My Rant on Space program from Repubibot.com

Yesterday’s successful launch of the Falcon 9 and its Dragon mock up reaching orbit is a technical triumph for Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX). The company has proved that space flight can be done cheaper and faster than the current NASA contractor cabal.

Elon Musk the company’s CEO believed that it was important that man colonize space and thought that it would never happen if left to governments and the big aerospace contractors. In 2002 Musk started the company with 100 million of his personal money.

What the Falcon 9 launch is not is a vindication of the Obama administration’s new space plans. It is a fortunate coincidence that companies like SpaceX and Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin are ready to take their shot at supplying orbital services. These companies are the vision of men that made their fortunes in the dotcom age and have spent their money on what they believe is man’s future.

The Obama administration’s space plan is less a vision and more a political maneuver to change the flow of money from one group to one that is more supportive of the Democratic Party. It actually slows the possibility of American manned space flight not enhancing it.

While I believe there is an important place for the private sector in the future of space I also believe that if we want that future to be free a vigorous manned program supported by the American people through their government must exist. Yes private companies can provide services cheaper and faster than the old NASA way of doing things but they can not provide a national vision and carry American values to the stars. Only the people can do that and the instrument of the people is the government.

The current plan abdicates space to the Russians, Chinese and Indians. All fine and brave people but they do not share are belief in the equality of all people and our democratic principals. This is much more than whether man will make it to Mars this century this is about what we want the future to look like. Do we want the future dominated by people who do not believe in freedom for all or do we want a future were freedom is still respected and cherished.

IO9 votes 1977 as best sci fi year ever

This is my comment to 1977 being voted best year ever for sci fi because of Star Wars.

1977 really Star Wars a film that stole whole tropes from books that came before is beating out 1912. A year full of literature that started almost all the tropes that Star Wars used.

Do you people even know the joy of reading a story and letting your imagination fill your mind with the images that the words help you create or does everything have to be pre-visualized for you.

Sorry for the rant but Star Wars, I mean I saw it when it was first released when I was 16 and liked it. But I did not think it was the next best thing to oral sex like some of you guys do. It was enjoyable and still is but it is also derivative of E.E Doc Smith and a dozen other golden age space opera writers.

Maybe because I read sci fi since I was a kid during the Apollo years that Star Wars just did not have the impact on me, maybe if it was the first sci fi I every saw but nope it wasn't.

A rant on Marxism and today's politics

This is from a comment I posted at

http://www.republibot.com/content/last-impressions-watchmen-1986#comment-4914

The thing about Marxist theory that always gets over looked is that Marx believed the revolution he envisioned would happen in the USA. In fact he thought it had already started here first with our original revolution in 1776 and then with what many believed was its continuation in the Civil War. We had over thrown the idea of an aristocracy in the first war of independence and then destroyed its vestiges in the South when the Union beat the Confederacy. The one thing he overlooked or did not understand was the libertarianism that was part of what made up the underlying foundation of the psyche of the US.

In Europe and Asia when Marxist took over a country they just supplanted the aristocracy with a party elite. Many times they continued the same policies with different names. Russia is a prime example it took the Bolsheviks less than ten years to adapt the Tsarist idea of an imperial Russia but this time they called it world communism, same policies new name. To a peasant or factory worker the slogans changed but their life pretty much stayed the same or got worse was the new elites consolidated power.

Here in the US we have an almost allergic reaction to power consolidation that has repeated itself over and over again; Andrew Jackson’s populist movement and the destruction of the Bank of the United States, the rejection of reconstruction in the 1870’s, Teddy Roosevelt’s trust busting at the beginning of the twentieth century. All these things happened in the US because the people saw the government or a private group grabbing too much power.

Today’s Tea Party movement is the same reaction to the power grab that the Federal Government and Wall Street have attempted. In the 60’s the reaction came form the left today the react is coming from the right but it is the same rejection of centralized power that has marked American politics for over two hundred years. The fight to right the power imbalance might last just this election cycle or it could be the defining movement of this generation it depends on how Washington and Wall Street react.

FDR did a course correction in the late thirties that let him stay in power but really end most of the radical aspects of the New Deal he tried to push. Wither the Washington party (The bosses of both parties) change their way of doing business will determine how long this grass roots unrest lasts and how far it goes in changing things. If Washington backs off the storm will clear after the November elections but if the power brokers fight to continue with the bailouts and power grab then we are going to be in for a long and bumpy ride.

Some news

I am now the Space correspondent for www.republibot.com so here is my latest post on the space program.

http://www.republibot.com/content/realspace-usaf-nro-launch-spike-and-other-news

I am back

Wow I had forgotten that I started this blog over two years ago it was during the election I was getting pissed by all sides. Since then I have been writing some science fiction stories and articles at http://www.republibot.com/blog/164 .

to aranna huffington

My god Arianna the idea that one and only one party has all the answers is so sicking as to be almost beyond comprehension. The true right and the true left are not discredited but this false right and left that is force feed down our throats by you and the other talking heads is what should be discredited. Both parties have been hijacked by absolutism, my way or the highway thinking that has made Washington the bad joke on the American people it has been for the last 20 years.

Problems are not solved by some political formula brought down from the mountain by some all knowing party elite, it is solved by people with many different ideas and backgrounds working hard to find the best solution possible given the limitations of the real world not some hoped for impossible world. Both parties have forgotten this in their quest for total power where you get to shit can good idea's just because they come from the other party.

The war is just the latest example where almost everyone is wrong where the idea's of all three major candidates will most likely make things worse not better. More energy is wasted on why we went in than on how to fix the problem that is not going to lead to thousands if not millions of deaths. The hows and whys of the start of the war are no longer important the fact that we are there needs to be the priority and how to end it that is not some feel good sound bite that does not take into account on how you disengage half a million men and woman from a country that makes the Road Warrior look like a Saturday cartoon. That number is not only the people of the US military but also the merc's that we call contractors who maybe the biggest threat to the republic since 1860.

If we are lucky both parties will self destruct soon and something better will be formed that does not divide us by party but unites us as Americans no matter what political point of views we may have.

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MAKE IT STOP

God i wish this election was over with everyone has lost their  fracking  minds.

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