Category Archives: Media Criticism

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

NGLLC Wrap Up

6 Comments

Alan Boyle has updated his coverage of last week’s and weekend’s rocket festivities up in the desert. Stupid comments like this are somewhat dismaying, as usual:

Definitely not a million dollar subject to write about Alan. These amateur rockets look like something cobbled together from legos by crazy kids. Write about these amateurs when they do something significant like getting one of their Frankenstein rockets into space, or to the moon.

The real news was the awesome success Ares 1-X had yesterday, why no Cosmic Log article Alan? NASA showed us they are still the professional adult at the rocket launching party. What a beautiful sight it was to watch the Ares 1-X launch live on NASA tv. We need to give more money to NASA to get the Ares and Constellation programs rocking and rolling to the moon and Mars.

Go NASA!

Yes, go NASA, which has billions of taxpayer dollars to play with, with little accountability. But yeah, let’s give them even more money.

Whereas Armadillo and Masten are accountable to their shareholders, which is why they accomplish so much for so little money. So who are the “adults” at this party, again? Give either of these companies one one hundredth of what NASA spent on the Corndog flight, and see how far they get with it. I’d bet a lot higher than the Corndog flew. In fact, I suspect that Armadillo for one will be higher within a year, with their existing funds.

[Update a few minutes later]

Mike Massee has put up a nice photo gallery.

[Mid-morning update]

Speaking of Armadillo flying higher, they got to almost two thousand feet yesterday.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture

Ah, Hollywood

29 Comments

Bad news from Lileks:

Over the fire I chatted with a neighbor who’s working on the “Red Dawn” remake. Get this: in the new version, China and Russia invade the US – to put a stop to our greed. There are times you wish you had a mouthful of kerosene so you could do a flaming spit take. If this is how the film turns out, it’ll be hilarious; it’s as if the filmmakers were a bit ambivalent about all the horrible jingoism that such a film might unleash, so they had to temper it with a bit of theoretical altruism that could be true, you know, in a sense. I almost expect the Russians and Chinese to invade to enforce Copenhagen protocols, and the brave Americans fight back for a modified rollout of carbon emission standards that will allow domestic industry to perfect the new HydroWind Energy System, which the Chinese don’t want because they just signed a UN agreement to respect patents of other countries.

Jeebus weeps.

[Afternoon update]

I have a confession to make. Despite accusations by leftist trolls in the past that I’ve worn out the video from watching it so much, I’ve never actually seen Red Dawn.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

When They Say “Do It For The Children”

13 Comments

…they’re talking about themselves:

Those unentranced by the magic flute have an obligation to remember what happened; to keep the history books free of revisionism so that by shame and memory those pied pipers who led a generation astray can never return unchallenged to sound their witching tune again. But for the children already lost to the dark we can only wish that wherever they have gone, they’ve found what they were looking for.

It’s unlikely. What they’re looking for doesn’t exist, and never will.

Media Criticism, Space

Non-Space Media Coverage

3 Comments

John Johnson, who I saw out at the test site in Mojave on Wednesday, has a story about the Masten feat at the LA Times today, illustrated with a photo by XCOR’s Mike Massee. My only problem with it is that he understates NASA costs:

NASA’s next-generation rocket, the Ares 1X, which was test-launched Tuesday, has cost tens of millions of dollars. Xoie and her predecessors have cost about $2 million.

Actually, while it’s technically true that Ares 1-X cost “tens of millions” (over forty tens of millions), it would be more accurate and less misleading to say that it cost hundreds of millions. Not to mention the fact that it flew Wednesday, not Tuesday. Tuesday was the originally scheduled launch date, but it was delayed until Wednesday.

So much for those much-vaunted “layers of editors and fact checkers” at the Dog Trainer.

Business, Economics, History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Eightieth Anniversary

3 Comments

I just realized that it was eighty years ago that the stock-market crash occurred, setting off the initial recession that Hoover and Roosevelt turned into the Great Depression. And we don’t seem to have learned the lesson. In fact, George Soros is spending millions to ensure that we don’t. Thanks, George!

[Update a few minutes later]

A little relevant history.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Most Transparent Administration In History

9 Comments

That phrase is going to seem as ironic as the Clinton pledge to be “the most ethical one.”

The administration repeatedly has stiff-armed Congress, the media, outside organizations and even a prestigious independent government commission. It has raised “none of your business” from an adolescent rejoinder to a public policy – to keep the public in the dark.

What is most disgusting is the hypocrisy, after all the sanctimonious criticism of Bush and the Republicans. It’s akin to Nancy Pelosi’s pledge to “drain the swamp” of the Republican “culture of corruption.” Yeah, tell it to Chris Dodd and Charlie Rangel.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Success Of The Corndog

27 Comments

Clark Lindsey has some useful thoughts. As he notes, it would have been pretty amazing if this test had failed, considering what a trivial thing they were doing, and how much they spent on it. If it had failed, it would (or at least should) have been the end of NASA, or at least Marshall, as a credible developer of rockets (not that they should have such a reputation now, given the history of the past three decades). Another SpaceX could have been founded and another Falcon 9 developed for the cost of that test. Which tells you all you need to know about the cost effectiveness of the NASA jobs program.

[Update a few minutes later]

Jeff Manber says that it was the wrong test, at the wrong time.

[Thursday morning update]

Chair Force Engineer has some thoughts on the Potemkin Rocket:

While Ares I-X was a low-fidelity test of a bad rocket design, the test’s fundamental flaws should not detract in any way from the Ares I-X program personnel who devoted the last three years of their life to making this test a success. While I strongly believe that Ares I-X should have waited until the 5-segment SRB was available, Ares I-X still taught NASA personnel much about ground handling operations and ocean recovery for the Ares rockets.

It would be churlish to imply that people who work on a bad project are bad people, and I’ve never intended to do that. I know from personal experience in the industry that sometimes you have to do what you have to do, and the real tragedy is that so much talent, and not just taxpayers’ money, has been wasted on this program. It was a huge opportunity cost, in time, dollars and people. The people who work on it both happily, and otherwise, deserve plaudits for doing as good a job as they could under the circumstances. Let’s just hope that their talents can soon be turned to more useful ends.

Media Criticism, Space

The Hits Keep Coming

10 Comments

…from Jay Barbree:

Heard on MSNBC at 9:48 am EDT: Jay Barbree says that Orion will carry a crew of “as many as 6 astronauts” and that the Ares 1 is the “best designed” and “safest rocket ever designed” .

Heard on MSNBC at 9:57 am EDT: Jay Barbree says “We have new people who do not have experience in this office who are trying to go through a commercial launch [for crew] and if they do it will be a delay for at least a decade before we have [something for] astronauts from this country to fly upon.”

This is (or should be) a continuing embarrassment for NBC. As I’ve noted before, they need to get an actual reporter, like Bobby Block, and not just a NASA cheerleader and faithful stenographer for PAO.