A defense of the SLS over at an Alabama news outlet. Let the fisking commence: Continue reading The Latest In Apolloism
Category Archives: Technology and Society
Those Space Mice
Eric Berger has the story, including the fact that we’ve done absolutely no research in partial gravity, which will be necessary if people want to procreate on Mars.
I’d note that while it’s never officially been confirmed, it seems unlikely, given the nature of astronauts, that no one has ever done it in space.
Shuttle had very sensitive accelerometers. It's likely that Houston was aware of any rhythmic orbital exertions. https://t.co/RNnYSfnCyi
— SafeNotAnOption (@SafeNotAnOption) April 21, 2016
“Denialism”
Does it exist? It’s hard to say:
It’s possible that with a lot of work, some extreme corner of the behavior spectrum could be isolated via specific criteria, which then merits labeling as ‘denialist’. But in truth the characteristics of our ‘proto-denialists’ above are radically different to expectations from the current framing, a framing which may have tainted the term beyond redemption. Nor is this approach a great plan even without that taint, because it tends to mask uncomfortable yet crucial truths, especially those in f) and g). So along with other errors we may end up fooling ourselves that there’s a nice clinical division between skeptics and ‘denialists’. Via naïve assumption of cause from a basic categorization of rhetoric, this is exactly the trap I believe Diethelm and McKee have fallen into. Hoofnagle goes further, dishing out labels of ‘dishonest’ and ‘crank’ yet without proper theoretical grounds; despite his noble motives many of these are bound to stick onto the wrong people. Some dishonesty and crankiness will ride any cultural wave, or backlash to such a wave, or backlash to an evidential cause that is perceived as cultural encroachment. But this does not mean that cranks and liars drive the main action; they do not. Nor can the touted methods reliably distinguish crankiness from cultural influence, or skepticism from either.
I would note (as always) that “denial,” and “denialism,” and “denialist” are not scientific terms. They’re religious ones.
[Update a while later]
Bill Nye epitomizes the Left’s authority complex.
The Climate Hustle
The press declares war on the new documentary.
Of course it does. It doesn’t fit the narrative.
Space Resource Utilization
Here are the proceedings of the symposium in the Netherlands. Haven’t read through them, but I expect to see a lot of support for Moon Treaty-like “solutions.”
Hospitals Suck
…because they’re socialist bureaucracies.
Best wishes to John Stossel on beating his lung cancer.
WordPress
I’ve been putting off an update for far too long, but I finally did it today. I’m hoping it will fix some site issues, including comments appearing/disappearing.
Metal 3-D Printing
…is coming to commercial aviation.
It’s hard to overstate what a technological revolution this is going to be.
Mouse Embryos
According to the pictures sent back from a high-resolution camera, the 600 embryos, which were put under the camera, developed from the 2-cell stage, an early-on embryonic cleavage stage, to blastocyst, the stage where noticeable cell differentiation occurs, around 72 hours after SJ-10’s launch. The timing was largely in line with embryonic development on Earth, according to CAS.
But we still have no idea what happens in partial gravity. And they didn’t bring them to term.
Useful Cislunar Orbits
Jon Goff has a blog post on a recent FISO telecon. One of the implications for all of these options, of course, is that SLS makes no sense.