Finding out what’s in it: Because of Obamacare Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Tennesee will raise premiums to its customers 3 to 30 percent in 2014.
Beginning in June Staples will be the first major retailer to sell a 3D printer.
The price, $1299, is reasonable, but the printer will likely be capable of only making very small parts. Nonetheless, this is a start. The price will drop, and the capabilities will go up.
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 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 uncertainty of science: The high peak in tornado in 2011, the most in fifty years, was quickly attributed to global warming. Eric Berger asks: How does this explain this year’s low number, the fewest in fifty years?
If you click on the first link, you will see that the global warming scientists quoted, Kevin Trenberth, Michael Mann, and Gavin Schmidt, were all involved in the climategate emails, where they came off very badly. Moreover, there have been significant questions about the work of Michael Mann himself. I also wonder if these guys will have anything to say about the dearth of tornadoes today.
Two university professors who believe in global warming celebrate book burning` at San Jose State University
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.
I spent the day driving to Orange County, California to attend the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Southern California Aerospace Systems and Technology Conference tomorrow, where I will be the keynote speaker at their evening banquet. Though I will be at the conference, I expect to be able to post tomorrow periodically.
Last Saturday the space telescope Swift detected the most powerful gamma ray burst ever detected.
You can see the raw reports of the detection, followed up immediately by a host of other ground-based and space-based observations at this website. Click on the circulars for GRB130427A, starting with circular 14448. When this happened last Saturday I was out camping. When I got home there were dozens of circulars to look at. Based on the data here, this gamma-ray burst was relatively close for a grb, approximately 3.6 billion light years away.
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
The lingering echo of Comet Shoemaker-Levy in the atmosphere of Jupiter.
The Herschel observations, together with heat maps provided by NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility on Mauna Kea, showed the researchers that the Jovian stratosphere was 20° to 30°F (10° to 15°C) warmer than it would be if completely dry. One question is whether the stratospheric warming results from the gentle, continuous infall of interplanetary dust particles, which would be warmed by sunlight as they linger high up. Cavalié and his colleagues believe IDPs create some of the infrared emission but cannot explain it all. Further, a continuously supplied source would migrate to lower depths, yet most of the emission is too high up, at pressures less than 2 millibars. And while the amount of water is roughly constant across the southern hemisphere, the emission gradually weakens northward until it’s less than half as strong. It’s not simply that Jupiter’s bottom half is hotter — there’s just more water down there. As the researchers note, “At least 95% of the observed water comes from the SL9 comet and subsequent (photo)-chemistry in Jupiter’s stratosphere according to our models, as of today.
Taken together, they conclude, these observations offer “clear evidence that a recent comet … is the principal source of water in Jupiter. What we observe today is a remnant of the oxygen delivery by the comet at 44°S in July 1994.”
A former gun control believer explains why he is now against gun control.
The individual lists a lot of reasons, but I suspect it was the lies and name-calling from the gun control mob that had the most influence. If only more people would react this way.
The story of the youngest survivor of the Buchenwald concentration camp to be liberated by the Americans.
At age seven, he was separated from his mother when she thrust him over to the men’s side during deportation. “Tulek, take Lulek,” she said, entrusting him to Naftali in the hope that the men were more likely to survive. Naftali smuggled him into the Buchenwald labor camp since a child his age would have been exterminated on the spot if discovered. Rabbi Lau thus became the youngest and smallest inmate in the camp. His survival over the next year was largely due to Naftali’s constant self sacrifice and protection.
You don’t have to be Jewish or even believe in God to agree with this man that miracles do happen every day.
The Chinese national who had been arrested at Dulles airport as he left for China with a NASA laptop has been released after pleading guilty to one charge, having porn on the laptop.
Investigators found no classified information on the computer. As part of the release agreement, however, the man must leave the U.S.
Though the man, Bo Jiang, was very careful to bring nothing secret with him when he tried to flee to China in March, the circumstantial evidence suggests that he should not have had access to this information in the first place, and that in the past he might have illegally funneled classified information to China.
The robotic demonstration of remote satellite repair on ISS resumed this week.
The latest round of demos follows a breakthrough round of ground-controlled activities in January using the 70-ft.-long Canadian robot arm/Dextre combination to sever lock wires and remove a mock fuel cap to flow 1.7 liters of ethanol fuel into the RMM.
The new tests will see if the robot arm can do even finer and more difficult tasks, such as unscrewing and storing a small screw.
After four tries the Air Force X-51A Waverider test craft finally succeeded in achieving sustained, scramjet-powered, air-breathing hypersonic flight above Mach 5 in its final test flight on May 1.
A close study of human bones recently uncovered from Jamestown’s early “Starving Time” have revealed evidence of cannibalism.
This really isn’t news, since we have always had firsthand accounts suggesting cannibalism during that terrible winter of 1609. It is, however, the first empirical proof of that cannibalism.
The European Space Agency is investigating the possibility that the Progress docking to ISS on April 26 might have damaged equipment needed by their ATV cargo ship.
The damage, caused by the undeployed Progress antenna, appears to have involved a navigational aid needed for ATV-4 … the Laser Radar Reflector (LRR) target. The LRR is needed for the automatic docking of the European ATV during the last part of the rendezvous operations. If the damage is confirmed, the device, recently replaced during an EVA by the Russian crew due to contamination of the optical section, will need to be replaced again. In this event, the European cargo ship could potentially be delayed for several months. ATV-4, named Albert Einstein, has been already delayed from April to June because of a glitch in an avionics box.
A new high resolution image from Mars Express illustrates the violent landslides and lava flows off the eastern flank of Olympus Mons, the solar system’s largest volcano.
NASA revealed Tuesday that last April the Fermi Gamma-Ray Telescope barely avoided a collision with an abandoned Russian satellite.
Fermi mission scientists first learned of the space collision threat on March 29, 2012 when they received a notice that the space telescope and Cosmos 1805 would miss each other by just 700 feet (213.4 meters). The mission team monitored the situation over the next day and it became clear that the two spacecraft, traveling in different orbits, would zip through the same point in space within 30 milliseconds of one another, NASA officials said.
They used Fermi’s thrusters to shift its orbit enough so the two spacecraft missed each other by 6 miles.
Gee what a surprise: Senator Harry Reid (D-Nevada) says the federal government isn’t spending enough to implement Obamacare.
Even if the federal government was not spending money it doesn’t have and was in the black, there will never be enough money to fund this monstrosity. Too bad Reid and the rest of the Democrats couldn’t figure that out. (Or maybe they did and simply wanted the country to go bankrupt. I wonder.)
Finding out what’s in it: The total benefits paid by private companies declined outright in the first quarter of 2013 as employers prepare for the onset of Obamacare.
A rose by any other name: In a NASA contest, a nine-year-old has named asteroid 1999 RQ36 after the Egyptian god Bennu.
1999 RQ36, or Bennu, is an important asteroid for two reasons. First, NASA is sending an unmanned sample return mission to it in 2016. Second, some calculations suggest the asteroid has a 1 in a 1000 chance of hitting the Earth in 2182.
In other naming news, the private space company Uwingu has launched its “Adopt-a-Planet” campaign.
This open-ended campaign gives anyone in the public—worldwide—the opportunity to adopt exoplanets in astronomical databases via Uwingu’s web site at www.uwingu.com. Proceeds from the naming and voting will continue to help fuel new Uwingu grants to fund space exploration, research, and education.
As noted earlier, they are ignoring the IAU’s stuffy insistence that only the IAU can name things in space.
Eight abandoned and truly gigantic construction projects.
Probably the most amazing is the one in North Korea.
Large majorities in the Muslim world want the Islamic legal and moral code of sharia as the official law in their countries.
While the poll included many encouraging things, I found this to be its most disturbing statistic:
Suicide bombing was mostly rejected in the study by the Washington-based Pew Forum, but it won 40 percent support in the Palestinian territories, 39 percent in Afghanistan, 29 percent in Egypt and 26 percent in Bangladesh.
Name for me any other culture or religion in the world today where more than a quarter of the population thinks suicide bombings are a good thing.
The competition heats up: In NASA’s new contract with Russia to launch astronauts to ISS, announced today, Russia has raised the ticket price from $63 million to $70.6 million per seat.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union the Russians have become very good capitalists indeed. Consider: the price the Russians were charging for a single ticket on Soyuz was about $33 million in 2004, when George Bush announced the planned retirement of the shuttle. Since then they have repeatedly jacked up the price, knowing that we have no where else to go.
In the end, these price increases are actually a good thing, as they will make it easier for the new American companies to undercut them while simultaneously making a bigger profit.
The competition heats up: Better buy your tickets now because in a week the price for a flight on SpaceShipTwo is going up 25%.
