The two boys lean out on the railing of the front porch, looking up.Behind them they can hear their mother in one room watching “Name That Tune,” their father in another watching a Walter Cronkite Special, the TVs turned up high and higher till they each can’t hear the other’s show. The older boy is saying that no matter how many stars you counted there were always more stars beyond them and beyond the stars black space going on forever in all directions, so that even if you flew upmillions and millions of years you’d be no closer to the end of...
Friday, 27 May 2011
Thursday, 26 May 2011
Harrison Schmitt is right for all the wrong reasons.
Posted on 06:14 by hony
Some of my most loyal readers know that I have a particularly juicy bone that I love to chew on called NASA. For the more recent visitors here, please do this Google search for "The Abstracted Engineer" and "NASA." Or you can read this smarmy post.You can imagine my delight, after former astronauts lined up to defend NASA, that one astronaut totally agrees with me that the best way to practice fiscal conservatism and also make progress into deep space would be to just ax NASA completely and form a new NASA. I called this plan "NASA 2.0" He...
Tuesday, 24 May 2011
Joplin
Posted on 05:36 by hony
I pass a high school every day on my way to work. Today there were large trucks in the parking lot, and supplies were being loaded into them. I saw about several pallets worth of bottled water, more pallets of food, and tons of first aid equipment. Everyone was smiling. High school kids - smiling at 6:30 in the morning.It is a strange truth that human beings are the most human in the face of disaster. I've argued before that I think that one thing that separates humans from animals is the ability to empathize with total strangers. What is it that...
Monday, 23 May 2011
We put a man on the moon 40 years ago, so why can't we...
Posted on 19:47 by hony
It is a popular chime for Presidents. "My fellow Americans, the time is now for a Sputnik moment. We need a new Apollo Program to innovate in (insert technological area here) in order to stay competitive."The reason these mantras do not work is because the "Sputnik Moment" for us was in September 2001. The whole nation, faced with an Axis of Evil, rallied. And now we're tired. Isn't that what the 70's were? The Cold War Hangover Decade? Really, the parallels between the Space Race and the War on Terror are striking. Both featured a serious event...
Was the Apollo Progam an Outlier To America's Historical TechnoSlump
Posted on 18:46 by hony
(Tastefully named) Alexis Madrigal rightly points out that the Apollo Program, kicked off by JFK 50 years ago today, was probably an aberration in the history of American technological progress. He points to an Economist essay that concludes:Putting a man on the moon was a brilliant achievement. But in some ways it was peculiarly un-American--almost, you might say, an aberration born out of the unique circumstances of the cold war. It is a reason to look back with pride, but not a pointer to the future.On the contrary, massive technological...
Friday, 20 May 2011
Self-Censorship
Posted on 15:36 by hony
Yes I just packed up and put away the last two weeks of posts. Yes I had a good reason. Every time I start to dip my feet into modern politics, I manage to really piss off the exact people I feel need to change their opinion, which only reaffirms to me that those people are never going to change. So there was really no utility in keeping those posts. They, like the feelings I had when I wrote them, are effectively worthless.But hey, maybe next week something good will happen and I can write fluff articles about i...
Monday, 9 May 2011
Creative Hiatus
Posted on 09:39 by hony
I really want to explore a few things on my blog in the next few weeks, namely the coming draw-down of military intervention in other countries - if it happens - and what it means for funding science research in America.However, I just got the green light here at work to be the prime author on a $9.8 million proposal, so I will effectively not exist on the internet until the due day in early June. Abandon me not, loyal readers, I shall retur...
Friday, 6 May 2011
Friday Poetry Burst
Posted on 12:03 by hony
‘Tis hard for man to rouse his spirit up—It is the human creative agony,Though but to hold the heart an empty cup,Or tighten on the team the rigid rein.Many will rather lie among the slainThan creep through narrow ways the light to gain—Than wake the will, and be born bitterly.-George MacDon...
Quote of the Day
Posted on 05:45 by hony
"Apparently 'Fog of War' is a spell from World of Warcraft that makes you lie all the time." -Freddie DeBo...
Thursday, 5 May 2011
Could We Really See Dyson Spheres?
Posted on 18:10 by hony
Both Dyson himself, as well as the author of this article, Dr. Dave Goldberg, seem to believe the best way to discover a civilization that has enshrouded a star in a Dyson sphere is to look for infrared radiation in the neighborhood of 10 micrometers:Everything that takes in energy ultimately re-radiates it. This is true, on average, of the earth, for instance, and if it weren't we'd heat up at an alarming rate. Likewise, you absorb light and take in fuel and as a result, you heat up and glow in the dark, though not in the wavelength range...
Monday, 2 May 2011
Quote for the Day
Posted on 08:53 by hony
"The Universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space - each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision."- Randall Munr...
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