Well, actually a pre-dawn launch, but it should still be a nice sight if/when the Delta II takes off with the Mars Phoenix lander tomorrow morning, from the Cape. I don’t know if I can work up the gumption to drive up there for it, though. Particularly if we plan to see Endeavour launch on Tuesday, which seems to be back on track with the valve replacement in the crew cabin.
Fantasy Land
Jeff Foust has found the most egregiously awful reporting of the Scaled Composites explosion yet.
Old Dog, New Trick
I don’t text much, but it sounds like a handy skill to have in an emergency:
The three company representatives were unanimous in their No. 1 piece of advice for cell-phone users:
“The biggest tip is to understand the importance of text messaging,” Smith said. “Text messaging uses far fewer of our network resources.”
Losing The War
…against spam. It’s an interesting history, but a little depressing.
[Via Geek Press]
Comment Problems
I haven’t been getting email notification of comments. This isn’t just an inconvenience–it means that the spammers can have their way with the blog, and I don’t even know about it. I’m putting this post up as a place for testing and troubleshooting for me and the sysadmin.
In-Air WiFi
Looks like it’s finally coming. I’m not sure that this is the ultimate technical solution, though. 1.5 Mbs won’t go very far with a plane full of browsing passengers, and it won’t work for international flights over the oceans. Ultimately, they’ll have to find a satellite solution, with more bandwidth.
Stop The World, I Want To Get Off
Just in case you somehow imagined that Elton John wasn’t an idiot, this should lay the matter to rest:
Crumbling Infrastructure
Amidst huge entitlement programs, paying farmers not to grow food, pork and boondoggles, the nation’s transportation infrastructure has been badly neglected, and is quite brittle. It also makes one wonder how many other ticking time bombs there are out there.
This applies to space transportation as well. A category three hurricane could wipe out NASA’s manned space program. On some days, I’m not sure that would be a bad thing. It would force them to do something different, and break us out of the rut we’ve been in since Apollo.
Of course, there’s a big difference. The highway infrastructure was a huge improvement over the past, offering affordable mobility to hundreds of millions of Americans, with a great deal of redundancy and resiliency. The space transportation infrastructure has never been affordable to anyone but the government, or able to support more than a few dozen people in orbit per year, and it’s always been quite fragile, with no backups. Until we address this issue, we’ll never be a spacefaring nation, or accomplish the things there that many of use want. But all that NASA offers is more of the same.
Quashing Of Dissent
The Saudis are suppressing speech, and getting books burned.
Naive
So, Barack Hussein Obama made a foreign policy speech today. Apparently, he wants to (among other things) invade Pakistan. So, he wants to make nice with North Korea and Ahmadinejad, and Hugo Chavez, and the chinless opthalmologist, all of whom are essentially at war with us, but invade a key ally in the war. Boy, I think four years of this guy would make us long for Jimmy Carter. If the intent of this was to disprove Hillary’s charge that he’s naive, I suspect that the effect will be the opposite.
Jim Geraghty has deconstructed the speech.