Category Archives: Technology and Society

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

Jimmy Carter And The Space Shuttle

5 Comments

Did he save it? And if so, why? An interesting bit of history of which I’d been unaware. Mondale wanted to kill it, and did manage to reduce the fleet size from seven to five (including Enterprise, which never flew). Which was economically stupid, because it saved very little money. If we’d had six vehicles, we’d have still had four after the losses of Challenger and Columbia (assuming that we hadn’t built Endeavour from spares after Challenger, and those two events would have occurred in that alternate universe). A four- or five-ship fleet would have made for a slightly different calculus after the loss of the latter, because part of the reason the program was ended was that three was too small a fleet to continue to operate for long.

Business, Economics, Space, Technology and Society

The Economic Development Of LEO

15 Comments

Yesterday, Deputy NASA Administrator Dava Newman announced with a blog post a new publication by NASA. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but given that one of the authors is Alex McDonald, I expect that it will be very good.

Speaking of which, I’m heading down to San Diego in a few minutes to attend at least the first day of the annual ISS R&D conference. So blogging may be light.

[Update Thursday morning]

I’m back from the conference. Meanwhile, I still haven’t looked at the publication, but Leonard David has.

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

A Modest Proposal

32 Comments

I’ve long said that air conditioning was the beginning of the downfall of the Republic, because it made DC habitable, and attractive to all manner of power-hungry grifters.

Well, Glenn Reynolds agrees, and has some suggestions to allow our betters in the federal government to set a good example for the rest of the benighted:

…it’s hard to expect Americans to accept changes to their own lifestyles when the very people who are telling them that it’s a crisis aren’t acting like it’s a crisis. So I have a few suggestions to help bring home the importance of reduced carbon footprints at home and abroad:

  1. Extend Smith’s bill to cover the entire federal government. We have Skype now, and Facetime. There’s no reason to fly to meetings. I’d let the President keep Air Force One for official travel, but subject to a requirement that absolutely no campaign activity or fundraisers take place on any trips in which the president travels officially.
  2. Obama makes a great point about setting the thermostat at 72 degrees. We should ban air conditioning in federal buildings. We won two world wars without air conditioning our federal employees. Nothing in their performance over the last 50 or 60 years suggests that A/C has improved things. Besides, The Washington Post informs us that A/C is sexist, and that Europeans think it’s stupid.
  3. In fact, we should probably ban air conditioning in the entire District of Columbia, to ensure that members of Congress, etc. won’t congregate in lobbyists’ air-conditioned offices.
  4. Speaking of which, members of Congress shouldn’t be allowed to fly home on the weekends. Not only does this produce halfhearted attention to their jobs — the so-called “Tuesday to Thursday Club” — but, again, it produces too much of a carbon footprint. Even if they pay for the travel out of campaign funds, instead of their own budgets, they need to set an example for the rest of us — and for those skeptical foreigners that Obama mentioned.

Exactly.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Back To The Moon

18 Comments

I agree with Eliot Pulham, it shouldn’t be about destinations (though SLS/Orion aren’t much more useful for going back than they are for Mars).

[Update a while later]

Sort of related: John Holdren rewrites history, and Eric Berger sets him straight.

[Update mid-morning]

Here’s a nice editorial from the Orlando Sentinel about the hopeful future in space due to competition between billionaires.