Blog

The deep-lodged problems with the BART system 15 years ago
Before World War II, the Key System serviced a huge chunk of the San Francisco East Bay Area (Oakland, Alameda, Berkeley, etc) with an electric streetcar and train network that connected with San Francisco. But, it was discontinued after World War II because trains were the past and cars were the…

40 Years after Apollo 11: This brings us to now... 15 years ago
So, I've already talked about how we're kind of screwed in terms of space exploration, some of the political considerations, launch costs, and some potential things to do in space. If you ask a person on the street how much money we spend on NASA, they'll give you a huge number, generally between…

Space based solar power: Eliminating the need for power transfer 15 years ago
I tend to believe that the true usefulness of exploration doesn't become apparent until much later. Consider that the Europeans came to America to find India and access one set of resources... but ended up colonizing America instead. On the other hand, to justify any big project, you need something…

40 Years After Apollo 11: The use of the Moon 15 years ago
Helium 3 on the moon is very much like spices in the New World. If it provides a decent justification to get there, you might forgive that we're heading in a potentially wrong direction. Helium 3 is rare, but not that rare. You can purchase, at an elevated expense, a tank of pure Helium 3. Despite…

40 Years After Apollo 11: A few things we really don't know about space but ought to 15 years ago
There are a few things about space travel and science that it bugs the heck out of me that we don't know. Astrobiology is the biggest one. We do know that one cannot live without gravity forever without at least some degree of medical help. What do we need to do for a person to live in freefall long…

40 Years after Apollo 11: The problem with blindly going on to mars 15 years ago
Mars has been on the books as the next step after the moon for a long time. Some people think that our next step towards space needs to center around going to Mars. I'm going to write about why this may not be the great idea you think it is. First, technological troubles. NASA likes to ignore these…

40 Years after Apollo 11: What to do in space? 15 years ago
There are a lot of things that can be done in space. The problem is, we really don't know what's really useful to do up there. People came to America to hunt for gold, but that's not a big part of the modern economy. They came here to find spices and other goods from Asia but found a new continent…

40 Years after Apollo 11: The giant elephant in the room 15 years ago
We like to talk about the big reason why we don't have much of a presence in space as being political will or the lack of a cold war or even things like not having anything especially important to do. I don't believe it. The real giant elephant in the room, that nobody likes to talk about, is the…

The state of the space program, 40 years after Apollo 11 15 years ago
We are in the final years of the space shuttle program. Potentially, we're quite close to the end of our space program, as we know it. In the waning days of the Apollo program, NASA had four options. Go to mars, explore the moon further, build an infrastructure for low-earth orbit, or get out of the…

Geeklust for SGIs 15 years ago
One of my co-workers was wondering why our monitoring system was alerting about a stock. Turns out, it was just Nortel, who is in the process of disappearing. And I taunted her and reduced her to tears about all of the cool tech companies that are no more. Like SGI. It's gone. Rackable picked them…