Fifty years ago today -- May 24, 1960 -- the Midas-2 spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral on an Atlas booster. (The "launch cover" for Midas-2. Click to enlarge. Image from http://rammb.cira.colostate.edu/dev/...ilitary-wx.htm. Note the price of the postage.) Midas-2 was the first satellite to carry an experimental IR surveillance payload into orbit. (The Midas-1 launch attempt in February 1960 failed because of ...
A lot of legislation is pitched on the basis of what it is intended to do, and often on the basis of whom it is intended to help. If I Were My Own Representative, my touchstone for voting would be quite the opposite: whom it was likely to hurt. (U.S. Capitol dome, from the Architect of the Capitol. Click to enlarge.) My initial position would be to vote "no" on any bill that had a provision that would hurt some of our citizens, even ...
Last year I posted a bit about why Veterans' Day embarrasses me, and also about the National Veterans Freedom Park that's to be built in Cary, NC. As much as I still feel that Veterans' Day is for those other veterans, those "real" veterans who endured hardships and battle, in contrast to veterans like me whose brushes with danger were few and brief and who endured more inconveniences than hardships, I confess that I've gotten to the point that it annoys me when I hear casual ...
(Abbreviated from the full entry in the Space Warfare Forum.) The second day of the 2009 Strategic Space Symposium was just as good as the first, and in some ways better. Highlights: NGA Director VADM Robert Murrett, discussed NGA's partial reliance on commercial satellites like GeoEye I found myself slowly becoming an ORS convert, as the vision explained was different from the old "rapid space reconstruction" idea I was pleased to learn that the ORS program ...
Coming to Omaha for the 2009 Strategic Space Symposium seemed like a good time to revive the Space Warfare Forum, so yesterday I posted a long report about day one at the symposium. I made some good contacts with company representatives and saw some of my old colleagues, so it was a good day at the symposium. Highlights: The symposium is extremely well-run (in large part by one of my former students): good facilities, exhibits, and speakers NE Governor Heineman mentioned ...
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