Moon exploration plan

Some details are out on NASA's back-to-the-moon plan. It's a two-launch Earth orbit rendezvous scheme, using the CEV for the command module and launchers derived from Shuttle parts. Sounds workable, though of course expensive. Target date 2018, and of course it then spins off into grandiose exploration and moonbase plans just like Apollo initially did.

It's probably not how I'd spend the money, but in the slim chance that this actually goes off as described I reserve the right to find it cool.

Release the Rover!

So apparently Bush's conversion on the road to Damascus has caused him to appoint Karl Rove as head of the Katrina reconstruction effort.

Do I even have to explain how absurd this is? The closest analogy I can come up with is that Sept. 11th happens on Bill Clinton's watch, and he makes a big somber speech about how our nation will have to put itself on a war footing and commit itself anew to security, and his first act is to appoint James Carville as Secretary of Defense.

Yes, as a sign that Bush has learned his lesson about appointing unqualified hacks to high public office, Karl Rove, a man whose only known skill is an endless imagination for devising means of personally destroying his enemies, a man who I'm pretty sure is still under investigation over Valerie Plame, is going to go save the Gulf Coast. I think I can skip the wait-and-see attitude.

Were I of a more conspiratorial cast of mind I'd say that they're actively trying to fail as spectacularly as possible, so they can then rail against the incompetence of Big Government in the form of themselves. But I think it's more that, as John DiIulio said, the current White House simply has no policy wing; when the chips are down, all Bush can really do is go back to Rove.

More Titan radar

New interesting-looking radar images of Titan. Some of the data from the pass were apparently lost to a software problem, but a goodly amount came through.