Category Archives: Uncategorized

Space Guard

The most recent disquisition on the idea is now available on line, as a PDF.

[Update a little later]

Yes, it’s long and wonky (it’s an appendix of a Space Policy Institute study), but once past the first couple pages it gets more interesting.

[Late evening update]

For those not aware, “SSA” is a TLA for “Space Situational Awareness.”

[Update a few minutes later]

I read this several months ago, and only passed it on in a hurry this morning on my way out the door, but by way of encouraging interest in the article, here is a representative sample of it:

Throughout the early days of aviation, there was a network of mutually supporting connections between the predecessors of the Air Force and the aviation industry, including both aircraft manufacturers and the airline operators. All parts of the aviation world generally supported each other. Due to NASA’s peculiar status as the sole civil government space organization for the majority of its life, NASA on the one hand has tightly controlled its contractors and discouraged robust discussion of means and ends when such collided with perceived NASA organizational goals. Meanwhile it viewed the emergence of private entities providing service directly to customers with hostility, or at a minimum an awkward uncertainty as to how such efforts should interact with the agencies. A USSG would be able to start with a clean slate and strive for a more balanced relationship with an industry whose existence and prosperity is part of its charter and rationale. A USSG might better be able to have comfortable and useful interactions with the Air Force, NASA, and the commercial space sector.

Really, read the whole thing, if you’re into space policy.

What I Learned

from Shirley Sharrod:

The word racist is losing its sting. Racism used to be such a horrible thing to call someone, but since Obama became President it has been over-used by the left to describe anybody who disagrees with Progressive politics. It doesn’t seem as evil a word as it used to be, that is very sad.

…Damn, those lefty “reporters” really hate Andrew Breitbart. They couldn’t wait to pounce on him for this story despite the fact that they couldn’t have read his post that well. Do they hate him for his politics or because he does their job much better than they do? I pick both.

I did a radio interview on a Fargo station a couple hours ago (yes at 5:10 AM PDT) on my PJM piece, and have another one scheduled on the Martha Zoller show at 8:20 this morning (11:20 Eastern, in Gainesville, GA). We do seem to need a new word to describe the concept of thinking that someone else is inferior because they have a different hue to their skin, because the leftists have removed all useful meaning from the word “racism.”

[Update a few minutes later]

This week in racism.

[Update a while later]

What Sharrod’s speech wasn’t about — racial transcendence:

Pardon me, but I think I’ll stay off the Canonize Shirley bandwagon. To me, it seems like she’s still got plenty of racial baggage. What we’re seeing is not transcendence but transference. That’s why the NAACP crowd reacted so enthusiastically throughout her speech.

Yes, there does seem to be overshoot the other way. She’s certainly no saint, particularly given her slander of Fox News.