The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has found that all but one of the approximately 3000 incidents of out-of-control acceleration involving Toyota vehicles were because of driver error, not mechanical problems. In other words, the accusations that there was something fundamentally wrong with the Toyota vehicles was false.
A draft version of Senate’s NASA budget has been released. More commentary to come.
Update. From what I can tell by a quick scan through the actual proposed legislation [pdf], the Senate will give the administration most of the money it wants for commercial space, but also demand that it start work on a heavy-lift replacement of the shuttle immediately, including the full size version of the Orion capsule. However, the language requiring this latter action is very vague (“as soon as possible after the date of the enactment of this act”) and leaves the administration a great deal of wiggle room. From my experience, this means that Congress is trying to create the illusion that it has done something, but is basically leaving the decisions to the administration.
The draft language does forbid any contracts being issued for any new private commercial crew services until the 2012 year, which suggests that Congress wants NASA to focus on the Orion capsule and heavy lift option first. However, to me this merely means the Obama administration is being given the option to stall for a year and then come back again later with the same proposals it offered back in February of this year. That the draft legislation also gives NASA 120 days to put together its plan for its heavy-lift program only increases my doubts about Congress’s seriousness.
Overall, this legislation only confirms my worst fears. If passed as is, both the new private commercial space ventures as well as the government space program will suffer.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon, any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Steve Goddard has posted on Anthony Watt’s webpage a very detailed update on the state of the icecap covering Greenland. Surprise! There are no signs of it disappearing anytime soon. (Note that you might have to scroll to the right to see the text of Goddard’s post, as on some computers Watts’s webpage is unfortunately far too wide for the screen.)
More so-called tolerance from Islam, this time helped by the secular authorities in Deerborn, Michigan. Four men were arrested and charged with misdemeanor charges because they stood on a public street and offered the gospel of St. John to passersby. The news article states the following:
The behavior of these individuals drew and incited a large crowd to a point where they were in violation of city ordinances, including breach of peace and failure to obey the lawful order of a police officer, according to the city’s public relations department. . . . Festival rules require religious groups to distribute information at paid booths or outside the event.
However, the video below paints a very different picture. It appears that at least two of the men were on public property, just outside the festival and no crowd appeared (except for a lot of cops). I find it especially disgusting how the cops force them to stop filming the event.
Update: In restrospective, it is very possible the video below was not shot at the same time the men were arrested. Even so, if the court documents do describe the events accurately, there is something disturbing about the response of the people at the Islamic festival. Why should they be so offended, almost to the point of violence, merely because others are passing out Christian literature? Moreover, the video below still shows a clear violation of the Christian activists’ freedom of speech and assembly, since they were standing on public property and had not caused any disturbances when the police moved in to harass them.
Now available in hardback and paperback as well as ebook!
From the press release: In this ground-breaking new history of early America, historian Robert Zimmerman not only exposes the lie behind The New York Times 1619 Project that falsely claims slavery is central to the history of the United States, he also provides profound lessons about the nature of human societies, lessons important for Americans today as well as for all future settlers on Mars and elsewhere in space.
Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space, is a riveting page-turning story that documents how slavery slowly became pervasive in the southern British colonies of North America, colonies founded by a people and culture that not only did not allow slavery but in every way were hostile to the practice.
Conscious Choice does more however. In telling the tragic history of the Virginia colony and the rise of slavery there, Zimmerman lays out the proper path for creating healthy societies in places like the Moon and Mars.
“Zimmerman’s ground-breaking history provides every future generation the basic framework for establishing new societies on other worlds. We would be wise to heed what he says.” —Robert Zubrin, founder of founder of the Mars Society.
All editions are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all book vendors, with the ebook priced at $5.99 before discount. All editions can also be purchased direct from the ebook publisher, ebookit, in which case you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
Autographed printed copies are also available at discount directly from the author (hardback $29.95; paperback $14.95; Shipping cost for either: $6.00). Just send an email to zimmerman @ nasw dot org.
All the discussion about the future of NASA must be put in some fiscal context, and here it is: the Debt and Deficit Commission that the Obama administration created to review the spending problems of the federal government has some bad news: there literally is no money for anything but Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Key quote from the Washington Post article:
The commission leaders said that, at present, federal revenue is fully consumed by three programs: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. “The rest of the federal government, including fighting two wars, homeland security, education, art, culture, you name it, veterans — the whole rest of the discretionary budget is being financed by China and other countries,” Simpson said.
"Leaving Earth is one of the best and certainly the most comprehensive summary of our drive into space that I have ever read. It will be invaluable to future scholars because it will tell them how the next chapter of human history opened."
-- Arthur C. Clarke
Astronomers have finished the first detailed study, including field trips, for the construction of a telescope on the one of the high mountains near the northern tip of Ellesmere Island, less than 10 degrees from the North Pole.
Scaled Composites has posted the full test flight log for all of WhiteKnightTwo’s test flights, through July 1, 2010. The logs strongly suggest that the company is moving quickly towards its first full flight of SpaceShipTwo.
India successfully launches five satellites in one heave. Even cooler, one of the satellites, STUDSAT, was built by students! Nor is that all. Immediately after the launch, India’s space agency head lobbied for a manned space program for India.
An evening pause: Here is an iconic movie scene from an iconic director (John Ford). The film is My Darling Clementine (1946), one of the best westerns ever made. Tough guy sheriff Wyatt Earp, played by Henry Fonda, makes the toughest decision in his life. And it has nothing to do with firing a gun!
Here’s a nice picture from the HiRISE camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, released July 7, showing the boulder tracks left by rocks bouncing down the escarpment of Kasei Valles in the low gravity of Mars. Fun quote:
Some of these blocks traveled downhill several hundred meters (yards) as they rolled and bounced, leaving behind a trail of indentations or poke marks in the surface’s fine-grained, light-toned soils. The raised borders in some of these poke marks indicate they are relatively recent features, unaffected by wind erosion, or that this soil has cohesive properties, such as if it was cemented.
The space war continues. Several members of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board have written a letter to Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland), endorsing in principle the goals of the Obama proposals for NASA.
Scientists are shocked, shocked, to discover that it doesn’t matter whether the Republicans or the Democrats are in power, governments like to interfere with the free flow of information and with scientific research.
Islam once again demonstrates its tolerance. The cartoonist who first proposed and then backed off from the “Everyone Draw Mohammed Day” has now been threatened with death by an Islamic cleric/terrorist.
On July 6, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) of the University of Colorado published its monthly report on the state of the polar ice caps. The Arctic ice cap, which this winter had been larger and more extensive than seen for many years, also shrank this spring at the fastest rate in years. (This chart, produced by data from the Japanese AMSR instruments on two research satellites, shows these trends very clearly.) Meanwhile, NSIDC reports that the ice cap in Antarctica is far larger than normal. Not unexpectedly, NSIDC immediately argues (quite unconvincingly if you ask me) that more ice in Antarctica is evidence for global warming.
From my perspective, the data continues to be inconclusive. We still do not really understand the long term trends of the Earth’s climate.
Jeff Foust of the Space Review has written an excellent analysis today explaining why some new space companies have succeeded (SpaceX) and some have failed (Rocketplane). Key quote:
If your business plan requires hundreds of millions of dollars of investment, and your founders don’t have that money available themselves, it may be wise to reconsider that plan in favor of an effort that can bootstrap itself with much less funding.
The Japanese space agency has announced that their solar sail spacecraft Ikaros has successfully increased its velocity using only the light from the Sun, the first time this has ever been done by an interplanetary spacecraft.
An evening pause: In a previous post, I described how I have always felt that Julie Andrews’ incredible screen presence was only rarely taken full advantage of during her career. In Mary Poppins — one the films that did showcase her wonderfully, Andrews’ co-star was Dick van Dyke, an amazing talent in his own right. For that film, Andrews and van Dyke had a chemistry that was riveting. In an earlier movie era, the studios would have taken advantage of that chemistry and cast them together again and again, much as Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn were repeatedly cast together throughout the 1940s and 1950s. Unfortunately, by the 1960s the studio system was dead and such casting was impossible, and Andrews and van Dyke have never again appeared on the big screen together.
However, in 1974 they did do a television variety show special together, Julie and Dick in Covent Garden. One particular skit from that show not only demonstrated vividly the chemistry between Andrews and van Dyke and how we had lost something precious by not having them appear together in many films, the skit’s story itself illustrated in a most ironic manner these lost opportunities of life. Enjoy.
The space war continues. This article by Lee Roop of the Huntsville Times gives an excellent summary of the precarious political position of NASA’s manned space program.
I was out in West Virginia this weekend for the monthly gathering of the Germany Valley Karst Survey. This project has discovered and mapped more than 37 miles of virgin cave passage in West Virginia in the past eight years. For the last two years I, along with about a dozen other project members, have been focused on a dig in a small cave that has the potential to break out into a lot of virgin passage. Below are two pictures taken by fellow caver Daniel Martinez, the first showing me at the cave entrance and the second showing my feet as crawl in.
The 2010 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest has been awarded, given to the writer who comes up with the worst opening sentence for an imaginary novel. This year’s winner, Molly Ringle, achieved the honor with this gem:
For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity’s affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss — a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity’s mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world’s thirstiest gerbil.
Go here to see the runners-up, all of which are worth it.
It appears that the chief investigator of the recently released climategate investigation of Phil Jones and the University of East Anglia never attended any of the investigation’s interviews of Phil Jones. What a strange way to do an investigation!
Today (July 10) is when the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft is scheduled to fly past asteroid 21 Lutetia. The webcast can be seen here, starting at 12 pm, Eastern time, including the release of the first pictures, beginning 5 pm Eastern.
An evening pause: Jack Benny and Mel Blanc on the Johnny Carson show, 1974. After you have watched and laughed, ask yourself this question: why is it funny? The answer: because sometimes the best “funny” is in how it’s done, not in what is said.
