Category Archives: Technology and Society

What To Watch For In Space This Year

Phil Metzger’s top 20:

Happy New Year To All

This past year has been good for a number of reasons, but I’m hoping that next year will be even better, both in general, and for space policy and activity.

I’m hoping that the economy will improve sufficiently to prevent the Democrats from taking Congress. I’m also hoping that there will finally be some accountability for all the corruption and lawlessness for the past decade, and not just in Minnesota.

I expect Jared to be aggressive in moving out on his agenda, and I expect Starship to start flying on a more-regular basis. In terms of technology in general, I suspect that we are entering interesting times, in the Chinese sense of the word.

We’re having people over for brunch today, with fresh bagels with lox, quiche, deviled eggs, meats and cheeses, and holiday cookies, while we watch a soggy Rose Parade and football games. The parade and Rose Bowl have been living a charmed life for the past couple decades in terms of weather, but looks like their luck may have run out. One of the things that motivated people to come to California was seeing the people in teeshirts and sunshine on New Years Day while they themselves were snowed in or cold. Maybe this will also dampen the enthusiasm people have had for immigrating here. The Democrats certainly continue to encourage them to leave.

Speaking of football, I was a little surprised, but not shocked, to see Ohio State lose, and I was disappointed, of course, to see Michigan do so, but they were playing only for pride. With the new coach, perhaps they’ll be on track for a better season next year. They’re doing well in basketball, but I hate basketball.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Be kind in comments.

The Foresight Meme Prize

I saw this at Vision Weekend a week and a half ago.

Moving Forward

[Saturday-morning update]

The Empire strikes back.

One of the last people whose opinions I have any respect for in such matters is Doug Cooke. His and Mike’s porkfest is what got us here. I may fisk this later.

[Wednesday-afternoon update]

[Bumped]

122 Years

The Wrights first flew powered aircraft at Kitty Hawk. I wrote about it on the hundredth anniversary. Unfortunately, both the Fox News piece and the TechCentralStation piece have succombed to link rot, but the National Review piece can be found in the Wayback Machine. I’ll do a search to see if I can find the other two. Doing three separate pieces in a single day on different aspects of the event was sort of a tour de force of my early blogging days.

[Update a few minutes later]

Well, Grok can’t find them. I should have made copies when they were still available. They may be lost to history.

[Late-afternoon update]

Thanks to commenter Douglas McKinnie, who dug them up. Here is the TechCentralStation piece, and this is the Fox News one. Note that, with regard to the latter, it was written shortly after SpaceX had been founded, but years before their first flight. But they followed my recommended path.

[Late-evening update]

Sorry, TCS link was bad, fixed now.