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From Rush Limbaugh: All right, people say, Rush, what do you mean media scandal? Let me put scandal in quotes. The simplest way, I think, to clue you in as to my thinking is to give you the -- well,...

I'm back home in Nebraska, still a good bit sore and getting a little touch of the ol' cabin fever, but on the mend. I'd like to thank all of my fellow bloggers and readers who stopped by to leave...

Start-up Firm Building New Space Capsule System

No links to this YET - but the October issue of Popular Science reports on a firm called T/Space which is developing, with NASA backing, and some project collaboration with Rutan's Scaled Composites, a capsule system called the CXV or Crew Transfer Vehicle capable of carrying three or four astronauts to low Earth orbit, and returning for a wet landing, like the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo had.

The launcher is an aircraft launched propane & liquid oxygen rocket. The whole emphasis has been on economy and simplicity of design - and seems to be making some real progress - possibly having things ready to go b\y '08 or '09 - an unheard of timeline for NASA projects.

Best of all, this will be privately owned/operated, flying as contractors to NASA, or whoever else wants/needs to get to orbit. Meanwhile, NASA is proceeding with its plans for vehicles to replace the shuttles also apparently based on a larger, more advanced capsule design for personnel, and a heavy lift cargo launcher, for well, cargo. NASA doesn;t plan to be ready to fly before 2012 at best, so the T/Space CVX could fill a gap to help keep the International Space Station in business until then.

The folks at T/Space emphasize that they are NOT building a shuttle replacement - but perhaps a modern replacement for the truly antiquated Soyuz technology.

This is truly good news - the US must maintain an effective capability for space, if for no other reason, to prevent a default ceding of the ultimate high ground to China, Russia, or whoever else goes after it.

From Rush Limbaugh: Now, as inspired as I am about the heroic efforts of the rescuers and as awed as I am by the monumental cleanup task, I am disgusted by the looters, not just the looters of food and...

While the storm rages over just how much the Katrina aftermath will affect George Bush's poll numbers, here are a couple of forward looking stories. First, how many people really died? I was always suspicious of the 10,000 speculation. I...

One simple thing, really: Joe-Joe Biden loves him some TV camera time. And that's understated, perhaps. Biden, Leahy, and Chuck Schumer. Does it get any better than that? I caught some of the hearing off and on yesterday, and have...

Kaus has it about right: Sure, the Bushies are using the federalism issue, and Louisiana's potentially bruised feelings, as an excuse--especially when they talk about how "it would have been perceived" if Bush had seized control of the relief effort...

Hey, Maybe the Singularity Really Is Near

A very interesting article from Glenn Reynolds stepping outside of his "evil" incarnation as the Instapundit, in which he points out some very strange sounding science and technology at the bleeding edge of the art.

Ray Kurzweil's book, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology comes out next week. And I suspect that a lot of people wonder if things will really happen as fast as Kurzweil suggests.

But as I look at the news reports, I see quite a few signs that we're living in a future that not long ago would have looked science fictional. Take, for example, this report: Miracle Mouse Can Grow Back Limbs.

It's so far out, that the Chief read it in new sci-fi just a few years ago. In spite of the cautious optimism implicit in all of this stuff, there's also a sobering warning:

Meanwhile, here's an interview with Ray Kurzweil that I published elsewhere. Kurzweil is an optimist, but even he worries that the Singularity may come as a result of Chinese, not American, efforts, and he's got some disturbing numbers. The future is almost here, but we've still got some choices about how things will turn out. Let's try to choose wisely.

Indeed!

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