Economics, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Why We Can’t Go To Mars

28 Comments

Yet…

Stephen Fleming gave a talk on that subject at Dragoncon this weekend (I should go some time). I haven’t looked at them yet, but his slides are on line, and I suspect there’s some good input to the Kickstarter there.

[Update a few minutes later]

Still haven’t been through slides, but I’m amused to see that he stole my graphical book-cover them in the very first one.

[Reading through]

I’d note that in his slides on the “Martian Defense Grid,” someone on the Mars panel at the AIAA meeting last week called Mars our “Jamestown.” High casualties to initial pioneers.

[Update a few more minutes later]

I wish we could show those charts of the unknown shape of the health/gravity curves to Congress. It makes a powerful case for a gravity lab, but only to people who actually give a damn about Mars. Actually, someone should show them to Elon.

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

ULA’s Technology

14 Comments

I saw George Sowers and Bernard Kutter, from ULA, at the AIAA conference in Pasadena last week. Jon Goff has a summary/review of some of the papers they presented there.

These are key technologies for my Kickstarter project (and opening the solar system). It’s interesting to note that they think they are ready to build depots now — Congress can’t prevent it any more by cutting technology funding. I asked Bernard in his presentation if it was fair to say that ACES was basically a depot with a propulsion system. His answer: “Basically yes.” Also, what they are calling “distributed launch” is essentially a powerful refutation of the argument for the need of SLS. But they can’t say that explicitly. I asked Tory on Twitter if he could give me a ballpark price of a Vulcan/ACES flight. He demurred, but it’s a number I need to cost architectures.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

Thoughts On The Donald

36 Comments

I haven’t had time to write much about it, but fortunately, I agree pretty much with everything Jonah writes:

Yes, I know Trump has declared himself pro-life. Good for him — and congratulations to the pro-life movement for making that the price of admission. But I’m at a total loss to understand why serious pro-lifers take him at his word. He’s been all over the place on Planned Parenthood, and when asked who he’d like to put on the Supreme Court, he named his pro-choice-extremist sister.

Ann Coulter wrote of Newt in 2011: “If all you want is to lob rhetorical bombs at Obama and then lose, Newt Gingrich — like recent favorite Donald Trump — is your candidate. But if you want to save the country, Newt’s not your guy.” Now Ann leads a chorus of people claiming that Trump is our only savior. Has Trump changed, or have Ann and her followers? Is there a serious argument behind the new thinking, or is it “because he fights!”?

It is entirely possible that conservatives sweat the details of tax policy too much. Once in office, a president must deal with political realities that render the fine print of a campaign pamphlet as useful as a battle plan after the enemy is met. But in the last month, Trump has contemplated a flat tax, the fair tax, maintaining the current progressive tax system, a carried-interest tax, a wealth tax, and doing nothing. His fans respond, “That shows he’s a pragmatist!”

No. It shows that he has absolutely no ideological guardrails whatsoever. Ronald Reagan once said, “Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.” Trump is close to the reverse. He’s a mouth at the wrong end of an alimentary canal spewing crap with no sense of responsibility.

In his embarrassing interview with Hugh Hewitt last night, Trump revealed he knows less than most halfway-decent D.C. interns about foreign policy. Twitter lit up with responses about how it doesn’t matter and how it was a gotcha interview. They think that Trump’s claim that he’ll just go find a Douglas MacArthur to fix the problem is brilliant. Well, I’m all in favor of finding a Douglas MacArthur, but if you don’t know anything about foreign policy, the interview process will be a complete disaster. Yes, Reagan delegated. But he knew enough to know to whom to delegate.

I am as mystified by otherwise-intelligent people supporting Trump as I was by the Perot phenomenon.

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

Commercial Crew Status

4 Comments

David Livingston, Leonard David, and I interviewed Kathy Lueders, the program manager, on Monday. The podcast of it is now up. We basically ignored the talking points put out by PAO, and just asked her questions, some of them philosophical. I suspect it’s probably one of the most in-depth interviews she’s ever had. I gave her a copy of the book afterward.

BTW, I’ll be on The Space Show myself next Friday, to discuss the Kickstarter project.

[Update a while later]

I didn’t post this when it came out, because I was busy with conference stuff and other things over the weekend, but the latest Space Access Society update posits a theory that the commercial crew fight is a heating up of the never-ending war between Huntsville and Houston.

Education, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Social Commentary

For Incoming And Returning College Students

1 Comment

Ashe Schow has a warning:

Students, especially male students, need to stop viewing sex merely as pleasure or as an expression of affection or love, and begin seeing it as a potentially life-ruining moment. And as someone who has never advocated abstinence, that is a painful thing to have to say.

The situation has gotten so bad that one parents’ group has begun distributing flyers on California campuses warning students of how easy it is to be accused and expelled.

The reality of it is this: There is little trust anymore between the sexes. Women are being told that men, especially men they believe are their friends, are waiting to get them drunk and rape them. This in turn is leading men to believe that women are going to accuse them of sexual assault for just about any reason, even for consensual sexual encounters.

I’m glad I’m not attending college these days.

[Update a few minutes later]

Defining deviancy up: Remarks about physical appearance now constitute “sexual violence.”

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

How To Destroy A City

4 Comments

…in five minutes:

Hotels are laying off workers. Shops are empty and many will have to be closed. The city is reeling with feelings of guilt and anxiety. Guilt because one of their own murdered guests, the gravest possible offense against the ancient Arab code of hospitality, and anxiety because—what now? How will the city survive? How will all the laid-off workers earn a living with their industry on its back? Sousse without tourists is like Hollywood without movies and Detroit without automobile manufacturing.

Even Tunisia’s agriculture economy is crashing. Prices are down by 35 percent because the resorts don’t need to feed tourists anymore.

Rezgui’s ghoulish attack was spectacularly successful, wasn’t it? A single act of violence and—boom. Just like that, it’s all over.

The lights continue to go out.

Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Pleading The Fifth

5 Comments

I’ll bet this IT guy is sorry he ever got involved with the Clintons.

The only reason I can think of to not give him use immunity is because the DoJ doesn’t want to hear what he has to say.

[Update a few minutes later]

Hadn’t noticed the whole story. Apparently he wasn’t just a hired IT guy — he worked on her campaign.

No sympathy, then. Anyone who voluntarily associates themselves with this long-time criminal syndicate deserves whatever they get.

Business, Economics, Health, Media Criticism, Science And Society, Technology and Society

A New Class Of Cholesterol Drugs

9 Comments

I wish I had more confidence that they’re not just treating a symptom:

As for the efficacy of the drugs, it is not yet proved that very low LDL levels produced by drugs lead to sharp reductions in heart attacks, strokes and deaths from cardiovascular disease, as researchers have seen in people with the naturally inactive PCSK9 gene.

Many cardiologists, though, are persuaded by a large body of evidence supporting the idea that the lower the LDL, the lower the risk.

“I believe lower is better and do not believe that a very low LDL is harmful,” said Dr. Daniel Rader, a cardiologist at the University of Pennsylvania.

Others, like Dr. Harlan Krumholz, a cardiologist at Yale, urge caution. “We are in a period of exuberant enthusiasm about these drugs,” he said. “We could just be performing cosmetic surgery on a lab value.”

If it were certain that the PCSK9 inhibitors were safe and effective in preventing heart attacks and deaths there would be no need for clinical trials, he noted.

$14,000/year is a lot of money for a treatment for which we have no idea whether or not it’s effective. I think improving diets would be much more cost effective.

[Update Tuesday morning]

Here’s a longer piece about the new drugs and the issues. Note: 1) It is assumed that the goal is to lower cholesterol, and that this will in turn result in lower mortality and 2) No mention of diet as a potential solution. Of course, it’s hard to get people to change their diets. But I suspect that to the degree that doctors are telling people to do so, they’re still telling them to cut out sat fat and cholesterol, despite all the actual science, and probably still telling them to follow FDA food-pyramic advice, which is junk science.

[Bumped]

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