Posted in Informative Articles, Opinion on Feb 12th, 2006
[Budget Cuts, NASA, Planetary Science, Science, Space Exploration, Terrestrial Planet Finder, TPF]Few scientific challenges are more important than determining if life on Earth is alone in the universe. Over the last ten years we have found almost two-hundred extrasolar planets, but none that seem likely to harbor life as we know it. Such […]
Posted in Informative Articles on Feb 7th, 2006
[FMARS, Mars, Mars Society, Space Exploration]This is the complete log (both personal and official) of my time as crewmember of the Mars Society’s FMARS-10 crew. This is a massive post! I’ve included a table of contents to help navigate all of the material here. So, feel free to browse the contents, there’s a […]
Posted in Informative Articles on Feb 5th, 2006
[Asteroid Mining, Copper, Platinum Group Metals, Resource Scarcity, Space]In last week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers published a review of the rates of metals mining and use that presents an alarming possibility: for the first time since the onset of the Industrial Revolution we may face resource scarcity in the next few […]
Posted in Informative Articles on Feb 3rd, 2006
[Automated Highways, Futurism, Honda ADAS, Safety, Smart Car, Traffic, Vehicle]Each year the nations highways grow more and more crowded, especially in major cities. And with those crowds come accidents that wreak tremendous economic and social damage on our nation. Despite tremendous efforts by governmental and private sector agencies, ridesharing/carpooling programs have been largely […]
Posted in Informative Articles on Jan 27th, 2006
[Mars, Moon, NASA, NASA Watch, Space, Space Advocacy, Space Exploration]I acknowledge that I am nowhere near the expert on NASA matters, but as a scientist and space advocate I feel some right to talk even from a position of some ignorance. Michael Griffin is now well into his first year as NASA administrator, and […]
Posted in Informative Articles, Opinion on Jan 26th, 2006
[Energy, Nuclear Power, Pebble Bed, Proliferation, Renewable, Reprocessing, Wind Energy]Today the Washington Post published an article detailing the Administration’s plans to reprocess and distribute spent nuclear fuel from abroad. Also part of the mix would be legislation intended to encourage the development of new nuclear power plants. The time for discussion of nuclear […]
Posted in Informative Articles on Jan 24th, 2006
[Accident, Design, Safety, Traffic, Vehicle]This month’s edition of Physics Today has an article by Marc Ross, Deena Patel, and Tom Wenzel that throws a little scientific light on vehicle accident safety. In 2004, 42,636 people were killed in traffic accidents in the U.S. This makes traffic accidents the number one non-medical cause of […]
Posted in Informative Articles on Jan 22nd, 2006
[Energy, Fusion, Futurism, Gerald Kulcinski, ITER, Moon, Nuclear Power, Space, Space Advocacy, Space Exploration]In a fine article summarizing the work of Gerald Kulcinski, a University of Wisconsin Nuclear Engineer working on Helium-3 fusion, Eric Hedman got me thinking again about nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion as a means of generating power for consumers began to […]
Posted in In The News, Informative Articles on Jan 20th, 2006
[NASA, Orbital Debris, Space, Space Exploration, Space Junk]In an analysis published yesterday in Science magazine, two NASA scientists report that the threat of space junk will steadily increase even if no new satellites or rockets are launched [citation]. We have reached a critical threshold at which the density of debris and junk at certain […]
Posted in Informative Articles on Jan 19th, 2006
[Alan Stern, NASA, New Horizons, Planetary Science, Pluto, Space]The launch of the New Horizons probe has been extensively covered in the blogosphere, but few, if any, of the blogs have focused on the mission itself. Sure, it’s the first mission to Pluto, and yes, it’s the fastest thing humanity has put up in space, […]
