So, what was the top secret payload carried by Dragon on its first orbital mission? SpaceX revealed this secret today: their tribute to Monty Python.
A wheel of cheese.
It ain’t about science: WikiLeaks cables confirm worst fears of climate skeptics.
Maybe I’ll be able to eat corn again instead of putting it in my car! Corn ethanol tax credits on the way out?
Another airport is considering dumping the TSA.
And these are the people who want to tinker with the climate: Cancun climate summit attendees eagerly sign petition to ban “dihydrogen monoxide,” which in plain language is nothing more than water!
This will make things chilly in Cancun: More than 1000 scientists dissent over man-made global warming claims.
The first carbon-rich exoplanet discovered.
Oink! Oink! The wind industry warns of job losses without federal grants.
If only the book was the Koran and these Jews believed in Mohammed, then someone might care! Eight Hebrew texts stolen from the library at Indiana University and thrown in toilets and urinated on, followed by several attacks on Jews at the university.
An evening pause: Deep Space 9, “The Quickening.” The entire population of a planet has a disease that kills all, horribly, but only after many years. No one believes a cure is possible, except Julian Bashir.
“Gore effect” strikes Cancun Climate Conference 3 days in a row.
Firestorm over arsenic microbe continues to grow. Now the leader author of the paper responds to the criticisms from other scientists that have been popping up on the web.
SpaceX is two for two! The Falcon 9 launch today was a success, and was topped off by the successful return of the Dragon capsule after two orbits.
This is big news. Think about it: a private company — not a government — has designed and built a rocket and capsule, capable of carrying astronauts, and successfully launched both and recovered the capsule. Hot dog! True space travel might very well be around the corner at last.
Sad news: It appears that Japan’s Venus probe failed to enter orbit, and might have flown past Venus.
Update: It is confirmed that the spacecraft flew past Venus. There is a chance Japan could try again, when Akatsuka returns to Venus — in about seven years.
The continuing space war: A draft version of NASA’s budget suggests that the lame duck Congress will more or less follow the recommendations of the authorization bill passed in September.
NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center today published its monthly update of the Sun’s developing sunspot cycle (see below). The graph shows the slow rise in sunspots (blue/black lines) in comparison with the consensis prediction made by the solar science community in May 2009 (red line).
As I noted last month, the rise in sunspots as we ramp up to the next solar maximum has definitely slowed, which indicates clearly that we are heading towards the weakest solar maximum in more than two centuries. And as I have noted repeatedly on this website as well as on the John Batchelor Show, that means very cold weather!
A recent paper published in Hydrological Sciences Journal states that climate models used by IPCC cannot even predict known past climate patterns. Key quote:
It is claimed that GCMs [General Climate Models] provide credible quantitative estimates of future climate change, particularly at continental scales and above. Examining the local performance of the models at 55 points, we found that local projections do not correlate well with observed measurements. Furthermore, we found that the correlation at a large spatial scale, i.e. the contiguous USA, is worse than at the local scale. However, we think that the most important question is not whether GCMs can produce credible estimates of future climate, but whether climate is at all predictable in deterministic terms.
Cool news! India said Wednesday that future climate negotiations would be unlikely if the Kyoto protocol is not extended in some manner this week at the climate summit in Cancun.
An evening pause: This newsreel, made shortly after the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, gives an honest sense of the rage felt by Americans following the attack. Or to quote the words placed in the mouth of Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto from the movie Tora! Tora! Tora!:
“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant, and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
Though it is not clear that Yamamoto ever actually said this line, it encapsulates the consequences of Pearl Harbor quite concisely.
More nations certain to follow! Because of onerous TSA regulations, the Japanese postal service has ended airmail shipments to the US of any package weighing more than a pound.
The actual list of companies receiving healthcare waivers, from the government itself.
What I find interesting about this list is the number of insurance companies and unions on it. The insurance companies would be the ones most familiar with the consequences of Obama’s healthcare bill and therefore the likeliest to react quickly to it. The unions, however, were almost all shilling for the bill’s passage, which suggests that the leaders of these unions are simply idiots for backing something without knowing what was in it. Now that they know they are scrambling to avoid it.
Our government in action! Inspector general notes that NASA sold excess computers without deleting the sensitive data still on them.
The military’s perspective on the X-37B.
Fifteen people have been arrested in Mali for embezzling $4 million intended to research malaria and tuberculosis.
It appears that the next attempt to launch Falcon 9/Dragon is now set for Wednesday.
What could possibly go wrong? A Muslim Brotherhood front group, hired by the TSA, has trained 2200 airport screeners.
What part of “Congress shall make no law” do they not understand? The push by the FCC to regulate news reporting draws fire.
If this law was so great, why is this happening? Waivers to the Obama healthcare bill continue to pile up.
Then again, maybe this quote explains it: “The new legislation would have left our part-time workers without their medical coverage,” said Tom Schroder of Universal Orlando Public Relations.
