This is a good illustration of how misunderstood the concept of “capitalism” is, and why we should prefer some other word to express the concept of a system of free markets.
[Late Sunday night update]
More thoughts at Volokh, with lots of good comments. Particularly on the distinction between Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.
[Bumped]
…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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
…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.
Looks like it’s the end of Rockets’n’Such. I wonder if we’ll ever find out who it was? I never really understood the need for the allegories. They often seemed to get in the way of communication, even for those familiar with the program.
Clark Lindsey makes a failed attempt to suppress snark about Ares 1-X.
Some thoughts from Popular Mechanics, and from Alan Boyle. Also, Clark has some more.
I would note carefully point five of the PM piece. I don’t think that most people really appreciate just how FUBAR NASA is in its current form.