Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
GOP Senators to the White House: Better start planning for no debt ceiling increase and making do on a $2.6 trillion budget.
Budget deficits signal a decline in spending for astronomy telescopes, both on the ground and in space, for the next decade.
Life in space: A photo-op was interrupted today when a false fire alarm blared out on the International Space Station.
Did a spotless sun cause the Little Ice Age after all?
Obama’s budget request for 2012 received zero votes today when it came up for a vote in the Democratic controlled Senate. Meanwhile, the House budget, proposed by Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) was also rejected, but by the much closer vote of 40-57.
I’m not sure if this is good or bad. It suggests that there is increasing recognition in the Senate that cuts must happen, and that Obama’s budget failed in this regard. It also suggests that the Senate is also not ready to make those cuts.
Tolerance in the Middle East: A provincial official in Algeria has ordered seven Christian churches to close.
In 2008 the government applied measures in accordance with Ordinance 06-03 to limit the activities of non-Muslim groups, ordering the closure of 26 churches in the Kabylie region because they were not registered. No churches had been closed down since then. [Protestant Church of Algeria] members argue, however, that the law is impossible to implement as officials refuse to register their churches despite efforts to comply. They said the authorities apply the law when they want to harass churches.
The dark ages return: Italy is going to put seven earthquake scientists on trial for failing to predict an earthquake in 2009. More details here, from Nature.
MSNBC has suspended Ed Schultz for calling Laura Ingraham a “slut” on the air. And Schultz has apologized publicly.
This is progress, as in the past leftwing hosts on MSNBC could say practically anything about their conservative opposites (and frequently did) without consequence.
A photo atlas of galactic “train wrecks.”
Asteroid sample return mission on slate for NASA in 2016. The asteroid chosen in 1999 RQ36, which is significant.
The space rock has been classified as a potentially hazardous asteroid, since its orbit brings it close to Earth in the year 2182. There is an extremely remote chance (a recent study pegs it at about 1-in-1000) that the 1,900-foot-wide (579-meter) asteroid could pose a threat to Earth.
More evidence to me it will never fly: Orion must wait for heavy-lift rocket.
Rep. Ryan agreed today that his budget plan played a role in Democrats’ special-election win in New York yesterday.
If Ryan is right, we are in big trouble. His plan might not be the solution, but the Democrats refuse to offer any alternatives. And if it is this Democratic non-plan that the public is choosing, it means that the public remains unwilling to deal with the debt in any way at all.
Now Tim Pawlenty has called for Medicare and Social Security reform — in Florida.
Once again, I don’t know how sincere Pawlenty really is, but he certainly has started his Presidential campaign challenging the voters to face hard realities.
NASA has decided to abandon efforts to contact the rover Spirit, incommunicado for more than a year.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress, both video and transcript.
If you want to watch or read a clear description of the real problems in the Middle East, you must watch or read this speech. It is all too rare in these sad days for political leaders to be so blunt.
NASA announces that the Orion program will continue, though under a different name.
This is a non-announcement, made to appease those in Congress who are requiring NASA to build the program-formerly-called-Constellation. NASA will do as Congress demands, and in the process will build nothing while spending a lot of money for a rocket and space capsule that can’t be built for the amount budgeted.
Evidence mounts for liquid water on Enceladus.
Facing a launch window that ends December 18, the next rover mission to Mars was damaged last week upon arriving at the Kennedy Space Center.
What the hell? In signing the guestbook at Westminster Abbey today, Obama dated his comments 24 May, 2008.
The next budget negotiations have started, and so has the squealing: Republicans propose cutting 12 percent of FDA’s budget.
Note that this would give the FDA a budget of $2.2 billion in 2012, about the same as its 2008 budget. Hardly painful if you ask me.
Video: Is it a blimp? Is it a plane? It’s both!
There is a pattern here: Gasoline prices by county.
Another Soyuz upgrade in the works.
Soyuz TMA-20 lands safely in Kazakhstan.
The United Kingdom’s Skylon spaceplane has passed a key European Space Agency review.
I’ve seen hundreds of these kinds of stories over the years. Skylon looks cool, and would be revolutionary if built. We shall see if it actually happens.
A hint at what today’s images of the station and shuttle, taken from the Soyuz capsule, will look like.
Satellite monitoring of the new Iceland volcano eruption.
More on the new Kepler results: Lots of multiple planet systems.
