It doesn’t hurt that he is attacking it, but it probably doesn’t help that much, either. Sadly, the congress/space-industrial complex doesn’t pay much attention to him.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s the story from Eric Berger.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
A Heart-Attack Gene?
This looks like interesting research, but I’ll bet that sensible nutrition advice would be even more effective.
We stayed in a Residence Inn in Florida, and they have free breakfast. Cream cheese for the bagels was available in two varieties: 1/3 reduced fat, and no fat. The real thing wasn’t available.
Bill Nye
…the climate huckster guy:
Admittedly, climate science is complex. There might be perfectly reasonable scientific justifications for what’s happening on the tornado front. Although, surely, there are just as likely interesting scientific arguments that challenge The Science Guy’s chilling and reckless assertions meant only to scare you into adopting leftist economic policy, not to teach you anything. Nye’s “science” is, at the very least, arguable.
But that’s not the reason Nye is dishonest. Or, at least, not the only reason. His biggest lie—and he makes these sorts of claims all the time—is that people are increasingly suffering because of global warming, and thus by extension they are suffering because of the use of fossil fuels.
This is simply untrue. Life, by nearly any quantifiable measurement, is better today for more people than it has ever been. One of the externalities in the spike of comfort and health is that more people are emitting carbon into the air. Fewer people are suffering. On top of the huge, if inadvertent, moral benefits of oil, gas, and coal, we should add that far fewer people are dying from drastic weather events—or any weather, actually.
These charlatans shouldn’t be surprised that people don’t take them seriously.
Hillary’s Emails
Is the scandal finally about to explode?
If so, it’s way overdue. Everyone who’s ever handled classified material knows that they’d be sporting orange after all this, if they had some last name other than “Clinton.”
Aging
I’ve always believed that there is no law of physics that makes it inevitable, that it’s a matter of learning how to continue doing the cellular-level repair that occurs when we’re young. But here is an article that says it is caused by thermal chaos.
Not sure I buy it (it still doesn’t take into account artificial techniques for doing error checking in transcription), but it’s an interesting read.
No, Senator McCain
The Delta is not a way to replace RD-180s.
I can’t figure out if McCain is stupid, venal, or both.
Hillary And The Aliens
She seems to be into the UFO conspiracy theories. Nadia Drake responds.
Let’s make her president!
(And remember, the Democrats are the Party of Science™)
Dick Shelby
It is theoretically conceivable that there have been chairs of the Senate budget committee more damaging to the future of spaceflight than him, but I don’t want to do the necessary research to determine it, and the thought itself is pretty frightening.
Kudos to Eric Berger for continuing to cover this like almost no one else in the media.
[Late-evening update]
Bad link, fixed now. Sorry!
It’s Up To SpaceX Now
I’m as shocked as everyone else to see that Boeing’s first commercial crew flight to ISS has slipped to 2018.
OK, not really.
In sort of related news, this assessment of Falcon reusability is amusing:
It’s easy to see why there’s such excitement about Falcon 9 and reusable rockets then. Except, of course, Falcon 9 isn’t really a reusable rocket. It’s still a two-stage launcher designed to deliver SpaceX’s Dragon craft into space, and only one stage is designed to be recoverable (rather like the space shuttle, only commercial) – something that Sadlier says would reduce costs by around 30%, not 99%. ‘It’s an amazing innovation, but it’s kind of a baby step.’
It will reduce costs by much more than 30%. He apparently doesn’t understand the difference between cost and price. And then there’s this:
not everyone is convinced that any of the space players are going to revolutionise 21st century life. ‘Since I entered the space business in 1983, I’ve been hearing claims about big money to be made in space tourism, the space launch business, space mining, space manufacturing,’ says Billings, who served on the US National Commision [sic] on Space under Ronald Reagan. ‘The longer I’ve been listening the more sceptical I’ve become about the more extreme of these claims.’
Others remain optimistic, whether about the likes of Falcon 9 or indeed about Reaction Engine’s Skylon space plane, a revolutionary British technology that delights enthusiasts but never seems to have enough funding for a prototype. As with any other futuristic technology, we’re just going to have to wait and see.
Linda completely ignores SpaceX’s huge commercial backlog. And it’s amusing to see an actual flown recovered vehicle compared with a non-existent vehicle that is unlikely to ever exist.
The Latest Book Review
Roger Launius has reviewed it over at Quest, but for subscribers only (I think it will become available when the next issue comes out). It was interesting, in that it was more of a good summary, with no value judgments, though in an email he did say it was “thought provoking.” And he had no criticism of facts or history, so that’s a good thing. It may be the first “peer reviewed” review I’ve gotten. FWIW