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The race to map the space around the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy

9:30 am

The uncertainty of science: Using a new generation of telescopes, in space and on the ground, astronomers hope to better confine Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity by studying the distortion in light and energy produced by the powerful gravitational field surrounding Sagittarius A* (pronounced A-star), the 4 million solar mass black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

This is an excellent article explaining both the limits of our ability to study black holes as well as what we do know about Sagittarius A*.

Correction: Thanks to commenter Mike Nelson for noticing that I had mistakenly written “billion” instead of “million” for the mass of Sagittarius A* above.

3 comments

Britain narrows its competition for spaceport

9:17 am

The competition heats up: The British government has down-selected its choices for a future spaceport in Great Britain to six airports, two of which have already said they are not interested in taking on the job.

The remaining four sites include two in Scotland, and one each in Wales and southwestern England. If I had to choose just based on orbital mechanics, the English site would win, as it is farther south thereby capable of putting more payload in orbit for the same fuel. However, politics and pork will certainly be a factor in any final decision, as this spaceport location is being decided not by private companies but by the British government.

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Conscious Choice cover

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.

Curiosity in trouble?

9:05 am

The Mars rover Curiosity has temporarily ceased work as engineers investigate what appears to be a short circuit in its electrical system.

The space agency said Tuesday that the electrical problem was discovered over the weekend as Curiosity tried to transfer bits of powder from a rock that it had drilled into. The short circuit stopped the rover’s robotic arm. Engineers are diagnosing the issue, and the testing is expected to take several days.

The worrisome components of this story are the words “short circuit” and “drill”, because of a known design flaw in the electrical system of the rover’s drill. It could very well be that this flaw, which could cause a short that could bring down the rover, is the cause of this electrical problem.

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Genesis cover

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 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

Boehner had made a deal with Pelosi

5:45 pm

Despite claiming that there had been no deal, John Boehner had negotiated a deal with the Democratic Party leadership to get a funding bill passed that also funded Obama’s illegal amnesty.

If there isn’t a successful revolt in the Republican Party to get Boehner replaced as Speaker, than that party will fall apart, giving more even power to the Democrats. It is unacceptable for a Republican leader to back stab his own caucus like this, and for them to accept it is as unacceptable.

Meanwhile, here are the names of the 75 House Republicans who backed the Democrats and Boehner in this back stab. I think I’d rather have Marxist Democrats in these seats than two-faced RINOs who say one thing during campaigns and then do another once elected. At least with the Marxist Democrats we’d know what we’ve got, and we can blame them when things go wrong. These Republican liars however have instead created the illusion that the left wing agenda of Obama and the Democrats is a bi-partisan effort.

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Dawn bears down on Ceres

5:35 pm

Ceres' cratered surface

More cool images! As Dawn moves in on Ceres and prepares to enter orbit on March 6, it has managed to assemble enough images to produce a global map of the almost spheroid-shaped giant asteroid.

The bright spots however remain a mystery which cannot be answered until we get higher resolution images from much closer. Hopefully, Dawn will be able to do this once it is in orbit.

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Leaving Earth cover

There are now only 3 copies left of the now out-of-print hardback of Leaving Earth. The price for an autographed copy of this rare collector's item is now $150 (plus $5 shipping).

 

To get your copy while the getting is good, please send a $155 check (which includes $5 shipping) payable to Robert Zimmerman to
 

Behind The Black, c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

Leaving Earth is also available as an inexpensive ebook!

 

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

A list of politicians boycotting Netanyahu

9:00 am

Link here. The list is incomplete, as it doesn’t include Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts). Nonetheless, it is instructive to note which party every single one of these politicians belongs to. I think you can guess.

But they support Israel! They said so!

In related news, it is now reported that President Obama has cut off providing Israel its intelligence information about Iran’s nuclear program.

But Obama supports Israel! He said so!

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Boehner joins Democrats to support funding of Obama amnesty

8:58 am

Working for the Democratic Party: The Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner announced today that he has joined with the Democrats and will allow a vote on a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security that also funds Obama’s illegal amnesty plan for illegal immigrants.

This flip-flop comes after months of Boehner saying he wouldn’t do this. “The House has acted. We’ve done our job. Senate Democrats are the ones putting us in this precarious position,” Boehner said on Fox News Sunday recently.

It’s unclear whether the vote will pass later on Tuesday, but if it does there are likely to be serious consequences against Boehner for having now flip-flopped into supporting Obama’s executive amnesty.

After this back-stab, I would not be shocked if the Republican caucus tears itself in two as its conservative half tries to get Boehner fired.

Update: The funding bill has passed, with almost 70% of House Republicans voting against it. With numbers like that, it is likely that John Boehner’s days as speaker are numbered. A majority of his own caucus is no longer willing to back him.

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Yutu lives!

8:33 am

Despite an engineering failure that has prevented it from roving after only a few days on the Moon, the Chinese lunar rover Yutu continues to reawaken after each long lunar night, surviving now far longer than its planned three month lifespan.

Since the rover arrived in late 2013, it has now functioned in the hostile lunar environment for more than a year. This, along with other successful long missions, suggests that Chinese space engineering has matured to a point that it has the ability to achieve some significant long term goals.

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Warren to boycott Netanyahu speech

11:25 pm

The modern Democrat: Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) announced today that she will boycott Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress on Tuesday.

Warren voted against the Senate’s new Iran sanctions bill in the Senate Banking Committee in January, one of just four Democrats to oppose legislation that would impose new penalties on Iran in the event it reneges on any nuclear agreement with the United States.

Warren joins a handful of Senate Democratic Caucus members to skip the address, such as Al Franken of Minnesota and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, as well as dozens of House Democrats. Many are skipping because it’s election season in Israel and due to Boehner arranging the speech without consultation with the President Barack Obama, they say.

I single out Warren because she has been touted by many Democrats as their best candidate for President after Hillary Clinton. Yet, she is going to boycott hearing a speech from the only elected leader in the Middle East who happens to be our only reliable ally there. What could he possibly say that she might not like? Might he say that the policy of her Democratic president is dangerous and is allowing Iran, a country that has called for the genocidal destruction of both Israel and the United States, to build its own nuclear bombs? Could it be that she supports Obama’s policy? Her vote on the Iranian sanctions certainly suggests this.

I can tell you that the Democratic argument that John Boehner broke protocol in arranging the speech is petty fiddle-faddle. Considering the threat that Iran poses for the world, and the fact that Israel is our strongest ally to counter that threat, to not attend Netanyahu’s speech for these childish reasons is downright disgraceful. Yet, too many Democrats seem eager to show their hostility to Israel’s leader, while holding out the hand of conciliation to Iran.

Of course, when it comes election time she knows she has nothing to worry about. She knows that American Jews will continue to vote blindly for her and the Democrats.

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Roy Clark & Buck Trent – Dueling Banjos

6:03 pm

An evening pause: While the version of this song for the movie Deliverance (1972) was quite good, I really dislike how that film made all country folk look like they were mentally and physically crippled. The portrayal seemed quite bigoted.

This performance, however, just shows us some great banjo playing, the way it should be done.

4 comments

Obamacare causes insurance company to lose money

10:10 am

Finding out what’s in it: For the first time in 15 years, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of North Carolina will lose money in 2015 due to Obamacare.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield, the state’s largest health insurer, said Friday that it posted its first financial loss in 15 years as a result of insuring high numbers of older and sicker people under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The Chapel Hill organization signed up 257,704 people under the federal health care law, which requires insurers to provide coverage regardless of a customer’s health condition. New enrollees last year swelled Blue Cross’s covered membership to 3.91 million people, and boosted revenue by 25 percent to an all-time high of $8 billion.

But steep medical claims – for hip and knee replacements, heart procedures, specialty drugs and other costs – drove up medical claims from $5 billion in 2013 to $6.4 billion in 2014. Blue Cross also paid $156 million in ACA-related fees, a new cost for the company.

Federal subsidies under Obamacare are supposed to cover these loses, but then we must ask where is the bankrupt federal government going to get this money? In the end, someone is going to go bankrupt and we will all be worse off.

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SpaceX has another successful commercial launch

9:26 am

The competition heats up: SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched its first two-satellite payload to geosynchronouse orbit on Sunday.

The satellites were unusual in that they both have replaced all their chemical engines with ion engines, thus saving weight and cost.

While the satellites will need six to seven times longer to reach the desired orbit, the cost savings is enormous. “The advantage of that, of course, is you don’t carry liquid chemical fuel, which is very heavy,” Betaharon said. “This particular satellite, each of them weigh around 2,000 kilograms. Typically, if you get a satellite like that from other manufacturers, or even from Boeing using chemical propulsion, they would weigh something around 3,500 to 4,000 kilograms, or in some cases maybe more. That’s why, because it’s lower mass, we managed to put two of them on one rocket, which right away reduces your launch costs in half.”

When ABS and Eutelsat signed up for Falcon 9 launch services several years ago, the rocket cost about $60 million. “We paid under $30 million for each satellite, which is almost unheard of,” Betaharon said.

More information about the new satellite designs can be found here.

Nonetheless, the combined weight of the two satellites plus the need to get them to geosynchronous orbit forced SpaceX to forgo another attempt to land its first stage vertical. The rocket needed the fuel to get the satellites where they had to go.

One comment

California bans Christian clubs at its colleges

10:27 pm

Modern fascism: Christian clubs at California colleges have been banned because the clubs insist that their elected leaders must be Christians.

Leaders of Cru, formerly known as Campus Crusade for Christ, as well as the two other Christian clubs at San Luis Obispo that were derecognized – InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and Chinese Christian Fellowship – have insisted that they couldn’t allow any non-Christians to be leaders.

“We have no issue with anybody of any kind of race, religion coming to our weekly meetings and being a part of who we are,” San Luis Obispo Missionary Leader Jamey Pappas said. “It’s a question of who’s going to be leading our students in a Bible Study, mentoring them individually, or deciding what kind of content goes into our weekly meeting, and we want people who agree with what we’re about.”

More evidence that the concept of freedom of association is dead in America, and with it freedom itself. The result here is that it is impossible to have a religious organization on these campuses. (Note that the Islamic clubs have joined with the Christian clubs to fight the policy.)

Since I have no doubt that atheist and gay clubs accepted this policy knowing that college administrators will look the other way if they discriminate because they are considered “politically correct,” I think these religious clubs should test the policy for real. Pick an atheist club and swamp it with religious members so that a religious person gets elected as leader. We will quickly find out that the real intent of these policies has nothing to do with preventing discrimination but to squelch the freedoms of traditional American values in favor of new ideologies.

5 comments

Small satellite industry predicted to blossom

2:07 pm

The competition heats up: An industry study now predicts that more than 500 small satellites, including nanosats, cubesats, microsats, and minisats, will be launched in the next five years.

Note however this important detail, highlighted below:

75% of the 510 satellites to be launched during the next five years will be for government civil and defense agencies. Growth in government demand will be stronger than in the commercial world where a total of 130 satellites are expected. “Large constellation projects such as those announced in 2014 by OneWeb and by SpaceX in association with Google have not been included in our forecasts/scenarios for launch by 2019,” said Rachel Villain, Principal Advisor at Euroconsult and Editor of the report. “Large constellation projects could, however, represent a very significant component of launches over the following five year period (2020-2024).” [emphasis mine]

Even though the predicted launches represent a two-thirds increase per year compared to the previous decade, this launch rate does not include the big private constellations that appear almost certain to fly. In other words, all signs point to the possibility that we are about to see a real boom in the space industry.

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Senate RINOS whine about the House’s refusal to give Obama what he wants

9:08 am

Well ain’t that a shame: Republicans senators McCain, Graham, Flake, and Kirk are fuming over the House’s refusal to settle the Homeland Security budget issues and give Obama what he wants.

GOP senators say it’s time to move on to other issues, such as the budget, trade legislation, and regulatory and tax reform. They must defend 24 seats in the 2016 election and worry that voters could soon start to question their ability to govern unless they can move forward with a more substantive agenda. The fight over President Obama’s executive actions on immigration brought that agenda to a standstill in February, as the threat of a homeland security shutdown thwarted other priorities.

“I just think we ought to move on to other things. I’m not sure how it helps for the American people to have the perception that Republicans in the Senate and Republicans in the House are at odds with each other,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). “We have a lot of initiatives I think we could show the American people we can work together on,” he added.

This idiot thinks that achievement is passing a budget, no matter how stupid or illegal. McCain also thinks that the public wants Obama’s agenda fulfilled. Meanwhile, elections tell us a completely different story. I hope the conservatives in the House continue to make these guys squirm.

What infuriates me the most is that McCain and Flake are my senators. McCain I’ve known as a back-stabbing RINO for more than a decade, but Flake had been a decent congressman who had been instrumental in squelching a lot of pork from the budget. Once elected as a senator, however, I have discovered him to be as bad as McCain.

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Fly-by close-up of Comet 67P/C-G

8:56 am


close-up of Comet 67P/C-G

More cool images! Rosetta’s navigation camera has taken another very amazing close-up of Comet 67P/C-G, snapped during the February 14 fly-by.

The cropped section above focuses on the transition between two regions, the generally smooth area called Imhotep on the right and the more mountainous and rugged area called Khepry on the left. Go to the link for the full image, which also includes an interesting description of the engineering problems of doing these close fly-bys.

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Methane does exist in the Martian atmosphere

6:32 pm

The uncertainty of science: Curiosity has confirmed the presence, and fluctuation, of methane in the local Martian atmosphere.

SAM [Sample Analysis at Mars, one of Curiosity’s instruments] has been detecting basal levels of methane concentration of around 0,7 ppbv, and has confirmed an event of episodic increase of up to ten times this value during a period of sixty soles (Martian days), i.e., of about 7 ppvb. The new data are based on observations during almost one Martian year (almost two Earth years), included in the initial prediction for the duration of the mission (nominal mission), during which Curiosity has surveyed about 8 kms in the basin of the Gale crater.

Since methane has a short life expectancy, something must be doing something to generate it.

3 comments

The Honey Trees – Moon River

6:01 pm

An evening pause:

Moon river, wider than a mile
I’m crossing you in style some day
Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker
Wherever you’re going, I’m going your way

Two drifters, off to see the world
There’s such a lot of world to see
We’re after the same rainbow’s end, waiting, round the bend
My Huckleberry Friend, Moon River, and me

Hat tip Edward Thelen.

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Homeland funding bill fails

5:49 pm

Good! A large number of conservative Republicans combined with most House Democrats to defeat a cobbled-together three week funding bill for Homeland Security.

As of midnight tonight many Homeland employees will either be furloughed, or have to work without pay (if their job is deemed essential).

The Republican leadership continues to brainwash itself into thinking a government shutdown will hurt them at the ballot box, when all the evidence from recent elections says exactly the opposite. After the 2013 shutdown the press screamed “Republicans did it!” as if it was a bad thing but the voters rewarded the Republicans one of its biggest landslides in almost a century in 2014. If anything, shutting the government down appeared to help the Republicans win elections. The public wants the government brought under control. Moreover, every shutdown helps prove how useless and unneeded that government is, the exact position conservatives have been touting for decades.

Let Homeland Security shut down. We didn’t need it for more than 225 years, and we don’t need it now.

Update: Congress has hurriedly passed a seven-day funding bill for Homeland Security.

The AP story linked above does the usual media hatchet job of spinning the story to make it all sound like the Republicans caused all the problems. As far as I am concerned, the failure here is the fact that not enough Republicans stood firm. A majority did, but we are still stuck with that handful of fake Republicans, such as Hatch, McCain, Flake, and Graham, that screw conservatives every time.

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A cold Pacific causing the lack of warming?

9:08 am

The uncertainty of science: Global warming scientists have concocted another explanation among dozens for the refusal of the climate to warm since 1998: a cold Pacific!

Where’s the heat? Greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, continue to be pumped into the atmosphere, but sometime around 1998, the rise in Earth’s average temperatures slowed, deviating from the rates predicted by models. Scientists have proposed that what some call “the pause” could be the result of a number of factors, including heat storage in deep ocean waters to unexpectedly high amounts of aerosols in the stratosphere helping deflect solar rays back into space. Now, a new study suggests that natural cycles in the Pacific Ocean are the culprit.

Since the end of last El Niño warming event of 1997 to 1998, the tropical Pacific Ocean has been in a relatively cool phase—strong enough to offset the warming created by greenhouse gas emissions. But, this is just a temporary balm: When the switch flips and the waters turn warm again, the researchers say, Earth will likely continue warming.

“What this study addresses is what’s better described as a false pause, or slowdown,” rather than a hiatus in warming, says climate scientist Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, University Park. Some climate change deniers have taken encouragement from the pause, saying they show warming predictions are flawed, but Mann, a co-author on the study, notes that “there have been various explanations for why [the slowdown is happening], none of which involve climate models being fundamentally wrong.” [emphasis mine]

Does no one at the journal Science notice the outright stupidity of the first two paragraphs above? In the first it is posited that all the climate heat we haven’t been seeing could be stored in the oceans. In the second it is posited that a cold Pacific Ocean has offset the warming, thus causing the lack of climate warming.

If the oceans are storing the extra heat, how is it possible for the Pacific to be unusually cold?

We should not be surprised by this stupidity, however. The third paragraph shows that Science is depending on Michael Mann for its climate expertise, a global warming activist who was exposed as a fake scientist, a fraud, and a dishonest corrupter of data in the climategate emails. That this journal still goes to him for his opinions tells us quite a lot about the lack of objectivity at Science. Their use of the word “denier” for scientists who raise questions about global warming also tells us that the journal hasn’t the faintest idea how science works. The very heart of the scientific method demands skepticism. To instead equate skeptics with those who deny the genocide committed by the Nazis suggests that much of the so-called science published by Science is not science but propaganda.

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Investigators say 32,000 Lerner IRS emails have been recovered

10:12 pm

Transparency! The Treasury investigators told a House committee on Thursday that they have been able to recover 32,000 emails by IRS official Lois Lerner that IRS officials had sworn were lost forever.

[Timothy Camus, a Treasury deputy inspector general for tax administration,] said it took investigators two weeks to locate the computer tapes that contained Lerner’s emails. He said it took technicians about four months to find Lerner’s emails on the tapes. Several Oversight Committee members questioned how hard the IRS tried to produce the emails, given how quickly independent investigators found them.

In other words, IRS officials lied to Congress when they said these emails were unrecoverable and couldn’t be found.

Unfortunately, the investigators have not yet gone through these emails in detail, and were not yet prepared to reveal what was in them. For that show we will have to wait a bit longer.

Update: During his testimony Camus also said that they are considering a criminal investigation into whether there was a real cover-up.

The IRS’s inspector general confirmed Thursday it is conducting a criminal investigation into how Lois G. Lerner’s emails disappeared, saying it took only two weeks for investigators to find hundreds of tapes the agency’s chief had told Congress were irretrievably destroyed. Investigators have already scoured 744 backup tapes and gleaned 32,774 unique emails, but just two weeks ago they found an additional 424 tapes that could contain even more Lerner emails, Deputy Inspector General Timothy P. Camus told the House Oversight Committee in a rare late-night hearing meant to look into the status of the investigation.

“There is potential criminal activity,” Mr. Camus said.

Camus also said that when his investigation went to the software people to try to get the tapes, they discovered that IRS officials had never talked to them, demonstrating clearly that IRS Commissioner John Koskinen was lying when he said the agency had searched high and low for the tapes and discovered them lost.

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