Why can’t I get fun emails like this one? I particularly liked the berating of the evil “CAPITOLISM.” I’m always a little surprised when I hear conservative bloggers talk about the vitriol in their email, because I just don’t see it.
I suppose that it’s partly, or largely because I have a comments section where unhappy customers can vent (and demand their money back). But even there, I rarely get this kind of stuff, other than from Elifritz.
Jeff Foust reports on a forum where that is the topic of discussion. The (unsurprising, or at least it should be to readers of this weblog) answer is, “no.”
Space, at least civil space, is not important, and has not been since the early 1960s. What is more dismaying, though, is that military space is not treated seriously, either, and that really should be considered important.
The panel also doesn’t think much of reviving the Space Council. I agree that the focal point should not be at OSTP, and that space does need a more serious advocate on the National Security Council.
I wonder why Jeff doesn’t quote anyone by name? Was he reporting under restrictions?
[Update in the afternoon]
Apparently, he was. He writes over at Space Politics:
Because of the ground rules of the discussion, none of the comments are attributed to any of the attendees.
I’d be curious to know at least who the attendees were, even if we can’t correlate specific statements with specific attendees. Is that a secret, too?
Also at The Space Review today, a good tutorial on how to tell a launch system from a ballistic missile.
I should note that one point not made here is that it’s actually easier to build a launch vehicle than an effective ballistic missile, if one defines “effective” as being able to hit a precise target, because the latter requires an entry vehicle. Getting into orbit, per se, does not require a precise injection, or heat shields, as long as the resulting trajectory doesn’t intercept the atmosphere.
Finally, Dwayne Day clears up (or at least attempts to clear up) media misconceptions about the Chinese space program.
[Mid-afternoon update]
Jeff provides the list of speakers, though it’s still not clear whether the quotes are from speakers or attendees.
Yes, I know. I hope we have them sorted out now.
For the first time all month. Got a lot to catch up on, so I don’t know how much blogging will be happening in the near term.
But unsurprisingly, it wiped out the whole day. Blogging may be light tomorrow, too, as I have several deadlines, and then back to Florida on Saturday. Be nice in comments.
I’m heading up there for the day tomorrow, so probably no blogging starting in the morning, until Friday.
I got in late last night, maybe more blogging later, but I’ve got a lot of catch-up to do with work.
I flew from LA to DC to meet Patricia for Valentine’s Day. I may have better things to do than blog for a couple days.
A long but fascinating essay from the late John Updike. I found this passage quite interesting:
The protest, from my perspective, was in large part a snobbish dismissal of [the president] by the Eastern establishment; Cambridge professors and Manhattan lawyers and their guitar-strumming children thought they could run the country and the world better than this lugubrious bohunk from Texas. These privileged members of a privileged nation believed that their pleasant position could be maintained without anything visibly ugly happening in the world. They were full of aesthetic disdain for their own defenders, the business-suited hirelings drearily pondering geopolitics and its bloody necessities down in Washington. The protesters were spitting on the cops who were trying to keep their property—the USA and its many amenities—intact. A common report in this riotous era was of slum-dwellers throwing rocks and bottles at the firemen come to put out fires; the peace marchers, the upper-middle-class housewives pushing baby carriages along in candlelit processions, seemed to me to be behaving identically, without the excuse of being slum-dwellers.
Emphasis mine.
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. They weren’t anti-war — they were just on the other side.
Yeah, blogging’s light. I’m busy with the work I’m doing out in LA, plus I’m coming down with a cold, which often happens when I travel. As long as I hermit up at home I can go months without getting sick, but exposure to all of the exotic bugs in airplanes and with new people tends to get to me.