Motley Moose – Archive

As North Carolina’s Legislature tries to out stupid Texas with bills saying that you can’t observe the rise of sea level and rely on science that only the crony appointed Coastal Management Commission can do that I have come to the conclusion that Mother Nature has gone on strike. Now I haven’t run these observations through the science geniuses of the Legislature (snark) but notice the pattern.

Sometimes as a graphic artist things come out even better then you possibly imagined they could. Like this one for example that I just finished called “The Night Sky.”

I am a space buff. I discovered science fiction when I was eight years old. I have been convinced since then that we are not alone.  

On the NPR blog, Robert Krullwich noticed that pictures taken at night from space of the US show a recent phenomenon — one of the brightest patches is in one of the least populated places in the US — western North Dakota.

The reason, apparently, is the boom in oil drilling. In addition to the lighting that the drillers bring with them, the drilling makes extensive use of the practice of burning off natural gas.  Those flares have turned this relatively underpopulated area into an area as bright as major metropolitan areas, such as Minneapolis-St.Paul.

You can find the NPR article here.

A new day dawned amid snow and fanfare in Mojave Spaceport in California Monday night. The VSS Enterprise was rolled out and unveiled to the public and given its official name, ushering in the age of commercial space flight.  Along with its mothership VMS Eve, itself adorned with a nod to great aircraft of the past and their crews, VSS Enterprise will be the first private vehicle to regularly deliver individuals into space simply because they choose to go.

It is easy to see this as nothing more than a toy for the rich, but as a life-long advocate of direct human experience with the new and unknown I think this will be looked back upon as one of the key steps in liberating mankind from it’s terrestrial home.  More than likely the passengers of the Enterprise will include over time not just the fabulously wealthy but also the average person who wins a ticket in a fundraising event and the retired person who chooses a trip into space as a good use for that home equity saved up over the years.  Sir Richard Branson’s stated goal is to see the cost of such flights drop down to where it is the equivalent of “taking the family to the Mediterranean” – a trip not outside the bounds of many people and a cost reduction not inconceivably far from the current rates.

I say bring the sky within reach of the average person and let’s see what they do with it.