The heat of competition: In describing the damage and repair plans for the Wallops Island launchpad, this article notes that a hot fire test of the reconfigured Antares rocket, with new first stage engines, is presently scheduled for the end of 2015.
No word yet on what those new engines will be, however.
Finding out what’s in it: Under Obamacare, thirty-five government agencies plan to use your private health data for their own purposes.
This week, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced the release of the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan 2015-2020, which details the efforts of some 35 departments and agencies of the federal government and their roles in the plan to “advance the collection, sharing, and use of electronic health information to improve health care, individual and community health, and research.”
The agencies include the Justice Department, the Defense Department, NASA, the Office of Personal Management, the FCC, and a whole slew of HHS employees.
So, while Congressional legislation forces youto fill out endless forms every time you visit your doctor, and he or she is forbidden from leaving voice messages on your phone out of fear the wrong person might hear it, Obamacare allows these government bureaucrats access to everything.
Aren’t you glad they passed Obamacare?
An evening pause:
For the next few days you can get the ebook “How to be a rocket scientist” for free, by an engineer who has been one. As Hoffstadt correctly notes,
We are still very far from having all of the answers and seeing all of the possible technologies that can help humans travel through the air and space, and to live beyond our planet Earth. There are important questions to ask, problems to solve, and things to build. We haven’t figured everything out yet and don’t know where the next ideas and accomplishments are going to come from. In other words … we need more rocket scientists! [emphasis in original]
New geological data from Curiosity suggests that the interior of Gale Crater was shaped by sediments placed there by the rise and fall of a lake over millions of years.
The data also confirms that conditions on Mars were good enough for liquid water to be maintained on the surface for long periods of time. The problem is that scientists still do not understand how Mars could have maintained such kind of atmosphere and environmental conditions, based on its location and size.
The competition heats up: According to a report in a Chinese newspaper today, China is developing preliminary designs for a new rocket that would be the most powerful ever built.
According to an earlier report by China News Service, Liang Xiaohong, deputy head of the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, disclosed that the Long March-9 is planned to have a maximum payload of 130 tons and its first launch will take place around 2028.
Liang urged the government to include the Long March-9’s development in its space agenda as soon as possible so that China’s rocket technologies will not lag behind those of other space powers.
Whether this rocket every gets built is highly doubtful. The article seems to mostly be both a public relations response to the U.S.’s test flight on Friday of Orion as well as an example of a government agency lobbying for a bigger budget. (This lobbying happens even in communist China.)
Nonetheless, we should not dismiss the possibility lightly. As competition causes the cost of building all rockets to drop, it will be more affordable to build bigger rockets. By the next decade building a heavy lift rocket might finally be affordable.
Put ’em in concentration camps! Pima County, which includes Tucson, Arizona, is considering banning the employment of any smokers.
Already employed smokers will be charged 30 percent more for their health insurance. The regulations will apply only to government employees.
I say, why waste time with this nonsense. Anyone who smokes is obviously the scum of the Earth, and should be rounded up and sent to camps, either to be re-educated, or to be killed if they can’t reform themselves. America is now an enlightened place, where freedom and individual responsibility have been replaced with the much deeper wisdom of the state!
A UN poll of more than 6 million people worldwide has ranked climate change at the very bottom of their list of priorities, with getting a good education at the top of the poll.
Climate change ranked higher in the more affluent nations such as the U.S. and the U.K., but overall was not given much importance.
Engineers have been struggling to maintain contact with Venus Express, and have only been able to establish contact for intermittent periods.
Europe’s Venus Express was launched in November 2005 and got to the second planet from the Sun in April 2006, on what was originally a two-year mission. Since then it has sent data streaming back from its polar orbit.
But the probe’s days are numbered, and last month the flight control team at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) at Darmstadt, Germany, reported loss of contact with it. According to ESA’s Venus Express blog, it is possible that the remaining fuel on board the spacecraft was exhausted during recent manoeuvres and that the spacecraft is no longer in a stable attitude (the spacecraft’s high-gain antenna must be kept pointed toward Earth to ensure reliable radio contact).
They have been able to get bits of telemetry from the craft, but since its fuel supply is almost gone the possibility of keeping it operating much longer is limited.
After almost nine years of travel the American New Horizons probe has been successfully awakened in preparation for its July fly-by of Pluto.
Since launching on January 19, 2006, New Horizons has spent 1,873 days — about two-thirds of its flight time — in hibernation. Its 18 separate hibernation periods, from mid-2007 to late 2014, ranged from 36 days to 202 days in length. The team used hibernation to save wear and tear on spacecraft components and reduce the risk of system failures. “Technically, this was routine, since the wake-up was a procedure that we’d done many times before,” said Glen Fountain, New Horizons project manager at APL. “Symbolically, however, this is a big deal. It means the start of our pre-encounter operations.”
By mid-May we will begin to see images of Pluto and its moons that are better than any images ever before taken.
An evening pause: Hat tip to Danae.
After more than two years of travel from Vesta, the space probe Dawn has now gotten close enough to Ceres to snap its first image.
The spacecraft will begin its approach phase on December 26 and will arrive in March.
