“Man Conquers Space:” Well, that answers that

 AARRRGH, blather, Crazy, dumbassery, Gah., news, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jul 112018
 

A few years ago, I made a post discussing the mysterious vanishing of all of the “Man Conquers Space” websites and such. It just seemed to vanish without a trace, after a great deal of effort had gone into making the film (including a good chunk of work on my part doing designs for launch vehicles and spacecraft). Some time after that original post, a commenter showed up and made some disturbing accusations against David Sander, the Australian feller making MCS. None of those accusations could be verified in any way, because the Aussies don’t have the sort of freedom of the press Americans do.

Well…. take a listen to this news report/commentary thing HERE, starting at about the 1:51:30 mark. The “Ray Hadley Morning Show” is unknown to me, but two seconds of Googling seems to indicate it’s on the up and up. He appears to be reading from a news article.

Sigh. Seems that Mr. Sander, according to the New South Wales cops and/or prosecutor (or whatever the Aussies use down there), lived down to the stereotype that we’ve come to expect from film makers when it comes to behavior… it appears he’s been arrested for raping two boys. (There’s also this police press release that seems to cover the same story, but without names… *24* “historical child sexual assault offences dating back to 2004“)

 

Entertainment types… I have but one question for you:

 

All things considered, I’d just as soon not be associated in any way shape or form with such activities or those who engage in them. It’s a stain what don’t come off. But if this is what indeed happened – and it certainly seems to be – then it’s best to get the facts out there.

So: “Man Conquers Space” is dead, dead, dead, deader’n shit. Even if all the rights and properties and footage and CGI models and all the rest had been legally passed on to someone reputable, ain’t no way anybody’s doin’ jack with it now.

 Posted by at 4:24 pm

Petro-Masculinity

 Crazy, Gah., Meh., politics, science  No Responses »
Jul 102018
 

Somebody had fun writing this word salad.

Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire

As the planet warms, new authoritarian movements in the West are embracing a toxic combination of climate denial, racism and misogyny. Rather than consider these resentments separately, this article interrogates their relationship through the concept of petro-masculinity, which appreciates the historic role of fossil fuel systems in buttressing white patriarchal rule. Petro-masculinity is helpful to understanding how the anxieties aroused by the Anthropocene can augment desires for authoritarianism. The concept of petro-masculinity suggests that fossil fuels mean more than profit; fossil fuels also contribute to making identities, which poses risks for post-carbon energy politics. Moreover, through a psycho-political reading of authoritarianism, I show how fossil fuel use can function as a violent compensatory practice in reaction to gender and climate trouble.

The possibility also exists that this was auto-generated by a computer using Social Justice buzzwords. But I would not be surprised either way… maybe this is someones idea of a joke or a hoax, and maybe it’s some crazed anti-science SJWs’s idea of what science is. In any event, it’s yet another example of “don’t take ‘published in a journal’ as meaning anything useful anymore.”

 

 Posted by at 3:53 pm

Early oxidation of Earth

 awesomeness, history, Hmm..., reshaping the world, science  2 Responses »
Jul 102018
 

Science is awesome.

Oxygen levels on early Earth rose, fell several times before great oxidation event

Short form: around 2.4 billion years ago, the rise of early plant life on Earth (largely cyanobcteria in the oceans) led to the first appearance of free oxygen in the atmosphere. Prior to this the atmosphere was pretty much oxygen-free, all oxygen being bound up in carbon dioxide. As the cyanobacteria emitted oxygen as a waste gas, it started to build up, but stayed at relatively low levels in the atmosphere for around a *billion* years because the oceans and land surfaces were busily drinking up the free oxygen. It wasn’t until about 850 million years ago that the oxygen “sinks” were filled up and oxygen could really start to accumulate in the atmosphere, finally allowing the development of modern animal life that depends on that oxygen.

New evidence suggests that 150 million years prior to the Great Oxidation Event of 2.4 billion years ago there was another “pulse” in the oxygen levels that fell back down to near-zero levels.The early history of life on Earth was clearly complex.

For billions of years Earth was a living place, but it would not have *looked* like a living place to modern astronomers. Right now people looking for signs of life in the universe are looking for places with free oxygen, but for Earth that’s only been the most recent quarter of the history of life on Earth. For a vast stretch of time the oceans were filled with dissolved iron; it took *forever* for available biologically emitted oxygen to finally bind with all that iron and sink to the ocean floor (forming the iron oxide deposits such as the one shown below). Only after all the iron was consumed could free oxygen really begin to accumulate. So there could well be other planets out there with oceans and life and atmospheres filled with carbon dioxide… and your efforts to terraform them will meet with the serious issue of the whole *planet* greedily gobbling up all the oxygen you try to fill the atmosphere with.

 Posted by at 12:25 am

Long March 8 and 9

 news, politics, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jul 092018
 

China reveals details for super-heavy-lift Long March 9 and reusable Long March 8 rockets

Long March 8: meant to emulate the Falcon 9 with a vertically-recovered core, but also use vertically-recovered solid rocket boosters (likely via parachute, though art seems to indicate that they too will have landing legs).

Long March 9: intended to be Saturn V class for manned missions to the Moon and beyond.

No indication that the Long March 9 is aiming for reusability, so it seems likely that the Chinese are emulating not the BFR but the SLS. It is too much to hope that China will emulate the spectacular economics of the SLS as well.

 

 

 Posted by at 11:31 pm
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