The House Republicans last night introduced a one-week stopgap continuing resolution with $12 billion in spending cuts.
Software engineers to the Moon!
Crazy? Absolutely! Impossible? Probably not! There are a growing number of people who believe that with federal funding for our space program getting scarce, the future lies in private-public partnerships. Entrepreneur Elon Musk’s third job (after leading electric car company Tesla and acting as the Chairman of solar installer SolarCity) is heading up SpaceX, which was the first private company to successfully launch, orbit and recover a rocketship. Virgin’s Richard Branson has a similar private space venture.
My heart bleeds: Federal workers in shutdown limbo.
Considering government workers generally make twice the salary of workers in the private sector, I have little sympathy for them and consider this to be nothing more than a pig squealing.
The Supreme Court decision today on school choice reveals a greal deal about how the justices might vote on the legality of Obamacare.
The Republican response to the various Democratic claims that a budget deal is imminent: There is no deal, and $33 billion in cuts is “not enough.”
Will the EPA lose control of greenhouse gas rules?
The article above, written for the journal Science, is clearly on the side of the EPA. Nonetheless, it does outline well the political dynamics of this regulatory battle between the EPA and Congress.
Three astronauts were launched to ISS today in a Soyuz capsule the Russians have named Gagarin, in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of his flight on April 12.
The real disaster in Japan finally reaches the U.S. and it isn’t radiation: Toyota has announced it will shut its North American plants due to the shortage of parts caused by the earthquake/tsunami.
I thought the banning of CFCs was going to change this? March sets a record for ozone loss over the Arctic.
Or to put it another way, climate science is far more complicated than too many climate scientists want to admit.
Russia’s launch capability continues to expand: Not only will they be able to launch rockets from French Guiana this year, it looks like Russia’s western spaceport will be ready for its first launch by 2015.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter website recently announced a new way to tour the Moon. The website, called QuickMap, allows a user with any home computer to zoom into any spot on the lunar surface and see the high resolution images being taken by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Using QuickMap, I spent a few hours this past weekend strolling about on the northern half of the floor of the crater Copernicus. It is in this area, annotated in the image on the right, that NASA engineer James Fincannon has already located a slew of collapse features and possible caves, the images of which I have posted previously on behindtheblack. (Click on the image or here to see a larger version of this updated index map.)
(You also can go sightseeing there if you wish. Go to QuickMap and zoom in on 10.1 latitude and -20.1 longitude to get to the floor of Copernicus. Or pick your own spot on the lunar surface and do some of your own exploring!)
What I found in the northern half of Copernicus’s floor was a plethora of possible caves and collapse features. Literally, the crater floor is littered with what appear to be pits, fissures, rills, and sinks. More significantly, sometimes the cave entrances line up with long straight collapse features, suggesting strongly the existence of extensive underground passages beyond the initial entrance pits.
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The Daily Beast reports today that the last flight of the shuttle Endeavour has been delayed due to a schedule conflict with a Russian Progress freighter.
Note that this has not yet been confirmed by NASA.
Update from spaceref: NASA has rescheduled Endeavour’s launch for April 29.
ATK is pushing hard for NASA commercial subsidizes to build a private version of Ares I.
More leftwing civility: New death threat emails sent to New York state lawmakers. You can read the full email here.
Leftwing civility in London: The London rioters and their targets.
It’s a start, though it really isn’t enough: the Republican 2012 budget will call for $4 trillion-plus in cuts over the next decade.
Ryan said Obama’s call for freezing nondefense discretionary spending actually locks in spending at high levels. Under the forthcoming GOP plan, Ryan said spending would return to 2008 levels and thus cut an additional $400 billion over 10 years. [emphasis mine]
Note that no one was starving and children weren’t dying for lack of federal spending in 2008.
The winners of the 18th annual Great Moonbuggy Race.
Last week brought a sober reminder that every religion has its extremists, as Christian radicals burned one copy of the Quran (and Muslim radicals attacked a half-dozen churches, burned dozens of Bibles, and slaughtered 321 people in 26 terror attacks in just 7 days).
Another hero: Defiant Japanese boat captain who rode out tsunami.
So, why did we pass this piece of garbage again? The Obama administration has issued another 129 waivers to Obamacare (almost half to unions), bringing the total to 1,168.
We need more Muslims doing this: A Pakistani actress smacks down a mullah. Be sure to watch the video, also available here!
More idiotic regulations from Obamacare: On Friday the FDA issued new Obamacare regulations, requiring calorie counts on restaurant menus.
More leftwing civility: Investigators look into additional threats allegedly emailed by Wisconsin teacher.
Bernard Lewis: “The tyrannies are doomed.” I hope he’s right.
EPA whistleblower slams global warming science and policy in new peer-reviewed study. The paper’s conclusion:
The scientific hypotheses underlying global warming alarmism are overwhelmingly contradicted by real-world data, and for that reason economic studies on the alleged benefits of controlling greenhouse gas emissions are baseless.
Yow! Southwest cancels 300 flights to inspect its planes after the fuselage cracks open on a Sacramento-bound flight.
