Time to throw in the towel on the theory. Like climate, genetics remains a lot more complicated than we’d like to think.
Category Archives: Business
Jeff Bezos
…sees a golden age of space entrepreneurship. Thanks to people like him, so do I. We’d previously heard he’d invested half a billion or so, but now he’s saying a billion a year. That’s serious.
Falcon Heavy
This should be easy, they said. Just glue three Falcon 9s together, they said:
Musk said the rocket cores for Falcon Heavy’s first flight are two to three months away from completion. He emphasized that the first launch will carry a lot of risk, and as such, SpaceX doesn’t plan to carry a valuable payload or payloads with it.
“We will probably fly something really silly on Falcon Heavy because it is quite a high risk mission,” he said.
I’m glad to see that they’re finally coming close. It’s an important development, both technically and politically. Also, the claimed LEO payload is now up to 64 tonnes, so it’s almost the capability of SLS Block 1B.
[Update early afternoon]
If we want bigger telescopes or to go to Mars, we need heavy lift, “experts” say.
Nonsense.
Sexbots
Can they teach us to be better humans? I’m skeptical, but it’s an interesting development.
The End Of OPEC
…is near.
Good. It’s long overdue. Couldn’t happen to a better group of thugs.
EPA
John Stossell says “Enough Protection Already.”
The amount of mendacity from the Left about Obama’s “Clean Power Plan” is more staggering than usual. It’s almost as bad as the health-care lies.
Graphene
Is there anything it can’t do? OK, probably, but this is pretty cool:
“Realization of scalable membranes with uniform pore size down to atomic scale is a significant step forward and will open new possibilities for improving the efficiency of desalination technology,” Rahul Nair, professor of material physics at the University of Manchester, said in a statement.
Previously researchers were unable to remove common salts using the graphene filtering technique, instead removing small nanoparticles and organic molecules.
“This is the first clear-cut experiment in this regime. We also demonstrate that there are realistic possibilities to scale up the described approach and mass produce graphene-based membranes with required sleeve sizes,” Nair added.
It will probably have useful purefying properties in general, but this would be useful for California as well as the Third World.
Capitalism In Space
Deuterized Drugs
The first one has arrived. The big advantage of this, according to a Twitter discussion with Derek, is that dosage times are much less critical.
Milspace
An interview with Mike Rogers. At the Space Symposium today he announced that he’s going to introduce legislation to create a Space Corps, attached to the Air Force, presumably per Coyote’s recommendation. This was amusing, though:
Is the development of a replacement for the Atlas 5 rocket’s RD-180 moving quickly enough? Is it moving in a direction you’re satisfied with?
Well, it’s not quick enough. I’m very happy that we’re staying after it. My subcommittee, our full committee, this Congress, is committed to not stop until we have an American-made engine that can get our national security space assets launched. And we’re not going to stop. I’m encouraged. I think we’re pretty close to getting a new engine that’s going to be viable.
Pretty sure he wants to engine that will be built in Alabama, even though no rocket manufacturer wants it.