Those Crazy Cosmonauts

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On Oct. 12, 1964, three smallish men, shrunk still more by a strict diet, squeezed into an aluminum sphere 8 feet in diameter. Earlier in the year, Nikita Khrushchev learned that the Americans were planning to send the first two-man capsule into orbit, and he wanted a Soviet trio in space ahead of them. The red team had neither a three-man craft nor a rocket powerful enough to shoot such a craft into space. The idea that they could quickly build both was ridiculous, but not so ridiculous as thinking that the Soviet leader’s demand could be ignored. So this particular sphere, a Vostok tailored for one (smallish) man, had been all but emptied out, given the minimum necessary refitting and relabeled Voskhod 1. The crew, according to author John Strausbaugh, had to do without bulky space suits and helmets and wore woolen leisure suits instead.

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Lost worlds

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The remarkable An Ordinary Youth (now available for the first time in English in a translation by Michael Lipkin), an autobiographical novel by Walter Kempowski (1929–2007), opens with a fictionalized version of his family moving into its new apartment in Rostock, a formerly Hanseatic port on Germany’s Baltic coast. The plants on the balcony include “Jew’s beard geraniums.” It is 1938.

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Electric Vehicles: Cellphones, EVs, and Pete Buttigieg

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Something tells me that those forever talking up the qualities of electric vehicles (EVs) are becoming a little anxious. With clear signs that the growth in EV sales is failing to meet central planners’ expectations, Pete Buttigieg appeared on Fox News with a new tactic to persuade reluctant buyers to jump on the EV, uh, train. The new tactic was mockery, vaguely reminiscent of the tack taken by candidate Barack Obama in 2008, when he talked about those “bitter” Rustbelt folk “clinging” to their guns, religion, or worse.

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The Green Road to Serfdom

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Deciding who has been the worst British prime minister of the 21st century (so far) is tough, but Theresa May (2016–19) strengthened her strong claim to this title shortly ahead of her ignominious departure from office. Desperate to secure a “legacy,” she saw to it that Britain became the first major country to legally bind itself to reaching net-zero greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions by 2050. That is, the nation committed itself to releasing no more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than it removes. Quite how this ambition could be fulfilled or what fulfilling it would cost was unclear, but no matter: This potentially enormous commitment passed into law with support across the political spectrum, astonishingly little scrutiny, and a great deal of self-congratulation. The 2050 target date reflected a widely held view that this is what it would take to contain the increase in the average global temperature since pre-industrial times to a more or less bearable 1.5 degrees Celsius.

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Electric Vehicles: The EPA’s Fast Track to Fiasco

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Helmuth von Moltke (1800-91), the greatest of Prussia’s nineteenth century generals, so the old (unreliable but enjoyable) story goes, laughed only twice in his life. Once when told that a certain French fortress was impregnable and once when told that his mother-in-law had died.

He would surely have at least permitted himself a smile at the over-confidence with which the EPA is attempting to reorder the American automobile industry….

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