Category: Points of Information

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

More than half Kepler planet candidates false positives

9:40 am

The uncertainty of science: In attempting to confirm the giant exoplanet candidates in the Kepler telescope database a team of scientists has found that more than half are not planets at all but false positives.

An international team1 led by Alexandre Santerne from Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço (IA), made a 5-year radial velocity campaign of Kepler’s giant exoplanet candidates, using the SOPHIE spectrograph (Observatory of Haute-Provence, France), and found that 52,3% were actually eclipsing binaries, while 2,3% were brown dwarfs. Santerne (IA & University of Porto), first author of this paper commented: “It was thought that the reliability of the Kepler exoplanets detection was very good – between 10 and 20% of them were not planets. Our extensive spectroscopic survey, of the largest exoplanets discovered by Kepler, shows that this percentage is much higher, even above 50%.

The news article above is unclear about the number of candidates total this study actually looked at and pinned down. It appears they began looking at the full database of almost 9,000 candidates, but then narrowed it to 125. Were 50% of the 9,000 false positives, or of the 125? The article is unclear.

At first glance, this study appears to tell us that there might be fewer giant Jupiter-sized exoplanets out there than previously thought. Then again, the data is uncertain enough that this conclusion could easily be wrong. The real take-away is that the science of exoplanets has only just begun, and that sweeping generalizations about the nature of solar systems in the galaxy are exceedingly unreliable. We simply don’t know enough yet.

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Next Falcon 9 first stage to touch down on land?

12:16 am

The competition heats up: SpaceX is considering an attempt to land its Falcon 9 first stage on land in its next launch in two weeks.

Carol Scott, who works technical integration for SpaceX within NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, told reporters here at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station today that SpaceX’s first attempt at a land-based rocket landing may be coming sooner than the public expects. “You know how they want to fly the stage back, right? Their plan is to land it out here on the Cape [Canaveral] side,” Scott told reporters.

The company declined to comment on Scott’s remarks, which are vague enough to leave them plenty of wiggle room. Not that it matters. Even if they attempt the next first stage landing on a barge, a landing on land will soon follow. It is only a matter of time.

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Money is worthless in 2016 Presidential campaign

4:40 pm

A graph of the amount of money spent by candidates on television ads reveals the utter worthlessness so far in 2016 for spending a lot of money. The big spenders are doing poorly in the polls, while the frugal candidates are doing great.

The campaigns and allies for three establishment presidential candidates – Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and John Kasich – have spent a combined $47.5 million in TV ads in the 2016 race so far, according to ad-spending data from NBC News partner SMG Delta.

By contrast, the campaigns and allies for the three Republicans who have been leading or surging in the most recent polls – Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Ted Cruz – have spent just $2.9 million.

The full list at the link is even more astonishing. The three bottom Republican candidates in spending (Carson, Cruz, and Trump) are in the lead, while the four top spenders (Bush, Rubio, Kasich, and Christie) have gotten little for their money, with their campaigns mostly doing poorly. Rubio might be the only one with any traction, but I suspect he will crash and burn once Republican voters actually begin voting. They feel betrayed by him after he decided to make immigration amnesty his most important issue after his election, taking a position completely opposite to the positions he campaigned on.

What this graph tells us is that the geography of elections had changed drastically. Big money means much less. Other things are more important, including the reliability and trustworthiness of the candidates.

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The first Ceres atlas

3:46 pm

Ceres's first atlas

Using data during Dawn’s first orbit of Ceres German scientists have compiled a global atlas of the dwarf planet.

The images used for this are the wide angle survey images, which won’t show the smallest objects because they were taken from about 2,700 miles above the surface. Nonetheless, this atlas gives scientists a baseline for studying the giant asteroid.

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NY’s Obamacare co-op failure forces doctors to demand cash up front

12:37 pm

Finding out what’s in it: Facing the possibility that they won’t be paid because of the failure of the New York Obamacare health insurer, doctors there are now refusing to see patients without an upfront cash payment.

Though the article describes examples where patients were turned away, what is really happening is that the doctors would be glad to treat them, as long as the patient pays for the treatment first. Their insurance ain’t worth anything, and the doctor rightly does not wish to work for free.

Meanwhile, our reality-challenged president, who somehow thought Obamacare would cut health premiums by $2500 and wouldn’t require anyone to change their health plans or doctors, is in Paris this week (which experienced a mass shooting only two weeks ago) telling the world that mass shootings only occur in the United States.

Sadly, the entire Democratic Party generally agrees with him on all issues. Let’s vote for them again!

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Scientists begin another attempt to drill through the Earth’s crust

9:26 am

An expedition to the Indian Ocean is about to begin an effort to drill a core down through the Earth’s crust and into its mantle.

Geologists have been trying to drill through the contact between the crust and the mantle, called the Moho, since the 1960s, with no success. Either the projects have gone way over budget and been shut down, have failed due to engineering problems, or were stopped by the geology itself. This last issue is maybe the most interesting.

Expeditions have come close before. Between 2002 and 2011, four holes at a site in the eastern Pacific managed to reach fine-grained, brittle rock that geologists believe to be cooled magma sitting just above the Moho. But the drill could not punch through those tenacious layers. And in 2013, drillers at the nearby Hess Deep found themselves similarly limited by tough deep-crustal rocks

This new project hopes to learn from these past problems to obtain the first rock samples from below the Earth’s crust.

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Turning planes into trucks

9:14 am

The competition heats up: Airbus has patented a concept for having the cargo/passenger section of an airplane modular and removable.

Instead of a single hull, aeroplanes would essentially be built with a hole in their fuselage between the nose cone and the tail section, into which modular compartments could be fitted and removed. The compartments, which could take on the purpose of a passenger, luxury passenger or freight unit, would be transferred between the aircraft and airport via a docking module, which according to Airbus would (ideally) be integrated into airport terminal buildings.

For passenger planes this idea really doesn’t work. However, for cargo it is brilliant. Like trucks, it allows cargo to be loaded without using the expensive flight infrastructure.

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Deposed XCOR founders form new company

9:04 am

The competition heats up? The founders of XCOR, who only weeks ago were pushed out in a management reorganization, have teamed up again to form a new company.

Forgive me if I am as skeptical of this new company as I am of XCOR. I’ve looked at all the news articles describing this new company, and see little there that excites me. Lots of talk about new management ideas and agile production efforts, but in the end nothing that suggests anything revolutionary.

These guys had more than a decade at XCOR to produce something and essentially never did. Why should I think they will do it now, just because they are hanging a different company name on their sign?

Don’t get me wrong. I will be the first to celebrate if they make something happen. I just remain exceedingly skeptical.

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Russia describes its planned first manned Moon mission

8:46 am

To accomplish its first manned lunar landing, tentatively set for 2029, Russia will have to launch six Angara rockets.

According to the source, the launches are planned to be carried out in pairs from the Vostochny cosmodrome (the Amur region in Russia’s Far East) and the Plesetsk cosmodrome (Archangelsk region in the northwest) with small intervals between the blast-offs. Under the proposed scheme, after the orbit placement, the complex with a total weight up to 70 tonnes will be docked with the manned spacecraft, after which it will fly to the Moon. A payload of 18-20 tonnes will be delivered to the lunar orbit by the end of the mission.

According to a preliminary plan, Russia’s first manned flight to the Moon is possible in 2029. One year ahead of that it is planned to conduct a flight around the Moon, the testing and qualification of space systems for the future manned landing. However, this project may become a reality only if the work to create a new-generation manned transport spacecraft, the Angara-A5 rocket, lunar boosters and other needed rocket and space technology and infrastructure is included in the draft Federal Space Program for 2016-2025.

The final draft Federal Space Program, however, has not yet been approved. This story is obviously a lobbying effort within Russia to get this lunar mission included in that master plan.

What strikes me most about all this is the timing. The big national space programs, Russia, China, and NASA’s SLS, are all aiming for big lunar missions in the late 2020s. All will spend a lot of money for a very limited number of flights, mostly single stunts that merely demonstrate that they can do it. None of these programs will have much staying power on the Moon.

Private space is likely aiming for the Moon as well, and will likely be capable of getting there about the same time. However, private space will be cheap and designed to go many many times (for profit). Watching this race between nations and private companies is going to be quite fascinating. And unlike the 1960s space race, which was a race between two different top-down government programs, this 2020s space race will be between bottom-up capitalism versus top-down government.

I think in the end the governments will be very embarrassed. They will either lose, or act to squelch their private competition.

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The global warming conference’s gigantic carbon footprint

9:24 am

Why are people skeptical of the global warming fear-mongers? Because they do not practice what they preach, flying to huge unnecessary conferences and producing 23,000 times more carbon dioxide then an average American in a year.

Yes, these conferences are unnecessary.

It’s 2015. We have incredibly advanced telecommuting systems. All of the political and scientific work behind a climate conference is performed using such global computer networking, long before the conference is held. Climate confabs are an excuse for politicians to soak their taxpayers for luxury junkets to exotic vacation destinations, where they stay in five-star hotels and dine on the finest gourmet foods.

(Lunch at the Paris climate conference on Monday, according to Politico: special turnip soup, scallops in a climate-symbolic “modern” sauce, stuffed celery confit with veined spinach cream, and then a trilogy of freshwater trout roe caviar, vegetable jelly, and coltsfoot, plus Reblochon au jus scented with myyrh, caraway wood, and a salad of wild undergrowth and tree beans. And yes, of course there will be dessert – citrus compote and light cream with praline.)

Climate conferences are pricey photo ops with no valid purpose beyond influencing media coverage, a fact the grandees at the Paris event have emphasized with their insulting blather about how holding the conference will somehow “rebuke” the Islamic State.

The hilariously obvious truth that no one attending the event actually believes the apocalyptic predictions they dump on their constituents makes these conferences into the equivalent of a “safari” at Disney World – a chance to laugh, hang out with friends, and enjoy a little shiver of play-acting fear as animatronic wild animals lunge at your robot-piloted jungle cruise boat.

The article researches the carbon footprint of the Paris conference, and finds it to be quite significant. If these leftwing global warming activists (they are not scientists, as this conference has nothing to do with science and everything to do with politics) really believed their lies about how fossil fuels and global warming was going to destroy humanity, they would never agree to their periodic parties in five-star hotels in beautiful cities throughout the world.

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The jets of Enceladus

9:09 am

Enceladus's jets

Cool image time! The image above, taken in June by Cassini, shows the night side of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, framed by Saturn’s rings, and faintly showing the jets of water coming from its south pole. To show it here I have cropped it and reduced it somewhat, as well as brightened the jets to make them more visible.

The release notes how the image compares the frozen water of Saturn’s rings and the liquid activity of Enceladus’s jets. I note how the image is simply beautiful. Be sure to click on the link to see the full resolution image.

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Marine court-martialed for displaying Biblical verses

8:51 am

Fascists: Claiming “significant damage could be caused by forcing military employees to work in the presence of a religious quotation,” a Marine was court-martialed when she refused to remove the verses displayed at her work place.

The case centers on an incident two years ago, in which Sterling was stationed at Camp Lejune in North Carolina. A devout Christian, she chose to place at her workstation three slips of paper with the words, “No weapon formed against me shall prosper,” a modification of the Bible verse Isaiah 54:17. Sterling taped the Bible verse in three different places to emulate the Holy Trinity, according to her lawyers.

When her immediate supervisor – Staff Sergeant Alexander – saw the verses, she ordered Sterling to remove them, saying that she did not like the tone. Sterling refused, according to her lawyers, citing First Amendment freedoms and the fact that others in her unit were allowed to have personal items in their workstations. The following day, Sterling found the Bible verses in the garbage. She then reprinted and posted the verses, but found them in the trash again the next day.

On February 1, 2014, Sterling was court-martialed.

She lost the case, but is now appealing to the military’s highest court.

The absurdity of this knows no bounds. No one ever complained about the verses. More importantly, it is her right to express them, even as a display.

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The big money for climate alarmism

7:55 pm

Want to make some big cash? Win some big government grants? Get some corporations to give you money? Become a global warming alarmist!

The article details the long list of government agencies, political organizations, and corporations eager, ready, and willing to provide money to anyone who will say we are all going to die because of human-caused global warming. And the amounts are not trivial.

Shell Oil since 1999 handed out $8.5 million in environmental grants. Like ExxonMobil, many grants flowed to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, but $1.2 million went to the Nature Conservancy; the remainder was spread to several different environmentally-minded groups. According to The Washington Times British Petroleum regularly gave to several environmental groups, such as “Nature Conservancy, the World Wildlife Fund, the World Resources Institute, various branches of the Audubon Society, the Wildlife Habitat Council.” It’s important to understand that these groups accepted the money BP gave them. The Washington Post confirms the Nature Conservancy pocketed over “$10 million in cash and land contributions from BP and affiliated corporations.”

Joanne Nova has documented the massive amount of money pouring from government into the pockets of individuals and groups associated with the environment. “The U.S. government has provided over $79 billion since 1989 on policies related to climate change, including science and technology research, foreign aid, and tax breaks.” $79 billion.

And how much has the author of this article, a scientist and skeptic of global warming, gotten for his skeptical position from big oil? The same as me.

In the interest of full disclosure, the total amount of any consideration I have ever received from any oil company, or any oil company affiliate, is, rounded to the nearest dollar, $0. But it was in cash. Skepticism of environmental apocalypse does not pay.

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The blackballing of Judith Curry

9:18 am

Link here. Curry is a climate scientists who believes carbon dioxide is warming the planet, but she is also a good scientist who is not afraid of data that counters her beliefs, and who also recognizes what she herself calls “the large uncertainties” in our knowledge of the climate.

The article is worth reading at length, as it outlines quite well the close-minded approach to climate science that permeates the global warming crowd. This quote, describing Curry’s experience, sums it up well:

Curry’s independence has cost her dear. She began to be reviled after the 2009 ‘Climategate’ scandal, when leaked emails revealed that some scientists were fighting to suppress skeptical views. ‘I started saying that scientists should be more accountable, and I began to engage with skeptic bloggers. I thought that would calm the waters. Instead I was tossed out of the tribe. There’s no way I would have done this if I hadn’t been a tenured professor, fairly near the end of my career. If I were seeking a new job in the US academy, I’d be pretty much unemployable. I can still publish in the peer-reviewed journals. But there’s no way I could get a government research grant to do the research I want to do. Since then, I’ve stopped judging my career by these metrics. I’m doing what I do to stand up for science and to do the right thing.’ [emphasis mine]

Curry makes it very clear who is blackballing who. If you don’t toe the global warming line, your career as a climate scientists is squelched.

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Iran deal “not legally binding”

10:15 am

More absurdity from the Obama administration: In a letter the State Department wrote to a congressman, they admitted that the Iran treaty was not a “legally binding” document.

“The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is not a treaty or an executive agreement, and is not a signed document,” wrote Julia Frifield, the State Department assistant secretary for legislative affairs, in the November 19 letter.

In other words, the whole kerfuffle about the Iran deal was garbage. There was no deal. All the Obama administration accomplished was to lay out what they’d like Iran to agree to, even as Iran refused to agree to it. Worse, what the Obama administration wished Iran would agree to was still weak and pointless and would allow them to develop nuclear weapons. They rejected that sweet deal (that Congress approved) and instead are proceeding with nuclear weapon development as fast as they can.

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The launch cost of Japan’s H-IIA rocket

9:51 am

The competition heats up: Yesterday’s launch of Japan’s first commercial payload on its upgraded lower cost H-IIA rocket suggested that they are now a serious player in the competitive launch market. What the earlier articles didn’t tell me was the cost they charge to launch a payload on H-IIA.

This article today states that each launch costs 10 billion yen, which translates to about $80 million. That is about $10 million more than SpaceX charges for its Falcon 9, but is certainly cheaper than many other rocket companies. At this price they have a chance of grabbing some of the launch market, but to really compete they need to cut that cost even more, which the article suggests their next rocket will succeed in doing: “The government is developing a new core rocket named the H3, whose launches are expected to cost only about a half of the H2A.”

They do not say whether H3 will be reusable, but at $40 million per launch it will be the cheapest rocket on Earth. That it is government developed however makes me skeptical they will succeed. We shall see. What is clear, however, is that the competition is certainly encouraging the lowering of cost.

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Earth’s magnetic field might not be flipping

10:12 pm

The uncertainty of science: A new analysis of the past strength of the Earth’s magnetic field suggests that today’s field is abnormally strong and that, even with the 10% decline in the field’s strength in the past two centuries, it remains stronger than the average over the past 5 million years.

The new data also suggests that the field might not be about to shut down and then reverse polarity, as some scientists have theorized based on the 10% decline. Instead, the data says that the field’s unusual strength today only means that the decline is bringing it back to its average strength, and is not necessarily an indication of a pending reversal.

To put it mildly, there are a lot of uncertainties here, including questions about the database that has been used previously by geologists to estimate the past strength of the Earth’s magnetic field. The database might have been right, but the new study raises significant new questions.

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They mean what they say

5:25 pm

And “they” are the evil murderers of ISIS and other Islamic terrorist killers.

Here we have ISIS, a murderous, genocidal Islamic supremacy group. They have stated quite openly that they intend to carve a caliphate out for themselves by any means necessary, and by “by any means” they mean as violently as possible. They view the West, Christianity, Secular Humanists, Hindus, everybody who doesn’t conform to their brand of Islam as the enemy, and they have only one tactic for dealing with the enemy : kill them and keep on killing them until they are either all dead or their remnant is so cowed that they convert to Islam. They justify this using the Koran and various Hadiths and they will quite happily tell anyone who will listen exactly what they believe is divine rational for their actions.

The author then describes how the left-leaning intellectuals of the west seem to have a fundamental inability to recognize this reality, an inability that has gotten so profound that it now feeds a blindness that makes them willing to even help these killers in order to avoid seeing them for what they are.

Read it all. The author makes a reasonable effort to understand why the intellectual leadership of the west, in the U.S. and Europe, seems incapable of understanding the threat of Islam. In order to defeat these terrorists, we are going to have to overthrow the blind fools we presently consider our intellectual elite. And to do that we need to see them for the fools they are.

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Ex-Im bank: Crony capitalism at its absolute worst

11:25 am

Republican pigs: Not only is this Republican Congress pushing to reinstate the Export-Import Bank so that the federal government can provide cheap loans to their corporate buddies, several senators are pushing to require that there be political litmas tests before those loans are granted.

[S]enators from both parties are pitching a condition: that applicants for loans essentially vouch support for the Israeli economy in order to be approved. The move, described by multiple sources, is meant to counter a pro-Palestinian campaign to undermine Israeli exports because of its occupation of the West Bank and blockade of the Gaza Strip.

Specifically, the Ex-Im Bank would have to consider whether applicants for loans oppose “policies and actions that are politically motivated” and meant to inhibit “commercial relations specifically with citizens or residents of Israel.” In the past, Ex-Im has taken into account applicants’ stance on human rights and terrorism, prompting advocates of the new language to propose the new qualification.

It is obscene for the federal government to be in the loan business, picking favorites among private companies. It is even more obscene for these elected officials to demand that those favorites adhere to their political whims (no matter that I might agree with those particular whims). The Ex-Im bank should go away, along with the senators who are now pushing for it.

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The climate fraud at NASA

10:51 am

A German scientist has taken a very close look at the climate data being released by NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Science (GISS) and found significant and unjustified tampering in order to create the false impression that the climate is warming.

A German professor has confirmed what skeptics from Britain to the US have long suspected: that NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies has largely invented “global warming” by tampering with the raw temperature data records.

Professor Dr. Friedrich Karl Ewert is a retired geologist and data computation expert. He has painstakingly examined and tabulated all NASA GISS’s temperature data series, taken from 1153 stations and going back to 1881. His conclusion: that if you look at the raw data, as opposed to NASA’s revisions, you’ll find that since 1940 the planet has been cooling, not warming.

Ewert’s results confirm what numerous climate skeptics and scientists have already noticed. The raw data shows a cooling trend in recent years, but the released data unjustifiably cools past records while warming recent records to reverse this into a warming trend.

Either everyone at GISS should be fired forthwith, or its funding must cease. They aren’t scientist there, but propagandists for the Obama administration.

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Japan launches its first commercial payload

8:58 am

The competition heats up: Using its H-IIA rocket, upgraded to lower cost, Japan launched its first commercial payload today, putting Canada’s Telestar 12V into geosynchronous orbit.

It is not clear if Japan’s government-run space program can compete. The rocket is built by Mitsubishi, but it appears owned and operated by JAXA, the equivalent of Japan’s NASA. It has also been a very expensive rocket to launch, as for much of its existence it has been like SLS, more dedicated to producing pork jobs than actually competing with other rocket companies. Whether they can upgrade it sufficiently to compete in price with other rockets is highly questionable.

Nonetheless, that Japan is trying to compete is good news. The more competition, the better. The effort alone will produce new ideas, which in turn can only help lower the cost to get into space, thus making it possible for more people to afford it.

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XCOR founders step down

8:49 am

In the heat of competition: Three of XCOR’s founders are leaving the company, even as it struggles to finish its Lynx suborbital spacecraft.

XCOR Aerospace said in a statement that Jeff Greason and Dan DeLong, the chief technology officer and chief engineer of the company, respectively, were “stepping back” from those positions “to turn their attention to pursue other interests.” A third co-founder, Aleta Jackson, was not mentioned in the release but is also leaving the company.

I am saddened that these individuals will not be there should XCOR finally succeed in finishing Lynx and flying it. At the same time, the fact that they are leaving at this stage suggests strongly to me that Lynx is nowhere close to flying, and that the company bean-counters have realized this and have now been forced to take action.

As regular readers to BtB know, I have always been extremely skeptical of XCOR’s effort. I have always wanted them to succeed, but in casting a cold eye at their progress I have never had much confidence that they would. Today’s story sadly adds strength to my skepticism.

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Spat between senators over Russian rockets

11:11 pm

Pig fight! In response to Senator Richard Shelby’s (R-Alabama) effort, with the lobbying aid of ULA, to slip an amendment into a budget bill that would allow ULA to use Russian engines in its Atlas 5 indefinitely, Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) has written a scathing letter condemning the effort.

In a Nov. 19 letter, McCain asked Cochran to “respect the well-informed work my committee took” and to avoid the “year-over-year relitigation” of the engine issue.“Recent attempts by the incumbent contractor to manufacture a crisis by prematurely diminishing its stockpile of engines purchased prior to the Russian invasion of Crimea should be viewed with skepticism and scrutinized heavily,” McCain wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by SpaceNews. “Such efforts should not be misconstrued as a compelling reason to undermine any sanctions on Russia while they occupy Crimea, destabilize Ukraine, bolster Assad in Syria, send weapons to Iran and violate the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.”

McCain is no saint when it comes to pork, even if he is right on this issue. Shelby however is and has always been a pork pig. He has always put the needs of local companies ahead of the needs of the country. This story illustrates this perfectly.

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NASA contracts Aeroject Rocketdyne to build shuttle engines for SLS

5:27 pm

The competition heats up? NASA has awarded Aerojet Rocketdyne a $1.4 billion contract to restart production on the space shuttle engines, with the intent to use those engines for its hoped-for missions beyond Earth orbit using the Space Launch System (SLS).

Normally I am thrilled when an American company gets a contract to build rocket engines, but here I have my doubts. This contract will only produce deep space engines if Congress gives NASA the money to fly SLS on deep space missions. Right now, Congress has only given NASA just enough money to fly one, maybe two SLS missions, with the second not coming until 2024 at the earliest. My impression of this contract award thus is that it is not to produce engines, but to keep Aerojet Rocketdyne from going bust, since no one else has been interested recently in buying their engines. In other words, it is pork, government money handed out in order to keep the people who work for Aerojet employed.

This is not the way to become a space-faring society. Better Aerojet Rocketdyne goes bust and the good engineers that work for it find jobs with companies making products that people want. Then, the government money can be spent wisely on things that we will eventually want and use, instead of make-work projects that accomplish nothing.

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More students demand firing of a teacher for saying things they didn’t like

9:15 am

The coming dark age: Graduate students at Kansas University are demanding the firing of a professor for trying to talk to them reasonably about race issues and saying things they didn’t agree with.

The article describes in detail the circumstances that caused the students, which in a sane world would have been considered actions of a decent and thoughtful professor trying to inspire a thoughtful discussion about issues of our time. The students, which the article’s names and correctly dubs “little fascists”, instead turn around and smear the professor to order to get her fired.

However, the worst aspect of this story is something noted by another professor in an email to the author of the article:

As a fellow communication professor on the tenure track, what’s happening at KU [Kansas University] chills me about the future of my profession. As an evangelical with “crunchy con” political leanings, I’ve always had to be mindful of what supervisors or colleagues might do should I make me views too strongly known (though thankfully not at my current institution, in which I feel very welcomed!). But my concern increasingly is not with the higher-ups, but with the possibility of unintentionally saying (or failing to display proper outrage at) something that the wrong student deems triggering, insensitive, discriminatory, or “unsafe.”

What is particularly disheartening is that the students in this scenario are not just run-of-the-mill undergrads looking for a cause of the week. They are grad students in one of the top programs in my discipline. Some of them are going to be newly-minted professors within the next six years or less. I agree with Jonathan Haidt that something has shifted in the last two or three years in terms of the grievance culture among today’s students, and we are only just beginning to see the consequences in places like Mizzou, Yale, and now, KU. Currently, much of the ire is being directed by students against their professors, but what happens when these students *become* the professors?

A new dark age will certainly come if we allow these thugs to gain power over others. Every student who is named here should themselves be expelled from the university. Not only do they not have the slightest idea what a university education is supposed to teach them, allowing them to gain a degree with allow them to impose their ignorance and fascist beliefs onto others.

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NASA contracting development of new ion/nuclear engines

8:51 am

The competition heats up: NASA has awarded three different companies contracts to develop advanced ion and nuclear propulsion systems for future interplanetary missions, both manned and unmanned.

These are development contacts, all below $10 million. However, they all appeared structured like NASA’s cargo and crew contracts for ISS, where the contractor does all of the development and design, with NASA only supplying some support and periodic payments when the contractor achieves agreed-upon milestones. Because of this, the contractors will own the engines their develop, and will be able to sell them to other customers after development, thereby increasing the competition and innovation in the field.

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