CommentsDisplaying Chris's 10 most recent comments.

• Want to Eradicate Stolen or Mistaken Identity? Writer Says Imprint a Code on ‘Everyone at Birth’

  May 24, 2012 at 7:32am

  I wish I had the tinfoil hat concession on this thread!

• ‘Cosmic Scene Investigation’: Cool New Simulation Gives Details on Invisible Black Hole

  May 5, 2012 at 6:32pm

  In reply to hwyllie.

  Black holes may not be completely stable (which may depend on the size) but if there is nothing nearby for them to pull in they don’t really do anything. In the current thinking they are a singularity – a place where the values of some of the properties go to infinity. Singularities really bother a number of scientists so there has always been some level of debate about whether the singularity represents what is really going on, a by-product of an incomplete understanding of the physics, and / or an inability of the math to represent what is going on

  In any event, you really don’t see a black hole directly, you only see it by what it does to things around it.

• Is Boeing Quietly Moving Forward With ‘Sonic Cruiser’ Concept?

  May 2, 2012 at 10:08pm

  In reply to sndrman.

  So far they haven’t been putting muslim outreach on our performance plans

• Is Boeing Quietly Moving Forward With ‘Sonic Cruiser’ Concept?

  May 2, 2012 at 10:06pm

  In reply to Snowleopard {gallery of cat folks}.

  Boeing walked away from the SST project because there was no way that they could make money with it. Concorde was the same generation and it was a huge money sink, burning money faster than jet fuel. It was more than just no being allowed to overfly the US because of the sonic boom problem – the seat price for the transatlantic route they flew didn‘t cover the operating cost and it didn’t have the range for the trans-Pacific route.
  When the concept came back in the 80′s the NASP project advanced the technology a lot more, but still not enough to allow the aircraft to pay for itself.
  If Boeing can make money with it now (and I hope that it can) then it means that the technology has advanced enough to allow it to happen.
  The technology development during these big programs is substantial, but between them the NASA aeronautics program (among others) has been continuing to work to make it possible.

• ‘Mining Asteroids’: James Cameron and Google to Search for Natural Resources in…Outer Space?

  April 21, 2012 at 7:15pm

  Whether this particular company succeeds or fails, private industry mining asteroids is a really good idea. It opens up a new source of resources and it helps to build a space industry in another area where only governments are currently working. For years NASA (and its predecessor NACA) have been doing high-risk and precompetitive research that is transferred to the US aircraft industry. They then invest their own money to develop these concepts into products that they can sell. (Part of the agency’s goal has been to support the US aircraft industry, particularly in the face of direct subsidies by foreign governemts to their own aircrafe industries to help them compete against the US.)
  This model can work well as a real space industry grows – instead of mining asteroids NASA would support the US companies that mine asteroids.

• DOE’s Vehicle Fleet Roughly The Size of Its 15,000+ Staff, Inspector General Calls The $60M Spent Annually on Travel a ‘Paltry Amount’

  April 19, 2012 at 7:30am

  I’ve worked at a federal facility (nowhere near Washington DC) for a long time and there is nobody that I’ve ever seen that has a government car for traveling to and from work, or gets paid mileage for it. You can get a government car from the pool if you are traveling on official business but the trip is too short to fly, but you only use it for the duration of the trip. From what I’ve seen, most people don’t bother with official travel for relatively short trips – they just drive their own car and don’t bother trying to collect mileage. Because of the way that the travel regulations are written, if you are traveling by air you get paid mileage from your home to the airport and back, which I always thought was odd, since for us the trip to the airport is the same as the trip to work – our site borders the local airport.

• The DNC Chair’s new look may surprise you

  April 14, 2012 at 12:46pm

  Trying to pass for Human?

• ‘It Is Clear the Science Is Not Settled’: 49 Employees Call Out NASA for Unsubstantiated Climate Science

  April 11, 2012 at 7:42am

  In reply to MaddieT.

  Hansen isn’t the head of NASA. He runs the Goddard Research Institute in New York City – a very small piece of a relatively small agency

• ‘It Is Clear the Science Is Not Settled’: 49 Employees Call Out NASA for Unsubstantiated Climate Science

  April 11, 2012 at 7:37am

  NASA isn’t a monolith. It does not, as an agency, really say anything about climate change. The agency studies the climate along with a lot of other things. Hansen runs the Goddard Research Institute in New York City and he is primarily the one talking about man-made climate change. For the rest of the agency, some people believe in it and some people don’t, but it isn’t what they do, Most of the agency works on aeronautics or space research, develops new vehicles, runs the space station, studies the universe, – everything except the “Outreach” project that everybody talks about.

  The “Global Warming” crew is a very small but very vocal piece of a much larger operation. It is just that the small piece gets a lot of press and makes a lot of noise.

• How Long Could You Last in the World’s Quietest Room? The Record Is Only 45 Minutes

  April 7, 2012 at 4:00pm

  I’ve been in a large anechoic building and it is a little odd. The place I was in is a big hemisphere completely lined with similar wedges to what they used in their room but with a big flexible entry door. It wasn’t anywhere near as completely anechoic as the place in the story but I noticed two interesting things: Your ears do react strangely once the ambient sounds go away and you could only hear someone talking to you if they were facing you. If they turned away you couldn’t hear them because the room absorbed all of the reflected sound.