A man in Ohio is arrested for the crime of having an empty hidden compartment in his car.
Read the story and weep for the death of freedom and individual rights.
In an interview Richard Branson says that Virgin Galactic is working to replace SpaceShipTwo’s hybrid engine.
So for instance, the initial rocket which I’ll be flying on to space will be thrown away afterward. Within six to nine months, we will be using rockets that will have capability of being used maybe up to 1,000 times, but definitely up to 100 times. That will bring the cost of space travel down dramatically.
This timing fits with their new schedule for the first commercial flights of SpaceShipTwo sometime late in 2014. I suspect they are hoping to fly the ship a few more times with the troublesome hybrid engine, partly for engineering research and partly to keep interest up in the company, and then switch over to a new engine.
As said by the chief technology officer of one of the world’s largest satellite communications company, in reference to today’s scheduled 5:37 pm (Eastern) launch of Falcon 9’s first geosynchronous satellite payload. As this man and Elon Musk also added,
» Read more
ESA has announced a six month delay in the development of its service module for the Orion capsule.
Y’know, you can’t finish these government projects too quickly. Otherwise, the cash cow is gone and stops producing milk!
The Washington Times and the journalist whose confidential files were taken illegally during a house search on an unrelated matter are suing Homeland Security.
The suit is also demanding that they be allowed depose the Homeland Security agent “who attended the raid and was involved in collecting the reporter’s materials to determine how widely information from the newspaper’s documents was distributed within the government.” That agent appeared to be on a fishing expedition to get these files, containing the names of several Homeland whistle-blowers, and then pass that information along to higher-ups in the agency.
MSNBC, the cable network of hate.
MSNBC was the outlier. Fully 85 percent of its airtime was devoted to commentary — virtually all of it left-leaning — while only 15 percent went to news reporting. Even allowing that this approach is driven by business considerations (newsgathering being more expensive than bloviating), there are a couple of intrinsic problems with this approach.
The first is that relentless partisan criticism invariably leads to name-calling. It’s like a drug addiction — you need more and more. Once you’ve called George W. Bush stupid a hundred times, audiences want something a little different, so you graduate to “worst president in history,” and finally, as Olbermann often did, a demented war criminal. Sometimes on that network, conservatives are labeled “Hitlerian.”
Sarah Palin starts out in 2008 as someone who can’t tell Katie Couric what newspapers and magazines she reads and is then spoofed as a provincial by Tina Fey for saying something she never said (“I can see Russia from my house!”). She ends up last Friday, at least in Martin Bashir’s telling, as “America’s resident dunce” with a reputation as a “world-class idiot” — all as a buildup to that weird riff on defecation.
The stream of angry, vicious, and hateful stuff that pours out from MSNBC anchors on a daily basis is quite shameful. That the left tolerates it and actually seems to relish it also tells us a great deal about the left itself.
The law is such an inconvenient thing: The Obama administration has delayed next year’s enrollment deadline under Obamacare.
Some of the buzz about this delay is that it pushes it to after the elections. This isn’t significant, and might even be worse for the Democrats, as everyone will still find out about the higher premiums just before the election. What is significant is how nonchalant this administration is about rewriting legislation without going through Congress. I thought Obamacare was the “law of the land” and that the Republicans were terrorists, racists, and bomb-throwers for suggesting changes during the government shutdown debate in October. Yet, Obama and the Democrats see nothing wrong with his administration rewriting laws at his whim, without getting the law changed by Congress.
In other words, the Republicans were not only right about the disaster that is Obamacare, they have been trying to fix it the correct and legal way.
A new Chinese suspension bridge, set to open November 25, has won top honors for being such a long three-tower/two span bridge.
When it opens on Nov. 25, Taizhou Bridge will carry six lanes of traffic (plus two maintenance lanes) nearly 3-km across the Yangtze River. Though the total length of 2,940 m is an awfully long way, the bridge has two main spans using three towers rather than the norm of one main span using two support towers.
The two spans are each 1,080 m (3,540 ft) long, which individually is less than the main span of the Golden Gate Bridge at 1,280 m (4,200 ft), and much less than the 1,990-m (12,830 ft) span of the Akashi Kaikyō Bridge, the longest main span of any suspension bridge on Earth. Two end spans of 390 m (1,280 ft) connect Taizhou Bridge with the banks of the river.
But in using two spans the Taizhou Bridge is a major breakthrough in structural engineering. The design requires the perfect balance of flexibility and rigidity in its 192-m (630-ft) steel central tower in order to withstand changing and imbalanced loads to either side. The complementary side towers are 178 m (584 ft) tall, and are made of concrete. The two main cables supporting the bridge are 3,110 m (10,200 ft) long and 72 cm (28 in) in diameter.
Think about it. The central tower is going to be pulled from both directions. Similarly, the outside towers must have incredible strain pulling them towards the center. Balancing it all is an amazing architectural achievement.
A Russian rocket this morning launched a trio of European satellites designed to study the Earth’s magnetic field.
More information about the science goals of the Swarm mission can be found here.
SpaceX successfully completed a countdown dress rehearsal and launchpad hot fire engine test yesterday in preparation for the next commercial launch of its Falcon 9 rocket on November 25.
This was the first such fueling at Kennedy of the Falcon 9.
Update: This article gives some details about why the second engine burn of the upper stage rocket did not occur on the previous Falcon 9 launch, and what SpaceX has done to fix the problem. That failure caused speculation that the engine exploded at the attempt.
It is essential that engine functions in space on the November 25 launch in order for SpaceX to deliver its commercial satellite to its proper geosynchronous orbit.
ISS celebrated the fifteenth anniversary of the launch of its first module yesterday.
Dennis Tito noted today that if the U.S. doesn’t partner with him to send a couple to fly past Mars, he’ll partner with Russia or China instead.
That’s nice, but how does he know they’ll partner with him? Based on his proposal, I would expect Russia especially to laugh him out of the room.
