Turkey has become the fourteenth nation to sign on to the Moon Treaty. Like the others, it’s never put so much as a grapefruit into orbit.
The War On Women
…conservative women, that is.
3-D Printing
…in weightlessness. This technology could be a game changer.
Jeff Bezos
An interesting profile in The Economist, including a mention (but unsurprisingly, little info) of Blue Origin.
Space Blather From Bill Posey
Once again, the congressman tells us how crucial NASA is to national security without explaining why, or what NASA has to do with weather satellites or cell phones. And I was very surprised to hear that the Chinese blew up their weathersat with a laser. The things you learn from Congresspeople.
Neil de Grasse Tyson
…is wrong about space policy. Well, he’s a scientist, not a policy analyst.
I’ve taught Katherine well, if I do say so myself.
Gas Prices
This is going to be fodder for some devastating campaign ads this fall. As I’ve said before, they should end with the tag line: “Obama got what he wanted. Did you?”
Via VDH, who has a lot more thoughts.
[Update a while later]
Sorry, link was missing originally. It’s there now.
Valentina Tereshkova
Happy seventy-fifth birthday!
SpaceX
Still more ambitious is Musk’s goal to reach Mars within 20 years – ten if he can. He firmly believes that it will be as natural a step for life to become multi-planetary as it was for it to evolve from single-celled creatures, move out of the sea and develop consciousness.
Musk says he wants to put 10,000 people on Mars, perhaps many more, and believes that will become a business proposition if the cost of a ticket can be brought down to the price of a decent house in California. Musk believes he will need $2 billion to $5 billion to reach the Red Planet which he sees as readily achievable.
Unlike Congress, Elon is serious about human spaceflight. And settlement.
Rush Limbaugh
…versus the mean girls.
[Early afternoon update]
I want to comment on the commotion over Rush Limbaugh’s use of the word “slut” to describe law student Sandra Fluke. Fluke, as you know, argued before a house congressional committee that women need taking care of. That is, if they should take it into their fluffy little heads to have sex with someone, they can’t be expected to manage the consequences all by their little selves. Someone else has got to pay for their contraception – preferably a big strong man like Barack Obama. Barack Obama has lots and lots of money. Chicks dig that. In fact, he’s so powerful, he just took the money from other people. What a turn on for girly girls like Sandra!
Anyway, Rush called her a slut, probably hoping that that sort of ungentlemanly behavior toward women would land him a show on HBO like that super cool Bill Maher, who called Governor Sarah Palin the c-word (whatever that is) and entertained guests who fantasized about raping Michele Bachmann. If only Rush could get a show like Bill Maher then he could be bitter and irrelevant too – probably the only things missing from Rush’s life.
So now the left is calling for Rush’s head and the right is arguing hotly that the left says equally misogynist things and even sometimes dumps their women into the water and then leaves them there locked in a car to drown while they go back to their hotel to chat with their friends and call their lawyer. And yet a leftist killer of women can go on to become the Lion of the Senate, and even a piece of work like James Carville who implied one of his boss’s sexual harassment victims was trailer trash gets a network gig. Hey, maybe Rush was trying to get a network gig like James Carville!
I’m sure that’s it.