Yes. Constellation wasn't just the moon. It was the next generation of NASA rockets for human spaceflight. If Constellation is cancelled, this isn't just the end of the moon. It's the end of Mars too. Hell, it's the end of America's manned spaceflight program in general.
Not true. The article notes that the Administration endorses exploration of near-Earth asteroids, and manned missions there are very feasible, unlike manned trips to Mars, were we simply can't get there and back soon enough. Unless someone magically comes up with genuine suspended animation technology to put astronauts to sleep for long periods, a manned trip to Mars was just a pipe dream unless it was a one-way trip.
The deficit is getting out of control. While everyone here of course favors cutting things like defense spending over science funding, at least you have to acknowledge that if you're going to cut some science funding, going to the moon is a pretty decent place to start.
Cutting Constellation is a good start, only because it did nothing new. It was a jobs program for Lockheed and a trip down memory lane for NASA. But even this is only a drop in the bucket. By far our biggest problems are entitlement programs, and frankly, politicians from Congress right up the President are cowards when it comes to dealing with them. You think the housing bubble was a time bomb? Wait until the entitlements check comes due.
Sorry, I don't see what's wrong in telling Congress "Look, NASA doesn't exist as a jobs program for your districts". And it's pretty clear that, like some other defense boondoggles.... the Zumwalt Destroyer, the Littoral Combat Ships, the F-35, the Osprey... programs like Constellation often can't be killed because Congressmen view them as nothing but Federal stimulus for their districts. When Dick Cheney killed the Osprey in the early 90's, Congress funded it anyway and ordered DOD to buy more. I'm not an Obama fan by any stretch, but isn't it a good idea to only buy hardware on its merits, and cancel it otherwise? This is taxpayer money we're talking about, after all.
Unless someone can make an as-yet unknown value proposition for going back to the moon, it's a waste of resources.
Had we planned on staying this time... building a small base or research station to leave men on the moon for extended periods of time... then it would have been worth it. But it was clear that we weren't going to do that. We were basically just going back to relive old glories, when it gets right down to it.
That's my biggest problem with this. I have no problem cutting Constellation or the Moon shot. It was clear we weren't going to build a base there or spend any extended time there. That made the new Moon program just an expensive nostalgia trip, a way to relive old glories with little new actual science being done. But NASA is about "out there", not looking "down here". If you want to do climate studies, that should be NOAA's job, and to a lesser extent, perhaps the U.S. Geologic Survey. NASA should be about space exploration and aeronautics research, period.
I'm completely onboard with the Administration's idea of exploring (and maybe sending a man to ) near-Earth asteroids. That's technically feasible, and unlike a new moon shot, would be real space exploration. I also like the emphasis on the push for private space launch contractors, which NASA's old guard will no doubt fight tooth and nail. But it's time for NASA's monopoly on sending men into orbit to end.
If the Pope was serious about using new communication technology, he should make the entire Vatican Secret Archives searchable on the Internet.
That's not a bad idea, but people need to realize that "Secret" doesn't mean what they think it does in this case. From the same Wikipedia link:
"The word "secret" in the title "Vatican Secret Archives" does not have the modern meaning: it indicates instead that the archives are the Pope's own, not those of a department of the Roman Curia. The word "secret" was used in this sense also in phrases such as "secret servants", "secret cupbearer", "secret carver""
The article also notes that the archive has been open to scholars since 1881, and about a thousand a year access it for study. So let's nip any DaVinci Code-ish conspiracy theories about the archive in the bud here.
"you really haven't ever noticed that the thought of religious communities lives almost exclusivity in controlled (not in "Orwellian" meaning of control, ffs, in which you seem to interpret it) environments?"
Show me someone that's advocating a position... on anything... that isn't "controlling" the message. That's what makes it a message. It's a point of view. Doesn't matter if it's coming from a church or club or political party or business. Everyone from the GNU people to the Pope "control" their message.
"Heck, even such overboard things as infiltrating those communities become bearable and easily done."
Again, you're falsely assuming some kind of conspiritorial security system here. Infiltrate? The whole point is to bring people into the church. Why would you need to infiltrate it? Unlike something like Scientology, Catholics are pretty open about their beliefs, practices, and methods. You're seeing conspiracy activity where there is none. Go to any Catholic church, walk up to the priest and tell him "I'm an atheist, and I want to see how and why you do things here". As long as you're not there to be an ass and disrupt the service, he'll invite you right in. He sees it as both a duty and a spiritual opportunity to bring you to mass, not some kind of invasion. So again, why would you think that flaming a priest's blog is going to make much of a difference?
The Internet is a great place to let people know God is real. Before people had to travel to meet people. The Internet is less disturbing than a face to face meeting.
Ultimately, it's just another line of communication. It's important, but getting priests to blog is not exactly a revolutionary idea. Some are doing it already, and have been for years.
I know you're joking, but that raises some interesting questions. As long as it's direct communication between the priest and person, could that kind of stuff... like confession be done over an iPhone (or IRC, instant messaging, etc)? I wonder if something like that has ever been done over, say, videoconferencing? Suppose someone is dying, and is requesting last rites, and you just can't get a priest there physically in time?
Please, just please make it be one domain, like religiousblogs.com
What a wonderful time and space saving idea. Hey, while we're at it, lets limit and compact all thought on the Internet. We'll start by forcing all geeks into one domain... something like geekblogs.com, and why stop there? We'll put political people into one domain and... by the way, who do we put in charge of forcing all this to happen?
Evens the playing field, makes what they preach much more vulnerable if it's not restricted to small community or closed channel of information.
I love it.
That's the silliest thing I've read this week. There are hundreds of millions... if not more... copies of Bibles in the world. There are thousands of churches and parishes. There are televsion and radio networks. You make it sound like they've been trying to hide, to keep what they teach to a small circle. Are you kidding? It's their job to go forth and preach. It's their job to interact with the public. "Closed channel of information"? Do you honestly think some nasty comments at a priest's blog is somehow going to usher in a glorious new era of atheism? Seriously?
" and trot out the old right-wing canard (originated by Rush Limbaugh)"
Limbaugh didn't originate that. That theory was put forth by a retired Lockheed engineer (before the accident investigation), and Limbaugh said it sounded likely to him. A lot of blogs picked it up too until the accident report came out.
>I'm curious why. Certainly, older generations of America fighter aircraft are permitted - Michael Dorn flies his F-86 Sabre all the time.
A privately owned F-104 occasionaly comes through the airport where I work. And there's a MiG-17... again, privately owned... in one of the hangers here that comes out to play occasionaly. I'm aware of no restriction on ownership or flights of retired fighters, only that they have to be "declawed"... have their gun and fire control system removed.
Unless you steal one from Iran, that will never happen. After the last F-14 squadron retired their birds in 2006, Dick Cheney ordered all Tomcats (with the exception of a very few set aside for museums) to be destroyed. Usually, we send freshly retired birds to the "Boneyard" at Davis-Monthan AFB in the desert... the dry conditions preserve the aircraft well in case we need them in an emergency. But Iran needs parts for their Tomcasts so badly that Cheney was afraid a black market would spring up and that parts would start making their way to the Islamic regime. So the birds were literally shredded. A sad end to arguably the greatest Navy fighter of the jet age.
no wonder... it's set as default on all the IE 8 and windows 7 installations i have made.
That's a copout. On IE8, when you first run it, it specifically gives you choices on things like search engine defaults, and even offers to download a list of more providers if you don't like the current choices (of which Google is one).
If they weren't, we'd all be flying autogiros and speaking Esperanto by now.
You can't really lay that at the feet of PM. Everyone thought we'd all be in flying cars and rocket packs and colonies on Mars by now. From the 30's to the 60's, we were incredibly optimistic about what the future would bring. And then we got there. We made it to the moon. Everyone had a car. Everyone had a TV. And we found out that life was as hard and boring as ever. Worse, we found out that there were limits to our wonder machines. Rockets make little difference in getting to Mars if you can't get there fast enough. You could make a flying car, but it would be an expensive disaster waiting to happen.
Our imaginations took us to Flash Gordon-like futures, and when we got there, it looked nothing like Flash's world. PM was no different from anyone else in missing this. We dreamed Art Deco/Streamline Moderne cities of the future. We got ugly, glass and concrete boxes in New York. What happened to us was the reality that the future, as we dreamed it, was never going to come.
All Popular Mechanics does is demonstrate that the people populating the middle and left of the IQ Gaussian are active consumers. In this, it stands shoulder to shoulder with the National Enquirer, Fox News, and any number of other amazingly low quality media outlets.
That's pretty arrogant. What would you consider a better alternative for people interested in practical solutions to mechanical problems, and curiosity about the latest planes, cars, etc? It sounds like you're looking down on people that like to work on their own cars and fix their own sinks.
I think lumping PM in with the National Enquirer says more about you than it does about PM.
Nobody wants to see a space truck until they need a delivery.
Yup. We're going to regret retiring the Shuttle in the coming years. It may be expensive and even dangerous at times, but rockets are no substitute for it.
"The fact that Japan's homelessness is large enough to now be visible is pretty shocking"
A lot of things about Japan would surprise people. But this is only going to get worse. I was reading this weekend about just how much trouble Japan is in. IIRC from the newspaper article, their national debt is 212% of the GDP, twice what the US's is. The savings rate for Japanese citizens used to average 10%. As the old have died off, and the less-numerous young entered adulthood, that rate has dropped precipitously to 3%. And there's much less home and real estate ownership on average in Japan than in the states. There may well be an impending debt crisis... some investors are actually betting against Japanese government bonds. So while the US is hurting, Japan is too. They've just done a better job of hiding it, but that's changing.
I don't think the average American realizes just how expensive it is to live in Japan. It makes San Francisco or New York seem affordable in comparison.
Everyone with half a brain joined the Air Force instead of the Navy. Not having a private room as an E5 was considered a hard ship and you got an apology for it.
Which is why all the other services snicker when Chair Force types complain about "hardship duty".
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Yes. Constellation wasn't just the moon. It was the next generation of NASA rockets for human spaceflight. If Constellation is cancelled, this isn't just the end of the moon. It's the end of Mars too. Hell, it's the end of America's manned spaceflight program in general.
Not true. The article notes that the Administration endorses exploration of near-Earth asteroids, and manned missions there are very feasible, unlike manned trips to Mars, were we simply can't get there and back soon enough. Unless someone magically comes up with genuine suspended animation technology to put astronauts to sleep for long periods, a manned trip to Mars was just a pipe dream unless it was a one-way trip.
The deficit is getting out of control. While everyone here of course favors cutting things like defense spending over science funding, at least you have to acknowledge that if you're going to cut some science funding, going to the moon is a pretty decent place to start.
Cutting Constellation is a good start, only because it did nothing new. It was a jobs program for Lockheed and a trip down memory lane for NASA. But even this is only a drop in the bucket. By far our biggest problems are entitlement programs, and frankly, politicians from Congress right up the President are cowards when it comes to dealing with them. You think the housing bubble was a time bomb? Wait until the entitlements check comes due.
Sorry, I don't see what's wrong in telling Congress "Look, NASA doesn't exist as a jobs program for your districts". And it's pretty clear that, like some other defense boondoggles.... the Zumwalt Destroyer, the Littoral Combat Ships, the F-35, the Osprey... programs like Constellation often can't be killed because Congressmen view them as nothing but Federal stimulus for their districts. When Dick Cheney killed the Osprey in the early 90's, Congress funded it anyway and ordered DOD to buy more. I'm not an Obama fan by any stretch, but isn't it a good idea to only buy hardware on its merits, and cancel it otherwise? This is taxpayer money we're talking about, after all.
Unless someone can make an as-yet unknown value proposition for going back to the moon, it's a waste of resources.
Had we planned on staying this time... building a small base or research station to leave men on the moon for extended periods of time... then it would have been worth it. But it was clear that we weren't going to do that. We were basically just going back to relive old glories, when it gets right down to it.
That's my biggest problem with this. I have no problem cutting Constellation or the Moon shot. It was clear we weren't going to build a base there or spend any extended time there. That made the new Moon program just an expensive nostalgia trip, a way to relive old glories with little new actual science being done. But NASA is about "out there", not looking "down here". If you want to do climate studies, that should be NOAA's job, and to a lesser extent, perhaps the U.S. Geologic Survey. NASA should be about space exploration and aeronautics research, period.
I'm completely onboard with the Administration's idea of exploring (and maybe sending a man to ) near-Earth asteroids. That's technically feasible, and unlike a new moon shot, would be real space exploration. I also like the emphasis on the push for private space launch contractors, which NASA's old guard will no doubt fight tooth and nail. But it's time for NASA's monopoly on sending men into orbit to end.
If the Pope was serious about using new communication technology, he should make the entire Vatican Secret Archives searchable on the Internet.
That's not a bad idea, but people need to realize that "Secret" doesn't mean what they think it does in this case. From the same Wikipedia link:
"The word "secret" in the title "Vatican Secret Archives" does not have the modern meaning: it indicates instead that the archives are the Pope's own, not those of a department of the Roman Curia. The word "secret" was used in this sense also in phrases such as "secret servants", "secret cupbearer", "secret carver""
The article also notes that the archive has been open to scholars since 1881, and about a thousand a year access it for study. So let's nip any DaVinci Code-ish conspiracy theories about the archive in the bud here.
"you really haven't ever noticed that the thought of religious communities lives almost exclusivity in controlled (not in "Orwellian" meaning of control, ffs, in which you seem to interpret it) environments?"
Show me someone that's advocating a position... on anything... that isn't "controlling" the message. That's what makes it a message. It's a point of view. Doesn't matter if it's coming from a church or club or political party or business. Everyone from the GNU people to the Pope "control" their message.
"Heck, even such overboard things as infiltrating those communities become bearable and easily done."
Again, you're falsely assuming some kind of conspiritorial security system here. Infiltrate? The whole point is to bring people into the church. Why would you need to infiltrate it? Unlike something like Scientology, Catholics are pretty open about their beliefs, practices, and methods. You're seeing conspiracy activity where there is none. Go to any Catholic church, walk up to the priest and tell him "I'm an atheist, and I want to see how and why you do things here". As long as you're not there to be an ass and disrupt the service, he'll invite you right in. He sees it as both a duty and a spiritual opportunity to bring you to mass, not some kind of invasion. So again, why would you think that flaming a priest's blog is going to make much of a difference?
The Internet is a great place to let people know God is real. Before people had to travel to meet people. The Internet is less disturbing than a face to face meeting.
Ultimately, it's just another line of communication. It's important, but getting priests to blog is not exactly a revolutionary idea. Some are doing it already, and have been for years.
Heh, this should be modded funny, but some people will go "Eh?"
Jeeze, learn to take a joke, man.
He made it pretty clear that he wasn't joking.
I know you're joking, but that raises some interesting questions. As long as it's direct communication between the priest and person, could that kind of stuff... like confession be done over an iPhone (or IRC, instant messaging, etc)? I wonder if something like that has ever been done over, say, videoconferencing? Suppose someone is dying, and is requesting last rites, and you just can't get a priest there physically in time?
Please, just please make it be one domain, like religiousblogs.com
What a wonderful time and space saving idea. Hey, while we're at it, lets limit and compact all thought on the Internet. We'll start by forcing all geeks into one domain... something like geekblogs.com, and why stop there? We'll put political people into one domain and... by the way, who do we put in charge of forcing all this to happen?
Evens the playing field, makes what they preach much more vulnerable if it's not restricted to small community or closed channel of information.
I love it.
That's the silliest thing I've read this week. There are hundreds of millions... if not more... copies of Bibles in the world. There are thousands of churches and parishes. There are televsion and radio networks. You make it sound like they've been trying to hide, to keep what they teach to a small circle. Are you kidding? It's their job to go forth and preach. It's their job to interact with the public. "Closed channel of information"? Do you honestly think some nasty comments at a priest's blog is somehow going to usher in a glorious new era of atheism? Seriously?
" and trot out the old right-wing canard (originated by Rush Limbaugh)"
Limbaugh didn't originate that. That theory was put forth by a retired Lockheed engineer (before the accident investigation), and Limbaugh said it sounded likely to him. A lot of blogs picked it up too until the accident report came out.
>I'm curious why. Certainly, older generations of America fighter aircraft are permitted - Michael Dorn flies his F-86 Sabre all the time.
A privately owned F-104 occasionaly comes through the airport where I work. And there's a MiG-17... again, privately owned... in one of the hangers here that comes out to play occasionaly. I'm aware of no restriction on ownership or flights of retired fighters, only that they have to be "declawed"... have their gun and fire control system removed.
Still waiting to get my own F-14.
Unless you steal one from Iran, that will never happen. After the last F-14 squadron retired their birds in 2006, Dick Cheney ordered all Tomcats (with the exception of a very few set aside for museums) to be destroyed. Usually, we send freshly retired birds to the "Boneyard" at Davis-Monthan AFB in the desert... the dry conditions preserve the aircraft well in case we need them in an emergency. But Iran needs parts for their Tomcasts so badly that Cheney was afraid a black market would spring up and that parts would start making their way to the Islamic regime. So the birds were literally shredded. A sad end to arguably the greatest Navy fighter of the jet age.
no wonder... it's set as default on all the IE 8 and windows 7 installations i have made.
That's a copout. On IE8, when you first run it, it specifically gives you choices on things like search engine defaults, and even offers to download a list of more providers if you don't like the current choices (of which Google is one).
Google needs the competition at this point. Google search has become the Windows of search engines.
If they weren't, we'd all be flying autogiros and speaking Esperanto by now.
You can't really lay that at the feet of PM. Everyone thought we'd all be in flying cars and rocket packs and colonies on Mars by now. From the 30's to the 60's, we were incredibly optimistic about what the future would bring. And then we got there. We made it to the moon. Everyone had a car. Everyone had a TV. And we found out that life was as hard and boring as ever. Worse, we found out that there were limits to our wonder machines. Rockets make little difference in getting to Mars if you can't get there fast enough. You could make a flying car, but it would be an expensive disaster waiting to happen.
Our imaginations took us to Flash Gordon-like futures, and when we got there, it looked nothing like Flash's world. PM was no different from anyone else in missing this. We dreamed Art Deco/Streamline Moderne cities of the future. We got ugly, glass and concrete boxes in New York. What happened to us was the reality that the future, as we dreamed it, was never going to come.
All Popular Mechanics does is demonstrate that the people populating the middle and left of the IQ Gaussian are active consumers. In this, it stands shoulder to shoulder with the National Enquirer, Fox News, and any number of other amazingly low quality media outlets.
That's pretty arrogant. What would you consider a better alternative for people interested in practical solutions to mechanical problems, and curiosity about the latest planes, cars, etc? It sounds like you're looking down on people that like to work on their own cars and fix their own sinks.
I think lumping PM in with the National Enquirer says more about you than it does about PM.
Nobody wants to see a space truck until they need a delivery.
Yup. We're going to regret retiring the Shuttle in the coming years. It may be expensive and even dangerous at times, but rockets are no substitute for it.
"The fact that Japan's homelessness is large enough to now be visible is pretty shocking"
A lot of things about Japan would surprise people. But this is only going to get worse. I was reading this weekend about just how much trouble Japan is in. IIRC from the newspaper article, their national debt is 212% of the GDP, twice what the US's is. The savings rate for Japanese citizens used to average 10%. As the old have died off, and the less-numerous young entered adulthood, that rate has dropped precipitously to 3%. And there's much less home and real estate ownership on average in Japan than in the states. There may well be an impending debt crisis... some investors are actually betting against Japanese government bonds. So while the US is hurting, Japan is too. They've just done a better job of hiding it, but that's changing.
By Tokyo standards $640 a month is cheap
I don't think the average American realizes just how expensive it is to live in Japan. It makes San Francisco or New York seem affordable in comparison.
Everyone with half a brain joined the Air Force instead of the Navy. Not having a private room as an E5 was considered a hard ship and you got an apology for it.
Which is why all the other services snicker when Chair Force types complain about "hardship duty".
"but may also be due to users jumping ship from IE."
Some of us jumped ship from Firefox. It's served us well these past few years, but since 3 came out, it's been increasingly buggy and memory hoggish.