A recommendation of Steve Kwast.
General Kwast has read my book, and I’ve heard that he occasionally quotes it.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
Life On The Moon
This will drive the planetary-protection people nuts:
Whether the tardigrades survived is unknown—but Spivack said if they did, there is no risk of the creatures taking over the Moon as they would need to be revived by future humans that may find them.
Yeah, it’s all fun and games until they mutate and become our giant lunar tardigrade overlords.
[Wednesday-afternoon update]
More at Pop Sci.
The Second Amendment
I’m sick to death of people who are sick to death of it.
The New Launch Rules
“It’s almost as though the Russians or Chinese wrote them.”
ITAR was supported by the big companies, too, because they had the infrastructure to deal with it, while the upstarts didn’t.
BE-4
Progress in testing it seems to be steady, and Bezos just sold another $1.8B of stock to support it and Blue Origin’s other goals.
A U.S. Space Force
Well, this is interesting. The Acting Secretary of the Air Force is advocating to amend Article X to create a U.S. Space Force as a separate service.
Newsmax
From what planet was this written?
The truth is, America already has a capable new rocket that dwarfs the capabilities of the Saturn V rockets that took our astronauts to the moon. The Space Launch System will be online and ready later this year.
…Real and robust competition pushes all participants to perform their best. But SpaceX has so far been able to avoid real competition. Without any real requirement that it ultimately succeed, SpaceX has been a technological failure, even while Musk has managed a public relations success and gotten paid based on his public relations campaign, more than actual accomplishment. To make it to Mars we must encourage real competition, not Elon Musk’s fake version of competition where he gets paid regardless of what he produces.
Sure, Jan.
[Update a while later]
I guess I needed a link for those last two words.
Yes, it was written by George Landrith.
The Religious Beliefs Of Ants
Lileks has a very strange mind.
Paul Krugman
Thoughts on his “most evil idea.”
I don’t know, I think there’s stiff competition for that. Also, my understanding is that a lot of the stuff he writes is prompted by his wife.
But yes, envy of the long-lived is just as sinful as envy of the wealthy.
Frankenstein
An insightful essay for the 21st century, on the 200th anniversary of the first modern science-fiction novel.