Northwest Goes after the Small Airlines with Non-Stops to Las Vegas

Northwest Airlines, Madison’s largest air carrier, announced new non-stop service to Las Vegas yesterday. This service competes with an existing non-stop route flown by Allegiant Airlines. The major airlines have often used this tactic to drive low fare competitors from the market. Northwest flies several non-stop routes from Milwaukee that compete with local favorite Midwest Airlines. These flights are unusual in that they do not require connections on NW’s Minneapolis, Detroit or Memphis fortress hubs.

$100 Million Tourist Trip Around the Moon

John Schwartz:

NASA brought the shuttle Discovery back from low Earth orbit, now a private company plans to announce a more audacious venture, a tourist trip around the Moon.
Space Adventures, a company based in Arlington, Va., has already sent two tourists into orbit. Today, it is to unveil an agreement with Russian space officials to send two passengers on a voyage lasting 10 to 21 days, depending partly on its itinerary and whether it includes the International Space Station.
A roundtrip ticket will cost $100 million.

Christopher C. Kraft, a former director of the Johnson Space Center, said his feelings about the enterprise were mixed. “I think it would be a fantastic journey,” he said. “I could see why, if I had the price of the ticket and could use the money that way, that it would be tempting to go.”
But Mr. Kraft added that the flight would be cramped and probably extremely unpleasant. With three people in a small Soyuz craft for an extended trip, he said, “I imagine that you could endure that, but, man, it would be tough.”

Lind: Return of the Militia?

William Lind:

This column continues #128, on the results of Colonel Mike Wyly’s Modern War Symposium, and specifically the discussion of what a state armed service designed for Fourth Generation war might look like. Since our number one goal should be to prevent 4GW attacks on American soil, our working group at the Symposium concluded such a service should be a militia.
The militia would be organized into three levels of types of companies. The first would be deployable world-wide, when our country had to respond to some event overseas. We anticipate that many of its members would be cops, as is true now of some Reserve and National Guard units, which means it would have a natural inclination toward de-escalating situations. This is what the FMFM 1-A, Fourth Generation War, suggests is the key to success in many 4GW situations.