The Pompitous Of Space

Some people call me the space cowboy,yeah Some call me the gangster of love
Some people call me Maurice
Cause I speak of the pompitus of love People talk about me, baby
Say I'm doin' you wrong, doin' you wrong
Well, don't you worry baby
Don't worry Cause I'm right here, right here, right here, right here at home
(Steve Miller, The Joker)

Time has a long article out on the new space entrepreneurs trying to get commercial space flight opened up for the masses. It spends too much time on Richard Branson, but other than that it's quite good.

While Branson was hitting the beach with future passengers, his competitors– smart, rich and innovative like him–were busily at work plotting to beat him into space. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos just tested his first prototype for personal space travel in West Texas. John Carmack, co-creator of the Doom and Quake games, is test-firing rockets for the next generation of spaceliners and lunar landers near Dallas. In California, Jim Benson, founder of Compusearch, is developing a space taxi with a motor that runs on rubber and laughing gas. (Don't laugh. It works.) PayPal co-founder Elon Musk, who has a NASA contract to build a robotic Pony Express to the International Space Station (ISS), is pouring his own millions into a ship for galactic travelers at his factory south of Los Angeles. Robert Bigelow, founder of Budget Suites of America, already has a small-scale, inflatable space station–hotel in orbit, an outgrowth of his curiosity about UFOs. New Mexico wants to become the Cape Canaveral of space tourism, but six other proposed spaceports across the country are vying for business too. There's even an Orbital Outfitters store to provide space suits for civilians–whether portly or petite.

Ever since Alan Shepard became the first American in space in 1961, NASA has controlled our mission in space. It became a sacred place, untouchable, a museum open only to select government employees. Fewer than 500 people have reached space since Shepard; Branson plans to double that number in Galactic's first year. NASA's idea of progress is to return to the moon, nearly a half-century later. Last year the agency spent nearly $5 billion sending highly trained astronauts to the ISS, largely to ferry supplies and fix the AC and other sputtering plumbing. The new generation of entrepreneurs is betting it can do what NASA does–only better and cheaper, with cushier seats and cool views for paying customers.

Far from fighting these space invaders, NASA is pushing such ideas as FedEx–like service to lunar outposts, private fueling stations in orbit and space tourism. "We're entering a renaissance period of space exploration," NASA administrator Michael Griffin said in January. Like the Renaissance, he said, wealthy entrepreneurs will–in fact, must–take the lead in commercializing technology.

The future of space travel is in private ownership, not under government control. The real problems I see down the road will be when the inevitable accident happens and the trial lawyers see a new cash cow to milk.

Mutants Masticate Malaysian Military Masonry

The Animal Uprising™ has chosen the nation of Malaysia as the testing area for its most evil strategy to date. They have unleashed their genetically engineered mutant concrete chewing masonry termites on the Malaysian military!

Many of the Southeast Asian country's 80 army bases are believed to be plagued by the pests, forcing authorities to assign special officers to tackle the problem, newspapers reported Saturday.

"There are several problems with our camps, like old age and wear and tear. But the biggest problem are the termites," the New Straits Times quoted Deputy Defense Minister Zainal Abidin Zin as saying while visiting a naval base Friday in eastern Malaysia.

"These termites are like guerrillas inflicting damage on our facilities," Zainal was quoted as saying by The Star. "There are more termites than members of the force."

Officials have "found the termites not only attacking the wood but also the concrete sections of buildings," the minister said, according to The Star.

Note the first official acknowledgment of the guerrilla warfare the Animal Uprising™ is waging, too! It is about time governments started taking seriously the calm, rational warnings we here at the Crabitat are famous for. Now we don't want to raise any undue hysteria here, but think of how much damage concrete crunching termites could do in the world.

McConnell Vows A Fight

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has promised a procedural fight in the attempt by some Democrats to "unring the bell" in Iraq. He's forcing a showdown with Harry Reid over the support of the troops and he is picking his battles very carefully.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) warned yesterday that a new Democratic effort to repeal the 2002 Iraq war resolution would meet the same fate as two previous efforts to limit President Bush's authority: blocked by procedural obstacles, unless Democrats relent to GOP terms.

Speaking to reporters by conference call from his Louisville home, McConnell compared the latest Democratic move to "trying to unring a bell." He warned that Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. military commander in Iraq, would "have to surround himself with lawyers" to comply with the new resolution that senior Democrats are drafting.

McConnell predicted he could muster Republican support to block the measure, unless Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) allows a vote on a nonbinding GOP measure to guarantee troop funding.

A showdown over both measures could come as early as next week. Reid has signaled that Iraq-related amendments may be offered to an upcoming homeland security bill. "It's a bit of a cat-and-mouse game," a senior Democratic Senate aide said.

It is important to continue to point out just how bone-stupid these political machinations are for the Democrats. If they succeed in this, they will have set a precedent that WILL come back to bite a Democrat in the White House someday. They will also pay a serious price by virtually destroying voter confidence in their national security credentials. These are craven attempts to force a defeat on America while blatantly trying to avoid responsibility for that loss. It won't work. Voters are not as stupid as the politicians seem to think at times.

It’s A Wiki, Wiki, Wiki World

Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago has an op-ed in the Washington Post describing the rise of Wikipedia and projects that use the same open collaboration. He argues that many problems in the future may stand a better chance of being solved by open, non-copyrighted collaborative projects resembling the Wiki approach.

The Central Intelligence Agency disclosed the existence of its top-secret Intellipedia project, based on Wikipedia software (and now containing more than 28,000 pages), in late October. The agency hopes to use dispersed information to reduce the risk of intelligence failures. NASA officials have adopted a wiki site to program NASA software, allowing many participants to make improvements.

In the private domain, businesses are adopting wikis to compile information about products, profits and new developments. The Autism Wiki, produced mostly by adults with autism and Asperger's syndrome, contains material on autism and related conditions. Wikileaks.org, founded by dissidents in China and other nations, plans to post secret government documents and to protect them from censorship with coded software.

But wikis are merely one way to assemble dispersed knowledge. The number of prediction markets has also climbed over the past decade. These markets aggregate information by inviting people to "bet" on future events — the outcome of elections, changes in gross domestic product, the likelihood of a natural disaster or an outbreak of avian flu.

In general, the results have proved stunningly accurate. For elections, market forecasts have consistently outperformed experts and even public opinion polls. (If you want to learn who is likely to win the Oscars, check out the Hollywood Stock Exchange at http://www.hsx.com.) Many companies, such as Google, Eli Lilly and Microsoft, have created internal prediction markets for product launches, office openings, sales levels and more. At Google, which has disclosed some of its data, the aggregation of dispersed information has yielded remarkably reliable forecasts.

Interest in open-source software — software whose "code" is available to users, so that they can improve it as they see fit — has also risen dramatically. But the idea of open source is not limited to software.

He also points out the obvious problem: open projects are easily vandalized or manipulated,as Wikipedia entries have been in the past. But there are many open source, collaborative projects going on already that have serious potential to do some real good in the world. Interesting times we live in.