Credit: Image by David Yonatan González from Pixabay
“Good work by @NASA this week: -Eliminated their unused Purchasing Cards (~80%) -Terminated ~$420M in unneeded contracts, including $45M ($15M each) to three separate consultants, all for “Change Management Support Services””
-Statement on Twitter/X by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The specific “unneeded” contacts being cut beyond the three provided contracts is unclear. What is the chance that any of the cuts will impact SpaceX or other Musk interests? Probably zero at this point. We will need to wait for more transparency once the dust settles.
Image (Credit): Wernher von Braun (center) with President John F. Kennedy discussing the Saturn Launch System. (NASA)
On this day in 1912, Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun was born in Wyrzysk (once German, now Polish). He became an aerospace engineer for both the Germans during World War II as well as the Americans following the war.
Wernher von Braun designed the V-2 rocket that terrorized Great Britain during the war. He used that knowledge to assist NASA with the Saturn V rocket that became the backbone of the Apollo Moon missions.
In a speech on the eve of the Apollo 11 launch, he stated:
If our intention had been merely to bring back a handful of soil and rocks from the lunar gravel pit and then forget the whole thing, we would certainly be history’s biggest fools. But that is not our intention now—it never will be. What we are seeking in tomorrow’s [Apollo 11] trip is indeed that key to our future on earth. We are expanding the mind of man. We are extending this God-given brain and these God-given hands to their outermost limits and in so doing all mankind will benefit. All mankind will reap the harvest…. What we will have attained when Neil Armstrong steps down upon the moon is a completely new step in the evolution of man.
This was only 24 years after the end of World War II. He came a long way from his days of bombing his fellow citizens in Europe.
More than 50 after the last Apollo launch we are still trying to “reap the harvest” started by those earlier missions.
See any differences? That last sentence discussing the first woman, the first person of color, and the first international partner astronaut has been zapped, as noted by the media.
Was it human intervention or AI intervention? We will probably never know, but the types of items being remove from the federal web pages, such as the Enola Gay, is pretty dumb.
Any space-faring civilization will be wise to avoid us for now. We do not really meet the definition of “intelligent life” at the moment.
After all the speculation, the Murderbot television series from Apple TV+ premieres on May 16.
If you are a fan of The Murderbot Diaries books by Martha Wells, you know what you are in for. And if you are new to this story, you have missed out on some great storytelling. I can only hope this new television series can do justice to the books.
“Murderbot” is a sci-fi thriller/comedy about a self-hacking security construct who is horrified by human emotion yet drawn to its vulnerable clients. Played by Skarsgård, Murderbot must hide its free will and complete a dangerous assignment when all it really wants is to be left alone to watch futuristic soap operas and figure out its place in the universe.
That is a very small part of what makes this series tick. The most important part of the books is the murderbot’s internal dialogue second guessing every move and cursing itself every time it helps bumbling humans.
The writing is both quick and fun, yet may be difficult to bring to the screen.
I will not miss this television series. Of course, I will also be the first to criticize it (or murder it) if it ruins the magic of the books.
Our Awesome Universe 