Random Musings from the Warped Minds of Jonathan Goff, Ken Murphy, John Hare, and Kirk Sorensen
Posted in Commercial Space, Politics, Snark, SpaceX on Mar 2nd, 2010
I predict that regardless of the outcome of SpaceX’s inaugural Falcon 9 launch, nobody is going to change their opinion. If it’s successful, Ares-huggers will suddenly begin to understand the concept that a single successful flight doesn’t prove anything about a vehicle’s overall reliability (while most on the pro-commercial space guys will start sounding [...]
Posted in COTS, Commercial Space, ESAS, International Space Collaboration, Lunar Commerce, Lunar Exploration and Development, NASA, NEOs, Politics, Space Development, Space Policy on Dec 14th, 2009
Amid all the recent discussion of the Augustine Committee’s results, Mark Whittington asks a question that a lot of people in Congress seem to be asking: “Why not just pay for the current program since any new program is going to cost more money anyway?” To elaborate, the line of reasoning goes that if [...]
…I know there’s sometimes some confusion about names, but I’m pretty sure NASA isn’t short for Northern Alabama Space Administration. Someone ought to point that out to our Mr. Shelby.
I was reading my RSS feeds tonight, when I stumbled on this article. I remember discussing this concept of cycles of history with both my mom, and my brother-in-law. Jame’s Delong’s description of the “Special Interest State” I think fits our current political climate very well (both Democrat and Republican). If you’re in for more [...]
Am I the only one who notices the eerie similarities between the debate over the current “stimulus” bill and the run-up to the Iraq War? The same drumbeat of propaganda coming from the press. The same repeated warnings of imminent disaster from some quarters–if we don’t give the government the emergency powers it needs to [...]
Posted in NASA, Politics, Space Policy on Jan 3rd, 2009
There was an interesting piece about foreign policy linked to by one of the blogs I read on a regular basis (can’t remember who now). The piece was talking about the delay between when changes to the global order happen, and when elites finally start recognizing that something has changed:
Now… it seems to me [...]
Posted in Commercial Space, Politics, Space Policy on Nov 6th, 2008
It’s been interesting watching the space corner of the blogosphere during the last several months. Many of my friends in the space advocacy community tend to support the Republican side of things, and it was sad to see how many of them started nearing the boarder of tinfoilhatdom during the course of the Presidential campaign. [...]
Posted in Politics, Space Policy on Sep 25th, 2008
Immigration is one of those topics that I don’t like to think about, because the current mess we have in this country tends to just get me depressed. Earlier today, I saw a flowchart from Reason’s October 2008 issue showing how complicated and screwed-up our immigration process is. The basic takeaway is that barring a [...]
Posted in Politics on Sep 22nd, 2008
by guest blogger Ken
While Jon is trying to keep the politics to a minimum out here in the Selenian Boondocks (and so I now owe him several space-related posts), this is a little something that you’re not likely to see through major news sources.
Libertarian candidate Bob Barr filed suit in Texas court to keep the [...]
Posted in Politics on Sep 18th, 2008
Robert Higgs, author of the libertarian work Crisis and Leviathan, explained one of my key issues with “temporary powers” granted to government in times of emergencies:
One aspect of my model, however, has received relatively little notice, although I have always regarded it as especially important. That is the notion that episodes of crisis and abrupt [...]