May 17, 2012 at 5:29 PM
The competition heats up: Japan today launched its first commercial satellite.
May 17, 2012 at 1:58 PM
Pitiful: Only 65% of the political class and only 61% of Democrats are aware that federal spending has gone up in the past ten years.
Interestingly, 85% of the general public knows this basic fact, which might explain why the intellectual elites of our country — from both parties — are continually being blindsided by the rise of the tea party movement and its continued success in elections.
May 17, 2012 at 9:22 AM
More information on the annular solar eclipse coming to the southwest U.S. this Sunday.
Actually, the second link above provides better information on where and when to view the eclipse. Definitely click on the map showing the national parks where viewing will be best.
May 17, 2012 at 9:08 AM
The Soyuz spacecraft with three astronauts has docked successfully with ISS.
Barring weather or another launch scrub, it looks like Saturday will be launch day for Falcon 9 and Dragon
May 16, 2012 at 3:11 PM
Based on further analysis of the data from WISE, the infrared space telescope, astronomers have now made a better estimate of the population of potentially hazardous asteroids.
Potentially hazardous asteroids, or PHAs, are a subset of the larger group of near-Earth asteroids. The PHAs have the closest orbits to Earth’s, coming within five million miles (about eight million kilometers), and they are big enough to survive passing through Earth’s atmosphere and cause damage on a regional, or greater, scale.
The new results come from the asteroid-hunting portion of the WISE mission, called NEOWISE. The project sampled 107 PHAs to make predictions about the entire population as a whole. Findings indicate there are roughly 4,700 PHAs, plus or minus 1,500, with diameters larger than 330 feet (about 100 meters). So far, an estimated 20 to 30 percent of these objects have been found.
May 16, 2012 at 2:19 PM
Good news: North Carolina’s State Board of Elections has begun an investigation into the voter fraud exposed in the most recent Project Veritas videotapes.
Rather than attack the messenger, the state is looking into the problem. Kudos to them.
May 16, 2012 at 2:06 PM
Fiddling away: The Senate today rejected President Obama’s proposed budget 99-0.
Too bad Harry Reid won’t offer up a budget of his own. The only reason this got voted on at all was that the Republicans forced a vote.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government fell another several billion dollars into debt even as the vote was being taken.
May 15, 2012 at 5:19 PM
An overview of what will happen on Dragon’s first flight to ISS next week.
May 15, 2012 at 12:05 PM
More voter fraud, this time in North Carolina, including a professor who applauds it.
Watch the video. The part where the professor applauds voter fraud because it would hurt conservatives is most revealing.
May 15, 2012 at 9:47 AM
Building a spaceship engine fueled by antimatter.
May 15, 2012 at 8:51 AM
Hitching a ride: The Russians last night launched a new crew to ISS.
Next up: the launch of Falcon 9/Dragon on Saturday.
May 14, 2012 at 5:37 PM
Senator Bill Nelson (D-Florida) on Monday attacked the House version of NASA’s budget that required the agency to make a quick decision on its commercial manned launch company.
Nelson faces a difficult election campaign from the right. Thus, I suspect he has realized that he is better off promoting free enterprise than local pork. It is unfortunate that the Republicans in the House haven’t yet realized this.
May 14, 2012 at 9:41 AM
Competition wins again: Faced with high prices and a near monopoly by China, the mining of rare Earth metals is once again rising worldwide.
May 14, 2012 at 9:33 AM
How the predictions for the year 2000 changed throughout the 20th century.
Not surprisingly, Arthur Clarke’s predictions were generally the best.
May 14, 2012 at 8:58 AM
If you build it they will come: An engineer has proposed using the USS Enterprise from Star Trek as a model for building an interplanetary spaceship for exploring the solar system.
Though similar in scale and appearance to the USS Enterprise (“it ends up that this ship configuration is quite functional,” Dan writes), the “Gen1 Enterprise” would be functionally very different. Firstly, the main nuclear-powered ion engine (boasting 1.5 GW of power) would strictly limit the Enterprise to intra-solar system missions, being incapable of anything approaching faster-than-light speeds. However, Dan claims that the Gen1 would be capable of reaching Mars from Earth within ninety days, and reaching the Moon in three.
The website is Build the Enterprise.
