Like a car salesman pushing a luxury vehicle that the customer no longer can afford, NASA has pulled out of its back pocket a deal for a cheaper ride to the moon.

It won’t be as powerful, and its design is a little dated. Think of it as a base-model Ford station wagon instead of a tricked-out Cadillac Escalade.

Officially, the space agency is still on track with a 4-year-old plan to spend $35 billion to build new rockets and return astronauts to the moon in several years. However, a top NASA manager is floating a cut-rate alternative that costs around $6.6 billion.null

They're calling this "not-shuttle-C." The *worst* possible outcome for the manned space program is if they go forward with Ares 1 and then don't get the money to build Ares 5. Then we're stuck in LEO with far less capability than we ever had with STS.

NASA says it can get to moon while spending less | Front page | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

The existence of the Augustine committee (officially the Review of US Human Space Flight Plans Committee) has been widely interpreted to be a vote of no confidence in NASA’s current human spaceflight plans, in particular Constellation, by the White House. After all, if everything was going well—or at least perceived to be going well by the new administration—there would be little need for an independent review. The existence of the committee has provided a new opening for those who want to replace the current architecture with any number of alternatives.

The Space Review: Constellation and its challengers

Dow Chemical and Algenol Biofuels, a start-up company, are set to announce Monday that they will build a demonstration plant that, if successful, would use algae to turn carbon dioxide into ethanol as a vehicle fuel or an ingredient in plastics. null

Bingo, carbon fixation.

Plant Would Let Algae Turn Carbon Dioxide to Fuel - NYTimes.com

The House passed legislation on Friday intended to address global warming and transform the way the nation produces and uses energy.

The vote was the first time either house of Congress had approved a bill meant to curb the heat-trapping gases scientists have linked to climate change. The legislation, which passed despite deep divisions among Democrats, could lead to profound changes in many sectors of the economy, including electric power generation, agriculture, manufacturing and construction.

The bill’s passage, by 219 to 212, with 44 Democrats voting against it, also established a marker for the United States when international negotiations on a new climate change treaty begin later this year.

House Passes Bill to Address Threat of Climate Change - NYTimes.com

I'm a big believer in the profit motive in 99 percent of all cases. If the government decided to open a non-profit hamburger stand, I doubt that it would compete successfully against Five Guys. If it tried to open a non-profit airline, I doubt that it could offer the same value as JetBlue. Insert joke about General Motors and/or the Post Office here. The point is, I think the profit motive is generally well worth it in terms of the incentives it creates to cut costs, develop new products, improve customer service, and so forth.

But health insurance is not like those things.

FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: George F. Will Admits Public Option Will Cut Costs

Applying for a job with the City of Bozeman? You may be asked to provide more personal information than you expected.

That was the case for one person who applied for employment with the City. The anonymous viewer emailed the news station recently to express concern with a component of the city's background check policy, which states that to be considered for a job applicants must provide log-in information and passwords for social network sites in which they participate.nullnullnullnullnullnullnullnull

Bozeman City job requirement raises privacy concerns - Montana's News Station - Fair. Accurate. To the Point. -

National broadband plan? We don’t need no stinking, national broadband plan, two Senators all but announced Monday, introducing a measure that would require states to build tubes for internet fiber optic cables under every bit of highway or rail they build or modify with federal funds.

Senators Introduce “Run The Tubes Under The Highway” Bill | Epicenter | Wired.com

Sure, a few still photos of the sushi-making Chef Robot now on display at the International Food Machinery and Technology Exhibition in Tokyo are all well and good, but there's nothing quite like a high def video to really bring all that creepiness home, and one has now surfaced courtesy of the brave folks at DigInfo. In case you missed it, the robot itself is actually just a standard issue FANUC M-430iA robot arm with a way too realistic hand attached to it, which apparently not only helps it prepare sushi, but some tasty desserts as well. Head on past the break for the must-see video, you've nothing to lose but your ability to unsee it.

Chef Robot makes its video debut, nightmares forthcoming

A 14-year old German boy was hit in the hand by a pea-sized meteorite that scared the bejeezus out of him and left a scar.

Boy Hit by Meteorite

I guess my big issue with the book world is that only rarely does anybody address the physicality of books, as if to do so is somehow an insult to “words,” which is kind of corny, and seems almost willfully self-blinding. The extreme is in France, where most covers are blank with just the title and author’s name, which is actually not a bad idea, like school uniforms, but then what next — all books set in the same font at the same size? A war between the pro italics and the anti italics camp? I think you can go too far.

The snippet doesn't nearly do this justice...

Doug Coupland -- Insects - Time Capsules Blog - NYTimes.com