I’m not normally a big agitator for unmanned planetary missions. I’m not opposed to them, but I don’t find them all that urgent and compelling. Generally, I agree with Proxmire’s famous statement, “Mars will still be there…”

But in this case I think that the cancellation of this particular mission is a travesty and a tragedy. In the context of the total NASA budget, a mission to Pluto doesn’t cost that much, and it’s one of the cases in which it isn’t true that “it will still be there.” Pluto has an orbit such that it will get much more difficult to reach it if the launch doesn’t occur in the next few years, perhaps to the point that it will be decades before we have an opportunity to explore it (assuming, of course, no major advances in deep-space propulsion, admittedly a brave assumption).

Unfortunately, the problems aren’t just penny pinching–they’re political (what a surprise–politics in a government space program). First, they’ve designed to launch the mission on a new launch vehicle that may not be adequately tested to NASA’s satisfaction by the time the launch window closes. This problem could be resolved by using a Russian launcher, but that’s not poltically acceptable.

The other problem is that a mission that far away from the sun can only be done with a nuclear power source, called a radioisotope thermal generator (RTG). This isn’t a reactor–it’s just a lump of plutonium that generates heat as it decays, which is then converted to electricity. We’ve been using such power sources safely since the beginning if the space program, but the last few missions that required such power sources (most notably the Cassini mission to Saturn) have had to run a gauntlet of environmental approvals and hysterical and ignorant protestors, and there is fear that the delays from this for the Pluto mission could end up pushing it out beyond its date of viability.

So, barring some technological breakthrough, we may not see Pluto up close for many decades.

A lot of people have already mentioned this story about how the IRS has erroneously issued slavery reparations in the form of a tax credit.

It strikes me that this opens up opportunities for many more successful methods of reclaiming some of our tax dollars.

Let’s see, I probably have relatives who died in the camps in Europe, so maybe I should get a thousand dollars per. How about a tax credit to compensate me for the fact that the government’s tax policies have made it more difficult to raise venture capital?

Oh, I know. How about this one? I should be compensated for the pain and suffering of having to listen to the idiots in charge tell me that, like tax collection, health care and airline security should be a government function, because only government is capable of doing this competently.

Hurry and claim your credit–you only have until midnight.

An enlightening and entertaining interview with Aussie blogger Tim Blehh (phonetic spelling) can be found at Rightwing News. I advertise this even though I’m not a “right winger,” since I think cloning is not intrinsically evil.

(thanks to emailer John Hawkins.)

Over at warbloggerwatchers, our new pet cowardly anonymous idiotarian comments:

Something is goin’ on. I feel the winds of change blowing through the warblogs. First it was Shakespeare Sullivan’s realization that the continuation of the Israeli offensive might lead to some kind of insane world conflict that would disasterous for us all and lead to unbelieveable amounts of human misery and suffering (see below) and now I find that Daddy Warblogs faith in the sanity of the Israeli military operation in Palestine is being shaken by the fact that mass graves filled with Palestinians civilians are being found…

Can someone get the poor creature a dictionary, and lend him some commas? It’s probably hard to afford things like that when you’re selflessly and anonymously and breathlessly fighting injustice and war crimes. I mean, whose sentences wouldn’t run on, and on, and on, like the deEnergizer (dumb) bunny?

Actually, I don’t usually criticize other people’s writing, except that in his very next post, he says:

…I see the usual suspects: Ken Layne, Will Vehrs, Rand Simberg, Tim Blair and others. The first thing I’m struck by is how mediocre and third-rate the writing is. That’s too be expected, I suppose.

At least I’m in good company. And note that in the last sentence, he uses the word “too,” when he obviously intends “to.” The irony is intense. As Christopher Johnson notes in the comments section, “Pot, meet kettle.”

Hmmm…”I’m struck by…how mediocre and third-rate the writing is…”

Maybe I’ll put that up as my new blog slogan.

Ah, well, guess I should quit reading blogs, and get back to pitchforking babies, like the rest of my partners in war crime…

[Sunday night update]

This is too hilarious.

That’s too (sic!) be expected, I suppose.

He didn’t correct it. He didn’t explain it. He just added a (sic!), as though it was someone else writing it, and he was reporting it.

What an idiot.

And he’s still got no commas in the never-ending sentence.

Over at warbloggerwatchers, our new pet cowardly anonymous idiotarian comments:

Something is goin’ on. I feel the winds of change blowing through the warblogs. First it was Shakespeare Sullivan’s realization that the continuation of the Israeli offensive might lead to some kind of insane world conflict that would disasterous for us all and lead to unbelieveable amounts of human misery and suffering (see below) and now I find that Daddy Warblogs faith in the sanity of the Israeli military operation in Palestine is being shaken by the fact that mass graves filled with Palestinians civilians are being found…

Can someone get the poor creature a dictionary, and lend him some commas? It’s probably hard to afford things like that when you’re selflessly and anonymously and breathlessly fighting injustice and war crimes. I mean, whose sentences wouldn’t run on, and on, and on, like the deEnergizer (dumb) bunny?

Actually, I don’t usually criticize other people’s writing, except that in his very next post, he says:

…I see the usual suspects: Ken Layne, Will Vehrs, Rand Simberg, Tim Blair and others. The first thing I’m struck by is how mediocre and third-rate the writing is. That’s too be expected, I suppose.

At least I’m in good company. And note that in the last sentence, he uses the word “too,” when he obviously intends “to.” The irony is intense. As Christopher Johnson notes in the comments section, “Pot, meet kettle.”

Hmmm…”I’m struck by…how mediocre and third-rate the writing is…”

Maybe I’ll put that up as my new blog slogan.

Ah, well, guess I should quit reading blogs, and get back to pitchforking babies, like the rest of my partners in war crime…

[Sunday night update]

This is too hilarious.

That’s too (sic!) be expected, I suppose.

He didn’t correct it. He didn’t explain it. He just added a (sic!), as though it was someone else writing it, and he was reporting it.

What an idiot.

And he’s still got no commas in the never-ending sentence.

Over at warbloggerwatchers, our new pet cowardly anonymous idiotarian comments:

Something is goin’ on. I feel the winds of change blowing through the warblogs. First it was Shakespeare Sullivan’s realization that the continuation of the Israeli offensive might lead to some kind of insane world conflict that would disasterous for us all and lead to unbelieveable amounts of human misery and suffering (see below) and now I find that Daddy Warblogs faith in the sanity of the Israeli military operation in Palestine is being shaken by the fact that mass graves filled with Palestinians civilians are being found…

Can someone get the poor creature a dictionary, and lend him some commas? It’s probably hard to afford things like that when you’re selflessly and anonymously and breathlessly fighting injustice and war crimes. I mean, whose sentences wouldn’t run on, and on, and on, like the deEnergizer (dumb) bunny?

Actually, I don’t usually criticize other people’s writing, except that in his very next post, he says:

…I see the usual suspects: Ken Layne, Will Vehrs, Rand Simberg, Tim Blair and others. The first thing I’m struck by is how mediocre and third-rate the writing is. That’s too be expected, I suppose.

At least I’m in good company. And note that in the last sentence, he uses the word “too,” when he obviously intends “to.” The irony is intense. As Christopher Johnson notes in the comments section, “Pot, meet kettle.”

Hmmm…”I’m struck by…how mediocre and third-rate the writing is…”

Maybe I’ll put that up as my new blog slogan.

Ah, well, guess I should quit reading blogs, and get back to pitchforking babies, like the rest of my partners in war crime…

[Sunday night update]

This is too hilarious.

That’s too (sic!) be expected, I suppose.

He didn’t correct it. He didn’t explain it. He just added a (sic!), as though it was someone else writing it, and he was reporting it.

What an idiot.

And he’s still got no commas in the never-ending sentence.

As usual, Mark Steyn has got the Arabs’ and the EU’s number.

Rita Cosby spent much of the last half of her show “Foxwire” on the space program tonight.

First up she had Jim Lovell, who’s Apollo XIII anniversary is today, on April 13, the day it launched. I’m not superstitious, but I’m still amazed at the fact that Apollo XIII (13) launched on April 13, at 13:13 (1:13 PM in the afternoon).

But she didn’t spend much time on history–she wanted to talk about air safety, for which he’s been responsible to some degree since September 11. Unfortunately, he put out the same pablum that we’ve been getting from officials since then–it’s safe to fly because we’ve upped the (idiotic) security procedures.

More interesting was her next guest, Lori Garver. She was portrayed as just an ordinary mom who is going to go into space. Now, I actually know Lori pretty well, and like her, but I thought this was a little misleading and disingenuous.

Lori is a former NASA Associate Administrator for Plans and Policy. When the new administration came in, she was shown the door (presumably being perceived as part of the Clinton team). Now she’s a VP at DFI, a “beltway bandit”–a consultant that makes a lot of money off of government contracts. She probably wouldn’t have that job if she didn’t bring a lot of connections to the table from her former government experience. In addition, she used to be the Executive Director of the National Space Society, a pro-space advocacy group (though, unfortunately, pro-space to NSS generally meant “pro-NASA”).

Now I’m cheering for her to go, and if she does, she’ll probably be a good spokesman for ordinary citizens to go into space (though she’s hardly an ordinary citizen herself, as the brief curriculum vitae described above shows). But they really should give a little more background, rather than raising false hopes that anyone can go right now, which unfortunately is still not the case, though if she goes, it may bring the day closer to making this true.

The main point of the story was that she is competing with Lance Bass, but it’s not clear that it’s competition as much as simply additional customers for the service. She also mentioned yet another candidate coming out of the woodwork, of whom I hadn’t previously heard, and whose name and affiliation I either don’t remember, or she didn’t say.

She gave a pretty good interview, as I would have expected, but I was disappointed at one point, when she was asked how her trip, and that of other space travelers, would advance the cause. She said that it would raise public awareness of it, which is true, and vague.

The correct answer (assuming that it really is a result) is that it will demonstrate that there really is a market for this, and this may spur much-needed private investment into low-cost space transportation, finally breaking us out of the government-funded rut in which we’ve been stuck for over four decades.

Just as a Saturday night update, we’ve broken the 200 barrier on the signatures.

Next week, we need to make an all-out push to publicize this.