Showing 1 - 10 of 17
Musk's Starship: If it sounds too good to be true...
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 06/12/2025
» Elon Musk promised to build a spaceship that would put people and cargo into Earth orbit at one-hundredth of the current cost per kilo and even enable human beings to create a colony on Mars. A great many people were seduced by the idea, including me.
The air war: plywood and Styrofoam
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 20/09/2025
» 'Nato is responding with unity and strength," said British defence secretary John Healey. "If you've got drones that are putting Polish lives at risk, then Nato will take them out. There's no firm confirmation on intent, but in the end that's not the point. It's still reckless. It's still dangerous."
Theatre of white refugees from South Africa
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 16/05/2025
» As my flight landed in South Africa on Sunday, I looked in vain for the plane that was due to take off with the first 49 white, Afrikaans-speaking "refugees" of the many thousands who are supposedly going to find safety from racist persecution in Donald Trump's United States.
Israel vs the ICJ: Is this a waste of time?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 18/01/2024
» The two sides have had their day in court -- one day each, actually. The 17 judges of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) have now retired to consider what interim decisions they should make on South Africa's accusation that Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip amount to the crime of genocide. Is this just a waste of time?
Starship: The Iterative Design Methodology
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 23/04/2023
» 'Obviously, this is not a nominal situation," said John Insprucker, a senior engineer at Space-X, who was doing a webcast on Thursday's launch attempt of Elon Musk's gigantic Starship rocket. So why did Mr Musk's employees, hundreds of whom were watching live, cheer when it blew up only four minutes into flight?
The industrialisation of space
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 11/01/2022
» It will be a bumper year for big space launches to the Moon, Mars, and asteroids, including many manned flights, but the real shocker is the number of satellites and spaceships being launched by private companies.
Belarus becomes a small storm in a sea of anxiety
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 18/11/2021
» It's not a tempest in a teapot; it's smaller than that. A few thousand Arabs and Kurds, mostly young men but including women and children, are trapped between Poland, which will not let them in, and Belarusian border guards and militia who will not let them back into Belarus. But the language is getting menacing.
Hypersonic missiles are a needless complication
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 13/11/2021
» 'I saw in some of the newspapers they used the term 'Sputnik moment'," said General Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. "I don't know if it's quite a Sputnik moment, but I think it's very close to that. It's a very significant technological event that occurred."
Time for a new discourse on Afghanistan
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 06/09/2021
» A man is sitting in a train somewhere in Europe, tearing sheets of paper into little pieces and throwing them out the window.
Do we need more rockets in the stratosphere?
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 27/08/2021
» If you're worried about your "carbon footprint" -- a concept foisted on the world in 2004 by British Petroleum to persuade people that their own behaviour, and not giant oil companies like BP, is causing the climate problem -- then you definitely should not sign up for a sub-orbital space flight. Besides, you probably can't afford it (US$250,000 -- about 8 million baht -- per person).