Metal detectors and Cameras: The Solution to Youth Violence

The family of the victim killed in the recent school shooting held a press conference today.

Strangely enough they don't seem to even mention gun control - not even once:

The family of slain teenager Jordan Manners made a tearful appeal to the Ontario government on Wednesday to launch an inquest and called for the appointment of a commissioner of youth.

I will give a mile of credit to this family for not getting sucked into the political meanderings of the Ontario Premier and the Mayor of Toronto in this whole affair by pushing for tougher gun laws.

I get the real sense that they don't really care what the politics is around this situation - they just want this to never happen again to someone else.

I sympathise with their suggestion that metal detectors and cameras need to be installed in today's highschools. It's the only shot we have to stopping a future crime like this one from happening again, because it's become apparent that it doesn't matter how tough your gun restrictions are someone will always break them.

"I'm asking for all your support, please don't let my son die in vain," Small said.

"He was on his way to being somebody and was the one who could have made a difference for me in my old age," Small said.

(..)

"This is not about a black community," said Greg Stokes, Jordan's uncle.

And this is the point where the family starts loosing me.

Of course this is about the black community. It's about the white community. It's about the immigrant community.

Part of the underlying social problems in teenage violence are partially all our responsibility collectively. And by that I don't mean that we as some sort of Borg like collective are responsible, but rather we as individuals need to accept responsibility for the moral decay that is prevalent in society today.

I argue if we were to act more moral, we would see a society not so prone to these acts of violence. Children, let us not forget, emulate. Part of these crimes originate from everyone's individual lack of sense of duty, honor, honesty and respect for each other's individual liberties and rights.

Comments like those at their root serve to deflect responsibility, when the solution lies in taking responsibility.

Then comes in the leftist activists to chime in:

John Muise, director of Public Safety for the Canadian Centre for Abuse Awareness, also echoed the call for an inquest and youth commissioner.

The province appointed its third and final commissioner, Ken Dryden, in 1984. He served in the position for two years.

"We have young men who pack real hand guns and the end result is horrific, it's horrible," Muise said. "We need an answer from decision makers."

It's so much easier to call on the state to do something isn't it? Because then we can all sit back and do nothing, and then when something goes wrong we can blame the state for all our ills.

The family gets a mile of credit by me like I said, but one thing I can't agree with is the need for a youth commisioner.

Just how does adding one more layer of bureaucracy aid the cause against youth violence?

We would be best to listen to the words of the family on this one:

"I just don't want to see any other family going through what I'm going through, what my family and friends are going through," Small added.

And that's exactly what our primary objective should be in this case: do everything we can to prevent this from happening again.

That means installing metal detectors and cameras in schools, and it doesn't mean hiring another public servant to commission reports that tell us what we already know.

Sue This!

There should be a saying "If someone sues, it's because they can't win an argument." Litigation is truly today's beating rod of injustice.

Case #1: Warren Kinsella. That man seems to threaten litigation at the slightest sign of criticism. (Disclaimer: I in no means mean to suggest that Warren Kinsella has in the past or will act in the future like a putz by pursuing unfounded legal action against political opponents and any suggestion that this disclaimer is intended to cover my butt against any scary former unnamed Liberal strategists is baseless.)

Case #2:

Friends of the Earth, one of the country's major environmental groups, has filed a lawsuit against the federal government for failing to live up to the obligations of the Kyoto Protocol, alleging that breaking the international treaty also violates Canada's pollution laws.

But the court action is a legal long shot, according to some observers, who say the suit will put the Conservatives on the defensive over climate change, but has little chance of succeeding.

Instead of trying to persuade the government of the moral superiority of their argument in the climate change debate they resort to baseless legal actions.

If you want to threaten someone the easiest way is to hire a lawyer. Now in this case the end effect isn't a serious. Stephen Harper has the apparatus of the Conservative Party behind him to help him out. He doesn't have much to worry about except this case's effect on public opinion.

I can't tell you the number of times in politics I've heard one person threaten to sue another person over petty useless things. Especially among Conservatives.

Please do the world a favour - use reasoned rational debate to prove your points. The justice system should be used to provide justice to the truly oppressed. Not as a means of dispute resolution for cry babies.

Pesky little thing called "price"...

I'll give Elon one thing: he knows how to play the game:

Orbital built the two rockets for TacSat-2 and TacSat-3 for a total of $24 million. The company likely could reduce that price somewhat if the Air Force bought a larger block of rockets, Grabe said.

Elon Musk, founder and chief executive of Space Exploration Technologies, said his company also plans to compete for the block of ORS launches. Musk said his company could reduce its $7 million price tag for the Falcon 1 rocket for a block purchase if the launches came within 12 months of each other, and it could find efficiencies such as increasing its order quantities from suppliers.

Musk said Space Exploration plans to increase the price of Falcon 1 launches in 2009 as part of an effort to increase the rocket’s payload. While the price tag will rise to $8.5 million, the cost increase will be proportionately less than the planned increase in payload mass and volume, he said.

I don't think their can be any doubt about why the Air Force is encouraging Elon Munsk's SpaceX. When he's offering a price half what the big guys are offering, and then in the same breath offering to reduce it more people will listen.

The question is can he really pull off launches at that price? His last launch was a smidgeon less than a complete success. Until he manages to have a launch without any hitches it's all happy guessing as to whether or not Elon can really manage to pull a Dave Nichol when it comes to launch costs.

With these things anything will go wrong. It's a natural part of engineering - that is to say failure. No one is perfect. I don't care how smart you are. We all screw up. Everyone will screw up some percentage of the time if they aren't paying attention, and a very small amount if they really are careful. What's worse is the more people you have working on that project that small chance of screwing up multiplies.

The only way around it is to be in it for the long term. You have to expect that screw ups WILL happen. Deal with them one at a time, learn from them and move on. Eventually, you will have learned enough, and you will minimized the mistakes enough that you can actually accomplish something. So really the question is does Elon have the guts and the pocketbook to see this thing through?

Space Beer

No. I'm not kidding:

Microgravity Enterprises has successfully recovered ingredients that were successfully launched into space onboard UP Aerospace's SpaceLoft-2 (SL-2) rocket on April 28th. These ingredients will be used to make the world's first consumer food products fortified by elements that have been flown in space. MEI's initial product offering will include an energy drink called Antimatter, a purified water with important electrolytes called Space2O, and the world's first true space beer called Comet's Tail Ale.

This is one avenue of space commercialization I haven't heard before...

When Preliminary Means Preliminary

When the US Government releases a report stating that CO2 emissions reduced by 1.3% in absolute terms despite the economy growing it definitely catches my eye.

But it has lead to some to question the viability of the premise that many conservatives have long held that the only way to shrink carbon emissions is to shrink the economy:

"This should be a wakeup call to conservatives who contend that any whiff of man-made greenhouse gas management will destroy the most powerful economy on earth. It’s also a poke in the eye to all those Goreons out there driving their SUVs to global warming worship services to commiserate on the evils of America and pray they could be more like the EU (whose gas problem was worse in 2006, by the way)."

If the author is suggesting that we can reduce carbon emissions while still growing the economy like most environmentalists suggest, the facts just don't add up that way.

The 1.3 percent drop in CO{-2} emissions marks the first time that U.S. pollution linked to global warming has declined in absolute terms since 2001 and the first time it has gone down since 1990 while the economy was thriving. Carbon dioxide emissions declined in both 2001 and 1991, in large part because of economic slowdowns during those years.

History has shown that during economic slow downs and recessions carbon emissions drop. That has been the only time in recorded history that we have evidence of man made CO2 emissions dropping. That's just the facts.

So this latest report of the US government is either tremendously historic, or their is something everyone is missing.

Unfortunately, on further examination of the report I quickly discovered what was missing.

The first problem is this: the report is an estimate. It lists at least twice this source: "Energy Information Administration, preliminary estimate for 2006." Further the title of the report includes the word "...estimate..."

In the notes it mentions: "All 2006 data are preliminary."

Unfortunately no confidence interval, or examination of the potential sources of errors exist. This means that these results could be amended at some point in the future and the confidence we should take in them is unknown.

But also, there's one point the report makes that no one is paying attention to. The drop may be the cause of weather."Weather conditions were favorable for emission reductions in 2006..." The US had a milder winter and a cooler summer. Wow. Now that sure won't sell a headline.

So before we all start consecrating ourselves to the carbon emissions Gods, I suggest we wait until the report isn't preliminary any more.

At this point all we really can conclude is that it APPEARS as if carbon emissions were lower than expected in the US last year. In fact they might have been better than they were in the True North Strong And Free. So it suggests that perhaps other countries should be looking to the US to see what they are doing to combat CO2 emissions... But that would require people accepting what the US has already accepted: believing that miraculously CO2 emissions will drop by a third in 5 years without destroying the economy is a fantasy.

The War On Guns

The War On Guns is clearly afoot as Miller and McGuinty jockey like a pack of blood thirsty socialists to take advantage of Toronto's latest school gun shooting.

David Miller:

"Handguns have one purpose and that is to kill and it really reinforces what we've been saying for quite a while at the city..."

"We absolutely have to get the guns off the streets. It's going to require some changes to our laws but it has to be done."

Dalton McGuinty:

"Handguns are designed for one purpose only – to shoot people – and should have no place in Ontario or anywhere in Canada."

It's amazing how it's no longer social ills, an immoral society, or a lax justice system that is the cause of crime - it's all guns.

It's the guns stupid. Only an idiot would think otherwise. It doesn't matter that crime existed before guns. Guns are evil.

Oh but this gun bashing extravaganza gets better with this quasi-statist comment from Ontario's Attorney General:

"There's got to be a balance between people's property rights and personal responsibilities to others..."

What the honourable attorney is of course suggesting is that too many property rights lead to people not taking "personal responsibility" for said property. I would argue the opposite. Too little property rights lead to people not giving a damn about the property they use. If we regulated firearms the way we regulate public parks people wouldn't care where they dump their guns 'cuz it aint their responsibility - it's the State's. They don't own the property. It's the big ol' gov that owns it, so let them take care of it.

Just as people litter and waste on public property, they would have just the same lack of care when it comes hand guns. Getting the state to "take care of it" is exactly how we negate individual responsibility.

What's worse is the Honourable Premier's suggestion that "the only reason" someone could ever possibly own a handgun is to shoot someone.

If it smells like horse manure, if it looks like horse manure, if it even tastes like horse manure it probably is horse manure. And in this instance the Premier's comments have a foul stench.

People collect hand guns for pleasure. They use them for target practice like a sport. Those are all valid reasons to own a hand gun.

What's worse is that it's as if the Honourable Premier can't think of the most basic reason to own a gun: self defence.

Hand guns are light and easy to transport. They don't necessarily act as the most accurate weapons but they are not dependant on your physical strength to operate them and they can turn the most weak person into someone capable of capably defending themselves from an attacker.

Women in particular stand to benefit the most from the use of handguns. But in today's climate of defeatism it is impossible for the right to self-defense to even exist. Even pepper spray is banned in this country. Here is a perfectly harmless weapon that is primarily of use to the weakest and most vulnerable in society and we can't see it fit to allow people to use it?

Further I wonder why the more obvious conclusion hasn't hit anyone about this shooting:

Currently, handguns in Canada are classified as either restricted or prohibited weapons. Canadians can receive a licence to own a restricted weapon if they can prove it's part of a gun collection or used for target practice or target-shooting competitions.

Only under "limited circumstances" can a person possess a restricted firearm for employment purposes, such as for a police officer, or for protection of a life.

Under the heavy restrictions and prohibitions we already had this shooting still happened. What makes us think that by banning hand guns we'll have any more success?

And then starts the US bashing... Because no debate is ever completed by a Liberal unless he bashes the US somehow:

"We know that there's two sources of guns used in Toronto: one is guns that are stolen from collectors, and the other is guns that come from the U.S. ..."

"The U.S. has to take some real steps, otherwise we're going to keep seeing tragedies. ... I mean, a 15-year-old boy. You know it's absolutely tragic."

A child was killed.

Violence was done.

A family is in tatters.

Once were done blaming inanimate objects, foreign countries that we don't like, and a federal government barely in power two years then we can start focusing on what will really work to prevent this crime: Installing camera's and metal detectors in schools.

No one likes to admit it or say it, but that's the reality of the situation. Teenagers today kill. They kill regardless if they get a handgun from another country, regardless if they had to break prohibitions, and regardless of what any politician may say or do.

Yes, western civilization today is that bad.

When You Haven't Suffered Enough...

It's your God given right to suffer more:

“I always like to be underestimated,” says the premier who made national history tonight when he became first-ever NDP leader in Canada to win three straight provincial races.

Doer's NDP captured 36 seats, stealing one from Hugh McFadyen's Conservatives, who managed only 19, and holding the ever-aspiring Jon Gerrard-led Liberals to a repeat pair.

The NDP stole a huge seat with a Sharon Blady win in the Kirkfield Park riding — which has been PC blue since its inception in 1981 — and also in Southdale, where veteran Tory Jack Reimer was ousted by journalist-turned-politician Erin Selby.

The newly crowned repeat premier says winning ridings like Kirkfield and Southdale make his victory all the sweeter. “We're changing the face of Manitoba. It's really important for a political party to change all the time,” Doer says. “I'm really proud that with the calibre we've elected that we're changing the future.”

Socialism has won big in Manitoba.

Why Sicko?

I have only two points to bring up about Micheal Moore's new film "Sicko":

1)Canadian wait times for basic health care are out of this world.

2)Canada has been experiencing a labour shortage of health care professionals for years as Canadian doctors have fled to the US attracted to lower taxes and a health care system that doesn't negate the concept of individual initiative and responsibility.

We have corrupt administrative officials that swallow any increases in cash the government floods into the system, and refuses to do the right thing and hire new bodies.

The Canadian system is superior to the US? My stinkin' eye.

Even the McGuinty Liberals in Ontario are reforming the public non-profit health care system in a way no one quite realizes how significant.

It's becoming more American. The new structure resembles a well hated system down in the Yankee south: HMO's.

Bigelow Delayed

Bigelow's recent delay, makes me wonder if all isn't so rosy in the paradise world of inflatable habitats.

Has the tech hit a snag? Or is this just dockyard maneuverings from the hotel magnate?

Only time will tell.

When Science Fiction Guides Space Exploration

I really sincerely hope that they had better reasons to examine 40 Eridani than the lure of finding "Vulcan":

NASA's upcoming planet-finding mission SIM PlanetQuest will scan the star system 40 Eridani for signs of a habitable planet.

If found, that planet would be the real-life counterpart of the fictional planet of "Vulcan," well-known in the "Star Trek" universe as the home of Admiral (formerly Mr.) Spock and the entire Vulcan race.

The Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) PlanetQuest, which is overseen by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California and slated to launch in 2015, is an orbiting interferometer that will link a pair of telescopes to function as a much larger "virtual telescope."

Wake up people. Vulcan isn't real. Spock isn't real. It was a TV show. A great TV Show and great SF - but it was a TV show all the same.

This constant need people have of projecting SF show story lines onto real life stretches even to naming deadly asteroids.

Private Space Travel Is Essential

I couldn't agree LESS with Jon Goff on this point:

I also agree with his point that life will go on if we don't go back to the moon in my lifetime. The environment isn't going to be destroyed because lunar platinum isn't being mined to enable the Hydrogen Economy. Human civilization isn't going to stagnate much worse than it will anyway. We aren't likely to be wiped out by a huge meteorite impact. I'm not too worried about those "Chinese Communists" taking over the free world by first wasting vast amounts of money building bases on the moon to prevent plucky space startups from accessing it. In fact, life would even go on if NASA closed its doors tomorrow, or if it completely canceled its manned spaceflight program. I don't think that Western Europe is going to convert to Islam and join the Evil Caliphate o' Doom (TM) if we don't continue to show "technological leadership" by flying people very expensively into space on government run boosters.

There's probably nothing in the public or private space program that is essential to human survival over the next century. Life would go on without it.

I find it incredible that Mr Goff doesn't believe space travel is a necessity to the survival of the human race. Alone the threat of global war, terrorism, and natural reoccurring global disasters in earth history would lead one to conclude otherwise. But there is another enduring reason why humanity should strive for the stars: it’s our only escape left.

The Romans had Europe, the Europeans had America, and America had the west. Now just where is the last frontier? Where is the haven for those feed up with the stifling rules of the old world or those just plain simply oppressed looking for a second chance?

Our world is quickly moving into a new phase of history where the reality of limits has become all the more apparent. As governments impose more and more rules and people find less and less real estate to escape them I think it’s fueling a drive for alternative escapes – artificial ones. Just look at what the people of today escape to – facebook, chat rooms, supermarket tabloids, television, reality tv – the list goes on and on. There are no more lofty goals. There are no more great dreamers.

The slow increase of rules by governments and the lack of a belief in a future worth living I think can be far worse threat to our survival than anything else.

Gas Gouging? Not Quite...

The notoriously socialist Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives has launched a web site to show us how the greedy oil companies are robing us blind.

Because you know it's always Big Oil that's the cause of all our ills. It's never government taxes on gasoline or the Opec Oil Cartel - that's just crazy capitalist talk.

“With today’s crude oil price of $61.80 USD per barrel and the U.S. dollar at $1.11 CAD, the price of regular unleaded gasoline in Ottawa should be 87.7 cents per litre at normal profit margins,” the site explains. “At a price of $1.02 per litre, you are paying 14.3 cents per litre in pure excess profit. Across Canada, an extra margin of 14.3 cents per litre generates an additional profit of 14.3 million dollars per day.”

Let's check that math again.

The price of crude oil is $62/barrel. Dividing that by 160 Litres/barrel gives us 39 cents/Litre for pure crude oil.

At $1.11 CAD per USD that gives us a price per litre for crude oil of 43 cents/Litre. Gas taxes run you at about 46.7 cents/Litre extra if you live in Ontario.

That runs you at a grand total of 89.7 cents/Litre. Slightly higher than the this guys numbers, but he can be forgiven for exaggerating his point.

Unfortunately though his numbers are severely off. You can't take crude oil and pump it into your car and expect it to work. You need to refine it first. That introduces more costs that this guy is cleverly overlooking.

The US government estimates that 19 % of gasoline costs come from refining. If we are conservative and assume that increases our price by 15% it makes our grand total a stinking 103.2 cents/Litre. That isn't including the cost of freight which we can neglect for a city close to a refinery but include for a city farther away from one.

As of right now the price of gas in Toronto runs at 102.8 cents/Litre.

Now obviously my numbers are rough, but I think it's apparent that whatever the profit margin companies make on gasoline is small pickings. Quite frankly this guy is not telling the whole truth - which for some people is LYING.

I should make this disclaimer right about now: I worked for 4 whole months at Imperial Oil. So I guess I'm a corrupted greedy oil sympathizer myself. Besides working for a whole 4 months for an oil company I haven't got paid one red cent by big oil to write this blog post so remove your blinders and calm down a minute.

Oil companies make a ton of money but it's not at what people think. They make it on the gimmicks. They make it, based on what I was told while working for that greedy oil company, on stuff like guys buying the chocolate bar when he's filling up. Or they make it when he stops to get some coffee. That's why many oil companies have pushed to get Timmie's installed right on their location and they've been pushing more and more the convenience store model of a gas station. The margin on a cup of coffee or a chocolate bar is a lot more appealing than the small sum they get from gasoline.

The strategy summed up in a few words: bring 'em in for the gas, make money on the gimmicks.

Decades ago the gimmick was oil changes. So Imperial Oil went ahead and bought an Oil change company to integrate Oil change locations at every Esso Station. They eventually gave up the idea but you can see that this follows a pattern of behavior.

But to top it all off while I was working for that greedy oil company I was made privy to another important piece of information: people don't care about gas prices.

It's true. They've done studies. People holler and complain - that's no surprise. But when it comes choosing to go to one gas station over another they will make their choice based more on gas station lighting (especially women), and accessibility. Price factors low on how people make their choices at the end of the day.

So why all the hate against oil companies then? My guess is that it's an easy target for people to blame stuff on.

So complain all you want to. My suggestion is buy a Honda Civic and move on. You aren't getting gouged. If you're driving a gas gussling SUV, a school bus of a van, or Hummer and you're complaining about gas prices you can go suck a lemon.

Dion's Compassion

Dion's latest:

"I think the PQ tradition is to be too harsh about their leaders. They are very quick to say that their difficulties are coming from their leaders..."

"Mr. Boisclair should not take everything on his shoulder like that..."

"The main difficulty is the cause, the cause of separatism..."

This is something I've noticed far too much from Canadian Left wingers: feigned compassion.

You know the word compassion comes from the words "suffering" and "with." Literally "compassion" means suffering-with.

Here Mr Dion acts as if he suffers with Mr Boisclair's poor leadership woes and attempts to comfort poor Boisclair by saying "it's not you."

Then in a cold calculated move his emphatically adds "it's your cause..."

That patronistic self serving arrogance behind that comment is unbelievable. It's as if Dion believes he is better than the seperatists, because poor them they just aren't enlightened enough.

Dion could have easily just said "seperatists are too hard on their leaders" and not take a parting shot at Boisclair before he left. Bringing up "his cause" as the source of problem was not compassionate or loving - it was stick to the chest.

There's a time to attack, and there's a time to show respect. When your opponent is on the way out you don't attack. Usually a principled gentlemen would let his opponent bow out gracefully. No wonder Quebequers almost turned to seperatism time and time again - look at the proponents of federalism and how they behave!

Dion instead took the "snake in a teddy bear" approach and slowly slithered in wearing a teddy bear suit, seeming harmless and even playfull, until he gets close enough that you can see the tail sticking out the back end - but by then it's too late.

True compassion is all but lost in this world. The Dion's in this planet knowingly or unknowlingly have killed it.

Elizabeth May: "A Prophet"

A lot of hoopla is going around about Elizabeth's May's comments about Harper's climate change plan.

What did she actually say? She said Harper's climate change plan "represents a grievance worse than Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of the Nazis."

Hence Dion's distancing with this: "We should not use it — for the very reason that in the spectrum of power, the Nazi regime is beyond any comparison..."

What no one else is paying attention to is the rest of the remarks made for the "sermon" at the Wesley-Knox United Church in Wortley Village in London.

"We have a moral obligation to our Lord and Father to ensure we don't destroy the creation that was given to us..."

..."This is a time for Christians to say we do believe in miracles, in the life-giving force," she said.

Someone needs to let Lady May know that she isn't at a Star Wars convention - it's a Church.

Just what kind of wheehackee-woohoo is she talking about when it comes to the "life-giving force..." ? Is it God? Is it Buddha? Is it my next door neighbor the drunk?

Lady May is right when it comes to one thing: we are stewards of this planet and this land. Our ownership of this place is dependant on God, First Cause, giving us this planet to begin with. I guess we only differ when it comes to application of that concept. I don't believe the state needs to get involved to keep the planet safe. I believe individuals are the best stewards of their own land.

"We're playing with the forces that led to creation . . . we're nearing the edge of the life force and we're still playing around," May said.

She said it's as if the lessons of the Garden of Eden have been disregarded repeatedly and the results are already harming poorer nations.

The lessons of the Garden of Eden had nothing to do with poorer nations being harmed by the evils of Global Warming the last time I checked. The theology of the Garden of Eden is that man is a fallen creature by choice. In other words God didn't screw up things - we did.

Furthermore environmentalists have done more harm to poorer nations than anyone else. The stubborn insistence of some to develop alternative energy sources in to poorer nations instead of "polluting" them with traditional energy sources has lead to poor results in terms of people getting electricity at the end of the day.

Lady May's reading into the creation story is tenuous at best. The story is supposed to be about the perils of not just ignoring but defying a command from God. In this case doing just that screwed it up for the rest of humanity.

I'm not sure what modernistic interpretation she's reading into Genesis, but one things for sure: it aint real it's surreal. The apple was not a symbol for greedy polluting capitalists, and Adam was not representation of George W. Bush.

And as to the argument that we're messing with the "forces of creation" I think that one is stretch if I ever saw one. The whole debate here is whether or not we're messing with anything to begin with, and who says that global climate necessarily was a "force of creation?"

"Through the power of our Lord and Jesus Christ, we can meet this moral obligation," she said.

May was escorted to the pulpit by the man who defeated her five months ago in in the London-North-Centre byelection -- Liberal MP Glen Pearson, who likened her to an Old Testament prophet.

"She is one such prophet."

Now this is getting very scary. Al Gore scary. I don't understand quite why people in the climate change debate seem insistent on invoking religion when It's clear they don't know what they are talking about. Argue that we're being selfish in not conserving energy. Argue that we are justifying our gluttony in the West. But if you bring up the "life giving force" it's just - quite frankly - weird.

May looks creepy, insane, and a little off-balance. It's amazing that people are only fixated on small comments she made about the PM. The rest of this stuff nails her coffin shut as far as I'm concerned.

Stupid Questions

Munsk on reusability:

"...Assuming the reusability factor, we expect to do more refurbishment than we do manufacturing original stages..."

I've lived by the motto that the more stupid questions you ask the closer you get to the truth of engineering problem.

So after reading this I have to ask this stupid question: why would you put so much emphasis on making your rocket system as reusable as you can?

If it requires a larger work force, and more refurbishment to refurbish old rocket stages for future use is it really cheaper than just rebuilding it from scratch? I'm probably going to get in trouble for saying this but are we really sure that expendable launch systems aren't really the way to get to LEO on the cheap?