We Don’t Cancel the Fact Check

Mike Griffin defended the budget averaging $8 billion/year for a Moon return (0.05% of 2018 GDP) by saying, “We Don’t Cancel the Navy” as MSNBC headlined. Actually we did cancel the Navy after the Revolutionary War and didn’t start it up again until 1794.

I spoke to my dad, the pre-civil war American History Professor Emeritus and he had forgotten that the Navy had been cancelled. I respectfully withdraw my media criticism. I guess it needs to be refiled under media witticism.
Update 2005-09-21-10:55:00

What, No Vichy Britain?

Non-Americans, and particularly French non-Americans, are fond of noting how ignorant Americans supposedly are of the rest of the world and history. Which makes it all the more ironic that the French foreign minister apparently doesn’t know that Hitler never conquered Britain:

Needless to say, Douste-Blazy’s question was met by his hosts with amazement. “But Monsieur le minister,” Le Canard quoted the ensuing conversation, “England was never conquered by the Nazis during World War II.”

The minister apparently was not content with this answer, which, according to the magazine, was given by the museum curator, and persisted, asking: “Yes, but were there no Jews who were deported from England?”

Well, I suppose that he should at least be given some credit for deigning to visit that “sh**ty little country,” Israel, and the Holocaust museum.

Old Media Becomes New

Ben Chertoff and Carl Hoffman at Popular Mechanics are live blogging the public announcement of NASA’s exploration architecture from NASA HQ. Chertoff’s calling it NASA’s “lunar retread.”

[Update at 1:15 PM EDT]

Griffin on commercial contractors:

…when you use a prime contractor in the traditional way it IS more expensive, but at least you know that you’ll get what you ask for. We don’t want to get in a position where we ask for something and they can’t make it happen.

Yeah, they cost more, but we all know that prime contractors never fail to come through.

I’m with Hoffman:

Only one question about commercial space activities – Rutan, X prize, Bezos, Elon Must [sic], who’s about to launch his first rocket with commercial payload into orbit for a reported $16 million – that was never mentioned by Griffin himself. And that has to make you wonder whether anything has changed at all…

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!