165 MPH gusts in Scotland. The ‘mill was supposedly feathered and locked but something bad happened, nobody hurt fortunately.
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Monthly Archives: December 2011
Could the Jetsons be Close? This would foment radical change and growth…
I had not realized that LENR (low energy nuclear reactions) research had continued. The PPT’s are actually pretty exciting but the proof is in the repeat ability. There does appear to be some developing theory and theory based experimentation, if this work bears fruit it would be a game changer.
Picture has nothing to do with the article, just APOD ‘eye candy.’
AWST – NASA, SpaceX Set First Dragon Launch To ISS
NASA and SpaceX announce a February launch for Dragon to the ISS.
Later in the article is this, first articulation of something that should have been policy from the start:
Philip McAlister, director of commercial spaceflight development at NASA headquarters, told the conference he expects regular commercial cargo deliveries to the ISS to begin next year, followed in about five years by commercial crew flights. Although it is currently funded only through 2020, McAlister says he expects the station to continue to operate “as long as it is safe and productive,” serving as an anchor destination for a growing space economy in orbit.
Drone Eye Candy: The RQ-170 at Kandahar | Defense Tech
Aside
AWST blog on RQ170 loss
More Details on RQ-170 Crash and Implications of Iran’s Recovery.
Also apparently we had time to retrieve or destroy the thing but the President nixed it as too provocative. Given that we are in a state of cool war with Iran, I guess this is important. But to be honest I think the only reason that matters is world opinion…
Some very blunt advice…
This article from the Cato Institute is very hard for me to argue with. Essentially the only parts of gov’t that matter when talking about deficits are (drum roll please) Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and the Defense department. And even the DoD is relatively small beer, it’s a traditional bee in the bonnet of Libertarian/Cato types (with some reason.) Mr. Bandow points out that all of these programs have to become purely means tested, I think the age has to move up into the mid seventies and should start doing so essentially on a year every year basis ASAP and that anyone ten years or more from ‘retirement’ would be affected, ten years is a huge time horizon to deal with the change.
Anyway read the article it’s timely and prescribes the sort of major overhaul we need.
Amazon and the law of the jungle
Mark Cooker the founder of Smashwords is also an epubs apostle, he’s out there selling the eBook revolution to the readers, writers and everyone in between. He’s got a post up on Amazon’s new Kindle Direct Platform (KDP) is a Kindle only eBook platform that promises the author some part of a 500K / month pot depending on your percentage of downloads from KDP inventory, I suppose on top of the direct sales. Now as he says himself he has a bit of a vested interested in dissing this because KDP because it cuts Smashwords out of part of the market but his point is that in essence its subtly anti author. Once on KDP you cannot sell through any other venue so you have to depend on Amazon being the principal sales channel for eBooks. And this 1 limits your market, and 2 in the long term if Amazon ‘wins’ puts the author at the mercy of Amazon.
Mark also points out that Amazon is pushing changes to the law about who can set the price on a book. It appears as if Amazon has always wanted this power, rather than the publisher. Now that may seem reasonable with Smashwords the author is the publisher, why shouldn’t the author of an eBook set the price? If it’s too high then perhaps that’s the authors problem, not the distributor. The distributor still gets their cut for the books that are sold.
DoD Buzz | The Iran problem
The problem with Iran is that there is nothing we can do about it as the article below points out. Short of all out war we are not going to make the situation any better proliferation wise and almost any other option at least leaves open the opportunity for long termsolutions.
The article points to a think tank paper arguing (rightly I think) that Deterrence like that used vs. the USSR is the most realistic option but it requires constant vigilance and a very credible threat on our side. Maintaining such a credible threat is not cheap, has to be part of the grand strategy and force structure of the US. The issue is, is the current administration up to the job of planning that grand strategy? Is the US up to sustaining another deterrent axis and the costs associated, the article highlights the (largely artificial) stresses even the limited missile shield for Europe is causing with Russia.
One interesting thing about this is that all the Wests attempts to halt proliferation have in the end come to nought, the worst of the worst are going to get the nuc’s, unless we provide an almost blanket assurance that we will avenge any first use then at least one more tier of nuc powers will emerge.
It’s also of some ironic interest that it was the US’s perfection of smart weapons and limited war tactics that could be seen as driving this nuc arms race. We should remember that at one time or another we saw nucs as the cheap counter weapon to the Russian horde . These smallish countries now see nuc’s as the cheap counter to folks with deep pockets and smarter magazines.
Air Force Mini Shuttle the future Swiss army knife of space
In a testing procedure, the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle taxis on the flightline in June 2009 at Vandenberg AFB, Calif
The Air Forces X37B autonomous mini shuttle has proven a great success. The first prototype orbiting for 9 months and then returning safely. The second unit is currently at 10+ months. Also the craft have shown that they are very maneuverable in orbit and very hard to keep track of from the ground even by pretty sophisticated observers. Now The AF is talking about an X37C that could carry six passengers. But it would still be autonomous, i.e. the passengers are passengers not pilots. To me that is probably a rather weak cover/secondary use. Most of the craft would spend most of their lives with no passengers, doing an array of important tasks. I think the AF like s the idea of a more ‘drone’ like operating profile, multi use(refuel, recovery, small launch, medium duration observation, etc) able to upgrade, lower orbit so less massive ‘optics’ for any class of objective. This would be the true space fighter, not a combat vehicle, but a platform that can do almost anything almost anywhere (in orbit) on very short notice without giving away the mission just by its shape/launch orbit.
Of course they need to lose the expensive aeroshell, it was necessary I assume to keep from having to do something even more expensive with the Boosters control laws, but it sure looks expensive, and for the six person version would get pretty bulky. Of course a 6 person crew though the same as the shuttle does not mean a shuttle scale vehicle, Shuttle was a mixed cargo freight hauler most of its size was for cargo I don’t the X37C will be much more than 2x maybe 3x the size of the diminutive 29ft X37B.
The US Air Force X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle during encapsulation within the United Launch Alliance Atlas V 5-meter fairing Feb. 8, 2011, at Astrotech in Titusville, Fla. The fairing protects and carries the OTV into space.
A bit overweight Goldilocks
This article discussing another good candidate for a relatively Earth like world orbiting a not to distant star.
This week astronomers have announced the existence of a planet discovered to be in human livable range of star not unlike our sun, with a size 2.4 times that of our Earth and a temperature of approximately 22 degrees celsius. This is the most recent in a line of possibilities for habitable planets in the realm of possibility as outlined by an international team of scientists in a paper by the name of “A Two-Tiered Approach to Assessing the Habitability of Exoplanets” as found at Mary Ann Libert Inc, publishing — these scientists are not the same group that’ve discovered this newest planet, but they’re sure to add the new finding to their list sooner than later. What we’ve got here is Kepler 22-b, a body that is what the Kepler space telescope team says is the closest we’ve ever gotten to discovering a planet that’s like our own – an “Earth 2.0,” if you will.
G the gravity constant, being a constant would indicate that your average 150lb person (on Earth) is going to tip the scales at 300lbs. This seems in the realm of supportable but it’ll be a chiropractor’s paradise. Also would have to wonder about atmospheric density and depth, seems like there would be all sorts of interesting knock on effects.
This World and Others 