Transterrestrial Musings

Not Simple, Not Soon

...and not safe. Nice catch by Jon Goff that no one else seems to have picked up on:

Basically, unless this source is bogus, or I'm completely misreading things, it's saying that even NASA admits that their odds of losing a crew or a mission using the Constellation architecture are far worse then they had originally claimed. In fact, at least for ISS missions, we're talking almost an order of magnitude worse. For ISS, they're claiming a LOC (probability of losing the crew on any given flight) of 1 in 231, with a LOM (loss of mission) of 1 in 19! If I'm reading this right, that means they expect right now that about 5% of missions to the space station will end up not making it to the station. For lunar missions, the LOC number is 1 in 170, and the LOM number is 1 in 9! That means of every multi-billion dollar mission, they've got an almost 11% chance of it being a failure. While some of these numbers have been improving, others have been getting worse.

In other words, it appears that NASA is admitting that the Ares-1 is not going to be any safer than an EELV/EELV derived launcher would've been, and in fact may be less reliable.

I've never drunk the koolaid that Ares/Orion was going to be more safe than Shuttle (or any previous system). Part of the problem is that (particularly with all of the vibration issues) they're being forced to put systems in that introduce new failure modes. The other is that in their determination to have a crew escape system (as I've mentioned before), they are adding hazards on a nominal mission.

There is only one way to get a safe launch system. We have to build vehicles that we can fly repeatedly, develop operational experience, and wring the bugs out of, just as we've done with every other type of transportation to date. When every flight is a first flight that has to fully perform, you're always going to have a high risk of problems. Unfortunately, NASA decided to do Apollo again instead of solve the space transportation problem.

And along those lines, I should say that I fully agree with Jon:

Quite frankly, I'd almost rather see a gap than try filling it with a kludge like keeping the shuttle flying. The fundamental problem is that even though "commercial" companies like Boeing and LM and Orbital (and hopefully SpaceX if they can get their act together) have been providing the majority of US spacelift for the past two decades, there is no commercial supplier of manned orbital spaceflight in the US. That's the bigger problem, IMO than the fact that NASA can't access a space station that it really doesn't have much use for.

I'd rather see more focus on how NASA and DoD can help encourage and grow a strong and thriving commercial spaceflight (manned and unmanned) sector than how NASA can fix its broken internal spaceflight problems. Once the US actually gets to the point where it has a thriving manned orbital spaceflight sector, there won't be any gaps again in the future. A strong commercial spaceflight sector with a weak NASA is still a lot better than a strong NASA and a weak commercial spaceflight sector.

Unfortunately, absent a real crisis, the politics seem determined to not encourage that to happen. And the ISS crisis, if it is perceived as one, is likely to cause a panic that still won't cause it to happen, though it may still result in something better than ESAS (not that we could do much worse).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:11 AM

August 30, 2008
The Idiossey

Iowahawk has dredged up a previously unfound work of Homer:

Speak to me, O Muse, of this resourceful man
who strides so boldly upon the golden shrine at Invescos,
Between Ionic plywood columns, to the kleig light altar.
Fair Obamacles, favored of the gods, ascends to Olympus
Amidst lusty tributes and the strumming lyres of Media;
Their mounted skyboxes echo with the singing of his name
While Olbermos and Mattheus in their greasy togas wrassle
For first honor of basking in their hero's reflected glory.
Who is this man, so bronzed in countenance,
So skilled of TelePropter, clean and articulate
whose ears like a stately urn's protrude?
So now, daughter of Zeus, tell us his story.
And just the Cliff Notes if you don't mind,
We don't have all day.

Read all.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:50 AM

Mark Steyn On Palin

First, Governor Palin is not merely, as Jay describes her, "all-American", but hyper-American. What other country in the developed world produces beauty queens who hunt caribou and serve up a terrific moose stew? As an immigrant, I'm not saying I came to the United States purely to meet chicks like that, but it was certainly high on my list of priorities. And for the gun-totin' Miss Wasilla then to go on to become Governor while having five kids makes it an even more uniquely American story. Next to her resume, a guy who's done nothing but serve in the phony-baloney job of "community organizer" and write multiple autobiographies looks like just another creepily self-absorbed lifelong member of the full-time political class that infests every advanced democracy.

Second, it can't be in Senator Obama's interest for the punditocracy to spends its time arguing about whether the Republicans' vice-presidential pick is "even more" inexperienced than the Democrats' presidential one.

Third, real people don't define "experience" as appearing on unwatched Sunday-morning talk shows every week for 35 years and having been around long enough to have got both the War on Terror and the Cold War wrong. (On the first point, at the Gun Owners of New Hampshire dinner in the 2000 campaign, I remember Orrin Hatch telling me sadly that he was stunned to discover how few Granite State voters knew who he was.) Sarah Palin and Barack Obama are more or less the same age, but Governor Palin has run a state and a town and a commercial fishing operation, whereas (to reprise a famous line on the Rev Jackson) Senator Obama ain't run nothin' but his mouth. She's done the stuff he's merely a poseur about. Post-partisan? She took on her own party's corrupt political culture directly while Obama was sucking up to Wright and Ayers and being just another get-along Chicago machine pol (see his campaign's thuggish attempt to throttle Stanley Kurtz and Milt Rosenberg on WGN the other night).

Fourth, Governor Palin has what the British Labour Party politician Denis Healy likes to call a "hinterland" - a life beyond politics. Whenever Senator Obama attempts anything non-political (such as bowling), he comes over like a visiting dignitary to a foreign country getting shanghaied into some impenetrable local folk ritual. Sarah Palin isn't just on the right side of the issues intellectually. She won't need the usual stage-managed "hunting" trip to reassure gun owners: she's lived the Second Amendment all her life. Likewise, on abortion, we're often told it's easy to be against it in principle but what if you were a woman facing a difficult birth or a handicapped child? Been there, done that.

Fifth, she complicates all the laziest Democrat pieties. Energy? Unlike Biden and Obama, she's been to ANWR and, like most Alaskans, supports drilling there.

Sixth (see Kathleen's link to Craig Ferguson below), I kinda like the whole naughty librarian vibe.

[Over at The Corner]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:45 AM

August 29, 2008
The Sarah Palin Chronicles

Heh.

It's Sarah and John!
New campaign motto: "Come with us, if you want to live."

This just keeps getting better.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:25 PM

Land For Sale

John Tierney on lunar and martian property rights .

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:57 PM

Reading The Writing On The Wall?

Mike Griffin has kicked off a study to consider Shuttle extension for five years.

The problem, not mentioned by the article, is that this doesn't close the gap, unless Ares is abandoned. Shuttle and Ares use the same launch infrastructure, and as long as Shuttle flies, pads and crawler cannot be modified for it. Nor does it allow us to permanently crew the station without Soyuz.

The only real solution (assuming that we want to pay the high costs of continuing Shuttle) is to put a capsule on something else (e.g., Atlas, or Falcon 9 if it ever flies), soon. Maybe Orion, maybe Dragon, maybe something else, but it looks like the Stick is on life support. In fact, as "anonymous.space" says over at Space Politics, it's already dead. It's just that Griffin and others have been doing CPR on the body to keep the coroner from getting to it.

What a fiasco.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:40 PM

Buyers' Remorse

Boy, you really have to think that the Dems would like to have a do-over. They will be wondering for years how they managed to screw up this election so royally. The answer is their identity politics, and arrogance. But that's not the lesson they'll take. Which is fine with me.

[Update a couple minutes later]

A good point over at The Corner. This won't just help with women--it will help with men. Who would you rather look at for four years: Joe Biden, or Sarah Palin?

[Update a while later]

Not that they've been high, but watch Bob Barr's poll numbers drop. McCain just brought a lot of libertarian Republican home, judging from what I read at Free Republic. Hell, I might even vote for him now.

[Update a little later]

A prediction. Sarah Palin, not Hillary Clinton, will be the first woman president. And the first black president will be a Republican as well (of course, I've always thought that the first black and women presidents would be Republicans).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:05 AM

So What About Space Policy?

Traditionally, the veep has had responsibility for space policy, as something to do besides waiting for the president to die and break ties in the Senate.

When it comes to space, she's got no track record at all, but an Alaskan would bring an interesting perspective to free enterprise and entrepreneurship.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:55 AM

That Will Wrap Up Those Key AK Electoral Votes

We'll see if Governor Palin can close the deal with the PUMAs (assuming that the rumor is true--she's reportedly still in Alaska, with no way to get to Dayton by 11 AM--could be another head fake).

People will say that she's not ready to be CinC. Well, she's only running for Vice CinC. And she's at least as ready (with actual executive experience) as the Democrats' nominee.

[Update a while later]

It's looking more certain now, but we won't know for sure for another half hour or so. I wonder if she'll take Senator McCain on a tour of ANWR?

Bob Beckel looked very depressed on Fox and Friends this morning. He knows how badly the Donkeys screwed up a free lunch this year, even if many others are in denial.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Carl Cameron is reporting that it's official.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:34 AM

August 28, 2008
Hilarious And Sad

I'm watching the Tavis Smiley show on KCET before I go to bed on the west coast. He has Julianne Malveaux and Cornell West on, whining that "brother" (and they used that word many times) Obama's speech was too white.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:27 PM

Not Pawlenty

It's Batboy! Hey, we could do worse, and probably will.

The comments are great.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:09 PM

Who Would You Rather Have?

Here is an interesting poll.

I'd have to go with Reagan (as long as it was the pre-Alzheimers version). Not that there's much to choose from. Second place would probably be Ike.

But it's hard to take presidents out of their historical milieu and have a good idea how they'd respond. For instance, what if we'd had a Reagan with a Newt-led Republican Congress? We'll never know.

[Later afternoon update]

I just went and actually took the poll. Reagan first, Ike a distant second, with everyone else in the noise. I always get suspicious when large numbers of people agree with me. It's so rare...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:46 PM

Too Late?

Wayne Hale explains why we should shut down the Shuttle.

Everything he says is true--much of the infrastructure and support contractors for the system are already gone. That's why it will be very expensive to resurrect them to the degree necessary to fly past 2010. That doesn't mean it's impossible, but as I wrote in my PJM piece, we have to decide how much ISS is worth to us. And if we want to keep the option open, and as least costly as possible, we need to stop terminating those suppliers and destroying tooling immediately. It's probably a prudent thing to do, until the next president can make a decision.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:52 AM

August 27, 2008
Bonnie And Clyde?

Over at MSNBC. Actually it's more like Bonnie and Clod.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 04:24 PM

Congratulations To Armadillo

But it sounds like a business setback for XCOR:

If the demonstrations in Oshkosh and Burns Flat were meant as a fly-off, the Armadillo team - led by millionaire video-game programmer John Carmack - came away as the winner.

"The Armadillo engine is going to be the primary engine for the Rocket Racing League," Whitelaw told me. He said five more planes will be built using Armadillo's propulsion system, which is a spin-off from Carmack's years-long quest to win the $2 million, NASA-backed Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge.

It sounds like the Armadillo engine has more thrust, though it's not clear how the T/W compares.

I wonder to what degree XCOR was constrained by a potential desire to maintain some legacy toward the Lynx engine? If they were building an engine purely for the RRL, would it have been a different design and fuel type?

Presumably, the business plan with which they raised their recent institutional investment considered this as a contingency. I'm sure they would have liked continuing business from RRL, though Whitelaw doesn't seem to rule it out for the future.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:54 PM

They Never Learn

They really are setting up a replica of a Greek temple from which The One will give his speech tomorrow. I've heard the excuse that they're just trying to make it like the White House (as though that's a good excuse...one more time--you're not president yet). But even if true, it doesn't fly. Yes, the White House is of Palladian style, but it's neoclassical, and only the porticos have columns. It looks more like the Parthenon (at least as far as one can tell from the grainy camera photo).

And you know who lives in Greek temples?

Gods.

It will be amusing to see what the McCain campaign does with this one.

[Update a few minutes later]

It's already started. The Temple of Obama.

[Update a few minutes later]

Here's another one, from Pethokoukis--Illinois Obama and the Temple of Gloom

[One more, late afternoon PDT]

The Temple of Obama.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:55 PM

Shuttle Is Not Enough

It just occurs to me that even if we continue to fly the Shuttle through "the gap" that doesn't really solve the problem of actually utilizing the station. We are currently planning on relying on dual Soyuzs (what's the plural of "Soyuz"?) for "lifeboat" capability to allow a six-person crew after completion. If the US is not purchasing Soyuz, we wouldn't be able to leave Americans on board permanently, unless we wanted to risk losing them in emergency. It seems unlikely that this would actually play out politically, but if there were only one Soyuz there while the Shuttle wasn't, it would be a Titanic situation, with only enough escape craft for half the crew. Would the Russians just say, "dos vedanya..."? The OSP was supposed to serve in that function, but it was cancelled when the VSE came along.

What a policy Charlie Foxtrot.

I'll bet that you could find volunteers in the astronaut office, though.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:04 PM

Getting Their Heads Screwed On Straight?

Is ESA getting serious about reusable vehicles? Too bad NASA can't find a clue.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:54 AM

I Can Live Without The Flying Cars

...as long as we get disease cures, including anti-aging, from pills. This was certainly a part of the twenty-first century that I'd been hoping for.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:49 AM

August 26, 2008
Appropriately Shod

Check out James "Lizardhead" Carville's footwear. Subtle.

I'm actually a little surprised that he wears shoes at all. I've never seen him below the waist before.

[Via Mike Puckett]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:11 PM

Center Of The NewSpace Universe

Robin Snelson browbeat me into posting this documentary she made about Mojave. Despite that, it's pretty good.

OK, she didn't really browbeat me. She just pointed it out.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:53 PM

More On Biden

Andrew Ferguson wrote a review of his book last year, as part of a longer piece. John McCormack pulls out the nut grafs:

What does a discerning reader learn from Biden's book that we didn't already know? Perhaps not much, if you're a regular watcher of C-SPAN or a longtime resident of Delaware. But there is something unforgettable about watching the man emerge on the page. His legendary self-regard becomes more impressive when the reader sees it in typescript, undistracted by the smile and the hair plugs. Biden quotes at great length from letters of recommendation he received as a young man, when far-sighted professors wrote movingly of his "sharp and incisive intellect" and his "highly developed sense of responsibility." These qualities have proved to be more of a burden than you might think, Biden admits. "I've made life difficult for myself," he writes, "by putting intellectual consistency and personal principle above expediency."

Yes, many Biden fans might tag these as the greatest of his gifts. Biden himself isn't so sure. After a little hemming and hawing--is it his intelligence that he most admires, or his commitment to principle, or his insistence on calling 'em as he sees 'em, or what?--he decides that his greatest personal and political virtue is probably his integrity. Tough call. But his wife seems to agree. He recounts one difficult episode in which she said as much. "Of all the things to attack you on," she said, almost in tears. "Your integrity?"

This lachrymose moment came during Biden's aborted presidential campaign in 1988, when reporters discovered several instances of plagiarism in his campaign speeches and in his law school record. Biden rehearses the episode in tormenting, if selective, detail, and true to campaign-book form, his account serves as the emotional center of the book. The memoir of every presidential candidate must describe a Political Time of Testing, some point at which, if the narrative arc is to prove satisfying, the hero encounters criticism, most of it unjust, but then rallies, overcomes hardship and misfortune and the petty, self-serving attacks of enemies, and emerges chastened but wiser--and, come to think of it, more qualified to lead the greatest nation on earth.

Is there something about pompous windbags that somehow makes them more electable? If so, then maybe an Obama/Biden ticket has a chance.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:06 AM

The Biden Pick Unifies The Party

Not.

The healing continues.

If I were a Dem, they'd have to put me on suicide watch. At least, if I weren't in denial.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:38 AM

August 23, 2008
Devious

Was Obama hoping that Biden's past (and future) gaffes would overshadow and distract from his own?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:56 PM

The Heavy-Lift Fetish

I've discussed this many times before, but Al Fansome has a useful comment over at Space Politics (scroll way down--it's in the forties):

Other than Bob Zubrin (e.g., the Mars Society), I don't know of any space advocacy organizations who have made super-heavy-lift a priority. The only reason that super-heavy-lift is a priority now is because Mike Griffin came in and made a command decision. He already knew the answer -- ESAS was a facade to justify the decision he had already made.
Let me try to give you a serious response to your question.

Have you thought about how all the truly GREAT engineering projects on this planet have been built?

Let me list a few obvious ones.

- The Pyramids
- The Great Wall
- The Empire State Building
- The Hoover Dam (or pick your favorite dam)
- The Eiffel Tower
- The Kremlin
- The U.S. Capitol Building
- The Statue of Liberty
- The Golden Gate Bridge

They all have at least ONE thing in common. The pieces of each & every one of these great engineering projects were transported to the final site in pieces, and then assembled on site.

Great engineering in enabled by low-cost transportation and the ability to assemble the technology on site.

We are KILLING ourselves by not taking the same approach to space.

Next -- think about standard home construction.

1) There are estimated to be more than 100 million homes in America.

http://www.census.gov/prod/1/pop/p25-1129.pdf+Number+of+houses+in+United+States&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us

Of that number, the estimated number of mobile homes is ~9 million
http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/census_2000/001543.html

In other words, well over 90%, or over 90 million, of American "homes" (whether in single family dwelling, apartments, condos, etc.) are assembled by the same method that is used to assemble the great engineering projects. This choice is obviously driven by economics (nobody mandated this result.)

SUMMARY: The large majority of Western and Eastern civilization has been built using the approach of cheaply transporting the pieces of the construction project to the site, and then final assembly at that site.

So, why are we ignoring the dominant traditional approach that is used over the entire planet?

Why are we not assuming that the right way to build our space economy, and to develop the space frontier, is to develop & use reusable launch vehicles to transport things to space at very low costs, and then assemble the pieces on-site.

Mike Griffin gave a speech a couple years ago talking about constructing the great cathedrals in Europe. Well, those cathedrals were transported to the final site in millions of pieces, and then assembled.

We continue to treat space differently than earthly endeavors for contingent reasons of history, not rationality or technology. Thus we get the cargo-cult approach of ESAS, in which NASA attempts to replicate Apollo, except without either the associated urgency, or the budget.

[Update on Sunday afternoon]

Since some people seem to imagine that the oil rig is a useful analogy, let me expand on it. It actually is one, but not in a way advantageous to the heavy-lift fetishists.

Yes, it is assembled in port and then towed to its operational location. But this is in no way analogous to assembling on the ground and launching to orbit. This is because of the huge energy barrier between the two. It's no big deal to tow something from one place in the ocean to another--that's a very old technology, and an extensive transportation infrastructure exists with which to do so. Thus, it makes sense to assemble it essentially in the ocean, but near land, to take advantage of the local work force.

But note that what we don't do with oil rigs is assemble them in Colorado, and then build a humungous custom truck (and associated reinforced roads, with clearances) to move it to the shore and put it in the water. But that's essentially what people are proposing in saying that things should be fully assembled on earth, and then launched into space, on a giant rocket that flies just once in a while, at a very high cost (particularly after amortizing the development cost).

In space the oil rig scenario would be analogous to having an existing assembly facility in LEO (that had presumably been bootstrapped up), with a robust low-cost transportation infrastructure to get things to and from earth, and from point to point in space. The "oil rig" (or large telescope facility, or prop depot for use at L1) would be assembled there, and then a space tug would move it to its final destination.

This was in fact part of the original vision for the SSF in the eighties. The "dual truss" configuration was intended to act as an orbital assembly hangar. Unfortunately, we didn't have the transportation infrastructure to support it. But the fact remains that what we need is not heavy lift, but affordable, reliable and frequent lift. Once we get the latter, it will become clear how to best utilize it to accomplish our goals.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:27 PM

Will Reynolds Get The Contract?

A woman Down Under has a novel approach to asteroid management: wrapping it in foil.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:11 PM

Pompously Hilarious

And to think that just a few days ago one of my trolls was trying to convince me that Chuck Hagel isn't an idiot:

"Joe Biden is the right partner for Barack Obama. His many years of distinguished service to America, his seasoned judgment and his vast experience in foreign policy and national security will match up well with the unique challenges of the 21st Century. An Obama-Biden ticket is a very impressive and strong team. Biden's selection is good news for Obama and America."

I don't understand why the guy even bothers to call himself a Republican.

[Late afternoon update]

Oy:

Maybe when I get to Denver I'll find someone who'll explain to me why Biden is an inspired choice. He doesn't have gravitas. He has seniority. We've been waiting for him to mature for decades. Only Chuck Hagel (his chief competitor as Sunday morning gasbag) could make him look wise...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:03 PM

What Was He Thinking?

There are a lot of people Obama could have picked that would have helped him with the south and west. But gun control remains a big issue in those regions. Obama has a problem because he professes support for the Second Amendment, as long as it doesn't actually nullify any gun laws. So you'd think he'd not have picked a running mate who gets an "F" from the NRA. This isn't going to help him with the bitter gun clingers.

[Late afternoon update]

A golden oldie from the primaries: Biden disses a gun owner. Well, the guy was probably bitter anyway.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:56 AM

Persuasion

Iowahawk has an in-depth report on the Obama campaign's new winning tactics.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:12 AM

I Wonder If They Considered This

What do you think of when you hear the phrase "Obama Joe Biden"? It could have a subliminal effect.

Anyway, I think that Jonah has the best take on the veep pick:

He says interesting things, from time to time. I think he makes a fair point here and there. He was correct, for example, that Congress needed to have a real debate over the war. I think he has some obvious verbal intelligence. But, again, what's fascinating -- and what might be distracting some folks from seeing his underlying-yet-occassional smarts -- is that he lets his ego and vanity get in the way. The man loves his voice so much, you'd expect him to be following it around in a gray Buick, in defiance of restraining order, as it walks home from school. He seems to think his teeth are some kind of hypnotic punctuation marks which can momentarily disorient the listener and absolve him from any of Western civilization's usual imperatives to stop talking. Listening to him speechify is like playing an intellectual game of whack-a-mole where every now and then the fuzzy head of a good point pops up from the tundra but before you can pin it down, he starts talking about how he went to the store and saw a squirrel on the way and it was brown which brings to mind Brown V. Board of Ed which most people don't understand because [TEETH FLASH] he taught Brown in his law school course and [TEETH FLASH] Mr. Chairman I'm going to get right to it and besides these aren't the droids you're looking for...

This is going to be a very entertaining election. I think that they're going to be a double-barrelled gaffe machine.

[Update a few minutes later]

Jay Nordlinger:

All politicians have sizable egos, but this may be the most self-loving ticket ever. There's an old saying, "He'll die in his own arms" -- that can apply to both of them. (I've thought of it in connection with McCain, too.) And Obama and Biden are two of the gassiest politicians in all the land -- they are rhetorically impossible.

I suspect that after a couple non-stop months of the Joebama Show, not that many are going to look forward to four years of it.

And the McCain campaign was ready to go with the ad.

[Update at noon]

Hey we not only have a messiah, but a veep who's a certified genius. Just ask him.

[Update half an hour later]

PJM has a link roundup of reax.

[Update in the afternoon]

Man, Limbaugh must think he died and went to heaven. I'll bet he has a huge library of Biden audio gaffes, enough for fresh material every week from here to November.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:51 AM

August 22, 2008
Nurture, Not Nature

Wild dolphins learning to tail walk. It would be fascinating to finally break the code to their language, and find out just how much culture they have. We can't replicate their sounds, but synthesizers should be able to.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:42 AM

Who?

I've never heard of Chet Edwards. And it strikes me that having a running mate with the last name "Edwards" is a little impolitic right now, given the current problems with the one named "John."

At least he seems to have a lot more experience than Obama. But then, he'd have had trouble coming up with someone who doesn't. More signs of an attempt to appear to be moving to the center, and perhaps pick up Texas and do better in the south (though that still seems unlikely).

[Update a couple minutes later]

Actually, in reading his bio, I'd think that this would be an unbeatable ticket if he was at the top, instead of veep. But he's not, and it won't be. All of this presumes, of course, that he actually is the pick. We'll find out soon enough.

[Update in the afternoon]

There are a lot of reasons to think that this is just a head fake. He's a very conservative Democrat, and it would probably push the nutroots over the edge to vote for Nader.

[Another one a couple minutes later]

More thoughts from Geraghty:

Sure, he's very pro-choice, rated F by the NRA, and manages to hang on to a central Texas House district. And Pelosi recommended him. But the debate would consist almost entirely of the GOP vice-presidential candidate saying, "I agree with Chet's old position, the one he had before he put his manhood in a blind trust and flip-flopped to agree with Obama's liberal position." Edwards would constantly be in the awkward position of defending positions he doesn't agree with. Add that to the fact that 90+ percent of Americans know nothing about him, it's a formula for disaster.

Let's hope he does it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:53 AM

More Thoughts On The Tether Permits

Paul Breed notes in comments that the decision to require permits or waivers for tethered testing didn't originate with AST (though I never claimed it did), but with the FAA chief counsel's office. To me, this is just one more argument for making the office independent of the FAA and report directly to the SecDot, as it did from its inception until the Clinton administration "streamlined" it into the FAA.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:48 AM

Keeping An Eye On The Moonbats

Here's a new blog devoted (at least for now) to covering the DNC next week and events leading up to it.

[Via former Traverse Citian and current Denverite Thomas James]

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:29 AM

Prius Liberal

A lot has been made (appropriately) of the hypocrisy of the warm mongers, and particularly Saint Al himself, and John Edwards. But John McCain is pretty much just as bad on that score:

Like any limousine liberal, McCain prefers the symbolic gesture to walking the walk. In our News interview, he was asked what kind of car he drove. As with Politico's question about home ownership, he didn't know and had to ask a nearby aide. "A Cadillac CTS," she told him. But then the senator was quick to point out that he had bought his daughter a Prius -- the prefect halo symbol for his green pretensions.

Though it should be noted that he almost certainly actually did know how many houses he had, if not what kind of car.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:23 AM

They Never Learn

NASA just lost two hypersonic test vehicles on an untested sounding rocket, built by ATK, the same company that is slated to build the paint shaker first stage for the Ares I. It's not clear whether it was destroyed by the range, or it if just blew up on its own.

Sigh...expendables, and particularly solid expendables. Gotta love the continuing notion of putting things into space on modified munitions.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:32 AM

August 21, 2008
PITA

Alan's a great science and tech reporter, but I wish that he'd asked George Nield about this:

We have poured a pad for tethered hover testing at our new location, but there was a recent FAA re-interpretation of the law that absurdly states that testing under a tether, as we have been doing for over eight years, is now considered a suborbital launch, and requires a permit or waiver just as a free flight would. This is retarded and counterproductive in so many ways, and the entire industry is lashing back over it, but it is an issue we have to deal with in the next couple months.

Maybe I will.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:40 PM

The One Returns To Denver

If Tim Kaine is the Veep pick, this will be a particularly devastating ad.

Not that that's a bad thing...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:06 PM

Sex Is Associated With Sports?

Who knew?

Only people unfamiliar with history, going back to the original Olympic games. Or football, for that matter...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:01 PM

An Interesting Contrast

I won't claim to know Juliette Ochieng, but I had a wonderful dinner with her (and several others, but I sat next to) a couple years ago in LA's Chinatown, and I've read many of her blog posts and opinion pieces. I'm neither religious, or conservative, and I'm sure that there are many issues on which we'd disagree, but if I had a choice between her and Barack Obama for president, I'd vote for her in a Chicago minute. And not just because I had dinner with her.

The black-on-black bigotry displayed in the link against a true African-American woman who criticizes the messiah is disappointing, but by no means surprising.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:27 PM

Strategery

OK, this new (527, not McCain campaign) ad is going to leave a mark. There are still many voters who have never heard of Bil Ayers, and the coverup going on at UIC is just going to make it look worse.

Of course, the Obama camp also started another spork fight with the McCain campaign, and is getting hammered again.

Does a guy who made more than $4 million last year, just got back from vacation on a private beach in Hawaii and bought his own million-dollar mansion with the help of a convicted felon really want to get into a debate about houses? Does a guy who worries about the price of arugula and thinks regular people "cling" to guns and religion in the face of economic hardship really want to have a debate about who's in touch with regular Americans?

The reality is that Barack Obama's plans to raise taxes and opposition to producing more energy here at home as gas prices skyrocket show he's completely out of touch with the concerns of average Americans.

The problem with their strategy, as is often the case, is that they project their own class envy on the voters (just as they project many of their other personal issues).

But by and large, Americans don't envy the rich--they want to be rich. Let's leave aside the amusing fact that by the new Democrat standard that white guys who marry rich women and end up with several houses are to be demonized as out of touch, that John Kerry shouldn't have had a prayer of getting their nomination.

So-called progressives are envious of the wealthy in the classical sense--they not only want what others have, but they want the others not to have it. In fact, the latter is more important to them than the former, so they promote policies that equally distribute poverty, in effect if not intent.

But the American people don't want to take John McCain's houses from him. They just want more house of their own. It's very hard for me to believe that the number of domiciles that John McCain has, or whether or not he knows how many, is going to be an issue on which the election will turn. And as already noted by the McCain campaign, Barack Obama isn't the best messenger in that regard. Nor were John Edwards or John Kerry. I think they'd certainly prefer a guy who came by his houses honestly--by marrying them--to one who acquired his with the help of a convicted felon for favors still unknown.

But what I don't really understand is the McCain strategy at this point. Less than a week before the convention, Senator Obama's polls aren't looking very good, but there's real dynamite in some of the internals of them, in which one poll showed Hillary! ahead of McCain by several points. So who do they want to run against?

If they weaken him too much this week, the Donkeys may come to their senses and come up with another nominee next week. On the other hand, in doing so, they'd shred the party. Of course, the optimal situation is for Obama to come out the nominee, but one badly bloodied by a huge obstreperous floor fight, so maybe they're betting that the Dems won't be able to jettison their flawed messiah without even more damage to the party. So it's in the Republican's interest for them to finally nominate Obama, but in the weakest possible state, and the worse things look for him going into the convention, the more likely that there will be a movement to oust him. But they should hope that it's not successful.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Here's more on Senator Obama and Tony Rezko.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:46 PM

The Russians Play Chess

...and the Americans play monopoly. A disturbing and depressing essay from Spengler.

Is there an enlightened solution for Russia's problems?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:27 AM

Happy Birthday, FAA

I hadn't realized that it's about the same age as NASA. I'd thought it went back further than that. For the occasions, Alan Boyle interviews the current head of the space side of the agency, George Nield.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:41 AM

"...Only Enemies Or Vassals"

Michael Totten reports from Tbilisi.

On Monday, I visited one of the schools transformed into refugee housing in the center of Tbilisi and spoke to four women--Lia, Nana, Diana, and Maya--who had fled with their children from a cluster of small villages just outside the city of Gori. "We left the cattle," Lia said. "We left the house. We left everything and came on foot because to stay there was impossible." Diana's account: "They are burning the houses. From most of the houses they are taking everything. They are stealing everything, even such things as toothbrushes and toilets. They are taking the toilets. Imagine. They are taking broken refrigerators." And Nana: "We are so heartbroken. I don't know what to say or even think. Our whole lives we were working to save something, and one day we lost everything. Now I have to start everything from the very beginning."

Maybe they exist, but I haven't seen any eyewitness accounts of the supposed atrocities by the Georgians that Russia claims started this.

And be sure to hit his tip jar. It's how he affords to do this reporting.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:36 AM

Sandwich Artists

Lileks explains why I rarely go to Subway.

I'd won a free 6" sub. This was timely, since I was planning to buy one for my wife. We finished our meal; I went back to the place where the Sandwich Artists labor in various degrees of surly disinterest, and presented the coupon. The Artist began to craft the meal out the chopped and processed carbclay arrayed before him - and that's when the manager walked over.

"For future reference," she said, "those are for the next visit."

I pointed to the small print on the back of the ticket. "Actually, it says for your next order."

"Well, it means visit. It's how we keep track of them in the back." She jerked a thumb towards the back of the store, where the Something wet and spiny sat in a crate, swallowing souls and dreams and crapping out rules and procedure.

If there are two things I don't like, it's someone who tells me that fine print doesn't mean what it says, and alludes to some company process that makes things simpler not for me, or for the employees, but some theoretical person on whose behalf the system was set in place years ago by a team of consultants who have already moved on to rejiggering something else that worked perfectly fine. On the other hand, after years of dealing with restaurant employees who couldn't give a fig about the job, it's difficult to carp when you find someone who does - unless, of course, that person has decided to make a point about a free sandwich for future reference.

Also, a trip to the museum.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:29 AM

Fay Hasn't Budged

It is still raining this morning in Brevard County. Man, that has got to be getting old.

At least it's not coming down inches per hour in Melbourne any more, but I'll bet they haven't seen the sun in days.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:17 AM

August 20, 2008
Who I Wish McCain Would Pick

If he did, I'd actually vote for him, as opposed to against Obama.

Fred Thompson. He'd mop up the floor with almost anyone in a debate (particularly Obama's rumored finalists) and he'd only have to campaign for two months. And in the unfortunate circumstance that something happened to McCain, we'd have him for a president.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:27 PM

I'll Get Right On It

Florida is apparently a haven for ambulance chasers, because there are always a lot of ads on television by lawyers trolling for victims (though now that I think about it, this may have been a national one, because it was on Fox News, which I get via satellite). I just heard one for some kind of medication that said, "If you or your loved one died after taking this stuff, call us right now."

OK, so if I died, what am I, supposed to channel John Edwards?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:33 PM

Not The Chicago Way

Apparently the Obama campaign forgot their new philosophy today. They brought a plastic spork to the fight, and the McCain campaign leveled a howitzer at them.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:46 PM

Oopsie

Some folks have been criticizing the recent Orion parachute test failure as just one more screwup at NASA that they've been covering up, and made a bigger deal of it than it is, but Henry Spencer has a more nuanced, and correct view:

Foul-ups in testing are not uncommon, especially when the test setup is being tried for the first time. One of the headaches of high-tech test programmes is having to debug the test arrangements before you can start debugging the things you're trying to test.

Sometimes a malfunctioning test setup actually gives the tested system a chance to show what it can do in an unrehearsed emergency. During a test of an Apollo escape-system in the 1960s, the escape system successfully got the capsule clear of a malfunctioning test rocket.

But sometimes the test conditions are so unrealistically severe that there's no hope of correct functioning. Unpleasant though the result often looks, this isn't properly considered a failure of the tested system. That seems to have been what happened here.

As I've noted before, requirements verification is where the real cost of a development program comes from, particularly when the only useful verification method is test.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:52 PM

Interesting Rumor

Lieberman may switch parties at the Republican convention. If he caucuses with Republicans, that would make it tied in the Senate, which means that Dick Cheney would be the tie breaker, and the Republicans would take over, at least until January. Bye, bye, Majority (non)Leader Reid...

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:10 PM

Buyer's Remorse

Victor Davis Hanson previews what's sure to burst forth among many in Denver next week:

Democrats wanted a bison and got Obambi, whose new 'take no prisoners' rhetoric in front of the VFW sounds like the Italian army in North Africa not the Desert Rats. Just imagine had Obama written "Dreams From My Grandmother" about a working-class white woman who moved to Hawaii sacrificing her all, stressing integration, conciliation, character, and hard work (all true), rather than future career-in-mind idealization and myth-making about a polygamist, alcoholic and absentee Marxist father? Had he done the former, he would have gotten a small advance, few sales--and now bankable proof of his character, rather than money, sales--and an embarrassing revelation of his PC credentials. Harvard Law Review is as essential to wowing a tiny irrelevant Eastern elite as it is meaningless to proving to mid-America that you can easily size up a thug like Putin, see through Euro-trash nonsense, or get some energy leverage back from the mullahs and House of Saud.

The Democrats expected an in-the-tank liberal press to publish charts and graphs of how the "progressive" FDR Obama was better for the blue-collar-worker than the Tom Dewey Republican. Instead they got the last gasp of the 1960s spoiled-brat loudmouths, ranting and frothing how an Obama could at last reify their own narcissistic, guilt-ridden pretensions. The amen-stable at Newsweek, for example, would not have been hired there as copy-editors in the 1960s. If Chris Matthews thinks his tingle up the leg giddiness helps Obama, or Sen. Obama's race speech is the new Gettysburg Address, he doesn't know Bakersfield or Dayton. A Keith Olbermann rant is a veritable McCain campaign ad.

Yup.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:58 PM

Thirty Inches Of Rain?

Wow. They're getting a real dumping in Brevard County. We got off lucky down here. This has to be hitting KSC workers and contractors pretty hard.

I'm surprised that Lake Okeechobee is still two feet below normal today. I would have thought that an almost-hurricane sitting over the watershed for a couple days would have gotten it up a lot higher.

[Update a few minutes later]

If this thing follows the current models, and heads off across the panhandle, it will probably set a record for the percentage of a large state affected by a single storm. Literally everyone in Florida will have been hit by it to one degree or another.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:46 AM

There Goes One Of Hillary!'s Votes

Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones, who would have been a potential big superdelegate for Hillary! in the event of an insurrection, has reportedly died from an aneurysm. Condolences to friends and family.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:24 AM

Bring It On

Converging non-food biomass directly into high-octane gasoline. Let's hope they're right.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:48 AM

Cover Up

What is the University of Illinois trying to hide?

Has there ever been a presidential candidate with such a sparse paper trail? And as usual, the media assists in the cover up.

[Update in the afternoon]

Here's a lot more.

[Late afternoon update]

Fishier and fishier. To repeat: what are they hiding? What are they afraid of?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:50 AM

More On Oscillation Mitigation

NASASpaceFlight has technical details of yesterday's briefing. It still looks nuts to me.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:16 AM

Good Advice For McCain

From George Will. I'm kind of intrigued by the idea of capping the pay of fascist CEOs (Lee Iacocca comes to mind as a poster boy).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:24 AM

A Milestone For New Space

XCOR has attracted the funding of an institutional investor. It's not just angels any more.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:52 AM

Burning Food

Food is a fuel, of course, though we don't think of it that way. But now that transportation is competing for it, it's having dire effects on everyone, but particularly the poor, largely as a result of idiotic government policies. This should be a good issue for John McCain, if he only understood economics.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:57 AM

Why Obama's Polls Are Cratering

He's a flake:

I'm using the term in its generally accepted sense. A flake is not only a screwup, but someone who truly excels in making bizarre errors and creating incredibly convoluted disasters. A flake is a "fool with energy", as the Russian proverb puts it. ("A fool is a terrible thing to have around, but a fool with energy is a nightmare".)

I've long been on record as believing that Obama cannot win (nor, at this point, could Hillary). Nothing has happened to cause me to alter that view.

[Update late morning]

Here's the latest tea leaf that the vice-president pick will be Evan Bayh. If they were smart, they'd put him at the top of the ticket--it would give them a lot better shot.

[Another update a few minutes later]

Some folks over at DU are starting to get worried: "What is Obama doing wrong?"

Nothing, of course. It's our fault, because we're racists. It couldn't have anything to do with his left-wing politics, inexperience and flakiness.

A lot of the commenters are whistling past the graveyard.

[Update a few minutes later]

A leftist sees the future:

All that Obama audacity of arrogance from the smiling, glib politician finally died the death it so richly deserved. Too many pundits will blame his loss on his blackness and racist voters. But the larger truth is that sufficient voters saw through the many lies and deceptions. Obama always had a hard time giving a simple, short straight answer to tough questions. He was always mentally calculating exactly how to game his answers so that he would achieve all the benefits he had his eyes on. He was simply too damn presumptuous and too smart for his own good. In the end, Americans do not want the smartest person in the presidency or endless nuancing. They want someone they can easily understand and trust, despite their skepticism. There were many reasons not to trust the calculating Obama to do anything he promised to do or, for some people, to fear he might.

As Lincoln said, some of the people, some of the time, but not all of them all of the time.

[Update just before noon]

How low do the polls have to go before the superdelegates have second thoughts? Keep the popcorn handy for next week, when Hillary!'s name is put in nomination, and the demonstrations begin.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:52 AM

August 19, 2008
Storm Update

This is one of the weirdest storms in recorded history. Jeff Masters has been calling it "the Joker" for several days because of its unpredictability, but the latest turn--an intensification over land--has him amazed:

It does happen sometimes that the increased friction over land can briefly act to intensify a hurricane vortex, but this effect is short-lived, once the storm is cut off from its oceanic moisture source. To have a storm intensify over land and maintain that increased intensity while over land for 12 hours is hard to explain. The only thing I can think is that recent rains in Florida have formed large areas of standing water that the storm is feeding off of. Fay is also probably pulling moisture from Lake Okeechobee. Anyone want to write a Ph.D. thesis on this case?

We haven't seen rain for several hours, though the winds continue (though not tropical force). We may still get some more rain out of it before it's gone; the feeder bands are over the water now, but as it moves farther away they may come back ashore in south Florida. Anyway, we got plenty of rain--enough that I won't bother to water tomorrow, which the local commissars say is our watering day.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:23 PM

Tehran Failure

Jim Oberg has the story on Iran's failed attempt to launch a satellite.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:38 PM

Good News

Tom Ridge won't be McCain's pick for VP candidate.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:40 PM

Punitive Liberalism

Roger Kimball, on Barack Obama's politics of envy and "fairness."

[Update a while later]

Like father, like son:

How high should the tax rates be? "Theoretically," he wrote, "there is nothing that can stop the government from taxing 100% of income so long as the people get benefits from the government commensurate with their income which is taxed." Yes, you read it: a 100% tax rate is fine. Obama Sr. continued, " It is a fallacy to say there is a limit (to tax rates), and it is a fallacy to rely mainly on individual free enterprise to get the savings." Free enterprise -- bad. (He was discussing future government economic development.)

This is one of the things that I find most disturbing about Obama. He doesn't believe that tax policy should be based on revenue. He thinks it should be based on "fairness." As he said in that debate, he's fine with less revenue as long as he can punish success.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:58 AM

Our Screwed-Up Space Policy

You know, the more I think about this, the more I think it should always have been a no brainer.

The first rule of wing walking is to not let go of the airplane with one hand until you have a firm new grip with the other. It's pretty simple: don't shut down the Shuttle until you have a replacement in place (and preferably redundantly).

The only reason we're undertaking such a dumb policy is because of the panic after the loss of Columbia causing a desire to end the program ASAP, and an unwillingness to pay what it cost to fund the new development at the same time we were continuing to spend billions annually on keeping the Shuttle going. The notion that we can take the savings from ending the Shuttle to develop the new systems seems appealing, but it essentially guarantees a "gap."

And it's all a result of the fact that space isn't important. Is there any other government activity where we arbitrarily assign a budget number to it, and then demand that its endeavors fit within that budget? But that's the way Congress has always viewed NASA--that there's a certain level of spending that's politically acceptable, and no more. If space were important, we'd do what we did in Apollo--establish a goal, and then provide the funding necessary to achieve it. But it's not, other than for pork and prestige. It's important that we have a space program, but it's not at all important that it accomplish anything of value. Until that attitude changes, we're unlikely to get sensible policy.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:35 AM

Shake, Rattle and Roll

Keith Cowing has a report on today's telecon to discuss the Ares 1 vibration issue. Apparently they've settled on a solution before they really understand the problem.

[Late afternoon update]

Bobby Block and Todd Halvorson have blog posts up as well. But I think that Halvorson's reporting is a little garbled here:

Gravitation forces on the astronauts will be reduced to 0.25 Gs from around 5 to 6 Gs, the latter of which is about double the force exerted on shuttle crews.

I think that he's confusing the steady-state acceleration resulting from thrust with the vibration acceleration ostensibly being mitigated by the springs and dampers. Also, it's not a "gravitation force." I'm assuming that NASA meant that they can reduce the oscillations on the crew couch from high gees to a quarter of a gee, but that's independent of the gees imposed by thrust. If they're only accelerating at a quarter of a gee, that would result in horrific gravity losses during ascent.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:39 AM

Surviving The Storm

It hasn't been that big a deal for me here in Boca. Windy and rainy, but nothing damaged, and not so windy that I can't go outside. We lost power this morning for a few minutes, but not long enough to knock down the computers on the UPS. And the pool is full, which is always good.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:34 AM

McCain's Space Advice

Well, now we know what the "space experts" told John McCain yesterday up in Titusville.

As I noted in my piece at PJM, the options aren't very pretty. The lowest risk course is to continue Shuttle past 2010, but to keep this option open, they have to take some immediate actions to keep production open on consumables, such as ETs. As I've noted before, it's ironic that they're shutting the system down just as they've finally wrung most of the bugs out of it. It still remains horrifically expensive, of course, but no more so than Ares/Orion, and it has a lot more capability. I think that the "recertification" issue is a red herring. Just because the CAIB recommended it doesn't mean that it makes any sense, since no one knows what it really means. Nothing magical happens in 2010 that makes it suddenly unsafe to fly. That date was chosen as the earliest one that they could retire and still complete ISS, not on the basis that anything was worn or wearing out. They could just continue to fly, and do periodic inspections.

I found it interesting, but not surprising, that Lafitte recommended an acceleration of Ares. It would be more in his company's interest to just give up on it and use Atlas, but I suspect that would be too politically incorrect to say with reporters around. He has to live with Mike Griffin for at least another few months.

What would I do if I were king? I'd stop buying Soyuz, and keep the Shuttle flying, I'd abandon Ares/Orion, and provide huge incentives to the private sector by establishing prop depots and paying good money for prop delivery. That would require more money than people want to spend, but we'd get a lot more robust transportation infrastructure, ready to go to either the moon or Mars (or other destinations) at a lot lower mission cost than NASA's current plans. It's what we would do if space were really important. But of course, it's not, so we won't.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:06 AM

August 18, 2008
McCain's Space Response?

I'd like to know who those "twenty hand-picked space experts" are. Unfortunately, I'll bet that one of them is Walt Cunningham. But at least he won't be the only one.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:01 AM

It's That Time Of The Week Again

Lileks takes on Keillor. Again.

Every column now ends with on-marching truth. But what's this thing about the rich and privileged saying it's not a great country? I hear more distaste and dismay about America from one Senator than the other; I hear more disdain from cosseted movie stars than I hear from ordinary folk; I hear more grumpy, costive old burbling about the dark hole into which America has fallen from a rich and privileged Old Scout than I hear from, say, middle-class bloggers who get 40 hits a day but happen to love the actual country we have as opposed to the theoretical variant which Keillor believes is right around the corner. Next week: an attack, probably, on the smug, self-righteous rich and privileged, who think America's just great. At least we know how that one will end: truth, marching, et cetera.

I think that Keillor has attained that unblessed state that no one dare edit him. Thankfully, we have Lileks.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:37 AM

Ignorance Of America

By the Brits.

Frequent commenter "Fletcher Christian" is a poster child for this phenomenon. And as one of the commenters at Glenn's post notes, the BBC is largely responsible.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:06 AM

An Attack By The Real Fascists

Over at Amy Alkon's place.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:01 AM

Articulate?

Everyone (including Joe Biden, who also thinks he's "clean") says that Barack Obama is articulate. I've never seen any evidence of it, and there was apparently plenty of counterevidence at the Rick Warren thing. Being good at reading a teleprompter is not the same thing as being "articulate."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:54 AM

Casualty Of War?

I have a piece up at Pajamas Media this morning on the potential effect of Russia's renewed belligerence on the US space program.

I should note that I may have been a little too sanguine about the situation for the current ISS crew. While the RSA astronauts in Expedition 17 weren't born in Russia, it's possible that they are Russians, and sympathetic to Russia, given the way that Russia had colonized the Ukraine and Turkmen Republic and moved populations of Russians in there. It's all really speculation. Only the crew really know what the atmosphere is up there.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:21 AM

Scaled Brings in SpaceDev Again

SpaceDev has announced Scaled Composites has selected them to develop a hybrid motor for SpaceShipTwo in a $15 million contract. The point that SpaceDev was selected (not down-selected) in SpaceShipOne development was 3.25 years before winning the Ansari X-Prize. This is consistent with the duration announced for the development contract for SpaceShipTwo's rocket motor of "through 2012" with work "primarily completed over the next two years". SpaceShipTwo will likely burn rubber getting to suborbital space.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at 06:45 AM

August 17, 2008
To Shutter, Or Not To Shutter?

I don't have to decide today--it looks like it will still be far enough away tomorrow morning, with a better track, to make the decision then. Right now, I'm inclined not to, even though we're still in the uncertainty cone (but over at the eastern edge of it). Most of the models, other than GFDL, have the thing out in the Gulf or along the west coast of the state. We are on a tropical storm watch on the east coast from Jupiter south, but that's all.

The best outcome overall (other than completely falling apart) would be for it to come up through the swamp and run up the middle of the state, where it would weaken pretty quickly. If it stays out in the Gulf and hits farther north, it could intensify and really pound wherever it comes ashore. Either way, though, barring some dramatic shift in conditions, it looks like we're in for rain and tropical-force winds, at worst, over here on the east coast. That's a lot better than it looked a few days ago, when it looked like it might have come right at us through the Bahamas.

[Early afternoon update]

Well that's good news. Jeff Masters says that this won't be another Charley, despite the similarity in track. One thing that I notice a lot of the weather people talking about are the sea surface temperatures, but they are ignoring the fact that the upper-level winds aren't that favorable for intensification.

[Update at 4:30 PM EDT]

The latest model run (2 PM) has moved it farther to the west, which is bad news for the panhandle, but good news for south Florida. Unless they're all wrong, this thing isn't heading to southeast Florida, and we may not even get much in the way of wind, though we could use the rain. There's actually an outer band moving through Miami-Dade on the radar right now. Hope it makes it up through Broward and into south Palm Beach County.

[5 PM update]

Heh. The headline of one of the stories over at Accuweather is "Florida Approaching Land."

A lot of people who bought swampland down here probably wish that it would do it faster. Now, if they could just give the place a few mountains. Or even hills.

In "The Swamp" (an excellent history of south Florida) the author quotes an early settler who reportedly said, "I've bought land by the acre, and land by the foot, but by God, this is the first time I've ever bought land by the gallon."

Obviously, it was supposed to be "Fay," not "Florida."

[Update a few minutes later]

That was quick. Good thing I caught the screenshot. It now says "Fay Approaching Land."

[Update about 6 PM EDT]

OK, it looks like shuttering tomorrow is definitely off the table. The track, per the models I described above, no longer has us even within the cone. I expect some wind and rain (which we need) but nothing more at this point. The only preparation I did this weekend was to fill up the tank of the car, and it looks like that's all I'm going to do for Fay.

But the hurricane season is still young, and we're heading into the heart of it. It's particularly problematic because I'm going to be in LA for the last week of August and the first week of September, which is one of the highest-probability times for major storms here. I may have to shutter up before I leave, just as a precaution.

[Update a half hour later]

The first squall line from the storm is approaching. Unfortunately, I don't have a camera handy, but it's looking ugly to the south, and the winds are picking up (and the local radar confirms it). We just put in a new tree, which needs watering every day. I've put off doing it all day, in anticipation of this.

[Tuesday morning update]

We didn't actually get much rain from that squall line last night, but about 8:30 this morning, the heavens opened up. The rain's been hard and steady for an hour now. Guess I didn't need to water that satin leaf.

I should note that Brendan Loy's Weather Nerd blog is the go-to place for blogging the storm.

As he notes, it's kind of good news, bad news. The good news is that it's shifted eastward, and will hit Florida sooner, which means it won't have much time to develop. The bad news (for me) is that it will affect the east coast much more than anticipated. Hope I won't regret not shuttering, because it's too late to do so now, unless I want to attempt it in wind and rain. The rains have come sooner than I expected, and a wind gust has already blown off a down spout that I hadn't properly tied to the wall. If I get a break, I might try to fix it later today, though it's not a big problem--just blasting water against the front wall.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:08 AM

Change!

...and hope!

Well, not really. The Obama campaign has released its new space policy, and there's not much breaking with the status quo in it. It's basically sticking with the current plan, at least in civil space, but promising (as in all areas) to spend more money. While one suspects that Lori Garver must have played a major role in it, it also reads as though it was written by a committee, or different people wrote different sections, and then it was stitched together, like Frankenstein's monster.

For instance, in one section, it says:

Obama will stimulate efforts within the private sector to develop and demonstrate spaceflight capabilities. NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services is a good model of government/industry collaboration.

But later on, in a different section, it says:

Obama will evaluate whether the private sector can safely and effectively fulfill some of NASA's need for lower earth orbit cargo transport.

If COTS is a "good model," why is such an "evaluation" necessary? Isn't it already a given? I also like the notion that Obama himself would do the "evaluation." As if.

It's got the usual kumbaya about international cooperation, of course, which I think has been disastrous on the ISS. There are also implied digs at the Bush administration, about not "politicizing" science (as though Jim Hansen hasn't done that himself) and opposing "weapons" in space. It also discusses more cooperation between NASA and NRO, ignoring the recent rumblings about getting rid of the latter, and the problems with security that would arise in such "cooperation."

Also, interestingly, after Senator Obama called McCain's proposed automotive prize a "gimmick," the new policy now explicitly supports them. So are they no longer "gimmicks"? Or is it just that McCain's idea was (for some unexplained reasons) but Obama's are not?

Overall, my biggest concerns with it are more on the defense side than on the civil space side. This is utopian:

Barack Obama opposes the stationing of weapons in space and the development of anti-satellite weapons. He believes the United States must show leadership by engaging other nations in discussions of how best to stop the slow slide towards a new battlefield.

Sorry, but that horse is out of the barn, and there's no way to get it back in. No anti-satellite weapons treaty would be verifiable. It is good to note, though, that the policy recognizes ORS as a means to mitigate the problem. That's the real solution, not agreements and paper.

In any event, it's a big improvement over his previous space policy, which was not a policy at all, but rather an adjunct to his education policy. Now it's time for the McCain campaign to come up with one. I hope that he gets Newt to help him with it, and not Walt Cunningham.

[Mid-morning update]

One of the commenters over at NASA Watch picks up on something that I had missed:

Sen. Obama names COTS and several other programs by name, but not Ares or Constellation. He mentions "the Shuttle's successor systems" without specifying what they might be.

That does give him some options for real change. I also agree that a revival of the space council would be a good idea. I hope that the McCain campaign doesn't oppose this purely because the Obama campaign has picked it up.

[Afternoon update]

One other problem. While it talks about COTS, it has no mention of CATS (or CRATS, or CARATS, or whatever acronym they're using this week for cheap and reliable access to space). It hints at it with COTS and ORS, but it's not set out as an explicit goal. I hope that McCain's policy does.

[Update a few minutes later]

Bobby Block has a report at the Orlando Sentinel space blog.

This part struck me (and didn't surprise me):

Lori Garver, an Obama policy adviser, said last week during a space debate in Colorado that Obama and his staff first thought that the push to go to the moon was "a Bush program and didn't make a lot of sense." But after hearing from people in both the space and education communities, "they recognized the importance of space." Now, she said, Obama truly supports space exploration as an issue and not just as a tool to win votes in Florida.

I'm not sure that Lori helped the campaign here. What does that tell us about the quality and cynicism of policy making in the Obama camp? They opposed it before they were for it because it was George Bush's idea? And does that mean that space policy was just about votes in Florida before this new policy? I know that there are a lot of BDS sufferers who oppose VSE for this reason, and this reason alone, but it's a little disturbing that such (non)thinking was actually driving policy in a major presidential campaign.

George Bush greatly expanded federal involvement in education and expanded Medicare. Are they going to shrink them accordingly? I'd like to think so, but I suspect not.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:36 AM

August 16, 2008
Must Be Getting Crowded Under That Bus

That wasn't the Wes Clark that I knew.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:52 PM

Good For Me

But bad for the Gulf coast. All of the models for Fay have shifted the track west, and it now looks unlikely that it will hit southeast Florida, so I probably won't have to put up the shutters on Monday. Still need to keep an eye on it, though.

[Late morning update]

That was the 2 AM runs. The 8 AM model update has it coming back slightly to the east, over the Florida peninsula, with GFDL just to the west of us, which is a little too close for comfort. But still, no decision before Monday.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:23 AM

Misanthropes

Do Democrats hate men?

It sure seems like it sometimes. And of course, if we object, we're misogynists (and probably racists as well).

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:07 AM

Space Politics

It's hard to think of any sitting (or past, for that matter) member of Congress who has done more for commercial space efforts than Dana Rohrabacher. He's been representing his southern California district for many years, so I was a little surprised to hear that he's in a potentially tough reelection battle. But his opponent is currently out-fund-raising him, and it's going to be a generally tough year for Republicans, even those whose seats had previously been secure. So for those of you who want to keep him in Washington for his space efforts (or for other reasons), a fund has been set up to help make that happen.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:57 AM

August 15, 2008
Here Comes Fay

The circulation finally closed this afternoon, but the storm is going to have to fight its way through the mountains of Hispaniola. It seems to have gone directly from a low to a storm, without the usual intermediate tropical depression (does that mean that TD 6 remains available for the next one?). Unfortunately, even though the chances that it will actually hit Boca Raton aren't high, I'll probably have to shutter up on Monday, just in case.

The good news is that most of the models are taking it over Cuba as well, which will keep it from intensifying much. If it comes up here, the only chance for strengthening will be in the open water over the Straight of Florida (where it would beat up the Keys). If it stays at tropical storm force, as SHIPS is currently predicting, I may be able to get away without shutters, as we did with Ernesto two years ago. Only one of the 2 PM model runs (HWRF) has it coming through town. The tracking models are probably going to get better now that there's a definite center of circulation to use as a starting point. Unfortunately, I'm kind of in the middle of the spectrum. By Monday, it should be more clear where this thing is going.

Sigh...

I prefer earthquakes. You don't have any false alarms with them.

[Update about 6:30 PM EDT]

Jeff Masters confirms my own thoughts:

If Fay does hit South Florida, the storm is likely to be a tropical storm or Category 1 hurricane, since it will not have enough time over water to reorganize much. I think the models are overdoing the intensification of Fay once it does pop off the coast of Cuba. We saw in 2006 that Ernesto popped off the coast of Cuba as a weak tropical storm, and took a full 36 hours to get its act together. If Fay misses South Florida and veers either to the east or west of the Peninsula, the storm could easily reach Category 2 status before a potential landfall either on the Gulf Coast or in North Carolina/South Carolina.

So if it's a major storm, it won't be one here. But we won't really know until late Sunday or Monday.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:39 PM

"Give We Shall Meet"

That's the subject of a spam email I got this morning. It's from "kenon nader" Here are the entire contents: "Greetings, how are you doing? Give we shall meet"

No link to a web site, just a return email address of someone at "allforchildren.org." And right after typing this, I got another one, same subject and contents, from "duff shiahn-w <assessoriaadm@lo.unisal.br>"

What is the point of this stupidity?

[Update in the late afternoon]

Apparently it's a buffer overflow attack trojan. I don't think it works very well with Thunderbird, given that I have Javascript disabled (which is why I didn't see the script). And my blog is now numero uno on Google for "give we shall meet."

[Update a couple minutes later]

Here's more info.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:37 AM

The Latest On The Space Debate

Jeff Foust has a report on the debate in Boulder between Lori Garver and Walt Cunningham. As I note in comments, if Senator Obama is now interested in prizes, that would be a change of position from when he criticized Senator McCain's proposal for an automotive prize.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:19 AM

August 14, 2008
A New Home For The Sixth Fleet?

In Sevastopol? And I don't mean the similar-sounding one in California.

We do need to recognize that we're in a new Cold War with Russia, though many of the former "Republics" in the Soviet Union will now be (in fact have been) on our side, which will make it more manageable, but also more dangerous, with more trip wires.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:25 PM

Bewitched, Bothered And Bewildered

When I read this piece by Walter Shapiro, I had much the same reaction as John Weidner did:

You were besotted with Edwards because he was (or was pretending to be) a liberal Democrat. And Edwards almost certainly paid flattering attention to the guy who was writing a book about his campaign. You dolt, Edwards and his wife almost certainly coldly planned how to woo you, and knew what your weaknesses are. That's what trial lawyers do with a jury. They study every scrap of information available on each juryman, and, like chameleons, tailor the message, and paint their very selves, to fit them. (I know about this stuff; my dear wife's on the other side, the good side, fighting scoundrels like Edwards every day.)

Everybody who retained any objectivity could see that he was a phony, and were not surprised by this. When a guy talks populism and green-ism while building the biggest mansion in the county, there's a 99% chance that he's a sham. When a guy spends minutes in front of a mirror fluffing his hairdo, there's a 99% chance that he will not resist the sexual temptations available to a celebrity.

These media love affairs with (liberal) politicians constitute journalistic malpractice. They gave us the corrupt Bill Clinton, from whom, had any of them had done their job and looked into Arkansas history back in 1992, the nation could have been spared. Glenn Reynolds has asked, after the obvious biased non-reporting in the John Edwards case, what else are they deliberately hiding from us? And at least Walter Shapiro, if not the rest of the swooners, should now be asking himself, "by what other politicians am I letting myself be fooled and beguiled?" For instance, how about the inexperienced phony about to be nominated in Denver that is this season's "it" girl for the media?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:46 AM

Politics, Not Geology

Why the oil "shortage" is made in Washington.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:25 AM

I'll Bet They Are

"Senator Obama and Senator Clinton are looking forward to a convention unified behind Barack Obama as the Party's nominee and to victory this fall for America."

Well, at least one of them is.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:02 AM

The Jokes

...they almost write themselves. The headline itself is wonderful:

Giant inflatable turd escapes moorings and brings down electricity line

Read the last line, too.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:56 AM

Time To Dig Out The Shutters?

I've been keeping an eye on that disturbance in the Atlantic for a few days, but it's starting to look like there's a chance of a hurricane here early next week. The models are all showing it curving to the north off the coast, and missing Florida, but the models aren't to be trusted this far out. I may have to shutter up on Sunday.

[Update early afternoon]

This morning's model runs have it heading across the top of the greater Antilles, and then tearing up through the Bahamas. Except for GFDL, which has it heading right up the Florida east coast, starting in northern Palm Beach County, and then right up to the Cape, four and a half days from now (i.e., late Monday). Despite my earlier musings on the palliative effects on space policy from a Kennedy Center hurricane, I hope it's wrong.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:22 AM

Firefox Problem

I tend to have a couple dozen tabs (in multiple instances) of Firefox running at any given time. But I've noticed (at least in Windows) that sometimes the program will start to saturate the CPU, and take forever to reload a site, or even to switch from one tab to another. When I shut down the program, the CPU usage goes from a hundred percent to a few percent. But when I reload it, with all previous tabs restored, it shoots back up to a hundred. I suspect that it's just one of the tabs that's causing the problem, but the Windows task manager can't provide any insight, because it's happening inside the application.

It would be really nice if the Firefox folks would put in a diagnostic tool that would tell which open tab, or tabs, was causing the problem, so that one could just close that one without having to kill the whole program. It's really made it almost unusable until I can figure out which one it is. Or just start over, but keeping them open is my way of bookmarking items for later blogging.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:06 AM

August 13, 2008
You're Not The Only One, Glenn

I'm not paying any attention to the Olympics, either. I haven't seen a single competition, and didn't watch the opening ceremonies. I don't think I've watched any channel showing it for more than a few seconds.

It's not political--I'm just thoroughly uninterested. I also think that it's highly overrated as a kumbaya enhancer, and I'm more interested in people for their intellectual prowess than physical abilities. I was amused a few years ago when one of my trolls (this one from Norway, but not HH) "warned" me that if the US didn't behave better internationally, we might not be selected for future Olympics. I told him that wasn't a bug--it was a feature.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:07 PM

A Foreign Policy Failure

A former Clinton official critiques the US' (and EU's) mismanaging of Georgia.

I've been pretty unimpressed by the Bush state department (one of the reasons that I've been pretty unimpressed by the Bush administration in general). It's not clear whether that's because both Powell and Rice were captured by the bureaucracy and "went native" or because they were squishy by nature, but either way, it's unimpressive. One of the legacies of this administration will probably be its complete inability to win the guerilla wars in the bureaucratic trenches.

Of course, it didn't help that the president imagined that he saw Putin's "soul" through his eyes. We now have a much better idea of the nature of his soul through his subsequent actions than George Bush got from his ocular examination.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:22 AM

Momentous Political News

Chuck Hagel won't endorse.

The post title was intended to be ironic, in case anyone had trouble guessing.

Is there anyone who cares what that pompous unprincipled idiot thinks about anything? If so, I sure hope that they don't vote.

[Update mid morning]

Exposing the myth of "Republicans for Obama."

Obama may count prominent GOPers like Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, presidential granddaughter Susan Eisenhower, Fairbanks, Alaska Mayor Jim Whitaker, former Iowa Rep. Jim Leach, former Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln Chaffee and former White House intelligence adviser Rita E. Hauser--all of them namechecked on today's call--among his announced (or likely) endorsers. But are there enough rank-and-file Republicans whispering their support at Obama rallies to actually make a difference on Election Day?

The answer, as noted in the article, is "no." And Democrats who believe this fantasy are fooling themselves, and setting themselves up for a huge disappointment in November. I hope that the taxpayer doesn't get stuck with the massive group therapy bill.

[Update late morning]

Hey, I told you that Chafee is a moron:

Former Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee, who left the GOP last year and later endorsed Democrat Barack Obama for president, has signed on with Republicans for Obama, saying that the Illinois senator embodies "my kind of traditional conservatism."

Right.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:41 AM

August 12, 2008
On-The-Job Training

If you want to know why Constellation is such a godawful mess, here's one reason:

NASA JSC Center Director's Systems Engineering Forum Planned Aug. 21

There actually are people out in private industry (like me) who do this stuff for a living, or at least would, if NASA would give them a contract. But instead of putting out a SETA or some other support contract for systems engineering, as Steidle had planned to do, Dr. Griffin simply decided that NASA would do it. This is where it's gotten him. Had he hired a good SE contractor (and listened) the program would likely not be in the kind of trouble it is, either technically or politically. Of course, it would probably look much different, because a proper systems-engineering approach would never have resulted in the Shaft. That was the danger inherent in putting a rocket scientist in charge of the agency. He thought he was smarter than everyone else.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:03 PM

Brawn, Not Brain

And now, idiots:

Byers called Castro a "great guy.''

Maybe he could move to Cuba, and wrestle for Fidel instead. Of course, there's no reason to expect a wrestler to be a deep thinker.

[Update a few minutes later]

Speaking of idiots, here we have Republicans for Obama:

This morning, former Iowa Republican Congressman Jim Leach, former Rhode Island Republican Senator Lincoln Chaffee, and prominent lawyer and former White House intelligence advisor Rita E. Hauser will host a conference call to endorse Senator Barack Obama and announce the formation of Republicans for Obama. Across the country Democrats, independents, and Republicans are coming together in support of Senator Obama to bring change to Washington. Obama has a strong record of bringing people together from the left and the right to solve problems, leading with superior judgment on foreign policy issues, and demonstrating fiscal responsibility.

What "strong record" is that? What "superior judgment" is that?

Lincoln Chafee hasn't been a Republican in years, but he's always been a moron. If this is the best that Obama can do in terms of "Republican" endorsements, it's pretty pathetic.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:32 AM

Are You Better Off?

...than you were three years ago?

The official IOC for an Ares I crew launch vehicle able to send a crew of six to the International Space Station (ISS) in the Orion crew exploration vehicle is March 2015.

And now that the Russians have shown themselves for what they are in Georgia, isn't it great to be dependent on them for crewed access?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:38 AM

Earmarks You Can Believe In

This must be that new politics we've heard so much about.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:19 AM

August 11, 2008
Fedora Diagnostics

Pete Zaitcev asked for a screen shot. Here are two.

This is the screen where it hangs up for several minutes before going into install mode.

And this one is the cryptic message that I get. I have no idea what it's looking for here.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:38 AM

One Less Thing To Worry About?

Is the Yellowstone caldera fizzling out?

This adds to suggestions that the plume has disconnected from its heat source in the Earth's core. If this is true, it means the plume could be dying - and that the sequence of mega-eruptions could come to an end. "If it doesn't have clear source, as it rises eventually the plume will die out," says Schutt.

Let's hope so. A Yellowstone explosion could be a civilization-ending event, and there's not much we can do to prevent it, at least with current technology.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:05 AM

Perseids

It's that time of year again. They peak tonight (or rather, early tomorrow morning). Be sure to get out of town, though. You won't see any but the very brightest with city lights around.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:47 AM

Any Minute Now

James Lileks awaits the war protesters. In vain.

The anarchists aren't up on it. Nothing from the central Green party. But it's possible they're just getting their blast emails out, alerting everyone to the upcoming World Can't Wait / Protest Imperialistic Imperialism Protest, complete with giant mocking paper-mache puppets of Putin with black oil dripping from his fangs. Who here can do a Putin? C'mon people, I need a big Putin. This international cabal isn't going to collapse on its own! It needs the sort of humiliating defeat only a large, three-dimensional effigy borne on the streets of a Western city in full view of bored policemen can bring.Yes, any day now: the streets will be filled with protestors.

Mao is denounced as well.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:19 AM

August 10, 2008
Curing Diabetes

...with lettuce? If this is true, it seems like a pretty big breakthrough.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:20 PM

August 09, 2008
New Fedora Laptop Issue

OK, when we last left our intrepid laptop, it couldn't install Fedora. Following advice in comments there, I tried a live version of Ubuntu, and it had no problem, other than telling me that it didn't have an open-source driver for the WLAN. Then I tried Fedora again. It hung up as it did before, but I went away and ignored it, and when I came back after a while, it had finally booted into the installer. Apparently I just hadn't been patient enough the last time.

Now, after selecting languages, it gives me a message saying "No driver found" It tells me that there is no driver for this installation for the device, and asks me if I want to install manually, or if I have a disk. When I try installing manually, it gives me a drop-down list of every driver for every device known to Linus. The only problem is that it doesn't tell me what device is causing the heartburn.

Any suggestions? I'm guessing that it might be the wireless, because of the message on Ubuntu, but who knows?

[Update a few minutes later]

The exact (cryptic) message is "Unable to find device type needed for this installation type."

Huh?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:46 PM

Random Saturday Morning Thought

You know you're an Internet troll when you get complaints from the moderator at /dev/null.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:32 AM

August 08, 2008
Back To The Sunshine State

I'm catching a plane back to Florida in a bit, so probably no more posting until tomorrow, since I don't get in until late tonight. I get to go through DFW, so they get (at least) two chances to lose my suitcase this time. But they apparently only need one.

[Saturday morning update]

Arrived late last night, with suitcase. Now to catch up on all the things that didn't happen while I was out of town.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 10:13 AM

Nearing The End?

Robert Block is wondering if the Stick is dying. I liked this bit:

In the face of the latest reports of trouble, sources say that NASA leaders are looking at a possible replacement design, including one that would use the shuttle's two four-segment solid rocket boosters, and a liquid engine with four RS-68 engines and no upper stage. While it sounds similar to a rocket called the Jupiter 120 or the Direct 2.0 concept which is being proposed by moonlighting NASA engineers, the sources insist it is not the same.

Yes. I have a literary theory that the Iliad and the Odyssey weren't written by Homer, but by another blind poet with the same name.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:48 AM

The New Brown Shirts

Glenn explains:

No doubt they all go around exchanging Obama Salutes and clicking their heels...

But don't call them a cult!

I guess that it really is all about the "O." Sabine Ehrenfeld is still a lot hotter, though. At this point, given the other choices on the menu, I'm ready to sign up for a Sabine/Paris ticket. Too bad she was born in Germany.

I suspect that Senator Obama's fans may prove to be his worst enemies.

[Update a while later]

Ace has more.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:02 AM

August 07, 2008
An Idle Thought

I wonder how many of the people who are giving Congress single-digit approval ratings know which party is in charge?

I think that it's foolish for John McCain to be running against George Bush. He shouldn't be asking whether or not you're better off than eight or four years ago. That's Obama's line.

He needs to ask whether or not you're better off than you were two years ago, when the Dems started mismanaging Congress. Point out not how much gas prices have gone up in eight years, but in how much they've gone up in two years (probably the biggest percentage jump in history). Never use the word "Congress" without prepending it with "Democratic."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:23 AM

Adrenaline Junkie

Eric Raymond is.

I am not. I've never been in a serious , or even mock fight, and never had a desire to be. I probably wouldn't have made it far in an earlier time. One of the many reasons I'm glad to live here and now.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:16 AM

The Latest Buzz

Alan Boyle interviews the first man to relieve his bladder on the moon, about the Moon, Mars and the Gap. And it's great to see him (and Lois) still going strong. And as he points out, there are a lot of fortieth and fiftieth anniversary news hooks coming up. I hope to take advantage of them as well.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:54 AM

August 06, 2008
That Was Quick

Henry Spencer got it right (no big surprise):

The gap between engine cut off and staging was 1.5 seconds - which was fine for the ablatively cooled engine on Flight 2. But on Flight 3, with the regeneratively cooled engine, there was some residual thrust after engine shut down and this caused the first stage to be pushed back toward the second stage after separation and there was a recontact between the stages.

One of the big mistakes that people make in writing requirements is not writing proper verification statements for them. One of my rules, that I came to late in life, is to not allow a requirement to be accepted unless it has an accompanying verification statement (i.e., how you verify that the requirement has been satisfied). If you can't write a verification statement for it, it's not a valid requirement. The other reason is that verification is where most of the cost of a program comes from. Test is very expensive. If you can come up with ways to verify early on that don't require it (inspection, demonstration, analysis), you can control and estimate costs much better.

One of the key elements of a proper verification statement is the environment. It's not enough to say, "Verify, by test, that engine thrust is less than TBD Nt TBD seconds after engine shutdown." It has to be "Verify, by test, in vacuum, that engine thrust is less than TBD Nt TBD seconds after engine shutdown."

AMROC had a similar problem on SET-1 back in 1989, because the propulsion system testing had all taken place in the desert at Edwards, and the actual launch occurred in the humid October weather of Vandenberg, at the coast. The LOX valve iced up. The vehicle ended up catching fire and fell over and burned on the pad. There was no explosion, but it was a launch failure.

This is why systems engineering processes were developed. I'd be curious to know what kind of SE processes SpaceX had in place. And what they'll have in place in the future...

[Late evening update]

Here's the official statement from Elon Musk:

Timing is Everything

On August 2nd, Falcon 1 executed a picture perfect first stage flight, ultimately reaching an altitude of 217 km, but encountered a problem just after stage separation that prevented the second stage from reaching orbit. At this point, we are certain as to the origin of the problem. Four methods of analysis - vehicle inertial measurement, chamber pressure, onboard video and a simple physics free body calculation - all give the same answer.

The problem arose due to the longer thrust decay transient of our new Merlin 1C regeneratively cooled engine, as compared to the prior flight that used our old Merlin 1A ablatively cooled engine. Unlike the ablative engine, the regen engine had unburned fuel in the cooling channels and manifold that combined with a small amount of residual oxygen to produce a small thrust that was just enough to overcome the stage separation pusher impulse.

We were aware of and had allowed for a thrust transient, but did not expect it to last that long. As it turned out, a very small increase in the time between commanding main engine shutdown and stage separation would have been enough to save the mission.

The question then is why didn't we catch this issue? Unfortunately, the engine chamber pressure is so low for this transient thrust -- only about 10 psi -- that it barely registered on our ground test stand in Texas where ambient pressure is 14.5 psi. However, in vacuum that 10 psi chamber pressure produced enough thrust to cause the first stage to recontact the second stage.

It looks like we may have flight four on the launch pad as soon as next month. The long gap between flight two and three was mainly due to the Merlin 1C regen engine development, but there are no technology upgrades between flight three and four.

Good Things About This Flight

Merlin 1C and overall first stage performance was excellent

The stage separation system worked properly, in that all bolts fired and the pneumatic pushers delivered the correct impulse

Second stage ignited and achieved nominal chamber pressure

Fairing separated correctly

We discovered this transient problem on Falcon 1 rather than Falcon 9

Rocket stages were integrated, rolled out and launched in seven days

Neither the near miss potential failures of flight two nor any new ones
were present

The only untested portion of flight is whether or not we have solved the main problem of flight two, where the control system coupled with the slosh modes of the liquid oxygen tank. Given the addition of slosh baffles and significant improvements to the control logic, I feel confident that this will not be an issue for the upcoming flight four.

Elon

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:49 PM

Peaked Too Soon?

Amid the fact that Obama's having a bad week, and not jumping ahead in the polls as conventional "wisdom" dictated, it's useful to note that he's not only not president yet (despite his play acting at it with the seal and the overseas visits), but that he's not even the Democrat nominee. I will continue to remind people that regardless of what Hillary! says about supporting him, actions shout where words whisper.

She did not withdraw from the race, and she did not release her delegates. Obama does not have enough "pledged" (i.e., derived from primary victories) delegates to get the nomination--he needs the votes of superdelegates who had previously committed to him in June, but they are still free to vote however they wish in Denver.

If he continues to make gaffes, and look weak, and lose support of the yout' who were supposed to be his big ace in the hole, and Obama fatigue sets in, there may be a lot of buyers' remorse among the once-enthusiastic Democrats. The stage is once again set for a very exciting convention in Denver, in which die-hard Hillary! supporters, despite her demurrals, will put her name in nomination and demand a roll-call vote. And those superdelegates will once again, and finally, be faced with a very ugly choice--go with a demonstrably weak candidate, and mollify the black constituency, or go with the winner of the latter part of the primary, and risk tearing the party apart (not to mention putting up a candidate with continuing high negatives), perhaps complete with mile-high riots. And the worse he seems to be doing, the harder the choice will be.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 01:22 PM

Dumbing Down

Peter Wood has an essay on the effects of our culture on science education.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:00 PM

August 05, 2008
You Just May Be A Racist

Twenty-five reasons. You're probably full of hate, too.

And obviously, when Obama loses, it will be because we're all racists. What other reasons could we possible have to vote against him?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:51 PM

Hey, Scalzi Fans

If you pre-order at Amazon, you can get a copy of his latest in the series that started with Old Man's War for less than ten bucks.

[Wednesday morning update]

Sorry, I misread the Amazon email. It's a savings of $8.48, not a price. Still a good deal, though.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:40 PM

Hope Remains

...for life on Mars. Actually, there are a lot of people who should hope that we don't find life on Mars, if we ever want to colonize it ourselves.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 03:14 PM

Encouraging News

About SpaceX:

If the problem is confirmed to be a simple and easily fixed design flaw, they may not launch again "tomorrow" but I wouldn't be too surprised if there was another flight within a couple of months.

...Lost in the hubbub over the flight failure was the fact that once again they were able to do a quick resumption of the launch procedure after a hot-fire abort. This sort of robustness in the launch operations and the use of small crews are crucial factors in lowering the cost of launch.

And as noted, the new Merlin apparently performed well. Had it not, that would have been a real setback for both Falcon 1 and 9.

[Update after lunch, Pacific Time]

Henry Spencer has more thoughts, with some history.

It seems quite likely that it was caused by the new engine--that's the only thing that changed between the last flight and this one, and Henry points out a couple potential plausible scenarios for that.

That doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with the engine--it just means that the overall vehicle design and operations have to account for the new characteristics.
Posted by Rand Simberg at 11:52 AM

Summer Reading

Ken Murphy has a bunch of reviews of solar fiction for kids.

Hook 'em while they're young.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:21 AM

It's Healed!

Miraculously (and mysteriously), my internal wireless adaptor started working yesterday. Unfortunately, that gives me one less excuse to return the laptop.

I still have to figure out what to do about Linux. Also, I'm unimpressed with Vista so far. Last night, the machine crawled almost to a halt. It's a 2 GHz Turion with three gigs of RAM. It took forever for task manager to load, and it provided no information as to which process was causing the problem, but the CPU was saturated. I couldn't even shut down applications, or the computer itself. I eventually had to just power it down. It's been OK since I rebooted into safe mode, and then rebooted again, but I have no idea what was going on.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:03 AM

Reporting The Edwards Scandal

Mickey Kaus makes the case:

The only legitimate reason not to cover this scandal, it seems to me, is simple sympathy for Elizabeth Edwards--and I've gotten enough emails from anguished and angry members of the MSM to conclude, with Estrich, that it's the prime reason for the MSM blackout. True, I also suspect that if Mrs. Edwards were a conservative Republican, or even an unbeloved Democrat, the MSM might somehow find a way to overcome this compassionate sentiment. But that doesn't make it wrong. Reporters don't have to print everything. You could conclude that the need to protect Mrs. Edwards her children is so great, the karma of Enquiring so bad, that all of the obvious, public-interesty reasons for covering the story should be thrown out the window. And if John Edwards were already so damaged that in practice he'd never get a significant public office even if he wants one, I might agree (even if that meant sacrificing the deterrent effect of full exposure).

But that's a point that clearly hasn't been reached yet, at least not while most Americans are being kept in the dark about what, exactly, has led to Edwards' mysterious disappearance from the political oddsmakers' charts. A man arrogant and ambitious enough to think he can run for president posing as a loyal husband while keeping his second family secret, even as he visits his mistress in a famous hotel that is hosting a convention of journalists, will be arrogant and ambitious enough to keep hiding under the shield of his wife's illness until he can attempt a comeback-- if given the chance.

The alternative, it seems to me, is to let affection for Mrs. Edwards suck journalists into a Print-the-Legend world where they must spend their time burnishing--or at least accepting--the story powerful people and institutions want them to tell, the story of the wonderful Edwards marriage, rather than figuring out and telling readers the truth. If I wanted to be in that business I'd be a publicist.

That's certainly what the "journalists" have been when it came to Barack Obama. Does anyone doubt that if Edwards were a Republican in similar circumstances, that there would have been a NYT story about it? The question answers itself.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:43 AM

It's That Time Of The Week Again

Lileks examines the train wreck that is Garrison Keillor's latest:

I'm sorry, but I'm just fascinated by his column. Each is nearly identical in formlessness, subject and general pointlessness. To be fair: we all write at haste and repent at leisure, unless we can somehow get it out of the Google cache. We all make inelegant remarks that seemed wonderfully writerly at the moment but curdle when exposed to another pair of eyes. It's the perils of blogging. But he has an entire week to write these things. Never does he attempt to make an argument or explore a line of thought - it's just flat assertions ladled out with nuance or shading. The sun rises, Bush is bad, life is long but also short and so you should sit outside and drink lemonade and think of the people who came before you and sat outside and drank lemonade and there is a comfort in that continuity and we need all the comfort we can get in these days when nihilists in golf pants are everywhere and the Republic lies in ruins. Also, he is given to run-on sentences. This week has perhaps the finest example yet.

If that's not enough, there is some cereal blogging, too.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:06 AM

A Farewell To Straw Men?

Probably not, but we can always hope. I have a piece over at Pajamas today about fallacious and demagogic debating tactics.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:46 AM

August 04, 2008
The Whining Children

...of capitalism:

Leaving religion out of it, no idea has given more to humanity. The average working-class person today is richer, in real terms, than the average prince or potentate of 300 years ago. His food is better, his life longer, his health better, his menu of entertainments vastly more diverse, his toilette infinitely more civilized. And yet we constantly hear how cruel capitalism is while this collectivism or that is more loving because, unlike capitalism, collectivism is about the group, not the individual.

These complaints grow loudest at times like this: when the loom of capitalism momentarily stutters in spinning its gold. Suddenly, the people ask: What have you done for me lately? Politicians croon about how we need to give in to Causes Larger than Ourselves and peck about like hungry chickens for a New Way to replace dying capitalism.

As Mark Twain once wrote, "If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man."

Most people in this country have little appreciation how good they've got it. It's a shame that we no longer teach history in school.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 09:06 PM

Hell Hath No Fury

Like a woman's supporters scorned:

And what will the Puma members do after the Convention? Murphy concedes, "We're realists. ... We know the DNC is committed to the path of nominating their chosen candidate." In November she explains, "We are protesting the election." Members will sit home, write in Hillary's name or vote for John McCain. She explains, "That up to them. That's part of our whole philosophy."

Kronert says that he won't be voting for Obama and thinks "Obama is running his campaign on the 'Change, Hope, a new kind of Politics' marketing gimmick." He also is one voter who thinks experience matters ("Obama is a two year senator with one year of that being on the campaign trail.")

Shanon from Maryland, another Puma member who donated to Hillary and voted Democratic in five straight past elections won't vote for Obama, listing his lack of experience, qualifications and track record among her concerns. She says, "I will vote McCain, third-party, stay home or write Hillary Clinton in. At this point, Ichabod Crane is looking better than the choices I have. But make no mistake, I have a choice." Eli, a self-described "Clinton Democrat" from Massachusetts, says he's not voting for Obama because "Quite simply, he is not qualified."

The healing continues.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:11 PM

The Fighter Pilot

...versus the community organizer. John Boyd would be pleased.

And yes, there are a lot of similarities between the tactics of Adolf Hitler and Saul Alinsky. This is not a coincidence.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 02:08 PM

Get Ready To Split A Gut

...at the world's oldest jokes.

Well, OK, not so much. It says they're old jokes, not good jokes.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:34 AM

Saving The Planet

That's what Nancy Pelosi claims to be doing. Well, good. She seems to consider it more important than her political career:

A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken July 25-27 found that Americans by numbers approaching 2-1 would be more likely to support a candidate who backs expanded offshore drilling.

Well, I hope that she really does consider it so. I certainly do. Of course, it's hard for me to think of anything less important than Nancy Pelosi's political career. Let us hope for a rapid end to it.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:52 AM

More SpaceX Perspective

Clark has a round up of links.

It was a little strange, and sad, descending into the LA basin yesterday. I had a left window seat, and I looked down at the old Rockwell/North American (and back during the war, Vultee) plant in Downey, which had been abandoned back in the nineties, and saw that Building 6 appeared to be no longer there. A lot of history in manned spaceflight took place there, but now there's almost no manned space activities left in southern California at all. Not in Downey, not in Huntington Beach, not in Seal Beach. It's all been moved to Houston, and Huntsville.

Except, except. A minute or two later, on final descent into LAX, I saw Hawthorne Airport just off the left wing, and quite prominent was the new SpaceX facility, which had previously been used to build jumbo jet wings.

So perhaps, despite the indifference of local and state politicians, the era of manned spaceflight in LA isn't quite yet over. And of course, Mojave remains ascendant.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:42 AM

Remembering The Gulag

Lileks reminisces:

I got all three volumes from the drugstore - which should have told me something about the land in which I lived, that one could buy this work from a creaky wire rack at the drugstore - and it taught me much about the Soviet Union and the era of Stalin. After that I could never quite understand the people who viewed the US and the USSR as moral equals, or regarded our history as not only indelibly stained but uniquely so. Reading Solzhenitsyn makes it difficult to take seriously the people in this culture who insist that Dissent has been squelched. Brother, you have no idea.

Indeed.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 06:30 AM

August 03, 2008
Arrived Safely

Sort of.

When I had the privilege of paying American an extra fifteen bucks to check my bag today, I had no idea how much extra service they'd be rendering. Apparently, with this new program, they've come up with an innovative new luggage-handling process that enables them to expeditiously lose your suitcase on a non-stop. And it only took me an hour and a half after the wheels touched down to discover this new capability.

When I got to the carousel that was supposed to be for my flight, it was full of luggage from not one, not two, not three, but four different Dallas flights, as evidenced by inspection of the tags. Apparently, another innovation that the airline has come up with is to get the luggage to the airport before the passengers arrive, and then helpfully leave it all on the carousel, so that the few bags from your own flight from Fort Lauderdale won't feel lonely and ostracized, and can fit in better with the crowd. Or perhaps the aircraft simply arrived in LAX sans occupants, the latter having somehow been spirited away en route by Bushco to be shipped off to Gitmo for the ritual waterboarding and holy book defilation, with the airline complicit in both the act and the cover up.

I reported the miscreant item to the baggage service.

"Did you look at the bags we have outside the door here"?

No, that hadn't occurred to me, because I lacked the imagination to conceive that a bag would be removed from the carousel by the authorities with hundreds still milling around seeking their luggage.

"Let's go over and look."

We go back over to the carousel.

"Sometimes it might have a Dallas tag on it, because it might have gotten rerouted."

This, as there remained hundreds of Dallas arrivals on the swirling machine, whose contents I had now seen several dozen times.

I marveled at an airline that could get a bag rerouted through Dallas and somehow end up there at the same time as I, who took a non-stop from Florida. Does the luggage get to skip the layover?

Bottom line: I am now the proud owner of a receipt that informs me that in the event they locate the missing suitcase, it will be delivered to my room. So I am here for a business meeting in the morning with no clothing except that on my back. Well, OK, and my keister. And, yeah, my feet. But still.

I have to say that I agree with the sentiment.

[Update on early Monday morning]

Well, when I check the web site to track it, it seems to have shown up overnight. It's supposed to be delivered sometime this morning to my hotel. No word on where it had been sequestered. I was kind of wondering if someone else took it off the carousel. They're not bothering to verify tags any more at LAX, as they did in the olden days.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:34 PM

Off to California

Hopefully I'll be checking in tonight.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 08:35 AM

Initial Thoughts

It's looking like there was a second-stage problem, either separation, or ignition (or both, since one could cause the other).

As I said last night, this is obviously a disappointment to the SpaceX team. Particularly since they had previously had a flight where this wasn't a problem, so in a sense it was two steps forward, one step back. I think that at this point, almost anyone is going to be pretty leery of putting a payload on the vehicle until it's had at least one successful flight. Is it the end? Despite what Elon said a long time ago about three strikes, it's hard to see it now. He's fully invested now, both financially and (I would imagine) emotionally, and he's not going to come this far just to give up, particularly when tantalized by his previous almost-success on the second flight.

They'll go through the telemetry, figure out as best they can what happened, and try again, and hopefully soon. In a sense, as someone noted in comments in the earlier post, Falcon 1 is really a test program for the bigger vehicles, though they should get an operational small launcher out of it as well.

As always, this points up the problem with expendable vehicles. They are very expensive to flight test, so you can't afford to do very many, and every flight is a first flight, so you can't wring bugs out of a vehicle with incremental testing. And it's a lot harder to figure out what went wrong because you generally don't get much debris to analyze (the first flight that failed off the pad was a rare exception)--you have to dig through electronic entrails. And NASA, of course, in its cargo-cult determination to redo Apollo, is taking exactly the same expensive and unreliable approach.

And just checking now, I see that Clark is having similar thoughts to mine.

Once the problem that caused this failure is determined, I would suggest that SpaceX just bite the bullet and allocate 2 or 3 Falcon I vehicles for test flights and fly them within a relatively short period, say six months.

This would represent a $20M-$30M investment but until the Falcon I is flying reliably, SpaceX will find it very difficult to get any more commercial or government payload contracts and it won't have any chance of getting COTS D (ISS crew transport) funding. The Falcon 9 is a completely different vehicle but the Falcon I is what currently defines the company's ability, or inability, to deliver what it says it can.

Anyway, best of luck to them in the future, but they know that they need more than just luck.

[Update a couple minutes later]

I see that Elon has a statement, which confirms my suspicion above:

There should be absolutely zero question that SpaceX will prevail in reaching orbit and demonstrating reliable space transport. For my part, I will never give up and I mean never.

That's the kind of attitude you have to have, even if eventually, you do in fact have to give up. I hope he won't have to.

Also note Clark's comment at the end of the post, that SpaceX is following in the tradition of all expendable staged launch vehicles in its failure modes, though they do seem to be getting the avionics right.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 05:58 AM

August 02, 2008
Flash Boot?

There was a comment in my previous post about my laptop problems that Vista doesn't play well with others when it comes to dual boot. Could this be gotten around by booting Linux from a flash drive, or a CD?

[Update on Sunday morning]

How about a separate USB hard drive for the other OS?

Posted by Rand Simberg at 07:50 PM

Another Clueless Commentator

And the sad thing is that he thinks he's smarter than those of us in the business. Clark Lindsey has a rejoinder in his comments section. I will add that this doesn't inspire confidence in his analysis:

SpaceShipTwo actually will only barely scrape space, eking out a scant 68 vertical miles before succumbing to the gravitational dominance of Earth. The craft musters only about 1/16 the energy needed to reach even low orbit 100 miles up. The space station, reposing 200 miles from the earth's surface, is completely beyond reach.

Attaining such distances requires enormous energy...

No, it's not the distance that's the problem, it's the velocity.

Sigh.

And Jeff Foust has found another idiot who wants it to be made illegal on environmental grounds. And because it's "selfish."

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:29 PM

SpaceX Launch Tonight

Falcon 1 goes up at 4 PM Pacific Time. That's 7 PM for me, and we already have tickets purchased for Dark Knight, so I guess we'll miss it, if it goes on schedule. I'll have to watch the replay.

[Update at 10:30 PM EDT]

Back from the movie, which was very good. Ledger can certainly expect a posthumous Oscar nomination.

There have been launch delays, but they're currently reloading fuel after having drained it (there was apparently concern that it was getting too cold during other delays) and are now expecting a launch at 11 PM EDT (8 PM Pacific), in almost exactly half an hour.

[Update a couple minutes later]

They must plan for an 8:05 liftoff, based on the count I just heard. T-32 and counting at 7:33. Weather is green, though there's some cloud cover.

[Update about ten till the hour]

There must be a delay or something on the web feed, because they're still saying it will be an 8 PM PDT launch, even though their count makes it come out three or four minutes after that. I wonder if there will be a transmission delay on the launch itself of a couple minutes? If so it won't quite be live, but it will be close enough.

[Update shortly after scheduled launch time]

They had a (literally) last-minute abort. The window closes in an hour, and I doubt they can turn it around that fast, since they still have to look at the data to figure out what happened. Better luck tomorrow.

[Update a couple minutes later]

That was fast. Now they're saying they think they may be able to recycle from T-10, so it still may be on tonight.

[10:30 EDT update]

Now they're at T-7 and counting again.

[Update shortly after launch]

Uh oh. Sounds like strike three. The picture was lost at about 35 km altitude and a thousand meters/sec. They announced an "anomaly." That doesn't sound good. The last update on the site was that it was about to enter inertial guidance (not clear what they were doing prior to that). Did something go wrong with an IMU, or some other part of the GN&C?

Fortunately, you're allowed more than three strikes in this game. It has to be a huge disappointment, though, unless the anomaly was merely a loss of signal, and the vehicle's doing all right. The webcast is over, though. I think that I'd assume that the news is bad.

Posted by Rand Simberg at 12:02 PM