The SLS Mess

A recognition by NASA that the vehicle has no missions. Too bad Congress doesn’t understand that.

This is what happens when you come up with Design Reference Missions to match a design, instead of the right way around.

[Update Wednesday morning]

More from Loren Grush over at The Verge:

But the SLS is expensive, and NASA’s budget is at the lowest it has been in decades, even with the new budget allotment of $19.3 billion for the 2016 fiscal year. The cost of developing the SLS through 2017 is expected to total $18 billion. And once the rocket is built, each launch is going to cost somewhere between $500 and $700 million, which makes it unlikely that the rocket will carry astronauts more than once a year.

If they’re only flying once a year, there’s no way the launch cost is that low. It’s at least two billion. I don’t know where that $500-$700M number comes from, but it’s probably marginal cost, which is a meaningless number for a vehicle with such a low flight rate.

[Bumped]

The Refugee Problem In Europe

Stand by for a collision:

When the problem was largely confined to Middle Eastern women it is easy to understand why it was ignored. Now that taharrush has come to Europe it is easier still. Events are being covered up because it runs counter to the Narrative peddled by the Western left. The Narrative is the source of their moral authority, the justification for their special graft.

What makes the pathological denial so catastrophic is that a vast, almost unstoppable torrent of refugees is already on the way to Germany, the fragments of collapsing Islamic countries. Cologne is but a skirmish with the vanguard. The main host is still on its way.

In belated mea culpa former senior adviser to president Obama Dennis Ross at last took his boss to task in an article titled: “How Obama Created a Mideast Vacuum”. It’s too late Dennis. What “too late” means was driven home years ago when one of the volunteer members of the Philippine Airlines cadaver recovery team described an accident which took the lives of 5 members of a university mountaineering club. The party was trekking along a dry riverbed on the lower slope of an 8,000 foot volcano in Mindoro. The weather was fine and the mountaineers were doomed. Unknown to them a squall had dumped a slug of rain on the peak high above them. The first warning they had of oncoming tons of water was a rumbling sound round the corner of the gorge. Then the flood came and only those fast enough to clamber up the riverbanks survived.

In the same way the present calm in Europe can be deceiving. Even if its leaders were somehow to reconstitute its borders, a gigantic flood from that vacuum upstream of the old continent is already rushing with irresistible force upon it. The UNHCR says refugee numbers are expected to increase in 2016. Some estimates say as many as 10 million more are on the way. From the beaches of North Africa to the overcrowded camps in Jordan and Lebanon; from every nook and cranny in MENA — they are on the way. One way or the other a terrible smash is now in train.

Europe as we know it may already be lost. Martel weeps.

[Update a couple minutes later]

The European media and the sexual assaults:

Scally’s bizarre use of “groping” is close to the worst imaginable example of PC disinformation from Orwell’s Ministry of Truth. “Groping” is a word better reserved for the awkward and/or unwanted advances of an adolescent teenager in regard to someone roughly his or her own age. Here, instead, we have (if Scally’s sources are to be believed) 30 adult men who organized a premeditated attack on a child—not a “young woman” as Scally mischaracterizes her—a child—a person under 18. (18 is the age of majority in most of Europe, including Germany.) This child was not “groped”—I had fingers at every orifice—she was the victim of sexual assault, rape, and attempted rape by multiple perpetrators. Again, groping generally refers to wanted or unwanted touching or fondling. The victim here did not describe “groping;” she described something far more serious: sexual assault and rape.

It’s almost as thought they’re trying to minimize the crimes for political reasons.

Writing A Constitution

for Mars.

They seem to be a little confused about positive versus negative rights. You may have a right to leave, but you can’t demand that someone else pay for it. A “right to oxygen”? Not obvious how to handle that one. The solution to how to overthrow a tyrannical government is, of course, a Second Amendment.

[Wednesday-morning update]

Can a democracy exist on Mars?

…naive, wish­ful think­ing seems to under­pin all of the very hard ques­tions about what gov­er­nance and daily life on Mars might pos­si­bly look like. One rea­son could be the par­tic­i­pants: the orga­nizer of these events is an astro­bi­ol­o­gist, and they seem to have got­ten their insight into pol­i­tics from writ­ers like Stephen Bax­ter. This is not a dig against either men — astro­bi­ol­ogy is an incred­i­bly inter­est­ing sub­ject, and I love Baxter’s books — but they are not experts in gov­er­nance or nation-building (which is what a colony will be). There is, luck­ily, an entire field of aca­d­e­mic study devoted to these ques­tions: aca­d­e­mics who have spent decades under­stand­ing how and why regimes can be resisted, how to build new nations, and so on. They don’t seem to have been included in this discussion.

Instead it looks like most other efforts at imag­in­ing space colonies: well mean­ing but ulti­mately naive tech­nocrats imag­in­ing a west­ern tech­no­cratic soci­ety as the best struc­ture. And just like with Musk’s con­cept of a Mars colony, the seri­ous eco­nomic issues at play here, which are a big deal in design­ing any soci­ety, are ignored. They assume it will be a mostly-deregulated lib­er­tar­ian eco­nomic sys­tem, again despite the inescapable fact that any space colony will have to con­cern itself pri­mary with gen­er­at­ing enough air and water to keep every­one alive. It is utterly baffling.

As he notes, tech people aren’t necessarily the best people to design a functional society.

The Virgin Galactic Mess

It’s not at all clear to me that it’s in their interest to stir this pot of merde with a lawsuit. I have no trouble believing that they’ve been overhyping safety, because it’s always appeared to be the case to anyone who understands rocketry. For example:

Virgin also advertised the “simplicity and safety” of SpaceShipTwo’s hybrid motor, claiming that the nitrous oxide and rubber used in it were “both benign, stable as well as containing none of the toxins found in solid rocket motors.”

This is a straw man, since few, if any, have ever proposed solids for passenger vehicles (other than NASA).

Basically, Branson made some disastrous business and technical decisions a decade ago, and it’s coming back to haunt him on an ongoing basis.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Related: An update on Spaceport America, who (along with the poor taxpayers of the two counties) was also sold a bill of goods by Branson.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!