Award denied cosmonaut
A Russian astronaut has been twice denied a routine but financially important honor after returning from space, and the Russian astronaut corps might strike over it.
Category: Points of Information
Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
Shooter to the Olympics
Alex Callage, one of the members of my gun range, has just been chosen by the Air Force to train for the Olympics as a pistol shooter. Go Alex!
The melt rate of the icecaps is half what was previously predicted
The uncertainty of science: The melt rate of the icecaps is half what was previously calculated.
Two asteroids to fly past Earth
Collision alert! Two small asteroids are going to zip past the Earth this week, both passing closer than the Moon.
Sweep for Republicans in 2010?
New poll news from several normally liberal news sources (Washington Post, NBC, ABC) all show that the voters are really eager to fire Congress in 2010.
More evidence that the solar cycle is changing
A preprint paper published today on the Los Alamos astro-ph website shows further evidence of the decline in the strength of the Sun’s magnetic field over the past ten years. Extrapolated into the future, this data also suggests that the next solar maximum will be the weakest in 200 years, and that the solar maximum after that will have no sunspots at all. You can download the paper here [pdf].
Cannibalism survivors talk to Chilean miners
This is not how I would try to boost their morale: Cannibalism survivors of plane crash talk to Chilean miners. Key advice from one of the crash survivors:
“They are much luckier than we were because they didn’t have to make the terrible decision to eat their friends.”
Bart Gordon responds to Nobel laureates
The space war continues: On Friday the chairman of the House committee of Science and Technology responded negatively to the letter by 30 Nobel laureates demanding the House revise its budget authorization for NASA and accept the Obama administration’s plans for the agency. Two key quotes from Gordon’s response:
The hard reality is that the Administration has sent an unexecutable budget request to Congress, and now we have to make tough choise to the nation can have a sustainable and balance [sic] NASA program.
Reluctantly, the Committee came to the conclusion that the president’s new human space flight program, much like the current Constellation program, was unexecutable under the current budget projections and other NASA priorities we all agree must be addressed.
Danish launch scrubbed
The first test launch of that privately funded Danish suborbital rocket had to be scrubbed on Sunday when a valve jammed.
Notre Dame fires employee
Notre Dame fires employee for attending pro-life rally protesting Obama’s speech at the Catholic university.
Danish test flight set for tomorrow
That test flight of a Danish privately built suborbital rocket has been delayed from today till tomorrow due to weather, with tomorrow’s flight having a 70% chance.
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Life on Mars?
New research now suggests that it was premature to conclude that Mars has no life, based on the data from the Viking missions to Mars in the 1970s. This is vindication for Gilbert Levin, one of the chief scientists for those missions, who had said so then and was subsequently pilloried for it.