Lasers in Space

Ever since man has first dreamed of flying through space, man has dreamed of attaching weapons to those spaceships. The latest addition to man's dream of weaponizing space may actually come to fruition. There are now plans to mount a powerful laser on the International Space Station.

It actually makes sense once you understand the context. There's about 3,000 tons of various kinds of debris floating around in Earth's orbit, and the tiniest speck can pack an enormous punch. The ISS constantly has to manuever around bits and pieces of space junk, and it is built to withstand impacts from really small objects. But think about it. It would make everyone's lives much easier if there was something up in orbit getting rid of potentially hazardous junk. After all, we've come to depend on satellites, and some stray debris could wreak a lot of havoc.

Unfortunately, the idea of attaching a laser to a space station is a bit politically sensitive. I imagine there will be some controversy. But the fact is that we depend on satellites up there in orbit, and they are all under constant threat. A way to clear out space debris would not only protect the people up in orbit, it would benefit all of us. As much as we might want to avoid it, space weaponization is probably inevitable, and as long as things are handled transparently, it should work out just fine.

Propulsion from Nothing is Still...Probably Nothing

Several months ago, I posted on this blog. Several months before that, I wrote about how there was supposedly some new means of propulsion that, well, wasn't actually propulsion. It seemed incredibly dubious then, so imagine my surprise when this story reared its ugly head once again in the past week or so. 

If you go through that, you might notice mention of the word "superluminary", or fancy science talk for faster than light. Yes, it wasn't enough for this theorized propulsion system to be highly implausible, we had to go a step further and make this thing a warp drive. Yes, that's basically what they're claiming, and of course, news sites ran with it. You can't come with 30 miles of mentioning warp drive and not expect people to go crazy.

There have certainly been voices of reason since the news broke. And that's good. While this new drive has apparently been subjected to slightly more rigorous experimentation, there are two very important facts that must be brought to the front. One, this news was basically self-published. There was no peer-review, nothing to stop them from basically fabricating their results. Two, science depends on repeatability. Once is a coincidence. Until at least one other independent organization can duplicate the results, we have to assume that this extraordinary claim is incorrect in some way. Again, don't get me wrong, I'd love it if this ended up all working out. I just don't think it will.