Not Another One.

///I need to dump this whole thing [when it’s finished] into a pdf so I can print it & take notes in the columns. On a similar note, perhaps next year’s edition can be delivered in installments to Berg’s Little Printer.///

Aldrin also doesn’t mention why NASA can’t innovate. It’s because NASA became a pork machine; it methodically spreads out major projects among so many Congressional districts that they’re unkillable, but also unworkable. Nobody was ever held to account for the failure of the Shuttle. even though the thing was a chimeric gobboon from the get-go. At least Aldrin manfully admits this failure, but he doesn’t address the underlying systemic problem involved in having Congress run a space technocracy. The contemporary Congress isn’t about Mars, it’s all about culture war over evolution and climate change. It’s a radically anti-science Congress where denial of facts is a litmus test. These guys can’t repair bridges, much less build shuttlecraft.

That doesn’t mean the US doesn’t innovate in aerospace, though. A giant, high-tech, robot blimp with a laser communication system and a starling horde of Predators. “Blue Devil” is not fast, it doesn’t zoom into outer space, it just sees global guerrillas and it illegally kills them. If anything’s gonna intimidate and cow the Chinese, it’ll be weird, scary, Gothic High-Tech devices like this, not some General Motors Martian bailout for NASA.

*The Chinese are building drones as fast as they can weld ‘em. Everybody likes drones. Even terrorists like drones. In 2012, drones are where it’s at, and they don’t even have pilots, much less glorious astronauts.

The WELL: Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky: State of the World 2012 (via new-aesthetic)

(via new-aesthetic)

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   “A giant, high-tech, robot blimp with a laser communication system and a starling horde of Predators.”

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