Talk about stupid: It seems the legal eagles at NASA have shut down a website that featured a variety of webcams, showing NASA missions.
The Met Office in the United Kingdom has issued a report on the state of the climate. In it they state unequivocally that the “world is warming”. Unfortunately, the report fails to address the questions that have been raised about much of the existing climate data, following the climategate scandal.
Archeologists have discovered the largest Roman canal ever built at the mouth of the Tiber river.
It appears that McCarthyism and the blacklist are both alive and well, thriving happily in the field of climate research. Key quote:
It is disturbing, to say the least, that organisations and persons who would be quick to claim professional status consider that it is their current duty to disparage, or to refuse to debate with, or to muzzle scientists whose views on climate change they apparently disagree with.
Read the whole article.
More on that failure of the cooling system on ISS. It appears that NASA is gearing up to send two astronauts out for up to two spacewalks to try to fix the problem.
Duck! The Sun has unleashed a coronal mass ejection towards the Earth.
An evening pause: From Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier (1955), a moment of quiet reflection.
War between the elites of our society and everyone else. Key quote:
If this election has a theme, it’s going to be the rejection of the elites and a return to a form of populism with a long streak in American history — the demand of citizens to their government to get the hell out of their lives.
China successfully launches the fifth satellite in its own GPS system.
A failure in the cooling system on the International Space Station yesterday has forced the astronauts to shut down some of their systems while ground control troubleshoots the situation.
Undersea adventure by robot. An unmanned probe completed its first dive beneath the Arctic ice this week.
At an airshow on Thursday, July 29, in Oskosh, Wisconsin, Burt Rutan, designer of SpaceShipOne, made some interesting remarks about the past and future of private space flight. Key quote:
Rutan said NASA should give 10 to 15 percent of its budget to new space companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX without regulating how to spend the money. “That would allow them to not (have to) beg for commercial investment, while still working in an entrepreneurial mode.”
Scientists are beginning to unravel the wind patterns on Titan.
After more than six years, it appears that the Mars rover Spirit has finally died. The rover was originally designed to only operate 90 days.
An evening pause: We’ve had animated machines and actors pretending to be machines. Now, let’s have a Rube Goldberg machine.
Who are the racists? Readers (and one former editor) respond with dismay because Essence magazine has hired a fashion editor who happens to be white.
Law of unintended consequences strikes again. The new healthcare law has a provision, unrelated to healthcare, that involves a paperwork nightmare for small businesses.
A political note: my Congressman happens to be Steny Hoyer, who waxed poetic recently about taxes and the coming expiration of the Bush tax cuts. Hopefully, this man will free Hoyer from such concerns.
The space war over NASA continues. The pushback from commercial space advocates and industry proponents seems to be having an effect. House aides have indicated that the House NASA authorization bill will not be voted on until September.
The Japanese space agency JAXA has put Hayabusa’s heat shield, outer capsule, and parachute on public display, to large crowds.
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter takes a picture of the non-face on Mars.
An evening pause: Not only does Eddi Reader probably have one of the most beautiful voices in the singing world today, she links that voice to some of the best Irish instrumentalists in the game. Watch her and her band bring down the house in this live performance of “Willie Stewart”.
The space war continues. Jeff Foust has two reports today on the political state of NASA’s budget. First, Congress has approved language that requires continuing funding of Constellation. Second, it looks like the House may vote on the new NASA authorization bill this week.
The Mars rover Opportunity has spotted its first dust devil after six-plus years of travel.
Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit today said the following (in recognizing Jeff Foust’s op-ed for Technology Review):
CONGRESS BLOWS IT: Commercial Spaceflight, We Have A Problem. Congress will always choose short-term pork over long-term development unless there’s strong Presidential leadership. But while the Obama space policy is good, the White House hasn’t provided the kind of legislative push it takes to make it work. Without strong leadership, a good policy will always lose out to pork.
Didn’t someone say this already? In fact, didn’t that someone say this more than once?
An evening pause: Yesterday we had a modern animation of a machine that made music. Tonight let’s watch a very different take on a vaguely similar idea, this time to produce comedy. This is a classic skit from Your Show of Shows, Sid Caesar’s variety show from early television. The four performers are, left to right, Sid Caesar, Imogene Coco, Carl Reiner, Howard Morris.
Two NASA probes, originally launched to study the Sun and having completed their mission, have had their orbits adjusted so that they can study the Moon instead.
Radar images from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter appear to show deposits of approximately 1.6 trillion pounds of water ice on the Moon.
The United Space Alliance, which runs shuttle operations for NASA at Cape Canaveral, has announced layoffs roughly 900 effective October 1. Key quote: “Local workforce officials expect that up to 8,000 KSC employees could lose jobs by the time the shuttle program ends.”
