Interesting links

Dr. Mike Griffin on Science, Exploration, and NASA
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=22033
I really trust this guy to make *the right* decisions for exploration. There's probably only one thing more complicated than making the hardware and software for exploration work. That's making the several hundred people representing the several million people whose money you have to use happy with how you're doing it. Oh, and the several million have to at least be interested, too. It's going to be impossible to make all of your employees happy with the limited money you have, so you have to make hard decisions, or else everyone's going to end up with $1.50 and no one can do anything. I especially like this part, and it's brave (or at least not typical of people who have to play political games) of him to say it:
"...[Exploration] is about the expansion of human activity out beyond the Earth. Exactly this point was very recently noted and endorsed by no less than Stephen Hawking, a pure scientist if ever there was one. Hawking joins those, including the Chairman of the NASA Advisory Council, who have long pointed out this basic truth: The history of life on Earth is the history of extinction events, and human expansion into the Solar System is, in the end, fundamentally about the survival of the species."
You'd think everyone would be interested in that, wouldn't you? I think it's important enough to dedicate my life to it.


An older link that Kevin sent me is about light reaching "superluminal speeds."
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/TECH/space/07/20/speed.of.light.ap/index.html
"Researchers... sent a pulse of laser light through cesium vapor so quickly that it left the chamber before it had even finished entering."
How cool is that?


NASA Watch linked to some old surface pictures from Russian Venus missions, and they're pretty amazing.
http://www.mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogVenus.htm


The second space tourist is making an OS available for free, especially for places that can't afford MS products.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/09/11/space.tourist.microsoft.reut/index.html


And the next space tourist is female, which is pretty cool.
http://www.anoushehansari.com/