Paul Spudis provides us with his thoughts for the goals of future space policy. I pretty much agree with it. In fact, it seems as though it should be obvious that we should be working to develop the resources off planet, but you’d never know it from NASA’s current plans.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
The New Army Air Corps
Joe Katzman writes about new developments in UAVs.
Kermit Feels Their Pain
It’s not easy being green:
The unexpected discovery of a nest of red-cheeked squirrels amidst the huge, partially constructed MegaPyre Solar Power plant has halted construction, casting doubt on the viability of what has been considered to be the environmentalist’s crown jewel of renewable power facilities.
The 20 gigawatt plant was expected to provide electricity to much of southern California, and was only 6 months away from completion when the nest of squirrels, which are on the endangered species list, was found. Due to federal regulations regarding endangered species, moving the nest to another location is not permitted.
The situation has confounded local environmentalists, who are now evenly divided on whether the solar power plant or the nest of squirrels is more important to their cause.
Hear that little sound? That’s the sound of the world’s tiniest violin.
[Yes, I know it’s a joke. The twenty gigawatts, if nothing else, is a dead giveaway.]
Get A Third Life
Protesters are invading Second Life Israel, to the point at which all visitors had to be banned.
Progress In Tooth Regeneration
I am expecting this to come along in a reasonable amount of time. I have lost my wisdom teeth, but I suspect that they’ll come up with other ways to find the needed stem cells.
[Via Mark Whittington]
A Critical Space Technology Issue
Would entry heating from orbit pop a kernel of popcorn?
I don’t really have time to think about it much right now, but the answer is (as is often the case), it depends…
On The Radio
I’ll be on The Space Show tomorrow at 3 PM Eastern (noon Pacific), to discuss Ares, Shuttle, EELVs, alternate architectures, Mike Griffin’s job prospects, etc.
[Monday afternoon update, with a bump]
The podcast is now available.
Thoughts On Twitter
Particularly in comments. I haven’t figured out what the difference is between Twitter and a short blog post, and why I should have to deal with yet another channel of communication. Of course, I still haven’t figured out what Facebook is for.
Death From The Heavens
Was there a major meteoritic strike 13,000 years ago in North America?
That wasn’t very long ago (compared to, say, the sixty-five million years ago that the Yucatan was hit). Evidence continues to accumulate that we get hit a lot more than people have previously imagined. We really need to develop the capability to do something about it. We have technology in hand to do so, but apparently lack the will to deploy it. This by itself is reason enough to make the investment to become a real spacefaring civilization, but pork and maintaining existing jobs remain more important.
What Am I Doing Wrong?
I bought an HD-DVR receiver for Christmas. Which means additional cable runs, because it needs two satellite signals to record while playing real time. I’ve always used the twist-on F connectors for RG-6, but the last time the DirecTV guy came he recommended crimp-on compression connectors, for a better water seal (we always have LOS in heavy rain, which is a problem in south Florida).
So I spent the money on a DataShark crimper and a package of ten connectors. I followed the instructions, stripping the right lengths of both center conductor and plastic inner insulator (even though it looks to me like if you only do a quarter inch of bare wire, it won’t stick out enough to make contact). I’ve now wasted four of the things. None of them stay on the cable after crimping. They don’t even try. I take it out of the crimper, and it almost falls off. And of course, you can’t uncrimp to try again, so it’s a waste of almost a buck with each one. I have no clue what the problem is. I’m using standard RG-6. I can’t quite figure out what they’re supposed to be crimping to, even after looking at a crimped and uncrimped one. Anyone out there have any experience?