Views Archive
Europe Goes to Mars. Maybe.
Tuesday’s issue of The Christian Science Monitor has a detailed article about Europe’s long-term space exploration plans, notably proposals the European Space Agency (ESA) has floated for European-led human missions to Mars by 2030. This would be in roughly the…
Yare Programming takes on XP
… Extreme Programming (XP), that is.XP is a radical new style of computer programming that’s taken some subgroups of the computer industry by a storm. It features embarrassing rituals, a cork-board with all of the known errors, and a kind…
Long Distance Tech Support
If you’ve had to spend hours on the phone with a technical support center to solve a problem with a computer or other electronics products–and who hasn’t, these days–then you can sympathize with the engineers at JPL who had to…
Microsoft Source Code is Out (Who Cares?)
The Associated Press reports that Microsoft’s Windows source code is now making the rounds in the hacker underground, or something to that effect. People are concerned about the potential security implications, of course.But the article doesn’t make a lot of…
Humans, Robots, and Mars
It would have been difficult to find two people with more polarized views on Mars exploration than Robert Park and Robert Zubrin. Zubrin is founder of the Mars Society and a staunch advocate of human exploration of Mars, while Park,…
GPS Goes to Court
In what is a first of a kind ruling in the nation, the Washington State Supreme Court declared Thursday that police may not attach a Global Positioning System tracker to a suspect’s car without getting a warrant. “Use of GPS…
iPod's Dirty Secret
Is Apple’s digital music player bad to the core? According to Reuters, Apple has been hit with five class action suits brought by music fans who claim that the company fraudulently concealed the fact that the iPod battery has a…
Farewell, Beagle 2
On Wednesday European officials confirmed the inevitable: Beagle 2, the British-built lander that was scheduled to land on Mars on Christmas Day, has been declared lost. The British government and the European Space Agency have launched a joint investigation into…
Implementing the Bush Space Plan
Wednesday marks the first public hearing of the President’s Commission on Implementation of U.S. Space Exploration Policy. The nine-member panel, chaired by former Secretary of the Air Force Edward “Pete” Aldridge (and hence often called simply the “Aldridge Commission”), was…
The Colors of Mars
While Mars has long been considered the “Red Planet”, does that mean that even NASA’s blue “meatball” logo has to turn hot pink? Shifting, unusual colors have been the topic of considerable online discussion since NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers landed…