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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Under the title ‘Physicists raise questions on EMR capabilities’ Janes, (a subscription only publisher) reports:
Two US physicists have claimed that the European Mid-course Radar (EMR), due to be installed in the Czech Republic in a planned expansion of the US ballistic missile defence system, is substantially underpowered, and will form part of “a defence system that is unable to provide any discrimination services against missiles launched from Iran to the eastern half of the continental United States”. George Lewis, associate director of the Peace Studies Program at Cornell University, and Theodore Postol, professor of science, technology, and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are both opponents of US missile defence plans.
Anyone who has followed military space systems should be quite familiar with the consistently negative and consistently incorrect claims of Dr. Postel. If one were to believe his writings in Scientific American and other publications in the 1980’s we should never have tried to build anti-missile systems because they are impossible.
One must wonder if Dr Postel is sullying the good name of Physics in defense of his political preference for a global OK Corral gunfight, a world seemingly frozen in a timeless instant before the first gunfighter makes a false move. With only two gunfighters that standoff might well last a very long time and thankfully did. With more players the chance of a miscalculation ending in a free for all grows exponentially.
Thankfully, the good doctor was wrong in his eighties predictions about what would be possible now, so we are rapidly moving away from his MAD dream world.
The first decades of the age of nuclear weapons were an historical anomaly, Our newly operational systems will mature rapidly over the next two decades and in so doing will re-instate the natural balance between offense and defense.
The Royal Air Force marks its 90th birthday today. There will be a flypast over central London at 1pm, so if readers have a digital camera, keep it nearby.
Heathrow’s Terminal Five, the one which is fingerprinting passengers even if they take domestic flights, has got off to a glorious start.
The British Airports Authority, now owned by Spain’s Ferrovial, is a joke. In an ideal universe, it would be broken up – as it should never have been privatised as a monopoly in the first place. If the wannabe Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, wants a campaign issue, this is it.
Update: I should of course stress that BA, which operates out of the terminal, bears a heavy lump of the responsibility for this. Its share price is down today by more than 3%. At least BA feels the economic chill of this sort of mess, BAA does not. One commenter points out that hitches often happen at the start of a new venture, but that does really wash since one assumes – right? – that the baggage and check-in facilities at a new airport were beta-tested to make sure they work properly. One would like to think that this is standard procedure in any new operation.
XCOR’s press conference will start in LA in a couple hours and I have just found that the embargo on the Lynx Spaceplane press release has been lifted. For those few lucky ones who happened to catch my earlier article and then wondered why it vanished, it was due to a communications SNAFU. The person who sent me the info forgot to state it was embargoed so I blogged it. An hour later I received a frantic phone call whilst I was watching a DVD and pulled it as soon as he explained the mistake.
In any case, there is now a lot more information about the Lynx showing up. Rand Simberg, one of my business partners, will be there and no doubt live blogging it.
Disclosures: I might add that I spent several months doing software support for the aerodynamics guy. 🙂
The Lynx will fly within two years with Astronaut Searfoss at the controls.
Image: With thanks to XCOR.
XCOR will be holding a press conference this Wednesday about the spaceship they are building. It will be their third manned rocket powered vehicle so this is no idle threat.
This press event will be held Wednesday, March 26, at 10 a.m. in the Canon Room of the Beverly Hilton at 9876 Wilshire Boulevard in Beverly Hills, CA 90210. Lunch will be served afterwards. The speaker will be XCOR test pilot Rick Searfoss. Rick has also flown the Space Shuttle three times as pilot and commander. If you are a media person who would like to attend, I presume you should call XCOR as soon as possible, although the information passed to me did not give any details on this.
According to a source associated with XCOR:
The prototype propulsion system for the Lynx now has more than two hundred flight equivalents on it and is in flight test now.
Fourteen engine runs yesterday, probably as many today.
The key to economic space transport is safe, reusable, and operable propulsion.No one else has anything like XCOR engines in that regard. Because engines are the most difficult and expensive part of the vehicle to develop, XCOR has a big advantage over its competitors. That includes giant firms like EADS Astrium.
In fact, no one anywhere has ever built anything even close to the economic efficiency of the XCOR engines.
I must of course note that I have worked as a consultant to XCOR, which basically means I know from the inside how good they are at this!
I would tell you more but I would have to shred you afterwards.
So there I was, your typical history buff aviation enthusiast, when I overhear a discussion in a cafe that there is a movie out called Horton hears a who.
“Oh fab!” thinks I, fully expecting said movie to feature the coolest Nazi jet fighter ever conceived (and if you know anything about conceptual late war German aviation, that is saying something). Maybe some contra-factual Luftwaffe 1946 scenario? Woo hoo!
…Sadly it is about an elephant.
A nice article in the Daily Telegraph on how to make flying a bit more fun, which admittedly is a tough proposition as the enthusiasm for “security theatre”, as some call it, makes for longer queues at airports. The term means security measures designed to give the impression of making us safer rather than actually doing so. I rather liked the article’s almost heartbreakingly simple suggestion: pack a set of ear mufflers. They don’t have to be big, but they can cut out the racket, such as the noise of a fractious baby child. I am going to get some. For years, I always dreaded the prospect of having to share part of the cabin with a set of screaming kids or for that matter, a chatty adult who did not get the hint that I’d rather read one of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher thrillers than hear my neighbour’s personal problems.
Problem solved!
I heard the very sad news earlier this evening. Arthur is a member of the Trinity: Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein, the greatest of the great Science Fiction writers. The first SF novel I ever read was “Red Sands Of Mars” when I was nine and by age fourteen I had read my way through every SF book in the Coraopolis Public Library and the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.
Arthur may have passed, but he is an immortal, a name which will be honored on far stars long after even after those of the greatest world leaders of our era are lost and forgotten.
Earlier today business partner Jim Bennett passed this SR-71 story along to me.
Mach 3.5 at 80,000 MSL… It just makes me go all quivery inside.
Not a single SR-71 was scrapped: every last one has been given an honoured and well-cared for retirement.
Photo: copyright Dale Amon, All Rights Reserved
A Boeing 40C which crashed in 1928 has been restored and flown.
Ain’t she just gorgeous?
I do not normally like receiving emails selling me products, but I thought I would have to make an exception for this:
Dear Antoine,
Virgin Galactic is delighted to announce a new destination… space. Climb to 360,000ft. at a cruising speed of almost three times the speed of sound, in unprecedented levels of safety and comfort. See our beautiful planet from 63 miles up and experience the magic of weightlessness.
Redeem 200,000 miles to receive 10% off the cost of a spaceflight, that’s an incredible $20,000 saving!* Join our future astronauts and book your place in history.
I look forward to the Nigerian version:
“My name is Mr.Moses Odiaka. I work in the credit and accounts department of Union Bank of NigeriaPlc,Lagos, Nigeria. I write you in respect of a foreign customer with a Virgin Galactica ticket. His name is Engineer Manfred Becker. He was among those who died in a plane crash here in Nigeria during the reign of late General Sani Abacha.
Since the demise of this our customer, Engineer Manfred Becker, who was an oil merchant/contractor, I have kept a close watch of the deposit records and accounts and since then nobody has come to claim the airmiles in this a/c as next of kin to the late Engineer. He had only 18.5mllion air miles in his a/c and the a/c is coded. It is only an insider that could produce the code or password of the deposit particulars. As it stands now,there is nobody in that position to produce the needed information other than my very self considering my position in the bank.”
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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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