Author: Robert Zimmerman

A FAA waiver granted to SpaceX for its next launch outlines details on the company’s effort to recover the first stage for reuse.

1:29 pm

The competition heats up: A FAA waiver granted to SpaceX for its next launch outlines the details of the company’s effort to recover the first stage for reuse.

The first stage will coast after stage separation, and then perform an experimental burn with three engines to reduce the entry velocity just prior to entry. Prior to landing in the water, it will perform a second experimental burn with one engine to impact the water with minimal velocity. The second stage will coast and then perform an experimental burn to depletion.

Elon Musk has said that they will be experimenting with bringing the first stage back safely with each launch of the upgraded Falcon 9 rocket. This waiver now gives us the plan for the first launch. It also shows that they are also considering recovery of the second stage as well.

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Scientists using data from India’s Chandrayaan-1 space probe have detected new evidence of water inside one crater.

9:10 am

More water on the Moon: Scientists using data from India’s Chandrayaan-1 space probe have detected new evidence of water inside one lunar crater.

What makes this detection important is that this particular water was not placed there by the solar wind or asteroids. Its chemistry suggests it seeped upward from deep within the Moon’s interior.

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Engineers in India have decided to completely replace the leaking second stage engine of the GSLV rocket whose launch was scrubbed last week.

9:00 am

Engineers in India have decided to completely replace the leaking second stage engine of the GSLV rocket whose launch was scrubbed last week.

The GSLV is a three-stage launch vehicle with four strap-on motors hugging the first stage. The first stage is powered by solid fuel while the four strap-on motors and the second stage are powered by liquid fuel. The third is the cryogenic engine powered by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen.

“At the rocket assembly building, the satellite, cryogenic engine and the second stage have been destacked. It has been decided to shift the second stage to Mahendragiri for detailed inspection and study,” the ISRO official told IANS. He said ISRO has also decided to start assembling another engine so that the GSLV could fly at the earliest. Queried about the time-frame for the GSLV’s flight, he said: “It is not possible to give a time-frame for the GSLV’s flight now.”

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The Homeland Security employee who runs a website promoting race war has been put on paid leave.

4:31 pm

Does this make you feel safer? The Homeland Security employee who runs a website promoting race war has been put on paid leave.

Then there’s this quote:

The website declares, “in order for Black people to survive the 21st century, we are going to have to kill a lot of whites – more than our Christian hearts can possibly count,” the Alabama-based SPLC said in its report.

One of Kimathi’s former supervisors at DHS told SPLC’s Hatewatch that, “Everybody is the office is afraid of him,” and that his co-workers are “afraid he will come in with a gun and someday go postal.”

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Healthcare premiums have climbed almost $3,000 since 2009.

9:28 am

Healthcare premiums have climbed almost $3,000 since 2009.

The important point however is this:

And while annual premium increases have moderated over the past two years, that’s due to trends in the insurance market largely unrelated to ObamaCare, and trends the law could actually reverse.

To save money on insurance people had been shifting to plans with high deductibles. Obamacare however has outlawed such plans, thus requiring health insurance coverage in cases where people really don’t need it or can’t afford it.

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Sierra Nevada’s engineering test vehicle of its Dream Chaser mini-shuttle completed its first capture carry flight test yesterday.

8:50 am

The competition heats up: Sierra Nevada’s engineering test vehicle of its Dream Chaser mini-shuttle completed its first capture carry flight test yesterday.

The test, which saw the lifting body space vehicle lifted by a Sikorsky S-64 to around 12,400 ft above the dry lakebed, follows completion of tow tests earlier this month. … During the Aug 22 flight the Dream Chaser’s flight computer, guidance, navigation and control systems were tested along with its landing gear and nose skid, which were deployed during the sortie.

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The University of Virginia is cutting health insurance coverage for spouses.

9:59 am

Finding out what’s in it: The University of Virginia is cutting health insurance coverage for spouses in order to avoid the cost of Obamacare.

Though the article doesn’t say, I would not be surprised if the university is also cutting the work hours of some teachers to make them part-timers as well, for the same reasons. And as Moe Lane notes, it is almost certain that this is what these university people voted for, as almost every single academic in the country is a partisan Democrat. I wonder how they will spin this disaster to blame it on conservatives.

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NASA will reactivate the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) next month to use it to look for more near Earth asteroids.

4:48 pm

NASA will reactivate the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) next month to use it to look for more near Earth asteroids.

This decision raises two thoughts.

  • Why did they shut it down in the first place if it was still viable and could still do important research? If the cost wasn’t worth the benefit then, how has this equation changed now? And if the cost was worth the benefit, it then was foolish to shut it down in the first place. Though it costs money to operate these things, it is always cheaper to keep something running than to build something new. The press announcement above doesn’t really address these issues, and I wish it did.
  • I wonder if this decision is somehow related to the end of the Kepler mission. With Kepler out of service, maybe NASA decided to shift the funds to run that telescope over to WISE. They do not say, but the timing is interesting. This decision could be a hint that Kepler doesn’t really have another mission it can fulfill, and thus the money to run it has already been put elsewhere.
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UPS announced today that it is dropping the spousal coverage for 15,000 employees because of the cost of Obamacare.

2:40 pm

Finding out what’s in it: UPS announced today that it is dropping the spousal coverage for 15,000 employees because of the cost of Obamacare.

To the Obama administration and the Democrats, this is proof that Obamacare works. According to a spokeswoman for U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “The health care law will make health insurance more affordable, strengthen small businesses and make it easier for employers to provide coverage to their workers.” Well, obviously!

Orwell called this kind of thinking doublethink, the ability to hold two completely contradictory statements in your brain and see nothing contradictory about it.

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Space agencies of the world unite!

9:48 am

On Tuesday NASA released what it calls a new “space exploration roadmap,” outlining the agency’s goals for the human exploration of space over the next few decades.

Normally I’d say, who cares? The space agency puts these kinds of PR roadmaps together periodically. None of them really ever mean that much. And in truth, this particular report doesn’t mean that much either. However, what makes this “Global Plan” interesting and worth mentioning is the participants who wrote it. It seems that NASA and the Obama administration didn’t do it alone.
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Japan’s unveiled its new Epsilon rocket yesterday, scheduled for its first launch next week.

9:10 am

The competition heats up: Japan’s unveiled its new Epsilon rocket yesterday, scheduled for its first launch next week.

Epsilon is a low-cost, high-performance, solid-fuel rocket co-developed by JAXA and IHI AEROSPACE Co.,Ltd. and designed to launch scientific satellites. Epsilon features the world’s first innovative launch system called “Mobile Launch Control” which allows for built-in checks to be conducted autonomously within the rocket’s system. This allows staff to focus on high-level monitoring, making overall performance very smooth. A spokesman joked that it is so easy to control that staff could monitor the rocket on their laptops while at Starbucks.

In the past Japan has not been very good at building cheap and efficient rockets. We shall see how this one does.

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A draft of the next IPCC climate report has arrived, and it is more of the same: We are all gonna die!

9:56 am

A draft of the next IPCC climate report has arrived, and it is more of the same: We are all gonna die!

An international panel of scientists has found with near certainty that human activity is the cause of most of the temperature increases of recent decades, and warns that sea levels could conceivably rise by more than three feet by the end of the century if emissions continue at a runaway pace. The scientists, whose findings are reported in a draft summary of the next big United Nations climate report, largely dismiss a recent slowdown in the pace of warming, which is often cited by climate change doubters, attributing it most likely to short-term factors. The report emphasizes that the basic facts about future climate change are more established than ever, justifying the rise in global concern. It also reiterates that the consequences of escalating emissions are likely to be profound.

I love the way the journalist here uses the term “climate change doubters.” Throughout the story it is applied to skeptical scientists in such a way as to imply that any doubt about these conclusions is obviously something to snicker at and to ignore.

As for the claim that the seas will rise three feet in the next 90 years, note that the level of sea rise has been consistently between 2 and 3 millimeters per year for the past half century, even as we have been pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and the climate has supposedly warmed. At 3mm per year, the seas will only rise 270 millimeters by the end of the century, or just under 11 inches, not three feet as claimed by this new IPCC report.

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