U.S. Effectively Abandons Human Space Flight

So the United States today launched its last space shuttle mission ever, leaving the task of supporting the International Space Station to Russia, a country ruled for all intents and purposes by a dictator.

NASA, along with its international partners, apparently thought it would be a good idea to build a space station and then retire its fleet of transport vehicles without any replacement in existence.

In about a week, after the final shuttle flight lands, the United States will no longer have the technical ability to put a single human being into earth orbit.

How’s that for leadership in technology and science?  That’s your current president at work who was supposed to possess some magical form of science awareness.

Onward presses NASA with its plan to privatize space station supply launches… sometime… perhaps… in the next five years.

The shuttle was expensive to operate and sometimes dangerous, but it was a successful machine.  No such thing exists now.  Typically, when I’m ready to replace my automobile I go buy the new one first.  Then I bring it home, park it in the driveway and think about how best to dispose of the old clunker.  That’s how it works with me.  I’m just sayin’…

Photography Breakthrough Allows Image Focusing Outside of Camera

The soon-to-be-available Lytro camera allows picture taking without focusing. The photos can be focused later by simply clicking on any part of the image to bring that area into primary focus. It’s a pretty historic achievement in photography. I don’t think anyone has done it before.

The camera uses something called a light field sensor. It captures the color, intensity and vector direction of the rays of light. This directional information is completely lost with traditional camera sensors, which simply add up all the light rays and record them as a single amount of light. So you can snap a picture without focusing at all and then later focus the image the way you want to.

Try clicking around on these images:

Killing the Net: A Film by Duncan Elms

This short film by Duncan Elms explores the danger of an Internet that can be shut down quite easily by governments that want to suppress free expression or crack down on popular movements toward freedom. The recent experience of Egyptians trying to stage a revolution and spread information about it amongst themselves and to the world should be very informative. The Mubarak government was able to turn off Internet access throughout the nation. Even in the U.S., President Obama has sought the power to switch off the Internet if he declares an emergency. That effort has since been watered down, but it is clear that the U.S. government does in fact seek a method for shutting down the Internet.  The continued treatment of China, a nation that monitors every single word typed into a web site, as even remotely civilized is an embarrassment to the entire world.  Those people won’t even allow a person to think freely, much less post freely on the web.  There must be a way to maintain worldwide access to the Internet that is beyond the control of any national government, including the United States government.

Ford Magic Skyway Film from 1964

At the 1964 World’s Fair in New York, Walt Disney built the Ford Magic Skyway ride which took visitors on a ride in Ford cars through history and into the future. It makes me realize that all we are really doing when we visit Disney theme parks is celebrating nostalgia for the 1950s and 60s. Were we ever naive enough to actually attend a World’s Fair?

A is for Atom – Nuclear Documentary by Adam Curtis

This is a five-part documentary by British filmmaker Adam Curtis about the rise of nuclear energy in the United States. These sections make up A is for Atom which is a 1-hour segment of a much longer science and politics television series called Pandora’s Box.  It chronicles the development of the nuclear power industry and shows clearly how little was ever understood about what would happen or what should be done during a nuclear accident.

Parts 2 – 5 after the jump

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