Bleddyn Bowen

@bleddb

Associate Professor of Astropolitics | Space warfare | Own views Books: Original Sin ; War in Space 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🏳️‍🌈 🚀🛰 Web: “He doesn’t see the stars - just the vast dark spaces in between.”

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Ist das dein Profil?Übernimm es — dann gehört dir bleddb.dirty.social.Profil übernehmen

Bleddyn Bowen@bleddb· 26d

Spot on from @willhaycardiff.bsky.social in ‘Who Cares About Wales?’ I’d say you can extend the argument UK-wide. So many people in Government, HE, and wider society have lost sight of what Universities are and should be in a political-economy.

There is no way you can have a prosperous Wales without prosperous universities. More than ever, a highly educated workforce is vital and it is universities which play the biggest part in providing this.
But if we view universities merely as places for people to gain qualifications for their career and life advancement, then we, much like successive governments, miss the true value these institutions should offer.
They are economic engines in their own right, and they should be centres for creative and open debate and places that can address societal challenges, drawing in talent from around the world and building international connections. In a world where Wales is very small, they are one of the greatest forms of soft power. They should also drive positive change in the communities where they are based. Added to this, the benefit of learning for learning's sake - for the pure curiosity of it - is a fundamental part of being human.
In a Welsh context, our unis are also vital for nation-building. A nation is that idea of an imagined community brought together by shared narratives, culture and language. All of these things are incubated, protected and developed within our academic institutions - or at least should be.
In Wales, our universities are in crisis. Thousands of jobs are being cut across the sector. The conversations I have had with those still working there have been bleak,

Bleddyn Bowen@bleddb· 27d

Zenit looks more scifi than actual scifi

Zenit re-entry capsule with camera ports

Bleddyn Bowen@bleddb· 27d

New arrival…

Bleddyn Bowen@bleddb· 27d

Iesu mowredd... ond rhy hwyr. Wales has had quite the change of heart about the EU, but it's too late now. Hopefully though it will drive more impetus for UK Gov to sort out a better long term relationship with the EU. The apathetic 2016 voters now realising what was lost is quite sobering.

Bleddyn Bowen@bleddb· Jul 8

Saw that APT-E in the Locomotion train museum at Shildon, near Darlington. Most peculiar concept train.

Bleddyn Bowen@bleddb· Jul 7

It’s time

Bleddyn Bowen@bleddb· Jul 6

So much fuss about watching overnight football, but never about overnight election results.

Bleddyn Bowen@bleddb· Jul 2

Paperback Original Sin spotted in the wild! Well, Durham. There are now a few signed copies in Collected Books, Durham! @hurstpublishers.bsky.social

Original Sin: Power, Technology and War in Outer Space on the shelves of a bookshop

Bleddyn Bowen@bleddb· Jul 1

Yes, this is quite nice. @emilarchambault.bsky.social

Bleddyn Bowen@bleddb· Jul 1

Yay I have a paperback copy of book 2. @hurstpublishers.bsky.social Get your copy here, use ORIGINAL20 for a 20% discount! www.hurstpublishers.com/book/origina... or go to your usual bookshop

Original Sin: Power, Technology and War in Outer Space by Bleddyn E. Bowen

Various praise for the book which you can find on the website

Bleddyn Bowen@bleddb· Jun 29

Hey England, you think rail electrification is bad there? Let’s talk about Wales, rail, and devolution… From @willhaycardiff.bsky.social’s ‘Who Cares About Wales’ www.ylolfa.com/cynnyrch/978...

Let's talk about line electrification. Today, about 33% of Scotland's railway lines are electrified, and 44% in England.
It's 3.7% in Cymru. This isn't new technology: the first UK railway lines were electrified almost 140 years ago! Three stations on the Coryton Line in Cardiff are amongst the top four UK stations with the most cancellations.

Bleddyn Bowen@bleddb· Jun 29

Not a viable plan for Labour in Wales for the foreseeable future. Last chance for that was to do something with Drakeford after he left his FM post.

Bleddyn Bowen@bleddb· Jun 24

And lo, did I encounter the ghost of spaceplanes past from 1993 in the archives this very week.

Times article from 1993 on what was to be known as the Skylon hypersonic spaceplane project.

Bleddyn Bowen@bleddb· Jun 23

Not good to leave out a country of 1.4bn people with two launch centres and several launch vehicles, one of which has one of the best reliability records in the world. But that’s Linkedin, I guess.

Visual Capitalist ‘infographic’ showing global launch centres and stats, but completely omitting India.

Bleddyn Bowen@bleddb· Jun 22

Well… www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Here, the questionable intellectual legacies of John Boyd, John Warden, and Arthur Cebrowski hang over the arguments of AI optimists.Footnote45 Notions of Observe, Orient, Decide, Act (OODA) loops, hierarchies of centres of gravity, and the war-winning effects of precision strike complexes are the intellectual primordial soup of AI optimists’ visions of war and strategy. The AI optimist literature not only resembles the problems of the RMA debates and OODA loop concepts, but also what Michael Handel called the ‘tacticisation of strategy’Footnote46, where lower-level operational considerations start driving strategic objectives, where the military means excessively influence the political ends of war.

Bleddyn Bowen@bleddb· Jun 22

Stop this or I’ll have to summon Colin Gray.

Bleddyn Bowen@bleddb· Jun 21

The hypersonic passenger flight newspaper splash seems to come round earlier every year.

Bleddyn Bowen@bleddb· Jun 19

Hearing there’s a special singer in for the anthems

Bleddyn Bowen@bleddb· Jun 18

Bleddyn Bowen@bleddb· Jun 16

Bleddyn Bowen@bleddb· Jun 14

I’d also recommend banning over 50s from Facebook.

Bleddyn Bowen@bleddb· Jun 11

Bleddyn Bowen@bleddb· Jun 8

Wait until they see Covenant ship interiors.

Bleddyn Bowen@bleddb· Jun 7

Making my way through @willhaycardiff.bsky.social’s new book on Welsh politics. I’m very much enjoying it and I didn’t know that the rules on the Welsh Government reserves were so tight. A bit silly.

$After all, if it is important to get all your money out of the door, then you are not rewarded for making good decisions. For example, during the pandemic, the Welsh Government spent a fraction of what the UK Government did on contact tracing. In Wales we used councils, whereas the UK Government used large companies like Serco. In this case, doesn't it make sense for the Welsh Government to be rewarded by being able to carry forward the cash they saved for a future year? Yes, it does. That is why Wales has a thing called the Wales Reserve. Think of it as a savings account where the Welsh Government can stick money it hasn't spent from its annual budget, to be used the following year. Seems like a good idea, huh? Well, it would be, except that it is built in a way that treats Wales like a naughty teenager. The first thing is that at the time of writing, the Wales Reserve is limited. The total the Welsh Government can have in the reserve is €350 million. While that might sound like a lot, it really isn't, in a government context. The Welsh Government's budget is £26 billion. This means that the Wales Reserve is just 1.35% of its budget. And that £350m isn't per year - that is the total it can carry. This means that if the Welsh Government reserve is full, then any money that isn't spent is just taken back by the Treasury in Westminster. What makes this system even worse is that the UK Treasury imposed limits on how much Wales can even use of its own reserves! Each year, the Welsh Government can only withdraw (i.e. spend) €125 million for resource spending (day-to-day administration costs) and €50 million$

…for capital spending (stuff like building a new road). So of that €350m, Wales can only access £175m a year. These are tiny amounts when you are talking about a whole country. €50m will barely get you anything when it comes to infrastructure.
So let's pause and look at what this means:
• Wales gets money from the Treasury.
• That is Wales' money.
• If Wales is careful financially, we may have some money left over.
• Wales might want to carry this cash on to next year.
• But the Treasury limits it to an arbitrary total of £350m.
• The Treasury then tells Wales that it is only allowed to have half of that in any one year.
Why the hell is Wales deemed unworthy or not grown-up enough to access its own money? This is ridiculous. But this isn't even the whole story.
The Wales Reserve was introduced in 2016. Those limits (€350m reserve and only £175m of it allowed to be used per year were fixed at that point and haven't changed since.
We are now 10 years on and the amount Wales can carry over is exactly the same. Given that inflation has been running very high over this time, this means that Wales can now carry over and use proportionally much less than it could a decade ago.
What makes this even more unfair is that this isn't the case for UK Government departments, whose limits have changed with inflation. This means that the Welsh Government, which is democratically elected by the people of Wales and oversees 22 devolved areas, can now carry over less money than a single Westminster department.

Bleddyn Bowen@bleddb· Jun 5

The return to Durham is always dramatic on the LNER.

Bleddyn Bowen@bleddb· May 30

Best go to check there are no heat rays or fighting machines.

Bleddyn Bowen@bleddb· May 30

Durham’s always picturesque. Even before rainbows are added.

Bleddyn Bowen@bleddb· May 30

Had a fabulous time at Durham Pride today. Despite the Reform-run council cutting its funding for the event, more money was raised in response and with help from TUC and it was very well attended. Weather was perfect. 🏳️‍🌈

Bleddyn Bowen@bleddb· May 27

This timeline seems quite bonkers. None of the SLVs envisioned to do this are tried and tested workhorses (some haven't even done full orbital flights yet). Generally it's a better vision than Apollo - a sustainable presence on the Moon matters more than short visits. www.nasa.gov/reference/mo...