Year: 2013

The Obamacare website — that doesn’t work and probably never will — was originally supposed to cost $93.7 million and ended up costing more than six times more, $634 million.

6:42 am

Government marches on! The Obamacare website — that doesn’t work and probably never will — was originally supposed to cost $93.7 million and ended up costing more than six times more, $634 million.

Gee, this is almost as good as the James Webb Space Telescope, which is probably going to end up cost nine times more than originally budgeted.

And obviously, this disaster must be the fault of either George Bush or the tea party!

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More defiance of the Obama administration’s attempt to lock Americans out of public lands.

5:59 am

Occupy America: More examples of defiance of the Obama administration’s attempt to lock Americans out of public lands.

The most telling quote from this story, however, is this statement by a park service spokesman about the first amendment exception they have instituted at the World War II memorial:

Michael Litterst, a National Park Service spokesman, said the First Amendment exception applies only to several Washington and Philadelphia parks related to the government and its history, “due to these parks’ long history of hosting First Amendment events, their expansive outdoor grounds, and their location in major metropolitan areas. You could not host a First Amendment rally at Chaco Culture, Grand Canyon, Manassas or any one of the 395 other parks where such activities are prohibited during the shutdown. They can be held only at the National Mall and Memorial Parks, the areas of the White House administered by the NPS, and Independence National Historical Park,” he said. [emphasis mine]

Since when is freedom of speech limited to only certain places, and those places are determined by the government?

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China complains about the ban of its scientists at a NASA Kepler conference.

5:40 am

China complains about the ban of its scientists at a NASA Kepler conference.

The meeting is a key event for scientists searching for planets beyond the solar system. NASA has rejected applications from Chinese nationals, citing a new security law. In Beijing, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying called the move “discriminatory”. The conference is for US and international teams who work on Nasa’s Kepler space telescope program. It will be held at Nasa’s Ames research centre in California next month.

And I say, tough. China does not distinguish between civilian and military research, and in fact has often used its scientists to do espionage, stealing both military and industry secrets in the process.

Posted in Virginia as we pass through Harrisonburg. Note again that Diane, not I, is doing the driving.

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Engineers hope Juno’s Earth flyby yesterday will help solve a mystery seen in previous flybys by unmanned probes.

5:32 am

The uncertainty of science: Engineers hope Juno’s Earth flyby yesterday will help solve a mystery seen in previous flybys by unmanned probes.

Since 1990, mission controllers at ESA and NASA have noticed that their spacecraft sometimes experience a strange variation in the amount of orbital energy they pick up from Earth during flybys, a technique routinely used to fling satellites deep into our Solar System. The unexplained variation is noticed as a tiny difference in the expected speed gained (or lost) during the passage.

The variations are extremely small: NASA’s Jupiter probe ended up just 3.9 mm/s faster than expected when it swung past Earth in December 1990. The largest variation– a boost of 13.0 mm/s – was seen with NASA’s NEAR asteroid craft in January 1998. Conversely, the differences during swingbys of NASA’s Cassini in 1999 and Messenger in 2005 were so small that they could not be confirmed.

The experts are stumped.

It is likely that these small variations are related in some way with simple engineering and not some unknown feature of gravity. Nonetheless, it remains a mystery.

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Is a natural rain of diamonds occurring on Jupiter and Saturn? Two scientists say yes!

5:07 am

Is a natural rain of diamonds occurring on Jupiter and Saturn? Two scientists say yes!

In their scenario, lightning zaps molecules of methane in the upper atmospheres of Saturn and Jupiter, liberating carbon atoms. These atoms then stick onto each other, forming larger particles of carbon soot, which the Cassini spacecraft may have spotted in dark storm clouds on Saturn3. As the soot particles slowly float down through ever-denser layers of gaseous and liquid hydrogen towards the planets’ rocky cores, they experience ever greater pressures and temperatures. The soot is compressed into graphite, and then into solid diamonds before reaching a temperature of about 8,000 °C, when the diamond melts, forming liquid diamond raindrops, they say. Inside Saturn, the conditions are right for diamond ‘hail’ to form, beginning at a depth of about 6,000 kilometres into the atmosphere and extending for another 30,000 km below that, says Baines. He estimates that Saturn may harbour about 10 million tonnes of diamond produced this way, with most of it made up of rocks no bigger than a millimetre and perhaps some chunks spanning 10 centimeters.

But don’t invest your money yet in a diamond gathering expedition. This is only a theory, which many scientists dispute.

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After the unmanned probe Juno zipped past the Earth on its way to Jupiter today, it unexpectedly went into safe mode.

9:28 pm

After the unmanned probe Juno zipped past the Earth on its way to Jupiter today, it unexpectedly went into safe mode.

Engineers continued to diagnose the issue, which occurred after Juno whipped around Earth in a momentum-gathering flyby. Up until Wednesday, Juno had been in excellent health. While in safe mode, it can communicate with ground controllers, but its activities are limited.

It is unclear at the moment why this happened.

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The Obama administration is shutting down small private campgrounds in Forest Service lands, but allowing big ski lodges to continue to operate.

11:45 am

Shutdown fascism: The Obama administration is shutting down small private campgrounds in Forest Service lands, but allowing big ski lodges to continue to operate.

The forest service is also allowing certain state parks in federal land to remain in open, which I think is the result of Scott Walker’s refusal to shut his state parks in Wisconsin. The big ski lodges have the ability to fight back, as do the states. And like all bullies, the Obama administration is going after the small and the weak, and running in fear from the strong and defiant.

We must all be defiant. Obama and the Democrats will then fold like a cheap card table.

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