The competition heats up: Sierra Nevada plans to continue development of Dream Chaser, including using it to bid on the next round of unmanned cargo missions to ISS.
They also say they are considering protesting the contract awards to SpaceX and Boeing.
A Soyuz rocket launched a new crew today, including the first Russian ISS astronaut.
They are also using the fast route to ISS, meaning they should dock within six hours.
To get an idea of why there have been no Russian females launched to ISS before this, see this article.
The uncertainty of science: A new study now suggests that previous climate models significantly over-estimated the effect increased carbon dioxide has on the climate.
Lewis co-authored a report with science writer Marcel Crok earlier this year that found many climate models running hot and overestimating climate sensitivity by 40 to 50 percent. The paper also criticized the IPCC for trying to hide the climate’s weaker response to carbon dioxide in its 2013 report by not giving a central climate sensitivity estimate.
Judith Curry, one of the co-authors, was also very quick to note that this result is by far not the final word. “There remains considerable meta uncertainty in the determination of climate sensitivity, including how the problem is even framed.”
Of course, if you are a global warming activist and communist, none of these minor details matter. Revolution for the climate is a must!
To reduce street truck traffic, a Belgian city is going to build a two-mile long pipeline to pump beer from its brewery to its bottling factory.
How nice of him! A New Jersey prosecutor has dropped the treat of imprisonment for a Pennsylvania mother who mistakenly brought her legally purchased gun into New Jersey.
Allen was arrested last October after she was pulled over on the Atlantic City Expressway for a minor traffic violation and volunteered to the state trooper that she had a gun in her purse. She erroneously believed that her Pennsylvania carry permit was good in New Jersey, and for that mistake McClain was prepared to put her behind bars for years, separating her from her two young sons. McClain’s predecessor and prosecutors in other counties took a more lenient approach, commonly approving PTI for defendants like her. But until now McClain had argued that New Jersey law did not allow such exceptions.
As a general rule, it is wise to avoid entrance to fascist states. This mother has discovered why in a very blunt manner.
In what appears to be evidence that the recent Israeli Gaza effort did significant damage to Hamas, the terrorist organization has agreed to give the Palestinian Authority some control once again in the administration of Gaza.
Hamas and Fatah leaders said that the agreement reached on Thursday calls for the PA government, headed by Rami Hamdallah, to “immediately” assume its responsibilities in the Gaza Strip. Palestinian sources said that the agreement allows the PA to take control over the border crossings in the Gaza Strip, including the Rafah terminal. Musa Abu Marzouk, a senior Hamas official, announced that the Palestinian Authority government would soon manage all the border crossings in the Gaza Strip.
A second quote gives as some idea of the corrupt patronage of these two organizations:
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Good riddance: Attorney General Eric Holder will announce his resignation today.
Morrissey offers a lot of good analysis about why Holder might be doing this now, but I think this story might explain it best: Federal Court Denies DOJ Motion for Delay, Orders Release of Fast and Furious Documents List to Judicial Watch by October 22.
The Holder Justice Department is under legal attack from several fronts. Holder’s effort to block all investigations, from Fast and Furious to the IRS scandal, will be revealed quite soon in court, and when it does, he is going to be toast. Better he leave now then be forced to resign at a time not of his choice. As Morrissey notes,
Resigning now allows Obama to appoint a replacement soon, and Senate Democrats to schedule the hearings during the lame-duck session (and don’t forget Harry Reid’s rule change on filibusters for presidential appointments, too, which expires at the end of this session).
The next crew to ISS is scheduled to launch on a Soyuz spacecraft this afternoon at 4:25 (eastern), and what makes this flight interesting is that it includes a Russian female astronaut, the first to fly in twenty years.
Indian engineers have posted Mangalyaan’s first image on the spacecraft’s Facebook and Twitter accounts, as well as presented the photo to their nation’s leader.
My first reaction when I looked at the image above was an immediate flashback to 1969, when the American probes Mariner 6 and Mariner 7 flew past Mars, taking images of its cratered southern hemisphere and thus making scientists think for several years that Mars was not much different than the Moon. The Indian image is of about the same quality, and shows lots of moon-like craters.
Image if this was the first close-up image of Mars anyone had ever seen. It would be very easy to assume that Mars is pockmarked with craters everywhere, just like the Moon.
New budget estimates for replacing Arianespace’s Ariane 5 rocket now say that they will have to include the construction of an entirely new launchpad, raising costs.
Nonetheless, Europe is trying to keep its per launch cost down and competitive.
ESA and the Airbus-Safran joint venture that proposes to manage Ariane development also floated per-launch costs that were lower than previous estimates. The lighter-version Ariane 62, with two solid-rocket boosters, could be built for as little as 65 million euros assuming a nine-per-year launch rhythm, officials said. The heavier Ariane 64, intended mainly for the commercial market and capable of carrying two satellites weighing a combined 11,000 kilograms into geostationary transfer orbit, could be built for 85 million euros each, again assuming a nine-per-year production rate.
These numbers are tiny compared to what they have charged in the past, and though higher than SpaceX’s, are within a price range that will keep them in business, assuming they can achieve them.
Having lost in the competition to build a manned spaceship for NASA, Sierra Nevada has laid off 90 employees from its Dream Chaser program.
The company says that the Dream Chaser program will continue, but I’m not sure how without funds.
Did a plasma bubble high in the atmosphere disrupt communications and contribute to the downing of an American military helicopter in Afghanistan in 2002?
