Only days after a TED talk about Mars inspired this post correcting some of the misconceptions in the talk, another TED talk has me scratching my head. This one is by Kirk Citron, editor of “The Long News”, a project concerned with winnowing the few news stories from current events that will actually be seen [...]
Archive for March 2010
TED Talk: Why we need to go back to Mars
March 25, 2010I recently started subscribing to the TED talk RSS feed, and I really love coming home every day after work and listening to smart people talk about cool ideas. If you aren’t familiar with TED, you should be. Most of the talks are fantastic and very thought-provoking. So you can imagine I was excited when [...]
Carnival of Space #146
March 22, 2010I’ve been a bit of a delinquent blogger lately, but the rest of the astro-blogosphere has been busy! To get caught up on all the cool stuff that I have neglected to tell you in the past week, check out the Carnival of Space over at Simostronomy!
Book Review: The Next 100 Years
March 18, 2010You would think that since I’m working at Johnson Space Center right now, I would have exciting tales from inside NASA to share with you, but I’m afraid it has been pretty uneventful. I have however managed to read a couple of books, one of which was The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the [...]
NASA Administrator Addresses Budget Misconceptions
March 18, 2010The Planetary Society blog posted this excerpt of some remarks made by Charlie Bolden on the 16th regarding NASA’s new plan. I was going to just select some key points, but really, it’s all pretty key, so I’m just going to copy shamelessly with some added emphasis: “So let me just tell you a little [...]
Review: Fallout 3
March 10, 2010Other than Spore, which I played briefly (but intensely!) last year, and occasional multiplayer games when I visited with friends, Fallout 3 is the first serious single player game that I have played in a very long time. I used to be extremely addicted to video games, and for most of undergrad and grad school [...]
Hailing Frequencies Open!
March 8, 2010Check this out, Star Trek’s Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) at JPL, ready to communicate with the rovers!
LPSC 2010 – Day 4: Mars Oceans, Titan Lakes, Astrobiology and Asteroids
March 6, 2010Thursday started off with a couple of talks about the possibility of oceans on Mars. The first one, given by Gaetano DiAchille looked at possible locations of deltas all over Mars to try to figure out the water level of a past ocean. Deltas form when a river hits a standing body of water and [...]
LPSC 2010 – Day 3: Rover Update, Mafic Mars and Atmospheres
March 5, 2010Wednesday started off with a summary of results from the Opportunity rover, given by Steve Squyres. He started off talking about the several iron meteorites discovered in the past year. I thought it was particularly interesting that there are hematite blueberries on top of some of the meteorites: the blueberries are way too big to [...]
LPSC 2010 – Day 2
March 3, 2010Well, I made it to Houston about a day later than expected so I missed all of the monday talks and sessions, but I took notes yesterday and I’ll share some highlights here. The day started off with a series of talks about terrestial planet cryospheres. In other words, ice on Mars and the earth. [...]
