Postcards from the Bleeding Edge
Sunday, August 21, 2005

  Science vs engineering

Heh. I beat slashdot on the carbon nanotube sheet story by 14 hrs.

I try really hard to find original sources, but frankly most of the time my web reading is limited to a few select blogs, Google News, slashdot, and lwn. I'd probably get more widely read if I posted to slashdot more often, but I write for me and I'm holding down a day job these days so... I look back at some of my recent posts and I want to fix the grammar - but I have got too much other stuff to do right now, I hope you're reading me just for the links.

Selenian Boondocks has some constructive suggestions for NASA.

Today's noteworthy blog post is science vs engineering in the Mars Society. I was pleased to discover that NASA adminsistrator Mike Griffin was a Mars Society member for eons before he took the top post - but the longstanding problems within most space based organizations continue to bother me. Why is it that the scientists sieze control of nearly every space advocacy organization? Is it because scientists have tons of time between experiments to organize while engineers are busy working? (I'm still burning over the L5-NSS takeover in the 80s)

Just my general before my first cup of coffee comment - science is a religion to some people. What the space program needs is less science and more engineering. Maybe I'll write more later...
And yea, my religion is engineering, but I recognise the need for a variety of personnel types in space.

I get this deep inner feeling of glee every time I think of one of Discovery's primary tasks this past mission - with all these PHDs supervising - taking out 5000 lbs of garbage. I laughed my way through Walden II for the same reason.

Mars needs women - but space needs janitors, construction workers, and engineers!

oh yea, I note that John Glenn accepts the risks of flying the shuttle because:

In other news, the Chinese are about 1/3 of the way towards replicating Gemini, with their first spacewalk planned in 2007.
 
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David Täht writes about politics, space, copyright, the internet, audio software, operating systems and surfing.


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