Category Archives: Technology and Society

Business, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

SLS/Orion

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NASA is thinking about putting up crew on its very first flight.

And yet they continue to delay commercial crew because “safety is the highest priority.”

[Update a couple minutes later]

[Update a couple minutes later]

A congressional staffer told me about this last week: A hearing on NASA’s past, past, past and present, no future.

[Update a few minutes later]

More from Eric Berger.

[Update a while later]

Joel Achenback weighs in.

[Update a while later]

[Update a while later, just before noon Pacific]

Thoughts from Keith Cowing. Yes, it’s a Hail Mary. And reckless, in my opinion. If it was to save the world, OK, but to save a bloated jobs program?

[Update early afternoon]

Here’s Marcia Smith’s take.

[Update a while later]

And here’s the story from the Chrises at NASA Spaceflight.

[Update a few minutes later]

And Jeff Foust’s take. Excellent point in comments:

If NASA agree[s] to this (putting astronauts on 1st flight of brand new rocket), they better not whine about SpaceX loading astronauts before fuel.

Indeed.

Business, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

The Window Shade

9 Comments

Reflections from Wayne Hale on the apparent new anti-social activity in airplanes: Looking out the window.

I have actually been requested to put my shade down on an occasion in which the sun was beaming right in the window. On my trip to Israel a couple years ago, the sun came up as we were approaching the French coast, but the plane remained dark. I had to crack the bottom if I wanted to see, as we crossed the French then Italian Alps and Monico, and then Italy and Greece. Last week on the way to DC I ended up with a window seat with no window (the seat in front of me had two). It was almost claustrophobic. When I hear about these new aircraft coming along without windows, I think “No way.”

Business, Economics, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Risk In Human Spaceflight

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I didn’t make it to the conference in time to hear him, but I was told a couple weeks ago that Bill Gerstenmeier would be talking about many of the themes of my book. He apparently did. I would note though, that “loss of crew” isn’t just probability of killing crew; it also includes causing a career-ending injury.

[Update a few minutes later]

Related: With new types of launch systems, we’re discovering new causes of launch failure, even after almost sixty years of orbital spaceflight.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

AI

29 Comments

The huge economic issue that no one in Washington is talking about:

Driverless trucks delivering goods to fully automated warehouses and loading docks. Drones delivering everything from pizza to furniture. Offices will become almost fully automated as work is farmed out to smart machines. There’s even speculation that AI could take the place of reporters and editors, writing copy with more speed and less bias than humans.

Most of these innovations are not far off. What’s worse, our schools are stuck in a time warp, teaching kids as if it was the 1970s, sending them to college where they major in English Lit or Environmental Management. How many of these young people would be better off going to a trade school and learning a valuable skill that would be useful in the new economy?

What’s needed is a revolution. Not rage against the machines, but a clear-eyed recognition in society from top to bottom that we can’t go back. The days when you could graduate from high school and go to work for 40 years in the local plant, earning a good middle-class wage and being able to buy into the American dream, are gone forever. Donald Trump can’t bring them back. The Democrats can’t bring them back. The unions can’t bring them back.

Nope.

Business, Technology and Society

One More Night In DC

15 Comments

I took the Silver Line out to Wiehle, to get to the last mile to Dulles. I admittedly didn’t provide enough margin, but I could have made it if Uber hadn’t screwed me over. The driver was driving all around, showing close to me on my phone, but I couldn’t see him in a big parking lot. He kept wandering on my screen, and never called me to ask where I was. I couldn’t call him.

After the official five minutes, he canceled me, and I was screwed, missing the last flight of the day to LA. I had to rebook from DCA the next morning (no way was I going to try Dulles again), and had to use miles to avoid who knows how many hundreds of dollars in change fees and fare changes, plus a hundred bucks for another night’s stay.

And for this “service,” and to add insult to injury, Uber charged me five bucks for the driver that I didn’t cancel. And when they did so, they said if I had an issue, to go to a web site that had no information whatsoever as to how to deal with it.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

The New “Climate Denial”

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This is the ongoing game of the warm mongers, to continually redefine and conflate terms, but Judith Curry gets right down to it:

exactly what is being ‘denied’? As far as I can tell, here is what is being ‘denied’: that the policies put in place under the Paris Agreement will on net be beneficial to global societies and ecosystems, and that they will have any kind of impact on the climate of the 21st century.

Climate denialism is no longer about science; its about action versus inaction – in particular, the UNFCCC’s preferred actions. It doesn’t seem to matter that the emissions targets are woefully inadequate for preventing what they expect to be ‘dangerous’ climate change; emissions targets are unlikely to be met; and the climate will show little change in the 21st century even if the targets are met.

Let me take this opportunity to redefine climate denialism: denial that the UNFCCC policies will accomplish anything significant regarding improving the climate as defined by increasing human welfare and the health of ecosystems.

I’d restate it as denial that we can have sufficient certainty at this time to think they will to justify implementing them.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Popular Culture, Science And Society, Space, Space Science, Technology and Society

To The Moon, Alice!

8 Comments

OK, actually, it’s to the moon, NASA. Bob Zimmerman has some thoughts.

In my opinion, this is a completely unrealistic goal, absent a) considering alternatives to SLS and b) being willing to risk astronauts’ lives. A seventy-ton SLS isn’t going to do that job, and that’s all they’re going to have (at best) by 2020. And putting up sending astronauts to the moon (even just around, and it’s not clear what the value of that is) on its first, or even second flight would be much sportier than Apollo 8 was, back when it was actually important.

FWIW, I also think that the reporter should have talked to someone besides Casey Dreier, The Planetary Society is hardly an unbiased source about human spaceflight.