Technology and Society

Better Than Nanopants

Nanobrushes:

The brushes can be used for sweeping up nano-dust, painting microstructures and even cleaning up pollutants in water.

The bristles’ secret is carbon nanotubes, tiny straw-like molecules just 30 billionths of a metre across.

This is pretty cool, but it remain irritating that the prefix “nano” has come to mean the scale of the objects themselves, rather than the scale at which they are built. That’s why Eric Drexler had to abandon “nanotechnology” and come up with the phrase “molecular manufacturing” to represent his concepts for precise placement of atoms in building objects both small and large.

[Via Geek Press]

Space

CEV Watch Update

No surprises. They picked the two bidders:

Phase 2, covering final CEV design and production, was scheduled to start with a down-selection to a single industry team in 2008. To reduce or eliminate the gap between the Shuttle’s retirement in 2010 and an operational CEV, the Phase 2 down-selection is planned for 2006.

Results of NASA Administrator Michael Griffin’s Exploration Systems Architectural Study will be incorporated into a Call For Improvements later this year to invite Phase 2 proposals from the Phase 1 contractors.

While, as I said, not a surprise, based on all the scuttlebutt, this really turns up the heat on the contractors. They don’t have four years to convince NASA as to who has the better concept and ability to execute it–they have (possibly less than) one. There will be no fly off, and they’ll now basically write new proposals under contract.

General

Gooney Bird Down

That’s the rumor from Fort Lauderdale, about twenty miles south of me. I hope that there were no casualties on the ground. I wonder how many C-47/DC-3s are still remaining, and how many of them still flying?

[Update a couple minutes later]

Now it’s sounding like it was out of Executive Airport, off Commercial Blvd, not out of Fort Lauderdale International.

[Update at 4:50 PM EDT]

Sounds like the pilot was a hero (assuming that he wasn’t at fault in the first place). He put it down in the street, missing homes and businesses.

Technology and Society

Liberation Biology

I just got an advance copy of the book in the mail. I don’t know when I’ll get around to reading it, though–it’s a big one. But it looks pretty good. Note that the only “review” at Amazon so far is an ad hominem attack by someone who obviously hasn’t even read the book yet. Appropriately, few found his “review” useful.

Space

CEV?

I had heard last Thursday that some kind of announcement on the CEV contract was imminent, expected any day. According to Keith Cowing, there will be some word this afternoon. I’ll update when I hear something.

[Update a couple minutes later]

I’m guessing they’re waiting for the market to close at 4:30 so they don’t influence late traders.

[Update at 3:20 PM EDT]

In this Reuters piece that quotes Jim Albaugh of Boeing as saying he expects an announcement today, Dr. Griffin says something at the Paris Air Show that I find a little disturbing:

“We have enough money to put people back on the moon in that [2015-2020] timeframe,” he said. “The model that I have is that we should build a lunar outpost similar to the kinds of multinational outposts we have in Antarctica.”

Antarctica is a very bad model, for two reasons. First of all, Antarctica is basically off limits to mineral exploitation, a precedent that would be disastrous if applied to the moon and, in the words of the infamous Moon Treaty, “other celestial bodies.” Second, Antarctica is focused primarily on scienctific research. Such a mindset isn’t necessarily conducive to the other uses to which a base might be put.

Basically, it sounds like he wants to dust off his old plans from the early 1990s for “First Lunar Outpost” or FLO, that he developed before he left NASA, just before the president’s father’s Space Exploration Initiative died.

I just think that by the year 2015, it’s going to be very clear that the future, and probably present, of space transportation will not lie in putting up throwaway capsules on throwaway rockets, whether Shuttle derived, or EELV derived. What he’s proposing is just picking up where Apollo left off, but there’s no reason to think that that will be any more sustainable than Apollo ultimately was. It’s certainly unlikely to be much more affordable.

Then there’s this:

NASA is weighing up competing bids for the so-called Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), the successor to the space shuttle, which will be retired in 2010. The new vehicle is expected to be compatible with the International Space Station and to play a role in a manned mission to the moon.

This is a little misleading. It’s not going to succeed the Shuttle in the sense that it will perform all the same functions as Shuttle does. In that sense, there will never (praise the heavens) be a successor to the Shuttle, because its overspecification was one of the things that made it such a programmatic disaster.

Also, the “expected to be compatible with the ISS” is a new requirement, not addressed in any of the proposals submitted, because it wasn’t required at the time the RFP came out (a result of the fact that Griffin hadn’t had time to influence it, being newly arrived). But now the first task of the contractors (and it would be surprising if that turns out to be anyone other than the Boeing/Northrop-Grumman team and the Lockmart team) will almost certainly be to redesign their respective concepts to satisfy this need.

[Update at 4:35]

Keith Cowing is saying that Lockmart has won something. I don’t see anything at their web site yet. That doesn’t (yet) mean that Boeing/Northrop-Grumman hasn’t, of course.

Space Science

A New Earth?

I’ve been told by someone at NSF that there may be an announcement today of an extrasolar “earth-like” planet (in terms of mass) at 1 PM. We’ll keep an eye out.

[Update at 11:30 AM EDT]

Here’s a link to a webcast on it, coming up in an hour and a half. The person who notified me of this writes:

“I believe, based on the level of media they’re expecting that it will be an earth-size and mass planet outside of the solar system.

Let’s keep our fingers crossed.”

[Update at 2 PM]

OK, it’s “more earth like than anything previously found,” but still not that earth like. It masses several times as much as the earth, at a distance of only a couple million miles from its star, with a year of only two earth days. Sounds more like a large “Mercury-like” planet.

Political Commentary

Tipping Point

Now that the French and Dutch have rejected the monstrosity that was the EU constitution, the Poles are now expressing their true feelings about it as well:

“The French and Dutch ‘nos’ encouraged people to openly say they were against the treaty but didn’t dare to admit it until now,” said Mikolaj Czesnik, a sociologist at the Polish Academy of Science.

Before voters in the two founder-member states of the EU rejected the constitution, followed closely by a British decision to put its referendum on the treaty on hold, it was “considered politically incorrect in Poland to reject the treaty,” Czesnik said.

“Some people also feared that a Polish ‘nie’ would lead to accusations that Poland was reponsible for the demise of European integration. Those people felt relieved” by the negative votes, Czesnik said.

It’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to ratify this thing now, at least in a popular referendum, with the possible exception of the Belgians.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!