Tuesday, July 26, 2005
NASA: adventure or nostalgia?
Nostalgia is fine. Getting back on the bike after you fall off is fine. But if you're going to spend billions of dollars, you should be accomplishing something meaningful.
Busting hurricanes is extremely meaningful, and is already known to be possible. Clearly it requires some expensive engineering and testing. NASA could help with that.
Busting up persistent or 'stuck' jet streams is not known to be possible, which makes it an excellent New Frontier. There must be some way to disrupt the positive-feedback patterns that have done so much damage in recent years; some way to get the jet stream moving, so it doesn't give three months of rain to some locations and three months of baking to others. ¶ 1:30 PM
Nostalgia is fine. Getting back on the bike after you fall off is fine. But if you're going to spend billions of dollars, you should be accomplishing something meaningful.
Busting hurricanes is extremely meaningful, and is already known to be possible. Clearly it requires some expensive engineering and testing. NASA could help with that.
Busting up persistent or 'stuck' jet streams is not known to be possible, which makes it an excellent New Frontier. There must be some way to disrupt the positive-feedback patterns that have done so much damage in recent years; some way to get the jet stream moving, so it doesn't give three months of rain to some locations and three months of baking to others. ¶ 1:30 PM
