Comet Elenin is no more
Chicken Little wrong again! Comet Elenin is no more.
Author: Robert Zimmerman
Russia’s next attempt to return to Mars is set for a November 9 launch
Russia’s first attempt in decades to send a probe beyond Earth orbit is now set for a November 9 launch.
Phobos/Grunt is a combined orbiter and lander, and is aimed not at Mars but at the Martian moon Phobos.
The Hastings College Choir – Home on the Range
An evening pause: This beautiful rendition brings new life to a classic American song that sadly has become so familiar most people won’t listen to it any longer.
Eradicating polio: not this year
The effort to eradicated polio entirely by the end of 2012 will not be met.
Afghanistan and Nigeria, two of the three remaining endemic countries, have had more cases in the first nine months of this year than in 2010 altogether. Several other countries targeted by the plan have also seen more cases to date this year compared to this time in 2010. Additionally, polio had popped up in countries where it had previously been eradicated — notably China, which went polio-free for 11 years until this summer.
Sadly, politics and culture are almost certainly the main reasons polio still survives in these countries.
Ultimate caption fail
An evening pause: More proof that computers are not as smart as many people think they are.
VAB to be opened to tourists for the first time in years
The Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral is going to be opened to tourists for the first time in years.
Back in around 1977 I was down in Florida for that year’s science fiction Worldcon convention. At one point we went out to the space center to take the tour. Since this was after Apollo but before the shuttle, the VAB was then part of the tour, and they took us inside at the ground level so we could look up into its vast height. Hopefully, the new tours will let the tourists see more.
Living in the Heavenly Palace
What is will be like to live in China’s first orbiting space station.
NASA steals moon rock given to widow of NASA engineer
In a sting operation, NASA steals a moon rock from the widow of an retired NASA engineer.
Five months after NASA investigators and local agents swooped into the restaurant and hailed their operation as a cautionary tale for anyone trying to sell national treasure, no charges have been filed, NASA isn’t talking and the case appears stalled. The target, Joann Davis, a grandmother who says she was trying to raise money for her sick son, asserts the lunar material was rightfully hers, having been given to her space-engineer husband by Neil Armstrong in the 1970s.
Tea Party in Space argues for more money for commercial space
Andrew Gasser at the Tea Party in Space website today argues strongly for Congress to fully fund the new commercial space program at the $850 million amount requested by the Obama administration.
As much as I am for these new commercial companies, I do not think it a good idea to fund them at these high levels.
For one thing, the government is still broke. It can’t afford to spend that much money. It is therefore unseemly for a website that uses the “tea party” label to advocate more spending at this time.
For another, the more money the government commits to these companies, the more control the government is going to demand from them. Far better to keep the government participation as small as possible. Make it just enough to allow the companies to succeed but not enough so as to make the whole effort a government program.
The highest balloon airship in the world
Round house in Brazil
An evening pause: Living in a round house.
NASA Is Considering Fuel Depots in the Skies
NASA is considering putting fuel depots in orbit.
Under the plan outlined in the document, the propellant depot would be launched first, and then other rockets would carry fuel to the depot before a spacecraft arrived to fill up. That would increase the complexity for an asteroid mission — 11 to 17 launchings instead of four — but could get NASA astronauts to an asteroid by 2024, the study said. The total budget needed for the project from 2012 through 2030 would be $60 billion to $86 billion, the study said.
By contrast, a study last year that designed an asteroid mission around a heavy-lift rocket estimated that it would cost $143 billion and that the trip could not happen until 2029. The earlier study briefly considered propellant depots but quickly dismissed them.
This idea of putting fuel depots in space merely mirrors the 1960s proposal of using the Gemini capsule and the Titan rocket to assemble a spaceship in orbit for getting to the moon. According to the earlier proposal it would have been faster and cheaper to use existing smaller rockets and many additional launches than to build a giant Saturn 5 rocket that could put everything into orbit in only one launch. I have always thought this idea had merit.
The fuel depot concept is further confirmation that a heavy-lift rocket is not necessarily the only way one can get humans beyond Earth orbit.
NASA negotiating an extension of its deal with the Russians to fly astronauts to ISS
How our government gets Americans in space in the modern era: NASA is negotiating an extension of its deal with the Russians to fly astronauts to ISS.
ROSAT has crashed to Earth, but no one knows where as yet
ROSAT has crashed to Earth, but no one knows where as yet.
Kate Rusby – Let me be
An evening pause:
Plagiarism at Politico
More info on the news organization’s attempts to stonewall the story here.
More money troubles for Webb telescope
More money troubles for Webb telescope.
ROSAT expected to fall to Earth this weekend
The 1.7 ton ROSAT space telescope is expected to fall to Earth this weekend.
Six northeast senators introduce legislation making it a felony to sell fake maple syrup
Focused like a laser on the country’s real problems: Six northeast senators have introduced legislation that would make it a felony to sell fake maple syrup.
The Republican presidential candidate we’ve all been waiting for
The Republican presidential candidate we’ve all been waiting for.
Who, you may ask, is T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII?
Simply put, a man born to the conservative saddle. The only scion of the legendary swashbuckling conservative editor / author / bon vivant T. Coddington Van Voorhees VI, I have since my earliest days honed a conservatism forged in the fires of intellectual combat, stoked by the bellows of classic education, and tempered in the cooling waters of good breeding. Even before matriculating at East Hampton Country Daycare, I was thrust headlong into heady intellectual debates of postwar American politics. Oh, how I cherish those moments, bouncing astride my father’s knee, as he held postprandial court on the patio with Long Island Sound’s most scrupulous Republicans – like Newport GOP chairman Z. Pilastor Fennewick, Greenwich GOP legend Boylston McInernery, and East Hampton’s “hostess with the mostest,” Modesty Crabwater. And although Dad had his differences with each, I admired the elegant grace with which these Republicans could command an Adirondack chair or accept electoral defeat. It is that very same grace I shall endeavor to bring back to the Grand Old Party.