…with much to be modest about.
Of course, given his talent for appointing rank incompetents like Janet Moronitano and Tim “Can’t Figure Out My Taxes” Geithner, maybe he would be better than them.
An Inconvenient Recanting
James Lovelock doesn’t think that we’re quite as doomed as he used to. So Gaia’s OK for now.
Aren’t You A Good Doggie?
Yes you are. All of a sudden, for some reason, Jon Stewart doesn’t think that people should be making dog jokes.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s another partisan media hackdistinguished journalist who liked talking about dogs until he didn’t like talking about dogs.
A Bad Week For Shuttlyndra Supporters
I have some thoughts on recent events over at Open Market.
Tomorrow’s Announcement
Here’s a WSJ piece on it. If they do actually move an asteroid, under current precedent, they’d own it.
I won’t be covering it in real time, because I’ll be at a workshop at JPL giving a talk on propellant depots. Interestingly, Dennis Wingo gives a talk following mine on extraterrestrial resource utilization. It seems like a lot of things are coming together at the same time.
[Evening update]
Sorry, workshop link was wrong. Fixed now, I hope.
Another One-Week Slip
The Dragon flight has been pushed off again, apparently to do some final validation on code. There’s entirely too much political pressure on the successful outcome of this flight.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s the official release from SpaceX: “After reviewing our recent progress, it was clear that we needed more time to finish hardware-in-the-loop testing and properly review and follow up on all data. While it is still possible that we could launch on May 3rd, it would be wise to add a few more days of margin in case things take longer than expected. As a result, our launch is likely to be pushed back by one week, pending coordination with NASA.”
Another Unfortunate Document Leak
If you’re an SLS supporter, that is. Spaceref has a NASA document from November that concludes utilizing orbital assembly and fueling for exploration missions adds no significant mission risk. Opponents of this concept have been sowing FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) about this ever since it became viewed as a threat to first Ares, and now SLS. It was always a monumentally ignorant argument, that could be made only by someone unfamiliar with basic statistics and space ops (and sadly, it was once even made by the administrator himself), but now NASA has an internal document that shows what nonsense it is (and really, always was). Of course, in defense of Bolden, he knew what his audience wanted to hear.
Oh, The Humanities
A better question is, should they be, at least in anything resembling their current form. It won’t change until parents realize what a massive fraud the whole thing is.
Just A Coincidence, Obviously
Wealthier states that had strong Democrat connections got most of the “stimulus” money. Based on the reaction to the economy, it mostly “stimulated” campaign donations.
Open Access
…and its importance to the integrity and public trust in scientific institutions:
If scientists are reluctant to share their data with other scientists it’s very difficult to believe they will be happy to put it all in the public domain. But I think they should. And I don’t mean just chucking terabytes of uncalibrated raw data onto a website in such a way that it’s impossible to use for any practical purpose. I mean fully documented, carefully maintained databases containing raw data, analysis tools and processed data products.
You might think this is all a bit Utopian, but the practice of sharing data is already widespread in my own field, astrophysics, and there are already many public databases of the type I’ve described. An exemplar is the excellent LAMBDA site which is a repository for data arising from research into the cosmic microwave background. Most astrophysical research publications from all around the world are also available, free of charge, at the arXiv.
So astrophysics is already much more open than most other fields, to the extent that it has already made the traditional model of publication and dissemination virtually redundant. I hope other disciplines follow this lead, because if researchers can’t find a way to break free from the shackles placed on them by the current system, the fragile relationship between science and society – already frayed by episodes like the University of East Anglia email scandal – may disintegrate entirely.
The problem is that astrophysics, unlike climate “science,” doesn’t have a political agenda, so he’s obviously making an unreasonable request.