Monthly Archives: February 2014

Ignition!

Posted on 13 February 2014 by josephshoer

The National Ignition Facility – a humongoid stack of lasers all aimed at a tiny target to try and compress it until it fuses – announced today that they had “positive fuel gains,” meaning that fusion happened and that more energy came … Continue reading →

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Space fleets

Posted on 12 February 2014 by josephshoer

A couple days ago, an article on NASASpaceFlight described an architecture of vehicles Bigelow Aerospace allegedly presented to NASA. Bigelow is a company developing inflatable space habitats – they’ve launched a few technology demonstrators already, and an inflatable module is set to go up … Continue reading →

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Jove’s Moon Shot

Posted on 9 February 2014 by josephshoer

Here’s a bit of wild speculation for the weekend: Suppose there is intelligent life in the globe-spanning ocean on Europa. Given how small our space exploration budget is, and our generally declining investments in R&D, how likely is it that … Continue reading →

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Despite tactical errors, Bill Nye is right

Posted on 6 February 2014 by josephshoer

Tuesday night, Bill Nye (the Science Guy) had a webcast debate with Ken Ham, founder of the Creation Museum. In many respects, this was a silly idea. Nye wasn’t going to change any minds, and I think he fell into … Continue reading →

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