The John Batchelor Show

Wednesday 7 October 2015

Air Date: 
October 07, 2015

Photo, left: The instrument panel of the Vought OS2U Corsair that James H. "Jimmy" Doolittle flew during the Guggenheim blind flight experiments, 1929.   (Smithsonian Institution) JAMES H. DOOLITTLE SCRAPBOOKS
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-host: Gordon Chang, Forbes.com.
 
Hour One
Wednesday   7 October 2015  / Hour 1, Block A: Monica Crowley, Washington Examiner and Fox, in re:  GOP and Dem candidates for the presidency (1 of 2)
'Draft Biden' group to air first national TV ad ; Democratic senators: Biden bid would be good for Clinton ; Biden ; The FBI has seized four State Department computer servers as part of its probe into how classified information was compromised on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email system, according to people familiar with the investigation.
The four servers, which were located at the State Department’s headquarters building, were seized by the FBI several weeks ago. They are being checked by technical forensic analysts charged with determining how Top Secret material was sent to Clinton’s private email by State Department aides during her tenure as secretary from 2009 to 2013, said two people familiar with the probe. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because it's an ongoing investigation.
Wednesday   7 October 2015  / Hour 1, Block B: Monica Crowley, Washington Examiner and Fox, in re:  GOP and Dem candidates for the presidency (2 of 2)
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/kevin-mccarthy-house-republicans-speaker-214488 ; Chaffetz: McCarthy's Benghazi Comment a 'Side Issue' in Speaker's ...If there's to be a Kevin McCarthy speakership, it's off to a tumbling ...  ;  McCarthy tells GOP conservatives 'I'm not John Boehner'
Wednesday   7 October 2015  / Hour 1, Block C: Evan Ellis, professor of Latin American studies at the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, in re: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-02/china-billionaire-with-canal-dream-confronts-biggest-loss-of-15
Wednesday   7 October 2015  / Hour 1, Block D: Reggie Littlejohn, founder and president of Women's Rights Without Frontiers, in re: October 11 is the International Day of the Girl Child.  http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2015-09/30/content_22021950.htm
 
Hour Two
Wednesday   7 October 2015  / Hour 2, Block A: Anne Stevenson Yang, co-founder of J Capital Research in Beijing and author of China Alone: The Emergence from, and Potential Return to, Isolation, in re: her attached research note on the contraction of the Chinese economy and its implications.
Wednesday   7 October 2015  / Hour 2, Block B: Mike Davis, professor at Hong Kong University Law School, in re: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/06/hong-kong-academics-students-march-beijing-crackdownhttps://www.hongkongfp.com/2015/10/05/more-than-a-nice-guy-says-hku-law-faculty-hits-back-in-rare-statement-on-johannes-chan-fallout/
Wednesday   7 October 2015  / Hour 2, Block C: Michael Auslin, American Enterprise Institute, in re:   http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-10-06/congress-to-push-obama-on-north-korea-sanctions   “The policy of strategic patience has been a strategic failure,” Cory Gardner, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia, the Pacific and International Cybersecurity Policy, told me in an interview.
Wednesday   7 October 2015  / Hour 2, Block D:  Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack, in re: A list of all smallsat launch rockets.  Doug Messier has compiled a very interesting table showing all the known smallsat launch vehicles presently under construction or in operation.
Most of the operational rockets, such as Orbital ATK’s Minotaur, have turned out to be too expensive for their small payloads, and have not been very profitable. The new generation of rockets, however, have the chance of success, as they are all working to reduce the cost significantly. Keep your eye especially on Rocket Labs (which just signed a contract with Moon Express), Swiss Space Systems, Firefly Space Systems, and (dare I say it?) Virgin Galactic.
France considers developing reusable first stage  The competition heats up: Two French government aerospace agencies have announced that they are researching the development of a reusable first stage. It is very unclear how this research will be applied, since Europe’s replacement for the Ariane 5 is being built by Airbus Safran and they have made it clear that they only intend to recover their rocket’s engines, not the entire first stage.
ULA completes its 100th successful launch The competition heats up: In a rare private commercial launch, ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket put a Mexican communications satellite in orbit on Friday, the 100th successful launch for the company. The company still faces the same problems it did before this launch: It is running out of Russian engines for the Atlas 5, Congress is not willing to give them permission to use more, and the cost competition from SpaceX is not going to let up
Lockheed Martin eliminated from ISS cargo contract competition  The competition heats up: NASA has eliminated Lockheed Martin’s bid for the second round of ISS cargo contracts. This leaves SpaceX, Boeing, Sierra Nevada, and Orbital ATK in the running. While dropping Lockheed Martin reduces the number of competitors for the contracts, it increases the competition between them. The decision is now expected in November.
Moon Express buys launch contract  The competition heats up: The leading private effort to win the Google Lunar X-Prize, Moon Express, has signed a contract with the smallsat launch company Rocket Labs for three launches.  Mountain View, California-based Moon Express plans to use the launches to send to the moon new, smaller versions of its MX-1 lunar lander. Two of the launches will take place in 2017, with a third to be scheduled. All three will use Rocket Lab’s Electron small launch vehicle, whose first flight is scheduled for no earlier than late 2015 from New Zealand. – See more at: http://spacenews.com/moon-express-buys-rocket-lab-launches-for-lunar-mis...    Rather than piggyback on the major launch of big payload, which would deny them any control over launch dates, they have signed with a new and as yet unproved small rocket company. The result? Not only do we have the chance of getting our first privately built lander on the Moon, the contract jumpstarts a new rocket company designed to put small payloads into space.
 
Hour Three
Wednesday   7 October 2015  / Hour 3, Block A:  Oriana Pawlyk, Military Times, in re: http://www.militarytimes.com/story/military/2015/10/04/us-russia-vladimir-putin-syria-ukraine-american-military-plans/73147344/. Black Sea Basin, Med Basin, Baltic Basin. The new cold war.  (1 of 2)
Wednesday   7 October 2015  / Hour 3, Block B: Oriana Pawlyk, Military Times, in re: http://www.militarytimes.com/story/military/2015/10/04/us-russia-vladimir-putin-syria-ukraine-american-military-plans/73147344/. Black Sea Basin, Med Basin, Baltic Basin. The new cold war.  (2 of 2)
Wednesday   7 October 2015  / Hour 3, Block C: Dan De Luce, Foreign Policy, in re: FOR CARTER, REALITY BITES: The secretary of defense came into office promising to shake up the Pentagon, but the chaos in Iraq and Syria has left him mired in wars he didn't want to fight, write FP’s Dan DeLuce and Paul McLeary  [more]
Wednesday   7 October 2015  / Hour 3, Block D:   John Tamny, Real Clear Markets, in re: Out with a new book, Ben Bernanke truly believes he stood between a prosperous U.S., and one wrecked by a recession that would have made the Great Depression seem small by comparison. His delusions are superhuman.  Economies are collections of individuals, and as such recessions (when they're left alone) signal a healthy - and short - cleansing of bad habits, investments and companies.  Long-term downturns are by definition a signal of gov't intervention, yet Bernanke sought poison in '08 similar to what was foisted on the economy in the '30s.  The results were similar too, yet actions taken by him that no serious economic thinker would pursue are viewed as heroic by this mercifully departed former Fed Chairman. 
 
Hour Four
Wednesday   7 October 2015  / Hour 4, Block A: Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor by James M. Scott PART III of III (1 of 4).
Wednesday   7 October 2015  / Hour 4, Block B: Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor by James M. Scott PART III of III (2 of 4).
Wednesday   7 October 2015  / Hour 4, Block C: Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor by James M. Scott PART III of III (3 of 4).
Wednesday   7 October 2015  / Hour 4, Block D: Target Tokyo: Jimmy Doolittle and the Raid That Avenged Pearl Harbor by James M. Scott PART III of III (4 of 4).