John Edwards has coined a phrase, the McCain Doctrine, which consists of the emerging plan to send thirty thousand or so extra troops to Iraq, scour the country of terrorists, then hand things over to the Iraqis. It is a mark of a man who learned about strategy by getting his knees scabby chasing ambulances that he thinks that this is a bad thing and that he's being all so clever by calling it the "McCain Doctrine."

Now I have my problems with John McCain, the Lord knows, but if one had a choice between a war hero and a trial lawyer to decide matters of war and peace, who would one choose? Besides, I see a perfect debate comeback which I offer here for free. "Mr. Edwards, there are some people who cannot be dealt with just by suing them."

William Burrows, author of The Survival Imperative and This New Ocean recomends five books on space.


I should add some of my own:


Addendum: Glenn Reynolds has some of his own

They will hang Saddam Hussein from a sour apple tree!
A sour apple tree! A sour apple tree!
They will hang Saddam Hussein from a sour apple tree!
As they march along!

Addendum: It's offical. Saddam Hussein now roasts in Hell.

Looks like there will be an Indian Jones 4 after all.

Jon Goff has a curious post about something that appears to be faith based entrepreneurialism. I am tempted to be snarky and suggest that the wrong answer when asked either by a bank board or a congressional committee about whether ones space project will work is, "I have faith that it will."

But Jon has stumbled upon a truth, though perhaps not the one. If one wanted to pursue a safe way of making money, there are plenty of avenues available. None of them are going to get so much as an ant into space, however. People who propose to make a business out of space travel have to believe that there is a market for it. All the analysis in the world will not foretell the future with one hundred percent certainty. That is not to say, however, that there is no science behind it.

People who suggest that space tourism is going to be the "killer application" that will drive the development of private space travel have a lot of marketing research to back up their belief. That's the sort of thing that a bank board or a venture capitalist can understand.

Not to be ignored is the tacit seal of approval that NASA has given private space development. Folks who have control of investment capital have often turned to NASA to evaluate potential space related projects. This was a big stumbling block in the 1980s and 1990s when NASA took a dim view of anyone who proposed to compete with it on its turf. That changed with the current administration. There can be no greater endorsement by NASA of private space than the COTS program.

And, of course, the X Prize played its role. The X Prize was not based on any "faith" that any single effort would succeed, but rather on "faith" that given a competition that some effort would succeed. This "faith" was based on historic experience, going back to the aeronautic prizes of the 1920s. And with the success of Burt Rutan, money has flowed to sub orbital barn storming efforts.

A similar approach can be used for publicly funded space efforts. The President and Congress need a little more than "faith" that something good will come of a space effort. Publicly this "good" has to consist of everything from national prestige (and for those who scoff at that, please read Machiavelli), good science, and economic stimulus. Privately, and even unspoken, the "good" consists of jobs in the district. The experience of Apollo proves that these are not unreasonable justifications.

Faith is a good thing, sure. But it has to be buttressed by real world evidence. Otherwise space efforts, whether they come from President Bush or Elon Musk, will be quite as useful as praying a space ship into orbit.

Alan Boyle looks back at 2006, the year that was in space, and then ahead at 2007 for what might be.

NASA is still struggling over relative apathy toward the Vision for Space Exploration on the part of young people, defined as 18-25 or so. Part of the problem, I suspect, is the fact that youths tend to not think about the long term as much as folks who are older. The return to the Moon is not scheduled to happen for another ten to twelve years.

Of course, there is the old problem that NASA Public Affairs has been clueless since the Apollo Program:

Tactics encouraged by the workshop included new forms of communication, such as podcasts and YouTube; enlisting support from celebrities, like actors David Duchovny ("X-Files") and Patrick Stewart ("Star Trek: The Next Generation"); forming partnerships with youth-oriented media such as MTV or sports events such as the Olympics and NASCAR; and developing brand placement in the movie industry.

OK, some of this is fine, like using the Internet and so on. But Patrick Stewart and David Duchovny? Both Star Trek: Next Gen and the X-Files are so--well--1990s. Besides, Patrick Stewart is on record as being against going into space until all the world's problems are solved, which is another way of saying never.

Now if NASA were smart,they'd approach actors from more current popular SF shows. Say--Nathan Fillion (Captain Reynolds) of Firefly and Katee Sackhoff (Starbuck) of Battlestar Galactica

Addendum: Stacy Bartley has what he calls a "modest proposal."

I'm not sure how much this would cost. Not as much as some things I
suspect. But why not live feed web cams on every astronaut's helmet?
Why not live web feeds from the flight deck of the shuttle? Why not
live web feeds showing day to day activities in the ISS? Why not a
live web feed looking down at the Earth from the ISS? Why not a live
web feed looking down the side of the stack during the launch and
ride to space?

I'm not of the generation in question, but I'd be on those web sites
every day,and I'd NEVER miss an EVA. Also the data from these would
not be without use to NASA. Yes, we may see something awful
happen-but that's life isn't it?

As for voices to use-I'd use James Edward Olmos. First off he HAS the
voice, secondly he's hispanic which is a large constituency that
needs to be sold.

Hmm. Admiral Adama. Might work.

Addendum Two. Jon Goff tells his horror stories about NASA public relations, the only group that could make going to the Moon the first time seem boring. Then he comes upon a big problem:

What NASA doesn't need is more clever PR. Their PR is too clever by half already. They need a space program that's actually relevant to kids. Kids love space. But by the time they grow up a bit and learn that NASA might just get back to the moon by the time they're as old as their parents are, it really takes a lot of the excitement away. Mary Lynne Dittmar said in the article that "If you're going to do a space exploration program that lasts 40 years, if you just do the math, those are the guys that are going to carry the tax burden", refering to the youth. The problem is that if you're doing a space program that takes decades to accomplish anything actually interesting to anyone outside of a few NASA centers, you've already lost the PR campaign before its started. There's only so much lipstick that can be put on that pig.

There is a lot of truth there. We're a culture that demands that things happen now or we get bored with the effort and want to move on to something else. And it is not just a charecteristic of youth.

Jon, however, stumbles badly when a solution is called for:

So long as the major program NASA is focusing on is being treated as a welfare-for-nerds project, they're going to have a hard time selling it to the youth. It's entirely possible for NASA to accomplish a lot more, a lot quicker, and to have an exploration program that's actually exciting to both youth and adults. An exploration program that people might actually care about and feel worth supporting. But doing that while also trying to keep aging Shuttle employees off the street is going to be a real challenge.

All perhaps true, but how? For most people the answer to the question is to drop the current plan and use my favorite plan, whatever that is. But there is no proof that any plan, using EELVs or Direct Launcher or any of the myriad of dime a dozen schemes to go back to the Moon will advance the day people return to the Moon by even a year, not to mention to a time when many people will get excited about it now (which the cynic within me suggests would have to be next week sometime.)

"Commercial solutions" does not constitute black magic. It does not get rid of all of the many technical problems inherent in designing, building, and flying reliable and cheap space craft. The alt.space folks have been trying to get something into low Earth orbit since the late 1970s. It's hoped that next year that will finally be accomplished (by Elon Musk, we expect.) It took about seven years of the X Prize just to get to the point Burt Rutan was able to replicate the feat of the X 15 with his SpaceShipOne, albeit with far less money. The era of suborbital barnstorming lays still in the future, though it is hoped later in the decade.

Even a lunar X-Prize, even if it could be accomplished, might not get us back to the Moon sooner than NASA's tried and true way. Remember, that is only ten to twelve years in the future. Considering the trouble the alt.space folks are having just getting beyond the atmosphere, I wouldn't want to place a bet that any private group could beat NASA to the Moon, even if it could raise the money to do so.

There is one sure fire way to bring the return to the Moon closer than a decade. Shovel more money at the project. A lot more money. Enough, in fact, to develop the Ares 1, Ares 2, and everything else needed to get to the Moon at the same time, rather than in sequence. Good luck persuading Congress, especially the one now under our new Democratic overlords.

Sounds depressing? Well, I was once young myself. Around the time men first set foot on the Moon, a group of people came out with a plan for what should be done next by NASA in space. One feature of it was the first Mars expedition taking place in 1986. I was apalled. I would be an old man of thirty by that time. How should I get excited by something that would happen then?

I am fifty now and the first person on Mars is still in the future. With luck, or perhaps life extending medical technology, I might even live to see it.

The release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is months away, but already London bookies are taking bets as to plot details. Will Harry die? And if so, who will send him off this mortal coil? Will Hermione and Ron marry and what will they name their first kid?

President Ford had a space legacy--of sorts.

Could someone please tell me the logic behind Joe Biden's Iraq strategy? It appears to consist of refusing to fight our enemies and applying pressure to our friends. The ghosts of Machiavelli and Von Clausewitz must not believe that man is soon to be Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

More to the point, how is it that a political party which was so wrong on the Cold War is even listened to when offering the same disasterous counsel for the War on Terror?

Plans to send Orion to an asteroid are taking shape.

RIP Gerald R. Ford. He was the first President I voted for, though truth to tell it was really a vote against Jimmy Carter. Ford was a better man than he was President, though in his defense it would have taken a true paragon to deal with the mess that had been handed him. The fall of South East Asia had happened on his watch, but that was the fault of Congress, which cheerfully cut off funds to our allies there and watched as tens of millions were consigned to tyranny, millions to live as refugees far from the land of their birth, and millions to die often grisly deaths. (That's the same fate many of the same folks have in store for the people of Iraq, but that's another story.)

The less said about tom foolery like WIN buttons, the better.

I do agree that Ford's pardon of Nixon was an act of statesmanship, which may have robbed him of a second and full term. Watergate had dragged on for far too long, attended as it was by blatant hypocrisy on the part of Nixon's enemies. In my opinion, there are several other Presidents who would be in the dock if subjected to the same ruthless examination as had President Nixon. Ford staunched the bleeding and then moved on. As disastrous a decade as the 1970s were, a lynching of Richard Nixon (and that's what any trial would have become) would have been the icing on a bitter cake indeed.

Ford was defeated by Jimmy Carter, likely the worse President in my lifetime and who continues to be the worse ex President. But Carter was followed by the man who almost beat Ford in the 1976 primaries, President Ronald Reagan the Great.

So how did Tolkien's elves--well--do it?

Very soon, now, it will be up the tall ladder and down the short rope for Saddam.

I am told that there is no truth to the rumor that Nancy Pelosi intends to enter Washington D.C. riding a chariot in a parade featuring maidens tossing rose petals in her path and defeated Republicans being dragged in chains. Nevertheless, the four day coronation seems to me to be a bit much. Besides, there can be only one Goddess Empress of America and the woman who intends to be that currently resides in the Senate.

Ice at the lunar south pole? The evidence is as yet inconclusive.

HOLIDAY WISHES.

For My Liberal Friends:

"Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. We also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the generally accepted calendaryear 2007, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere, and without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishes. By accepting these greetings you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for herself or himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher."

For Everyone Else:
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Henry Hertzfeld explains in a paper produced last year why the cost and price of launching things and people into space have not decreased in the last forty odd years and why it may be difficult for them to decrease very much in the foreseeable future.

The Space Cynics once again give the Internet Rocketeer Club a good thrashing, though perhaps with a little overheated rhetoric. Please note the bit in the comments, by the way, about on orbit refueling, everyone's favorite alternative to NASA's plan to go back to the Moon. It turns out that unless Falcon 9 flies, it won't work.

Eragon is a very derivative film, to say the least. But it was pretty enjoyable nevertheless.