Category: Behind The Black

Lobbying to save commercial space

2:08 pm

Jeff Foust reports today that the long delayed final FAA reauthorization bill also includes language that will extend until 2015 the restrictions on the FAA’s ability to regulate commercial space.

How nice of them.

When the Commercial Space Law Amendments Act (CSLAA) passed in 2004 I wrote in my UPI column Space Watch that I thought it was a bad idea and would cause great harm to the commercial space industry. All the law accomplished was hand power to the FAA and Congress to restrict commercial activities in space, without providing the industry any real benefit. Even with this extension space commercial companies remain at the mercy of Congressional action or FAA regulation, neither of which is really interested in helping this new industry.

The bad elements of the bill are finally beginning to come to light.
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The head of Russia’s space agency makes news again

9:33 am

The following stories are all the result of statements made by Vladimir Popovkin, the head of Roscosmos, the Russian Federal space agency, during a radio interview yesterday.

This is the same guy that only a few weeks ago was throwing accusations at the U.S. for the failure of Phobos-Grunt.

What should we make of these statements? First, everything Popovkin says is aimed at fund-raising. Whatever his background, he is a political appointee whose job is to generate interest and funding for Russia’s space program. Everything he says in public must be weighed against this reality. That he first tried to shift the blame to the U.S. for Phobos-Grunt’s loss was an effort to absolve his program from any blame and thus reduce the possibility that the Russian government might cut his funding. Now that his agency has gotten approval of its insurance payment for the failure, however, he is free to say otherwise.

Second, these announcements give us a clear indication of where the Russia space effort is heading, and that effort looks both thoughtful and intelligent.
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A report tonight at the Daily Caller says that at least two Justice Department prosecutors accepted cash bribes from allegedly corrupt finance executives who were indicted but never arrested or prosecuted.

10:16 pm

Oh my, how much worse can it get? A report tonight at the Daily Caller says that at least two Justice Department prosecutors accepted cash bribes from allegedly corrupt finance executives who were indicted but never arrested or prosecuted. Worse,

The sitting governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands, his attorney general and an unspecified number of Virgin Islands legislators also accepted bribes, the source said, adding that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is aware prosecutors and elected officials were bribed and otherwise compromised, but has not held anyone accountable.

I must point out that a certain skepticism is called for: This story is very vague about who, what, when, and where, and its sources are anonymous. Nonetheless, if true this might very well be the bombshell story that ends Eric Holder’s career. What it does to the Obama administration remains to be seen.

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By a significant majority the House has voted to repeal part of Obamacare.

8:43 pm

More House action: By a significant majority the House has voted to repeal part of Obamacare.

Once again, that a significant number of Democrats joined the Republicans in this vote illustrates where the political power lies. The Democratic leadership and President Obama are fighting a losing battle trying to support this turkey, especially since this section of Obamacare has already been abandoned as unworkable by the White House.

Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius effectively suspended the program last fall, conceding she couldn’t find a way to make it pay for itself. And the Congressional Budget Office took the program off the books, releasing lawmakers from budget rules that would have otherwise required them to replace the lost savings.

Since the rest of Obamacare is unworkable as well, expect more action to repeal it after the November election. And I expect that effort to succeed.

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The House has voted to freeze all congressional and federal pay for another year, through 2013.

8:34 pm

The House has voted to freeze all congressional and federal pay for another year, through 2013.

On a vote of 309 to 117, GOP supporters scored the two-thirds majority needed to approve the measure under a suspension of normal procedural roles. The bill, introduced by Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.), would extend the current two-year freeze on federal cost-of-living raises for an additional year starting next January. Lawmakers haven’t raised congressional pay in four of the last six years.

The bill would need to be approved by the Senate before becoming law.

The yay votes above included a significant number of Democrats, once again indicating where the political winds are blowing. Even as their leadership poo-poos this vote, their membership knows what the voters want.

The last sentence in the quote above illustrates again which party in Congress is really doing nothing, as it is the Senate where this bill might die, and it is the Senate that the Democrats control.

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The Orion test capsule arrived in Alabama for tests, covered in fan signatures.

6:45 pm

You think Americans aren’t interested in space travel? Get this: The Orion test capsule arrived in Alabama for tests, covered in fan signatures.

Orion and NASA’s space launch system might not get us there, but that doesn’t matter in this case. The public is expressing its desire for space travel quite clearly. All they need is someone to provide it to them at a reasonable cost.

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The face in space

3:38 pm

The face in space.

The hotbed of star birth, called NGC 3324, is full of hot young stars, whose ultraviolet radiation is making the gas clouds glow. The stellar wind and radiation from the newborn stars has also punched out a cavity in the surrounding gas and dust. The edge of the wall of gas and dust at the right in the photo resembles the profile of a human face, with a ridge in the center that looks like a nose.

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The NY Times reported today that the investigation into MF Global’s bankrucpty has located most of the missing $1.2 billion of customer money

9:25 am

The NY Times reported today that the investigation into MF Global’s bankrucpty has located most of the missing $1.2 billion of customer money.

Investigators have determined what happened to nearly all of the customer money that disappeared from MF Global around the time of its bankruptcy last Oct. 31, but have not publicly disclosed their progress, fearing that doing so might cripple efforts to recover the cash and pursue potential wrongdoing, people briefed on the investigation said.

While authorities have traced hundreds of millions of dollars to banks, MF Global’s trading partners and even the firm’s securities customers, investigators remain uncertain about whether they can retrieve the money.

As I was reading this article I had the strange feeling that I lived in an alternative universe. At no point did the New York Times bother to mention the name of former Democratic New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, the economic go-to guy for the Obama administration and the man who was in charge of MF Global when all of this illegal and incompetent activity occurred. For those that want to know a bit more about the story, you might want to go to this New York Post editorial today, which lays out the issues that the New York Times so conveniently wants everyone to forget, and also notes that even now Corzine is out there campaigning and raising funds for Obama’s re-election.

Well, as they say, birds of a feather will flock together.

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A U.S. government panel today unanimously recommended that scientists limit publication of results relating to bird flu.

9:53 pm

A U.S. government panel today unanimously recommended that scientists limit publication of their results relating to bird flu.

We found the potential risk of public harm to be of unusually high magnitude. In formulating our recommendations to the government, scientific journals and to the broader scientific community, we tried to balance the great risks against the benefits that could come from making the details of this research known. Because the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) found that there was significant potential for harm in fully publishing these results and that the harm exceeded the benefits of publication, we therefore recommended that the work not be fully communicated in an open forum. The NSABB was unanimous that communication of the results in the two manuscripts it reviewed should be greatly limited in terms of the experimental details and results.

As much as I am almost always in favor of the free flow of information, in this case this recommendation seems quite reasonable. The situation is in many ways identical to the government’s policy to routinely limit publication of the engineering details of its weaponry.

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Laser-guided bullets

4:55 pm

Laser-guided bullets.

Invented by engineers at the US government’s Sandia National Laboratories, the self-guided bullet homes in on a laser spot trained on a target from up to 1.4 kilometres away from its firing point. If the target is a moving truck, say, and it moves after the bullet is fired, the laser illumination as seen by a laser sensor in the bullet’s nose instructs the bullet to finely twist tiny rudder-like fins on its rear end to keep it on target.

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The Great Moonbuggy Race

11:21 am

The Great Moonbuggy Race.

The Great Moonbuggy Race is an engineering competition that requires a team of six students to design a “proof-of-concept” wheeled rover that will race over a half mile of simulated lunar terrain. In April, two team members, one male and one female, will drive the completed vehicle in competition at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. This contest will present design challenges that are similar to those encountered by the original lunar rover team. This is the 16th year of competition for high school teams, but it will be the first year for Chicago’s public high school students.

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White nose syndrome has been found in bats in Europe

10:22 am

White nose syndrome, the fungus that has been killing bats in the northeast United States these past five years, has now been definitively found on bats in Europe.

With this information, scientists now know that it is the differences between North American and European bats that can explain why European bat colonies can survive the fungus while North American bats cannot. Furthermore, this information should show us how future North American bats will adapt to the fungus.

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The CBO has projected another trillion plus deficit for 2012, the fourth year in a row the U.S. government has produced such a deficit.

10:18 am

The day of reckoning looms: The CBO now predicts another trillion-plus deficit for 2012, the fourth year in a row the U.S. government has produced such a deficit.

For those who like to blame Bush for everything, it must be noted that these deficits, all during the Obama administration, are three to four times larger than any previous single year deficit of any previous administration. As bad as the deficits were in the Bush years — and they were bad — they don’t hold a candle to what Obama has done.

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