Tag: space

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government transparency

Unidentified Non-​Disclosure

Elon Musk, UFO

Elon Musk, the entrepreneur and genius behind Tesla Motors and SpaceX, is someone who really knows how to get government subsidies and contracts — as well as elicit investor enthusiasm — for his extraordinary endeavors. And his Twitter account is often interesting.

“I’m not saying there are UFOs,” he tweeted a little over a week ago, “but there are UFOs.”

Musk was riffing off a popular joke meme, featuring wild-​haired Giorgio A. Tsoukalos of Ancient Aliens fame: “I’m not saying its aliens. But it’s aliens.” It’s a funny photo, encapsulating the genius of an obsession from the early 1970s: Erich von Däniken’s ultra-​popular Chariots of the Gods. 

“This sparked a huge response on Twitter, with many asking [Musk] if he knew more about the existence of aliens,” explains Patrick Knox of The U.S. Sun.

The day before Musk’s amusing tweet, “a UFO was spotted near the International Space Station during a live feed, sparking a new wave of alien conspiracy theories” — giving Musk the news peg for his quip.

Now that the U.S. Government has admitted that there have been plenty of encounters with unidentified aerial phenomena that have no official, public explanation that makes any sense, you might think we were beyond the “conspiracy theory” charge.

But most ufologists, I glean, believe some people within the military-​industrial complex know a great deal more about these phenomena than they are saying. So “conspiracy” is not entirely out of the blue. 

Worth mentioning, though, is that Elon Musk has multiple ongoing contracts with NASA, and undoubtedly has signed more than one non-​disclosure agreement (NDA).

So he must walk the jocular tight-rope.

It would be interesting to learn what the heck is really going on. 

NASA’s NDA’s should be voided.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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Elon

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individual achievement

The Division of Adventure

Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson

On Sunday, billionaire Richard Branson became the first person to ascend into space in his own spacecraft — assuming that myth, old rumors and sci-​fi stories of god-​kings and mad scientists going to the Moon or Mars remain just that, myth and rumor and fi.

“The launch with Branson marked the 22nd test flight of Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity space plane,” writes Alex Veiga for MSN. “The company has planned at least two more space test flights this year.”

Thus Branson beat Jeff Bezos into space — depending how you figure. Later in the month Bezos’s Blue Origin spacecraft is set to launch Amazon’s less-​than-​beloved billionaire even higher above the planet.*

The billionaire space race is on, with the next level to be reached when regularly scheduled flights become the norm, ticket sales and all.

This is really “just” thrill-​ride fare we are talking about here — and likely when commercial space travel first becomes normalized. Neither man is aiming to rocket into orbital space.

Yet.

Which is not to say this is not of great significance.

Of course, the fledgling industry receives criticism. Why go to space now, some say, when we have so many problems on Earth?

Well, explorers and adventurers did not wait till Europe’s problems were solved to explore and settle the Americas. They pushed forward.

Just as there is a division of labor in society, there is a division of ambition, of venture.

I will likely never go into space. But I am happy Richard Branson got there.

And I’ll applaud if you, too, jaunt upwards.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 * Branson and Bezos publicly squabble about what “space” is. Virgin Galactic went above the American standard of about 50 miles, while Bezos aims for the worldwide “accepted” standard of 62 miles.

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Jeff Bezos| Elon Musk | Richard Branson

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ideological culture national politics & policies Popular

Strange Days

swing, space, weird, ufo, aliens, strange,

We live in a strange time when a possible official UFO disclosure by the government doesn’t seem strange at all.

What’s odd is one of the two major American political parties proudly talking up socialism.

What’s weird is the increasing financial instability of the country’s top two social programs, Medicare and Social Security, while Americans seem unworried and politicians push not to shore the programs up, but expand them.

What’s bizarre is over $22 trillion in federal debt, and the current president and Congress piling on ever more with new trillion-​dollar deficits.

What’s strange is … well, OK: UFO disclosure is a bit strange.

It is worth noting that Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests have unearthed quite a lot of information on UFOs already. When FOIA mechanisms were first set up, no one expected the avalanche of requests that would be related to UFOs. But that is what happened — and they haven’t dredged up nothing.

When President Trump was asked about the issue by George Stephanopoulos, his response was dismissive, however. “People are saying they’re seeing UFOs. Do I believe it? Not particularly.”

Like me, he probably has seen nothing first-​hand, experienced nothing. But by now he has surely been briefed.

Or has the de facto Deep State coup attempt against his presidency entailed keeping him in the dark?

Meanwhile, Senator Bernie Sanders, running for Trump’s job, told YouTuber Joe Rogan that he would pass on whatever he might learn about UFOs if president. “Alright, we’ll announce it on the show. How’s that?”

Yet even that is not the strangest thing Sanders has said.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

swing, space, weird, ufo, aliens, strange,

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general freedom individual achievement media and media people national politics & policies responsibility

Red Roadster Rides Outer Space

Tesla, Elon Musk, SpaceX, launch, space, orbit, government

On Tuesday, SpaceX launched one of the largest rockets ever, the Falcon Heavy. Because it is still experimental, it didn’t carry up an expensive satellite. Too early for that. Instead, it has sent up a Tesla Roadster.

And it’s not aiming for orbit … around Earth. 

It’s aiming for, well, “a precessing Earth-​Mars elliptical orbit around the sun.”

All the while playing the late David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.”

This is all very bizarre, of course. But SpaceX is headed by Elon Musk, who is one of those daring people who do daring things. The very fact that he kept finding funding (no small amount of it from taxpayers, sadly) for Tesla Motors (which he also founded), while failing to make a profit, is a tribute to … something.

Sending Musk’s personal car into space — to circuit Sol for a billion years — is, the visionary says, at least not boring. (Musk, perhaps not coincidentally for that word choice, also founded the Boring Company.) The Roadster, “piloted” by a dummy “Starman,” is an upgrade with flair.

But who is he playing to? The masses of auto buffs? Stargazers? Science fiction fans?* 

Maybe the mad-​scientist/​eccentric-​mogul is playing for bureaucrats, Capitol Hill staffers, and politicians. For, by one estimate, his companies have received $4.9 billion in government subsidies.

So, think of what’s going into orbit as just another part of the skyrocketing — spacerocketing — federal debt.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The odd payload choice might make sense in sci-​fi context, for, in the early days of science fiction, one idea often mentioned was to literally send a bomb to the Moon: an explosion, after all, could be seen, in early Space Age days, with old technology right here from Planet Earth surface. This was the case in the boys’ book The Rocket’s Shadow as imagined in 1947.

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free trade & free markets general freedom individual achievement

Falcon 9 Delivers Eleven

SpaceX, Falcon 9, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Space, NASA, Common Sense, illustration

Earlier this week, SpaceX made history. Again.

Back in 2008, the company had launched the Falcon 1 into orbit —a big deal in the Space Age, previously dominated by governments.

Blue Origin, which is the baby of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, has been providing Elon Musk’s SpaceX some stiff competition. A few weeks ago, Blue Origin sent up the New Shepard rocket — and returned it to earth vertically.

This week, SpaceX pulled ahead, sending its Falcon 9 up beyond New Shepard’s suborbital heights, putting eleven (count ’em: 11) satellites into orbit … and returning to touch down safely onto dry land — on the launch pad — vertically.

Just like we imagined when we (well, some of us oldsters) were young, before we witnessed Mercury and Apollo splashdowns.

Back in 2012, when I wrote about SpaceX — and NASA’s outsourcing of launches — I called it progress. One reader worried about the whole thing, though: “A spy satellite is still a spy satellite even if some telecom conglomerate puts it in space.” He was afraid of privatizing tyranny. That would be bad, but it doesn’t seem to apply to this week’s new satellites … unless M2M (machine-​to-​machine) Internet devices mean something different than what I understand them to be.

In any case, costs have been contained: while NASA’s Space Shuttle was also reusable, it cost about half a billion bucks per launch, which, we’re told, is “about eight times the current cost of a Falcon 9.”

Free enterprise: delivering the goods at a fraction of the cost.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom individual achievement property rights responsibility too much government

Roman Rockets?

Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos, rocket, private, privatize, Common Sense, illustration

Is Big Government necessary to accomplish Big Things?

Big government built the pyramids. Big government erected the Great Wall of China. Big government put Man on the Moon.

But humanity could have reached Luna over a thousand years ago, had Roman civilization not gone into a death spiral.

Bill Whittle made this point in some recent talks on Afterburner and guesting on Stefan Molyneux’s philosophy show. He blames the fall of past civilizations on “sexual strategies”: the sociobiology of r/​K. (The “r” strategy organisms make lots of babies, invest little in them, accept widespread predation; the “K” strategy makes fewer babies, invests heavily in each, and suppresses predators and parasites.) Civilizations start K‑style and decline with r.

It’s a theory.

Whatever the biology, Big Government was integral to Rome’s decline, with its exploitative systems and corruption, monetary inflation and “handouts.”

Rome wasn’t destroyed in a day. There were delays and cost-​overruns, like any government job.

But Whittle’s right about progress. Humanity would be a lot further along if it didn’t get caught in government/​conflict/​exploitation traps. Private companies might be on the Moon today were it not for Big governments that destroyed promising civilization in the past.

But hey: private enterprise is catching up.

“In an historic first,” Popular Science informs us, “the private company founded by Amazon co-​founder Jeff Bezos has become the first to land a re-​useable rocket that’s traveled to and from space.” The rocket lands as envisioned in old science fiction flicks, vertically — though with the aid of “drag brakes” (parachutes).

Let’s hope our civilization doesn’t once again collapse before we witness (and contribute to) further progress.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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