Robert A. Black, Mathematical Storyteller

Today, NPR reports that the Government Accountability Office has listed NASA among "13 urgent issues facing the new administration." Yup, you heard that right. With all that's going wrong in the country these days - the stock market crashing, homes being foreclosed, the auto industry going bust - NASA made the list of things that President-elect Obama needs to focus on. Specifically, the GAO is concerned about the multi-year gap between the retirement of the space shuttles and the launch of the new Ares rockets. I've mentioned that in this blog before. Now that the International Space Station is almost done, we're going to be stuck relying on another country - most likely Russia, who isn't being entirely friendly right now - to get there. It's got people worried. And Barack Obama wasn't exactly the most NASA-friendly presidential candidate. A position paper his campaign released early in the year proposed cutting NASA's budget and delaying th...

The PBS series Nova has turned out some really great episodes about the space program over the years, and last night's episode was no exception. "Space Shuttle Disaster" took a look at the 2003 Columbia accident - not just the accident itself, but the social and political factors around it, through the past and into the future. They made a good case for the claim that the Columbia accident was a product of the environment that made the Shuttle what it was in the first place, and then explored the ways that the accident has changed NASA's plans for the future. If you missed it, you can look for your local PBS station to rerun it, or go here to watch it online: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/columbia/program.html Meanwhile, I've got a space show of my own to do. The Space Show, in fact: I'll be on the air from 12:00noon to 1:30pm Pacific Time this Sunday , talking about Lunar Pioneers . You can hear the show streamed live from the Space Show website or do...

This is my author blog, where I write about things related to my books. With that in mind, my aim is to avoid politics as much as I can. If you want to know who I support for president this year, I've made that pretty clear in other places around the net. I don't need to repeat it here. Nevertheless, I wanted to point out this new opinion piece in the New York Times - "Houston, We Have a Problem" . It's about the challenges facing our next president, whoever he may be, if the US is to keep its leadership role in space. The columnist asserts that, "Not since John F. Kennedy, has a president truly understood the incalculable value of space." It's a credible claim. Richard Nixon killed the Apollo program. Ronald Reagan gave us the International Space Station, but with so little support that today's scaled-down version still isn't finished. George H.W. Bush tried to interest us in Mars, but failed to follow up his initial proposal. Bill...