James Dean has an interview with the man himself.
This is the essay I wrote the previous summer as an input to the committee.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
The Chairman Of The House Science Committee
“If Orion could provide a redundant capability as a fallback for the commercial crew partners, why is it necessary to carry two partners to ensure competition in the constrained budget environment?” Smith asked NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in an Oct. 7 letter co-signed by Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-Miss.), chairman of the House Science space subcommittee.
So as a bonus, the chairman of the space subcommittee is an idiot, too.
The country’s in the very best of hands.
Bias In Academia
…is destroying scientific integrity:
OK, it’s not exactly a “Sopranos” plot. But it’s pretty shady for the world of higher education. Chen went to great lengths to make up fake email addresses and even assume the names of other scientists to write approvingly of his own research.
In a sense, though, he was just exploiting the deep flaws of the peer review system. The academy has become a kind of club where friends give friends flattering assessments of research, which essentially guarantees promotions and tenure.
Here’s how the former editor of the British Medical Journal explained peer review:
“The editor looks at the title of the paper and sends it to two friends whom the editor thinks know something about the subject. If both advise publication the editor sends it to the printers. If both advise against publication the editor rejects the paper. If the reviewers disagree the editor sends it to a third reviewer and does whatever he or she advises. This … is little better than tossing a coin.”
But it’s not just the clubbiness of academia that is to blame. There is such ideological uniformity in the ivory tower that no one ever questions the important assumptions behind anyone else’s research.
Gee, where have we seen that sort of thing before?
I’d note, though, that contra the headline, it’s not a “liberal” bias. It’s a leftist bias.
Of Machines And Men
An interesting interview with Robin Hanson on brain emulation, AI, and the flaws of humanity.
Firefox
Great. Now not only is it refusing to restore tabs after it crashes (even though that’s what my preferences tell it to do), but this morning it came to with total amnesia of every page I’ve ever visited.
[Update Monday morning]
OK, I’ve installed Pale Moon 24.6.0, which seems to be the most recent version for which there’s a Linux tarball. It seems to run quickly so far, but I haven’t done much with it, or opened many tabs.
The Keystone Pipeline
“The best way to get it built is to make it irrelevant.”
This would be a smart thing for Canada to do though, as the article notes, there will be more nutty opposition from some Canadians.
Social Media And Friendship
Some interesting sociological results. I find the word “friend” for Facebook acquaintances annoying.
XCOR’s Approach To Space
Speaking of Stewart Money, he has a nice post, comparing and contrasting Virgin, XCOR and SpaceX.
About That Mars One MIT Study
Some thoughts from Stewart Money, with which I agree:
While presented as a legitimate concern, $4.5 billion is after all a large sum of money, and a very tall hurdle to overcome, it still leads to an interesting counterpoint which the authors of the NASA funded study do not address. NASA is well on the way to spending $16 billion to get the Orion capsule alone through one crewed flight, a number which excludes the development costs of the Space Launch System as well as its ground infrastructure. The agency cannot even begin to put a price tag on gong to Mars. It would be interesting to see the same team run the numbers on that.
There is no doubt that Mars One is [a] risky concept, and if it is to ever gain real traction, it will have to endure a lot more scrutiny than presented in the MIT study. It should probably begin with a clear statement that Mars One is meant as an evolving concept, in which the final product may differ considerable [sic] from what has initially been put forward on a time frame which like all space projects, is subject to change. At the same time, its many critics might want to at least consider how much of the risk to any future Mars mission, whether one way of with a return ticket, could be reduced through advancing the Technological Readiness Level (TRL) of some of the core technologies the MIT team identifies.
Finally, they might want to ask why the U.S. is committed to a very different, but perhaps even more financially implausible plan.
Yes.
[Update a few minutes later]
By the way, Bas Lansdorp has responded in comments over at Marcia Smith’s place.
Twelve Technologies We Need To Get Going On
A list, at io9.
Not sure about either the space elevator or space solar. And he leaves off a gravity lab, which we need to understand if or how we can properly conceive and gestate in partial gravity.