Rob Hoyt told me about this when I was up in Seattle in November:
BOTHELL, WA., 17 March 2016 – NASA has announced that its Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program has selected Tethers Unlimited, Inc. (TUI) for award of a Phase II contract to develop “Customizable, Recyclable ISS Packaging” (CRISSP). CRISSP is a suite of recyclable packaging materials, such as bags, bubble-wrap, and 3D-printed containers that are designed to cushion and protect equipment and supplies during launch to the International Space Station (ISS) and then be processed into 3D printer feedstock to support in-space manufacturing of tools, satellite components, and replacement parts.
TUI creates its patent-pending CRISSP materials using high-performance plastics that are chosen based upon their safety for use in space missions, their ease of recycling, and their suitability for use in 3D printing. “One really exciting aspect of the project is that 3D printing has enabled us to build novel vibration damping features into CRISSP,” said Dr. Rachel Muhlbauer, Principal Investigator on the SBIR effort. “Our Phase I effort demonstrated the ability of the CRISSP materials to absorb launch vibrations up to ten times better than traditional foam packaging materials, and the Phase II effort will develop and qualify a process for rapidly designing and manufacturing protective packaging that is customized for each payload.” To recycle CRISSP materials aboard the ISS, NASA will use TUI’s Positrusion™ Recycler, a suitcase-sized system that safely and automatically processes plastic waste into very high-quality filament for 3D printers.
“We are very excited to continue collaborating with NASA Marshall Space Flight Center’s In-space Manufacturing Project to develop a sustainable in-space manufacturing ecosystem for the ISS and future manned missions,” said Dr. Rob Hoyt, TUI’s CEO and Chief Scientist. “A typical cargo mission to the ISS carries about 25 pounds of packaging material. Currently, that’s 25 pounds of waste they have to dispose of. But with launch costs around $10,000 per pound, that material is worth roughly a quarter million dollars. The combination of CRISSP packaging materials and our Positrusion Recycler will enable NASA to transform this waste on the ISS into valuable feedstock to help manufacture and operate the next generation of exploration systems.”
Just think if the money being wasted on the giant rocket was going to more of this sort of thing.
It’s too late for the administration to appeal to Constitutional norms:
the Obama administration, with its aggressive assertions of executive power, is in a poor position to appeal to constitutional norms. The administration showed a severe lack of respect for constitutional norms when, for example, contrary to decades of precedent that the Justice Department will defend any federal law with a plausible defense, it refused to defend the Defense of Marriage Act; when the administration forced Common Core standards on local education without anything resembling explicit congressional approval or even debate, based on an aggressive reading of vague existing law; when the administration unilaterally changed immigration policy via executive order, after Congress failed to pass legislation that would have accomplished similar ends; when the president has simply refused to enforce provisions of Obamacare that proved politically problematic; and, for that matter, when the president advocated for and signed perhaps the only major piece of American social legislation (Obamacare) that not only failed to win widespread bipartisan support, but also attracted not a single vote in either house of Congress from the other party. More generally, President Obama has repeatedly promised to try to circumvent Congress using any arguably legal means available, on the rather extra-constitutional grounds, contrary to the norms attendant to the separation of powers, that “we can’t wait” for Congress to pass legislation that the president favors.
Beyond that, it’s not as “moderate” a pick as some are claiming. For instance, he opposed Heller and the 2nd Amendment, and would have disarmed residents of DC.
[Update a few minutes later]
And now for something completely different: Wolf Blitzer actually calls out Debbie Wasserman Schultz for hypocrisy.
I expect stupidity from Congress, but I wish that we had an administrator who was a brighter bulb. Bolden also said earth was “the most important planet in the world.”
This is an interesting panel (it actually starts about half an hour in, I think) from last week’s Goddard Symposium. Four women (Marcia Smith, Lori Garver, Sandy Magnuson and Mary Lynne Dittmar) and one man, moderated by Frank Morring. As expected, Lori is quite politically incorrect.
If you’re ready to burn down the world, you’re part of what’s wrong with the world. There are plenty of places on this planet where “burning it down” has been tried — Syria, Somalia, the Balkans, Afghanistan, the territories of Boko Haram — and the results are never anything short of catastrophic. It’s easy to forget, but even in the toughest of times, Americans are incredibly blessed compared to those living everywhere else. Our wealth, our spirit, our untapped potential, and our capacity for renewal are mind-boggling. And yet some significant portion of the population relishes the thought of sending it all up in flames.
You dare not call yourself conservative if you belong to this arson-minded mass. Conservatives are here to preserve, create, and build, not to ignite and destroy. Insofar as the torch is an American political tradition, it’s not a conservative one — it’s the recourse of our country’s worst radicals, from the Klan to the Weather Underground to the Black Panthers to Timothy McVeigh.
Victor Davis Hanson calls what we’re witnessing “Republican nihilism,” a dangerous strain of the historical perspective that there is nothing to approve of in the current social order. It’s a self-evidently ludicrous perspective when applied to our country as it stands today.
If you think that Trump will be a conservative, in any way, you’re deluding yourself.