This is a good time to use US dating conventions.

From Jerry Pournelle’s site:

“For those whose dating conventions are mm/dd/yy, at 5 minutes & 6 seconds after 4 a.m. on July 8th, we’ll have 04:05:06 07/08/09.”

I meant the way we display dates in the US – mm/dd/yy. What did you think I meant?

Question of the Day

Which would you rather have, a flux capacitor..

or an oscillation overthruster:

Assuming they would cost the same, of course…

For You Science Folks Out There…

I was watching an old episode of NCIS on USA tonight and they played bits of “The Element Song.” It’s a Tom Lehrer bit from the 1950s using the tune from the Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Modern Major General.”

Anyone going to write a tag for the newer elements?

So, see how the Cat helps you learn science? Another free service of OGCIE.

Another Republican To Watch

Michele Bachmann, R-MN

Michele Bachmann, R-MN, took a clear and eloquent stand against the cap and trade bill on the House Floor Friday night in less than 60 seconds. I had not heard of her before, but a little research shows her to be a Reagan conservative and that the left absolutely hates her, so she would get my vote!

I can’t seem to embed video from RealClearPolitics, so here’s the link.

Yep, she said a choice between “Liberty and Tyranny.” Just like Mark Levin’s book. It’s almost Independence Day – NOT the “Fourth of July” – INDEPENDENCE DAY! So now would be a great time to order Mark’s book. That’s assuming you don’t already have it. you have it, don’t you? Have you read it yet? It’s not a difficult read, you know. Go get it. I don’t make a dime on this…I just think it’s the best way for someone who has not been paying much attention to national politics – and that’s most of us – to see what is really going on, and what needs to be done to make America a better place.

Now, I have have to say “Make America a better place, before it’s too late.” Sorry for that, but it’s true.

“First, we kill all the lawyers…”

OK, it’s a paraphrase from the Bard of Avon. And no, I’m not advocating murder, of one or a class of people. Before I explain, I found this on teh interwebs:

“The first thing we do,” said the character in Shakespeare’s Henry VI, is “kill all the lawyers.” Contrary to popular belief, the proposal was not designed to restore sanity to commercial life. Rather, it was intended to eliminate those who might stand in the way of a contemplated revolution — thus underscoring the important role that lawyers can play in society.”

Link

Now let’s look at something like this cap and trade bill, or the Waxman – Markey Bill. 1300 pages at last count. Supposed to protect the environment, force us to “make greener decisions,” stuff like that. Lots ‘o taxes and “incentives,” redistributin’ the wealth. Yours and mine.

I just finished Glenn Beck’s Common Sense. I talked about it in a previous post. Beck’s essential premise is that we need a new revolution, a non-violent, common-sense one in which we turn the bastards out and remake the government in a more reasonable, less controlling image. I found a couple of places where the number 36% was quoted for the number of congresscritters who are lawyers, but those are practicing lawyers, not the number with law degrees. That number, according to this source, is 43%.

To get to the point, one of the ways the Congress makes it more difficult for us to stop them from controlling us is by making bills incredibly complex. The TARP bill, this cap and trade bill – many of the bills passed now by Congress are so long, and so complex, that congresscritters say they can’t read them all the way through. What? It’s your job to read it all the way through!

Maybe this commercial shouldn’t be so far from the truth:

Congressmen were supposed to be representatives of the people. I know the world is a complex place, economics is complex, lots of things are complex. Still, if a bill is too long or too complicated to understand, it’s a bad bill!

My point is that we need to simplify government, and that’s going to take regular people. It will be a new revolution, and lawyers should not stand in the way of it. That’s not “protection,” unless you mean it as in “protection racket.”

Oh, and the cap and trade bill: it’s bad anyway. Go to Heritage.org and find out why.

Michael Jackson Passed

He made white socks fashionable...for the 80s.

Just in case this is the only place you go for your news. OK, so you don’t care? If you’re over 20, one word: Thriller. Now it’s in your head, isn’t it?

You don’t have to thank me. It’s just another service we provide at OGCIE.

New Theme

The old theme looked funny on the Toshiba tablet. It has a yellowish cast to the display that I can’t seem to fix. I switched themes, and actually had to find the image again…and ended up using a different one. Similar, though. Hope you like it.

Schroedinger’s Cat In Verse

Is the kitteh alive or dead?

For those of you who don’t get quantum physics, here’s something I just found…an explanation of the Schroedinger’s Cat thought experiment, in verse – as if Dr. Seuss taught it. Link

Oh noes! Fractal kittehs!

Turnabout is fair play

I find it hard to stop...

Buzz Aldrin On Our Future In Space

Apollo 11 Astronaut Buzz Aldrin

Buzz Aldrin, who really did have his name legally changed to “Buzz,” wrote an article for Popular Mechanics recently that criticizes the current path our national manned space program is going and offers an alternative.

Aldrin doesn’t like the solid boosters. Neither do a lot of other folks. He’s a proponent of the Delta IV Heavy or the Atlas V as a possible launch vehicle for the Orion spacecraft. He also proposes that the commercial launch vehicles like the SpaceX Falcon 9, using the in-development Dragon manned vehicle, could take up a lot of the slack.

As far as going to Mars, he’s for smaller steps, using a modified version of the canceled ISS Habitation Module that he calls the Exploration Module. He proposes doing an asteroid mission first, then using Phobos as a base for Mars landing missions. It’s pretty much the opposite of Zubrin’s Mars Direct, except for using robot spacecraft to help prepare the way.

Aldrin proposed his own flyback booster concept about ten years ago, the StarBooster. He has an MIT doctorate – he literally wrote the book on in-orbit rendezvous procedures – and has been active in a lot of pro-space exploration groups. I think he’s worth listening to.

SpaceX Falcon 9 on the pad

The problem is, of course, that we’re about five years into this thing. The Ares solid/liquid booster is going to be test flown in a few months. The Orion capsule, while it’s been growing in weight as it develops, is pretty much finalized, at least to Block I. I don’t know how hard it would be to man-rate a Delta IV Heavy. It didn’t seem like a bad idea a couple of years ago. Why didn’t it get more consideration.

Jerry Pournelle would argue that it’s too simple and wouldn’t keep all the federal employees working, and NASA has become a federal jobs program, not a space program. He could very well be right. SpaceX seems to be running things with far fewer people because they can’t afford more. When we were going to the moon – at least in the early days of Mercury and Gemini – if we needed another guy at another desk, we added it.

Granted, we can monitor things more easily by far using today’s c omputers and instruments than we could in 1966. Still, the Ares are still supposed to be using the Pad 39 launch systems. Do we need something so extensive, including a crawler, for the Stick? The Russians have been loading out their Soyuz launchers for fifty years using a railroad car and a crane. Maybe we could learn something from their example.

Soyuz on the cradle

I don’t know if Ares is the way to go, if Delta or Atlas would be better, or if the DirectLaunch guys, using hardware leveraged even more from the Shuttle program, is the right answer. I hope the Augustine Commission can make some sense of this and the Obama Administration can get on with it. Something tells me that’s not going to be the case, though.

What I don’t want to see us do is waffle. Every time we stall to rethink this stuff, we spend more money with no result. I’d love to see a booster that takes 100 people to set up and launch, not 10,000. That by itself will drop the price of launches enough that maybe we can get some hardware up there, and maybe a few more people, too!

DirectLaunch with Ares

And yes, Buzz Aldrin recently did a rap tune. I didn’t link it because you shouldn’t have to listen to it. Great thinker, American hero…not a rapper. Really. Dude, what were you thinking?

By the way, remember that the 40th Anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the moon is less than a month away.

And This Guy Was Supposed To Be A Presidential Contender?

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford told everyone he was going hiking, and then used a state car to go to the airport to fly to Argentina to see his mistress – on Father’s Day weekend! And this guy was supposed to be a Republican hopeful for the Presidency in 2012. Honest to God, isn’t there anybody in national politics who isn’t a complete moron? It’s freakin’ depressing.