In response to some comments on this post a while back regarding the state of research and development funded by the United States government, I created this list which includes most of the major scientific programs and facilities maintained by the US government. I’m sure I’ve missed at least a few, but clearly there is a huge amount of scientific research and development done by the US government both through research agencies and those which do scientific research as a secondary task to improve their own methods and systems.
Sorry if this comes off as America-centric, but doing a list for the entire world or even for all the large countries in the world would have been all but impossible. The US federal government is undoubtedly one of the largest funders of scientific research and has built a rich legacy of discovery. The only other competitors for having contributed so much research might be the Soviet Union or perhaps the combined scientific achievements of the European Union. Of course, this is not to dismiss the research which is ongoing by other countries.
I’d like to point out to Al Gore and his whole climate change movement that there is an opportunity to make a real difference in global CO2 emissions as well as other environmentally damaging emissions. Furthermore, I challenge Mr. Gore to take this opportunity. For the past few years he’s told us that something has to be done and he’s done a few small things like invested in insulation for his home and bought effecient light bulbs. However, the primary focus of the effort has been “raising awareness” and this has taken the form of both a feature film, An Inconvenient Truth and a massive ad campaign costing $300 million dollars! All of this geared at getting people to demand action and to take notice of the problem.
Well, I have a very convenient truth for Mr. Gore: You don’t need to convince millions to change their lives or demand political change. No, with your ability to raise such enormous amounts of money and support combined with your high profile and political connections you can stop talking and start doing actually make something happen that will make a major difference. I can’t do it, because I can’t russel up a quarter of a billion dollars. But Gore can. For the cost of this campaign of words action can be taken.
The opportunity exists to reduce CO2 emissions by hundreds of millions of tons per year. The potential for reduction of CO2 is greater than the reduction which would result from converting all the cars and trucks in North America to a 100% carbon-free power source. It is greater than the entire CO2 emissions from commercial aviation worldwide. It is greater than the reduction that would occur if half of the fossil-fuel power plants in the United States were suddenly shut down. Furthermore, it will reduce sulfur emissions, ground water contamination, hazards to human settlement and the destruction of hundreds of thousands of acres of vegetation.
I challenge Gore, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, the entire “We Can Solve It” campaign, with all its fat coffers up to the plate and actually do something. Stop spending money on talk and advertising and take the following actions:
Yes, I know I was just talking about the British issue of Homeopathy and how it’s being taken on just a few days ago and honestly, it’s not like I am trying to pick on the Brits, but how could I ignore a story like this one?
From the Daily Mail, (which for those who don’t know, is kind of a cross between the New York Post and the Weekly World News):
Nearly half our drinking water could have fluoride added to it under a ’secret’ Government plan.
Dental health chiefs want to add the chemical to 40 per cent of England’s water supply to combat high levels of tooth decay.
But critics said the ‘mass medication’ of water without the population’s consent was an invasion of their human rights.
Yes, that’s right. It’s a secret Government plan. Er… except it’s published in a newspaper too. So much for the secret, eh? Yes, that’s right, it’s the flouride issue again. Critis have blamed fluoride for everything from cancer to autism to nearly every other health problem. It’s also constantly being tied to the strawman of being “mass medication against the will of the people.” Right…
Well, I really think they could use it, especially if this video is at all representative of British dental care:
For those who might not know, Leuren Moret and Doug Rokke are a couple of extremely dishonest and generally dishonorable and self-serving individuals who have been perpetuating some ridiculously inflated fears of radiation and especially depleted uranium. They’ve managed to just about make careers over going around and showing pictures of dead babies and claiming that George Bush and the United States are the greatest genocidal, baby-slaughtering, imperial, tyrannical force of evil… EVER
They’ll tell you that the genetic future of Iraq.. the middle east… the world… the universe is forever destroyed by depleted uranium and then they’ll ask you to buy their books. Despite their claims of experience neither one of them is actually a toxicologist or a health physicist or anything like that - although Rokke is commonly reported to be one. Moret has a bachelors in geology and Doug Rokke does apparently have a doctorate, although it’s in philosophy.
Call this a bit late in reporting, as it was already mentioned in comments, but the SpaceX Falcon-1 launch, the third launch of the rocket has turned out the be a partial failure, which is effectively the same as a full failure when you’re dealing with trying to get stuff into orbit. On the bright side, the first stage appears to have operated more or less properly but when it came time for stage separation the second stage failed to detach and ignite, resulting in a loss of the entire vehicle and the small payload not making it to orbit.
This is definitely discouraging, but it’s not that big of a surprise that the first few launches would be difficult. The rocket is an entirely new design and the first launch system to be designed from the ground up by private enterprise. SpaceX has created the highest performance rocket engine of its type in the Merlin. The design of the whole spacecraft is very innovative and the fact that the problems have apparently all been ironed out of the first stage is an achievement in and of itself. The company has pretty good backing and already has contracts for launching satellites by the US government and others. So hopefully this won’t threaten their solvency.
On a stranger note, the rocket apparently carried a payload which included several samples of human ashes, which were destine for a “burial in space.” This included Star Trek actor James Doohan, known for playing the character of Scotty. Interestingly this was not the first time that the ashes of Doohan had been sent into space. In 2007 they were rocketed into a four minute sub-orbital flight by a sounding rocket along with 200 others. I don’t know whether these were the same ashes that were recovered or whether the sample was divided up and put on different rockets, but Doohan was a pretty big guy, so I guess maybe there are enough to go round? Anyway, it’s a bit disappointing because if you’re going to be burried in space I’d figure you’d want to actually stay up there for a bit and not just go up and back down for a few thrill rides. (It’s not even that much fun anyway, considering you’re dead)
As for me, if I were to be buried in space, I’d consider it to be less than legit to have my cremation ashes sent up. That’s not even much of the matter that I was composed of and a fair portion is likely just ash from the casket. For a real “space burial” I’d want to have my whole damn corpse shot into orbit. Lovely idea, isn’t it?
The “Pickens Plan” proposes to cut US oil imports by providing alternate means of generating electricity (namely wind power) and thus reducing or eliminating the use of natural gas to generate electricity. Beyond the obvious issue with providing such an enormous amount of wind energy, as well as storage to provide reliable energy from an inherently intermittent source, it’s important to consider whether the natural gas used for power generation even could replace petroleum or at least imported petroleum. The United States currently imports more than 60% of the petroleum used domestically.
In order for it to do so, it would need to address the use of petroleum as a motor fuel, by far the largest end use and the most difficult to address by other means. While natural gas could be used in some applications it would be difficult or impossible to use it effectively in applications like aviation. It could certainly replace the use of oil for applications like heating.
Maybe it’s just me or maybe it’s not, but for some reason this page has been taking up an obscene amount of CPU power and ram recently. Am I the only one experiencing this? Perhaps it’s that comment scroller which I thought I had finally gotten working like I had hoped. Or it might be the way I have my own browser set up, but either way if I’m not the only one let me know. Perhaps it needs a couple of tweaks. I just updated by copy of Firefox so it could be that one of the plugins isn’t playing nicely.
Homeopathic remedies, a problematic scam the world over seem to have become an especially acute problem in Great Britain in the past few years. They’re sold in many pharmacies and many have demanded they be covered by the national healthy care program and even used in hospitals and clinics. The Royal Pharmaceutical Society, the predominant national organization of pharmacies and pharmacists in Britain has recently been asked to take action due to allegations that these products are being sold without the proper information being given to consumers by the retailers.
SpaceX has been working on developing the Falcon-1 and its big brother, the Falcon-9 as partially reusable launch systems with the aim of reducing the cost of sending payloads into orbit. The Falcon-1 is only capable of sending about 650kg into low earth orbit, but the Falcon-9 will be able to send up to 27,000kg to low earth orbit. All this for a launch cost estimated at 35-78 million US dollar, depending on the configuration. If successful, this will be about the cheapest launch system around.
The first two flights of the Falcon-1 were deemed “partial successes” as the first flight experienced an engine cutout and loss of vehicle after about a half minute of flight and the second test resulted in a successful firing of the first stage but the payload failed to reach orbit. This kind of thing is not surprising in development of a rocket like the Falcon-1, which has been built from the ground up with new technology including a custom designed engine and flight control system. Hopefully this next test will be a 100% success.
This is probably not news to anyone, but just in case you have not heard, a new and stranger twist in a long-running story: The anthrax attacks of 2001 have been a mystery for the past seven years. However, federal prosecutes have recently been zeroing in on one suspect, a scientist who had worked with anthrax as part of the US military’s counter bio-warfare operations. Now apparently he has committed suicide. Very strange indeed.
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