Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
Cryosat releases its first map of the thickness of the Arctic icecap.
Busy day for travel to and from ISS: The European unmanned ATV freighter Johannes Kepler burned up in the atmosphere even as a Russian Progress freighter was launched.
In related news, the U.S. and ESA are in negotiations to merge the European unmanned ATV freighter program with NASA’s manned Orion derivative. At the same time, Europe has announced its plans to test fly a reusable space plane.
The first Soyuz launch from French Guiana has now been scheduled for October 20, 2011.
Conservative lawmakers are coalescing behind a pledge to cut spending across the board while requiring a balanced budget amendment.
This story once again suggests to me that the political winds are definitely favoring big cuts in government spending. Woe to the politician of either party who ignores these winds.
President Barack Obama’s complete list of historic firsts.
Take some time to look at the list closely, including the links that back up each “first.” You might remain skeptical of some of the stories, but the weight of numbers is surely suggestive of the kind of president Obama really is.
Big Brother rules! King County, Washington, has voted to require life vests for swimmers.
[The law] applies to people intertubing, rafting, using a surfboard, canoe or kayak. Swimmers or people wading more than 5 feet from shore or in water more than 4 feet deep would also have to wear life vests. The new ordinance does not apply to people at designated public beaches or for people who are skin diving.
Talk about intolerance: Atheists demand the removal of a sign honoring seven firefighters who died on 9/11 because it includes the word “heaven.”
According to the chief of the Russian space agency, it presently does not have the capacity to produce additional Soyuz capsule for tourist flights.
The failed predictions of global warming activists.
In 2005 “the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations University declared that 50 million people could become environmental refugees by 2010, fleeing the effects of climate change.” Three years later . . . Srgjan Kerim, president of the UN General Assembly, said it had been estimated that there would be between 50 million and 200 million environmental migrants by 2010. A UNEP web page showed a map of regions where people were likely to be displaced by the ravages of global warming. It has recently been taken offline but is still visible in a Google cache.
Doesn’t this make you feel safer? Theft by TSA employees of passenger valuables has become a nationwide problem.
According to TSA records, press reports, and court documents . . . some 500 TSA officers . . . have been fired or suspended for stealing from passenger luggage since the agency’s creation in November of 2001. The airports servicing New York City—John F. Kennedy, LaGuardia, and Newark Liberty—harbor the most flagrant offenders, but virtually no city in the nation is safe from the TSA’s sticky fingers.
In 2009, a half dozen TSA agents at Miami International Airport were charged with grand theft after boosting an iPod, bottles of perfume, cameras, a GPS system, a Coach purse, and a Hewlett Packard Mini Notebook from passengers’ luggage. Travelers passing through the airport’s checkpoints reported as many as 1,500 items stolen, the majority of which were never recovered.
In May of this year alone, TSA agents were arrested on the suspicion of theft at airports in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Chicago.
Another state moves to limit union power: The New Jersey Senate has passed a public employee benefits bill that suspends union bargaining over healthcare while increasing the costs to union members.
Note that the vote was not partisan, 24-15 with 8 Democrats voting in favor.
A gladiator’s tombstone reveals a tale of death and bad refereeing.
The legal store of stolen objects.
Will the last one out please turn off the light? Companies are leaving California in record numbers.
A House panel has told the Department of Energy to get rid of underperforming research grants.
Though this article focuses on what it considers “whopping” cuts, I must point out that the total cuts to the DOE simply bring its budget back to its 2008 level, hardly a draconian cut.
How the recently dissolved California Space Authority wasted millions of dollars in federal earmarks and grants.
Sadly, this story is typical of many quasi-public/private authorities, most of which have nothing to do with the aerospace industry. There is a lot of one hand washing the other, using money the federal government nonchalantly gives away as if it is water.
The Roman emperor Hadrian built his country estate with the buildings aligned with the sun.
For centuries, scholars have thought that the more than 30 buildings at Hadrian’s palatial country estate were oriented more or less randomly. But De Franceschini says that during the summer solstice, blades of light pierce two of the villa’s buildings.
In one, the Roccabruna, light from the summer solstice enters through a wedge-shaped slot above the door and illuminates a niche on the opposite side of the interior (see image). And in a temple of the Accademia building, De Franceschini has found that sunlight passes through a series of doors during both the winter and summer solstices.
The cost of rare earth metals used in electronics has soared to record levels in the past two weeks as China clamps down on illegal mining and limits supplies.
A prototype of an unmanned sailing ship will begin a test voyage this fall.
Although Harbor Wing will operate without a captain and crew by sailing on a pre-programmed course, “the man is always in the loop,” Ott said. An operator, seated at a computer that could be hundreds of miles away, can control the craft with keystrokes that relay commands via satellite. The transmission gap, from order to receipt, is only 18 seconds, which “on the open ocean is not much,” he said, “so you have very close control.”
White House chief of staff can’t defend Obama’s “indefensible” (his word) economic policies.
A university research center is under attack for arbitrarily adjusting its sea-level data upward.
Good news: Some bats seem to be surviving despite being infected with white nose fungus [pdf].
NASA is about to decide on its shuttle heavy-lift replacement, and it looks like it will be almost entirely shuttle-derived.
As I have said previously, this rocket will almost certainly never fly. NASA has to start over after spending billions and years developing Constellation, and is being given less money and time to do it.
And even if I am wrong and this rocket does fly, I bet it will do only one flight and then be retired as too costly.
Poland joins the European Space Agency.
The debate over arsenic-based life continues.
Turf war: SpaceX has sued a NASA safety expert (with ties to the Ares rocket program) who questioned the safety of the Falcon 9 rocket.
The Pan-STARRS Telescope has found a comet that might provide us all a show in 2013.
An update from Messenger.
An idiot speaks: Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) yesterday equated Islamic terrorists with “Christian militants” in the United States.
Since 9/11 Islamic terrorists have carried out more than 17,000 attacks, killing tens of thousands. In that same time, you could count on one hand the number of attacks by “Christian militants,” if that many. For Representative Lee, it seems it is hard for her to tell the difference.
