Tag: policy

The 50th anniversary of Gagarin’s spaceflight

12:26 am

I am on the road today, so posting will be light. Though I have many things to say about today’s historic anniversary, fifty years after the first manned spaceflight by Yuri Gagarin, I simply won’t be able to post them. However, I plan to express some of my thoughts on the John Batchelor Show at 11:30 pm (Eastern time) tomorrow. Listen in live, or on his podcast posted shortly after the live show.

The ironies, however, are amazing, and quite depressing. On the same day we celebrate the start of manned space exploration, NASA administrator Charles Bolden will announce where the United States’s three retired shuttles will be put on display. Note also that he does this on the thirtieth anniversary of the first shuttle flight. It is almost as if the Obama administration’s desire to kill the American government space program is so strong that they have to rub salt in the wound as they do it.

I say this not so much because I am in favor of a big government space program (which I am not) but because the timing of this announcement once again illustrates how astonishingly tone-deaf the Obama administration continues to be about political matters.

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SpaceX Unveils Plan for World’s Most Powerful Private Rocket

1:17 pm

SpaceX unveils its plan for the Falcon 9 Heavy, what would be the world’s most powerful private rocket.

The new rocket will be able to carry about 117,000 pounds (53,000 kilograms) of cargo to orbit – about twice the payload-carrying capability of the space shuttle. The Falcon Heavy would launch more than twice as much weight as the Delta 4 heavy, currently the most powerful rocket in operation. Only NASA’s Saturn 5 moon rocket, which last launched in 1973, could carry more cargo to orbit, SpaceX officials said.

Musk said the rocket should lower the launch cost of cargo to about $1,000 per pound, about one-tenth the cost per pound on NASA shuttle launches.

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Nearly $2 billion already paid to unions, state public employee systems, and big corporations under Obamacare

9:06 am

This idiotic thing has got to be repealed: Nearly $2 billion already paid to unions, state public employee systems, and big corporations under Obamacare.

The program began making payouts on June 1, 2010. Between that date and the end of 2010, it paid out about $535 million dollars. But according to the new report, the rate of spending has since increased dramatically, to about $1.3 billion just for the first two and a half months of this year. At that rate, it could burn through the entire $5 billion appropriation as early as 2012. [emphasis mine]

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Delays in NASA heavy-lift rocket plan stir skeptics

10:09 am

More proof it’s nothing but pork: Witnesses at House committee hearing express strong concerns about the heavy-lift rocket plan (the-program-formerly-called-Constellation) imposed on NASA by Congress.. Key quote:

“We simply do not know what is next,” said Maser, president of Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, which builds the space shuttle’s main engines. “We are in a crisis.”

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