NIAC at NASA 12 Jun 2009 Frank Sietzen at NASA Watch (a great blog, by the way) has asked if the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) should be revived. Most of his readers say yes. NIAC was where they came up with designs for wacky spacesuits, propulsion systems, and so on. It was poached to pay for the idiotic (there! I said it) COTS program by former head Mike Griffin. I think something like this is needed, but it needs to be where political, both internal and external, interests cannot reach it, so I suggest situating it at a suitable university with separate funding. NASA’s ability to look forward has always been compromised by military and political interests, and most of its disasters have been due also to this. What do you think, dear readers? Politics Technology
Ecology and Biodiversity Miscellany 26 Jun 200818 Sep 2017 Barbara Forrest has an excellent analysis and background story on the introduction of the creationist bill in Louisiana, and the organisations supporting it, here at Talk2Reason. There’s a new phylogeny of birds out. See GrrllScientist’s post, and a full size tree here. Late edit See Bird Evolution – Problems with… Read More
General Science Sociology and science 26 Apr 2008 I have an uncanny ability to offend those who I shouldn’t be offending, with bad jokes. In a recent post I put in a Tom Lehrer video where he mocks sociology. Having had philosophy mocked by my friends and contacts over the years (you study what? Your navel?), I guess… Read More
Politics Harvey Milk is getting a Presidential Medal of Freedom 11 Aug 2009 This is a Very Good Thing: Harvey Milk became the first openly gay elected official from a major city in the United States when he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. Milk encouraged lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) citizens to live their lives openly… Read More
Not unless they employ philosophers, which is a bad bet for an engineering project. No, I was thinking of ASU, which has a large space project going on (they did the Mars Rovers), or someone like that.
Could the aforementioned philosopher maybe offer perspective on the ROI between sending delicate bipeds into space vs. an armada of much cheaper but insensible robots? I mean anyway, whether there’s an institute or not.
That, too, is something NIAC could consider. I personally think that near-earth human space travel is a good thing. Interplanetary is something else.