David Cameron hummed four notes and the musical webosphere went nuts, all the composers attempting to create songs and symphonies around it. I like this one:
Jul 132016
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Jul 132016
Three cheers for late 1970’s nostalgia. Who remembers Skylab coming down?
When Will China’s ‘Heavenly Palace’ Space Lab Fall Back to Earth?
It *seems* that the Tiangong-1 space station *may* have lost control. Wheeeee!
Jul 122016
Heh.
Jul 122016
This short film is a demonstration of the capability of a real-time videogame rendering engine. For that purpose it seems to succeed pretty well… the animation is largely smooth and flawless (some jerkiness here and there). But in order to do the demo, a fragment of a story is told, and, man, is it a disturbing one:
What *seems* to be happening here is that a prison is releasing a large number of prisoners all at once, to stumble out into an unknown wilderness. But the prisoners are all structurally identical androids. Weird as that is, the reactions of the main character android seem to indicate that there’s a *human* in there, presumably a human mind copied and uploaded into the androids artificial brain.
That… would be one nasty way to punish a criminal (or enemy of the state). Make ’em live forever, or at least a very long time, in a body that is not their own and which is pretty limiting, Yeesh.
Jul 122016
My interview on the Space Show is now available for downloading as a 26 megabyte MP4 right HERE. This one covers Project Orion, ol’ nuclear bang-bang. The discussion kinda wanders around some.
So, download, give it a listen, point and laugh. I’m listening to it now and recognizing once again that while I have a face for radio, I have voice for print. At least this time, the audio troubles that plagued my last interview don’t seem to have arisen this time.
Jul 112016
In a bit over 15 minutes. So: will this be the time my phone explodes? My computers crash while looking something up to answer a simple question? My tiny little mind goes into meltdown on the air? Taking all bets!
Jul 102016
From the point of view of weirdo bizarre politics, 2016 is the year that keeps on giving. Behold:
The Religious Cult Secretly Running Japan
I’d suggest that “Secretly” is not terribly accurate, since they seem to be pretty open about it. Specifically, Nippon Kaigi, a Shinto group that wants to restore Japan militarily and culturally to what it was prior to getting spanked in WWII, is a group that includes such government types as the current Prime Minister and many in his cabinet. Military adventurism, elimination of women’s rights, expulsion of foreigners, Emperor worship, all that rubbish.
This is *kinda* amusing. First part of the last century the Japanese were able to storm around east Asia because the US had, perhaps unwisely, kinda *forced* the Japanese to modernize in the late 19th century. They were burdened with a medieval culture but graced with advanced technology… while their neighbors were largely still medieval everything. But now… well, if the Japanese try that Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity schtick again, they’ll find that the Koreans and the Chinese and the Vietnamese are a little closer to them technologically.
I wonder, though, what it is about certain ideologies that continue to persist well after they got their asses well and soundly *beat.* Knuckleheads who want to worship the Emperor, or people who think the Nazis were neato-keen, or people who think Communism is the future, or people who think the South will rise again more than 150 years after the profoundly failed War of Southern Aggression… all these schmoes are worshipping at the altar of failure. They are waving loser’s flags. And yet, here we are.
Jul 102016
The mysterious syndrome impairing astronauts’ sight
Short form: zero gravity over a span of weeks or months shifts fluids up into astronauts heads, applying pressure to the back of eyeballs, trashing their vision. One astronaut went from 20/20 to 20/100. It’s not yet clear if this is temporary or permanent, but it’s moderately disastrous for long duration spaceflight such as trips to Mars.
There is, of course, a simple solution: artificial gravity. Centrifugal force will do the job. But the question is, what level of gravity is needed? If you go to 3/8 of a G, Mars gravity, will you be just fine forever, or will it just take longer? Can we get by on 1/6 G, Lunar gravity? 1/10 of G? 1/20? 1/100?
These are questions that *cannot* be answered on the ISS. We need a real space station, one that either has different rotation rates over a span or years, or multiple levels with different G-levels. This would obviously be a better setup then pure zero-g fr a “space hotel.” It’s not even remotely certain that all space tourists will be able to well tolerate or even want zero-g non-stop for the duration of their stay; a rotating station, especially one attached to a zero-g module via a rotary bearing airlock, would provide both environments within just a moments travel.
Best solution: develop some good zero-g, vacuum-capable 3D printers that can work with aluminum and steel and titanium, and send to the ISS along with a modified woodchipper. Feed the ISS into the chipper then the printer a module at a time, turning it into a properly designed station, one with inflatable modules and artificial gravity.
Jul 102016
The Star Wars theme and Imperial March played on floppy drives? Sure, why not.
Jul 102016
So how’s that Reset going?
U.S., Russia expel each other’s diplomats
Oh. That good.
Bonus round: Russian police have taken to assaulting US diplomatic personnel. Note how in Russian media it is just assumed that anyone the Russian government decides to knock around is a “CIA spy.”