Recommended reading for those interested in space–a nice piece in the Washington Post today on space tourism, and its continuing progress in getting taken more seriously. Odd timing, though–the reporter is describing a conference that occurred in late June.

When Rogers first started talking in public about space tourism, his wife, Estelle, refused to come hear him speak. “I can’t stand people laughing at you,” she told him. Today, as one Federal Aviation Administration official puts it, “space tourism now passes the laugh test…”

This is important. As Arthur C. Clarke used to say when asked when some technological advance would occur, “…about five years after we stop laughing at it…”

…When Anderson talks about the future of space tourism, he points to other benefits. For example, vehicles capable of hauling sightseers into orbit could also be used for rapid, point-to-point transportation. Washington to Sydney in 45 minutes, for example. Anderson believes “space business jets” capable of flying his suborbital missions will be available in three years, an optimistic timeline, according to the people at NASA, where they put the figure at five to seven years.

Given their track record, why does or should anyone take what NASA says seriously? Not that I disagree in this particular case, but I find it irritating that reporters always feel that they have to balance anything any non-NASA person says about space with a quote (often anonymous) from “people at NASA.”

It’s particularly damaging when the most-quoted person at NASA says nonsense like the following:

Daniel S. Goldin, who recently retired as NASA administrator after nine years on the job, says that NASA’s professional space shuttle crews know there is “a 1 in 250 probability they are not coming back.” He contrasts that with a 1 in 20,000 probability flying air combat and 1 in 2 million for commercial airline passengers. “This is very serious stuff,” he says, and should be reserved for highly trained professionals. “It is not for the faint of heart. This is not Disneyland.”

Who ever claimed that it was for the “faint of heart,” Dan? This is what’s called a “straw man” argument. The level of safety is simply not an issue, and in some cases, danger actually makes the experience more appealing. As the article points out (again quoting Space Adventures’ Eric Anderson):

Anderson acknowledges that in its early days, space tourism is bound to be terrifying, uncomfortable and, yes, dangerous. But then again, so is climbing Mount Everest. Yet every year more than 100 people paying more than $50,000 each reach the summit (and, on average, three a year die trying). Tito was airsick during the two-day ride to the space station, but, once there, he reported back to Earth, “I don’t know about this adaptation that they’re talking about. I’m already adapted. I love space!” Even with the risks, proponents believe there are enough people who want space vacations to create the economies of scale needed to reduce the cost of putting stuff in orbit.

More nonsense from Dan:

Goldin ran NASA from 1992 until last month, making him its longest-serving administrator. A poor kid from the South Bronx who had 25 years with defense contractor TRW before joining NASA, Goldin managed to survive the first Bush administration, two terms of the Clinton administration and the first year of the second Bush administration by being pretty adroit. But he also doesn’t mince words. “Flying rich guys and gals in space is not space tourism,” he says.

No, Dan Goldin was never afraid to mince words, even (or especially) when he didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. Just one of the many reasons that his too-long tenure at NASA was disastrous. We’ll see if his replacement, Mr. Okeefe, will actually support public space travel, instead of just giving it lip service while undermining it at every opportunity.

This article is one of the better ones that I’ve seen on the subject, and given that it’s in the mainstream press, it’s a milestone.

No posts yesterday. We got up early to drive down to the southwest part of the island, to a little fishing village called Parguera. There’s a wall a few miles offshore that constitutes probably some of the best diving on the island itself (the very best diving is actually off shore, at the islands of Desecheo, Mona, Culebra, and Vieques, of naval bombardment/protest fame). Puerto Rico has been heavily populated for too long to have good reefs–the outflow from the mountain rivers and waste have probably decimated them, relative to their pre-Columbian (if not prehuman) condition. Thus, Puerto Rico is a good base to operate from for diving at other islands (the Virgins, Saba, Bonaire, etc.) but not for diving itself.

We went with Paradise Divers (based in Parguera) who I heartily recommend. They have just the right degree of safety consciousness (unlike most operators, they’ll actually hang a safety line from the boat with regs at forty feet) while allowing you autonomy to go explore on your own (unlike some of the German “dive nazis” over in the Dominican Republic).

Anyway, though the sea was a little choppy (2-4 foot swells), which made entry a little problematic, the conditions were good (84-degree water–no wet suit required, at least for someone who, like me, learned to dive in cool California waters), about seventy feet of visibility. Saw a lot of fish (large schools of black durgeon) and a few angels (gray, french, and rock beauties), but nothing big, other than a barracuda (though some divers on the second dive claimed to see a white-tipped shark).

On the way back, we stopped in another little seaside town named Guanica, found a little shack that had a sign saying “Pescadero.” There were some guys hanging out in the yard (fishermen?). We bought a couple langosto, supposedly right off the boat, at six bucks a pound. We didn’t know the Spanish word for “fresh,” and were unsure how to ascertain their quality. Finally, brilliantly, Patricia asked “Hoy?” (today?). The proprietress nodded eagerly and said, “Si, hoy!” Of course, she might not have been referring to the provenance of the crustaceans in question, but just agreeing with the idiot Yanquis that it was indeed today, and not yesterday or tomorrow, in that part of the island…

It should be pointed out that it’s not as good a deal as it sounds, since probably over half the weight is shell and body, but still, it’s fresh lobster dinner for two for twenty bucks. We got home, butchered and threw them on the grill, nuked a potato and made a salad (Caesar, with Spanish olive oil). A delightful post-dive repast, with a bottle of Chardonnay from South Africa. Viva globalizacion!

Now back to your regularly-scheduled posts…

At her weblog Allison Alvarez enthuses that:

Hooray! A new Mersenne prime has been discovered and it’s the largest one yet. The new number, expressed as 213,466,917-1, contains 4,053,946 digits and would take the best part of three weeks to write out longhand. Sweet!

I’m curious to see the derivation of this time estimate. How many weeks would it take to write it out longhand without making a mistake?

At her weblog Allison Alvarez enthuses that:

Hooray! A new Mersenne prime has been discovered and it’s the largest one yet. The new number, expressed as 213,466,917-1, contains 4,053,946 digits and would take the best part of three weeks to write out longhand. Sweet!

I’m curious to see the derivation of this time estimate. How many weeks would it take to write it out longhand without making a mistake?

At her weblog Allison Alvarez enthuses that:

Hooray! A new Mersenne prime has been discovered and it’s the largest one yet. The new number, expressed as 213,466,917-1, contains 4,053,946 digits and would take the best part of three weeks to write out longhand. Sweet!

I’m curious to see the derivation of this time estimate. How many weeks would it take to write it out longhand without making a mistake?

Is it just me?

There are lots of reasons that I would never buy a Dell computer, but their ad campaign is just one more. I just don’t get the deal with this “Stephen.” Is it really effective?

I mean, maybe they figure that younger people don’t see the similarity (though I would have thought with Nick at Nite that even many Gen X and Yers would also). But to the degree that some of their market is boomers, why in the world do they think that anyone would buy a computer being promoted by Eddie Haskell?

And if people will buy a computer being hawked by Eddie Haskell, does this explain Bill Clinton’s success?

[Update]

Reader Stephen Karlson asks:

Only now have you recognized that this kid is the second coming of Eddie Haskell? That’s been common knowledge on words-l@uga.edu for a long time.

Yup. Guess I’m just “out of it” (whatever the heck “it” is…)

Will it sell computers? I don’t know. Is it any less goofy than the talking cow Gateway are using?

Less goofy? No. But given an endorsement by a cow vs Eddie Haskell, I’ll have to go with the bovine recommendation. If it can talk, it’s worthy of the benefit of the doubt, but Eddie Haskell…well…

Clearly, the Democrats have decided that the American people will (in that bizarre Clintonian concept) “compartmentalize” their approval of the Commander-in-Chief and their supposed concern about his domestic agenda. It’s possible they’re right, but if the particular tactic they’ve chosen to employ works, I once again weep for the intelligence and economic perspicacity of the populace.

Apparently, they’re running the phrase “Bush recession” up the flagpole to see how many salute. And their apparent rationale (I can see no other, since it’s been their main gripe with his economic policy from day one, if not day negative six months–i.e., during the campaign, as a “risky tax scheme”) is his “gargantuan (i.e., on the order of a percent of the GDP over the period) tax cut”.

Now let’s tie one intellectual hand behind our back, and ignore the fact that the recession probably started within two months of Bush being sweared in, and that the economy was in fact already slowing in the summer before the election, and that economies don’t turn on a dime, so our current condition was largely due to decisions made more than a year ago (ignoring the spike from the September attacks–surely even they aren’t going to attempt to blame Bush for that?).

Can these Democrats cite a single historical precedent for a recession being caused by a tax cut?

For extra credit, can they put forth a plausible theoretical mechanism by which this might occur?

No, I didn’t think they could…

Oh, well, at least we can be thankful that we don’t have Al Gore around any more with his mindless and oxymoronic phrase, “blowing a hole in the deficit.”

Did They Take Custody Of The Car, Too?

According to the Times (the real one–not that pretense of a newspaper in New York), the Cyclops (aka Mullah Omar) has been captured, but the US forces will not confirm it. Perhaps we’ll know more in the morning.

According to this report we have some data that strongly indicates that our memory capacity is indeed finite in a practical sense (i.e., we have to delete old memories to make room for new ones.

Interesting.

A useful discussion over at Instapundit (not to imply that Professor Reynolds is in the habit of discussing unuseful stuff) about gun registration and whether Ashcroft is following the law and the Constitution in not going through gun purchase lists looking for terrorists. In a previous post, Glenn mentioned that some of his pro-gun friends consider him “wet” because he believes gun registration to be Constitutional (though under the federal statutes he cites and quotes here, not legal).

This is an issue that continually rankles me (not gun registration, but the inability to distinguish between good ideas, and Constitutional ideas). Almost always, when discussing court decisions, each debater uses, as a center of gravity of the discussion, not what is legal or Constitutional, but what they want the outcome to be. I suspect that this is simply another symptom of the abysmal state of our educational system. Roe v Wade is a classical example of this. Supporters of the decision support it not because there’s a clear basis in the Constitution for it (even Ruth Bader Ginsburg is skeptical on that score), but because they want abortion to be universally legal, and the Constitution be damned. I oppose the decision not because I want abortions made illegal (though I do in fact believe that it should be left up to the states), but because I consider it an abortion of a decision, and one that sets an ugly penumbra of an emanation of a precedent.

I think that gun registration is a very, very bad idea, for reasons that have been discussed in length at many times in many places, but I agree with Glenn–it isn’t per se unconstitutional. It’s unfortunate that we can’t somehow segregate these two discussions from each other, because when they get entangled, as they inevitably do, it makes the issues that much harder to resolve.