The big game, in the Big House.
The crowd always cheered in the stadium when the Slippery Rock score was announced. It’s a long-standing Michigan tradition.
What If They Had A White House Strategy Meeting On Ebola?
…and the “Ebola Czar” didn’t show up?
I’d say it was about par for the course for this administration.
Pain In Childbirth
Can be reduced with Vitamin D?
News I can’t use, but perhaps some of my younger female readers can.
Hal Lewis
Seems to have very publicly resigned from the American Physical Society:
The global warming scam…is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist.
Come on, Prof. Don’t hold back. Tell us what you really think. Watch out for the lawsuits, though.
ISPCS
The opening ceremony is a (brief, presumably) literal space opera about a mission to Mars.
[Update]
“Searching for nothing but action verbs” on Mars. OK.
[Update after the 20-minute opera]
Pat Hynes paying tribute to the late Bill Gaubatz, who helped her get this conference started ten years ago, who died in July.
If Baghdad Falls To IS
None of them are good, and all of them will be viewed by history as attributable to Obama’s desire to “end” rather than win the war in Iraq.
Off To Las Cruces
I’m heading to the airport to go to ISPCS. I’ll check in later.
[Later]
OK, made it here, went to reception, much food and drink was consumed and many old acquaintances refreshed. Lots of compliments on the book, but this is the choir. Off to bed, and conference tweeting/blogging on the morrow.
Safe Is Not An Option: A Review
Finally, someone at NASA is willing to take the book seriously enough to critically review it. Obviously, I will respond at some point (TL;DR version, he cherry picks and ignores much of what I have to say, but that’s to be expected, given his NASA-centric viewpoint), but it’s a bad week between taxes and ISPCS. Anyway, despite my disagreement with the review itself, I’m sincerely grateful to Mr. Fodrocci for finally acknowledging the book’s existence, rather than (as much of the industry, including IAASS, has) pretending it doesn’t exist and hoping it will just go away.
Chuck Hagel And Global Warming
Add this to the extensive annals of stupid things he’s said.
Sierra Nevada’s Bid
Although the document praises Sierra’s “strong management approach to ensure the technical work and schedule are accomplished,” it cautions that the company’s Dream Chaser had “the longest schedule for completing certification.” The letter also states that “it also has the most work to accomplish which is likely to further extend its schedule beyond 2017, and is most likely to reach certification and begin service missions later than the other ‘Offerors’.”
Discussing costs, Gerstenmaier says that “although SNC’s price is lower than Boeing’s price, its technical and management approaches and its past performance are not as high and I see considerably more schedule risk with its proposal. Both SNC and SpaceX had high past performance, and very good technical and management approaches, but SNC’s price is significantly higher than SpaceX’s price.”
Touching on why Boeing received a $4.2 billion contract, versus $2.6 billion for SpaceX, he adds “I consider Boeing’s superior proposal, with regard to both its technical and management approach and its past performance, to be worth the additional price in comparison to the SNC proposal.”
Given how subjective such evaluation processes are, it’s not an implausible story.