If you’re the Federal government, and you’re doing one thing right, kill it!

I can only see one reason for the House Appropriations Committee’s push for NASA to “downselect” the number of companies building private spacecraft: pork barrel politics.

I’ve not looked into the congresscritters who are pushing the restriction of NASA funding to one or two companies yet. I know that two of them are Florida Republicans, Bill Posey and Sandy Adams. I simply cannot fathom any other reason for Republicans in the House to make such an incredibly boneheaded decision!

Unfortunately, making boneheaded, short-sighted decisions is not just in the purview of Democrat congresscritters. Republicans seem to be just as willing and able to do so. House members are supposed to be more responsive to their electorates than Senators, decreed so by virtue of the structure laid out in the Constitution. I expect that Representatives would do what they can to make sure tax dollars going into the Federal government coffers come back to their constituents.

NOTE: OK, kids, go into the other room and watch TV or read a book. Preferably Robert A. Heinlein or L. Neil Smith, if possible. Anyway, the adults and I have to talk and I may get emotional and use colorful language.

But: after decades of harping that the space program would be in better hands if not a governmental agency, just when competitive approaches to access to orbit are beginning to bloom – they want to kill them, and return to the bad old days when NASA was the only game in town.

THIS IS COMPLETE AND UTTER STUPIDITY. IT MAKES NO SENSE ON ANY LEVEL EXCEPT A LEVEL OF SELFISHNESS THAT SHOULD NOT BE DEMONSTRATED BY ANY OF OUR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES TO CONGRESS.

Mark my words, brothers and sisters: this has absolutely nothing to do with safety, “protection of government intellectual property” – whatever the Hell that means, and don’t get me started – good stewardship of our tax dollars, or any other high-handed phrases they can trot out.

It comes down to CONTROL. CONTROL OF YOUR TAX MONEY. That, folks, is really all the Federal government is about. Take the taxing power away  - or even restrict it – and the whole thing would wither and die in a fortnight. The fact remains that the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, THROUGH THE CONGRESS, CAN TAX US TO ANY EXTENT IT WISHES, AND WE ARE POWERLESS TO STOP IT. 

Do NOT give me crap about “we can fix it in the next election.” Look what this idiot has done to us in three and a half years. He flagrantly violates the Constitution and Federal law, and no one – even the Republicans in Congress – does anything about it. He browbeats the Supreme Court, threatens the Congress, and places blame for his own misguided ideas on everyone else, and we’re all supposed to be happy because he’s decided he’s for gay marriage. (Let’s not talk about how that announcement came right before a huge Hollywood fundraiser, because of course there is no connection.) And the alternative: I am not convinced Romney will be much better, sorry.

“But Stimps,” you say, “if you really believe in those crazy libertarian-leaning views of yours, why should you care? Shouldn’t those private companies be able to compete anyway with whatever company NASA might select?”

OK. Small words, short sentences. It’s not that complicated as to why that won’t work.

1. Government regulation. You can’t launch a rocket from US soil without jumping through about a million hoops first. Rockets are huge tanks of highly explosive chemicals, sheathed in metal; it’s supposed to be bad to launch one from, say, Indiana. The folks in Ohio where said failed rocket falls would be upset. So some regulation might be necessary, but – SpaceX wasn’t allowed to do their first Falcon launches from anywhere within the US, not even Florida. They had to go out to Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific. When the launch was scrubbed, they had to wait for another tanker of liquid oxygen to come from the US because they had lost too much of their supply to boiloff already. There are no sources of LOX on the Atoll, imagine that. The government put them so far away from the world that most people would have given up. Elon Musk, thank the Good Lord, is NOT most people. Still, the Federal regulations they had to go through to launch from Pad 40 at the Cape are incredible.

“But,” you say, “United Launch Alliance has to go through the same thing before they launch an Atlas or a Delta, right?”

OK…

2. There is no real competition if some companies get major favoritism from the government. United Launch Alliance is, actually, Lockheed-Martin and Boeing, dba as ULA. In 2005 SpaceX challenged them through antitrust laws as a monopoly. In 2006 the Pentagon and the Federal Trade Commission both gave ULA their blessing, of course. Case closed.

There was a big political reason for this, of course. It looked on the surface like privatization of launch services but the same people who had been doing the work for NASA now just got their paychecks from ULA instead of either the Feds or LockMart or Boeing. It is, in essence a shell company. Business as usual. And a bunch of folks working on the Florida Space Coast kept their jobs. Since this was during the wind-down of shuttle operations it was largely considered a Happy Thing. Unfortunately, SpaceX was right. ULA is the de facto only provider of orbital launch services to the US Government except for S.P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia, which builds and launches the Soyuz and Progress vehicles to the ISS. We’re not pushing EADS to build a man-rated Ariane 5, are we? (Oh, well, yeah, the Liberty launcher, with ATK, but I don’t know if that counts, seeing as how they are kind of on the outs with NASA right now. This is one of those endeavors I’m sure the Congressional Committee would like to be killed first. Well, maybe second, after SpaceX.)

Besides, there are really only four markets for space launches right now: commercial satellites, government (military) satellites, manned and unmanned missions to support the International Space Station, and soon, hopefully, manned and unmanned support of the Bigelow Aerospace orbital habitats.

More commercial satellite launches worldwide now go to Arianespace than to ULA – we’ve already lost that market, big time. Energia is going launch a Soyuz from the Arianespace launch site in French Guiana soon.  (Kazakstan is getting to be increasingly difficult to work in if you are a Russian, I understand.) The US government should be encouraging US companies to compete with the French and the Russians, not throw roadblocks in their way.

We can – and should – enable a competitive market for the ISS supply missions. That’s what most of the commercial companies are working toward right now, of course. They all believe – or they wouldn’t be in this game – that eventually there will be a much larger market for manned space flights. I don’t think any of them are stupid enough to believe that they can make a profit from only ISS flights, especially if there are several vendors vying for the same business.

“OK, genius,” you add, “what about Manned Exploration of Our Solar System and Beyond?”

Elon Musk is thinking about that. He’s made sure the design of the Dragon will allow it to be used in all kinds of places, like manned landings on Mars. By tying three Falcon 9 cores together to create the Falcon Heavy he will have the most powerful launcher in the world. And sorry, NASA’s SLS is still a pipe dream, folks. I’ll believe it when I see it take off from Pad 39A.

SpaceX Falcon Heavy

But SpaceX seems to be the only one thinking that far ahead. Boeing doesn’t count; the CST-100 has been built from the ground up as an ISS service vehicle. LockMart’s Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (AKA Orion) is designed to go to lunar orbit or to near-earth asteroids, so that’s a big plus for that vehicle. LockMart went ahead with development when the Orion program was officially cancelled by the Obama Administration, I think with a wink and a nod from NASA; since then they have received some NASA funding to continue construction of the test article and related stuff, like a simulator they build originally on their own dime. Lockheed-Martin is the largest defense contractor in the US; it’s not likely that any technology they create for the government is going to be shelved without them getting paid for it.

Blue Origin, Orbital Sciences, and SpaceDev/Sierra Nevada are all looking more at the sub-orbital and low earth orbit flight envelopes. I really don’t get what Blue Origin is trying to do; they are building a suborbital tourist vehicle, and then a totally separate ISS supply vehicle, and probably eventually a home-grown booster for it. But Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame is no dummy, and I figure he has a plan. He’s been very quiet about it, though – not necessarily a bad thing in a government-industrial-complex environment that is a lot like eighth grade in terms of gossip and favoritism. Orbital Sciences seems to be concentrating on the small satellite market. They’ve had some setbacks in launching their own home-grown liquid-fueled booster, which is needed to launch their Cygnus unmanned ISS supply craft. I really like the Dream Chaser lifting-body design SpaceDev is building; they are the only folks trying to orbit a truly reusable spaceplane. Their work is going slowly, thought, it seems.

Every single one of these approaches to manned orbital flight – Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, SpaceX, ATK/Astrium, Blue Origin, and SpaceDev/Sierra Nevada – have elements that sets it apart from the others. While all but SpaceDev are building “Apollo-like” conical vehicles, that decision makes sense. The research on such designs has been validated for decades and gives them all an easier path to building a successful vehicle. There are even several different approaches to emergency escape from a rocket in trouble, from a solid booster under the capsule to a ring of liquid-fueled engines to a traditional, Apollo-style escape tower.

Eventually, one or two of these companies might be the most successful and get the lion’s share of the orbital market. Even better, competition should bring the cost of lofting personnel and equipment to orbit far lower than the Shuttle could ever accomplish. Assisting what appear to be well-thought-out approaches with government grants makes sense only if the government is planning on being a major customer. If there was no ISS, and no NASA plans for further exploration, don’t fund ‘em at all. In this case it is somewhat of an “if you build it, they will come” scenario: the commercial space market will grow – I think it will explode – when there is real low-cost access to space. We should have had this kind of situation thirty years ago, but we got the Shuttle – a massive government employment program with a marginally-performing spaceship in the middle. Government restriction to one or two competitors means a major boost for those companies and a major disadvantage to all others. That’s not how a capitalistic society should work. The fact that it doesn’t work properly in so many other areas because of the meddling of government is no reason to destroy one area where it does seem to be working. It should be seen as a model for the cooperation of the government with private industry, not as a drain on resources.

One other thing: We are talking about a half-billion dollars a year here. Maybe, through the development life of the programs, four or five billion. The average cost of flying the Shuttle for just one mission: $ 450 million!

In these days of multi-trillion-dollar social programs and continual debates about defense spending, throwing a half-billion a year at something that could lead to humanity really getting off this planet someday seems pretty small. And unbelievably petty. So there has to be something else behind it.

Oh, and what’s this nonsense from former Apollo astronauts backing the House Committee? Have they lost their senses? Or were they so tied up in the government/military-industrial complex themselves in the Apollo days to not see what’s going on now? Note that Buzz Aldrin is not among this group. Buzz is out there sometimes, but he for sure gets it.

Adios, old friend…

What can be done about gasoline prices? Turns out, a lot.

This article by John Merline in Investor Business Daily outlines a number of ways the price of gasoline, or at least the rapid climb in the price we’ve seen recently, could be reduced.

Some of the price increase is caused by the loss of several refineries. But most of the increases in price are due to Federal government taxes, regulations, and fines. Read the article for the full list.

My favorite: recently, according to the article, “Congress left in place a 2007 law requiring increasing amounts of ethanol (including so-called advanced biofuels) in gasoline, rising to 36 billion gallons by 2022.”

The article continues: “In any case, the law has cost refiners almost $7 million in fines this year after they failed to add 6.6 million gallons of “advanced biofuels” as required. The problem is these advanced biofuels don’t exist commercially, and nobody’s sure when they will, which means even bigger industry fines going forward as the mandated use increases.” (Italics are mine.)

I don’t use this term usually, but WTF? The Federal government is collecting fines from refiners because the advanced biofuels it has mandated don’t even exist? Am I crazy, or is this completely insane?

I’m very afraid that we as a nation are sitting at home, watching basketball on our big flat-screen TVs, while the folks in Congress run completely amuck. What has caused us to feel so disenfranchised that we do not hold these people accountable for their actions?

I suppose that is for another post, isn’t it? I’d be interested in any answers you folks out there have for my question. Come on, you have the time…at over four bucks a gallon for gas, you sure as hell ain’t goin’ anywhere!

“Progressive” radio talk show host mocks tornado victims

So there is a “progressive” talk show host named Mike Malloy who has a long history of saying incredibly insensitive things. On March 2 he went on a rant about the people who were victims of the recent rash of tornadoes. Among his comments:

“Their God … keeps smashing them into little grease spots on the pavement in  Alabama, and Mississippi, and Arkansas, and Georgia, and Oklahoma. You know, the Bible belt, where they ain’t gonna let no goddamned science get in the way, it says in the Bible, blah blah blah blah blah. So, according to their way of thinking, God with his omnipotent thumb reaches down here and so far tonight has smashed about 20 people into a grease spot on highway 12, or whatever the hell highway they live next to.”

He has since apologized on his web site. Okay, so he apologized. He has a history of bizarre and hateful on-air statements.

Should we all send letters to his sponsors telling them to drop him because of his speech? That’s what’s been going on with Rush Limbaugh.

I’ve already said I believe Rush got carried away and went too far. He was trying to make a point but it got out of hand. Of course the “mainstream” media has gleefully reported that many sponsors have dropped his show. According to Rush, some have, but in most cases they were local sponsors buying time on the commercial segments reserved for local advertising during his show – not the national sponsors.

Rush can be over the top. He also can be insightful. Sometimes I agree with him, sometimes not – but he has always made me think. The stuff this Malloy guy said would just make me very angry. Apparently he used to be on WLS-AM, which is, ironically, where Rush is broadcast in the Chicago market. I dimly recall the name but I don’t recall hearing him.

Rush was trying to make a point about how the Administration is usurping our freedoms in yet another way. He didn’t succeed because of the direction he took the discussion and the resulting focus on the wrong things. What Malloy said can’t be justified in any way I can see.

But he’s OK, of course. I haven’t heard that the President called the tornado victims to make sure they didn’t feel bad because of Malloy’s comments. But he was very concerned about Ms. Fluke.

As is often the case, Jerry Pournelle presents a logical discussion about the issues of contraception, the Catholic Church, and freedom.

Heinlein was right, but the “Crazy Years” have been going on too long…

 

Asteroid DA14…wham!

Next February we will see a close pass (probably in the nature of 16,000 miles) of asteroid DA14. Maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe it will break up into pieces the size of “basketballs, and uh, Volkwagens, things like that.” Did I read that right? Sixteen thousand miles. Geosynchronous orbit is 22,200 miles! That’s where the communications satellites live!

All I can say is, where’s Harry Stamper?

About the current Rush Limbaugh flap…

He’s an easy target. He makes a living “illustrating the absurd with absurdity.” He is often emotional, and does not suffer fools gladly. He also has the largest audience in talk radio…in fact, one of the largest audiences anywhere in any media. He has coined many phrases used by not only by conservatives, but by people of all political persuasions. (For example, he created “operation chaos” to keep the race between Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama going through more primaries…and I’ve heard it used often by others over the last few weeks in referring to the Republican primaries.)

Now, I’m sure I’ve said some things without doing proper research from time to time. I expect all of us have. I have to say, though, that the statements I’ve read and heard from a variety of sources today seem to have been made without having ever heard the argument Rush Limbaugh made the other day.

I’ve been a Rush 24/7 member for years. I suppose that disqualifies me for this discussion. I have heard the whole argument, because I have listened to the audio files from earlier in the week.

As I understood it, Rush was making a couple of points. First, the entire “committee hearing” was a sham. The House Republicans wouldn’t allow “testimony” on the contraceptives/religious freedom issue the Current Occupant of the White House started. That decision was made by Rep. Darrell Issa, who has been critical of the whole issue in the past.

Therefore, Democrats decided to create a sort of a fake hearing to get their points out to the press. I’ve seen it referred to as a “Congressional Panel.” I guess that’s a true statement. There were Congressmen – but only Democrats. They listened to “testimony” from a “Georgetown University law school coed,” whose age was given as 23.

Except…Sandra Fluke is actually 30 and has a long history of promoting feminist causes. In fact, there is some evidence she decided to attend Georgetown specifically because she wanted to make the University’s health care policies an issue. She certainly was not a random female law school student, testifying as to the beliefs and concerns of all her fellow students. She is a woman with a very specific agenda.

So Limbaugh’s first point was that the entire “panel” was set up just to bring this issue to light in the way the Democrats wanted to present it, and the media lapped it up.

His second point was that, assuming Fluke’s testimony could be applied to all female students at the University, two things seemed absurd: if all female students were so concerned about contraception, they must all be having sex or contemplating same; and that they all believed it was the job of the Government to force health care plans to provide means of contraception free of charge. Georgetown, a Catholic Jesuit university, was a perfect target for Obama’s argument that all heath care plans should include contraception, even if they are provided by religious institutions that specifically discourage the use of contraception.

In his “illustration” of the absurdity of these issues – a sham “hearing” and a blatant infringement of religious freedom, not to mention the issue (still to be decided) of the constitutionality of Obamacare – Limbaugh used the absurd. If Ms. Fluke was sexually active – and she must be, or why should she be concerned about contraception? – why should her health care provider be forced to provide it? Granted, Limbaugh did have one break in his logic chain: the price of birth control pills does not increase based on the frequency of sexual activity – although condoms do, of course.

So, if Obamacare distributes the costs for health care across the largest possible group of people, then by extension, we, as contributors to Obamacare, are being forced to pay for her contraception. “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.” Robert Heinlein tried to make that into a pronounceable acronym in The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, but TANSTAAFL doesn’t fall right off the tongue. It still is true, though. The bigger issue here is that we are being forced, through taxation, to pay for many, many things that should not be the responsibility of government. Doing so creates more opportunities for control, both in taxation and in rules and regulations.

Limbaugh attempted to show that if the government provides (or forces other agencies to provide) contraceptives for sexually active, unmarried young women, then we – as the providers of the funds used to provide said contraceptives – are, in essence, “paying these young women for having sex.”

Put aside for the moment the fact that a thirty-year-old unmarried law student publicly admitted that she is sexually active. (Even though she did nothing to lead us to believe she is in a committed relationship, even.) You may also put aside the fact that she tried to project her situation to other female students. We may instead stay focused on the issue of the government promoting contraception to the extent of requiring even religious institutions to provide it.

This was the core issue – an issue of religious freedom and public policy. It was not an issue of one law student being sexually promiscuous. Instead, that issue was overpowered by a personal attack.

Limbaugh pushed his logic too far by trying to personalize it and focus it on one person. I’ll agree with that. His apology to Sandra Fluke demonstrated that he realized it as well. You may say that the only reason he apologized was because his advertisers were beginning to bolt, but I don’t think that’s true. I’m sure he got some heat from Premiere Radio Networks, which distributes his show, even though they were quick to support him publicly. Should he have called this woman a slut…no. I don’t think so. But should the President of the United States call this same woman to express his support? No. By giving this incident the focus that can only come from the use of the “bully pulpit” of the Presidency.

The discussion we should be having is why the President is willing to trivialize a constitutional issue. It’s not the first time, of course, and it won’t be the last. Why does he do it? Because it’s his deception tactic – “pay attention to this little thing over here, and you won’t see the great big thing going on over there.”

Okay, Rush Limbaugh said a stupid thing, or at least said a thing stupidly. Is that worse that any one of a number of things Bill Maher has said about other women? Of course not. It was said by Rush Limbaugh, though, which means it’s automatically the most horrible thing ever said by one human being about another.

Let’s get back to the big issues. Rush probably learned a lesson, and maybe we all can, too. Let’s be concerned about how more and more of our freedoms are being taken away, instead.

 

You mean I DIDN’T invent the term “monkey-fish”?

According to this blog, there have been sightings of Japanese mermen called “monkey-fish” for years. To quote Johnny Carson, “I did not know that.” I’d put the pictures on here but they are too ugly. They look like a fish up a monkey’s butt.

I guess I can’t continue to refer to my granddaughters as monkeyfish anymore. They are agile, and they do like to swim. Oh well. I wouldn’t want them to think I was referring to them like this.

OMG Marie Osmond?

Before and after - she looks like Terri Hatcher now!

I understand the temptation toward plastic surgery for those in the “entertainment” business, especially women. There is more than a little ageism in that industry. But some people take well to it, and have doctors who are real artists, and some…well, some end up just damned scary.

Marie Osmond was blessed with being “cute.” (Valerie Bertinelli was also one of those perpetually cute celebrities, for example.) Apparently the pull of celebrity life was too much for Marie.

I don’t know what they do to lips to make them look like that. It looks like whatever they did to Marg Helgenberger. I know, I’m just some middle-aged guy, what do I know. But geeze, people. Spend all that money, pain and effort, and get…well, you know.

I am once again glad I’m not a celebrity. And in this case, that I am neither a little bit country or a little bit rock and roll. You thought I could leave it alone, didn’t you? Nope. Too easy.)

Wikipedia scares me.

No, it’s not the pictures of scary-looking folk they’ve been putting on top of the pages lately. I used to tell kids when I was teaching that the internet was a vast resource but not an accurate one, or words to that effect. I told them that I could set up a site with totally erroneous information and fairly soon somebody would quote it.

It happened, sort of. En route to looking up something else, I found a reference in Wikipedia to this very blog! Sadly, the author of the entry quoted something I had said somewhat out of context. I was reminiscing about a colleague in the music profession who had recently passed, and related an anecdote I had heard second-hand. I can’t verify the anecdote…I heard it several decades ago. I found that anecdote referenced in Wikipedia, implied as fact.

It did reference the blog post, but when you look something up on Wikipedia, how many times do you check the sources? First, to see if the author of the article interpreted the source correctly and attributed the information correctly, and second, to see if the original source seemed reliable? Yeah, me neither.

So, folks, a word to the wise: Don’t trust Wikipedia as a source. It even uses me as primary source material – and as we all know, I’m not to be trusted!

If you can’t say somethin’ nice…

Presidents and Vice Presidents have been caught with an accidentally-live mic many times over the years. My favorite isn’t the Dick Cheney/George W. Bush 2000 campaign blunder, but instead the famous Reagan joke about declaring the Soviet Union illegal and that the bombing starts in five minutes.

However, the Sarkozy/Obama exchange last week at the G20 summit may beat them all. At least the others were light-hearted. These two supposed  world leaders should have better sense than to discuss their feelings about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu where there could be a live mic.

What this tells us, besides, are a couple of things I have suspected for a long time – first, that Obama is a petty little man. He should have better than to talk to another world leader in such a way at all, in public or not. I’ve never thought of those two as soul mates. They don’t seem to have the kind of bond that Bush 43 and Tony Blair did after 9/11. Instead, he showed himself to just basically not handle himself very well on the world stage – again.

Besides, it shows us where the US position with Israel really is, and it should show Netanyahu as well. Besides Thumper’s Dad’s warning – “If you can’t say somethin’ nice, don’t say anything at all,” both of these “statesmen” would do well to remember another basic rule:

“It’s better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.”