Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Trump, And Space

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I was on The Space Show yesterday discussing this, but Marcia Smith has a good rundown.

The subject of fueling the Falcon while crew was aboard is mentioned there, and it came up on the show yesterday. I need to write something up on this, but my take is the usual one. It’s probably saf(er) to load crew after propellant has been loaded, but it’s not at all obvious to me that doing it with them on board is sufficiently unsafe to justify the extra cost/time. As always, the notion of “human rating” is nonsense, there is no single correct level of safety. It depends on the purpose of the mission. I’d let the astronauts decide (knowing that they will know that if they won’t accept the risk, they probably won’t fly, because others will).

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

How Did Trump Win?

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Thoughts from Clive Crook:

two things seem to loom large. First, that Hillary Clinton was an objectively bad candidate. Second, that having chosen so poorly, Democrats came up with yet more ways to repel a large segment of the electorate. If I’d been asked to advise them on how to lose an election to a manifestly unqualified opponent, I’m not sure I could have been much help: They had it covered.

From the outset, many voters were clearly fed up with Washington and all its works. Up and down the country, the political establishment was cordially detested. Step forward, Hillary Clinton, wife of an ex-president, champion of the downtrodden, somehow wealthy, trailing scandals, friends in all the right places, anointed after a rigged nomination — in short, the complete representative of politics as usual. Yet if Clinton was a bad candidate, Trump was so much worse. Even many of his supporters acknowledge his unfitness. And remember, the election was close. Something else (aside from the design of the Electoral College) was needed to put Trump in the White House.

The crucial extra ingredient, I think, was the way the case against Trump was framed. Clinton’s goal should have been to detach a slice of his support. The best way for her to do that, issue by issue, would have been to acknowledge the particle of truth in his claims, if any, and say why her approach to the problem was better. Instead, she and her supporters refused to grant the validity of any part of Trump’s pitch. Even that wasn’t enough. Trump was a racist and a fascist, they said. Support him, and you’re no better: Either that, or you’re an idiot for failing to see it.

Apparently it takes more than four years of college to understand this: You don’t get people to see things your way by calling them idiots and racists, or sorting them into baskets of deplorables and pitiables (deserving of sympathy for their moral and intellectual failings). If you can’t manage genuine respect for the people whose votes you want, at least try to fake it.

I don’t really want to concern troll Democrats and give them good advice, but really, if you want to believe that this was about racism and misogyny, you just keep telling yourself that. And you just keep continuing to become electorally irrelevant:

Republican Map

[Late-evening update]

Lefties’ arrogance elected Trump. It’s the classic Greek tragedy of hubris, as exemplified by Obama’s upraised chin and Greek columns, and then the fall. As Glenn says, it was (ironically, but not surprising to people who have long seen the projection of the Left) a culture of hate. And as I said, the best reason to vote Trump (besides the fact that he, unlike her, could be impeached) was to issue a giant EFF YOU to the Left, and the media. But I repeat myself.

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

A Trump Space Program

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Lori Garver’s take.

I don’t understand where this talk about a return of Mike Griffin is coming from. I’d be very surprised if either Bob Walker or Mark Albrecht would recommend that.

[Update a few minutes later]

Not space related, but here is a report on potential cabinet members. Needless to say, I’m not as hair on fire as Jerry Coyne is. Bolton would be a good choice for Secretary of State. I think that Corker would be a disaster. Not sure about Newt.

I think, from a space perspective, the worst thing about the Trump win is that Jeff Sessions has been such a close supporter. If he becomes head of OMB, killing off SLS will be impossible, unless we can come up with something more useful for Marshall to do.

History, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Quantity Versus Quality

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This is an old post, but it’s worth a repost with all of the nonsense this week about how Hillary should be president because she won (or is winning — I think they’re still counting) the popular vote:

It would be perfectly constitutional for the electors to be chosen by throwing darts at a phone book, by elimination from a reality show, or a mass tournament of pistols at dawn, as long as the legislature so stipulated. That was the degree to which the Founders thought that the states should have leeway in determining how they determined their electors. This is a very important point to make when arguing with modern democraphiles about ending the Electoral College and electing the president by popular vote.

Not also my broader point:

Many (in fact, many too many) in government imagine that their job is to create more government. As three examples, legislators think they’re supposed to pass legislation, diplomats think that (among other things) they’re supposed to get treaties signed and ratified, and regulators think that they’re supposed to create regulations. They are encouraged in this by many fools in the press who actually consider legislation sponsored and passed into law (particularly when it has a lawmaker’s name on it) to be a figure of merit to be touted as part of his record for reelection, or election to a higher office. Legislators who have passed lots of legislation, or secretaries of state who get lots of treaties ratified are lionized in the media, while those who do neither are denigrated as “do nothings.” All this, of course, despite whether or not the legislation passed, treaty ratified, or regulation created was actually a good idea.

But in fact, those are not their jobs. Their jobs are described in the Preamble. They are: “…to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence [common spelling at the time], promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

Passing legislation, ratifying treaties, promulgating regulations are means to those ends but, despite the title, it is not a legislator’s job to legislate per se. It is not a diplomat’s job to ratify a treaty per se. It is not a regulator’s job to regulate per se. Those are simply tools granted them by the Constitution to carry out their true jobs, as defined above.

I’d also note that, contra the more-recent nonsense about how the Senate wasn’t “doing its job” with regard to Merrick Garland, it has no Constitutional “duty” to advise and consent. It only has the power.

History, Political Commentary, War Commentary

In Flanders Fields

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Poppy Fields

It’s hard to believe that in two years, it will have been a full century since the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, when the armistice was signed, silencing finally the guns and ending the Great War. Almost a century ago, my paternal grandfather, a recent immigrant from what is now Poland, was sent back to Europe to fight in it. Unfortunately, the war’s end only planted the seeds for another worse one, and a little over two decades later, his only child, my father, at the age of eighteen, flew in a B-25 Mitchell bomber to Italy via Ascension Island to man a radio and waist gun in it.

No one who fought in the first one is any longer with us, and the ranks of those who fought in the second one are rapidly diminishing, as it too passes out of living memory. I didn’t serve, but if I had, I’d have wanted to be a pilot in the Air Force (my prescription for eyeglasses in the third grade put an end to that). But I remain grateful to all who have.

I hope that one of Trump’s highest priorities is to fix the VA system, the lack of addressing which is one of the many things for which Barack Obama would be ashamed, if he had any shame. And if you want to see how a single-payer government healthcare system would work, just ask a vet.

[Update a while later]

The Washington Examiner agrees with me on the latter point:

Now that the long, bitter 2016 election is over, Americans are free to stop thinking about the VA scandal as a partisan issue. It’s a new day, and partisans need not become defensive about the agency’s disgraceful treatment and broken promises.

Vets will now turn to President-elect Trump with their concerns. He won many of their votes because he was willing to shine a light on the problem, rather than dismiss it, as his opponent did, as “not widespread.”

“The VA is, really you could say is almost a corrupt enterprise,” Trump declared at one point. At another: “Our vets, our most cherished people, thousands of people are dying waiting on line to see a doctor.” His simple promise: “We are going to make it efficient and good.”

Let’s hope he does. Bold words will not be enough. We sincerely hope Trump follows through ruthlessly on this promise. If so, he will have done the nation a true and necessary service, and he will deserve the gratitude even of the tens of millions who voted against him.

We’ll see.

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

Orion

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The slow, inevitable death begins:

Entering into the transition period between presidents, NASA’s administrator, Charles Bolden, has encouraged the next White House administration to continue support for Orion and the Space Launch System rocket, which account for more than $3 billion annually. Congress, too, has expressed a strong interest in continuing work on these vehicles.

However one source told Ars that it may become necessary to choose either the Orion capsule or NASA rocket in the coming years as the space agency looks to pare back its budget, and this might necessitate going to a less expensive, more privately developed vehicle. “Look,” this source said, “if you have to cancel a program, this is a responsible way of lining up a replacement.”

It will be a bloody political battle, but ultimately, SLS won’t be far behind.

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

Political Ignorance

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It’s time to start taking it seriously:

You don’t have to be a libertarian skeptic about government to worry about political ignorance. Indeed, the greater the role you want democratic government to play in society, the more you have reason to worry about the quality of voter decision-making. The more powerful the state is, the greater the harm it can cause if ignorant voters entrust that power to the wrong hands. Here too, the rise of Trump is a warning we should take seriously. He is not the first or (most likely) the last demagogue of his kind.

I have long argued that we can best alleviate the dangers of political ignorance by limiting and decentralizing the power of government, and enabling people to make more decisions by “voting with their feet” rather than at the ballot box. Foot voters deciding where they want to live or making choices in the private sector have much stronger incentives to become well-informed than ballot box voters do. There is much we can do to enhance opportunities for foot voting, particularly among the poor and disadvantaged. Limiting and decentralizing government power could also reduce the enormous scope and complexity of the modern state, which make it virtually impossible for voters to keep track of more than a small fraction of its activities.

But I am open to considering a variety of other possible strategies for addressing the problem, including voter education initiatives, and “sortition,” directly incentivizing citizens to increase their knowledge, among others. Perhaps the best approach to is a combination of different measures, not relying on some one silver bullet.

A large part of the problem is the public-education system (and academia), which is doing a terrible job of explaining civics (and history), because the Left finds an ignorant populace not only convenient, but essential.

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