Year: 2014
“If you try to mandate my smart-gun technology, I’ll burn it down.”
The article is a good summary of the issue of smart gun technology, its pros and cons, as well as the effort to misuse it by many political liberals to impose gun control by sleight of hand.
Another Rosetta closeup of 67P/C-G
The above image is not the most recent daily image from Rosetta, but it is the most interesting of the last three.
It shows the side of the comet nucleus that has not been featured in most images, as the topographical differences between its two sections is not as distinctly highlighted. What is highlighted is the neck that connects the two sections, lighter colored and thus likely made up of less dusty ice.
Also of interest here is the circular features on the larger bottom section. These certainly resemble craters, and are likely remnants of early impacts that are now been corroded away as the nucleus’s ice particles evaporate off the surface. The scientific question here is this: Why are crater features more evident on this side and section of the comet nucleus than on other areas of its surface?
More U.S. spacesuit problems
Two American spacewalks planned for this month have now been postponed until the fall due an issue with a fuse in the U.S. spacesuits’ batteries.
They have to now wait until replacement batteries are brought to the station by the next Dragon supply ship.
Test results from NASA saucer Mars landing test
NASA has released video and test results from the first test flight of its Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD), referred by many press outlets as a “flying saucer” because of its shape.
The purpose of the test was to see if the saucer and its parachute would work to slow a vessel down sufficiently in the Martian atmosphere. The parachute tore and failed. The video describes the flight and the failure and how the data from this failure can now be used to modify the parachute for the next two test flights.
Bambi meets Godzilla
An evening pause: A classic from 1969. I remember seeing this for the first time at one of the very first comic book conventions in New York. It brought the house down.
Hat tip to Phil Berardelli.
The coverup involves large swathes of the federal and state bureaucracy
It isn’t just Congress that is having trouble getting documents from the Obama administration or the bureaucracies involved in administering Obamacare.
The article describes illegal stonewalling by state Obamacare agencies in Nevada, California, Hawaii, Vermont, and New Mexico, in order to cover-up the hiring of convicted criminals within their Obamacare bureaucracy.
An Obamacare typo costs family $1.2 million
We’ve only just begun: Because of a typo in a family’s Obamacare healthplan, their insurance company is refusing to pay more than a million dollars in claims in connection with the premature birth of their daughter.
[T]he Review-Journal reports that the Anthem Blue Cross insurance they got through the Nevada Health Link — an ObamaCare exchange — is not paying claims. The payments are being denied, reportedly because the mother’s birth year is incorrectly listed on the insurance card. It should be 1979, but is listed as 1978. The newspaper reports the family is also struggling to get their baby daughter Kinsley added to the insurance. They are facing $1.2 million in medical bills.
They have been unable to get the bureaucracy to fix this simple little problem, which is typical of bureaucracies. Expect a lot more of this in the coming years as the government apparachiks who run Obamacare tighten their grip on our lives.
New Horizons shoots a movie
In anticipation of its fly of Pluto next year, the New Horizon spacecraft has produced a 12 frame movie showing Pluto’s moon Charon circling the planet.
The Dream Chaser test vehicle to fly again
The competition heats up: Sierra Nevada has announced that its Dream Chaser engineering test vehicle has been refurbished and will complete a number of manned and unmanned flight tests in the fall, with their schedule on track for a November 2016 orbital test flight.
“We will do between two and five additional flights. A couple will be crewed. As a result of the vehicle being upgraded, we will be flying our orbital flight software, which will give us about a year’s worth of advancement on the vehicle.” Flights are expected to last over a six- to nine-month period, he adds.
Sierra Nevada has also continued to expand its partnerships, both in the aerospace industry as well as with other countries. The first action is likely part of a lobbying effort to help convince NASA to choose it when it down selects its commercial manned program from three manned spacecraft to two later this year. The second action indicates that even if Sierra Nevada is not chosen by NASA, they plan to proceed to construction anyway to serve other customers.
Orion first test flight scheduled
NASA has set December 4 for the first test flight of Orion.
In related news, the Navy has successfully completed a splashdown recovery test of Orion.
I haven’t labeled these stories “The competition heats up” because I have serous doubts Orion or SLS will survive the next Presidential election, even if this test flight on a Delta 4 Heavy rocket is a complete success. And if you want to know why, just read the first article above. It lists the long troubled ten-year long history of this capsule, with the following punchline describing the schedule for further launches with the actual SLS rocket:
While the first SLS/Orion mission, known as EM-1, is still officially manifested for December 15, 2017 – internally that date has all-but been ruled out. Internal schedules shows EM-1 launch date as September 30, 2018, followed by the Ascent Abort (AA-2) test – required for crew launches – on December 15, 2019, followed by EM-2 on December 31, 2020.
I find also find it interesting that in describing the many problems Orion has had in development, the article fails to mention the cracks that appeared in the capsule that required a major structural fix. Nor does the article mention the ungodly cost of this program, which easily exceeds $10 billion and is at least four times what NASA is spending for its entire program to get three different privately built spaceships built in the commercial program.
Dragon launch abort tests scheduled
The competition heats up: SpaceX has scheduled its Dragon launch abort tests for November and January.
The Hawthorne, California-based company plans to conduct a pad abort test at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, in November, followed by an in-flight abort test from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California in January, Garrett Reisman, SpaceX Dragon Rider program manager, said here Aug. 6 at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Space 2014 conference.
In the pad-abort test, Dragon will be mounted to a mocked-up SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and use its hydrazine-fueled SuperDraco thrusters to boost itself up and away from the pad, as it might need to do in the event of a major problem just before or during liftoff. The in-flight test will attempt to repeat the feat at altitude.
In related news, two former SpaceX employees who were terminated in July when the company laid off about 400 people in an annual restructuring of its workforce have sued the company for not giving them ample notice as required by California law.
The California law is pretty clear, which means these employees will likely win, which also sounds to me like a good reason to shift SpaceX’s entire operation to Texas and its new spaceport in Brownsville.