Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
It appears the space war is heating up again. This analysis of the NASA authorization legislation issued by the House yesterday notes that it has serious differences with the Senate bill. The article notes that the House bill does not fund an additional shuttle mission while insisting that the government continue the construction of some variation of the Orion capsule and Ares rockets. See also this article from the Orlando Sentinel.
Meanwhile, it turns out that the climategate investigation of Phil Jones at the University of East Anglia allowed Jones himself to review and approve the evidence that the investigation would look at!
The U.S. Department of Energy has temporarily suspended all research funding to the University of East Anglia, pending its review of the climategate controversy.
The House Committee on Science and Technology has released the text [pdf] of its NASA reauthorization bill. The committee’s short thumbnail description of the language suggests it is similar to the Senate language. A quick scan of the text also suggests this as well. I hope to take a closer look at both the Senate and House bills later this week and then give my take on both.
The head of the Russian manned space program thinks that NASA’s new goals of building a rocket and capsule for reaching an asteroid by 2015 to be “unreal.”
Boeing has released some new images and videos of its crew transportation vehicle, being built in partnership with Bigelow Aerospace using subsidies from NASA’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program.
John Glenn is meeting with President Obama today. Considering Glenn’s opposition to Obama’s plans for NASA, I suspect he is going to spend some his time lobbying Obama about changing those plans.
I just thought I should note quickly that my weekend cave trip was a spectacular success. John Harman, Pete Johnson, Nikki Fox, and myself surveyed almost 800 feet of beautiful and big virgin cave passage. I hope to have pictures soon.
Man, it is really fun to go where no one has ever gone before!
A headline that insists you read the story: Joe the Plumber (not that one) says he helped stop Gulf oil spill leak.
A preprint paper, published today on the astro-ph website but also accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, has confirmed what scientists have suspected about the dust and gas between the stars: As you travel closer to the center of the Milky Way galaxy this interstellar medium gets increasingly enriched with heavy elements. The scientists believe this is because the higher rate of supernovae in the inner galaxy sprays space with more of these atoms.
Since the field of extrasolar planets has also found that the more heavy elements a star contains, the more chance it will have planets, the new results above suggest that we will find more planets as we look inward towards the galactic center.
Brownshirt alert: Watch how these union participants at this union rally react to the fact that several citizens are videotaping the event:
