Category Archives: Technology and Society

Business, Economics, Space, Space History, Technology and Society

Reusability

23 Comments

Jeff Foust writes about the unheralded 25th anniversary of the DC-X flights, and what has happened in the past half decade to see the promise that it offered a quarter of a century ago finally coming to fruition. I attended the 20th anniversary, but the only thing happening this year is a dinner in LA later this month.

I would note, per the criticism of the “purists,” that SSTO is highly overrated. Two-stage systems are much more flexible and efficient, particularly for off-nominal missions (e.g., high inclination or high altitude). SSTO would make sense only for a large traffic model to a single destination, probably equatorial.

Business, Economics, History, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Airworthiness For Spacecraft

10 Comments

I missed this earlier in the week, but Mike Snead has a long essay on passenger safety over at The Space Review. It’s a useful history, that touches on many of the themes of my book, but I believe that it’s technologically premature to apply the principles to human spaceflight. Spaceflight participants (not passengers) must be aware of the risks of the varied methods of building spaceships, and accept them accordingly. No one should, at this point in history, get aboard one with the same expection of getting safely off that one does with an airliner, particularly because different people have different risk tolerances and goals. There will come a time when trips to space will be considered common carrier, on certified vehicles, but we are years from that time.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Space, Space History, Technology and Society

Planting The American Flag On The Moon

42 Comments

Bob Zimmerman isn’t impressed with the Armstrong movie.

[Update late evening, before I drive up to West Palm Beach to pick up Patricia]

Some (sadly) hilarious thoughts and links from Jim Treacher.

[Sunday update]

OK, I see that Bob Zimmerman has had second thoughts.

I’m going to reserve judgment until I see the film. I think that the proximate cause of the uproar wasn’t the decision to leave out the flag planting, but the Canadian actor’s idiotic explanation of it. As I note in comments, the movie is a biopick of Neil Armstrong, not a history of Apollo, and his great achievement was not in planting a flag on the moon, but in simply being present on its surface.

Business, Economics, Space, Space Science, Technology and Society

Paul Spudis

9 Comments

This is terrible, and a huge loss to the lunar development community. I just saw him in January at the lunar landing science workshop at Ames. He had finally come around to oppose SLS. Condolences to his family and other friends, RIP, and ad astra.

[Update a few minutes later]

More from Leonard David, who was as shocked by the news as I am. I hadn’t been aware that he had lung cancer.

[Update on June 8, 2021]

Paul’s widow, Anne, asked me to update this post to note that, contra a comment here, Paul had quit smoking in 1988, and was informed by his doctors that it was not the cause of his cancer.

Business, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Crew Dragon

25 Comments

Almost ready to fly.

And NASA is now saying that the first crewed flight, scheduled for spring of next year, may be operational. And no more Soyuz flights after that. Should have happened long ago, though.

Business, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

SJWs

9 Comments

…are ruining engineering school.

No surprise, they ruin everything they come near. They have the reverse Midas’ touch.

[Late-afternoon update]

There may be a scientific reason that SJWs are so whiny.

[Update a while later]

The fences are closing in:

Born as free Americans, you are being treated as sheep.

Raised as proud Americans, you are learning the lessons of shame.

Schooled as thinking Americans, now you’re told to abandon open debate, objective truth, even the scientific method and mathematics. They are somehow “racist.” They’re the products of “privilege.”

What do the brilliant minds behind Tim Kaine’s Democrat Party want to replace them with? A set of stern, angry dogmas that have taken over our colleges and our corporate human resource departments. And dogmas like “intersectionalism,” which demonize whole groups of people such as Christians and conservatives. They want to say that their voices shouldn’t be heard and they shouldn’t be protected from hate and discrimination. You should be able to spew hate about them for years, as tech reporter Sarah Jeong did and then still get hired for the editorial page of the New York Times. Andrew Sullivan, a liberal gay writer, warned us in New York magazine that the Democrats have been hijacked by a new, puritanical cult, and it’s already running witch hunts. So Sarah Jeong called him a racist and tried to get him fired. If that can happen to famous, liberal, gay writers, what do you think they’re planning for your pastor? For conservatives who teach school? For you and your children?

The witch hunters can’t afford to let you question them because their excuses will fall apart. So they impose them instead by legal action, by harassment, by collusion and blacklisting. Unable to defend their new creed with reason, these ideologues instead forbid our questions. They isolate, target, and try to destroy dissenters. They spray them with social and professional plutonium as “an example to the others.” That tactic is straight from the playbook of totalitarian movements. We have seen all this before.

Yes. And the irony, of course, is that they call us fascists.

[Monday-morning update]

The story about SJWs ruining engineering is no joke.

[Bumped from a week ago]