Space and now the Storm

On his book “The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order by historian Gary Gerstle:

5:56 “The Soviet Union represented an existential threat to the United States”.

6:48 “-and that required (to contain communism) a standing army and quasi-peacetime of a sort that America had never experienced before. And Taft was profoundly uncomfortable with this…he was a republican in a classical sense, small central government, devolve power to the state, it’s suspicious of foreign entanglements, believing that America was protected by the two vast oceans and thus did not need a strong standing army, did not have to be involved in world affairs, and he was opposed to The New Deal; he thought it was a form of tyranny, was going to lead to collectivism, Soviet style, and he was poised, in the 1940’s, to roll back The New Deal-“

Eisenhower came along to address communism and without the cold war The New Deal would have disappeared and been seen “as a blip” instead of a “juggernaut” that continued on for 30 more years.

17:18 “-but the scale of this would not have reached the point that it did without getting a lot of republicans on board and the critical argument for them was national security and the critical event was Sputnik-“.

We Have More People

Some good news:

6 percent of American adults support the use of force to restore Trump to the presidency.

8 percent of American adults support the use of force to prevent Trump from becoming president.

6 percent is a little over 15 million. 8 percent is a little over 20 million.

While the right is more likely to have guns, America has more guns than people and those on the left with guns, and there are many, will share if it comes to violence. Only a small percentage of a small percentage of a small percentage are going to end up shooting at each other and it will in my opinion be roughly equal and Martial Law will be declared quickly, and the military will move in and when they start shooting anyone with a gun on sight, which is the only way to stop a civil war, it will be over quickly. The military will follow the orders of their officers and the officers will obey the sitting government. Various National Guard and Reserve units might stage half-hearted mutinies but the military will react to that like the dreadful hand of God. The great worry is that the democrats are the ones who will not react strongly enough out of fear of being the fascists and if luck is on their side the Trumpists will take power.

Do You Believe?

The Kamala Harris speech was rousing…and took me back to a significant event in my life some years ago.

She concluded with, “Do we believe in the promise of America…and are we ready to fight for it? And when we fight, we win! God bless you and God bless the United States of America.”

I was having a discussion with a coworker before Trump was elected trying to explain why Trump would not be a good President. I thought it was in good faith but when he asked me, “Do you believe in America?”, the light bulb went on and I realized nothing I said would make any difference to him because he was essentially stating I was NOT an American. Not his idea of an American. He was unmistakably othering me.

There are those who “believe” in the tribe and nothing else. There are those who do not believe in tribalism….that reject the principle that the group you identify with has all knowledge and authority and “others” not in your group are enemies. In Fascist ideology this is a necessary feature called “othering.” The three primary features being 1) the absolute authority of the Leader and the State ideology, 2) absolute loyalty to the Leader who embodies the State, and 3) the demonization of those identified as not part of, or not fit to be, a subject of the State. One of, or a group of, the “others” that must necessarily be destroyed. Because the individual cannot choose to be a subject of the Leader and State without some valid reason to do so. An existential threat is really the only valid reason to suspend all independent thought and “believe.” A promise is something hoped for, that must be traveled to with independent thought, not something taken as it is on the authority of celebrity or a cult of personality, not something that was, in the past. We must not go back. The threats American democracy faces are to its very existence, but unlike fascism, we must NOT suspend individual thought.

When Kamala Harris is asking us if we believe in the promise of America, she is asking if we believe in the freedom of the individual, she is NOT asking if we are in a tribe. Those that demand belief in and submission to a Leader and an ideology and absolute loyalty to that Leader are not referring to any promise of the greatest good for the greatest number of individuals. Only the power of their tribe embodied in the authority of their Leader. Not about truth as a primary feature, only the authority of the Leader, not about the rule of law, only the authority of the Leader, not about the good of the people, only the destruction of those not submitting to the authority of the Leader, who embodies the power of their tribe. Only the Leader can save us….is the lie.

That Trumpists are willing to ignore reality, to call lies the truth, and to change the meaning of words to make them serve the fascist ideology of their Leader. The single most glaring example is the idiotic statement that “America is not a democracy, it is a republic.” America is both in the same way countries are a monarchy and a kingdom. A direct democracy does not delegate authority to elected representatives. The citizens are the representatives and vote. A republic elects representatives who vote on laws that make up the rule of law that limits the authority of direct voting to do things like make people kings and start wars. The representatives, elected by direct democracy to ensure the greatest good for the people, discuss and decide and vote on acting on these issues and enact or repeal the laws limiting or enabling action. If the representatives do not create the greatest good possible, they are democratically voted out of office and new representatives are democratically voted in. A republic is a democracy. Checks and balances, limits, “limitarianism”, is what changes direct democracy to representative democracy. A mob does not understand that this is what democracy actually is, whether direct or representative as in a republic.

Trumpism is a mob being conned by a demagogue to enable him to take power as the autocrat of a fascist state. There are other terms that blend into this such as kleptocracy, plutocracy, authoritarianism and the terms just explained are also often defined in slightly different and very different ways to the point where they can be completely different except in name. That is the world we live in. And the predators who want to take absolute power use that ambiguity and manipulate emotions and grievance to control the mob.

The next few days will decide the future of America. We the People will either continue as a democracy….or what has been America will end. We must fight and win.

250 Million are NOT Garbage?

250 million Americans just happen to be….white.

I just heard him say it. Loud and clear. His white supremacist AR-15 army could not get a clearer message. Steve Bannon saying everyone should be willing to go to federal prison…and now I am really getting worried. Garbage trucks are perfect for mass burials of dead bodies.

Another Space Review Comment?


We will see if this gets posted. My comment on the military in space has not gone up.

The SLS is really the continuation of the Shuttle program and for want of money, like the Shuttle could have been turned into a reusable version, the SLS can also be transformed. It CAN be made to work. For those arguing that it is not fully reusable and only this is acceptable, I submit that two different versions of the External tank can make it fully reusable. One lightweight version now being produced, and a heavier wet workshop version for use as crew compartments for Space Stations and Spaceships. These Space Station wet workshops could be launched from Vandenberg and provide Space Force with human-crewed early warning orbital stations our adversaries would be far less likely to attack as this would of course have far greater consequences that satellite brinkmanship.

Chapter 8 of “The Shuttle Decision”

Though it lacked wings, the pressure-fed booster became a candidate for reusability because its thick aluminum skin would easily serve as a heat sink. This same robust skin would allow the vehicle to come down by parachute and land in the ocean, surviving the impact and the subsequent perils of the sea. It would enter the water 200 miles offshore; a boat would then bring it back. No one was prepared to describe this as graceful; with this form of makeshift added to those of its design, the concept was unofficially called the Big Dumb Booster. Such dumbness seemed, however, to promise a new path to wisdom.

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A pair of RS-25’s weigh about 14,000 pounds dry and a CH-53 helicopter can sling load 35,000 pounds so parachute-air-recovery of at least a pair of engine return modules with a pair of helicopters is quite possible. credit: The Shuttle Decision, NASA history series.

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credit: Chris Bergin June 18, 2010

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And I replied to one of the most devious and sleazy fanboys…we will see if this goes up.

Certainly, an interesting and epic saga, but I have to side with those who frown on any praise of the Shuttle. It was one of the worst wrong turns in the history of any government agency. I would have to compare it to the V-22 Osprey, which is such a flawed design there is also almost zero to praise. The V-22 is essentially a bastard combination of an airplane and a helicopter. The Shuttle was essentially a bastard combination of an airplane and a spacecraft. The V-22 cannot fly as fast as a fixed wing airplane and cannot hover as efficiently as a rotary wing helicopter and is far more expensive to operate than both of them. The V-22 has no ability to auto-rotate and make an emergency vertical landing like a helicopter. The Shuttle sacrificed most of it’s payload on the Orbiter itself while having no escape system for the crew and was also extremely expensive to operate. Apologists cite all the wonderful capabilities of the Shuttle and the V-22. In reality the Shuttle should have used pressure-fed liquid boosters and an engine return module mounted on the bottom of the external tank and used a capsule and escape tower at the top of the stack. It would have been used for heavy lift missions with no crew. It would still be flying. Likewise, the Credible Sport concept was a far better path to pursue than the tilt-rotor used by the V-22.

Big Question, Big Lie

The only question in politics is how much a person gets to keep and how much do the rest of us get to keep a person from keeping everything. In regard to the election, it is like high school actually, and high school never ends. In my high school, the bullies always won. I am not optimistic about the outcome. Saying liberals control the media and it is all fake news is part of the big lie. Corporations control the media, and they only care about what makes them money. Everything, EVERYTHING, reduces to the rich evading taxation and regulation. That is the key. And the corporate owned media will not say that quiet part out loud when it should be incessantly stated to the American people. When someone does say it they find themselves shut out and labeled a communist and everyone knows this…..don’t call out the bully, you will lose.

Start with “Left”

Right and left is taken from the French revolution. An official hearing was held and the majority poor people who wanted a better life ended up on the left side of the room, and on the right gathered the minority rich people who had that better life. One witness explained: We began to recognize each other: “-those who were loyal to religion and the king took up positions to the right of the chair-.” This was after and largely inspired by the American Revolution, which would have failed without the support of the French Navy. The French were not supporting any idea of freedom but simply trying to hurt their old enemy the English. That success would ultimately lead to the King of France marching to the guillotine.

Though America would succeed in creating a functioning democracy, France would not and in the decades after The Terror become the birthplace of the most radical utopian political ideology in history: Communism. The left is often associated with this later development but in fact is only about the original event on that side of the room. The right would come to be associated with another radical political ideology from over a century later: Fascism. In America the left and the right are attractors to that precursor of communism called socialism and the enabler of fascist dictatorships which are the super-wealthy. A good principle to follow is that while The Terror and The Holodomor were bad, The Holocaust was the worst.

As I once told a coworker who was arguing with me about Trumpism, “if I am walking down the street and I see people on the right with swastikas and confederate battle flags and people on the left with Antifa and Black Lives Matter flags….I am going to the left.”

Not My Last Comments

Despite having left my toxic online community….I still have some things to say and The Space Review seems willing to let me post occasionally. And then allow others to trivialize, mock, and denigrate me. But whoever is moderating must be throwing out most of the replies because they are just not vicious and disgusting enough for fanboys.

Here is the third comment I submitted. The first two were posted.

The need for military personnel in space is now vital to national security for 3 reasons:

  1. The nuclear triad is failing as a valid deterrent. Submarines, bomber bases, and ICBM sites are all targeted and with only minutes to “use them or lose them”, the risk of a massive exchange is as high as ever. Our luck cannot continue. Launch on warning MUST be extended from those few minutes to bring the risk down or our luck WILL run out. The money spent on nuclear submarines that are now tracked by sea glider underwater drones, on new bombers that are kept under constant surveillance, and on ICBMs in silos the coordinates of which are precisely known, can all be redirected to a space-based deterrent. Space as in NOT orbital. Months away in deep space Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit (BELO). Such “Space Boomers” would necessarily be human-crewed. These Spaceships would cost the same as the triad and one figure to use as proof is the quarter of a trillion-dollar life cycle cost of just the 12 new missile submarines.
  2. Satellite constellations are increasing the risk of nuclear war. The temptation to militarize these tens of thousands of satellites will inevitably lead to many of the same cold war games that were played in the last century. Unfortunately, because satellites are not human-crewed, those games MUST inevitably spin out of control. The resulting incidents WILL place the superpowers on nuclear alert and these repeated Cuban-missile-crisis events cannot have any other effect but to run our luck out at some point. The greatest danger is the inability of the superpowers to detect weapons being launched with the present warning network resulting in a hair-trigger launch on warning situation that will NOT be sustainable. The solution is the same solution used in places like the DMZ on the Korean peninsula where U.S. soldiers have been stationed for 72 years. Human-crewed Space Stations in GEO would be the new DMZ. Stationed over national borders any actions against these Stations would be the same as an attack on a U.S. military base and the resulting casualties would entail consequences not found in satellite brinkmanship. These Stations would also provide infallible early warning of attack.
  3. DOD’s mission is to “provide the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation’s security. The Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force and Coast Guard are the armed forces of the United States.” National security is fundamentally about preventing the destruction of a nation. This includes the destruction of the world of course. If the world goes then so MUST America be destroyed also. Any insurance policy for humankind in effect with a sustainable population off-world WILL prevent the destruction of America. Only the DOD has the resources to begin this sea change in national defense by projecting not only deterrence but also creating an insurance policy for all of humankind off-world. Entrepreneurial schemes will NOT succeed in creating any kind of human expansion or permanent presence Beyond Earth Orbit (BEO). Space-based nuclear deterrence would provide planetary protection with tremendous power to deflect asteroid and comet impact threats. The cislunar infrastructure required to support GEO warning Stations and space-based deterrence would enable further industrial expansion with lunar human technicians and a path to addressing another DOD priority: Climate Change. Space Solar Power by way of lunar resources as the solution to Climate Change.

Mehdi Predicts Violence and I Agree

It is going to get crazy. It is now crystal clear to me how civil wars happen. Trumpism is such transparent fascism that democrats are simply not going to let him end America at this point. Millions of us will pour into the streets the moment it looks like Trump is going to take power. His plan is obviously to wreck the election process and use congress and the supreme court to seat him. Again, not going to be that easy. The democrats are going to have to cowboy and cowgirl up and fix this or allow democracy to die.

44:44 “This idea that there will be free and fair elections in 2028 after four more years of Republican Trump rule is…delusional.”

I posted this November 1st: “In the event of a civil war, before Martial Law is declared and the military restores order, the better armed republicans are likely to inflict some massive blood-letting in any large clashes. However, to engage in those large clashes they are going to have to go to population centers and this is going to lower republican numbers somewhat and greatly increase democrat numbers. It seems a weird replay of the blitzkrieg with everything depending on how much violence the fascists can generate to effect a quick victory.”