Transterrestrial Musings

Comments

I rather like this passage from the Cohen piece:

You only have to listen to Bush talk about the virtues of immigration -- another liberal sentiment -- or his frequent mention of the "soft bigotry of low expectations" to appreciate that the president is a sentimental softie, what was once dismissively called a "mushy-headed liberal."

I can agree with it also. "Mushy headed" is spot on. Same with Tony "I can't understand why the Iraqis are not more grateful" Blair.

Anyway, as I posted a few days ago, as time passes, the GOP strain of "Bush Derangement" shall come to be more nasty, more virulent and longer lasting than the Democratic version.

Looking at the 2008 elections, I am less than enthused by Edwards or Hillary and Obama is too new to the national scene BUT as Newt Gingrich has said recently, when contrasted with Bush 43, they all look very, very electable and Newt is the only potential GOP candidate setting himself up as being the anti-Bush GOP candidate.

Thus, I am growing ever more fond of ole' Dubya as his term in office nears.

Posted by Bill White at May 29, 2007 03:59 PM

"when contrasted with Bush 43, they all look very, very electable "

Unfortunately for them, they will likely be getting Fred Dalton Thompson and not George W Bush as an opponent.

Posted by Mike Puckett at May 29, 2007 04:15 PM

My conservative friends have always distrusted W, just as my liberal friends distrusted Bill Clinton (and are none too fond of Hillary).

I note that the "debacle in Iraq" that "in the end ... will cost us our soul as well" is the reaction to the incursion. If Cohen's prediction comes true, deposing Saddam will turn out be the last genocide we stop for many years to come. The contrived anti-war opposition may doom millions.

Posted by Jay Manifold at May 29, 2007 04:28 PM

Fred Thompson? The same Fred Thompson that Margaret Carlson had a thing for?

Newt Gingrich scares me twice as much, so bring him on. ;-)

Posted by Bill White at May 29, 2007 04:28 PM

Fully agree with you Rand. I've always thought Bush's instincts are liberal. It's a shame really that he was surrounded with people who didn't share his vision but instead gave him the worst advice possible, mainly to exploit his instincts and crafting their own agendas through him. Fundamentally though, it is my opinion that Bush remains a very decent and benignly motivated individual.

Jimmy Carter and George Bush actually share a lot more than poll numbers in the upper twenties. I wouldn't be surprised to see the latter building houses for the poor ten years from now.

It is ironic in this context, that those who lean liberal such as myself have to glorify hard nosed conservatism as the medication.

Posted by Toast_n_Tea at May 29, 2007 04:32 PM

You only have to listen to Bush talk about the virtues of immigration -- another liberal sentiment

Immigration is a liberal sentiment, Bill??? Does that mean California is the most conservative state in the union and Texas is the most liberal? (Or are you now using "liberal" in the original sense of the word?)

> the GOP strain of "Bush Derangement"

There is no GOP strain of Bush derangement. Believing falsehoods is derangement, Bill. Believing the truth isn't.

Posted by Edward Wright at May 29, 2007 05:18 PM

Edward, this was written by Cohen, not me:

You only have to listen to Bush talk about the virtues of immigration -- another liberal sentiment

and Rand cited Cohen with approval. With whom do you intend to argue?

And I stand by my prediction that in the years to come, the GOP will silently curse GWB far more than the Democrats will.

Posted by Bill White at May 29, 2007 05:27 PM

Not as much as the Dems end up cursing them name of Clinton after November of next year.

Posted by Mike Puckett at May 29, 2007 05:31 PM

At Daily Kos, they already do curse Hillary.

Often, and loudly.

Posted by Bill White at May 29, 2007 05:41 PM

Like I said, I don't know why you hang out at that place. Lie with dogs, fleas, etc....

You won't catch me posting at Freeper and damn seldom ever lurking.

Posted by Mike Puckett at May 29, 2007 06:08 PM

> Edward, this was written by Cohen, not me

Bill, when you quote something and say "I rather like this passage," most people assume you agree with it.

> And I stand by my prediction that in the years to come, the GOP will silently curse GWB far more than the Democrats will.

The difference, Bill, is that conservatives have every reason to. Unlike your deranged friends, who have gotten just about everything they ever wanted from the Bush budgets.

Posted by at May 29, 2007 08:08 PM

Liberalism is agnostic to the "size" of government in purely monetary terms, and strongly opposed to expanding its power, so if Cohen is indeed a liberal--which I can't say, having no great familiarity with his work--then he has, for some inexplicable reason, adopted external definitions that only exist among conservatives. As for the late, convenient, and entirely rhetorical expulsion of Bush and Cheney from conservative ranks, it's a farce reminiscent of Nikita Krushchev's posthumous excommunication of Stalin. Conservatives chose Bush twice because his values and beliefs are indeed similar to theirs, and now they're abandoning him for failing to adequately hide or divert from the inevitable consequences of policies they actively supported.

As a phenomenon, conservatism does not favor decreased funding of government, but rather prefers that most if not all funding be directed toward agencies associated with force rather than provision. Moreover, once this shift in priorities is satisfied, conservatives do not in practice reduce funding to these agencies, but rather expand them without limitation. This is generally known as "authoritarianism," and it is the centerpiece value of conservatism--not limited government, not state's rights, not any of the feigned attributes of conservatism discarded the moment power is attained.

If you recall the 2000 presidential election, the Bush campaign tried to craft the image of a humble, statesmanlike candidate who would tread lightly on the world stage and "do right" by America's armed forces. I particularly remember the "Help is on the way!" slogan directed toward the military, which was apparently meant as some kind of morbid joke or threat. Within less than two years, of course, the man being paraded around as a man of stature and principle was flinging kindergarten personal insults at hostile leaders, declaring himself a global savior above the mere laws of men, and taunting our enemies to "bring it on" to the enthusiastic cheers and votes of conservatives all across America.

Few truly believe that this regime is anything but conservative--not liberals, not moderates, not the regime itself, and clearly not those conservatives who at least have the presence of mind to feign dissatisfaction with the consequences of their own stupidity. They've supported people like this throughout history, and they will continue doing so, blind and regardless.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at May 29, 2007 08:36 PM

"Liberalism is . . . strongly opposed to expanding its [the State's] power." Maybe in the Age of Locke, or on Bizarro Planet.

Posted by Bilwick at May 30, 2007 08:24 AM

" They've supported people like this throughout history, and they will continue doing so, blind and regardless."

While your side eagerly supports tone deaf geeks like Gore and Carter who could not run a lemonade stand at a profit.

Posted by Mike Puckett at May 30, 2007 08:26 AM

Hmmmmm...I'm beginning to suspect that Brian doesn't like conservatives...

Posted by Gunga at May 30, 2007 09:05 AM

...or libertarians...

Posted by Gunga at May 30, 2007 09:06 AM

...or librarians...

Posted by Gunga at May 30, 2007 09:07 AM

...or pretty much anybody...

Posted by Gunga at May 30, 2007 09:10 AM

I find it so humorous when people complain about the changes in Bush's foreign policy positions between the 2000 campaign and 2002. I seem to remember that something rather significant occurred in the second half of 2001. Not quite sure, but I think it had a rather big effect on a lot of peoples' positions.

Posted by KeithK at May 30, 2007 11:37 AM

Maybe in the Age of Locke, or on Bizarro Planet.

I have no knowledge of your homeworld, Bilwick. The Constitution is a statement of liberal principles, and the United States of America is a liberal republic.

Mike: While your side eagerly supports tone deaf geeks like Gore and Carter who could not run a lemonade stand at a profit.

Jimmy Carter was a commissioned officer on nuclear submarines, and one of Georgia's most effective, competent, and courageous governors in its history. Al Gore is a literal genius who has repeatedly been years or decades ahead of the curve on public policies as diverse as commercialization of the internet, global warming, and the Iraq war. To belittle such men while you vote for certifiably insane, homicidal maniacs with double-digit IQs and a direct phone line in their heads to Almighty God is an admission of irrelevance. You dismissively talk out of your ass about these incredibly talented and accomplished people, and do so in defense of the pettiest, most malicious predators ever to hold power in our nation's history--like a child badmouthing Lincoln because "skewl is boring" and you'd rather be learning about gunslingers and pirates.

Hmmmmm...I'm beginning to suspect that Brian doesn't like conservatives...

I try not to judge nature. If you can't blame a syphilitic monkey for being what it is, how can you blame a conservative? When civilization, reason, and decency triumph, we will certainly set aside some pristine habitat in Dixie for the preservation of the conservative. Of course, they would just destroy it and go extinct within five years, but at least it would be caught on camera for the amusement of future generations.

...or libertarians...

On the contrary, I like libertarians very much. They have such a rich assortment of wildly impractical, contradictory, and poorly thought-out ideological pieties, and they (unlike conservatives) actually do believe what they say. I've always enjoyed watching Libertarian conventions on C-Span--listening to the anarchistic types trudge out their slovenly, incoherent rationalizations for simply not liking structure; the laissez-faire capitalism evangelists extolling the ability of their god to heal all wounds, salve all ills, and deliver paradise; and the ever-present, self-gratifying practice of casting aspersions on the very concept of government, which of course only holds back the bursting creativity and genius of libertarians. You gotta love these businessmen who get rich in New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles, on infrastructure built by huge tax-and-spend bureaucracies, and then buy ranches in Montana and decide they're "rugged individualists" whose creativity shouldn't be stifled by taxes. And I mean that sincerely, you gotta love'em--they're not hypocrites, they're just hilariously self-absorbed.

...or librarians...

Why would I hate librarians? They do for liberalism what corporate control of news media, multiple choice testing, and brutal childhood religious indoctrination do for conservatism.

...or pretty much anybody...

If you think conservatives are everybody, that's a pretty good sign you're a member. But don't worry, there are many treatment options. Ask your doctor about Knowzac. Side effects include thoughts, feelings, and consistent recollection of historical facts. Do not take Knowzac with bribes or Republican Kool-Aid.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at May 30, 2007 12:26 PM

Jimmy Carter was a commissioned officer on nuclear submarines, and one of Georgia's most effective, competent, and courageous governors in its history.

Great, he was also an unprepared and overmatched president.

Al Gore is a literal genius who has repeatedly been years or decades ahead of the curve on public policies as diverse as commercialization of the internet, global warming, and the Iraq war.

Whose father was a card carrying member of the KKK, yet no one ever did anything about it. He's ahead of the myth of Global Warming. Great. He's an armchair quarterback for war. Lovely. He would have been an ineffective and overmatched president (IMO)

You're ranting again Squiddie. Get back to logical debate rather than vitriolic spewing and name calling.

Posted by Mac at May 30, 2007 01:15 PM

The original Cohen article was not "merely" about Iraq.

Here is a fascinating development -- In this situation is the Bush-ian USDA being "liberal" or "not liberal" -- stupid comes to mind but as for "liberal" or "not-liberal" I cannot tell:

WASHINGTON: The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.
The Agriculture Department tests fewer than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. A beef producer in the western state of Kansas, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, wants to test all of its cows.

Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone should test its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive tests on their larger herds as well.

Should we support Creekstone or the USDA?

Posted by Bill White at May 30, 2007 01:47 PM

Easy one Bill, support Creekstone, as its their right to run their business their way. If they see publication of testing all their meat as a means to promote their business, all power to them. The administration in this case is trying to assuage the stupid hysteria over this disease which kills less than the common flu.

Posted by Mac at May 30, 2007 02:17 PM

A follow link to the USDA/mad cow story:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture — invoking an obscure 1913 law intended to thwart con artists from peddling bogus hog cholera serum to pig farmers — is blocking companies from selling the testing kits to Creekstone.

WTF ??

Posted by Bill White at May 30, 2007 02:17 PM

Mac, we agree. To prohibit Creekstone from testing is far too statist, even for me. ;-)

By the way, is "Big Cattle" a Texas based industry?

Posted by Bill White at May 30, 2007 02:40 PM

Who cares whether Bush is a liberal, a conservative, or a Whig? Political labels change meaning, mean different things to different people, and reveal little about a specific person's stand on a particular issue.

Posted by Artemus at May 30, 2007 04:09 PM

The Creekstone issue is more complicated then a person would realize.

The USDA position on Creekstone Testing is driven by attempts by other countries, Japan in particular, to impose non tariff trade barriers ou US beef.

Posted by TJIT at May 30, 2007 04:11 PM

The Constitution is a statement of liberal principles,

Yes, Brian, but in the Eighteenth Century, "liberal" did not mean what you think it means.

Back then, "liberals" were those who believed that government was a dangerous tool and a fearful master, whose functions should be strictly limited to preventing men from harming one another (i.e., the military, police, and judicial functions) while leaving them otherwise free to regulate their own affairs.

That is not equivalent to modern "liberals" who want government to regulate almost every aspect of private life and perform almost every function except except for national defense. In fact, it's pretty much the exact opposite.

For example, you say that Congress should gut the military so NASA can spend $170 billion a year building a national space transportation system and establishing government housing projects on other planets. A classical liberal would say that national defense is a legitimate function of government but operating transportation systems and building housing should be private functions. Your idea might be "liberal" in the modern sense, but it is anti-liberal in the original, Eighteenth Century sense. (Actually, I'm not even sure it's liberal in the modern sense. I doubt that most modern liberals would support it. Mostly, it's just naive.)

Posted by Edward Wright at May 30, 2007 06:07 PM

"If you can't blame a syphilitic monkey for being what it is, how can you blame a conservative?"

You crack me up Brian.

Actually though, as someone else pointed out, in todays context, all these terms, liberal, conservative, libertarain etc. are just badly muddled and mixed up. Only a lobbyist could tell the difference.

Posted by Toast_n_Tea at May 30, 2007 07:16 PM

"Jimmy Carter was a commissioned officer on nuclear submarines, and one of Georgia's most effective, competent, and courageous governors in its history."

.....and then he was abducted by alien leptoids from planet 87 and force fed stupid pills by the crate. He was the worst president since reconstruction by absolutely no fault of his own.

Posted by Mike Puckett at May 30, 2007 07:19 PM

" Al Gore is a literal genius " who has demonstrated time and time again he is totally lacking in wisdom and common sense. Intellect not tempered by wisdom is at best wasted and at worst dangerous.

Posted by Mike Puckett at May 30, 2007 07:21 PM

Only a lobbyist could tell the difference.

You're kidding right? Lobbyists don't care what your political stance is, they just hammer away at what they want. I would be willing to surmise that most lobbyists probably don't even care what they're lobbying for, if they even know.

Posted by Mac at May 31, 2007 05:24 AM

Brian ("Me Lovey the Statey") S. writes that the Constitution is a liberal republic. Which liberalism? The individualism, anti-statist, pro-freedom liberalism of Locke, Paine, and the authors of the Cato Letters? Or the collectivist, pro-statist "we're really socialists but we don't want to scare you so we'll call ourselves 'liberals'" pseudo-liberalism that didn't begin until the early Twentieth Century?

(The "credit" for idea of the hijacking of the term "liberalism" to fool the electorate is given by some to John Dewey, although I don't recall reading this for myself. Accounts of the hijacking can be found in Arthur Ekrich's DECLINE OF AMERICAN LIBERALISM and Philip Crane's THE DEMOCRAT's DILEMMA. The latter is especially useful in tracing how the party of Jefferson and Jackson became the party of Wilson, FDR and other Staat-shtuppers. Both deal with real-world, as-it-is liberalism--the genuine and the psuedo--not BS' Bizarro Planet versiion.)

"I remember when 'liberalism' meant being generous with your own money."--Will Rogers.

Posted by Bilwick at May 31, 2007 06:44 AM

One wonders what Cohen thinks is "liberal" vs. "conservative" in the whole "soft bigotry" thing.

Is it non- or anti-conservative somehow? I'm not seeing it. I certainly don't think it's "liberal" (in the modern use of the word) to point out that expecting less of someone because of, for example, their skin color or economic background isn't "soft bigotry" in a reasonable combination of the meanings of both words.

Brian: It should perhaps be pointed out that much of the Consitution is "conservative" in that it codified many rights of the British citizen (and it's been argued, in my opinion quite convincingly, that the American Revolution was at least as "conservative" as "revolutionary", in that it aimed to secure for Americans the same rights of self-government, etc. held by their Britain relatives in Britain; when the Crown and Parliament wouldn't respect those rights, they were re-taken on a new basis).

Perhaps you're confused because modern "conservatives" have a lot of classical liberalism, and modern "liberals" aren't the same as the "liberal" of 1780?

When someone (such as Cohen) doesn't specify, it's a bad idea to assume that "liberal" means "classical liberal" rather than "a progressive who hasn't changed labels yet".

Posted by Sigivald at May 31, 2007 10:19 AM

> The "credit" for idea of the hijacking of the term "liberalism" to
> fool the electorate is given by some to John Dewey

At least temporarily. Later, "liberal" acquired the same reputation "socialist" once had. "Progressive" became the preferred term. Today, it seems to be "moderate." (Everyone on the left is "moderate" while everyone on the right is "extreme.")

Bill Clinton even tried to call himself a "conservative" at one point and compared himself to Ronald Reagan, although no one bought it.

Most outrageously, after the Cold War, the liberal media redefined Soviet Communists as "conservatives" and "rightwingers" -- like Ronald Reagan who opposed Communism, while liberals preached appeasement.

This is nothing more than the old advertising trick of changing the name of a failed product.

When this is pointed out, people often say labels (words) don't matter. If that's true, we should give up verbal communication and go back to grunting and gestures.

Posted by Edward Wright at May 31, 2007 12:20 PM

Mac: Great, he was also an unprepared and overmatched president.

True, his talents and temperament were not suited to the presidency. A tremendously effective manager, but an utterly disastrous leader; a man of profoundly insightful ideas, but incapable of persuading large masses to believe in them; a man of such innate intelligence that he never understood the power of superficial appearances. He's a product of the calm humanity of rural Southern liberalism, completely alien to the raging forces at work around him during his administration. I can only speculate, but seeing that he grew up in the middle of nowhere during a Depression, watched America fight a World War that threatened its very survival, and raised a family while mankind stood poised on the brink of nuclear annihilation, gripes about gas lines probably sounded ludicrous and childish to him. Hence his willingness to believe that it was all just a "crisis of confidence" rather than a fundamental increase in people's sense of entitlement.

Whose father was a card carrying member of the KKK

Where are you getting that? We're not talking about his father, we're talking about him.

He's ahead of the myth of Global Warming.

Whatever you say, Reverend.

He's an armchair quarterback for war.

I shouldn't have to point out the stupidity of such an accusation. Everyone who expresses their views without having been privy to a decision is an "armchair quarterback," so if that isn't you then you're describing yourself as silently obedient. Furthermore, you apparently don't place any stock in the fact that his remarks were both prescient and courageous, but I'd suggest that most people find those qualities useful in a leader.

He would have been an ineffective and overmatched president (IMO)

I really don't know. There's no way to guess how 9/11 would have affected him as president, positively or negatively, or whether he would have learned how to translate his vast catalog of good ideas into practical achievements. Unlike Carter, who found it difficult to delegate, Gore's problem prior to his current Renaissance was that he didn't trust his own talents, and allowed himself to be led astray by incompetent creatures of the party establishment. That lack of self-confidence may have continued into his administration, making him a chump for parasitic underlings, or it might have disappeared altogether.

However, I should reiterate that these judgments of Carter and Gore are relative to liberal standards of excellence, and that neither of them at their absolute worst could possibly have done anywhere near the damage inflicted by Dick Cheney and his thugs. But even while stating that about the lower end of Gore's potential, from what I've seen he's never come anywhere near the true limit of his talents. With luck on his side, he still has the potential for greatness.

Artemus: Who cares whether Bush is a liberal, a conservative, or a Whig?

Republican gains from 1994 onward were partly attributable to their tactic of hijacking the meanings of words, and redefining them to mean their opposite or to eliminate meaning altogether. Defining conservative leaders who become liabilities as liberals achieves a double purpose, both absolving the conservative body politic of responsibility for its decisions and seeking to tar liberals with policies they never supported. This matters because words convey information, and conservative attempts to corrupt and disfigure that information at their convenience endangers our freedom.

Rather than as communication, they use words as tools of control, developing an organized "command language" of euphemisms and Newspeak in order to manipulate people. When they say "freedom," they don't mean "freedom," they're simply initiating a chain of emotion-based reactions intended to attach positive feelings to unrelated or even opposite ideas. Like the advertising industry, they have a highly effective, institutionalized knowledge of how to reduce human beings to stimulus-response machines, but they can only do it well when their internal agendas aren't getting in each other's way.

Ed: Yes, Brian, but in the Eighteenth Century, "liberal" did not mean what you think it means.

Yes, actually it did. Liberal means the same thing today it meant in 1780, just like science means the same thing it meant in 1910 regardless of its theories having evolved. The fact that liberals were primarily ruralist agrarian and are now urban technocratic is frankly irrelevant, and has no bearing on its definitive core values.

Back then, "liberals" were those who believed that government was a dangerous tool and a fearful master

Government as they knew it was precisely as you describe, which is why they designed a better model. The fact that they engineered a government in a world that had, for over a thousand years, been ruled by the divine right of fortunate birth showed them to be quintessentially liberal in a very modern sense. Modern conservatives like Newt Gingrich would have lambasted the Constitution as a hubristic, utopian social experiment doomed to failure, and would have counseled for a domestic copy of the British system.

whose functions should be strictly limited to preventing men from harming one another (i.e., the military, police, and judicial functions) while leaving them otherwise free to regulate their own affairs.

You're wrong in one key respect: Liberals believe and have always believed that the power of government--it's ability to employ force--should be strictly limited to preventing people from harming each other; not that its "functions" should be limited in that way. Article I, section 8 of the Constitution reads "Congress shall have the power to [...]promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." This is hardly essential to secure people's freedom, but it's beneficial to the lives and prosperity of the citizenry, and I don't recall any of the Founders having objected to it.

That is not equivalent to modern "liberals" who want government to regulate almost every aspect of private life and perform almost every function except except for national defense.

Ed, your statement is mendacious fantasy, pure and simple. Conservatives and libertarians designate marketplace decisions whose externalities have immediate consequences on other people as part of their "private lives," and hold them sacrosanct from all public regulation, refusing to acknowledge basic facts of economics. Those externalities--the costs a transaction inflicts unwillingly on third parties not involved in it--are what liberal policies seek to address, and that is perfectly in line with the doctrine of "preventing people from harming each other." This is pretty basic, common sense stuff: You are not entitled to burn tires in your yard and then disavow responsibility for the smoke when it leaves your property. As for national defense, I refuse to believe you're unaware of the wars fought and won under liberal leadership, not to mention those prevented by it. And it almost sounds like you're bitter about that fact.

No. First of all, reducing military spending to the point that ours is merely the best funded by a factor of two is not "gutting" it, nor does it in any way compromise the ability of the military to defend the United States or even its allies. The vast majority of current Pentagon spending is wasted, stolen, or used to advance business interests abroad through illegal and aggressive activities that undermine American national security. Were funding to be reduced to the given level, not only would it be easier for Congress to oversee, but it would clarify priorities and free up not $170 billion, but $320 billion for NASA per year.

Secondly, I spent a great deal of time earlier describing to you exactly what I thought that money could be used for, and my descriptions bore no resemblance to what you just said. Half of it would go to COTS-style development contracts, prize competitions, research grants, and seed funding for colonies, and the other half for manned and robotic exploration the private sector has no interest in performing. I prescribed no means of transportation, no means of habitat construction, but you just see what you want to see and ignore the outside world.

A classical liberal would say that national defense is a legitimate function of government but operating transportation systems and building housing should be private functions.

A liberal of any age simply says that government shouldn't ban private citizens from operating transportation systems or building housing. If citizens get together and decide their government should provide city buses or housing projects, you're free to dissent, free to move elsewhere, free not to use the services offered, or free to offer private alternatives. But the democratic process and/or elected representatives determine how tax money is spent, and that's how our republic works. I repeat, that's how our republic works--the country outside rural areas subscribing to your philosophy is not a Stalinist wasteland, it's largely beautiful and prosperous.

Toast: Actually though, as someone else pointed out, in todays context, all these terms, liberal, conservative, libertarain etc. are just badly muddled and mixed up.

Then I'll state my meanings clearly: Liberal = me. Conservative = opposite of me. Libertarian = orthogonal to me.

Mike: ...and then he was abducted by alien leptoids from planet 87 and force fed stupid pills by the crate.

Apparently he wasn't their only victim.

He was the worst president since reconstruction by absolutely no fault of his own.

Are you forgetting Hoover, or is this the first you've heard of him?

who has demonstrated time and time again he is totally lacking in wisdom and common sense.

Does that include commercializing ARPANET, predicting current events in Iraq four years ago, and shining a spotlight on climate change two decades before its universal acceptance?

Bilwick: Which liberalism? The individualism, anti-statist, pro-freedom liberalism of Locke, Paine, and the authors of the Cato Letters?

Individualism, pro-freedom, and liberalism are roughly synonymous. Anti-statism literally means anarchism, which is illiberal by virtue of being dogmatic and irrational. Any ideology that relies on fetishism for or against systems that should be judged objectively is illiberal, so that includes libertarianism as much as statism. You err in regarding liberalism as a set of doctrines like libertarianism--it is a system of values (e.g., truth, reason, freedom) and methods (science, democracy, innovation), not a set of conclusions. It's a misunderstanding similar to the way Intelligent Design proponents regard science.

Or the collectivist, pro-statist "we're really socialists but we don't want to scare you so we'll call ourselves 'liberals'" pseudo-liberalism that didn't begin until the early Twentieth Century?

Liberals are not afraid to borrow good ideas from socialism or anywhere else in fear of a label, nor do they subscribe to fetishes for or against the public sector. Nor do they look with mindless solipsistic terror and abhorrence on the idea that people can act cooperatively in groups. There are obvious benefits for doing so in many different contexts, not to mention being an instinctive activity of the human species, and they don't find the concept at odds with their individuality. Whether in the arts, sciences, business, or politics, liberals strive for self-improvement and mutual betterment on every level, and people who want no part of it are welcome to deprive themselves. They just aren't welcome to deprive everyone else in the name of anti-government hysteria.

The "credit" for idea of the hijacking of the term "liberalism" to fool the electorate

The "credit" belongs to Rush Limbaugh and various other propagandists who redefined it as a generalized negative term with no meaning other than "enemy of the Republican Party." They were tired of educated, intelligent, reasonable people being elected, so they made it an insult to be associated with those qualities. Liberals don't win elections by fooling the electorate, but by effectively cutting through the lies of conservatives virtually defined by deception. Listen to your deranged false dilemmas, classifying Timothy McVeigh with Thomas Jefferson and Robert Kennedy as a ComIntern plant. Libertarian dogma simply has nothing to do with reality or the principles of constitutional democracy.

"I remember when 'liberalism' meant being generous with your own money."--Will Rogers.

Apparently he didn't believe liberals pay taxes. What an asshole.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at May 31, 2007 01:04 PM

Mike: ...and then he was abducted by alien leptoids from planet 87 and force fed stupid pills by the crate.

"Apparently he wasn't their only victim."

No need to self-immolate there Brian.

Posted by at May 31, 2007 04:08 PM

Liberal means the same thing today it meant in 1780,

In that case, Brian, you are not a liberal but an anti-liberal.

The fact that liberals were primarily ruralist agrarian and are now urban technocratic is frankly irrelevant, and has no bearing on its definitive core values.

I said nothing about ruralist agrarians. Your fabricator is operating perfectly, I see.

> "Congress shall have the power to [...]promote the progress of science and
> useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the
> exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries." This is
> hardly essential to secure people's freedom,

Yes, it is. Protection of property (including intellectual property) is part of the defense function.

Giving you free prescription drugs is not.

> Conservatives and libertarians designate marketplace decisions whose
> externalities have immediate consequences on other people as part of their
> "private lives," and hold them sacrosanct from all public regulation, refusing
> to acknowledge basic facts of economics.

Most economists don't agree with you, Brian. Is there a coverup, like the Moon hoax?

In any case, you are not arguing for individual liberty, which is what classical liberals stood for -- the similarity between the words is not coincidental. You are arguing against it. No matter what arguments you use for restricting liberty, someone who wants to restrict liberty is not a (classical) liberal.

> This is pretty basic, common sense stuff: You are not entitled to burn tires
> in your yard and then disavow responsibility for the smoke when it leaves your property.

Again, that is simple protection of property rights. It does not explain why the average American should give 50% of his income to the government to provide all the government bennies you want.

> First of all, reducing military spending to the point that ours is merely the
> best funded by a factor of two is not "gutting" it,

We don't have a military just to say we're number one in military spending. That's juvenile rhetoric. The cuts you propose would leave the military unable to defend the United States. That is gutting the national defense, whatever you want to call it.

> The vast majority of current Pentagon spending is wasted, stolen, or used to
> advance business interests abroad through illegal and aggressive activities
> that undermine American national security.

Killing the enemies of the United States is an aggressive activity. It is not illegal except in your mind, Brian.

> it would clarify priorities and free up not $170 billion, but
> $320 billion for NASA per year.

$320 billion??? Your fever is rising, Brian. Even in your party, I doubt you'll find anyone nutty enough to go along with that.

> Secondly, I spent a great deal of time earlier describing to you exactly
> what I thought that money could be used for, and my descriptions bore
> no resemblance to what you just said. Half of it would go to COTS-style
> development contracts, prize competitions,

Those things don't require anything like $160 billion a year. (Did you lose three decimal places?)

> research grants, and seed funding for colonies, and the other half for manned
> and robotic exploration the private sector has no interest in performing.

So, half the money ($160 billion a year) would be to send government employees and robots on cool junkets? And more to establish "colonies" (soviets?) throughout the Solar System?

That still bears no resemblence to (classical) liberalism. Most settlement and exploration of the American continent was done by private citizens. The rest was done primarily by your archenemy United States military. Some cities, like Fort Wayne, were founded by the Army. Most were founded by private citizens.

The Corps of Discovery spent just over two years roaming the Northwest Territory before they were disbanded. At that point, Jefferson declared the frontier open and asked Congress to create incentives for private citizens and private enterprise to move west. If the US government did that today, private enterprise could open the space frontier and we wouldn't have to disband the military to pay for it.

Saying the private sector has no interest in robotic and manned exploration is pure fiction. There are a lot of people interested in robotics. Do you know how many hits JPL got when their rover landed on Mars? There are even more who are interested in manned (and womanned) exploration. Up to half of all Americans say they would like to take part in space exploration, if the price is right.

> But the democratic process and/or elected representatives determine
> how tax money is spent, and that's how our republic works. I repeat,
> that's how our republic works

You're confusing a democracy with a republic. The two are not equivalent.

The Constitution and the Bill of Rights were not created so you and your neighbor could vote to mug the man across the street and take his money for your purposes. They were created to prevent that. Anti-liberals have circumvented those protections, but changing the law does not make anti-liberals liberals.

Posted by Edward Wright at May 31, 2007 04:17 PM

Ed: In that case, Brian, you are not a liberal but an anti-liberal.

No, I am a liberal.

I said nothing about ruralist agrarians.

Yes, I brought them up. Do you have a comment on my point?

Your fabricator is operating perfectly, I see.

Your incoherence is becoming a barrier to communication.

Protection of property (including intellectual property) is part of the defense function.

The Constitution doesn't posit intellectual property as an inherent right like property in general, but clearly states it to be a temporary right that Congress is permitted to extend to creators for the betterment of society. Congress has statutory authority to say that patents and copyrights will stand for a hundred years, ten years, one year, one minute, or not at all. Apparently your ideology is so ludicrous and ignorant you've now labeled the Founders "statists."

Intellectual property does not rise to the level of natural property, as it cannot exist in the absence of a broad enforcing entity. An individual can hold and defend land, protect their person from attack, and do similarly with any physical object, but it is not possible for them to enforce ownership of an idea, method, likeness, or story. Moreover, your insistence that intellectual property is essential for freedom is obviously false, as nothing about the absence of that construct would prevent anyone from doing anything or deprive them of anything already in their possession. If someone writes a story, the paper on which it is written is not stolen; the pen is not stolen; the physical fact of the story remains that person's property; but they would simply be unable to force others to pay them for duplicating their creations.

Giving you free prescription drugs is not.

Life is a right, and rights aren't just things the government can't confiscate without due process. They are actively defended with the power of the government. The Declaration of Independence does not say "the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness," but says "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." There is no logical reason for including the qualifier "pursuit" before "happiness" if it is not implied that life and liberty are to be actively guaranteed. Moreover, you arbitrarily and archaically limit the concept of defense to attacks from other people--but what about natural disasters, diseases, economic crashes, and attacks from other phenomena that deprive citizens of life, liberty, and their ability to pursue happiness? You think it's valid for the government to spend an unlimited amount of money protecting us from other people, but shouldn't spend a single dime on a little girl dying from a treatable illness?

Most economists don't agree with you, Brian.

Yes they do, Ed. This is a fundamental point of economics, not an opinion. All economists with degrees from accredited institutions are aware of the concept of externalities, and that policies correcting for them increase the productivity of the economy--it's just libertarians who can't seem to grasp the concept.

you are not arguing for individual liberty [...] You are arguing against it.

No, Ed. You are once again ignoring me and arguing with a fictional character of your own imagining.

It does not explain why the average American should give 50% of his income to the government to provide all the government bennies you want.

That isn't what I'd suggest, and forget about benefits for the moment--we need substantial top-level tax increases just to stop existing infrastructure from collapsing. The state of the roads, schools, power lines, cell phone networks, airports, seaports, and railways is pitiful. But if you want to ask why millionaires should pay 40% of their income to prop up the infrastructure of the country that facilitated their success, the answer is the question.

The cuts you propose would leave the military unable to defend the United States.

Bullshit. Either you're saying that the US Armed Forces is inherently the most inefficient organization on the face of the Earth, and couldn't serve as a viable deterrent for $180 million per year even with thousands of nuclear missiles backing them up, or you've drunk the Imperial Kool-Aid and think national defense requires conquering every third-world tinpot that looks at us cross-eyed.

Killing the enemies of the United States is an aggressive activity.

Whether or not it's aggressive depends on the context, namely whether the enemies attacked first. The job of the military isn't to kill our enemies, it's to defend the Constitution. If you think our soldiers are intended to be imperial death squads, you have apparently never learned the laws and values of your own country.

It is not illegal except in your mind, Brian.

My mind and objective reality, the first following from the second. Insofar as treaties signed by the President and ratified by the US Senate are law, and the US Constitution is binding on all government officials and activities, it is a crime to engage in wars of aggression.

Even in your party, I doubt you'll find anyone nutty enough to go along with that.

Few in my party have the balls to cut military spending at all, let alone publicly state that it's vastly overfunded and wasteful. Some idiot might accuse them of endangering America for cancelling the nuclear skateboard program.

Those things don't require anything like $160 billion a year.

Taking into account COTS-style contracts, prizes, research grants, and colony seed funding, $160 billion probably would be just about right. Research would be in technologies associated with linear aerospikes, hypersonic scramjets, Bussard fusion ramjets, solar sails, EM sails, solar power satellites, on-orbit refueling, automated operations, modular systems, balloon-launched rockets, various nuclear rocket concepts, VASIMR rockets, ion drive evolutions, solar panels, lenses for propulsion beaming, radiation and particle shielding technologies, impact shielding, space elevators, orbital tethers, space medicine and biological research, space-based agriculture, heat shielding and environmental control, near-closed-loop environments, ISRU in as many environments as possible, asteroid detection and impact prevention, spin-generated artificial gravity, space economics (that's right), antimatter generation/storage/propulsion, mining on various bodies including asteroids and comets, aerobraking for reentry, landings, heliophysics, and detection and detailed characterization of all exoplanets in the immediate neighborhood, are just a few of the things I can think of off the top of my head. Space economics might develop "basic economy kits" consisting of foundational technologies with which a settlement could create its own indigenous industrial base. The results of the research would be available to the private sector, and they would determine which are implemented into useable systems.

COTS and/or prizes would be related to the following requirements, among many others: continuations of existing Centennial Challenges with more funding and more difficult requirements; point-to-point space transportation, Lagrange installations, Lunar dust protection, Mars dust protection, spacecraft power generation, Lunar habitat infrastructure, Lunar ground transportation vehicles and possibly roadbuilding, ditto Mars, orbital debris collection, interplanetary telecommunications and internet, Mars cyclers, space suits, mining on various types of bodies, transportation of mined materials, prize targets for greatest speed, lowest energy, greatest speed for lowest energy, most mass transported, etc.

Colony seed funding would basically be awarded to any group with a credible plan (as determined by a panel of New Spacers, alright?) for getting the technology built, getting themselves and their equipment there (wherever "there" is--orbit, Lagranges, Luna, Mercury, Venus [it could happen], Mars, Main Belt, Trojans, gas giant moons, KBOs) with a reasonable probability of safe arrival, and a decent chance of flourishing. The competence threshold of the plans would depend on the difficulty of the destination--the Moon and Mars would get heavy traffic and quickly become standardized; asteroid and trojan settlments would require very specialized planning, but would also eventually become commonplace; money would only be awarded for outer planet moon and KBO ventures with extraordinarily competent and conservative establishment plans. Anyway, obviously none of this will happen, but it's always a pleasure to "Dream of what isn't, and ask 'Why not?'"

So, half the money ($160 billion a year) would be to send government employees and robots on cool junkets?

Gathering data and learning experiences crucial to the viability of settlement, and in the human case accepting huge risks so that the settlers have a chance isn't what I'd call a "junket." They would be the Lewises and Clarks of the infinite frontier--profoundly competent, obsessively focused, hugely talented people pushing the envelope to go where no man has gone before. Footprints to Show The Way.

And more to establish "colonies" (soviets?) throughout the Solar System?

What exactly is the connection you believe exists between the words "colony" and "soviet"? That's bizarrely random, like you're responding to a Rohrschach test.

Most settlement and exploration of the American continent was done by private citizens.

Private citizens are welcome to explore and settle space any time they please, but nobody in the private sector with $50 billion is going to spend it establishing a space colony. And those are the prices after we assume orders of magnitude in price reductions from commercialization of space technology. The government is either going to eventually hand out the money in huge charters, or settlement will simply be impossible in the 21st century.

The rest was done primarily by your archenemy United States military.

Which isn't likely to happen in space. The choice between a trailer-sized tin can on the Moon and a dozen nuclear aircraft carriers isn't exactly a hard dilemma for the high command.

If the US government did that today, private enterprise could open the space frontier

No, it couldn't. It could open orbit and maybe, with a huge amount of institutional investment and incentives, cislunar space over the next fifty years. But the expenses of deep space colonization would be multiple orders of magnitude beyond the largest consortiums in the world, even with New Space prices.

Saying the private sector has no interest in robotic and manned exploration is pure fiction.

They have no ability to fund it.

You're confusing a democracy with a republic.

No, we elect appropriators democratically and they vote on spending bills. As I said, this is how our republic works.

The Constitution and the Bill of Rights were not created so you and your neighbor could vote to mug the man across the street and take his money for your purposes.

Indeed not, but a legitimately enacted Constitutional Amendment explicitly permits Congress to collect income taxes, and the duly elected representatives of the people have the authority to determine how those taxes are appropriated.

They were created to prevent that.

No, Ed, the Constitution and Bill of Rights were not created so you could avoid paying taxes. They were created so some "fine gentleman" couldn't have you hanged for not prostrating yourself in his presence. But as long as he didn't take your precious money, I guess you would consider that freedom while Vermont is Mao Zedong's dungeon.

Anti-liberals have circumvented those protections, but changing the law does not make anti-liberals liberals.

Deluded gibberish. You're not a liberal, Ed. I am.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at May 31, 2007 09:28 PM

Correction above: I say $180 million, but intended to say $180 billion.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at May 31, 2007 09:33 PM

The Constitution doesn't posit intellectual property as an inherent right

The passage you quoted shows otherwise. Do you read your own words, Brian.

Life is a right,

"Life" (in the sense of "free drugs") is not a right. Nor is food, clothing, or fast sports cars. You have a right to those things only if you are willing to pay for them.

Handouts are not a right.

Either you're saying that the US Armed Forces is inherently the most inefficient organization on the face of the Earth, and couldn't serve as a viable deterrent for $180 million per year even with thousands of nuclear missiles backing them up

So, you want to eliminate conventional weapons and just start a nuclear war the next time we're attacked??? Your ideas are getting nuttier and nuttier.

Taking into account COTS-style contracts, prizes, research grants, and colony seed funding, $160 billion probably would be just about right

That's like saying a hamburger, fries, and a jumbo jet cost $100 million. COTS needs hundreds of millions of dollars, not hundreds of billions. Ditto research grants.

The stalking horse is your "colony seed funding." Your previous bizarre idea of building a colony using Ares V could cost $160 billion a year. It would not be worth that much, however.

The words you leave out are "affordable" and "economical."

We don't need more expensive technology. What we need is *less* expensive spaceflight. That means spending less money to do things, not more.

Gathering data and learning experiences crucial to the viability of settlement, and in the human case accepting huge risks so that the settlers have a chance isn't what I'd call a "junket."

Again, we don't need to learn how to spend hundreds of billions of dollars just so a few government employees can take cool trips into space. We already have that data.

What exactly is the connection you believe exists between the words "colony" and "soviet"?

"Soviet" is an old word for a socialist community or settlement, like those you propose to finance. Look it up.

Private citizens are welcome to explore and settle space any time they please, but nobody in the private sector with $50 billion is going to spend it establishing a space colony.

They won't have to, when the cost of space access and space operations come down.

You seem to have a hard time with this concept, so let me put in simple words: We want to make doing stuff in space *cheaper.*

The choice between a trailer-sized tin can on the Moon and a dozen nuclear aircraft carriers isn't exactly a hard dilemma for the high command.

Not everyone in the military is stupid, Brian, no matter what you think. And we won't be restricted to trailer-sized structures when we get past ELVs.

It could open orbit and maybe, with a huge amount of institutional investment and incentives, cislunar space over the next fifty years. But the expenses of deep space colonization would be multiple orders of magnitude beyond the largest consortiums in the world, even with New Space prices.

So what? We don't have a desperate need to colonize the Andromeda galaxy next week. If we spend the next 50 years developing the Moon, the asteroids, and maybe Mars, that will be more valuable than spending hundreds of billions to land a six-man "colony" on Europa.

Saying the private sector has no interest in robotic and manned exploration is pure fiction.

They have no ability to fund it.

That would be news to Paul Allen, Robert Bigelow, and Richard Branson. I guess they don't exist on Bizarro Planet? :-)

You're not a liberal, Ed. I am.

You are not a classical liberal, Brian, because you're opposed to liberty.

I'm not even sure you're a modern liberal. Even Nancy Pelosi would laugh at your ideas.

Posted by Edward Wright at June 1, 2007 12:26 AM

I erred in the Will Rogers quote. Rogers used the word "liberal" not "liberalism." Even so, the meaning of the quote is pretty clear. Rogers is not only making a satirical comment on the hijacking of the terms "liberal" and "liberalism" by State-socialists, but contrasting true generosity (a voluntary sharing of one's wealth) with pseudo-liberal "generosity" (i.e., showing one's "compassion" by forcing other people to share their wealth). It tells you a lot about Mr. Swiderski that he is either feigning confusion about the meaning of the quote or deliberately distorting the meaning of it.

Posted by Bilwick at June 1, 2007 07:05 AM

Ed: The passage you quoted shows otherwise.

No, it does not. The constitution makes separate provision for giving Congress the power to secure intellectual vs. tangible property, and clearly states that the former is (a)pursued only as a means to affect progress in art and science, and (b)must be temporary for the same reason. If we accept your position, then in your hysterical language the Founders intentionally put limits on property rights for the benefit of "the collective."

"Life" (in the sense of "free drugs") is not a right.

Then why can't you answer any of my points arguing that it is? Why are you left in the meager position of simply stating your rejection of the idea over and over? I made a point regarding the language of the Declaration of Independence which, while not technically a legal document of the United States, indicates the intentions of the Founders with regard to later developments. Then I made a point about the defense function of government applying to infectious diseases, natural disasters, and market failures that deprive people of their ability to exercise their rights. You ignored both points, and simply restated your position.

Nor is food, clothing, or fast sports cars.

Sports cars are not a survival requirement, nor are they integral to the ability of a citizen to exercise guaranteed rights. Food, however, is both, and therefore inherent in the government's most fundamental mandate to protect the rights of the citizenry--although they may apply means tests before providing it. As for clothing, the government requires it under most circumstances, and it is a survival necessity under some, so basic provision in need is a right under both the previous reasoning and that of simple fairness.

You have a right to those things only if you are willing to pay for them.

Then you attribute all poverty to lack of will.

Handouts are not a right.

No method of securing rights is a right in itself.

So, you want to eliminate conventional weapons and just start a nuclear war the next time we're attacked?

Optimum national security at any given time has a specific cost, it is not determined by rate of increase, so I've already more than dealt with your bizarre statements portraying $180 billion as "disarmament." Moreover, the point about our nuclear forces was simply this: Security against foreign conquest is absolute, and any attempt at our physical destruction would be mutual. Ergo, the sole purpose of conventional forces is defense against limited attacks on our interests or invasions of allied countries, which do not and will not likely require anywhere near current funding levels.

COTS needs hundreds of millions of dollars, not hundreds of billions. Ditto research grants.

How many contracts and grants do you think would be involved? All I mentioned were broad general topics, and most of them could include well over a dozen COTS partnerships and research efforts. If the average was $100 million a pop, that could be anywhere from $30 billion to $100 billion.

Your previous bizarre idea of building a colony using Ares V could cost $160 billion a year.

I never even mentioned Ares V for settlement. Either you have me confused with someone else, or you're arguing with an imaginary antagonist.

The words you leave out are "affordable" and "economical."

They're implied in the term "credible." If the plan isn't affordable, funding it would jeopardize the program; if not economical, the chances of success are sharply reduced. Remember, these are one-way trips we're talking about, not sorties--they would have to be economical just to have a serious chance of survival.

That means spending less money to do things, not more.

Less money to do each thing, which means increasing overall spending to reduce fixed and marginal costs.

Again, we don't need to learn how to spend hundreds of billions of dollars just so a few government employees can take cool trips into space.

Again, you ignore my points and repeat your opinion. Manned exploration is about learning the requirements for a human presence first-hand, and trying out various approaches in the field, not dictating how future settlers do things. Eventually costs will be low enough for private sector exploration, but there will always be a limit (albeit increasing) to how far that extends, and beyond that line is where NASA belongs. Even inside that boundary will be places the private sector doesn't find interesting, and they too deserve to be explored for both pure science and the unforeseeable potential they may hold.

We already have that data.

This would be news to anyone who's ever been involved in actual space missions, human or robotic, and I'm beginning to wonder how much you actually know about these matters. Most of the Moon hasn't been mapped with greater resolution than tens to hundreds of meters, meaning a death trap of razor-sharp boulders would look exactly like a smooth plain--i.e., that a human mission tomorrow would just have to guess at landings based on the neighborhood. Ditto for finding resources, and also for gravity mapping to plan safe and efficient orbits. Then there are the medium- to long-term effects of Lunar dust on various materials and mechanical components, the biological consequences of continued exposure, the effects of minigravity (as opposed to micro), the tools and techniques needed for safe and reliable ISRU, near-closed loop recycling, disposal of marginally recyclable wastes, medical contingencies requiring surgery, on and on.

And that's just the Moon, where we've already been--we know even less about Mars. Its atmosphere, while useful for aerobraking, can send craft plummeting to the ground or flying off to nowhere if the air column at any point is taller or shorter than predicted. All we do know comes in broad, tantalizing brush strokes from the few orbiters and landers that did survive the journey: The limited chemical and morphological information the rovers have given us for a few tiny patches of land; the constant stream of ego-inhibiting surprises with every new layer of information from the orbiters; and the seemingly neverending tenuousness of each fresh attempt to believe we know something about that planet, let alone enough to start building condominiums.

Then there's the rest of the solar system, which remains essentially unknown despite the pretty pictures from the few probes to visit. In other words, for everywhere in the universe beyond LEO, we most assuredly do NOT have that data, and these are not things permanent settlers on a one-way ticket want to figure out with the lives of their families, nor things corporations want to figure out with their own money.

"Soviet" is an old word for a socialist community or settlement, like those you propose to finance.

Did this proposal happen in our universe, or do you get visions of another? The latter might explain why the record of what you claim seems to have vanished without a trace, and been replaced with remarks bearing no resemblance to it. Or maybe you just find it easier to fill in blanks with your own fantasies instead of asking me.

They won't have to, when the cost of space access and space operations come down.

The cost of a Mars colony today would be about a trillion dollars, so that $50 billion figure is a rough guess of what it will cost after costs come down given current investment levels. To make it go down any further would require vastly more funding--which is what I'm suggesting.

You seem to have a hard time with this concept, so let me put in simple words: We want to make doing stuff in space *cheaper.*

Which you seem to think occurs by withholding money from it, so the best approach would be to spend nothing at all and let space magically settle itself according to the laws of Scientology.

Not everyone in the military is stupid, Brian

That was my point.

And we won't be restricted to trailer-sized structures when we get past ELVs.

Yes, then we can have multiple trailer-sized structures connected with accordion tubes. I don't doubt the US military will eventually throw its weight around in space, whether the people who end up living there want it or not, but that won't happen until ET operations become more profitable than Earth-based counterparts.

We don't have a desperate need to colonize the Andromeda galaxy next week.

I said "deep space," not the unimaginable intergalactic void. Main Belt, Trojans, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto, Titan, Enceladus, Miranda, Triton, Kuiper Belt, etc. With proper funding and commitment, we can make a lot of that happen in our lifetimes--it doesn't have to take centuries to make settlements diverse and ubiquitous. But it does take an awesome level of funding, and it takes organizations with the ability to spend it without needing any direct return on investment.

Maybe you're content to spend the remainder of your days waiting for suborbital space companies to drag their asses out to the Moon, but I want to look out a window half-filled by Saturn or Neptune, walk on or float beside bodies that are now just pictures in a magazine, and settle on a Mars full of hope and promise like America was when our ancestors came here. And I don't care how fantastical those ambitions seem, because they are obtainable within a decent timeframe if we get serious.

If we spend the next 50 years developing the Moon, the asteroids, and maybe Mars, that will be more valuable than spending hundreds of billions to land a six-man "colony" on Europa.

Surveying and settling the outer solar system wouldn't compete with the Moon, Mars, and asteroids, they would accelerate each other's development concurrently. There may be an attractive symmetry to moving outward in concentric circles, but it ultimately makes little sense and squanders profound opportunities. Imagine what America would be like today if pioneers and homesteaders had insisted on only moving one territory Westward at a time, and not going onward until the last was well on its way to becoming established. They probably would have crept forward lethargically and then stopped dead not far into the Rockies, leaving the country mono-coastal, and the riches of the interior and the Pacific Coast would never have been realized.

In fact, the Pacific Coast is an apt analogy for the outer solar system--wealth and potential beyond imagining, but lying across forbidding wastelands that make the Prairie (Earth->Mars) seem leisurely by comparison. But there are reasons for choosing concurrent development, at least as it (initially) concerns the Jupiter system, and they have to do with a very important commodity in space: Volatiles.

Mars probably has enough accessible volatiles for settlement, but still far too scarce for exporting them to ever make sense. Where then does the water come from for asteroid operations, bases, and settlements? Where should it come from for purely artificial stations in various orbits about the Sun, or on the Martian moons? Virtually all Main Belt asteroids are too small to hold water ice at that orbit, and the main exception Ceres has serious logistical problems. For one, its 10.6 degree inclination from the ecliptic could make transfers problematic, although I invite any experts reading this to correct me. For another, it only has .03g, which is good for hauling the mass away, but perhaps not so good for setting up and managing the extraction operations. Lunar and asteroid practices would both apply imperfectly due to the nontrivial gravity. We could always get the volatiles directly from Earth, but even with cheaper launch that becomes prohibitively expensive in short order, and the same launch cost reductions would work anywhere else. Comets? For all the huge quantities of ice they carry, harvesting them beyond gravitationally tugging them into collision courses with the Moon or Mars may not be feasible. Their instability, continuous and violent outgassing, and virtually nonexistent gravity make ice mining a dubious proposition. So the question remains, where does the water come from?

Callisto. At 10% of Earth gravity, Lunar best practices could be applied, human beings can operate efficiently, no significant atmosphere to fight through, and the launch savings over Earth even at somewhat greater distances would be substantial. Also, its orbit is outside Jupiter's radiation belts, while still having the benefit of the Jovian magnetic field against solar flux and cosmic rays. Finally, if vague memories of Newtonian mechanics serve, escape velocity from Jupiter at Callisto's orbit is roughly the same as Earth escape at Lunar orbit, and it's right there in the plane of the ecliptic. In fact, I wouldn't dare try to figure the numbers myself, but it's possible that it might be cheaper energy-wise to supply the Moon with water from Callisto on some kind of continuous supply cycle than from Earth.

If this logic holds, and if Callisto has the potential I believe it does, then there's no reason not to develop the Jupiter system concurrent with the Moon, Mars, and asteroids, and every reason that it would be an explosive stimulus to their progress. And again, while I don't dare try to delve into the numbers, I personally don't see a reason that moons of Saturn, Uranus, or Neptune might not yield even cheaper volatiles despite the greater distance. I welcome anyone who disagrees to explain the flaws in my facts or reasoning.

That would be news to Paul Allen, Robert Bigelow, and Richard Branson.

None of whom have yet engaged in space exploration, human or robotic, nor have any specific plans to do so.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at June 2, 2007 07:46 AM

I would add that the ice supplies wouldn't have to get there fast, and wouldn't have to involve manned ships: They could take advantage of low-energy slow routes from Callisto to the Belt, Mars, and/or the Moon with continuous shipments guaranteeing constant supply once the first cargo arrives, so the volatiles would then be dirt-cheap compared to those launched direct from Earth.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at June 2, 2007 08:13 AM

> "Life" (in the sense of "free drugs") is not a right.

Then why can't you answer any of my points arguing that it is?

Been there, done that. The simple fact that Brian Swiderski wants something does not mean Brian Swiderski has a "right" to get it without paying. Handouts are not a "right." Saying they are shows that you do not understand the concept of rights.

That is why you are not a classical liberal.

All I mentioned were broad general topics, and most of them could include well over a dozen COTS partnerships and research efforts.

Over a dozen COTS partnerships???

So, that means each vehicle would get to resupply ISS how many times during its lifetime? Once? Twice?

[sarcasm] Yeah, that will be economical. [/sarcasm] Or maybe you didn't know that ISS has a finite design life?

> The words you leave out are "affordable" and "economical."

They're implied in the term "credible."

No, it's not. ESAS, which you've argued for in the past, is neither affordable nor economical, although you think it's credible.

Although, I'm not sure you know what ESAS is, since you're now claiming you never argued for Ares V.

In any case, it should be obvious that *no* plan that costs $160 billion a year is economical. By definition.

> You seem to have a hard time with this concept, so let me put in simple words: We want to make doing stuff in space *cheaper.*

Which you seem to think occurs by withholding money from it

No, Brian, I don't "think" it. I know it for a fact. When you spend less money to do something, that thing is cheaper. When you spend more money to do it, it is more expensive.

That is not an opinion, Brian. That is a tautology. Programs that cost more are more expensive and less affordable. Programs that cost less are cheaper and more affordable. By definition. Everywhere in the universe.

We already have that data.

This would be news to anyone who's ever been involved in actual space missions, human or robotic,

I assure you, Brian, everyone involved in actual space missions knows we got data on how to do Apollo missions from the Apollo program. If you're unaware of it, that's your problem.

Most of the Moon hasn't been mapped with greater resolution than tens to hundreds of meters, meaning a death trap of razor-sharp boulders would look exactly like a smooth plain--i.e., that a human mission tomorrow would just have to guess at landings based on the neighborhood.

You don't need ESAS to get that kind of mapping data, Brian. Let alone a $160-billion-a-year ESAS on steroids.

Also, a human mission would have a pilot who could adjust for unexpected conditions at the landing site. In fact, Neal Armstrong did just that on Apollo 11. If he just followed the maps the robots made, he would have died.

All of the other items on your list could be done at reasonable cost, once we have affordable, routine access to the lunar surface. No need for nutty left-wing proposals to cancel the Defense Department.

>That would be news to Paul Allen, Robert Bigelow, and Richard Branson.

None of whom have yet engaged in space exploration, human or robotic, nor have any specific plans to do so.

You are poorly informed, Brian. Look up "SpaceShip One." It was in all the papers.

When you've found that, look up "Bigelow Aerospace" and "Virgin Galactic."

Posted by Edward Wright at June 2, 2007 03:31 PM

Been there, done that.

Just never that I've seen.

The simple fact that Brian Swiderski wants something...

And the mantra continues. How many times are you going to beg the question like this, answering every argument and point by reiterating your opinion?

Handouts are not a "right."

As I explained in the last post, they're one method for securing rights.

Saying they are shows that you do not understand the concept of rights.

Your sudden abandonment of our intellectual property discussion says otherwise.

That is why you are not a classical liberal.

Add whatever meaningless qualifiers you please, but they can't make your "moneytarian" political religion any more about liberty or rights, or genuine humanist liberalism any less.

Over a dozen COTS partnerships? So, that means each vehicle would get to resupply ISS how many times during its lifetime?

COTS-style contracts, Ed. Not contracts specifically for the provision of ISS resupply. I had assumed you were familiar enough with this subject to understand that, but I guess that isn't the case. Each of the broad topics I mentioned could include a dozen commercial, results-based contracts like COTS for the development of diverse capabilities and services.

ESAS, which you've argued for in the past, is neither affordable nor economical, although you think it's credible.

ESAS isn't a colonization proposal.

Although, I'm not sure you know what ESAS is, since you're now claiming you never argued for Ares V.

I never argued for using Ares V for colonization, which is what you claimed.

In any case, it should be obvious that *no* plan that costs $160 billion a year is economical.

No "plan" would cost $160 billion a year, that would be the cost of four distinct distinct programs--prizes, commercial contracts, research grants, and colony seed funding--encompassing potentially hundreds of specific, largely independent operations. And those operations would, as a result, be more economical than anything currently being undertaken.

No, Brian, I don't "think" it. I know it for a fact. When you spend less money to do something, that thing is cheaper.

This is another subject we've been through, that I've explained to you quite clearly, and whose key concepts you apparently have still not learned. The only ways to reduce the marginal and fixed costs of space operations are to increase their number, which yields economies of scale, and invest heavily in technology, both of which result in higher overall spending.

Programs that cost more are more expensive and less affordable. Programs that cost less are cheaper and more affordable. By definition. Everywhere in the universe.

Except in economics class, where you should have stayed awake.

I assure you, Brian, everyone involved in actual space missions knows we got data on how to do Apollo missions from the Apollo program.

We know how to land exactly where they did, walk or drive around for a few days, and then leave. None of the issues I mentioned were addressed by Apollo.

If you're unaware of it, that's your problem.

There's little evidence you're aware of US space programs beyond their names, subjects, and the political judgments of likeminded people.

You don't need ESAS to get that kind of mapping data, Brian.

Just a few expensive probes, none of which are currently funded.

Let alone a $160-billion-a-year ESAS on steroids.

You keep pointing out that this project or that doesn't cost $160 billion, apparently forgetting how many projects go into the total.

Also, a human mission would have a pilot who could adjust for unexpected conditions at the landing site.

Yes, unexpected--not have the landing entrusted to his intuition by default to save money on reconnaisance.

In fact, Neal Armstrong did just that on Apollo 11.

And he almost ran out of fuel.

If he just followed the maps the robots made, he would have died.

Because those maps weren't detailed enough. He was operating on information limited by the state of technology, not deliberately endangering his own life and the mission to avoid the cost of robotic surveys.

All of the other items on your list could be done at reasonable cost, once we have affordable, routine access to the lunar surface.

A circular claim, since many of those items are required before that can happen.

No need for nutty left-wing proposals to cancel the Defense Department.

But according to you, spending less is good. Where does this rationale disappear to when the subject shifts to the Pentagon?

You are poorly informed, Brian. Look up "SpaceShip One." It was in all the papers.

What does a suborbital rocketplane have to do with space exploration? You really, seriously don't know squat about this subject, do you? You're just namedropping at random.

When you've found that, look up "Bigelow Aerospace" and "Virgin Galactic."

VG is building another suborbital rocketplane based on the first one, and Bigelow is testing habitats for LEO. The former might have been called exploration in the early '60s, but Low Earth Orbit is not a frontier--it's a front yard. Bigelow may be credited with helping to settle LEO, but he sure as hell won't be credited with exploring it. My point stands: None of the people you mention has engaged in space exploration, and none has any specific plans to do so. Nor is it likely they ever will, if they have any intention of making profits from their investments.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at June 2, 2007 05:51 PM

>Saying they are shows that you do not understand the concept of rights.

Your sudden abandonment of our intellectual property discussion says otherwise.

I abandoned nothing. I explained the concept of intellectual property rights. You responded with your usual ignorance. So be it. I've never yet stood in the way of a student who wanted an F.

COTS-style contracts, Ed. Not contracts specifically for the provision of ISS resupply.

Do you know what "COTS-style contracts" are, Brian?

You're right, they are not contracts for the provision of ISS resupply -- but they are development and demonstration contracts for ISS resupply vehicles.

Why should the US government spend $160 billion a year to develop ISS resupply vehicles when Shuttle, Soyuz, Progress, ATV, etc. cost a small fraction of that amount? What would motivate a politician to do such a thing?

Does Nancy Pelosi support your ideas? Does any member of your party?

I never argued for using Ares V for colonization, which is what you claimed.

I don't recall if you used the "c" word or not, but you did argue for ESAS (and therefore Ares V, assuming you know Ares V is part of ESAS).

Mike Griffin claims colonization is the long-term goal of ESAS, although I'm not sure you know that, either.

You did claim that ESAS would somehow lead to human settlement of space. Obviously you can't defend that claim, so now you're playing word games. I refuse to play.

The only ways to reduce the marginal and fixed costs of space operations are to increase their number, which yields economies of scale, and invest heavily in technology,

No, Brian, those are not "the only ways."

In fact, they are not ways to reduce fixed costs at all. Increasing the amount of money spent to develop space transportation systems will increase the fixed costs. Development costs *are* fixed costs. To reduce fixed costs, you need to develop vehicles *less* expensively.

We don't need to "invest heavily" in new technology, either. The technology needed to build cheaper vehicles has existed for decades. We only need to apply it.

What does a suborbital rocketplane have to do with space exploration?

(Eyeballs rolling.) Are you serious? You really don't know this?

Suborbital rocketplanes will take people into space, at dramatically lower cost. This will allow thousands of people to explore space.

Virgin Galactic alone expects to fly 50,000 people in its first 10 years of operations.

Low Earth Orbit is not a frontier--it's a front yard.

Then don't go, Brian.

Maybe you don't think LEO is hip anymore, but I've talked to quite a few people who've been there. All of them enjoyed it. Immensely. The only people who call it boring are wannabes who've never been in space and affect that "jaded" attitude.

If you don't see any value in exploring any part of space that we can reach affordably, then stay home and watch Star Trek. That won't stop the rest of us from going.

Posted by Edward Wright at June 2, 2007 08:36 PM

I abandoned nothing. I explained the concept of intellectual property rights.

I debunked each and every single claim you made about intellectual property, thoroughly and without ambiguity, and you failed to address a single one of those rebuttals. Not only did you fail to respond, you dropped the subject altogether, so the picture that's been painted here is clear to everyone reading this: Your understanding of liberal concepts is, at best, limited to a set of buzzwords whose actual meanings (if any) are both unknown to you and a matter of complete indifference. Rather, instead of knowledge of and thoughtful reflection on constitutional principles, you establish your "classical liberal" bona fides with mindless bigotry against the public sector, virtually all institutions and services associated with it, and all people who don't share your attitude. But the one and only exception to that bigotry, your unquestioning (and monetarily unlimited) support of an imperial standing army, was utterly abhorrent to the Founders for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, none of these contradictions and hypocrisies on your part bothers you in the least, even after being confronted with them, and you've made abundantly clear just how comfortable you find ignorance.

Do you know what "COTS-style contracts" are, Brian?

Commercial contracts for the provision of a service with the means left undefined, but with milestone-based development awards.

Why should the US government spend $160 billion a year to develop ISS resupply vehicles

The incoherence in your posts is disturbing, Ed. I've had to remind you in nearly every single post of what the $160 billion would be for, yet in every reply you pull some completely random, unrelated plan from an alternate universe and talk about that instead of what I suggested. I'm not trying to being mean-spirited by saying that you're showing extreme difficulty remembering basic details of our discussion, and if there is some reason for that then please tell me so I can adjust how I respond instead of just assuming you're being dishonest.

Does Nancy Pelosi support your ideas?

Do I care?

Does any member of your party?

Not in federal office, as far as I know. But there are many liberals who support space exploration, development, and settlement, and plenty of them would support a $320 billion NASA budget if they thought it could ever pass. Of course, not all of those would support getting the entire increase from Pentagon budget cuts, but we can always just eliminate the Republican tax cut bribes they used to buy '02 and '04.

I don't recall if you used the "c" word or not, but you did argue for ESAS

No, I argued against specific alternatives that were being mentioned, some of which have since evolved into more credible plans.

Mike Griffin claims colonization is the long-term goal of ESAS

No, he claims it's a step in that general direction, not that it will ever directly take part in colonziation.

You did claim that ESAS would somehow lead to human settlement of space.

Assuming it's funded, it could very well make settlement more likely.

Obviously you can't defend that claim, so now you're playing word games.

Considering that the claim was made over a year ago, if it was ever made in the first place, your statement is bizarre. You can't recollect what I said 14 hours ago, but you're throwing things at me that I allegedly said last year? Seriously, is there something I should know so I can be more patient in talking with you?

Increasing the amount of money spent to develop space transportation systems will increase the fixed costs. Development costs *are* fixed costs.

That's right, and increasing that aspect of fixed costs reduces the FC of operations, which means that over time you've saved money.

To reduce fixed costs, you need to develop vehicles *less* expensively.

That's one way of approaching it, and not mutually exclusive with reducing operational fixed costs. A system like Pegasus, even if developed cheaply, would still have cripplingly high operational FC. The ability to make money off it would ramp down, not up, over time.

We don't need to "invest heavily" in new technology, either.

We do, and should anyway. If VASIMR could be implemented, that's Mars in a third the time, not to mention the various disruptive spinoff applications associated with precise plasma control. Continuous acceleration would allow for a small degree of artificial gravity without rotation, and the theoretical speed limit is way beyond anything currently envisioned. Moreover, the controlled high temperatures achieved by the technology would allow recycling of any matter down to its constituent elements, which would have profound implications for closed-loop life support. There might be a few accidents along the way, vaporizing the entire spacecraft and crew, but we can accept some hiccups for a prize that sexy.

Suborbital rocketplanes will take people into space, at dramatically lower cost. This will allow thousands of people to explore space.

LEO and realms beneath have already been "explored"--we know the environment to a high degree of confidence, and have a significant amount of experience dealing with it. What you're talking about are *development* and *settlement*, two consecutive stages following exploration. These stages may in future become blended in some ways, but as far as LEO is concerned, it's Aetheria Cognita--known space. That isn't to say we know everything about it, or that developing and settling it will be easy, but what's happening is not exploration. They're following in the foosteps of hundreds of "government employees," as you term our intrepid astronauts, and thousands of satellites. Elon Musk is not Marco Polo, he's more like the railroad builders.

Virgin Galactic alone expects to fly 50,000 people in its first 10 years of operations.

And we're all excited about that, but don't tell me a tour bus that pops out of the atmosphere so people can float and see where they already live is "exploration." That will only occur when space transportation companies can offer service to anywhere the customer defines, limited only by the capabilities of the vehicle and the safety of the crew, and only then when unexplored destinations are within range of those capabilities.

Then don't go, Brian.

Why wouldn't I go? LEO isn't unexplored, but it's certainly undeveloped and unsettled--still quite exciting.

The only people who call it boring are wannabes who've never been in space and affect that "jaded" attitude.

I didn't say it was boring, I said it was known. And it's a bit fatuous to use it against me that I haven't been in space, which has never been by choice and won't be corrected until Virgin's prices decline by 3/4.

If you don't see any value in exploring any part of space that we can reach affordably, then stay home and watch Star Trek.

Isn't it a bit of a wank to call Virgin Galactic "exploration"? Whatever you think it will lead to, that doesn't change what it is now, and its passengers won't be "exploring" anything. I'll go up when I can for the weightlessness and the view, but I'm not going to come back thinking of myself as Buck Rogers because I did a couple of sommersaults and stared out a window. I'd love to be involved in real exploration at some point, but that isn't likely since (a)I'm not an astronaut, engineer, pilot, doctor, or scientist, and (b)I'm not gruesomely wealthy. And, given how slowly progress is being made on getting even the suborbitals operating, I don't anticipate exploration becoming an open field in my lifetime.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at June 3, 2007 04:01 AM

I debunked each and every single claim you made about intellectual property, thoroughly and without ambiguity,

And without understanding or comprehension. Sorry, Brian, but in my class you do not get points for showing up.

>Do you know what "COTS-style contracts" are, Brian?

Commercial contracts for the provision of a service with the means left undefined,

As I thought, you don't know what COTS contracts are.

They are not contracts for the provision of a service. (Oddly enough, you had that part right before.)

They are contracts for vehicle development and flight demonstrations. NASA *might* sign contracts to purchase a service from such vehicles at a future date but has not committed to doing so (even provisionally).

The hope is that those demonstrations will lead to a cheaper way of supplying ISS. Since that is the goal, spending more money on COTS than it would cost to purchase Shuttle, Soyuz, Progress, and ATV flights would not make sense.

>Does any member of your party?

Not in federal office, as far as I know.

So, you can't find a single elected representative who takes your ideas seriously? Not even the leftmost members of your own party will support you?

Doesn't that tell you something, Brian?

But there are many liberals who support space exploration, development, and settlement, and plenty of them would support a $320 billion NASA budget if they thought it could ever pass.

Many liberals will support any increase in government spending, as long as it does not benefit national security. Yet, I don't see any liberals supporting your call for a $320-billion NASA budget. Not even Bill White.

Since you acknowledge that your $320 billion budget would never pass, what's the point of these posts? Just to make yourself look sillier?

>you did claim that ESAS would somehow lead to human settlement of space.

Assuming it's funded, it could very well make settlement more likely.

The facts and figures show otherwise. Would you care to refute those facts and figures, or is your belief simply an article of faith?

increasing that aspect of fixed costs reduces the FC of operations, which means that over time you've saved money.

"FC of operations" means "fixed costs of operations," Brian.

You can't reduce fixed costs by increasing fixed costs. The only way to reduce fixed costs is to reduce fixed costs.

>We don't need to "invest heavily" in new technology, either.

We do, and should anyway. If VASIMR could be implemented

We don't need VASIMR to reduce the cost of access to space and begin to develop and settle the frontier. Or scramjets. Or warp drive.

>Suborbital rocketplanes will take people into space, at dramatically lower cost. This will allow thousands of people to explore space.

You think exploration is something that only occurs before development and settlement?

And once a place has been explored, it is used up -- no one can explore it again?

So, why do we have books like "Exploring San Francisco"? Isn't SF already developed and settled?

China and America were developed and setting by the Chinese and Native Americans long before Marco Polo, Leif Erikson, and Columbus showed up. Do you think Marco Polo, Leif Erikson, and Columbus were not explorers?

LEO and suborbital space have been explored by fewer people than the summit of Mt. Everest or the North Pole. Neither are developed or settled to any significant degree. Yet, you think LEO and suborbit are already used up for exploration?

What about the Moon? Wasn't it explored by Project Apollo? Does that mean no one else can explore it again? If so, why do you want NASA to go back there?

but don't tell me a tour bus that pops out of the atmosphere so people can float and see where they already live is "exploration."

I'll tell you the facts whether you like them or not. According to the dictionary, exploration is "travel for the purpose of discovery."

If people travel outside the atmosphere, see things they have not seen before, and learn things they did not know before, then they are exploring space -- by definition.

Posted by Edward Wright at June 3, 2007 12:09 PM

And without understanding or comprehension.

I made specific points referring directly to the text of the Constitution, and you ignored them all and tried to drop the subject. Then, when pressed, you simply responded with a cut-and-past blanket dismissal and reassertion of your original opinion. Does being so completely ineffectual and frivolous bother you?

As I thought, you don't know what COTS contracts are.

And as I thought, your question was bullshit. Had I directly quoted the document establishing COTS, your response would have been no different than to the previous subject--sullen silence, punctuated by vague insults when cornered. Rather, I spoke generally and got exactly the predicted response: Inane, defensive nitpicking.

They are not contracts for the provision of a service.

In my usage, COTS-style refers to a contract that is either for arm's-length (i.e., commercial) provision of a service, or for the development of a capability to provide such a service if not currently practical.

Since that is the goal, spending more money on COTS than it would cost to purchase Shuttle, Soyuz, Progress, and ATV flights would not make sense.

This is now the third or fourth time I've had to remind you that I'm referring to the overall structure of the COTS program, not to its specific purpose of ISS resupply.

So, you can't find a single elected representative who takes your ideas seriously?

I've never tried. There are, however, several who might support a gargantuan NASA budget if it didn't involve cutting the military, but they would (a)be nervous about how a precipitous increase would appear, and (b)could not likely fight the combined assaults of anti-space, anti-NASA, anti-spending, and pro-miscellaneous.

Not even the leftmost members of your own party will support you?

The leftmost members of my party hate the NASA manned space program, just like you, and for equally mindless reasons. Liberals and moderates, however, tend to run the gamut on the issue depending on regional and personal preferences.

Doesn't that tell you something, Brian?

It tells me that legislators are short-sighted by necessity, and that your attitude toward the government is seriously schizo. One minute they're the enemy of all progress, and the next you're citing their resistance to heavily funding NASA as proof that it shouldn't be considered.

Many liberals will support any increase in government spending, as long as it does not benefit national security.

Space is universally beneficial, and many liberals are deeply committed to its exploration, development, and settlement for precisely that reason. A few, like myself, also understand it to be an overarching imperative that does not allow for low-balling or procrastination.

Yet, I don't see any liberals supporting your call for a $320-billion NASA budget.

I've seen a few over the years. But why not be honest and admit that it's not the $320 billion you oppose, but the fact that it would be administered by a civilian agency?

Since you acknowledge that your $320 billion budget would never pass, what's the point of these posts?

What's the point of saying anything if a substantial majority of people don't already agree with you? What an asinine statement, Ed. The point is to communicate the fact that NASA is grossly underfunded, and that far more is needed to credibly pursue its mission.

Just to make yourself look sillier?

Sillier than whom? I may look ridiculous trying to reason with you, patiently explaining facts you simply don't care about, but nobody whose opinion is worth considering holds that against me.

The facts and figures show otherwise.

Normally that would be followed by actual facts and figures, but if you want to leave it at the words "facts" and "figures" that would be typical of your approach to reality.

You can't reduce fixed costs by increasing fixed costs.

This statement is lazy and ignorant. There are different kinds of fixed costs, some of which occur only once (e.g., development) and others are needed on an ongoing basis for operations (e.g., infrastructure). Reducing the former can be helpful, but if you do so simply by low-balling the process without real advances, then all you've done is shift costs into operations and made the system more expensive. This is precisely what is happening with your beloved ESAS, which you yourself enjoy criticizing for using old approaches, but apparently the implications of your own criticism had escaped you.

We don't need VASIMR to reduce the cost of access to space and begin to develop and settle the frontier. Or scramjets. Or warp drive.

We need VASIMR to go anywhere. There is no workable business case for settling anything beyond the Moon with current travel times, and New Space chemical rockets aren't going to be any faster than NASA's.

You think exploration is something that only occurs before development and settlement?

By definition, by practicality, and by common sense.

And once a place has been explored, it is used up -- no one can explore it again?

Not in the sense we're discussing. If you want to use "explore" in the way that kindergarten teachers use it, rather than in the absolute sense of breaking new ground for all mankind, then we differ in how we see the endeavor.

So, why do we have books like "Exploring San Francisco"?

Because "explore" has a very broad meaning in general use, but "space exploration" has quite distinct connotations that don't apply to people just being there. That's part of the rationale for the Vision in the first place--astronauts are no longer doing their job of exploration by staying in LEO.

China and America were developed and setting by the Chinese and Native Americans long before Marco Polo, Leif Erikson, and Columbus showed up.

It was a mutual discovery, but the Europeans get the credit for being the active agents. Likewise, if a highly advanced ET civilization were to land on Earth, they would be exploring it, because theirs is the agency of introduction and the broader context of understanding. However, just going somewhere you personally have never been is not exploration in this sense, because you are not likely adding anything to the general state of knowledge. Suborbital and orbital flights will make incremental progress in this department, but it is unlikely to be qualitatively significant, and each new frontier will cease to be so as time passes and experience is built. Fortunately, the inner system and gas giant moons are so diverse that boredom with space won't be a problem for a very long time.

LEO and suborbital space have been explored by fewer people than the summit of Mt. Everest or the North Pole.

That's right, because it takes far fewer people to explore a small, barren patch of ice and snow on a mountain peak or polar plateau than to characterize a totally alien environment in near-vacuum and microgravity. But all three have indeed been explored, and all who have subsequently visited were merely looking to share in or contribute marginally to the original achievement.

Neither are developed or settled to any significant degree.

There would be no reason to settle or develop the summit of Everest, no rational possibility of benefit to anyone, and the Nepalese government would never permit it. As for Antarctica, the Antarctic Treaty nations enforce a ban on all resource development or activity not approved by the treaty organization, although there's no reason it couldn't be turned into a habitable, economically prosperous continent. Unfortunately, several countries already have territorial claims on the books, so opening it up to settlement and development would merely enlarge the possessions of Argentina, New Zealand, Australia, Norway, and a handful of others (not including the US). It would, however, have a rather unique political map, with sovereignties divided into pie wedges all centered at the pole.

What about the Moon? Wasn't it explored by Project Apollo?

Exploration took place, but far from any comprehensive level.

According to the dictionary, exploration is "travel for the purpose of discovery."

One of several meanings the dictionary gives, each with its own subjective ambiguities.

If people travel outside the atmosphere, see things they have not seen before, and learn things they did not know before, then they are exploring space -- by definition.

By one definition. The one I'm relying upon, from the perspective of general human achievement and knowledge, does not consider tourism of previously visited premises or use thereof for unrelated business "exploration." Saloon prostitutes were not pioneers, nor will prostitutes operating out of Bigelow modules be space explorers.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at June 4, 2007 09:30 PM

I made specific points referring directly to the text of the Constitution, and you ignored them all

I often ignore nonsense, Brian. Ignoring your nonsensical rants may upset you, but it is not a crime.

In my usage, COTS-style refers to a contract that is either for arm's-length (i.e., commercial) provision of a service

Yes, and your usage has little to do with reality. COTS is not a service purchase, no matter how you use words. It is a demonstration contract, period.

>So, you can't find a single elected representative who takes your ideas seriously?

I've never tried.

Obviously. If you had any real experience in politics, you would know how unrealistic your ideas are.

If a cost is incurred on an ongoing basis, it is not a fixed cost; it is a variable cost. I suggest you pick up a textbook on engineering economics.

We need VASIMR to go anywhere.

No, we do not need VASIMIR to go anywhere. There are plenty of places we can go with conventional technology.

I know, you complain that those places are not sufficiently exciting. That's your problem, Brian. There's a limit to how much the taxpayers will spend to provide you with excitement, and that limit is nowhere near $320 billion a year.

You think exploration is something that only occurs before development and settlement?

Yes, I know that was the rationale for the Bush vision of space exploration: Only a handful of NASA astronauts are allowed to explore space. That's why I'm not a BVSEer. I don't believe space exploration should be limited to those "distinct connotations" that exclude 99.999% of all Americans.

As Pete Conrad said, "Bouncing around on the Moon was a blast. Everyone should go!"

The [definition] I'm relying upon, from the perspective of general human achievement and knowledge, does not consider tourism of previously visited premises or use thereof for unrelated business "exploration."

Yes, and that artifically restricted, elitist definition would keep space exploration a very rare, expensive undertaking with little impact on human civilization, as it has been for the past 40 years. The idea that no one outside the NASA astronaut can contribute to human achievement and knowledge is a quaint relic of the Cold War.

Me, I'm with Pete. :-)

Posted by Edward Wright at June 5, 2007 06:12 PM

I often ignore nonsense, Brian.

No, you just ignore any point that leaves you no choice but to admit being wrong. Being wrong is impossible from the perspective of dogmatism, so you probably do think reality is nonsense.

Yes, and your usage has little to do with reality.

The ultimate purpose of COTS is commercial service provision, and it achieves that by starting with development contracts--i.e., exactly what I described.

If you had any real experience in politics, you would know how unrealistic your ideas are.

Not that it isn't amusing hearing "unrealistic" from someone who thinks the military can and should build Battlestar Galactica, but the facts are (a)I am perfectly aware of the up-front challenges of my ideas, and (b)they're not relevant. Leave the vision game to people capable of playing it, and then people like you can have the easy tasks that don't require taking risks.

If a cost is incurred on an ongoing basis, it is not a fixed cost. I suggest you pick up a textbook on engineering economics.

I suggest you pick up any economics text at all, because you've clearly never spent a single day of your life in an economics class. All costs that don't change on a per-unit production basis are fixed costs, and those that do are marginal costs. "Fixed" is not a literal descriptor, it just means there's no strong direct relationship between that cost and production volume.

No, we do not need VASIMIR to go anywhere. There are plenty of places we can go with conventional technology.

Other than the Moon, that isn't the case. A Mars mission with a two-year round-trip is simply not realistic for a manned spaceship, even if rotation for gravity proves feasible. That would demand robustness beyond what a Navy submarine can provide, and with technology orders of magnitude more complex at its simplest. Moreover, if you're relying on ISRU for return propellent, that effectively means abort is impossible--i.e., most scenarios requiring en route abort would become fatal mission failures, and the long travel time would multiply the likelihood of such scenarios occurring. And after all that, you would still only be able to put three or four people on the surface--tens of billions just to get four people there at the cheapest, nevermind surface operations or return. We need VASIMR or something else to dramatically cut down travel time.

I know, you complain that those places are not sufficiently exciting.

Nevermind exciting, they aren't the Big Picture. The Moon is too close to Earth and too lacking in key resources to ever become fully independent. No matter how well its settlements flourish, short of some truly fanciful futures, their fate will always be bound to developments here. Mars and some of the gas giant moons, however, could each become fully independent homes for mankind--trading with each other, but having enough local resources to survive no matter what happens to the rest.

Only a handful of NASA astronauts are allowed to explore space.

Everyone is allowed to explore space. Don't whine just because you can't afford to, or accuse NASA of holding you back for not subsidizing the industry enough.

I don't believe space exploration should be limited to those "distinct connotations" that exclude 99.999% of all Americans.

The connotations don't exclude people, they exclude going for a brief jaunt where hundreds have gone for extended periods, or pursuing unrelated commercial activities in a well-characterized environment. Nothing stops these companies from offering Moon landings but the expense, complexity, and risk of doing so without first moving to suborbit and orbit, so stop blaming NASA for the business priorities of private companies.

Yes, and that artifically restricted, elitist definition would keep space exploration a very rare, expensive undertaking with little impact on human civilization, as it has been for the past 40 years.

No, it wouldn't. Space development and settlement requires space exploration, and the development and settlement of LEO will push exploration of the Moon, cislunar space, Earth's orbit, and Mars. And your belief that Apollo had "little impact on human civilization" is ignorant at best. The idea of anyone landing on the Moon would still be laughable without that achievement, let alone private companies offering tickets to customers. In all the excitement about New Space, you must have lost sight of a crucial fact: NASA actually did engage in Lunar exploration, several times, while these companies you think are so superior haven't yet accomplished a damn thing. So perhaps you ought to reserve your contempt for NASA for after private industry exceeds their achievements, not while all we have are hopeful promises and a long line of vaporware. This isn't the Libertarian Special Olympics, and New Space doesn't get points just for not being government. They must earn the right to be considered superior to NASA.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at June 6, 2007 02:52 AM

The ultimate purpose of COTS is commercial service provision, and it achieves that by starting with development contracts--i.e., exactly what I described.

Okay, you finally got it right.

You still haven't explained why the taxpayers should spend far more money on COTS contracts than COTS competitors are asking for.

Not that it isn't amusing hearing "unrealistic" from someone who thinks the military can and should build Battlestar Galactica,

I don't want the military to build the Battlestar Galactica (which is fictional, Brian). I want the military to build reusable spaceplanes.

You should not rely on sci-fi teevee series for your information about space.

> No, we do not need VASIMIR to go anywhere. There are plenty of places we can go with conventional technology.

Other than the Moon, that isn't the case. A Mars mission with a two-year round-trip is simply not realistic for a manned spaceship

Nor is it necessary. No one seriously talks about two-year trajectories. Zubrin's Mars Direct uses a six-month trajectory.

Furthermore, there are a lot of destinations, called Near Earth Asteroids, between the Moon and Mars. Once again, you need to do some research.

most scenarios requiring en route abort would become fatal mission failures

Only if you have a lousy architecture. A well-thought-out mission architecture would provide for rescue and buddy ops en route.

tens of billions just to get four people there at the cheapest

It doesn't have to cost tens of billions, Brian.

You start from the false assumption that costs cannot be reduced, then you demand the taxpayers give you a $360-billion-a-year handout. It doesn't work that way, Brian. Even if costs couldn't be reduced, that would be no reason for the taxpayers to give you all that money.

Which is why you haven't found a single Congressman, even in your own party, that supports your nonsense.

Everyone is allowed to explore space. Don't whine just because you can't afford to, or accuse NASA of holding you back for not subsidizing the industry enough.

I'm not asking for subsidies, Brian. You are.

Nothing stops these companies from offering Moon landings but the expense, complexity, and risk of doing so without first moving to suborbit and orbit

The expensive, complexity, and risk are significant, but not nearly as you would have people believe.

NASA actually did engage in Lunar exploration, several times, while these companies you think are so superior haven't yet accomplished a damn thing.

Everyone who saw SpaceShip One fly knows better.

Reducing the cost of access to space may not mean "a damn thing" to you, Brian, but it's important to everyone who wants to see space travel become more than a political stunt.

The politicians are not going to give you $360 billion a year no matter how much you spout and sputter. If you can't come up with a viable alternative, you'll just end up as another angry leftist who's mad at the world because his dream of utopia didn't work.

Posted by Edward Wright at June 6, 2007 12:26 PM

You still haven't explained why the taxpayers should spend far more money on COTS contracts than COTS competitors are asking for.

The cost would come from the number of contracts, which in turn comes from the number of services and technologies sought, not how much each contract would involve.

I want the military to build reusable spaceplanes.

But you were also in favor of massively armed orbital Marine barracks. AKA, Battlestar Galactica.

No one seriously talks about two-year trajectories. Zubrin's Mars Direct uses a six-month trajectory.

Six months is the minimum one-way transit time, and then you have to wait on the surface or in orbit until the next six-month trajectory becomes available. The whole round-trip is the mission, not just the journey there, and getting to Mars doesn't give the crew or the systems a vacation. That won't be the case until major technology manufacturing centers are located there, so until then any manned journey to Mars is basically a two-year mission.

there are a lot of destinations, called Near Earth Asteroids, between the Moon and Mars.

Not affordably, economically, or routinely. Large NEAs aren't frequently in range, and when they are they usually have very high velocities that are expensive to match. Mining them would actually make less sense than Main Belt asteroids. Yes, we could visit one or two for prestige and inspiration, but I thought you were against that sort of thing.

A well-thought-out mission architecture would provide for rescue and buddy ops en route.

Mars Direct makes no such provision, and for good reasons--it would vastly inflate costs.

It doesn't have to cost tens of billions, Brian.

Yes, it does. That isn't just launch costs. It's closed-loop life support (which doesn't exist), human habitats engineered for over a year of centripetal acceleration (which also don't exist), ISRU (doesn't exist), two years worth of supplies, and by far the most robust manned spacecraft ever created.

I'm not asking for subsidies, Brian.

Yes, you are. You accuse NASA of somehow stopping you from going into space by not making it affordable--in other words, you're saying if you can't afford something, then people who can are preventing you from having it. Well, I want to colonize a ski lodge in Aspen, but the accursed Colorado state government has "made" it expensive.

And no, I'm not demanding government subsidy. I'm saying that NASA needs more money to pursue its mission, and that it can do more, faster with more money. You, however, both blame NASA for not doing more and refuse to fund it.

You start from the false assumption that costs cannot be reduced, then you demand the taxpayers give you a $360-billion-a-year handout.

You haven't listened to a word I've said. That $360 billion would reduce costs much further, much faster than is remotely possible with $8 mil in Centennial Challenges and $800 mil in COTS. At this rate, it will be 2030 before the first private citizen sets foot on the Moon, and we might make it to Mars in time for the centennial celebration of Project Apollo. I don't know why the hell you want everything to move glacially, and mankind to stew in its own refuse while billionaires wait for the penny-by-penny business case to add up right, but I've had enough of that for a long time.

Everyone who saw SpaceShip One fly knows better.

YET AGAIN, you sing heavenly praises of the private sector for a technical improvement on something the Air Force did nearly half a century ago, putting a one-man rocket into suborbital space for a handful of minutes three times, but dismiss NASA as worthless despite having conducted six successful manned missions to the Moon. It would be like if you climbed Mount Everest six times, and then I called myself your superior and dismissed your accomplishments because I climbed a 500 foot hill three times at a lower cost-per-foot. The private sector has never come anywhere near to surpassing NASA's achievements in manned space, and until they do (if they ever do), you should stop pretending otherwise. The case for New Space hasn't remotely been proven, just indicated on a small scale. There remains a possibility that it can't be scaled up to the inner solar system in anything like a timely fashion (i.e., less than fifty years), and if that is the case your ideological bigotry against the public sector shouldn't require the human future in space to commit suicide waiting for business to catch up.

Posted by Brian Swiderski at June 8, 2007 09:22 AM

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