Keith Cowing is trying to locate a missing spectacular blow-up poster of the Lunar Orbiter “Earthrise” image from 1966, shown here.
The lead spacewalker for the next shuttle mission, the long-delayed last flight of Discovery, has apparently broken his hip in a bike accident. Key quote:
NASA does not train backup crews and a replacement, even a recently flown veteran, would need time to rehearse spacewalk scenarios and receive mission-specific training for Discovery’s flight. How long that might take, if required, and what impact it might have on the shuttle’s launch date is not yet known.
Want to know who is spreading hateful political rhetoric? Check out Climate of Hate.
What does it take to end a political career?
Finally a response: J. Eric Fuller, the Tucson shooting victim (also a Democrat party campaigner) who blamed Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, and Sharron Angle for the shooting was arrested today at an ABC-TV town hall meeting when he threatened the founder of the Tucson Tea Party. Key quote:
When Tucson Tea Party founder Trent Humphries rose to suggest that any conversation about gun control should be put off until after the funerals for all the victims, witnesses say Fuller became agitated. Two told KGUN9 News that finally, Fuller took a picture of Humphries, and said, “You’re dead.” . . . A Pima County Sheriff’s spokesman told KGUN9 News that the department has charged Fuller with one count of threats and intimidation, and said they plan to charge him with at least one count of disorderly conduct.
For today, and today only, the Sun was blank. This blankness ended, however, when a sunspot rotated into view from the far side.
As I asked the last time the Sun was blank in December, will this be the last blank day of the just-ended but very prolonged solar minimum?
More battles in the space war over NASA:
How the hell is this toning down the rhetoric? One of the Tucson shooting victims today accused Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Sharron Angle, of causing the shootings on Saturday.
And why isn’t the press criticizing this Democrat campaign official for this blatant slander?
NASA has named a backup to Endeavour’s commander Mark Kelly for the shuttle’s last flight, now set for launch on April 19. This is “to facilitate training for crew and support teams,” while Kelly focuses on the recovery of his wife, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.
The squealing is getting louder: NPR has launched an offensive against the congressman who wants to cut its funding.
An evening pause: While our politicians fight it out in Congress, let’s watch a different kind of showdown.
The vulture that was arrested by Saudi Arabia for spying was actually the third Israeli bird held since 1975 by Muslim countries.
I wish Congress understood this: Almost three quarters of the public opposes raising the country’s debt limit.
From the American Astronomical Society meeting this week:
A team of astronomers, using the data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, calculated the galactic orbits of nearly 40,000 low mass stars. These stars are generally M dwarfs, cool, not very bright, and thus generally somewhat close to the Sun since if they are too far away we would not see them. You can read the abstract here, and download their full poster here [pdf].
For the astronomers, the data told them a great deal about the orbital properties of these stars. Though a majority are in circular orbits between 20 to 30 thousand light years from the galactic center, a small minority are in extremely eccentric orbits that travel far out into the galactic halo, as much 260,000 light years. A few others dive inward, getting within 6000 light years of the galactic center.
What made this poster stand out to me, however, was this quote from the abstract:
In addition, we have identified a number of stars that will pass very close to the Sun within the next [billion years]. These stars form the “Nemesis” family of orbits. Potential encounters with these stars could have a significant impact on orbits of Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt members as well as the planets. We comment on the probability of a catastrophic encounter within the next [billion years].
All told, they found that 18 low-mass cool M dwarf stars that will eventually pass close to the Sun. One star, SDSS J112612.07+152517.6, an M3 star that is about 2,300 light years away, is in an orbit that has it moving right towards us at about 90,000 miles per hour. Its mass is less than half that of the Sun, about 0.4 solar masses. This figure from the poster roughly illustrates the star’s position relative to our solar system over the next billion years:
The star itself is shown in the inset. The red curve shows its calculated distance from the Sun over time, with the black area above and below showing the uncertainties of the calculation. As you can see, every hundred million years or so the distance between this star and the Sun shrinks, with the very very very rare possibility that the distance will sometimes shrink to zero!
With 18 stars each doing this every few 100 million years or so, the average time between close approaches is about 5 million years. These results suggest that another star passes close enough to our solar system frequently enough to not only disturb the comets in the Oort cloud, but also possibly affect the orbits of the planets in the outer solar system and Kuiper belt. One wonders, for example, if such an event had some influence on Pluto’s strange orbit.
The new TSA scanner procedure: Dumb in a new way. The quote below actually isn’t the point of the article (which notes other idiotic things about TSA procedures), but I found it telling nonetheless:
For the most part, it has been possible to avoid the scanners just by picking the right line to stand in, which I assume means that the government has determined that terrorists have poor line-picking skills.
TSA pays off for exposing a woman’s breasts during security clearance.
We need more such lawsuits against the TSA.
Repeal the damn bill! Half the states are now suing the federal government over Obamacare.
A computer is going to take on two Jeopardy! champs for $1 million. Two comments from this story:
The computer was finally defeated when it said “Windows has finished updating your computer. Rebooting in 14 seconds.”
and
“Just what do you think you’re doing, Dave?”
Earlier this week NASA submitted a report to Congress reviewing the design and construction status of the heavy-lift rocket and manned capsule that Congress has required them to build and launch by 2016. NASA’s conclusion: the space agency doesn’t think it can do the job in the schedule or budget that Congress has provided.
NASA does not believe this goal is achievable based on a combination of the current funding profile estimate, traditional approaches to acquisitions and currently considered vehicle architectures. . . . We will not commit to a date that has a low probability of being achieved.
NASA’s conclusions here are not surprising. The agency had been having trouble building Constellation on the much bigger budget and longer schedule given to them by past Congresses. For them to build the-program-formerly-called-Constellation for less money and in less time is probably impossible.
Nonetheless, this was the response of the Senate Commerce committee:
The production of a heavy-lift rocket and capsule is not optional. It’s the law.
This is why I have been saying that the money for this program is nothing more than pork. Congress knows that nothing can be built on this budget, but wants the money spent nonetheless, to keep people employed in their districts.
Meanwhile, in sharp contrast, Space Adventures yesterday announced a new deal with Russia, whereby the Russians have agreed to build and launch one extra Soyuz capsule per year, beginning in 2013, to fly 3 tourists to ISS. In addition, there is this report today about how SpaceX is successfully meeting all its milestones in building its cargo ferry for ISS. An earlier report last week also noted how Orbital Sciences is also moving forward with its cargo ferry, with a planned first test launch by the end of 2011.
All in all, this news is not good news for NASA. The space agency’s manned spaceflight program appears to have two futures, neither of which will involve it continuing to build rockets or fly humans into space. In one option, the new Congress, when it finally sits down to write a budget, will decide that pork and happy constituents are more important than a balanced budget, and will appropriate the money for the-program-formerly-called-Constellation. NASA will struggle hard to build it, but will not succeed. Thus, no government-built manned space program.
In the second option, Congress will agree with me and decide that it just doesn’t have money for pork, especially considering the terrible state of the federal budget. Moreover, seeing the success of the private efforts of SpaceX, Orbital Sciences, and Space Adventures, Congress will wonder why it needs to pour more billions into a vain effort by NASA to build something it can’t, when there are other private companies that can do it, and do it for less. In this circumstance, it will be very easy for them to cut the-program-formerly-called-Constellation. Once again, no NASA manned program.
Neither scenario is actually a bad thing. What we are actually seeing play out here is the free competition of different companies attempting to provide a service to a customer, and the customer eventually picking the best company from which to buy the product. NASA, as a government agency, simply can’t compete, and unless Congress decides to provide them welfare, will lose this competition hands down.
The U.S. will still have the capability of getting into space, but for far less money. And having multiple private companies competing to provide this service will also encourage innovation, something the rocket industry has sorely needed these past five decades.
This has got to stop: The death threats against Sarah Palin are at an “unprecedented level,” according to her aides.
Vicious liberal hate: Fifteen quotes. (Several of these have been noted in previous posts, but most have not.)
From the AAS meeting, the black hole press conference!
The bands that scientists attach to penguins to track them actually do harm. The data also suggests that certain climate research might also be skewed because of this. Key quote:
Overall, the team found, bands were bad for penguins. Banded penguins had a 16% lower survival rate than unbanded birds over the 10 years, the researchers report online today in Nature. Banded birds also arrived later at the breeding grounds and took longer trips to forage for food. As a result, they produced 39% fewer chicks. . . . [The researcher noted] that his team’s results suggest that research using banded penguins may be biased. For example, he says, several high-profile studies have used banded penguins to investigate the impact of climate change on the birds. The findings of those studies aren’t necessarily wrong, but the numbers need to be reconsidered, he says.
A new deal has been announced to fly tourists to ISS using Russian Soyuz capsules. According the arrangement between Space Adventures and the Federal Space Agency of the Russian Federation (FSA) and Rocket Space Corporation Energia (RSC Energia), three seats will be made available on Soyuz spacecraft bound for the International Space Station (ISS), beginning in 2013.
These seats will be made available through the increase of Soyuz production, from four to five spacecraft per year. Each flight will be short duration, approximately 10 days, and will contribute to the increase of launch capacity to the ISS.
From today’s first press conference at the AAS meeting, astronomers have found that two of the fundamental objects they use as units of measure might not be as reliable a unit of measure as they thought.
Look, I agree that we’ve got to tone down the rhetoric. And I also agree that conservatives bear as much responsibility to do this as anyone. Free debate in a civilized society requires reasoned discussion of the issues, and a willingness to tolerate disagreement. It should not include ad hominen attacks, or the wishful desire to murder your opponents.
However, it is not the tone of rightwing discourse that worries me much these days. You would be hard pressed to find any examples of any Republicans or Tea Party activists suggesting it would a good thing to kill Democrats. Such suggestions are not only considered unacceptable, everyone on the right knows that to say such a thing would probably destroy your career in the public arena. Thus, it just doesn’t happen.
Instead, it is the left, the press, and the Democratic Party’s efforts to whip up anger at the right that scares me. Nor did this ugly behavior begin on Saturday after the Tucson murders. In the past decade there have been the numerous examples (which I have been documenting these past few days) of leftwing activists, Hollywood movies, talk radio hosts, and Democratic officials advocating violence against the right. (For a talk radio host example, see this new list of liberals calling for the murder of conservatives.) Worse, such behavior has almost become routine in recent years. It seems that every random violent act has become a vehicle for the left and the press to attack and slander conservatives, despite the fact that there is no evidence that any of these accusations are true.
This behavior must stop. Violent and angry rhetoric can and will cause violence. And it probably has, considering the fact that a large number of the random violent acts in recent years have actually been committed by deranged individuals with liberal, not conservative, leanings. This is not to say that I blame the left for this violence, but that the left has as much of a responsibility as the right to think carefully about what it says, before it says it. Otherwise, they might find that they have made their less rational followers more angry than they ever imagined, or can control.
Or as Michael York says to his NAZI friend at the end of this scene from the 1972 movie, Cabaret. “You still think you can control them?”
