Month: October 2012

Astronomers have discovered that the nearest star to the Earth, Alpha Centauri, has an exoplanet only slightly heavier than the Earth.

3:28 pm

Big news: Astronomers have discovered that the nearest star to the Earth, Alpha Centauri, has an exoplanet only slightly heavier than the Earth.

Alpha Centauri is actually a triple star system, with two sunlike stars in a tight orbit around each other and a third star far out orbiting them both. The exoplanet orbits one of the inner stars every 3.2 days.

More details from Nature here.

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Faced with stiff competition in the launch market, Europe struggles to come up with a competitive replacement for Ariane 5

1:51 pm

Faced with stiff competition in the launch market, Europe struggles to come up with a competitive replacement for Ariane 5

“I strongly believe we have to decide, as quickly as possible, to develop a new-generation launcher to be competitive in the market as it is forecast, and with the competitors,” [ESA Director General Jean-Jacques] Dordain said at the Berlin air show last month, a reference to new launch vehicle developments in India, China and the U.S., where Space Exploration Technologies’ low-cost Falcon 9 is challenging the global launcher market.

While space cadets might argue about launch prices till the cows come home, the actual competitors in the industry know better: SpaceX’s low prices are real and are forcing everyone to find ways to lower costs or lose business.

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The Cuban government announced today that it will allow its citizens to freely visit other countries for the first time in over a half century.

8:24 am

The Cuban government announced today that, beginning January 13, 2013, it will allow its citizens to freely visit other countries for the first time in over a half century.

This quiet announcement reminds me of what happened in East Germany in 1991. The government then made a quiet announcement saying it would allow travel outside its country, and within days the Berlin Wall was literally being torn down by its citizens. Shortly thereafter East Germany ceased to exist, absorbed into Germany itself, and the communist bloc fell apart.

Hopefully, we shall see the same thing happen to the Cuban dictatorship.

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Just two months after the failure of its second stage during launch, Russia’s Proton rocket successfully put a communications satellite into orbit yesterday.

9:01 am

The competition heats up: Just two months after the failure of its second stage during launch, Russia’s Proton rocket successfully put a communications satellite into orbit yesterday.

This quote, from this Space News article, also implies that there is increasing competitive pressure in the launch industry, which I attribute to the success of SpaceX’s Falcon 9:

Perhaps the most striking element of the launch is that Washington- and Luxembourg-based Intelsat agreed to proceed with it so soon after the August failure of the Proton Breeze-M upper stage. It has been common practice following previous Proton failures that a Russian government mission would be the customer on the return to flight. In this case, Intelsat and its insurance underwriters were sufficiently persuaded that Reston, Va.-based ILS and Proton prime contractor Khrunichev Space Center of Moscow had come to grips with the issue to agree to be the customer for the first flight after the failure.

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Scientists have found the source of the water on the Moon and Mercury: the solar wind.

8:48 am

Scientists have found the source of the water on the Moon and Mercury: the solar wind. Key paragraph:

“We found that the ‘water’ component, the hydroxyl, in the lunar regolith is mostly from solar wind implantation of protons, which locally combined with oxygen to form hydroxyls that moved into the interior of glasses by impact melting,” said Zhang, the James R. O’Neil Collegiate Professor of Geological Sciences. “Lunar regolith is everywhere on the lunar surface, and glasses make up about half of lunar regolith. So our work shows that the ‘water’ component, the hydroxyl, is widespread in lunar materials, although not in the form of ice or liquid water that can easily be used in a future manned lunar base.” [emphasis mine]

Though this result would explain the detection of hydrogen on the lunar surface and would also mean that this hydrogen is far less useful for future colonists than previously hoped, it doesn’t eliminate the possibility that there is ice in the permanently shadowed craters near the lunar poles that came from other as yet unknown sources.

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It now appears to be illegal to drive around in Dearborn, Michigan displaying Israeli flags on your vehicle.

7:04 pm

The tolerance of Islam: It now appears to be illegal to drive around in Dearborn, Michigan displaying Israeli flags on your vehicle.

The [driver] involved was driving in front of the high school as it let out. He was backed up in traffic, a police car immediately behind him. He had Israeli flags on truck. When the students began their assault he rolled down his window asking them to stop. After they pulled him over the police used the rolled down window as a pretext to accuse him of instigating the altercation. While being questioned by the police in front of the high school the [driver] received death threats. The police denied hearing them though the individuals involved were only a few feet away.

The assault also included one high school student throwing a bottle at the car.

Damn, I wish I lived close to Dearborn. I would be organizing a large parade of cars with Israeli flags right this minute.

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The new blacklist

6:08 pm

The new blacklist.

As columnist Maggie Gallagher pointed out during the furor over Proposition 8, “Targeting an entire business because one person associated with it made (in their personal capacity) a donation to a cause is brand new.” Some gay activists are one step away from claiming that if someone disagrees with them, they shouldn’t be allowed to work anywhere. The original Hollywood blacklist never went that far, but you won’t see any movies made about the current intolerance of supporters of traditional marriage. [emphasis mine]

Read the whole article. It very clearly illustrates the reality today that if you disagree with the gay movement in any way, they are increasingly demanding that you should not be allowed a job anywhere, and your career, life, and family should be destroyed.

That doesn’t sound like the actions of an oppressed minority, does it?

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This year’s Walter Duranty Prize for dishonest and corrupt journalism.

3:30 pm

This year’s Walter Duranty Prize for dishonest and corrupt journalism.

The award is named after the New York Times Moscow Bureau chief from 1922 to 1936, who

whitewashed the repressive evil deeds of the Soviet Union, leading to that country’s recognition by none other than Franklin D. Roosevelt, while winning a 1932 Pulitzer Prize for his efforts.

[Duranty] did this whitewashing most prominently in the case of the Ukrainian Holodomor: the forced starvation of between 1.2 and 12 million ethnic Ukrainians, depending on whose estimates you believe. In other words, a lot of people. Duranty called that genocide “an exaggeration and malignant propaganda” in the newspaper of record. He also covered up the show trial of the British engineers who were tortured into falsely confessing that they were trying to sabotage Stalin’s Five-Year Plan … and similar events … all the time excusing those Soviet misdeeds with what became his personal mantra: “You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet.”

Meanwhile, he fiercely attacked those who dared criticize him, particularly the brave Welsh journalist Gareth Jones, who risked his life to report on the Holodomor, and the British author Malcolm Muggeridge, who returned the compliment by calling Duranty: “The greatest liar I have met in fifty years of journalism.”

Virtually the same year he was winning his Pulitzer, Duranty was reassuring Soviet authorities that he would allow them to vet all reports about their country before they appeared in The New York Times — effectively making that newspaper a U.S. branch of Pravda, for a time anyway.

Read or watch the whole thing (video at the link). The speeches are both sad and hilarious.

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The new ebook edition of Genesis

12:56 pm

I am thrilled to announce that the new ebook edition of my first book, Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, is now officially available for sale for only $5.99 from Mountain Lake Press. The direct link to Mountain Lake Press’s sales page is here and on the right. Within two weeks the book will also be available at all retailers, but if you buy it direct from Mountain Lake Press, I will make a little extra money, which would be very much appreciated.

In creating this ebook edition I made sure that all the graphics from the original but out-of-print hardback were included. Valerie Anders, the wife of astronaut Bill Anders, added her own thoughts in a new foreword. I also added a new introduction discussing how the history of space exploration has evolved since the book’s initial publication in 1998. As I noted,
» Read more

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Telescopes of the future

11:27 pm

Two stories were published on Thursday about two very different future space telescopes. Both are worthwhile, but the differences between them illustrate how the industry of space astronomy — like manned space — is evolving from Big Science and government to small, efficient, and privately built.

First there is this story describing how the nonprofit B612 Foundation’s project to launch an infrared telescope by 2017 had passed its first technical review.
» Read more

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The Orbcomm communications satellite put in a wrong orbit in the Falcon 9 launch has fallen to Earth.

10:15 pm

The Orbcomm communications satellite that was put in the wrong orbit by the Falcon 9 rocket Sunday has fallen to Earth.

According to the company insurance will cover most of the loss. They also said that “had Orbcomm been the primary payload on this mission, as planned for the upcoming launches, we believe the OG2 prototype would have reached the desired orbit.” This appears to be a strong endorsement of the Falcon 9 rocket from the company, which has a contract with SpaceX to launch 17 more satellites on two Falcon 9 launches, scheduled for 2013 and 2014.

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“A profound disdain for the Constitution.”

9:17 am

“A profound disdain for the Constitution.”

The article quotes numerous Constitutional scholars, cites numerous examples of abuse by Obama, and repeatedly makes this same point:

Multiple experts interviewed for this article cited the Obama administration’s willingness to disregard laws for the sake of his policy goals as evidence that the president is disregarding the Constitution.

The last thing a free nation needs is a leader who has contempt for the law.

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A super Earth, made of diamonds

8:55 am

A super Earth, made of diamonds.

Astronomers also thought 55 Cancri e contained a substantial amount of super-heated water, based on the assumption that its chemical makeup was similar to Earth’s, Madhusudhan said. But the new research suggests the planet has no water at all, and appears to be composed primarily of carbon (as graphite and diamond), iron, silicon carbide, and, possibly, some silicates. The study estimates that at least a third of the planet’s mass — the equivalent of about three Earth masses — could be diamond. “By contrast, Earth’s interior is rich in oxygen, but extremely poor in carbon — less than a part in thousand by mass,” says co-author and Yale geophysicist Kanani Lee.

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