and then
Sounds to me like someone wants the capability to lob ICBMs without having to worry about same. :dubious: And isn’t she already conected to Alaska’s secession movement?
All hail The Ice Princess!
But, of course, using stimulus funds to extend unemployment benefits is completely unacceptable.
Hmm indeed; I smell pork cooking…
I thought we had heard enough about Palin. I guess not.
As far as I can see, she is putting herself in contention for the 2012 election. Fortunately, unless Obama is found in bed with a dead puppy, the outcome of that election is pretty safe, but the Repubs are going to make a lot of noise while going about losing it.
Heh…I’ll shut up about her if she does.
They can smell the pork from Russia (see translation of the Russian in the third comment).
That’s the real head-scratcher from the article. All the commercial space ventures I know of are trying to launch from as close to the equator as they can get. Why would anyone launch from Alaska?
Less gravity as you get up towards the pole.
Plus the spin is slower because less distance has to be travelled in a 24-hour globe rotation so your launch is more accurater.
Not if Eminem has anything to say about it.
If you’re launching a surveillance satellite that can cover any point on Earth. That takes a polar orbit, launched either due South or due North, but it doesn’t matter from where except that you want the early, failure-prone portion of the launch path to be over water.
What puzzles me is why we need a facility for those on Kodiak Island as well as at Vandenberg AFB. The Ted Stevens Effect again, maybe?
The election is almost 4 years away. Be complacent, by all means. But remember the old saying: “There’s many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip.”
I know that, but the statement specified a commercial facility, while the cutting-edge surveillance birds are all military. Have Google Maps, and its ilk, become such a hot item that a whole new launch infrastructure is needed?
[hijack]I read once that when the U.S. needed a new missile test range, three sites were considered. Florida was chosen, and it only turned out later to be the best choice for launching to orbit, too.[/hijack]
If Republicans keep on going the way they have (you know, stupidly), Obama will win more like Roosevelt and Johnson than Clinton.
Or to assist education, for that matter.
The missile defense system has not yet been proven to be effective, efficient, or even acceptably functional. It’s a government and DOD boondoggle.
Don’t even get me started on what’s been going on here in the state of late, or we’ll end up in the Pit, for certain.
Is there a gentle way you could approach it? I have relatives there. In fact, spent last Christmas with them in Palmer (used to spend it with them in Chugiak, but they moved). Sometime it takes an Alaskan to explain.
Indeed, this. Most people think America has a missile defense system up and running, which is complete BS. Last I had heard (from one of my professors back in college) but it was still in debate among some higher ups in the physics field whether it is even POSSIBLE to shoot down one missile with another missile, due to countermeasures real missiles employ (mostly in the form of radar jamming and spreading debris that makes it impossible to tell the actual missile from crap flying off the missile) yet still we spend billion and billions of dollars every year on something that doesn’t work and has never worked, and all the “successfull tests” have been against missile that use no countermeasures whatsoever, basically completely unrealistic tests. He used to rant about it rather often
She’d be a damn idiot not to be thinking about 2012, frankly.
She’s the Governor of a small population state. She has, unexpectedly, been moved to the center stage and built a certain level of national following. This is unbelievably rare for someone from Alaska and to NOT attempt to capitalize on it politically would be stupid. Even if she’s only got a 10% shot at the nomination she should take it.
Why? Because the electorate is fickle and impulsive and sometimes the long shots catch fire. So what the hell?
“The Hell” ignores anything resembling self-awareness that, maybe, she isn’t quite up to the job. This may be astonishing, but some Americans are sufficiently modest about their own accomplishments to think that running the entire country may be more suited for someone else.
Not Palin, of course. If it’s feasible, she’s running.
But I remember Adlai Stevenson, and several other well-trained, highly competent potential candidates, suffering self-doubt as to whether the job was beyond their capabilities. I don’t think Palin is more knowledgable or wiser than Stevenson, just much more clueless about her own limitations.
What I would take from the past year’s events, were I Palin, was that this was one tough job, that my knowledge of foriegn affairs was scant, that my economic philosophy was shallow, and that my reading of public relations needed some serious brushing-up. I don’t think any of that has penetrated her brain, not even made a dent.
Honestly, I get too worked up over the topic and would rather just not get going again. The woman is a disaster on two legs.