Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

NASA And The GAO

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The latest major project assessment is out:

Three of the largest projects in this critical stage of development—Exploration Ground Systems, Orion, and the Space Launch System—continue to face cost, schedule, and technical risks. In April 2017, we found that the first integrated test flight of these systems, known as Exploration Mission-1, will likely be delayed beyond November 2018.

NASA concurred with our findings and is currently conducting an assessment to establish a new launch date. Because NASA’s assessment is ongoing, the cost implications of the schedule delay and its effect on the projects’ baselines are still unknown. However, given that these three human space exploration programs represent more than half of NASA’s current portfolio development cost baseline, a cost increase or delay could have substantial repercussions not only for these programs but NASA’s entire portfolio.

You don’t say.

[Update mid afternoon]

Bob Zubrin isn’t happy with NASA’s current Mars plans:

During the Apollo program, the NASA’s mission-driven human spaceflight program spent money in order to do great things. Now, lacking a mission, it just does things in order to spend a great deal of money.

Why is NASA proposing a lunar-orbiting space station? The answer to that is simple. It’s to give its Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion capsule programs something to do. The utility of such activity is not a concern. As a result, nothing useful will be accomplished.

Because Congress isn’t serious.

[Update a few minutes later]

Bob Zimmerman has some caustic thoughts on the GAO report.

[Thursday-morning update]

Bob Zimmerman isn’t happy about the cost overruns on the engine test stands. Neither am I. These aren’t the costs, they’re the overruns. On test stands for engines for a rocket we don’t need, and can’t afford to operate.

Also Ethan Siegal agrees with Bob Zubrin that a cislunar station is a waste of time and money.

[Bumped]

[Update mid-afternoon]

NASA doesn’t have any good answers as to why the test stands were being built in Alabama. We know the answer. It’s not a good one.

History, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Trump And Russia

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Why it’s not Watergate redux.

The overreaction to this, from people like Larry Tribe, has been hyperbolic. I’ve been having some arguments on Twitter with people, including Bob Zubrin (who is the Never Trumper’s Never Trumper), on the roles and responsibilities of the branches of government and of the federal workforce. Bob thinks that someone should disobey (or even countermand) a presidential order that they consider illegal, and somehow still keep their job. My position is that while no one is required to break the law or violate the Constitution, they are not the law unto themselves. Employees of the executive branch report ultimately to the president, and are accountable to him or her. The president is accountable either to the states in an election, or to the Congress, who can impeach and remove him. There is nothing in the Constitution about insubordination to the White House being a check on executive power, and to allow it would be to remove the unelected employees of the executive branch from any accountability to any one at all, giving us a tyranny of the bureaucracy. I don’t think that Bob has fully thought this through. I’m sure that Madison et al would never have intended this.

[Afternoon update]

I agree with Ben Sasse:

Sasse also emphasized the importance of three separate, co-equal branches of government, including ensuring the Justice Department is “very, very insulated from partisan politics.”

“We have three branches of government, not one, not 17, right? And so you need to have investigative and prosecutorial functions be in the Article II branch of government. They need to be in the executive branch, but there should be lots of insulation from the career civil servants and the leadership of the Justice Department from political decision-making at the White House,” he said.

It would help if we had an educational system that actually taught about the Constitution. And a president who had read it.

Business, Economics, Education, General Science, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Climate Exaggerators

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Cliff Mass on the academic wages of debunking them:

Every time I correct misinformation in the media like this, I get savaged by some “environmentalists” and media. I am accused of being a denier, a skeptic, an instrument of the oil companies, and stuff I could not repeat in this family friendly blog. Sometimes it is really hurtful. Charles Mudede of the Stranger is one of worst of the crowd, calling me “dangerous” and out of my mind (see example below).

A postdoc at the UW testified at the Environment Committee of the Washington State House saying that I was a contrarian voice. I spoke to her in person a few days later and asked where my science was wrong–she could not name one thing. But she told me that my truth telling was “aiding” the deniers. We agreed to disagree.

My efforts do not go unnoticed at the UW, with my department chairman and leadership in the UW Climate Impacts Group telling me of “concerns” with my complaints about hyped stories on oyster deaths and snowpack. One UW professor told me that although what I was saying was true, I needed to keep quiet because I was helping “the skeptics.” Probably not good for my UW career.

I believe scientists must provide society with the straight truth, without hype or exaggeration, and that we must correct false or misleading information in the media. It is not our role to provide inaccurate information so that society will “do the right thing.” History is full of tragic examples of deceiving the public to promote the “right thing”–such as weapons of mass destruction claims and the Iraq War.

Global warming forced by increasing greenhouse gases is an extraordinarily serious challenge to our species that will require both mitigation (reducing emissions) and adaptation (preparing ourselves to deal with the inevitable changes). Society can only make the proper decisions if they have scientists’ best projections of what will happen in the future, including the uncertainties.

What a concept.

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