Next New Shepard flight is now scheduled for Monday. I wonder what the delay has been about? In 2017, they said they’d be flying people in 2018.
Missile Defense And Launch Costs
I did a thread on Twitter this morning.
It's worth noting that one of the reasons we never got space-based missile defense was that it was only recently that we've finally gotten launch costs down sufficiently to make it financially feasible, due to an almost demented policy failure for the past three decades. [1/n] https://t.co/ouaaIS9eUk
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 18, 2019
The first serious proposal for space-based missile defense was Lowell Wood's concept of "Brilliant Pebbles": Kinetic interceptors in orbit. But in order to implement it, launch costs had to be reduced far below those of the Shuttle and conventional USAF expendables.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 18, 2019
The purpose of the DARPA DC-X program was to demonstrate the potential for reusable Single-Stage-To-Orbit, which many viewed as a requirement for low launch cost (SpaceX has since proven this to be mistaken).
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 18, 2019
DC-X did demonstrate vertical take-off and landing of single vehicle in an atmosphere (the Apollo LEM was two stage in a vacuum). It also demonstrated relatively rapid turnaround of a LOX/LH2 propulsion system. But then NASA took it over.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 18, 2019
On one of the test flights of the NASA-modified vehicle, someone left a pneumatic hose off one of the legs, and it crashed and burned at White Sands, ending the program.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 18, 2019
Another thing that the DC-X program demonstrated before its demise was that traditional cost models for new concepts were utter crap. SpaceX has since validated that. NAFCON cost model has been shown to be worse than worthless for non-traditional activities.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 18, 2019
One of the biggest launch-policy errors of the 90s was to confine the military to expendables, and assign reusable space transports to NASA. It was nothing short of disastrous, setting us back over a decade.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 18, 2019
After the X-33 debacle, which no one saw coming except anyone who understood how to do X programs, the idiotic lesson (fallacy of hasty generalization) drawn from it by NASA was that reusable launch systems weren't practical. Tell it to SpaceX.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 18, 2019
X-33 should never have been awarded to Lockmart (their proposal wasn't compliant, in that the business plan was nonsense, but no one at MSFC would recognize a business plan if it kicked them in the ass). Also, should never have been a single award.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 18, 2019
A key rule of X programs is that a vehicle only tests one new technology, on a platform that is otherwise well understood. VentureStar was testing single-stage to Montana, with a linear aerospike engine, and a conformal composite hydrogen tank. Huge and obvious tech risk.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 18, 2019
X-33 was an example of NASA's Wile E. Coyote approach to technology development: Try some crazy thing, then when it doesn't work, don't try to figure out why and improve it, just assume it can't be done and go on to the next crazy thing.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 18, 2019
And so we entered the 21st century with no one, neither USAF or NASA, even attempting to get launch costs down. Former was focused on mission assurance of expendable EELVs, and latter had devolved into a jobs program for giant expendable rockets.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 18, 2019
But now, having done that, it's useful to go back and re-examine concepts for space-based missile defense that were financially infeasible with traditional launch costs of many thousands of dollars per pound. Cubesats are also a game changer.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 18, 2019
[Update a couple minutes later]
Trump’s missile-defense strategy.
As I noted above, if the space segment is now feasible, it’s despite, not because of government launch policy for the past three decades (except possibly for COTS).
Toxic Anti-Masculinity
Thoughts on the need for both masculinity and femininity from a (female) psychotherapist.
And Kurt Schlichter writes that we need to retoxify it.
[Update a while later]
Heh. Least masculine society in human history is concerned about “toxic masculinity.”
And this will be fun: Harvard could be sued under Title IX for calling traditional masculinity “harmful.”
The State Of The Union
…is off.
Good. Just send a letter. I’ll be happy if there’s never another speech; there is nothing requiring it in the Constitution. If he wants to address the nation, he can do it from the Oval Office again.
[Friday-morning update]
One way you can tell that SOTUs as they’ve been done for the last century are a terrible idea is that Woodrow Wilson started this execrable circus. Unfortunately, Trump will almost certainly not take the advice. It would be behavior (and an expression of beliefs) far too Reaganesque.
[Bumped]
[Update a few minutes later]
26 of 45 presidents didn’t give a SOTU speech.
Gillette
Thoughts on their attempt to get woke, go broke:
Gillette has learned that in [current year], it’s not enough for a company to make a product that people want. It’s not enough to make them feel inadequate about themselves, and then sell them the supposed cure for that inadequacy. Consumers, men in particular, must be made to feel worthless. They have to be reminded that their needs and desires are wrong under any circumstances, that their instincts are loathsome, that their very existence is a malignancy, and that they’re responsible for all the world’s ills whether they want to admit it or not.
Now give them your money, you piece of garbage.
There are a lot of alternatives.
[Update a few minutes later]
Wow, they’ve even turned Piers Morgan into a men-rights activist.
[Wednesday-morning update]
The toxic mission to re-engineer men.
[Late-morning update]
More thoughts from Lileks:
The first half of the ad is stupid – all these guys staring in the mirror, wondering “Am I a straw man who actually laughed at that ‘Married with Children’ episode in 1999?” The clueless, fatal association of grilling with indifferent lunkhead men, the sort of detail that could only come from men who write long essays for Medium about how they feel alienated from grilling and always get nervous sweat when they have to go to a backyard party, because there are like, these dudes, standing over the fire? And it’s so, like, primal? god none of these people ever listen to Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me you can just tell but I guess I can stand here and joke while I drink this beer because airquotes it’s what guys do airquotes
Here’s the thing, though. I am not completely outraged. Take care of your kids, set a good example, don’t catcall – sure. Yes. Men who do these things will surely agree. Men who do not are unlikely to be moved to behave otherwise. But men who do these things already will not find the commercial supportive; they’re more likely to be irritated that someone presumes they have to be told these things.
Yes.
[Friday-morning update]
Some razor advice from Stephen Green.
[Bumped]
The Elements Of Writing
An interesting interview with Virginia Postrel.
Glenn Miller’s Plane
One of the mysteries of the war may be about to be solved. It still wouldn’t explain what caused it to go down, though.
Politicians, And Lies
Thoughts from Neo-Neocon.
The word “lie” is bandied about with far too much abandon. A broken promise is not a lie, nor is making a false statement, if one believes it to be true.
Trump seems to be indifferent to the truth value of what he says, simply saying whatever seems useful to his needs at the time. But as she points out, Obama’s lies (and they were that) were much more consequential.
Space Force
The television show.
Despite Steve Carrell, I don’t have high hopes.
The Space Frontier Act
Ted Cruz is going to try to pass it again. Hope it happens.
So, in this alternate universe in which Ted Cruz has a beard, will he be able to get the Space Frontier Act passed?https://t.co/fW2b1j68ki
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 17, 2019