Year: 2013

Engineers have decided to keep the New Horizons spacecraft on its original fly-by path past Pluto, scheduled for July 2015.

11:37 am

Engineers have decided to keep the New Horizons spacecraft on its original fly-by path past Pluto, scheduled for July 2015.

The New Horizons team recently completed an 18-month study of potential impact hazards – mostly dust created by objects hitting Pluto’s small satellites – the spacecraft would face as it speeds some 30,000 miles per hour (more than 48,000 kilometers per hour) past Pluto in July 2015. The team estimated that the probability of a mission-ending dust impact was less than 0.3 percent if the spacecraft followed the current baseline plan, far below some early, more conservative estimates. So, with the concurrence of an independent review panel and NASA, the project team expects to keep New Horizons on this baseline course, which includes a close approach of about 12,500 kilometers (nearly 7,800 miles) from the surface of Pluto.

0 comments

A man claims he has found a piece of debris from the Russian space station Mir in his backyard in northern Massachusetts.

7:43 am

A man claims he has found a piece of debris from the Russian space station Mir in his backyard in northern Massachusetts.

And I have a bridge I want to sell you. This story is very suspicious. No picture, the rock isn’t metallic, the NASA engineer who identified it isn’t identified even though he wrote a letter to the man, and it was found on the eastern United States even though Mir was de-orbited over the south Pacific.

If this story is true, than the journalist who wrote it did a really bad job of reporting it.

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The delays in SpaceX’s commercial launch schedule appear caused by a series of problems testing the first stage’s upgraded engines.

9:45 pm

The delays in SpaceX’s commercial launch schedule appear caused by a series of problems testing the first stage’s upgraded engines.

The article also provides this updated scheduling information:

A successful test will be key for several of SpaceX’s future ambitions, not least their upcoming increase in launch frequency, with the next Falcon 9 – the debut of the v1.1 – set to loft Canada’s space weather satellite, CASSIOPE, out of Vandenberg Air Force Base. This mission has officially slipped to August, with the likelihood it will be re-targeted to September. Focus will then switch to Cape Canaveral, with two satellite missions, the first carrying SES-8, to be followed by the Thaicom 6 launch.

I had suspected the delays were related to the upgrades to Falcon 9. This article confirms this.

5 comments

A Democratic Congressman thinks it “is simply not fair” to make his staffers subject to Obamacare like everyone else.

9:31 pm

My heart bleeds: A Democratic Congressman thinks it “is simply not fair” to make his staffers subject to Obamacare like everyone else.

The problem it seems is that

Dozens of lawmakers and aides are so afraid that their health insurance premiums will skyrocket next year thanks to Obamacare that they are thinking about retiring early or just quitting. The fear: Government-subsidized premiums will disappear at the end of the year under a provision in the health care law that nudges aides and lawmakers onto the government health care exchanges, which could make their benefits exorbitantly expensive.

Well, ain’t that just too damn bad. As I say, my heart bleeds.

4 comments

It appears that Homeland Security and Customs teach their officers that pilots have “no right to refuse a search” of their planes.

1:14 pm

The law is such an inconvenient thing: It appears that Homeland Security and Customs both train their officers to believe that pilots have “no right to refuse a search” of their planes.

To put it another way, these agencies think that they don’t need a warrant to search the private property of pilots.

2 comments

Engineers in the Czech Republic have built a bicycle that can fly.

11:17 am

Engineers in the Czech Republic have built a bicycle that can fly.

The demonstration does beg the question “Why a bike?”. Once those big, knobby tires are lifted off the ground, aren’t they rendered more or less moot? According to the project website, the central concept was to create a flying vehicle that could easily be ridden to a more suitable takeoff site and then be capable of a 3 – 5 minute flight. In order to offset the extra weight added by all the rotors, they could be used to help propel the bike along the ground, besides allowing it to fly.

Video below the fold.
» Read more

5 comments

Detroit announces that it will default on its debt today.

10:01 am

Coming soon to a blue state near you! Detroit announces that it will default on its debt today.

The City currently faces approximately $17 billion in total liabilities. Detroit is insolvent and cannot meet its financial obligations without a significant restructuring.

It is important to note that Detroit has been run exclusively by Democrats for about a half century. Thus, this bankruptcy is an entirely partisan event, supported by voters who blindly insisted on one-party rule, and never questioned the incompetence or corruption of that Democratic Party.

And please, don’t argue with me by mentioning examples where Republicans screwed up. They have their own lock on stupidity, corruption, and failure. The point here, however, is to recognize that the failure in Detroit, as well as all of the recent other cities that have gone bankrupt, is because of decades of liberal Democratic rule, where money got funneled to unionized city employees at the expense of the taxpayers, with no regard to cost or affordability.

And if you doubt me, read this history of Detroit’s last fifty years.

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