Howie Kurtz says that General Clark’s honeymoon with the press is over, after a single day.
Soaring Robots
The LA Times (sorry, registration required) has another typically misguided editorial about the space program. Like much of the rest of the media, they remain mired in the Cold-War mentality, and can only conceive of space as being for “exploration” and “science.” Accordingly, they continue to promulgate the tired and false dichotomy between man and machine.
Where Americans think NASA should go after the February explosion of the space shuttle Columbia depends on whether they’re Star Trek people or robot people. Trekkies say NASA must not shrink from the poetic challenge of human space exploration, that the inspirational pull can’t be measured by money. The robot people point out that unmanned craft do much more science for much less money, that there’s sufficient inspiration to be had from probes now heading for Mars and Saturn or the James Webb space telescope, to be deployed in 2010…
…Both the space shuttle and the international space station, which account for 40% of NASA’s budget, are dubious science. As Robert L. Park, a University of Maryland physics professor, bluntly said of the Columbia mission, “Nothing was being done on that flight that would have any impact on any field of science.”
But where is it written that the only reason that we should expend taxpayer dollars on civil space is science? It’s always assumed that it’s so, but it’s long past time to have a national debate on the subject, rather than continuing old and unresolvable arguments on that are based on flawed assumptions.
There is a little glimmer of hope toward the end, however:
Congress, as Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) suggests, should first require NASA to perform a detailed study of the costs and benefits of human space flight. This hard-nosed exercise should not quash the grander vision for space or the unimagined opportunities there. Might NASA find, for example, that entrepreneurs would take over programs it micromanages at a cost of billions?
I’m not sure that any entrepreneur in their right mind would want to do anything that NASA is currently doing, and I’m not sure what they mean by this, but I take heart that, despite their science-centric viewpoint, they’re at least willing to use the world “entrepreneur” in a space editorial. It will be interesting to see what the editorial response is when an actual entrepreneur (like Burt Rutan, or XCOR, or Armadillo) actually puts people into space, with no help whatsoever from NASA.
Second Flight Of Stairs
Part Two of Jeff Foust’s reporting on progress in space elevators is up now.
Winds Of Space
Joe Katzman has a good roundup of space policy links over at Winds of Change, particularly pertinent now that policy is actually being formulated in the wake of the release of the CAIB report on Columbia.
RIP To An Ecologist
I hadn’t heard this at the time, but I just learned that Garrett Hardin (most noted for coining the phrase, “tragedy of the commons”) has died, with his wife. The article doesn’t mention this, but according to Razib at Gene Expression, it was a double suicide. Apparently they’d been ailing.
I could say something snarky about him finally living up (err…as it were) to his population-reducing principles, but I won’t…
Farewell To A Space Probe
Galileo (the spacecraft, not the scientist) is going to plunge into Jupiter’s atmosphere tomorrow, ending its many-year exploration of that planet and its many moons. NASA is deliberately dropping it into the Jovian atmosphere in order to prevent it from accidentally hitting one of the moons, such as Europa, which may harbor life, and thereby contaminate that body with earth life that may have somehow survived the many years in deep space and Jupiter’s intense radiation fields.
This weblog has a warm feeling for the spacecraft, which had a very hard life. The picture of the earth and moon in the banner was taken by it on one of its gravity-sling encounters, in which it stole a little momentum from the earth-moon system to augment its trip to the gas giant. In its honor, I’m displaying it in this post in more detail.
I don’t like to anthropomorphize spacecraft, but it was a doughty explorer, and despite the rocky start to the mission, delivered a wealth of new information about our system’s largest planet and its satellites. May it rest in peace.
[Thanks to my web designer Bill Simon for the heads up]
With Her Help, We’ll Get Through Somehow
Jane Galt is writing what I know we’re all feeling about the great tragedy.
Certainly, the world will never regain for us that quality of hope and magic which it once had, but with the passage of years our pain will ease. No matter how improbable it may seem to you in this terrible time, someday you will laugh again.
Hey, she’s right!
She managed to lift my black spirits, and make me laugh today, despite all.
With Her Help, We’ll Get Through Somehow
Jane Galt is writing what I know we’re all feeling about the great tragedy.
Certainly, the world will never regain for us that quality of hope and magic which it once had, but with the passage of years our pain will ease. No matter how improbable it may seem to you in this terrible time, someday you will laugh again.
Hey, she’s right!
She managed to lift my black spirits, and make me laugh today, despite all.
With Her Help, We’ll Get Through Somehow
Jane Galt is writing what I know we’re all feeling about the great tragedy.
Certainly, the world will never regain for us that quality of hope and magic which it once had, but with the passage of years our pain will ease. No matter how improbable it may seem to you in this terrible time, someday you will laugh again.
Hey, she’s right!
She managed to lift my black spirits, and make me laugh today, despite all.
I’m Taking Bets
How long before the ill-prepared Jonah goes all Korean on us and eats Cosmo?