February 5, 2003

HOUSTON, Texas, USA (APUPI)

A number of progressive, liberal, and socialist organizations have banded together to protest the latest slanderous attack on them, and their noble unquestionable principles, this time by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Some of the more prominent groups include Postmodernists for Peace, the World People’s Liberation Front, the Liberation Front Of The People of the World, Socialists International, the American Communist Party, International ANSWER, Stalinists for Trotsky, Trotskyites for Chomsky, the NAALPOC (National Association for the Advancement of Liberal People Of Color), the ACLU, and the Green and Democratic parties.

In a press conference in Clear Lake City, outside the front gates of the NASA Johnson Space Center, Emilio Litella, the spokesman for the newly formed “Coalition For Social Justice And Leftist Anti-Defamation” complained that even before the investigation into the Columbia disaster was completed, they were being blamed for it.

“NASA has already started to leak rumors that it was caused by the left wing,” he said. “Once again, we’re being unfairly libeled by reactionary conservatives with an anti-human, anti-peace agenda. It’s obvious that this is part of an ongoing effort by right-wing baby-killing pencil-necked geeks to demonize all progressive forces, just as our pro-peace, no-war-for-oil message is starting to resonate with the American people, on the eve of a brutal and unjust war on the people of Iraq and Palestine.”

In Washington, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, a noted expert on demonization of progressive forces by the conservative media, was asked if the Democrats agreed with this complaint.

In a soft, pained, reasonable-sounding-yet-whiny voice, he replied, “Well, I have to say that I’m very disappointed at this rush to judgement on the part of the space agency. They claim to be objective, and that they aren’t going to say anything definitive until the investigation is complete, but anyone who reads the papers knows the direction that the investigation has been going.”

“Then shrill voices on talk radio and the internet pick it up, and make it sound as though those of us who are for truly compassionate policies, and are against tax cuts for the rich, are responsible for the destruction of the space shuttle. It’s just a continuation of the politics of personal destruction.”

“I and my family have received several death threats about this in the past hour alone, and that’s not even considering the normal daily ones from Bob Torricelli and Jim Jeffords. That was most disappointing.”

Senator Hillary Clinton, who happened to be in Mr. Daschle’s office measuring the draperies, added, “It’s just part of the ongoing vast, right-wing conspiracy against me and my husband, that I still wish that some enterprising reporter would go and dig up the real story on, instead of tarring voices for fairness with innuendo about blowing up space shuttles.”

When asked if she had ever had any involvement with the nation’s space program, she replied, “Well, I did want to be an astronaut, before I went through the period when I wanted to be a Marine, but the reactionary neanderthal rat-bastards at the space agency told me that girls need not apply. But other than that, I’m afraid I don’t recall.”

Back in Clear Lake, following the press conference, in response to queries, Kent Lovebreed, a crewcut spokesman from NASA’s Public Affairs Office, responded, “We regret that anyone feels that they’re under personal attack by our critical investigation into the cause of Saturday’s tragedy. We wouldn’t want to imply that there is anything sinister here. We are simply objective scientists and engineers, gathering the evidence, and following the trail wherever it leads. Right now, unfortunately, the left wing has to be considered the leading cause of that catastrophe.”

Asked if, as a result of the preliminary results of the investigation, NASA was considering laying down a design requirement that all future space vehicles have only right wings, he said, “It’s premature to make any kind of recommendation like that, but in light of our experience now, it certainly has to be one of the options on the table.”

[Copyright 2003 by Rand Simberg]

The logical conclusion of inane anti-war tactics can be found here. [Warning, more than slightly risque, particularly some of the links on the page]

My own bumper sticker suggestions:

“Save An Iraqi By Getting All Whacky”

“Bag Balm–not Baghdad Bomb”

“War is Funky, Slap the Monkey”

It’s pretty damned funny.

[Via Volokh]

OK, I was gentle with Easterbrook. But Bruce Moomaw is totally out to lunch with this piece. Everything he knows is wrong, other than the title.

The Space Age Born Of The Cold War Is Over

Today’s appalling Shuttle tragedy proves — once again — that manned spaceflight, at this point in history, is not remotely worth either its cost or its risk of lives. I say “once again” because virtually any scientist worth his salt has been pointing out that fact routinely for decades.

Any skeptic is invited to take a look at what the professional science journals regularly say on this subject.

He says this as though scientists in general have anything interesting or useful to say about the space program. This is an assumption with no foundation. Just as one example, recall UK Astronomer Royal Richard Woolley’s comments, a year before Sputnik, about space travel being “utter bilge.”

Tell me, Bruce, why should we care what scientists think? What does space have to do with science?

Continue reading Bruce Moomaw Gets It Not At All →

The Israeli embassy has set up a condolence page for Columbia.

Finally, indisputable proof that Saddam is linked to Al Qaeda. The headline says it all.

A number of pundits and bloggers have been citing Easterbrook’s piece, so I decided to finally take the time and go through it to separate fact from fancy, so they’ll have a better idea whether or not to agree with him, and on which points. It’s not a true fisking, because I actually agree with most of it, but I do want to note a few places where he goes off the rails as a result of (as always) invalid assumptions.

Continue reading An Easterbrook Critique →

Anglospherian (and former space entrepreneur) Jim Bennett has a column in NRO today on the need for NASA to get the Shuttle/ISS monkey off its back.

Aziz Poonawala has a theory about what happened to Columbia. He thinks that the left gear door opened in flight.

I’ve no opinion on that, and it may be true, but it then begs the question…why? How would such a thing happen, on this of all flights? It still doesn’t really solve the mystery.

But I’m really posting this to make this point. To me, it doesn’t matter that much what the proximate cause of the accident was. As I’ve said in various venues, what surprised me was not that it happened, but that it took so long to happen, and that NASA was lucky for so long.

The Shuttle, as a program, is now, and always has been, a failure, in terms of the original goals set out for it. Now, it is a dead program walking. It may fly for a few years now, but I suspect that at the end of the day there will be a consensus that we have to have different means (and I mean this word in the plural sense) of getting people to and from orbit. Different in the sense that it is safe, affordable, often, routine, and varied. No more monocultures.

My focus is not on the technical details of exactly what went wrong (I am a recovering engineer, after all) but on what we’re going to do to fix it, in a broad policy sense (not a Space Shuttle program sense).

I see this as a rare opportunity to actually change the tenor of the debate about space, and our future in it, and I’m going to emphasize issues relating to that, which I consider much more important. If you want blow-by-blow descriptions and theories of the forensics of the investigation, there will be many places to do so. This will not be one of them. I’m simply not that interested, which means that I won’t want to take the time to discuss it, and my opinion won’t count for much, because I’m not going to be paying much attention to it, except at the highest level, where there may be policy implications.

That is all.

For people who want to have the best technical facts available, here’s a continually-updated FAQ, maintained by experts, both amateur and professionals, many of whom are regular posters in the sci.space.* newsgroups.

I particularly recommend it to journalists who don’t want to say really dumb things, and ask really stupid questions. Many of them will be answered here before you embarrass yourself.

For any readers in the Richmond, Virginia area, I’m going to be interviewed about space policy on WRVA sometime between 4 and 4:30 EST.

[Evening update]

It might be worthwhile to mention how the interview went. Not well, in retrospect.

I think that, based on my NRO column, he was disappointed, because I believe that he expected me to agree with Gregg Easterbrook and bash Shuttle. Instead, I told him that Shuttle was the most reliable launch vehicle we have (which took him aback quite a bit). I perhaps could have softened the blow by telling him that this was damning it with faint praise.

I then confused him by telling him that Soyuz was the safest manned vehicle, which of course required explaining the difference between safety (ability to survive launch mishaps and not lose crew) and reliability (probability of having a successful flight). I could almost hear the crackling of his eyes glazing over three thousand miles away. I was cut off shortly thereafter, though to be fair, it was only supposed to be a ten-minute interview, and that’s about how long it lasted. But the ending seemed somewhat abrupt and, to me, unexpected.

Anyway, I report, you decide…