"COME ON YOU GUYS WAKE UP!"

The official warning call of a modern pontificator.  It's also a warning that the following statement will be one or several of the following:

1. A conspiracy theory (or conversely, and anti-conspiracy theory)
2. Wrong
3. Patently obvious to everyone but, apparently, the poster
4. Hopelessly biased

Of late something has truly bugged me.  Let me preface this by saying that I am a full believer in the US constitution, the bill of rights, and the additional amendments that followed.  I believe it sets out a very nice set of guidelines.  And I do admire the founders of this nation as the remarkable men they were ( Read more... )

So a few weeks back I saw this:
Bigelow plans to build Orion Lite

So I says to myself, "self, now we got some action again in private manned orbital space." I'll put it this way, when Robert Bigelow says he's going to build a spaceship, it may as well already be flying. And finally somebody decided to trim the fat from the one piece of Orion that ( Read more... )

1 for 2.  NASA falls short one more time with one more chance set for Wednesday.  This isn't like a late grade on a paper, though.  There's some serious negotiations with the Russians involved.  There's a cargo resupply headed to the ISS and the Russians are eager to keep their almost clockwork-like reputation for on-time, on-target delivery.  ( Read more... )

Monday, July 13th is poised to be quite the interesting day in my world of space geekdom.  Due to multiple delays and barring any further inclement weather, today will see the launch of STS-127 (space shuttle mission).  It's carrying the final piece of the final large module, Kibo.  Aside from one large experiment to be strapped to the exterior of ( Read more... )

One of my biggest pet peeves in life is people who run around yelling "the sky is falling" because of such-and-such study that found this-or-that shocking truth about some detail of our daily lives when they haven't actually gone through the trouble of actually reading the study themselves.  It's true of any number of subjects from the respiratory ( Read more... )

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/

Since I don't want to spend the time to figure out a perma-link, here's the text in question:

"Today at 12PM EST, ABC's George Stephanopoulos will conduct the first "Twitterview," interviewing Senator John McCain, R-Ariz. The ten to 15 minute interview will be available for viewing on Read more... )

or "Signs you should find a new boyfriend"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/13/police-shoot-man-dressed-as-joker

I know love can blind you a bit, but wouldn't you think twice about getting in a car with a guy dressed as the joker, armed with a shotgun, and fresh from stabbing and tazing a fellow soldier?  Instead this young lady decided to ( Read more... )

It appears now I only come on here to let off some steam from my political angst.  So I'm going to sound off on the latest and greatest issue, Rush Limbaugh.

I don't much care about the argument saying Rush is the voice of the party, though the soap opera between Rush and Steele is certainly one for the comedy clubs.  What concerns me is the idea ( Read more... )

It seems for some time I've had a strong viewpoint on the space front so I've decided to formalize it and create my own blog on the subject. It's pretty slow moving at the moment (averaging about 1 post every month and a half) and I'm not 100% satisfied with the tone, but if you want to check it out, it's at starshipprivateenterprise.blogspot.com ( Read more... )