An interesting new discovery by LRO:
“If this hypothesis is true, only the first few hundred meters of the moon’s surface possesses little iron and titanium oxides, according to NASA. ‘But below the surface, there’s a steady increase to a rich and unexpected bonanza,’ it said.”
At the Space Settlement Summit last fall in Pasadena, a Canadian mining engineer berated the assembled for lack of seriousness when it comes to lunar resources. “You have no idea what’s under that dust,” he said, “and you won’t until you get up there and start drilling.” I thanked him for the comment, noting that for people who claim to want to develop the solar system, we think really small, likely from hanging out with NASA too much.
All posts by Rand Simberg
Kanye
Will he change how the Democrats treat blacks?
I think he’ll take more black votes away from Biden than from Trump.
Race, Gun Control
…and the Second Amendment. No, the Second Amendment wasn’t about helping round up escaped slaves. What monumental historical ignorance to think it was.
Space Settlements
Robin Hanson says we will colonize the sun first.
A Message To Newsom And Garcetti
Despite the threat of a $50K fine, the fireworks across LA basin were continuous last night as we ate ribs on the upstairs patio. It was a better display than the cities ever put on. I have no idea where the fireworks came from, because I’m sure they’re all illegal for personal possession in California. Maybe they were contraband from Nevada or Arizona. There wasn’t a lot of breeze overnight, and it was still smoky when we got up. I love the phrase “News Karens.”
I hope this massive public disobedience is a harbinger for the election.
[Update a few minutes later]
It wasn’t just LA.
Restaurants
Who is ready to go back to them?
The notion of wearing a mask in a restaurant is absurd. You can’t eat with a mask on. This is another area in which the pandemic hasn’t affected me much, because I’ve never liked going out to eat at restaurants, other than for social reasons. It’s both expensive and unhealthy to pay someone else to cook for you, and I don’t like having people serve me.
ABC’s “Powerhouse” Round Table
Is there a more pretentious name in news than what ABC calls the assorted idiots it has on This Week to opine? There was no one even remotely conservative on it this morning, though they probably still imagine that Matthew Dowd is, just because the hack worked for G. W. Bush. Like much of the rest of the media, they were characterizing Trump’s fantastic Rushmore speech as “dark” and “divisive.”
What utter horsepoop. Neo takes them to task on that nonsense.
Meanwhile, Roger Kimball writes that historians will record the speech as the moment that Trump won re-election. I agree.
Launch Failure
Rocketlab didn’t go to space today, or at least not to orbit.
[Sunday-morning update]
Here’s the story from Eric Berger.
Independence Day
We have ribs in the smoker, and I’ve been doing odds and ends around the house (including laying conduit and PVC for power and water of a new irrigation system). I want to wish as happy a holiday as possible under the circumstances to all of my readers. If you’ve never done it (or even if you have), I recommend reading the Declaration aloud; too few understand what this is all about, particularly given the state of our educational system. I also recommend reading Coolidge’s speech on the sesquicentennial. It seems more timely than ever, and is one of the best of its breed.
I will say, though, that Trump’s speech last night was a pretty good one, and it kicked off the campaign much better than the one in Tulsa. And of course, it drove all the right people nuts.
Your Dog
How old is he in human years? It turns out that it’s not multiply by seven. It never made a lot of sense to me that it would be a linear relationship. I’d like to see them do cats now.