Tag: government

India launches sixth GPS satellite

9:51 am

The competition heats up: India has successfully launched the sixth satellite in its own GPS constellation. using its PSLV rocket.

They will complete the GPS constellation with a seventh satellite launch in April. The system however is already functioning, as it only needs a minimum of four satellites to work. Unlike the U.S. 24 satellite system, which is designed to be global, India’s system is regional with its focus centered over India itself. This is why they do not need as many satellites for it to function effectively.

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Iran tests ballistic missiles

1:00 pm

Does this make you feel safer? Iran today completed two more ballistic missile tests, with rockets capable of reaching Isreal that were supposedly marked in Hebrew with the phrase, “Israel must be wiped off the Earth.”

The firings took place on the second and final day of a large-scale military drill, which marked the first time Tehran has fired ballistic missiles since signing a deal with world powers on its nuclear program in July.

U.S. officials said Tuesday that the tests did not violate the nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, but were very likely in breach of a U.N. resolution calling on Iran not to undertake ballistic missile activity. U.S. officials threatened Tuesday to raise the issue at the Security Council.

Well, I am so glad these tests didn’t violate the Obama Iran deal. That makes me feel so much better.

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College student faces charges for expressing conservative opinions

9:35 am

The coming dark age: A student senator at the University of Southern California (USC) faces removal from office merely because he is a conservative.

The complaint against him cites three charges, all absurd. The best however is this one:

The third violation Ellenhorn is accused of also concerns a Campus Reform article, but in this case, he is charged with failing to secure permission before filming the “Consent Carnival” that was held on campus in January by several student groups. The complaint specifies that university rules require approval “for any filming required as part of an event (including footage for use on YouTube, Facebook, and other online platforms).”

In other words, according to the fascist making the charges, no one is allowed to film anything on this so-called college campus without first obtaining permission first from school authorities. Such a charge demonstrates that this fascist has a complete lack of understanding of the concept of freedom, or the first amendment.

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NASA reschedules rather than cancels InSight

8:29 am

Forced to delay its launch because its primary instrument, built by the French, would not be ready for its 2016 launch, NASA has decided to go on with the InSight Mars mission, rescheduling it for a May 2018 launch, rather than cancelling it outright.

The seismometer, built by the French space agency CNES, will be repaired in time to make the 2018 launch window, said Jim Green, the head of NASA’s planetary sciences division in Washington DC. “That’s terrific news,” he told a planetary sciences advisory panel on 9 March. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, will assume responsibility for building a new vacuum enclosure for the seismometer.

The last sentence above suggests that NASA has decided to take certain responsibilities from the French to make sure they get done right. It also means that the cost will be born by the NASA’s planetary program, cutting into other possible future missions.

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A Ted Cruz surge tonight

10:09 pm

As predicted a few days ago, Ted Cruz surged against Donald Trump in tonight’s four closed primaries.

Though each won two primaries, the numbers gave Cruz the win over Trump in delegates, 69 to 44 (the numbers now adjusted after all the votes have been tallied). Moreover, as noted at the link, Trump’s voting totals remain flat or have declined, while Cruz’s have been rising steadily. It appears that among Republicans either the love affair with Trump is fading, or there never was one and that his support in the previous open primaries came from cross-over Democrats..

In addition, the numbers for both Kasich and Rubio are going nowhere, which means voting for them in future primaries will essentially give Trump an undeserved win. Thus, expect the movement from them to Cruz to increase.

More here, confirming my analysis above.

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Roscosmos approves space tourism project

8:01 pm

The competition heats up? Russia’s giant aerospace monopoly Roscosmos has given formal permission for the development of a suborbital space tourism project, proposed by the formally independent company, KosmoKurs.

Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos has admitted the private space company KosmoKurs to working out a project for the development of a reusable system for space tourism flights, KosmoKurs Director General Pavel Pushkin said on Friday. “Our technical design specification was approved by Roscosmos two days ago. The system’s preliminary design will be created with this document,” Pushkin said at the InSpace forum.

According to him, the technical design specification has also been approved by the Central Research Institute of Machine Building (TsNIIMash) and the Keldysh Research Center. In addition, Pushkin said, Roscosmos chief Igor Komarov has already approved the project. “Igor Anatolyevich has taken the project with enthusiasm and gave orders to promote this project”, Pushkin said.

So, if I understand this right, this private company had to get approvals from Roscosmos’s bureaucracy, two other competitive groups within Roscosmos, plus the head of Roscosmos itself, before it would be allowed to proceed with building its independent suborbital operation. I wonder how many bribes KosmosKurs had to pay along the way. I also wonder what kind of quid pro quo deals that had to make in order get those other institutes to give their okay.

With Russia’s aerospace industry function under this kind of set-up, I doubt they are going to get much done in the coming decades.

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Trump begins to “evolve”

9:37 am

The betrayal begins: At the debate last night Donald Trump noted that he is already beginning to consider easing his hardline immigration stance.

In Detroit, Fox News’ Megyn Kelly pointed out that Trump’s campaign website has a strong statement against increasing the number of H-1Bs, saying it would “decimate American workers,” and yet in one debate Trump spoke favorably of the program. “So, which is it?” Kelly asked.

“I’m changing,” Trump said. “I’m changing. We need highly skilled people in this country, and if we can’t do it, we’ll get them in. But, and we do need in Silicon Valley, we absolutely have to have. So, we do need highly skilled,” Trump continued, “and one of the biggest problems we have is people go to the best colleges. They’ll go to Harvard, they’ll go to Stanford, they’ll go to Wharton, as soon as they’re finished they’ll get shoved out. They want to stay in this country. They want to stay here desperately, they’re not able to stay here. For that purpose, we absolutely have to be able to keep the brain power in this country.

“So you are abandoning the position on your website?” asked Kelly.

“I’m changing it,” Trump said, “and I’m softening the position because we have to have talented people in this country.”

I’ve said from the beginning that Trump is not a reliable conservative, that his roots are liberal, even if they aren’t radical leftwing, and that once he gets in power he will be no different than either George Bush or even Bill Clinton.

Thus, I am not surprised that he “softening the position”. What surprises me is that he is revealing this now, even before he has gotten the Republican nomination. I wonder if anyone will really notice.

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Businessman found innocent of all charges after years of persecution by the Justice Department.

9:22 am

Our fascist government: A medical company and its head was pursued and persecuted for five years by the Department of Justice, based on a false accusation by a former employee, only to lose its case when it finally presented its case to a jury.

It all started when one of our salesmen became upset he didn’t receive a promotion. So he quit and filed a baseless complaint with the U.S. attorney’s office in San Antonio, alleging a multitude of offenses to try to justify a $20 million claim. Simply by hiring a lawyer and making wild accusations, this former employee with an ax to grind became entitled under the law to receive 20 percent of whatever money the government could “recover” from Vascular Solutions.

The government lawyers reviewed his allegations and chose to pursue just one. I offered to meet with them to correct their misinformation, but two days before that scheduled meeting, they called my lawyer and canceled it. And they never would reschedule. So before deciding to bring criminal charges, these prosecutors never heard my side of the story.

Instead, they subpoenaed over 2 million pages of our documents and interviewed over 60 customers and employees. In the process, they received evidence that conflicted with the story told by that money-motivated former employee. But instead of changing their conclusions to fit the evidence, these prosecutors engaged in obscene tactics to try to change the evidence.

In conversation with our lawyers, they called conflicting statements by witnesses “a line of sh*t.” They referred to one employee as “a poor f***er” who needed to return “on bended knee” to “fix” his testimony. They told a female employee to think about what would happen to her firstborn son if she were indicted because she refused to “cooperate.” And by “fix” and “cooperate,” I mean retract their prior testimony and support the government’s case.

Granted, this is written by the man whom the government was trying to prosecute. Still, I believe him, especially because of one key fact he outlines once they went to trial:

In the end, after I endured four weeks sitting in a San Antonio courtroom while still running Vascular Solutions in Minnesota, the jury rejected each and every allegation. And that was without hearing from any of our 20 witnesses, since we made the decision to rest immediately after the government finished its case. So the government’s own witnesses proved our innocence — simply stunning.

The company says it spent $25 million defending itself. It is now calling for an investigation and a firing of these Justice Department lawyers. How many of you expect the Obama administration to follow through with this? I don’t.

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Free government money for Aerojet Rocketdyne!

8:16 am

Crony capitalism: Even though ULA prefers Blue Origin’s engine for its Atlas 5, the Air Force continues to fund Aerojet Rocketdyne’s new engine.

The U.S. Air Force announced Feb. 29 it was investing $115 million this year, and with options, as much as $536 million over the next five years, in [Aerojet Rocketdyne’s] AR1, a new liquid oxygen- and kerosene-fueled main-stage engine. The contract award is part of an Air Force initiative to end reliance on the Russian-built RD-180 engine that powers ULA’s Atlas 5 workhorse rocket.

Aerojet says it has two potential other customers to use the engine, but will not name them. In reviewing the field, the only customer I can think of that might be interested would be Orbital ATK (for its Antares rocket), and even there I have doubts. Thus, it appears to me that these funds are really being distributed to prop up a company that is failing, not to build anything useful the government needs.

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Trump winning open primaries, Cruz winning closed ones

10:14 pm

Link here.

If true, why does this matter? Because so far the primary calendar has been heavily tilted toward open primaries. But there have been four closed elections: the Iowa caucus, the Nevada caucus, and Super Tuesday’s Oklahoma primary and Alaska caucus. Ted Cruz won three of those four closed elections.

This suggests that, as a number of polls have indicated, Trump’s victories have largely been aided by moderate Democratic voters crossing over to vote for him, mostly I suspect out of disgust at the extreme leftist tilt of their own party.

A more important factor to consider, however, is that the primaries will be increasingly shifting to closed primaries in the coming weeks. This weekend alone there are four primaries/caucuses, and they are all closed. No Democrats can vote in them. If Cruz tops Trump in most, it will indicate Trump’s true weakness within the Republican Party, a fact that could make it far more difficult for him to achieve the nomination than presently indicated.

And if Trump does well in these closed primaries? Then the nomination is likely his.

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India’s space agency ISRO gets a budget boost

9:37 pm

In its new budget approved by India’s government the country’s space agency ISRO was the only science agency to get a significant budget increase, approximately 7.3%.

In the short run this is good, as ISRO has been using its funds wisely and accomplishing a lot for a little, while trying to encourage private development in India’s aerospace industry. In the long run, however, this will not be good, as government agencies always grow more than they should while sucking the innovation and creativity from the private sector. This is what NASA did in the U.S.

Hopefully, India will see how things are changing in America with private enterprise reasserting itself after a half century of government stagnation in space development and copy what we are doing.

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The suicide of the GOP establishment

10:07 am

Link here.

Time and time again, grassroots and movement conservatives have expressed their opposition to all five of the key planks in Rubio’s platform. These Republicans do not support the Gang of Eight bill. They do not support Obama’s trade deals. They do not want to spend huge amounts of blood and treasure again in the Middle East. And they most certainly do not want the economy to look like it did in the fall of 2008.

These voters have tried, through every means available, to make their opposition felt. They are the reason that Eric Cantor is no longer in the House. They are the reason that the Gang of Eight bill didn’t pass. They are the reason that John Boehner is no longer speaker. And they are the reason that Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have dominated the polls for months.

Many people have urged the Rubio donor network, think-tank fellows and media supporters to back off on their policy demands — to do more than simply acknowledge “the voters are right to be angry.” In fact, Gov. Chris Christie advocated for compromise during a speech at St. Anselm’s College earlier this year. People such as former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan wrote recently that the GOP must be more sensitive to the concerns of working-class voters, whom she dubbed the “unprotected.”

Nevertheless, even today, the Rubio supporters refuse to budge.

The Rubio supporters are also the same people in the GOP who tried to push Jeb Bush on us. The real tragedy is that if they had thrown their support to Ted Cruz, they might have been able to quell Donald Trump’s dominance in the polls. Instead, they have refused to face the reality that the general public does not support they policies, and have run like lemmings to the cliff by splitting the conservatives between Cruz and Rubio.

The result: The Republican Party stands a very good chance right now of nominating as its Presidential candidate someone who is as liberal as Bill Clinton and as reliable in what he says. Worse, polls continue to show him losing to the worst Democratic candidates offered in decades.

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China’s next manned mission

9:55 am

The competition heats up: The next Chinese manned mission will occur in the fall of 2016 and will have the astronauts remain in space for 30 days on a new space station launched during the summer.

After the astronauts have completed their flight, China will then launch their first unmanned cargo craft, dubbed Tianzhou-1, to dock with the station, using a new medium-lift rocket, Long March 7, which will get its first test flight this coming June.

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Brownshirts try to silence conservative speaker

11:48 am

The coming dark age: Ben Shapiro speaks at California State U, despite fascist mobs, violent threats, and an attempt by the college president to silence him.

Be sure to watch all three video clips at the first link above. One shows Shapiro speaking as the fire alarm goes off. The other two clips show the hostile mob outside. The contrast is striking. All the mob needs are pitchforks and torches to complete the picture.

That it was possible for the left to harness such a large mob so quickly in an effort to silence Shapiro’s dissent suggests strongly to me that we are heading for very bad times. In a few short years, the students in that mob, who far outnumber the peaceful students who came to listen to Shapiro, are going to have powerful jobs and influential positions. And these fascists are going to be eager to use that power to squelch their opponents.

Addendum: Be sure to read this comment at the link from someone who was there. It is really frightening. As she notes,

I know from this site and others that this is what goes on. But actually being there and being shoved and taunted and blocked from hearing a speaker … it’s just another dimension. You can’t believe the insanity. You can’t believe the completely undeserved sense of moral superiority coupled with the simmering threat of violence. Really, really disheartening. …

The Young Americans for Freedom gang are a brave, brave group. Just completely outnumbered. Talked with one of them from the Reagan Center and she’d met Professor Jacobson and Mrs. Jacobson when they were at the center last year.

Seeing that in person, I think we’ve passed the point of no return. It’s not something you fix. It’s a stain you can’t get out … a complete mess. You cannot reason with people who refuse to listen to reason. At one point, one of the protestors was telling the guy next to me that Ben Shapiro was a racist and a supremacist because he was an Orthodox Jew, and thus should not be allowed to speak.

Tolerance. Behold.

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Our glorious Democratic leaders!

9:44 am

Dumb and dumber: When told that one of the Gitmo terrorists released by the Obama administration is now working for Al Qaeda recruiting more terrorists to attack the United States, Secretary of State John Kerry had a real smart answer: “He’s not supposed to do that.”

The link also provides some nice background, describing other absurd efforts of Kerry’s State Department to counter terrorism, such as when he enlisted a 1960s singer to serenade world leaders.

John Kerry was the Democratic Party’s choice to run for president in 2004. He is now the Obama administration’s choice to run the State Department. What does that tell us about that party? Could it be that they are all as dumb and incompetent as he is?

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The coming collapse of Obamacare

9:31 am

Finding out what’s in it: Link here.

I haven’t described this time any specific discovery about this monstrous law because the article at the link describes too many different examples where the law is failing. Here’s just one to give you a taste:

Insurers say they’ve also been hurt by customers who appear to be waiting until they become sick to buy coverage. The companies blame liberal enforcement of the ACA’s special enrollment exceptions. The law provides an annual enrollment window for several weeks starting in the fall. This is the main chance most people have to enroll or change coverage. But customers can enroll outside that window if insurance needs change because they’ve moved, gotten married or had a child, among other exemptions.

Exchanges have not been asking for birth certificates, marriage licenses or other proof of these life-changing events. Insurers say that leaves them vulnerable. The Montana Health Co-Op had a severely ill customer in a hospital sign up for its coverage in October and then drop a $250,000 bill on the insurer. CEO Jerry Dworak said he asked the exchange operator for details on whether the patient had a legitimate reason for the special enrollment. The exchange would only say that the patient changed ZIP codes.

“They’ve got to do something about the special enrollment because we just got killed on that,” Dworak said.

Read it all. The story also describes how the law’s health exchanges are failing, how healthy people are not signing up, how the law has caused health costs to skyrocket, and how it is causing heath insurance businesses to go bankrupt.

Other than these minor details, however, we all have been able to keep the insurance plans we like, and costs per family have dropped by $2500, just as Barack Obama promised! Let’s hire as our next President his former Secretary of State, who actually first conceived a similar Hillarycare proposal in the 1990s!

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Iridium dumps Russia for SpaceX

10:14 pm

In the heat of competition: Because of Russian red tape Iridium has switched from a Russian rocket to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 for placing its first 10 next generation communications satellites in orbit this year.

I thought the Putin government’s consolidation of its entire aerospace industry into a single corporation was going to speed things up? Not. Then again, SpaceX might not be any better, considering the problems it continues to have meeting its launch schedule.

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Lexington proposes gun confiscation

10:18 am

Fascists: The town of Lexington, Massachusetts, where the American Revolution was started by Minutemen armed with rifles, has proposed confiscating legally owned firearms from its citizens.

One such town meeting member, a Harvard professor named Robert Rotberg has taken it upon himself to enact, what he hopes will be “a movement against assault weapons that would capture the state and therefore maybe explode to reach the country.” He has seized upon the recent ban enacted in Highland Park, IL, and has modeled his own ban, almost copying the language verbatim. Filing it to the town meeting warrant as Article 34.

Among other things, Article 34 includes any firearm that is semi-automatic and can accept a magazine that will hold more than 10 rounds. It also includes any magazine that holds more than 10 rounds. The article also has a provision in which Lexington’s licensed gun owners who own firearms included in the ban would be forced to sell, render inoperable, or have them seized and destroyed by the police department

It doesn’t seem to occur to this Harvard professor that this ordinance would violate both the second amendment (“the right to bear arms shall not be infringed”) and the fifth amendment (“nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation”). But then, who cares about some old document called the Bill of Rights written by some white guys more than 200 years ago? We are Progressives! We know better!

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Successful test of India’s GSLV rocket engine

9:54 am

The competition heats up: India has successfully completed a full duration static hot fire test of the cryogenic engine it is developing for its more powerful GSLV rocket.

The press release is very short and lacking in many details, including any detailed information about the engine being tested. However, this success bodes well for India’s plans to launch a new upgraded GSLV before the end of the year.

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GAO finds fraud rampant in Obamacare subsidy program

9:23 pm

Finding out what’s in it: A GAO report has found that the Obamacare bureaucracy gave out millions of dollars in subsidies to more than 35,000 applicants who did not qualify.

Worse, the GAO decided to test the system directly, and created twelve fake applicants whose applications had problems that should have prevented them from receiving subsidies The result?

It was able to secure $2,500 a month subsidies for 11 of those applicants. When CMS [the bureaucracy administering Obamacare] asked for documents to resolve inconsistencies in the files, GAO either sent fake documents or simply didn’t send anything. In both cases, CMS sent letters acknowledging receipt of documents and stating the matter had been resolved. Again, this was the case even when GAO had sent nothing in response to the initial CMS query. In the end, GAO was able to keep all 11 fictitious applicants on subsidies throughout 2014, each one directing about $30,000 in federal funds to an insurer under false pretenses. And it’s worth noting that, later on in the report, GAO makes clear it created this fake applicants with no prior or inside knowledge of any verification procedures that might be applied. This was something that anyone could have done.

There’s more at the link, such as the fact that the bureaucracy also decided, quite arbitrarily, to send subsidies to applicants who claimed they were not in prison, even if those applicants were on the official database of individuals in prison (and thus not qualified for subsidies according to the law).

But hey, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, and even Donald Trump want to use the government to administer health care. Trump might say he wants to get rid of Obamacare, but he also wants the government to run the system he will create to replace it. What could possibly go wrong?

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No security at Homeland Security

9:44 am

Does this make you feel safer? Homeland Security has lost 165 firearms and more than 1,300 security badges in the past three years.

The people running Homeland Security are generally the same people who want to prevent ordinary citizens from possessing guns. I would say instead that we all would be safer if we owned the guns and they were banned at Homeland Security.

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America’s ten most oppressive colleges

9:31 am

Fascists: A new review of free speech on campuses across the United States has listed the country’s ten most oppressive colleges, with examples of why they earned this odious status.

The first link is the actual report, while the second provides a good quick summary. In either case, the behavior of college officials in attempting to squelch dissent is quite disgusting. Far more horrifying and worrisome for the future were the number of cases where the students themselves moved to stamp down on opposing views. They are the future, and that future does not look pleasant.

Some good news: In South Carolina students are suing their college for interrogating them for daring to hold an event in support of free speech that offended some students.

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Trump threatens private citizens for opposing him

9:08 am

Fascist: Presidential candidate Donald Trump yesterday threatened the owners of the Chicago Cubs because they have been donating to a political action committee that is running campaign ads opposed to his candidacy

His exact words: “I hear the Rickets family, who own the Chicago Cubs, are secretly spending $’s against me. They better be careful, they have a lot to hide!”

As the link above notes,

This follows on him threatening Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) with a lawsuit for running an ad using old footage of him talking about abortion. And that follows on him threatening to sue a reporter who wrote about the failure of the Taj Mahal Casino. All of this has happened within the last four weeks.

I don’t like fascists, whether they are on the left or the right.

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The Obama-like promises of Trump

10:52 am

During an interview on CNN yesterday, Donald Trump was asked about Obamacare and the insurance mandate. The first words out of his mouth were “I like the mandate,” which is what most conservative websites are focusing on.

I think it is more important to focus on Trump’s entire answer, which goes on for about two and half minutes. (I have posted the video below the fold, so you can listen for yourself.) As noted at the first link above,

Trump doesn’t have a freakin clue as to what he’s talking about. What he’s obviously done is extract a few focus group tested themes, like “dying on the street,” and “get rid of the lines,” and he simply says these over and over with connecting verbiage. The plan Trump refers to, the one that apparently suspends the idea of supply and demand and guarantees everyone a free lunch, simply does not exist. In the tech field it is a concept known as vaporware.

During Trump’s answer, he notes the dishonesty of Obama for making wild promises about Obamacare that were outright lies (‘If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. Period.” and “Obamacare will cut costs by $2500 per family.”). Trump then proceeds to spout his own wild and unrealistic promises about what he will do about healthcare when he is President. And they sound to me as dishonest and incoherent as the promises Obama made. Both set of promises remind me of school elections when I was in junior high school, where candidates would promise free ice cream at every break and soda machines in the halls. Such promises are silly, childish, and unrealistic, and the voters should try to be mature enough to see that.

Trump might be a better choice than Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, but for Republicans to pick him as their nominee is insane. We can certainly do better.
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Bureaucrats fight over the regulation of commercial space

9:37 am

Battle of bureaucrats: The FAA’s office that regulates commercial space (AST) and the National Transportation Safety Boad (NTSB) are fighting over the procedures AST should use to control and manage the work of private space companies.

The issues deal with how the FAA inspects the work of space companies, prompted by the NTSB’s investigation into the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo crash in 2014. The kerfuffle also illustrates the absurdity of the regulatory responsibilities that Congress forced on AST when it amended the commercial space act in 2004. Somehow it is expected that bureaucrats in Washington will know better how to make sure a private company’s new space designs are safe than the very engineers who are building them. The disagreement here is merely about how the bureaucrats keep watch. The NTSB wants AST’s bureaucrats to hover over them like a worried mother. AST wants to hover from a little farther away, like a proud father.

In either case, the hovering will accomplish little to make the cutting edge engineering more safe except create fake jobs in the government for hovering bureaucrats, while squelching risky innovation since such risks go against the instincts of every bureaucrat.

Though Congress has recently revised the law to ease its regulations, they didn’t really do much to remove them. Expect these kerfuffles to get bigger in the coming years as the Washington bureaucracy moves to impose its will on this industry while simultaneously manipulating the press and Congress to create more useless jobs for themselves.

If they succeed, we should also expect them to succeed in making innovative commercial development in space become increasingly impossible.

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