Private Spaceflight a boon to Scientists

History is happening around us.. Despite the problems in our world, we can see great progress in the frontiers that will eventually free humanity from this lonely single rock.

Scientists go suborbital - Cosmic Log - msnbc.com:
"The killer app for private spaceflight, at least once the millionaires and celebrities have had their turn, may well be scientific research.

'You spark this industry with tourists, but I predict in the next decade the research market is going to be bigger than the tourist market,' says Alan Stern, a planetary scientist at the Colorado-based Southwest Research Institute who is heading up a committee to link up researchers with future suborbital spaceflights.

Until recently, suborbital space trips were marketed primarily as the penultimate high for well-heeled thrill-seekers.
. . .
Virtually all the major players in the still-gestating suborbital industry now realize that research flights could make the difference in their drive to profitability.

One of the clearest signs of that came last month, when an Arab investment group bought a $280 million stake in British billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic venture, putting special emphasis on the capability to fly scientific experiments and deploy small satellites.

. . .

There are other options for space research, of course, ranging from zero-G airplane flights to suborbital sounding rockets to unmanned orbital and deep-space flights to space station experiments. So why would researchers, and even NASA, opt for rides on private spaceships that have yet to be built?

Cost is just one reason, Stern told me. A $200,000 ticket for a space ride may sound expensive for a tourist, but it's peanuts compared to the $2 million or more charged for the launch of a NASA sounding rocket, he said.

. . .

"If you could go at [an experiment] every day of the year and see the atmosphere changing, how powerful would that be?" Stern said. "This becomes a laboratory-like experience."

Piloted spaceships are also likely to provide a more robust environment for research. Scientists would be more likely to get their experiment back and less likely to lose it in a hard landing.

. . .

Experimenters could also fly along with their experiments - not just once, but multiple times. "Graduate students will be doing their own Ph.D.s in these vehicles," Stern predicted.

. . .

"This is so cheap, and the applications are so good, that I expect NIH, NSF, DOD, DOE, a whole slew of federal agencies will have space efforts, just like federal agencies have boats and airplanes that they use," he said. "Literally, Aruba could afford to have a spaceflight program. ... Every country that wants to have their own space program with astronauts can go.""

Spaceport America construction starts in New Mexico

We start slowly - currently only the wealthy can consider vacationing in space. This will change over time - start saving now.

Eventually life on Earth will be improved as we tap the wealth of our solar system. Privatization of space travel is an essential component of this transition. We're seeing privatization happen now.

Construction Begins on Spaceport America | Popular Science:
". . .
For everyone looking to hop the next commercial flight to space, your departure gate has finally been announced. Almost two years after the first plans were announced, construction has finally begun on Spaceport America. The spaceport, which will serve as the launch and landing pad for Virgin Galactic flights, is the first of its kind anywhere in the world, and represents the first serious commitment of infrastructure to manned commercial spaceflight.
. . .

Currently, Virgin Galactic only has two space ships, so it will probably be sometime before the facility experiences O'Hare and LaGuardia level traffic."

American capitalism gone with a whimper - Pravda.Ru

Fascinating to see how our country is viewed by others in the world. This blog was reprinted in Pravda, once the official newspaper of the Soviet Union.

American capitalism gone with a whimper - Pravda.Ru:
". . . the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed,
. . .
First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives.
. . .
Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses
. . .
The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.
. . .
it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies.
. . .
The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left."

It would be interesting to see what this author says after the 2010 elections.

Chrysler Bankruptcy Plan

Where are the lawyers? This seems like WW-II era Italy

Chrysler Bankruptcy Plan Is Announced - NYTimes.com:
"WASHINGTON — President Obama forced Chrysler into federal bankruptcy protection on Thursday so it could pursue a lifesaving alliance with the Italian automaker Fiat, in yet another extraordinary intervention into private industry by the federal government.
. . .
The arrangement came after an intensive round of White House-sponsored negotiations among the Treasury Department, the union and Chrysler’s executives and creditors. After working through the night, a small group of debtholders balked at Mr. Obama’s final terms, leading the president to decide that bankruptcy could not be averted.

It was a stark moment, and one unseen in modern times, as the fledgling president deepened his involvement in a struggling but iconic American company. Chrysler, which Mr. Obama called “a pillar” of the industrial economy, invented the minivan and owns the Jeep brand.

With Thursday’s filing, Chrysler became the first major American automaker to seek bankruptcy protection since Studebaker did so in 1933."

the Stimulus Plan Viewed With Suspicion

There are lots of criticisms of the Stimulus Bill floating around - this suggestion that it is intended to destroy our political & economic systems goes further than most. What do you think?

American Thinker: The Cloward/Piven Strategy of Economic Recovery:
"The assumption that Obama will need the nation to prosper in order to protect the 2010 mid-term election incorrectly assumes that he esteems free market capitalism. He does not. Rather than win through superior ideas and policies, the Democrat plan for success in the mid-term elections is to win by destroying political opposition.

Obama adheres to the Saul Alinksy Rules for Radicals method of politics, which teaches the dark art of destroying political adversaries. However, that text reveals only one front in the radical left's war against America. The Cloward/Piven Strategy is another method employed by the radical Left to create and manage crisis. This strategy explains Rahm Emanuel's ominous statement, 'You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.'

The Cloward/Piven Strategy is named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven. Their goal is to overthrow capitalism by overwhelming the government bureaucracy with entitlement demands. The created crisis provides the impetus to bring about radical political change.

. . .
Making an already weak economy even worse is the intent of the Cloward/Piven Strategy. It is imperative that we view the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan's spending on items like food stamps, jobless benefits, and health care through this end goal. This strategy explains why the Democrat plan to "stimulate" the economy involves massive deficit spending projects. It includes billions for ACORN and its subgroups such as SHOP and the Neighborhood Stabilization Program. Expanding the S-Chip Program through deficit spending in a supposed effort to "save the children" only makes a faltering economy worse.

If Congress were to allow a robust economy, parents would be able to provide for their children themselves by earning and keeping more of their own money. Democrats, quick to not waste a crisis, would consider that a lost opportunity.

. . . .
Because these programs are financed with deficit spending, the effect of the Cloward/Piven Strategy becomes doubly destructive. Talk about a perfect storm! The Democrat stimulus plan is a mechanism whose goal is the destruction of the traditional American way of life. It is bitter irony that the American taxpayer will actually fund the destruction of his own ability to live according to the values of our Founding Documents. It is not alarmist to identify this situation as a coup d'etat."

In these discussions, we need to be thankful that Congressional Representatives get re-elected every two years. I think the Democrats will overreach, and end up getting replaced by conservatives in 2010 who will begin to withdraw us from this socialist experiment.

Our Problems Can't be Fixed by the Congress That Caused Them

This article by Harvey Golub is on Senator John Kyl's recommended reading list - I'm glad I found it.
Click the link to read the entire article.

I Vote No Confidence in Congress - WSJ.com:
"In recent months, Congress has displayed a fundamental lack of understanding of how our economy and our financial markets actually work. Members believe they can say a bank is likely to become insolvent and that will not lead to a run on the bank, or say a major insurance company is in trouble and not have insurance stocks tank. They believe they can extend a $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) beyond its charter and not have every institution under the sun try to get what they believe is cheap capital.

Most significantly, although Congress is a large cause of the collapse of the home-mortgage market (witness the folly of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), members believe the markets are too stupid to recognize Congress's culpability and will maintain confidence in Congress's ability to resolve the financial crisis."