Month: January 2013

Polio virus from Pakistan has been found in Egypt.

11:15 am

Bad news: Polio virus from Pakistan has been found in Egypt.

The importation of the virus into Egypt is another setback for the global program, which has finally been making significant progress in the past 2 years, with polio cornered in just three endemic countries: Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria. (India has now gone 2 years without a single case of polio.) Of the three, Pakistan was doing especially well in knocking out the virus, but the program there has recently been disrupted by the targeted assassination of nine polio workers in December and early January. Those killings, widely condemned, have stoked fears the virus will regain strength in Pakistan and then reinfect polio-free countries. “This is proof positive of long-distance importation from Pakistan, and there may be more,” Aylward says.

But don’t worry: the Muslim Brotherhood have us covered! “Experts are worried, Bari says, because Egypt has scaled back its national polio vaccinations campaigns from twice to once a year during the turmoil of the revolution.” [emphasis mine]

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A research plane has crashed in a remote area of Antarctica, stranding three.

11:12 am

A research plane has crashed in a remote area of Antarctica, stranding three.

Once the beacon had sounded, a U.S. LC-130 aircraft was sent to the crash site, but it was unable to establish radio contact with the Twin Otter, while a thick layer of low-lying clouds prevented those onboard from seeing the plane. Later, a DC-3 aircraft spent hours circling above the crash site, but it also came away empty-handed.

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Engineers at Lockheed Martin are adding structural braces to fix the cracks found in the first Orion capsule.

11:07 am

Engineers at Lockheed Martin are adding structural braces to fix the cracks found in the first Orion capsule.

Engineers have designed a “doubler” to place over the cracks to ensure the craft can sustain loads from pressure, launch and landing. Geyer said two of the structural aids, similar to devices regularly used on airplanes, could be added to the spacecraft. “We’ve come up with a great plan to basically bridge over those cracks to distribute the load so we don’t see any issues on orbit,” Geyer said.

How reassuring.

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The entire NRA has converted to Islam to stymie the Obama administration’s effort to take their guns.

9:28 am

News flash! The entire NRA has converted to Islam to stymie the Obama administration’s effort to take their guns!

“This administration loves providing guns —big guns, and thousands of them— to Muslim fighters in Libya, Egypt, now Syria,” said [NRA CEO Wayne] LaPierre, bedecked in Wahhabi-style Muslim garb, at a press conference Wednesday. “Many of these rebel groups consist of radical jihadists who hate America just as much as the governments we’re helping them topple. If Obama is so pro-gun when it comes to radical Muslims, then damn it, we at the NRA are now radical Muslims, too!”

The response from the White House press secretary was not surprising.

“Admittedly, we’re perplexed at the (NRA’s) announcement of its conversion to Islam,” said a stunned-looking Carney. “And if more legal gun owners follow the NRA’s lead and convert to Islam, it will make it even harder for the administration to push for tighter gun laws, since we all know it’s middle-aged, rural, Christian white men with families who legally own guns who are the greatest threat in America today. Now we’ve lost much of that dangerous demographic to target. It’s a strategically cowardly move.”

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NASA has now agreed to contribute equipment and researchers to a European dark energy mission.

9:17 am

The check is in the mail: NASA has now agreed to contribute equipment and researchers to a European dark energy mission.

And why should Europe have any expectation that NASA will follow through? Europe’s ExoMars project was screwed badly when NASA pulled out last year. Nor was that the first time the U.S. government reneged on a deal with Europe.

Considering the fragile nature of the U.S. federal budget, I wouldn’t depend on anything from NASA or any U.S. government agency for the foreseeable future. And this includes the various private space companies such as SpaceX and Orbital Sciences that are using NASA subsidies to build their spaceships. Get those things built, and quickly! The government money could disappear very soon.

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Russia is now threatening to abandon its Baikonur launch site due to restrictions demanded by the Kazakhstan government.

8:57 am

Russia is now threatening to abandon its Baikonur launch site due to restrictions demanded by the Kazakhstan government.

The restrictions include a limitation in the number of Proton launches, which Russia claims will cost them half a million dollars in sales. The problem is that the new Russia launch site in Vostochny will not be ready until 2015. If Russia pulls out of Baikonur before then, there will be no way to launch humans to ISS for at least the next two years.

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An update on the Chinese manned program.

9:29 am

An update on the Chinese manned program.

The original script called for [the space station] Tiangong 1 to be followed by Tiangong 2, which would have been a module of the same basic design as Tiangong 1. Tiangong 2 was expected to have tested more advanced life-support systems than Tiangong 1, but there would be no major changes to the spacecraft. It was expected that two or three crews would be launched to this module.

Towards the end of the decade, China would then launch Tiangong 3, which was slated to be an entirely different class of spacecraft. It would be larger and more capable. Tiangong 3 was expected by some analysts to be a precursor to the types of modules to be used in China’s future space station, slated for launch around 2020.

According to Yang’s presentation, we can forget about Tiangong 2. Or at least, we can forget about Tiangong 2 as it was originally planned. China still plans to launch a mission with this name, but it would seem that the large laboratory module originally known as “Tiangong 3” has now been designated as the new Tiangong 2.

In other words, China is accelerating the admittedly slow pace of their manned program.

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Planetary Resources has released a video showing off the prototype of their Arkyd-100 space telescope.

9:24 am

The competition heats up: Planetary Resources has released a video showing off the prototype of their Arkyd-100 space telescope.

As I noted when this company first appeared, for the foreseeable future they are going to be a manufacturer of space telescopes, not an asteroid mining company. At the same time, they, like Deep Space Industries, are going to drive satellite development towards lower cost and smarter design, which in the long run will make asteroid mining practical and profitable.

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The Democratic Party leaders in New Mexico have announced that an agreement over spaceport liability has been reached with Virgin Galactic.

9:13 am

The Democratic Party leaders in New Mexico have announced that an agreement over spaceport liability has been reached with Virgin Galactic.

This might be good, but with no details released and all the statements coming from politicians of only one party it is reasonable to wonder how serious it is and whether this announcement is merely a bargaining ploy.

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A Colorado county government, joining twelve other state governments and numerous local sheriffs, has passed a resolution supporting the second amendment and pledging not to enforce any federal laws that violate it.

9:00 am

A Colorado county government, joining twelve other state governments and numerous local sheriffs, has become the first county to pass a resolution supporting the second amendment and pledging not to enforce any federal laws that violate it.

This specific resolution is not as interesting as the growing list of defiance, described in the article, to the gun control effort of the Democratic Party.

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Another sheriff, this time in Missouri, has told the Obama administration that he will not enforce any regulations that violate the second amendment.

12:02 pm

A dozen sheriffs, all in Missouri, have told the Obama administration that they will not enforce any regulations that violate the second amendment.

I like this quote from the letter of one sheriff:

It appears to me and many Americans that there is a genuine desire on the part of your administration to restrict the Second Amendment rights of law abiding American citizens in the interest of curbing gun violence in our nation. Any attempt to restrict these Second Amendment rights through executive order is unconstitutional and tantamount to an all-out assault on the United States Constitution.

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The plans and proposed launch schedule of the new asteroid mining company, Deep Space Industries.

9:02 am

The plans and proposed launch schedule of the new asteroid mining company, Deep Space Industries.

They aim to do their work using cubesats, which will keep everything cheap and simple, with the first launches by 2015, and the first sample return missions by 2016. Their new manufacturing technology appears to be a variation of 3D printing, though the descriptions so far released remain vague on details.

We should have even more information later today, after their press conference, aired live on youtube here at 1 pm (eastern).

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A NASA engineering team is restarting the agency’s 1960s research into nuclear powered engines for deep space missions.

8:53 am

A NASA engineering team is restarting the agency’s 1960s research into nuclear powered engines for deep space missions.

If completed and put into use, these engines could easily revolutionize the exploration of the solar system. Forgive me, however, if I remain skeptical, not because I lack faith in the technology but because I lack faith in NASA’s ability to finish anything.

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A new infrared image of Betelgeuse suggests the star and its winds will smash into the interstellar medium in only a few thousand years.

8:43 am

Crash! Boom! A new infrared image of Betelgeuse suggests the star and its winds will smash into the interstellar medium in only a few thousand years.

If the bar [of gas] is a completely separate object, then taking into account the motion of Betelgeuse and its arcs and the separation between them and the bar, the [star’s] outermost arc will collide with the bar in just 5000 years, with the red supergiant star itself hitting the bar roughly 12 500 years later.

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Orbital Sciences has published an updated schedule for its Antares rocket and Cygnus cargo capsule.

12:13 am

The competition heats up: Orbital Sciences has published an updated schedule for its Antares rocket and Cygnus cargo capsule.

Key dates:
February: Hotfire test of the Antares first stage.
March: First test flight of Antares.
May/June: First test flight of Cygnus, on Antares, docking with ISS.
Third quarter 2013: First operational flight of Cygnus to ISS.

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Another asteroid mining company will announce its plans tomorrow, Tuesday.

3:52 pm

The competition heats up: Another asteroid mining company will announce its plans tomorrow, Tuesday.

As I mentioned earlier today, it is important to maintain a skeptical attitude to each of these new commercial space companies, even as we cheer them on enthusiastically. For example, I am very curious how this company has come through with a “breakthrough process for manufacturing in space.” What could this be, and why has no one thought of it before?

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Electronic medical records — required by Obamacare — are costing doctors time while taking them away from their patients.

3:40 pm

Finding out what’s in it: Electronic medical records — required by Obamacare — are costing doctors time while taking them away from their patients.

Probably the biggest problem with electronic records is simply that it requires the physician to input all notes and orders, rather than dictate them. As a result, as my bride puts it, “they’ve taken the highest paid person in the department and turned him/her into a data entry clerk”. On average, she and her colleagues spend more time per patient wading through drop-down menus, clicking boxes and filling in required but utterly irrelevant information than they do at the bedside, actually treating the patient. In short, it’s her experience that they see fewer patients per shift than they did previously, and spend less time with each one, now that they are required to sit down at a computer after seeing each patient and jumping through hoops to place orders instead of, as previously, simply telling the nurse what is needed and then moving on to the next patient. [emphasis mine]

Have you noticed in your recent visits to the doctor how the doctor seems to be spending his entire visit with you staring at his laptop, typing continuously as you talked? I have. Say goodbye to simplicity in the medical field. The future shall be complex bureaucracy and less medical treatment.

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