Hugh Laurie – All you gotta do is . . .
An evening pause: Once again, a folksinger provides us the answer.
Author: Robert Zimmerman
Placido Domingo – Furusato (My Country Home)
An evening pause: From a concert performed in Japan on April 10, 2011, only a month after the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Stay for the end, to see the audience’s response.
Space News suggests Congress use the billions for NASA’s heavy-lift rocket to fund JWST
In an editorial yesterday Space News suggested that Congress use the billions it is allocating for NASA’s heavy-lift rocket to fund the James Webb Space Telescope instead.
This is not surprising. Webb already has a strong constiuency (astronomers, the public) while the Space Launch System has little support outside of Congress and the specific aerospace contractors who want the work. With tight budgets as far as the eye can see into the future, and the likelihood that Congress is going to become more fiscal conservative after the next election, it would not shock me in the slightest if SLS gets eliminated and the money is given to Webb. And if the SpaceX and Orbital Sciences cargo missions to ISS go well then cutting SLS would almost be a certainty, as this success would demonstrate that these private companies should be able to replace SLS for a tenth of the cost.
And I also think this would be a much wiser use of the taxpayers money.
India puts four satellites in orbit with one rocket
Success for India: Its PSLV rocket yesterday lifted four satellites into orbit.
ROSAT predicted to re-enter the atmosphere October 20 to October 25
The defunct 2.4 ton ROSAT space telescope is now predicted to crash to Earth sometime between October 20 and October 25.
A giant lava basin on Mars appears to have instead once been a lake of water
The uncertainty of science: Hesperia Planum, a giant basin on Mars, assumed for decades to have been formed by volcanic activity, now appears to have instead been formed by water.
Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser to get its first test flight in the summer of 2012
Dream Chaser, Sierra Nevada’s space plane, is to get its first test flight this coming summer.
For the unmanned test flight, it will be carried into the skies by WhiteKnightTwo, the carrier aircraft for the commercial suborbital passenger ship SpaceShipTwo, backed by Virgin Galactic, a U.S. company owned by Richard Branson’s London-based Virgin Group.
A UN report says that nearly one billion people are hungry because of biofuels such as ethanol from corn
A UN report this week says that nearly one billion people are hungry, partly because of biofuels such as ethanol from corn.
The findings are echoed in a report published today by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), based in Washington DC. Maximo Torero, one of the report’s authors, says policymakers must “curtail biofuels subsidies” and “discourage the use of food crops in biofuel production” to limit food price volatility.
The Democratic Senate rejects Obama’s jobs plan
Just another indication of how politically weak Obama is: The Democratic Senate has rejected Obama’s jobs plan.
Gilad Shalit freed: Israel agrees to swap a thousand Palestinian prisoners for him
Gilad Shalit freed: Israel agrees to swap a thousand Palestinian prisoners for him.
I wonder how many of those Palestinian prisoners, many imprisoned for terrorist acts, will come back to do more harm.
Gillian Welch & David Rawlings – Red Clay Halo
An evening pause: Some great guitar pickin’!
Finding out if neutrinos actually can move faster than light.
An update on the launchpad work for the first test flight of Taurus 2
An update, with pictures, from Orbital Sciences on the launchpad and assembly work leading to the first test flight of the Taurus 2 rocket.
No Jews allowed at Jewish holy site in Egypt
The tolerance of Islam: Jews banned at Jewish holy site in Egypt.
London to Tokyo in 90 minutes, via space
London to Tokyo in ninety minutes, via space.
As much as I want every space tourism company to succeed, I’ll believe this story only when I see it.
The space police of Baikonur
I find this quote interesting:
When the status of the city was designated [after the fall of the Soviet Union], the leased Baikonur was monitored by two Interior Ministries, two prosecutors’ offices and two state security organs. But social problems have not disappeared. Engineers and astronauts are not the only ones who live in the city. Baikonur hosts a great deal of people who have local residence papers, including the indigenous Kazakhs. They cannot work on Baikonur objects because mostly Russians are hired to work there. If the Kazakhs are lucky enough to be hired, they are paid far less than the Russians.
In June of this year mass uprisings occurred in Baikonur. A crowd of youths pelted a police patrol car with stones and bottles.
Climategaters running a science session at geology conference
Want to ask climategate scientist Michael Mann some questions? He will be presenting a paper today during a session on extreme weather and how it links to climate change at a geology conference in Minnesota.
The strange rubbing boulders of Chile
The strange rubbing boulders of Chile.
Then, on another trip to the Atacama, Quade was standing on one of these boulders, pondering their histories when a 5.3 magnitude earthquake struck. The whole landscape started moving and the sound of the grinding of rocks was loud and clear.
“It was this tremendous sound, like the chattering of thousands of little hammers,” Quade said. He’d probably have made a lot more observations about the minute-long event, except he was a bit preoccupied by the boulder he was standing on, which he had to ride like a surfboard. “The one I was on rolled like a top and bounced off another boulder. I was afraid I would fall off and get crushed.”
The abstract is here.
The remaining assets of Rocketplane Kistler are to be auctioned off November 11
Got $50,000 for the good faith deposit? Then you can bid on remaining assets of Rocketplane Kistler, to be auctioned off on November 11.
Rough Terrain
The Dawn scientists have released another spectacular image of the south polar mountain on Vesta whose relative size is three times that of Mount Everest. More information about the image can be found here. From the caption:
The peak of Vesta’s south pole mountain, seen in the center of the image, rises about 13 miles (22 kilometers) above the average height of the surrounding terrain. Another impressive structure is a large scarp, a cliff with a steep slope, on the right side of this image. The scarp bounds part of the south polar depression, and the Dawn team’s scientists believe features around its base are probably the result of landslides.
It appears the light gravity on Vesta allows for the formation of extreme topology.