Brian Wang is unimpressed with the new cost-plus gift to Boeing.
More thoughts from Bob Zimmerman.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
Going Off The Air
I’m flying to DC this afternoon for eight days of space stuff, culminating with a brief talk on space property rights at the International Astronautical Conference a week from tomorrow. I’ll have my laptop, but not sure how much time I’ll have to post. But be good in comments.
NASA And The Media
Bob Zimmerman isn’t impressed with the coverage, to say the least.
The Methuselah Foundation
They have a new newsletter. Lots of interesting life-extension things going on. It’s worth noting that one of the principals of Oisín Biotechnologies is Gary Hudson, who is currently more focused on this topic than space.
Ad Astra
A friend of mine, who saw it a couple weeks ago with the class she was teaching at SpaceX, roundly panned it to me. Jeff Foust says don’t bother seeing it, either.
Hollywood seems to have a hard time getting space movies right.
Sergei Brin
An open letter from Dennis Prager to him, on freedom of speech.
A Gold Asteroid
Will it make us rich?
Dennis Wingo responds:
Yes, it’s impossible to predict the effects of drops in the price of previously-rare commodities. Gold is a very useful industrial metal, and this would expand its usage.
Space
You’re in the Army now.
The Continuing SLS Disaster
Work has restarted after a “corrective action” for Boeing.
[Update a few minutes later]
Man, the comments are (appropriately) brutal.
California’s Planned Blackouts
Jim Meigs explains.
I just read that they’re cutting power to the Berkeley campus, which could be a disaster for researchers who need to keep things in the fridge, if they don’t have backup generators.
And you know what isn’t the problem? Climate change. Or at least not anthropogenic climate change. Drought is the natural state of affairs for the place. The 20th century was unusually wet, and a lot of policy decisions were made on the assumption that this was a normal state of affairs.
We’re on So Cal Edison, not PG&E, but we’ve heard that SCE might be planning the same thing. Unclear if we’ll be affected if they do.
[Update Saturday morning]
Californians learn that solar panels don’t work during power blackouts. More policy idiocy, and they’re compounding it by requiring every new home to have them. I can’t believe the state I’ve lived in for four decades, with such an innovative history, has become so effing stupid.
[Bumped]