The Giant Magellan Telescope project has decided it will not participate in a funding competition offered by the National Science Foundation.

8:49 am

The 24.5 meter Giant Magellan Telescope project (GMT) has decided it is not interested in competing for funds offered by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

With just US$1.25 million available to the winner, the NSF competition was less about money and more about prestige. The NSF has been adamant that it has no significant money to support either project until the early part of next decade. But the Thirty Meter Telescope, which will still respond to the NSF’s solicitation, believed that a competition would at least demonstrate the NSF’s intention to eventually support one project — and that the winner would have an easier time attracting international partners.

But the GMT says it can go it alone, at least for now. On 23 March, the group began blasting at its mountaintop site in Chile. And they say they are nearly halfway towards raising the $700 million they need to complete construction.

If the GMT has already raised almost $350 million without NSF support, it makes perfect sense for them to thumb their noses at this piddling funding from the NSF, especially since the bureaucratic cost of getting that money will probably be far more than $1.25 million.

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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, 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

Four Indiana Democratic officials were charged with election fraud in 2008 presidential race.

9:09 am

Four Indiana Democratic officials have been charged with election fraud, a felony, for forging signatures during 2008 presidential race.

According to affidavits, St. Joseph County Voter Registration Office worker Lucas Burkett told investigators that he was part of the plan that started in January 2008 “to forge signatures on presidential candidate petitions instead of collecting actual signatures from citizens.”

The documents state that Burkett told investigators that “he was heavily involved in St. Joseph County political activities with the local Democratic party,” and that “he had, in fact, personally forged several such signatures,” and had attended meetings at the local Democratic party headquarters, where it was agreed to forge the petitions. Morgan, the County Democratic Chairman, allegedly “instructed Mr. Burkett, Pamela Brunette, Beverly Shelton, and Dustin Blythe to forge ballot petitions for presidential candidates,” and that “all of them agreed to follow these instructions” by copying names and signatures from old election petitions.

According to affidavits, Burkett told investigators it was his job to “forge petitions for candidate Barack Obama,” Shelton “was assigned to forge petitions for candidate Hillary Clinton” and Blythe “was assigned to forge petitions for candidate John Edwards.” When Edwards dropped out of the race at the end of January 2008 and Burkett refused to continue the forgeries, Morgan allegedly ordered Blythe to then forge petitions for Barack Obama.

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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.

NASA management yesterday extended funding for almost all of its on-going astrophysics missions, including Hubble, Kepler, Chandra, and Fermi.

8:37 am

NASA management yesterday extended funding for all but one of its on-going astrophysics missions, including Hubble, Kepler, Chandra, and Fermi.

According to a statement from NASA headquarters, all missions will continue in fiscal years 2013 and 2014. The guest observer programme for the Chandra X-ray Observatory would even be augmented. Only Spitzer, an infrared telescope, would be phased out earlier than the mission wanted, in 2015.

There is some justification for ending Spitzer’s funding early, as the spacecraft’s cameras have lost their ability to stay as cold as designed to do their full range of infrared observations.

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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

Candide: Make Our Garden Grow: Bernstein at 70

6:01 pm

An evening pause: The finale of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide. Just before the song begins, Candide says this:

We will not think noble, because we are not noble. We will not live in perfect harmony because there is no such thing in this world, nor should there be. We can only promise to do our best, and to live out our lives. Dear God, that is all we can promise in truth. Marry me, Cunegonde.

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The world’s largest solar power project, recipient of the second largest ever Department of Energy loan guarantee, has filed for bankruptcy.

8:28 pm

Another wise investment of the Obama administration: The world’s largest solar power project, recipient of the second largest ever Department of Energy loan guarantee, has filed for bankruptcy.

Update and correction: It turns out that the company was offered the DOE loan guarantee, but turned it down. Read this second article. The facts it describe make the decisions of the Obama administration seem beyond foolish.

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The chief of the General Services Administration has resigned and two of her top deputies have been fired for organizing an excessively expensive training conference at a luxury hotel.

4:17 pm

Our government at work: The chief of the General Services Administration has resigned and two of her top deputies have been fired for organizing an excessively expensive training conference at a luxury hotel.

Organizers spent $835,000 on the event, which was attended by 300 employees. The expenses included $147,000 in airfare and lodging at the hotel for six planning trips by a team of organizers. Among the other expenses were $3,200 for a mind reader; $6,300 on commemorative coin set displayed in velvet boxes and $75,000 on a training exercise to build a bicycle. [emphasis mine]

They made six separate trips to this Las Vegas hotel in order to plan a four-day conference?

The sad part is that this kind of spending abuse is actually quite normal in the federal government. I’ve seen it at multiple science conferences and press conferences. Lots of free food, fancy digs at cool locations. And all paid for by the taxpayer.

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Europe has shut down the production line producing their ATV cargo craft for ISS.

10:39 am

Is this good or bad news? Europe has shut down the production line producing their ATV cargo craft for ISS.

Confronted by parts obsolescence and waning political support, the European Space Agency has shut down subsystem production lines for the Automated Transfer Vehicle as member states debate how they will contribute to future international space exploration efforts, according to top spaceflight officials.

ESA has launched three of the five ATVs it agreed to launch, with the remaining two scheduled in 2013 and 2014. What happens after that remains unclear. It seems from the article the European partners don’t seem interested in upgrading the ATV, and instead seem willing to let the as-yet untried U.S. commercial companies carry the load.

Commercial flights by U.S. spacecraft will make up the rest of the lost capacity with the end of the ATV program.

The pressure continues to build on a successful Falcon 9/Dragon flight on April 30.

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French engineers have designed a tiny ion motor that nano-satellites could use as a thruster to adjust their orbits.

7:54 am

Swiss engineers have designed a tiny ion motor that nano-satellites could use as a thruster to adjust their orbits.

The motor weighs only seven ounces, and could work on satellites as small as four inches cubed.

Up to now, it wasn’t possible to reduce the size of maneuverable satellites below a certain point because of the size of their large thruster engines. If it is now possible to provide nano satellites with thrusters, it will be possible to significantly reduce the cost, and more importantly, the payload weight, of satellites. And with a lower payload weight, it will be possible to create a market for smaller rockets, which are much easier to build and far cheaper.

This kind of news makes me more confident that the new commercial space industry truly has a future.

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The Black Stallion

6:01 pm

An evening pause: The central sequence from the 1979 movie, The Black Stallion, when the shipwrecked boy Alec succeeds in taming the shipwrecked Arabian horse. The combination of Carmine Coppola’s music and Caleb Deschanel’s photography in this sequence is unmatched.

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The Buzz Lightyear toy that flew on space shuttle has been donated to the Smithsonian.

8:42 am

The Buzz Lightyear toy that flew on space shuttle has been donated to the Smithsonian.

This news item illustrates the sad state of the American space program, when the arrival at a museum of a foot-high plastic toy that had been in space merits major news coverage. Worse, if we instead wanted to bring this toy back to ISS, we can’t, at least not without begging help from someone else.

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