Author: Robert Zimmerman

Except for a troublesome fan, the first Cygnus cargo capsule to dock with ISS is performing perfectly.

5:52 am

Except for a troublesome fan, the first Cygnus cargo capsule to dock with ISS is performing perfectly.

The fan has been a minor issue. The astronauts have simply turned it off periodically when it started to act up. What is really important is this:

The next Cygnus – along with its Antares launch vehicle – is already being processed at Orbital’s Wallops facility, with a target launch date of December 15, with an available launch window through to December 21.

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An eleven year old’s experiment in brewing beer in space will fly to ISS on the next Cygnus cargo flight in December.

6:17 pm

An eleven year old’s experiment in brewing beer in space will fly to ISS on the next Cygnus cargo flight in December.

The tiny brewery is set up inside a 6-inch-long (15 centimeters) tube, filled with separated hops, water, yeast and malted barley — all of the key ingredients used to make beer — and will be delivered to the station by the commercial firm NanoRacks. An astronaut aboard the station will shake up the mixture to see how the yeast interacts with the other ingredients in the beer. “I really didn’t expect this from the start,” Bodzianowski told KDVR, a Fox affiliate in Denver. “I really just designed my experiment to get a good grade in my class.”

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Astronomers have found evidence of the remains of an exoplanet that they think was once wet and rocky.

6:12 pm

Astronomers have found evidence of the remains of an exoplanet that they think was once wet and rocky.

Using observations obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope and the large telescopes of the W. M. Keck Observatory , they found an excess of oxygen – a chemical signature that indicates that the debris had once been part of a bigger body originally composed of 26 per cent water by mass. By contrast, only approximately 0.023 per cent of the Earth’s mass is water.

From what I can gather, the actual data here is somewhat skimpy, requring a lot of assumptions for the scientists to come to this conclusion. Nonetheless, the data is interesting and very tantalizing.

Posted from Memphis, Tennessee.

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“Look at these radicals who are blatantly defying the federal government by having a stroll and eating lunch in a CLOSED PARK.”

10:26 am

“Look at these radicals who are blatantly defying the federal government by having a stroll and eating lunch in a CLOSED PARK.”

Click on the link. Lots of hilariously captioned pictures of evil tourists defying their righteous government which is so sincerely trying to protect its property from those disgusting “little people.”

Posted as we pass Knoxville, Tennessee.

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A Iowan Mennonite couple that owns an art gallery has filed suit against the state’s Civil Rights Commission after being threatened with punishment for refusing to host a same-sex wedding on their property.

10:14 am

Jack-boot thugs: A Iowan Mennonite couple that owns an art gallery has filed suit against the state’s Civil Rights Commission after being threatened with punishment for refusing to host a same-sex wedding on their property.

Posted from Tennessee.

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“The Obama Administration’s behavior during the first week of the shutdown has been the best argument against Obamacare anyone has ever made.”

7:43 am

Another reasonable thought: “The Obama Administration’s behavior during the first week of the shutdown has been the best argument against Obamacare anyone has ever made.”

The American people do not want Obamacare, and they are demanding that Washington act to protect them from the harmful effects of this unfortunate law. The president’s response has been to ignore them, allow the government to shutdown, and then use his power to close national parks and monuments, stop paying veterans’ benefits, and cut off cancer research. This is exactly why we should not expand the government’s power over our health care choices. What power the government has, it will use – and misuse – to advance its own interests, even if that means punishing the American people along the way. [emphasis mine]

Just think what any power-hungry politician, from either party, might do if he or she had unfettered access to your personal health records. If you express any opposition to them, they might even use that information to attack and destroy you.

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Jaxa, the Japanese space agency, announced today its management goals for the future.

7:22 am

JAXA, the Japanese space agency, announced today its management goals for the future.

Management Philosophy

  • To realize a safe and affluent society using space and the sky.
  • By utilizing leading technological developments, we will succeed and deliver our achievements along with broader wisdom to society.

    • Action Declaration

  • Jubilation for human society
  • We will provide enjoyment and surprise to people by evolving our lives. [emphasis mine]

    • They then added this important note: “The above management philosophy and action declaration in English are a tentative translation version, thus the original Japanese version shall take precedence if any inconsistency arises.”

    Posted as we drive past rainy Roanoke, Virginia.

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    The Obamacare website — that doesn’t work and probably never will — was originally supposed to cost $93.7 million and ended up costing more than six times more, $634 million.

    6:42 am

    Government marches on! The Obamacare website — that doesn’t work and probably never will — was originally supposed to cost $93.7 million and ended up costing more than six times more, $634 million.

    Gee, this is almost as good as the James Webb Space Telescope, which is probably going to end up cost nine times more than originally budgeted.

    And obviously, this disaster must be the fault of either George Bush or the tea party!

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    More defiance of the Obama administration’s attempt to lock Americans out of public lands.

    5:59 am

    Occupy America: More examples of defiance of the Obama administration’s attempt to lock Americans out of public lands.

    The most telling quote from this story, however, is this statement by a park service spokesman about the first amendment exception they have instituted at the World War II memorial:

    Michael Litterst, a National Park Service spokesman, said the First Amendment exception applies only to several Washington and Philadelphia parks related to the government and its history, “due to these parks’ long history of hosting First Amendment events, their expansive outdoor grounds, and their location in major metropolitan areas. You could not host a First Amendment rally at Chaco Culture, Grand Canyon, Manassas or any one of the 395 other parks where such activities are prohibited during the shutdown. They can be held only at the National Mall and Memorial Parks, the areas of the White House administered by the NPS, and Independence National Historical Park,” he said. [emphasis mine]

    Since when is freedom of speech limited to only certain places, and those places are determined by the government?

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    China complains about the ban of its scientists at a NASA Kepler conference.

    5:40 am

    China complains about the ban of its scientists at a NASA Kepler conference.

    The meeting is a key event for scientists searching for planets beyond the solar system. NASA has rejected applications from Chinese nationals, citing a new security law. In Beijing, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying called the move “discriminatory”. The conference is for US and international teams who work on Nasa’s Kepler space telescope program. It will be held at Nasa’s Ames research centre in California next month.

    And I say, tough. China does not distinguish between civilian and military research, and in fact has often used its scientists to do espionage, stealing both military and industry secrets in the process.

    Posted in Virginia as we pass through Harrisonburg. Note again that Diane, not I, is doing the driving.

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    Engineers hope Juno’s Earth flyby yesterday will help solve a mystery seen in previous flybys by unmanned probes.

    5:32 am

    The uncertainty of science: Engineers hope Juno’s Earth flyby yesterday will help solve a mystery seen in previous flybys by unmanned probes.

    Since 1990, mission controllers at ESA and NASA have noticed that their spacecraft sometimes experience a strange variation in the amount of orbital energy they pick up from Earth during flybys, a technique routinely used to fling satellites deep into our Solar System. The unexplained variation is noticed as a tiny difference in the expected speed gained (or lost) during the passage.

    The variations are extremely small: NASA’s Jupiter probe ended up just 3.9 mm/s faster than expected when it swung past Earth in December 1990. The largest variation– a boost of 13.0 mm/s – was seen with NASA’s NEAR asteroid craft in January 1998. Conversely, the differences during swingbys of NASA’s Cassini in 1999 and Messenger in 2005 were so small that they could not be confirmed.

    The experts are stumped.

    It is likely that these small variations are related in some way with simple engineering and not some unknown feature of gravity. Nonetheless, it remains a mystery.

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    Is a natural rain of diamonds occurring on Jupiter and Saturn? Two scientists say yes!

    5:07 am

    Is a natural rain of diamonds occurring on Jupiter and Saturn? Two scientists say yes!

    In their scenario, lightning zaps molecules of methane in the upper atmospheres of Saturn and Jupiter, liberating carbon atoms. These atoms then stick onto each other, forming larger particles of carbon soot, which the Cassini spacecraft may have spotted in dark storm clouds on Saturn3. As the soot particles slowly float down through ever-denser layers of gaseous and liquid hydrogen towards the planets’ rocky cores, they experience ever greater pressures and temperatures. The soot is compressed into graphite, and then into solid diamonds before reaching a temperature of about 8,000 °C, when the diamond melts, forming liquid diamond raindrops, they say. Inside Saturn, the conditions are right for diamond ‘hail’ to form, beginning at a depth of about 6,000 kilometres into the atmosphere and extending for another 30,000 km below that, says Baines. He estimates that Saturn may harbour about 10 million tonnes of diamond produced this way, with most of it made up of rocks no bigger than a millimetre and perhaps some chunks spanning 10 centimeters.

    But don’t invest your money yet in a diamond gathering expedition. This is only a theory, which many scientists dispute.

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    After the unmanned probe Juno zipped past the Earth on its way to Jupiter today, it unexpectedly went into safe mode.

    9:28 pm

    After the unmanned probe Juno zipped past the Earth on its way to Jupiter today, it unexpectedly went into safe mode.

    Engineers continued to diagnose the issue, which occurred after Juno whipped around Earth in a momentum-gathering flyby. Up until Wednesday, Juno had been in excellent health. While in safe mode, it can communicate with ground controllers, but its activities are limited.

    It is unclear at the moment why this happened.

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    The Obama administration is shutting down small private campgrounds in Forest Service lands, but allowing big ski lodges to continue to operate.

    11:45 am

    Shutdown fascism: The Obama administration is shutting down small private campgrounds in Forest Service lands, but allowing big ski lodges to continue to operate.

    The forest service is also allowing certain state parks in federal land to remain in open, which I think is the result of Scott Walker’s refusal to shut his state parks in Wisconsin. The big ski lodges have the ability to fight back, as do the states. And like all bullies, the Obama administration is going after the small and the weak, and running in fear from the strong and defiant.

    We must all be defiant. Obama and the Democrats will then fold like a cheap card table.

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    Scientists in Egypt have found what they think is evidence of a comet impact from 28 million years ago.

    10:39 am

    Scientists in Egypt have found what they think is evidence of a comet impact from 28 million years ago.

    The best part however is this:

    At the centre of the attention of this team was a mysterious black pebble found years earlier by an Egyptian geologist in the area of the silica glass. After conducting highly sophisticated chemical analyses on this pebble, the authors came to the inescapable conclusion that it represented the very first known hand specimen of a comet nucleus, rather than simply an unusual type of meteorite.

    Assuming this claim is confirmed it is a very significant discovery. As far as I know, no other specimens from a comet nucleus have been identified previously.

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    Obamacare’s biggest problem.

    6:52 am

    Obamacare’s biggest problem.

    As Obamacare rolls out, many current health plans will be cancelled because they don’t meet new ACA requirements,. The people who held these plans will have to purchase a comparable plan on the exchanges. In many cases, the “comparable plan” will be much more expensive.

    As people “find out what’s in it” and are horrified by the cost, they will begin to develop a large rage at Obama and the endless lies he told about what this law would do. You won’t get to keep your doctor or your insurance, and everything will be far more expensive, not cheaper, as he claimed. Instead, everything that conservatives and tea party activists have said is turning out to be right.

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    IRS officials, including Lois Lerner, used their private email accounts to illegally transmit confidential tax information.

    7:39 pm

    Working for the Democratic Party: IRS officials, including Lois Lerner, used their private email accounts to illegally transmit confidential tax information.

    “[W]e have uncovered a troubling pattern of IRS officials sending official documents to non-official email accounts as well as the use of non-official email accounts to conduct official business,” the September 30th letter to acting IRS Commissioner Dan Werfil reads. “In some instances, IRS officials have sent taxpayer protected information to non-official email accounts.” The officials were identified as then-IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman, Lois Lerner, who headed the office at the center of the scandal, Judith Kindall, and Nikole Flax, who worked in Lerner’s office.

    In the letter to Werfil, Issa said that the committee had found over 1,600 pages of emails and documents related to official business in non-official email accounts. Nearly 30 pages of the material contained confidential tax information. The revelation raises serious questions about privacy and the security of the confidential data transmitted to the private email accounts. There is also a question of what might have been done with the data after it was sent to the private accounts. Those records would not be subject to the normal rules of transparency or freedom of information requests.

    The only reason I can think of for these IRS officials to do this is because they wished to hide what they were doing, which also suggests that what they were doing was downright wrong.

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    The public appears to be increasingly defiant about the National Park Service’s closure of parks.

    7:27 pm

    The public appears to be increasingly defiant about the National Park Service’s closure of parks.

    Meanwhile, from a commenter here describing the situation at Great Smoky National Park since we left that area on Friday:

    I was at the Smokies this weekend (Saturday and Sunday). The parking lot a Newfound Gap was completely open. The road to Clingman’s Dome was open. I did not travel down the North Carolina side of the park. Major trailheads were blocked at the Chimneys and Alum Cave Bluff. Chimneys picnic area closed. All other trailheads along 441 were open and there were plenty of people parked and enjoying the park. Little River Road was closed. We parked a couple of quiet walkways and took some short walks. Never saw an ranger anywhere.

    If you are planning a trip to the Smokies then I would say to go for it. You may not be able to access some of the more popular areas of the park but there are plenty of areas that are accessible. I am planning a horseback riding trip (my own horses) in a couple of weeks and I am not going to let the dictatorial government in Washington ruin my plans.

    The Chimney Top trail has been closed anyway during the week because of trail work, and the Alum Cave Bluff parking area is located at a spot where road work is presently going on and therefore might have been closed anyway as well.

    And then there’s this: Yorktown restaurant owner defies the federal government, “occupying” his restaurant.

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