Dare mighty things!

All writing by topic

Low-Tech Rovers

Inspired by a conversation at work today, here’s a line of space-exploration inquiry that’s both un-PC and probably over the tinfoil hat line, but nevertheless worth considering:  Amidst all of the many plans for future robotic and manned missions to Mars, there is no talk of sending some non-human critters... [Read More]

Communication conundrum

Is there a more effective way to communicate new developments in sci/tech? This is a question that has had me scratching my head for a while now. I feel like the incentives often aren’t there to really give the full picture to people with little or no prior knowledge of... [Read More]

Quantification Quandaries

Recently, the American Medical Association defined obesity as a disease. Obesity is defined as having a BMI greater than or equal to 30.  Your BMI is defined as your mass in kg divided by the square of your height in meters.  All of these definitions kind of make sense when... [Read More]

Philanthropy... in spaaaaace

Here’s yet another Kickstarter for a small, possibly awesome space project.  The proposal has received a stamp of feasibility from colleagues who have cubesat and cubesat propulsion knowledge that I trust.  Also note the images of actual developed hardware rather than just pretty graphics.  A thought on the bigger picture:... [Read More]

Ditch Day Details

A busy weekend, while awesome, didn't leave me much quality blog-post-type-thinking time. However I did discover an delightfully detailed description of Ditch Day at Caltech written up by Ilya Nepomnyashchiy.   I've briefly described Ditch Day in the past, and should probably emulate Ilya and write up a fun and detailed description of my... [Read More]