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
Censorship The first casualty 26 Jul 2010 The increasing intention of western and non-western governments to censor the internet is usually put in terms of “child protection”, although it is very unlikely to be affected by censorship, merely by using uncensorable techniques like Torrents. But one has to wonder if the real reason is more to do… Read More
Censorship Defending liberal democracy 17 Mar 20094 Oct 2017 I urge people to go read Russell Blackford’s submission to the Human Rights consultative committee in Australia. It deals with the changes and challenges to civil liberties in the modern era and although Australia-focussed, it generalises well once you get past our odd spelling conventions and local events. 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.