According to this article, SpaceShipOne had problems on its last test flight.

…as SpaceShipOne detached from White Knight for an unpowered glide test, the radio chatter at Mojave Airport was suddenly tinged with alarm. ?Cut back on your trim, Mike, you?re way out of it!? a voice urged Mike Melville, the ship?s test pilot, over the com. SpaceShipOne, weighed down with lead ballast in its aft section to test the plane?s handling, was plummeting out of control, rolling over twice and falling 11,000 feet before Melville could wrestle the ship out of its dive. The rest of the trial maneuvers were canceled, and both craft came in for landings just as the desert sun was heating up.

Burt is making the usual noises about occasionally having unexpected things happen during flight test, and that’s why we have flight tests, and that’s of course true. It may be that it just didn’t behave quite as Melville expected, and that he’ll be better prepared next time, or it may mean some fundamental problem with the design. I’ve no idea, but it should at least give pause to any confident predictions of celebrating the Wright anniversary with a private manned spaceflight (even ignoring the regulatory issues).

I also think that this bit about XCOR is a little misleading:

…The engineers at the small, 12-person Mojave, Calif., firm, down the street from Scaled Composites, have designed the Xerus, a winged space plane intended to carry a passenger and pilot to suborbital space at Mach 4, powered by at least four kerosene rockets. The ship looks sleek in the drawings, the engineers have plenty of experience building spacecraft?but the company is totally broke. They work from an un-air-conditioned former Marine hangar and pay for their efforts out of their own pockets.

While it may be that XCOR is “broke” in a literal cash sense (I’m not privy to the books), the company has many assets (including their potential matching grant from the Air Force) that, combined with their talented staff, will be parlayable into investment. I’m personally confident that it will happen, sooner or later, and that they’ll remain alive until it does.

Frank J. has taken a break from making futile war on the blogfather (you will be assimilated) at least long enough to do something useful.

Bookmark this site if you want to get the real scoop from Iraq, rather than the manufactured quagmire that those yearning-for-their-former-days-of-glory-in-Vietnam members of the press would like you to believe.

Former astronaut Don Peterson had a misguided op-ed the other day opposing the Orbital Space Plane.

While I’m no fan of the OSP, and think that it should be stillborn (and perhaps in fact is, though it will cost us billions and years to realize it), he opposes it for all the wrong reasons. He’s too much blinded by his Shuttle experience. I was going to comment on it, but now I don’t have to, because the Marsblogger has, at least as well as I would or could have.

Godless has a post over at Gene Expression that I largely agree with (though I would have some quibbles), that is accordingly certain to enrage vast swathes of academia, particularly the pomos. He ranks various academic fields by required intelligence. Gender/ethnic “studies” comes out dead last, under gym.

I’m more interested, though, in a comment by one of his readers, which I think provides at least a partial explanation.

I always point out that the humanities have been largely destroyed in the last 40 years. I think if you had to master greek, latin and old english and write very detailed papers it would be a much more challenging field.

I think that elimination of the language requirement in general may have softened things up quite a bit (I know that I’d certainly have had much more difficulty getting my engineering degrees if they hadn’t done so–I perhaps might not even have made it).

But as other commenters point out, even the hard science curriculum has been dumbed down to some degree, particularly with the huge influx of computer “science” degrees in the desperate nineties. Several commenters point out the lack of familiarity with multi-variable calculus, even among the faculty.

I may have more thoughts on this later, but the comments are interesting even without any input from me.

Godless has a post over at Gene Expression that I largely agree with (though I would have some quibbles), that is accordingly certain to enrage vast swathes of academia, particularly the pomos. He ranks various academic fields by required intelligence. Gender/ethnic “studies” comes out dead last, under gym.

I’m more interested, though, in a comment by one of his readers, which I think provides at least a partial explanation.

I always point out that the humanities have been largely destroyed in the last 40 years. I think if you had to master greek, latin and old english and write very detailed papers it would be a much more challenging field.

I think that elimination of the language requirement in general may have softened things up quite a bit (I know that I’d certainly have had much more difficulty getting my engineering degrees if they hadn’t done so–I perhaps might not even have made it).

But as other commenters point out, even the hard science curriculum has been dumbed down to some degree, particularly with the huge influx of computer “science” degrees in the desperate nineties. Several commenters point out the lack of familiarity with multi-variable calculus, even among the faculty.

I may have more thoughts on this later, but the comments are interesting even without any input from me.

Godless has a post over at Gene Expression that I largely agree with (though I would have some quibbles), that is accordingly certain to enrage vast swathes of academia, particularly the pomos. He ranks various academic fields by required intelligence. Gender/ethnic “studies” comes out dead last, under gym.

I’m more interested, though, in a comment by one of his readers, which I think provides at least a partial explanation.

I always point out that the humanities have been largely destroyed in the last 40 years. I think if you had to master greek, latin and old english and write very detailed papers it would be a much more challenging field.

I think that elimination of the language requirement in general may have softened things up quite a bit (I know that I’d certainly have had much more difficulty getting my engineering degrees if they hadn’t done so–I perhaps might not even have made it).

But as other commenters point out, even the hard science curriculum has been dumbed down to some degree, particularly with the huge influx of computer “science” degrees in the desperate nineties. Several commenters point out the lack of familiarity with multi-variable calculus, even among the faculty.

I may have more thoughts on this later, but the comments are interesting even without any input from me.

To help get in touch with your inner geek.

[via Geek Press

I was out of town for the weekend, and had little time to check in. I’m going away again on Wednesday for a few days (fall colors in the upper Midwest and family visits) and have two columns to write, so I don’t know how much else you’ll see.

Just in case anyone thought I was hit by a beer truck.

Or cared…

Dr. Steve Harris has a much more detailed dissection (or vivisection?) of the Arizona article on cryonics regulation than mine.

Excerpt:

…When Thomas says the state has *no* regulatory authority
over Alcor, what he’s actually complaining about is that the Arizona Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers doesn’t wield state authority over Alcor, and the state therefore doesn’t have as much authority as Thomas WANTS it to have, because Alcor is regulated in another part of the law. But that’s not the same thing…

…What is done to bodies at medical schools also might be “mutilation” to Mr. Thomas also, but that’s irrelevant. The law in Arizona actually does not prohibit the mutilation of dead bodies it only becomes mutilation if done without force or coverage by law. The AAGA provides the law, and it specifically allows technicians to remove body parts, and so on, if the purpose is science or research. See the relevant law here. Funeral directors can’t do that, and perhaps this is what Mr. Thomas is complaining about. But scientific institutions can, and funeral directors cannot, BECAUSE the AAGA, which is the relevant 1996 Arizona State Law, **is written that way.** Otherwise you can be sure Mr. Thomas wouldn’t be complaining to the legislature about it, but rather would be going to the attorney general. Again, Mr. Thomas calls things “unregulated” when the state actually is explicitly authorizing an action that Mr. Thomas doesn’t *like* (cutting up bodies for science). Regulating an
action does not mean outlawing it, fortunately…

…If Thomas asked for cryonics be regulated by Board he represents, this would look like the naked power grab that it is. So what do we see, instead? Thomas deceptively asks for creation of a brand new state agency (which he knows will never happen), and then one of the legislators stands up right away to deliver the message that it’s better to put things into the hands of good old Mr. Thomas and his boys (who we all know and love). Modest though they may be…

…Alcor needs to spend time with the sponsoring legislator to see how he got into the pocket of the funeral industry. Then to remind some of the other legislators that the AAGA already is the state’s regulation intended to cover the
practice of cutting up bodies for research. Alcor is regulated, just not in the way the funeral industry wants.

That’s the meat of it, but the whole thing’s worth a read for those interested in the issues.