If the Russians Won't Play Nice, Who Needs Them?

Bigelow/Boeing Space Hotel

Apparently the Russians don't like it that the US has complained about recent Russian imperialism rearing its ugly heat with the annexation of the Crimea and continuing threats to take more territory from the Ukraine. Now they want to ban us from the International Space Station.  I figure, let's just let 'em have it along with the rest of the world who were supposed to love us now that Barak Obama is president, but don't. We should, of course take our junk with us. I figure, since they all keep telling us they don't need us, let's see how they manage on their own. Call it our gift to international development.

Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin and suggested we "use trampolines" to get our astronauts to space. So let's do just that for a while. We don't have to be in space all the time. Let's back up and unleash American private industry on the problem. Meanwhile our astronauts can be training for the next "giant leap for mankind" as Neal Armstrong so aptly described it. For instance:

1. The US pays 67 million dollars per astronaut for transportation to the International Space Station. Elon Musk's Dragon X space capsule could deliver 7 astronauts for that figure. Space X already delivers up to 13,228 pounds (6.5 tons) worth of stuff to the ISS on every trip using it's cargo version of the Dragon X. The spacecraft was designed to also be able to be fitted to carry human passengers. Give him the launch money we'd have used to pay the Russians and we'll wind up saving a lot of money in the long run.
2. Why are we messing with the Russians anyway? Why don't we just build our own space station and, like I said, leave the old ISS behind as our gift to the "rest of the world". Our way of giving them a little boost. Bigelow Industries and Boeing have already developed inflatable space station modules. Take our budget for launching astronauts and put it toward designing a giant blow-up US Space Station with lots more room and more modern tech on board. We could even give the Air Force it's own wing to do Air Forcey type things. 
3. Why aren't we going to the moon? Bigelow also has some nifty designs for blow up moon bases. Space X has a Falcon Heavy rocket under development that could get us there. We could always dust off the lunar lander designs from Apollo and update them. We know they work. 
4. What about mining and salvage operations? NASA already has its eyes on harvesting asteroids for materials.Why not the same on the moon?  There are plenty of minerals there and our astronauts could go around picking up all the metal stuff the Russians and Chinese have left scattered all over the lunar surface and either melt them down for scrap or repair them and charge the Russians and Chi-coms for the repairs. 
5. Why aren't we preparing to go to Mars while we're at it? Apparently there are some things on the moon we could make oxygen and water out of so let's set up labs to experiment with that stuff on the moon. If we can learn to get along on the moon we can figure out how to get along on Mars. At least Mars has an atmosphere to work with.
6. Actions speak louder than words. Instead of talking about how much we want to help the world, why don't we just do it. Let's push out toward the final frontier and bring our friends along with us. Countries that want to go along should be welcomed. Our gain is their gain and all you have to do to be a part of the amazing things we will be doing is to quit calling us names and undermining everything we're trying to do. If you want to be part of something big, do like the sign on the recording studio where "We are the World" was taped - "Please check your egos at the door." If we show the rest of the world how to be altruistic in space, others will follow.
7. Reward innovation and keep the cronyism out of it. You want a successful space race, make it a real race. Rewards go to those who do the best work. Cheating should be massively punished. Crony deals that reward shoddy workmanship, kickbacks and poor return on investment should get the perps banished from space. Let the Earth be their prison.
8. Get the media in on it in a big way. If you want people excited about space investment, get it on television and in the theaters. How about IMAX on the moon or Survivor Tranquility Base. Admittedly down the road, but you get the idea. Chris Hadfield had the right idea with his ISS music video of "Ground Control to Major Tom". Find media celebs to recruit as space boosters. How about a reporter in space on the brand new space station. Wouldn't you love to see Meghan Kelly floating around on camera trying to interview the guys on the crew?
9. Get private investors into the business of financing individual for-profit missions. What might an asteroid pulled into lunar orbit be worth?  How about investors putting up a for-profit space hotel. Bigelow's got the modules for it. Space-X has the boosters and soon will have the crew capsules. About 7 other companies aren't far behind.
10. Make the greenies happy and reduce rich peoples' collective guilt. Start a fund-raising drive to support development of more eco-friendly launch vehicles - balloon launches, space elevators, mag lev "rail gun" launchers and such. Publish efforts to create fuels from things found in space rather than having to lift it off the Earth. Advertise our efforts to reduce the cost and environmental impact of spacecraft launches, to harvest and recycle space junk and improve our knowledge of planetary science as "planet-friendly". Do documentaries showing how what we learn about conservation and recycling of food and water for off-world bases can be used to insure better harvests and cleaner water back on Earth.

NASA Scale Mag/Lev Launch System

We just need some leadership over at NASA that's more concerned with space exploration than with making Muslims feel good about their contribution to science. The politics need to be set aside in favor of getting the job done. Right now, as Ronald Reagan pointed out, we're the last best hope of freedom left on the planet. If we go down to totalitarianism, you'd better hope we've got some way to get off this rock.

Me, I'm betting on Jesus dropping by in a big space ship and evacuating the good guys before the bad guys blow themselves up and all the rest of us with them. Ah, but then I'm a bit pessimistic about how long we've got left. But I do think the longer we keep them busy the less twitchy their nuclear trigger fingers will be.

It'll be nice when we inherit the New Earth, not to have to deal with all the self-interested, corrupt and evil folk that feel like they must rain on every parade anybody gets up besides themselves. I like the rail gun launch system myself. It make take me and some buddies of mine a thousand or so years to figure it out and build it, but then, we won't have to worry about time so much then.

© 2014 by Tom King

Diplomacy Always Triumphs Over Action (Our Ideology Says So)

Pay no attention to those masked Russian soldiers with very large guns.
They're not really in Ukraine. President Obama has used his magic diplomacy!
We may expect unicorns and universal healthcare any minute now.

In 2008 Sarah Palin predicted that a wishy-washy response to Russia's invasion of Georgia would only encourage them to invade Ukraine next. The liberal press piled on her for that calling her a dim bulb and telling her not to worry her pretty little head about that because Obama's wise diplomacy would prevent that from ever happening. Now that the Russians have invaded Ukraine, the liberal self-appointed pundits claim that diplomacy is actually working despite appearances to the contrary.

One self-styled pundit said that threats of violence never work with Russia and that the Cold War ended, not because of Reagan's tough stance with the Russkies, but  because of "diplomacy".  Yeah, right - diplomacy in the form of more US military power than the fragile Communist Soviet Union's smoke and mirrors economy could keep up with. Diplomacy, they say, is actually working because President Obama is the smartest president ever and because, according to our ideology, diplomacy works. Diplomacy, they say, if done properly by a Democrat administration, works. The liberal punditry have said it works, therefore it must be working (again, despite evidence to the contrary).

Me? I think Palin was right.

© 2014 by Tom King
Sarah Palin image © Gage Skidmore
Russian soldiers © Daily Caller

Russians Squeeze NASA for More Bucks

(c) 2013 by Tom King

Dragon X Commercial Space Vehicle
successfully docks with Space Station

The price just went up on the cost of getting American astronauts into space.  The price of shipping our astronauts to the space station via Russia's "spam in a can" Soyuz capsule just increased from 62.3 million per seat to 70 million per seat.  

Thanks to this brilliant move, NASA is stuck hitching rides with the Russkies until at least 2017 - a deal which puts American astronauts in the hands of 1970s Russian technology in order to reach the space station. 

And the left is, of course, still blaming it on George Bush.

 I had intended to make some comment about how the Obama Administration's new goals for NASA had switched from space exploration to making Muslim nations feel good about themselves and their contribution to science, but let's let the president's choice for NASA head honcho speak for himself:




Note that none of the three initiatives the president charged Bolden with has anything to do directly with space exploration. It's all about political agenda.  The first thing NASA did under the Obama Administration in 2009 was cut the Orion crew size and delay the project for years, guaranteeing we continue to rely on the Russians to get our guys into space for close to a decade.

Notice that the evil commercial sector which is busily "lining its pockets", has already launched freight carrying space vehicles that cost NASA half what it's own rockets cost, delivering bigger and bigger payloads.  The Dragon X manned capsule will be ready long before Orion is. Space planes and inflatable hotels in space are already in the offing. 




And care to guess which president pushed hardest for NASA to open the doors to commercial space flight?

Meanwhile Obama's NASA will be busily "inspiring" children to "get into" science rather like they get into video games and rap music.  And the boss, Director Bolden, will be wandering around the middle east looking for ways to make the Muslims feel good about their contributions to science (his words).

Don't get me wrong. I do appreciate Arab contributions to science like unpronounceable names for constellation and that whole Arabic numerals thing.  Technically though they should be called "Hindu-Arabic numerals" because the Persians and Arabs borrowed them from their Hindu inventors (rather before any of your actual Arabs and Persians actually became your actual Muslims).  We are grateful that the Arabs, by then Muslim, passed Arab numerals along to the west no matter that they were misnamed.

Westerners grabbed onto the new number system instantly - probably because they were stuck trying to multiply CMLXXXVII times MDCLXXVIII  (the answer has something like 1,656 "M's" in it).  So let me formally thank the Middle East for 0 through 9.  Right handy it's been all in all. Without it we'd have had a right job of it to figure out which shuttle mission was STS-CXXXV.  And think of all the money NASA has saved on hiring the guys that paint the lettering on the spaceships, not to mention the cranes, the vehicle assembly building and the catering trucks. 859 takes a lot less paint than does DCCCLIX. 

At the rate things are going, I fully expect the greedy capitalists to be back on the moon long before NASA can figure out which Middle-Eastern leader most needs to be reassured that Islam has contributed to "science".  I'm sure, however, that millions of children will be "inspired" to "go into" science by NASA's new propaganda mission.  When NASA finally finds its way to Mars, they'll be able to land their one way space pod full of "inspired" kids in the parking lot of a Martian McDonald's right between a Ford orbital shuttle and a BMW interplanetary cruiser. 

Good plan, Big "O".  Really great plan.

I'm just saying.

Tom King

* Don't get me wrong. I think the Arabic numeral system was a peachy idea, but that predated Islam and actually they should be called Hindu-Arabic numerals because the whole idea originally came from India and was borrowed by the Arabs who lent it to people whose brains were fried from trying to multiply MCLXXXVII times MDCLXXVIII. 

Katyn II: The Polish People Fear a Repeat of 1940

The people of Poland are in shock and are worried about the Russians again. Saturday's plane crash that killed, not only the president of Poland and his wife, but practically the entire leadership of Poland's military and government, is already being called Katyn II. It is a measure of just how nervous their neighbors make them. If you don't know what Katyn I was, prepare yourself for a string of "interesting" historical coincidences. Given Polish history, the Poles can be forgiven if they find what happened this weekend in the forest near Smolensk eerily parallel to what happened 70 years ago in the forests near Katyn.

It was 1940, Europe was in turmoil and Poland was, unbeknown to most of its citizens, the subject of a secret agreement between Germany and Russia, dividing the country between them. On March 5 1940, Joseph Stalin signed a secret order as brutal as any Hitler ever issued, that led to the capture and mass murder of 22,000 Polish doctors, lawyers and military officers in the forest near Katyn. The crime was so brutal that the German (Goebbels, of all people) was able to use it as propaganda against the Russians. The assassinations decapitated the Polish Army and the leadership of its public service sector as the Germans and Russians prepared to overrun the Polish nation.

The plane crash that took the life of Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and 95 key Polish government and military leaders is already being publicly called Katyn II by many Poles and one can hardly blame them. The plane was carrying the president and his entourage to a Katyn memorial service on the 70th anniversary of the tragedy.

President Kaczynski and his twin brother, founding members with Lech Walesa of the Polish Solidarity movement have been less than diplomatic with either the Russians or the European Union of late. They've been less than diplomatic with the European Union about its bullying tactics. Suddenly, the troublesome leader is eliminated in a crash that ironically took place at Smolensk, not far from the Katyn Forest. It effectively decapitates the government and brings the opposition party almost instantly to power, at the same time leaving all three Polish military branches without their top leaders, the banking system and much of the Polish civil service. Predictably, the Russians are blaming the crash on the Poles. The newspapers in the states are dismissing Poles who compare the disaster to Katyn "extremists".

It's also a bit unnerving that the day after the crash, news about it is already buried in the back pages of the newspaper behind glowing headlines about how Neville......., I mean Barak Obama is bringing us peace in our time by signing a nuclear nonproliferation agreement with the Russians, the upshot of which is that the U.S. is laying down its nukes with few real guarantees that anyone else will lay down theirs. With the stroke of a pen, the U.S., for all practical purposes ceases to be a superpower. Of course, considering that we've got an administration that seems intent on turning us into Albania, it's not surprising.

By the way, be careful looking up the Katyn massacre. In the first two pages of a Google search on the subject last night, more than half of the sites that showed up were fiercely virulent malware sites. I had to flip my computer off at the wall to escape having malware forcibly downloaded to my computer. Odd that the obscure term "Katyn" would suddenly be the keyword for so many malware sites. It's as though someone didn't want people reading that particular bit of history.

I have a friend in Poland. He says everyone is in shock. He mentioned Katyn right away. I think the Poles would do well to reexamine that bit of their history. If the U.S. doesn't stand with Poland on this one, then once again, Poland is all alone. Pray for Poland. They will very likely need it if history is indeed being replayed.

Just one man's opinion.
Tom King