Cool video time! Images from the recently launched Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) have been assembled to create a short movie showing the Moon transiting across the face of the Earth.
I have embedded the animation below the fold.
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Two quotes from the article I think clarify what is going on here. First, one of the protester signs illustrated very clearly the level of ignorance and foolishness of the protesters;
“We don’t want your big toy telescopes on our sacred mountain.”
Then there was this significant point noted in the article:
The demonstrators are a diverse group but are generally led by men and women in their twenties who were educated in modern Hawaiian-language immersion schools. Decades ago, children were beaten for speaking the language; today it is a source of cultural pride and a touchstone for Hawaii’s burgeoning sovereignty movement.
In other words, for the past few decades the public schools in Hawaii have been focused on teaching young Hawaiians to hate American culture and whites. Instead, race and ethnicity come before concepts of freedom and individual rights. How nice. (If you don’t believe me spend just a little time studying what these native peoples courses teach. I’ve seen it here in Arizona as well as in New York. They really do teach anti-Americanism and a hatred of whites.)
However, considering that Hawaii has been controlled exclusively by leftwing Democrats for decades, no one should be surprised.
On Monday NOAA posted its monthly update of the solar cycle, showing the Sun’s sunspot activity in July. As I have done every month since 2010, I am posting it here, below the fold, with annotations to give it context.
Sunspot counts continue to decline at a rate faster than predicted or is usual during ramp down from solar maximum. Normally the ramp down is slow and steady. This time it has so far been more precipitous. While the 2009 prediction of the solar science community (indicated by the red curve) suggests minimum will occur sometime after 2020, the actual counts suggest it will occur much sooner.
Cool image time! The above image is a cropped version of a full resolution image taken by Curiosity of the terrain the rover will be traveling in the coming years.
I have also enhanced the contrast slightly to bring out the details. The terrain is rugged and very diverse, from rounded buttes to rocky outcrops.
Gravel and sand ripples fill the foreground [not shown in my cropped version above], typical of terrains that Curiosity traversed to reach Mount Sharp from its landing site. Outcrops in the midfield are of two types: dust-covered, smooth bedrock that forms the base of the mountain, and sandstone ridges that shed boulders as they erode. Rounded buttes in the distance contain sulfate minerals, perhaps indicating a change in the availability of water when they formed. Some of the layering patterns on higher levels of Mount Sharp in the background are tilted at different angles than others, evidence of complicated relationships still to be deciphered.
Traversing this rugged terrain will be a challenge but it is necessary to obtain data that will help decipher its origins. The immediate goal will be to reach the light brown terrain in the distance. In the full image, that region gently slopes upward to the left to the mountain summit, providing a route to the rover’s eventual goal.
Fascists: Because of a single false report to Child Protection Services (CPS), government officials illegally kidnapped the eleven children from their parents, and are now imposing their rule on the family.
The mother was in the hospital for three days being treated for pancreatitis. During that time period, her husband came to visit twice, bringing their youngest baby with him while leaving the remaining kids under the care of the oldest kids, 16, 14, and 12 years old, a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Members of a church the family formerly attended reported this to CPS. CPS then lied to a visiting judge, claiming the children had been left alone for three days, in order to get the court order to remove them. Moreover,
The order for the removal of the children was signed by visiting Judge Curt Henderson, while the sitting judge was on vacation. The sitting judge had reportedly previously denied the removal. According to protocols, the visiting judge reportedly should not have signed the emergency removal order without notifying the parents’ attorneys first. The apparent violation is believed to be the reason that the children were returned home.
In addition, they now have less than a week to find a new place to live.
They also have to find a house to move to, and move, by August 8, because a police officer who accompanied the social worker decided to phone the Rembis’ landlord and allegedly accused them of violating their lease. They received the eviction notice the day after the children were seized. When no lease violations were found, the landlord reportedly decided not to renew their lease. They still have to move. [emphasis mine]
Worse, even though the removal was illegal, CPS now has its claws in the family. If the parents do not do exactly as the government demands it will then steal the children again, and will be in a better position to make that removal stick.
Read the whole story. It will make you ill.
The competition heats up: Two Airbus engineers have gotten a patent for a supersonic jet that would use suborbital space engineering, including hydrogen-oxygen engines as well as a ramjet, to fly at 20 to 30 miles elevation.
On a typical flight, it would take off like a conventional plane using ordinary turbojet engines, but once in the air, an open door in the stern of the plane reveals a rocket motor. When this fires, it sends the aircraft into a near vertical trajectory, accelerating it to supersonic speeds.
As the airplane approaches Mach one, the turbojets shut down and retract into the fuselage. On completion of the acceleration phase the plane is now flying at anywhere from Mach 4 to Mach 4.5 at an altitude of 30,000 to 35,000 m (100,000 to 150,000 ft). The rocket motor shuts down and is again concealed as the aft door slides shut to reduce drag. A ramjet now kicks in and the aircraft cruises along its flight path and can cover a range of 9,000 km (5,600 mi) in three hours – the equivalent of Tokyo to Los Angeles or Paris to San Francisco. Meanwhile, the wing fuselage design dissipates the sonic shock wave over 110 to 175 km (68 to 109 mi) and angles it at 11 to 15 degrees so it doesn’t reach the ground. At the end of the journey, split flaps reduce speed and the turbojets take over for approach and landing.
As the article notes, it is unlikely this jet will ever be built, as patented. The patent however illustrates the growing interest by commercial operators of these radical aerospace designs. While this specific design might never fly, many aspects of it are going to start appearing in flying ships in the next few decades.
An evening pause: It could be argued that all classical music would be better played in this manner.
Surprise, surprise! A comparison of the entire production process for both solar and coal power has found that solar power is more damaging to the environment and the climate.
Not only does the production, transport, and use of solar panels dump more total CO2 into the atmosphere than coal power plants, the manufacture of the solar panels adds many more toxic chemicals to the environment than coal.
According to Ferroni, the other huge drawback presented by PV systems are the nasty chemicals and industrial gases used for their manufacture. The production of solar panels in China entails nitrogen trifluoride (NF3) and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), which are extremely potent heat-trapping gases that leak out during the process. NF3 has a greenhouse gas potency that is 16,600 times greater than CO2; SF6 is 23,900 times more potent. Reports show that these gases emitted annually into the atmosphere from the manufacture of solar panels is equivalent to over 70 million tonnes of CO2 in terms of greenhouse effect. In 2010 over 17.5 GW of rated capacity of solar cells were installed. Thus the emissions per square meter of solar panels comes out to be 513 kg CO2 – a huge amount!
The manufacture of solar cells also uses other chemicals like (HCl), silizium carbide, and silver among others. The total alleged warming potential of these chemicals comes out to be an estimated 30 kg CO2 per square meter of PV module. Oddly (likely to avoid embarrassment) the solar industry has yet to release any detailed data on the warming potential and impacts of the chemicals used in their manufacture.
But President Obama tells us solar power is good! It must be true!
Government in action! Last week NASA admitted that the Orion capsule and its service module might not be ready for its 2018 test flight.
Bill Gerstenmaier, head of NASA’s human spaceflight directorate, told members of the [NASA Advisory Council’s human exploration] subcommittee the Orion capsule’s European-made service module, which is being developed by Airbus Defense and Space, will probably be the last piece of the critical test flight to be ready for launch.
NASA and ESA officials, together with contractors from Orion-builder Lockheed Martin and Airbus, have discussed shipping the Orion service module from Europe to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida before it is finished. European engineers could travel to the Florida spaceport to complete construction of the service module before its integration with the Orion crew capsule, which is to be assembled by Lockheed Martin at KSC’s Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building.
Engineers plan to introduce changes to the Orion crew module after a successful orbital test flight in December 2014. The upgrades include a switch from a monolithic heat shield made of ablative Avcoat material to blocks of Avcoat, a change intended to improve the manufacturability of the thermal protection system. [emphasis mine]
I have highlighted the last paragraph above because it is written to give the false impression that the decision to change the heat shield resulted from the December 2014 test flight. The truth is that NASA had already decided to change heat shields before the test flight. Why NASA engineers are still “planning” to introduce these changes illustrates why government operations are absurdly wasteful.
Orion was first proposed by President George Bush in 2004. The first Orion contract was awarded in 2006. It is now a decade later, and NASA is suddenly warning us that they might not get a single capsule and service module built by 2018, 12 years after construction began. During that time they have spent approximately a billion dollars per year on Orion. For what?
Kennedy proposed going to the Moon in 1961. Eight years later Americans were walking there. Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7, 1941. The U.S. completed the total defeat of Germany, Italy, and Japan in slightly more than three years, by the spring of 1945.
Today’s NASA however can’t get a single capsule and service module built in 12 years. The contrast is striking. Anyone with the slightest bit of common sense would say that with a track record like this, this program should be shut down now.
An evening pause: How about a wonderful country rendition of this pop classic?
Squelching the competition: NASA is pushing to redesign its expensive and giant Space Launch System (SLS) rocket so that it can be used to launch commercial, military, and scientific payloads as well as proposed manned exploration missions.
At the moment, SLS has no planned payloads or funded flights past its second test flight in 2021. The system is very expensive, however, and the only way other customers could afford it would be if NASA charges them far less than the actual cost to fly. In such circumstances, NASA would essentially be subsidizing SLS so that it could compete, even undercut, private commercial rockets that actually cost far less.
If NASA does this, they could very well squelch the emerging private commercial launch industry.
The competition heats up: While the U.S. has struggled to find funding for its giant in-the-ground radio telescope in Arecibo, China is about to complete construction of a similar but larger radio telescope.
