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You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:

 

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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.

A federal court has ruled that police must have a warrant before attaching a GPS tracker to your car.

10:59 am

Victory for freedom: A federal court has ruled that police must have a warrant before attaching a GPS tracker to your car.

That this ruling took several appeals depresses me. The language of the Constitution on this issue couldn’t be more plain. The government must have probably cause and a warrant before it can do these kinds of things.

What baffles me even more is that the police had probable cause in the specific case above. Why they didn’t bother to simply get a warrant makes no sense.

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A D.C. businessman faces two years in jail because he happens to own guns and stores them legally in Virginia.

8:44 am

A D.C. businessman faces two years in jail because he happens to own guns and stores them legally in Virginia.

The story also describes a SWAT team raid on the man’s home, which included barging in on his 16 year old son while he was taking a shower.

Read the whole thing. You will discover what it is like to live in a fascist state, where an unelected official can make your life hell, merely because he doesn’t like you.

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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.

In an engineering test, LADEE successfully used a laser to beam information back from the Moon this past weekend.

8:25 am

In an engineering test, LADEE successfully used a laser to beam information back from the Moon this past weekend.

Lasers could enhance space communications and lead to radical changes in spacecraft design. Today’s spacecraft communicate with radio, but radiofrequency wavelengths are so long that they require large dishes to capture the signals. Laser wavelengths are 10,000 times shorter than radio, the upshot being that a spacecraft could deliver much more data then even the best modern radio system. For scale, NASA says that the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft that’s carrying this laser experiment would take 639 hours to download an average-length HD movie using ordinary S-band communications. LLCD could download the film in less than eight minutes.

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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

The next Dragon flight has now been scheduled for no earlier than February 11.

8:13 am

The next Dragon flight has now been scheduled for no earlier than February 11.

The next flight of SpaceX’s Dragon has been realigned to a February 11, 2014 NET (No Earlier Than) launch date. The launch will mark Dragon’s first ride on the upgraded Falcon 9 v.1.1 rocket, potentially sporting landing legs, as Elon Musk plans his next attempt at proving the rocket’s ability to return its stages back to Earth for reuse.

SpaceX must first launch two commercial satellites with the upgraded Falcon 9 before its NASA flight. Also, 2014 will be a very business year for the rocket, as it is scheduled to send three cargo missions to ISS plus launch eight commercial satellites.

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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

An engineer describes how he and four other engineers debugged a fully fueled Saturn 5 rocket while it was the launchpad.

12:09 am

An engineer describes how he and four other engineers debugged a fully fueled Saturn 5 rocket while it was the launchpad.

The Saturn V was more noisy and ghostly than I had ever expected and it had grown much taller and certainly more threatening since last week. The venting fuel made loud hissing sounds when relief valves popped or opened up suddenly. It was very easy to let your imagination infect your brain. This is a very dangerous place and everything seems to be moving in the heavy foggy mist. There was no way to talk to each other, heck, we could barely see each other and…we hadn’t thought of this problem so we held onto each others yellow protective clothing like kindergartners crossing the street. We all wore safety helmets but they just did not make you feel like you were really safe.

This was also the first test launch of the Saturn 5, so the unknowns were significantly magnified.

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Why the shutdown was a total victory for conservatives, both in the short and long runs.

9:48 am

Why the shutdown was a total victory for conservatives, both in the short and long runs.

The shutdown/debt limit imbroglio wasn’t a defeat. Defeats leave the losers feeling defeated. But the designated losers, the conservative base of the GOP – which, more accurately, now is the GOP – is more eager and excited than it has been in a long time.

Why? Someone fought. Finally.

Sure, we didn’t win the repeal of Obamacare. The only people talking about actually repealing Obamacare as a direct result of the tactical moves of recent weeks were the doddering dinosaurs and their media accomplices trying to put out the notion that Ted Cruz and his band of merry marauders had suckered us numbskull conservatives with promises of total victory right here and right now.

Being very familiar with the Constitution, we realize that it’s kind of difficult to pass a law when we only hold the House. We’re clear on that. We were always clear on that. What Ted Cruz did – and what the go-along, get-along gang of Republican stegosauruses hate – is that he fought. He fought. There’s a huge value to drawing a line, to taking a stand, to rallying the troops.

Real leaders – which the GOP establishment lacks – know that. We’ve had two presidential elections in a row with a demoralized base. That’s bad. Just ask Presidents McCain and Romney. [emphasis in original]

The key for determining which side is winning this battle is to look at the positions that new politicians are taking. That tells you the trend. And what I see is that the challengers all want to be Ted Cruz, not John McCain.

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Even when they admit that Obamacare isn’t working, liberals still refuse to recognize that they are now agreeing with Ted Cruz.

9:27 am

Leftwing bigotry: Even when they admit that Obamacare isn’t working, liberals still refuse to recognize that they are now agreeing with Ted Cruz.

I call it bigotry because that is what it is. No matter what you say to these types of liberals, no matter what they experience or conclude, they remain incapable of considering the possibility that a conservative or Republican might have the right idea. Instead, they believe that conservatives or Republicans must be opposed at all costs because conservatives or Republicans must be evil and wrong.

And such close-mindedness is nothing short of downright bigotry.

3 comments

A new company is now offering balloon flights to the edge of space for one third the price of a suborbital flight.

9:15 am

The competition heats up: A new company is now offering balloon flights to the edge of space for one third the price of a suborbital flight.

World View passengers will soar to an altitude of about 30 kilometers (about 100,000 feet) — far short of SpaceShipTwo’s intended 110-kilometer (68-mile) high peak. Inside the capsule there will be little sensation of microgravity. Rather, the whole point of the ride is the view. “You can be sitting up there having your beverage of choice watching this extraordinary spectacle of the Earth below you and the blackness of space,” project co-founder and Paragon president Jane Poynter told Discovery News. “It really is very gentle. You can be up at altitude for hours, for days for research if you need to be… I think we have the opportunity to give a really, really incredible experience to people — and for a lot less than most of what’s out on the market right now,” she said.

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The great Martian dust storm of 1971.

8:49 am

The great Martian dust storm of 1971.

There has only been one comparable global dust storm on Mars since then. What made the 1971 even more significant historically is that the first human orbital probe had arrived at that very moment to record it.

By late 1971 and into January 1972 the storm abated, and Mariner 9 began to send back some spectacular images – a total of over 7,300 pictures that mapped the entire martian surface with resolutions ranging from 1 kilometer per pixel to as good at 100 meters per pixel.

The image here gives a sense of the magnitude of the storm. This was what the scientists began to see as the dust settled. The only visible features are the three great Tharsis Montes shield volcanoes, poking up through the haze in a line. The tallest of these reaches an altitude of over 18 kilometers. These peaks, and the enormous bulk of Olympus Mons had never been imaged by a spacecraft before, earlier flybys had missed them.

The late Bruce Murray (Caltech) was on the camera team and recalls, “there was a gradual clearing, like a stage scene, and three dark spots showed up.” The Mars that came out of the storm was a revelation, from these colossal mountains to the great rift of Valles Marineris and the steep valleys of Noctis Labyrinthus.

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“Let me be clear, there is no option to keep my current plan.”

9:06 am

Finding out what’s in it: “Let me be clear, there is no option to keep my current plan.”

We were promised that under the ACA, we would be able to keep our present insurance plan if we liked it, and we could keep our own doctor, according to President Obama. This is absolutely not true. My current insurance plan is very affordable and has no deductible. This plan has been found to be noncompliant under the new federally mandated insurance law. So my insurance is going to cost nearly 50 percent more and will now have a $1,200 deductible.

The businessman who wrote this has a Democratic congressman who has repeatedly voted for Obamacare.

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Progressives made their beds; it’s time they lay in it.

8:41 am

Progressives made their beds; it’s time they lay in it.

In short: Obamacare is a massive wealth “spreading” from the young and struggling to the old and well off. Add to that Obamacare’s devastating impact on the economy and part-timing of the American workforce, and you can almost see the train flying off the rails.

There will be attempts at bi-partisan “fixes” to some of the more visible problems caused by Obamacare. Republicans and Democrats have been working together to delay or repeal the medical device tax and change the definition of a full-time employee back to 40 hours per week from Obamacare’s 30 – to name just two.

Republicans must resist the urge to help with these “fixes.” We just spent a month being lectured by arrogant know-it-alls about how Obamacare is “settled law.” So keep it settled. Obamacare is failing already, and it will continue to fail in more spectacular ways as we move forward, let it.

Democrats wrote the bill, Democrats voted for the bill, a Democrat president signed it into law. It’s theirs. Make them live with it. As is. [emphasis in original]

I would add that Democrats just re-endorsed the law aggressively during the government shutdown battle. Rather than revise it by the smallest amount, they insisted instead on shutting down the government to defend it.

When the 2014 elections roll around, the responsibility for this Obamacare disaster must fall on the perpetrators of that disaster: The Democrat Party and President Obama.

In related news: Thousands get health insurance cancellation notices. Actually, that’s “Hundreds of thousands,” but who’s counting?

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Fresh impacts caused by Curiosity during landing

10:06 pm

impacts from Curiosity debris

The image on the right is a cropped close-up of a Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter image taken in early September that shows a fresh cluster of impacts, all smaller than six feet across. Nearby but not visible in this image are four larger craters about 12 to 15 feet in diameter. The impact cluster is located just northwest of Gale Crater and was not present in images taken before Curiosity’s arrival on Mars. The cluster is also in line with other impact craters produced by other debris dropped by Curiosity as it descended onto the Martian surface.

Scientists are at the moment unsure what spacecraft debris caused these impacts.

Assigning each of the impacts to specific pieces of hardware is a challenging puzzle, but it is thought that the four large craters were produced by two large tungsten weights that broke in half to make these four craters, or by pieces of the cruise stage, which was designed to break up in the atmosphere for planetary protection purposes, to kill any Earthly microbes.

The cluster imaged here adds to the mystery, and may have been produced by a piece of the cruise stage that traveled farther through the Martian atmosphere and was therefore more thoroughly fragmented by the time it crashed onto the surface.

Identifying the source of the debris is a challenging engineering problem that also has scientific interest. Knowing what caused the impacts and then studying how the surface was changed by them will tell geologists a great deal about the make up of that surface.

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A person on twitter has threatened both Ted Cruz and his family, posting his home address as well.

8:51 pm

Evil: A person on Twitter has threatened both Ted Cruz and his family, posting his home address as well.

A person identifying himself as Troy Gilmore Jr., posted on Twitter Friday morning: “Take down Ted Cruz, at his home” and listed Cruz’s home address in Houston. “What goes around comes around CRUZ!!” the person wrote.

The person has also done this several times this month, using threatening language each time.

This is a case of an unstable person making violent threats. However, it would be nice if members of the left stood up to condemn it. Sadly, I don’t expect that to happen.

4 comments

Extreme weather events in 2013 are at an all time low.

9:53 am

Another global warming prediction fails: Extreme weather events in 2013 are at an all time low.

There have been many forecasts in the news in recent years predicting more and more extreme weather-related events in the US, but for 2013 that prediction has been way off the mark. Whether you’re talking about tornadoes, wildfires, extreme heat or hurricanes, the good news is that weather-related disasters in the US are all way down this year compared to recent years and, in some cases, down to historically low levels.

As I wrote back in April,

Global warming scientists have spent the past two decades telling us that we were all gonna die from increasing temperatures caused by the increase in CO2. Now that this prediction has proved false, they apparently are shifting gears. Instead, it is extreme events — big storms, long droughts, intense heatwaves — that are going to kill us.

But not only have they no evidence that the increase in CO2 will cause these extreme events, there is no evidence that more of these extreme events are even occurring.

In other words, these stories are mere political advocacy. They have nothing to do with science, but with propaganda, based on fantasy with the goal of trying to convince everyone that we are all gonna die if we don’t do exactly what these scientists say. [emphasis in original]

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New York doctors express their strong reluctance to participate in Obamacare.

9:37 am

Finding out what’s in it: New York doctors express their strong reluctance to participate in Obamacare.

Despite a much publicized rollout, many other doctors said they haven’t decided whether to become ObamaCare providers, because they haven’t been notified by insurers or the state about ­reimbursement rates. “I have not spoken with anyone who has made a decision to participate in the exchanges. We simply don’t have any information about which we can make a decision,” said Dr. Paul Orloff, president of the New York County Medical Society. “We have no idea what the reimbursements will be or what the claims-form process will entail.”

This is another problem for Obamacare: If doctors end up refusing to accept the insurance plans and go freelance, then the law cannot work.

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Maryland’s Obamacare exchanges will not be functional until December.

9:15 am

Fail: Maryland’s Obamacare exchanges will not be functional until December.

A week into its launch, the Maryland exchange had reportedly enrolled only 326 people. A week later, the number had improved to just a little over 1,000, and O’Malley told reporters it could be six weeks before the exchange website was working smoothly. “My sense of it is, probably for the next month or so, month and a half, we will be working out glitches in the portal,” he said.

Maryland was enthusiastic about Obamacare and attacked the problem from the beginning. The result is still pitiful. Even though you are required to get a health plan under Obamacare, you might have no way to do it before the deadline arrives next year.

Which is why the real conservatives in Congress had a shutdown battle: They want to repeal Obamacare, but were willing to offer a compromise whereby the mandate was delayed one year. Considering the problems Obamacare is having, what is so unreasonable about that?

And then there’s this: Insurance companies complain that the ObamaCare website is providing them faulty data, even with its low success rate in enrolling anyone.

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