Given the news in other places, no one’s been paying much attention to Venezuela lately. Just in case anyone was still wondering if Chavez is really a dictator, and a Castro wannabe, he’s about to declare martial law, after murdering a few demonstrators.

It’s going to get worse, and maybe a lot worse, there before it gets better.

Everyone (well, at least many in the blogosphere) is demanding that Trent Lott step down after his stupid remarks about how much better off we’d be if Strom and the Dixiecrats had won in 1948.

I agree that he should step down, but not for the reason that many are putting forth–that he’s apparently an unreconstructed racist and segregationist. I don’t think that he is. I suspect that what he meant was that because Thurmond later changed his stripes, the turmoil of the sixties might have been avoided, though of course this makes no sense at all, since no one knows what Thurmond would have done later had he actually won in 1948 and had his segregationist world-view confirmed and rewarded.

There’s nothing new here. I believe that he should resign for the same reason that I’ve thought that he should resign ever since he took the post six years ago–he’s a politically tone-deaf idiot, a gutless wonder who presided over and enabled the sham trial in impeachment, and let the Democrats roll him time and time again. If he stays in power, he’s quite likely to continue to do and say stupid things that will lose him the Senate, or at least more likely than most of his probable replacements.

The reason for him to resign is that that’s exactly what Tom Daschle & Co. don’t want him to do (whatever feigned outrage they may express over the latest incident). He’s been far too useful an idiot for them.

Sixty one years ago today, the Japanese imperial Navy (fundamentalist Shinto extremists) attacked Pearl Harbor.

Thirty years ago today, Apollo XVII, the last Apollo mission, was launched to the Moon.

You think that we’re not at war with a culture? The Islamic equivalent of Toys’R’Us has Osama action figures flying off the shelves.

And now that it’s the Christmas buying season again, you may want to consider this, a hot seller last year.

The Ninth Circuit, apparently looking for another 9-0 overruling by the Supremes to add to their coup stick, has issued an opinion that the Second Amendment does not confer an individual right to bear arms.

Unsurprisingly, it cites Bellesiles. The judges apparently don’t get out much.

Equally unsurprisingly, Eugene Volokh has some excellent commentary, as does Clayton Cramer.

[Update at noon PST]

It just occurs to me that this is probably just the case the Supremes may be looking for to finally resolve the issue, even if the Administration wants to continue to try to have it both ways (i.e., stating that it’s their policy, but not actually changing any laws that would logically follow from such a policy shift).

We now have the Fifth and Ninth Circuits in diametrical opposition to each other, with this case and Emerson. It’s exactly the kind of case that the Supremes are necessary to resolve.

The gun grabbers shouldn’t be cheering this ruling, particularly when one understands just on what shaky historical and Constitutional grounds it rests. It may prove to be their Waterloo.

And Bellesiles may be the best thing to ever have happened to supporters of the right to bear arms, which is why Gary Wills, among others, is so angry at him now.

John McLucas has died.

I liked this little palindromic bit from the bio:

During World War II, he served in the Navy in the Pacific. Afterward he would describe his wartime work as involving “a project so secret that it had to be spelled backwards.” When pressed on what exactly this was, he confided that it was something called “radar.”

I didn’t know him well, but he was one of the good guys, and was very supportive of space enterprise. My condolences to his friends and family.

Next week, it will be thirty years since the last Apollo mission to the Moon.

Many, perhaps most of the people who made that feat happen are either retired or no longer with us. Those remaining are the institutional memory of the early days of the space program. NASA is trying to preserve it, and more recent experience, by interviewing and capturing the knowledge of their veterans, while it’s still available to do so.

Back in the fifties and sixties, we were building new launch systems and high-performance aircraft every year or two–it was a veritable assembly line of aerospace innovation, with a wide variety of projects for people to work on, and develop cutting-edge (at the time) technology. However, we’ve slowed down greatly since then, and put into place cumbersome government procurement procedures, with set program phases tied inextricably to unavoidable budget cycles, to the point that major interesting programs are now few and far between, and ponderously slow.

This has two results. First, within her career, your average engineer gets to work on many fewer programs these days, resulting in correspondingly less, and less diverse experience. Second, it’s a much less fascinating career with which to draw in some of the best and brightest of our technologists. Nanotechnology, biomedical breakthroughs, computer graphics–all of these presently offer much greater challenges and excitement than aerospace engineering in general and NASA in particular.

Sadly, much of this knowledge was never written down, or if it was, it has been tossed out, like old cancelled checks and tax records. When I was working at Rockwell International a dozen years ago, President Bush (the first) announced a desire to go back to the Moon and Mars. I wanted to resurrect the computer codes that had calculated the lunar trajectories during Apollo. I discovered that the last set of cardboard punchcards (which were the only way it had been stored) containing them had been disposed of a few weeks before.

Now, all of the hard-won knowledge that accumulated during the heady days of the X-15, and Apollo, and Ranger and Mariner, and dozens of other programs of which most today have never even heard, is dissipating into retirement or the grave. Worse, many of the things that these people know are less science than art, and not easily condensed into a textbook.

How to design a stable rocket propellant injector? How to shape a wing that will get a plane from the speed of an everyday airliner, through the turbulent hurricane fury of the transonic region, into a supersonic realm in which it outraces the sound of its own engines?

Some of these people, if in good health, remain available for consulting, but once in the grave, their secrets are lost to us forever, and in some ways, it sets us back years, and even decades.

NASA is to be commended for this program to capture what’s about to be lost forever. Anything we can do to hold on to the fragile knowledge base that took us to the Moon, or even, with all their flaws, built the Space Shuttle and other more modern programs, will reduce costs in the future should we once again revive the spirit necessary to take great steps on the high frontier.

Even from program white elephants (like the International Space Station) and total failures (like X-33) there are lessons to be learned, though sadly, unlike the lessons of the early space age, those lessons are lessons of management caution, and more about what things not to do, than how to do them. This just goes to show that no program is utterly worthless–it can always serve as a bad example for a case study.

And along those lines, as the article points out, this ongoing exodus of industry and agency personnel represents a double edged sword, and reveals a silver lining to the retirement cloud.

As mentioned in the Washington Post article linked above, it’s healthy for the industry to turn over its personnel, and bring in new blood. For at least some old dogs, the adage about new tricks is certainly true.

Yes, we’re losing a lot of valuable knowledge and experience. On the other hand, we’re also losing a lot of false certainties and misunderstood experience that’s been holding us back for years, particularly among management. There’s an old saying that “it’s not so much what folks don’t know that hurts them, as much as the things they know for darned sure that are wrong.”

They know that we cannot have lower launch costs without new “technology.”

They know that it takes billions of dollars to develop a new “low-cost” launch system.

They know that, unlike airplanes, launch vehicles require devices to blow up the vehicle if the slightest thing goes wrong.

They know that, unlike airplanes, putting pilots in space transports increases both development and operational costs by a large factor.

They know that no one in their right mind would pay money for a ride into space.

They know that only governments can fund space activities.

In other words, many in the industry remain certain of things that are absolutely wrong. Particularly (and sadly) many of them are in positions of authority, and with power over budgets, and program go-aheads, and young engineers’ lives and careers.

Which is why, based on their sage and invalid advice, the new NASA administrator can also make mistaken pronouncements, to the detriment of progress.

I mourn the knowledge being lost. We must do everything possible to not only capture and preserve it, but honor those who achieved so much decades ago, and march forward on the shoulders of those giants.

At the same time, I rejoice at the thought that many of those who remain mired in the myths of the past will no longer hold us back.

We must hold on to the good, and build on it, while remembering that the Cold War is long over, and build a new space age on its unlamented ashes.

The torch has been passed to a new generation.

I’ve got all-day meetings through Wednesday, so I’ll likely be posting little. On the other hand, if I take the trouble and time to put anything up under the circumstances, it’ll be pretty darned good…

Hard to believe that it’s been a whole year since George Harrison died.

Of course it’s about oil.

What the idiotarians who proclaim this to the rooftops don’t understand, though, is that, despite the President’s and Vice President’s backgrounds, it’s not about oil companies.

All this braying does is betray their fundamental economic ignorance. How does opening up a major new source of oil on the market, and thus dropping prices, help oil companies? If anything, this is one of Russia’s concerns about the Iraq invasion–that her oil will suddenly become worth much less in a newly glutted market.

So how is Iraq about oil? Oil is probably the reason that we continue to treat the Saudi thugs with kid gloves. We need to get control of Iraqi oil to a) no longer have to worry about the Sauds cutting off the supply (though in current market conditions, they probably need dollars more than we need the oil) and b) allow us to threaten to flood the market with cheap Iraqi oil, thus wiping out their current income stream, and perhaps causing their downfall.

And of course, the Iraqi oil will pay the expenses of setting up a demonstration libera Arab state in the fertile crescent that will be used to undermine the rest of the Arab world over the next few years.