New missiles for USAF

The Air Force has released two Requests for Proposals (RFP) at the end of last month.  One is for a new ICBM to replace the aging Minuteman III missiles and the other for a new Long Range Stand Off  Cruise Missile.  Timing is a little odd, for two massively expensive programs just before election day.  Clearly the incoming administration will have it's own ideas. 
   They used to assign snappy names to missile programs.  Atlas, Titan, Thor, Skybolt, and the like.  Now they just go with acronyms.  The ICBM is dubbed "Ground Based Strategic Deterrent Ballistic Missile" or GBSD for short.  The cruise missile is called "Long-Range Standoff Missile"  (LRSO). 
   GBSD is long term and slow going.  USAF budgets $3 billion  over the next five years for studies.  First production missiles are not expected until 2028.  That's a long long time away, many profitable years of contractor paperwork.  Production of 642 missiles will cost $62 billion spread over thirty years.  That's $1 billion per missile in round numbers.  Pricey, very pricey.  It wouldn't cost so much if it didn't take so long.  I remember the original Minuteman program put 1054 missiles into silos inside of five years from start of contract.  And built the necessary 1054 silos at the same time. 
   The LRSO is really a penetration aid missile.  Bombers (B52, B1,B2, B21) carry them to soften up air defenses.  The missiles can reach out 1000 miles ahead of the bomber and vaporize enemy radar sites, fighter bases and SAM sites.  With enough missiles, and good intel about where to shoot them, the bombers are pretty much unstoppable, at least in an all out war where nukes are used.  The program schedule is just as slow as GBSD.  They budget $2.2 billion and 4 1/2 years  for studies.  Then another $10 billion to actually build the missiles. 

"Boy" and "Girl" outlawed by Charlotte NC school board

The TV snippet didn't mention what word[s] were supposed to replace "boy" and "girl" which have been words in English since the time of William the Conqueror.  "Kid" perhaps?
  Ya gotta wonder what this school board was thinking when they made this really amazing ruling.
  Was it the unisex "There is no difference between male and female" people?  Who hope to make boys and girls the same in all respects, opportunity, dress, life roles, what ever? 
  Was it the Transies who want to teach children that they can change themselves from boy to girl or girl to boy if they so desire?
   Was it a desire to defuse or sidestep the boys and girls room issue?
   Was it the LGBT crowd who must be thinking it will ease the social pressure on gay and lesbian students?

   And, how is this amazing ruling going to interfere with the push to start sex education at ever younger ages?

   And what will the signs on boys and girls room doors read?  

Healthcare reform to cut the federal budget

W all know that the federal budget is in trouble.  Has been since Obama became president.  Obama has managed to spend $1 trillion more each year than the IRS collects in taxes.  He sells bonds (T-bills) to the public to keep the Treasury checks from bouncing. 
  There are only two fixes for the problem, raise taxes (the favorite Democratic  plan) or reduce spending (the Republicans like this but never carry thru).  Right now, the second biggest outlay is healthcare, Medicaid and Medicare.  These are "entitlement" programs, they don't have to be approved or funded by act of Congress, they just are.   Eligible patients submit their medical bills, and Uncle pays them.  So the program costs cannot be controlled by law.  Right now, health care payments are the second biggest part of the US federal budget, 27% of total spending.  There are other big things (defense, Social Security, highways, and a bunch of others) but let's just look at one big enchilada for this essay. 
  Everyone agrees that health care costs in the US are twice the costs in any other country.  And for spending twice as much as any other country, US healthcare isn't all that good.  We are down around number 10, not number 1. 
  If we could just lower healthcare costs of  by half, like every other country in the world manages to do, we would chop Federal healthcare spending in half.  That would knock healthcare down to 13% of the federal budget, down from 27%.  That is serious money. 
   Neither The Donald nor Hillary are talking about this at all.  They should be.

Persid Meteor Shower

The Internet said it was peak last night.  So I got up at midnight and went out to see.  And I did see three good bright meteors in about 20 minutes.  To get a good view I went up to the Peabody Slopes parking lot.  The sky was lighter than optimum, the moon hadn't quite set yet although it was below the tree line.  All I had to do was look straight up, and there they were.  The flash was too quick to photograph, at least not with my humble point-n-shoot.  If I do this again, remember to bring a flashlight and a folding chair. 

Estate Tax, small business killer.

Small businesses employ a lotta people, and a few of 'em grow up to be the next Apple Computer.  We need more of them, and we ought to pass laws to make things easier for them.  Eliminating the estate tax would help a lot.
   Typical small businesses, a gas station, a retail store, a motel, a general contractor,  a farm, a medical practice, or a restaurant.  Typically a sole proprietor  deal.  Sooner or later (death comes to everyone) and the sole proprietor dies.  His estate is the small business.  He may have a few bucks in a checking account, but over his lifetime he put everything into the business.  And now that he died, Uncle Sam wants 50% of the value of the business for estate taxes, in cash, right now. 
   Few small businesses have that kind of money.  Not now, not ever.   So the business is closed, sold off, the employees laid off.  The owner cannot will the business to an heir, he has to give half of it to Uncle Sam.  And paying half the value of the business kills it. 
  Me, I think business owners ought to be able to pass the business down to heirs, tax free. 
  The estate tax was invented to confiscate the fortunes of  people like the Rockefellers and  the Gates.  It does skin some of them, but they hire clever well paid lawyers who construct tax shelters for them.  The estate tax really does hammer small businesses, so hard that many of them die. 
  We ought to repeal the estate tax, all the way. 

Delta computer crash. Again

This morning's Wall St Journal had a few words from Delta's chairman.  He says an equipment failure on Delta's site both knocked out the system AND started a small fire.  A fire?  Where are the Halon fire extinguishers that any decent computer room has???   We actually had them go off once at my old place.  It was a false alarm, and it's a good thing that Halon just puts out fires and doesn't wreck electrical equipment like water will do.  But the question for Delta is, why didn't your Halon extinguishers work? 

Delta admits it was their own equipment that failed.

The local power company, Georgia Power, said that their power had stayed on all night.  Delta admitted that a "power control module" (which might be anything)  failed early Monday morning and crashed their computer system, shutting down Delta flights world wide.  And apparently rebooting the world wide systems isn't working so well.  Delta is announcing further flight delays and cancellations for tomorrow.
   Delta clearly needs to decentralize their computer systems, preferably down to the local airport level, so that a failure only knocks out ONE airport, not the entire world.  The only thing that has to be centralized is the airline's seat reservation system.  Agents sell seats all over the world.  Before an agent can sell a seat, he has to know that the seat in question is available, not already sold to someone else.  So all the seat sales go to the central computer system, which keeps track of which seats on which flights are available and which are sold.  This function has to be centralized.  But a lot of other  stuff, like running the airport kiosks ought to be local.
   Good luck Delta IT dept.  You gotta lotta work to do, and a lotta flak to catch.