Geothermal energy developers plan to pump 24 million gallons of water into a dormant volcano in Oregon this summer to demonstrate a new way to generate electricity.

9:55 am

Geothermal energy developers plan to pump 24 million gallons of water into a dormant volcano in Oregon this summer to demonstrate a new way to generate electricity.

The irony I glean from this article is this: Pumping water underground to produce energy from geothermal sources (a source liked by the environmental movement) is good. However, pumping water underground to produce energy from gas or oil (energy sources hated by the environmental movement) is bad. And yet, what difference really is there between either effort?

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Occupy Wall Street Thugs Confiscate Man’s Home

9:42 am

Thugs: Occupy Wall Street has stolen a man’s home.

The real property owner is livid because he could be raising his two little girls, Imani, 3, and Kwazha, 10, in the two-story home instead of in a meager, two-bedroom rental in Brownsville while he tries to sort out his mortgage nightmare. … “[OWS] told me not to talk to them [reporters] because they [OWS] had an offer for me,” he said.

At a second meeting after the press conference, however, organizers said they would not pay him for the house. At that point, he told them to leave. Inside the house the walls are knocked down and all of his belongings, including a stove, refrigerator and bedroom furniture, have been moved to the basement.

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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, 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, 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

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.

Scientists have found that the structure of Titan’s atmosphere appears to change daily and seasonally, much like the Earth’s.

9:22 am

Scientists have found that the structure of Titan’s atmosphere appears to change daily and seasonally, much like the Earth’s.

“The most interesting point is that their model shows the presence of two different boundaries, the lower one caused by the daily heating and cooling of the surface – and varying in height during the day – and the higher one caused by the seasonal change in global air circulation,” commented Paulo Penteado from the Institute of Astronomy, Geophysics and Atmospheric Science at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. According to [Benjamin Charnay from the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris], this link between the lower atmosphere’s layers and the moon’s daily and seasonal cycle has never been seen on another moon or planet besides the Earth.

One caveat: the results are based upon a computer climate model. Though this model was tweaked based on actual data, that data remains slim and incomplete.

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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

Phobos-Grunt due to crash to Earth anytime in the next ten hours

9:00 am

path of Phobos-Grunt's reentry

Updated and bumped. An updated prediction from Aerospace now calls for Phobos-Grunt to come down sometime between 9 and 3 pm (Eastern). This puts the U.S. now out of danger, though Europe, South America, Africa, Australia, and the southern half of Asia all remain in the spacecraft’s path.

Watch your heads! Phobos-Grunt is due to crash to Earth anytime in the next ten hours. And unfortunately, this new prediction has it flying over both North America and much of Europe and Africa during that time period.

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NASA is soliciting private aerospace companies to bid on building their designs for rocket upper stage that will send the Orion capsule beyond Earth orbit.

10:47 pm

NASA is soliciting private aerospace companies to bid on building their own designs for the rocket upper stage that will send the Orion capsule beyond Earth orbit.

This is good news: Rather than design the upper stage themselves, NASA is behaving like a customer and looking for someone else to provide them the product, much as the agency has been doing in buying from private companies crew and cargo services for ISS. Using this approach the agency is more likely to get its upper stage quickly and at less cost.

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A private organization is now taking the White House to court over the president’s decision to install three new members on the National Board Relations board without Senate approval.

8:45 pm

The court suits begin: A private organization is now taking the White House to court over the president’s decision to install three new members on the National Board Relations board without Senate approval.

Once again, President Obama’s decision to make these appointments in this unprecedented manner, when it was obvious the appointments would be challenged legally, was a terrible decision that will do no good and a great deal of harm. At minimum, it puts a cloud over anything these appointees do.

Above all, this action is further evidence that this President is an arrogant man with no interest in running the government in a manner that is reasonable or fair.

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Obama asks for more power to consolidate government agencies

10:18 am

President Obama today asked Congress for additional power to consolidate six government agencies.

While this at first sounds like a very good idea, I must admit that it is difficult for me to trust this man with more power, at any time. In addition, how serious can we take his claim of desiring to save money when his administration is on a pace to increase the federal debt by more than $6 trillion, exceeding the debt accumulated by all Presidents from George Washington to Bill Clinton?

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Engineers have gone to a back up radio system on Cassini after a primary unit did not respond as expected in late December.

11:58 pm

Engineers have gone to a back up radio system on Cassini after a primary unit did not respond as expected in late December.

The cause is still under investigation, but age may be a factor. The spacecraft launched in 1997 and has orbited Saturn since 2004. Cassini completed its prime mission in 2008 and has had two additional mission extensions. This is the first time its ultra-stable oscillator has had an issue.

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LightSquared seeks an investigation into one of the GPS advisory board members that said their system interferes with GPS

3:31 pm

LightSquared has announced that it is seeking an investigation into the GPS advisory board which said its system interferes with GPS.

On Thursday, the mobile broadband startup petitioned the Inspector General of NASA to investigate Bradford Parkinson, the vice chairman of a board that advises the government on GPS. Parkinson should be removed from discussions about potential interference between GPS and LightSquared’s proposed LTE (Long Term Evolution) network because he is also a director of GPS vendor Trimble Navigation, LightSquared said in its petition.

As lawyers say, when you’ve got the facts, pound the facts. When the facts are against you, pound the law. And when the law is against you, pound the table. Right now, LightSquared is pounding the law, as the technical results of the GPS investigation were quite clear: their system will interfere with most commercial and military GPS units.

That they went to the NASA Inspector General is instructive, since NASA has nothing to do with this issue.

Note that the law is also against LightSquared. I expect them to soon start pounding the table.

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The Obama State Department has rejected the European code of conduct for space

3:21 pm

The Obama State Department made it known today that it has rejected the European code of conduct for space.

“Too restrictive,” Ellen Tauscher, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, said of the 12-page document that seeks to promote the peaceful, safe and “transparent” use of outer space. Tauscher, speaking to a gathering of Washington, D.C.-based defense reporters on Jan. 12, let slip at the end of her talk that the State Department had rejected the document as it was written. While answering an unrelated question, she mentioned that, “we’re not going to be joining with the Europeans on their [space] treaty.” She did not share any further details as to what parts of the code were “too restrictive.”

Though I applaud the decision of the Obama administration to say no now, the article notes that Tauscher later admitted that the administration is still willing to negotiate this thing.

Why has Western civilization decided in recent decades that the solution to all problems is to lay down restrictions on what people can do? This authoritarianism goes against every ideal and principle that made our culture a success. Worse, it never works. Like gun control, the only people the rules harm are those who follow the rules.

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X-Prize offers $10 million prize for anyone who can build McCoy’s tricorder

3:06 pm

Life imitates art: The X-Prize announced today a $10 million prize for anyone who can build McCoy’s tricorder from Star Trek.

The X PRIZE Foundation and Qualcomm Foundation said the prize, announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, will go to the team that “develops a mobile platform that most accurately diagnoses a set of 15 diseases across 30 consumers in three days,” a release from the the two foundations said. The device must be light enough to be portable, weighing no more than 5 pounds.

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