Shut it down

Our government in action: An NIH nationwide study to track hundreds of thousands of children from birth to age 21 is wracked with budget and management problems.

All told, this study has already cost the taxpayers almost a billion dollars for the enrollment of only 4,000 children, not the 100,000 envisioned. That’s about $250,000 per child, an amount that seems incredibly high.

In addition to the above problems, it appears there are scientific ones as well:
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LightSquared has filed for bankruptcy

Another Obama tech wonder company dies: LightSquared has filed for bankruptcy.

From the beginning engineers were saying that LightSquared’s system would interfere with GPS. The only reason the company lasted as long as it did was because it had the political backing of the Obama administration. And the reason it had that backing is because the company’s CEO was a big supporter of Obama.

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Senator Bill Nelson (D-Florida) on Monday attacked the House version of NASA’s budget that required the agency to make a quick decision on its commercial manned launch company.

Senator Bill Nelson (D-Florida) on Monday attacked the House version of NASA’s budget that required the agency to make a quick decision on its commercial manned launch company.

Nelson faces a difficult election campaign from the right. Thus, I suspect he has realized that he is better off promoting free enterprise than local pork. It is unfortunate that the Republicans in the House haven’t yet realized this.

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An engineer has proposed in great detail building the USS Enterprise for the purpose of exploring the solar system.

If you build it they will come: An engineer has proposed using the USS Enterprise from Star Trek as a model for building an interplanetary spaceship for exploring the solar system.

Though similar in scale and appearance to the USS Enterprise (“it ends up that this ship configuration is quite functional,” Dan writes), the “Gen1 Enterprise” would be functionally very different. Firstly, the main nuclear-powered ion engine (boasting 1.5 GW of power) would strictly limit the Enterprise to intra-solar system missions, being incapable of anything approaching faster-than-light speeds. However, Dan claims that the Gen1 would be capable of reaching Mars from Earth within ninety days, and reaching the Moon in three.

The website is Build the Enterprise.

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