space

Steve Hayes, with A.B. Stoddard and Charles Krauthammer, last night on Fox News:

During last night’s debate, Mitt Romney responded to Newt Gingrich’s proposal that America establish a lunar colony by the end of the decade by saying that if someone presented him with that proposal, “I’d say, ‘You’re fired.’” While one might think Romney justified in firing someone who pitched Gingrich’s specific proposal, Romney gave the distinct impression that he also might have fired John F. Kennedy back in 1962.

Forty-two years ago yesterday, Apollo 11’s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin ascended from the surface of the moon and rendezvoused with Michael Collins in the command module Columbia for their trip home from mankind’s maiden voyage to the moon. All three men are now in their 80s, and no human being has been on the moon since each of them was 42 — and now even the space shuttle has had its last liftoff.

The Economist magazine thinks the Space Age is probably over, and the discussion of our space future (or non-future) in its new issue is intelligent and informative. I've found over the years, though, that in many instances, the Economist's suave articulation of the not-so-cutting edge of conventional wisdom proves wrong. Mark Albrecht hopes that's so in this case, because he's a believer in space exploration, and his new book argues for U.S. leadership in that endeavor.

It's subscriber only, unfortunately, but that's no reason to miss Robert Zubrin's devastating analysis of the last several decades of space policy in Commentary. The piece is informative, imaginative, and extremely well written. Upon finishing it, I immediately looked up Zubrin's book, The Case for Mars.

And while you're at it, don't miss Charles Krauthammer's "On to Mars," from the January 31, 2000 issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

The Guardian's Jon Ronson profiles Paul Davies, the Arizona State Univerity scientist who chairs the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Post-Detection Task Force. SETI, the brainchild of Frank Drake and Carl Sagan, has been active for almost 50 years. So far, nothing.

Writing about lost technology last year, I noted how worrisome it was that today NASA would have trouble building even a Saturn V rocket, which was, once upon a time, the engine of the entire agency.

Remember the headline from a few days ago about the impending supernova from "nearby" recurring nova T Pyxidis? T Pyxidis is a star which goes boom every 20 years, but hasn't had an event since 1967. This week some astronomers suggested T Pyxidis is headed for supernova, one of the aftereffects of which would be the stripping away of the Earth's ozone layer, massively increased gamma radiation, the creation of millions of Incredible Hulk-like monsters, and the eventual destruction of life on earth .