Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
It seems that more than one experiment was never turned on while on ISS this past month, and an investigation has begun as to why.
The Virginia spaceport at Wallops Island is on schedule later this month to hand control of its launchpad over to Orbital Sciences so it can begin ground tests of its Antares rocket.
The irony of this press release story is that Orbital has actually been running things, as it took over prepping the launchpad last year when the spaceport was unable to handle it.
The competition heats up: Sierra Nevada has successfully completed testing of the nose landing gear for its Dream Chaser manned reusable spacecraft.
Racists! Five Democrats joined 239 Republicans as the House today voted to repeal Obamacare 244-185.
Repeal it! With each new estimate, the cost of Obamacare has risen. See the chart below the fold.
Obama’s initial cost estimate was $900 billion for ten years. The most recent CBO estimate is $2.6 trillion. And we all know that even this number is a lie.
» Read more
News you can use: The Internet Cat Video Film Festival.
Scientists find out what makes a stinky rock stink.
The competition heats up: From Virgin Galactic come two announcements today:
The second is really the big news, especially as it appears they already have some customers.
LauncherOne will be a two-stage vehicle capable of carrying up to 500 pounds (225 kilograms) to orbit for prices below $10 million. The rocket will be launched from Virgin Galactic’s proven WhiteKnightTwo, the uniquely capable aircraft also designed to carry SpaceShipTwo aloft to begin her suborbital missions. Thanks to the extreme flexibility of air launch, Virgin Galactic’s customers will enjoy reduced infrastructure costs in addition to the wide range of possible launch locations tailored to individual mission requirements and weather conditions. Branson and other senior executives announced that work has already begun on the vehicle.
Using the Hubble Space Telescope astronomers have discovered a fifth moon orbiting Pluto.
Five moons, eh? That’s pretty good for something that isn’t supposed to be a planet.
The day of reckoning looms: Another California city, San Bernardino, has decided to declare bankruptcy.
Orwell would be proud: India is in the process of biometrically identifying every one of it 1.2 billion citizens.
Turn, turn, turn: Cassini has now seen the beginnings of a vortex over Titan’s south pole, the first sign that winter is coming to the planet’s southern hemisphere.
The modern Democratic Party: The Democratic candidate for Secretary of State of Missouri claims that no Jews were killed on 9/11, while also suggesting that Jews were involved in the attack itself.
“Why [was] 9/11 was a official holiday for all Jewish people who worked in the the WTC?” Alam said in a discussion titled, “Was 9/11 a conspiracy??”
Asked earlier this week about this statement, Alam reaffirmed his position. “My question was, ‘What’s the reason not a single Jew was killed on that day,’” Alam said, according to the Washington Free Beacon. “Was there a single Jew killed on that day?”
Gee, I wonder what he would say to these people?
An indoor climbing wall that never ends.
This is good: The number of Democrats in the House willing to join the Republicans to vote for repeal of Obamacare appears to be growing.
The uncertainty of science: The glaciers of the Karakoram Range in the Himalayas are not shrinking as predicted, according to satellite data.
The rise and fall of Germany’s solar power industry.
A campaign by scientists in England to reform that country’s libel laws.
The Russian company building that country’s Glonass GPS system is under investigation by the police for the embezzlement of more than a half billion rubles.
A student experiment — successfully flown up and down to ISS by Dragon — is apparently a failure because no one on ISS ever turned it on.
Per instructions from NanoRacks, the Houston company that works with NASA to integrate such deliveries, Warren packed his worms, or C. elegans, into a glass ampule, or tube, then packed that tube into a larger one containing a liquid “growth medium” for the worms. An astronaut aboard the space station was to crack the outer ampule in a way that would release the worms into the surrounding liquid. It never happened.
The article is very diplomatic about this, but it is very clear that either the astronauts on ISS screwed up, or NASA did by not giving them clear instructions.
Repeal the damn thing! A survey of doctors nationwide has found that 83% have considered abandoning the practice of medicine due to Obamacare.
Saturn from above: Cassini has shifted its orbit so that it can look down on Saturn and its rings.
The religion of peace: “Christianity should be destroyed and wiped from the face of the earth.”
New research suggests that — despite its known bad effects — weightlessness might actually slow the aging process.
Don’t jump into that spaceship yet! The research was done on worms, and is to put it mildly very preliminary. Moreover, none of the results change anything regarding the serious loss of bone density and the weakening of the muscles and cardiovascular system caused by weightlessness.
The uncertainty of science: New research has apparently disproven the Mono Lake research that suggested that arsenic might replace phosphorus as one of the basic building blocks of life.
