Robert Graboyes, of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, notes the similarities between spaceflight and health care.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
Your Router
How to supercharge it.
I might try this, on both the router and the extender.
A Gravity Lab
A concept for doing it on the cheap.
One problem I see in the near term is that NASA plans to use Dragons as lifeboats, so I’m not sure when one would become available on orbit.
[Update a while later]
Actually, I think that a cargo Dragon meets the requirements for this much better than a crew Dragon. It’s an on-orbit mission only, so there’s no need for couches, which just take up room. It can’t be used for a lifeboat, because it has no docking adaptor (at least currently), so NASA wouldn’t miss it. Even a Dragon V2 would need an ECLSS upgrade, so might as well just put it in the cargo version. It would have a lot less value to NASA than a V2, so it would be easier to get it from them. All they’d be giving up is the cargo return (which they could even get when the mission was over, months later, if they wanted).
Adam Gopnik
Gun-controller wannabe legal (and moral) idiot.
[Afternoon update]
What is it about “progressives” and guns?
That Stupid Slate Article About Space Billionaires
I don’t know if I mentioned this foolish piece by Charles Seife last week (what would we do without “journalism” professors?). At the time, I merely tweeted that I didn’t understand why I was supposed to care whether or not Virgin Galactic and SpaceX were about “exploration.”
Jeff Foust commented that Slate editors must have taken the week off (which I think gives them too much credit during the non-holidays). Anyway he has taken it apart.
It’s difficult to imagine a student of Professor Seife’s turning in a class assignment with such factual errors and getting a passing grade.
Zing.
And speaking of “space exploration,” I’ve decided that this is the year I make all-out war on the phrase. It has held us back for decades in thinking about space in a sensible way.
Video Games
I’m not a gamer, but here‘s what Pop Mechanics thinks were the top ten of the year, at least in terms of innovation.
Another Dumb Space Piece
If it weren’t for that fiasco at The American Spectator yesterday, this would take the prize for the week, if not the month.
After reading this "Billionaires' Space Club" piece, I can only assume Slate's editors are taking this week off. http://t.co/eZFGoyLofB
— Jeff Foust (@jeff_foust) December 30, 2014
Statins
A long piece about the science wars. Answer: we still don’t really know, but I’m avoiding them.
The Climate-Change Debate
Jessica Chastain
…buys the BS about SLS/Orion, sadly.