Stereo has spotted the fastest coronal mass ejection on record.
Stereo has spotted the fastest coronal mass ejection on record, rocketing from the Sun at approximately 2000 miles per second.
Year: 2012
One of Dawn’s reaction wheels, used to orient the spacecraft, shut down last week.
Uh-oh: One of Dawn’s reaction wheels, used to orient the spacecraft, shut down last week.
During a planned communications pass on Aug. 9, the team learned that the reaction wheel had been powered off. Telemetry data from the spacecraft suggest the wheel developed excessive friction, similar to the experience with another Dawn reaction wheel in June 2010. The Dawn team demonstrated during the cruise to Vesta in 2011 that, if necessary, they could complete the cruise to Ceres without the use of reaction wheels.
That the spacecraft can get to Ceres without reaction wheels is good. However, can it be oriented precisely to do science without these wheels? The JPL press release does not say.
“Obama lauds NASA for Mars landing, pledges continued investment.”
“Obama lauds NASA for Mars landing, pledges continued investment.”
What a joke. This Reuters’ article is so busy campaigning for Barack Obama that it fails to note one fundamental fact: It is the Obama administration that gutted NASA’s science program so that there is little likelihood of any missions to Mars, or elsewhere, in the foreseeable future. As noted correctly in this Science article describing the same Obama telephone call to JPL,
The president’s sweeping endorsement of research, however, carefully avoids the fact that his 2013 budget would cut funding for NASA’s Mars exploration program by nearly one-third and end the country’s role in two Mars missions planned jointly with the European Space Agency for later in the decade. Both the House of Representatives and a Senate spending panel have added back money for Mars exploration, although Congress is unlikely to settle on a final budget for the agency until next spring.
Look, I freely admit the federal budget has to be cut. And I am freely willing to have those cuts occur in NASA. What I can’t abide is the kind of junk journalism seen in the Reuters piece above, selling Obama as a big supporter of space research when he clearly has not been.
The Wall
An evening pause: Fifty-one years ago today the Soviet Union and East Germany — in the name of ideology and communism — cut Berlin in half, putting a wall between neighbors, friends, and families. The documentary below was made in 1962 and will give you a sense of the evil of that wall, as felt by the people who were oppressed by it.
I think it a reasonable thing to remind ourselves again and again that the use of force in the name of any ideology, no matter how well intentioned, is always wrong.
July’s violence against pro-live protesters.
Leftwing civility: July’s violence against pro-live protesters.
- An pro-life activist’s home was vandalized, including having a rock thrown through the front door in the middle of the night.
- A 69-year-old pro-life volunteer was attacked while collecting petition signatures, fracturing his hip.
- Another protester was shoved and injured while passing out fliers.
- A homemade fire bomb was thrown at pro-life protesters praying in front of an abortion clinic.
- Other pro-life protesters were threatened by the owner of an abortion clinic owner with a loaded gun.
I am not arguing for or against abortion. I am pointing out that there is increasing violence in the political arena, and it is almost all coming from the liberal and leftwing side. Worse, this violence is increasingly reminiscent of the brownshirts in Germany before World War II, attacking Jews and vandalizing their homes and businesses, in order to instill fear and wield power over others.
The article above focuses on how the media is not covering these attacks. I think it is even more important to call them for that they are: bigoted, hateful acts of violence intended to oppress those who disagree with them.
The very predictable Democratic playbook against Paul Ryan:
The very predictable Democratic playbook against Paul Ryan:
In the national media narrative – perhaps best illustrated by the shorthand of Jay Leno’s monologue, which presumes that the audience has the barest-bone familiarity with national figures – every Republican figure is reduced to one of three things: Old, stupid, or evil.
George H.W. Bush: Old. Dan Quayle: Stupid. Newt Gingrich: Evil. Pat Buchanan: Evil. Bob Dole: Old. George W. Bush: Stupid. Dick Cheney: Old and evil. John McCain: Old. Sarah Palin: Stupid. ,,,
Because Paul Ryan isn’t old, we will see an effort to paint him as either stupid or evil. You and I know that painting Paul Ryan as stupid is like trying to paint Bill Clinton as chaste. But we have also witnessed the rapid definition of an unknown Republican figure four years ago, and we know that right now, every Democratic official, commentator, talking head, and more than a few reporters awaken this morning with a new mission in life: define Paul Ryan. [emphasis in the original]
In other words, substance be damned, the Democrats have got to find an ad hominem attack that will allow them to dismiss everything Ryan says, even if it makes sense.
For this reason alone I think it justified to fire every Democrat from elected office. Until we can get a reasoned debate on the federal government’s out-of-control debt, it will be impossible to fix the problem. And it is very clear that the Democrats are not willing to have that reasoned debate.
A federal court has ruled that the EPA violated the law when it rejected a Texas permitting program for refineries and other industrial sites.
The law is such an inconvenient thing: A federal court has ruled that the EPA and the Obama administration violated the law when it rejected a Texas permitting program for refineries and other industrial sites.
A third Chick-fil-A has now been vandalized.
What brownshirts do: A third Chick-fil-A has now been vandalized.
The outfitting of the first Orion capsule, scheduled to take seventeen months, has begun.
The outfitting of the first Orion capsule, scheduled to take seventeen months, has begun.
The article also notes that about 400 Lockheed Martin employees will participate in this work.
I might very well be wrong, but this seems to be a very long time and a very large workforce for “turning what is a shell of a structure into a real spaceship.” I wonder if the work is being stretched out, partly to delay its completion to better match up with the long timeline of the heavy lift rocket, and partly to keep these jobs alive and feed the pork to some congressional districts.
The reason an environmental polar bear scientist has been suspended and under investigation is because while tasked to review and approve research proposals he played favorites, helping to write and revise the government proposal while working against a proposal from private oil companies.
The reason an environmental polar bear scientist has been suspended and is under investigation is because — while tasked to review and approve research proposals — he played favorites, helping to write and revise his preferred proposals while working against proposals from others.
Documents obtained by Nature through the Freedom of Information Act do not reveal the investigators’ conclusions but they suggest a more specific context for Monnett’s troubles: he assisted in the writing of a proposal from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that he was also responsible for reviewing for the [US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM)]. He also resisted a separate initiative by oil companies.
Over five years, the NOAA study would synthesize knowledge of different elements of the Arctic environment — from marine mammals to fish to zooplankton — and offer conclusions about the overall impact of oil-and-gas exploration there. The NOAA team was awarded the contract last year.
Monnett exchanged e-mails with the NOAA researchers between February and May 2011, made edits to their draft proposal and talked on the phone with them about how to strengthen it. Nature has seen emails from within the BOEM showing that the reason for his suspension in 2011 was management concern about similar assistance being provided to a grant applicant on another contract, which Monnett was also responsible for reviewing.
This is the same scientist whose paper on drowning polar bears has become a favorite with the environmental movement.
Headphones for cats.
News you can use: Headphones for cats. With video!
With its most recent glide test on Saturday it appears SpaceShipTwo has successfully fulfilled its glide engineering goals.
The competition heats up: With its most recent glide test on Saturday it appears SpaceShipTwo has successfully fulfilled its glide engineering goals. Hat tip Clark Lindsay at NewSpace Watch. To quote their flight summary:
With this latest round of six flights we have cleared the full glide-flight envelope for airspeed, angle-of-attack, CG, and structural loads!