Friendly Atheist interview | Bad Astronomy

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While I was at TAM 8, Hemant Mehta and Robin Ferguson from The Friendly Atheist and interviewed me about the JREF, my Sooper Sekrit Project, and many things skeptical. It was too long to transcribe, so they put it up as a recording.

If you’re wondering about my razor joke right at the very start, I was poking fun at their recording device, which looks much like my shaver. But we covered a lot of ground, including PepsiGate, Skeptologists, and of course my talk at TAM 8 which has caused, to my bemusement, so much controversy. I’ll have more about that later, but for now you’ll hear something about it in this interview.


What You See When a Kingfisher’s About to Eat You | Visual Science

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A female kingfisher plunges into a pond in southwestern England hot on the tail of a tasty little fish. These birds’ eyes have special filters thought to reduce glare, giving them a clearer view of underwater prey from above. A third eyelid, called a nictitating membrane, protects their eyes when they strike the water at high speed.

Photographer Charlie Hamilton James placed the camera in a waterproof box and set it up in the pond, wired to an infrared trigger that fired when something crossed its path. This image was the result of several weeks of patient monitoring. James: “When shooting wildlife my aim is to show the subjects as they exist in their environment. This is particularly the case with kingfishers, which are more often than not shot close up with wide-angle lenses in order to show them in their river landscape.”

Charlie Hamilton James/Nature Picture Library

The Microbiome Never Ceases to Amaze | The Loom

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While I was away last week on vacation, the New York Times published my feature on the hidden jungle that each of us carries, known as the microbiome. I was very happy to come home to a lot of kind notes, tweets, and various communications about it. Yet I would never claim that my article delivered the Big Scoop on the subject. After all, we’ve known about the microbiome ever since Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek scraped his teeth over 300 years ago and discovered wee animacules in the scum. And as I wrote in my book Microcosm, Theodor Escherich discovered his eponymous Escherichia coli over a century ago in a quest to catalog the good microbes in babies’s guts, hoping to thereby identify the ones that were killing the children in droves. Even in the age of molecular biology, the microbiome has been well-chronicled. Jessica Snyder Sachs wrote a book back in 2007 called Good Germs, Bad Germs: Health and Survival in a Bacterial World that I heartily endorsed (and still do).

So why write a story now? That’s a question that science writers have to ponder a lot. Much of the most interesting science does not explode with a single experiment or the unearthing of a single fossil. It’s a stately unfolding, a long-running collaboration/competition. For me, the time seemed ripe thanks to a couple recent papers that catalogued vast amounts of DNA in the collective genome of our microbial lodgers. Scientists have long known that the genes in the microbiome outnumber human genes by perhaps 10 or 100 to 1. But now we’re finally getting a database of that genomic richness.

And then, at a recent conference, I heard about a fecal transplant that saved a woman’s life. I knew I had my lede. But I called my editor to make sure that I could kick off the article that way, given that so many readers peruse the Times over breakfast. You never know. To anyone who experienced a fascinated nausea, my apologies.

In the days since my article came out, a series of new papers on the microbiome have been published. Today the Times published an editorial about one of them, a study of the incredible diversity of bacteria-infecting viruses we carry. Even identical twins harbor different sets of viruses. And yesterday, Caltech researchers described how multiple sclerosis may be the result of the way bacteria manage our immune systems.

Still, I’m glad I didn’t wait for all the good science to emerge. I would still be waiting 20 years from now.

PS–Here is a list of links for my Times article:

The fecal transplant paper

Genomes of the microbiomes

A catalog of 3.3 million genes

Bacteria teaching the immune system

The paper on how microbes infect us at birth

The microbes of the lungs

[Image: A beautiful bacterial colony]


The Mystery of the Macaroni Penguin and the Bad Egg | Discoblog

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macaroni-penguinsGiven an allotment of two eggs each year, a lady macaroni penguin starts out by laying a smallish bad egg–then she goes on to lay a bigger, good one. If all goes well, the big egg hatches into a baby bird, but the smaller one never does. Why bother laying an egg that never hatches? A new study doesn’t touch that 60-year-old question, but it does hint that the smaller eggs’ sizes might result from the macaroni’s migration.

A group led by bird biologist Glenn T. Crossin has looked at the size of the bad eggs, which can be anywhere from almost the size of a hatching egg to fifty percent smaller. They noted that some ladies laid their eggs immediately after arriving at a penguin colony, while others waited a couple of weeks–and suspected that some of the penguins formed their eggs en route.

By measuring the levels of a protein called vitellogenin–essential for egg making–in arriving penguins, Crossin’s team realized that the ladies who waited before laying the first egg had greater levels of the protein (and possibly bigger first eggs), while those who laid immediately had lower protein levels (resulting in smaller eggs). They suspect that the little-egg makers aren’t “reproductively ready” when they pop the first one out.

Again, that doesn’t answer why the penguins make the bad egg in the first place. As Crossin told The New York Times:

“The thinking is that evolution works perfectly, but that’s not always the case, and the macaroni penguin is one good example of that,” he said.

Maybe the smug penguin couldn’t be bothered to evolve any further once it had stuck a feather on its head and called it macaroni.

Related content:
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Kinky quails fertilize more eggs.
Discoblog: Meet the Suicidal, Child-Soldier, Sexless Cloned Wasps
Discoblog: Menopause Test Lets Women Count Their Eggs Before It’s “Too Late”
Discoblog: The Incredible, Not-So-Edible Egg

Image: flickr / Jason Auch


Master of Blastr | Bad Astronomy

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blastr_logoI am pleased to announce that I will be writing a periodic column for Blastr, the new incarnation of SciFIWire, the SyFy Channel’s web news portal*!

I’ve had an informal relationship with SyFy for a while. The panel I moderate at Comic Con every year has Jaime Paglia from the SyFy show "Eureka" on it, and they’ve been nice enough to let me sneak in attend the SyFy/Entertainment Weekly party every year so I can ogle celebrities and pretend I’m cool for an evening.

But it’s now official: I’ll be writing a monthly column on the science of science fiction for Blastr, and the inaugural column is now up: Predators, and being abducted by one. I pontificate about the likelihood of being snatched from your bed and plopped down on a gaming preserve planet. You probably already know the answer (50/50, of course, since it will either happen or it won’t), but getting to that answer is the real fun.

I enjoyed writing the article, and I hope you like reading it. In the future I’ll write about the science of TV shows, comic books, or whatever else the folks at Blastr and I come up with. So set your bookmarks, update your feedreader, and put a little reality into your make-believe. It makes it even more fun.

* Apparently, some people don’t like the misspelled name and have been leaving complaints on the Blastr intro page. I guess these same folks won’t use Flickr or Google, either.


Video: Navy’s New Laser Weapon Shoots Down Drones | 80beats

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Unmanned aerial vehicles beware: We’ve got laser weapons.

This week defense contractor Raytheon debuted video of a test conducted with the U.S. Navy in California this May, in which the company’s laser weapon shot down four UAVs. The shaky black-and-white footage shows lasers locked on an aircraft until it loses control and plunges into the sea.

The Navy’s laser depends upon a guidance system it already uses on its ships—Raytheon’s Phalanx Close-In Weapon System, which normally uses radar to guide a 20mm Gatling gun.

Raytheon developed the system after buying six off-the-shelf commercial lasers from the car industry and joining them to make a single, powerful beam guided by the Phalanx’s radars. Unlike other tests which have been conducted on aircraft it uses a solid state laser rather than a chemical generated beam [The Telegraph].

Raytheon won’t give away many of the weapons system’s specs, such as its range. But Raytheon’s Mike Booen says the lasers produce enough power to overcome one of the major challenges of laser weapon technology: using it over water.

Damp maritime air can absorb the laser energy before it reaches the target and — as developers discovered in the 1960s when trying to target Russian Mig aircraft — a reflective surface can negate much of the laser’s effectiveness. Mr Booen acknowledges this, but said that these problems could be overcome. “Every material reflects, but you can overcome this with power; once you get over a certain threshold — measured in multiple kilowatts — then the laser does what it is designed to do,” he said [BBC News].

More military laser projects:

Death from above. For years the military has been developing a laser-mounted Boeing 747. However, we noted earlier this year that the government had pulled back on the funding for this program.

Laser humvee. Speaking of Boeing, last year the company tested a 1-kilowatt solid-state laser mounted on the back of a military humvee. It succeeded in burning a hole through mortar rounds and blowing them up.

We have the power. Last spring, Northrop Grumman’s laser weapons engineers created a blaster that for the first time exceeded 100 kilowatts, which many viewed as the power needed for a weapons-grade laser.

Related Content:
DISCOVER: The Most Important Future Military Technologies
80beats: Laser-Bearing Jumbo Jet Shoots Down Its First Missile
80beats: Boeing’s “Phantom Eye” Joins the Roster of Unmanned Spy Planes
80beats: DARPA Loses Contact with Mach-20 “Hypersonic Glider” During Test Flight


Frog Species Are Hopping Into Extinction Before They’re Even Discovered | 80beats

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PanamaFrogAndrew Crawford and his colleagues discovered 11 new species of amphibians in Panama. But they wish it hadn’t happened this way.

The team just completed a long-term study of amphibians in Panama’s Omar Torrijos National Park, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showing the startling disappearance of species there. Co-author Karen Lips began the study back before the disease chytridiomycosis, which is caused by a fungus called Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis and has devastated amphibian populations, reached that place and began to afflict its inhabitants.

The pre-decline surveys identified 63 species of amphibians within just a 1.5-square-mile (4-square-kilometer) area. After 2004, 25 of those species had disappeared from the site. As of 2008, none had reappeared. An additional nine species saw an 85 percent to 99 percent decline in their abundance [MSNBC].

The team also tested the DNA of the amphibians they studied, and by doing so identified 11 new species that had escaped notice because of their striking physical resemblance to other species. However, five of the newly discovered amphibians are already extinct in the area, vanished before we ever know about them.

This brings the total loss of amphibian lineages to 41%. Naming a species that is already extinct was “pretty sobering”, says Crawford [Nature].

And this discovery of the already dead isn’t likely to end, he says:

“In amphibians, the amount of new species described every year keeps going up. We can’t even guess where it is going to stop…. But at the same time, we keep losing them. One third of amphibian species around the world are listed on the IUCN Red List” [Wired.com].

Meanwhile, other researchers are racing to stop the die-off. The main thrust of current research is to culture beneficial bacteria from healthy amphibians that could help keep the fungus at bay. But scientists don’t know whether a plan to inoculate wild species this way could work.

Related Content:
DISCOVER: 10 Studies That Revealed the Great Global Amphibian Die-Off—And Some Solutions
DISCOVER: Are Frogs Hopping Straight Into Extinction?
80beats: Lizards Can’t Take the Heat, But Are They Really Going Extinct?
80beats: Toads—Yes, Toads—May Know When an Earthquake Is Coming
Discoblog: Frogs Pee Away Scientists’ Attempts To Study Them

Image: Andrew Crawford


Would You Pick Your Child’s Sexual Orientation? | Science Not Fiction

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Triples Raphael Goetter

“Would you take a magic pill to make yourself straight?” asked an audience member at a GLBT forum at Winona State University in Minnesota. The concept is not pure fantasy: scientists have flipped a genetic switch to make female mice homosexual and rogue pediatric endocrinologist, Maria New, has been giving mothers dexamethasone to prevent lesbian daughters. Pre-implantation genetic diagnostics, combined with in-vitro fertilization, is making it possible to select out genetic defects and disorders, and to select for desirable traits. The science of sexuality is driving us towards a future in which we may have the option to choose our child’s sexual orientation. This scenario poses a few questions:

1. Is choosing the sexual orientation of a new child an ethical act, regardless of the orientation chosen?

2. Would it be ethical to make all of one’s children a single orientation? All homosexual? All attracted to women?

3. Is it ethical to cure pathological sexualities, such as pedophilia?

Our culture reserves some of the largest swaths of freedom for procreation and child-rearing. Where does one draw the line? I don’t have answers. I open it to you, dear readers.

Photo: Triplées by Raphael Goetter via Flickr


The Man Who Drops the Mentos: Meet the Host of “Joe Genius” | Discoblog

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joegeniusWhat do you get when you mix homegrown science videos, an expert comedian, and experiments made for your garage? Discover Magazine’s new web television show, Joe Genius.

We chat with Jonah Ray, the show’s host, about the show, his start in comedy, and his favorite video games.

Discover Magazine: Could you describe your road to Joe Genius? How did you get your start as a comedian?

Jonah Ray: When I was 19, I moved from Hawaii ["born and raised"] to Los Angeles to do comedy…. I started just working at record stores and being a roadie for my friends’ bands, going on little tours. It took about a year to realize that was a horrible life! (laughs) I looked into some open mics in the LA Weekly and started going almost every night.

Discover: How did stand-up lead to your other work?

Ray: I started doing stand-up primarily. UCB [Upright Citizen’s Brigade, a sketch group] opened out here in LA, and I started taking some classes. Just from doing stand-up, I got more attention from people. I became a writer’s assistant on The Andy Milonakis Show which was a sketch show on MTV. I was really bad at it—so they fired me–but during the same conversation they hired me back as a writer. That’s what started my writing career in comedy. Shortly after that, I did Live at Gotham show and stand-up on Comedy Central. I started working on a web series called the The Freeloaders Guide to Easy Living on a site called Super Deluxe which was an offshoot of Adult Swim…. I did some writing and performing on Human Giant which is a sketch show on MTV. I also started performing and writing on more shows on G4.

In comedy, in the beginning it feels like one thing will always beget another. Really it’s about doing everything you can all the time trying to push yourself and being prepared when things come up. That’s usually how it happens. It’s kind of a mishmash of finding work where you can and doing the best job you can.

Discover: How is Joe Genius different from your previous work?

Ray: It’s more factual than anything I’ve ever done. That’s fun and exciting. I pretty much have been in the business of not taking anything seriously, and making fun of everything. . . Although, I do get to just be myself on the show, I still have to make sure the science is correct.

Discover: Any geeky secrets from your past? Favorite video games, role-playing games, action figure collections?

Ray: Growing up, I collected puppets and dummies. I had a Groucho Marx dummy, an Old Man Muppet (laughs), some different things to entertain my small cousins. Currently, my favorite video game of all time is Resident Evil 4, Wii edition. If we’re talking pure playability and frustration, I’m going to have to go with Sega Genesis’s Ghost and Goblins, which is one of the hardest games. But, I’m also always a sucker for MegaMan 2, and Super Mario World.

Discover: Did you like science class growing up?

Ray: I’ve always enjoyed science class, because you were always doing things…. I actually also learned a lot of science from Cosmos with Carl Sagan, Bill Nye, Beekman’s World, and Mr. Wizard. Those were shows that I always tuned into.

Discover: Any particular types of science experiments that you really loved?

Ray: I was always interested in rocket propulsion … concentrated, directed explosions. While out here [in LA], I got really interested in this one girl because I found out that she worked for JPL [NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory] in Pasadena. I pursued her pretty hard. I don’t think she even did sciencey things there … but the fact that she worked at JPL really got me going. It didn’t work out. (laughs) I think she preferred scientists over struggling comedians.

Discover: One early commenter said, after watching Joe Genius, that it was like the show was a concentrated version of all the good parts of a MacGyver episode. Did you have any favorite science shows growing up?

Ray: I used to go to school always wearing Mystery Science Theater 3000 t-shirts. I was obsessed…. It was the opportunity to watch all of these horrible science fiction movies, but it was like I was watching them with friends: Tom Servo, Crow, and Mike. That was most of the science fiction that I watched as a kid. It wasn’t for a lack of enjoying other science fiction. I was definitely a Star Wars kid–it’s just I was also really into comedy.

Discover: Could you tell us a little bit what it’s like to film an episode of Joe Genius?

Ray: It’s pretty grueling! But everyone who works on the show is awesome. There is a lot of stuff to go through: trying to makes the shows right, trying to make them funny, but everyone on staff was really funny and fun to have around. There was actually a lot of goofing off. So much so that sometimes someone would just have to say, “Shut up! Let’s focus.” … Yeah, it was a blast.

Discover: How do you pick out the Joe Genius award?

Ray: We try to pick out the video that’s not only the coolest to watch, but also the most interesting. One that’s simple, unexpected, and that you’re able to do at home. We’re searching for kind of a callout to the people watching: “This is cool because you can do it too.”

Discover: Can we get a peek at upcoming episodes? Upcoming favorites clips and themes?

Ray: The gravity episode is pretty awesome and painful at parts [lots of people almost hurting themselves]. I also failed some of the experiments in future episodes too. In one, I tried to drop a bunch of Mentos into a Diet Coke and I didn’t get to putting the cap on in time…. That was a little bit embarrassing. I thought my hands were quicker than they were! There are a lot of fun, really crazy videos coming up.

Check out Joe Genius on Facebook.

What do you get when you mix home science videos culled from the depths of the internet, and an expert comedian?
We chat with Jonah Ray, the host of Discover Magazine’s new web television show, Joe Genius.
Discover Magazine: Could you describe your road to Joe Genius? How did you get your start as a comedian?

When I was 19, I moved from Hawaii [where Ray grew up] to Los Angeles to do comedy. . . I started just working at record stores and being a roadie for my friends’ bands, going on
little tours. It took about a year to realize that was a horrible life!
(Laughs) I looked into some open mics in the LA Weekly and
started going almost every night.

Discover Magazine: Did you do other things than standup?

I started doing stand-up primarily. UCB [Upright Citizen’s Brigade] opened out here in LA and I started taking some classes. Just from doing stand-up, I got more attention from people. I became a writer’s assistant on The Andy Milonakis Show which was a sketch show on MTV. I was really bad at it—so they fired me–but during the same conversation they hired me back as a writer. That’s what started my writing career in comedy. Shortly after that, I did Live at Gotham show and stand-up on Comedy Central. I started working on a web series called Super Deluxe which was an offshoot of Adult Swim. I did some writing and performing on Human Giant which is a sketch show on MTV. I also started performing and writing on more shows on G4.

In comedy, in the beginning it feels like one thing will always beget another. Really it’s about doing everything you can all the time trying to push yourself and being prepared when things come up, because that’s usually how it happens. It’s kind of been a mish-mash of finding work where I can and doing the best job I can.

Discover Magazine: How is Joe Genius different from your previous work?

It’s more factual than anything I’ve ever done. That’s fun and exciting. I pretty much have been in the business of not taking anything seriously, and making fun of everything I can for the past seven or eight years. Although, I do get to just be myself on the [Joe Genius]
show, I still have to make sure the science is correct.

Discover Magazine: Any geeky secrets from your past? Favorite videogames, role-playing games, action figure collections?

Growing up, I collected puppets and dummies. I had a Groucho Marx dummy,
an Old Man Muppet. . . (laughs) some different things to entertain my small
cousins.

Currently, my favorite videogame of all time is Resident Evil 4, Wii edition. If we’re talking pure playability and frustration, I’m going to have to go with Sega Genesis’s Ghost and Goblins, which is one of the hardest games. But, I’m also always a sucker for MegaMan2, Super Mario World.

Discover Magazine: Did you like science class growing up? Favorite class?

I’ve always enjoyed science class, because you were always doing things. . . I actually also learned a lot of science from Cosmos with Carl Sagan, Bill Nye, Beekman’s World, and Mr. Wizard. Those were always shows that I specifically tuned into.

Discover Magazine: Any types of science experiments that you really loved?

I was always particularly interested in rocket propulsion. . .concentrated, directed explosions. While out here [in LA], I got really interested in this one girl because I found out that she
worked for JPL in Pasadena. I pursued her pretty hard. I don’t think she even did sciencey things there. . . but the fact that she worked at JPL really got me going. It didn’t work out. (laughs) I think she preferred scientists over struggling comedians.

Discover Magazine: One commenter said of Joe Genius: “It’s like you took all the good parts of a MacGyver episode and crammed them into 15 minutes.” Did you have any favorite science shows growing up?

I used to go to school always wearing Mystery Science Theater 3000 t-shirts. . . I was obsessed … It was the opportunity to watch all of these horrible science fiction movies, but it was like I was watching them with friends: Tom Servo, Crow, and Mike.
That was most of the science fiction that I watched as a kid. It wasn’t for a lack of enjoying
other science fiction. I was definitely a Star Wars kid, it’s just I was also really into comedy.

-Could you tell us a little bit what it’s like to film an episode of Joe Genius?

It’s pretty grueling! But everyone who works on the show is awesome. There is a lot of stuff to go through. Trying to makes the shos right, trying to make them funny, but everyone on staff was really funny and fun to have around, so there was actually a lot of goofing off. So
much so that sometimes someone would just have to say, “Shut up! Let’s
focus.” . . . Yeah, it was a blast.

How do you pick out the Joe Genius award?

We try to pick out the video that’s not only the coolest to watch, but also the most interesting. One that’s simple, unexpected, and that you’re able to do at home. We’re searching for kind of a callout to the people watching: “This is cool because you can do it too.”

-Peek at upcoming episodes. Upcoming favorites clips and themes?
Some of the best ones are when people almost hurt themselves. (laughs). I don’t know why that is… The gravity episode is pretty awesome and painful at parts. I also failed some of the experiments in future episodes too. In one, I tried to drop a bunch of Mentos into a
Diet Coke and I didn’t get to putting the cap on in time…. That was a little bit embarrassing. I thought my hands were quicker than they were! There are a lot of fun, really crazy videos coming up.


Who gets the credit for the BP container cap? YOU do. | The Intersection

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This is a guest post by Darlene Cavalier, a writer and senior adviser at Discover Magazine. Darlene holds a Masters degree from the University of Pennsylvania, and is a former Philadelphia 76ers cheerleader. She founded ScienceCheerleader.com and cofounded ScienceForCitizens.net to make it possible for lay people to contribute to science.

The world may never know for certain who sparked the idea for the current BP oil containment cap. Professor Robert Bea, from the University of California, Berkeley, however, has a strong hunch:

Six weeks ago, Robert Bea, an engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley, received a late-night call from an apologetic “mystery plumber.” The caller said he had a sketch for how to solve the problem at the bottom of the Gulf. It was a design for a containment cap that would fit snugly over the top of the failed blowout preventer at the heart of the Gulf oil spill.

Professor Bea, a former Shell executive and well-regarded researcher, thought the idea looked good and sent the sketches directly to the US Coast Guard and to a clearinghouse set up to glean ideas from outside sources for how to cap the stubborn Macondo well.

When Bea saw the design of the containment cap lowered onto the well last week, he marveled at its similarity to the sketches from the late-night caller, whose humble refusal to give his name at the time nearly brought Bea to tears.

Whether or not this unnamed plumber will or should receive credit for this is sketchy, but this much we know: more than 300,000 ideas from the public were submitted to BP. No prize money was offered, no promises of fame. When called upon to act, YOU, the public came through. Unfortunately, this natural reaction to collaborate and act upon a crisis is, more often than not, an unnatural reaction for most organizations. A host of reasons can be cited including politics, governance, legalities, public relations, etc.

It’s high time things change, no?

As painful as the past few months have been from an ecological, economic, social, and governance perspective, there are many lessons to be learned. I’d like to address one, here: some problems are too big to leave solely to the experts.

Earlier, on this blog, I argued for a more serious approach to solicit and vet solutions from the public. This led to several meetings and conversations with the White House, the National Academy of Engineering, the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, Expert Labs, and others, including the CEO of Innocentive, Dwayne Spradlin, who has done an incredible job of crowdsourcing potential solutions.

The entities, referenced above, and I have formed a loose network to figure out how we might help pre-wire the system before the next crisis strikes. Ideally, this process will make it easier to tap American ingenuity and facilitate the coordination, vetting, and delivery of the best ideas into the hands of the decision makers.

Call To Action

All of this presents an opportunity for the White House to flex its muscles and take the lead in assisting and directing players in this arena. The White House has already demonstrated both passion and success in finding ways to build collaborative, public-private partnerships.

Here are some practical suggestions:

The White House can ask the National Academy of Engineering to study and make recommendations for best practices (a playbook of sorts so we are better prepared in the future). However, because such reports typically take a few years to complete….

The NAE can host a public forum on this topic (soon).

Consider existing assets such as Innocentive’s technological platform to solicit and process ideas from the public.

Innocentive and Expert Labs can utilize their rapid-fire mechanisms to reach active scientists and engineers.

The Sloan Foundation’s support of the work the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars and Crisis Commons are doing (read on) can be expanded to support these related efforts. The Wilson Center and Crisis Commons are already at work improving upon methods to harness the collective power of volunteers who help with on-site crisis triage. Why not combine forces so these on-site “problem identifiers” can inform a distributed network of “problem solvers?”

If you have ideas, please share them here.

In closing, I’ll leave you with this, from Innocentive’s Dwayne Spradlin:

Natural and man-made disasters are, by their nature, devastating and unpredictable. But our response to them shouldn’t be. Government must take a lead here in assisting and directing parties to this end. We need to act now to be at a heightened readiness the next time. And there is always a next time.


Asteroid comparison chart | Bad Astronomy

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Emily Lakdawalla — scientist, blogger, and all around cool chick — has just posted a totally awesome scale diagram comparing every asteroid and comet visited by spacecraft. It features pictures of all the rocks, each of which she has carefully resized so you can see just how big they are relative to each other:

emily_asteroids_comets

Whoa. Look how big Lutetia, just visited by Rosetta, is compared to everything else! And yet, at 130 km across, it’s a dot compared to our Moon. In fact, you could smash together all the known asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter and they’d be far smaller than our rocky satellite.

Still, small doesn’t mean "uninteresting". These rocks in Emily’s diagram are all fascinating beasts, and the more we learn about them the more compelling they become. And there’s more to come, with the Dawn mission about to see the big asteroids Vesta and Ceres up close… and go read Emily’s blog about this to see how they’d fit on the diagram (hint, they don’t, and by a long shot). You’ll also find a much larger version of the diagram there, and you really, really should look at it. Wow.


House Wants To Kill CRuSR

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Full Draft Text of House NASA Authorization Legislation

Keith's note: One thing that the House version of the NASA Authorization Act does is to cut further into proposed commercial activity - specifically, CRuSR (Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research).

In this draft House Legislation, funding for CRuSR is cut in FY 2011 and FY 2012 from the President's and Senate's mark at $15M per year year down to just $1M per year, with funding unspecified in later years. In addition, according to the draft language, CRuSR's funding in FY 2011 may not be used to buy flights or build payloads. Instead it can be used only to fund studies.

If you look at Sec. 906 (page 94) you will see that this proposed draft adds onerous restrictions before NASA can spend money on CRuSR, using identical language to restrictions placed on Commercial Crew in the same legislation, e.g., NASA may not proceed with a CRuSR RFP until all indemnification and liability issues are settled and a report has been sent to Congress.

More than 300 researchers and educators, specializing in fields ranging from microgravity and life sciences to astronomy and atmospheric sciences, from all over the U.S. showed up at a conference in February wanting to use this program. It would seem that anti-suborbital research and anti-commercial forces from within and outside of the agency are at work once again. SMD AA Ed Weiler has long been opposed to suborbital research and has clearly been working behind the scenes to take yet another run at killing this sort of activity. Just look where the CRuSR money is going (if the House gets its way): sounding rockets launched out of Wallops.

Letter: Armstrong, Cernan, and Lovell Support NASA Authorization

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Letter to Senators Mikulski and Shelby from Apollo Astronauts Neil Armstrong, James Lovell, and Eugene Cernan, 20 July 2010

"This week, Chairman Gordon of the House Committee on Science and Technology released his Committee's version of the NASA Reauthorization Bill. Cosponsored by Committee Ranking Member Hall, Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee Chairwoman Giffords and Space and Aeronautics Ranking Member Olson, the bill reflects the Committee's belief of those plan components necessary to assure a worthy national space and aeronautics program."