A sample text widget
Etiam pulvinar consectetur dolor sed malesuada. Ut convallis
euismod dolor nec pretium. Nunc ut tristique massa.
Nam sodales mi vitae dolor ullamcorper et vulputate enim accumsan.
Morbi orci magna, tincidunt vitae molestie nec, molestie at mi. Nulla nulla lorem,
suscipit in posuere in, interdum non magna.
|
I can hear the ultrasonic twittering of the moonbats already: Problem May Delay Launch Of Mission To Pluto
The space probe called New Horizons is all set for a three-billion-mile, nine-year journey to Pluto. But the Atlas-5 rocket carrying the probe is not ready for liftoff.
Engineers think a propellant tank might be flawed, and they haven’t yet determined how to fix it.
“Well, we really don’t have those details,” said Dwayne Brown, of NASA.
The new problem comes on top of an effort to repair hurricane damage, which had already thrown the launch effort behind schedule.
An ancient, watery Mars was not always an acid bath
Drawn to Mars largely by signs of past Earth-like conditions, researchers have finally found definitive relics of gently lapping seas and balmier skies: in particular, deposits of sulfate salts. To form those sulfates, though, the ancient seas must have been acidic enough to burn off skin.
But a different tale is told by another class of minerals, fully mapped only recently: clays. They suggest that even before the era of the sulfates, Mars was drenched in water safe enough to dunk a hand in. “The clays indicate alteration with a lot of water,” says Fran?ois Poulet of the University of Paris-South, a member of the discovery team. “The sulfate indicates a second step in the climate of Mars.”
Looks like Bruce MacKenzie will have a ready supply of brickmaking materials.
One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputations.
— Eric Hoffer
Here’s a fascinating site archiving personal stories and photos from Hurricane Katrina, modeled on a similar project covering 9/11.
(I used to go to this B&N almost every Saturday morning. Oops.)
Commenter Wally expresses concern over the development of space:
Besides, who wants to go to McDonald’s Restaurant on Mars?
I do.
Not because I find the food appealing, but because of what the fact of a McDonald’s on Mars would say about the planet’s level of development. Shipping in from a distribution center on Earth all the mystery meat, synthetic cheese, pickles, onions, buns, soft-drink syrup, shoestring potatoes, condiments, service items, and other consumable products a franchised fast-food restaurant would require would be prohibitively expensive, at least by the modes of transportation available in the near term, so the existence of a simple McDonald’s on Mars would imply a whole range of other complex economic activities:
- the ranching (or decanting) of various types of meat;
- agriculture capable of supplying oil seeds, wheat, cucumbers, onions, sugarcane/corn, potatoes, tomatoes, and assorted spices;
- silviculture providing pulp stock for paper goods;
- processing facilities for the meat and other raw agricultural goods;
- secondary processing facilities, such as bakeries for the buns, plants for conversion of sugar or corn syrup into soft-drink concentrate, other plants producing ketchup, mustard, pickles, etc.;
- transportation for moving the raw materials and processed items (not to mention the consumers);
- a local construction industry capable of building a structure to house the restaurant, and a supply of building materials;
- a local manufacturing industry with the ability to produce the various pieces of specialized machinery and fittings required to turn the aforementioned consumables into final product and deliver them to customers — freezers, refrigerators, fry vats, grills, microwave ovens, soft-drink dispensers, cash registers, communications systems, preparation tables, sinks, water heaters, icemakers, customer furnishings, etc.;
- the constituent items (gears, motors, electromechanical elements, control devices, refrigerants, sheet metal, advanced plastics) that go into the production of such equipment;
- the miscellaneous secondary items involved in the running of the primary business, such as cleaning equipment and supplies;
- items taken for granted in a terrestrial McDonald’s: a supply of breathable air, potable water, and reliable electricity;
- a reliable supply chain making all of the above available on short notice;
- enough unskilled and surly teenagers to staff the restaurant;
- all of the above available at a cost which still allows the restaurant to make a profit;
- a trustworthy means of exchange (i.e.: money), and the financial infrastructure that goes with it;
- applicable legal structures (contract law, property law, etc.) and appropriate enforcement institutions; and
- enough customers to keep the restaurant profitable.
Not to mention the fact that a McDonald’s would be a pleasant alternative to a communal cafeteria that would be a more practical and efficient if drab means of providing meals. That is, the restaurant would indicate a level of development at which options for enjoyment are available, and people can concern themselves with quality of life (in this case the enjoyment of a simple pleasure) versus mere subsistence.
Who would go to a McDonald’s on Mars? I would — to celebrate the accomplishment that the existence of such a thing would symbolize.
…what you can buy on E-Bay:
- Boeing replacement workers delivered the third stage to NASA, on schedule;
- Space News has a summary of the mission and its progress to-date. Interesting tidbit:
In 2001, under pressure from the U.S. Congress, NASA held an open competition to find a cheaper way to do a Pluto flyby and ultimately selected the $500 million New Horizons proposal but did not request any funding for the mission. Congress funded the New Horizons program as a budget earmark for two years before NASA finally got the message and started requesting money for the mission.
- Alan Stern, “leader” of the New Horizons mission, explains the mission (including the need for an RTG to power it) in an editorial in the Daytona Beach News-Journal, which last week featured a bit of misleading fearmongering by anti-nuclear/anti-space “terrorist” Karl Grossman in the same space;
- PhysOrg.com profiles Gerard P. Kuiper and the science behind New Horizons;
- Florida Today opines that the safety risk from the New Horizons launch is small based on the design of the RTG being used and the testing the technology has been put through (though they appear to confuse “fail-safe” with “failure proof”);
- Meanwhile, in USA Today, Florida Today’s Todd Halvorson regurgitates Grossman’s talking points about lottery odds, and quotes Bruce Gagnon worrying about “making that area a nuclear wasteland” (what, like Nevada?) — giving both Grossman and Gagnon more attention than they merit;
- Preparation of the Atlas V launch vehicle continues, with on-pad dress rehearsal completed last week, encapsulation of the payload scheduled for today, and stack scheduled for Friday.
Jeff Foust looks at the upcoming launch of New Horizons, and wonders why there is less controversy (particularly from the luddites) than there was over Cassini.
Carl at No Oil for Pacifists has an interesting overview of the latest info on the Katrina debacle.
In short: there were failures at the federal level, to be sure, but as time goes on and more info comes out, Queen Bee Blanco and Ray Nagin appear to be the worst offenders with respect to poor leadership.
|
|