He was a great guy, and made a lot of contributions to advancing the cause of space development. I worked with him a lot in the eighties when I was at Rockwell and he was at Scripps (with a beautiful facility on the cliffs in La Jolla). He’ll be missed.
The Oatmeal
…goes after SOPA. Slightly NSFW (some hawt koala/goat lovin’).
Internet Regulation And The Economics Of Piracy
A very good post by Julian Sanchez on why SOPA/PIPA are so bad.
The Commerce Clause
…and its threat to liberty, as currently interpreted. The Supreme Court has a chance to finally get this right, after decades of Wickard-driven federal tyranny, but I fear they won’t.
[Update a while later]
Related: does the Constitution protect the unenumerated right to economic liberty? If not, as Glenn says, the Ninth Amendment is a dead letter.
A 3-D Printer
That uses sun and sand. He should work on a version to test on the moon.
The Ship Disaster
Should not have been at all surprising.
Adult Stem Cells
…that seem to work in the brain. Faster, please.
The G-Spot
After sixty years of searching, researchers still can’t find it.
I say it’s too early to give up. I will steadfastly continue the search, on my own, if need be. Volunteer searchees can contact me via email, or in chat rooms.
A View Of The Capsized Ship
From above. Not clear whether this is aerial or satellite.
Did The US Sabotage The Russian Mars Probe?
Ummmmmm…no:
Rogozin, at least, admitted that a far more plausible cause was a failure on the spacecraft itself. “Practially all disruptions are due to flaws in the technologies manufactured 12 to 13 years ago,” he said. And a new and highly plausible report issued today further supports the leading theory: that the craft’s autopilot software had never been adequately debugged. The probe’s chief scientist, Alexander Zakharov, also denounced the interference theory as “exotic” and “disingenuous.”
The Russians have space tracking blind spots around the world because they scrapped their sea-going tracking ships years ago, and closed down other ground sites. The space program’s tracking ability is so limited that shortly before the launch of Fobos-Grunt, a program scientist emailed amateur astronomers in South America, asking them to go outside when the probe was passing overhead and report whether its rocket was firing on time. (It wasn’t, as it turned out.)
And as for Kwajalein, scientists familiar with worldwide radar tracking of asteroids assure me they’ve never heard of any participation by radars based there. If asked, they would have told Kommersant the same thing.
Sadly, this knee-jerk blame shifting in the space industry has ramped up in recent years. The real danger in the Russian nonsense about finding the United States at fault for the crash isn’t just the blow to diplomacy and public attitudes. Also important is how such claims prevent a proper investigation and get in the way of implementing a reliable “fix.”
Phantom “causes” lead to delusional, even damaging, responses. That raises the level of danger to which everybody whose lives depend on Russian spacecraft—and that now includes U.S. and other astronauts—is exposed.
Yup. And it’s looking more and more like it was a software problem.