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Richard Branson: We owe it to test pilot to continue Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo

November 3, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Excerpt from smh.com.auThe Tony Blair grin was gone but Richard Branson was unbowed by disaster when he appeared on American breakfast television on Monday morning. He vowed his program to hurl paying customers into the...

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Branson vows to find out cause of spacecraft crash

November 1, 2014 / / 0 Comments




Excerpt from
sfgate.com 

MOJAVE, Calif. (AP) — Billionaire Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson vowed Saturday to find out what caused the crash of his prototype space tourism craft that killed one of two test pilots, adding that while he remains committed to civilian space travel "we are not going to push on blindly."

In grim remarks at the Mojave Air and Space Port, where the craft known as SpaceShipTwo was under development, Branson gave no details of Friday's accident and deferred to the National Transportation Safety Board, whose team had just arrived.


"We are determined to find out what went wrong," he said, asserting that safety has always been the top priority of the program that envisions taking wealthy tourists six at a time to the edge of space for a brief experience of weightlessness and a view of Earth below.

"Yesterday, we fell short," he said. "We'll now comprehensively assess the results of the crash and are determined to learn from this and move forward."

He also criticized early speculation about crash causes. "To be honest, I find it slightly irresponsible that people who know nothing about what they're saying can be saying things before the NTSB makes their comments."

The pilot killed in the test flight was identified Saturday as Michael Tyner Alsbury, 39, of nearby Tehachapi. The surviving pilot is Peter Siebold, 43, who parachuted to safety and was hospitalized.
Both worked for Scaled Composites, the company developing the spaceship for Virgin Galactic. Scaled Composite said Alsbury was the co-pilot for the test flight. Siebold, who was piloting SpaceShipTwo, "is alert and talking with his family and doctors," the company said in a statement.

More than a dozen investigators in a range of specialties were forming teams to examine the crash site, collect data and interview witnesses, NTSB Acting Chairman Christopher A. Hart told a press conference at Mojave Air and Space Port.

"This will be the first time we have been in the lead of a space launch (accident) that involved persons onboard," said Hart, noting that the NTSB did participate in investigations of the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle disasters.

Virgin Galactic — owned by Branson's Virgin Group and Aabar Investments PJS of Abu Dhabi — plans to fly passengers to altitudes more than 62 miles above Earth. The company sells seats on each prospective journey for $250,000.

The company says that "future astronauts," as it calls customers, include Stephen Hawking, Justin Bieber, Ashton Kutcher and Russell Brand. The company reports receiving $90 million from about 700 prospective passengers.

On Saturday, Branson said none of that money has been spent and that anyone who wanted a refund could get it. However, he said, no one has asked, and instead someone signed up on the day of the accident in a show of support.


Friday's flight marked the 55th for SpaceShipTwo, which was intended to be the first of a fleet of craft. This was only the fourth flight to include a brief rocket firing. The rocket fires after the spacecraft is released from the underside of a larger carrying plane. During other flights, the craft either was not released from its mother ship or functioned as a glider after release.

The NTSB investigators were expected to head to an area about 20 miles from the Mojave airfield where debris from SpaceShipTwo fell over a wide area of uninhabited desert Friday morning. The spacecraft broke up after being released from a carrier aircraft at high altitude, according to Ken Brown, a photographer who witnessed the accident.

Friday's accident was the second this week involving private space flight. On Tuesday, an unmanned commercial supply rocket bound for the International Space Station exploded moments after liftoff in Virginia.

SpaceShipTwo is based on aerospace design maverick Burt Rutan's award-winning SpaceShipOne prototype, which became the first privately financed manned rocket to reach space in 2004. Three people died in a blast at the Mojave Air and Space Port in 2007 while testing a rocket motor for SpaceShipTwo.

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Baby Ben Born to Our World Bearing a Message for Humanity ~ By Greg Giles

September 26, 2014 / / 0 Comments



Baby Ben calf 09252014 A new calf at Vale Wood Farms, a family dairy farm business in Loretto, Cambria County, bears a No. 7 on his forehead. The farm has named him "Baby Ben."
Beautiful Pennsylvania calf Baby Ben


Does Baby Ben, the beautiful Cambria County Pennsylvania calf named after hometown Pittsburgh Steeler quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, come into our our world bearing a message for an awakening humanity?


The number SEVEN is one of the most significant numbers in the Holy Bible, and was the most sacred number to the ancient Hebrews. Seven is the total sum of earth crowned with heaven - the four-square earth plus the divine COMPLETENESS OF GOD.

The number SEVEN is used over 700 times in the Bible, and in the  Book of Revelation the number SEVEN is used symbolically from beginning to end. There are SEVEN churches, SEVEN Spirits, SEVEN stars, SEVEN seals, SEVEN trumpets, SEVEN vials, SEVEN personages, SEVEN dooms, and SEVEN new things.

SEVEN symbolizes Spiritual Perfection. All of life revolves around this number, and for very good reason. If a universe was to be created and it was to be seeded with everlasting life, SEVEN levels or stages or dimensions would be the natural choice, as in music theory, there are seven notes to the major scale, with the 8th note being the octave when another scale begins  again.  
  
Baby Ben was born Saturday on Vale Wood Farms in Loretto, Pennsylvania, about 80 miles east of Pittsburgh. “He turned to face me, and I said, ‘Wow, it’s a perfect little 7,’ ” Ms. Itle-Westrick said.She posted the picture to the farm’s Facebook page Wednesday. By the next afternoon, Baby Ben totaled more than 1,100 “likes” and nearly 100 comments.

The family doesn’t sell any meat from their cows, Ms. Itle-Westrick said. Baby Ben will be on display, and available for photo opportunities — during the farm’s pumpkin patch event Oct. 1-19.
Greg Giles

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U.S. Creates Largest Protected Area in the World ~ 3X Larger than California

September 25, 2014 / / 0 Comments


Photo of fish swimming in the Palmyra Atoll.
A school of fish swims under the water around Palmyra Atoll, in an area of the Pacific that is already part of a marine sanctuary.
Photograph by Randy Olson, National Geographic



By Brian Clark Howard




NEW YORK—The Obama administration announced Thursday that it will create the largest marine reserve in the world by expanding an existing monument around U.S.-controlled islands and atolls in the central Pacific.


The Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument will now be nearly 490,000 square miles, nearly three times the size of California and six times larger than its previous size. Commercial fishing, dumping, and mining will be prohibited in the reserve, but recreational fishing will be allowed with permits, and boaters may visit the area.


The protected area that Secretary of State John Kerry announced this morning is actually smaller than the 782,000 square miles that the president initially considered. But environmentalists, preservationists, and conservation groups that had pushed for the expansion called President Barack Obama's designation a historic victory in their efforts to limit the impact of fishing, drilling, and other activities that threaten some of the world's most species-rich waters.

Map of the pacific remote islands.
MAGGIE SMITH, NG STAFF. SOURCES: U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE; USGS; MARINE CONSERVATION INSTITUTE


"What has happened is extraordinary. It is history making. There is a lot of reason we should be celebrating right now," said Elliott Norse, founder and chief scientist of the Seattle-based Marine Conservation Institute.


Enric Sala, an ocean scientist and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, called the newly expanded monument "a great example of marine protection."


During the past several years, Sala and National Geographic's Pristine Seas project—which aims to explore, survey, and protect several of the last wild places in the world's oceans—have been key players in expeditions to the region that helped to put a spotlight on its biodiversity. Sala also met with White House officials to make the scientific case for expanding the Pacific Remote Islands monument. 


Photo of a sea anemone providing cover for a transparent shrimp in Kingman Reef, Pacific Ocean.
Tentacles of a sea anemone provide cover for a transparent shrimp in Kingman Reef, which is part of the existing marine sanctuary. Photograph by Brian Skerry, National Geographic Creative


In announcing the expansion of protected marine areas, Kerry said, “We’re committed to protecting more of the world's ocean. Today, one to three percent of the ocean is protected, that's it. That's why President Obama will sign a proclamation today that will create one of the largest maritime protected areas in the world. It will be protected in perpetuity.”

Michael Boots, chairman of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality, made clear that by expanding protected areas, the administration sought to balance the need to preserve a range of marine species with concerns from the fishing industry, which had warned about the economic impact of curtailing deep-sea fishing areas.

"We thought [the monument decision] was a good way to balance what the science was telling us was important to protect and the needs of those who use the area," Boots said.


The administration said in a statement late Wednesday that "expanding the monument will more fully protect the deep coral reefs, seamounts, and marine ecosystems unique to this part of the world, which are also among the most vulnerable areas to the impacts of climate change and ocean acidification."


In June, when he first announced his intent to expand the monument, Obama said, "I'm using my authority as president to protect some of our nation's most pristine marine monuments, just like we do on land."


The June announcement was followed by a public comment period and further analysis by the White House, officials said. Thousands of people submitted comments, with many conservation groups and scientists offering their support. Some fishing and cannery groups, as well as a few members of the U.S. Congress opposed the expansion, citing the potential a loss of commercial fishing grounds. 


Norse said that the newly protected areas will safeguard endangered seabirds and other key species, including five endangered sea turtle species (such as loggerheads and leatherbacks), sooty terns and other terns, silky sharks and oceanic whitetip sharks, beaked whales, manta rays, red-tailed tropic birds, and deep-sea corals.

The expanded monument will help ensure that "there are some places that are as pristine as possible for as long as possible," Norse said. "I think a hundred years from now, people will be praising Barack Obama for having the vision to protect the Pacific remote islands."


"A Big Step"


Obama's Democratic administration is building on a national monument that was first created by his predecessor, Republican President George W. Bush, suggesting that "ocean protection may be one of the last bipartisan issues" in the politically divided United States, says David Helvarg, the author of several books on the ocean and the founder of the advocacy group Blue Frontier Campaign.

Democratic and Republican presidents going all the way back to Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican who served from 1901 to 1909, have used the 1906 Antiquities Act to designate national monuments. The law requires simply that an area be unique and considered worthy of protection for future generations. This is the 12th time Obama has used his authority under the Antiquities Act to protect environmental areas.

The area being protected by the administration will expand the protected areas from 50 miles offshore to 200 miles offshore around three areas—Wake Island, Johnston Atoll, and Jarvis Island—the maximum reach of the United States’ exclusive economic zone. The current 50-mile offshore protections around the Howland and Baker islands, and Kingman Reef and Palmyra Atoll, will not change.


"Although 71 percent of our planet is covered with saltwater, we have protected much more of the land than the ocean," Helvarg said. But the newly expanded monument is a big step in the right direction, he added.

Enforcing fishing bans in the monument will be a big challenge, Kerry acknowledged. "Agreements won't matter if no one is enforcing them," he said. "It's going to take training and resources."
Kerry said one measure that could help deter illegal fishing in the region, as well as around the world, would be to implement the Port State Measures Agreement, an international treaty that requires member nations to prevent illegally caught fish from entering the market. Eleven nations or parties have ratified the agreement, but a total of 25 must sign before the treaty will take effect.

"Our goal is to get this done this year," Kerry said.


Meanwhile, efforts to preserve more biologically diverse waters continue.


This week, National Geographic Society announced that it is dramatically expanding its campaign to help protect marine areas, with a goal of persuading governments to officially safeguard more than 770,000 square miles.


The plan, announced by former President Bill Clinton, includes programs that target the Seychelles—an archipelago in the Indian Ocean—northern Greenland, and South America's Patagonia region. The program builds on National Geographic's Pristine Seas project, which has financed ten scientific expeditions to remote areas of ocean around the world, including in the South Pacific and off Africa, Russia, and South America.

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So is Pluto a Planet Again or Not?

September 23, 2014 / / 0 Comments


Illustrated image of Pluto

theweathernetwork.com
ByScott Sutherland Meteorologist, theweathernetwork.com

Friday, July 18, 2014, 12:24 PM - For over 75 years, tiny Pluto enjoyed its status as the most distant planet in our solar system, but in 2006, it was demoted down to a 'dwarf planet' and its title was passed on to Neptune. Now, though, the editor of Astronomy magazine is sounding the rallying cry to re-open the debate about Pluto's nature, which could potentially redefine what it means to be a planet.

In 2006, when the International Astronomical Union (IAU) set down an official definition for what a 'planet' is, they came up with three rules:
1) The object must be in orbit around the Sun,
2) The object must be massive enough to be a sphere by its own gravitational force. More specifically, its own gravity should pull it into a shape of hydrostatic equilibrium, and
3) It must have cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.
Everything in the solar system technically orbits around the Sun, of course. Something like the Moon doesn't qualify, though, even though it's massive enough to be roughly spherical and its 'neighborhood' is as clear as Earth's is, because it only goes around the Sun as a consequence of being in orbit around Earth. Same goes for the moons of the other planets. Asteroids and comets don't qualify because they're not big enough to become spherical by their own gravity. Even Ceres (which is roughly spherical) doesn't make the cut, because it's in the asteroid belt, thus its 'neighborhood' isn't clear.
Pluto suffers the same problem as Ceres. It's definitely in orbit around the Sun (or at least the common gravitational focus it shares with Charon is in orbit around the Sun). It is massive enough to be a sphere. It just isn't considered to have cleared its neighborhood. So, not a planet, at least by the IAU rules.

However, while the first two rules are pretty clear and easy to determine, third isn't. According to Prof. Abel Méndez, of the University of Puerto Rico at Arecibo, "there is no standard 'cleared' metric." It seems that due to the very existence of the Kuiper Belt, Pluto loses its status. However, exactly how cleared does the neighborhood have to be? There are millions of near-Earth asteroids flying around us, and there are even some asteroids that are locked into the same orbit as Earth ('Earth trojans'). There are even more asteroids near Mars' orbit, due to its proximity to the asteroid belt. Jupiter has an extremely large collection of asteroids in its orbit, both preceding it (the Greeks) and following behind (the Trojans).
Even discounting these cases, as it is, when you go further out into the solar system, it gets harder and harder for an object to clear its neighborhood. This is simply because it makes fewer orbits around the Sun compared to objects closer to the Sun, and thus it encounters the other objects in its orbit far less often. Consider Earth, going around the Sun once every year, with Pluto orbiting every 247 years. So, whereas Earth has made roughly 4.5 billion trips around the Sun since it formed, Pluto has only made 18 million similar trips (if it formed at roughly the same time).
As Astronomy magazine editor David Eicher said: "At the Pluto-like distance of 40 astronomical units — 40 times farther away from the Sun then we are now — Earth would not clear its orbit of asteroids, and so would Earth then not be classified as a planet?"
Also, since recent evidence has pointed to the fact that there may be two super-Earth-sized objects out beyond Pluto, both of them would be considered 'dwarf planets' as well, despite one potentially being 10 times the mass of Earth and the other being up to 100 times the mass of Earth.
So, when it comes to Pluto, what's the case for making it a planet again? Based on the facts above and Eicher's own thoughts:
1) the definition of what 'cleared the neighborhood around its orbit' is, itself, unclear
2) it seems unjustifiable that an object even larger than the Earth would not be considered a planet, simply because it orbits far out in our solar system
3) an object's intrinsic characteristics should dictate what kind of object it is, not its location.
Indeed, if you take the IAU's definition and attempt to apply it to all objects we know about, the multitude of worlds that we've discovered outside our solar system aren't technically planets, despite being large enough and even if they've cleared their orbit, because they don't orbit around the Sun.
So, perhaps it's time to revise the IAU's definition, not only to reconsider Pluto for planetary status, but also to make the definition applicable to a wider range of objects. Even if they changed the first rule to have 'a star' instead of 'the Sun' and changed the emphasis of the third rule to be that the object is large enough compared to the rest of the objects in its orbit to be capable of clearing its neighborhood (given enough time), it might be a much better set of conditions to measure everything against.
As Astronomy's editors offer up their time and efforts to host a renewed debate about Pluto, what do you think about its status? Should it be a planet again, remain as a dwarf planet, or perhaps something else? Leave your ideas in the comments below.

pluto

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Galactic Federation of Light Ashtar May-12-2013

May 15, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Ashtar through Elizabeth Trutwin: ET Commander Ashtar Comments On Citizens Hearing In Washington
Thanks to Wes Annac:http://aquariusparadigm.com/2013/05/14/ashtar-through-elizabeth-trutwin-et-commander-ashtar-comments-on-citizens-hearing-in-washington/

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Suzanne Lie: My First Message from Mytria, 1995

May 3, 2013 / / 0 Comments

My First Message from Mytria by Suzanne Lie
Thanks to The Golden Age of Gaia
http://goldenageofgaia.com/2013/05/suzanne-lie-my-first-message-from-mytria-1995/
http://suzanneliephd.blogspot.co.uk/

Dear Readers,
I am so pleased to see all your wonderful

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Galactic Federation of Light Matthew Ward April-11-2013

April 12, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Matthew’s Message — April 11, 2013
APR 12 Thanks to Wes Annac: http://aquariusparadigm.com/2013/04/12/mattews-message-april-11-2013/

Original Link: http://www.matthewbooks.com/mattsmessage.htm

April 11, 2013

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Galactic Dreamflight April-13-2013

April 10, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Galactic Lightship Dreamflights 13APR2013
Thanks to Wes Annac: http://aquariusparadigm.com/2013/04/10/galactic-lightship-dreamflights-13apr2013/

Original Link: http://spirittrainchronicles.com/2013/04/10/galactic-lightship-dreamflights-13apr2013/

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Cosmic Awareness Newsletter 2012-01

March 8, 2012 / / 0 Comments

{mainvote}

7 March 2012

Channeler: Will Berlinghof

Well...Anasazi1 just made me realize that there was no Cosmic Awareness message posted here recently,so here's the most recent one avaiable right one,as the CAC newsletter is for mem...

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What You Put Out Is What You Get Back by Deborah Sorkin, MD

May 28, 2011 / / 0 Comments

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Your Thoughts, Every Thought has the Potentiality to Manifest into Form. Energy modulated by thought, word, deed or action is a dynamic exchange of information.

Resonance provides the mechanism for this dynamic exchange. Very ...

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Fetzer on 9-11

September 30, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Now I'm not attempting to beat this to death, at four in the morning, but this came up when I searched for something not even remotely related. Coincidence? I think not....

If you watch the comments on it at youtube, you ...

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Kicking off…. …and leaning back

September 21, 2010 / / 0 Comments

I got stranded at home today, by a lack of oxygen that had me put the bicycle back where it was, and mail my boss I'd not be joining him today. Since providence had already provided me with EagleEyes' comments on the topic, I decided to simply follow ...

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