Year: 2013

Observations of Comet ISON have detected strong carbon dioxide emissions escaping from the comet.

3:05 pm

Call Al Gore! Observations of Comet ISON have detected strong carbon dioxide emissions escaping from the comet.

Images captured June 13 with Spitzer’s Infrared Array Camera indicate carbon dioxide is slowly and steadily “fizzing” away from the so-called “soda-pop comet,” along with dust, in a tail about 186,400 miles (300,000 kilometers) long. “We estimate ISON is emitting about 2.2 million pounds (1 million kilograms) of what is most likely carbon dioxide gas and about 120 million pounds (54.4 million kilograms) of dust every day,” said Carey Lisse, leader of NASA’s Comet ISON Observation Campaign and a senior research scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. “Previous observations made by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission and Deep Impact spacecraft gave us only upper limits for any gas emission from ISON. Thanks to Spitzer, we now know for sure the comet’s distant activity has been powered by gas.”

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Bigelow announces prices for visiting or renting their space station modules.

11:53 am

The competition heats up: Bigelow Aerospace announces prices for visiting or renting their space station modules.

For countries, companies, or even visiting individuals that wish to utilize SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule, Bigelow Aerospace will be able to transport an astronaut to the Alpha Station for only $26.25 million. Using Boeing’s CST-100 capsule and the Atlas V rocket, astronauts can be launched to the Alpha Station for $36.75 million per seat. In stark contrast to the short stays of a week or so aboard the ISS that we have seen wealthy individuals pay as much as $40 million for, astronauts visiting the Bigelow station will enjoy 10 – 60 days in orbit. During this time, visiting astronauts will be granted access to the Alpha Station’s shared research facilities. Examples of available equipment include a centrifuge, glove-box, microscope, furnace, and freezer. Also, potential clients should note that as opposed to the ISS, where astronauts dedicate the lion’s share of their time to supporting station operations and maintenance, astronauts aboard the Alpha Station will be able to focus exclusively on their own experiments and activities, ensuring that both nations and companies can gain full value from their investment in a human spaceflight program. [emphasis in original]

The release also describes price plans whereby the customer can rent part of a module for a period of time, as well as the prices for the naming rights to a module.

I hadn’t heard about it elsewhere and do not remember if this is old news or not. The announcement on the website is undated. Nonetheless, as the release notes, these prices undercut the fees charged by the Russians and provide far more opportunities for the customer.

2 comments

According to a new poll, only 11% of doctors believe that the Obamacare health exchanges will be open for business on October 1, as mandated by the law.

11:24 am

Finding out what’s in it: According to a new poll, only 11% of doctors believe that the Obamacare health exchanges will be open for business on October 1, as mandated by the law.

I found this tidbit from the article, however, far more disturbing, as it describes a detail of the Obamacare exchanges that will surely cause doctors incredible financial pain, and will likely cause them to demand all payments up front:

Jackson said that doctors who don’t have an understanding of those coverage terms could be in for a nasty surprise once the new plans go into effect. That’s because under the rules of the exchange, a patient can go up to three months without paying premiums and still not get their coverage formally dropped by an insurers—but the insurer isn’t obligated to pay claims incurred during the second and third month if that person isn’t paying their premiums for that time, Jackson said. Those rules could mean that doctors end up eating the cost of the care they have already provided, or have their receivables stay unpaid for longer stretches of time. [emphasis mine]

In other words, the law is tilted to allow patients to stiff both their doctors and their insurance companies. How precious.

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An Arizona nursing student was suspended from school and called a bigot because she requested one of her classes be taught in English.

9:08 am

An Arizona nursing student was suspended from school and called a bigot because she requested one of her classes be taught in English.

The student, Terri Bennett, 50, initially complained in April to school officials because she said the Spanish-dominated discussions in her class room were preventing her from learning, Townhall reported. The college nursing program director, David Kutzler, then allegedly called her “a bigot” and an expletive, and suspended her.

She has sued. The article also notes that the Arizona constitution requires schools to use English.

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The routine lowering of past climate data to make today’s temperatures seem hotter.

9:22 pm

More climate fraud: The routine lowering of past climate data to make today’s temperatures seem hotter.

Almost all past temperatures have been adjusted downward, compared with the temperatures that were actually recorded at the time. During the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s, when many record high temperatures were recorded, the readings have been adjusted downward by, generally speaking, one to one and a half degrees. These adjustments stop abruptly in the late 1990s. The effect of the adjustments is to make the past look cooler in relation to the present.

This kind of manipulation of data, changing the historical record after the fact, is done ALL THE TIME by the climate alarmists who crank out all of the data that are reported on in the newspapers. And the adjustments are always the same: they make the past cooler, so that the present will look warmer, in order to support their power-grabbing climate hysteria agenda. Whenever you hear on the radio that a temperature reading is the “warmest ever” in a particular place, you can reasonably assume that the “warmest ever” title was conferred by falsely reporting temperature readings from past decades.

And as Hinderaker properly concludes, “This is, in my view, the biggest scandal in the history of science. I can’t think of any competitor that could even come close.”

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NASA is trying get some spare spacesuit parts onto a Russian Progress freighter, scheduled to launch Saturday, in its effort to fix its American spacesuits on ISS.

7:14 pm

NASA is trying get some spare spacesuit parts onto a Russian Progress freighter, scheduled to launch Saturday, in its effort to fix its American spacesuits on ISS.

It must be emphasized that NASA still doesn’t know exactly what caused the water leak into that spacesuit during a spacewalk last week.

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