Author: Robert Zimmerman

An update on the Falcon 9 engine problems.

4:09 pm

An update on the Falcon 9 engine problems.

Based on SpaceX’s press release, the rocket functioned as designed to overcome the engine failure. Nonetheless, it behooves them to find out why that engine shut down prematurely.

More worrisome for the company is the failure the Falcon 9 rocket to place in its proper orbit a secondary payload, an Orbcomm communications satellite. The satellite ended up in too low an orbit, probably because of the engine failure during launch. Orbcomm has a contract with SpaceX to launch a whole series of these satellites. This failure now, right at the get-go, won’t do them much good in terms of public relations.

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The Obama administration had declared that a company whose sole business is to publish Bibles is not religious enough for an exemption to the HHS contraceptive mandate.

9:22 am

The Obama administration had declared that a company whose sole business is to publish Bibles is not religious enough for an exemption to the HHS contraceptive mandate.

The company has of course gone to court. The mandate itself is odious and unconstitutional. It is not the business of the federal government to decide who is religious and who is not. Nor is it that government’s business to force behavior on anyone that they do not believe.

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A GAO investigation into fraudulent and foreign campaign donations has discovered that the Obama.com website is owned and managed by a man in China with ties to the Chinese government.

9:02 am

The law is such an inconvenient thing: A GAO investigation into fraudulent and foreign campaign donations has discovered that the Obama.com website is owned and managed by a man in China with ties to the Chinese government.

That’s not all.

The unusual Obama.com website redirects traffic directly to a donation page on the Obama campaign’s official website, my.barackobama.com, which does not require donors to enter their credit card security code (known as the CVV code), thereby increasing the likelihood of foreign or fraudulent donations. The website is managed by a small web development firm, Wicked Global, in Maine. One of Wicked Global’s employees, Greg Dorr, lists on his LinkedIn page his additional employment with Peace Action Maine and Maine Voices for Palestinian Rights. According to the GAI report, 68 percent of all Internet traffic to Obama.com comes from foreign visitors.

The Obama administration had this same problem in 2008. Donations to its website did not verify the donation, allowing donations from anywhere, even if illegal or from foreign sources. There’s more here.

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One engine of the Falcon 9 failed during launch.

8:43 am

Confirmed: One engine of the Falcon 9 exploded during launch.

Video at the link. The other 8 engines picked up the slack — as designed — and got Dragon into orbit.

This spectacular engine failure will of course have to be reviewed. However, if I were a commercial satellite company looking for a rocket to get my satellites into orbit, this failure would be recommendation, not a deterrent. The Falcon 9 demonstrated that even if one engine fails (and this one did by blowing up!), the rocket can survive the failure and make it to orbit. If that isn’t clear proof that this is a well designed and well built rocket, nothing is.

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How ABC News destroyed a company with false allegations, and is now being sued for $1.2 billion because of it.

6:23 am

How ABC News destroyed a company with false allegations, and is now being sued for $1.2 billion because of it.

Though this attack by ABC was not obviously political, it followed the same pattern as their coverage of politics. They had an agenda, they pursued it without mercy, and they did so with a complete disregard for the facts. I hope they lose big in this case.

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A star has gone supernova and astronomers get to see it from the very beginning, and even earlier!

7:05 pm

A star has gone supernova and astronomers get to see it from the very beginning, and even earlier!

The star had erupted several times before but had not produced a real supernova explosion. On September 26 it finally did so. Moreover, astronomers have images of the star prior to any eruption, information that until recently was not available for any supernovae.

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NASA and the Russians have agreed to fly a two-person year long mission on ISS beginning in the spring of 2015.

6:58 pm

It’s now official: NASA and the Russians have agreed to fly a two-person year long mission on ISS beginning in the spring of 2015.

NASA has denied that this agreement has any connection with the Sarah Brightman/Russian deal, but I still wonder. Either way, it is very good news. Not only will they finally be using ISS appropriately, a mission like this will generate some real excitement for space exploration that the repeated boring six month expeditions to ISS have failed to do. Even better would be to schedule a two year mission, simulating a journey to and from Mars.

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Painting in the Skies

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Fran McKendree, vocal, guitar; Lindsey Blount, vocal; River Guerguerian, percussion; Charles Milling, bass, vocal; Duncan Wickel, violin.

Words and music by Fran McKendree.

There is a painting in the skies,
Reflects the longing in your eyes.
Horizon widens, river bends,
Awakening that never ends.

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Deep Impact fired its engines today to adjust its orbit, giving it the option of visiting a near Earth asteroid in the future.

6:01 pm

Deep Impact fired its engines today to adjust its orbit, giving it the option of visiting a near Earth asteroid in the future.

The press release is very vague about this future mission. I suspect there is a question of funding, which means that even if they can go to the asteroid, they might not have the funds to staff the mission.

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Astronomers have discovered a star that circles the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way in only 11.5 years.

5:57 pm

Dizzy: Astronomers have discovered a star that circles the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way in only 11.5 years.

This newly discovered star joins another that is 15 times brighter and has a 16 year orbit. The combined orbital data from both will allow astronomers to measure precisely the size of the black hole while also measuring the distortion of space caused by its intense gravitational field.

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A new study has found that scientific misconduct and fraud is on the rise.

11:14 am

A new study has found that scientific misconduct and fraud is on the rise.

A review of retractions in medical and biological peer-reviewed journals finds the percentage of studies withdrawn because of fraud or suspected fraud has jumped substantially since the mid-1970s. In 1976, there were fewer than 10 fraud retractions for every 1 million studies published, compared with 96 retractions per million in 2007.

The study’s authors suggest that the high pressure of big science might be a cause, combined with an overall decline in our culture itself. I wonder if the influence of government money, granted not because of good science but in the service of a political agenda, might also be a contributing factor.

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A high school teacher threatened a student last Friday for wearing a Romney t-shirt on dress-down day.

9:21 am

Leftwing tolerance: A high school teacher in Philadelphia threatened a student last Friday for wearing a Romney t-shirt on dress-down day.

The teacher allegedly told the girl to take off the shirt, saying it was like wearing a Ku Klux Klan sheet. The teacher allegedly threatened to use a marker to cross out Romney’s name and that of Rep. Paul Ryan, his running mate. The teacher also allegedly tried to throw the student out of class. The teacher also allegedly said that Carroll was “a Democratic school.”

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In order to get a seat on a Soyuz capsule Sarah Brightman outbid NASA, bumping its astronaut out and thus forcing the U.S. agency to finally agree to a year long mission.

7:12 pm

Irony of ironies: In order to buy her seat on a Soyuz capsule Sarah Brightman outbid NASA, bumping its astronaut out.

This was a win-win for the Russians. They get paid more by Brightman than by NASA (over $51 million), and they finally get that year long mission they’ve been campaigning for for years. Because Brightman has taken one of NASA’s seats, the U.S. agency was forced to agree to the extended mission in order to maintain a presence on the station throughout that time period. Otherwise, their astronaut would come home and be replaced by Brightman, but for only ten days.

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First Kids – Ghosts

6:01 pm

An evening pause: An evocative song from a musical that is presently in development.

What I like about this video is how it reminds us that every image, every movie we see, especially the older ones, can only show us a image of a human being that no longer exists, and is essentially nothing more than a ghost to us.

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New research has now documented the widespread bigotry of liberals in the academic community against conservatives.

12:29 pm

Leftwing tolerance: New research has now documented the widespread bigotry of liberals in the academic community against conservatives.

Hostility toward and willingness to discriminate against conservatives is widespread. One in six respondents said that she or he would be somewhat (or more) inclined to discriminate against conservatives in inviting them for symposia or reviewing their work. One in four would discriminate in reviewing their grant applications. More than one in three would discriminate against them when making hiring decisions. Thus, willingness to discriminate is not limited to small decisions. In fact, it is strongest when it comes to the most important decisions, such as grant applications and hiring.

This behavior is hateful, prejudiced, intolerant, and close-minded. And it is occurring against individuals merely because they disagree with the accepted orthodoxy of liberal academia. Worse, it is occurring in our universities among the educated elites of our society. Such close-mindedness among the educated cannot bode well for our society’s future.

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Using data from the Spitzer Space Telescope astronomers have narrowed the universe’s rate of expansion to about 74.3 kilometers per second per megaparsec.

11:22 am

The uncertainty of science: Using data from the Spitzer Space Telescope astronomers have narrowed the universe’s rate of expansion to about 74.3 kilometers per second per megaparsec.

The importance of this number, also called the Hubble Constant, is that it allows astronomers to extrapolate more precisely backward to when they believe the Big Bang occurred, about 13.7 billion years ago. It also is a crucial data point in their effort to understand dark energy, in which this expansion rate is actually accelerating on vast scales.

Back in 1995 a team led by Wendy Freedman, the same scientist leading the work above, announced that they had used the Hubble Space Telescope to determine the expansion rate as 80 kilometers per second per megaparsec. Then, the margin of error was plus or minus 17 kilometers. Now the margin of error has been narrowed to plus or minus 2.1 kilometers.

Do I believe these new numbers? No, not really. Science has nothing to do with belief. I do think this is good science, however, and that this new estimate of the Hubble constant is probably the best yet. I would also not be surprised if in the future new data eventually proves this estimate wrong.

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