Author: Robert Zimmerman

China’s Yutu rover is still functioning but cannot move.

9:12 am

China’s Yutu rover is still functioning but cannot move.

Last week Yutu and its companion spacecraft, the Chang’e 3 Moon lander, awoke from a period of dormancy after the frigid, two-week lunar night — the third awakening since landing on 14 December, Chinese scientists said this week at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas. The probes continue to gather data and send it back to Earth.

But Yutu may never move more than the 100–110 metres it has already travelled from its landing site — in the Mare Imbrium. Mission officials had hoped that Yutu would travel to the rim of a nearby crater and explore it, but a mechanical failure in Yutu’s drive system has stilled the rover since late January.

I wish they would get their story straight. This article suggests that the problem wasn’t in the circuit that controls the storage of equipment during the long lunar night, as reported previously, but in the system that actually moves the rover.

It also appears from the story above that scientists were disappointed by the amount of information released at the Texas conference.

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Before and after images from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have discovered the formation of a new gully on Mars sometime between November 2010 and May 2013.

8:43 am

Before and after images from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have discovered the formation of a new gully on Mars sometime between November 2010 and May 2013.

The winding gully seems to have poured out from an existing ribbon channel in a crater in Mars’ Terra Sirenum region. The leading hypothesis on how the gully formed is that debris flowed downslope from an alcove and eroded a new channel. Though it looks water-carved, the gully is much more likely to have been formed when carbon dioxide frost accumulated on the slope and grew heavy enough to avalanche down and drag material down with it.

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Obamacare worked so well some Senators want to do the same for the real estate industry.

10:31 am

Obamacare worked so well some Senators want to do the same thing for the real estate industry.

Top Senate Banking Committee members released plans this week to wind down mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and replace them with a complicated apparatus disturbingly similar to Obamacare. While the proposal by Senators Tim Johnson (D-SD), the chairman, and Mike Crapo (R-ID), the ranking member, was announced with great fanfare, it simply follows the outlines of another bipartisan bill, offered last year by Sens. Bob Corker (R-TN) and Mark Warner (D-VA). The idea is to get rid of the two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) that provide mortgage financing today for most American homes and replace them with a system of private lending with securities explicitly backed by the federal government.

In going through contortions to reinvent the housing finance system, the senators have avoided the obvious solution: keep the basic platform that has generally served American homeowners well but reform it to reduce risks. Instead, Johnson and the others have come up with a contraption that resembles the Affordable Care Act in its convolutions and its potential for unintended consequences.

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“There were women and children inside our retail establishment when the (ATF) agents came in with guns drawn.”

9:02 am

Fascist thugs: “There were women and children inside our retail establishment when the (ATF) agents came in with guns drawn.”

The ATF raid was also in defiance of a court-ordered temporary restraining order against the ATF, telling them to leave the business alone. But hey, they’re the government, it’s up to them to decide what laws to enforce!

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According to an audit, the former chief financial officer of the Mojave Air and Space Port provided 24 straight months of inaccurate accounting reports.

8:53 am

According to an audit, the former chief financial officer of the Mojave Air and Space Port provided 24 straight months of inaccurate accounting reports.

That officer also resigned abruptly the morning this audit began, and had “cleared out her apartment” just beforehand. Still, there is no hint yet of any theft or loss of funds, only incompetence.

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The leftwing feminist professor who thought she had the right to use violent force to steal a anti-abortion protestor’s sign and destroy it has now been charged with vandalism, battery, and robbery.

10:43 pm

Leftwing civility: The leftwing feminist professor who thought she had the right to use violent force to steal a anti-abortion protestor’s sign and destroy it has now been charged with vandalism, battery, and robbery.

Video below the fold. The teacher even admits on camera that she is a “thief.” Somehow, she thinks that because she disagrees with these protestors it gives her the right to do anything she wants.
» Read more

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According to the former CEO of Arianespace, now head of the French space agency, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 costs significantly less to launch than the Ariane 5

10:29 pm

According to the former CEO of Arianespace, now head of the French space agency, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 costs significantly less to launch than the Ariane 5.

How big is the difference? Jean-Yves Le Gall, who until mid-2013 was chief executive of Evry, France-based Arianespace and is now president of the French space agency, CNES, addressed the point in Feb. 25 testimony to the French Senate. According to Le Gall, launching a satellite on an Ariane 5 costs around 100 million euros ($137 million). After subtracting the amount of European Space Agency subsidies to Arianespace, the per-satellite cost drops to about $100 million, he said.

Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX, he said, would charge $60 million to $70 million to launch the same satellite aboard the Falcon 9. In fact SpaceX has charged even less than that to its first few commercial customers.

It is for this reason that Arianespace is struggling to decide how to build its next generation rocket. They have find a way to do it cheaper, something that is very difficult for this multi-headed European conglomerate to do.

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“There’s no compassion in the Affordable Care Act.”

9:20 am

“There’s no compassion in the Affordable Care Act.”

From a pastor who has discovered at the last moment that the insurance under Obamacare did not cover his life-saving chemo treatments, putting him $50,000 in debt.

But since we know that this pastor is lying, according to Harry Reid, he must be ignored.

And then there’s this liar: Obamacare leaves Las Vegas man owing $407,000 in doctor bills.

What is Harry Reid going to do with all these liars hanging around making up stories about Obamacare?

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Putting a spacecraft back in the orbit it was intended, thirty-one years later.

9:14 am

Putting a spacecraft back in the orbit it was intended, thirty-one years later.

The spacecraft, ISEE-3, was intended to study the solar wind and the connection between the Sun and the Earth. In 1986 it was diverted instead to take a look at Halley’s Comet. Now there is an opportunity to return it to its original task, assuming engineers can wake it up after three decades.

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Scientists think they have detected active volcanoes on Venus.

3:12 pm

Scientists think they have detected active volcanoes on Venus.

We should hear more about this story in the next couple of days, after the scientists give their presentation at a science conference today. Note too that this result would only confirm other data, such as the fluctuating levels of sulfur in Venus’s atmosphere, that have suggested active volcanoes hidden under that planet’s thick cloud cover.

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The first test flight of NASA’s Orion capsule has been delayed from September to December.

8:50 am

The first test flight of NASA’s Orion capsule has been delayed from September to December.

The supposed reason is to allow a military launch to get the best launch opportunity first. I find this excuse to be quite lame, and instead suspect that the NASA program needed more time but did not want to admit this publicly.

The delay moves the launch until after the November elections. Watch the political pressure continue to build to end this expensive, bloated, and not-very-useful boondoggle.

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Comments again

1:10 pm

Just want to let my readers know that I will be out of town, caving in the mountains southeast of Tucson this weekend, out of range of the internet.

Because the comments presently need to be manually approved by me because the spam filter is still not working, no comments further will be approved until Sunday evening. If you post, be patient, your comment will appear then.

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One liberal pundit proposes that Democrats embrace Obamacare in the coming election campaign.

11:51 am

One liberal pundit proposes that Democrats embrace Obamacare in the coming election campaign.

Here’s a heretical idea. Rather than parsing the individual elements of the law, and trying to persuade voters on an à la carte basis, what about raising the stakes and defending the reform in its entirety as a historic effort to provide affordable health-care coverage to tens of millions of hard-working Americans who otherwise couldn’t afford it? Instead of shying away from the populist and redistributionist essence of the reform, which the White House and many Democrats in Congress have been doing since the start, it’s time to embrace it.

I hope they do it. For one thing, it would be refreshing to see Democrats actually campaigning honestly for once on what they actually believe in! For another, they would get creamed, because their fantasies about how wonderful Obamacare is have nothing to do with the horrible reality being experienced right now by millions of Americans.

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Arianespace and the Russian-owned Sea Launch are seeking to get the restrictions against them removed so that they can sell their services to more customers.

9:26 am

The competition heats up: Arianespace and the Russian-owned Sea Launch are seeking to get the restrictions against them removed so that they can sell their services to more customers.

Arianespace wants to sell its launch services to the U.S. government, something it is not allowed to do right now because of U.S. restrictions. These are the same kinds of restrictions that has prevented SpaceX from launching military satellites and which that company is now contesting.

Russia meanwhile wants to use Sea Launch for its own payloads, but because Sea Launch’s platform is based in California, the Russian government won’t allow their payloads on it because of security reasons. They want the platform moved to Russia so that they can use their own company to launch their own satellites.

The article also describes how Japan is trying to reduce the cost of its H-2A rocket by 50% so that it can become more competitive.

All in all, I would say that the arrival of SpaceX has done exactly what was predicted, shaken the industry out of its doldrums. How else to explain this sudden interest in open competition and lowering costs? These companies could have done this decades ago. They did not. Suddenly a new player arrives on the scene, offering to beat them at their own game. It is not surprising that they are fighting back.

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The next Dragon launch to ISS has been delayed for two weeks because of the detection of contamination that could affect some of its research cargo.

11:26 pm

The next Dragon launch to ISS has been delayed for two weeks because of the detection of contamination that could affect some of its research cargo.

[T]he launch was put on hold, sources said, when engineers noticed contamination of some sort on the Dragon’s lower unpressurized trunk section. Two of six electrically powered payloads aboard the Dragon are mounted in the trunk section — a first for this mission — and engineers were concerned the contamination might “outgas” in orbit and cause problems for the station-bound hardware.

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A Health and Human Services official has resigned in disgust from his job monitoring research misconduct because of his frustration with the federal bureaucracy.

5:23 pm

A Health and Human Services (HHS) official has resigned in disgust from his job monitoring research misconduct because of his frustration with the federal bureaucracy.

His resignation letter is brutal.

“[M]y role as ORI Director has been the very worst job I have ever had and it occupies up to 65% of my time,” he wrote. ”That part of the job is spent navigating the remarkably dysfunctional HHS bureaucracy to secure resources and, yes, get permission for ORI to serve the research community. I knew coming into this job about the bureaucratic limitations of the federal government, but I had no idea how stifling it would be.” According to Wright, activities that in his capacity as an academic administrator that took a day or two, took weeks and months in the federal government.

He then recounts some examples, such the inability to get approval to spend $35 and the inability to hire someone because there was “a secret priority list.”

But hey, don’t worry, we know that HHS will do so much better running the healthcare industry.

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A dishonest “Cosmos”.

4:44 pm

A dishonest “Cosmos”.

A educated religious scholar looks at one piece from the Tyson television series and discovers that its portrayal of religion is wrong and no better than blatant propaganda.

This morning, I watched the cartoon in question and took some notes. Let’s walk through what it gets right and what it gets wrong.

I’m actually not going to draw from any exotic sources for this post. I’m going to try confine what I include here only to things that can be found on the first page of a Google search for Giordano Bruno. This will illustrate more clearly the rank intellectual dishonesty involved in this segment. The truth of the story was never more than five minutes away from host Neil DeGrasse Tyson and his writers, producers, and animators. They opted to tell half-truths and outright lies instead. [emphasis mine]

I am not surprised. I said that we should expect this. Tyson’s job is to be front man for the modern shibboleths of the leftwing academic society, and this series is going to pound them home, regardless of the facts.

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Why conservatives should have no regrets dumping Mitch McConnell as the Republican leader in the Senate.

12:06 pm

Why conservatives should have no regrets dumping Mitch McConnell as the Republican leader in the Senate.

I have had very mixed feelings about McConnell, and was unsure about whether the campaign to get rid of him made sense, until I read this article. The author is devastating, very effectively noting that even though McConnell has generally been very conservative in his votes as a senator, as a leader he has routinely supported the election of RINOs over conservatives.

As the man who helps steer lobbyist dollars to get candidates elected, you all think McConnell is a solid conservative. [Then] why is he steering dollars and support to men like Charlie Crist, Arlen Specter, Trey Grayson, David Dewhurst, and Bob Bennett? McConnell may be voting the way you all want on the votes that matter to you, but he is clearly and indisputably working to get other men elected whose votes you’d despise in states where more conservative challengers could easily win and have won.

Fortunately, all of McConnell’s candidates above eventually lost, and we got instead Marco Rubio, Pat Toomey, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Mike Lee, names that have very effectively changed the political landscape by tilting it in a conservative direction. In other cases, however, McConnell’s candidates won, and thus we have guys like Jeff Flake, a Republican in name only, producing a profound lack of unity in the Republican party.

Getting rid of McConnell would tilt that landscape even more so in a conservative direction, and might finally give the Republicans the balls to really fight this fight instead of squabbling among themselves.

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