I wouldn’t question your patriotism any more than I would that of anyone in NASA, the DoD, or their contractors who advocate selling off the ability to defend ourselves. I can’t wait until we start buying the Airbus tankers to replace the venerable KC-135. On the up side, however, anyone who threatens people on a space policy blog does not really need to concern themselves with what others might think about their patriotism.

Back to lurking.

Be very careful here. You don’t know me one bit, and if you did you would not have said those things.

The data on Russian launch vehicles is clear – do your homework.

As far as questioning my patriotism – you are very lucky this is a virtual discussion. Nothing angers me more than someone questioning my love of the United States.

You go wish your anti-Christian, anti-demcracy, anti-free speech Chinese dictators well. Go lick their boots, why don’t you?

All you little pee cee stooges, brainwashed to parrot the party line that all cultures and all value systems are equal. Why don’t you try to think independently?

I’d actual think better of “Phil” if he turned out to be an actual Chicom imitating an Anglo-American. At least he’d be standing up for his own kind if he were Chinese.

According to who, Pravda?

We let our good friends talk us into putting the space station into an orbit where it is useless for the only real potential purpose it had, a base for the assembly of lunar or planetary missions. The good news is, now the only way we can get to the useless station is via a Russian rocket. How very international. And good luck to your comrades, the Chinese too.

We need to respect each other’s efforts when it comes to space exploration and exploitation. This also means we must wish our Chinese friends well on their journey into space this Wednesday.

Migrating into space is a human adventure, not an American or Western one.

Anyway, one guy who is an expert on this sort of thing is Dr. Steven Dick, currently the NASA historian. I had the pleasure of working briefly with Dr. Dick when I volunteered as an escort at the Naval Observatory (he used to work there). He has written voluminously on the subject of extraterrestrial intelligence, and has done so in a very academic way; that is, he is well-respected for his views on the subject, among others. His particular focus is more on human culture and its interpretation of what “extraterrestrial” means to different peoples and individuals. Fascinating stuff…

While this is going on, we have an Italian company bidding on a major defense contract for helicopters, after having won the contract to build the presidential helicopter fleet, another Italian company is vying with a European consortium to sell us a twin engine cargo airplane – no US competitor in sight to mess up this one. This will probably make a nice complement to the A-400M our defense dept has no answer for, and which they will probably be happy to buy in place of US designed and built C-130s when it is available. We launch the Web telescope on an Arian. The aerial common sensor airplane for the Army and Navy will be built by Brazil. Our venerable F-15s get waxed by the Indian Air Force flying MiG-21s, 27s, and Su-30s, while its replacement ticks well past the second decade of development, and the Air Force announces a $6B program to upgrade the F-35 – even though it is years from being built. I think the aliens have already landed.