Yes, all of these are a sign that the belief is religious, not scientific or rational.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
Trump’s Commercial Space Policy
A White House press release.
Asimov And O’Neill
The Space Studies Institute has resurrected a old television discussion of the prospects for space colonies.
It’s interesting to note that when this occurred, we didn’t know how much hydrogen was available on the moon and in the rest of the solar system.
Reversing Aging
The latest, and it looks promising. Humans aren’t rodents, but no reason in principle we shouldn’t be able to do similar things.
[Tuesday-evening update]
Intermittent fasting seems to help. I’ve been doing this as part of my weekday routine for a while. I go all day without eating until dinner time, other than coffee in the morning, but it’s mostly out of convenience rather than for health reasons. I’m glad to hear it might be good for me.
[Bumped]
The Space Show
I’ll be on this afternoon, at 2 PM PDT, to talk about space settlement, the OST, and probably ranting about the latest safety insanity from NASA.
Ariane
They’re frustrated that they have to actually be competitive in the launch market. And they keep using this word “subsidy.” I don’t think it means what they think it means. If anyone gets a subsidy, it’s ULA, not SpaceX, and sure as hell not Blue Origin. Plus, an open admission that their rocket is a jobs program.
Tom Wolfe
Thoughts from Tim Fernholz on his space legacy.
GenCon
No, Tor.com, GenCon isn’t racist: A fisking (from Larry Correia).
Click. You know you want to.
The Latest Safety Insanity
OK, so I read this, and the steam that shot out of my ears took the fresh paint off the wall of the kitchen on both sides of the room:
His committee recommended that NASA and the other ISS partners should plan for ways to operate the station with a reduced crew if commercial crew vehicles aren’t ready to enter service by the fall of 2019.
“Given these schedule risks, we recommend the partnership pursue plans to protect for a minimum crew capability to ensure ISS viability during the flight development phase,” he said. “NASA’s biggest priority is maintaining the U.S. presence on the ISS in case the commercial crew launch dates slip.”
One option he mentioned at the meeting is “providing training to Russian crewmembers on the USOS critical systems.” That training, he said, would be provided to cosmonauts scheduled to fly to the station on Soyuz missions in September 2019 and March 2020.
So, let me get this straight: In order to avoid any risk of loss of crew (and there is no way to do that), we are going to not only make ourselves more dependent on the Russians, but further reduce, if not eliminate any actual utility we’re going to get out of a facility in which we’ve invested over a hundred billion dollars and, as a bonus, put that facility at risk.
All because “safety is the highest priority.”
This is insane.
LOP-G
Gerald Black writes that it’s a waste of time and money.
You don’t say. Its only purpose is to give SLS/Orion something to do.