Confronting our potentially stark choices.
I don’t know if human expansion off planet is economically feasible, but I sure hope so.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
A Mission To Venus
A private one. All is proceeding as I have foreseen.
I hope they have a good camera to see if it’s beautiful clouds, or just gray.
Heat Wave
Looks like the next week and a half will be one of those times we wish we had A/C in coastal California. It was warm last night (temperature has been below seventy every morning when we get up, but it was 73 this morning). Can’t really justify the expense and electricity of central air, but maybe we’ll finally be motivated to get a window or portable unit for the bedroom.
[Noon update]
People are talking about split units in comments. No way we’d spend that kind of money, particularly when we have no use for a heat pump. We just need something to keep the bedroom cool to sleep at night.
[Saturday-morning update]
Well, so far, so good. It never got below 74 in the house, but we slept well. If it gets no worse than that, we’ll be OK. The worst thing about Santa Anas is that when the wind comes from the east, we can hear the sound of the 405 freeway, which is about a mile away. Otherwise, the neighborhood is quiet, because despite being half a block from a major thoroughfare to the west, the sound is blocked by a dune that our place is at the bottom of.
Bernard Kutter
I got an email from Jon Goff about this yesterday, but didn’t want to post until there was a public announcement.
This is a huge loss to the industry. He had a great deal of vision, that was squandered by the child abuse of ULA’s parent companies. Not sure he’s replaceable. My deepest condolences to all his friends and family.
[Update a few minutes later]
Well, that was fast. This post is already number two on a DuckDuckGo search for “Bernard Kutter.” Funny thing is that Google has nothing on the death.
[Update a while later]
A tribute from the National Space Society.
When Poland Saved Europe
This history is not taught much in American schools.
Rogozin’s New Trampoline
Apparently he thinks he’s competing with Falcon 9/Dragon, because there is no mention of Starship.
The Space Industry
Morgan Stanley thinks that investors should be more interested in it than they are.
[Afternoon update]
Sorry, didn’t realize that article was two years old.
Cuomo
Baby, please come back.
This virus has been like a wildfire, sweeping through education, academia, and blue cities. It took technological and social trends that were already happening, and rapidly accelerated them, and now they’re smoldering ashes. I don’t think any of them will ever be the same again. And that’s not a bad thing.
Space Solar Power
Here’s an overview of the state of the art of needed technologies to beam power to earth, from almost three decades ago, when I was working at Rockwell. I ran across it in trying to reduce the entropy of my office. It’s funny how little has changed.
Sorry about the rotation; that’s how it scanned into the PDF. Just rotate it with your browser.