Category: Behind The Black

Elon Musk confirms that on future Falcon 9 launches they will do tests of a powered return of the first stage.

1:18 pm

The competition heats up: Elon Musk confirms that on future Falcon 9 launches they will do tests of a powered return of the first stage.

For the upcoming flight, after stage separation the first stage booster will do a burn to slow it down and then a second burn just before it reaches the water. In subsequent flights they will continue these over-water tests. He repeatedly emphasized that he expects several failures before they learn how to do it right. If all goes well with the over-water tests, they will fly back to launch site and land propulsively. He expects this could happen by mid-2014.

These tests are an extension of the Grasshopper tests, only this time they will take place during an actual launch.

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Science and sequestration in context

11:00 am

On March 21, the House accepted the continuing resolution proposed by the Senate for the year 2013. This continuing resolution will fund everything in the federal government though September of this year, and includes the cuts imposed on March 1 by sequestration.

As it always does, the journal Science did a specific analysis of the science portion of this budget bill. As usual, they looked only at the trees, not the forest, comparing the budget changes up or down for the 2012 and 2013 years only, noting how those changes will impact each agency’s programs. As usual, Science also took the side for more federal spending, assuming that in each case any cut was sure to cause significant harm to the nation’s ability to do cutting edge science.

I like to take a wider and deeper view. Below is a chart showing how the budgets for these agencies have changed since 2008. They give a much clearer perspective of the consequences of sequestration and the cuts, if any, imposed by Congress on these science agencies.
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To show support for the New Jersey family that had been threatened by the government for posting a picture of their son holding a rifle, hundreds of parents post pictures of their own gun-toting kids.

8:51 am

Pushback: To show support for the New Jersey family that had been threatened by the government for posting a picture of their son holding a rifle, hundreds of parents post pictures of their own gun-toting kids.

Note also that if you look at the posed pictures, none of the kids have their hands on the trigger. Unlike Michael Bloomberg’s actor in his anti-gun ads, these kids have been taught the safe way to handle a gun.

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A Democratic voter discovers he’s actually a tea party racist.

4:48 pm

A Democratic voter discovers he’s actually a tea party racist.

Today was a bad day. After meeting with my tax accountant, I am now cutting a very large check to the State of California, all of which resulted from Proposition 30 and the “retroactive tax” that was levied on my 2012 income. This despite the fact that I already paid my 2012 taxes back in September.

While the law stipulates that I must surrender this money, I refuse to acknowledge this as a tax at all. This is not a tax. This is an asset seizure plain and simple. The term “retroactive tax” is a despicable euphemism. It is no different than when Hugo Chavez used the benign-sounding “nationalize” to describe his seizure of private property in Venezuela.

He then notes that he is not a tea party member or even a Republican and that he voted for Obama twice.

Wanna bet that in the next election he’ll still vote Democratic? Based on the history of the past three decades, I expect that even after this experience, he will still refuse to abandon the faction he has adopted (the Democratic Party) and change his vote.

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Cyprus has agreed to confiscate a percentage of the savings of large depositors in order to satisfy demands from the European Union creditors..

10:10 am

The day of reckoning looms: Cyprus has agreed to confiscate a percentage of the savings of large depositors in order to satisfy demands from its European Union creditors..

This is only a hint of what’s coming for us here in the U.S. Like the European Union, eventually the federal government is going to go bankrupt, and when that happens it (being the politicians in charge) will then decide that the savings and pensions of private citizens will have to save them somehow.

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The strange polar vortexes of Venus.

9:54 am

The strange polar vortexes of Venus.

The large-scale cyclone extends vertically in Venus’ atmosphere over more than 20 kilometers, through a region of highly turbulent, permanent clouds. However, the centers of rotation at two different altitude levels (42 and 62 km above the surface) are not aligned and both wander around the south pole of the planet with no established pattern at velocities of up to 55km/h. The study also finds that even when averaged cross-winds are roughly the same at both altitudes, there is still a strong vertical gradient, with winds increasing by as much as 3km/h for every kilometer of height and leading to possible atmospheric instabilities.

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We made it.

11:16 pm

Getting to the Window in the Santa Catalinas is a challenge, mostly because of the 4000 foot elevation gain. In the past two years Diane and I have made three previous attempts, all of which were aborted because we simply either ran out of time or energy.

Today, we left very early in the morning, and because we are right now in very good shape, made it with little trouble, completing the entire hike in just under eleven hours. Some pictures below the fold.
» Read more

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Hiking to the Window in Ventana Canyon

6:01 pm

An evening pause: My posting on Sunday will be light until the evening, as Diane and I will be doing a 13.2 mile hike up Ventana Canyon to a giant natural bridge called the Window. This canyon is in the Santa Catalina mountains that overlook Tucson. These mountains are quite rugged, with some intense elevation gain in a very short time, comparable to the Grand Canyon. For this hike we will gain 4,000 feet in 6.6 miles.

Below is a video of this hike but only going about halfway up the canyon.

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The Democrats in the Senate passed their first budget in four years yesterday.

9:19 am

Pigs fly! The Democrats in the Senate passed their first budget in four years yesterday.

The budget cuts practically nothing while increasing taxes by almost $1 trillion, which essentially illustrates how little the Democrats want to bring the debt under control. That four Democrats who face a tough election in 2014 voted against the budget also suggests that the Democrat’s traditional spendthrift approach might finally be becoming dangerous at the polls.

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NASA has issued a clarification specifically excluding its press announcements from the suspension of all public outreach efforts.

9:00 am

NASA has issued a clarification specifically excluding its press announcements from the suspension of all public outreach efforts due to sequestration.

I am not surprised. These budget cuts are aimed at grabbing the most publicity as possible, without harming NASA’s ability to lobby for funding. Ironically, the truth is that much of NASA’s education and outreach work can be cut, will not be missed, and so these cuts should illustrate this fact quite effectively.

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