We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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The changes at NASA Rand Simberg is at the Return To The Moon Conference this weekend and is providing live blogging of the talks by key speakers. Frank Seitzen’s talk is of particular interest to those with a commercial space bent:
Taking questions now. Jeff Krukin: “Is there any sense that all of this could be made irrelevant by things happening in the private sector”?
Answer: “Yes, O’Keefe has met with Musk, and O’Keefe is very skeptical about the ability of the conventional space industry to do things affordably. Was particularly disturbed by cost estimates for OSP. Has been reaching out to the smaller players.”
“Estimate cost of getting to the Moon by 2020 is 64 billion dollars. They found nine billion for a down payment by 2009, but they won’t be able to afford it all without much lower costs from the private sector (and that doesn’t mean traditional contractors).”
I have known the disarticulated skeleton of this story for some time but this is the first I have seen it put together and with flesh on the bones.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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The space program has always custom designed and manufactured every item on the spacecraft even down to the smallest screw.
NSA has to change their designs to use off-the-shelf parts whenever possible. Just as the military did in their design and manufacture of unmanned aircraft.
Its not just the problem of getting NASA and the military to use off the shelf equipment. They also have to learn to write the requirements to fit the commercial sector rather than only for the big contractors.
Spacer is right. If they want to get what they’ve never had, they should learn to do what they’ve never done…