Hands up! Participants celebrate. Reuters reports on Expedition Trophy 2005—a 15,000 km Murmansk to Vladivostok road rally through the Siberian wilderness: Another team, called Severny Dozor (the North Watch) and made up of Russians and Americans in two Chevrolet trucks, got lost in thick forests near Saratov, ending up at a secret nuclear missile base. …
Spacecraft for the Unmanned Modification of Orbits (SUMO)
by | 2005-03-15 | No Comments
DARPA is the gift that keeps on giving. I noticed this new start in the DARPA budget: Program (US$ Millions) 2006 2007 Spacecraft for the Unmanned Modification of Orbits (SUMO) 12.6 22.3 “SUMO combines detailed stereo photogrammetric imaging with robotic multi degree of freedom manipulators,” DARPA exclaims, “to autonomously grapple space objects without custom interfaces.” …
Iran Wankery
by | 2005-03-14 | No Comments
Will someone in the press please, for the love of God, notice that Bush’s description of Washington’s Iran diplomacy does not constitute anything anyone could reasonably call “success”? Bush told an audience on Friday that: we [the US and the Europeans] worked together on the issue of Iran, to make sure that we speak with …
Griffin to Head NASA
by | 2005-03-14 | No Comments
Don’t let the “Opie” grin fool you. He’s nuts, too. President Bush will nominate Michael Griffin to succeed Sean O’Keefe as NASA Administrator. Despite drawing bipartisan praise, Griffin’s missile defense background— he served as deputy for technology at the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization—should raise alarm. Griffin was a signatory to a Heritage Foundation report entitled …
