Mission Arabsat 6A carried a major communications satellite into a high geosynchronous orbit last night. This bird will provide service all over the Arab World and East Africa. This was a commercially funded mission. Watch the tape. Enjoy. pl
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/11/livestream-watch-spacex-falcon-heavy-rocket-launch-and-landing.html
"Why would we attempt such a bizarre feat of astro-engineering? Because the spin of the asteroid would create enough gravity for mining equipment to be effectively used, giving us a way to tap into the rich minerals and deposits inside these celestial rocks.
In addition, researchers suggest the asteroid's rocky hull could also help keep the mining station safe from the dangers of being out in space – cosmic ray radiation and all.
This crazy idea might just be possible, according to a new study from astrophysicists at the University of Vienna in Austria, who applied some advanced gravity models to a hypothetical asteroid measuring 500 metres by 390 metres (1,640 feet by 1,280 feet).
"Loads resulting from centrifugal forces... [make] a space station in the cavern of a mined asteroid feasible," write the researchers, though there are a lot of unknowns here – the right dimensions and materials would need to be chosen, and the asteroid would need to be strong enough to support a station." Sciencealert
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Ah! This is a blessed opportunity to escape the tedium of Virginia politics and the attendant plotting and scheming that is normally and decently hidden from pubic view.
This is intriguing. Imagine a sizable living space built INSIDE an asteroid big enough to have significant gravity. I hope the pay is good. An occasional stroll in a pressure suit on the surface would need to be well padded with good old money to make living in the rock worthwhile. pl
"SpaceX’s second Falcon Heavy side booster has made its way from Texas to Florida after completing a successful static fire acceptance test at the company’s McGregor complex, paving the way for the third and final booster – currently vertical on McGregor’s test stand – to complete its own round of tests and head East.
Once the third and most important booster – known as the center core – arrives at SpaceX’s Florida launch facilities, all three of the next Falcon Heavy’s boosters will be ready to head into the integration stage, culminating in an integrated static fire prior to the second launch ever of SpaceX’s flagship super-heavy-lift rocket." teslarati
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Anybody working on the Alderson Drive or the flaws in the General Theory of Relativity? No? How about something interesting in String or Membrane Theory relating to wormholes? No? Well, get busy. I can't wait around forever. pl
https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-falcon-heavy-second-launch-second-booster-florida-arrival/
"Last year, Elon Musk's personal Tesla might have gotten all the headlines during SpaceX's historic rocket launch back back in February, but the Falcon Heavy also carried a second, secret payload almost nobody knew about.
Stashed inside the midnight-cherry Roadster was a mysterious, small object designed to last for millions (perhaps billions) of years – even in extreme environments like space, or on the distant surfaces of far-flung planetary bodies.
Called an Arch (pronounced 'Ark'), this tiny storage device is built for long-term data archiving, holding libraries of information encoded on a small disc of quartz crystal, not much larger than a coin." sciencealert
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So, this particular pilgrim is in solar orbit carrying with him a tiny device that contains the entire text of Isaac Asimov's great science fiction trilogy - "Foundation," "Foundation and Empire" and "Second Foundation." This is a wonderful, thought provoking work that I relished as a teenager. Asimov was a polymath genius; biologist, man of letters and theater critic among other things. I have a copy of his commentary on the entire oeuvre of Gilbert and Sullivan.
Musk is a man like unto him. pl
IMO everyone should consider this lander and the landing itself to be a roaring success. Perhaps you think the whole space exploration thing to be a waste of time, money and talent. I do not. I consider the funds to be well spent as seed money for future benefits as many spinoffs of the space programs have proven to be so far.
I watched the landing coverage. It was thrilling and inspirational. It was perfection disguised as a flawed human enterprise. The lander itself is a Martian geology platform loaded with seismic measurement instruments and the like. I have no idea what all the little gadgets are around the main lander. If anyone can tell us, please do so. pl
"The EU is to allow farmers to receive full compensation for any damages caused by attacks from protected animals like lynxes, wolves and bears.
Other expenses including installing electric fences or acquiring guard dogs to prevent damage will also be fully reimbursed.
The EU says the move will help protect large predators in areas where they have come into conflict with humans.
Campaigners hope it will limit the need for culls.
After many decades of decline, the numbers of large carnivores like wolves and bears are stable or increasing in many parts of Europe, often due to concentrated conservation efforts." BBC
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I am really for this. As a half a---d naturalist and recovering hunter I love the creatures of the field. These measures to compensate farmers for livestock losses to predators and for better fencing are great things. Anything that results in more dogs must be good.
When I was a young man I had many forest encounters with black bears (Maine), wolves (Alaska), tigers (SE Asia), and jaguar (Panama). I never felt particularly threatened but then, I don't think I look afraid and vulnerable and I don't go into the woods without a pistol that will knock down whatever might come along in a hostile mood. Thankfully, I never had to do that.
We have cougar in Virginia. I have had them around my erstwhile cabin on the North Fork of the Shenandoah at night. Beautiful creatures, they were attracted by the large population of White Tailed deer who used the front steps of my little house to descend the slope to the river below and behind the house. It was a great experience when sleeping on the screened front porch to hear and smell one nearby. A flashlight through the screen several times revealed one peering in at me in puzzlement. "Where did you come from?" the mountain lion seemed to ask. When I turned the light off they would disappear around the corner of the house headed for the river.
These were probably western puma migrated in. The eastern mountain lion is thought to be long extinct. I mentioned them once at the local hardware store in Strasburg and after a glance among the Valley People present was told that "we do not tell outsiders about them. If we do some idiot will shoot them."
I knew I had arrived. pl
"Lockheed Martin has unveiled the designs for a reusable lander built to ferry four astronauts and 1.1 tons of cargo between lunar orbit and the surface of the moon. Leveraging tech from the aerospace giant's Orion spacecraft for deep-space missions, the 14-meter, single-stage vessel can camp for up to 14 days on the moon. Upon touchdown, the crew will use the craft's lift elevator platform to get from the cabin to the surface, before blasting back to their home base aboard the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway -- a small space station that NASA plans to start constructing in 2022.
With enough juice to last the full two weeks, refuelling would take place between missions, though the lander can also be powered up on the surface. The preliminary concept relies on four modified RL10 engines, but other engines could also be utilized.
Lockheed's vehicle would be be twice as tall as the Lunar Module used during the Apollo missions to the Moon nearly half a century ago, reports Ars Technica, which carried two astronauts for brief stints of just a few days. The company says it will also serve as a precursor for its Mars lander -- also built to carry four people -- which is integral to its Mars Base Camp orbiting mission." engadget.com
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I wish I were younger. No. I wouldn't have made the cut for space travel. No good at math, I never was. If there were some nice hostile aliens to fight then I might have made the team.
Seriously, this is a marvelous concept machine. 14 days on the lunar surface, actual cargo carrying capacity, these are wonderful things to accomplish
Still waiting for the Alderson Drive, let's have another look at the theories of relativity. pl
https://www.engadget.com/2018/10/04/lockheed-martin-reusable-lunar-lander/
"Telstar 19V is the latest in a new generation of satellites operated by Canada’s Telesat, and will be used by Hughes Network Systems to expand broadband satellite services in Brazil and other South American countries. It’ll also enhance broadband coverage for NorthwesTel, a Bell Canada subsidiary, in the far northern territory of Nunavut.
The satellite has a 15-year design life. It weighs 15,600 pounds, making it by some accounts the heaviest commercial telecom satellite ever successfully launched.
SpaceX is to launch yet another satellite in the series, Telstar 18 Vantage, in mid-August. But first, the California-based launch company is due to execute two other missions.
A Falcon 9 is scheduled to launch 10 telecom satellites into low Earth orbit for Iridium from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Wednesday. The spotlight returns to Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Aug. 2, when yet another Falcon 9 is due to launch the Merah Putih satellite for Telkom Indonesia.
The Falcon 9 Block 5 is designed to be capable of far more reuse than SpaceX’s previous Block 4 variant. The new-generation rocket is also an essential part of SpaceX’s plans to start sending astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA by 2019." Yahoo
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And now for something pleasant. pl
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/spacex-falcon-9-rocket-launches-063442927.html
"The technology is a "living drug" made from a patient's own cells at one of the world's leading centres of cancer research.
Dr Steven Rosenberg, chief of surgery at the National Cancer Institute, told the BBC: "We're talking about the most highly personalised treatment imaginable."
It remains experimental and still requires considerably more testing before it can be used more widely, but this is how it works: it starts by getting to know the enemy.
A patient's tumour is genetically analysed to identify the rare changes that might make the cancer visible to the immune system.
Out of the 62 genetic abnormalities in this patient, only four were potential lines of attack.
Next researchers go hunting. A patient's immune system will already be attacking the tumour, it's just losing the fight between white blood cells and cancer.
The scientists screen the patient's white blood cells and extract those capable of attacking the cancer.
These are then grown in huge quantities in the laboratory.
Around 90 billion were injected back into the 49-year-old patient, alongside drugs to take the brakes off the immune system." BBC
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That is she kayaking about. pl
"Octopuses’ brains are in their arms, which is admittedly pretty odd. Two-thirds of an octopus’ neurons reside in the long appendages that many mistakenly call “tentacles” (in modern zoology, a “tentacle” is relatively long and thin, with some kind of clubbed end). This decentralized way of thinking means that even severed arms can “think” for themselves, or at least respond to physical stimuli and try to escape whatever is trying to eat them, which is why people die from trying to swallow live octopus arms only to find that the arm is still fighting back (a reported six people die this way on average each year in South Korea, where the dish is popular).
But their peculiar approach to brains hasn’t stopped them from ranking among the most intelligent creatures that we know of. Octopuses regularly use tools, solve puzzles, and generally cause mayhem by sneaking in and out of their enclosures. They also sometimes accessorize by hopping inside old coconut shells and using them as little mobile homes, all while looking more stylish than most humans.
As they travel, they also taste everything that they walk on since their suckers are all sensory organs. You’d think that would motivate them to swim everywhere, but unfortunately one of their three hearts has to stop beating whenever they swim, which is quite tiring and means that many octopuses prefer to stroll. Their other two hearts provide blood to the gills, but that third heart circulates blood to the central organs. The main organs reside inside the octopus’ bulbous head (called a mantle), which contains no bones. The only truly hard part of an octopus is the beak, which is basically its mouth. This means that the critters can squeeze through almost any opening as long as it’s bigger than the schnoz. Everything else is negotiable.
But perhaps the weirdest thing about octopuses is that, unlike many of the other highly intelligent creatures populating our planet, they don’t live long. Some live just six months, others a few years, and most males die shortly after mating. The females last long enough to protect their clutch of eggs, during which time they slowly starve to death."
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All of this and mother love as well ... IMO octopus in US territorial waters should be declared Cephalopod Americans. EEO protections should be considered. "Is this a great country or what?" pl
At one time, not long ago, there was a U.S. Space Command headquartered at Peterson AFB in Colorado. This was a unified combatant command. I was never aware of their full mission, although the CINCUSSPACECOM was also the CINCNORAD and commander of the Air Force Space Command. As a unified combatant command, SPACECOM would be allocated forces as needed to accomplish its mission. I only knew of one such unit allocated to SPACECOM, Joint Task Force - Computer Network Defense (JTF-CND). It was a great and productive relationship. However, it did not last. In 2002, Rumsfeld deactivated SPACECOM to make room for NORTHCOM as a new unified combatant command. The SPACECOM missions were assumed by STRATCOM. I think the idea of reactivating SPACECOM as a unified combatant command is worth a look.
What missions must a newly established U.S. Space Force or newly reactivated SPACECOM undertake? I contend that either entity must defend our current and future space-based assets from destruction or degradation. At the same time we must be prepared to destroy or degrade the space-based assets of potential enemies. Following from these missions, we must develop and maintain a capability to rapidly replace our assets that are destroyed or degraded. To accomplish these missions, we must have an agile R&D and procurement structure that works hand-in-hand with our commercial space industries.
What kind of forces are needed to accomplish these missions? Surely it would require a small number of people extraordinarily accomplished in science and engineering of limited usefulness in terrestrial warfare as Colonel Lang points out. These specialist who are most at home with their heads in the stars would naturally guide the R&D and procurement functions. I feel at least some of them are also required to plan and execute the offensive and defensive missions of such a space force. But along with these heads in the stars types, the missions will rely on more conventionally oriented personnel. The Russians recently tested the PL-19 Nudol, a mobile, track-mounted anti-satellite weapon (ASAT). In 2008 we destroyed one our malfunctioning satellites with a ship-launched Standard Missile 3 ABM. This was most likely done in response to a Chinese demonstration of a similar ASAT capability. The range of ASAT weapons and weapons platforms include air, land and sea launchers. Those deploying, maintaining and operating these systems are soldiers, sailors and airmen. In addition to these systems, we and our adversaries may develop space-based killer satellite systems. Perhaps we may someday have manned space-based killer satellite systems. That will be the closest thing to Heinlein’s Starship Troopers we would have.
I have seen proposals for the Air Force to develop a Space Force along the same lines of the Navy’s Marine Corps. This would be the fifth US Armed Service that Colonel Lang mentioned. Given the wide array of systems and personnel needed to successfully fulfill our space-based national defense strategy, I think a reactivated USSPACECOM would better meet our needs. It would begin the process of coordinating with STRATCOM, NRO and other existing agencies to juggle the missions and functions of a space-based national defense strategy. Perhaps it would establish a national training center for space to put the myriad kinds of personnel needed to fulfill our strategy into the proper space-based mindset. As we expand our horizon beyond Earth orbit, we may need the Space Force. Until then, a USSPACECOM will suit the purpose.
TTG
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I see your point but doubt that you could really protect space assets from the manned aircraft dominated USAF without a separate service. pl
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Space_Command
https://thediplomat.com/2018/04/russia-conducts-new-test-of-nudol-anti-satellite-system/
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/news/a24455/russia-anti-satellite-weapon/
"Donald Trump believes that space is becoming a “warfighting domain,” just like the land, air, and sea, and is thus encouraging the creation of a space force on par with the other branches of the armed forces. It was hardly an off-the-cuff comment.
The idea enjoys strong support in Congress. Pushing forward such an initiative would strengthen the president’s position at a time when he needs it the most. Some lawmakers say that force could be created as part of the Department of the Air Force in just three to five years. The proposal is not popular among the military brass, but on March 13 the president made his views known. “The president is very focused on outcomes. He has prioritized space, he has recognized the threats that have evolved, and the pace with which they’ve evolved, and he recognizes that as a warfighting domain,” says Kenneth Rapuano, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense and global security.
The initiative dovetails with the recently issued National Security Strategy. Some initial steps have already been taken. Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, the chief space adviser, provided lawmakers with an interim report on upcoming space reforms this month. An updated report is due August 1." SF
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This would create a fifth US Armed Service. The present four are; the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force. These four are more or less accepting that they do not fight as single service forces in combat but rather in joint task forces controlling combat forces from two or more of the services, Actual warfare demands that. Those who have tried to do otherwise generally fare poorly.
Space is different. The environment of such operations and the difficulty involved in merely reaching the area of operations is such that space operations necessarily employ a small number of people who are extraordinarily accomplished in science and engineering. These people are of limited usefulness in terrestrial warfare. This can be seen in the fact that most astronauts come from the present armed services but once selected and trained by NASA never return to their parent services.
The creation of a Department of the Space Force within DoD would facilitate coherent programs for acquiring, training and retaining such valuable personnel.
I would think that black on black would be an appropriate color scheme for the uniforms. pl
https://southfront.org/president-trump-create-space-force-another-race-us-may-trigger-lose/
By Robert Willmann
Russia has presented 14 questions to the British Foreign Ministry on the alleged poisoning of the Skripals in Britain by a nerve agent--
1. Why has Russia been denied the right of consular access to the two Russian citizens, who came to harm on British territory?
2. What specific antidotes and in what form were the victims injected with? How did such antidotes come into the possession of British doctors at the scene of the incident?
3. On what ground7:55:14 PM7:57:06 PMs was France involved in technical cooperation in the investigation of the incident, in which Russian citizens were injured?
4. Did the UK notify the OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) of France’s involvement in the investigation of the Salisbury incident?
5. What does France have to do with the incident, involving two Russian citizens in the UK?
6. What rules of UK procedural legislation allow for the involvement of a foreign state in an internal investigation?
7. What evidence was handed over to France to be studied and for the investigation to be conducted?
Continue reading "Russia Sends 14 Questions To Britain on the Skripal Nerve Agent Affair" »
"Those hopper flights would go up to an altitude of several kilometers. "We'll do flights of increasing complexity," he said last month, including tests of heat shield technology.
Musk didn't provide new testing details in his SXSW interview, and offered a cautionary note about schedules. "People have told me that my timelines historically have been optimistic," he said. "So I'm trying to recalibrate to some degree here." That echoed his comments in Ausralia last year, where he described a schedule that called for the launch of the first BFR missions to Mars in 2022 "aspirational.
The interview covered a wide range of other topics, from his leadership of electric vehicle company Tesla to founding the tunneling startup The Boring Company to his concerns about artificial intelligence. He also stressed his worries about a war or other calamity setting back civilization on Earth, a motivation for establishing a presence on Mars." space.com
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The Big Falcon Rocket is Musk's space ship for the establishment of a first permanent colony on Mars. He is building a vessel that will have a reusable first stage and a second stage that is the Mars lander. He intends to start testing the second stage as a separate unit next year in what he call "hopper" jumps with flights of increasing difficulty proceeding to LEO flights fairly soon. Because of the re usability factor a launch to LEO is expected to cost $6 million. This is a low relative cost. Interestingly he plans to produce fuel for the rocket and food for the crew on the surface of Mars.
At the same time he says he hopes that SpaceX' success in the Mars effort will bring more commercial players into this business. pl
https://www.space.com/39945-elon-musk-spacex-bfr-mars-rocket-sxsw.html
"When SpaceX's Falcon Heavy blasted off last Tuesday (Feb. 6) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center Pad 39A in Florida, the rocket's three first-stage boosters were expected to return to Earth and land much like the company's Falcon 9 rocket stages. The Falcon Heavy's two side boosters landed successfully (and simultaneously) on twin pads at the nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, but the center core crashed and burned.
That core booster, which was expected to land offshore on SpaceX's drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You," crashed when two of three engines did not fire during a final landing burn, Musk told reporters after the launch. The booster missed the landing ship by about 328 feet (100 meters) and hit the water at 300 mph (484 km/h), damaging thrusters on the nearby droneship, Musk has said.
On Monday, we learned a bit more in Musk's Twitter posts. The two engines did not fire because they ran out of ignition fluid, Musk said.
"Not enough ignition fluid to light the outer two engines after several three engine relights," Musk wrote. "Fix is pretty obvious."" Space.com
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This is interesting in many ways. The thing ran out of lighter fluid. What? Someone did not fill up the tank? This reminds me of the incident in which a Canada Air mechanic newly transferred from Europe had liters in his head rather than gallons and did not put enough fuel in the tanks. The airplane ran out of fuel at cruising altitude and the pilots glided it to a landing on an abandoned RCAF airfield.
This booster hit the water near the drone ship. What is a drone ship? Does it steam to its destination with no one on board?
I had not known that SpaceX was planning to recover the fairings and apparently other parts of the front end of its rockets. How would that work? The recovery ship has long articulated arms. They would catch the falling fairings?
And who is this science fiction writer who Musk admirers so much? pl
https://www.space.com/39690-elon-musk-explains-falcon-heavy-core-booster-crash.html
"When SpaceX was competing to fly cargo to the International Space Station, Musk mocked his rival’s rockets. Vying to launch spy satellites, SpaceX sued the US Air Force for a chance to bid on classified launches. Plotting a satellite internet constellation, he promised a network “an order of magnitude” more sophisticated than his competitors. Tomorrow (Feb. 6), his space company will attempt to launch the largest rocket in the world, the Falcon Heavy—and if successful, the rocket entrepreneur could find himself set for collision with a gigantic rocket NASA been building for more than a decade.
SpaceX’s goal since 2002 has been to develop the technology to make humanity a multi-planetary species. The Falcon Heavy is the first vehicle built by Musk’s company with the capability of taking a usefully large scientific robot—or even, in stages, a human exploration mission—beyond earth orbit, and to another astronomical body." Qurtz
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Tomorrow, Musk will try to put his red roadster into Mars orbit. "Up, up and away!" "Fly me to the moon!" Pick your tune. I had just arrived in Frankfurt in 1969 when the first moon landing occurred. I remember that the local newspaper had a headline the next day that read "Jetzt der mann in der mond ist ein Ami," or something like that. pl
" ... in late 2016, scientists using the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) found a buried ice sheet at Mars’s mid-latitudes that holds about as much water as Lake Superior. But until Dundas’s study, published today in Science, scientists struggled to understand the extent and accessibility of Mars’s subsurface ice layers.
The eight sites featured in the new study include steep banks where, much like cutting into a cake, erosion has exposed layers of rock and ice that MRO could see from overhead. The bands of ice first appear between three and six feet underground, supporting the notion that Mars’s mid-latitudes periodically saw large snowfalls millions of years ago, when Mars was tilted on its axis at a steeper angle than it is today, says Dundas." National Geographic
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I don't see any Martians in these pictures, but this greatly increases the chance that humans can colonize Mars. The great majority of my forebears were among the colonizers of the New World and so I suppose I have a natural inclination toward the prospect of human colonization of Barsoom. We need to get some of us off this world so that our descendants can see Terra in the rear view mirror and think of this planet as the place where we began. pl
"No one knew for sure exactly how far those molten fuel cores had traveled before desperate plant workers — later celebrated as the “Fukushima Fifty” — were able to cool them again by pumping water into the reactor buildings. With radiation levels so high, the fate of the fuel remained unknown.
As officials became more confident about managing the disaster, they began a search for the missing fuel. Scientists and engineers built radiation-resistant robots like the Manbo and a device like a huge X-ray machine that uses exotic space particles called muons to see the reactors’ innards.
Now that engineers say they have found the fuel, officials of the government and the utility that runs the plant hope to sway public opinion. Six and a half years after the accident spewed radiation over northern Japan, and at one point seemed to endanger Tokyo, the officials hope to persuade a skeptical world that the plant has moved out of post-disaster crisis mode and into something much less threatening: cleanup." NY Times
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"Nuclear power is a major source of energy in France, with a share of 40% of energy consumption in 2015.[1] Nuclear power is the largest source of electricity in the country, with a generation of 416.8 TWh, or 76.3%[2] of the country's total production of 546 TWh, the highest percentage in the world.[3]
Électricité de France (EDF) – the country's main electricity generation and distribution company – manages the country's 58 power reactors.[4] EDF is substantially owned by the French Government, with around 85% shares in government hands.[5]
As of 2012, France's electricity price to household customers is the seventh-cheapest amongst the 28 members of the European Union, and also the seventh-cheapest to industrial consumers, with a rate of €0.14 per kWh to households and €0.07 per kWh to industrial consumers.[6] France was the biggest electricity exporter in the EU in 2012, exporting 45TWh of electricity to its neighbours.[7] With very inclement weather, when demand exceeds supply, France infrequently becomes a net-importer of electricity in these rare cases, because of the lack of more flexible generating plants.[8] Wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France
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Japan is reputed to be among the most technologically advanced countries in the world. The process of the progress of their society in this regard runs uninterruptedly from the Meiji period onward. So, how did these events at Fukushima get so out of hand and why have they not worked out solutions over the last six years?
At the same time, the French who are obsessed with their patrimoine and good cheese seem able to manage a nuclear power system that provides 40% of the countries electric power needs.
Why is that? pl
"The Falcon 9 lifted off at 6:53 p.m. EDT (2253 GMT) from historic Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. About 8.5 minutes later, the first stage came back to Earth for a pinpoint landing on the robotic SpaceX ship named "Of Course I Still Love You," which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean. It was the second successful mission in three days for SpaceX. [The Rockets and Spaceships of SpaceX]
This was the booster's second successful landing; the first came on Feb. 19, when the rocket stage helped send SpaceX's Dragon cargo capsule on an uncrewed resupply run to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA. (That February launch, by the way, was SpaceX's first from Pad 39A, which previously hosted liftoffs for NASA's Apollo and space shuttle programs.)" space.com
https://www.space.com/38434-spacex-launches-satellite-third-used-rocket.html
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Re-usable boosters are now a proven commodity. SpaceX is IMO going to dominate the commercial space industry for a long time. I look forward to seeing the first flight test of their heavy booster.
I have been studying quantum mechanics lately. Any thoughts about that field? pl
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""After visiting Hyperloop One’s test site in Nevada and meeting its leadership team this past summer, I am convinced this groundbreaking technology will change transportation as we know it and dramatically cut journey times," Virgin Group founder Richard Branson said in a press release.
Hyperloop One is headed by Shervin Pishevar, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist best known as an early investor in Uber. The Los Angeles-based startup is conducting feasibility studies in Dubai and Finland for the transit system. US cities like Denver and Nevada have also submitted proposals for the construction of a Hyperloop.
The Hyperloop is a nascent transportation system that works by shooting pods through a vacuumed-sealed tube at speeds that experts say could reach 700 mph. " BI
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Branson visualizes tubes that can run underground, above ground or under water. Pods will carry passengers or cargo in these tubes at the speeds mentioned. He was interviewed on TV today and mentioned the prospect of cargo being unloaded offshore from ships tied up at artificial islands with the good then being loaded into pods for transport far inland bypassing existing harbors. The harbors can then be re-developed. pl
"Today’s teens are ... less likely to date. The initial stage of courtship, which Gen Xers called “liking” (as in “Ooh, he likes you!”), kids now call “talking”—an ironic choice for a generation that prefers texting to actual conversation. After two teens have “talked” for a while, they might start dating. But only about 56 percent of high-school seniors in 2015 went out on dates; for Boomers and Gen Xers, the number was about 85 percent.
The decline in dating tracks with a decline in sexual activity. The drop is the sharpest for ninth-graders, among whom the number of sexually active teens has been cut by almost 40 percent since 1991. The average teen now has had sex for the first time by the spring of 11th grade, a full year later than the average Gen Xer. Fewer teens having sex has contributed to what many see as one of the most positive youth trends in recent years: The teen birth rate hit an all-time low in 2016, down 67 percent since its modern peak, in 1991.
Even driving, a symbol of adolescent freedom inscribed in American popular culture, from Rebel Without a Cause to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, has lost its appeal for today’s teens. Nearly all Boomer high-school students had their driver’s license by the spring of their senior year; more than one in four teens today still lack one at the end of high school. For some, Mom and Dad are such good chauffeurs that there’s no urgent need to drive. “My parents drove me everywhere and never complained, so I always had rides,” a 21-year-old student in San Diego told me. “I didn’t get my license until my mom told me I had to because she could not keep driving me to school.” She finally got her license six months after her 18th birthday. In conversation after conversation, teens described getting their license as something to be nagged into by their parents—a notion that would have been unthinkable to previous generations." The Atlantic
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Well, pilgrims, my generation did all these things with a vengeance as soon as we could manage it and we could hardly wait to leave home. This was in the 50s. The idea of having your mom drive you to school would have been pretty close to the world's worst thing.
I know a number of young people from the generation under discussion and they are incomprehensible to me. They are well described in this article. They seem to be frozen in childhood, content to be fed, watered like plants and expectant of endless praise whether it is deserved or not. This brings to mind Garrison Keilors description of the children of his mythical Lake Wobegon, Minnesota who are said to be "all above average."
They remind me of the completely isolated people in Asimov's novel "The Caves of Steel" in which individuals live isolated from each other, communicating and working remotely., only coming together occasionally for reproductive sex.
One wonders what happens when these creatures are finally forced to live and interact in the context of an organization that demands performance in return for money. Ah, well I have seen this occur among the children of my friends. Typically these young people have a hard time holding a job. pl
A letter to the Chair of the Commons Defence Committee, the Rt Hon Julian Lewis MP, and his colleagues on 13 April. A parallel letter was been sent to the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Crispin Blunt MP, and his colleagues.
"Dear Dr Lewis,
Re: Evidence re Ghouta sarin atrocity on 21 August 2013
I am writing to you and your colleagues on the Foreign Affairs Committee with reference to a piece of mine on the Ghouta atrocity which was recently posted on his ‘Sic Semper Tyrannis’ blog by Colonel W. Patrick Lang. He is a distinguished American military Arabist, formerly in charge of the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism at the Defense Intelligence Agency, the first Director of its ‘Humint’ service, and also the first Professor of Arabic at West Point.
My piece develops arguments made by the veteran American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in an article entitled ‘The Red Line and the Rat Line’ published in the ‘London Review of Books’ in April 2014. If his arguments are correct, they have very significant, and disturbing, implications for us in Britain – implications particularly relevant in the light of the recent incident at Khan Sheikhoun and subsequent events.
They may be even more disturbing, against the background of claims made yesterday by our Ambassador to the UN about that incident. Actually, these appear contradictory. So the identification of ‘Sarin, or a Sarin like substance’ in samples from the incident by scientists from Porton Down provides, Matthew Rycroft told the Security Council, good grounds for believing the Syrian government to have been responsible. But then, we were assured on ‘Twitter’ by Mr Rycroft that ‘Scientists in UK have analysed samples from #Khan Sheihoun. Tested positive for #Sarin.’
As sarin is a member of a group called ‘organophosphates’, which includes several other compounds which can be used as chemical weapons, the natural construction of his statement to the Security Council is that material of this kind was identified in the samples tested, but it was not established – yet at least – that it was sarin. But if this was so, it is difficult to see what grounds there could have been for the confidence expressed in the ‘Tweet’.
It would be just possible, although it is not the obvious interpretation, that Mr Rycroft meant to suggest that both sarin and some other ‘organophosphate’ were identified. But, even if the claims can withstand critical analysis, which is not clear, this would also have quite different implications to the suggestion that only sarin was found. It is far from obvious that it would make the Syrian government the likely suspect.
Particularly given the sorry history of accusations against the government of Saddam relating to WMD by American and British officials and politicians which turned out to be baseless, and had disastrous consequences, it would be helpful if Mr Rycroft could be more precise. And, hopefully, we will soon have clarification about exactly what the tests carried out at Porton Down are supposed to have established, and on what basis.
As it happens, it is precisely such clarification that we also need in relation to the Ghouta atrocity. And what makes this all the more relevant to the current situation is that Porton Down plays a central role in Hersh’s account of what was described in press coverage at the time as the ‘head-spinning reversal’ by President Obama.
It was to almost universal surprise, and against the advice of most of his senior national security advisors, that on 30 August 2013 President Trump’s predecessor abandoned plans to respond to Ghouta with air strikes.
According to the ‘Red Line and Rat Line’ article, his change of mind resulted from an intervention by the then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey. And this, Hersh claims, was successful because General Dempsey was able to support his case with the results of tests on samples from Ghouta carried out at Porton Down, which definitively exonerated the Syrian government.
In subsequent interviews, Hersh has claimed that these tests showed that the toxin used at Ghouta was ‘kitchen sarin.’ The question of what tests carried out at Porton Down and elsewhere established about its precise composition is critical to assessing whether his case his credible. The question of what parallel tests establish about the composition of toxins used at Khan Sheikhoun do or do not establish will be highly significant in assessing whether claims such as those made by Mr Rycroft are credible.
What makes the parallels particularly relevant is that, in support of his – unsuccessful – attempt on 29 August 2013 to secure the support of the Commons for British participation in air strikes in Syria, David Cameron was able to rely on an ‘assessment’ from the Joint Intelligence Committee.
Its then Chairman, Sir Jon Day, provided precisely the same kind of endorsement to claims made on the other side of the Atlantic as Mr Rycroft has just given, asserting that there were ‘no plausible alternative scenarios to regime responsibility’ for Ghouta. As Obama’s change of mind happened on the day following, if in fact test results from Porton Down account for it, these would have had to be in General Dempsey’s possession by that date at the latest.
"Despite their "tiger" sobriquet, thylacines are not members of the cat family. Nor should they be confused with the Tasmanian devil (Sarcophilus harrisii), another carnivorous marsupial that is native to Australia and is still widespread in Tasmania.
Fossil evidence suggests that the modern thylacine — Thylacinus cynocephalus, whose name means "dog-headed pouched one" — emerged about 4 million years ago. Once widespread across Australia, the animal disappeared everywhere except Tasmania about 2,000 years ago, according to the National Museum of Australia (NMA)." livescience.com
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Seems to me there was a movie a while back in which Willem Dafoe as a hunter stalks the last Tasmanian Tiger. As a recovering hunter I could really identify with this character and understand his emotions when he finds one that is sick, old and alone and finishes her off.
I sure hope there are some left up there in Queensland hanging out with the box jellies, salt water crocs and all the rest. pl
http://www.livescience.com/58483-search-for-extinct-tasmanian-tiger.html
Earlier today, Colonel Lang momentarily emerged from his reveries to grace us with a bit of wisdom. Actually it was more of a “druther” than a bit of wisdom. Seems he would rather be a Sasquatch hunter than the Director of National Intelligence. He’d rather be stalking through a chilly forest in a drizzling rain than wearing a suit and dealing with the shameless political hacks at Liberty Crossing or in the halls of Congress. Not only does he want to search for Sasquatch, but he wants to ensure the “Sasquatch People” are protected from the inevitable ravages of mankind. Not too shabby a druther. I’d happily join the Colonel in this noble quest. DOL
In a peculiar coincidence, I discovered that the 2016 Sasquatch Summit will be held in Grays Harbor, Washington on 18 and 19 November. Well known Sasquatch researchers will present “two days of physical proof about Sasquatch, habitat, audio, video, photos, casts and more. In addition, [they will explain] how to identify hoaxes, the differences between authentic tracks and fake, plus tons more.”
I also found a piece in “The Atlantic” entitled “Why Bigfoot Sightings Are So Common Across Cultures.” Only three weeks old, this piece explores mankind’s need to believe in such creatures.
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“Bigfoot might or might not roam the primeval forests of the Pacific Northwest, watching us and avoiding us, a reminder of our deepest, animalistic past. But whether or not there is an actual creature, the archetypal Sasquatch is, in his own way, very real.“ (The Atlantic)
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I choose to believe if for nothing else than for the sheer adventure of it.
TTG
Why Bigfoot Sightings Are So Common Across Cultures
The Sasquatch Genome Project (link provided by Colonel Lang earlier today)
"In 2018—just two years from now—SpaceX plans to land the heaviest spacecraft ever sent to Mars on the planet’s surface, and to repeat these (uncrewed) landings at every available launch opportunity, or every 26 months. Meanwhile, the company will be developing the largest rocket ever built (Musk doesn’t have a generic name yet, but wants to call the first one “Heart of Gold,” from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), which will be ready for booster tests by 2019 and Earth-orbit trials a year later. Once that’s done, SpaceX’s interplanetary ship—capable of carrying at least 100 people or 450 tons of cargo—could be ready to start taking the first settlers to Mars by 2024, although Musk calls that optimistic. Tickets for the journey will cost an estimated $200,000. Over time he sees a million people living on Mars, with fleets of 1,000 ships making the trip in as little as three months, or even, eventually, 30 days." Air and Space
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We have some very technologically adept people on SST. Let's discuss the plausibility of this. pl
http://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/did-spacex-just-pass-nasa-road-mars-180960629/?no-ist
"“Some of the bad guys are fiddling around, trying to improve the performance,” she said. “It may be a very basic, ‘actually take off’ kind of improvement, but it says that there is some level of active work in the drone area. It’s probably not super-sophisticated yet, but they’re working on them.”
Out-of-the-box, tactically viable drones can be purchased on Amazon for under $100, but face major operational limitations due to their short range, slow flight speed and minimal battery life. ISIS has used commercial drones to capture propaganda footage of battlefields and suicide attacks since at least December 2014, but improvising solutions to their limitations would raise the ante — and potential lethality.
Weaponized payloads, while difficult for ISIS to pull off, are not too far a stretch. “If it was me, I would be asking ‘How can I extend the battery life, how can I extend the operational range, how can I stick a payload on here that I can actually use? How can I really get that to work?’” Grant said." Marine Corps Times
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Having given drones (UAV) some thought, I have reached the conclusion that the introduction of UAVs to the kind of wars that I deal with will have a profound effect.
There has been a great deal of attention given to the use of very sophisticated UAVs by the US. The armed Predator has become the very symbol of the GWOT and it is not by any means the most fearsome UAV possessed by the US. Reconnaissance and armed UAVs are an interesting auxiliary capability for a state that possesses an air force.
OTOH, the possession of UAVs will be a game changer for those combatant parties that do not possess a traditional air capability. The ability to conduct reconnaissance and surveillance over extended distances will lead inevitably to armed systems.
The toy helicopter drones now being experimented with by IS are just the beginning. Fixed wing drones with actual engines are easy to make. The technology is familiar to model airplane enthusiasts who seem to exist in every country in the world. The process of scaling up sizes to pilotless aircraft with a wing span of ten feet or more is just a matter of experimentation and incremental improvement. Guidance systems over extended ranges will be more of a problem but some sort of GPS system and airborne relays of signals from the drone to its controllers can overcome that.
We are now glimpsing the shape of insurgent warfare to come. pl
"So what would happen if we learned that there is microbial life on Mars, or that it has existed there in the past? Well it would only challenge everything we know. We would have to come to grips with not having a unique status in the universe and will have to work out how to include extraterrestrial "life" in our existential or religious beliefs – to name a few.
On a scientific level, there's a lot at stake. Of course, it would also lead to major new efforts to find life on planets beyond Mars and even beyond our own solar system.
The first challenge if life is ever detected will be to prove that we didn't bring it there from Earth – a difficult task to achieve. Careful cataloguing of the "bioburden" load on the spacecraft and from the cleanrooms it was assembled in can provide a check on what organisms might have been present on the spacecraft when it left the Earth. Fundamentally though, life that arose beyond the Earth would likely result from subtly different chemical processes, so to find out for sure, a detailed in situ biochemical analysis would be required." phys.org
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The political farce in the US and the never ending spectacle of the Borg's failures in the ME are boring. Now, here is something interesting. pl
http://phys.org/news/2016-03-exomars-mission-life-marsand.html
There is so much going on in the world that I want state my opinions during these interesting days. I don't claim that this is reportage, only my opinion:
"Scientists announced Thursday that they have succeeded in detecting gravitational waves from the violent merging of two black holes in deep space. The detection was hailed as a triumph for a controversial, exquisitely crafted, billion-dollar physics experiment and as confirmation of a key prediction of Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity."
"It will also inaugurate a new era of astronomy in which gravitational waves are tools for studying the most mysterious and exotic objects in the universe, scientists declared at a euphoric news briefing at the National Press Club in Washington." (WaPo)
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This is a big deal. Judging by the giddiness and wide eyed enthusiasm of the scientists making the announcement today, this is a mind altering, stupendously big deal. They have proven the existence of ripples in the fabric of spacetime. Perhaps some of you understand this in its fullest meaning. Or perhaps some of you, like me, are more akin to a pig looking at a wristwatch… abundant curiosity, but precious little understanding. That lack of understanding does not diminish the greatness of this achievement. In the days to come, I will endeavor to reduce my ignorance. I want to share in the giddiness of those scientists.
I can still share in the pride of this scientific achievement. It brings to mind the Robert Ardrey quote I pasted above. I read “African Genisis” in high school. It was damned near a religious experience. Quite an accomplishment considering I was surrounded by Jesuits at that time. I’m not alone in sensing the momentousness of this accomplishment for mankind. Lawrence M. Krause wrote an insightful opinion piece in the New York Times today.
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"With presidential primaries in full steam, with the country wrapped up in concern about the economy, immigration and terrorism, one might wonder why we should care about the news of a minuscule jiggle produced by an event in a far corner of the universe."
"The answer is simple. While the political displays we have been treated to over the past weeks may reflect some of the worst about what it means to be human, this jiggle, discovered in an exotic physics experiment, reflects the best. Scientists overcame almost insurmountable odds to open a vast new window on the cosmos. And if history is any guide, every time we have built new eyes to observe the universe, our understanding of ourselves and our place in it has been forever altered." (continue reading at NYT)
TTG
“Life on Earth is in trouble. That much we know. But how bad have things become – and how fast are events moving? How soon, indeed, before the Earth’s biological treasures are trashed, in what will be the sixth great mass extinction event? This is what Gerardo Caballos of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and his colleagues have assessed, in a paper that came out on Friday.“ (The Guardian)
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This paper lacks the cautious caveats that are usually present in scientific studies. The researchers are pretty damned sure of their results and the implications of those results. The entire study along with supporting data and metrics is freely available online under the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial license. My guess is that the researchers feel it is too important to be merely summarized in a few sensational articles and then left to languish in an obscure scientific journal. It’s available here. This is one paragraph from the study.
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“The evidence is incontrovertible that recent extinction rates are unprecedented in human history and highly unusual in Earth’s history. Our analysis emphasizes that our global society has started to destroy species of other organisms at an accelerating rate, initiating a mass extinction episode unparalleled for 65 million years. If the currently elevated extinction pace is allowed to continue, humans will soon (in as little as three human lifetimes) be deprived of many biodiversity benefits. On human time scales, this loss would be effectively permanent because in the aftermath of past mass extinctions, the living world took hundreds of thousands to millions of years to re-diversify. Avoiding a true sixth mass extinction will require rapid, greatly intensified efforts to conserve already threatened species and to alleviate pressures on their populations—notably habitat loss, overexploitation for economic gain, and climate change. All of these are related to human population size and growth, which increases consumption (especially among the rich), and economic inequity. However, the window of opportunity is rapidly closing.” (Science Advances)
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Gerardo Caballos, the leader of the research team, pointed to Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si, as a sign of hope. This encyclical goes far beyond a simple message of “give a hoot, don’t pollute.” This sinner does not feel up to divining the deeper meanings of Laudato Si at the moment. That will take time and prayer. Pope Francis begins by saying the encyclical is for every living person on the planet, not just Roman Catholics. I suggest we all read it or, at least, read some of the more serious reviews. Is it mere coincidence that Laudato Si and the study on the sixth mass extinction appear within days of each other? Perhaps the timing is divine.
https://thejesuitpost.org/2015/06/an-overview-of-laudato-si/
https://thejesuitpost.org/2015/06/what-you-might-overlook-in-the-papal-encyclical/
Laudato Si The encyclical on the Vatican website
Jason Petta, an associate professor of physics at Princeton and the lead author of the study, said, “It is basically as small as you can go with these single-electron devices.”"
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I had never heard of "quantum computing" until recently. pl
This article completely grabbed my attention. I am an amatuer futurist, a long time reader of science fiction and managed to earn a minor in ecological science (emphasis on bio-systems).
What struck me is the creeping nature of discovering (the possibility turning into fact) that we have evidence of microbial life on Mars in the past eons. There was a famous ‘false positive’ during the Viking Lander era, the continuous discovery of spikes of methane (often related to microbial action on Earth) and various formations of mineral formation and deposit that, on Earth, occur in the presence of warm water. Yet rigorous science always demands that an observation is repeatable and other reasonable explanations have been ruled out.
That is obviously harder to do in the setting of studying these things on Mars. The rate of failure of probes to the Red Planet is high. The current advanced rover, Opportunity, took a impressive feat of engineering and program management to land a golf cart sized machine on the surface.
So, when a scientist says that a rock formation on Mars resembles the same pattern of fossils back on Earth, what references can we go to to understand how this more than likely billion year old formation near Opportunity is, in fact, an artifact produced by ancient life, the first to be discovered off our own planet?
We can go to Wiki to get a reference to a remarkable process that is probably 3.9 billion years old and can still be seen working today. It’s called stromatolite formation. The pictures in Wiki show both ancient fossilized stroma and current ones forming in Australia.
“”Stromatolites or stromatoliths (/strɵˈmætoʊlaɪts/; from Greek στρώμα, strōma, mattress, bed, stratum, and λίθος, lithos, rock) are layered bio-chemical accretionary structures formed in shallow water by the trapping, binding and cementation of sedimentary grains by biofilms (microbial mats) of microorganisms, especially cyanobacteria.[1] Stromatolites provide ancient records of life on Earth by fossil remains which might date from more than 3.5 billion years ago.””
The microbial mats mentioned are the same mechanism that Nora Noffke is proposing as the agent in creating the fossil presentation she detects in the Opportunity pictures.
If we can verify this as highly probable, we will have crossed the ‘life can only form on Earth’ threshold. As our science is busy looking for exoplanets in the ‘Goldilocks Zone’ (most favorable orbits for the formation of earth like life in other solar systems), we get to confront the questions to our view of our place in the universe. What will the anti-Darwinists say, other than denial, in the face of reason, when some future astronaut/scientist looks into an electron microscope and declares that a formation on Mars was in fact created by microbes, perhaps a billion years ago?
For myself, if I am alive to hear and see that, it will be perhaps the most profound moment of my life.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/08/life-on-mars-photos-scientist_n_6425392.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromatolite
"On Tuesday, December 16, 2014, NASA scientists attending the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco announced the detection of organic compounds on Mars. The announcement represents the discovery of the missing “ingredient” that is necessary for the existence – past or present – of life on Mars.
Indeed, the extraordinary claim required extraordinary evidence – the famous assertion of Dr. Carl Sagan. The scientists, members of the Mars Science Lab – Curiosity Rover – mission, worked over a period of 20 months to sample and analyze Martian atmospheric and surface samples to arrive at their conclusions. The announcement stems from two separate detections of organics: 1) ten-fold spikes in atmospheric Methane levels, and 2) drill samples from a rock called Cumberland which included complex organic compounds." Universe Today
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I would bet my own money that there is a lot of water on Mars. Terraforming is probably a real possibility. pl
http://www.universetoday.com/117384/nasas-curiosity-rover-detects-methane-organics-on-mars/
"United States Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) is an armed forces sub-unified command subordinate to United States Strategic Command. The command is located in Fort Meade, Maryland, and centralizes command of cyberspace operations, organizes existing cyber resources and synchronizes defense of U.S. military networks" wiki
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If it is established that the North Korean government and/or its agents attacked Sony then I say, let slip the dogs of cyberwar. Hacking? You like hacking and destructive cyberwar activity? Hah! We will burn your servers into piles of smoldering kimchi !! pl
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/18/us-sony-cybersecurity-theaters-idUSKBN0JV2MA20141218
"Heberprot-P is the brand name of a drug developed by scientists at the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB) in Cuba as a cure for diabetic foot ulcer. The product contains epidermal growth factor (EGF) to be applied by intra-lesional injections directly in the wound site.[2][3][4] It has been found to "promote granulation and healing in advanced diabetic foot ulcers". Heberprot-P is indicated for the treatment of poor prognosis of deep, extensive, and terminal DFU not responding to comprehensive and/or extensive conventional methods, particularly in grades 3, 4 and 5 of Wagner's Classification with average ulcer size bigger than 20 cm2, of both neuropathic and ischemic etiology with high risk amputation. Clinical studies in 344 patients with advanced diabetic foot ulcers (Wagner´s grade 3 or 4, median size >20 cm2, ischemic ulcers not excluded) have shown that injected recombinant EGF has the potential to promote complete granulation in more than 80%, with complete wound healing (re-epithelialization) in more than 50% of subjects usually unresponsive to other treatments. Injected recombinant EGF has the potential to reduce amputation rates, with a considerable personal and public health improvement, including longer survival." Wiki
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As I have just explained to someone who used to comment on SST, I have no use for communism and its friends but the devil must be given his due.
Many Americans are mutilated or die every year because of diabetic foot ulcers. First the toes go, then the feet and later the legs. Death follows.
This drug has been available since 2007? One might ask why it has not been available in the States? Was this caused by the idiocy of the present sanctions against Cuba? Did the possession by the Cuban government of the world patent pose an insuperable barrier to entry of this drug into our marketplace? Would the FDA have proven to be another insuperable barrier?
pl
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heberprot-P
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diabetic_foot_ulcer
You all are desperate to have an Ebola thread. I have dumped your OT comments on this in the interest of keeping my records sorted out. pl
Col. Lang, I spent my early years at a skeptical boarding school in New England. They taught us that faith was an artifact of a more primitive time. It was to be humored but never to be taken seriously. Man had moved on, or at least that culture in New England had moved on, to better things. These were modern men with modern answers. They no longer needed the prophets to guide their lives. I have to laugh, now, when I think of that. Obamas words are a testament to that culture and how my classmates thought. We were infused with purpose, and we were intent on redeeming the world. In our own right, as his language suggests, we were no less religious than the dour pilgrims before us. Our faith was a secular one, but it was no less dogmatic. We had lost our god, but we had not lost Winthrop's creed. We were so convinced of modernism though. Our answers, unlike those who came before, were both right and universal. Indeed, we believed that backward beliefs and the shackles of primitive religions were the only obstacles to our mission. We were missionaries, but we couldn't understand that. Obama suffers from that, as do many in his circle. They do not understand the peculiar nature of their values. They do not understand that their values are the product of their culture, and can hardly be considered universal truths. They do not understand that the primitive and backwards peoples of the world will resist them, and forcefully so. - Eliot
""The point is that Afghanistan has got to figure out how to get along as a nation, and there have been a lot of steps toward nation building," he said. "A lot of local warlord-type leaders have been marginalized - not all of them completely."
Mr. Boucher, who is assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asian affairs, also attributed some of the chatter to political jockeying ahead of presidential and parliamentary elections in Afghanistan late next year.
"That's bringing out a little more these days - resentments and alliances between groups and talk about ethnic politics, but I think there is a stronger movement toward creating a sense of nation."
The Northern Alliance was founded by mostly Uzbek and Tajik warlords and took power after the Soviet pullout in 1989. The Taliban was formed later as a Pashtun resistance to the alliance and seized control of most of Afghanistan in 1996. The Bush administration relied on the Northern Alliance to capture northern Afghanistan in 2002. Washtimes
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This kind of policy formulation is derived from an excessive exposure to political science (PS) professors at an impressionable age.
PS sells the idea that human society is evolving towards higher forms. The creed in this secular religion holds that human behavior is universal in nature in all important aspects and that apparent differences are fated to disappear as mankind and its societies develop toward higher and more general forms. The form sought by the more practical is that of national states. Some of the more visionary seek the emergence of a globalized world culture and state. PS is an idea system, that originated in the age of cultural, literary and scholarly romanticism of the 19th Century. European scholars like Durkheim and Weber reflected the same set of ideas that created romantic nationalism, marxism (a very romantic idea), belief in the "Golden Ages" of various peoples, Germans, Italians, Jews, etc. For minority group scholars like Durkheim and Weber, the notion of redefining societies within a new paradigm is always attractive. The Arab World was late to the European "Romantic Age" so the creation of paradigms like Baathism, Phalangism or the Syrian Social Party came along a bit later than the European copies of this phenomenon. For the minority member, a new paradigm that does not recognize the old one that considered you to be marginal is clearly a good thing.
These State Department types are soaked in PS. It permeates their thinking as much as it does that of the Jacobins. The Defense Department is also infested with this kind of thinking since so many military area specialists and civilian policy people have been sent to graduate school in PS and/or International Relations, a related disorder and delusion.
Continue reading "The US Government and "Afghan Man." republished 9/27/2014" »
"Two teams of scientists published studies on Sunday showing that blood from young mice reverses aging in old mice, rejuvenating their muscles and brains. As ghoulish as the research may sound, experts said that it could lead to treatments for disorders like Alzheimer’s disease and heart disease.
“I am extremely excited,” said Rudolph Tanzi, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, who was not involved in the research. “These findings could be a game changer.”" NY Times
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I look forward to asking to be recalled to active duty. Hah! pl
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/05/science/young-blood-may-hold-key-to-reversing-aging.html?_r=0
"Researchers in the US have overcome a key barrier to making nuclear fusion reactors a reality. In results published in Nature, scientists have shown that they can now produce more energy than put into igniting fuel, at least on an experimental scale. The use of fusion as a source of energy remains a long way off, but the latest development is an important step toward that goal. Nuclear fusion is the process that powers the Sun and billions of other stars in the universe. If mastered, it could provide an unlimited source of clean energy because the raw materials are plentiful and the operation produces no carbon emissions. During the fusion process, smaller atoms fuse into larger ones releasing huge amounts of energy. To achieve this on Earth, scientists have to create conditions similar to those at the center of the Sun, which involves creating very high pressures and temperatures." Ars Technica
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I find it difficult to imagine how a fusion technology could be made to work at the pressures and temperatures mentioned in the article or if the system did work how large the mechanism would have to be.
Nevertheless, the prospect of virtually unlimited energy supplies without any carbon emissions is certainly enticing. pl
"HARI SREENIVASAN: So what are the specific diseases and how did they narrow down the list of what to tackle?
MONICA LANGLEY: That’s a good question. At first the head of the N.I.H. is Francis Collins and he’s the one who sequenced – led the human genome experiment – and he wanted to map all diseases. That was his grand idea. And the drug companies were like ‘Are you crazy? We can’t think of some big experiment like that. We want something that will go into our pipeline and help us make money. So they looked at what diseases they thought were within the realm of possibility or else were what patients really wanted. And they came up with Alzheimer’s with the aging population; diabetes with the population getting fatter. And they also came up with two autoimmune diseases – rheumatoid arthritis and lupus — for this initial five-year project." Newshour
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I think I will try to stick around long enough to see how this works. pl
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/ten-big-drug-companies-unite-study-major-diseases/
"Moon Express recently unveiled the MX-1 spacecraft design at the Autodesk University in Las Vegas. The Mountain View, California-based company is in the commercial space race, competing for the $40-million-Google Lunar X prize. The coffee-table sized spacecraft will be powered by solar panels and hydrogen peroxide and can move about the lunar surface. Water on the lunar surface could be a "potential source of rocket fuel on the lunar surface," the company said." Nature World
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I would think that it is clear that without commercial profits or at least a "break even" point with big salaries and bonuses the long term prospects for the whole space thing are dim.
I say that with great sorrow because "space" like Bigfoot is high on my personal agenda. There are lots of ore laden rocks out there and Heinlein long ago and he devised a great way to transport ;the loot" back to earth. His sociological musing about things like "line" marriages were also entertaining. pl
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Adam L. Silverman, PhD*
COL Lang asked for information pertaining to centrifuges, enrichment, and proliferation. At the following two links are two excellent articles - one article and one report - dealing with these issues.
Alexander Glaser's "Characteristics of the Gas Centrifuge for Uranium Enrichment and Their Relevance for Nuclear Weapon Proliferation (corrected)" from Science and Global Security, 2008
and
Krass et als "Uranium Enrichment and Nuclear Weapon Proliferation" from SIPRI, 1983.
* Adam L. Silverman is the Cultural Advisor at the US Army War College. The views expressed here are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of the US Army War College and/or the US Army.
** Imageof Krakoa the Island that Walks Like a Man, found at Doctor Nerdlove and taken from the story in Giant Sized X-Men #1
"On Thursday, however, CERN stopped hesitating. They’ve announced that the the particle described in July 2012 was, in fact, a Higgs Boson. “The preliminary results with the full 2012 data set are magnificent and to me it is clear that we are dealing with a Higgs boson though we still have a long way to go to know what kind of Higgs boson it is,” spokesperson Joe Incandela said in a statement. To make this final determination, the dataset was analyzed to see if the quantum properties of the boson discovered in July matched the properties that are currently predicted by physics. After tests in two different detectors, it was confirmed that the particle possessed those properties." forbes
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OK. I actually know a little physics, but I would like to have someone here explain the answer to my question. pl
http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/03/16/cern-now-certain-it-has-discovered-the-higgs-boson/
Nautical Archaeology: The Wreck Of The Evelyn (Norcom)
Non-Solar Images: Astrophotography by John Minnerath, Part 3
Hydrogen Alpha Solar Images- Astrophotography by John Minnerath, Part 2
In honor of the approach of Christmas festivities and such like that I offer this recipe which I "inherited" from a friend's grandmother down in Southside Virginia. Over the years I have tinkered with it a bit here and there and would welcome suggestions. I won't necessarily take them, but I WILL welcome them.
The culinary influence of the South seems to be growing. "Miz Paula's" show on the cooking channel is an example, but sometimes people don't know where the dishes come from.
I once had a friend (Northern) express surprise when informed that "Biscuits and Gravy" are not a new thing developed in LA. Oh, well.
Remember: After it is all cooked, including baking, put it in the refrigerator over night. It is ALWAYS served cold. SLICE IT THIN!!!!
"A country ham can be hung up in your basement indefinitely before it is re-hydrated. Pay no attention to any signs of mold, etc. To cook a dry-cured country ham from Madison County in God's own Commonwealth, you first take it out of the net bag, then soak it in a big cauldron in which the ham will be covered with cold water. You soak it for anything from 10 to 18 hours, depending on how much salt you want to get out of it. I would recommend about 15 or 16 hours, changing the water 2 or 3 times. Throw the water away, fill with new water to cover the ham. In the water put a medium sized quartered onion studded with six or eight cloves, a dozen black pepper corns, half a dozen Allspice berries, a bay leaf, a quartered apple, and some cider. I would put in a cup of Bourbon whiskey, but maybe you won't. Incidentally, the alcohol will all cook away, so all that will be left is the taste. Bring the water to a boil, and then reduce the heat so that the ham simmers in all this wonderful stuff. Simmer 20 minutes a pound plus another twenty minutes to be sure. Take it out of the pot and let cool until "just warm." Skin it with something like a really sharp "boning" knife. Work the blade parallel to the surface of the ham to take off the skin and then the thick layer of fat underneath. Take the fat off in thinnish layers. You will be surprised at how much fat there is. Be careful you don't get into the meat underneath. The fat is translucent. The meat is, well, not translucent. Once you get all the fat off, score the ham lightly and stud with cloves. Coat this marvelous object with a glaze. We use one made of real maple syrup, brown sugar, dry mustard, and a cup of Bourbon whiskey. Remember. The alcohol will be gone after cooking. Put the ham in a preheated 350 degree oven for an hour. Let it cool completely and you are ready to carve. The ham has two flat sides and two curved sides. Using a very sharp ham slicer with a long, narrow blade, slice some very thin slices off the less curved of the two curved sides to make it flat. Then stand the ham on that side and start carving off the more curved side. Start down near the hock by making a vertical cut to the bone, then slice paper thin slices, working your way toward the big end of the ham and gradually inclining the knife so that after a while you are cutting long, very thin slices that are six or eight inches long. This ham will keep in the refrigerator two or three months, wrapped in aluminum, and is an endless source of sandwiches (turkey and country ham is one great possibility), snacks, etc. Make sure you slice it as near to paper thin as you can manage. Otherwise, the full flavor of the ham will overwhelm you."
"The newly released study has found that water was most likely formed on the surface of the Moon by the constant stream of charged particles ejected from the Sun. The finding “represents an unanticipated, abundant reservoir” of water on the moon, according to researchers from three U.S. universities, who formally reported their results Sunday in the journal Nature Geoscience." Bell Jar
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I remember this. Robert Heinlein wrote about this 60 or 70 years ago in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress." In his novel, Luna has been colonised and Terra is the colonial overlord exploiting the mining products of the Loonies. The big rocks mined are filled with lithium and other rare earths. They are shot back to planet earth with a mass driver (someone will explain). The rocks land in the Pacific Ocean somewhere where they are retrieved, for...?
The inevitable revolt takes place on the moon and freedom rings forth through the maze of tunnels that these people live in. The best part of the book was the obsessive, inevitable meditation by Heinlein on the various forms of marriage among the Loonies. As a teenager this certainly seemed the most interesting part to me. The most exotic of these forms was the "line marriage." Look it up.
So now it is known that there is a lot of water of the moon. The sky is the limit. pl
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