Category Archives: General

General, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Satire, Social Commentary

Some Thoughts On Comparing The President To Hitler

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They seem to have won back their democracy, no thanks to the White House.

As a test of the state of “Bush the Nazi” rhetoric, I went to Google and typed in “Bush is a Nazi” and got 420,000 hits, well behind “Hitler was a Nazi” (654,000 hits), but then Hitler WAS a Nazi and had a 75-year head start. (Computer searches like this are very crude instruments. They sweep up many references that cannot fairly be listed as slurs. But they do offer a rough idea of the amount of name-calling.)

President Clinton did fairly well in the Nazi sweepstakes (158,000 hits, but that’s only 20,000 references for each presidential year, compared to 120,000 annually for the 3 1/2 year-incumbency of George Bush.) The odd thing is that I typed in the names of every Nazi I ever heard of, excluding only Hitler himself, and the group total was still less than George Bush gets alone. This might indicate that either that George Bush is by far the second most important Nazi of all time, or that the Democrats and the left now require some sedation.

But that was then, this is now…

And remember, that was five years ago. I’ll bet that a similar search now would provide much larger results.

Business, Economics, General, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space

The Heavy-Lift Empire Strikes Back?

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Thoughts over at Space Transport news. It was a little dismaying to see Augustine’s comment.

I have no predictions as to the outcome, but I’m not particularly hopeful, given the nature of bureaucracy and entropy. But we are continuing to get useful ideas out there, for the private sector to pick up on even if we continue to waste billions on NASA’s HSF program.

[Update in the evening]

This article would indicate that the panel overall remains stuck in the conventional wisdom that heavy lifters are on the critical path to space exploration. One of the hopes for my piece in The New Atlantis was to break that consensus, but it doesn’t seem to have succeeded, so far.

[Late evening update]

Here’s an interesting chart (that appears to have been captured by a camera at the actual presentation) that summarizes the seven options currently being considered. I assume that “IP” is international participation (aka the Russians). I’m not sure what “SH” means, but perhaps one of my readers will be smarter at deciphering than me. I’m guessing something like “Super Heavy.”

Note that the panel (as a whole — there could be dissent among individuals) assumes that refueling is not an option within the current budget, as the chart is currently configured. Note also that it assumes that Ares V is required. I assume that these two assumptions are not coincidental. Take away the heavy lifter, and there’s abundant budget for depots, and other things.

The real question to me is: what is the driver for the perceived heavy-lift requirement? Is it a credibility factor with the flight rate necessary for smaller vehicles to deliver all the propellant for (say) a Mars mission? Or a “smallest biggest piece” (again for, say, a Mars mission) that begs credibility in terms of ability to assemble it on orbit? Or a “let’s keep the options open for some kind of need that we can’t anticipate”? Or all of the above? I expect that we will know the answers to these questions in a very few weeks. I don’t think that the panel will hide the ball the way that NASA did with ESAS.

But one hint might be in noting that the Mars mission (presumably to the surface) is the biggest driver — it assumes both “many” Ares V launches while also noting that refueling is “enabling” (i.e., cannot be done without it). This is a simple recognition of the reality that at some point, even the heavy-lift fetishists have to recognize that there is a limit to the degree to which they can afford to avoid orbital operations — there are some missions simply a bridge too far to do with a single launch.

Anyway, I’m slightly more encouraged by this chart, if for no other reason that it recognizes refueling as a viable option, and that minds are clearly starting to change. I may have more thoughts anon, though, and it’s a long way to August 31st, I suspect, with a lot of perturbations to come.

[Update a few minutes later]

One other point. The chart isn’t good news for Ares I.

[One more update before crashing to catch with with loss of last night’s sleep]

“Brad” has some more comments on the table:

1) The porklauncher, Ares I, looks dead. Only two of the seven options use Ares I, and one of those two options uses commercial crew services as well.

2) Commercial crew services is going to happen. Five out of the seven options exploit commercial crew services.

3) The Shuttle orbiter looks like it will still retire close to schedule. Only one of the seven options extends orbiter operations through 2015.

4) Ares V may not survive. Even though HLV is endorsed with every option, Ares V is only included in four out of the seven, and those four (IMHO) consist of the less probable choices.

5) Propellant depots are enabling to one option, and mentioned as enhancing three options, so depots are not ignored and have a fair chance for future development. Particularly when you take into account that commercial services are included in every option.

6) The ISS is not going to de-orbit in 2016. Five of the seven options extend ISS operations through 2020. The committee’s hope to expand international cooperation will only emphasize the importance of the ISS. Perhaps this might not be a drain on NASA, if international cooperation offsets the cost of flying ISS beyond 2016.

[Thursday morning update]

Todd Halvorson reports on the subject. Does anyone else see something missing in the reporting? You know, the thing that’s “enabling” for Mars First?

General

Thoughts On Dads

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…and cars.

I have my own dad and car story. As I’ve mentioned in the past, my dad was first an AC, and then a GM executive. He got company cars to drive, and he got discounts on cars that he wanted to buy. Generally, he would get a company car like a Caddy, drive it for a while, then buy it at discount, and then sell it to get a new one, on a yearly basis. But when I was just starting to become aware of cars in my “tween” years, my step-brother bought an Austin-Healy Sprite. Not the one that was a copy of the MG Midget (one of which I later bought myself on a whim because it was a great deal) but the original, “bug-eyed” variety (following in suit, my younger brother even later bought a couple of Healy 3000s, in the first one of which he had an accident when a woman made a left in front of him, with me in what passed for a back seat, and I got tossed out the back, with no serious injuries, but he and his friend in the front seat got some nasty face cuts from wheel and windshield — he bought the next one with the insurance money therefrom).

Anyway, I wonder if that, and the combination of a sort of mid-life crisis (he was forty-five, and about to have his first coronary, the second of which would kill him a little over a decade later) spurred him to buy the coolest car that he ever bought, at least to my knowledge.

The 1968 models (which came out as they always did in the fall of the previous year) represented a wonder year for me, as far as General Motors was concerned. The change in styling was so dramatic, that it almost seemed like I’d been instantly transported into the future. The lines were curved, not square, the windshield wipers were hidden, giving the cars a streamlined look. The Vette went from something that looked all right to the classic Stingray that I think is still the best-looking in its history (yes, I know many disagree — don’t waste time trying to argue with me in comments — you’re wrong. The early ones were ugly and it didn’t achieve its style potential until ’68).

And in that year of their, but not my, Lord, late 1967, my father ordered a 1968 Pontiac. A LeMans. A green one. A convertible.

And here’s the coolest thing. Unlike his Caddies, or Caddie wannabes, like a Buick deuce and a quarter, it had a stick shift. With a clutch. Three on the floor, baby.

I never drove it, because I wasn’t old enough, but I sure wanted to. We took that car a lot of places, with the top down, and I think my dad liked driving it, though after it died (a cracked bell housing that resulted in the clutch not disengaging, and not worth the money, at least to him, to repair) he went back to his standard living rooms on wheels. I wish I’d talked to him more about why he’d bought it. I wish that I could talk to him more about a lot of things.

It’s been thirty years now, but I miss you, Dad.

Business, General, History

Farewell, Central High School

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My old high school in Flint is being closed (as part of downsizing the city in general). It was the oldest existing high in Flint, I think, arch-rival Flint Northern having been closed and moved to a more modern facility while I was attending high school. Here are some pictures of the farewell from its many decades of alumni. I remember playing french horn in the orchestra on that auditorium stage.

And Gordon Young (not an alumnus — he attended the Catholic school) did something that I never did (though I did wander a lot in the steam tunnels) — he climbed the tower, and took some great photos. That blue dome you see in the distance is the planetarium in the arts and cultural center, a large campus of which Central was just a part. It also contains the main branch of the public library, an arts institute and museum where I used to take art lessons as a kid, Mott Community College (where I attended my first two years before transferring to Ann Arbor) and the former home of the University of Michigan – Flint, before it moved downtown back in the eighties. The trees over to the right of the planetarium are on the estate of Charles Stewart Mott, the General Motors philanthropist who made Flint one of the great places to live in the country when I was growing up, before it all started to fall apart, about the time I graduated from Central, in the early seventies recession.

I haven’t lived there since 1977, but I would have liked to attend this farewell.