Sunday, April 25, 2010

Vast Canyon of Gas and Dust, Inshallah

Takuan Seiyo’s latest guest-essay concerns the Obama administration’s gutting of the space program, and what it means in the larger multicultural scheme of things.


Vast Canyon of Gas and Dust, Inshallah
by Takuan Seiyo


The magnificent Hubble Space Telescope is celebrating its 20th Anniversary. It’s a marvel of Western science and American technological achievement about which not much more can be said intelligently — except if you be an astrophysicist — than this:

Hubble Telescope photograph
(Click to see a larger version)

The caption says, “This image depicts a vast canyon of dust and gas in the Orion Nebula from a 3-D computer model based on observations by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.” More Orion Nebula pictures are here.

In the presence of images like these, adjectives are silly. The most matter-of-fact prose, as in the Orion Nebula Wikipedia entry, has to invoke “bullets” of gas piercing “dense hydrogen clouds,” each bullet “ten times the diameter of Pluto’s orbit and tipped with iron atoms glowing bright blue.”

What speaks the most to me, because I once ran an endless 21-kilometer half-marathon, is that the Orion Nebula is 24 light years across and 1,344 ± 20 light years distant. Which is to say that this thing is roughly — very roughly — 240 trillion kilometers wide and 13.5 quadrillion kilometers distant from us.

These are numbers that can sit honorably at the same table and have a drink or two with the United States’ national debt, currently estimated at $115 trillion. Tying the Orion Nebula and Obama Nation together is also the vast canyon of dust that the latter is being transformed into under much hopeychangey hot gas.

“Nasa is dying,” reports Jerry de Groot in The Telegraph. “Doom has come in the form of President Barack Obama, who yesterday unveiled plans for a stripped-down space agency during a speech at the Kennedy Space Centre. The speech was more like a funeral oration than a new policy announcement.”
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The nebulous hot gas bullets were piercing the clouds of credulity already in August of 2008, when Presidential candidate Barack Obama during a campaign rally with NASA workers criticized the Bush Administration for inadequate support of NASA and promised to change that (more here).

America voted for the change, and change it got. The change is neatly expressed by the headline, Obama cuts US space program, orders NASA to work with Muslim countries.

Not that NASA didn’t need change. For instance, a recent GAO Report shows that in 2007-2008, NASA reported 1,120 security incidents that resulted in the installation of malicious software on its systems and unauthorized access to “sensitive information.” We do not know to what extent the BHO administration has tackled and contained this idiocy. On the other hand we do know that NASA now has a black chief and a female deputy chief, so at least we started out with what really matters: racial and gender justice[1].

Another change that raises hope — alas only among people surfing the Daily Kos between sips of Fair Trade coffee under a poster of Comandante Che — is NASA’s increasing involvement in hockey sticks, data fudging, and other science fraud at its Goddard Institute for Space Studies for the sake of — what else — social justice. The falsified theory of AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) is after all a necessary underpinning to the enterprise of shutting down or at least crippling Western industry and generating a humongous flow of whitey penance cash streaming from the West to the Third World, i.e. the “trading” after the “capping.” It’s probably to bolster this case that president Obama has reshuffled $2.4 billion in the NASA budget to “battle against climate change.” Less space exploration, more Fair Trade.

A further change NASA got was the gutting of its Constellation rocket program in addition to the ending of its Space Shuttle. The funds are simply not there when you have to provide medical insurance to several million citizens of Mexico, to continue the wealth transfer mirage of Fannie ‘n’ Freddy and to offer free college education for every possible moron with high self-esteem and low competence at the multiplication table.

What budget remains will be deployed in part in the service of American science and technology as per the announcement, “NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden said Tuesday that President Barack Obama has asked him to ‘find ways to reach out to dominantly Muslim countries’ as the White House pushes the space agency to become a tool of international diplomacy. He mentioned new opportunities with Indonesia.” Jihad Watch called it simply “dhimmitude in space.”

Dhimmitude is our national pastime now, manifest daily in every public institution and in the public utterances of key public officials. If only top Russian commanders were writing Chechen war strategy manuals without once mentioning the word Islam, and if the Chinese shifted their focus to sharing space technology with Nigeria and Sudan, everything might be okay.

Alas, it’s not the case.


[1] No disrespect is meant for General Charles Bolden. I know little about the man, but anyone who is a combat pilot, Marine General and astronaut deserves the utmost respect, a priori. Bolden may yet prove himself as a great NASA chief, if he manages to stand up to his boss in the White House and focus more on reaching the stars and less on reaching the Muslims. If anything, General Bolden is ill served by the Affirmative Action-on-steroids policy of the Obama Administration. The string of demented or at least incompetent actions and utterances by some key black and/or female Obama appointees casts a presumption of lack of genuine merit on any such new appointee who is a member of a preferred minority. It’s unfair and may be deemed “racist”, but it’s not nearly as unfair and racist as the monumental stupidity and great national disaster we call Affirmative Action.

13 comments:

Fjordman said...

Obama does this for one, and only one, reason: Because he is an enemy of the white West who wants to destroy his country. Its strong leadership role in space exploration was one of the few things left that really made the USA a great country, which of course means that it has to be ended. Not to mention the fact that more of Whitey's money can go to pay for the health care of all the Third World peoples in the USA.

Zenster said...

A key byproduct of the Space Race was its vivid demonstration of American technical supremacy. During the Cold War this was no small matter and likely played a pivotal role in persuading undecided nations to select America’s weapons over those offered by the USSR.

There was also the issue of ideological supremacy. For over a decade the Communists had enjoyed a string of unparalleled aerospace achievements culminating in Yuri Gagarin's manned orbit of the earth. Not many would readily believe that Soviet Russia was reaching the limit of its technological ability.

Few more meaningful messages could be sent to the non-aligned world than seeing a nation of capitalist wage slaves successfully land a civilian astronaut on the lunar surface and safely return that person to earth. The propaganda value of that one single event almost exceeded its scientific worth.

As with so much military research, the microelectronics revolution and many other materials-based advances were propelled by America's lunar landing program. Miniaturization and weight reduction provided key improvements in a host of ancillary fields ranging from human medicine to telecommunications.

The role of computers in navigation and real time telemetry paved the way for our Internet age well before it was much more than a gleam in DARPA's strategic eye. The valuable spinoffs are simply too numerous to count. Just as importantly were the advances in America's military capabilities. Aerospace research contributed rather disproportionately in winning the Cold War.

"Cracking" a hardened ICBM silo required what essentially amounted to a direct hit (less than 100 meters of error). American cruise missiles not only were able to carry high yield scaled down nuclear devices but their on-board electronic navigational systems were capable of treetop flight altitudes (below radar) that enabled passage through mountain passes instead of over them thus risking radar detection.

Beyond that, once detected, these same cruise missiles could automatically adopt evasive measures or alternate routes and take in-flight bearings from high elevation terrain features or even tall buildings. Finally, after traveling thousands of miles, these flying missiles could strike their targets with, not 100 meter accuracy but 10 meter precision, thus literally guaranteeing destruction of the silos they were sent to eliminate.

During the first Gulf War, cruise missiles were used to punch holes in the reinforced walls of military installations. Successive incoming flights would play "follow-the-leader", flying through the hole blasted by the first one and detonating inside the building. This provides a hint of the phenomenal precision guidance these unmanned vehicles are capable of.

If a non-military demonstration of space technology's value is required, consider this. Current propulsion systems are limited to C (the speed of light). Rapid acceleration of a manned vehicle to relativistic velocities would pulp a human body into protoplasmic jelly. What's more, reaching the nearest star would take years if not decades, especially if a return trip was in the mission plan.

The Space Telescope is one of the only means we have of interstellar travel. In reality, it is a time machine, taking us back through billions of years to the very origins of our universe. At present, there is no other way for humans to reach such distant regions much less analyze their physical environments.

All of this came from people of vision whose far-seeing ability totally dwarfs the midget mentalities currently governing America. For a glimpse into the sort of minds that brought The United States to its technological preeminence, permit me to suggest one of my own essays at Gates of Vienna, "Standing on the Shoulders of Giants.

Cobra said...

Yup.
The enemy within stroke at the heart of our country.
This is happening because the American people allowed crinal shysters to get more and more power over the lst hundred years.
What we see now is the culmination of the progressive/commie attack on our Christian culture in America.

Takuan Seiyo said...

@Zenster,

Illuminating comment(s). Of course, we need the giants. But to have the tall trees we need to pay attention to the forest floor from which they sprout. With education gutted for the same reason the rest of the country is being gutted – to disguise group differences in IQ, ability and earned achievement – we can no longer grow those giants but must import them. In fact, if you delve into one of those alarmist articles about how America’s scientific edge is eroding, you will discover that it’s all about Chinese and Korean foreign PhD students in the sciences who once used to stay after completing their studies, and now return to their home countries.

Moreover, whatever scientific edge we do have, we give away or allow it to be stolen by the competition. If you recall the Loral rocket stabilizing technology and where it went and in what circumstances, that’s an emblematic case.

Perhaps the one home-grown giant we ought to concentrate on these days is John Boyd. Once we’ve figured out as a nation that life is not tiptoeing through the tulips hand-in-hand with Ban Ki-Moon, Nyamko Sambuni and Anjem Choudary, and how smart and tactical we have to be to keep up with China and contain Putin, we will need to elevate out great tactical minds before science can do us much good at this juncture.

Jedilson Bonfim said...

Reaching out to mahoundian countries in space-exploration efforts is just like doing that in order to end marriages between 52-year-old pedophiles and 8-year-old girls.

After all, what interest could mahoundians possibly have in that, besides perhaps getting shots of ravines on the surface of the moon, so that they can claim them as "proof" that once mahound's imaginary alter-ego allah helped mahound itself (not himself) split it in half and glue it back together? Just like their interest in science never goes beyond finding discoveries and breakthroughs which, through creative interpretation of verses and suras in Mein Qurampf, could help them claim that they were somehow foreseen by mahound's imaginary alter-ego in the 7th Century (or since the beginning of times, due to their belief that Mein Qurampf is the eternal, uncreated word of allah.)

In Hoc Signo Vinces† said...

In hoc signo vinces

‘find ways to reach out to dominantly Muslim countries’


I am sure General Charles Bolden will use his military initiative creatively to accomplish his orders.

A motoon projected on to the moon maybe.

The first window of opportunity is May 20th First Annual Everybody Draw Mohammad Day.

Henrik R Clausen said...

A key byproduct of the Space Race was its vivid demonstration of American technical supremacy.

Actually a main product. The lunar landing program was conceived as a powerful response to the Sputnik - and it worked!

That achieved, few were able to maintain illusions about the Soviet system being more capable than the Western.

Astonishing images! I'm glad we have a post with this :)

Anonymous said...

NASA has been &^$%ing garbage for decades. 30 years #$@%ing around in low earth orbit. Whenever ANY project came on the scene that looked like it might actually make some space travel happen, NASA took it over and then killed it with bureaucracy. See Delta Clipper for the most egregious example.

They are WORTHLESS. They all deserve to be fired. I am not going to complain about Obama doing this.

This leaves us with private industry as the only American space program, which is not necessarily going to work, but one thing has been proven: NASA can not and does not want to do the job.

Anonymous said...

Bottom line, if you want space travel, there is ONE effective way to do it with known technology. Build Orion. Not the bureaucratic jobs program they were selling recently; Freeman Dyson's Orion. The fallout is negligible, the technology and engineering are known and have been for decades, the ability to move large things at high acceleration is unparalleled. The obstacle is politicians who are terrified of anything "controversial".

We don't have government. We have pack of contemptible worthless traitors, on every front. We have a ruling class that has been dedicated to discrediting itself for as long as most people have been alive. There will be consequences.

Takuan Seiyo said...

@Rollory
Funny you mentioned Freeman Dyson because as I was reading your first post the word “Dyson” popped up in my head. Dyson vacuum cleaners and their inventor, James Dyson.
I can’t comment on the technical parts in your comments but I can on the political parts. I was recently contemplating a photo of Newt Gingrich, the great white conservative hope, touring the country with Al Sharpton and Arne Duncan. As to Sharpton, I don’t like adjectives and 4-letter words, so I’ll leave it that. Suffice be that he is organizing a big protest rally in Arizona. As to Duncan, he is Bill Ayers-lite. But what does this say about Gingrich?
Essentially, almost our entire political class behaves like the landed gentry used to. It's the Ancien Regime all over again. They really believe that by now they have locked us in such a straitjacket of onerous laws (not applied to themselves), unpayable debt, imported agents of disharmony, dumbed down education and candysuck media that we can't notice anymore what they are doing.

Zenster said...

Although a bit long in the tooth, this delightful article has only taken on more significance with NASA's continuing defalcation.

A Rocket a Day Keeps the High Costs Away

Author John Walker provides a bit of solid historical overview as he not-so-gently deconstructs many prevailing arguments against a robust and high volume space development plan.

Those of you who read this will be shaking your heads in dismay at how poorly managed America's current space programs continue to be.

Zenster said...

Takuan Seiyo: I was recently contemplating a photo of Newt Gingrich, the great white conservative hope, touring the country with Al Sharpton and Arne Duncan.

I have never been a fan of Gingrich, so any pecadillos of his only contribute to my overall dislike for America's current crop of slop-trough politicians.

Lending the least shred of credibility or dignity to a race baiting poverty pimp wannabe urban warlord like Al Sharpton instantly places Gingrich on America's list of enemies.

There is no peace to be made with scum like Sharpton. One does not enter into treaties or agreements with rats and cockroaches.

In Hoc Signo Vinces† said...

In hoc signo vinces

@Zenster,

"a race baiting poverty pimp wannabe urban warlord"

LOL :) Great putdown.

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