Category: Points of Information

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

The battle in Congress of the EPA’s effort to regulate dust

10:02 am

The battle in Congress over the EPA’s effort to regulate dust.

Not surprisingly, the Democrats all support the EPA’s effort, while there are Republicans who oppose. What I consider significant is that more than a hundred agricultural organizations oppose the regulations.

One of the agricultural groups that is supporting the bill [to block the EPA regulations], the National Association of Wheat Growers (NAWG), wrote a letter to the committee last month, saying that a slight raise in overall particulate matter standards would require the EPA to regulate farm dirt under the current standards. “And, for what purpose? Scientific studies have never shown rural dust to be a health concern at ambient levels,” said the NAWG letter. [emphasis mine]

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Eradicating polio: not this year

8:35 am

The effort to eradicated polio entirely by the end of 2012 will not be met.

Afghanistan and Nigeria, two of the three remaining endemic countries, have had more cases in the first nine months of this year than in 2010 altogether. Several other countries targeted by the plan have also seen more cases to date this year compared to this time in 2010. Additionally, polio had popped up in countries where it had previously been eradicated — notably China, which went polio-free for 11 years until this summer.

Sadly, politics and culture are almost certainly the main reasons polio still survives in these countries.

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VAB to be opened to tourists for the first time in years

6:56 pm

The Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral is going to be opened to tourists for the first time in years.

Back in around 1977 I was down in Florida for that year’s science fiction Worldcon convention. At one point we went out to the space center to take the tour. Since this was after Apollo but before the shuttle, the VAB was then part of the tour, and they took us inside at the ground level so we could look up into its vast height. Hopefully, the new tours will let the tourists see more.

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NASA steals moon rock given to widow of NASA engineer

7:53 am

In a sting operation, NASA steals a moon rock from the widow of an retired NASA engineer.

Five months after NASA investigators and local agents swooped into the restaurant and hailed their operation as a cautionary tale for anyone trying to sell national treasure, no charges have been filed, NASA isn’t talking and the case appears stalled. The target, Joann Davis, a grandmother who says she was trying to raise money for her sick son, asserts the lunar material was rightfully hers, having been given to her space-engineer husband by Neil Armstrong in the 1970s.

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Tea Party in Space argues for more money for commercial space

7:43 am

Andrew Gasser at the Tea Party in Space website today argues strongly for Congress to fully fund the new commercial space program at the $850 million amount requested by the Obama administration.

As much as I am for these new commercial companies, I do not think it a good idea to fund them at these high levels.

For one thing, the government is still broke. It can’t afford to spend that much money. It is therefore unseemly for a website that uses the “tea party” label to advocate more spending at this time.

For another, the more money the government commits to these companies, the more control the government is going to demand from them. Far better to keep the government participation as small as possible. Make it just enough to allow the companies to succeed but not enough so as to make the whole effort a government program.

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NASA Is Considering Fuel Depots in the Skies

8:34 pm

NASA is considering putting fuel depots in orbit.

Under the plan outlined in the document, the propellant depot would be launched first, and then other rockets would carry fuel to the depot before a spacecraft arrived to fill up. That would increase the complexity for an asteroid mission — 11 to 17 launchings instead of four — but could get NASA astronauts to an asteroid by 2024, the study said. The total budget needed for the project from 2012 through 2030 would be $60 billion to $86 billion, the study said.

By contrast, a study last year that designed an asteroid mission around a heavy-lift rocket estimated that it would cost $143 billion and that the trip could not happen until 2029. The earlier study briefly considered propellant depots but quickly dismissed them.

This idea of putting fuel depots in space merely mirrors the 1960s proposal of using the Gemini capsule and the Titan rocket to assemble a spaceship in orbit for getting to the moon. According to the earlier proposal it would have been faster and cheaper to use existing smaller rockets and many additional launches than to build a giant Saturn 5 rocket that could put everything into orbit in only one launch. I have always thought this idea had merit.

The fuel depot concept is further confirmation that a heavy-lift rocket is not necessarily the only way one can get humans beyond Earth orbit.

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The Republican presidential candidate we’ve all been waiting for

8:05 pm

The Republican presidential candidate we’ve all been waiting for.

Who, you may ask, is T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII?

Simply put, a man born to the conservative saddle. The only scion of the legendary swashbuckling conservative editor / author / bon vivant T. Coddington Van Voorhees VI, I have since my earliest days honed a conservatism forged in the fires of intellectual combat, stoked by the bellows of classic education, and tempered in the cooling waters of good breeding. Even before matriculating at East Hampton Country Daycare, I was thrust headlong into heady intellectual debates of postwar American politics. Oh, how I cherish those moments, bouncing astride my father’s knee, as he held postprandial court on the patio with Long Island Sound’s most scrupulous Republicans – like Newport GOP chairman Z. Pilastor Fennewick, Greenwich GOP legend Boylston McInernery, and East Hampton’s “hostess with the mostest,” Modesty Crabwater. And although Dad had his differences with each, I admired the elegant grace with which these Republicans could command an Adirondack chair or accept electoral defeat. It is that very same grace I shall endeavor to bring back to the Grand Old Party.

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House Panel Lays Out Spending Preferences for science programs

5:30 pm

The Republicans on the House science panel lay out their recommended spending plans for science.

Updated and bumped: First a correction: in my original post I had incorrectly assumed these recommendations were from the entire House panel, not from the Republicans alone. (You can read their actual letter here [pdf].)

Second, that these recommendations come from the Republicans alone is quite depressing, as it seems they don’t have the guts to cut much of anything. All these recommendations do is trim some programs around the edges. Overall, very little is cut at all, with almost all departments ending up with budgets greater than they had in 2008. Even NASA, whose budget is cut from the 2011 $18.8 billion down to $16.6 billion, still includes the billions allocated for the Congressionally-designed Space Launch System. As these Republicans depressingly enthuse, “We also strongly support proposed funding levels for the Space Launch System and the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle.”

With this kind of budget-cutting wimpiness from the Republicans, I expect the federal government to continue to grow in an out-of-control manner, even as the rest of the economy continues to tank.

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Orbital announces revised schedule for its initial Taurus 2 and Cygnus flights

4:26 pm

Orbital Sciences has announced its revised schedule for the initial Taurus 2 and Cygnus flights.

Orbital will conduct a test of the Taurus 2’s first stage on the launch pad in late January [2012], and the inaugural Taurus 2 flight in late February or early March. This will be followed, in early May, by a Taurus 2 flight carrying the Cygnus station cargo vehicle, a flight during which Cygnus is expected to demonstrate its ability to berth with the station. The first operational space station cargo-delivery mission for Taurus 2 and Cygnus will occur in late August or early September under this revised schedule, Orbital officials said.

Based on conversations I’ve had with people at Orbital, this delay was expected, and is a good thing. The company was under incredible time pressure to get ready for a December launch. Given that this will be the first test flight of Taurus 2, and it must work for the Cygnus cargo flights to follow, better they give themselves some working room to get it right.

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An independent study of climate suggests the climate has warmed 0.9 degrees Celsius since 1950

2:24 am

An independent study of land temperature records by a team led by Richard Muller concludes that the climate has warmed 0.9 degrees Celsius since 1950.

Does this prove that human-caused global warming is happening? No, not even close. The study has not yet been peer-reviewed, and others have not yet been able to duplicate its results. Also, a warming trending since 1950 can be caused many things, and it is only a very short snapshot of a vastly longer movie.

Nonetheless, it does appear that real science (open data, honest analysis, and a willingness to entertain opposing viewpoints) is beginning to return to the field of climate research. For this we should celebrate.

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