Author: Robert Zimmerman

Gun manufacturers flee California over its microstamping law.

10:28 am

Banning guns by proxy: Gun manufacturers flee California over its microstamping law.

Smith & Wesson announced it will stop selling its handguns in California rather than manufacture them to comply with the new microstamping law. The other publicly traded firearms manufacturer in the U.S., Sturm, Ruger, also said this month that it will stop new sales to California. The announcement late Wednesday came a week after the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the trade association for firearms manufacturers, filed suit against California for requiring that all new semi-automatic pistols that are not already on the state’s approved gun roster have the microstamping technology.

Microstamping is a patented process that, in theory, would have a unique code on the tip of a gun’s firing pin that would engrave that information on the casing when fired.

In other words, while the California legislature might want to make believe the technology is practical, the people who have to build and sell the guns know otherwise and can’t do it. So, this law essentially becomes a backdoor ban on guns and the second amendment. If you make it illegal to manufacture and sell guns, it doesn’t matter whether you have a right to own one.

Note also the basic dishonesty of the legislators who passed this law. They knew it was impractical, and did it not to put microstamping on ammo, but to make it impossible to sell guns. Or to put it more bluntly, they lied about what they were doing.

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The credit rating agency Moody’s has downgraded its outlook for health insurancers from stable to negative because of Obamacare.

10:10 am

Finding out what’s in it: The credit rating agency Moody’s has downgraded its outlook for health insurancers from stable to negative because of Obamacare.

In other words, the agency now expects many of these companies to go bankrupt because of the costs and regulations imposed on them by the healthcare law.

Aren’t we all glad Obama and the Democratic Party forced this law on us?

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For more information about that newly discovered supernova in the nearby galaxy M82 go here and here.

9:50 am

For more information about that newly discovered supernova in the nearby galaxy M82 go here and here.

The first link notes that the supernova has brightened to 11.5 magnitude and could get even brighter in the next two weeks. Though still too dim for the naked eye, it is easily bright enough right now for most amateur telescopes and binoculars. How much brighter it will get remains a question.

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Astronomers have detected water vapor spurting from Ceres, the solar system’s largest asteroid.

9:41 am

Using the Herschel Space Telescope astronomers have detected water vapor spurting from Ceres, the solar system’s largest asteroid.

Herschel’s sensors spied plumes during three of the four observation periods. The strength of absorption varied over a matter of hours, a trend probably caused by relatively small sources of water vapour rotating in and out of view of Earth, the researchers say.

Data gathered in March 2013 suggest that the plumes originated from two widely separated, 60-kilometre-wide spots in the dwarf planet’s mid-latitude regions. Together, these spots ejected about 6 kilograms of water vapour into space each second. Neither ground-based observations nor images from the Hubble Space Telescope are keen enough to identify the as-yet-mysterious areas, says Küppers. “We don’t know what these features are, we just know that they’re darker than their surroundings,” he notes.

The NASA probe Dawn will arrive at Ceres early next year, and take a good look at these plumes. Should be exciting.

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Virgin Galactic today announced the successful testing of their own new rocket engine.

9:32 am

The competition heats up: Virgin Galactic today announced the successful testing of their own new rocket engine.

Virgin Galactic, the world’s first commercial spaceline, announced today that it has reached a significant milestone in the testing of a new family of liquid rocket engines for LauncherOne, the company’s small satellite launch vehicle. As part of a rapid development program, Virgin Galactic has now hot-fired both a 3,500 lbf thrust rocket engine and a 47,500 lbf thrust rocket engine, called the “NewtonOne” and “NewtonTwo” respectively. Further, the NewtonOne engine has successfully completed a full-mission duty cycle on the test stand, firing for the five-minute duration expected of the upper stage engine on a typical flight to orbit. These tests are being conducted on two new state-of-the-art test stands that the team designed, assembled and installed internally. [emphasis mine]

Though they say that these engines are for their orbital rocket, not SpaceShipTwo, I find it interesting that their development was in-house, not by Scaled Composites which has so far been building everything for Virgin Galactic. Moreover, note the highlighted words, “rapid development program.” Though you should never be leisurely about this stuff in order to compete, giving this particular title to this engine program suggests they are in a particular hurry to develop it.

Both factoids suggest again that they are not happy with the performance of the hybrid engines Scaled Composites built for them, under their direction, and are now working hard to replace them.

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The fraud in global warming science

10:56 am

You might have noticed a plethora of stories in the last couple of days, reporting claims by NASA and NOAA that 2013 was one of the hottest years ever on record.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Tuesday released its global temperature figures for 2013. The average world temperature was 58.12 degrees (14.52 Celsius) tying with 2003 for the fourth warmest since 1880. NASA, which calculates records in a different manner, said Tuesday that 2013 was the seventh warmest on record, with an average temperature of 58.3 degrees (14.6 Celsius).

How can this be, if there has been a pause in global warming for the past 17 years, as has been admitted by the UN’s IPCC and climate scientists everywhere?

The answer, in my opinion: outright fraud.
» Read more

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A new study outlines the problems British researchers had in their 2012 attempt to drill down into a buried Antarctic lake.

9:33 am

A new study outlines the problems British researchers had in their 2012 attempt to drill down into a buried Antarctic lake.

The project had been under development for ten years, and yet:

According to the paper, problems started when the boiler that was intended to melt large quantities of snow to provide hot water for the drill failed to work properly because of short-circuiting in its control panel. More severe problems followed. The two parallel drills — one to drill the main borehole to reach the lake, and one to create a reservoir cavity to recirculate drilling water — ran too slowly. Other failures, including of components designed to ensure vertical drilling, exacerbated the problems.

“The drilling was essentially undertaken blindly,” says Siegert. Probably because one or both holes were not drilled vertically, the cavity failed to link with the main borehole. Water also leaked into the cavity drill and froze the hose in the drill hole. Attempts to remove the hose failed, so it had to be cut. At that point, and with not enough fuel left to reach the lake, Siegert gave up.

Seems to me that these problems — some very basic engineering design errors — are a good example of some basic incompetence. If I was providing financial backing to this project I would probably demand that a lot of people be fired before I would give them anymore money.

The report also has this interesting detail which confirms the doubts about the Russian drilling effort:

In 2012, Russian scientists broke into Lake Vostok, by far the largest of Antarctica’s hidden lakes, using a kerosene-fuelled drill. But their samples are spoiled with drill fluid and the bacteria they contain are probably contaminant species.

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To environmentalists no warming and more bears means global warming and an endangered species

9:20 am

A U.S. Geological Survey science team has determined that the grizzly bear population has recovered enough that the bear can be taken off the endangered species list.

A report delivered in November by the US Geological Survey’s Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team describes a resilient and healthy bear population that has adapted to the loss of pine nuts by eating more elk and bison, keeping fat stores at levels that allow the bears to survive and reproduce. For Christopher Servheen, a biologist who oversees grizzly-bear recovery efforts at the Fish and Wildlife Service in Missoula, Montana, that is not surprising. “Bears are flexible,” he says. “It’s easier to say what they don’t eat than what they do eat.”

Not surprisingly, environmental activists don’t like this decision. They claim that, wait for it, global warming threatens the bear enough that it should not be delisted.
» Read more

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A woman spends six weeks trying to cancel an Obamacare insurance policy.

8:43 pm

Repeal the damn law: A woman spends six weeks trying to cancel an Obamacare insurance policy.

Ms Hill was told by an ObamaCare operator that she needed to call her insurance company, who passed her back to the Federal Exchange. Ms Hill claims the terminate button on Obamacare’s website did not work, and that she spent ‘several hours a day’ on hold with the Health Insurance Marketplace. Finally, Ms Hill drove to her insurance company’s headquarters in Kansas City, 100 miles from her home, and they were able to help her cancel her ‘Obamacare’ plan.

Remember, Obamacare essentially asks the equivalent of the DMV to handle the complex task of running the nation’s health insurance industry. And we all know how efficient the DMV is!

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Because of a computer reboot, Rosetta’s revival from hibernation came 18 minutes late.

3:57 pm

Because of a computer reboot, Rosetta’s revival from hibernation came 18 minutes late.

[Rosetta] woke yesterday as planned, to the relief of ESA scientists – but the signal it sent home to confirm it was awake reached Earth late, fraying the nerves of some mission controllers in the meantime. Due to call at 1745 GMT, Rosetta did not announce its revival until 1818. Fifteen minutes could be explained because the spacecraft’s computer checked the on-board clock only every quarter of an hour. The additional 18 minutes, however, was a mystery.

Now, the telemetry has shown that soon after Rosetta’s first revival sequence had started, the on-board computer automatically rebooted and the sequence started again, causing 18 minutes of delay.

It seems all is well now, though the engineers plan to spend some time pinpointing the cause of the reboot.

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A village government in New York is trying to take a private grocery using eminent domain in order to replace it with a municipality-owned market.

12:51 pm

Theft by government: A village government in New York is trying to take a private grocery using eminent domain in order to replace it with a municipality-owned market.

In a statement, the village said it has “been trying, without success, to engage the Whitneys in substantive discussions” about renovating for the past year. “[A]t various times they have clearly stated their inability or unwillingness to undertake the renovation requirement and despite statements to the contrary, no building plans or architectural drawings of any kind have ever been presented to the village for review,” it said.

But here’s where the story becomes particularly frustrating for Whitney: Four engineers, including two commissioned by the village, reviewed the storm damage on the market and ruled that it was not “substantial,” the store owner’s son, Scott, said. “The repairs that are required due to the flooding . . . do not appear to me to be substantial improvements as defined in the building code,” one of the village-commissioned reports reads.

Nevertheless, despite the findings in the reports, village officials continue to argue that the damage is too much for Whitney to handle. Officials also said the veteran’s submitted plans for repairs are insufficient or incomplete.

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A donut-sized rock suddenly appears in front of the Mars rover Opportunity.

10:18 am

A donut-sized rock suddenly appears in front of the Mars rover Opportunity.

NASA announced the discovery of the rock at an event at Caltech in Pasadena this past Thursday night, dubbing the rock “Pinnacle Island.” “It’s about the size of a jelly doughnut,” NASA Mars Exploration Rover lead scientist Steve Squyres told Discovery News. “It was a total surprise, we were like ‘wait a second, that wasn’t there before, it can’t be right. Oh my god! It wasn’t there before!’ We were absolutely startled.”

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If you want to see the inside of NASA’s gigantic Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), you better hurry. Tours cease in February.

9:33 am

If you want to see the inside of NASA’s gigantic Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), you better hurry. Tours cease in February.

Tours into the VAB have only occurred during gaps in the American space effort. I was lucky to visit Florida back in 1977, after the end of the Apollo program and before the start of the shuttle program, so my tour went inside the VAB. For the last few years, since the shuttle’s retirement, interior tours resumed.

The tour is worth it. If you can find the time and money, get down there now!

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Another law, another squelched dream

9:28 am

Surprise, surprise! Virgin Galactic space tourists could be grounded by federal regulations.

Virgin Galactic submitted an application to the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation in late August 2013, says Attenborough. The office, which goes by the acronym AST, has six months to review the application, meaning an approval may come as early as February. Industry experts, however, say that may be an overly optimistic projection. “An application will inevitably be approved, but it definitely remains uncertain exactly when it will happen,” says Dirk Gibson, an associate professor of communication at the University of New Mexico and author of multiple books on space tourism. “This is extremely dangerous and unchartered territory. It’s space travel. AST has to be very prudent,” he says. “They don’t want to endanger the space-farers or the public, and they can’t let the industry get started and then have a Titanic-like scenario that puts an end to it all in the eyes of the public.” [emphasis mine]

As I predicted ten years ago, the 2004 revision to the Commercial Space Act puts bureaucrats in charge of the exploration of space by private citizens, a fact that can have no good consequences.
» Read more

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After three years in hibernation Europe’s Rosetta comet probe has successfully come back to life.

4:10 pm

After three years in hibernation Europe’s Rosetta comet probe has successfully come back to life.

The craft at the heart of ESA’s €1-billion (US$1.4-billion) comet-hunting mission was shut down in 2011 to save energy while travelling in deep space. Rosetta successfully re-established communications with Earth on 20 January.
With an alarm pre-set for 10:00 GMT, a signal was expected at any time from 17:30 GMT, once the spacecraft had warmed up and turned its antenna towards Earth. But Rosetta kept everyone guessing, with the first sign that everything had gone to plan only arriving around 40 minutes later.

ESA’s European Space Operations Centre erupted in cheering and hugging as small spikes appeared in radio signals received at NASA deep-space communications centres in Canberra and in Goldstone, California.

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“You can literally just open up your browser, go to this, and extract all this information without actually having to hack the website itself.”

11:49 am

“You can literally just open up your browser, go to this, and extract all this information without actually having to hack the website itself.”

Guess which website. And guess what personal and confidential information he is extracting.

Aren’t you glad the Democrats and Barack Obama built it for you?

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A comparison between reality and the predictions of global warming scientists from 1988 reveals an epic fail.

9:32 am

The uncertainty of science: A comparison between reality and the predictions of global warming scientists from 1988 reveals an epic fail.

Look especially at the charts at the link. While carbon dioxide emissions increased at a higher rate than predicted, the global temperature — predicted to increase from 2 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit — has instead remained completely flat.

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A cancer patient discovers at the last minute that she can’t keep her doctor or get treatment, because of Obamacare.

9:18 am

Repeal the damn law! A cancer patient discovers that she can’t keep her doctor or even get treatment, because of Obamacare.

I realize I am a racist and a terrorist for repeatedly demanding that Obamacare get repealed, but unlike the Democrats and President Obama — who are willing to defend this law under all conditions — I don’t like it when innocent people die because of some stupid regulations imposed on them by self-righteous elites who really don’t know what they are doing.

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The European Space Agency has now released its first cost estimates for upgrading and replacing its Ariane 5 rocket.

8:54 am

The European Space Agency has now released its first cost estimates for upgrading and replacing its Ariane 5 rocket.

Europe needs to find about 1 billion euros ($1.35 billion) to complete development of an upgrade to its current Ariane 5 heavy-lift rocket, which would fly in 2018 and be capable of lifting satellites weighing 11,000 kilograms into geostationary transfer orbit, European Space Agency Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain said Jan. 17. The Ariane 5 upgrade, called Ariane 5 ME, will be on the table for ESA governments to decide, alongside the new Ariane 6 rocket, at a meeting scheduled for December in Luxembourg.

In a press briefing in Paris, Dordain said it is too early to say how much Ariane 6 will cost to develop. Government and industry estimates have ranged between 3 billion and 4 billion euros, with an inaugural flight in 2021.

As Doug Messier notes in his worthwhile analysis of these numbers, “Europe is in deep trouble.” From a customer’s perspective, these new rockets won’t fly (pun intended). The cost is too high and the development time too long. By the time they get both Ariane 5 and Ariane 6 ready for launch they will be obsolete and overpriced, when compared to the rocket’s that will already be available from their competitors.

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