Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
Revenge and the abuse of power: The Obama Justice Department has begun an investigation of Standard & Poor.
The Titan Mare Explorer: A nautical mission to an alien sea.
If [NASA] green-lights the mission, the capsule will lift off in 2016. By 2023, TiME will be about 800 million miles away in Titan’s north-polar region, home to its biggest lakes and seas. The capsule will take photographs, collect meteorological data, measure depth, and analyze samples. TiME will have no means of propulsion once it is on Titan, so it will float, carried by breezes across the sea’s surface. Then, by the mid-2020s, it will enter a decade-long winter of darkness as the moon’s orbit takes it to the dark side of Saturn, away from the sun and communication. It won’t have a line of sight to Earth to beam back more data until 2035.
A Tennessee woman has been ordered to remove the American flag she raised outside her optometry office.
Fly me to the moon! Two stories today (here and here) from Russia about a possible tourist flight around the moon by 2016-2017.
Union civility: An Ohio business owner, harassed for years for running a non-union business, was shot last week when he surprised a vandal scrawling “scab” on his car.
What caused a giant arrow-shaped cloud on Saturn’s moon Titan?
American manned space: dependent on the Russians in more ways than you think.
As commentators from around the country gnash their teeth at U.S. dependence upon Russia to move cargo and astronauts to the mostly U.S. built/funded International Space Station (ISS), they’ve missed the bigger boat: With one exception, all the commercial spaceflight offerings currently in the works have Soviet or Russian engines as a key part of the rockets involved.
The Allen Telescope Array and the Search for Extraterrestial Intelligence (SETI) saved by private donations.
About Obama’s clash with a Tea party activist during his bus tour this week: How long do you think it will take for the press to go after that activist to try to destroy him for daring to challenge this Democratic President?
I give it one week.
Union civility: “You may first beat them repeatedly with a tire iron.”
Things are so good on Juno ten days after launch that mission controllers have canceled a rocket burn to adjust the spacecraft’s course.
Russians to display a new rocket and manned spacecraft design at an international air show in Russia today.
According to Russian space officials today, the next Soyuz tourist flight to ISS will be in 2014.
The article above contradicts yesterday’s story where the head of the Russian space agency suggested that Russia is going to shift its focus from manned space. I suspect both stories reflect an underlying political battle going on within the Russian government.
Serious questions raised about the EPA process that designates a species as endangered.
Saving a failed orbiting satellite with engineering.
Remarks by the head of the Russian space agency on Thursday suggested Russia is going to shift its space effort away from manned space.
Though it is not yet official, it appears the sun is blank of sunspots today, for the first time since January 16.
Solar scientists have concluded that the solar minimum of the past four years has ended and that the sun is now moving towards solar maximum. The recent activity in August has seemed to confirm this. However, once the minimum has ended, the sun should not have any further blank days until the maximum is over and the sun is ramping back down to solar minimum. That the sun should appear blank again during its ramp up to solar maximum is quite unusual, probably unprecedented, and is further evidence that the sun is heading towards a period of little or no solar activity.
Another anniversary: Thirty years ago today IBM introduced its first PC.
Fifty years ago tomorrow the Berlin Wall went up. Two stories:
The appeals court for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta today ruled that Obamacare is unconstitutional.
The mystery of Vesta’s south pole depression.
Video: Who’s the real reporter?
Archeologists have discovered a 2,600-year-old wall mural used as a wall decoration during the Iron Age.
The abuse of power: A legal rabbit farm raided and destroyed by Colorado police.
“They’ve destroyed me emotionally, socially and professionally,” Bell said, listing numerous ways in which local animal rights activists have publicized information about the case in an effort to make her and her four children — all adults who haven’t lived under her roof for several years — look bad. But that’s not all.
“They’ve made 4-H kids all across Colorado just sob,” she said, “because I am their 4-H connection.” Bell noted that 12 of the seized rabbits belong to 4-H kids who were planning to show them at upcoming fairs — two at the Jefferson County Fair that begins Thursday and the remaining 10 at the Colorado State Fair which runs from Aug. 26 to Sept. 5 in Pueblo.
It turns out that Joe Wilson was right when he accused Obama of lying about Obamacare.
From a Tea party activist: “The left is going to have to compromise and cut some domestic welfare spending, and the right is going to have to compromise and cut some military spending.”
Contact was quickly lost today soon after a hypersonic glider was released by its rocket launcher during a test flight. More here.
