Potpourri CLIV

The blog inbox has gotten seriously out of control, but I'll slog away as best I can. Enjoy my scattershot reading as you see fit.

First up, something from Mom: a site showing 360-degree pictures of the summit of Mount St. Helen's. Note that in the later pictures, MSN is smoking a wee bit more...

Next, something from Father Dan: a multipurpose "clock" of various statistics. A bit sobering, but interesting to watch.

From Lin:

• This story is old, but it amused me. Apple tech guru Steve Jobs reportedly got pulled over by Japanese security personnel from smuggling shuriken (ninja throwing stars) aboard his private jet. That'll teach him.
• Castro tried to retract this statement, but the word already got out there, perhaps via old age, perhaps via Freudian slip: an admission that communism doesn't work.

From Kate Down Under:

• Australians are developing a beer for space. Huzzah!
• A Battle of Midway Roundtable site. The Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway were the first naval battles in the Pacific Theater of World War II, and were of great concern to Australia--if the U.S. had lost, Oz stood a good chance of being invaded by Japan. I once met a veteran from the U.S.S. Lexington, which was sunk at Coral Sea. He had just returned from Australia, where he was given a hero's welcome. Some folks still remember.

From Tracy: 

• A report on commercial space activities.
• NASA's video recruitment YouTube site. The video seems a little long to me, but maybe I just have a short attention span.

Just found this through random surfing: a story about one case where a Muslim woman got more legal protections under sharia law than she could get under the U.S. domestic court system.

Started reading this one, but haven't finished it yet: a Dinesh D'Souza editorial on how Obama approaches economic policy.

Not sure what to make of this: in case of an emergency, ladies, you might want to remove your bra.

Here's an interesting site: an online source for elementary school-level lectures.

In addition to the Dynetics-led team I wrote about awhile back, there is another Huntsville-based team vying for the Google Lunar X Prize.

Caveat visor (fake Bartish Latin for "reader beware"): I haven't read all of this yet, but it's an open letter to Christian leaders on the potential impact of theology on "transhumanism."

This guy reportedly operated alone, but tried to plant a bomb half a block from Wrigley Field. This sort of thing makes my hair stand on end.

Science fiction writer Joe Haldeman has some interesting things to say about "unplugging" in order to do creative writing.

This is a form of technical writing humor to the extent that "humor" equals "terrifyingly bad technical jargon getting in the way of clear communication."

I probably addressed this before, but wanted to add a couple of other comments. This interview with SF writer Kim Stanley Robinson is part of why I've been working with Darlene the Science Cheerleader, who seeks to increase public involvement in the sciences. Robinson, whose Mars trilogy I admire, nevertheless is a dedicated socialist utopian with no serious understanding of how economics works, as this interview makes clear. There are alternative views to how science can be enacted in society, and they are not all leftist. He glosses over so much evil that has been done by communist elites with “science” on their side that it’s truly terrifying. The point I would make to rebut KSR's points is simply that science is a method of understanding the physical world--it is not and should not be--a means of ordering society or concentrating political power. In fact, the more people who have scientific and technical knowledge, the less likely it is that some scientific elite will be able to force their ideas upon the populace.

Speaking of Darlene and citizen science, some amateur astronomers observed objects impacting with Jupiter.
 
And, because I've forgotten why I've cared or I just got tired of looking at them, I've deleted a whole bunch of links for your sanity and mine. Have a pleasant evening.

Fun Space Things Happening in Huntsville

Today Dynetics proved that the space business is by no means finished in Huntsville, Alabama, regardless of the future direction of NASA. So what's the hubbub? In this case, Dynetics announced that they are leading a team to compete for the Google Lunar X Prize. What the heck is that? Well, as one person at the press conference joked, "You can always Google it." However, for the sake of the reader's sanity, here's the short version from their web site:

The Google Lunar X PRIZE is a $30 million international competition to safely land a robot on the surface of the Moon, travel 500 meters over the lunar surface, and send images and data back to the Earth. Teams must be at least 90% privately funded and must be registered to compete by December 31, 2010. The first team to land on the Moon and complete the mission objectives will be awarded $20 million; the full first prize is available until December 31, 2012. After that date, the first prize will drop to $15 million. The second team to do so will be awarded $5 million. Another $5 million will awarded in bonus prizes. The final deadline for winning the prize is December 31, 2014.

The team leader for this project is not a surprising choice for anyone familiar with the Huntsville aerospace community: Tim Pickens. Pickens is a former HAL5 rocket enthusiast who decided to turn his passion for rockets into an honest-to-gosh business, starting with designing the propulsion system for Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne, and then moving on to starting Orion Propulsion, which is now part of Dynetics. Along the way, Pickens and his team have also designed thrusters for Bigelow Aerospace's next space station and a low-cost launcher for military mini-satellites. Pickens and his friend and lead engineer Steve Mustaikis have kept themselves plenty busy. The Google Lunar X Prize is simply the latest mountain for them to climb on the way toward human settlement of space. As Pickens put it quite adamantly, "If we don't step up to the challenge, other countries will."

What interested me was the technical approach for their lander. They will be a piggyback payload on a Falcon 9 launch to get to the Moon. The lander will use thrusters similar to the ones Dynetics is building for Bigelow to soft-land on the Moon's southern hemisphere. Once there, the lander will broadcast live video from the surface, which will be available to the public via internet and mobile devices. No doubt each of the partner organizations in the Dynetics-led coalition will have their own crucial roles to play in the project. Pickens, a fearless promoter as well as rocket builder, noted that sponsorship opportunities were available for the lander and rover. "Come join us and make history. It'll be fun. Let's do it!"





The Dynetics-led group is called the Rocket City Space Pioneers, and it features team members that all "speak geek" fluently: Teledyne Brown Engineering, Draper Laboratory, Andrews Space, Univeristy of Alabama-Huntsville (UAH), and the Von Braun Center for Science and Innovation.


Also lending voices of support to the Rocket City Space Pioneers were Homer Hickam (author of Rocket Boys and My Dream of Stars, a biography of X Prize founder Anousheh Ansari) and Alabama Governor Bob Riley. Hickam was a natural person to invite, as he's a Huntsville resident and Tim Pickens began his professional rocket-building career working on the X Prize. Governor Riley, understandably, was there to lend a little gravitas to the team and to take the political opportunity to show off Alabama as a place where "we can do something significant." I believe this will be the case.

Pickens made it clear that the X Prize project was part of Dynetics' business model, which makes sense, given the conversations I've had with him over the years. His attitude with Dynetics is the same as it was with Orion Propulsion: by going after the X Prize, he is demonstrating that Huntsville companies can adapt to a space industry that is no longer focused solely on one customer.

Potpourri LXXXIX

Mixed bag this evening, so let's just reach into the inbox and see what colored marbles I dig out.

From the Down Under Defense Expert (DUDE):

• Global warming is amok! Weather is out of control! Uh...unless you're a tornado hunter.


• Um...or a hurricane tracker. Remember when Al Gore, the Smartest Man With a PowerPoint, predicted that all of our weather was going to get worse every year?
• Remember the moral outrage over the Big Three automakers' CEOs taking corporate jets to Washington for their powwow with the president? Well, apparently, it's still okay for members of Congress to use private jets. I'm shocked, shocked...

Rod Coppinger at Flightglobal takes a few shots at the orbital fuel depot idea.

Responses to Darlene the Science Cheerleader have not been particularly polite or pleasant in the land of academia. I find a lot of the comments akin to something you'd read in high school: "brains" getting snippy because "a cheerleader is trying to do what we're supposed to do." These critics have little sense of humor or appreciation for what Dar is trying to do. The fact that she's a Republican probably just makes things worse, at least in the academics' eyes. Too bad. Dar has an audience, and probably a larger one than many of the folks currently sniping at her. It's not just a matter of cute. Positive attitude matters, too, and Dar has it in spades.

From Doc, a cool site on ways to get involved with the space biz.

One sign that I'm a Gen Xer is that I got cubicle toys for my birthday (I am currently 39.99999). Dr. OZMG sent me a sensitivity consultant from The Cubes. The awesomeness is so great it hurts.

After I finish with Europe, my next big vacation might be New Zealand, partially because I can hang out with the DUDE and Mrs. DUDE, partially because that's where they filmed Lord of the Rings, and partially because it's just a beautiful country.

Some idjit who didn't do well with women went nuts and killed three people and then himself in Pittsburgh. Dude, what the heck were you thinking? What were you doing/saying with these women that caused them to reject you? Could it have been that "tense, creepy, might-go-off-and-shoot-people" vibe you were giving off? Losers of the world, get thyselves to church!

The U.S. Navy's Littoral Combat Ship is ready to deploy.

New from Hu: Someone has taken the time to unleash a critical preemptive strike on G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra before it comes out. Why waste the energy? It'll be on DVD within three months anyway.

The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) detected free oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere, indicating signs of life. Might've made a more intriguing story if it hadn't found life...or intelligent life, anyway.

Lego is cosponsoring a Lunar X Prize contest. Cool!

Oh yeah, and rather than take the word of the media, talk radio, or the blogosphere, check out this link and read for yourself the current healthcare bill before Congress...all 1,000+ pages of it. I read the Clinton healthcare plan, so I guess I'll subject myself to this one as well. Expect a very long blog entry, come the day...

And on that note, I guess I'll sign off. Tomorrow I'll be 40. How the heck did that happen? Never mind...