If you like following politics and appreciate science—and who doesn't?—the continuing saga of our space program offers a great lesson. It's got everything: larger than life technology zillionaires intent on establishing off-world colonies, creepy foreign meddling, rockets blasting off to perilous adventures, and plenty of political sausage making. One thing it doesn't have as much of is the hyper-partisan gridlock that has seized DC in the last 20 years. In fact one could argue this is how politics is supposed to work, where elected representatives fall less along the defined political axis and more in line with the interests of their constituents.
Next week a hearing will be held by the House Armed Services Committee on space exploration illustrating that struggle. Forget about the invisible hand of free competition! This is a bare-knuckle fight for big government space-bucks between traditional defense aerospace firms like Lockheed or Boeing and upstarts like SpaceX. One issue is that many ground to orbit rockets today use proven but aging engines made by Russia, whereas SpaceX uses the Merlin engine designed and made here in the USA, which also happens to be way cheaper and much newer.
If the formula for America's future in space means continued reliance on Russian-built engines, the solution produced will invariably mean fewer domestic jobs at a higher price per launch. Considering the geopolitical headaches on top of that, this should be a no-brainer. But nothing in politics is ever that simple. Watch this space, no pun intended.
- The video above is about the new movie Merchants of Doubt, it's based on the book of the same name reviewed on Daily Kos here. I haven't seen it yet, but I'm looking forward to it, especially since Chris Mooney gave the new movie a positive review here, and Rotten Tomatoes rated it at
83 86 percent—that's a real solid rating for any movie, let alone a documentary.
- Now that's what I call solar energy technology!
- It's nothing new lately for purportedly serious cable channels to be infested with pseudo-scientific nonsense. But et tu NPR?
- Some of the largest-known bugs to ever slither across the Earth were the the giant sea scorpions and the huge millipede like Arthropleura. But scientists have added another big one, only this fierce-looking lady may have been a gentle giant:
Ribbon-like structures, probably functioning as gills, covered its back. Two appendages near its mouth were specialized for filter-feeding, with a series of spines lined with bristle-like structures to sweep up small animals and particles.
- Cue the whines of "help, help, I'm being repressed!" by the usual suspects. Google is reportedly considering a big change in how they deliver search results:
The Internet, we know all too well, is a cesspool of rumor and chicanery. But in a research paper published by Google in February — and reported over the weekend by New Scientist — that could, at least hypothetically, change. A team of computer scientists at Google has proposed a way to rank search results not by how popular Web pages are, but by their factual accuracy.