Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
China has successfully launched an unmanned Shenzhou spacecraft to do an automatic rendezvous and docking test with its first space station, Tiangong 1.
Boeing has leased a now unused shuttle hanger from NASA for its CST-100 manned ferry.
I haven’t commented much on the Occupy Wall Street movement, mostly because I’ve been too busy moving. However, though I fully support their right to demonstrate and protest, I find the contrasts between these protests and the Tea Party protests to be striking. The differences are even highlighted in their names. “Occupy Wall Street” implies a right to impose its will on others, to take over without permission other people’s property. “The Tea Party,” though inspired by an equally illegal act of stealing British tea and destroying it, now implies the much more benign activity of a gathering to express one’s opinion. And the Tea Party protests proved this by the fact that to this date no tea party protester has been arrested, and no laws broken. In fact, the only documented violence at any tea party event that I have found was committed by opponents of that movement.
As to what these movements believe in, I readily admit that I am in agreement with the Tea Party ideas of smaller government and fiscal responsibility. I will also say that I oppose the calls for socialism and even communism from some Occupy Wall Street protesters.
Nonetheless, there are many in this latter movement who are expressing the same kind of rage and frustration at the recent partnership between big business and big government that led to bad policy, unaffordable bailouts, a collapsing housing market, and a suffocating economy that have been similarly expressed by many Tea Party protesters.
The protests of both groups are merely a reflection of the anger that ordinary people feel about the failure of both government and business to act responsibly and with some common sense in these last years.
Herman Cain speaks out about NASA and space:
When President Obama decided to cut, it put the United States in a position that we don’t like. We don’t like to have to thumb-ride with the Russians when we were the first ones and the leaders in space technology. It’s not just about getting to the moon and outer space. The space program inspires other technological advances to business and the economy. In the Cain presidency, it will be reversed back to where it should be.
As much as I might like Cain for some things, I could not help cringing when I read these words. They suggest a great deal of ignorance about what the Obama administration has done, a willingness on Cain’s part to pander to his audience (speaking as he was at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville), and a desire by this self-declared fiscal conservative to spend lots more money for a big government space program at a time when the federal government is broke.
I’d rather have Cain take a more thoughtful approach. Alas, this is a campaign. Moreover, whoever ends up as president after this election will probably be less important than the make-up of the next Congress. It is that part of the 2012 election that really counts.
Russians successfully put Progress freighter into orbit.
Explorers appear to have found the wrecks from Sir Francis Drake’s last voyage.
As Drake was buried in full armor in a lead-lined coffin near the wrecks, there is also the chance of locating his grave.
A giant sequoia has fallen in Giant Sequoia National Monument in California. You can see a very short video of the event, captured by a German tourist, here.
Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell has been forced to return to NASA the camera he used on the Moon.
[He had been allowed to keep the camera after his return in accordance with] a practice within the 1970’s astronaut office that allowed the Apollo astronauts to keep equipment that hadn’t been intended to return from the moon so long as the items did not exceed weight limitations and were approved by management.
The Mars500 crew prepares to open the hatch after seventeen months of a simulated mission to Mars.
A Progress freighter has now undocked in preparation for the arrival of its replacement, scheduled for launch on Sunday.
Sunday’s launch will be the first test of the Soyuz rocket since the failure in August. A lot rides on this liftoff’s success.
The day of reckoning looms: The US debt will surpass the gross domestic product come Halloween.
What could possibly go wrong? Automakers are developing technology to let cars drive themselves.
Chile’s powerful Cerro Hudson volcano has come back to life and is threatening a major eruption.
Patagonians are worried. Many remember Mount Hudson’s catastrophic eruptions of 1971 and 1991. The latter eruption was one of the most violent registered eruptions in Chile, and lasted for five months. At its peak it turned day into night, making the banks of nearby Huemules, Cupquelan and Ibáñez Rivers collapse with ash. Many areas in the region are still covered with ash, pumice and other volcanic rocks. “These are the characteristics of this highly explosive volcano,” said Juan Cayupi, a volcanologist at the National Emergency Office.
The first year’s hunt by the Large Hadron Collider for the Higgs particle is ending.
Vivek Sharma of the University of California, San Diego, who heads the search for the Higgs at [one experiment], points out that results . . . have already ruled out, with a confidence of 2 sigma, a Higgs mass of between about 145 and 400 gigaelectronvolts, and that the LHC’s predecessor, the Large Electron Positron collider, ruled out a Higgs mass below about 114 gigaelectronvolts. So the Higgs, if it exists, almost certainly lies in the gap between the two. According to Sharma, the extra data to be collected in 2012 once proton-proton collisions resume in March will allow the CERN scientists to “either find the Higgs in this mass range, or wipe it out”.
If the Higgs particle turns out not to exist, it will mean that physicists will have to go back to the drawing board to explain all the phenomenon seen in the subatomic world.
NASA Inspector General Paul Martin has refused to comment on his office’s abuse of an elderly woman during botched moon rock sting.
Due to the fact that Inspector Generals are independent of the agency they “inspect” (this is actually a very good thing) NASA management has near zero ability to affect the behavior of the IG’s office – or publicly comment on it. Paul Martin is apparently quite comfortable with not explaining to taxpayers (he works for them too) why an elderly woman was roughed up and detained by half a dozen police officers with weapons and then released – with no charges filed after 5 months. That is his call to make. Alas, only a truly insensitive creep would think that it was O.K. not to at least express regret that this situation happened to a small, elderly woman the way that it did. But Martin is tone deaf and oblivious to the real world aspects of what his office does.
Science better than fiction: Astronomers have proposed that the cloud of dust surrounding about 50% of the supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies comes from planets that were ripped apart and smashed by that black hole.
Collisions between these rocky objects would occur at colossal speeds as large as 1000 km per second, continuously shattering and fragmenting the objects, until eventually they end up as microscopic dust. Dr. Nayakshin points out that this harsh environment – radiation and frequent collisions – would make the planets orbiting supermassive black holes sterile, even before they are destroyed. “Too bad for life on these planets”, he says, “but on the other hand the dust created in this way blocks much of the harmful radiation from reaching the rest of the host galaxy. This in turn may make it easier for life to prosper elsewhere in the rest of the central region of the galaxy.”
Coming to a state near you (until the project goes bankrupt and leaves behind a financial and environmental ruin): The Obama administration this week identified seventeen sites in six Western states, all on public land, as prime locations for solar energy projects.
To me, the best indication that something is not quite right with this proposal is that the solar industry itself has doubts.
Environmental groups hailed the announcement, but the solar industry was guarded in its response. Rhone Resch, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, said he had “some significant areas of concern” about the solar energy zones@ Flexibility in project siting and access to transmission were crucial to financing and development of utility-scale solar power plants, Resch said, adding that he was optimistic a balanced approach could be found.
You would think the solar industry would be thrilled to get this support from the government. That they have reservations is a serious red flag.
A congressional report today revealed that two American climate satellites were attacked by hackers in the past four years.
In October 2007 and July 2008, a NASA-managed Landsat-7 satellite experienced 12 or more minutes of interference, and a Terra AM-1 satellite was disrupted for two minutes in June 2008 and again that October for nine minutes, according to Bloomberg Businessweek’s analysis of the annual report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. The report says the hackers gained access to the satellites — both are used for Earth climate and terrain monitoring — through the Svalbard Satellite Station in Spitsbergen, Norway. It’s believed the attackers may have hijacked the Internet connection at the Norway ground station to interfere with the operation of the satellites.
The actual headline: “House votes to restrict healthcare law, with White House support.”
White House support for H.R. 2576 is seen by many as an acknowledgement that the healthcare law passed last year overextended eligibility for government programs.
Maybe they should just repeal all of Obamacare now and safe us all a lot of trouble.
Dismantling the last American hydrogen bomb.
The [9 megaton] B53 was designed in the 1950s and replaced 500 B41s, which had a yield of 25 megatons. The largest nuclear device ever built and tested was the 27 ton Russian AN602, which had a yield of 50 megatons. It was eight meters (26 feet) long and 2.1 meters (6.9 feet) in diameter. Only one of these was built. The Russians followed the Americans in phasing out large yield bombs in favor of smaller, and more numerous ones. This was largely the result of ICBM warheads designed to carry multiple nuclear weapons.
A random collection of awesome things. In pictures.
According to Robert Zubrin, the Obama administration is planning to terminate all funding to NASA’s planetary program, while cutting back significantly on its astronomy program.
Word has leaked out that in its new budget, the Obama administration intends to terminate NASA’s planetary exploration program. The Mars Science Lab Curiosity, being readied on the pad, will be launched, as will the nearly completed small MAVEN orbiter scheduled for 2013, but that will be it. No further missions to anywhere are planned. After 2013, America’s amazing career of planetary exploration, which ran from the Mariner probes in the 1960s through the great Pioneer, Viking, Voyager, Pathfinder, Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey, Spirit, Opportunity, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Galileo and Cassini missions, will simply end.
Furthermore, the plan from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) also leaves the space astronomy program adrift and headed for destruction. The now-orbiting Kepler Telescope will be turned off in midmission, stopping it before it can complete its goal of finding other Earths. Even worse, the magnificent Webb Telescope, the agency’s flagship, which promises fundamental breakthroughs in our understanding of the laws of the universe, is not sufficiently funded to allow successful completion. This guarantees further costly delays, with the ensuing budgetary overruns leading inevitably to eventual cancellation.
I suspect these cuts have been leaked now, months before the budget is publicly released, in order to whip up support for funding these programs. I also find it distressing that these programs, which cost practically nothing, are targets, while others that cost many many more billions (in NASA and elsewhere) remain fully funded.
An international research team has diagnosed the oldest known case of prostate cancer in ancient Egypt and the second oldest case in the world, from a mummy 2250 years old.
Several Congressmen expressed doubts about and resistance to the new private space manned effort by companies like SpaceX during hearings today in the House.
Let’s be honest: it’s all about pork and only pork. Unfortunately, the new companies don’t deliver the same kind of pork to the right congressional districts, even if they might deliver a real product faster and for less money. To quote the article:
Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., rallied to the industry’s defense, citing a “hostility” to the private space industry. “Much to my dismay, I see some of the worst elements of decision making,” he said. “I see an anti-commercial-space attitude that could have very negative consequences.” Rohrabacher (who represents a district near SpaceX’s headquarters) seemed to chide Hall and Johnson, the two Texans who chair the panel, for parochial views. “Focusing on one’s own district and directing federal funds seems to be having a major impact on this decision,” he said.
As we anticipated yesterday, there were other regional pleas connected to the word of choice heard in the halls of Congress: jobs. Rep. Hansen Clarke, D-Mich., for instance, asked how the space contract could be used to create jobs in his district of metropolitan Detroit. The witnesses made the most diplomatic kowtows they could. “I’ve been pushing SpaceX to use more automotive suppliers,” Musk responded. Other space industry execs went on to claim Michigan subcontractors, to praise the auto industry, and to speak of spin-offs from space science programs.
Virgin Galactic has hired its first astronaut pilot.
[USAF test pilot Keith] Colmer, whose aviator call sign is “Coma,” joins an elite team in Mojave, CA, where Scaled Composite’s test pilots and [Virgin Galactic’s Chief Pilot David] Mackay have been putting WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo through an exhaustive series of test flights to fully explore and quantify the performance profiles of the two revolutionary vehicles.
Britain’s Royal Society has made its archive freely accessible online.
This covers everything published from 1665 to 1941.
