Planning dates set for first Dragon cargo mission to ISS
The planning dates have been set for the first Dragon cargo mission to ISS.
Year: 2011
Hoyer says Balanced Budget Amendment would “Make it virtually impossible to raise” taxes
And this is bad? My idiot congressman, Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland), said today that the balanced budget amendment passed by the Republican-controlled House yesterday would “make it virtually impossible to raise” taxes.
NYU Professor Catches 20% Of His Students Cheating, and the school punishes him for it
Modern madness: A NYU professor caught 20% of his students cheating, and the school punished him for doing it.
Ten Ways Progressive Policies Harm Society’s Moral Character
Obama plans birthday bash costing almost $40k per ticket on default day
Tone deaf: Obama is planning a birthday bash fundraiser for himself costing more than $35k per ticket on August 3, the day the debt limit is reached and could default.
Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson is expected to perform at the birthday bash at the historic Aragon Ballroom in Chicago. The event will be one of the president’s biggest fundraisers of the year. Publicity literature featuring a red, white and blue Happy Birthday logo has already been produced. The event will be “multi-tiered,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported. The Hudson concert would cost $50; admission to the party $200; a premium seat $1,000; a souvenir photo with the president $10,000; and VIP seating and dinner with Obama $38,500.
A flag in the dust
Bumped: I posted this essay last July 20th on the anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon. I think it is worth rereading again, even as the shuttle is about to return to Earth for the last time.
Today, July 20th, is the anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon, the first time ever that a human being arrived on another planet. Americans love to celebrate this event, as it symbolizes one of the finest moments in our history, when we set out to achieve something truly great and noble and succeeded far better than we could have imagined. Not only did we get to the Moon as promised, over the next three and a half years we sent another five missions, each with increasingly sophisticated equipment, each sent to explore some increasingly alien terrain. Forty-plus years later, no one has come close to matching this achievement, a fact that emphasizes how difficult it was for the United States to accomplish it.
There is one small but very important detail about the Apollo 11 mission, however, that most Americans are unaware of. In mounting the American flag, the astronauts found the lunar surface much harder than expected. They had a great deal of trouble getting the flagpole into the ground. As Andrew Chaikin wrote in his book, A Man on the Moon, “For a moment it seemed the flag would fall over in front of a worldwide audience, but at last the men managed to steady it.” Then Armstrong took what has become one of the world’s iconic images, that of Buzz Aldrin standing on the lunar surface saluting the flag of the United States of America.
What people don’t know, however, is that when Armstrong and Aldrin blasted off from the lunar surface, the blast wave from the Lunar Module’s rocket knocked the flag over. As Chaikin also wrote, “Outside, a spray of gold foil and debris from the descent stage flew away in all directions. The flag toppled to the dust.”
Thus, for the last four decades this American flag, shown so proudly unfurled on the surface of the Moon, has actually been lying unceremoniously on the ground, in the lunar dust.
It might actually be possible to see this, though the photos at this time remain unclear and quite blurry.
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Triumph and tragedy: 30 years of the Space Shuttle
Worth reading: Nature has put together a special section of articles on the history of the space shuttle.
Hubble has discovered a fourth moon orbiting Pluto
Hubble has discovered a fourth moon orbiting Pluto.
The Republican-controlled House today passed legislation raising the debt ceiling and cutting federal spending by $6 trillion
Now it’s in the Democrats’ court: The Republican-controlled House today passed legislation raising the debt ceiling and cutting federal spending by $6 trillion.
Republicans have now passed their second bill this session that attempts to address the exploding deficits and the debt crisis, the first being Paul Ryan’s budget plan in April. Meanwhile, Democrats in the Senate haven’t bothered to pass any budget resolution in over 800 days, and the White House still refuses to offer any specific ideas.
All charges dropped on woman who groped a TSA agent
All felony charges dropped against the woman who groped a TSA agent.
Jerry Cobb, a spokesman for the Maricopa County attorney’s office, said county prosecutors concluded the facts of the case don’t rise to the level of a felony. The case against Yukari Miyamae, of Longmont, Colo., now goes to Phoenix’s city prosecutor’s office, which handles all misdemeanors in the city. That office said it hasn’t received the case and hasn’t decided whether to charge Miyamae.
Grand Canyon Flash Flood
An evening pause:
Opportunity’s journey on Mars tops 20 miles
On July 17 the Mars rover Opportunity passed the twenty mile mark on its now seven year journey on Mars. The image below was taken on that day. In the distance, now only about 4,000 feet away, can be seen the rim of Endeavour Crater, fourteen miles wide. Opportunity has been traveling toward that crater now since 2008.
With the rover able to travel about 300 to 500 feet each sol, it should be reaching the crater’s rim sometime in the next few weeks.
