Jeff Foust attended a speech that Elon Musk gave in DC, and took notes. It would be nice to see a Falcon 9 launch this summer.
Recognizing Reality
Astrium has officially shelved its nutty suborbital project:
“The world economic situation has created a difficult near term environment in which to finalise ongoing discussions with investors. Astrium is to temporarily slow down the technical activities focusing on core risk mitigation for the project. The [space jet] team achieved impressive results in the pre-development phase particularly in the field of propulsion technology. Astrium sees suborbital flight as a promising area because of the emerging space tourism market.”
They had no sensible business case even in a booming economy. There was never any way that a vehicle with a billion-dollar development cost was going to compete with the other players.
Unless, of course, they were hoping to pull a Concorde, and have the taxpayers pick up the tab.
[Update a while later]
More thoughts from Doug Messier, with a roundup of the competition.
Naivety
Some thoughts on “hitting the reset button with Russia.” And other countries.
People who delude themselves that all of our foreign relations issues were the fault of George Bush are in for a rude awakening.
Well, Who Would Know Better?
TOTUS has a sneak preview of tonight’s presser.
More spoilers here and a Reader’s Digest Condensed version here.
A Silver Lining In The Madoff Cloud
It put an end to funding nonsense like this:
A typical apartment has three or four rooms in the shapes of either a cylinder, a cube, or a sphere. Rooms surround a kitchen-living room combination with bumpy, undulating floors and floor-to-ceiling ladders and poles. Dozens of colors, from school-bus yellow to sky blue, cover the walls, ceilings and other surfaces.
At least one tenant says he feels a little younger already. Nobutaka Yamaoka, who moved in with his wife and two children about two years ago, says he has lost more than 20 pounds and no longer suffers from hay fever, though he isn’t sure whether it was cured by the loft.
There is no closet, and Mr. Yamaoka can’t buy furniture for the living room or kitchen because the floor is too uneven, but he relishes the lifestyle. “I feel a completely different kind of comfort here,” says the 43-year-old video director. His wife, however, complains that the apartment is too cold. Also, the window to the balcony is near the floor, and she keeps bumping her head against the frame when she crawls out to hang up laundry, he says. (“That’s one of the exercises,” says Ms. Gins.)
“A different kind of comfort.” Yes, I suppose that’s one way to put it. But there’s a fly in the ointment:
Some transhumanists dismiss the couple’s architectural solution.
You don’t say.
“Human life has enough challenges in terms of our work and daily lives that we don’t need to invent new physical challenges for our bodies,” says Ray Kurzweil, a leading transhumanist figure in the U.S.
Well, the good news is that Madoff’s (and their) loss is our gain.
The HitlerObama-Youth Bill Passes The House
Gateway Pundit has the story.
Oh, sorry, did I offend? Let’s call them the Young Pioneers instead. And soon, we’ll find out what color the uniforms are.
I hope there will be an immediate suit against it on Thirteenth-Amendment grounds (assuming it makes it through the Senate — I’m hoping that it will be one of many bridges too far).
These people want to bring back slavery.
Fighting Aging
“Reason” has a link roundup of Russian coverage of an Aubrey de Grey visit, and some thoughts on cryonics from Robin Hanson. It’s encouraging to hear from de Grey that the first man who will live to a hundred and fifty is probably alive, and sixty today. And that people currently living will hit a thousand, if they wish (though I think it would be tough to go that long without some non-aging cause of death).
Let’s Hope The Modern Ones Don’t Follow Suit
There’s accumulating evidence that ancient Druids engaged in cannibalism and human sacrifice.
There seems to be something missing here, though:
By the early centuries of the first millennium A.D., the Celts’ defeat and absorption into the Roman Empire was nearly complete across Europe.
Today, their once wide-ranging culture lives on mainly in the traditional languages of Ireland, Wales, and Brittany, France.
Why no mention of Scotland?
Some Good News About The New Brown Shirts
They’re not very effective:
Trying to mobilize voters to rally behind a complex, multi-trillion dollar budget that Congress will take months to enact is a different task from winning votes for a presidential candidate.
“You live in Terre Haute, Indiana, or suburban Denver, and someone you don’t know knocks on the door and talks politics — the election is over,” said Peter Brown, the assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute in Connecticut. “I’m not sure if it will make a big difference.”
Still, Brown concedes that it’s early enough in Obama’s presidency and he’s still popular enough that some people will listen and give Obama “the benefit of the doubt” on his agenda.
“They’re scared about their income future,” Brown said.
Well, I’m scared as hell as hell about my income future, too, because Obama wants to tax the hell out of it. It doesn’t make him popular with me. And whatever “benefit of the doubt” he had with me ended last spring, after the duplicity about Reverend Wright.
Here We Go Again
New “cold fusion” results. It’s hard to believe that it’s been twenty years since Pons’ and Fleischmann’s original claims.