A couple of mindsets caught my attention at the Mars Society conference: a strong science-über-alles bias regarding activities in space, and a curiously holistic perspective regarding settlements.
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A couple of mindsets caught my attention at the Mars Society conference: a strong science-über-alles bias regarding activities in space, and a curiously holistic perspective regarding settlements. Tom Hill, a non-intrusive Mac user, shares his own observations on last week’s Mars Society conference. I know I’m going to catch hell for this post, but I found this interesting and amusing. Bill White sends this link to what appears to be a Boeing/JSC/MSFC study of Shuttle-derived launch vehicles. A lot of it is a familiar recap of prior Shuttle-derived studies, breaking down the possibilities into a set of general configuration types (side-mount, single-stick, in-line). Nice new graphics, though, and it’s nice to see the ET-derived option as a multi-configuration vehicle or “family” of vehicles, akin to EELV, rather than a single vehicle. Yes, yes, I realize the title is redundant, but this was an unexpected bit of moonbattery that surprised even me. This afternoon, I attended a presentation by one Brad Jarvis, titled “Population Growth and the Settlement of Space”. For some reason, I thought the presentation would concern the growth of population on Mars via settlement…limiting factors on population growth, estimating how many people you might have there at some target date due to settler influx and birth rates, etc. Census and demographic issues, that sort of thing. Well, he talked about the limits to growth, all right. In fact, it was one of his sources. Chris Shank, Special Assistant to Mike Griffin, spoke this morning at the Mars Society Conference on the VSE and related topics. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to Launch Aug. 11 Interestingly (to me, at least), the Atlas V launching it will carry on its side a memorial placard which includes (among others) the name of one of my recently-deceased coworkers. How cool is that? Brian Dunbar links to an excellent article on workplace culture. And what the heck — as long as I’m somewhat off-topic, here’s another interesting post, on aid to Africa (summary: trade is good, handouts from the G8 and self-important rock “benefits” are not). It amuses me to think of the reaction I would have gotten from my old poli-sci professors at State had I handed in a term paper along such lines…”But, where are the import substitution policies? Internationally-funded infrastructure megaprojects are prone to corruption? Surely you don’t mean that centralized economic planning in the socialist model isn’t the best development strategy for the Third World? How can you have social and economic justice if you don’t eat your pudding?!?” Not space-related, but certainly ideas for a better future. For some reason, I was expecting the Mars Society Conference to be next week, rather than starting tomorrow morning. Which is actually lucky, since I have a window in my work schedule this week/weekend, so I will be able to attend after all. Unluckily, however, the owner of the laptop I intended to borrow to live-blog from the conference is out of town until Sunday, so my posts on the conference will be less immediate than I had hoped. |
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