The Sequester, NASA, and BRAIN
Sequestration is having a horrific effect on Americans from one coast to another (except, of course, for those that enacted it) and it’s only going to get worse as time goes by. We’re watching it unfold before our eyes – cuts in funding for schools, airport towers shutting down, federal employees and contractors being furloughed, [...]
Terra Lumina
One of the things I love about science is that it gives us insight into what would otherwise be a mysterious and confusing world to live in. True, there are things that we still don’t quite yet fully understand, but what we have learned in just a cosmic blink of an eye is truly astonishing. [...]
NASA Johnson Style!
I confess I haven’t blogged nearly as much as I expected to this month, and perhaps that’s because I’ve allowed the events in the news to consume more of my attention than I wish it had. Still, there is an amazing universe out there to explore. And there’s also this: There are several parodies of [...]
Reliving Apollo 11′s descent to the Moon
With the recent passing of Neil Armstrong, there have been many tributes to the first manned landing on the moon. Tamtech has done something I’ve never quite seen before – a real-time playback of the audio, video, and spacecraft telemetry of the actual Apollo XI landing. The movie points out who’s talking, both from the [...]
Build your own space communications network – on your iPhone
Among the many unsung heros of the space program are the people who build and maintain NASA’s space communications networks. After all, every spacecraft, whether it’s Hubble, the International Space Station, or even your everyday weather satellite has to communicate with the ground somehow. But let’s face it, space communication is not exactly the glitziest [...]
Crowdfunding a space science startup
It doesn’t appear that our investment in NASA is going to change anytime soon, and that’s a shame because about 10% of NASA’s budget goes to funding research and education. In other words only about 0.05% of the entire federal budget goes towards actually funding the research that leads to scientific and engineering breakthroughs or [...]
Symphony of Science – Climate Change
John D Boswell at Symphony of Science created a beautiful video that describes our greatest challenge to date – climate change. Yes, the subject is a downer, and I would love to believe that it really isn’t happening as much as the oil industry would like us to. But the reality is that it is happening, [...]
The Universe, now in collectible trading card format
Over the years, I collected some trading cards and even played a few games to a rather obsessive extent, hoping that my opponent trading partner wouldn’t have the cards I had and would be dumb enough to trade his rare card for a handful of my common ones. But thanks to the Internet, and to [...]
