Category: Points of Information

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

SpaceX delays commercial launch 24 hours

8:55 am

SpaceX has delayed its next commercial launch one day to Wednesday in order to make sure the issues that caused its Falcon 9R test rocket to self-destruct are irrelevant to the full Falcon 9 rocket.

Seems like a prudent decision that is also not overly timid. If this had been the NASA of the past few decades, they would have generally delayed the launch for far longer.

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Rosetta’s comet landing sites

8:48 am

67P/C-G landing sites

The Rosetta science team has narrowed the choices for Philae landing sites on Comet 67P/C-G to five, three on the smaller lobe and two on the larger lobe.

The smaller lobe sites, being on the outside surface of the lobe, don’t provide as good a view of the rest of the comet, while the larger lobe sites are on its inside surface, looking down at the neck and the smaller lobe. In addition, the terrain for the larger lobe sites looks to me more interesting.

Being on the inside surface, however, the larger lobe sites are going to be more difficult to land on.

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Crime rate plunges in Chicago as concealed carry applications surge

7:02 pm

Surprise, surprise! Since Illinois began issuing concealed carry permits last year, the crime numbers in Chicago have plunged steeply.

Since Illinois started granting concealed carry permits this year, the number of robberies that have led to arrests in Chicago has declined 20 percent from last year, according to police department statistics. Reports of burglary and motor vehicle theft are down 20 percent and 26 percent, respectively. In the first quarter, the city’s homicide rate was at a 56-year low. …

As of July 29 the state had 83,183 applications for concealed carry and had issued 68,549 licenses. By the end of the year, Mr. Pearson estimates, 100,000 Illinois citizens will be packing. When Illinois began processing requests in January, gun training and shooting classes — which are required for the application — were filling up before the rifle association was able to schedule them.

Actually, this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. In every single case, when the number of gun-toting law-abiding citizens was allowed to increase because of an easing in gun restrictions, the number of crimes has dropped.

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Cooking the climate numbers in Australia

4:59 pm

A comparison of the raw climate data with the adjusted numbers released by Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology shows that the adjustments have routinely turned the trends from cooling to warming.

This is the same finding that Steven Goddard and others in the U.S. found when they did the same comparison of NASA and NOAA numbers. In every case the adjustments either cooled the past or warmed the present in order to accentuate the appearance of a warming trend, sometimes in complete contradiction of numbers that had been accepted by scientists for decades.

So, does this mean the climate isn’t warming? No. What it means is we haven’t the slightest idea what’s happening, since the data has now been corrupted so badly that it is almost meaningless.

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“Finally, finally, finally! They had come!”

9:32 am

When American forces liberated Paris from Nazi occupation seventy years ago today, one Parisian schoolgirl described what happened.

An idea took hold – we needed flags; a collective idea, as if everyone had the same thought at the same time. We would make the flags and hang them at the windows. But how were we going to do it? Quick, tea towels, old sheets cut in strips. A piece of luck, there was a shop that sold dyes in the courtyard. We ran down and started boiling water in the tubs. Some red dye. Some blue dye. The red didn’t work very well, the material came out pinkish red, not the flamboyant red we had hoped for. Too bad. How many stars are there on the American flag? But never mind, we’ll have to just put some on, and that will be good enough.

Read it all. It is important to note that this has been the kind of reaction of practically every oppressed nation when American troops have arrived.

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Picking a comet landing site

9:05 am

67P/C-G on August 22, 2014
Comet 67P/C-G as seen on August 22, 2014
from 40 miles. Click on image for full resolution.

Engineers have begun the landing site selection for Rosetta’s Philae lander.

This week, up to ten possible sites are being laid on the table for a first round of dedicated discussions and for the LCC and the SONC to carry out a technical analysis on each site, ready to be presented at the weekend meeting. Participants of the LSSG will then review the results from the technical analysis and discuss the scientific merits of the candidate sites. By the end of the weekend meeting, as many as five sites could be selected for further detailed investigation.

They will announce the five finalist sites on Monday.

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Confirmed: Life in buried Antarctic lake

6:50 pm

American scientists have confirmed that water samples from the buried Antarctic Lake Whillans, first obtained in January 2013, contained almost 4,000 different species of life.

Samples from the lake show that life has survived there without energy from the Sun for the past 120,000 years, and possibly for as long as 1 million years. And they offer the first look at what may be the largest unexplored ecosystem on Earth — making up 9% of the world’s land area. “There’s a thriving ecosystem down there,” says David Pearce, a microbiologist at Northumbria University, UK, who was part of a team that tried, unsuccessfully, to drill into a different subglacial body, Lake Ellsworth, in 2013.

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Soyuz puts two satellites in wrong orbit

5:55 pm

A Russian-made Soyuz rocket launched from French Guiana for Arianespace has placed two European Galileo GPS satellites into the wrong orbit.

Russianspaceweb suggests that the problem was caused by the rocket’s Russian Fregat upper stage. (Scroll down about halfway to read their report on this launch.)

Multiple independent sources analyzing the situation suggested that the Fregat upper stage had fired its engine for the right duration, however the stage’s orientation in space during the second or both maneuvers had probably been wrong. According to Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and a veteran space historian, the Fregat’s angular orientation error during engine firing could reach as much as 145 degrees.

This failure is a triple whammy. It hits both Arianespace and Russia since the Soyuz was part of a partnership between the two. It also hits Europe’s Galileo GPS satellite, which after many years of development was beginning to move towards full operation.

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Sea Launch has suspended all operations until 2015

5:44 pm

Russian competition cools down: The mostly Russian-owned rocket company Sea Launch has suspended all operations until mid-2015.

I suspect that the Russian government, now in control of almost all Russian aerospace efforts, is not interested in building this company up as the rocket it uses is partly made in Ukraine and is a competitor to Russia’s new Angara rocket. Everything the Russian government has done for the past year has indicated a desire to shut down all cooperative efforts with other countries and focus everything towards all-Russian efforts.

Thus, Sea Launch dies.

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Falcon 9R destroyed during failed test flight

10:49 pm

In a test flight today of SpaceX’s Falcon 9R vertical take off and landing rocket the rocket was destroyed when ground controllers detected an “anomaly.”

Falcon 9R is a three engine version of the Falcon 9 first stage, designed to test designs for making that first stage capable of landing vertically. It has flown successfully a number of previous times, but this time it appears something was not quite right during the flight and ground controllers had to destroy it for safety reasons.

Is this a set back? Of course. Is it a failure? Not really, as it was a test flight of very cutting edge technology and even failures will teach you something to improve the engineering.

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A problem with drilling on Mars

9:07 am

In drilling a new hole while scientists considered Curiosity’s future route to Mount Sharp, the drill cut off operations prematurely.

Engineers think that the rock might have shifted during drilling, causing the robot rover to abort. They have ordered the rover to take a lot of pictures of the situation so they can figure out what happened.

I should note that engineers take a large risk every time they use Curiosity’s drill, as the design of the rover’s electrical system is such that the drill might short everything out while it operates. Thus, when I see a story about a problem with any drilling operation, I become very concerned. In this case, however, it appears to not be a problem with the rover itself.

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Air Force requests info for new engine

8:54 am

Corporate welfare: The Air Force on Thursday issued a request for information from industry for the replacement of the Russian-made engines used by ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket.

Companies are being asked to respond by Sept. 19 to 35 questions. Among them: “What solution would you recommend to replace the capability currently provided by the RD-180 engine?” Air Force officials have told Congress they only have a broad idea of how to replace the RD-180. Estimates of the investment in money and time necessary to field an American-built alternative vary widely. Congress, meanwhile, is preparing bills that would fund a full-scale engine development program starting next year; the White House is advocating a more deliberate approach that begins with an examination of applicable technologies.

In the request for information, the Air Force says it is open to a variety of options including an RD-180 facsimile, a new design, and alternative configurations featuring multiple engines, and even a brand new rocket. The Air Force is also trying to decide on the best acquisition approach. Options include a traditional acquisition or a shared investment as part of a public-private partnership. [emphasis mine]

The Atlas 5 is built by Lockheed Martin. This is really their problem, not the Air Force or ULA. In addition, the Air Force has other options, both from Boeing’s Delta rocket family as well as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. For the government to fund this new engine is nothing more than corporate welfare, at a time when the federal government is swimming in debt and is essentially bankrupt.

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Judge orders release of documents withheld by DOJ in Fast-and-Furious

5:04 pm

A federal judge has ordered the Obama administration and the Justice Department to hand over some of the documents demanded by Congress in its investigation of the government’s gun-smuggling operation dubbed Fast and Furious.

The judge also ordered the Justice Department to provide Congress a list of withheld documents so that they will have a better idea of what documents should be made available.

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High school student arrested for writing he killed his neighbor’s dinosaur with a gun

4:31 pm

Madness: A South Carolina high school student was arrested for writing — in a “What-I-did-during-summer-vacation” school assignment — that he killed his neighbor’s dinosaur with a gun.

Investigators say the teacher contacted school officials after seeing the message containing the words “gun” and “take care of business,” and police were then notified on Tuesday. Summerville police officials say Stone’s book bag and locker were searched on Tuesday, and a gun was not found. According to police, when Stone was asked by school officials about the comment written on the assignment, he became “very irate” and said it was a joke. A Summerville Police Department report states that Stone continued to be disruptive and was placed in handcuffs, and was told that he was being detained for disturbing schools.

The police are claiming that he was arrested because of his behavior when questioned. I don’t blame him. I think the teacher who reported him and the school officials who called the police should be fired immediately for downright stupidity. Such people are not competent to teach the young.

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A new map of the Middle East

10:38 am

Link here. The wide extent of Islamic State control is scary. It is also interesting that all of the U.S. airstrikes are outside those areas. At first glance it appears that we have terrible aim and are missing our targets. It is more likely that these are areas of dispute and we are supporting Iraqi and Kurdish efforts to regain the initiative.

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The weight of Comet 67P/C-G

10:26 am

Scientists, using radio and orbital data from Rosetta, have made their first estimate of the mass of Comet 67P/C-G.

For the Rosetta mission, this task comes under the umbrella of the Radio Science Investigation (RSI). Using 80 hours worth of tracking data between 6 August, since arriving at the comet, and up to 9 August, the RSI team made a first estimate of the comet’s mass as approximately 1×10^13 kg +/-10%, or about 10 trillion kilograms.

This is very much a preliminary number which will be refined significantly as the spacecraft continues its travels with the comet.

More here. This mass, when considered in conjunction with the nucleus’s size, suggests a very low density. If you could find an ocean large enough it would float.

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Arianespace and ESA sign contract for three launches

9:53 am

Arianespace and the European Space Agency (ESA) signed a contract on Thursday for the Ariane 5 rocket to launch 12 more of Europe’s Galileo GPS satellites on three launches.

This contract is a perfect example of European pork. Europe’s Galileo system might provide competition to the U.S. GPS and Russian Glonass systems, but I am not sure what additional capabilities it provides that will convince GPS users to switch to it. Instead, building it provides European jobs, while using the Ariane 5 rocket to launch it gives that increasingly uncompetitive rocket some work to do. In fact, this situation really reminds me of the U.S. launch market in the 1990s, when Boeing and Lockheed Martin decided that, rather than compete with Russia and ESA for the launch market, they instead decided to rely entirely on U.S. government contracts, since those contracts didn’t really demand that they reduce their costs significantly to compete.

Europe now appears to be heading down that same road.

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Two additional Russian rocket engines arrive in the U.S.

9:38 am

Despite tensions over the Ukraine, a Russian cargo plane on Wednesday delivered two more Russian rocket engines to Alabama for their refurbishment and use in ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket.

This delivery gives ULA some additional breathing room. It the additional deliveries scheduled for later this year and early in 2015 happen, they will have even more breathing room for more Atlas 5 launches. Even so, their dependence on Russian engines is something that limits the company’s competitiveness in the emerging aggressive launch market.

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NASA’s Space Launch System searches for a mission

9:26 am

Managers of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) are searching for a mission that they can propose and convince Congress to fund.

Any honest read of this article will conclude that this very expensive rocket system is an absurd waste of money. It has no mission now, and will never get one considering the cost. Instead, NASA will spend billions to fly two test flights, both unmanned, and then the money will run out.

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Scientists baffled by unknown source of CFCs

1:10 pm

The uncertainty of science: Scientists have found that, despite their complete ban since 2007, one type of ozone-depleting CFCs are still being pumped into the atmosphere from some unknown source.

Carbon tetrachloride (CCl4), which was once used in applications such as dry cleaning and as a fire-extinguishing agent, was regulated in 1987 under the Montreal Protocol along with other chlorofluorocarbons that destroy ozone and contribute to the ozone hole over Antarctica. Parties to the Montreal Protocol reported zero new CCl4 emissions between 2007-2012.

However, the new research shows worldwide emissions of CCl4 average 39 kilotons (about 43,000 U.S. tons) per year, approximately 30 percent of peak emissions prior to the international treaty going into effect. “We are not supposed to be seeing this at all,” said Qing Liang, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the study published online in the Aug. 18 issue of Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union. “It is now apparent there are either unidentified industrial leakages, large emissions from contaminated sites, or unknown CCl4 sources.”

That there seems to be an unknown source of CFCs suggests strongly that the entire theory of CFCs destroying the ozone layer is faulty. If CFCs were being produced naturally in the past then the ozone layer should not exist based on this theory. That it does exist says the CFCs are not harmful to it and were banned unnecessarily.

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German journalists arrested by police in Ferguson

1:43 am

Modern American free speech: Two German journalists were arrested by police in Ferguson for wanting to take photographs of a burned out gas station.

The comments of one of the journalists was especially shameful:

This was a very new experience. I’ve been in several conflict zones: I was in the civil war regions in Georgia, the Gaza strip, illegally visited the Kaliningrad region when travel to the Soviet Union was still strictly prohibited for westerners, I’ve been in Iraq, Vietnam and in China, I’ve met Cuba dissidents. But to be arrested and yelled at and be rudely treated by police? For that I had to travel to Ferguson and St. Louis in the United States of America.

Except for the arrests of journalists there, I have not posted much about the situation in Ferguson, mostly because no one at present really knows what happened and the subsequent behavior of everyone has been exceedingly disgusting and uncivilized, undeserving to my mind of much attention.

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