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Showing posts from March, 2011

Zubrin Makes the Case for Mars

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Dr. Robert Zubrin , President & Founder of The Mars Society , recently gave an address at the University of Washington on his Mars Direct plan to send humans to the Red Planet within a decade. A superbly edited version of segments of his presentation combined with a conversational style interview and other footage is available in two parts for your viewing pleasure: Part 1 Part 2 I highly recommend watching these videos. It'll be 19 minutes well-spent. Zubrin is an engaging and inspiring advocate of human Mars exploration and offers piercing criticism of the way the USA has handled the goals of its human space program since the Apollo program. His central thesis is that with the right motivation and resources, we can get to Mars within a decade. We don't have to wait for future advanced technologies to be developed, and in fact strategies relying upon such technologies are used more as excuses not to go to Mars than as enabling such a journey. After all, N

Daddy x 2

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At 1:34am on February 28, 2011, my wife gave birth at home to a baby girl, whom we named "Isla Sydney Shiro." She was born about two weeks early with a weight of 6 pounds 8 ounces (2948 g) and was 20 inches (50.8 cm) long. She's five days old now and in perfect health. " Isla " (pronounced EYE-la) is a popular name in the UK that refers to an island and river in Scotland. Since we live on an Island in Hawaii, and I have an aunt in Scotland, the name seems to fit. " Isla Earth " is also a popular environmental science radio show to which I regularly listen.  "Sydney" doesn't have any special significance to us other than that we like how it sounds. Although, I realized after we had named her that the first client of Astronauts4Hire does hail from Sydney, Australia. Plus, do the initials " ISS " remind you of anything spacey? My son Henry is now 3 years old and is a proud big brother. He's pictured here holding his