Sunday, October 31, 2021

Hypersonic missile defense is a job for the Space Force

The recent revelation that China has tested two hypersonic glide missiles has rocked the American national security establishment. According to Bloomberg, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley suggested that the tests approached a “Sputnik moment,” harkening back to the Soviet launch of the first Earth satellite, which also proved the capability of delivering a nuclear warhead anywhere on Earth with a ballistic missile.

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Prince William’s snark about billionaire space travelers is unwelcome

Prince William, who in the fullness of time will be king of England, recently chose to get snarky at billionaires who are building rockets and are sending them to the heavens. Why, he opined in a recent interview, do these rich guys not spend their money solving climate change rather than launching toward the heavens? The sentiment was replete with both ignorance and a lack of self-awareness.

Sunday, October 24, 2021

I've finished Don't Blow Yourself Up: The Further True Adventures and Travails of the Rocket Boy of October Sky and I can enthusiastically recommend it. #CommissionEarned
We watched Dune this afternoon and loved it. It, fortunately, lacked the druggy dialogue of the 1984 version.
The UAE is becoming a major space power

An old saying among foreign policy circles stated that while the kingdom of heaven runs on righteousness the kingdoms of the Earth run on oil. However, because of concerns about climate change, the fracking boom in the United States and the discovery of oil and gas deposits offshore of the State of Israel — the old reality no longer applies.

The new reality is that the kingdoms of the Earth run on high technology. Few countries have moved so quickly to adapt as the United Arab Emirates. The UAE, as part of a shift toward high tech, has started its own space program. In a few short years, the Arab gulf state has become a major space power.

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SpaceX’s first orbital Starship launch slips to March 2022 in NASA document

Sunday, October 17, 2021

Replace Kamala Harris with William Shatner to get kids excited about space exploration

By now everyone has seen the cringy video of Vice President Kamala Harris extoling the excitement of space exploration to a group of kids who were gathered at her residence in Washington. While one supposes she gets points for making the effort, Harris claiming the kids could expect to see the craters of the moon with their own eyes (presumably from the lunar surface and not through a telescope) was unintentionally funny.

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Sunday, October 10, 2021

Blue Origin is taking William Shatner to space — but can it distract from internal criticism?

William Shatner, famous for his role as Captain James Kirk in “Star Trek,” is going for a ride on the Blue Origin New Shepard rocket. However, recent allegations by a group of current and former Blue Origin employees may make him think again of going on a 10-minute suborbital hop into the final frontier.

Old NY mobsters reportedly fear handing over reins to phone-obsessed, soft millennials

Seasoned New York mob bosses are reluctant to make made men out of millennials, who they worry lack the street smarts and ruthlessness of their predecessors — and are too obsessed with their cellphones.

Sunday, October 03, 2021

Will NASA's Lucy probe find signs of alien life at the Trojan asteroids?

On Oct. 16, if all goes well, NASA will launch a Discovery-class space probe dubbed “Lucy” on a 12-year journey to visit the Trojan asteroids, which are clustered around two of the Jupiter-Sun Lagrange points. If scientist Jacob Haqq-Misra, Ph.D., is correct, Lucy has a chance of discovering evidence of intelligent alien life.