Government marches on! Budget disagreements in the EU could delay construction of an experimental fusion reactor.
The space war delayed: The Senate has postponed its hearing on NASA’s future until December 1.
Feel the hate: A man shot his television in outrage over Bristol Palin’s success on Dancing with the Stars, then held off the police for fifteen hours.
Analyzing the actual and very minimal risks of terrors. And as I like to say: Live in fear, die in tyranny.
What a difference a year makes! Tomorrow will the one year anniversary of the release of the climategate emails.
Sometimes going is hard: The engineering challenge of human waste management in space.
More security madness: A security summit in Kazakhstan is demanding the Russians bring home three astronauts from ISS a week early so as to keep the air space clear during the conference.
A blow for freedom! Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller) called the cops and threatened to press charges against a TSA security agent for assault during his airport screening. Fun quote:
I tell the cop the story, in a very funny way. The cop, the voice of sanity says, “What’s wrong with you people? You can’t just grab a guy’s crank without his permission.” I tell him that my genitals weren’t grabbed and the cop says, “I don’t care, you can’t do that to people. That’s assault and battery in my book.”
The story gets even crazier afterward, when a pr gal from the TSA calls Penn and tries to placate him. This quote is especially telling:
“If you give me your itinerary every time you fly, I’ll be at the airport with you and we can make sure it’s very pleasant for you.”
Update: I just realized that this event occurred in 2002, so it isn’t part of the recent TSA craziness, only past TSA craziness that is as unacceptable as the new TSA craziness.
Astronomers have identified a dozen new binary star systems, where the two stars are tiny white dwarfs. Of even more interest is that a half dozen are spiraling into each other and will eventually merge, the ensuing collision likely producing a supernova explorsion.
Is the TSA backing down?
DARPA has completed its investigation on why a hypersonic test vehicle (HTV), launched on April 22, disappeared about 9 minutes into its flight. Key quote: “The HTV wobbled too much. Rather than risking an out-of-control flight, the bot self-destructed.”
At 10:44 pm (Eastern) tonight a ten foot wide asteroid will zip by the Earth at a distance of only 24,000 miles.
I thought I was joking in my post earlier today, but the TSA actually is requiring agents to put their hands down fliers’s pants!
Freedom of speech alert! The TSA, not content to stick its hands in our pants, is going to investigate the man who refused a body scan and recorded the whole event.
Go to sleep for science and space exploration.
The first asteroid sample return! Japanese scientists announced today that their probe Hayabusa did capture asteroid dust in its visit to the asteroid Itokawa.
Chinese female astronaut identified.
A fourth crack has been found on Discovery’s external tank. How this will affect Discovery’s November 30 launch remains unknown. There will a briefing on Monday to discuss the status of the schedule. This quote however gives me the willies:
External tank crack repairs are not unusual. Some 29 stringer cracks were found in 18 previous tanks, according to an official familiar with their history. Four have now been found in Discovery’s tank, ET-137, and three were found in a tank scheduled for use by the shuttle Atlantis next summer, ET-138. Doublers were used in 23 repairs.
There is a saying that we always fight the last war. After the Challenger accident NASA made great effort to prevent another o-ring failure in the solid rocket boosters, and ignored the foam falling from the external tank. After the Columbia accident, NASA then made great effort to prevent another piece of foam from hitting an orbiter.
Unfortunately, it appears that NASA may now be ignoring this crack problem. Even though they have been able to repair past cracks, for this many cracks to occur this often should cause alarm bells to ring throughout the agency, forcing a look at the problem in toto. Instead, it appears management has been making catch-as-catch-can repairs.
What makes this situation even more difficult is the factory that makes the external tanks has shut down. No new tanks are available. Thus, there are not many options for flying these last few shuttle missions except by using the already existing tanks, and repairing them as needed.
Like I said, this is beginning to give me the willies.
Except for the failure to install a video camers, two Russian astronauts successfully completed a six hour spacewalk on ISS today, doing a variety of construction tasks on the station’s exterior.
An evening pause: “Many a New Day” from Oklahoma (1955). It is the dance choreography here that is surprising and original.
National Opt-Out day at the airports is November 24. One commentator is suggesting that men wear kilts, just to drive the TSA even more crazy.
The space war returns! The lame duck session of Congress is now expected to pass a continuing resolution that extends into next year, leaving the final decisions about the budget to the next Congress. This is very bad news for NASA and what’s left of the government space program.
Update: I should add that I’m not bothered in the slightest that this might happen. The money that the present Congress proposed giving to NASA will not make the exploration of the solar system possible, and in fact might hinder that exploration significantly under the weight of government regulation. It is time to cut the cord, and stop depending on the damn government to conquer the stars.
Fire him! Local councilman calls the cops on two 13-year-old boys, because they are selling cupcake illegally!
Now here’s a good idea: Abolish the TSA.
Scientists have exhumed the body of Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe in order to do a new autopsy.
Videos from the Chinese lunar probe, Chang’e 2.
The first tests in Antarctica of a drill designed to drill cores on Mars.
