Rich is watching Matt's cats. He gets the following note: "The key to my house is in your desk drawer, we left instructions for their care on the counter. Be careful when you go over, I think Worm [one of the cats] is plotting to kill you." Classic.

rant time...

There's a lot of hubbub lately about cuts at space agency to aeronautics research. You can read all about it on NASA Watch. Anyway, my personal opinion on this probably diverges a lot from the norm. But I just don't care. I mean, I do care when research funding is withdrawn prematurely and grad students can't finish their phd's. And I care when expensive, useful facilities (i.e. wind tunnels, arc jet facilities) are shut down with no thought to the future. And I hate to see people lose their jobs. But the agency helped make aeronautics a solvent, realistic idea 50 years ago. It should be supporting itself by now.

But, I just personally think the space agency doesn't need to be as involved in aeronautics as it used to be. The commercial airliners need a wider cockpit to make more money? They should fund their own research. The military worried about aerodynamic stability in a fighter jet? There budget is about 200x space agency's, they should fund their own research. Does the national airspace system need to run more efficiently? We have the FAA and the NTSB, they're the experts, they should fix it. All that's left for space agency's aeronautics should be the basic research no one else will do -- super theoretical aerodynamic shapes, high altitude stuff/high speed stuff that's useful for spaceflight, etc.

Yes, its a shame that people may have to relocate or find new jobs because of this realignment. But its ridiculous when any government agency is saddled with unnecessary work with funding that sucks money away from things they should be doing.

That said, I still remain paranoid that all this stuff is a way to quietly shut down the space agency without too many people kicking up a hissy fit. "Hey, shuttle people, help us shut it down manned spaceflight and we'll let you go to the moon... giggle, giggle... like that will ever happen... Hey aeronautics people, sorry, necessary sacrifice to go to the moon, c'est la vie, we're shutting you down... giggle giggle, who needs to reappropriate that money to space, we can just cut it from the budget... stupid engineers, they'll never know what hit them!"