Waste of Space

After spending over $9 billion towards returning humanity to the Moon for a permanent presence there, NASA has been told that the Constellation Program is scrapped.

No moon for you, NASA! No stepping stone space habitat to help get to Mars and beyond.

*big sigh*

'The U.S. can't afford it!', scream the bean counters.

Oh really. There is a significant elephant in the room, and it, as usual, is getting to eat nearly all the peanuts.

If just 10% of the annual budget for the U.S. Department of Defense Offense had gone to NASA over the last 50 years, we would be sending shuttles to the Jupiter system by now, not axing the Moon.

Over the last 50 years, the total investment in NASA (including Apollo) has been equal to the U.S. Department of Defense Offense budget for a single year. EVERY single year.

To make war toys and train toy soldiers to fight manufactured enemies.

And many people see this as money well spent.

So many people are just SO stupid...

The tragedy of NASA

And so the long awaited Augustine Commission report has been released, offering its vision for NASA's future.

And what did it recommend?

Eight piss-weak alternatives to keep NASA on a shoestring - two maintaining the current funding and six with a paltry $3 billion p.a. top-up.

To achieve what?

Bugger all really. Skip the moon. Forget landing on Mars in the next thirty years. Go visit an asteroid! Do a Mars flyby! Or go check out Phobos or Deimos and do some 'exciting science' there.

By when?

Oh, going back to the moon should be a goer by 2030...

Jazus H. Fucking Rice Crispies!

In the 1960s NASA got the moon and back in less than ten years from a standing start, and now a bunch of learned bean counters say it can't be done again in under twenty!

NASA has achieved some of the greatest events in all of human history. Getting off the Earth CAN be achieved. And getting off the third rock from the sun is both inevitable and a total human necessity.

The U.S. has the financial muscle to do this. The money exists.

The elephant in the room is - of course - the U.S. military. The U.S. Department of Defense gets more money each year than NASA has been granted in its full history of 50 years - over $500 billion. Every year.

To do what?

Stuff all! Piss off middle eastern countries and rattle the sacred sabers. A colossal fucking waste of money and resources with few tangible gains.

Just 5% of the Defence budget moved to NASA would put a permanent human presence on both the moon and Mars in just a few years, doing real science and expanding human boundaries in amazing ways. Our first steps to the stars.

Or, the preferred option of gun luvin' American paranoids, keep the status quo and keep on spending trillions of dollars, beating the crap out of carefully nurtured enemies.

Carl Sagan was right. A great civilization itching to snuff itself out of existence when on the verge breaking free.

Sigh.

40th Anniversary - Apollo 11!

Congratulations of course, to Neil, Buzz and Michael, this being the 40th Anniversary of the first landing on the moon.

Raspberries and a cactus up the anus, to all the conspiracy fruitcakes that reckon it never happened. They are endlessly tedious and collectively have a negative brain cell count. The day Buzz punched one in the face (the jerk sprang out at Buzz and called him a liar, a thief and a cheat) was a great day for Truth, Justice, and the American Way! :-)

I do have a 40 year old grudge with Neil though.

He was so hyped up after landing that he insisted on skipping a three hour rest break scheduled for before the moonwalk. NASA caved and he and Buzz went out early. And I missed seeing the whole thing, as I was stuck in a compulsory school exam. My school refused to reschedule the exam just because of a little something happening on the Moon... It was all over before I got home. I couldn't see anything at school, as my school didn't have any televisions...

"Next time for sure!" I thought.

Nope. Al Bean buggered the Apollo 12 video camera by pointing it at the sun just after he and Pete Conrad started their moonwalk.

"Next time for sure!" I thought.

Nope. Apollo 13 never landed, but that's another story.

"Next time for sure!" I thought.

AMAZING! FINALLY! Live TV from the moon with Apollo 14! Wee...!

There is nothing quite as stupid as the Pommie tabloid press

I think I should make a series out of this. Let's start with:

Stupid Pommie Tabloids #1

The Mirror 14-Feb-2009

Dumb-ass headline: The Dark Side of the Moon: 40 years after moon landing the doubts persist

Dumb-ass journalist: Dennis Ellam

---

It doesn't seem to matter how often and how completely this particularly stupid conspiracy theory gets torn down; it will always pop up again, pretending to be fresh and new.

Every single hoax detail the writer breathlessly reveals has been debunked countless times. Anyone with half a shred of intelligence can see that the whole conspiracy is a load of crap.

But here it is - again.


This isn't the moon, you see. It is "an elaborate mock-up in a movie studio somewhere in a remote corner of an Earthly desert."

You want proof? There's acres of it:

1. Heaps of American believe the landings were a hoax. 6% in 1979. 11% in 1999. 22% "recently"... that would be 60 million doubting yanks. "It's embarrassing now for NASA to realise that, as a four-decade anniversary approaches, a rapidly-growing body of public opinion is convinced the greatest moment was a fake." PROOF!

2. 1960's era computers were too primitive to do it. PROOF!

3. The lighting was too good. The lighting cast shadows in weird directions. PROOF!

4. No stars in the pictures. PROOF!

5. Buzz Aldrin punches a dumb-ass conspiracy theorist on the nose who is trying in shove a bible at him so he can swear on it that he is not lying about going to the moon. Buzz is clearly guilty! PROOF! (Note: Dumb-ass journalist Ellam calls the dumb-ass conspiracy theorist a "TV Reporter" BZZZT. Nope. Just a loon 'film maker' trying to falsely nail someone who actually achieved something amazing in his life. I am not a supporter of violence, but in this case it's a pity Buzz didn't actually hurt this jerk. I have seen the video and the 'reporter' deserved more than he got. It went to court when the 'film maker' sued Buzz, but the judge just as quickly threw it out again. Heh.)

6. "The most telling evidence, say the HBs (Hoax Believers), is that the Moons still there, 250,000 miles away, but we dont go there any more... Has science moved so far backwards? Or are we about to celebrate the day when it really took all of us for a ride? That small step begins to look even more mysterious than ever." PROOF! KNOCK-OUT PUNCH!

What complete drivel.

I am not going to debunk this rubbish again here as it has been done elsewhere better than I can do it. Go to: http://www.clavius.org/ or http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html and have a fun read.

The Mirror obviously has a very low opinion of the intelligence of its readers. There is nothing new in this story. This tired list of 'evidence' has been regurgitated endlessly for years.

I even wonder if this present story isn't just a reprint of a very old story by a lazy (probably an essential skill for an employee of the Mirror) sub-editor. It says: "But the HBs have begun to gather important allies. A former engineer who worked on the design of Apollo rockets Bill Kaysing had his doubts during the 1960s..."

"BEGUN" to gather Bill Kaysing? He was the certified loon who started this nonsense. And he was NOT an engineer.

Oh, and yes: this recently gathered important ally of the HB's died on 25th April 2005. Killed by aliens, I heard.

Good ol' Bill is making much more intelligent pronouncements these days...

Going for the record here...

To quote the 'news' pages in the Internet Movie Database (IMDb):

Hudson's Love For Steamy Photos

Kate Hudson has some good news for her male fans - she has vowed to carry on stripping off for raunchy photoshoots.

The Bride Wars actress enjoys posing for racy pictures, and is happy to shed her clothes for the cameras in the name of art.

She tells MTV.co.uk, "I love doing them and I will do more. It's fun. Also, I've come to appreciate the skill of the photographer. It's a real art. I'm very interested in that side of it.

Now count the puerile sexual adjectives in this quite short story. There are three: 'steamy', 'racy' and 'raunchy'. Usually stories of this sort get just one or two pearls out of the journalist's treasure trove of creaky clichés. Three? Definitely heading for a record. Other frequent choices include 'naughty' and of course the ever popular 'saucy'.

Every single IMDb story that hints at sexuality gets the saucy, racy, steamy, naughty, raunchy treatment. You can almost hear the tittering of the spotty 13 year old boys pounding this crap out for publication.

Another nearby story refers to a possible X-rated topless scene for the new Star Trek movie. This was quickly howled down and assurances were made that NO! The film will be 'Family Friendly'...!

Oh puh-leeze. A 'topless' shot is worth an X-rating? Only in America, land of the pure.

Or is that: America, Land of the Puerile...

Aghast! Nooooo! Shield the Eyes of the Children Lest They Be Corrupted!

Finished averting your eyes in moral terror? Good. So, why am I displaying this image of Satanic Evil on my previously pure and chaste blog?

To get my ratings up.

Well, not really.

Recently it came to my attention that a blog listed in Google had gained the tag 'Pornography'.

Was there porn inside?

No.

Unless you counted the unclothed baby image placed within by a loving mother. My suspicion is that some clever software somewhere was detecting too high a skin-to-clothing ratio thus generating an automatic tag of damnation. Or a neat advertisement!

We shall see.

I think I shall adorn my blog with other shameless hussies for a while and see what it unleashes.

I would like to think the American Taliban will descend on my blog in raging fury. They are, after all from the country that created a huge stink over a highly obscured nipple revealed at a football game (Janet Jackson's somewhat un-erotic wardrobe malfunction). That little moral catastrophe cost millions and is still making waves nearly 5 years later.

America is crazy. Here, have another pair of gratuitous tits, courtesy of someone's great great grandmother:

Not bad at all.

Fun with Yanks

SPERchul skwerl WOY-yerz fer JAAAAY-suss!

Picking on accents is probably not a fair sport but it can be fun. The above doesn't make a lot of sense but it combines a few of my favourite American mispronunciations into a single phrase. The translation if you aren't sure is "Spiritual squirrel warriors for Jesus!" Yes, a silly concept, but it fits the type of southern U.S. ranting loon Fundie persona I'm thinking of.

'Warriors' as WOY-yerz seems more widespread though. I have heard quite well-spoken US citizens use it, as well as a few who can say it correctly.

As an Australian I can't throw too many stones. STRINE for 'Australian' is still quite common. Or STROY-ya.

Elevator Blues

The concept of the space elevator has been around for a long time. Arthur C.Clarke helped awareness of the idea in 'Fountains of Paradise' published way back in the 1970's.

And now the Japanese claim to be doing the development work prior to actually building one. Price tag claimed? $10 billion. I suspect it will cost a bit more than that, but its great to see a real start at last. Here's hoping they stick to their resolve, because it will be a tough job.

I, and I'm sure a lot of people wonder if it can actually be done. The risks are enormous; and even if it proved possible, the appeal to various clot-headed terrorists and end of the world wannabees would be enormous. Imagine a structure tens of thousands of kilometres high slowly collapsing back on a rotating planet...

Doom and gloom aside, the concept is completely cool. Being able to feed stuff into orbit continuously would open up unlimited possibilities for getting humanity off this rather limited rock. And for just $10 billion...

It has so far cost the US around $5 trillion to conduct its war on terror. Benefits gained? One dead dictator and stuff-all else. Other effects: An unlimited supply of hatred for the US from the Muslim bits of the world. Well done, Dubya.

Now, if the US had spent just one fifth of the money they have plowed into endlessly thumping Iraq and Afghanistan on developing space elevator technology instead, they could have built one hundred space elevators, rendered conventional spacecraft unnecessary and delivered payloads into orbit at a fraction of the present cost and opened up the Solar System.

I wonder which would have been better value for money...?

Public Idiot Number One

"Lordy sakes! Let's go to war with Russia if they don't do what we tell them!" (paraphrased and probably understated)

Oh super - just what the world needs - another testosterone soaked blathering idiot in a position of power. And won't she have that in spades if McCain keels over.

This person is probably more dangerous than Dubya ever was. One wonders if she is already planning her part in the (rather late, but still coming) Christian Apocalypse - "gotta get those End Times a' rollin' before The Lord up an' Raptures me away!" The sooner Jesus snatches her (and the 90% of U.S. Republicans who believe such nonsense) away for a bang-up fundie-fest in the clouds the better. One can only hope.

American Measurements Dept.

Americans often use non-standard or obscure (to everyone else) measurements in cooking.

Q. How much is a stick of butter?

A. 4 oz (US) or about 125g (Rest of World)

Wasted Opportunities

This image was on 'Astronomy Picture of the Day' recently:


The picture was taken nearly 37 years ago.

Why are humans not still there? The United States pulled off the greatest feat of engineering and exploration in history, and then abandoned the Moon.

Once there, they should never have left.

Now it will take yet another decade to make it back, while the imagination-free scream 'Been there! Done that!' and 'Waste of tax-payer dollars!' etc.

Many of the same people have no problem at all watching countless billions being poured into the black hole of the US military to wage unnecessary or imaginary conflicts of their own creation. A fraction of the military budget would put humanity back on the the moon and on Mars. And would be a better use (duh!) of the money.

The next 'giant leap for mankind' is inevitable (as long as a wandering 10km wide asteroid doesn't take us out first). The problem is getting politicians now to fund something that is not of direct benefit to their re-election strategies. Any true commitment would not bear fruit for decades or even centuries.

Sigh. It should have been in my lifetime. Now I doubt it will occur in my children's lifetimes...