Fifty-one fascinating historical pictures.
Fifty-one fascinating historical pictures.
I especially like the contrast between #26 and #41. And #18 is pretty wild also.
Orbital Sciences has announced a further delay to July 1 for the next Antares/Cygnus cargo mission to ISS in order to complete its investigation into the failure of a Russian engine during testing.
Orbital Sciences has announced a further delay to July 1 for the next Antares/Cygnus cargo mission to ISS in order to complete its investigation into the failure of a Russian engine during testing.
The total delay is now about a month. The press release provides no information as to the status of the investigation, so why it is taking longer than originally expected is unexplained.
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.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"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
Animal rights activists want to blacklist the metal band Metallica from a music festival because one of its members is a hunter.
Fascists: Animal rights activists want to blacklist the metal band Metallica from a music festival because one of its members is a hunter.
Why Japan (and Germany) really lost World War II.
Why Japan (and Germany) really lost World War II.
The article also illustrates with facts why Russia would have lost to the U.S. as well if we had fought them then, before they got the bomb.
Read it. The facts are quite astonishing. Moreover, I have read a number of histories of World War II from the perspective of the Japanese and the Germans, and in both cases their experience matches the facts laid out by this article: The depth of the U.S. manufacturing capability — created by freedom and property rights and small government — was beyond anything the Axis powers could match. As the war continued it overwhelmed 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 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.
Mississippi’s new voter ID law went into effect and there were no problems.
The biggest non-event in this past Tuesday’s election: Mississippi’s new voter ID law went into effect and there were no problems.
As Sid Salter from the Clarion Ledger put it, the voter ID law was a “non-event” and “voters expressed little, if any, inconvenience at the polls due to the new law.” So how is the new law being covered by the media? Instead of reporting that the voter ID law is “sailing through,” the mainstream media has instead elected to remain silent.
The media did not report this non-story because it didn’t serve the partisan fear-mongering of the Democratic Party, which has been claiming since 2000 that voter id laws are designed to suppress the black vote — as if black voters are too stupid to have ID. The truth is that these laws only suppress one thing: voter fraud, something that it appears the Democratic Party depends on all too often to win elections.
Dozens of Veterans Administration whistle-blowers have been punished by their management for reporting management problems.
Transparency! Dozens of Veterans Administration whistle-blowers have been punished by their management for reporting management problems.
The retaliations included suspensions, demotions, and reassignments.
The VA scandal continues to reveal the kind of future we face with Obamacare.
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.
Winner of the 2003 Eugene M. Emme Award of the American Astronautical Society.
"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
Oklahoma today joined Indiana and South Carolina in rejecting the Common Core education standards that have been imposed by the federal government.
Oklahoma today joined Indiana and South Carolina in pulling out of the Common Core education standards that have been imposed by the federal government.
All told, seventeen states are pushing back against the federal standards, with four states, Alaska, Nebraska, Texas, and Virginia, refusing to participate at all.
A new analysis of Apollo lunar rocks provides strong new evidence for the theory that the Moon was formed when the Earth was hit by a Mars’ sized planet.
A new analysis of Apollo lunar rocks provides strong new evidence for the theory that the Moon was formed when the Earth was hit by a Mars’ sized planet.
The abstract from this just released science paper summarizes the scientific problem.
Earth formed in a series of giant impacts, and the last one made the Moon. This idea, an edifice of post-Apollo science, can explain the Moon’s globally melted silicate composition, its lack of water and iron, and its anomalously large mass and angular momentum. But the theory is seriously called to question by increasingly detailed geochemical analysis of lunar rocks. Lunar samples should be easily distinguishable from Earth, because the Moon derives mostly from the impacting planet, in standard models of the theory. But lunar rocks are the same as Earth in O, Ti, Cr, W, K, and other species, to measurement precision. Some regard this as a repudiation of the theory; others say it wants a reformation. Ideas put forward to salvage or revise it are evaluated, alongside their relationships to past models and their implications for planet formation and Earth.
The new analysis has found that lunar rocks do differ from Earth in certain ways. Not surprisingly, however, the results have uncertainties.
Some additional details about Airbus’s spaceplane, its recent successful drop tests, and the company’s future plans.
Some additional details about Airbus’s spaceplane, its recent successful drop tests, and the company’s future plans.
The design has similar to XCOR’s Lynx. It would take off and land from a runway and do a suborbital flight without the need of a mother ship.
Mojave Spaceport temporarily evacuated due to a small scrap metal fire.
Mojave Spaceport temporarily evacuated due to a small scrap metal fire.
The official statement can be read here. As noted by Doug Messier,
There’s a question of why scrap material (or any other flammable material) was anywhere near a tank full of nitrous oxide. In consulting with one expert who uses nitrous oxide, I was told that a blast could have possibly damaged everything within 1,000 feet. That’s basically two complete football fields with end zones plus another 93 yards. There are a lot of irreplaceable people and technologies within 1,000 feet of where that fire took place.
Then again, a fire can occur almost anywhere, and it is often impossible to keep it away from flammable materials.
Believe it or not, it appears that organic or “green” kitty litter is the cause of the leak that has shut down a nuclear waste facility in New Mexico.
Believe it or not, it appears that organic or “green” kitty litter is the cause of the leak that has shut down a nuclear waste facility in New Mexico.
Disgusted with getting petty citations from their Florida city for the look of their home, a Bradenton couple has had it painted with a giant American flag.
Pushback: Disgusted with getting petty citations from their Florida city for the look of their home, a Bradenton couple has had it painted with a giant American flag.
Americans the Obama Administration has left behind.
Americans the Obama Administration has left behind.
It sickens me that the Obama administration has been justifying ransoming terrorist leaders for a probable deserter by reciting the creed that America never leaves a man behind. The Obama administration frequently leaves men (and even children) to suffer and die, with minimal apparent effort on their behalf. A partial list:
Why the crickets on the Hawaiian islands stopped singing twenty years ago.
Why the crickets on the Hawaiian islands stopped singing twenty years ago.
Believe it or not, they actually evolved.
The rupture of a drum at a nuclear waste site in New Mexico has shut down a neutrino experiment.
The rupture of a drum at a nuclear waste site in New Mexico has shut down a neutrino experiment.
This article, from Nature, focuses on the harm done to the science experiment, which is considerable and very unfortunate. However, scroll to the end of the article to learn a little about the drum rupture, which has serious implications for the storage of nuclear waste anywhere.
India will do a planned midcourse engine burn of its Mangalyaan Mars orbiter on June 11.
India will do a planned midcourse engine burn of its Mangalyaan Mars orbiter on June 11.
So far, all is well with the spacecraft, which is scheduled to arrive at Mars in September.
Richard Shelby’s poison pill in the Senate NASA budget bill that will double the cost of manned commercial space.
Senator Richard Shelby’s poison pill in the Senate NASA budget bill that will double the cost of manned commercial space.
Essentially Shelby wants to require the commercial companies to follow the older paperwork requirements used by NASA in the past. Presently, the contract arrangements NASA has used for these new companies have been efficient and relatively paperwork free, allowing them to build their cargo freighters (Dragon and Cygnus) and their manned spacecraft (Dragon V2, CST-100, and Dream Chaser) for relatively little.
The older contract rules are what NASA has used for Constellation and SLS as well as all past attempts to replace the shuttle. In every case, the costs were so high the replacement was never finished. In the case of SLS, the costs will be so high it will never accomplish anything.
Why has Shelby (R-Alabama) inserted this language? He wants pork, and SLS is the way to get it. Rather than cut the cost of SLS to make it more competitive (and which will reduce the pork in his state) Shelby instead wants to make the new commercial companies more costly, thus making SLS appear more competitive. It will still cost too much and will not accomplish anything, but this way he will be able to better argue for it in congressional negotiations.
Shelby illustrates clearly that the desire to waste the taxpayers’ money is not confined to the spendthrifts in the Democratic Party. Republicans can do it to!
Want to own your own Apollo capsule from the 1960s?
Want to own your own Apollo capsule from the 1960s?
Apparently nobody wants to buy a spaceship, at least not for $200,000. St. Louis-based auction company Regency-Superior reported no bids on Wednesday for former Lt. Gov. Lonnie Hammargren’s 1960s Apollo Command Module Block 1 mock-up, which was a fixture in the retired neurosurgeon’s eclectic collection since he acquired it in the mid-1970s.
The capsule remains available still at the minimum price if you go to the auction house’s website.
Weather has once again delayed the test flight of a new Mars-landing parachute system on a saucer shaped launch vehicle.
Weather has once again delayed the test flight of a new Mars-landing parachute system on a saucer shaped launch vehicle.
The next launch opportunity is Saturday, June 7.
SpaceX plans to boost production of its rockets to 2 per month by year’s end.
The competition heats up: SpaceX plans to boost production of its rockets to 2 per month by year’s end.
They need to do this to prove they can launch their backlog of contracts of commercial satellites. And I will say this once again, I see nothing in their history to suggest that they won’t succeed.