Academy of Ideas has produced some profoundly insightful content. I ran across and re-watched this video in particular recently, and find deep relevance in it for the time and troubling phenomena we’re living through. Especially striking is Jung’s assessment that “psychic disturbances are far more dangerous than epidemics [of physical disease]”.
Much to that point, the following sounds all too familiar:
When it is understood that a flood of negative emotions, in conjunction with a weak and insecure sense of self, can trigger a descent into madness, it becomes clear how a mass psychosis can occur. A population first needs to be induced into a state of intense fear or anxiety by threats real, imagined, or fabricated. And once in a state of panic, the door is opened for either the positive or negative reaction to unfold. If a society is composed of self-reliant, resilient, and inwardly strong individuals, a positive reaction can take place. But if it is composed of mainly weak, insecure, and helpless individuals, a descent into the delusions of a mass psychosis becomes a real possibility.
People can be tricked into accepting, in repeated small increments, massive changes that they would never have put up with all at once. This appears to be true of both individuals and entire populations. It’s a fact of human nature that I suppose is the darker side of our characteristic adaptability, and appears to have been instrumental in reaching the sad state I find us in. This phenomenon has been on my mind in recent years, perhaps because I’ve now lived long enough to witness the long arc of its consequences and see how much of our condition it appears to explain.
We in the USA are both blessed and perhaps cursed to be a remarkably accepting, easygoing culture. This assertion runs contrary to the oft-repeated slanders that we are cruel and intolerant, but it is demonstrably true. How else could we reach a point where we’ve allowed nearly every institution to be slowly but steadily turned against us, infiltrated by people bent on the systematic dismantling of our foundational values and the very essence of who we are? The trope of insufficient tolerance and kindness will continue to be leveled against us, precisely because our good nature abhors and recoils from such accusations, causing us to capitulate with muted objections, one small increment at a time. The trope is employed, because it is effective, because we are kind.
If there is a limiting factor to the cumulative damage such incrementalism can inflict, it may be impatience. Some can’t help but want to push this transformation faster, even when things are going their way in the long term, and in their moments of eager overreach they eventually push us too far all at once. The threshold of our easygoing nature is exceeded, and we become alerted to what is going on. We are living in a time of sustained impatient overreach that seems to have crossed the line of acceptability for many. My own personal line has certainly been crossed. I expect this to inject some salutary feedback into phenomena that have been trending badly for far too long, but it remains to be seen whether that will be enough.
I was raised by two loving parents, in a better time for which I am deeply grateful, to live with integrity and virtue in a world that no longer exists. The world that has supplanted it is decidedly done with me and those who share my values, and the feeling has become mutual. My parents’ passing in 2016 and 2020 feels like a key inflection point in that conclusion, taken together with the realization that my sons are now old enough that they will start to be impacted by the wounded state we’re in. I’ve been an easygoing guy all my life, but I can no longer accept and accommodate things that are toxic to my nature and threaten my children’s future. Now is the time to draw the line and stand for my convictions, against cultural tides that mean harm to all that I love, buoyed by the gift of the better world I have seen and know is possible, and deep gratitude for having known it. I’ll be walking with greater resolve toward the metaphorical battles that must be fought, to save the future I hold dear, and I expect to be thinking, writing, and publishing more here and in my other outlets in pursuit of that.
The gloom has been as hard as ever to bear on this twentieth anniversary, given recent events. I’ve said this, and meant it, many times before, but I’ve never felt it with greater alarm or grief than now: We are in some bad, bad shape as a culture, and serious consequences are coming down the pipe that we’re going to have to reckon with over the course of many years to come.
Whatever one may think about the 20-year-long US & allied operation in Afghanistan that the Taliban’s harboring of 9/11’s al Qaeda Jihadists and their training camps kicked off — including valid disagreement over reasonable strategic aims, realistic goals, rules of engagement, and conditions for success and exit (and there is plenty of room for sane discussion and debate on these matters) — the shape and form of our needlessly bungled exit from Afghanistan has been an unmitigated disaster that we will pay the price for for decades to come. From the profoundly foolish, premature abandonment of the essential and well-defended Bagram Air Base, to the surrender of massive combat assets and a “kill list” to our Taliban adversaries, to the stranding of vulnerable American and allied personnel behind enemy lines that left many to find their own ways out with no help from the US government, and the others left behind and in ongoing peril — it’s hard for me to imagine a worse execution or worse result. This was an unforced error and a colossal failure that will cost us dearly. It has both armed and emboldened those who seek to cause us harm, broken the trust of those we’ve asked to take great risks with us, and given costly weight to the claim that we are but a paper tiger, weak and easily frightened, that can be worn down, demoralized, and defeated with sustained effort. The result of this will be lives lost when we are not taken seriously in future battles. We can count on it.
No less severe, I expect, will be the domestic consequences of this self-inflicted catastrophe. A resurgence of Jihadist attacks on our own soil seems entirely likely, given the weakness of resolve and gross incompetence of leadership we’ve demonstrated — not to mention the act of abjectly surrendering territory from which the prior attacks were planned and staged, and that can easily be used again for the same purpose. (I would love nothing more than for the coming decades to prove me wrong in this expectation.) Moreover, those among us who ardently seek a weakened USA that is unwilling and unable to stand up for itself have been given another example of defeat and dishonor that they are sure to employ with enthusiasm toward their ends for decades to come. Those of us who saw the despicable way our prior withdrawal from Vietnam was used these past two decades, as a cudgel to convince the public of both dishonorable intentions and inevitable failure, know this to be true.
All of this was unnecessary and could have been avoided, and it kills me to see it. Nothing short of a toxic mindset bent on cultural suicide seems adequate to explain it. I do not understand how one can be anything less than livid about this. It grieves me to see it, and I can only begin to imagine how this disastrous turn of events is being felt by our servicemen and women — people for whom I hold a deep and abiding love and respect. Their chain of command all the way up to Commander-in-Chief has utterly failed them and betrayed their honorable sacrifices, and the look of things thus far is that no one who’s been responsible for this massive failure in judgment will actually be held accountable in any significant way — either by law, electorally, or by a supine press that maybe finally got the failure it’s been ghoulishly cheering for all these years.
I don’t know what to do with this situation but take issue with those who’ve cheered for our demise while laboring to weaken, demean, and demoralize us. I will not forget this betrayal or what it has revealed to me. With my children now old enough to have awareness of and questions about the 9/11 attacks and the years since, I feel as strongly as ever the determination I felt on that September day twenty years ago, when so many of us pledged to ourselves that we would not forget what we had witnessed, nor falter in standing for the land we love.
Though it ended in another “rapid, unscheduled disassembly” instead of the successful landing we’d hoped for, yesterday’s test-launch of the Starship SN9 prototype was a spectacular sight and will doubtless yield valuable data and help inform the next attempts and further evolution of SpaceX’s prototypes.
Like SN8, SN9 reached its target altitude (10km this time) with smooth stability. The controlled free-fall went remarkably well, as it did for SN8, which is a very encouraging result given the importance of this means of re-entry to the design. An interesting difference vs. the SN8 test was a very visible overshoot during the rotation back to vertical, which SN9 attempted unsuccessfully to correct. An astute observer pointed out to me that SN9 had only one engine firing at the time, whereas reviewing the SN8 test flight’s landing you can see two Raptors firing during the landing attempt (until one of them started to burn out with a bright green flame, at least). This leads one to wonder whether the failure was at least partly a matter of not having sufficient thrust (and the stability of a pair of pivoting thrust sources vs. just one) to correct the overshoot past vertical once it happened. But noting that SN8 rotated to vertical more slowly without overshooting and having to correct, it also seems like maybe a gentler approach to the rotation maneuver could have avoided the problem. I therefore wonder if control software or the feedback loop of sensors that informs it could have been partly at fault. Maybe the software that controls the maneuver, adaptive as it is designed to be, has a certain degree of hard-to-avoid reliance that the engines will successfully ignite and start providing thrust on command, and is limited (both logically and physically, with only one gimbaled rocket motor firing) in its ability to cope with failure of one engine to relight. I’m very curious about what actually happened and am looking forward to SpaceX’s findings and resultant changes to the next prototypes.
Here’s SpaceX’s livestream footage from yesterday:
Here’s SN8’s test-launch and landing attempt for comparison:
And here’s an illuminating side-by-side comparison and SN9 crash analysis from Terran Space Academy:
I’m tempering my excitement with the knowledge that further delays are possible, but signs are currently pointing to a Starship SN9 12.5km hop attempt today. A successful ascent, controlled free-fall, and vertical landing will be a huge milestone for SpaceX’s Starship program and our prospects of going places in these magnificent, ambitious vehicles.
Check LabPadre’s Nerdle Cam or the NASASpaceflight channel for the livestream. Barring a @SpaceX announcement, the time of the test flight may remain a mystery as usual. It’s been a magnificent sight to see SN9 and SN10 standing side-by-side at the launch site for the past few days. With visuals like this, it’s not hard to imagine a sci-fi future made real where we have fleets of Starships in active service.
The huge crane that’s used to put them in place is a pretty awesome sight too:
In related news, this 4-minute video from Terran Space Academy presents the significance of SpaceX’s achievements to date and the Starship program beautifully:
Last but not least, an exciting announcement from SpaceX regarding the next phase in its crewed Dragon program:
Today, it was announced SpaceX is targeting no earlier than the fourth quarter of this year for Falcon 9’s launch of Inspiration4 – the world’s first all-commercial astronaut mission to orbit – from historic Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Jared Isaacman, founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments, is donating the three seats alongside him aboard Dragon to individuals from the general public who will be announced in the weeks ahead. Learn more on how to potentially join this historic journey to space by visiting Inspiration4.com.
The Inspiration4 crew will receive commercial astronaut training by SpaceX on the Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Dragon spacecraft, orbital mechanics, operating in microgravity, zero gravity, and other forms of stress testing. They will go through emergency preparedness training, spacesuit and spacecraft ingress and egress exercises, as well as partial and full mission simulations.
This multi-day journey, orbiting Earth every 90 minutes along a customized flight path, will be carefully monitored at every step by SpaceX mission control. Upon conclusion of the mission, Dragon will reenter Earth’s atmosphere for a soft water landing off the coast of Florida.
Eighteen years ago today, in the second and last major catastrophe of the Space Shuttle program, we lost Columbia and her crew. Tragically, as with Challenger, this loss might have been avoidable had we found a better way to secure the insulating foam around the external tank that ended up breaking loose, damaging Columbia’s left wing, and leaving the shuttle’s airframe vulnerable to being pierced by hot gases on re-entry. On the other hand, judging such things foreseeable is often all too easy with the benefit of hindsight. Sometimes in the dangerous endeavor of spaceflight, however diligently we may try to anticipate all scenarios and control all the variables, unexpected stuff happens and there’s not much we can honestly do but chalk our failures up to bad luck. There is danger in this grand adventure. We know it. And we go anyway.
Columbia had the proud distinction of being the first shuttle to fly. I remember learning about and watching that first flight from my 4th grade classroom in Los Angeles, and somewhere I probably still have the excited pencil scrawlings of my 4th grade self celebrating this human accomplishment and imagining myself one day as an astronaut taking the same journey to space.
Bill Whittle’s 2003 essay, Courage, written in the wake of the loss of Columbia, captures the magic and tragedy of it all in soaring poetry I have not seen surpassed anywhere. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Freedom is a tremendous and precious inheritance. To develop our potential, thrive in it, and pass it along to each successive generation is our highest calling. I write here to give my thanks, and to seek ways we can cultivate the resilience, independence, courage, and indomitable spirit necessary to sustain a culture that cherishes liberty.
