[Links]
[links] Link salad wonders what happened over the weekend
Zinc blinked — Scott Westerfeld lays out the Amazon vs Macmillan episode as cogently as I’ve seen, and far better than I could have done. (In case you were off the Internet this weekend or something.)
FAILblog on furries — Or possibly the Furies. I can’t tell. It’s a FAIL!
Barack Obama to drop NASA moon mission in budget cutbacks — Reports say planned human flights to the moon and Mars likely to be ditched in effort to rein in US deficit. Wow, I sure wanted a trillion dollar Iraq War more a whole lot more than I wanted a moon shot. Didn’t you?
Pentagon to rank global warming as destabilising force — My God, there’s liberals everywhere! Even in our nation’s military! George Will and Rush Limbaugh to the Pentagon, stat!
Political Quietism And Religion — Daniel Larison saying things on religion and politics that strike a chord with me. He’s literally the first conservative commentator I’ve run across who seems to focus on what’s actually happening in conservativism and politics in general rather than seeing the world through some Reaganite Oz version of the conservative self-image. If more conservatives were like Larison, I might actually have some respect for their principles and thinking. Now on my daily must-read list.
?otD: Would you fly to the moon if you could?
2/1/2010
Writing time yesterday: 90 minutes
Body movement: 30 minutes on stationary bike
Hours slept: 7.5
This morning’s weigh-in: 224.8
Currently reading: [between books]
Posted: 4:36 am Mon February 01 2010 |
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You are reading the blog of Jay Lake, speculative fiction writer and author of hundreds of short stories, many novels, and winner of the John W. Campbell Award.
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tobias buckell
February 1st, 2010 at 4:54 amJay, I think you may want to read a bit deeper about the manned missions. Prezzie’s reigning back NASA money on the initial mission of developing manned rockets in favor of paying private companies to put a man where they want.
So let SpaceX, Boeing, or Burt Rutan build a man-rated rocket, then NASA buys a launch for $XX dollars. This is like the guaranteed mail for $XXX per pound in the 30s that led to an explosion in private mail carrying planes at the infancy of flying.
Building up a private infrastructure of spaceflight sounds like a good idea to me.
What’s really funny is watching loud libertarians and conservatives suddenly do a 360 and decry what’s essentially a program in line with their business philosophy (let business do it!).
To be honest, I’ve somewhat dubious about the idea of the ‘space a utility’ model. The X prize demonstrated its better to specify a prize for a goal and let lots of people try to be the servicer, and not try and ‘prepick’ the winner. No one expected Rutan to win until the last 6 months. Right now NASA tries to design stuff in house, farm stuff out, and pick the winner a decade ahead of time.
Jay
February 1st, 2010 at 4:58 amYeah, I know there’s a lot more to it than this. Another angle is that many if not most actual rocket scientists view manned missions as a waste of money that could be used to much greater effect on multiple unmanned missions, for example. But the symbolism just slays me, and I do think there’s political and social value in a public effort in this regard.
tobias buckell
February 1st, 2010 at 5:25 amWe’ll see the true details later today, so I don’t want to pre-argue something. But I see more efficient and cheaper and wider access to space as a good thing for space age 2.0, not a bad thing. NASA’s budget is being increased overall, so I’m not all that ready to be slayed just yet.
tobias buckell
February 1st, 2010 at 11:25 pmhttp://www.transterrestrial.com/?p=24520
re: the space flight plan.