Business, General Science, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space, Space Science, Technology and Society

JWST

22 Comments

We expected this yesterday, but here it is:

Following an Independent Review Board report on the James Webb Space Telescope project, NASA has announced a further delay to the telescope’s anticipated launch. Coming just three months after a year-long delay to 2020, NASA now says the telescope will not be ready to launch until 2021 at the earliest and that the project will breach its $8.8 billion USD cost cap.

The cited mismanagement at NG and NASA is just staggering. The new overrun is about the amount that it was supposed to cost, in total, originally. What a programmatic disaster.

[Update after noon]

Here’s the story from Jeff Foust.

[Update a while later]

[Thursday-morning update]

Here‘s Marina Koren’s take:

A wiring error caused workers to apply too much voltage to the spacecraft’s pressure transducers, severely damaging them. And during an acoustics test, which examines whether hardware can survive the loud sounds of launch, the fasteners designed to hold the sun shield together came loose. The incident scattered 70 bolts, and engineers scrambled to find them. They’re still looking for a few. “We’re really close to finding every one of the pieces,” Zerbuchen said.

These three errors alone resulted in a schedule delay of about 1.5 years and $600 million, Young said.

I think that’s about Northrop Grumman’s annual net income. If I were NASA, I’d tell them that if they ever want another NASA contract, they’ll eat it themselves.

[Update a while later]

Alex Witze has more, over at Nature.

Education, History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, War Commentary

Stop Trivializing Naziism

9 Comments

Thoughts from David Harsanyi:

It’s difficult to take this spurious reasoning seriously, but simply because you think you detect some trace parallels between what Nazis engaged in and contemporary politics doesn’t make them comparable in any important way. The Nazis adopted a bunch of socialist policies, but that doesn’t mean Bernie Sanders is a would-be Himmler.

Admittedly, there is huge space in-between zero tolerance and lawlessness at the border. But none of the positions that have been taken in American political discourse so far portends the Fourth Reich. Switzerland and Japan, to name just two liberal democracies, have far stricter immigration laws than the United States, and neither is on the cusp of fascism. Simply because the arbitrary number of allowable immigrants you’ve come up with differs from that of your political opponent doesn’t make that person a budding sociopath.

Popular Culture, Social Commentary, Space, Space History, Technology and Society

Buzz

2 Comments

Emilee Speck got the court documents. As someone who’s known them all for years, this is very sad.

[Afternoon update]

Here’s a statement from Christina:

[Wednesday-morning update]

Here’s the latest, from Chris Davenport.

[Bumped]

[Late-morning update]

Marina Koren has more at The Atlantic.

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Technology and Society

The Latest Bombshell

20 Comments

Well, now we know why the DoJ and FBI have been dragging their feet for so many months on those subpoenaed documents. I’m guessing we’ll soon be seeing a lot more, and worse.

And then there’s this:

[Update a while later]

What did Peter Strzok do?

Not as much as he wanted to, but he did a lot of damage.

[Afternoon update]

Just got around to reading the whole thing at the first link:

On October 30, the Department of Justice finally got in gear to get a warrant — to include everything dealing during Mrs. Clinton’s tenure with the State Department and all devices — and especially the Comey-denominated “golden emails” from the BlackBerrys and all the messages sent to Abedin to be given to Mrs. Clinton, right?

Nope.

Shocker #1: Despite everyone’s recognition of the importance of the “explosive” “bomb,” and the “golden emails” on the Weiner laptop, the FBI never even sought to review the “golden” emails. FBI General Counsel Baker pushed hard to expand the application to include those, but Strzok and DOJ prosecutors shot it down.

Shocker #2: They deliberately ignored the emails between Huma Abedin and others — despite knowing she was a proxy for the Secretary and had lied to them in her interview.

Federal investigators knew people would email Abedin, and she would print things out for Clinton. Abedin admitted it was easier for her to print things from home in Brooklyn.

Logically then, it appears it was Abedin who deliberately stripped classified markings from emails to forward the information to Mrs. Clinton so she could then deny ever receiving anything marked classified. It’s called “plausible deniability,” and it was a deliberate and illegal scheme for handling classified information.

Shocker #3: Over analysts’ objections, the FBI never reviewed the Weiner laptop to determine if it had been compromised by foreign agents despite finding that Huma Abedin had forwarded classified information to it. Those were flagrant violations of 18 U.S.C. §793.

There are important conclusions from these facts in the inspector general’s report.

This is a much bigger cover up than Watergate, by orders of magnitude.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!