You are browsing the archive for Ryan Anderson.
17 April 2010
Off to MarsSed 2010
I’m headed off to El Paso Texas tomorrow! Why? Because that’s where the Mars Sedimentology and Stratigraphy workshop is! I’ll be presenting my work on the Gale Crater landing site for MSL on tuesday and then the second part of the week will be a geology field trip to interesting and instructive locations. I’m really looking forward to it, since the best way to learn geology is to go out …
15 April 2010
Thoughts on Obama's Space Speech
In case you missed it, you can click here to watch Obama’s speech at NASA today and read the transcript here. Overall there were not a lot of surprises in this speech. NASA still gets a budget increase. The shuttle is still on-track for cancellation, the Constellation program is also going to be canceled, with transportation to and from the ISS to be provided by private companies. The ISS will …
How and when to view today's Space Conference
Today’s space conference, including Obama’s speech, will be shown on NASA TV. Here’s the information (copied and pasted from this site): NASA will hold a conference following President Obama’s remarks about the bold new course the administration is charting for NASA and the future of U.S. leadership in human spaceflight on Thursday, April 15, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. A diverse group of senior officials, space leaders, academic …
14 April 2010
Obama to speak at NASA tomorrow
Well, it looks like president Obama will be making a short visit to Kennedy Space Center tomorrow, where he will give a speech clarifying the space agency’s future. There has been a lot of speculation about what exactly he will say. Will he just promote his original plan, or has all the wailing and gnashing of teeth had some effect? I don’t know, but there are rumors flying around that …
8 April 2010
Review: Bioshock
When Bioshock came out, I heard rave reviews about its revolutionary gameplay, deep storyline, tough moral choices, arresting visuals and general awesomeness. So of course, when I decided to give in to my old gaming addiction and get an XBox 360, it was near the top of the list of games I wanted. Well, I just finished playing and sadly, I was pretty underwhelmed. The premise of the game is …
7 April 2010
We've come a long way
Yesterday our Mars Journal Club met to talk about a book chapter from 1990 about geologic mapping on other planets. It was really useful and informative, but what really struck me was how much things have changed since then. When the chapter was written, the best images of Mars were the Viking orbiter maps. There were also a lot of lunar examples in the chapter along the lines of: “Clearly …
31 March 2010
More TED skepticism: Is science news the most important news?
Only days after a TED talk about Mars inspired this post correcting some of the misconceptions in the talk, another TED talk has me scratching my head. This one is by Kirk Citron, editor of “The Long News”, a project concerned with winnowing the few news stories from current events that will actually be seen as important 100 years or more from now. In his very brief talk he gives …
25 March 2010
TED Talk: Why we need to go back to Mars
I recently started subscribing to the TED talk RSS feed, and I really love coming home every day after work and listening to smart people talk about cool ideas. If you aren’t familiar with TED, you should be. Most of the talks are fantastic and very thought-provoking. So you can imagine I was excited when I saw that today’s talk was about Mars! The talk was given by Joel Levine, …
22 March 2010
Carnival of Space #146
I’ve been a bit of a delinquent blogger lately, but the rest of the astro-blogosphere has been busy! To get caught up on all the cool stuff that I have neglected to tell you in the past week, check out the Carnival of Space over at Simostronomy!
18 March 2010
Book Review: The Next 100 Years
You would think that since I’m working at Johnson Space Center right now, I would have exciting tales from inside NASA to share with you, but I’m afraid it has been pretty uneventful. I have however managed to read a couple of books, one of which was The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century, by George Friedman. This was a really fascinating book about using history and …
