It takes a mighty tug — and $400,000 — to tow an aircraft carrier

The aircraft carrier USS Constellation, deactivated as soon as she returned from duty during the Iraq campaign, arrived this past weekend in Bremerton, WA, to be mothballed. The brand-new USS Ronald Reagan replaces the “Connie” in the fleet, who’s arrival means the end of service for the USS Midway. The Midway heads to a museum in San Diego.

The Navy says the nearly $400,000 towing fee to bring the ship to Bremerton is cheaper than paying for food and fuel for a crew of 2,500 to steam it here, then fly them back.

That $400K is really how much it cost really seems incredible to me, but I guess I’ll take their word for it.

UPDATE: The Midway, launched during World War 2, had been in mothballs since 1992. The same tug that brought the Constellation to Washington is taking the Midway to San Diego. Here’s a story on the Midway’s departure from Bremerton, and here’s the San Diego Aircraft Carrier Museum site.

Toddler ‘doing well’ after nearly 3 weeks alone

I don’t think I need to add any commentary. The headline speaks for itself.

Chinese Yuhangyuan Could Reach Space In Fortnight

It appears that China will launch its first astronaut(s) into space somewhere between Oct. 11 and Oct. 17. Uncertain is if there will be one, two, or more men oboard. There has been a near-total news blackout, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t learn of the flight, at least officially from the Chinese government, until it’s reached orbit or even returned safely to earth.

The “BYOB” War – Reservists issued Vietnam-era flak jackets forced to purchase their own body armor

Phil Carter at Intel Dump points out an LA Times op-ed about the shortage of Interceptor body armor for US troops. He’s calling it the “Bring Your Own Bulletproofs” war. The new body armor was one of the top performing items during the invasion of Iraq. But someone has totally dropped the ball on this.

Prof. Turley is right — this boils down to priorities. If the Pentagon wanted to buy Interceptor body armor for every servicemember on active duty, it could. But it chose not to, by making a phased purchase of this product over time for pieces of the force at a time. Then the department made a second choice, which was not to take the armor from some non-deployed elements and shift it to those units in contact now with the enemy. Then the Pentagon made a third choice, which was not to immediately jumpstart procurement of these vests in 2002 when it became clear we were going to invade Iraq. These choices reveal a dangerously skewed sense of priorities for the procurement executives in the Pentagon, who would place programs like missile defense and aircraft carriers above the lives of our soldiers and Marines.

There is no excuse for the fact that some of our troops do not have this armor. EVERY SINGLE American serviceman in the field should have this. (I think everyone, whether deployed or not, should have one, but I’ll be “realistic” – for the time being.) We’ve been rushing to war for years, yet we still don’t have enough? Like Carter points out, we DECIDED to not have enough.

I won’t even mention the fact that dropping a few F-22 fighters would outfit the entire Army and Marine Corps with armor.

Do it now. Whatever it takes. We’re spending billions on big ticket items, and the non-glamorous things like body armor, Bradley tracks, batteries, GPS units, weapon cleaning lube, and spare parts get overlooked. Unacceptable.

This summer a friend told me that someone had given him a story about how Oliver North claimed, during the Iran-Contra hearings, that Osama Bin Laden was a dangerous man that needed to be hunted down, and that Al Gore made fun of him for it.

I’ve been meaning to look into it, and finally I remembered to do so. One quick google for oliver north testimony iran contra bin laden confirmed my suspicions. My friend was right.

It’s a story.

Ollie didn’t mention bin Laden’s name during the Iran-Contra hearings. Al Gore didn’t question any witnesses before the Senate Select Committee. All a fabrication. (North did mention Abu Nidal, who is a bad guy in his own right.) Too bad, but not at all surprising. (Although the claim that Gore was actiing like a dufus DID add some credibility.)

And why is it that I never get these cool urban legend emails? I’ve never once been asked for bank account numbers by anyone from Nigeria. No one has ever sent me real pictures of a shark attacking a helicopter. No one has ever implored me to remove the teddy bear iconed program from Windows.

And about that Nigerian email scam? There’s a training seminar coming up. Check it out. You’ll be glad you did.

Instapundit on Novak/Palme

Instapundit has been keeping up with this. He notes that the recent witch-hunting associated with this story

only serves to make this matter look more political, and less serious, than it perhaps is. More and more, these guys remind me of the anti-Clinton fanatics of the 1990s. Which doesn’t necessarily make them wrong, any more than the anti-Clinton fanatics were always wrong. It just makes them a lot less persuasive.

I was first introduced to this story quite a while ago by a friend of mine. I’ll have to dig up the e-mail and see when he sent it and what we said.

But Reynolds is right. This is potentially very serious, but right now it’s just a lot of people shooting from the hip. By definition, secrets are, um, secret. I’ve got no beef with a thorough look into this issue. I just think if everyone would calm down a bit with the wild accusations (on both sides) maybe the American public will still care by the time some real information is available.

The Lord of the Rings Trailers

I’m sure EVERYBODY but me has seen this already. But, if not, here’s the page with the trailers. Large Quicktime version (zipped) comes in at 26.3MB. Downloading now.

UPDATE:Looks promising.

Although I watch the trailers and preview specials with anticipation, I do not look for info on the internet or in magazines beyond the typical surface-level interviews in Premier. Some readers doubtlessly know where I’m right and where I’m wrong. I don’t want to know if you do. Thoughts and speculation are welcome, though.

US Production Of The RD-180 Engine Moves Closer To Reality

The US wants to build the best rocket engine in the world. Excellent!

How to do it? License the design from the Russians, of course.

The RD-180, already in use on American Atlas III and Atlas V launch vehicles, will be built by a group led by Pratt & Whitney and Lockheed Martin once they get the documents translated. (I’m not making this up.)

The RD-180 is definitely a great design.

The RD-180 is the only LOX/Kerosene oxygen-rich staged combustion engine flying in the U.S. today. It incorporates leading-edge technologies such as a single pre-burner, single-shaft main turbopump unit, spherical no leak flanges and a milled channel wall nozzle for safety and robustness of the rocket engine. It generates nearly one million pounds of thrust.

For reference, the F-1 engines on the 1960s-era Saturn V were LOX/Kerosene burners that generated 1.5 million pounds of thrust. I’m just saying.

As a caption to a photo of the RD-180, SpaceDaily notes

If we can buy Russian engine technology why not buy Russian manned space technology and save the taxpayers a bundle. Oh that’s right NASA only likes to use equipment that costs 10 times more than it needs to.

That isn’t a very effective caption, but it’s a good question and answer session that summarizes so much of what’s gone wrong with the US space program.

Meteorite wrecks houses in India

What was apparently a meteorite destroyed two houses and injured 20 (just 5 according to other sources) in eastern India Saturday evening. To my knowledge, no American Patriot missile batteries are in the region, so the possibility of another misfire is probably ruled out. No word on the size of the meteroite or if anything has been recovered.

I first learned of this on Space.com, and their page also has a post about doubters of the asteroid-killed-the-dinosaurs theory. A few years back I read “The Great Dinosaur Extinction Controversy” and was convinced that, at the least, a lot of things remain unanswered despite nearly universal belief that a huge impact, probably in Mexico, wiped out the dinosaurs. We’ll see. Maybe.

UPDATE: Besides Patriot missiles gone awry, another non-meteor possibility here might be a crashing Indian Air Force MiG-21, which is a pretty common thing. Or, if it did come from outer space, maybe it was part of a satellite or space station. Just a thought. Since I’m keeping my mind open about asteroids killing the dinosaurs, it’s only fair that I also keep my mind open about this.

I’ve upgraded to the “Pro” version of enetation comments. Supposedly the comments for MO are now on a different server that only handles Pro users. Performance should be better. We’ll see.