Showing 1 - 10 of 20
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."
Democracy survives crucial test in Senegal
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 04/04/2024
» The crisis in Senegal, the one country in West Africa that has never had a military coup, has passed. Few people outside Africa were paying close attention to it, but I'm sure you will be pleased to know that democracy has survived.
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 molecular line between life and death
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 01/03/2023
» 'We are but one very small company [among] many hundreds of companies using AI software for drug discovery and de novo design. How many of them have ... the know-how to find the pockets of chemical space that can be filled with molecules predicted to be orders of magnitude more toxic than VX?" This is a warning that requires a little explanation.
War narrative a fable not fit for the times
News, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 09/05/2022
» We were talking recently about how clever the Ukrainians had been to call the invading Russian troops "Orcs" even before all the atrocities in the Russian-occupied towns around Kyiv came to light. Then Tina said: "If Putin's troops are Orcs, then he must be Sauron."
North Korea: The sting in the scorpion's tail
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 02/02/2022
» 'They want to have a deterrence system that is like a scorpion's tail," said Professor Kim Dong Yup, a former South Korean naval commander. "North Korea's main purpose is not to attack but to defend themselves." They want a "diversified deterrent capability", and who could blame them?
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.
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."
Fascists really are coming in the United States
Oped, Gwynne Dyer, Published on 25/06/2021
» Godwin's Law, coined in 1990, says that as a discussion on the internet grows longer, the likelihood of somebody being compared to Hitler or the Nazis rises inexorably towards 100%. But once in a very long while the comparison is correct.