democrats and the media about “Russian collusion” no doubt contributed to the loss of the House to the Democrats last year, if not caused it in and of themselves. Not only must those responsible for the abuse of power be held to legal account, but it would be just and fitting for this to result in a great victory against the Democrats in both the presidential and congressional races next year. It’s unfortunate that the Republicans would be the beneficiary of that, but sadly, we have no good choices in political parties, and haven’t in my lifetime.
[Bumped]
[Update a few minutes later]
Speaking of Glenn, his latest USA Today column: Collusion by the media, but don’t expect any apologies. And more at The Morning Brief.
[Update a while later]
This wasn’t just the biggest abuse of federal power in American history, but the biggest media failure in American history.
[Update at noon]
The real threat to the Republic: The Democrat Party. It always has been.
[Afternoon update]
No collusion, but the #Resistance is still yelling about it.
And Russiagate is WMD times a million.
The media should engage in a struggle session, but they won’t.
I’ll remember where I was when first I heard that the report had been released on Friday (Anza Borrego State Park, looking at a superbloom of wildflowers).
If you look carefully at the bottom shot, you’ll see a mountain sheep ram standing on top of the ridge (this was with my phone, kicking myself that we hadn’t taken a camera with a zoom lens).
I’ll also remember where I was when we heard the Barr letter being read on the radio yesterday: Looking at more wildflowers, including poppies, on a hillside north of Lake Elsinore (the crowds were apparently horrific down there in Walker Canyon, but this road was relatively empty).
The orange splash on the distant hillside in the top picture is the same kind of golden poppies (the California state flower) as the ones in the bottom picture, by the side of the road.
[Late afternoon update]
Bob Zimmerman isn’t impressed with Mueller, but sees signs of hope.