David Balogh

“Mars, Bitches!”

Credit: Russell Croman

From Engadget:
President Bush’s plans for a return to the moon in 2020, with a trip to Mars to follow, were all well and good, but now NASA has finally fleshed out the details of the moon visits, and it seems a permanent international moon base is in the cards. NASA hopes to return to the moon starting in 2020 with short stays to get things prepared, and to have the base ready for extended stays by 2024. The lunar outpost will most likely be placed on the lunar south pole, which is lit by the sun three-quarters of the time, and has possible resources to mine nearby. Two vehicles will be employed, the Orion exploration vehicle, and an all-purpose “pickup truck” of a landing vehicle which attaches to the Orion and can bring cargo and/or crew to the lunar surface in a manned or unmanned manner. It’ll cost a whoppin’ $104 billion to get back to the moon for the first trip, and we’re sure carting supplies up there won’t be cheap, but in the long run NASA hopes to be able to harvest hydrogen, oxygen and other nifty moon resources for the operation of the outpost, tasks which could eventually become simple enough to turn over to a commercial supplier. In an effort to keep costs down and build good will, NASA is welcoming other countries to join the effort, though NASA will be doing the actual design work. “This is not your father’s Apollo,” says John Logsdon of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. “This is not a flag-and-footprints. This is the idea of starting an outward movement that includes long stays on the moon.”

A few choice comments:

Xavier Gill
“…$104 billion…” Wow it’s a good thing there aren’t 37 million people living below the poverty line in the USA…oh wait

G. Snyder
“Comments about poverty lines are idiotic, as these are long term investments…investments which will secure the continuation of the human race (sounds like being a doom sayer, but someday the sun will blow up and take earth with it. It is not up for debate – that is what stars do.)”

OMAC
Yeah people are going to whine and moan about poverty this and environment that. What they fail to realize is that there will always be poverty, disease and environmental concerns. There will always be the haves and the have-nots. I think it’s a safe bet to say that every democratic country on the face of this planet has its homeless, poverty, racial strife, AIDS issues and envirionmental concerns. These things are not going anywhere. It is our responsibility, as citizens, not the governments, to end, or at least mitigate these things.

…

All very valid points. That said, let’s go! I think this will be the first step to A. store information about our history on the moon, B. understand and possibly start to implement terraforming, C. build a telescope on the moon for better research, and D. get more answers to aid our planet back to health

Will it bring all of this? Maybe, maybe not. who knows. It’s a great concept though.

Add comment December 5th, 2006

Future By Design

“Imagine a world where war is outdated, there is no shortage of resources, and every human being enjoys a high standard of living.” -JACQUE FRESCO

A genious in the design of future cities, societies, the natural world, transportation, etc. Below is one clip about humans taking responsibility instead of believing a deity or government should have the power to control what happens on earth. Very forward-thinking, perfectly states my own feelings, of course he’s much more thorough than I could ever be. Also check out: Future By Design: The Movie

Add comment November 27th, 2006

Randomly Shut Me Down

So the lovely Macbook I bought a month ago was beautiful! I say ‘WAS.’ After two short weeks of Reason Music-creating bliss, the damn thing decided it wanted to stay on when it felt like it, and that wasn’t very often. Alas, 3 visits to the Genius Bar and a load of forum research on the issue, new OS X installs, reseatings of RAM, resettings of PRAM & PMU, plus many other tests later…and they replaced it with a brand-spanking new Macbook. Cross your fingers the issues have subsided. So far so good, but I won’t hold my breath until two weeks in. Kudos for the help from the ‘Geniuses’ despite the cover-ups of the problem. I want to love it, I do, and I will continue the journey into the Intel Mac world. During all this however, I was able to get out a new song, better check it out on Myspace (hint: there’s a link on the right column called “Plastic Minds (my music)”).

I was born to rage against them.

Add comment July 27th, 2006

Bet you’re wondering

So, anyone notice the Del.icio.us tags or my Flickr photo badge? Sweet huh? Want one? TOO BAD! Ok ok, just kidding. Here’s whatcha do. Go to Del.icio.us and create an account. Then you can start adding bookmarks, and add tags to them. That will create a Tag Cloud, which you can create a custom cloud like mine by going to their help section on tags at: Del.icio.us Blog Integrations

For Flickr, I’m not sure if you need an account, but you can get a badge tagged with anything you’d like (i.e. typography for mine, but could be harmonica, music, love, etc.) at Flickr: Make a Badge Fun stuff! You can customize it like I did as well, if you know a lil css/html.

Oh, speaking of, I used the plain black template for my site, and tweaked it to hide things, and add a header. I also changed some colors and added some borders. I usually copy the whole template and paste it into a new HTML doc in Dreamweaver 8 (MX 2004 should have decent CSS support, anything before that ain’t that great), and just manipulate some of the code to my liking. I don’t touch any of the automatic stuff in the HTML, just the look and feel of the site. The templates Blogger has to me seem to be very clean and great to work with. Ok, nuff geek speak. Have a good night!

Add comment May 24th, 2006