Why it’s self defeating.
At best, it’s a delaying tactic.
[Update a while later, about an hour before my appearance on The Space Show]
Sam’s thesis is a matter of some dispute. I suspect it will be addressed in comments over there.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
The Space Show
I’ll be on this afternoon from 2-3:30 PM PDT, to discuss the book in the context of current events with Russia, commercial crew and congress.
Left-Lane Squatters
Washington state is cracking down on them.
I wish more states would do this. As I wrote in comments there, for decades, I’ve been saying that when I am king, all those stupid signs that say “Slower Drivers Keep Right” will be replaced with “Left Lane For Passing Only.” Because no one thinks that they are a “slower driver.” I’d also put in sensors so that you get an automatic ticket if you’re passed on the right five consecutive times without passing anyone.
Safe Is Not An Option
Ed Driscoll interviewed me the other day. The podcast and a transcript are up now.
The Next Commercial Crew Battle
OK, we lost the fight in committee, but now the bill goes to the full Senate. As noted here, individual senators actually can throw a wrench in the works, because there is a preference for unanimous consent. So now you don’t have to have a senator on the committee to fight the good fight — anyone with a senator or two (that is, any USian voter) can call one or both of them and try to fix this before the floor vote.
Leonardo Da Vinci
He wrote himself a pretty awesome CV.
Interstellar Spaceships
Is this the future?
Who knows?
The NRC Report On Human Spaceflight
Well, it’s out, and depressingly familiar. There seems to have been very little imagination, and its authors seems stuck in the sixties. It’s basically Apollo to Mars.
Joel Achenbach has the story. I’m glad that at least they’re pointing out the safety issues with flying SLS so rarely, but a bolder report would have discussed what a disaster the program will be cost wise. I’ll have to read the report to see if they addressed the real issue, which is launch costs, but since they seemed to get all their input from NASA, I suspect that it will be completely ignored.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here‘s Eric Berger’s take.
Gwynne Shotwell
She’s discussing the future of American launch right now, live.
Peter Glaser, RIP
I don’t see any details, but apparently he died late last week. I hadn’t seen him in a couple decades, but I know that he’d been ill for quite some time. I imagine many younger people in the space movement haven’t heard of him, but he was one of the luminaries back in the seventies, creating the potential economic driver for O’Neill colonies. Anyway, John Mankins seems to have taken up the baton from him for space solar power.