Virgin Galactic has begun paying rent — under protest — for its use of a New Mexico spaceport.
Iran today claimed it has successfully flown a monkey on a suborbital rocket flight.
The only sources for this story come from Iranian sources, so I remain unsure whether it actually happened.
Norwegian scientists admit that the climate has shown no warming since 2000.
They then spend a lot of time trying to explain this — and failing — in the context of the theory of global warming. The bottom line remains, however. All the predictions and models of the global warming advocates have been shown to be wrong. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has continued to rise, without causing any increase in global climate temperature.
Or to put it plainly: We don’t know what’s going on.
More Antarctica news: An American team has successfully obtained samples from Lake Whillans, buried half a mile under the Antarctic icecap.
No survivors from last week’s Antarctica airplane crash.
An evening pause: For Diane, on our anniversary. The words and music are by Gordon Lightfoot, but this is a particularly beautiful version by Sarah McLachlan.
The robotic refueling demo on ISS successfully did a simulated refueling of a satellite on Friday.
The first nighttime photos from Mars.
An evening pause: How about a bit of real Shakespeare this time, this time his song, “The Wind and the Rain” from Twelfth Night, set to music by Ben Toth and sung by Zak Resnick. Undeniably one of the most beautiful versions written.
When that I was and a little tiny boy,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
A foolish thing was but a toy,
For the rain it raineth every day.But when I came to man’s estate,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
‘Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate,
For the rain, it raineth every day.But when I came, alas! to wive,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
By swaggering could I never thrive,
For the rain, it raineth every day.But when I came unto my beds,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
With toss-pots still had drunken heads,
For the rain, it raineth every day.A great while ago the world begun,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain.
But that’s all one, our play is done,
And we’ll strive to please you every day.
Salvage in space: DARPA’s project to harvest parts from abandoned geosynchronous satellites.
Now this is a new law I can support: A Texas Congressman has introduced a law to repeal “Gun-Free School Zones Act” of 1990.
The law is such an inconvenient thing: An appeals court has unanimously decided that Barack Obama violated the Constitution when he tried to make appointments to the NLRB when the Senate was not in recess.
The Constitution is very clear on this issue (see article I, section 5). It is up to the Senate to decide when it is in recess, not the President. Obama’s attempt to ignore the clear words of the Constitution here is an ugly example of his willingness to place himself above the law, something no American citizen of either party should take lightly.
The Russian foreign minister today denied that there is any friction between Kazakhstan and Russia over the use of the Baikonur spaceport. More here.
Despite the denial, it appears that they are in some tough negotiations which to their chagrin got leaked to the press.
Back to the future: NASA engineers today test fired a major component of a refurbished Saturn 5 engine.
The seasons change on Mars.
With three years of data in hand the researchers report on the sequence and variety of changes that take place over the spring, including outbursts of gas carrying sand, polygonal cracking of the ice on the dunes, sandfalls down the slipface of the dunes, and dark fans of sand propelled out onto the ice. Gas escaping from under the seasonal layer of dry ice erodes channels in the dunes, reminiscent of the erosion that carves more permanent “spider” channels in the southern hemisphere polar region.
Bad news: Polio virus from Pakistan has been found in Egypt.
The importation of the virus into Egypt is another setback for the global program, which has finally been making significant progress in the past 2 years, with polio cornered in just three endemic countries: Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Nigeria. (India has now gone 2 years without a single case of polio.) Of the three, Pakistan was doing especially well in knocking out the virus, but the program there has recently been disrupted by the targeted assassination of nine polio workers in December and early January. Those killings, widely condemned, have stoked fears the virus will regain strength in Pakistan and then reinfect polio-free countries. “This is proof positive of long-distance importation from Pakistan, and there may be more,” Aylward says.
But don’t worry: the Muslim Brotherhood have us covered! “Experts are worried, Bari says, because Egypt has scaled back its national polio vaccinations campaigns from twice to once a year during the turmoil of the revolution.” [emphasis mine]
A research plane has crashed in a remote area of Antarctica, stranding three.
Once the beacon had sounded, a U.S. LC-130 aircraft was sent to the crash site, but it was unable to establish radio contact with the Twin Otter, while a thick layer of low-lying clouds prevented those onboard from seeing the plane. Later, a DC-3 aircraft spent hours circling above the crash site, but it also came away empty-handed.
Engineers at Lockheed Martin are adding structural braces to fix the cracks found in the first Orion capsule.
Engineers have designed a “doubler” to place over the cracks to ensure the craft can sustain loads from pressure, launch and landing. Geyer said two of the structural aids, similar to devices regularly used on airplanes, could be added to the spacecraft. “We’ve come up with a great plan to basically bridge over those cracks to distribute the load so we don’t see any issues on orbit,” Geyer said.
How reassuring.
Happy 9th anniversary to the Opportunity rover on Mars!
Talk about getting your money’s worth: The rover was planned as a 90 day mission.
Push back: The boycott against the organizer of an outdoor trade show that tried to ban rifles has forced them to postpone the show.
Push back: Now a Mississippi sheriff has vowed not to enforce any federal gun control laws that violate the second amendment.
News flash! The entire NRA has converted to Islam to stymie the Obama administration’s effort to take their guns!
“This administration loves providing guns —big guns, and thousands of them— to Muslim fighters in Libya, Egypt, now Syria,” said [NRA CEO Wayne] LaPierre, bedecked in Wahhabi-style Muslim garb, at a press conference Wednesday. “Many of these rebel groups consist of radical jihadists who hate America just as much as the governments we’re helping them topple. If Obama is so pro-gun when it comes to radical Muslims, then damn it, we at the NRA are now radical Muslims, too!”
The response from the White House press secretary was not surprising.
“Admittedly, we’re perplexed at the (NRA’s) announcement of its conversion to Islam,” said a stunned-looking Carney. “And if more legal gun owners follow the NRA’s lead and convert to Islam, it will make it even harder for the administration to push for tighter gun laws, since we all know it’s middle-aged, rural, Christian white men with families who legally own guns who are the greatest threat in America today. Now we’ve lost much of that dangerous demographic to target. It’s a strategically cowardly move.”
The check is in the mail: NASA has now agreed to contribute equipment and researchers to a European dark energy mission.
And why should Europe have any expectation that NASA will follow through? Europe’s ExoMars project was screwed badly when NASA pulled out last year. Nor was that the first time the U.S. government reneged on a deal with Europe.
Considering the fragile nature of the U.S. federal budget, I wouldn’t depend on anything from NASA or any U.S. government agency for the foreseeable future. And this includes the various private space companies such as SpaceX and Orbital Sciences that are using NASA subsidies to build their spaceships. Get those things built, and quickly! The government money could disappear very soon.
Russia is now threatening to abandon its Baikonur launch site due to restrictions demanded by the Kazakhstan government.
The restrictions include a limitation in the number of Proton launches, which Russia claims will cost them half a million dollars in sales. The problem is that the new Russia launch site in Vostochny will not be ready until 2015. If Russia pulls out of Baikonur before then, there will be no way to launch humans to ISS for at least the next two years.
February 23, 2013: A day of resistance.
