Tag: politics

Another look at the cost of building NASA’s heavy lift rocket

9:54 am

Clark Lindsey takes another look at the cost for building the Congressionally-mandated heavy lift rocket, what NASA calls the Space Launch System and I call the program-formerly-called-Constellation. Key quote:

Finally, I’ll point out that there was certainly nothing on Wednesday that refuted the findings in the Booz Allen study that NASA’s estimates beyond the 3-5 year time frame are fraught with great uncertainty. Hutchison and Nelson claimed last week that since the near term estimates were reliable, there’s no reason to delay getting the program underway. That’s the sort of good governance that explains why programs often explode “unexpectedly” in cost after 3-5 years…

In other words, this is what government insiders call a “buy-in.” Offer low-ball budget numbers to get the project off the ground, then when the project is partly finished and the much higher real costs become evident, Congress will be forced to pay for it. Not only has this been routine practice in Washington for decades, I can instantly cite two projects that prove it:
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Nobel prize winner resigns from the American Physical Society over its support of global warming

12:34 am

A Nobel prize winner has bluntly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) because of its unquestioning support of global warming.

Dr. Giaever wrote to Kirby of APS: “Thank you for your letter inquiring about my membership. I did not renew it because I cannot live with the (APS) statement below (on global warming): APS: ‘The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth’s physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.’

Giaever announced his resignation from APS was due to the group’s belief in man-made global warming fears. Giaever explained in his email to APS: “In the APS it is ok to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible? The claim (how can you measure the average temperature of the whole earth for a whole year?) is that the temperature has changed from ~288.0 to ~288.8 degree Kelvin in about 150 years, which (if true) means to me is that the temperature has been amazingly stable, and both human health and happiness have definitely improved in this ‘warming’ period.” [emphasis in original]

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More bad budget reporting

12:16 am

Once again a journalist as well as a science journal are spinning budget numbers to hide the fact that the present Congress is not imposing draconian cuts to science. If anything, they are not cutting enough, considering the dire state of the federal deficit.

First there is the headline, from Science: Senate Panel Cuts NSF Budget by $162 Million. Then there is the article’s text, by Jeffrey Mervis, which not only reaffirms the cuts described in the headline but adds that “the equivalent House of Representatives panel approved a bill that would hold NSF’s budget steady next year at $6.86 billion.” Mervis then underlines how terrible he thinks these budget numbers are by quoting Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland): “We’ve gone beyond frugality and are into austerity.”

This reporting is shameful. Not only is Mikulski full of crap, Mervis’s description of the budget numbers is misleading if not downright wrong. Here are the final budget numbers for the NSF since 2007, in billions of dollars (sources: Science, the American Geological Institute, and The Scientist):
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Senate reinserts money for the James Webb Space Telescope

10:38 pm

The Senate has reinstated money for completing the James Webb Space Telescope.

The allocation in today’s markup does not automatically mean that the Webb telescope has been rescued. The markup will now go to the full appropriations committee for approval before going to the Senate floor for a vote. The approved bill will then have to be reconciled with the House version, which, NASA hopes, will result in a final appropriation that keeps the telescope alive.

The House version also zeroed out funding for Webb, so reconciling the two budgets will not be easy.

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Washington staffers fear pay cuts, layoffs, loss of perks

11:36 am

Well ain’t that a shame: Washington political staffers fear pay cuts, layoffs, and loss of perks. Some precious quotes:

“Salaries are essentially frozen and in some cases going down,” said one former senior House Democratic aide, who recently left the Hill. “That makes it very hard for some people to stay on the Hill and just promotes a culture of underappreciation.”

and

Many chiefs of staff have started with small office perks: water jugs, sodas and orange juice. One Republican lawmaker told POLITICO that aides now take up a collection because the office can’t afford coffee.

What prigs. The rest of the country is experiencing the highest unemployment and lowest income in decades, and they’re unhappy they don’t have a water cooler or coffee machine.

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September 11 memorial says nothing about what happened on September 11

9:16 am

A September 11 memorial in New Jersey says nothing about what happened on September 11.

The stone reads, “Dedicated September 11, 2011/10 year anniversary,” followed by the names of the current township mayor, committee members and administrator. The marker does not mention the terrorists’ nearly 3,000 victims, the attacks that cost their lives or the origins of the steel. “I mean, how freaking narcissistic can you be?” [retired Police Officer Dennis] Ryan said Tuesday.

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The Moral High Ground

2:53 pm

The moral high ground.

The Left has fought the spread of genetically modified (GM) foods with every weapon in its arsenal. Leftists did this in the name of combating a long list of “potential risks” that never materialized. They have been permitted to overlook the fact that their assaults on GM food were not cost free. For instance, they have greatly delayed and in some places stopped cold the use of rice modified to increase vitamin A content. For the Left this is cause for celebration. In fact, widespread use of this “golden rice” would have prevented a half-million cases of child blindness a year. So the next time someone talks to you about the evils of genetically modified foods, remind him of the millions of poor children this crusade has condemned to a lifetime of blindness. How do folks prepared to allow millions to needlessly go blind still command the respect of any truly moral person?

And that’s only the start. Read the whole thing.

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Obscure editor resigns from minor journal: why you should care

9:54 am

Obscure editor resigns from minor journal: why you should care.

We have sadly reached that stage in the climate debate where the Alarmist establishment isn’t even going to bother trying to make its case through force of argument. And the scary part is that it senses – probably correctly – that it doesn’t need to. The junk-science establishment – from the UEA to the Royal Society to NASA GISS to the National Academy of Sciences – has done so well out of its whitewash enquiries, its FOI breaches, its appeals to authority, its craven, unquestioning support from the MSM and the political class, its silencing of critics, that it has lost all sense of shame. It is out of control, unaccountable, yet directly responsible for a large chunk of the costly regulation, taxation and environmentally disastrous schemes from biofuels to wind farms which are helping to destroy the global economy. The great global warming scam is the biggest scandal of our age. It is time someone took it seriously.

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Republican in the lead in special congressional election in New York

3:25 pm

Oh my: A new poll shows the Republican is in the lead in the special election in New York to replace disgraced Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner.

If the Republican wins this election, in what has always been a Democratically-entrenched district in Brooklyn-Queens, it will send a clear signal to all that the 2012 election is going to be a very very very unusual election.

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Don’t you dare touch my space junk!

11:01 am

cataloged objects in orbit

A just released National Research Council report on space junk, Limiting Future Collision Risk to Spacecraft: an assessment of NASA’s meteoroid and orbital debris programs, describes in great and worthwhile detail the increasing problem of orbital debris as well as the technical and budgetary problems that exist for removing it. It is especially worth reading for the stories, such as when a Colorado hiker heard a high-pitched sound and then found a still warm thirty-inch diameter sphere in a foot deep crater. The object turned out to be a titanium tank from a Russian upper stage rocket, launched two months earlier.

What I want to focus on here, however, is one issue the report discusses that, as far as I can tell, has generally been missed. Worse, this issue — somewhat ridiculous when you think about a little — will make removing most of the space junk in Earth orbit far more complicated than ever imagined by engineers.

Simply put, under already agreed-to international treaties, no nation can salvage or collect any debris placed in orbit by another nation. To do so will violate international law, and almost certainly cause an international incident. To quote the report:
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The space shuttle program officially ended on Wednesday

9:23 am

The space shuttle program officially ended on Wednesday. Note however:

Closeout of the shuttle program is an enormous effort expected to take two years. The program occupied 640 facilities and used more than 900,000 pieces of equipment with a value exceeding $12 billion, according to NASA. Much of the work will take place at Kennedy Space Center, where orbiters have been maintained and prepared for launch. NASA requested $89 million for shuttle transition and retirement work in the 2012 fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, but Congress has not yet approved a budget.

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Another Al Gore doomsday prediction bites the dust

9:31 pm

In a new paper published yesterday, climate scientists described a newly discovered deep, cold current flowing off Iceland’s coast that appears to make the ocean conveyor belt that warms the northern Atlantic less sensitive to climate change than previously thought.

In other words, another one of Al Gore’s doomsday predictions has proven false.

More significantly, scientists now have no understanding why the ocean conveyor belt shut down during past ice ages, as their most favored theory now appears insufficient.
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