Tag: history

A new report from Russia suggests that the undeployed antenna on the Progess freighter will interfere with ISS’s docking port and prevent a docking.

8:44 am

A new report from Russia suggests that the undeployed antenna on the Progess freighter will interfere with ISS’s docking port and prevent a docking.

It appears that the antenna would allow a soft docking but prevent the hard docking necessary to allow for the opening of the hatch. Something similar to this had happened on the Russian Mir station in the 1987. Two astronauts did a space walk to clear the hatch of a piece of debris. Now the Russians are suggesting again that if a hard dock becomes impossible a spacewalk be performed to get the antenna out of the way.

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Visiting a nuclear missile silo

10:04 am

a fuel line for the Titan missile
A fuel line for the Titan missile.

Last week my oldest friend Lloyd and his wife Denise came to visit Diane and I here in Tucson. One of Lloyd’s requests was to visit the Tucson Missile Museum. This museum is built at the site of one of the now disabled missile silos built in the 1960s as a means for launching nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union. Fifty-four silos total had been built and operated, with eighteen of those silos scattered around the Tucson, Arizona area. When the U.S. signed a nuclear arms treaty with the Soviet Union in the 1980s these silos were then shut down and sold. Some became private residences. Others remain buried and abandoned.

One silo, however, was kept as intact as allowed by treaty and made into a museum in order to preserve this artifact of history. Because Diane and I happen to know Chuck Penson, the archivist at the museum, we were able to arrange an augmented tour of the facility. Below are some of my pictures as Chuck took us down into the deepest bowels of the silo.
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A sunstone, used by mariners to judge the position of the Sun when it is cloudy, has been found at a 16th century shipwreck.

8:46 am

A sunstone, used by mariners to judge the position of the Sun when it is cloudy, has been found at a 16th century shipwreck.

A previous study showed that calcite crystals reveal the patterns of polarized light around the sun and, therefore, could have been used to determine its position in the sky even on cloudy days. That led researchers to believe these crystals, which are commonly found in Iceland and other parts of Scandinavia, might have been the powerful “sunstones” referred to in Norse legends, but they had no archaeological evidence to support their hypothesis—until now.

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The House yesterday voted to rename the Dryden Flight Research Center after Neil Armstrong.

9:02 am

Don’t they have better things to do ? The House yesterday voted to rename the Dryden Flight Research Center after Neil Armstrong.

As I noted previously, I disagree strongly with this action. To honor Armstrong properly we should name something really important after him. But it is shameless and wrong to steal the honor from Hugh Dryden in doing so. Armstrong, a modest and honorable man, would have surely protested this action himself.

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George Washington’s Farewell Address

6:01 pm

An evening pause: In honor of George Washington’s birthday, here is his farewell speech, in which he outlined his advice for the citizens of this country to sustain a free America into a long and prosperous future.

The wisdom of these words is astonishing. More so is their predictive quality. Washington knew, possibly better than anyone, the greatest risks that threatened liberty. Woe to us all if we choose to ignore his warnings.

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The abandoned calibration targets used by surveillance satellites of the 1960s.

2:09 pm

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.”

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The HOAs of Israel

3:59 pm

What is a West Bank settlement? If you read the press, it is a place where Israeli Jews have moved in and stolen the land of Arabs in order to occupy their land unfairly. It is a place where Arabs are forbidden, where apartheid has been established against the indigenous population.

Not only are these statements false, they actually turn reality on its head.

In my two visits to Israel I have stayed or visited four different West Bank settlements, and in each place my first impression was that I was visiting a typical American gated community, a suburban community run by a home-owner-association (HOA). You enter by driving through a gate where an attendant waves at you as you go by. He doesn’t stop you, because he either knows you or he has profiled you and sees no reason to ask you any questions. Once inside the roads wind about, passing individual homes or apartments. At the center of the community is a recreation center, often with a pool and library, where events are held and people go for entertainment.

Alon Shvut
The gated community of Alon Shvut, south of Jerusalem in the West Bank.

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The House passed legislation Monday proposing to rename the Dryden Flight Research Center in California after Neil Armstrong.

10:00 pm

Don’t they have better things to do? The House passed legislation Monday proposing to rename the Dryden Flight Research Center in California after Neil Armstrong.

As much as I think Armstrong should be honored in as many ways as possible, it seems cheap and inappropriate to take the honor away from Hugh Dryden, whose work helped make Armstrong’s lunar mission possible. Moreover, Armstrong, being a very modest man himself, would likely be quite appalled by any action that would rob someone else of a memorial in order to give it to him.

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William Butler Yeats – The Second Coming

6:01 pm

An evening pause: In memory to the 20,000 or so violent attacks committed by Islamic radical since September 11, 2001, I think this poem by William Butler Yeats is appropriate. Written it 1920, it somehow sensed the the coming conflict.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

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On the road

1:01 pm

I am off to Ames, Iowa, today where I will be giving a lecture tomorrow at Iowa State University to the Iowa section of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. The subject: Predicting the future of space travel based on the past.

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Why state regulation is better than federal regulation

11:09 am

In response to my condemnation of the insane requirement by Obamacare that restaurants and take-out pizza delivery services publicly post on their menus the calorie count for every item, including a calorie count for each of the literally thousands of topping variations for pizzas, regular reader Patrick Ritchie asked me, “What level of super market labeling would you support?”

I replied, “I think the federal government has no business requiring any labeling at all. This is a state matter, pure and simple, both for practical and Constitutional reasons.”

He responded, “Which practical reasons? I’m genuinely curious. What makes a state regulation inherently better than a federal one?”

My response to this last question was quite long, and after reading it Patrick suggested I elevate the comment into a full headlined post. I have decided to do so. Here is what I wrote, edited slightly for clarity:
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