At a recent meeting here of the Council for the United States and Italy, a group that brings together influential folk from both sides of the Atlantic, America’s often withering view of Europe was as clear as the light on the lagoon.
That view may be summarized as follows: a Continent reluctant to spend on defense, offering only “postmodernist” armies useful enough as peacekeepers but next to useless as warriors, given to earnest blah-blah about the pre-eminence of international law, inhabited by a declining and evermore aged citizenry living in overregulated economies that have not shown significant growth for at least five years.
Contrast that image with another offered at the meeting: that of an India growing at over 7 percent a year, inhabited by more than 500 million people under the age of 25, busy buying hundreds of advanced aircraft, convinced that armies are still created to fight, churning out English-speaking high-tech graduates by the million each year, and persuaded by Islamic terrorism that its strategic goals and America’s are often identical or at least complementary.
So, which of these parts of the world is more worthy of the attention of the United States? Which is a compelling affair: the intensifying and fast-changing relationship with India, or the largely stagnant alliance with Europe that served above all a cold-war strategic challenge now overcome?
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.
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.
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.
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.