With all of the government spending and stimulus spending going on these days, this…

…is the program that doesn’t have enough funding.
Not the Send-the-Asteroid-into-the-Earth program.  The Find-Big-Asteroids-That-Could-Collide-with-The-Earth one.
I can already see Obama talking about this at a Town Hall meeting:
“You know, there’s a lot of people out there who say ‘this government isn’t protecting the Earth from major asteroid collisions, so it must want people dead.’  Nothing can be further from the truth.  We simply don’t believe in investing money in a program that has the potential to saves everyone’s lives.”
I’m …

I wanted to mention a column by Charles Krauthammer published last week, “The Moon We Left Behind.”
Michael Crichton once wrote that if you told a physicist in 1899 that within a hundred years humankind would, among other wonders (nukes, commercial airlines), “travel to the moon, and then lose interest . . . the physicist would almost certainly pronounce you mad.” In 2000, I quoted these lines expressing Crichton’s incredulity at America’s abandonment of the moon. It is now 2009 and the moon recedes ever further.
…
America’s manned space program is …

$200,000.  That’s the going rate for a space tourist these days.  Remember when only celebrities or highly wealthy people with $20,000,000 to blow were the ones who could go into space by paying the Russians?  If you can measure in money, now you see how fast technology is progressing.  Virgin Galactic wants to start up space tourism:
Will Whitehorn said Virgin’s plans to take tourists into space were just a first stage that could open up a range of possibilities for the company including space science, computer server farms in space …

Four-time shuttle astronaut Tom Jones wrote about his vision for NASA’s future in Popular Mechanics.  Like many others in the space community, the talk is about retiring the flimsy space shuttles that have seemed outdated for years.
Sure, it’s been useful to use shuttles to continually ship parts to the International Space Station, but that doesn’t make the shuttles great.  They’re more like space versions of UPS trucks – not very safe looking, but useful.
NASA’s been thinking about what to do after the space shuttle era for some time, and it …

Anyone who hears me talk about NASA and figures I just like shiny rocket ships is missing the point:  okay, maybe I like shiny rocket ships, but NASA and space exploration is the future of our military.  And we’re starting to see the development of a new space arms race even as we speak.
I bring it up because Russie is building anti-satellite weapons even while denying that it wants to be part of a space arms race.
Gen. Valentin Popovkin said Russia continues to oppose a space arms race but will …

In 1961, John F. Kennedy gave a speech in which he set the goal of landing a man on the moon before the closing of the decade.  He is widely hailed for his vision and leadership for this.
In 1983, Ronald Reagan laid out plans for the Strategic Defensive Initiative, which would be able to stop nuclear missiles from hitting the U.S.  The technology wasn’t quite there yet, like when JFK gave his speech, but Reagan was criticized much more.
Today, missile defense is becoming not only a possibility, but is turning …

In Richard Dawkins’ book, The Selfish Gene, it introduces the topic of evolution by saying it is of such importance that if aliens landed on Earth, the first thing they’d ask about humans is “have they figured out evolution?”
(Right: That’s what we don’t want to happen.)
But I contend there might be a different and more important milestone: blowing up asteroids. Can humans protect themselves enough to continue advancing their technology?
Why is blowing up space rocks important? Well, if you recall my 14 Reasons We May Be …

A company called Aqua Sciences, based out of Miami Beach, can now harvest water from atmospheric moisture – essentially getting “water from thin air.”
Interestingly, although Aqua Sciences wasn’t directly funded through military contracting, it will find early uses in hydrating our troops in Iraq – where it will bring water transportation costs from $30 a gallon to $.30 a gallon.
Darpa gave millions to research companies like LexCarb and Sciperio to create a contraption that could capture water in the Mesopotamian desert.
But it was another company, Aqua Sciences, that developed a …

…while people worry about Ashley Dupre’s Myspace page and high gas prices, the Cassini spacecraft is sending us information from Saturn’s moon Enceladus. It’s moving through geyser plumes 120 miles above the moon, giving us information about the chemical makeup of these geysers.
We just found out that instead of a cold, remote object, Enceladus actually has an atmosphere and a “warm” south pole.
In 2005, Cassini surprised scientists when it snapped images of geyser-like eruptions of ice particles and water vapor spewing from the south pole. The dramatic images effectively …

Star wars time, baby! The U.S. is set to shoot down the USA-193 spy satellite as early as tonight, which was launched in December of ‘06. For whatever reason, ground controllers lost contact with the satellite after it was launched.
Behind all of the War on Terrorism news, the Space Race has been harboring some secret tensions between the U.S., Russia, and China.
China and Russia have expressed concerns about a US plan to shoot down what officials in Washington say is a crippled spy satellite, with that event to …