Stephen Smith has an analysis. While it’s nice that they slightly mitigated the idiotic language about using SLS/Orion for ISS missions in 2010, the most significant aspect of the bill, to me, is the extension of the learning period. I don’t think the language about mining is all that significant, legally. It simply makes explicit what’s always been customary law since the moon samples.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
Coffee
A daily habit may contribute to longevity.
That’s why I choke down the swill ever morning. I’ve never found any other reasons to do so.
Speaking of my apparent imperviousness to caffeine, I was staying with an old (in both senses of the word) friend in Seattle last week, and he noted that since he’d gone more paleo in his diet, he noticed much less of a caffeine effect from morning coffee or evening tea. I started drinking it after I’d changed my diet as well, so maybe carbs enhance it. Actually, someone should do a study on that.
Cats And Cukes
This is truly bizarre. I don’t think I’ll try it with Rerun, though, even though I happened to buy a cucumber the other day. She gets enough abuse.
Vizio Televisions
This is why they’re lower priced. The company makes revenue from selling your viewing habits.
Here’s the thing. I’ve got plenty of video input sources. I don’t want a “smart television.” I don’t even want to waste money on audio amp and speakers. I just want to pour all of my television money into a good-quality picture. But it’s very hard, if not impossible, to find just monitors in the large-screen class.
Space Property Rights
A story on the current state of play, at the WaPo.
StratoLaunch
…getting its wings clipped?
The program has never made any sense to me. And I weep when I think of the better ways Allen’s money could have been/could be spent.
PJMedia
Welcome to the new web site. It does seem to be a cleaner load.
Space Settlement And Starships
Kim Stanley Robinson says they’re impossible.
I call Clarke’s Law about distinguished scientists, even though he’s just a fiction writer.
ULA’s Shot Across McCain’s Bow
When they said they couldn’t bid GPS without RD-180s, they meant it.
Bill Nye
I’m completely unsurprised that he is clueless about the purpose of NASCAR. Does he really think that people would come to watch Prius’s toottling around the track?