The UK and the USA, once bastions of civil liberties, are becoming more and more totalitarian.

The UK is installing cameras in families’ homes, to monitor whether their kids are going to bed on time. But only the “worst” families. That’s all right, then.

George W. Bush (whose foreign policy I supported)’s vaguely Orwellian “Department of Homeland Security” was bad enough, but the current stifling of dissent by the Obama administration is chilling. It is all too clear that those liberals who professed fear that Bush would suspend the Constitution and civil liberties were simply projecting.

There has been a wide groundswell of grass-roots opposition to Obama’s 1400-page government expansion healthcare bill. Under Bush, dissent was the highest form of patriotism. Now, the Obama administration has set up an email address where people can inform on their neighbors who oppose the plan.

Now groups of administration supporters are denying concerned citizens access to town hall meetings, even to the point of physical violence.

Inform on your neighbors for disagreeing with the President. If you show up to tell your Congressperson your opinion, violent gangs of government thugs will beat your head in.

No wonder Obama won’t criticize Ahmadinejad.

The grand human experiment that began with the Magna Carta and culminated in the Declaration of Independence seems to be grounding on the shoals of corruption and the license that progressivism gives to those who crave power over others.

We need a way to move on out and start new afresh. Ad Astra!

I just watched a TED Talk by Bill Stone from 2007, who vowed to lead a prospecting expedition to the Shackleton crater on the south pole of the moon, which definitely contains millions of tons of hydrogen, possibly in easy-to-access ice deposits.

Without any return fuel.

That’s my kind of space mission. Gratuloj je SpaceX, kiu sukcese lanĉis komercan sateliton antaŭ kelkaj tagoj. Unu malgrana paŝo cele al ĉies kosma aliro, ne nur registaraj burokratoj.

Mis ĵus rigardis TED Talk de Bill Stone de 2007, kiu votis estri esploran ekspedicion al la kratero Shackleton je la suda poluso de la luno.

Sen iom da karburaĵo por reveni.

Tian kosmomision mi ŝatus.

Congratulations to SpaceX, and I hope that this is a further step on the road to an expanded human presence in space.

There are two shuttles on the pad at Cape Canaveral right now. Atlantis is scheduled to do some maintenance on the Hubble Space Telescope October 10, and Endeavour will be prepped for a possible rescue mission should something go wrong (Hubble is in a much higher orbit — 590km vs 340km, with of course a completely different inclination — than the International Space Station, where stranded astronauts could hang out for a while in the case of emergency). Sounds like a job for Blackstar from the West Wing universe…

If all goes well with the Hubble mission, then Endeavour will fly the usual supply trip to the station.

I’ve even been too busy to note last Saturday’s SpaceX launch and subsequent failure of their 3rd Falcon 1 rocket. Turns out that the new engine they were testing burned a little longer than they expected after shutdown, and the first stage bumped into the second stage after they separated. Which is disappointing, but an easy fix — just separate a bit later after main engine cutoff.

There’s even a video, which is pretty darn cool.

SpaceX say that they might launch another rocket in a month or so. I’m a huge space geek, so of course I’m hoping that the fourth time will be the charm.

There’s a list of tasks needed to get it to an alpha state in the tracker.