Re: What's New - Bob Park

Sam Wormley wrote:

What's New - Bob Park
Friday, December 15, 2006
http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN06/wn121506.html

1. NASA'S MOONDOGGLE: EXPOSING THE DARK SIDE OF WHAT'S NEW.
"Viewed from the point of history several decades out," Michael Griffin
told the NY Times last week, "the retreat from the Moon to low Earth
orbit will be seen to be a mistake." A year ago he told USA Today that
the shuttle and the ISS were both mistakes (WN 30 Sep 05) . So what are
we doing about it? At $2 billion a pop, we're launching the shuttles as
often as we can to finish the ISS so we can drop it in the ocean, or
foist it off on some fool. Then we can get on with making really dumb
mistakes like a manned lunar base. For what? Using fragile humans in
space is hopelessly old-fashioned. Alas, WN makes mistakes too. Last
week we said "dark side" of the moon, when we meant "far side." We got
a lot of mail. It was a goof, but we were talking about radio
telescopes. In terms of anthropogenic radio waves, the far side is the
dark side.

Oh those small thinkers! ISS FUBAR should be boosted into lunar polar
orbit at immense cost as a command post and emergency evacuation
bunker. A NASA boo-boo - perhaps a carefully calculated unanticipated
structural failure during orbital insertion - will send it crashing
into the moon. Management will get massive performance bonuses while
nuisance engineers are fired. Bad luck.

When the moon was hot and soft tidal forces plus tidal locking sloshed
low-melting lavas to the Earth side leaving jagged dikes of high
melting stuff on the far side. The near side is smooth flat maria.
The far side is like the Tibetan Plateau. It is tough to build on a
jagged bed of spikes.

[snip]

4. PROJECT BIOSHIELD: LET'S PRAY THERE ISN'T AN ANTHRAX ATTACK.
The response of the Bush Administration to 9/11 included Project
BioShield at $5.6 billion. Nearly $1B went to VaxGen to produce 75
million doses of anthrax vaccine by 2006, even though VaxGen had just
failed to produce an AIDS vaccine for which it got millions from NIH.
VaxGen now says maybe 2009. On Monday, HHS decides whether to terminate
VacGen or give them an infusion of cash. I would bet on the cash.

If they cannot manufacture it the product cannot fail and be
withdrawn. So much money has already been invested... that we would
be fools to abandon it or make it right re ISS FUBAR, new Orleans, and
Iraq War II.

--
Uncle Al
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/
(Toxic URL! Unsafe for children and most mammals)
http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/lajos.htm#a2
.