The competition heats up: The Russians are considering offering tourists the ability to buy a full six month tour on ISS when they resume tourist flights in 2018.
They don’t yet have any customers for such a flight, but in order to make some money, or “lowering the budgetary load” as they put it, they are considering offering it.
I ask this frightening question because it is becoming increasingly clear that Obama’s loyalties do not seem to be firmly lodged on the side of western civilization, the United States, or even our allies in the Middle East, both Jewish and Muslim.
To give you an idea, here is a small selection of links:
The last is interesting in that it includes these comments by Obama:
In a Nowruz (Persian New Year) video address, Obama said that a “reasonable nuclear deal… can help open the door to a brighter future for you, the Iranian people. I believe that our nations have a historic opportunity to resolve this issue peacefully — an opportunity we should not miss,” added Obama.
The collection above is only a sampling in the past week. It ignores past stories, such as Obama’s snub of the Charlie Hebdo demonstrations in France, for example.
I repeat: Whose side is Obama on? The evidence sure is mounting that he is not allied with the United States.
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 or any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from 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
An evening pause: Some Irish music with one normally un-Irish instrument.
Hat tip Danae.
Some good news: Two Congressmen have introduced legislation to repeal the Patriot Act as well as end all unconstitutional domestic spying by government agencies.
The article notes that there is bi-partisan support for “doing something” about the out-of-control surveillance of federal agencies like the National Security Agency. I agree. Expect something like this to get passed. Whether Obama will veto it is another question. Despite what he says (which no one should every believe), he likes the idea of prying into the lives of private citizens.
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.
“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 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.
Finding out what’s in it: A group of Democratic senators, all supporters of Obamacare, are now begging Obama to delay implementation of one aspect of the law they wrote and voted for.
In a letter exclusively obtained by The Daily Caller, Senate Democrats pleaded with Health and Human Services secretary Sylvia Matthews Burwell to delay an Obamacare rule change that puts companies with 51 to 100 employees in the costlier “small group” market instead of the “large group” market. The rule change, which will result in higher premiums for many companies, goes into effect in 2016. The letter was signed by Democratic Sens. Claire McCaskill, Heidi Heitkamp, Chris Coons, Joe Manchin, Joe Donnelly and Jon Tester and independent Sen. Angus King, who caucuses with the Democrats.
Some of these Democrats were not in Congress when the law passed, but since then they have all voted against all Republican proposals to change or repeal the law, including proposals that wanted to do this very thing.
But they are Democrats! They are so very smart! And they care! It must be Bush’s fault Obamacare was passed!
Those evil American imperialists! As an American military convoy passed through the Polish Bialystok during a NATO exercise the entire town came out to cheer.
Gee, I wonder if the Poles would give the Russians or Germans or maybe any other foreign army the same greeting. In fact, isn’t it strange that this is the same greeting American troops get from ordinary people in every nation they have ever gone to? Could it be because we as a nation have never gone to conquer but only to liberate? Could it be because once we are finished these places have always been better off than before we got there? Could it be because we have always demanded that freedom, justice, and the rule of law be the guidebook for the local regimes we leave behind?
Nah, none of that can be true. My leftwing college professors told me that America is the source of all evil in the world. That must be true. They couldn’t have lied to me.
Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel, can be purchased as an ebook everywhere for only $3.99 (before discount) at amazon, Barnes & Noble, all ebook vendors, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big oppressive tech companies and I get a bigger cut much sooner.
"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
Using data from Curiosity scientists have for the first time identified nitrates, also called fixed nitrogen, on the Martian surface.
There is no evidence to suggest that the fixed nitrogen molecules found by the team were created by life. The surface of Mars is inhospitable for known forms of life. Instead, the team thinks the nitrates are ancient, and likely came from non-biological processes like meteorite impacts and lightning in Mars’ distant past.
Features resembling dry riverbeds and the discovery of minerals that form only in the presence of liquid water suggest that Mars was more hospitable in the remote past. The Curiosity team has found evidence that other ingredients needed for life, such as liquid water and organic matter, were present on Mars at the Curiosity site in Gale Crater billions of years ago.
The data also suggests that these nitrates are widespread on the Martian surface.
The most important aspect of this discovery to me is not so much that it suggests the faint possibility of past life on Mars but that it makes Mars a more hospitable place for life in the future. Nitrates are essentially fertilizer, and for Mars to have this material in the soil already means it will be easier to figure out how to grow crops there.
Sierra Nevada has made an agreement with Houston’s airport authority to use Ellington Airport there to land its Dream Chaser spacecraft.
This announcement is part of the public relations push going on right now as NASA prepares to award its next round of cargo freighter contracts to two private companies. Sierra Nevada has bid to use an unmanned version of Dream Chaser to launch that cargo.
A three month old flash memory problem on the Mars rover Opportunity has finally been fixed by reformatting the rover’s memory banks.
Since the problem came up in December they have been operating the rover without any flash memory, essentially running it on the equivalent of its ram memory. This fix allows them to once again store data on the rover and gives them more flexibility of operation.
Science provides the answer!
The competition heats up: ULA is running a contest allowing the public to vote on the name — Freedom, Eagle, or GalaxyOne — it should use for its next generation rocket.
The Siberian Times has posted a very interesting photo tour of Russia’s new spaceport, Vostochny, presently under construction.
The article is very much a propaganda piece pushed by the Russian government (some photos were actually taken by Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin himself), but it still gives you a sense of the scale and size of the project.
It is quite instructive to compare how the Russians do things, with a giant public works project costing $5 billion and taking more than a decade to build, with how the Americans do things, with a small privately-built space port being constructed by SpaceX in Brownsville for mere millions and in only a few years.
Having successfully completed its nominal six month mission and continuing to operate perfectly, ISRO has extended the mission of India’s Mangalyaan Mars orbiter for another six months.
Take a gander at the images the orbiter has been sending down. Quite impressive. The cropped image on the right shows the western slopes of the giant volcano Arsia Mons, with white water vapor hovering above those slopes. (Click on the image for the full resolution version.) The water vapor is significant because scientists believe that this region once had many glaciers, and that much of that water is still present and trapped below the surface as ice, possibly in many of the caves that are there. The vapor’s presence, a routine occurance here, strengthens this theory.
The competition heats up: The first test flight of a rail-guided military small satellite launcher has been delayed until October 2015.
“Launch delays of the new launch system were driven primarily by technical development challenges on the first stage motor including design and delivery of the rocket motor case and the integrated rocket motor,” Anttonen said in a response to written questions from Spaceflight Now. “This motor is now complete along with the rest of the launch vehicle, and the launch is on hold pending an opening in the range schedule,” Anttonen said.
The launch system is designed to provide launch capability for small satellites like cubesats, with a launch cost of $12 to $15 million. If successful, it will be a direct competitor to Virgin Galactic’s LauncherOne, except that it appears it might be operational first.
The competition heats up: Faced with the loss of income from NASA in 2017, when private commercial ferries take over the job of bringing Americans to ISS, Russian officials today revealed that they plan to resume launching tourists to the station in 2018.
The problem the Russians will have then is that they will have competition from the American companies, who will likely be able to compete in price with them, and will be easier to work with.
This will make your day: A GAO report has found the IRS financial security system has gigantic holes, including allowing former employees access to taxpayer confidential records long after they have left the agency.
The GAO report says the IRS uses old outdated software without proper security functions. IRS passwords can easily be compromised, the report notes. Even worse, the report says the IRS does not always delete employee access when workers quit or are fired.
But don’t worry. The IRS might not be able to protect your private data, but it is still very good at losing the emails of employees like Lois Lerner, who do the work the Democratic Party needs done, such as using the tax code to harass their political opponents.
An evening pause: From the 1962 Howard Hawks film Hatari!, this scene, and the music that goes with it, shows off the film’s light-hearted adventurous tone. And yes, that’s John Wayne following the girl. Since then this music has been reused innumerable times in youtube pet videos.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
A close analysis of last week’s elections in Israel finds that the place where Netanyahu got the most votes was an Arab village.
The residents were uninterested in any of the accusations of racism being aimed at Netanyahu by the media. Instead they were interested in housing. As one resident put it, “I used to sleep in a cave with my goats. Now I ask my daughter what wallpaper she wants in her room.”
The article provides a very detailed and educational breakdown of the Arab vote, which is far more complicated than portrayed by the leftwing media. For example, in other areas the Arabs voted not for Netanyahu but for another right-wing party in his coalition. If the right was so bigoted, as the left likes to claim, why did this happen?
The Supreme Court today turned down a challenge to Wisconsin’s new voter ID law, essentially allowing it to become fully effective.
This is not the first time the court has upheld voter ID. Moreover, the decision today is another political victory for Scott Walker, who pushed the legislation through, and a defeat for Democrats and the left, which for some reason fear a system that will make sure voter fraud is difficult if not impossible.
Geoscientists have created a short video showing the break-up of the giant continent Pangea, beginning 187 million years ago and showing the changes in million year increments.
It is very cool to watch today’s continents slowly come into view. Make sure especially that you watch India as it suddenly starts to fly north at a relatively fast speed to smash into Asia.
