NASA has decided that Dream Chaser met all its engineering milestones during its test flight in October, despite the landing gear failure.
This means that Sierra Nevada will get its next payment under the commercial crew program.
The Cygnus cargo mission to ISS has been delayed by at least one day as NASA managers struggle to deal with the station’s coolant pump failure.
As noted in earlier reports, it appears they are considering a series of spacewalks to try to fix the problem.
Iran claims to have sent a second monkey into space and recovered it safely.
The story remains unconfirmed, with a number of significant questions, including this fact: “[T]he success of the first monkey flight was disputed when a different animal was shown in images released after the landing.
The same thing happened after the claimed first Iranian monkey mission in January, which also remains unconfirmed.
The competition heats up: After a successful soft landing, China’s lunar rover Yutu has successfully rolled onto the lunar surface.
The real significance of this mission is that China has now demonstrated that it has developed the engineering to achieve a controlled soft landing on another world. With this technology, they can move on to building a manned lander, something only the U.S. has been able to accomplish.
This weekend I am out of town for another weekend of caving as part of a cave mapping project I am involved in here in Arizona. (I am the cartographer.) Thus, posting will have to wait until I return Sunday evening.
It appears that NASA is planning to go ahead with at least one spacewalk to replace ISS’s faulty coolant system pump.
After attempts from the inside to restart the malfunctioning cooling loop on the International Space Station failed last night, NASA mission managers have decided a spacewalk will be required to fix the problem, a source privy to NASA operations told TV20 News. NASA mission managers have scheduled the first spacewalk for Dec. 19th, according to the source, with two other spacewalks, also known as EVAs, likely to follow a few days after.
This story is not yet confirmed, but this AP article suggests it might be true.
The law is such an inconvenient thing: As deadlines loom and the problems with the Obamacare website continue, the Obama administration has issued a number of illegal extensions to the law.
I hate the law, as any reader of this website knows. However, the law is the law. Obama and his bureaucratic minions don’t have the legal right to rewrite it at their pleasure, just because it doesn’t work. And they are discovering this, as increasingly insurance companies and state insurance boards are telling them that their so-called changes are invalid and cannot be obeyed.
It appears a growing number of Congressmen also agree: A resolution in the House demands Obama be brought to court for not faithfully executing the law.
Maybe not so stupid: It appears that Senate Republicans will filibuster the Ryan budget deal.
If the Republicans in the Senate can force some changes, to both the reduction in the sequester cuts over the next two years as well as the procedural change that ends the minority’s ability to block tax increases, then they will have accomplished something.
What I like about this is that they appear to be willing to fight, something Republicans all too often fail to do.
Chinese scientists have concluded that the asteroid Toutatis is a rubble pile barely held together by gravity, based on data obtained from Chang’e 2’s flyby one year ago.
A survey of 400 chief financial officers finds that nearly half plan to cut back on employment because of Obamacare.
And there’s also this:
Besides altering the makeup of their workforces, companies said they also plan to change the health benefit packages offered to employees. “Two-thirds of companies will change health benefits in response to ACA,” reads the Fuqua/CFO Magazine report summary. Forty-four percent of CFOs said they are considering reducing health benefits for employees. Thirty-eight percent said that employees and retirees may be forced to contribute more to their health plans.
“The inadequacies of the ACA website have grabbed a lot of attention, even though many of those issues have been or can be fixed,” said John Graham, Duke Fuqua School of Business finance professor and director of the survey, in a press release. “Our survey points to a more detrimental and potentially long-lasting problem. An unintended consequence of the Affordable Care Act will be a reduction in full-time employment growth in the United States,” the study says. [emphasis mine]
So, tell me again why the Republicans in Congress should not challenge the Democrats over Obamacare?
Right on! It is time to start applying the Broken Windows Theory to liberal intolerance.
Compare the rude, vicious terms from Obama and his spokespeople, and Senior Democrats such as Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, Nancy Pelosi and others, with the gentlemanly behavior of John Boehner and Mitch McConnell. There is plenty of push back and name-calling on both sides at lower levels and on the blogosphere, but it’s qualitatively different when it comes from The White House and the Democratic Party House and Senate leadership. When the leadership of the Republican Party does not push back against the leadership of the Democratic Party for the name-calling and taunts, it’s an invitation to more attacks, and it sets a national tone.
We’ve become punching bags. At dinner and at the highest political levels.
We need to do what Rudy Giuliani did to graffiti artists and squeegee guys, apply broken windows theory. “Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. This is as true in nice neighborhoods as in rundown ones. Window-breaking does not necessarily occur on a large scale because some areas are inhabited by determined window-breakers whereas others are populated by window-lovers; rather, one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing.”
In other words, push back hard every time a liberal spits out an insult or rude comment about conservatives. Don’t back down. Don’t let them get away with it easily.
Well, I agree, but be forewarned. Liberals are all self-righteous about you being polite, but never think such rules should apply to them. (Which isn’t surprising considering how much they like to tell others what do to.) You will lose friends, as I have. I don’t think any of those lost friendships was ever much of a loss, but you should be forewarned.
An evening pause:
