Business, Space

A Tantalyzing Space Press Release

2 Comments

I just got this from Shafer Corporation:

Schafer Corporation Signs Licensing Agreement with MoonDust Technologies LLC

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 21, 2011

Schafer Corporation Licenses Space Commercialization Technology to MoonDust Technologies, LLC

Albuquerque, NM – The Schafer Corporation, a scientific and engineering company, has signed a Licensing and Development Agreement with MoonDust Technologies, LLC (MDT) of Tucson, AZ to give them exclusive, worldwide production and marketing rights for a unique line of products resulting from the use of Schafer’s Proprietary microgravity production technology. Although well known for their defense-related space capabilities, Schafer has been developing and evaluating technologies for commercial space applications since 2008.

The Agreement grants MDT the exclusive right to produce and sell these products worldwide and provides Schafer with royalties on the sales. As part of the agreement, Schafer will provide MDT with technical and engineering support focused on the design and development of space hardware. “We’re excited about this opportunity,” said Schafer Corporation President Tony Frederickson. “For over 40 years, visions of space-based commercial ventures have been driven by the advantages of microgravity fabrication for a range of high-value products. We’re pleased that Schafer technology will play a part as this dream at last nears reality.”

“We were blown away,” said MoonDust Technologies CEO Rick Gibson. “When we saw what they had developed it was a no brainer; form the company and let’s do this. The impact will be stunning – we’re looking at a broad range of transformational products involving medical, information, and DOD applications.”

MoonDust Technologies, LLC was created as an affiliate of the Medusa Group of companies in Tucson, AZ. Dan Hodges, CEO and President of Medusa said “Notably, Schafer’s micro-gravity technology allows us to solve some extremely difficult technical issues and create solutions and products that are desperately needed, but simply couldn’t be solved with earth-bound processes before. This approach is the only way to go.” MDT expects to have sample products available for industry review next summer, 2012.

About Schafer Corporation

Schafer Corporation, formed in 1972, is a leading-edge technology company providing high quality products and professional services to government and industry customers. Schafer’s legacy is rooted in space, optical, and directed energy programs. Today, our knowledge and experience supports all branches of the military, the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security and NASA. In addition to our legacy competencies, we support these customers over a broad set of disciplines including system engineering, technology management, missile defense, commercial space, net-centric systems and communications, nano-fabrication, modeling and simulation and agile software development.

For more information, please visit: www.schafercorp.com

Contact: Rhonda Peyton P: 505-338-2856

About MoonDust Technologies, LLC

MoonDust Technologies, LLC (MDT) was created in 2011 by Rick Gibson with its headquarters located in Tucson, AZ. MDT is an OEM product company that specializes in the production of unique materials that can only be manufactured in microgravity environments. MDT owns exclusive rights to Proprietary technology that has been developed by leading edge defense and advanced aerospace companies.

For more information, please visit: www.MoonDustLLC.com
rpeyton@schaferalb.com
MoonDust Media Relations: Rick Gibson
 p: 520-661-6797

About Medusa

Medusa comprises a group of five affiliated companies specializing in electromagnetic, ultrasound and aeronautical research, development and operations. With broad operational expertise, MRO and laboratory facilities, the Company has unique large corporation capabilities with the attention to detail and customer needs which emanate from a small company atmosphere.

For more information, please visit: www.medusa.com

Medusa Media Relations: Darrin Holman p: 520-512-5299

Via Rich Glover at Shafer, who says that “…if successful, this is a game changer.”

Political Commentary, Weird

Penn State In Michigan?

5 Comments

Well, this is interesting, I guess, but as commenters note, usually there’s not just one witness in cases like this. Hard to know what’s cause and what’s effect in terms of the guy’s mental condition (that is, is he mentally ill because of real abuse, or is he making up stories about abuse because he’s mentally ill?). Though apparently the mother was aware, and they did have contact.

For whatever it’s worth, when I was growing up, I lived around the corner from Congressman Kildee, and delivered his morning paper. When I collected from him, he never invited me in.

[Update a while later]

Given that he’s retiring this year, I wonder what effect, if any, these revelations will have on the race to replace him? Might make it tougher for nephew Dan.

[Late evening update]

Welcome, Instapundit readers. I have to say that it’s certainly possible that he just wasn’t that into me. Certainly true of a lot of women that I’ve met over the decades…

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

What Occupy Harvard

…should tell their elite liberal parents on Thanksgiving:

The man you think is a “sucker” because he votes for Republican candidates who don’t seem to give a hoot about him will vote for them every time. He looks at you, the crowd of The-Fix-Is-Always-In, and he casts his lot with the crowd of wealth and initiative.

You see, Mom and Dad, they don’t lie about his prospects. They tell him that he has to sink or swim. They don’t disrespect his willpower by promising that government will make life easier for him. They tell him that they respect his individuality. They tell him straight out what you, the liberal elite, know to be true but will never say. They tell him that life in America is winner-take-all, and that they are the people who will let him keep what he has. They tell him that his religion, his wife’s capacity to reproduce, his children—whether they are “successful” or not—are his treasure. They tell him that they don’t care if he is a person of modest ambition, little sophistication, and humble means. What they value is his capacity to change his own life.

What you tell him is that he should put his life in your hands. Yet you scorn his religion. You mock his faith in the sacredness of conception. You deride his belief in family. You tell him that his love for hunting makes him a murderer, and that his terror at being economically displaced makes him a xenophobe and a racist. Then you emasculate his hope for the future by telling him that if his ship comes in—that dream of a ship that makes the grinding disappointment of daily life worth living through—you’ll help yourself to a big slice of it. And you expect him to believe your rhetoric about fairness and equality when, all the while, you are accusing him of gullibility in his politics and bad faith toward the least fortunate of his fellow citizens. When, all the while, you are living untouched by your own policies. When you are cushioned against life’s hardness, not by government, but by simply knowing other people in your class. You expect him to buy your talk about equitable distribution of wealth when you are sailing through tax loopholes off into the sunset. For this man, his emotions make all the rational sense in the world.

Indeed.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary

Good News For Space Startups

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And not just space startups: the House passed a bill to allow non-accredited investors to invest up to ten grand in startups. This would undo some of the damage caused by Sarbanes-Oxley, though that still needs to be repealed as well (one of the many disasters of the Bush administration). It would also be a huge improvement over decades-long SEC rules that have prevented space entrepreneurs from easily raising funds. And yes, of course, there will be some bad deals. Caveat emptor.

And of course, it isn’t law yet. It still has to get through the Senate and signed by the president. I won’t hold my breath.

Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Space

Changing The Conversation

6 Comments

I agree with Stephen Hawking that it is important to expand humanity into the universe, but…:

Stephen Hawking says the colonization of outer space is key to the survival of humankind, predicting it will be difficult for the world’s inhabitants “to avoid disaster in the next hundred years.”

The renowned astrophysicist explores some of the most remarkable advancements in technology and health with the new U.K.-Canadian series “Brave New World With Stephen Hawking,” debuting Saturday on Discovery World HD.

Before its premiere, he discussed the earth’s most pressing concerns in an email interview with The Canadian Press from Cambridge, England, declaring space exploration to be humankind’s most urgent mission.

“We are entering an increasingly dangerous period of our history,” said Hawking, who has Lou Gehrig’s disease, leaving him almost completely paralyzed and unable to speak.

Please stop using the E-word as though it’s synonymous with space settlement. It is not. It is a means to an end, and as long as the focus stays on “exploration,” it is easy for opponents of sending humans into space to say, “it’s cheaper with robots.” Unless you believe that robots will be our mind children (as some do), humanity is not going to settle space with robots. Every time you are about to say the phrase “space exploration,” stop yourself, and replace it with “space settlement.”

As an aside, for those who followed the link to Wikipedia, Jimmie Wales is not Hans Moravec. He’s not a douche, either. Or maybe he is. That one’s a matter of opinion, I guess. Anyway, as The Oatmeal points out, you get some pretty hilarious Wikipedia pages when Wales is doing a fundraiser. He should move his face over to the right side of the page, or something.

Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

What The Occupiers Believe And Why They Believe It

6 Comments

It’s indoctrination:

During the 2008 campaign, Obama’s critics often called him a “radical,” a “socialist” or even a “Marxist” and were either dismissed as hysterics or condemned for “McCarthyism.” It was not widely noted that, for those too young to remember America’s Cold War struggle against Soviet tyranny, the accusation of “Marxism” doesn’t carry much weight, while “McCarthyism” is at most something they’ve read about in books. (Stan Evans’s Blacklisted by History probably isn’t on the collegiate reading list.) Voters who were 25 in 2008 were in first grade when the Berlin Wall came down. If they have some idea that the Soviet empire was a bad thing, they have little idea of why it was bad. And this ignorance is no accident.

To explain why the Bolshevik experiment failed so spectacularly would require that students be taught the errors of socialism, which would necessarily require an explanation of the superiority of the market economy to the socialist planned economy. And the left-wing orientation of today’s academic establishment — “Down With Capitalist Education!” to quote a sign in a protest today by Cal State university faculty — pretty much prohibits any such explanation.

Seventeen-year-olds taught that they are “the 99 percent” and that advocates of economic freedom are “f–king up our future” have not been merely miseducated, but have been quite literally indoctrinated. But as Buckley said, they would be “outraged by the suggestion” that they have not arrived at their beliefs “by independent intellectual exertion.”

These young people have not been taught Marx and Lenin. Rather, they have had their heads stuffed with nebulous ideas about “equality,” “rights” and “social justice” by teachers (and journalists and movie producers) who cherish romantic mythology about the righteous glories of Sixties radical movements.

The other problem is that Marxism is an emotionally appealing argument, to those who have never been taught how to actually think.

[Update a while later]

“The putrid stench of a century of folk Marxism.”

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!