Texans In Space!

Well, sort of. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Yahoo, is planning a spaceport for West Texas. This week, the environmental plan for the spaceport will be the subject of a public meeting in Van Horn, Texas. Plans include a vertical launch/vertical land experimental spacecraft.

The craft would hit an altitude of about 325,000 feet — or almost 62 miles — before descending and restarting its engine for a "precision vertical powered landing on the landing pad" in sparsely populated Culberson County, about 125 miles east of El Paso.

Those were among the plans detailed in a 229-page draft of an environmental review filed with the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA would issue permits and licenses for Blue Origin to go ahead with launch plans.

The report was assembled by Blue Origin and Tetra Tech Inc., an engineering and technical consulting firm based in Pasadena, Calif.

According to Blue Origin's Web site, the company is "developing vehicles and technologies that, over time, will help enable an enduring presence in space."

"We are currently working to develop a crewed, suborbital launch system that emphasizes safety and low cost of operations," the Web site says.

A public hearing on the environmental review was scheduled Tuesday in Van Horn, a town of 3,000 and the closest center of population to the space base. Bezos, the 42-year-old billionaire who built Amazon into an Internet sales giant, won't attend the hearing, Blue Origin spokesman Bruce Hicks said.

The environmental assessment process is "only one of the steps prior to obtaining an experimental permit for a launch operator's license," FAA spokesman Hank Price said. "We have received permit applications from Blue Origin and are evaluating them for safety and other considerations, as well."

As many as 10 flight tests lasting as long as a minute and reaching an altitude of about 2,000 feet could occur this year at the site, north of Van Horn on the 165,000-acre Corn Ranch purchased by Bezos. Over the following three years, as many as 25 launches would be made annually, growing in altitude to 325,000 feet and in duration to more than 10 minutes.

Commercial flights, a goal of the project, could begin in 2010, according to the timetable in the document, with as many as 52 a year.

There is a lot of commercial activity on space. It's about time private industry took over. Let's face it, government in this country has been underfunding NASA for years. The fact that American manned missions are confined to low earth orbit is a disgrace for a country that once sent men to the moon. Let's see if commercial space travel can make the difference.

Bikers In The News

A couple of items today involving bikes of one sort or another.

Item: To Dutch nuns gave chase to a suspected thief on their bicycles. They were in full uniform when they did this, so to speak.

On Saturday evening, one of the sisters believed she recognized a man walking past their chapel in southern Amsterdam as a thief who snatched hundreds of dollars in cash from the building two weeks earlier, Amsterdam police spokesman Rob van der Veen said.

She invited him inside for a drink and asked a fellow nun to alert police.

The man, apparently suspecting what was happening, fled the building and snatched a bicycle from a passer-by.

"The nuns then grabbed their bikes and gave chase. They tried to grab him, but he managed to escape into a residential neighborhood and they lost him," Van der Veen said. Police hunted for the man in the neighborhood but could not find him.

I can see a television series! Two crime-fighting nuns help police clean up Amsterdam. We need a title, though. Heaven on Wheels? Nuns With Handcuffs? Good Habits? Suggestions welcome. Too bad Aaron Spelling is dead, this could be huge!

Second item: From the other side of the world and the other side of the tracks as well, an Australian biker gang is auctioning a day with the gang. The package includes a trip to visit the site of the worst biker gang war in Australian history.

The club has advertised the chance to spend eight hours with three or four Comancheros on their Harley Davidsons in Sydney on internet auction site eBay, The Daily Telegraph reported Monday.

The advertisement also promotes the chance to visit the scene of one of Australia's bloodiest biker wars, known as the Milperra Massacre.

The Comancheros lost four members at the Viking Tavern on Father's Day in 1984, while two members of the rival gang, the Bandidos, were killed. A teenage bystander was shot in the face.

The auction has a reserve price of 2,000 Australian dollars (US$1,500), and the club has pledged to donate half the final bid to the cystic fibrosis unit of The Children's Hospital at Westmead.

One of the gang member's daughters has cystic fibrosis. So it's half for a good cause anyway. No word what they plan to do with the other half of the money.

Now if we could get the bikers to do a guest appearance on the crime-fighting nun's show, we could be in Emmy territory!

Jacoby On Chickenhawks

This column by Jeff Jacoby is a thing of beauty. He dismantles the particularly asinine meme that any number of lefties use all the time. Commenters on this blog, in fact, have used it.

“IT'S TOUCHING that you're so concerned about the military in Iraq," a reader in Wyoming e-mails in response to one of my columns on the war. “But I have a suspicion you're a phony. So tell me, what's your combat record? Ever serve?"

You hear a fair amount of that from the antiwar crowd if, like me, you support a war but have never seen combat yourself. That makes you a “chicken hawk" — one of those, as Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey, defending John Kerry from his critics, put it during the 2004 presidential campaign, who “shriek like a hawk, but have the backbone of a chicken." Kerry himself often played that card. “I'd like to know what it is Republicans who didn't serve in Vietnam have against those of us who did," he would sniff, casting himself as the victim of unmanly hypocrites who never wore the uniform, yet had the gall to criticize him, a decorated veteran, for his stance on the war.

“Chicken hawk" isn't an argument. It is a slur — a dishonest and incoherent slur. It is dishonest because those who invoke it don't really mean what they imply — that only those with combat experience have the moral authority or the necessary understanding to advocate military force. After all, US foreign policy would be more hawkish, not less, if decisions about war and peace were left up to members of the armed forces. Soldiers tend to be politically conservative, hard-nosed about national security, and confident that American arms make the world safer and freer. On the question of Iraq — stay-the-course or bring-the-troops-home? — I would be willing to trust their judgment. Would Cindy Sheehan and Howard Dean?

As clear and succinct a beatdown on that particular meme as I have ever read. Read the rest.

Arms Race? - Part Two

The Times of India also reports on the Washington Post story on the nuclear reactor under construction in Pakistan. They give a little additional information that is relevant.

The ISIS paper, while ostensibly dealing with Pakistan’s expanded program, was also headlined, ''Is South Asia heading for a Dramatic Build-up in Nuclear Arsenals?''

An unnamed Pakistani official helped amplify the concern by confirming that Islamabad was ''consolidating the program with further expansions,'' and the expanded program includes ''some civilian nuclear power and some military components.''

Albright also reported that Pakistan had made no effort to conceal the construction of the new reactor, enabling even commercial satellites to take high resolution pictures.

While the timing of the report and its affirmation by US and Pakistani analysts is manifestly aimed at raising the ante before the US-India nuclear vote, the experts also suggested the new reactor is still a few years from completion. (Emphasis added)

….

Pakistan’s nuclear program, aside from what its now disgraced expert A.Q.Khan stole from Europe, is mostly based on help from China. According to the Center for Non-proliferation Studies, most of Pakistan’s nuclear facilities have been build with Chinese help or bought from China.

China has also supplied Pakistan with nuclear weapons, enriched uranium, heavy water, tritium and other materials and components that have enabled it to go nuclear.

So, with that bit of information, what country is causing the destabilization?

Miss Universe

For no other reason than to post a picture of the winner of the 2006 Miss Universe pageant, we are reporting that Miss Puerto Rico has won. Enjoy!

Ok, so we posted two pictures.

Syrian Mouthpiece

You know, I have been really hard on the New York Times for quite some time now. I think I have good reason to be. But it seems they just keep getting worse. Now they are cheerfully acting as a pipeline for the Syrian government to spread it's disinformation and it's demands that the US negotiate directly with terrorists.

Buthaina Shaaban, the minister of expatriates and a close adviser to President Bashar al-Assad, said the chaos engulfing the region could be reduced only if Damascus and Hezbollah were directly involved in any negotiations. Washington has a policy of isolating Syria.

Further, she said, Washington is ignoring reality if it thinks groups like Hezbollah and Hamas can be purged by allowing Israel to bomb at will, or that extremism can be curbed in any way besides solving the Arab-Israeli dispute.

“The United States has to get realistic about addressing issues in the region instead of taking steps that only make things worse,” Mrs. Shaaban said in an interview. “They don’t have a vision about what is happening in the Middle East. They don’t have a plan for the region. They are losing credibility.”

Both President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have warned Syria that it must rein in Hezbollah, not least by cutting the supply line for the missiles the organization fires into Israel, which they say Iran ships through Syria.

“Do you want to step on the supply line or do you want to solve the big problem in the Middle East?” Mrs. Shaaban said. “That is the main issue. Do they want to end the Israeli occupation of Arab territories, that is the question.”

One Syrian official issued a strong warning against a proposal that was gaining momentum on Sunday for an international force to guard the Lebanon-Israel border. Deploying such a force without the cooperation of Syrian and Hezbollah, the official said, will risk repeating 1983. That was a pointed reference to the 241 United States service members and 58 French soldiers killed in attacks on military installations by suicide bombers. It has long been considered likely that Hezbollah sent the bombers with Syria’s blessing.

The only thing this article does show is the complete lack of actual bargaining room there is and why there really is no route to a negotiated settlement. This is exactly why all the past ceasefires and concessions have led nowhere. Because to the extremists, there is no solution other than the complete removal of Israel.

Condi Visits Beirut

Here's a surprise. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a surprise stop in Beirut on her way to Israel today.

Rice planned to meet with Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora, other leaders of his government and members of parliament about the surge in fighting along the southern border in the last two weeks.

Saniora greeted Rice, kissing her on both cheeks. On her way into the meeting, Rice told him, "Thank you for your courage and steadfastness."

Her visit is intended to make a show of support and concern for both the Saniora government and the Lebanese people, administration officials said. She also plans to talk with Lebanese leaders about how the central government can gain control of the entire country.

Rice has said her trip this week to the region will find ways to get much humanitarian aid to Lebanon. She plans to announce U.S. financial aid in her stops. But her mission took a dramatic turn with her arrival here under heavy security.

"We all want to urgently end the fighting. We have absolutely the same goal," Rice told reporters traveling with her.

Under heavy guard, Rice flew over the Mediterranean from Cyprus. She arrived still resisting international pressure to call from an immediate cease-fire. As Rice's motorcade sped through Beirut on the way to her meeting with Saniora, aides said the idea to stop in Lebanon was Rice's.

R. Nicholas Burns, U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, said Monday that Rice will seek to use "our influence to see if there can be a cessation of hostilities."

However, he told CBS' "The Early Show," any cease-fire would have to be long-lasting and involve a removal of Hezbollah rockets on the U.S.-Lebanese border* (sic) and a return of Israeli soldiers taken captive.

(* How's that little slip for the reporter and editor to let through?)

I've always thought highly of Dr. Rice, this act just raises my opinion. A move like this takes physical courage. She'd win if she were to run for president in 2008 I think.

Arms Race?

This is not good news if it is true. The Washington Post is reporting that independent analysts have determined that Pakistan appears to be building a new plutonium production reactor a great deal larger than their existing facility. Al though the analysis is based solely on commercially available satellite imagery, the analysts believe the reactor could be large enough to produce sufficient material for 40-50 bombs per year.

Pakistan has begun building what independent analysts say is a powerful new reactor for producing plutonium, a move that, if verified, would signal a major expansion of the country's nuclear weapons capabilities and a potential new escalation in the region's arms race.

Satellite photos of Pakistan's Khushab nuclear site show what appears to be a partially completed heavy-water reactor capable of producing enough plutonium for 40 to 50 nuclear weapons a year, a 20-fold increase from Pakistan's current capabilities, according to a technical assessment by Washington-based nuclear experts.

The construction site is adjacent to Pakistan's only plutonium production reactor, a modest, 50-megawatt unit that began operating in 1998. By contrast, the dimensions of the new reactor suggest a capacity of 1,000 megawatts or more, according to the analysis by the Institute for Science and International Security. Pakistan is believed to have 30 to 50 uranium warheads, which tend to be heavier and more difficult than plutonium warheads to mount on missiles.

"South Asia may be heading for a nuclear arms race that could lead to arsenals growing into the hundreds of nuclear weapons, or at minimum, vastly expanded stockpiles of military fissile material," the institute's David Albright and Paul Brannan concluded in the technical assessment, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post.

The assessment's key judgments were endorsed by two other independent nuclear experts who reviewed the commercially available satellite images, provided by Digital Globe, and supporting data. In Pakistan, officials would not confirm or deny the report, but a senior Pakistani official, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that a nuclear expansion was underway.

"Pakistan's nuclear program has matured. We're now consolidating the program with further expansions," the official said. The expanded program includes "some civilian nuclear power and some military components," he said.

Pakistan's nuclear arsenal right now is believed to be primarily made up of uranium bombs which are heavier and harder to mount on missiles. India appears to mainly have plutonium weapons. Regardless, this is not a really good situation.