Friday, November 30, 2012

How Looper should have ended...

What has Mars Curiosity found anyway?

Addendum: NASA downplays 'earthshaking' Mars Curiosity discovery

Friday, November 23, 2012

A heart warming Thanksgiving story:

A retired officer in the Saudi Navy strongly suggests that the Arabs rethink their hatred of Israel and start concentrating on improving the lives of their own people.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Monday, November 19, 2012

Rand Simberg is considering a Kickstarter bleg to finance the publication of his book on space safety, currently entitled "Safe Is Not An Option: How Our Futile Obsession To Bring Everyone Back Is Killing Spaceflight"

The first thing I would lose is the title. Something like "Spaceflight Should Be Dangerous" or "The Price of Space Admiralty" with apologies to Kipling.

Dumb ways to die...

Saturday, November 17, 2012

For all you fans of the Twilight series of books and movies, a different kind of vampire, Gabriella Doria

Charlotte Allen makes the case for Sarah Palin running for president in 2016. She's pretty much hated by the establishment. But we ran with their candidate and now see how that turned out.

Thursday, November 15, 2012

This is how missile defense works.

Report: commercial astronauts may beat NASA and China back to the moon by 2020

Addendum: Predictably Rand Simberg has gone orgasmic.

If this is true, it’s going to make it harder for NASA to justify SLS. Or even being in the human spaceflight business at all. We’ll soon see, perhaps. December isn’t far off.

Actually, no. Rand did not quote the part of the article that suggested that the current thinking on space exploration involves heavy lift and fuel depots. We don't have any details about the venture or who is involved. So it is a little premature to predict the death of NASA as a space exploration agency.

The first two installments of SyFy's web movie "Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome" are now up.

Rand Simberg is spinning fairy tales of secret plans to scrap the heavy lift Space Launch System in favor of the latest scheme to put more money into Elon Musk's pocket, fuel depots in space supplied by "commercial" launches. If such a plan were to even be proposed it would be proof (if it was needed) that space policy under Obama is driven by politics and graft. But it would not fly otherwise because (a) it's unworkable and much more expensive and risky than some people pretend and (b) Congress will never go for it.

Tuesday, November 06, 2012

God help us.

Monday, November 05, 2012

My predictions, for what they are worth:

Romney: 51 percent

Obama: 48 Percent

Romney 300+ electoral votes.

It looks like that one of Obama's biggest supporters and an intellectual leader of the Democratic Party has started to make terroristic threats to support his candidate. The sorry part of it is that he is not even promising to go after Romney supporters himself.

Friday, November 02, 2012

Rudyard Kipling returns from the grave with reproaches in verse about Benghazi, 2012.
Seaside Heights, N.J., Turns Away Utility Workers for Being Nonunion; Words Almost Fail

Apparently it was the the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers [IBEW] and neither the local power company nor local government that is holding back nonunion utility workers from helping to restore power.