Breaking News: A judge said the government should release Kseniia Petrova, a Russian scientist employed by Harvard University, saying U.S. customs had “no factual or legal basis” for revoking her visa.Somebody should tell Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller and Pam Bondi. They really should know this!
Overnight: Elon Musk must face a lawsuit that accuses him of wielding unconstitutionally vast powers to reshape the US government, a US judge ruled.Poor put upon Elmo.
The Trump administration adopted a "perverse reading" of the Constitution's system of checks and balances, Judge Tanya Chutkan wrote.
Musk said repercussions over DOGE cuts were severe. “DOGE is just becoming the whipping boy for everything,” he said.
“So, like, something bad would happen anywhere, and we would get blamed for it even if we had nothing to do with it.”
Did I mention I saw a pro-Trump book in a bookstore the other day titled From Mar-A-Lago to Mars? Don’t think we’re gonna get there in three years. Or, for that matter, ever occupy it. Of course, Elmo has convinced people he’s putting autonomous taxis on the street next week. Or the week after. Whenever.
Pretty much the same people who think he’s ever gonna get a manned flight to Mars.
And yeah, I don’t understand why anybody held him responsible for anything:
"Mars bound rockets"
ReplyDeleteSaturn V launched twice, getting its payload into orbit both times, then we put 3 men on top of it and they went around the moon.
Starship hasn't even made it to low earth orbit yet, 9 launches in. The Human Landing System is supposed to undergo ascent/descent testing THIS YEAR, and the Starship Propellant Transfer Demonstration has already been delayed until 2026 as a result. The testing schedule is gonna drift further and further until they get the launch platform operational. But we're gonna land on Mars in 2029 and have a self-sustaining Martian Galt's Gulch by 2050.
There's a line in From the Earth to the Moon regarding LM development delays that seems apt:
"We're not gonna go to New Jersey, let alone [Mars]."
The television series For All Mankind is an alternative history of NASA's space race. The Soviets beat us to the moon. In Season 3 the Soviets and the US set foot on Mars in a dead heat, pushed from behind in the mid Nineties by a Musk-like twenty-something, black, tech wonder boy billionaire.
ReplyDeleteIn the ‘60’s the government was the only one with the wherewithal to mount the space program from Mercury to Apollo. Then we decided business could do everything better, and here we are. Although I get how that’s an alternate history (a lot of ‘50’s/early ‘60’s sci-fi imagined American business would lead the space race). I really like the tweak that the Musk-like character is black. Very fitting. And apparently, a real boy wonder.
ReplyDeleteMy first job as a lifeguard in the summer after my sophomore year at U of Houston was at a sub-division swimming pool in Clear Lake City. My supervisor, also a lifeguard, was the oldest daughter of an astronaut who flew the first Joint NASA - Soyuz docking mission as part of Apollo in 1975 and later four or five Shuttle missions to what gradually became the Space Station. Stephanie's dad is still going strong at age 94. Her mom worked as an interior decorator for the contractor who built the houses in the subdivision where I worked in walking distance from Mission Control. The contractor had been a high school football coach until he got fired for mental, physical and emotional abuse of his football players. He fired me for being a 'spic' when he found out I had a girl friend who worked as a lifeguard at a large public pool in inner city Houston. Her mother was Mexican, but her father was Italian and Jewish. They owned a pizza parlor that featured deep dish pizza in rectangular pans. My fellow lifeguard at the pool where I worked was a high school girl who played water polo and had aspirations as a diver. Her older brother had gone vagabond after a disagreement with the football coach/contractor who drove a jeep and thought he was Brian Keith personified. Vance Brand became a key figure in the International aspect of the Space Station. Never met him, but can say from personal experience that For All Mankind does capture some of the essence of the atmosphere on the ground of the Apollo Program even though the filming of the series is actually Culver City in California and Lithuania.
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