Category Archives: Technology and Society
Industry At The Edge Of Space
Leonard David reviews Erik Seedhouse’s new book on the suborbital industry.
As an aside, how does Springer sell books at those prices? Almost thirty bucks for a Kindle?
Hard Drive Prices
Seeing three terabytes for a hundred bucks at Newegg.
My problem is, I don’t know what I’d do with that much storage. I don’t need bigger drives; I’d like cheaper ones. But as with restaurants and food, the marginal cost of adding capacity is low, but the basic overhead of manufacturing a drive seems to set a lower limit on the price.
Space Solar Power
John Walker reviews John Mankins’ new book.
Regenerative Life Support
This is the kind of research that NASA should be doing, and would be if we were serious about space settlement. Instead, we waste billions on unneeded giant rockets. At least China is taking it more seriously.
Though I’ve had an account for years, I’ve never really “done” it. I spend very little time there, except when I get an email notification that someone mentioned me there. I never manually post, but these blog posts do get automatically added there.
The BearCam At Brooks Falls
…has gone live. Salmon are being caught.
Colonizing Venus
The surprisingly strong case for it.
One of the many disappointments of the NRC report on human spaceflight is the almost total neglect of this topic. That’s at least partially because if was rooted in a neo-Apollo mindset, which must have boots on the ground, though it’s not clear what they’ll be doing.
Space
Without the space. XKCD stitched together all of the land area in the solar system.
Self-Driving Cars
Hyundai did a bad-ass stunt outside of Mojave.
[Update a few minutes later]
For those wondering (as I was) where that was, it’s on Hyundai’s test track northwest of town, according to Doug Messier.