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Category Archives: Technology and Society
Regulating Medical Devices
A new paper from Mercatus, citing me and the book. In fact, I used the FDA as another example of a risk-averse bureaucracy in the book.
Dog Years
Lengthening them with a new anti-aging drug. Humans come next.
Spacefest In Seattle
Though the program doesn’t (yet) reflect it, I’m going to do a talk and book signing there on Saturday afternoon, November 7th. Attendance does require museum admission, though ($20). But it’s probably worth it if you’ve never been to the Museum of Flight, and maybe even if you have. I also hope to be able to visit some of the area space companies early the following week before coming back to LA.
“Fratricidins”
Researchers have come up with a way to get cancer cells to kill each other.
Faster, please.
Temperature And The Economy
Well, this is a twofer from Borenstein: Junk science and junk economics.
NASA Can’t Go To Mars
It’s essentially illegal. My latest column, about NASA in the movies and in real life, at USA Today.
Virgin Galactic
Almost a year after the loss of SpaceShipTwo, Doug Messier has some questions about their switch back to a rubber engine. The answers are unsatisfactory. And there’s this perennial bit:
Despite Richard Branson’s increasingly dire pronouncements (The Time for Climate Action is Now) about how rising global temperatures and sea levels threaten the planet (and his private island home), it looks as if Virgin Galactic will go back to using a carbon spewing rubber hybrid rocket engine to power SpaceShipTwo.
That’s the word from Virgin Galactic officials in Mojave, who say that the rubber/nitrous oxide engine they previously abandoned is now performing better than the supposedly superior nylon/nitrous oxide engine they abandoned it for in May 2014. It’s not entirely certain, but it looks that way.
Branson won’t lose any sleep over this further expansion of his carbon footprint. He never has. Anyone who can passionately advocate for the climate while flying around the world in a private jet, expanding his fuel-gulping airlines, launching three new massive cruise ships, and burning rubber in the upper atmosphere is clearly untroubled by irony or contradictions. Here’s a guy who urges billions in new public spending on climate change while living as a tax exile in the British Virgin Islands.
As Emerson said, a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.
A New Desalinization Method
If this works out, it would be huge. It might be useful for Martian water, too.
“Space Exploration”
I hate op-eds like this. They’re meaningless.
I oppose "space exploration." It's a meaningless phrase. I favor space development.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) October 20, 2015