Wouldn’t it be great for humanity if space was more accessible? A little time thinking about the possibilities should excite all but the least imaginative. Imagine the implications of being able to mine asteroids or deploy vast solar arrays in space, for example.

So with NASA’s US$17bn budget you’d think there would be some room to do some basic work in this area. And I’m sure there is.

Doesn’t it make you proud, though, that some seriously promising work is being done in Oxfordshire and that so far it has consumed just US$7m?

Read more on Scientific American magazine’s blog.

You can see the mobile version here.

I have a profile on Facebook and, heck, a website here where I occasionally say something that I feel needs saying (less frequently recently). I also use Google to search and only rarely delete anything from my search history. But the article I was reading that triggered the ‘must write’ response was one on RFID tags.

When I first decided to get an Oyster card it was after a long period of thinking about it. To me having the Mayor of London able to see where I’m going seemed like a bit of an imposition. Why should he need to know where I’m going? And can I trust a man who leaves the Congestion Charge cameras on on Sundays? Eventually I decided that as it was voluntary it wasn’t unreasonable to help them manage the network and, anyway, it’s cheaper for the right reasons.

But as I read the RFID article I realised how many things I was carrying had an RFID tag in them. I was going to an examination so I had my new-style passport with me as ID. This contains a passive chip that is encrypted (I believe) using my passport number as a key. But also on my person I had said Oyster card and also my new Barclaycard that has PayPass.

If I wander into a shopping centre, the article explained, an array of RFID tag readers in appropriate places may just be able to read my RFID tags and find out where I go, where I stop or dally and where I don’t go. While, at the moment, this would not necessarily identify me as me, it wouldn’t be too hard for that to happen and it would be much easier to integrate that data into a useful database than are images on CCTV.

I have to admit, despite my concerns about freedom I am not worried about the implementation of RFID in the West yet (China’s another matter: China to issue RFID ID cards) but it is an area we need to keep an eye on.

I think most people these days are a little cynical about green taxes. Isn’t it true, they say, that green taxes are about revenue rather than behaviour? Isn’t it true that outside of London there is no viable alternative to private transport? And isn’t it true that a tax meant to disincentivise a behaviour, in the absence of an alternative, serves only to hurt the lower and middle earners?

Well Osborne’s solution is to create price stability — ensure the effective price of oil maintains a certain level and there will be a realistic chance of people investing in alternatives. Make long-term guarantees about the minimum level of landfill tax and then companies can be sure that it is worth investing in making money out of the situation.

While we would all like to believe that people and companies do the right thing because it’s the right thing, there’s absolutely no harm in allowing companies to profit from environmentally friendly practices. Even though there are arguments about the ‘green-ness’ of the Toyota Prius, no-one can claim it has been bad for the Toyota company.

Our current government announces things at pre-budget report stage and if they’re unpopular, changes its mind on the day of the budget. Osborne and co. have promised that there won’t be a raft of surprise new measures on the day of the budget which will allow companies and early-adopter consumers to know that their purchases and money-making exercises are going to have a sound-business case in five years time.

Like social welfare and the NHS, the Conservatives have taken the lead on another policy area — environmental realism.

But to be fair to the services available, I had not yet tried the journey from my new home to my old work. My new home is only a two minute walk from the railway station and Legal & General in Hove is a pacy fifteen minutes walk. So the combined journey time, with the fifteen minutes on the train itself, is about half an hour. This compares very favourably with the rush hour journey time by car (because, of course, of the lack of public investment in viable roads from Shoreham past Chichester).

So, in future, if it weren’t for the frankly bizarre prohibitive cost, I would be more than keen on using this alternative. Actually, I’ll have to again tomorrow as my car remains at the garage.

On the cost, I still need to have it explained to me. How can it possibly cost more to transport many passengers than to transport one? And if you can share your car not only is the cost halved instantly, but it also becomes even more competitive. The do-gooder socialist environmentalists wish to correct this imbalance by charging car drivers more for the privilege of moving about their own country by private means (where do-gooder socialist environmentalists could, without too much squinting, be replaced with the single word “facists”).

As a short exercise, here is a comparison of the costs:

1. Private car: 13 pence per mile (if through town) or 10 pence per mile (if using the A27 trunk road which I do). This is a total of £1.20 for the 9.2 mile journey.
2. Train: £3.10 in each direction (ignoring spurious discounts if you choose to use the train every day)

Even if we add the 48 pence per day of road tax (which presumably exceeds expenditure on roads these days) the car remains a cheaper option. And if we removed the imbalance caused by fuel duty the car would be nearly a half cheaper again.

But why? How do economies of scale not come into play here? The train was full and the train in front of it was full too (I had to watch it pass as it does not stop here in Lancing) so the passengers on the train were not subsidising empty seats. The train uses electricity which everyone knows is created relatively efficiently (much more efficiently than burning a small amount of petroleum under the bonnet of several hundred vehicles) and, to cap it all, the train companies are largely subsidised by Her Majesty’s wealth-suppressor (sorry, the tax man).

So, someone, tell me why!

Why does Germany buy fewer games per head than the UK or France:

[Germany] is the third-biggest market for video games in Europe, behind the UK and France, with PC titles dominating the market.

This from a story about the PS3′s new PVR capabilities: BBC News

It would seem to me that Germany’s cultural similarities concerning alcohol and free time would make the number of games bought there similar to in Britain… But obviously not.

If you believe that the world’s States alone cannot make the best of space (or even if you do believe that they can); if you believe that we, as a species, need to leave this planet eventually to ensure our existence; if you believe that ‘progress’ is a reason enough in itself…

… then join the Planetary Society as I did a year ago, and join in that effort. See the progress that the Planetary Society’s efforts are achieving and know, in your heart, that you are part of something great, momentous and meaningful.

Join me, join the Planetary Society

Interestingly, though, June’s Scientific American magazine has a passage which I think presents the barrier to solution quite clearly:

To accomodate the economic aspirations of the more than five billion people in the developing countries, the size of the world economy should increase by a factor of four to six by 2050; at the same time, global emissions of greenhouse gases will have to remain steady or decline to prevent dangerous changes to the climate. After 2050, emissions will have to drop further, nearly to zero, for greenhouse gas concentrations to stabilize.

Assuming the scientific community’s poor understanding of the climate is accurate then it is reassuring that the solution (technology) as proposed by the author (Jeffrey D. Sachs) costs approximately 1 penny per kilowatt hour. That’s on top of a current electricity price of approximately 8.1 pence.

I have long said that environmental-socialism is not the solution and I am heartened to read the technological-solution being espoused.

Here’s the link if you want to try it too: Apple Safari