Month: July 2013

A Norwegian town, sunless for five months of the year, is building a giant array of mirrors to light up its town square.

7:20 pm

A Norwegian town, sunless for five months of the year, is building a giant array of mirrors to light up its town square.

Three mirrors with a total surface area of about 538 square feet will sit at an angle to redirect winter sun down into the town, lighting up over 2150 square feet of concentrated space in the town square. A similar idea exists in the Italian village of Viganella, which has used brushed steel to reflect light since 2006.

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NASA plans to test the parachutes for the Orion capsule today.

9:44 am

The competition heats up: NASA plans to test the parachutes for the Orion capsule today.

Wednesday’s test will see an Orion prototype dropped from a plane at an altitude of 35,000 feet (10,700 meters) over the U.S. Army’s Yuma Proving Ground in southwestern Arizona. Engineers will simulate a series of failures and test the parachute system’s ability to adapt and land the capsule safely. Orion has three main parachutes, and the NASA team plans to simulate the failure of one of the trio to see if the landing sequence can proceed safely with only two.

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Obama’s nominee to manage contracting and budget at the Energy Department had serious problems doing the same job while she was at NASA.

9:42 am

The merry-go-round: Obama’s nominee to manage contracting and budget at the Energy Department had serious problems doing the same job while she was at NASA.

A Washington Times review of NASA inspector general reports finds the space agency struggled to achieve austerity under Ms. Robinson’s financial leadership, as cost overruns grew sixfold from $50 million in 2009 to $315 million in 2012. … Audits conducted during Ms. Robinson’s tenure as CFO uncovered that NASA spent an average of $66 per person per day for light refreshments at conferences, shelled out $1.5 million to develop a video game to replicate astronauts’ experiences and reimbursed employees $1.4 million for tuition dating to 2006 for degrees unrelated to their NASA jobs.

But no matter. Her resume lists all these important past jobs, so she must be qualified!

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The developmental engineering successes of the new commercially-built private spaceships, Dragon, CST-100, and Dream Chaser, appears to be winning over Congress.

9:12 am

The developmental engineering successes of the new commercially-built private spaceships, Dragon, CST-100, and Dream Chaser, appears to be winning over Congress.

The article linked above is mostly about Boeing’s effort with its CST-100 spaceship, but within it was this significant paragraph:

Last week, the House Appropriations committees approved $500 million and Senate appropriators $775 million for commercial crew development as part of NASA’s 2014 budget. The first figure is well below the Obama administration’s $821 million request, a figure NASA Administrator Charles Bolden has characterized as essential to meet the 2017 objective. Nonetheless, agency and company managers believe legislators are losing their skepticism over a program that has so far committed $1.4 billion to competing vehicle designs from SpaceX, Sierra Nevada, Boeing and others. [emphasis mine]

Congress is still insisting that NASA spend far more for the Space Launch System (SLS), but they do appear to be increasingly less interested in cutting the new commercial crew program. Eventually, a light will go off in their dim brains and they will realize how much more cost effective this program is compared to SLS. I expect this to happen sometime in the next three years, It is then that SLS will die.

Note that I don’t have any problems at all with the above cuts to the commercial program. It is far better to keep these private efforts on a short leash, thereby forcing the companies to stay lean and mean, than to give them a blank check (as has been done in the past and with SLS) and thus allow them to become fat and lazy.

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India has set August 19 as the launch date for its home-built Geosycnchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV).

8:58 am

The competition heats up: India has set August 19 as the launch date for its home-built Geosycnchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV).

Their last attempt to launch this rocket three years ago ended in spectacular failure. A success here would allow India to become a serious player in the launch market, thereby increasing the competition and thus helping to lower prices and encourage innovation.

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SpaceX has begun assembly of the upgraded Falcon 9 rocket that will launch its first commercial payload in early September.

8:52 am

The competition heats up: SpaceX has begun assembly of the upgraded Falcon 9 rocket that will launch its first commercial payload in early September.

This launch has been significantly delayed because the company was testing the actual engines to be used in the rocket, and had a series of engine aborts during testing (as outlined in the article above). Once the engines completed a full duration burn last week, however, the way was cleared for launch.

The article is very detailed, and also outlines the other new features of the upgraded Falcon 9 rocket to be flown for the first time in September. I must admit that this list makes me nervous. A lot rides on the success of this launch, both for SpaceX and for the entire new commercial space industry.

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The defense industry has found that the cuts from sequestration have been far less painful than their lobbying had claimed.

12:06 am

Surprise, surprise! The defense industry has found that the cuts from sequestration have been far less painful than their lobbying had claimed.

Contractors seem pleasantly surprised that the automatic spending cuts are not hurting nearly as much as the industry’s lobbying arm warned they would in the months leading up to the sequester that took effect in March. [For example,] Lockheed Martin had predicted that sequestration would wipe out $825 million in revenue this year, but it no longer expects such a big hit. In fact, the company said, profit will be higher than initially projected. [emphasis mine]

The article specifically mentions the doomsday lobbying effort of the Aerospace Industries Association, As I noted back in December 2012, that lobbying was a lie. There is so much fat in the government that sequestration could have been three times bigger and it wouldn’t have done these contractors any serious harm. The inconsequential nature of those cuts now is illustrating the reality of this truth.

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The family that George Zimmerman rescued from a car crash this week is terrified they will become targets of hate mobs if they say anything positive about him.

3:28 pm

Leftwing civility works its magic: The family that George Zimmerman rescued from a car crash this week is terrified they will become targets of hate mobs if they say anything positive about him.

Thugs. The left and its minions are no different than jack-booted thugs, and the aftermath of the George Zimmerman trial has proven this quite clearly. Say or do something they don’t like, no matter whether it is legal, and they will come after you with threats of violence. And their leaders in the political world, led by President Obama, will just look the other way.

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Observations of Comet ISON have detected strong carbon dioxide emissions escaping from the comet.

3:05 pm

Call Al Gore! Observations of Comet ISON have detected strong carbon dioxide emissions escaping from the comet.

Images captured June 13 with Spitzer’s Infrared Array Camera indicate carbon dioxide is slowly and steadily “fizzing” away from the so-called “soda-pop comet,” along with dust, in a tail about 186,400 miles (300,000 kilometers) long. “We estimate ISON is emitting about 2.2 million pounds (1 million kilograms) of what is most likely carbon dioxide gas and about 120 million pounds (54.4 million kilograms) of dust every day,” said Carey Lisse, leader of NASA’s Comet ISON Observation Campaign and a senior research scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. “Previous observations made by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission and Deep Impact spacecraft gave us only upper limits for any gas emission from ISON. Thanks to Spitzer, we now know for sure the comet’s distant activity has been powered by gas.”

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Bigelow announces prices for visiting or renting their space station modules.

11:53 am

The competition heats up: Bigelow Aerospace announces prices for visiting or renting their space station modules.

For countries, companies, or even visiting individuals that wish to utilize SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule, Bigelow Aerospace will be able to transport an astronaut to the Alpha Station for only $26.25 million. Using Boeing’s CST-100 capsule and the Atlas V rocket, astronauts can be launched to the Alpha Station for $36.75 million per seat. In stark contrast to the short stays of a week or so aboard the ISS that we have seen wealthy individuals pay as much as $40 million for, astronauts visiting the Bigelow station will enjoy 10 – 60 days in orbit. During this time, visiting astronauts will be granted access to the Alpha Station’s shared research facilities. Examples of available equipment include a centrifuge, glove-box, microscope, furnace, and freezer. Also, potential clients should note that as opposed to the ISS, where astronauts dedicate the lion’s share of their time to supporting station operations and maintenance, astronauts aboard the Alpha Station will be able to focus exclusively on their own experiments and activities, ensuring that both nations and companies can gain full value from their investment in a human spaceflight program. [emphasis in original]

The release also describes price plans whereby the customer can rent part of a module for a period of time, as well as the prices for the naming rights to a module.

I hadn’t heard about it elsewhere and do not remember if this is old news or not. The announcement on the website is undated. Nonetheless, as the release notes, these prices undercut the fees charged by the Russians and provide far more opportunities for the customer.

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According to a new poll, only 11% of doctors believe that the Obamacare health exchanges will be open for business on October 1, as mandated by the law.

11:24 am

Finding out what’s in it: According to a new poll, only 11% of doctors believe that the Obamacare health exchanges will be open for business on October 1, as mandated by the law.

I found this tidbit from the article, however, far more disturbing, as it describes a detail of the Obamacare exchanges that will surely cause doctors incredible financial pain, and will likely cause them to demand all payments up front:

Jackson said that doctors who don’t have an understanding of those coverage terms could be in for a nasty surprise once the new plans go into effect. That’s because under the rules of the exchange, a patient can go up to three months without paying premiums and still not get their coverage formally dropped by an insurers—but the insurer isn’t obligated to pay claims incurred during the second and third month if that person isn’t paying their premiums for that time, Jackson said. Those rules could mean that doctors end up eating the cost of the care they have already provided, or have their receivables stay unpaid for longer stretches of time. [emphasis mine]

In other words, the law is tilted to allow patients to stiff both their doctors and their insurance companies. How precious.

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An Arizona nursing student was suspended from school and called a bigot because she requested one of her classes be taught in English.

9:08 am

An Arizona nursing student was suspended from school and called a bigot because she requested one of her classes be taught in English.

The student, Terri Bennett, 50, initially complained in April to school officials because she said the Spanish-dominated discussions in her class room were preventing her from learning, Townhall reported. The college nursing program director, David Kutzler, then allegedly called her “a bigot” and an expletive, and suspended her.

She has sued. The article also notes that the Arizona constitution requires schools to use English.

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The routine lowering of past climate data to make today’s temperatures seem hotter.

9:22 pm

More climate fraud: The routine lowering of past climate data to make today’s temperatures seem hotter.

Almost all past temperatures have been adjusted downward, compared with the temperatures that were actually recorded at the time. During the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s, when many record high temperatures were recorded, the readings have been adjusted downward by, generally speaking, one to one and a half degrees. These adjustments stop abruptly in the late 1990s. The effect of the adjustments is to make the past look cooler in relation to the present.

This kind of manipulation of data, changing the historical record after the fact, is done ALL THE TIME by the climate alarmists who crank out all of the data that are reported on in the newspapers. And the adjustments are always the same: they make the past cooler, so that the present will look warmer, in order to support their power-grabbing climate hysteria agenda. Whenever you hear on the radio that a temperature reading is the “warmest ever” in a particular place, you can reasonably assume that the “warmest ever” title was conferred by falsely reporting temperature readings from past decades.

And as Hinderaker properly concludes, “This is, in my view, the biggest scandal in the history of science. I can’t think of any competitor that could even come close.”

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NASA is trying get some spare spacesuit parts onto a Russian Progress freighter, scheduled to launch Saturday, in its effort to fix its American spacesuits on ISS.

7:14 pm

NASA is trying get some spare spacesuit parts onto a Russian Progress freighter, scheduled to launch Saturday, in its effort to fix its American spacesuits on ISS.

It must be emphasized that NASA still doesn’t know exactly what caused the water leak into that spacesuit during a spacewalk last week.

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The plundering of NASA

3:30 pm

From one of my readers: The Plundering of NASA: an Expose, How pork barrel politics harm American spaceflight leadership. You can buy the ebook edition here, and the print edition here.

I just finished reading it. Boozer’s introduction and opening two chapters provide one of the best detailed summaries explaining clearly why the United States today cannot launch its own astronauts into space, and why we are threatened with the possibility that we won’t be able to do it for years to come. And while his perspective is mostly from an engineering perspective, he also gives some of the political background behind this situation.

His later chapters are not as effectively written, but the opening is still worth it.

I will give a hint about his thesis: it involves comparing the Space Launch System (SLS) with private commercial space. And SLS does not fare well.

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Two days before IRS White House appointee William Wilkins established the guidelines for reviewing IRS applications of conservatives, he met with Obama.

9:02 am

Working for the Democratic Party: Two days before IRS White House appointee William Wilkins established the guidelines for reviewing IRS applications of conservatives, he met with Obama.

IRS chief counsel William Wilkins, who was named in House Oversight testimony by retiring IRS agent Carter Hull as one of his supervisors in the improper targeting of conservative groups, met with Obama in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on April 23, 2012. Wilkins’ boss, then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman, met with Obama on April 24, 2012, according to White House visitor logs.

On April 25, 2012, Wilkins sent Hull and fellow Washington-based IRS official Lois Lerner “additional comments on the draft guidance” for approving or denying tea party tax-exempt applications, according to the IRS’ inspector general’s report.

It is quite possible that the two events are unrelated. This also could be the smoking gun linking Obama to the IRS scandal. Fortunately, the story notes that thirteen people attended this meeting, which means it should be possible to find out what actually happened there.

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Robot engineers have successfully built a fleet of small flying robot helicopters that can fly individually or as complex large arrays.

8:50 am

Robot engineers have successfully built a fleet of small flying robot helicopters that can fly individually or as complex large arrays. With video.

Applying this biologically-inspired solution to swarms of robots could enable a wide range of applications. Swarms of robots could be used to explore other planets, or search a large area for a missing person. When a larger payload needs to be lifted, groups of robots would combine to make a larger flying platform and when that job was done, disperse into smaller groups that can cover a larger area. The advantage of distributed control in these scenarios is that there is no vulnerable central control unit which, if taken out, could bring down the entire mission.

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