Dragon has successfully reached orbit.
No word on the attempt to bring the first stage down to the water under controlled conditions. One announcement during launch said the video was good and that the stage’s first burn was successful.
The competition heats up: SpaceX has successfully completed the first vertical flight of the Falcon 9R landing test rocket.
Reports have been confirmed that SpaceX’s Falcon 9-R development vehicle made its first free flight today at McGregor — taking off, hovering, moving sideways and landing.
Falcon 9R is the successor to Grasshopper, carrying more engines to more accurately simulate a Falcon 9 first stage.
Meanwhile, today’s launch of Dragon and the second attempt to bring the first stage back to Earth in a controlled manner remains iffy because of weather.
We have consensus! When asked if Arizona’s gun laws need changing, 86% chose the answer “We have too many laws, and most of them should be eliminated.”
Only 5% of those polled thought stronger gun laws were necessary.
The irony here is that the story at which this newspaper poll is being taken is about a protest by a Tucson gun control group. They might be noisy, but these gun control protestors are very much in the minority, despite any claims they might make.
What happens to you if you decide you want to control the education your children get in a public school.
In addition to the repeated refusal of school officials to obey your commands, you get approached by police officers who tell you that you are trespassing on school property, even though you are there as per a pre-arranged appointment with the school principal.
The crashes that changed aviation and plane designs forever.
Like the 1964 Alaska earthquake, sometimes bad things have to happen to force humans to face a problem and fix it.
How the 1964 Alaska Earthquake shook up geology.
Sometimes the shake-up isn’t physical it is mental. In this case, the 1964 Alaska quake forced geologists to finally take serious the theory of continental drift and plate tectonics.
Worlds without end: The existence of a Kepler-found earth-sized planet in the habitable zone has been confirmed.
The newfound planet, called Kepler-186f, was first spotted by NASA’s Kepler space telescope and circles a dim red dwarf star about 490 light-years from Earth. While the host star is dimmer than Earth’s sun and the planet is slightly bigger than Earth, the positioning of the alien world coupled with its size suggests that Kepler-186f could have water on its surface, scientists say.
In this new work, the Keck and Gemini ground-based telescopes confirmed Kepler’s discovery.
The new more sinister IRS scandal.
Yesterday was a significant day in the IRS abuse scandal. The scandal evolved from being about pesky delays in IRS exemption applications to a government conniving with outside interests to put political opponents in prison.
Emails obtained by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act reveal Lois Lerner cooking up plans with Justice Department officials to talk about ways to criminally charge conservative groups that are insufficiently quiet.
Larry Noble, a law professor now with the Soros-funded Campaign Legal Center, was cited in the emails as someone agitating to jail conservatives who “falsely” report on IRS forms that they are not engaged in political speech. Lerner talked about setting up meetings with Justice Department election lawyers who wanted to talk about making Noble’s dreams a reality — this after Senator Sheldon Whitehouse raised the idea of criminal charges for conservatives who are not sufficiently quiet, charges that they falsely completed an IRS tax exemption form. [emphasis mine]
It might be illegal to claim tax exemption for non-political activities and then use that tax exemption to do politics, but it has to be emphasized that this law was only going to be used against those who disagreed with Obama and the Democrats. In other words, the IRS and the Obama administration weren’t really enforcing the law, they were thinking of using the law to put their opponents in prison.
Finding out what’s in it: Over two dozen widows in Alabama were dropped from their health care plans due to Obamacare.
Hey, no big deal. It’s only some southerners from a red state, and just a handful when you think about it. Moreover, we all know that the Democrats and Obama care about women, while the Republicans are evil haters who want women enslaved and helpless.
Then there’s this: No dentists available under Obamacare for children in California.
And we all know how much the Democrats care about children. It’s always for the children, y’know.
The competition heats up: Russia is accelerating construction of its new spaceport in Vostochny.
The schedule doesn’t appear to have been pushed up, with the first launch still set for 2015, but they are going to initiate a second shift, and will have monthly meeting with the government to monitor progress. Under the top-down Russian way of doing things, this is how they make sure their high priority projects get finished on time and successfully.
The competition heats up: Sierra Nevada is planning additional glide tests in the fall. using its Dream Chaser engineering test vehicle.
This is the same test vehicle that crashed last October during its first glide test when one landing gear failed to deploy properly. The glide test itself was a success however, as the vehicle did a controlled unmanned glide perfectly to the runway, and the failed landing gear was one that the spacecraft will not use once completed.
Note also that these announced flight tests will occur after NASA eliminates one of the companies competing for the final crew ferrying contract to ISS. This suggests that Sierra Nevada plans to continue development of Dream Chaser, regardless of whether they get the contract or not.
