MarsBlog.net

So, when James Hansen makes a stink about how NASA was supposedly “censoring” his views about global warming, it’s an intolerable abridgement of free, unbiased, and objective scientific inquiry. But when NASA refuses to publish one of its own scientists papers because it doesn’t fit the AGW narrative, well…where’s the outrage?

So Miskolczi re-derived the solution, this time using the proper boundary conditions for an atmosphere that is not infinite. His result included a new term, which acts as a negative feedback to counter the positive forcing. At low levels, the new term means a small difference … but as greenhouse gases rise, the negative feedback predominates, forcing values back down.

NASA refused to release the results. Miskolczi believes their motivation is simple. “Money”, he tells DailyTech. Research that contradicts the view of an impending crisis jeopardizes funding, not only for his own atmosphere-monitoring project, but all climate-change research. Currently, funding for climate research tops $5 billion per year.

Miskolczi resigned in protest, stating in his resignation letter, “Unfortunately my working relationship with my NASA supervisors eroded to a level that I am not able to tolerate. My idea of the freedom of science cannot coexist with the recent NASA practice of handling new climate change related scientific results.”

It doesn’t matter for this discussion whether Miskolczi is right or wrong…what matters is that the appearance of suppression of free scientific inquiry in this case is being ignored. Were NASA giving the cold shoulder to a paper which appeared to strengthen the pro-AGW case — that is, were the results of the research exactly the opposite — there would be no end to the howls of protest. But in fact, there is very little information on this in the usual news channels.

So…where is the outrage?

Posted on March 23rd, 2008 under Luddism. Comments: 1

“Rocket Man” over at Rockets and Such seems to think that Lockheed Martin scammed NASA on the Orion proposal.

To the extent that LM is adding cost for added features, it’s due to changes in NASA’s requirements for Orion. The configuration at the moment bears only a superficial resemblance to the configuration that won LM the contract, in large part because of NASA-directed changes.

To retool Rocket Man’s car-buying analogy, what NASA said it wanted when it was looking around on the lot was a station wagon (basic transportation). Having signed the contract, they now want the dealership to throw in this add-on and that trim package, in an effort to turn the station wagon into a vehicle with the durability of a Hummer, the flexibility of a Jeep, and the reliability of a Volvo…while simultaneously reducing the curb weight to that of a Yugo so that the underpowered engine can actually get it off the lot.

Which is, of course, no easy task.

The blame here is misplaced. LM is doing what it can to accommodate the requirements changes coming from NASA. But LM is not a charitable organization – it’s in business to make a profit, and there’s no reason to expect a contractor in any line of business to simply eat the cost of changes requested by their customer, as Rocket Man seems to imply in the case of Orion. To expect otherwise is to invite abuse by the customer, and bankruptcy for the contractor.

Posted on March 23rd, 2008 under Orion. Comments Off

UK television show Top Gear turns a Reliant Robin into a space shuttle.

No, really.

“I thought the Robin as a good place to start because, er, it’s…pointy…at one end…”

Posted on March 9th, 2008 under Entertainment. Comments: 3