The competition heats up: The Air Force today certified that SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket had completed three successful flights.
This certification is a preliminary okay before the official certification. What it means is that the Air Force is agreeing that the Falcon 9 is capable of launching its satellites, which also means that the official certification is almost certain.
Update: The upgrade is mostly finished. There are still a few tweaks that either I or Shane will do over the weekend but essentially the site is up and running.
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This evening Behind the Black will be undergoing a significant upgrade. For this reason posting will cease beginning with this post at 3 pm (Pacific) until the upgrade is completed later tonight. When completed the site will be slightly different. Most of the changes will be irrelevant to readers, as I have tried in this upgrade to keep the website how I like it, clean, thoughtful, and not cluttered with unnecessary internet stuff.
Two issues will affect my readers.
To complete the upgrade my software guy, Shane Rolin of Amixa, and I will have to do a number of tweaks and changes after the new site goes live. Thus, be prepared for a short period on Friday where things might not work as they should. By the end of the evening, however, all should be fixed and working properly. If you see a problem after that please feel free to comment here, describing what you see and what you think could be done to fix it. Also feel free to comment here with any additional suggestions for making Behind the Black a better experience. I am always open to new ideas.
A second judge has now ordered the IRS to explain under oath how it lost Lois Lerner’s emails central to the agency’s harassment of conservatives.
The article does not tell us if this second judge has put a deadline on his demands. I expect we will learn more by the end of the day.
Update: This article provides more information. It appears he wants his answers fast, but is also willing to defer to an IRS inspector general investigation into the lost emails that is ongoing.
At a hearing Friday, [U.S. District Judge Reggie] Walton warned government lawyers that he wanted a quick turnaround on that information, saying he would likely require it by the end of next week. Walton said he expected to officially make his order by the end of Friday, but also suggested that he was willing to defer at least somewhat to the inspector general’s investigation and to the multiple congressional inquiries into the IRS. “I am one of the judges that believes the judicial branch has a limited role” in these sorts of cases, Walton said.
Does this make you feel safer? The TSA is allowing illegal aliens to fly on commercial airlines without valid identification.
“The aliens who are getting released on their own recognizance are being allowed to board and travel commercial airliners by simply showing their Notice to Appear forms,” NBPC’s Local 2455 Spokesman, Hector Garza, told Breitbart Texas. “This is not the CBP [Customs and Border Protection] or another federal agency renting or leasing an aircraft, these are the same planes that the American public uses for domestic travel,” said Garza. “This just adds insult to injury. Not only are we releasing unknown illegal aliens onto American streets, but we are allowing them to travel commercially using paperwork that could easily be reproduced or manipulated on any home computer. The Notice to Appear form has no photo, anyone can make one and manipulate one. They do not have any security features, no watermark, nothing. They are simply printed on standard copy paper based on the information the illegal alien says is the truth.”
Spokesman Garza continued, “We do not know who these people are, we often have to solely rely on who they say they are, where they say they came from, and the history they say they have. We know nothing about most of them, ICE releases them into the American public, and now they are boarding aircraft at will with a simple paper document that anyone can easily alter or reproduce themselves.”
I am really speechless. Even as the TSA continues to force Americans to jump through hoops to simply board an airplane, it is allowing illegals to pass through without documentation. How insane is this?
The competition heats up: The new budget of India’s new conservative government under Narendra Modi has given its space program a 50 percent increase.
It appears that there were increases across the board, including a gigantic increase for their GSLV rocket as well as their manned program.
It also appears that Modi is following in the path of George Bush, at least when it comes to space. He might be a conservative, pro private enterprise and anti-big government, but his approach to building a space industry is decidedly Soviet in style, pumping funds into government agencies so that they can build the rockets and spacecraft. For the moment at least, private companies will be the servants to India’s government space program, not the masters.
In the U.S. and Russia this approach worked for the first generation of rockets and spacecraft, but then ended up a lead weight for later generations. I suspect we shall see the same history play out in India.
The competition heats up: A Soyuz rocket successfully launched four communications satellites from French Guiana yesterday.
I know that I repeatedly pound Arianespace for its high costs and lack of profits, but anyone who thinks this European company, in partnership with the Russians, is going to let its competition grab its customers easily is in for a surprise. They are going to fight back, and have the resources to do it.
The battle is on! It should be a lot of fun to watch over the next decade.
Because the severe weather conditions at Wallops Island have interfered with preparing Antares and Cygnus for launch, Orbital Sciences announced today another 24 hour launch delay, rescheduling it now for Sunday, July 13, at 12:52 pm (Eastern).
The private group trying to resurrect ISEE-3 has come up with a plan of action to get its engine working.
We spent all day yesterday with space propulsion experts. We have identified a series of options including hydrazine tank heating and a long series of pulse attempts to (possibly) clear the lines.
They have not yet said when they will try this, but stay tuned.
A federal judge has given the IRS 30 days to testify under oath how the Lois Lerner emails were lost.
This testimony will be far different than congressional hearings, in that it will be wide-ranging and will not have Democratic legislators present to provide cover. It will also not be under the time constraints that limit congressional hearings.
In related news, Congressman Steve Stockman (R-Texas) has filed a resolution calling for the arrest of Lois Lerner for contempt of Congress.
The next Falcon 9 launch of six commercial communication satellites remains on schedule this coming Monday, July 14, at 9:21 am (Eastern).
It ain’t dead yet: The private group trying to resurrect ISEE-3 has not yet given up.
[T]he reboot team, led by editor Keith Cowing and entrepreneur Dennis Wingo, CEO of California-based Skycorp Incorporated, isn’t quite ready to give up. One of the project volunteers has suggested that perhaps the nitrogen isn’t actually gone. It may in fact still be there, but dissolved in with the hydrazine.
If that’s the case, Wingo says, ISEE-3 could potentially repressurize the propellant by powering up the tank heaters, raising the temperature up perhaps 10 degrees from the roughly 25 degrees C where it stands now. “If [the idea] has any merit, then we could turn the heaters on and drive at least some of the nitrogen out of solution. That would give us more pressure that just heating the tanks themselves,” Wingo says. “It’s not desperation,” he adds. “There is some good physics behind this.”
Their big problem is that they need to know more about how the nitrogen was stored on the spacecraft. They are asking for help from anyone who is willing to research the problem.
New data from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows that the fresh gullies that have been seen on the Red Planet are caused by dry ice evaporation, not liquid water as had been hoped.
Dundas and collaborators used the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on MRO to examine gullies at 356 sites on Mars, beginning in 2006. Thirty-eight of the sites showed active gully formation, such as new channel segments and increased deposits at the downhill end of some gullies.
Using dated before-and-after images, researchers determined the timing of this activity coincided with seasonal carbon-dioxide frost and temperatures that would not have allowed for liquid water.
Frozen carbon dioxide, commonly called dry ice, does not exist naturally on Earth, but is plentiful on Mars. It has been linked to active processes on Mars such as carbon dioxide gas geysers and lines on sand dunes plowed by blocks of dry ice. One mechanism by which carbon-dioxide frost might drive gully flows is by gas that is sublimating from the frost providing lubrication for dry material to flow. Another may be slides due to the accumulating weight of seasonal frost buildup on steep slopes.
The findings in this latest report suggest all of the fresh-appearing gullies seen on Mars can be attributed to processes currently underway, whereas earlier hypotheses suggested they formed thousands to millions of years ago when climate conditions were possibly conducive to liquid water on Mars.
