NASA engineers on the outs, Newspace could help

Former NASA employees in my former neighborhood are finding out what the rest of us knew for years: the Spacecoast job market sucks even in good times, now it’s virtually un-inhabitable. I feel bad for them, not all of them voted for the economic policies that rewarded repackaging and reselling shady derivatives over actually making things. The ones that did were classic GOP mushroom people: kept in the dark and fed a diet of bullshit: [Read more…]

Opportunity stirs after long Martian winter

 The Mars rover Opportunity stirred in the midst of its slumber in the long Martian winter and snapped this beautiful composite image.  One month from today it will be joined by the much larger Curiosity and the search for ancient life will begin in earnest. Assuming Curiosity survives NASA’s Rube Goldberg reentry and descent contraption. And a new study suggests signs of ancient life could be lurking just under the surface for it to find: [Read more…]