Year: 2014

“There’s no compassion in the Affordable Care Act.”

9:20 am

“There’s no compassion in the Affordable Care Act.”

From a pastor who has discovered at the last moment that the insurance under Obamacare did not cover his life-saving chemo treatments, putting him $50,000 in debt.

But since we know that this pastor is lying, according to Harry Reid, he must be ignored.

And then there’s this liar: Obamacare leaves Las Vegas man owing $407,000 in doctor bills.

What is Harry Reid going to do with all these liars hanging around making up stories about Obamacare?

2 comments

Putting a spacecraft back in the orbit it was intended, thirty-one years later.

9:14 am

Putting a spacecraft back in the orbit it was intended, thirty-one years later.

The spacecraft, ISEE-3, was intended to study the solar wind and the connection between the Sun and the Earth. In 1986 it was diverted instead to take a look at Halley’s Comet. Now there is an opportunity to return it to its original task, assuming engineers can wake it up after three decades.

2 comments

Scientists think they have detected active volcanoes on Venus.

3:12 pm

Scientists think they have detected active volcanoes on Venus.

We should hear more about this story in the next couple of days, after the scientists give their presentation at a science conference today. Note too that this result would only confirm other data, such as the fluctuating levels of sulfur in Venus’s atmosphere, that have suggested active volcanoes hidden under that planet’s thick cloud cover.

0 comments

The first test flight of NASA’s Orion capsule has been delayed from September to December.

8:50 am

The first test flight of NASA’s Orion capsule has been delayed from September to December.

The supposed reason is to allow a military launch to get the best launch opportunity first. I find this excuse to be quite lame, and instead suspect that the NASA program needed more time but did not want to admit this publicly.

The delay moves the launch until after the November elections. Watch the political pressure continue to build to end this expensive, bloated, and not-very-useful boondoggle.

2 comments

Comments again

1:10 pm

Just want to let my readers know that I will be out of town, caving in the mountains southeast of Tucson this weekend, out of range of the internet.

Because the comments presently need to be manually approved by me because the spam filter is still not working, no comments further will be approved until Sunday evening. If you post, be patient, your comment will appear then.

0 comments

One liberal pundit proposes that Democrats embrace Obamacare in the coming election campaign.

11:51 am

One liberal pundit proposes that Democrats embrace Obamacare in the coming election campaign.

Here’s a heretical idea. Rather than parsing the individual elements of the law, and trying to persuade voters on an à la carte basis, what about raising the stakes and defending the reform in its entirety as a historic effort to provide affordable health-care coverage to tens of millions of hard-working Americans who otherwise couldn’t afford it? Instead of shying away from the populist and redistributionist essence of the reform, which the White House and many Democrats in Congress have been doing since the start, it’s time to embrace it.

I hope they do it. For one thing, it would be refreshing to see Democrats actually campaigning honestly for once on what they actually believe in! For another, they would get creamed, because their fantasies about how wonderful Obamacare is have nothing to do with the horrible reality being experienced right now by millions of Americans.

2 comments

Arianespace and the Russian-owned Sea Launch are seeking to get the restrictions against them removed so that they can sell their services to more customers.

9:26 am

The competition heats up: Arianespace and the Russian-owned Sea Launch are seeking to get the restrictions against them removed so that they can sell their services to more customers.

Arianespace wants to sell its launch services to the U.S. government, something it is not allowed to do right now because of U.S. restrictions. These are the same kinds of restrictions that has prevented SpaceX from launching military satellites and which that company is now contesting.

Russia meanwhile wants to use Sea Launch for its own payloads, but because Sea Launch’s platform is based in California, the Russian government won’t allow their payloads on it because of security reasons. They want the platform moved to Russia so that they can use their own company to launch their own satellites.

The article also describes how Japan is trying to reduce the cost of its H-2A rocket by 50% so that it can become more competitive.

All in all, I would say that the arrival of SpaceX has done exactly what was predicted, shaken the industry out of its doldrums. How else to explain this sudden interest in open competition and lowering costs? These companies could have done this decades ago. They did not. Suddenly a new player arrives on the scene, offering to beat them at their own game. It is not surprising that they are fighting back.

5 comments
1 … 135 136 137 138 139 … 170