History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Space History, Technology and Society

Make NASA Great Again

21 Comments

My thoughts on the passing of John Glenn, over at National Review.

[Update a while later]

Buzz Aldrin remembers his former colleague.

[Update a while later]

Dear President Trump, here’s how to make space great:

This list of goals sounds audacious, perhaps outrageous, but it is entirely within the capability and character of the people who built the Transcontinental Railroad, the Hoover Dam, and conquered a continent. Americans are leaders in every one of these fields. It is only necessary for the new President to unleash America’s potential—once unleashed, American innovators will move these dreams toward reality faster than anyone can imagine.

Asteroid mining, moon mining, propellant depots, solar-power satellites, asteroid deflection? Crazy talk, when instead we could be building a giant rocket.

I had dinner with Coyote in Seattle last June.

[Update early afternoon]

Bill Gates’s and America’s false memory of Apollo:

So whether you agree with Bill Gates and his assessment of Trump or not, it’s important to remember that funding for the Apollo program was opposed by the majority of Americans. Why then does America have this bizarre memory of the program? You can blame the baby boomers like Gates.

The baby boomers were kids during the Apollo space program. And when you’re a kid you don’t have much to worry about in the way of paying the bills or public policy. You certainly don’t have fully formed political ideas about, say, ways that government funds can be better used than blasting people into space.

But that was precisely what happened. Baby boomers, as children of the 1960s, just remember the speeches on TV and watching the moon landing. They don’t remember that the majority of Americans (American adults, as those are the people who get polled) thought that the Apollo space program was a waste of money.

Roger Launius, chief historian at NASA, put it best in a 2005 paper: “While there may be many myths about Apollo and spaceflight, the principal one is the story of a resolute nation moving outward into the unknown beyond Earth.”

This is why, as I wrote a few months ago:

Because they view Apollo as the model for how large space programs should operate, and because they believe that Apollo represented a moment of national unity, they seem to think that we ought to recreate it.

In a sense, however, a critical reason that we cannot do what they want is because we never really did it the first time.

Stop trying to make Apollo happen again.

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

The New Attorney General

10 Comments

This is bad news:

Mr. Sessions has heavily influenced the makeup of the transition team for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, these people said, with many of those appointed favoring greater emphasis on manned exploration missions to the moon and deeper into the solar system.

Candidates for NASA administrator also are being vetted, in part, by Mr. Sessions or his associates, while officials at Boeing Co. and other legacy aerospace giants increasingly believe Mr. Sessions will help temper possible changes inside NASA that would hurt existing, big-ticket projects to ultimately send astronauts to Mars.

Not coincidentally, such exploration would rely heavily on scientists, workers and rocket technology based in Alabama, at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. Mr. Sessions over the years has been a champion of the agency’s proposed heavy-lift rocket, dubbed Space Launch System, or SLS, and helped protect its roughly $2 billion-a-year price tag from cutbacks proposed by the Obama White House.

I like how Pasztor unironically talks about SLS/Orion as part of sending “astronauts to Mars,” when they’re almost completely irrelevant to it. This pork-mongering is part of the tragedy of Apollo.

This is the first time I’ve seen Doug Cooke’s name as a potential NASA administrator. He’d be as bad as, or worse than, a second stint by Mike Griffin.

[Update a while later]

Yes, Trump should focus on the government, not Boeing or Lockmart. They’re just doing what they’re incented to do.

And he should take a look at SLS.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Technology and Society, Weird

Where Is Trump Getting His Cabinet Picks?

24 Comments

Surprisingly (at least to me), he’s poaching Galt’s Gulch.

[Wednesday-morning update]

Robert Tracinski (who actually is an Objectivist) isn’t impressed:

The problem is that Hohmann is trying to fit the Rand angle into a narrative about the supreme awfulness of the supremely awful Trump administration. “The fact that all of these men, so late in life, are such fans of works that celebrate individuals who consistently put themselves before others is therefore deeply revealing. They will now run our government.” Are you frightened now? Because I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to be frightened.

Hohmann would have been better served by asking what these business leaders took from Rand as the message that inspired them. Again, there are a few hints. Puzder says that it’s about encouraging his kids to live “the kind of lives of achievement, integrity, and independence that Rand celebrated in her novels.” Congressman Mike Pompeo (referred to in the article) explained that Rand’s impact was because, “I spent my whole life working hard,” a virtue her novels promoted, and because, “I eat and breathe small government and freedom.”

Oh, no! Important figures in the new administration have been influenced by an author who advocated freedom. And integrity. Does that perhaps sound a little less frightening?

It does to people who hate those things.

Business, Economics, Science And Society, Space, Technology and Society

Bootstrapping The Solar System

17 Comments

A new paper:

Advances in robotics and additive manufacturing have become game-changing for the prospects of space industry. It has become feasible to bootstrap a self-sustaining, self-expanding industry at reasonably low cost. Simple modeling was developed to identify the main parameters of successful bootstrapping. This indicates that bootstrapping can be achieved with as little as 12 metric tons (MT) landed on the Moon during a period of about 20 years. The equipment will be teleoperated and then transitioned to full autonomy so the industry can spread to the asteroid belt and beyond. The strategy begins with a sub-replicating system and evolves it toward full self-sustainability (full closure) via an in situ technology spiral. The industry grows exponentially due to the free real estate, energy, and material resources of space. The mass of industrial assets at the end of bootstrapping will be 156 MT with 60 humanoid robots, or as high as 40,000 MT with as many as 100,000 humanoid robots if faster manufacturing is supported by launching a total of 41 MT to the Moon. Within another few decades with no further investment, it can have millions of times the industrial capacity of the United States. Modeling over wide parameter ranges indicates this is reasonable, but further analysis is needed. This industry promises to revolutionize the human condition.

Looks interesting. I remember talks like this at the Princeton conferences 35 years ago. It’s technology is finally starting to evolve to allow it to happen.

Related: Carlos Entrena Utrilla has started a series of descriptions of the coming cislunar economy.

[Update a few minutes later]

Sorry for missing link on Carlos’s piece, fixed now.

Economics, History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The Racist Roots Of “Progressivism”

6 Comments

Virginia Postrel:

In the early 20th century, most progressives viewed as cutting-edge science what today looks like simple bigotry. “Eugenics and race science were not pseudosciences in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era,” Leonard emphasizes. “They were sciences,” supported by research laboratories and scholarly journals and promoted by professors at the country’s most prestigious universities.

While some socialists and conservatives also embraced them, Leonard argues, eugenics and scientific racism fit particularly well with progressive thought: “Eugenics was anti-individualistic; it promised efficiency; it required expertise, and it was founded on the authority of science.” Equally important, “biological ideas,” Leonard writes, gave progressive reformers “a conceptual scheme capable of accommodating the great contradiction at the heart of Progressive Era reform — its view of the poor as victims deserving state uplift and as threats requiring state restraint.” They could feel sorry for impoverished Americans while trying to restrict their influence and limit their numbers.

Know what else is “founded on the authority of science”? The war on the fossil-fuel industry, and the desire to control all aspects of our lives in the name of “saving the planet.”

In addition to restricting immigration, throwing people out of work with a minimum wage, and keeping blacks and other inferiors out of the job market, she could have also pointed out that gun control (another “progressive” idea) was traditionally intended to keep those inferior disarmed.

And nothing has changed. Accusations of “racism” against actual liberals by “progressives” remain, as with accusations of “hate,” and “violence,” and “ignorance,” psychological projection.

[Update a few minutes later]

How to get “progressive” students to understand the minimum wage:

When I get to the words “parasites,” I am aware that my tone of voice and demeanor are showing signs of disgust. They are disgusting sentiments, not easily read aloud to a classroom of students.

I think this is useful pedagogically for several reasons. First, it teaches students in political economy to carefully distinguish positive analysis from normative evaluation. By building this in early in the course, I find it easier to teach more difficult concepts like Coase and externalities. Second, it poses a striking challenge to students’ priors that good intentions lead to good policy. I use the opportunity to emphasize that economists judge policies by their outcomes, not the intentions behind them. Third, the example demonstrates the value of knowing something about the history of ideas and economic thought. It enriches their knowledge of both of the historical and contemporary debates and they remember it (I think). Fourth, the discussion invites a consideration of what values, views, and policies are consistent with their own normative positions. And finally, it is a powerful illustration of how ideas have consequences.

Yes. I wish that more teachers did this. But of course, too many of them are “progressives.”

General Science, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Cats

6 Comments

Humans’ strange love affair with them.

Our current cat is the weirdest one we’ve ever had. She’s very social, and has never attacked us, other than nipping at my calves occasionally when she wants to be fed. In fact, that’s the only way she communicates orally; she never talks. I know her vocal cords work, because she will have discussion with other cats, but with us she’s silent, unless you squeeze her. It’s a problem in fact, because if she gets stuck in a closet, we’d never know, unless she bangs on the door. She also has a genetic defect that created a kink in her tail, making her look like a squirrel, so this may be another one.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!