Science and Technology

Another $110 million down the drain…

April 16, 2005 @ 5:07 pm

NASA wasted the better part of another $110 million of hard earned taxpayer money recently. NASA spent the money on a robotic spacecraft designed to rendezvous with satellites. The robotic spacecraft was supposed to get within 16 feet of a particular satellite as part of a test run. It only got within 300 feet, however, [...]

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AIM (Lack of) Privacy Issue

March 16, 2005 @ 1:26 pm

If you use AIM (AOL Instant Messenger), a free service, you might want to be very careful what you write to people in your instant messages. AOL has changed its TOS (Terms of Service) for AIM in such a way as to make privacy a figment of your imagination. By using AIM you tacitly consent [...]

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A Heinlein Reader at NASA?

January 10, 2005 @ 4:16 pm

Has someone at NASA read Robert Heinlein? Jerome Pearson of NASA is a proponent of “space elevators,” an idea first popularized (to my knowledge) by the great libertarian science fiction writer. Read more about Pearson’s and NASA’s ideas here. If “space elevators” are ever to become a reality, however, I think it will be done [...]

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From NASA to LSU? Please no…

December 14, 2004 @ 4:50 pm

Outgoing NASA chief Sean O’Keefe has thrown in his hat as a contender for the recently vacated Chancellorship of my alma mater, Louisiana State University. Fortune help us. The last thing LSU needs, if it is to improve its national standing among Research One universities, is the head of that supremely incompetent and inefficient bureaucracy, [...]

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