Category Archives: Space

Is SETI just asking for trouble?

Posted on February 27, 2010 | Comments Off on Is SETI just asking for trouble?

One of the more amusing tales  of science fiction is the one where the exploring earthlings, who believe that technological survival requires logic and logical beings can’t be warlike, run smack into an alien warship whose star troopers proceed to eviscerate them. (See Larry Niven’s warcats.)

Comes now a similar argument from New Scientist (“Hello ET, We Come In Peace”) that we need to pour more tax money into the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Why? Because we need to let any other cosmic civilizations know we’re around. (Like why should they care?) But is that so smart? We might just be inviting some really big trouble to come calling.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Library, Science/Engineering, Space

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Moonwalker: AGW is a fraud

Posted on February 24, 2010 | Comments Off on Moonwalker: AGW is a fraud

Apollo astronaut Harrison Schmidt:

“Recent disclosures and admissions of scientific misconduct by the United Nations and advocates of the human-caused global warming hypothesis shows the fraudulent foundation of this much-ballyhooed but non-existent scientific consensus about climate.”

Welcome aboard, sir.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Science/Engineering, Space, Weather/Climate

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Infrared Andromeda

Posted on February 19, 2010 | Comments Off on Infrared Andromeda

andromeda_wise900Twice the diameter of our Milky Way. Largest galaxy in the Local Group.

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Posted in Library, Science/Engineering, Space

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Image

Home view

earthmoonsun_small

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Posted on February 14, 2010 in Science/Engineering, Space

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Saving NASA. Pity, that.

Posted on February 2, 2010 | Comments Off on Saving NASA. Pity, that.

Ugh: the pols aren’t going to let the bloated NASA bureaucracy’s deeply unimaginative return-to-the-moon program die.  I have to give Barry credit for trying to cancel  Constellation in favor of private enterprise. Even former Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin likes the idea.

Which is not to say I expect the anti-business president to do much for commercial space. But just killing the space agency’s behemoth would be a good start. The pols, of course, see only pork they cannot afford to lose lest the voters force them out and they have to find real jobs.

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Posted in Obamalot, Science/Engineering, Space

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Bye, bye Moon

Posted on January 27, 2010 | Comments Off on Bye, bye Moon

moonset_sts35

Moon set over the Earth’s limb. An appropriate view for the news that Obamalot will cancel plans to return to Luna. We’re going to, uh, cure poverty first. Probably mostly among Barry’s cronies in Chicago. And oh, yeah, global warming. It’s hard to sympathize with NASA, however, the behemoth that wasn’t even planning on an airlock for its return ships.

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Posted in Obamalot, Science/Engineering, Space

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Cauldron

Posted on January 25, 2010 | Comments Off on Cauldron

I enjoyed this apparent finale to the Hutch Hutchins series of space operas Jack McDevitt began years ago with Engines of God. As usual, I don’t quite understand the put downs of a good number of the Amazon reviewers. The book may, indeed, have filched a Star Trek plot device. I wouldn’t know. I couldn’t remember all the ST shows if I tried. They’re too boring.

McDevitt repeats his themes, of course, but he is rarely boring and he certainly isn’t here. There was one glaring error which amazed me. In the first paragraph of the epilogue the Preston superluminal returns to Earth space. Two pages previous it was destroyed near the galactic core. Fortunately its lovable AI Phyllis was saved. Pitiful editing that. Nevertheless, it was a fun read and a good place to end the series. Hutch deserves her porch rocker even if she wouldn’t want the rest of the human race to lollygag on its porch without having first gone forth as boldly as she did.

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Posted in Library, Science/Engineering, Space