The hatch is closed and Dragon is ready for its return to Earth tomorrow morning.
Ten science fiction episodes that changed television.
I don’t know if these particular episodes changed anything. I do know, however, that any single episode that people are still talking about fifty years after it was aired (such as “Walking Distance” from the original Twilight Zone) as got to be special.
The high school football star who was imprisoned for six years on a false rape charge now has four auditions with NFL teams.
We should all pray he makes it. And I hope Wanetta Gibson, the woman who made up the whole story and who won a $1.5 million court suit from the school based on her false testimony, goes to jail, especially because she still has the nerve to say that this about the settlement: “I don’t want to have to pay it back.”
The Whitewater-Baldy wildfire in New Mexico is now the largest in that state’s history, covering 266 square miles.
I flew over this fire on my way from Tucson to Chicago on Tuesday. The smoke cloud itself was astonishingly large, extending eastward far beyond the fire itself.
An evening pause: Antonio Breschi again, this time with a piece of his own, from his album At the Edge of the Night. Last week I posted a breathtaking piano performance by Breschi, but unfortunately, I can’t find a video of him playing this particular piece, which I first heard back in the mid-1980s. Nonetheless, the music so beautiful it is really doesn’t need fancy visuals.
Life imitates a television mystery: A truck transporting a NASA balloon telescope worth millions has disappeared in Dallas in route from Minnesota to Texas.
What does this tell us? A black former Democrat Congressman who also gave the seconding speech for Obama’s nomination in 2008 has decided to switch parties and become a Republican.
Finding out what’s in it: A college has been forced to double the healthcare fees it charges its students, and lays the blame solely on Obamacare.
Corruption in Big Science: A U.S. senator is demanding the NIH explain how it could give a $2 million grant to a researcher previously punished for not reporting financial conflicts of interest who is also under investigation by the Department of Justice.
The competition heats up: The FAA has granted Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic a launch permit to begin rocket-powered test flights of SpaceShipTwo.
The Air Force has announced that the X-37B spacecraft presently in orbit will be returning to Earth in the next few weeks.
From a past SpaceX critic: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy could wipe out its launch competition.
This announcement [of SpaceX’s deal with Intelsat] is an indication that SpaceX is now threatening the dominance of Arianespace and ILS in the commercial launch arena. If a Falcon 9 Heavy can carry two or more large GEO communications satellites for half the launch price of an Ariane 5 or Proton M booking, then this could spell the end of their commercial operations as going concerns. It is not only on the commercial front that SpaceX may dominate. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Heavy launch service promises to be less than half the cost of using equivalent Atlas and Delta rockets. So even the cosy launch provider-governmental relationships that previously benefited the likes of Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Pratt and Whitney/Rocketdyne could now be threatened.
As much of a fan of SpaceX as I am, and as much as I agree with the above statement, we must remember that Falcon Heavy is not yet built. Moreover, I suspect that the deal with Intelsat does not yet include any transfer of funds. SpaceX has a long way to go before any of this happens. Nonetheless, the company’s continued success very obviously is beginning to make its competitors nervous.
The wolves guarding the chicken house: The top GSA official involved in the extravagant Las Vegas conference has been reinstated.
How scientists can author as many as 700 papers without even reading what they have written.
This is why we should all be skeptical about any peer-reviewed paper. There is a lot of fraud going on, sometimes for political reasons but mostly for reasons of status and financial reward. Science and the love of discovery often has nothing to do with it.
A conservative blogger was arrested today in Maryland — for blogging.
The blogger was arrested merely because he had written critical posts about leftwing activist and convicted bomber Brett Kimberlin. Kimberlin claimed the blogger’s posts caused others to harass him.
If this stands, it makes everyone who writes anything responsible for the misbehavior of others.
The competition heats up: Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser mini-shuttle underwent its first flight test today in Colorado.
Modern intellectualism: At a Harvard conference, a scientist has proposed that the government should require people to exercise in order to control their weight.
At a “Harvard Thinks Big” confab earlier this year, evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman offered his own bright idea for tackling the nation’s obesity epidemic. Merely medicating it won’t do, he said, and education is well-meaning but ineffective. His answer? “Coercion. … We should start telling corporations what to do.” But not just corporations. He also advocated – “to hearty applause,” the Harvard Gazette noted – “requiring people to exercise.” [emphasis mine]
I emphasis the applause to illustrate that this tyrannical attitude is not unusual in academic circles. The modern elite community is very arrogant, and believes it has the right to tell everyone else what to do.
The Dead Sea is getting a bounce.
The radiation released from the Fukushima nuclear power meltdown in Japan last year will cause almost no cases of cancer according to two separate reports.
This story is almost a week old. I missed it initially because Nature buried the results, headlining the story in the most boring way possible: “Fukushima’s doses tallied”.
These results however illustrate again the success of the engineering at the nuclear power plant. Certainly they did things wrong, and certainly there were engineering failures there. Nonetheless, the safety features allowed them to contain the power plant even after it experienced the most powerful earthquake in recorded history followed by the most powerful tsunami in a thousand years.
The competition heats up: SpaceX has gotten its first contract, with Intelsat, for its not-yet-built Falcon Heavy rocket.
The Falcon Heavy when completed will be the most powerful rocket since the Saturn 5. If SpaceX can get it funded through commercial contracts, it will end forever the need for government subsidies in the aerospace industry. Government as a customer will still exist, of course, but it will no longer be in charge.
Modern journalism: The BBC used a fictional UN logo from a video game instead of the real UN logo during a news broadcast.
Kazakhstan is blocking three upcoming Russian satellite launches from its spaceport in Baikonur because of a dispute over where rocket debris will fall.
I suspect that Russia is now even more enthused over completing its new spaceport in Vostochny.
In related news, a Russian analysis of the consequences of the Dragon docking at ISS. The article also notes some potential changes in the Russian space effort.
Here’s a bit more information on the Excalibur Almaz proposal to launch commercial tourist flights to the Moon using refurbished Soviet-era space stations and capsules.
You can’t make this stuff up: Computer researchers have found that the microprocessor used by the U.S. military but made in China contains secret remote access capability.
The unnamed chip, which the researchers claim is widely used in military and industrial applications, is “wide open to intellectual property theft, fraud and reverse engineering of the design to allow the introduction of a backdoor or Trojan”, they said. … The “bug” is in the actual chip itself, rather than the firmware installed on the devices that use it. This means there is no way to fix it than to replace the chip altogether.
How stupid can our government be to buy microprocessors from the Chinese, a country that is definitely not our friend? Pretty stupid, it appears.
This ain’t good: The most common college grade is an “A”.
In other words, we no longer have any idea if anyone is learning anything in college.
An evening pause: Watch the assembly of the world’s smallest v-12 engine. Though the titles are in Spanish, it is quite clear what is going on. And the thing works!
A Japanese dentist has invented a self-stirring cookpot that also saves energy. Video below the fold.
» Read more
Islamic democracy: An angry mob set fire to the headquarters of one of the Egyptian presidential candidates today.
Yesterday my wife Diane and I took my 94-year-old mother on a sightseeing trip to see the Casa Grande ruins southeast of Phoenix, “the largest known structure left of the Ancestral People of the Sonoran Desert.”
This four story high structure was built around 1350 AD from bricks made of concrete-like caliche mud, with the floors and roofs supported by beams of pine, fir, and juniper brought from as far away as fifty miles. (The rooflike structure above the ruins was built by the National Park Service in order to protect it from rain.)
Though impressive, I must admit I’ve seen far more impressive American Indian ruins elsewhere. Casa Grande, which means “Great House” in Spanish, suffered as a tourist attraction from two faults:
» Read more
