Sierra Nevada has begun the testing program of Dream Chaser’s engines.

1:35 pm

The competition heats up: Sierra Nevada has begun the testing program of Dream Chaser’s engines.

These tests were to verify that the engine test stand will function properly when they begin testing the engines themselves. Note also that Sierra Nevada provided the engines for SpaceShipTwo, and that Dream Chaser’s engines appear to be some variant of that hybrid engine design.

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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 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, 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

Despite the failure of any climate model to predict the climate, the Obama administration is increasing the cost and strictness of regulation because of what it sees as the “social cost of carbon dioxide.”

10:57 am

Despite the failure of any climate model to predict the climate, the Obama administration is increasing the cost and strictness of regulation because of what it sees as the “social cost of carbon dioxide.”

[E]ssentially, the government is now incorporating newer climate models that capture the future damage from sea-level rise more explicitly. Those models also project that agriculture will suffer more heavily in a hotter world. So, in its central estimate, the federal government now assumes a ton of carbon-dioxide emitted in 2013 does roughly $36 in damage, rather than its previous estimate of $22, with the value rising each year.

Meanwhile, new data also suggests increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere might actually be beneficial, not damaging.

Shouldn’t the EPA and the Obama administration get their heads out of the sand?

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Two IRS employees in Cincinnati have told congressional investigators that officials in Washington directed and established the policy of harassing conservative groups that began in 2010.

10:18 am

Two IRS employees in Cincinnati have told congressional investigators that officials in Washington directed and established the policy of harassing conservative groups that began in 2010.

I especially like this quote:

Hofacre said she was outraged last month when IRS higher-ups, including Lois Lerner, then the head of the IRS tax-exempt division, blamed the problem on employees in Cincinnati. “I was furious,” Ms. Hofacre told interviewers. “It looked like Lois Lerner was putting it on us.”

Yup, that is exactly what Lerner was doing — looking for a fall guy.

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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 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.

The repairs to the cracks in the first Orion capsule have withstood static stress tests.

9:54 am

I’m so glad: The repairs to the cracks in the first Orion capsule have withstood static stress tests.

In addition to the various loads it sustained, the Orion crew module also was pressurized to simulate the effect of the vacuum in space. This simulation allowed engineers to confirm it would hold its pressurization in a vacuum and verify repairs made to superficial cracks in the vehicle’s rear bulkhead caused by previous pressure testing in November.

The November test revealed insufficient margin in an area of the bulkhead that was unable to withstand the stress of pressurization. Armed with data from that test, engineers were able to reinforce the design to ensure structural integrity and validate the fix during this week’s test. [emphasis mine]

I love how this NASA press release describes the cracking of the capsule bulkhead during the November testing, indicated in bold. “Insufficient margin”, eh?

Normally I am very forgiving when things fail during engineering tests, but for the bulkhead of this capsule to crack during these tests was actually pretty shameful, considering the decades of engineering work previously done in the building of space capsules and submarines. Things can certainly go wrong when you build something new, but I don’t see anything particularly revolutionary about Orion’s design. Lots of things might fail, but making sure the bulkhead could withstand the normal and well known stresses of spaceflight should not have been one of those things. The bulkhead failure suggests to me some sloppy engineering work took place in Orion’s initial design.

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Leaving Earth cover

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

The predictions of seventy-three climate models are compared to real data and not one comes even close to reality.

4:21 pm

The predictions of seventy-three climate models are compared to real data and not one comes even close to reality.

Remember: computer modeling is not science research. It does not tell us anything about the actual climate. It is instead theoretical work useful for trying to understand what the data actual is telling us.

Computer modeling, however, is totally useless if it doesn’t successfully mimic that actual data. Since all of these climate models fail to do this, they very clearly show that they do not understand the climate itself, and are not valid theories to explain its processes. If the scientists who created them were honest about these results, they would immediately go back to the drawing board and rewrite these models.

I unfortunately have serious doubts they will do this.

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The first annual College Stupidity Awards.

9:11 am

The first annual College Stupidity Awards.

I especially like this one:

A Hispanic student group at Northwestern University instructed members of the campus community to forgo eating tacos and drinking tequila on Cinco de Mayo, so as not to offend Mexican culture. But Mexican students, who indeed wanted to spend their holiday eating tacos and drinking tequila, took offense at the assumed offense. The Hispanic student group ended up with huevo on its face.

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The EPA has acknowledged that it illegally released personal information of farmers to several leftwing environmental organizations.

8:53 am

The EPA has acknowledged that it illegally released personal information of farmers to several leftwing environmental organizations.

Mistakes do happen, but like the IRS scandal, this mistake was all one way, helpful to the left and harmful to their opponents. And like the IRS scandal, this one way harm suggests this was not a mistake, but quite intentional.

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A message to moderate Muslims.

8:45 pm

A message to moderate Muslims.

What we need is a Muslim backlash, and we need it now. You may be a moderate, peaceful Muslim, but there’s nothing moderate or peaceful about your religion, and you know it.

The bigots who preach in your mosques, who take sustenance from your religion, are hiding behind you. And your silence is helping them to do it. If your mosque is letting anyone preach hatred and violence on its premises, you have a duty to call the police. And the police have a duty to take off their politically correct-tinted glasses to go into that mosque, without removing their shoes, and arrest that person. Anything less than this, and you’re on the wrong side.

As always, Pat Condell puts it bluntly but honestly. If Islam is being hijacked by radicals, as so many politically correct people claim, than the religion can easily be saved if the reasonable people within stand up to them. If they don’t, however, they tell us that the religion isn’t being hijacked. It is radical, and violent, and should be shunned and opposed by all reasonable people worldwide.

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A new report from Social Security has raised its predicted unfunded liabilities over the next 75 years by one trillion dollars.

2:23 pm

The day of reckoning looms: A new report from Social Security has raised its predicted unfunded liabilities over the next 75 years by one trillion dollars, for a total of $9.6 trillion.

According to the report, “Through the end of 2087, the combined funds [OASI and DI] have a present-value unfunded obligation of $9.6 trillion.” That is “$1.0 trillion more than the measured level of $8.6 trillion a year ago,” states the report, in reference to the data available for 2011. That $9.6 trillion shortfall equals approximately $83,894 per household based on the Census Bureau’s latest estimate that there are 114,430,000 households in the country.

The report also looks farther into the future and saw the shortfall rise to $23 trillion.

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The Sun makes the scientists look good — for now!

1:53 pm

NOAA today released its monthly update of the Sun’s sunspot cycle, covering the period of May 2013. As I have done every month for the past three years, I have posted this latest graph, with annotations to give it context, below the fold.

For the third month in a row, the Sun has shown increased sunspot activity. Though the total activity continues to remain well below all predictions, it appears that the Sun is going to produce a double-peaked maximum, as predicted by some solar scientists back in March. Be aware however that this prediction isn’t based on any real understanding of the physical processes that produce sunspots but is instead based on the fact that the Sun has sometimes done this in the past. If you asked these scientists why the Sun sometimes produces a double-peaked maximum they will wave their arms about but will really not be able to tell you.

» Read more

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Stratolaunch officially announced today that Orbital Sciences will build the system’s second stage rocket.

1:04 pm

The competition heats up: Stratolaunch officially announced today that Orbital Sciences will build the system’s second stage rocket.

The rocket that Orbital will build for Stratolaunch will launch from the air, the first stage being a giant airplane which will carry that rocket aloft, much like Virgin Galactic’s WhiteKnightTwo and Orbital’s Pegasus rocket. Clark Lindsey at the same website also notes that the efforts of SpaceX (and to my mind Stratolaunch) to make the first stage reusable will likely revolutionize the rocket industry.

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“I can say with a very strong sense of certainty that there are people very close to this president that not only knew what the IRS were doing but authorized it.”

9:01 am

“I can say with a very strong sense of certainty that there are people very close to this president that not only knew what the IRS were doing but authorized it.”

Said by an ABC news reporter today.

In related news, it appears that the IRS not only targeted conservative organizations which applied for tax exempt status, the tax agency also targeted the donors to those organizations.

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