Available within two years? If so, this will save a lot of lives, and perhaps end the need for waiting for donors (which, unlike other organs, could be solved by simply letting the market work).
Category Archives: Technology and Society
LA Traffic
Elon’s tunnelling plan. Earthquakes will be a huge issue, I think.
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!