The Senate has passed a bill to allow the continued sale of the government’s stockpile of helium, but this time at market prices.
The House has already passed a similar bill. The two sides of Congress now have to come to agreement. If they don’t, come October sales cease and the supplies dry up.
Republicans in the House move to fund the government, excluding Obamacare.
If the government shuts down because of this budget proposal it will be because the Democrats refused to sign it. It will be because the Democrats would rather keep Obamacare then keep the government operating.
A NASA veteran slams the Space Launch System (SLS).
The problem with the SLS is that it’s so big that makes it very expensive. It’s very expensive to design, it’s very expensive to develop. When they actually begin to develop it, the budget is going to go haywire. They’re going to have all kinds of technical and development issues crop up, which will drive the development costs up. Then there are the operating costs of that beast, which will eat NASA alive if they get there. They’re not going to be able to fly it more than once a year, if that, because they don’t have the budget to do it. So what you’ve got is a beast of a rocket, that would give you all of this capability, which you can’t build because you don’t have the money to build it in the first place, and you can’t operate it if you had it.
Q: What do you see as the alternative?
A: In the private sector we’ve got an Atlas and a Delta rocket, and the Europeans have a rocket called the Ariane. The Russians have lots of rockets, which are very reliable, and they get reliable by using them. And that’s something the SLS will never have. Never. Because you can’t afford to launch it that many times.
The law is such an inconvenient thing: Despite a congressional ban against providing ACORN or any of its affiliates money, HUD handed the organization $200k.
It also appears that this is not the first time the Obama administration has ignored the ban and illegally given ACORN or its affiliates money.
A report by NASA’s inspector general of the Orion program says it faces delays and budget overruns.
I’m not surprised. The audit [pdf] tried to put a good spin on NASA’s effort to build this capsule, but you can’t make a beauty queen out of a cockroach. Even though I truly believe that the agency has worked hard to try to contain costs and meet its schedule, it is impossible for NASA to succeed at this under the constrains imposed on it by Congress.
And then there is this:
Meanwhile, although [the] report focused on Orion, it also reiterated an oft-repeated point: The money NASA has said it will spend on SLS, Orion and associated ground systems is not enough to stage a mission to any extraterrestrial surface. “Given the time and money necessary to develop landers and associated systems, it is unlikely that NASA would be able to conduct any surface exploration missions until the late 2020s at the earliest,” the report says. “NASA astronauts will be limited to orbital missions using” Orion.
In other words, this very expensive project will not go anywhere for almost two decades. Doesn’t that just warm your heart?
Today I have an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, entitled “No liftoff for these space flights of fancy.” It is essentially a more detailed reworking of my rant on the John Batchelor Show on July 30.
My point is that the federal space program mandated by Congress, the Space Launch System (SLS), is never going to go anywhere, and is nothing but pork that should be cut as fast as possible. (See my essay from November 2011 on how NASA and the federal government can better use this money to get more accomplished in space, for less.)
The comments to the article have generally been positive and in agreement. Those who disagree mostly question the $14 billion cost per launch that I claim SLS will cost. That number comes from John Strickland’s very detailed analysis of what it will cost to build, complete, and operate SLS. However, it doesn’t require much thoughtful analysis to realize that this number is not unreasonable.
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Climate fraud: An analysis of the climate models used by global warming advocates to illustrate the consequences of climate change finds them to be totally useless.
These models have crucial flaws that make them close to useless as tools for policy analysis: certain inputs (e.g. the discount rate) are arbitrary, but have huge effects on the SCC estimates the models produce; the models’ descriptions of the impact of climate change are completely ad hoc, with no theoretical or empirical foundation; and the models can tell us nothing about the most important driver of the SCC, the possibility of a catastrophic climate outcome. IAM-based analyses of climate policy create a perception of knowledge and precision, but that perception is illusory and misleading. [emphasis added]
It’s a start! The sequester was — and continues to be — a success.
The author details how the sequester has clearly slowed federal spending, and will continue to do so.
And wouldn’t you know, the world hasn’t ended!
The law is for the little people: The Obama administration has given Congress and its staff a waiver so that they will not have to pay the full cost increase imposed by Obamacare.
No waiver for anyone else, however. You gotta pay, tough luck. You ain’t an important member of the Washington elite, the royal class, the superior smarter set that makes the laws you (and not they) have to follow.
On my Thursday appearance last week on the John Batchelor Show John and I devoted the entire segment to talking about the sad state of NASA and how the partisan bickering in Congress is not only failing to deal with those problems, that bickering is intentionally disinterested in actually fixing them. As I say,
What both those parties in Congress and in the administration are really doing is faking a goal for the purpose of justifying pork to their districts, because none of the proposals they’re making — both the asteroids or the moon — are going to happen.
I intend to elaborate in writing on this subject in the next day or so. In the meantime, here is the audio of that appearance [mp3] for you all to download and enjoy.
Note that I specifically talked about the following stories during this appearance:
The law is only for the little people: The White House has agreed to exempt Congressional staff from the high costs of Obamacare.
A very good analysis of this arbitrary decision, which is completely counter to the specific wording of the healthcare law, can be found here.
If only all bills were this lacking in details: Congress fiercely divided over completely blank bill that says and does nothing.
A blank piece of legislation that says nothing, does nothing, and contains no text whatsoever has been the source of heated debate in Washington this week, and has sharply divided Congress along partisan lines, Beltway sources confirmed Thursday. Known as S.0000, the bill, which doesn’t have sponsors, co-sponsors, or an author, has reportedly drawn starkly contrasting opinions from legislators in both the Senate and House of Representatives, and has paved the way for a major legislative battle in coming months.
Read the whole thing. It accurately captures the reality of present day Washington, with the Democrats pounding the table for this bill and the Republicans pounding the table against it.
