Bob Zimmerman says that the former “hovers over [the latter] like a vulture.”
While there are no doubt many in Congress with that attitude, I was actually encouraged by Chairman Palazzo’s remarks this morning at the Space Transportation Conference, in which he expressed support for an extension of the “moratorium” because it will “stifle innovation” to overregulate at this point. (Note: At the hearing yesterday, he used the phrase “learning period,” as industry does. It’s possible he used the “m” word because he was reading from notes put together by staffer that hadn’t gotten the memo.)
Mark the day that Glenn Reynolds agrees with the president. I don’t think he goes far enough here, though:
Right now, too many people go to college by default, even if they don’t usually major in art history. College is a status symbol that many regard as essential to membership in the middle class, but now it’s a status symbol that requires a six-figure investment, often supported by student loans.
There’s nothing wrong with going to college, and there’s nothing wrong with liberal-arts majors, so long as they’re rigorous: The world does not enjoy a surplus of people who can think critically and write clearly, and America is certainly not overloaded with experts in foreign languages. The real problem is with non-rigorous majors, which are common. Those cost just as much, but leave their graduates no better off than when they entered, and often in debt to boot.
If they were only no better off, it wouldn’t be as bad, but many of them come out of the experience notably less educated and malinformed, in the sense that they have been indoctrinated into the nonsense that the faculty provides.
George Whitesides responds to Tom Bower’s accusations (sort of), and Doug Messier analyzes.
I’ll simply repeat my long-standing belief that hybrids have been dramatically overhyped. If VG is smart, they’ll be trying to migrate away from them as quickly as possible.
Photos taken by several local people from a public road in the vicinity of the test site – some of which were provided to L2, while others were posted openly on the internet – provide a glimpse of the landing leg structures that appear to be closely based on the hardware that SpaceX is expected to employ when they actually fly with legs on a Falcon 9.
…limitations at the Texas site result in an AGL (Altitude above Ground Level) ceiling for Grasshopper of 2,500 feet.
Once GH2 arrives in New Mexico, it will be able to fly to much greater altitudes.
Gywnne said at ISPCS in October that they hoped to be flying out of New Mexico by the end of the year, so it looks like they’ve slipped that schedule. I was going to ask her at a meeting I had with her a couple weeks ago, but we were interrupted before I had a chance.