Burt Rutan says that NASA will be eating his dust.
“Thirty years ago, if you had asked NASA — and people did in those days — ‘How long would it be before I could buy tickets to space?’ the answer was, ‘About 30 years,’ ” Rutan told reporters in June.
“If you ask today, you’ll get about the same answer, ’30 years.’ I think that’s unfortunate. There’s been no progress at all made toward affordable space travel.”
Senator Kerry steps in it again:
“I just came here from Bowling Green,” Kerry told the crowd to subdued applause. “I was smart enough not to pick a choice between the Falcons and the, well, you know, all those other teams out there. I just go for Buckeye football, that’s where I’m coming from.”
At that point, before all the boos began raining down upon him, Kerry seemed to realize his error. In an attempt to silent the angry crowd of University of Michigan supporters, Kerry said, “But that was while I was in Ohio. I know I’m in the state of Michigan and you got a great big M and a powerhouse of a team.” Then his face, presumably, the Botox permitting, turned Big Blue.
If it’s Monday, it must be wolverine country.
I wanted to write something about it, but given how busy I am, I figured it would be better to just wait for Mark Steyn to weigh in.
It was worth the wait.
In 1992, pictures of a baffled George Bush p
I wanted to write something about it, but given how busy I am, I figured it would be better to just wait for Mark Steyn to weigh in.
It was worth the wait.
In 1992, pictures of a baffled George Bush p
I wanted to write something about it, but given how busy I am, I figured it would be better to just wait for Mark Steyn to weigh in.
It was worth the wait.
In 1992, pictures of a baffled George Bush p
Another item in the latest Industrial Physicist is a piece on understanding the uncertainties in global warming models, and the public policy implications of those uncertainties. It’s well worth a read if you care about global warming in particular or science and public policy in general.
One of the hardest things about ensuring that public policy is based on sound science is that sound science inherently involves uncertainties. Politicians like yes or no answers, but science only gives really reliable answers in the very long term, far longer than the relevant political timescales. In order to make policy based on sound science, politicians have to take uncertainty into account, and allow for the possibility that the policies may need to be adjusted as new information becomes available.
There’s a fairly in depth look at scramjets in the latest edition of The Industrial Physicist. It’s got enough meat on it to be worth reading, though I have a visceral dislike of scramjets. It’s nothing to do with the technical merits – it’s just that they are yet another technology that’s constantly being held out as the technical breakthrough needed to bring down launch costs. Someday I suspect scramjet powered vehicles (at least missiles) will be practical. In the meantime they are a kind of interesting technology that’s worth understanding just for curiousity’s sake.
Incidentally, I’m not singling out scramjets here – space elevators also trigger my “here we go again” reaction. Ditto electromagnetic accelerators.
An eco-cruise ship ran aground in Alaska, spilling 5000 gallons of fuel in the water.
This is almost as good as the environmentalist who was brutally killed by a rampaging tree a few days ago.
Despite the church bombings this weekend.
Ayatollah al-Sistani has condemned them:
Iraq’s top Shiite Muslim cleric condemned as “hideous crimes” the coordinated bomb attacks on five churches in Baghdad and Mosul that killed at least seven people and marked the insurgency’s first major attacks on Iraq’s minority Christians.
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani said in a statement that Sunday’s assaults on churches “targeted Iraq’s unity, stability and independence…”
“…We assert the importance of respecting the rights of Christian civilians and other religious minorities and reaffirm their right to live in their home country Iraq in security and peace.”
It looks like he understands the problem. Amazingly, even Mooky al-Sadr’s guy got into the act:
“This is a cowardly act and targets all Iraqis,” Abdul Hadi al-Daraji, spokesman for radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, told Al-Jazeera television.
Unfortunately, I’ll bet we won’t be hearing this from the imams across the border in Iran, or from the loony bins that are many of the mosques in Saudi Arabia. This is why Iraq is so fundamental in the war on the fundamentalists.
I’m on a deadline crunch today, trying to wrap up some consulting work, and a long essay for The New Atlantis, but it’s Monday, which means Jeff Foust has lots of good stuff up over at The Space Review, including a book review of New Moon Rising, a slapdown of Professor Van Allen (something apparently required every few years, ever since the dawn of the space age, yet he never seems to learn), and a proposal to send a Soyuz to the moon.