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On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

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College professors insist all private activity in space must be regulated, by them

Now that private enterprise and free civilians are beginning to fly missions to space, independent of the government, “an international team of experts” have published a paper that demands that all future private activity in space be strictly regulated. From an article in the student newspaper of the University of Alberta:

Private citizens or corporations that collect data or research in space pose unique ethical concerns, Caulfield said. Previously, space travel was “largely funded by the public purse.” For example, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) receives its funding from the United States government. Publicly funded research has to follow certain rules and there is a degree of oversight, Caulfield explained. But, “if space flight is funded primarily or largely by private companies like Blue Origin [and] SpaceX, what rules do they need to follow?”

Caulfield is Timothy Caulfield, the Canada Research Chair in Health Law and Policy and a professor in the University of Alberta’s faculty of law. He is also one of the twenty co-authors of this paper, the authors of which somehow think that because they teach at colleges they have better ethics that the owners of private space companies. Not only do they want to establish strict rules over what can be done in space, they want all research and data to be open source. The private data obtained by missions paid for by others must be available to everyone, even if they didn’t do a damn thing to get it.

These control freaks also insist that commercial space must follow standards of diversity, inclusion, and equity.

“This has been for too long dominated by old white men,” [Caulfield] said. “We’ve got to change that.”

O joy! We are here to help you! These idiots have ruined the entire academic community, making colleges worldwide cesspools of bigotry and race hate. They now want to impose their Marxist ideals to commercial space, probably because deep down they resent the fact that others are doing it and they are incapable of accomplishing anything on their own.

That Alberta’s student newspaper is all-in on these foolish ideas is especially disturbing. The students appear to have been brainwashed to accept such stupidity, and since they represent the future, it tells us what that future will be like.

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14 comments

  • Joe

    What a way to try to weasel in on the space game. It sounds like a data grab as opposed to a money grab. Same thing just different clothes.

    They also are not looking at New Space companies too much. They don’t need DEI as it is baked in. Quub’s demographics are extremely diverse because we look for the best people.

  • Lord Dilligaf

    The University of Alberta is my alma mater. Lately, it seems that hardly a day goes by in which that institution doesn’t make me ashamed to be an alumnus.

  • Concerned

    Lord D: I hope you are not contributing one red cent to them.
    These bastions of Marxism must be defunded out of existence.

  • Ray Van Dune

    In case you don’t know, Alberta is widely considered to be the most conservative Canadian province.

  • Lord Dilligaf

    Concerned:

    I can’t remember the last time I made a donation to the U of A but I’m sure it’s close to 20 years ago. It doesn’t need my money.

  • sippin_bourbon

    Because NASA and ESA have been the major source of science projects, on the tax payer dimes, these people are used to having access to data that is public domain.

    They are worried they will have to pay for the data. There was a post I read a while back on Reddit that implied that SpaceX, Blue Origin. Etc, should make all their tech open source, because space, and anything in going to or from, should be free to all.

    If I recall, the conversation was about the zero-g pharmaceutical vehicle that the FAA denied re-entry. The general opinion of several was that this was a good thing. They held the belief that anything made or tested outside the atmosphere should be public domain, and no company should be allowed to make money in space.

    They were a pretty socialist crowd.

  • Edward

    Robert wrote: “He is also one of the twenty co-authors of this paper, the authors of which somehow think that because they teach at colleges they have better ethics that the owners of private space companies. Not only do they want to establish strict rules over what can be done in space, they want all research and data to be open source. The private data obtained by missions paid for by others must be available to everyone, even if they didn’t do a damn thing to get it.

    Oh, look. The second and third sentences show that these supposed experts don’t have the ethics that they think they do. Proprietary, non-open-source data, information, and knowledge are completely ethical, and have been forever. What is not ethical is to take take privately funded research and making it open-source. Not only is that called theft, it is literally unconstitutional, in the Fifth Amendment sense. If we were to force research to be open source, then why would we bother to let private companies or citizens perform any research at all? We should just leave it to government to fund and perform.

    The humorous part is the ignorance of these ever so highly intelligent intelligentsia. Back in the days of the Enlightenment and all the way through the Victorian Age, virtually all research was performed and financed privately. These were times when technological advances were being made, especially in the Victorian Age. It was after WWII, only when government took over the funding of research, that our advancements waned. Government does not perform for all mankind, as many would have us believe; it performs for itself. It is just as greedy as these professors, who are greedy for intellectual power. How ethical is it to stifle advancement and prosperity?

    Neither government nor these supposed experts are accountable to the public, the public that they are supposed to benefit. We think of government as our elected officials, who we control, but government is the bureaucracy that isn’t even accountable to our elected officials.

    As Robert notes in another post, the bureaucrats think they can threaten the elected officials:

    Yet, their intentions here are what matter. These federal employees, many of whom it appears are political appointees, were actually making a blackmail threat to the elected officials: Do what we want or we won’t obey you. The law, the Constitution, and the legal powers of elected officials don’t matter. Our cause is just and the law doesn’t apply to us.

    https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/essays-and-commentaries/the-lawless-left/

    So much for governmental ethics.

    A look into academic ethics shows that academia is filled with bogus research papers, because the publish or perish imperative does not foster a calmness in the academic world for the supposed experts to carefully review their work and to be able to reject work that does not pan out. Instead, if the work is bad, it must be published anyway, otherwise the professor perishes. Time wasted on bad work is unaffordable in a publish or perish world, so the bad is published with the good.

    So much for academic ethics.

    Is this really the kind of research we want in our airplanes and spacecraft?

    And why does research need to be regulated anyway? Unregulated research in the past has brought us much prosperity, not only financially, but medically, too, along with comforts and conveniences that improve the quality of life. What is ethical about regulation? It reduces and eliminates the freedoms and liberty that the Preamble promises.

    Indeed, for half a century we relied upon the FAA to regulate airlines and manned flight, and safety improvements were barely incremental. It wasn’t until the airline industry, back in the 1980s, decided to skip the FAA’s anemic regulatory regime and improve safety on their ownthat we finally got a decade and a half of no passenger fatalities in America’s major airlines, and for the past two decades there has been only one fatality.

    However, now that the FAA is going woke and implementing DIE policies, we are getting a large number of close calls in the air and on the ground. Safety at the FAA has become secondary to woke principles.

    There go those government ethics again.

    From the linked paper’s abstract:

    We propose an ethical framework based on terrestrial human research that is anchored in four guiding principles—social responsibility, scientific excellence, proportionality, and global stewardship—and is applicable to the responsible conduct of research in commercial spaceflight.

    What do these supposed experts think human research ethics have to do with other kinds of research? Why have they not demanded it to be applied to airline safety research? Human research and animal research have ethical requirements that do not apply to other kinds of research.

    These supposed experts are not as smart as they think they are. How ethical is it for them to foist the ethics of their own human research onto all research in space? In my early days, before college, I was an intern in a NASA laboratory that performed research using both humans and animals. Those ethics were very different than the research I later worked on, building space instruments for space science on NASA satellites and an ESA probe.

    I worked where we all had to take annual ethics classes. Do these supposed experts and professors have to do that? I may be a better expert on ethics than those guys. From the linked article:

    “This has been for too long dominated by old white men,” he said. “We’ve got to change that.”

    And there it is! This is not about the safety of a Titanic tourist submarine or the ethics of space research. It is about wokeness and DIE. And it was placed at the end of the article, where only the tenacious will find it.

    I once worked for someone who said that if you are bored with an article or annual report, skip to the end, as some of the most interesting things are tucked away there.

  • Related because most ALL American universities and their professors are a real and clear threat to the country and peace in the world:

    And there will have to be choices made soon to counter it all.

    GAME OF THRONES: WHO WILL IT BE?

    “SHE KICKED ASS WITHOUT MERCY REGARDING THE DEI / PRO HAMAS / ANTI ISRAEL UNIVERSITIES IN A CONGRESSIONAL HEARING. She was a raging political Amazon warrior killer! And I believe that that one shining performance along with her many other clear and concise well-spoken positions puts her high on the list. She gets it.”

    https://www.sigma3ioc.com/post/game-of-thrones-who-will-it-be

  • Max

    Go up to Timothy Caulfield and ask him to for the keys to his car. Tell him you need a ride home and your taking his.
    He may insist that he owns his car and even has the title and that you do not have a right to his property.
    Simply explain that his car uses public roads paid for by public funds, therefore all transportation on those roads is for public use… all transportation driven on publicly paid roads is “open source” for those who want to take it for free. A title is worthless on a piece of public property that anyone can claim a right to its use. After all, all vehicles are worthless without the roads to drive them on.

    Timothy Caulfield, Is that a cell phone? :-) It uses radio waves that passes through “public air space”. I may need that also…. by the way, is your house connected to the public water, sewer, electrical and gas?…..

  • Jeff Mason

    This all boils down to this – I am incapable of doing anything truly creative, innovative or productive so I must control, hinder and regulate those that can.

  • pzatchok

    They are so much smarter than us. I do not know why we just do not listen to them in all things.

  • Not just NO, but hell no. College, university, and professional school academics and administrators are all (with very few exceptions) totally corrupt.; as are politicians, news media, and celebrities. No one from any of these groups should ever be allowed near any group that passes judgement over anything (ever their peers). What’s needed is a massive purge and a return to the morality and Constitutional governance of our Founders. Starting right now,

  • Rich Zellich

    “This has been for too long dominated by old white men,” [Caulfield] said. “We’ve got to change that.”

    No date of birth or dates applicable to basic education, but he appears to have about 35 years of professional experience at a relatively high level. Add to that the years required to get his advanced degrees and to advance in his profession to the level that would coincide with his claims, and you get an estimated age that puts him in the “old white men” category (he may not be “white”, but his CV suggests it).

    He’s right, we have to change that – kick him out.

  • pzatchok

    Small schools are switching back to a less liberal viewpoint. though this is being brought about by cost.

    As university costs go up they are starting to drop those “extra” classes and focusing more on just what you need for your field of study.
    Less bs classes equals less liberal viewpoints and indoctrination.

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