Of NASA and Budgets

Fine print: While I receive funding from NASA for some of my work, this blog post written by me as a private citizen. Today was the NASA Town Hall; that 1 or more hour window of time when some official from NASA stands at the podium and tells us how NASA will grow or crush our dreams. The very first NASA...

A Rocket Car Future (for some)

Currently I’m attending the Next Generation Sub-Orbital Research (and Education) Conference in Palo Alto, California. I’m staring at all my notes struggling with finding a coherent theme, idea, or even emotion that I can use to tie together my thoughts. I find that I just can’t; this is a...

LPSC: NASA Night

Live blogging will begin here at 5:30pm 5:10pm A presentation will be by Dr Laurie Leshin, Deputy Associate administrator, Exploration Systems Mission Directorate. Title : “New Oppurtunities in the President’s FY2011 Budget” 5:12pm Speaker is not dressed in back. While there are people...

News from NASA: Jim Green & Andrew Thomas

Quick notes, often copied from PowerPoints. Attempts to write in full paragraphs not made. Jim Green, Director of Planetary Science Division at NASA State of the State of NASA Planetary Science Division (PSD) 18 months ago PSD had these problems: The Reserarch and Analysis budget had been cut 15%. This...

Michael Griffin Redux

The last time I reported on Michael Griffin I was at AAS and he was addressing us (the astronomy community) on the future of astronomy missions (space missions focusing on stuff outside of our solar system). Today he will address the planetary science community (and a few stray astronomers like me) on the...

Freedom to like who I want to like

I will be the first to admit that I sometimes don’t understand why politicians do what they do, even when they do what is generally considered the right thing. Last night Hilary Clinton made a complaint against Barack Obama that I just can’t understand.  Background: Recently, Nation of...