MarsBlog.net

MarsBlog.net

News and Commentary on Space

MarsBlog.net RSS Feed
 
 
 
 

Archive for May 17th, 2004

So Much for Rivalry

Looks like the Chinese won’t be our rivals for the Moon, after all, despite the hopes of some for a renewed “space race”.

Maybe we could just sell them the station and kill three birds with one stone: get out from under ISS, removing the need to continue Shuttle operations; discontinue Shuttle operations now, rather than 2010; and handicap potential future space competition from China by removing the need for it to develop from within space capabilities comparable to our own.

Share

Moving Along

Sometime within the next six weeks, MarsBlog will be moving to new digs — as will I, as I will be moving to Denver at the end of this month to start a new job.

I hope the move to a new domain will be smoother than the transfer from Blogger to MoveableType was. And with any luck, the change to a space-infused locale will be more conducive to blogging than the, er, considerably less space-infused environment of New Orleans.

Share

Saturn Worship

Jeff Foust takes on what he calls the “myth of heavy lift”.

Despite myself, I am coming around to this conclusion myself, and for the reasons Jeff articulates. I still think it would be a shame to simply throw away the “potential” that exists in the decades-long investment represented by the Shuttle and its related manufacturing and launch infrastructure, but it’s getting harder to see exactly what, in practical rather than emotional terms, that potential really is…we ought not build a Shuttle-derived vehicle for its own sake, it has to have something to do, for which no alternative is available. While the former requirement is shaping up, the latter is growing more questionable.

Share

America’s Priorities

Mark Whittington points to an AFL-CIO ad ridiculing the Moon-Mars plan: Tell President Bush.

Color me unimpressed.

It’s hardly unexpected for the AFL-CIO to use whatever they can to poke at a Republican candidate — the organization typically campaigns for and endorses Democrats, after all. And it seems that in this case, they have found just another issue with which to deride the President.

Note the condescending tone (“Meanwhile, back on earth…”) and the focus on the usual palette of labor interests (jobs, health care, job safety, Social Security, Medicare, education, outsourcing, overtime pay). There is no substance to the ad with respect to the plan — no discussion of its proposed elements, no evaluation of the economic impact, not even a barrelfishingly easy swipe at “subsidies for the military-industrial complex”.

The content is pure boilerplate. By changing just a few lines of text, the site could be used to question any number of Bush policy proposals…as I suspect will happen frequently over the next few months.

(While the AFL-CIO has in effect — if insubstantially — dismissed the Moon-Mars plan, at least one other labor group is supporting it. As to whether that’s a good thing…)

Share


2012 Prometheus Award Finalist


Buy Kindle version
Buy Nook version

A young girl sets out to prove herself by resolving a long-forgotten mystery. But when she gets close to the truth, what she thought was a harmless adventure becomes a threat to the future of the independent commercial settlements on Mars.

May 2004
M T W T F S S
« Apr   Jun »
 12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930
31  

Blogroll

Archives

Recent Posts