Clark Lindsey has a report on today’s Senate hearing on the new space policy. Are they really this ignorant, or are they just lying? You’d think that their staffs would at least have a clue. Either way, it’s depressing. It doesn’t sound like Bolden holds up well under fire, either. And the guy’s a Marine general.
[Update a few minutes later]
A tweet from Jeff Foust:
Sen Bennett takes issue with Bilden statement that Ares 1 demonstrated reliability is 0; hold up Time mag proclaiming it invention of year.
Sigh…
And as is usually the case with space policy, the ignorance and stupidity is bipartisan.
[Update a few minutes later]
Another tweet from Jeff:
Shelby and Obama do have something in common: both have pronounced Orion OR-ee-on. See, common ground!
Once again, when it comes to space policy, the ignorance is bipartisan. I was amused at the speech when the president at least twice mispronounced Suzanne Kosmas’ name as “Cosmos.” Maybe he thinks that corpsemen will be going up in the OReeon.
None of these flubs bug me more than people spelling “Ares” as “Aries.”
People see it spelled correctly on official NASA docs, in newspapers, in other people’s posts, etc. and yet they still get it wrong.
Of course, undermispronouncimations are common in DC speak. During the early Iraq war some bayou general from Louisiana started pronouncing “weapons caches” as “weapons cashays” and suddenly every grunt is pronouncing it that way and making Americans sound like idiots around the globe.
Oh, and when Jimmah Cahtuh, a degreed nuclear engineer, stops pronouncing it “newcuelar”, I’ll be much happier.
The non-standard pronunciation of nuclear was “the standard taught pronunciation” in a swath of the country in the seventies and eighties. It wasn’t just the deep, rural south either. It was the pronunciation I learned at a private school in Seattle, for instance. I have no idea where or how we got that dialectical drift, but we’re well on the way to eliminating it – just by alluding to Bush. (Or Jimmy, which is my comeback.)
Do we have even vague ideas about how the X37B works into this puzzle? Yes, robotic, not for crew, but do we have even foggy ideas about payload, orbits, etc.?
Corpsemen from Or-eh-gone maybe?
Alex, ditto for people who can’t spell SpaceX.
Funny, I had a student a few years ago whose first name was Orion, and he pronounced it OR’-ee-on. I wonder if that’s a regional thing….