Don’t Try This In LEO, Robots

In the midst of an article in which he recommends that the administration encourage the Chinese to race us to the moon, Dwayne Day writes: “There is nothing that a human can do in low Earth orbit, other than the study of other humans, that a robot cannot do better.”

I hope that he didn’t give very much thought to that statement, because it’s demonstrably untrue. Could a robot have done this better? How about this? Or especially this, which happened over three decades ago?

I doubt that we have the robotic capability today to do those things, let alone at the time. Dwayne can argue if he likes that they weren’t worth doing (I would disagree in all cases, especially in the case of Skylab), but to say that there’s nothing that robots can’t do better than humans in LEO is…mistaken.

Interestingly, of course, this is being discussed as an alternate means to save Hubble, but it will clearly be a technical challenge, and it’s not being done because it’s a better way, but because NASA is unwilling to send a crew.

Back From Phoenix

But there’s a lot of non-blogging stuff to catch up on. I’ll try to get a post and pics up of the conference in the next day or two, but no promises. Bottom line–there’re lots of exciting things happening, and the days that NASA dominates manned spaceflight are looking increasingly numbered.

XCOR Gets Their Ticket To Suborbit

Thanks to Michael Mealling, I’ve got connectivity enough to announce that the FAA presented XCOR with their launch license this morning, at the Space Access Conference. It was the 180th day after completion of their licence application submittal, so they brought it in under the wire.

More later, but further details can be found at Michael’s wiki. Up to the minute pictures are also available on the wiki page.

[Update on Sunday evening]

If you haven’t seen it, Alan Boyle, who was in attendance with me (and who I greatly enjoyed meeting), has a more extensive story.

More Non-Posting Excuses

As though I wasn’t busy enough, I find this at NASA Watch (I also heard about it from a friend at Boeing).

White papers are invited that address initial challenges facing Project Constellation and Project Prometheus in general, and the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) in particular. Enclosed are the key focus area, issues, and suggested white paper topics. White papers that examine one or more of the topics are invited. Papers that address other important aspects (in a manner consistent with the information requested below) are also welcome. Viable white papers should be consistent with the January 14, 2004, U.S. Space Exploration Vision, as well as with generally accepted laws of physics. Innovative approaches

Making Males Superfluous

I don’t know whether or not Heather does, but apparently Mickey has two mommies.

Kono, in an email, said the procedure might be useful with animals for agricultural and scientific purposes. When asked if he saw any reason to produce human babies this way, he dismissed the question as “senseless.”

Some lizards and many other animals reproduce with only maternal genes, but mammals do not. Lab experiments in mice had produced embryos and fetuses, but no successful births.

Actually, for reasons stated in the article, this doesn’t mean that human parthenogenesis is just around the corner, but I suspect that it is inevitable. At some point, we’re going to have to work out the sociological implications.

HTML Problems

Not here, as far as I know, but I’ve noticed over the last few weeks that some blogs are coming up totally FUBAR in Mozilla (Firebird .7), though they appear OK in Explorer. I’m not sure, but I think they’re all blogspot sites. Here’s an example (one that’s a regular read for me).

I don’t have the time or the inclination to dig through the source to figure out what the problem is, but if anyone else is interested, they might want to tell the site owners, so that they’ll be more accessible to the rest of the non-Microsoft universe. The problem seems to start right after the words “Advertise on the world’s biggest nanoblog!” which makes me suspect that there’s a blogads problem.

[Update on Wednesday morning]

I just checked Nanobot again, and it’s OK this morning.

<shrug>

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!