Author Archives: jlredford

A Heinlein Meme Started the Space Race

Posted on October 12, 2019 by jlredford

… according to the excellent Washington Post podcast Moonrise.  It’s an account of what led up to the Apollo 11 moon landing, starting with Robert Goddard, John W. Campbell, Sergei Korolev, and Wernher von Braun in the 1920s and 30s, … Continue reading →

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Space Is Not That Big

Posted on July 31, 2019 by jlredford

So we just had the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, and there’s renewed interest in doing another landing on the Moon.  That got me thinking about space as the final frontier. How much is there out there really?  I added … Continue reading →

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MIT On Climate Change

Posted on June 28, 2019 by jlredford

Every year MIT has a Technology Day on its alumni reunion weekend where faculty discuss what they’re working on.   These are consistently interesting, and I’ve written about them before: The Oceans Are Dissolved Information and Print Your House and … Continue reading →

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Is “The Biggest Little Farm” For Real?

Posted on May 28, 2019 by jlredford

This new documentary is so wholesome and uplifting that it immediately raised suspicions in my skeptical heart.  It describes the odyssey of a young couple in Los Angeles who started their own organic farm, Apricot Lane, on 200 acres of … Continue reading →

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Mad Science #5: Fluorine-Based Rocket Fuels

Posted on May 1, 2019 by jlredford

One of the purest examples of maniacal engineering is the field of liquid rocket fuels.   These chemicals have to contain as much energy as possible, and so are  dangerous by definition.  A fun and opinionated version of their development … Continue reading →

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“Big Lonely Doug” – An Alien Stranded on Humanity’s Earth

Posted on April 14, 2019 by jlredford

There’s a tree in Canada that’s so famous that it now has its own biography, Big Lonely Doug (2018) by Harlan Rustad: It’s a gigantic Douglas fir, ~67 m (220′) tall and 4 m across at the base. It’s one … Continue reading →

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“They Shall Not Grow Old” – the Movie Memorial of WW I

Posted on March 15, 2019 by jlredford

This extraordinary restoration of actual World War I footage shows what movies can do that practically no other art form can – take you to places that you’ll never see.  Theater has physical limitations, television has technical ones, and literature … Continue reading →

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Nothing Has Ever Been Manufactured in Space

Posted on February 3, 2019 by jlredford

I happen to own something that has been to space – a laptop bag made partly from the orange nylon of Soyuz re-entry parachute: A Montreal company, Everquest Design, went out to Kazahkstan in 2003 and recovered the parachute from … Continue reading →

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The Best-Looking Movies of the 20th Century

Posted on January 24, 2019 by jlredford

The American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. In honor of the occasion, they’ve put together a list of The 100 Best-Photographed Films. Members submitted nominations, and then an overall list was created and voted … Continue reading →

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Peak Gas Cars Are Already Past

Posted on January 10, 2019 by jlredford

Here’s an extraordinary thing – the peak sales of gasoline-powered cars in the US was in 2016: This includes straight passenger cars, SUVs, and pickups, which are all lumped together as Light Vehicles. The data comes from the Bureau of … Continue reading →

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