I’d always wondered about this sort of thing.
Commercial Crew
Looks like Boeing is going to slip into 2019.
We remain dependent on the Russians because we remain unwilling to risk astronauts’ lives on something as hazardous as spaceflight.
Colonizing Mars
Is Elon religious enough to do it?
I don’t know, but I think there will be room for plenty of religions off planet, including new ones.
[Update a while later]
A new paper from the White House called “Making Human Settlement of Space a Reality” that contains almost nothing that would actually enable human settlement of space.
[Afternoon update]
Adam Routh wants to do Apollo again.
Conservative Reasons To Vote For Trump
Five of them. I agree, even though I think he’d be terrible. Especially on the last one.
[Sunday-morning update]
Since the topic has come up in comments, it’s worth noting that while Trump talks dirty, Juanita Broaddrick still relives her brutal rape by Bill Clinton. And expect the Democrats (of which she, like Kathleen Willey, used to be one) to continue to attack her and imply that she is a liar, or a “narcissistic loony tune,” as they do with all of his victims.
[Update a few minutes later]
Hillary is (faux) shocked, shocked at Trump’s crude language. The hypocrisy is overwhelming.
[Late-afternoon update]
Juanita Broaddrick wants to be believed.
And the Left and the Clinton mafia want to victimize her again.
[Monday-morning update]
A reminder of what Hillary did to Kathleen Willey. It’s who she is. It’s what she does.
The Childishness Sweeping America
Thoughts from Bob Zimmerman:
The worst aspect of all these stories is how this childish intolerant behavior is becoming increasingly violent and aggressive. Unfortunately, our society does not seem to know how to stop it, and thus I expect it to only grow worse in the coming years, no matter who wins this coming election.
Like related things, it won’t end well.
NASA’s Approach To Mars Exploration
A lot of what NASA is doing is going to undergo a rethinking in the next few years, I think.
Rocket Propellant From Water
I’m glad to see this technology being demonstrated and matured in space, but I think its terrestrial applications are overhyped.
The Rule Of Law
Do we still believe in it?
Democrats don’t seem to. At least not as applied to them.
Whatever you think of Donald Trump, the election of Hillary Clinton will be a moral and legal catastrophe unprecedented in the history of our country from which it may never recover. Sound excessive? Think what you wish, but the fact of the matter is the USA will have an unindicted criminal as president and no one knows what the consequences will be.
With each passing day it becomes clearer the investigation of the Hillary Clinton email scandal was such a sham that it did far more than merely tarnish the reputations of the FBI and the Department of Justice. It distorted our legal system beyond recognition.
The FBI and Justice Department have apparently been used by one political party to keep the other out of power by covert manipulation of our system. That means these institutions have been turned on their heads into instruments of state oppression extraordinarily close to those used by totalitarian regimes.
There will come a point, if this continues, that only the Second Amendment will preserve the Republic. At this point, the best outcome would be the election of Donald Trump, and then removal via Article 2, Section 4. Or perhaps the 22nd Amendment.
[Update a few minutes later]
Oopsie. Two “boxes” of Clinton emails unaccounted for. And why were they in boxes? Because for no explained reason, she printed them out, a format that can’t be easily searched, rather than simply handing over a thumb drive, which could. This is a massive cover up, in which the White House, the Department of State, and the Justice Department and the Clinton campaign all collaborated. It’s a much bigger deal than Watergate (particularly when combined with the continued IRS abuse and cover up). And the Democrats in the media can’t be bothered to care.
[Update a few minutes later]
The Left’s attempts to silence dissenters will not end well. And I agree with Glenn: “I’m increasingly concerned that the neutralization of the Tea Party movement — an effort by both major parties — may have convinced a lot of people that civics-book style polite political participation is for chumps.”
They are sowing the wind.
[Update a while later]
America’s governing “elite” thinks that Americans are morons. Well, if we continue to allow them to run our lives, in some sense, we are. This will not end well.
[Update at noon]
Sarah Hoyt: Breaking and buying.
“Peak Oil”
Alaska just doubled its reserves.
Good news for our economy, bad news for petrotyrants, in Russan and the Middle East. And once again, my prediction of many years ago, that $100 oil was unsustainable, remains accurate.
Climate
What is the import of Lorenz? Literally ALL of our collective data on historic “global atmospheric temperature” are known to be inaccurate to at least +/- 0.1 degrees C. No matter what initial value the dedicated people at NCAR/UCAR enter into the CESM for global atmospheric temperature, it will differ from reality (from actuality – the number that would be correct if it were possible to produce such a number) by many, many orders of magnitude greater than the one/one-trillionth of a degree difference used to initialize these 30 runs in the CESM-Large Ensemble. Does this really matter? In my opinion, it does not matter. It is easy to see that the tiniest of differences, even in a just one single initial value, produce 50-year projections that are as different from one another as is possible(see endnote 1). I do not know how many initial conditions values have to be entered to initialize the CESM – but certainly it is more than one. How much more different would the projections be if each of the initial values were altered, even just slightly?
This has always been pretty obvious to me. What does it mean? That we cannot model it into the future with any confidence whatsoever.