A review of Greg Autry’s and Peter Navarro’s new book, by Michelle Hanlon.

…but perhaps, ultimately, good news for the country?

Hard times make strong people. Perhaps they’ll be another “great generation,” like that of my parents.

…is here.

Red states are going to gain congresspeople and electoral votes in the next census, and blue states will lose them.

This is an interesting technology, that may have extraterrestrial applications.

A blog post about the meaninglessness of the other labels, and how this is the only important one.

[Update Saturday morning]

Sorry, didn’t mean to post this, it was supposed to be a draft as a reminder to write a post. Have fun in comments.

Don’t Californicate us, bro!

We’ve been thinking about relocating there (we already have a house in Golden), but things like this really make us hesitate. I hope there’s a big backlash. I’m tempted to throw those who want Colorado to remain free some money to help compensate for all of the funds coming from here.

[Update a while later]

Why Kanye West is leaving California.

For us, the question isn’t whether, but where (and when) to go.

Anthony Watts is reporting that he’s going to have to pay Tim Ball his legal fees. Let’s hope this is a good omen for my own case.

[Update a few minutes later]

It may be only court filing fees, not legal expenses, but we don’t have the whole story yet.

Jeff Manber says that space companies need to talk to each other more.

We came to the conclusion in our study … [that] there is no one company that can do commercial. One company does not make a market. … You need an ecosystem. You need compares that are doing things and other companies that use that and begin to put it into their business plan.

You also need advances in communications, like getting data down [to Earth] using advanced technology. You need orbital tugs to move hardware between [free flying commercial space stations] and the International Space Station. You need reentry vehicles, and a cost effective way to bring biopharma products and products made in microgravity like fiber optics back to Earth. What we laid out in our plan was a road map that has the government as one of many customers and a private sector that knows what each other is doing and can plan accordingly.

I’m in discussion with him, and others.

I flew into Detroit Friday evening, then drove up to Grayling in northern MI, stopping in Mount Pleasant to visit a niece who attends Central Michigan University. I got into my motel about 11 AM.

Then, yesterday morning, I make a one-hour drive to Traverse City, where I attended a Michigan Space Symposium. The founder of U.S. Robotics, who is from there, has been incubating space companies and encouraging them to set up shop there, in the hopes of making the state more prominent in the space industry. He has a 27,000 square-foot mansion on the west arm of Grand Traverse Bay, at which he hosted attendees Wednesday night, so I unfortunately was unable to attend. The hope is that they may even have a spaceport in the state.

It was an interesting line up, including retired General David Buck, formerly of Patrick AFB and the Cape, and retired General Wayne Monteith , the new head of the Office of Commercial Space Transportation. It was my first opportunity to meet him. The theme of the day was the need for both innovation, and acceptance of failure. I gave both a copy of the book.

There were also several people I knew there (some of them also from Michigan), including Chuck Lauer of Rocketplane, and Jim Ransom, with whom I had worked at Aerospace almost forty years ago, who is a Traverse City native, and has recently retired there.

I drove back down to the Flint area after the event, and today I’m attending a nephew’s high-school graduation in Linden, a small town south of there. Then off to DC tomorrow.

Wow, some engineer is really screwing the pooch at AM 1290 in West Palm Beach (the EIB station). Minutes and minutes of dual programming then minutes of dead air. At the top of the hour, news came on doubled up with something else.