I hope that both Bob Zubrin and Barney Frank lose this pointless debate about Mars missions.
Category Archives: Space
Homesteading The High Frontier
A press release will be going out shortly, if it hasn’t already, but the project I’ve been working on regarding space property rights was published today. I’m flying to DC tomorrow for a Thursday press conference.
Where Does Space Begin?
Ion Propulsion
My thoughts on the implications of Boeing’s new electric-propulsion satellites for space development, over at Popular Mechanics.
“Very Lunar, A Very Desolate Place”
James Cameron, with the first video of his trip to the deepest part of the ocean.
Nautilus X
An article describing what NASA could be doing to actually explore space, if Congress wasn’t forcing them to waste so much money on an unaffordable and unnecessary launch system.
Princess Of Mars
If that had been the title of the movie mistitled John Carter, I am confident that it would be doing much better at the box office. It was the title of the book on which it was based and, unlike Disney, Edgar Rice Burroughs knew how to sell books. It would help as well, of course, if the trailers had offered ample views of Lynn Collins rather than Mars monsters. It would have brought in the adolescent males by the hordes, just as DiCaprio brought the female tweens into Titanic.
We took the afternoon off (from normal weekend chores) to go see it at the matinee in 3-D IMAX, and we had a great time. Yes, it’s harder to suspend disbelief about the features of the planet than it was in E. R. Burroughs’ day, but it’s still a great story. Sadly, the theater was almost empty, both because of Disney’s awful marketing, and because it was competing with the opening weekend of a movie about teens hunting each other down.
I was amused to hear at the end someone talking about how it was a rip off of Star Wars. Obviously, whoever said it had no concept of what George Lucas was reading as a boy. I imagine that it was pitched as “Star Wars meets Gladiator,” but it’s a lot more than that. I highly recommend, and I particularly recommend it for families, who want a great role model for their daughters.
Remembering Bernard Beard
Over at the original post, John Bossard comments:
Dr. Beard was a colleague of mine as we worked together at the ARES Huntsville office, and I considered him a friend, and I hope he considered me the same.
Bernard had a wide-ranging intellect, and made numerous contributions in a variety of fields, including computational particle physics, before moving into the aerospace field, where he worked for PW in turbojet engines and flight trajectory analysis. He then went into academics, teaching in the ME dept at Christian Brothers in Memphis, and eventually becoming department chair.
It was my opinion that the progressive politics and trans-logical arguments of the academic world eventually lead him to seek work back in the aerospace world, and it was my pleasure to get to work with him when he joined ARES Corporation in 2007. There, Bernard made significant contributions in a variety of different areas, most notably in working on slosh mechanics of the Ares I upper stage, where he developed some amazing analytic modeling capabilities. His website, “Slosh Central”, provided a great deal of references regarding this topic.
Bernard was a reserved, dignified person, of even temperament; calm, and thoughtful. He was a master of the BBQ, and participated in numerous team competitions out of Memphis, where he kept his home with his wife and two sons. He was also scouter, participating as an adult leader in cub and boy scouts with his sons, and this was an area where we found a great deal of common ground.
I’m sure there were many other things that Bernard did, that I’m not aware of, as would be the case of a man with a powerful intellect and imagination.
His passing was sudden and unexpected, and is a tragedy. He will indeed be missed.
Thanks, John.
More Space Socialism From Republicans
I have some thoughts on Bob Zimmerman’s thoughts over at Open Market.
Wernher Von Braun
He would have been a hundred years old today. Also, it’s the 29th anniversary of the announcement of the Strategic Defense Initiative. “Wouldn’t it be better to save lives than to avenge them?”
[Update a couple minutes later]
Related to last item: Japan prepares missile defense in anticipation of North Korean launch.
[Update a few minutes later]
Back to von Braun: a blog post from Roger Launius.