Category: Behind The Black
NASA privacy suit to go to Supreme Court
A suit by NASA contractors over what they think is the agency’s over intrusive efforts to do background checks on their private lives goes to the Supreme Court.
Remembering Willie Ley
Remembering Willie Ley. He never flew in space, and died just weeks before the Apollo 11 landing. Yet he probably did as much if not more to make it happen than any other man.
To duck or not to duck
An evening pause: More Loony Tunes! To Duck or Not to Duck.
Life in the Chilean mine
A very detailed update on the trapped Chilean miners, now expected to be rescured in early November. Two key quotes:
The miners are sleeping on cots that were sent down in pieces and reassembled, and each can look forward every weekend to eight minutes each of video chat time with his family using compact cameras and a phone that was disassembled to fit through the hole.
And:
Their routine starts with breakfast – hot coffee or tea with milk and a ham-and-cheese sandwich. Then lots of labor: Removing the loose rock that drops through the bore holes as they are being widened into escape tunnels; cleaning up their trash and emptying the toilet; and attending to the capsules known as “palomas” – Spanish for carrier pigeons – that are lowered to them with supplies.
The miners must quickly remove the contents – food, clean clothes, medicine, family letters and other supplies – and send back up material such as dirty clothes, rolled up like sausages to fit. Each trip down takes 12 to 15 minutes, then four minutes for unloading and five minutes to pull them back up. At least three miners are constantly stationed at the bore hole for this work.
The single most powerful political force in the nation
Want to know what the actual future consequences of the Tea Party movement will be? Read this op-ed by Glenn Reynolds. Key quote:
Both political parties are out of touch, and ordinary Americans are very unhappy about it, as they watch the Treasury being looted, the economy sink, and the political, journalistic, and financial ruling-class figures escaping the consequences of their ham-handed and self-serving actions.
Also:
For now, Republicans are (sort of) the beneficiaries. Though Tea Partiers aren’t happy with the GOP, they’re much less happy with the Democrats. In this election cycle, Republicans will benefit. But Tea Partiers are also taking over the GOP from the bottom up, running for precinct chairs and state committee seats.
This makes sense: There are barriers to entry for third parties, and it makes more sense to take over an existing party than to start from scratch, if that’s possible.
But those establishment GOP figures who think that they’ll cruise to victory and a return to the pocket-stuffing business-as-usual that marked the prior GOP majority need to think again. This election cycle is, in a very real sense, a last chance for the Republicans. If they blow it, we’re likely to see third-party challenges in 2012, not only at the Presidential level but in numerous Congressional races as well.
Virgin Galactic’s launching system in doubt
Virgin Galactic, the company that is building a suborbital rocket to put tourists in space, appears to be delaying the development of its orbital launching system.
Meanwhile, the company resumed capture carry flights of WhiteKnightTwo, with SpaceShipTwo attached, with a five hour test flight on Thursday.
The layoffs at NASA
More layoffs yesterday at NASA, this time at the Marshall Space Flight Center. Also, this report gives a good overview of all the layoffs so far.
One question: The authorization bill that passed Congress on Wednesday night specifically required NASA to continue construction of a heavy-lift vehicle, quite similar in concept to Constellation. Why then is NASA management laying off all these Constellation workers? Granted, the authorization did not provide Constellation with as much money as previously budgeted, but the layoffs seem greater than necessary at this time, considering the budget differences. Also, the lack of a final budget from Congress might require these layoffs to occur temporarily, pending a new budget, but NASA is not making it clear that this is the case. Instead, they are letting a lot of people go without giving them any guidance about NASA’s future plans.
If the Obama administration was serious about fulfilling Congress’s legal requirement to build a heavy-lift vehicle (as deputy administration Lori Garver said they were on Thursday), I would have expected them to be more forthcoming to these NASA employees, if only to encourage them to remain available for rehiring, for at least a short time. That they have not is very telling.
Do not expect this heavy-lift vehicle to be built.
Zenyatta wins again
On a different subject, Zenyatta, a 6 year old thoroughbred mare, won her 19th consecutive race today. What makes the horse so amazing is that she always hangs way back, and then charges past everyone in the stretch.
Fred Astaire dancing on the ceiling
An evening pause: Fred Astaire, dancing on the ceiling, from Royal Wedding (1951).
Antarctic increase in sea ice since 1970 cannot be explained by ozone hole
In another paper published today in the Geophysical Research Letters of the American Geophysical Union, researchers have found, according to their computer model, that the increase in sea ice since 1970 in Antarctica cannot be explained by the ozone hole. (Note that the sea ice has been shrinking in the northern hemisphere while it has been growing in the south.) Key quote from paper:
It is presently unclear why the observed Southern Hemisphere sea ice extent trends are so different from those in the Northern Hemisphere. Previous studies have suggested that the cause might be related to atmospheric circulation changes induced by the stratospheric ozone hole. The results in this study are not consistent with this view and highlight the need for continued investigations of Antarctic sea ice extent trends.
Modern climate models can’t predict sudden climate change
A paper published today in Geophysical Research Letters of the American Geophysical Union says that the general circulation climate models used by scientists today to predict things like global warming cannot predict past examples of similar sudden climate change. Key quote from abstract:
These [sudden] shifts are thus noise induced with very limited predictability, and early detection of them in the future might be wishful thinking.