Category: Points of Information

Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.

One last chance for Philae

8:56 am

With time running out as Comet 67P/C-G moves away from the Sun, the Rosetta engineering team is going to try one more time to contact the lander Philae.

The lander team are going to try another method to trigger a reponse from Philae: on 10 January they will send a command, via Rosetta, to attempt to make Philae’s momentum wheel switch on. “Time is running out, so we want to explore all possibilities,” says Stephan Ulamec, Philae lander manager at DLR. Philae’s momentum wheel ensured that it was stable during its descent from the orbiter on 12 November, 2014.

If the command is successfully received and executed, the hope is that it might shift the lander’s position.”At best, the spacecraft might shake dust from its solar panels and better align itself with the Sun,” explains Philae technical manager Koen Geurts at DLR’s lander control centre.

They also believe that one of the lander’s two transmitters and one of its two receivers are broken, which makes communications difficult at best.

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How to really look for aliens

11:38 am

Two scientists summarize the challenge for finding alien life in the universe.

Look for high amounts of oxygen and mid-infrared energy, the second of which has already produced some candidates.

A recent large survey by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) satellite did identify five red spiral galaxies whose combination of high MIR and low near-ultraviolet luminosities are inconsistent with simple expectations from high rates of star formation. A conventional explanation for these observations, such as the presence of large amounts of internal dust, has not been ruled out, however. Such peculiar objects deserve follow-up observations before we explore whether they might represent the signatures of galaxy-dominating species.

The article is very thoughtful, however, and outlines in detail the issues and problems the research faces. We might, in a few decades, have the capability to answer this question, but then, the aliens might be alien enough to still be undetectable. Or they might not exist at all.

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Arianespace sales top SpaceX in 2015

10:14 am

The competition heats up: According to Arianespace’s CEO Stephane Israel, the company signed more new launch contracts in 2015 than SpaceX, despite their competitor’s much larger PR footprint.

At a briefing here outlining Evry, France-based Arianespace 2015 record and plans for 2016, Israel sought to portray Arianespace as once again in the driver’s seat when it comes to commercial launches. After drawing even with Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX in 2014, with nine commercial orders each, Arianespace’s count for 2015 showed its Ariane 5 rocket winning 14 contracts for geostationary-orbit satellites, compared to nine for SpaceX and one each for International Launch Services of Reston, Virginia, which markets Russia’s Proton; and for the Atlas 5 rocket of United Launch Alliance of Centennial, Colorado.

Arianespace’s count includes one undisclosed customer. Unless it’s identified, it will not be included in SpaceNews’s annual count of firm contract awards. Of the 13 satellites remaining, two are for Europe’s meteorological satellite organization, Eumetsat, and cannot be considered commercial wins. In addition to the geostationary-satellite contracts, Arianespace in 2015 booked the largest single launch contract, to use 21 Russian Soyuz rockets — including the Europeanized version operated from Europe’s spaceport — to launch the OneWeb low-orbiting broadband constellation.

Israel also spent a lot of time at the briefing dealing with reporters’ questions about SpaceX, where he poo-pooed the significance of the Falcon 9 first stage landing, noting repeatedly the accepted wisdom that the stress of launch limits the re-usability of rocket stages. This suggests that Arianespace’s next generation rocket, Ariane 6, is not likely to have this capability. Considering that its launch price is now estimated to be between $90 and $100 million, I wonder how they will compete with a reusable Falcon 9 that will likely cost a third this price.

That the Russians only signed one new contract for its Proton last year, as noted in the quote above, also tells us that SpaceX is getting most of its market share from the Russians. If the company should continue to lower its costs and increase its launch rate over time, they will then start stealing market share from others. Thus, Arianespace’s CEO makes a very big mistake if he takes their competitive threat lightly.

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Starliner schedule shapes up

9:49 am

The competition heats up: The schedule and launch plans for Boeing’s manned Starliner spacecraft are now becoming solidified.

For Boeing, Starliner will first launch on an uncrewed test flight to the Station via the “Boe-OFT” mission in April or May, 2017 – on a 30 day mission, ending with a parachute-assisted return. Should all go to plan, the second mission will involve a crew on a mission designated “Boe-CFT”, launching sometime between July and September, 2017, on a 14-day mission to the ISS.

The article also outlines the launch procedures Boeing intends to follow, some determined by the company and some by NASA’s complex safety rules. One interesting tidbit about Starliner revealed here that I was unaware of previously is that the capsule is made of separate top and bottom units that are only fitted together late in the launch process, allowing for easier access.

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Rubio as establishment proves tea party won

9:49 am

David French notes that if Marco Rubio is now considered a RINO establishment candidate whom conservatives must oppose it demonstrates beyond doubt that the tea party has won the debate.

It seems that [Rubio’s] now the “establishment” candidate mainly because a number of establishment figures and donors have defected to him after their preferred candidate — perhaps Bush, Christie, or Kasich — failed to gain traction. But if the standard for establishment status is simply whether establishment figures have chosen to support you after their first-choice candidate fails, then every single GOP contender is either establishment or establishment-in-waiting. After all, if Rubio falters, mass numbers of establishment politicians and donors will rush to back Cruz over Trump. And if Cruz falters, those same people will presumably back Trump over Hillary.

Here’s the reality: In the battle — launched in 2010 — between the tea party and traditional GOP powers, the tea party largely won. The contest between Rubio, Cruz, and Trump is a fight between Tea Party 1.0, Tea Party 2.0, and classic American populism. And each one of these candidates would need traditional Republican or “establishment” support in the general election.

He’s right. The political debate is now being fought entirely on tea party terms, with those terms forcing the candidates consistently rightward on every issue. Not only is this a good thing, it suggests a major shift by the American public itself. Our so-called “intellectual elites” might still be liberal, standing there with their fingers in their ears and eyes closed chanting “La-la-la-la-la-la-la-LA!!” so they won’t get triggered by new ideas, but the public has heard what tea party advocates have said and has found those positions worth supporting.

This suggests to me that we might even be seeing a shift in the voting patterns of the low-information television voter, the kind of voter who only comes out during Presidential elections and routinely supports the Democratic candidate being pushed by the mainstream networks. If so, the Democratic Party is in very deep trouble, as they continue to behave as if their low-information voting block remains solid and under their control.

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Europe might end its ISS partnership in 2020

9:26 am

Despite agreements by Russia, Canada, and Japan to extend their ISS partnership with the U.S. through 2024, both France and Germany of the European Space Agency (ESA) are having second thoughts and might pull out in 2020 instead.

In separate statements Jan. 4 and Jan. 5, the heads of the French and German space agencies said a detailed study is under way to assess the future operating cost of the station, and whether the cost can be justified given the pressure on near-term budgets.

Pascale Ehrenfreund, chairman of the board of the German Aerospace Center, DLR, which is Germany’s space agency, said DLR would make no promises until after a full review of ISS’s value. “In view of the high cost involved and the resulting implications on budgets of [European Space Agency] member states, we have to evaluate very carefully costs and benefits of a continued participation in the ISS,” Ehrenfreund said in a Jan. 5 statement in response to SpaceNews inquiries. “It’s only based on this evaluation that we will be able to take a definite position.”

Germany has been Europe’s ISS champion — its biggest paymaster and most vocal booster — for more than 20 years and at times has had to strong-arm France into boosting its support under threat of reduced German backing of Europe’s Ariane rocket program, a French priority.

Eventually, all the partners running ISS with the U.S. are going to come to this decision, which means the U.S. government should begin thinking about what it does at that time. I say, when that time comes the government will privatize the station, giving it to the private companies best able to make a profit from it. And by 2024 the U.S. is likely to have a number of companies quite capable of doing so, from SpaceX to Blue Origin to Bigelow.

There also will be no reason to destroy the station at that time. Being modular, much of it is relatively new, and what is old could be replaced with relatively simplicity. This is a national asset that should not be abandoned nonchalantly.

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Hillary Clinton vows to investigate UFOs if elected

8:55 am

Well, we now know her priorities! In a meeting with the editorial board of a New Hampshire newspaper, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton vowed to find out once and for all whether UFOs have been discovered by the federal government and kept secret.

Her husband Bill Clinton apparently tried and failed to uncover those buried records while he was President.

I am sure this reassures you all. While the Republicans are distracted by unimportant issues, such as terrorism, radical Islam, a weak economy, an out-of-control federal budget, and a corrupt federal bureaucracy that is abusing its power while failing to do its job, Hillary Clinton has her sights on issues of real importance.

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2015 the busiest launch year for Florida since 2003

8:46 am

The competition heats up: With 17, Florida had more rocket launches in 2015 than it has had in more than a dozen years.

Russia once again had the most launches in the year, with 29 (including 3 failures). Overall, launches worldwide were down, from 92 in 2014 to 87 in 2015. However, the uptick in the U.S., spurred I think by SpaceX, suggests that the U.S. numbers will continue to rise, and in in a few years the U.S.will take the lead.

Note also that when the shuttle was retired many thought that — with the loss of that government operation — it would be the end of the Florida launch business. Competition and private enterprise have instead shown that a dependence on government is not the only way to do things, and is in fact not the best way to do things.

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Four elements added to periodic table

8:30 am

Scientists have now officially added four new elements to the periodic table, completing the discovery of all elements through 118.

All of the elements were created in the lab, by smashing lighter atomic nuclei together. The unstable agglomerations of protons and neutrons last mere fractions of a second before they fall apart into smaller, more stable fragments.

The teams that have been given credit for the discoveries can now put forward proposals for the elements’ names and two-letter symbols. Elements can be named after one of their chemical or physical properties, a mythological concept, a mineral, a place or country, or a scientist. Priority for discovering element 113 went to researchers in Japan, who are particularly delighted because it will become the first artificial element to be named in East Asia. When the element was first sighted 12 years ago, ‘Japonium’ was suggested as a name.

While creating element 119 is believed possible, beyond that it is thought unlikely that anything heavier can be produced in the lab.

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Millions opt out of Obamacare despite penalities

8:48 am

Finding out what’s in it: The White House last month admitted that millions of healthy Americans have decided it is cheaper to pay the Obamacare penalty for not having health insurance than pay for insurance that is too expensive and does them little good.

Because so many young and healthy people are doing the math and refusing to pay for a product they don’t need and costs them far more than it is worth, the insurance pool is, as predicted, increasingly made up of sick people only. Such a pool is not viable for the insurance companies, and guarantees that they will eventually go bankrupt.

But hey, Obama and the Democrats promised us all that Obamacare would lower costs and make everyone happy. They wouldn’t lie to us, would they?

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A detailed look at Trump’s positions

8:45 am

This link provides a very detailed but thorough summary of the political positions that Donald Trump has taken in the past year during his presidential campaign. Take a look, as it does a nice job of listing his stance on almost all the important issues that appear to concern Americans at this time. His conclusion is telling:

Except for immigration, foreign policy, and energy, all of Trump’s contemporary positions are more identifiable with liberal positions, which is not surprising, considering he has spent most of his life as a liberal Democrat. Now, if you’re a conservative and immigration is your number-one issue, you can still justify a vote for Donald Trump. But Ted Cruz is almost as good – promising to build a wall, oppose amnesty, and enforce the law – and he’s much better on just about every other issue.

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Washington state releasing convicts early by mistake since 2002

10:01 am

Government marches on: Because of a software error, Washington state has for more than 12 years released more than 3,000 convicted felons several months earlier than required by law

Two of those felons have now been charged with murders that occurred during the period when they should have been in prison.

Sounds stupid and bad eh? Well, it gets worse:

Even though the problem was discovered in 2012, the department repeatedly delayed fixing the software, until Gov. Jay Inslee says the problem finally came to his attention last month. He disclosed the problem to the media in a press conference shortly before Christmas. “That this problem was allowed to continue to exist for 13 years is deeply disappointing, it is totally unacceptable, and frankly, it is maddening,” Inslee says.

Hey, why should anyone be complaining? It takes time to fix software problems. And the work is hard! In fact, we should be grateful these government employees are now working to fix it.

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2015’s 13 most ridiculous protests on college campuses

10:36 am

Link here.

Read it all and weep. I would also suggest that if you need to choose a university for your child, you should cross off Swarthmore University, the University of New Hampshire, Idaho State University, College of the Canyons (in Los Angeles), Western University (in London), University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Harvard University, Brandeis University, the University of California-Los Angeles, Kansas University, North Carolina University, Scripps College (in California), the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Washington, the University of Ottawa (in Canada), the University of Georgia, Quinnipiac University, and the University of California-Merced.

Most of these are government colleges, which also means that as voters we should also be demanding that their government funding should cease, now, immediately, without any negotiation. They are not only failing to educate their students, the academics who run these colleges are actually teaching them very stupid and bad ideas. They should be forced to find some real work where they will be no longer be able to do society this harm.

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Seeds from archaeological site grow into extinct squash

10:18 am

Update: It appears the story below is bogus. (Hat tip Pzatchok.) It appears to be a combination of two different stories, one in which gardeners from the Miami Nation in Indiana donated old seeds to a research group, and the second where that same research group attempted to grow seeds found in a Kentucky cave, with poor results.

Original post:
Students who discovered some ancient seeds in a clay pot at an archaeological site in Canada successfully planted them to grow a previously extinct species of squash.

Not all the seeds grew, but enough did. Moreover, the new squash produced new seeds. This once extinct squash is no longer extinct. And according to the article is also tastes delicious!

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Make Trump go away with software!

11:31 am

The coming dark age: Want to be hip, cool, and with it? Then what you need is the Trump filter, a Chrome extension that will block any access to any website that mentions Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Dubbed as the “Trump Filter,” the Google Chrome extension will filter all Trump-related articles while users surf the Internet. The extension is described as “part of the antidote for this toxic candidacy.” The extension will identify parts of a web page that contain Donald Trump and remove them from the Internet, according to the creator’s description on his Trump Filter website.

In another more enlightened age, this would have instead been called “putting one’s head in the sand” to avoid dealing with reality. Donald Trump is not my first or second choice for president, but he is leading the polls and could very well win. To make believe he doesn’t exist is the height of close-minded foolishness.

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Science journal publishes fake study

11:06 am

The uncertainty of peer review: A science journal has published a fake study that supposedly proved that kissing a child’s “boo-boo” has no medicinal value.

In their study, the authors claim to be members of the Study of Maternal and Child Kissing (SMACK) Working Group, which they say is a subsidiary of Procter and Johnson, Inc., the maker of “Bac-Be-Gone ointment and Steri-Aids self-adhesive bandages.” Procter and Johnson, which is not a real consumer goods company, is an obvious mash-up of Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson, two consumer packaged goods companies which sell health care items like bandages and ointments. The only contact information for the study’s authors disclosed in the research paper is a Gmail address. Bac-Be-Gone ointment and Steri-Aids also do not appear to be actual products available for sale. Additionally, many of the academic research references listed at the end of the study–including one article entitled “So what the hell is going on here?”–also appear to be fake.

The journal, the Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, claims on its website that all papers published by it are copy-edited and peer-reviewed. In this case I suppose the reviewers worked for Comedy Central .

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Japan looks to private space

9:00 am

The competition heats up: Japan’s legislature is considering bills that would allow for the private launching of Japanese rockets.

Draft bills for the Space Activities Act and Satellite Remote Sensing Act, to be submitted to the regular Diet session from Jan. 4, will require the government to scrutinize launch plans before granting case-by-case permission. Under the Basic Plan on Space Policy set in early 2015, the government aims to expand the size of the space industry to around ¥5 trillion over the next decade. The government would also oblige companies to pay compensation in the event of accidents. Victims would receive government compensation if private operators are unable to cover all the damages, according to the drafts.

Currently, the only entity that has a space program is the state-sponsored Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

The proposed laws will probably not work very well, as they they seem to maintain the government’s strong control over everything.

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Russia cancels all Moon missions till 2025

9:20 am

Faced with a shrinking budget and poor economic conditions, Russia has once again trimmed back its proposed ten-year space plan for the next decade in space, cancelling all Moon missions until after 2025.

Russian might now have a giant government-run aerospace corporation, but flying space missions is not really its primary task. Like all government agencies divorced from profit and loss, its primary task is really to provide pork barrel jobs, regardless of whether those jobs do anything useful or not. Thus, Russia will have a very expensive space program for the next decade, but the money spent will not accomplish much of anything new.

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First test flight of India’s prototype space shuttle delayed

9:12 am

Because of a discovered leak, India’s space agency ISRO has delayed the first flight of an engineering test prototype of a reusable space shuttle.

Sources said on Sunday that the Reusable Launch Vehicle-Technology Demonstrator (RLV-TD), under development at the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC) here at Thumba, developed a minor leak during a test, forcing the ISRO to postpone the mission. The ambitious RLV-TD, the first small step to building a ‘space shuttle’ which can return to earth after accomplishing space missions, is likely to be delayed up to April 2016. ISRO had originally planned a mid-2015 launch for the RLV-TD. It had later been postponed to January 2016.

VSSC Director Dr K Sivan said that some of the components had to be re-assembled. ‘’If things go as planned, we can launch the mission in the first week of February. Otherwise, the test will be conducted in the first week of April,’’ he said.

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SpaceX to display recovered first stage

9:04 am

The competition heats up: Rather than re-fly it, Elon Musk suggested today that, after some testing, SpaceX will likely put its first recovered Falcon 9 first stage on display instead.

“[We will] do a static fire at the launch pad there, to confirm that all systems are good and that we are able to do a full thrust hold-down firing of the rocket,” Musk said after the stage landed. The static fire will also test the modifications SpaceX has made to Pad 39A to support its rockets.

After that though, the stage will become a display piece. “I think we will keep this one on the ground for tests that prove it could fly again and then put it somewhere — just because it is quite unique,” Musk said.

Since they already have a satellite company, SES, willing to buy that first stage, this only underlines how this last Falcon 9 launch changes everything. Nor do I think this change has sunk in with most people yet. The last launch was not a one-time event. SpaceX’s intends to recover as many of its first stages as it can in all future launches. Their Falcon 9 first stage is no longer expendable. Thus, they can afford to put this first recovered stage on display because they expect all future first stages to fly again.

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Vostochny update suggests further delays and corruption

8:30 am

Government marches on! This detailed update on the status of construction at the new Russian spaceport at Vostochny contains this very revealing quote:

During his year-end press-conference on December 17, Russian president Vladimir Putin expressed hope that the space center would be ready in the first quarter of 2016, however he stressed that there was no need to rush with the completion of the project and that the quality (of the construction) was more important. The lag in schedule had been reduced from as long as 1.5 years to between four and six months, Putin said.

However, an unofficial posting on Russian social media by a local witness claimed that there was no chance for the first launch in April, because all additional funds disbursed by the Kremlin for the project had already been spent or stolen, while most expensive hardware needed for the completion, including some to be imported from China, was yet to be delivered. Such reports were backdropped by continuous publications in the Russian press about corruption and waste plaguing the project. Even the official TASS joined in, disclosing that Spetsstroi had spent a part of the federal funds allocated for the spaceport to develop commercial real estate in the nearby city of Khabarovsk. The Russian Deputy Prime-Minister Dmitry Rogozin vowed to sell these residential properties and return at least part of the money into the budget. [emphasis mine]

I fully expect Vostochny to get built, and its first rocket to launch sometime in 2016. I also expect the corruption and waste that permeates Russian society — much of it resulting from decades of centralized government control during the Soviet era — to make the spaceport far less competitive or useful. The Russians have spend a lot of money here building a spaceport designed for 20th century rockets. Changing this infrastructure to handle new rocket designs is likely to be complicated and expensive.

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Proton successfully launches satellite

8:58 am

The competition heats up: A Russian Proton rocket successfully placed a commercial communications satellite in orbit today, the fifth successful launch in a row since a May launch failure and the second launch in only 10 days.

For the Russians the Proton successes during the second half of 2015 are encouraging. Whether they have solved their chronic quality control problems, however, remains unknown. I remain doubtful, especially because they have eliminated competition within their industry and folded everything into a single government entity that runs it all.

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Prosecutors investigate scientists while blocking efforts against plant disease

8:50 am

The coming dark age: Italian prosecutors have ordered that all efforts to halt the spread of a deadly disease that attacks olive plants cease while they investigate scientists who study the disease.

Under European Union rules, Italy is obliged to carry out a scientifically based containment plan to stop the disease from spreading to other EU countries. In addition to culling infected trees, this plan involves destroying healthy trees to create buffer zones. But farmers, supported by environmental activists who deplored the destruction of ancient trees, have protested against its implementation. Individual court rulings have found in their favour, stopping tree felling and the spraying of insecticide on their land.

On 10 December, just over a week before Italian public prosecutors announced their investigation, the European Commission opened an infringement procedure over Italy’s failure to carry out containment measures quickly enough. Commission spokesman Enrico Brivio says that he does not know what will happen now that Italian courts have blocked the entire containment plan. “Xylella in all its strains is the most dangerous pathogen for plants, and epidemics have huge economic impact,” he says. “The emergency measures are necessary and need to be implemented.”

The article also notes that the disease can only have come from Costa Rica, which is an area that none of the scientists under investigation have ever worked.

Let me sum up: Environmentalists, hostile to the killing of “ancient trees”, have worked to block any effort to stop the disease, which can now run rampant killing “ancient trees.” Prosecutors, searching for blame, have teamed up with the environmentalists to attack the scientists studying the disease, making sure that any effort to either cure the disease or stop its spread will be discouraged now and in the future.

Maybe the prosecutors and environmentalists should get some torches and pitchforks and burn the scientists at the stake. That will surely solve the problem!

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A new lightweight and very strong metal

9:03 am

Engineers have developed a new superlight and very strong metal.

A team led by researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science has created a super-strong yet light structural metal with extremely high specific strength and modulus, or stiffness-to-weight ratio. The new metal is composed of magnesium infused with a dense and even dispersal of ceramic silicon carbide nanoparticles. It could be used to make lighter airplanes, spacecraft, and cars, helping to improve fuel efficiency, as well as in mobile electronics and biomedical devices.

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Russia hints at Vostochny schedule

8:36 am

The competition heats up? Russian sources today suggested that the first unmanned launch from Vostochny will occur on April 25, 2016 (subject to testing) while the first manned flight will occur in 2023

The second story is more significant, as it demonstrates the slow, laborious pace of this government operation. Based on the pace being set by the private companies in the U.S., by 2023 they will be flying regular manned missions from several privately run launch sites, all built quickly with as little cost as possible, with some flights possibly going beyond Earth orbit. Vostochny is expected to cost about $2.9 billion and take more than a decade to complete. The first manned missions will go to ISS only, with the first lunar manned mission not expected until after 2025 (this link also gives some details about the Russian government’s ongoing struggle to establish a 10 year plan for its space program amid continuing and changing budget crises).

The differences here are striking. While the Russian government builds an expensive spaceport built on old technology, Americans will be launching innovative and low-cost rockets that no one has ever seen before. Who do you want to hitch your ride to?

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“The Democrats’ theme for 2016 is totalitarianism.”

10:11 pm

There are those who have read Behind the Black who have been very offended when I refer to the policies and behavior of the Democractic Party and the left as fascist. This article provides a nice summary of their recent activity, which when read all together should make every freedom-loving American downright horrified:

Donald Trump may talk like a brownshirt, but the Democrats mean business. For those of you keeping track, the Democrats and their allies on the left have now: voted in the Senate to repeal the First Amendment, proposed imprisoning people for holding the wrong views on global warming, sought to prohibit the showing of a film critical of Hillary Rodham Clinton, proposed banning politically unpopular academic research, demanded that funding politically unpopular organizations and causes be made a crime and that the RICO organized-crime statute be used as a weapon against targeted political groups. They have filed felony charges against a Republican governor for vetoing a piece of legislation, engaged in naked political persecutions of members of Congress, and used the IRS and the ATF as weapons against political critics.

On the college campuses, they shout down unpopular ideas or simply forbid nonconforming views from being heard there in the first place. They have declared academic freedom an “outdated concept” and have gone the full Orwell, declaring that freedom is oppressive and that they should not be expected to tolerate ideas that they do not share. They are demanding mandatory ideological indoctrination sessions for nonconforming students. They have violently assaulted students studying in libraries and assaulted student journalists documenting their activities. They have staged dozens of phony hate crimes and sexual assaults as a pretext for persecuting unpopular organizations and people.

He keeps going. And with every statement he provides a link to a documented story that backs-up his accusation. Worse, he doesn’t even address the attacks on traditional religions and their practitioners.

The Democratic Party and the left have become the party of brownshirts and dictators. No wonder they often seem more sympathetic to Islamic terrorists and tyrants than they do to the innocent people those terrorists and tyrants have killed. They empathize with this oppressive behavior, especially because it appears to be attacking their own enemies.

Unfortunately, there are too many powerful Republicans who have little problem with this behavior, because they themselves see the behavior of the Democrats as useful because it also attacks their own enemies. It is thus imperative for the voters to aggressively vote against all these brownshirts, from either party, and support those candidates — who unfortunately appear to only be running in the Republican Party — who are dedicated to defeating these fascists.

In fact, it appears this is exactly what Republican voters appear to be doing, illustrated by their consistent support for outsider-type candidates like Trump and Cruz.

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U.S. production of plutonium-238 resumes

7:10 pm

After a 30 year hiatus, the Department of Energy has produced the first plutonium-238 in the United States since the late 1980s.

Plutonium-238 is the fuel of choice for deep-space exploration. But for nearly 30 years, nobody in the United States was making it.

On Tuesday, that all changed. The Department of Energy announced that 50 grams of the stuff had been made by researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn. Fifty grams isn’t much, but this is the first time the substance has been made in the country since the Savannah River Plant in South Carolina stopped making it in the late 1980s.

What this does is provide NASA and the U.S. the ability to fly unmanned deep space missions for many more years. Without this plutonium-238, there would be no practical way to power spacecraft traveling out beyond Mars orbit.

And why did the U.S. stop making plutonium-238 in the late 1980s? The story is of course complicated, but one of the big factors is that at that time nuclear power had become politically incorrect after the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl nuclear power plant failures, and thus politicians fell over themselves to be the first to ban any such production, even if it was harmless and incredibly beneficial.

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