Will Elon Musk kill it?
Let’s hope.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
NSA
…Doesn’t know the extent of the Snowden damage:
This is criminal. Every single thing he did should have left an audit trail, both as a guard against misuse, and for damage assessment in a case just like this.
I didn’t say “criminal incompetence,” because if the need for an audit trail is obvious to such as me, it surely must have been obvious to higher-ups at NSA. If the systems lack the capacity for this, it’s because somebody doesn’t want the records kept. That suggests abuse at a systemic level. (It also undercuts claims of extensive auditing here.)
Then there’s the incompetence of letting someone like Snowden have such free-ranging access to the system: “The NSA had poor data compartmentalization, said the sources, allowing Snowden, who was a system administrator, to roam freely across wide areas. By using a ‘thin client’ computer he remotely accessed the NSA data from his base in Hawaii.” Snowden and Bradley Manning. That’s who’s in charge of our secrets?
Hey, I’ve got an idea! Let’s put the federal government in charge of our health care!
A Nuclear Reactor
…competitive with natural gas.
That’s quite a trick, considering how cheap fracking is making gas.
[Update a few minutes later]
Wrong link, fixed now. Sorry!
The DC-X Story
Per Jerry Pournelle (who unfortunately couldn’t attend this past weekend, for reasons he explains).
Note: “Dr. Gould from North American” was my boss at the time.
The Pima Air (And Space) Museum
OK, since I have to check out of my room, and I have a few hours to kill before my flight, I’m going to check it out, since I’ve never actually been there. Like Aviation Week (and space technology) I expect the “Space” part to be an afterthought.
[Update, waiting at the airport]
As I expected, the emphasis was on the “Air,” but there were a lot of pretty neat aircraft there. It was 104 degrees, but didn’t seem that bad to me (as it generally doesn’t in the desert, particularly in the shade). I was more put off from wandering far out in the field by the sun for which I had no sunblock than the heat itself. I pointed out to a docent that Gene Kranz never said “Failure is not an option,” at least while he was a NASA mission controller. He said he’d talk to the curator.
I also showed the book to the space docents, and they all wanted a copy. The gift-shop manager was out for the day, but I’ll email her. But it would look pretty lonely amidst the other books. Almost nothing about space –mostly aviation. But I did put it up on the shelf to see how it stood out. It did, a lot. I think we’ll be glad we spent extra time on the cover design.
[Update a while later, before boarding]
I forgot to mention that it happened to be Orville Wright’s birthday. There were remnants of a cake (I had a small piece). I got a picture of it, but not on my phone — on my good camera, and I don’t have a card reader with me, so I’ll have to post it later.
[Bumped]
We Need To Burn More Coal
At first glance, it would appear that the largest recent contribution to global warming is clean-air laws. Fortunately, China is continuing to help with their coal plants.
DC-X At Twenty
I’ve been at a celebration/workshop since Friday to commemorate the first flight of a radical new vehicle back in 1993 (which I attended at the time — it was just two or three months after I resigned from Rockwell International to try to be entrepreneurial).
Here’s an article about it by my (new) friend Megan Gannon at Space.com.
Mike Griffin: The Spoiled Generation
Asked by Jeff Greason why we as a society stopped pushing the technologies we needed to be pre-eminent in civil and military space, the former administrator blamed it on “My Generation,” the Baby Boomers. He prefaced the statement with the caveat that he had thought long and hard about it, and didn’t have a good answer, and that it was only his opinion, and that it might be wrong. Obviously many of us are exceptions (and he obviously thinks himself one) but that was the only answer that he could come up with.
In response to a question from Greg Sullivan, he noted that when we feel threatened (e.g., being attacked with IEDs) we throw the acquisition book out the window to solve the problem. Clearly, we don’t currently feel threatened enough to do that with space technology development and acquisition.
[Update a while later]
Jeff’s answer: We don’t want game-changing technologies, because they upset the Russians, and arms-control regimes. They don’t like game changers, because they like and are comfortable with the game. Reagan administration was rare exception. Not surprised that we do not attain that which we do not want.
In commercial market, the market will drive things. If Brilliant Pebbles had gone forward, we’d have much cheaper launch today. If there was a market, we’d have satisfied it by now. If assured market, he could go to the bank and get the money for reusable vehicle.
Demand is key. Airmail-like things would help (already starting this with COTS). Could buy payloads and capability, rather than resources. Isn’t as concerned about tech development for launch vehicles, except things that allow SSTO. But it’s important to learn how to integrate two-stage stage system, and that would be productive area.
History Comes Alive
Colorized versions of historic black-and-white-photos.
Shale Gas
…is Rearden metal:
Rand’s fictional progressives don’t want Reardon Metal to succeed any more than their modern, real-life equivalents want shale gas to succeed.
Why not? For the same rag-bag of made-up, disingenuous reasons which progressives have used to justify their war on progress since time immemorial: it’s unfair, it uses up scarce resources, it might be dangerous. Rand doesn’t actually use the phrase “the precautionary principle.” But this is exactly what she is describing in the book when various vested interests – the corporatists in bed with big government, the politicised junk-scientists at the Institute of Science (aka, in our world, the National Academy of Sciences or the Royal Society), the unions – try to close down the nascent technology using the flimsiest of excuses.
It was supposed to be a cautionary tale, not an instruction manual.