The anti-choice left’s disarming of the American woman.
As I said, the fascists are out, and they appear no longer timid about telling us who they are and how they want to control our lives.
The competition heats up: There will be hot fire tests on Friday of both the Antares and Falcon 9 rockets.
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, any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, 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
The microfilmed miniature bibles that flew to the moon during Apollo have become the center of a custody dispute between the state of Texas and the author who wrote their history.
Scientists have released some results, including video, from their look at asteroid 2012 DA14 during its fly-by last week. Key quote:
The asteroid’s path was perturbed by Earth’s gravitational field in such a way that it won’t come as close in the foreseeable future.
The video, which I have embeded below the fold, was produced from radar data. It clearly shows the asteroid’s rotation.
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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.
Consensus! A new poll of Earth scientists has found that a majority are skeptical of human-caused global warming.
Only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis, according to a survey reported in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies. By contrast, a strong majority of the 1,077 respondents believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem.
This is fun to note, but this poll is as worthless in determining the climate of the Earth as every previous poll that said the opposite. What matters is the data. However, this quote about the poll is significant:
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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
Not fit to print: Two days ago the Congressional Budget Office increased its projection for the cost of Obamacare by 29 percent, while also saying that seven million workers will lose their health insurance due to the law, almost twice as many as previously estimated.
As noted at the link, not one news organization has seen fit to mention this juicy tidbit in their news reports. I wonder why?
Meanwhile, we will go bankrupt. This law, and the government that is imposing it on us, is unsustainable.
NASA mission control in Houston has lost all communications with ISS.
Communications are still possible each orbit for short periods with Moscow.
The fascists are out: A gun control bill introduced in the state of Washington includes a provision that allows the police to conduct yearly house searches, without a warrant, of any gun owner’s home.
Such searches would violate the fourth amendment of the Constitution, and in my case, any cop who showed up at my door would be politely told that I do not consent to any searches, without a warrant. They don’t get in my door.
Meanwhile, the Democrats who sponsored this bill, without reading it of course, are now tripping over themselves to disavow it, as if that would somehow make everyone forget that they introduced it.
The abandoned calibration targets used by surveillance satellites of the 1960s.
“There are dozens of aerial photo calibration targets across the USA,” the Center for Land Use Interpretation reports, “curious land-based two-dimensional optical artifacts used for the development of aerial photography and aircraft. They were made mostly in the 1950s and 1960s, though some apparently later than that, and many are still in use, though their history is obscure.”
“Doomsday never arrived, apparently.”
The topic isn’t meteorites, but something more critical to our survival as a society.
Mercury, in full color.
Scientists working with NASA’s Messenger probe have produced a global color map of the surface of Mercury, closest planet to the Sun. Thousands of sets of images were enhanced then stitched together in a mosaic to create a detailed image covering the entire planet.
Russian scientists have identified the first fragments from Friday’s meteorite in Chelyabinsk.
The pieces, found on the ice of a lake, were stony chondrites.
More on today’s Russian meteorite: Largest in a century.
My earlier skepticism appears incorrect. This impact actually happened.
Note the article’s sense of outrage and panic that we aren’t looking for these types of rocks:
Although a network of telescopes watches for asteroids that might strike Earth, it is geared towards spotting larger objects — between 100 metres and a kilometre in size. “Objects like that are nearly impossible to see until a day or two before impact,” says Timothy Spahr, Director of the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which tracks asteroids and small bodies. So far as he knows, he says, his centre also failed to spot the approaching rock.
Yet, today’s impact actually illustrates the wisdom of excluding this kind of small asteroid from searches. They aren’t big enough to do serious harm, and trying to find them would hamper searches for larger asteroids that do pose a serious risk.
An outline of the cuts NASA proposes if sequestration occurs on March 1 includes shutting down commercial crew while leaving the Space Launch System untouched.
I am in favor of sequestration, as it will only bring NASA’s budget back to the numbers the agency received in 2005, numbers that were then totally sufficient to build Constellation and fly the shuttle. Now that the cost of the shuttle is gone there should be sufficient cash today for everything NASA wants to do.
To favor the very expensive and not very useful SLS system over the new commercial crew contracts however is madness. I suspect this letter is meant as a lobbying sledge hammer to try to convince Congress to cancel sequestration. If it is serious, however, than say good-bye to any manned American spacecraft for at least another few years, as I expect the new private companies will not disappear, but their effort will be slowed significantly as they search for alternative funding.
An unexpected meteorite shower yesterday across three regions of Russia has reportedly caused more than 400 people to seek medical help.
Hundreds suffered cuts from broken glass as the meteorites smashed windows in numerous buildings across the Chelyabinsk Region, officials said. “The condition of at least three [people] is considered grave,” an Interior Ministry spokesman said. At least six cities have been hit in three central regions of Russia. Some areas of neighboring Kazakhstan were also affected, Russian state officials confirmed on Friday.
There is something about this story, reported in many Russian news sources, that smells fishy to me. Something happened, and it likely is related to a shower of meteorites, but the images at the link above as well as here and here just don’t look right.
A group of California scientists have proposed a system to vaporize asteroids that threaten Earth.
In developing the proposal, Lubin and Hughes calculated the requirements and possibilities for DE-STAR systems of several sizes, ranging from a desktop device to one measuring 10 kilometers, or six miles, in diameter. Larger systems were also considered. The larger the system, the greater its capabilities.
For instance, DE-STAR 2 –– at 100 meters in diameter, about the size of the International Space Station –– “could start nudging comets or asteroids out of their orbits,” Hughes said. But DE-STAR 4 –– at 10 kilometers in diameter, about 100 times the size of the ISS –– could deliver 1.4 megatons of energy per day to its target, said Lubin, obliterating an asteroid 500 meters across in one year.
They also propose an even larger system which could “enable interstellar travel.”
An evening pause: This interview has about as much truth to it as almost every single interview included in almost every “Making of…” documentary made about movies.
Scientists now believe they have found evidence proving that the unknown origin of cosmic rays are supernova explosions.
This has been one of astronomy’s longest outstanding mysteries: What produces the interstellar cosmic rays that come from outside our solar system?
