Elon’s tunnelling plan. Earthquakes will be a huge issue, I think.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
The Nye Quadrant
An interesting discussion and link roundup from Judith Curry.
This Morning’s Launch And Landing
Because they didn’t show the second-stage burn for security purposes, SpaceX showed the entire descent sequence of the first stage for the first time, including the landing back at the Cape.
The Internet Of Things
Why you should buy the dumbest appliances you can find.
That’s always my philosophy. We’re planning to finally get a true “big screen” television (our current one, over a decade old, is 37 inch). I’d like to just buy a monitor, but they don’t seem to really make them. I am absolutely not going to buy a television that insists that I give it my wifi password.
The EPA Endangerment Finding
I agree with Steve Milloy, it’s time to revisit it.
Climate Evangelists
How they’re taking over your weather forecasts.
Pretty sure that meteorologists in general aren’t part of the BS 97%, though. Interesting comment that weather is the only thing keeping local news alive. It’s the only reason I generally turn it on. I haven’t noticed and of the LA weathercasters talking about climate so far, though, fortunately.
SLS/Orion
It’s official; it’s slipped into 2019. Just put it out of its (and our) misery.
This is my shocked face. #NotReally https://t.co/iO6a1oNMOa
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) April 27, 2017
[Update a couple minutes later]
What's really infuriating is that Congress robbed funding from Commercial Crew to feed it to the monster rocket, and still a 3-year slip. https://t.co/66Q01ImBnk
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) April 27, 2017
[Update a few minutes later]
And in related news, the space-suit situation is as screwed up as ever. I was looking into thie problem 35 years ago for military man-in-space at the Aerospace Corporation, and we still don’t have a usable suit that doesn’t require pre-breathing.
[Update early afternoon]
A reminder, from the comments at the Berger piece:
This rocket is a colossal waste of NASA’s limited resources and valuable expertise. They are building it entirely at the micro-management of the Senate to make sure that certain districts get the jobs. Its going to end up costing around $2 billion per flight, has zero reuse built in, and this first model with the 70mt capacity and interim upper stage will only fly ONCE. Right now we have 3 US heavy/super heavy lift rockets in development: Falcon Heavy, Vulcan, and New Glenn. They are each a fraction of the cost per kg and they are all incorporating reusability and are all going to be ready to fly astronauts before this one does.
Yup. Well, maybe not Vulcan. That one’s funding constrained.
Calico’s Anti-Aging Research
What is it doing?
Gavin Schmidt
He attempts to discredit Judith Curry, and you’ll never guess what happens next!
There is one wonderful thing about Gavin’s argument, and one even more wonderful thing.
The wonderful thing is that he is arguing that Dr. Curry is wrong about the models being tuned to the actual data during the period because the models are so wrong (!).
The models were not tuned to consistency with the period of interest as shown by the fact that – the models are not consistent with the period of interest. Gavin points out that the models range all over the map, when you look at the 5% – 95% range of trends. He’s right, the models do not cluster tightly around the observations, and they should, if they were modeling the climate well.
Here’s the even more wonderful thing. If you read the relevant portions of the IPCC reports, looking for the comparison of observations to model projections, each is a masterpiece of obfuscation on this same point. You never see a clean, clear, understandable presentation of the models-to-actuals comparison. But look at those histograms above, direct from the hand of Gavin. It’s the clearest presentation I’ve ever run across that the models run hot. Thank you, Gavin.
Yes, thank you.
[Update a while later]
Semi-related: Chelsea HubbellClinton tweets about science, and you’ll never guess what happened next!
Yesterday’s Senate Space Hearing
Bob Zimmerman has a roundup of links, and some thoughts:
Cruz’s effort here appears incredibly bi-partisan. The only other Senate attendees to the hearing were Democrats, with the former and new ranking leaders of the subcommittee from the Democratic Party, Bill Nelson (R-Florida) and Ed Markey (R-Massachusetts), participating eagerly and without rancor. They were both there for the entire hearing, and were clearly being influenced not only by Cruz’s remarks but by the testimony of the witnesses. That no other Republican attended this hearing was I think not because they were boycotting Cruz (several fellow committee members, such as Mike Lee (R-Utah), are strong conservative allies) but because Cruz does not need to convince them to support his position. He was working here to bring the Democrats to his side, and it appeared that he was having some success.
Most important of all, however, were the repeated references to the Outer Space Treaty by Cruz and others. That Cruz noted that maybe it is outdated and needs revision did not surprise me. What was significant, and not captured by the stories above, was his reference to the idea of incorporating the American concept of homesteading in that revision. Even more significant was Bill Nelson’s hearty endorsement of the idea, noting that his own family had obtained land through homesteading in the early 20th century, a piece of land that just happened to be located near one end of the space shuttle runway at the Kennedy Space Center.
While these senators might have been influenced by my op-ed in The Federalist last week, I think it much more likely that they have been, like me, considering this issue themselves, and that I more likely sensed the wave coming from many different places, and caught it with my op-ed at just the right time.
If there’s any administration that could take action on the OST, it’s this one.