The New Space Race

…is postponed until next year. This is interesting, politically:

In one corner, we have the SpaceX Crew Dragon, a successor to the original Dragon capsule it’s been using to deliver supplies to the ISS. The seven-seater vehicle appears to be quite the looker, with fairly large windows to give passengers a stunningly clear view of their journey — a feature you’d definitely appreciate if you were a paying customer. The company already has a solid idea of what to do with the capsule outside of its Commercial Crew responsibilities. In fact, it already sold two seats to take private citizens on a trip around the moon next year … but only if it has already started taking astronauts to the ISS for NASA.

A successful Falcon Heavy flight (hopefully next month) is a necessary, but not sufficient condition for SpaceX to attempt an Apollo 8 recreation (the fiftieth anniversary is almost exactly a year from now). If they do it before they’re flying commercial crew, it will have the appearance of not keeping their eyes on the ball for NASA’s needs. But NASA can control the schedule by throwing up impediments to first flight, and some at the agency might be motivated to see that happen, because it would be politically embarrassing to see a private company do an Apollo 8 re-enactment before the agency can with SLS, causing even more people to question the need for the latter. It will be an interesting year.

Oh, one other point. Amusing to see a woman journalist using the terms “manned” and “unmanned.” I personally try to only use those terms to describe historical events (e.g., Apollo). It appears that “crewed” and “uncrewed” are gaining acceptance, but there remain two problems with that. First, “crewed” sounds like “crude” when verbalized. Second, not everyone who flies will be crew. Maybe we need to start saying “humanned” spaceflight.

Space Is Not A Global Commons

Scott Pace gave an important speech that is sure to upset many in the international space community at the Galloway Symposium a couple weeks ago. Laura Montgomery comments.

Speaking of Henry Hertzfeld, every time I see him, for over a couple decades now, we argue about the viability of reducing the cost of launch through reusability of rockets. I wonder what he’s thinking these days?

The Corporate Tax Rate Arms Race

A https://www.the-american-interest.com/2017/12/21/ladies-gentlemen-take-places/ is good for all of us.

As I noted on Twitter, many people, ignorant of economics, are going to be surprised at how little reducing corporate tax rates will have on government revenue. Because corporations don’t pay taxes; they only collect them.

Corporations will “pay” less tax, but shareholders and employees will end up paying more, because their income will go up, and the increased economic growth from reduced prices will result in additional revenue as well.

Merry Christmas

I want to wish the best of the season to all of my Christian readers. As my gift, here is Psalm 53, being sung to the Pope in Aramaic.

[Christmas-afternoon update]

Richard Fernandez has thoughts on the Left’s continually failed attempts to purge the holiday of its meaning:

“Happy Federal Holiday” is about as information empty as you can get and perhaps that is deliberate. It advances not just another phrase, but a completely different world view, a universe safely empty of everything but numbers on a calendar.

Eventually anyone indoctrinated in this tradition will find accounts of the Federal Holiday Truce of 1914 or “I’ll be Home for the Federal Holiday of 1943” hard to comprehend. Nor will they be able to understand why anyone in Mosul should want to observe the Federal Holiday of 2017. Yet how could it be otherwise? To understand history one has to understand why such events as Christmas are and you cannot do that in a meaning-free universe.

The effort to erase Christmas will probably fail for no other reason than that it meets a human need that a mechanical bureaucratic day off cannot fulfill. Humanity needs a time to mark the growth and change in the family, an occasion to renew hopes and put aside fears and a chance to remember something we once knew: that everything’s going to be alright in the end. It really will.

The best Christmas present I could get would be for the corrupt officials at the Obama Justice Department (including the IRS) to finally be confronted with actual justice in the New Year. And I continue to be very happy that She lost.

My New Computer

Regular readers are aware of my recent travails (no, I’m not going to search for links). As an experiment this fall, I’ve been using an ASUS tablet and bluetooth keyboard and mouse. I won’t go into all of the frustration and screaming I’ve gone through to make this work, but it just. doesn’t.

I finally broke down and went out shopping at Best Buy near our place in Golden, CO (that’s where we are until the trip back next weekend). They had a fantastic deal on an HP AMD laptop for $229. Two problems with it: its 4G RAM isn’t expandable, and it has a 15″ screen. Why is the latter a problem, you ask? And well you may. It’s a problem because in addition to my old laptop needing replacement, seat pitch has gotten to a state at which you cannot use a laptop that size on a seatback table. I needed a smaller machine.

So I looked some more, and I found a 2-in-1 HP with a much smaller footprint, and a touchscreen. It also has a pen, in theory, but I don’t give a rat’s tuchus about that because the whole reason that I love computers is that I no longer have to drag something across something to communicate my thoughts. God’s gift to me, despite the fact that I don’t believe in Him/Her is the keyboard.

Its memory is also not expandable, but I’ve given up on that; these new machines are so thin that the RAM has to be soldered to the board. For $350 plus tax, it’s good enough. And so far it has been.

Next step is to see if I can install a good OS on it…

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!