Year: 2014

If you want to see the inside of NASA’s gigantic Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), you better hurry. Tours cease in February.

9:33 am

If you want to see the inside of NASA’s gigantic Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), you better hurry. Tours cease in February.

Tours into the VAB have only occurred during gaps in the American space effort. I was lucky to visit Florida back in 1977, after the end of the Apollo program and before the start of the shuttle program, so my tour went inside the VAB. For the last few years, since the shuttle’s retirement, interior tours resumed.

The tour is worth it. If you can find the time and money, get down there now!

2 comments

Another law, another squelched dream

9:28 am

Surprise, surprise! Virgin Galactic space tourists could be grounded by federal regulations.

Virgin Galactic submitted an application to the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation in late August 2013, says Attenborough. The office, which goes by the acronym AST, has six months to review the application, meaning an approval may come as early as February. Industry experts, however, say that may be an overly optimistic projection. “An application will inevitably be approved, but it definitely remains uncertain exactly when it will happen,” says Dirk Gibson, an associate professor of communication at the University of New Mexico and author of multiple books on space tourism. “This is extremely dangerous and unchartered territory. It’s space travel. AST has to be very prudent,” he says. “They don’t want to endanger the space-farers or the public, and they can’t let the industry get started and then have a Titanic-like scenario that puts an end to it all in the eyes of the public.” [emphasis mine]

As I predicted ten years ago, the 2004 revision to the Commercial Space Act puts bureaucrats in charge of the exploration of space by private citizens, a fact that can have no good consequences.
» Read more

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After three years in hibernation Europe’s Rosetta comet probe has successfully come back to life.

4:10 pm

After three years in hibernation Europe’s Rosetta comet probe has successfully come back to life.

The craft at the heart of ESA’s €1-billion (US$1.4-billion) comet-hunting mission was shut down in 2011 to save energy while travelling in deep space. Rosetta successfully re-established communications with Earth on 20 January.
With an alarm pre-set for 10:00 GMT, a signal was expected at any time from 17:30 GMT, once the spacecraft had warmed up and turned its antenna towards Earth. But Rosetta kept everyone guessing, with the first sign that everything had gone to plan only arriving around 40 minutes later.

ESA’s European Space Operations Centre erupted in cheering and hugging as small spikes appeared in radio signals received at NASA deep-space communications centres in Canberra and in Goldstone, California.

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“You can literally just open up your browser, go to this, and extract all this information without actually having to hack the website itself.”

11:49 am

“You can literally just open up your browser, go to this, and extract all this information without actually having to hack the website itself.”

Guess which website. And guess what personal and confidential information he is extracting.

Aren’t you glad the Democrats and Barack Obama built it for you?

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A comparison between reality and the predictions of global warming scientists from 1988 reveals an epic fail.

9:32 am

The uncertainty of science: A comparison between reality and the predictions of global warming scientists from 1988 reveals an epic fail.

Look especially at the charts at the link. While carbon dioxide emissions increased at a higher rate than predicted, the global temperature — predicted to increase from 2 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit — has instead remained completely flat.

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A cancer patient discovers at the last minute that she can’t keep her doctor or get treatment, because of Obamacare.

9:18 am

Repeal the damn law! A cancer patient discovers that she can’t keep her doctor or even get treatment, because of Obamacare.

I realize I am a racist and a terrorist for repeatedly demanding that Obamacare get repealed, but unlike the Democrats and President Obama — who are willing to defend this law under all conditions — I don’t like it when innocent people die because of some stupid regulations imposed on them by self-righteous elites who really don’t know what they are doing.

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The European Space Agency has now released its first cost estimates for upgrading and replacing its Ariane 5 rocket.

8:54 am

The European Space Agency has now released its first cost estimates for upgrading and replacing its Ariane 5 rocket.

Europe needs to find about 1 billion euros ($1.35 billion) to complete development of an upgrade to its current Ariane 5 heavy-lift rocket, which would fly in 2018 and be capable of lifting satellites weighing 11,000 kilograms into geostationary transfer orbit, European Space Agency Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain said Jan. 17. The Ariane 5 upgrade, called Ariane 5 ME, will be on the table for ESA governments to decide, alongside the new Ariane 6 rocket, at a meeting scheduled for December in Luxembourg.

In a press briefing in Paris, Dordain said it is too early to say how much Ariane 6 will cost to develop. Government and industry estimates have ranged between 3 billion and 4 billion euros, with an inaugural flight in 2021.

As Doug Messier notes in his worthwhile analysis of these numbers, “Europe is in deep trouble.” From a customer’s perspective, these new rockets won’t fly (pun intended). The cost is too high and the development time too long. By the time they get both Ariane 5 and Ariane 6 ready for launch they will be obsolete and overpriced, when compared to the rocket’s that will already be available from their competitors.

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