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

The Faux Issue About Ted Cruz And NASA

10 Comments

A good analysis from Hank Campbell, with a little history for those ignorant in the space-science community.

I love cute robots on Mars and pretty pictures from Hubble but keep in mind that politicians and their staffers see beyond that. They know we could have cute robots and pretty pictures while spending a whole lot less money – and we wouldn’t lose a single NASA employee. Though advocates claim we will “lose leadership” in some area or another if we don’t spend more money than some other country, that argument does not work with politicians, who see how badly money can be misused – when it is the pet projects of their political opponents, anyway.

I don’t care what Ted Cruz thinks about global warming, pollution is bad whether he thinks so or not, and Senator and now President Obama said he thought vaccines might be causing autism, but did anyone in science not vote for him in 2008 because of that? If you about care climate science, don’t worry about NASA, worry about the new chair of the environment committee, Senator Jim Inhofe, who denies climate science outright.

If you do care about space science, Cruz is a good choice. Just like Cruz’s opinion on climate change, that science media happens not to like Republicans is irrelevant to how well someone will do at NASA. He’s likely to be better for space science than the people we have had under Democrats, including the space advocate (and space-farer) Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, who insisted that extending the life of the glorified space-going UPS trucks known as the Shuttle Program was somehow necessary for science – a porkbarrel agenda that would have starved out actual space science programs – and did nothing at all about President Obama canceling Constellation in his home state. Nelson has to be careful criticizing the President ‘or the Republicans win’ but Cruz is not handcuffed by common party registration. If he has presidential ambitions, helping NASA will help him in Florida and some common sense about funding will be welcome to the public and a lot of NASA employees and scientists who can’t criticize the President. As I have discussed about the James Webb Space Telescope and its eternal cost overruns, every time a high-profile NASA project hemorrhages money, it’s the less-publicized but more scientifically valuable projects that bleed.

NASA needs someone who is not going to sign off on projects hoping they will become too big to fail. It’s better for the public and it’s better for science, because all those experiments that only need a few million dollars can then get it, rather than being told to wait for next year because an old program no one is excited about is delayed and over budget once again.

Unfortunately, he’s bought (or at least seems to have bought) into the SLS BS. But he’s a smart guy, so he may be educable.

Business, Space, Technology and Society

The “Hard Landing” On The Ship

34 Comments

Elon has been tweeting some video grabs.

[Update a while later]

Here’s the video.

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

Martin Rees

90 Comments

…has some thoughts on risk, and who will be exploring Mars:

…space travel will be done by adventurers, doing it for the sake of it, and they will thus become more like today’s mountaineers, who are actually doing things which others have already done, but making life harder for themselves – for example by climbing without ropes.

“I hope that some people now living will walk on Mars, but they will go in my view not in the spirit of Nasa astronauts – who are exposed to fairly low risks – but as part of a cut-price venture accepting great danger and perhaps even a one way ticket. If the Chinese wanted to have a prestige programme, as the Americans did with Apollo, they could get there in 20 years. But unless they do so, the first people to land on Mars will be mad, brave adventurers, and we will cheer them on.

Yup.

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

Fifty-Dollar Oil

19 Comments

Is it a floor, or a ceiling?

Competitive market conditions would therefore dictate that Saudi Arabia and other low-cost producers always operate at full capacity, while US frackers would experience the boom-bust cycles typical of commodity markets, shutting down when global demand is weak or new low-cost supplies come onstream from Iraq, Libya, Iran, or Russia, and ramping up production only during global booms when oil demand is at a peak.

Under this competitive logic, the marginal cost of US shale oil would become a ceiling for global oil prices, whereas the costs of relatively remote and marginal conventional oilfields in OPEC and Russia would set a floor. As it happens, estimates of shale-oil production costs are mostly around $50, while marginal conventional oilfields generally break even at around $20. Thus, the trading range in the brave new world of competitive oil should be roughly $20 to $50.

Makes sense to me.

[Update a few minutes later]

I’ve long said that oil over a (inflation adjusted) hundred dollars a barrel was unsustainable. This would seem to validate that.

Business, Culinary, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

High-Fat Rodent Diets

1 Comment

Why they are not to be trusted:

So are the results telling us that the increasingly popular low carb high fat approach is wrong? That after all there’s no need for official bodies to perform a major U-turn? Not as far as I can tell. In fact it seems the rodent work is highly misleading. Not only are the so called ‘high fat diets’ they are fed nothing like the low carbohydrate diets any informed human would follow, but the animals have been selectively bred to ensure they become fat and diabetic on a high fat diet. This is not research, it is a rigged game.

I’m sure you’re as shocked as I am.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

The White House

15 Comments

…is it a sleeper cell?

Just yesterday I theorized the real reason Obama didn’t go is he just couldn’t put the words “Islamic” and “terrorism” together in one sentence even if, forgive the tired image, it hit him in the face. (The exception of course being when insisting that something is NOT Islam.) He just can’t handle it after nearly fifty years of virtually non-stop anti-imperialist programming. His mind would fly apart if he had to utter the words “radical Islamic terrorism,” which French PM Valls, and any honest person, was quite willing to do.

Now I admit that was just a supposition. Just because I’ve never heard him link Islam and terror doesn’t mean in his heart of hearts he doesn’t. Though not a genius, he does have an IQ in triple digits and sees what’s right in front of his nose, I assume. He just interprets it differently. But why?

Is someone whispering in his ear?

My money would be on (born in Iran) Valerie Jarrett.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!