Sunday’s post has me thinking about other ways my outlook on technology has changed as I’ve been exposed to more of its underbelly. In particular, how I’ve softened my derision towards technology that doesn’t actually allow us to do anything new. From what I can tell, there are two main... [Read More]

I had an excellent conversation a few weeks ago about how current patent law produces ‘chilling effects’ on software innovations. This got me thinking about what sort of things have these same chilling effects on space innovations and what can be done to reduce them (space is cold enough already.)... [Read More]

While looking at the job market for mechanical engineers during my senior year, I often lamented that nobody did cool purely mechanical things anymore. Back in the day, my complaint went, mechanical engineers came up with brilliantly clever things like Reuleaux mechanisms and farther back in time, world changing things... [Read More]

Saturday Stories! A pretty detailed overview of SpaceX – a good read, if a bit long It shouldn't be acceptable for NASA flagship missions to just 'update the wikipedia page' Some fodder for the real Tinfoil Hat people Only relevant because the headline made me think the answer should be... [Read More]

I feel like this proposal for a private manned mission to the moon is almost a quintessential over-the-tinfoil hat – line idea. The goal is lofty and awesome, but there is no meat to the high-minded framework, a deficiency that can it seems you can only get away with if... [Read More]