…and solve the social security problem. Thoughts from Jim Pinkerton.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
If You Do This In An Email
[Via Geekpress]
No Rockets?
No problem. My survey of nonconventional launch technologies is up at Popular Mechanics.
Rare Earth
…on the moon.
It doesn’t make much sense to even speculate on the economic potential until we solve the launch-cost problem, though, and there is little in current space policy that even attempts it.
Unconventional Space Access
I’m doing a piece for Popular Mechanics on alternatives to rockets, and I was going to cover rail guns, gas guns, space elevators, sky hooks, and perhaps the launch loop. Does anyone have any other suggestions?
[Update a while later]
Folks, when I say alternatives to rockets, I am including all vehicles that employ chemical rocket engines, including airbreathers. As I said, unconventional.
[Update a few minutes later]
OK, I’m thinking of three categories: cannons (whether EM, chemical, whatever), external energy (laser, Orion), and momentum exchange (tethers, space elevators, compression towers). I know the latter isn’t really momentum exchange, but it fits sort of. The former don’t work well for passengers, but are well suited to bulk delivery of low-cost stuff (e.g., propellants), and the latter require very high up-front capital costs, in general. With a lot of tech risk.
Better Living Through Aerodynamics
Congratulations to Barnaby Wainfan (who I’ve known for over three decades, having gone to school with the woman who later became his wife), on the win in the Automotive X-Prize. Also on his becoming an adjunct professor at Michigan. One thing that the article doesn’t note, but I will, is that he also played a significant role in the design of XCOR’s Lynx.
The Ten Best Jobs
…of the future. Three of them are space related. Actually, one of them I sort of do now. But it doesn’t pay very well…
Attitudes And Regulations
…that hold back progress in aging and health breakthroughs.
I Have Been There
Watching someone use a computer. It takes the patience of Job sometimes.
Old Age
…is it a cause of death?
There will be unintended consequences (good ones, in my opinion) of making it one. It implies that aging is itself a disease, and one that should be fought directly, rather than coming up with palliatives for individual symptoms of it (e.g., hypertension, muscle degeneration, senility, etc.), which would mean that the medical establishment would have to take gerontological research a lot more seriously than it currently does, both in terms of interest and resources. It also flies in the face of the deathist belief that we shouldn’t seek longer life, because it’s not “natural” (the naturalistic fallacy).