The opening ceremony is a (brief, presumably) literal space opera about a mission to Mars.
[Update]
“Searching for nothing but action verbs” on Mars. OK.
[Update after the 20-minute opera]
Pat Hynes paying tribute to the late Bill Gaubatz, who helped her get this conference started ten years ago, who died in July.
None of them are good, and all of them will be viewed by history as attributable to Obama’s desire to “end” rather than win the war in Iraq.
I’m heading to the airport to go to ISPCS. I’ll check in later.
[Later]
OK, made it here, went to reception, much food and drink was consumed and many old acquaintances refreshed. Lots of compliments on the book, but this is the choir. Off to bed, and conference tweeting/blogging on the morrow.
Finally, someone at NASA is willing to take the book seriously enough to critically review it. Obviously, I will respond at some point (TL;DR version, he cherry picks and ignores much of what I have to say, but that’s to be expected, given his NASA-centric viewpoint), but it’s a bad week between taxes and ISPCS. Anyway, despite my disagreement with the review itself, I’m sincerely grateful to Mr. Fodrocci for finally acknowledging the book’s existence, rather than (as much of the industry, including IAASS, has) pretending it doesn’t exist and hoping it will just go away.
Add this to the extensive annals of stupid things he’s said.
Although the document praises Sierra’s “strong management approach to ensure the technical work and schedule are accomplished,” it cautions that the company’s Dream Chaser had “the longest schedule for completing certification.” The letter also states that “it also has the most work to accomplish which is likely to further extend its schedule beyond 2017, and is most likely to reach certification and begin service missions later than the other ‘Offerors’.”
Discussing costs, Gerstenmaier says that “although SNC’s price is lower than Boeing’s price, its technical and management approaches and its past performance are not as high and I see considerably more schedule risk with its proposal. Both SNC and SpaceX had high past performance, and very good technical and management approaches, but SNC’s price is significantly higher than SpaceX’s price.”
Touching on why Boeing received a $4.2 billion contract, versus $2.6 billion for SpaceX, he adds “I consider Boeing’s superior proposal, with regard to both its technical and management approach and its past performance, to be worth the additional price in comparison to the SNC proposal.”
Given how subjective such evaluation processes are, it’s not an implausible story.
James Dean has an interview with the man himself.
This is the essay I wrote the previous summer as an input to the committee.
“If Orion could provide a redundant capability as a fallback for the commercial crew partners, why is it necessary to carry two partners to ensure competition in the constrained budget environment?” Smith asked NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in an Oct. 7 letter co-signed by Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-Miss.), chairman of the House Science space subcommittee.
So as a bonus, the chairman of the space subcommittee is an idiot, too.
The country’s in the very best of hands.
…in all the wrong places.
As he says, with Occupy, or what’s happening in Ferguson, the so-called “anarchists” are just the muscle for the Left.
…is destroying scientific integrity:
OK, it’s not exactly a “Sopranos” plot. But it’s pretty shady for the world of higher education. Chen went to great lengths to make up fake email addresses and even assume the names of other scientists to write approvingly of his own research.
In a sense, though, he was just exploiting the deep flaws of the peer review system. The academy has become a kind of club where friends give friends flattering assessments of research, which essentially guarantees promotions and tenure.
Here’s how the former editor of the British Medical Journal explained peer review:
“The editor looks at the title of the paper and sends it to two friends whom the editor thinks know something about the subject. If both advise publication the editor sends it to the printers. If both advise against publication the editor rejects the paper. If the reviewers disagree the editor sends it to a third reviewer and does whatever he or she advises. This … is little better than tossing a coin.”
But it’s not just the clubbiness of academia that is to blame. There is such ideological uniformity in the ivory tower that no one ever questions the important assumptions behind anyone else’s research.
Gee, where have we seen that sort of thing before?
I’d note, though, that contra the headline, it’s not a “liberal” bias. It’s a leftist bias.