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Another ‘truth’ constantly parroted at us is bin Laden would never work with Saddam. As with the bin Laden was trained by the CIA meme, it can be difficult to remember or find the refuting evidence when you need it. Fortunately, someone has done it for us. It is a good summary, but Richard Miniter (author of Losing bin Laden) left out at least one item. September 25th, 2003 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
 There seems to be a lot more information floating about now than there was last week. The first Chinese orbital flight might come as soon as October 1st, but probably not until mid month. You may remember I suggested the Chinese will aim for the moon within a few decades. I’m not a lone voice: here is what Space.com has to say:
I’ve some friends that hope to be able to offer them a hotel room with a nice Mare view by that time. September 25th, 2003 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
Arnold has finally come out of the closet. In a Wall Street Journal article he states:
He then lays out the key elements of his program:
He then closes with a statement which is difficult to argue with:
Long before the California election I read Mr Schwarzenegger had at least slight libertarian leanings. Given this statement I feel safe declaring he is a fellow traveller at the very least. The article can be found here. It is well worth reading despite the hassles of getting to it. This is perhaps the first Opinion Journal article I have linked to since they started crashing my browser when I attempt to print to file. In general, I do not refer people to something if I am unable to file a copy for future reference in the all too common case where the link becomes unreachable. September 24th, 2003 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
Many of us are aware bin Laden was not US funded. Fewer of us have the information at hand to prove it when faced with an adamant statement that “the US funded and trained bin Laden!”. Osama paid his own way. Through his wealthy Saudi friends he helped finance a jihad against the Russians by forces entirely seperate from other, less religiously fanatical, guerrilla forces. Even those forces were not funded directly by the CIA. The money went to Pakistan and the arms went in via the Pakistani ISI. In hindsight this had some some serious downsides. It made the ISI nearly independent of the central government. Later the ISI did indeed back the Taliban during the post-Russian Kabul free-for-all. But not bin Laden. The linked story by Richard Miniter (author of Losing bin Laden) has an extra nice touch to it. This bin Laden quote:
comes from an article written by… Robert Fisk. September 24th, 2003 | 3 comments - (Comments are closed)
In a recent Boeing and USAF test, a B2 bomber dropped 80 bombs in 22 seconds… and hit 80 different targets. They call it revolutionary. I call it awesome to the point of being scary. Perhaps in a future war we’ll only need two very large bombers. One as a backup for maintenance downtime… and the other to make a single war-ending zig-zag pass over enemy territory. September 23rd, 2003 | 36 comments - (Comments are closed)
FEE reports President Bush’s steel tariff has had the unintended consequences most of us expected. According to the Washington post article Steel Tariffs Are a Net Job Killer, 9/19/03:
It’s not just those uppity complaining fur’ners the EU is starving who get hurt. Protective tariffs harm everyone. September 20th, 2003 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
Seattle voters have rejected a tax on coffee. You can read about it here (registration required). September 19th, 2003 | One comment - (Comments are closed)
Over at Oxblog, Josh Chafetz has some surprising quotes of Gordon Brown on the subject of the EU. I nearly fell off my seat when I read this one:
I would perhaps not go so far as Josh and say this indicates the reality of the break of Labour with its past. Still… I cannot ignore a sign of economic sanity in early 21st century Britain. One does need some hope. September 19th, 2003 | 11 comments - (Comments are closed)
Chief Wiggles is is on the warpath. I wouldn’t approach him too closely today if I were a reporter. He’s absolutely right. The correspondents in Iraq are lying to us by choosing to report only the negatively spectacular. It’s an inherently false view and doesn’t help anyone understand what is actually going on. I personally saw the same thing happen here in Belfast. I can remember more than one lovely peaceful day on which I found out from the international news there had been rioting a mile away from where I live. From what I have heard, there were times when reporters outnumbered rioters. You can do wonders with the right camera angle. You see, reporters are like flies. The entire forest can be full of sunlight through leaves and the smell of spring flowers… but they will manage to find and congregate on that pile the bear left behind in the back of its’ dark den. September 19th, 2003 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
There are reports China may launch its’ first manned spacecraft by as early as October 15th. I fully expect the general media will not consider it a major story. They will be wrong. China is not going to park in Earth orbit for three decades like we have. Western complacency is up for a serious butt-kick. China is going to aim for the moon as soon as they can concievably do so. Before you complain about how far behind their technology is, please note it is not technology that has kept us from colonizing the solar system the last thirty years. It is the iron triangle which has kept us here: NASA, Big Aerospace and Congress. Congress primarily looks on space as pork for the re-election. Big Aerospace sees it as a feeding trough. NASA chiefs see it as a means of turf expansion. The whole system is bloated and risk averse. Getting people into space is a side issue from what really matters. Congress runs taxpayer funds through as many districts as possible. The government contractors want the most profit for the least possible amount of deliverables. NASA top management wants to minimize the risk of adverse media attention to their careers. The end result is… three decades of next to nothing for our money but paper spaceships and imaginary engines. Don’t tell me that NASA isn’t risk averse just because the bureaucracy missed a problem and lost a shuttle. We’ve lost fourteen men and women in spaceflight and three more on the pad in four decades of manned spaceflight. More aviators than that died in almost every single year at the dawn of flight whose centenary is but three months away. Individuals can accept risk and push boundaries forward rapidly; democratic governments cannot. This is why the answer to the Chinese is not NASA and the Ministries of Aircraft Production (ie Lockmart and Boeing); it’s XCOR, Armadillo Aerospace, Scaled Composites, Bigelow Aerospace, TransOrbital and the rest of the small and the innovative. The ones who are ready to put their own lives and fortunes on the line. As Ben Bova said many years ago: “The Meek shall inherit the Earth. The rest of us will have left for the stars.” September 17th, 2003 | 23 comments - (Comments are closed)
I’ve not been writing about XCOR lately as there has not been much I feel at liberty to write about. There has not been a press release from them since July. So… I rang the CEO, an old friend from sci.space days. I caught him in DC where he is no doubt carrying out obeisance and sacrificing a fatted calf or his first born to the God of Paperwork. Mojave has submitted its application to be a launch site. XCOR has submitted its launch license paperwork. I would say both are fairly good news. It certainly makes for convenience if the Mojave Civilian Flight Test Center adds spaceship testing to its’ approvals. Both Scaled Composites and XCOR are based there. September 16th, 2003 | 2 comments - (Comments are closed)
On September 4th, Scaled Composites executed a full scale ground test of the SpaceShipOne hybrid rocket engine. If all goes well, this engine will power the small ship on the first non-State manned suborbital flight. The engine was run for the same amount of time and at the same thrust levels as a real flight. Due to proprietary concerns there are no technical details available on the test. Most of the publicly available details are summarized in this article by Leonard David. Hybrid engines have a solid fuel that is quite similar to the material in truck tires. They are throttleable over a wide range (although Rutan appears to not be utilizing this ability) because they use a liquid oxidizer, typically liquid Oxygen (N2O2 or laughing gas in the case of SpaceShipOne). The engines are inherently safe. Hybrid rocket engines were pioneered by the long departed California based companies Starstruck and AMROC, run by the late George Koopman and our good friend Jim Bennett. SpaceDev, one of the SpaceShipOne engine developers, bought the patent rights when AMROC went out of business. September 15th, 2003 | 10 comments - (Comments are closed)
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