Tag: fourth (page 2 of 6)

5 Signs the California Drought Could Get Worse

May 19, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Anastasia Pantsios, EcoWatchCalifornia is entering its fourth year of drought, with high temperatures, water shortages and increased wildfires. The state has taken some steps to address the impacts of that, including addressing greenhouse gas emissions and rationing its diminishing water supply. But there are signs that the impacts of drought on the state could get even worse.1. A new study shows that if greenhouse gas emissions continue to ris [...]

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Report: Russian Rocket Carrying Mexican Satellite Crashes in Siberia

May 16, 2015 / / 0 Comments

A Russian-built Proton rocket with a relay satellite blasts off from a launch pad in Kazakhstan (April 2014)
The Proton-M carrier rocket blasted off with the MexSat-1 communications satellite from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan



Excerpt from nytimes.com

MOSCOW — A Russian-made rocket ferrying a Mexican telecommunications satellite crashed in eastern Siberia minutes after its launching on Saturday, Russian news agencies reported, citing officials at the country’s space agency.

The Proton-M rocket was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 11:47 a.m. and crashed in the Chita region of Siberia about eight minutes later, the reports said.

The failure appeared to have occurred with the rocket’s third stage, which was intended to bring the satellite to an altitude of about 110 miles. At that point, it was supposed to be propelled by engines into geostationary orbit.

File photo: A Proton-M launch vehicle with three Glonass-M satellites onboard while being mounted on its launch pad at Baikonur cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, 28 June 2013


Instead, there was a catastrophic failure. The stream of telemetry data sent back by the rocket failed about a minute before the satellite was to enter orbit, the news agencies reported.

The Interfax agency quoted an unidentified official at Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, as saying there had been an “emergency engine shutdown of the third stage.”

The Proton rocket is the mainstay transporter for International Launch Services, a joint Russian-American satellite carrier business. The satellite, called Centenario, was being sent into orbit on behalf of Mexico’s Ministry of Communications and Transportation and had been manufactured by Boeing Satellite Systems.

According to a statement issued by International Launch Services before the launching, it was intended to provide “mobile satellite services to support national security, civil and humanitarian efforts and will provide disaster relief, emergency services, telemedicine, rural education and government agency operations.”

The Proton-M is regarded as a workhorse but has encountered numerous problems in its decades of service. In 2013, a leadership shake-up at Roscosmos was prompted in part by the fourth failed launch of a Proton-M rocket within three years.

Officials said further launchings would be suspended until the cause of Saturday’s crash was determined.

The Mexican ministry said International Launch Services would create a commission to investigate the accident.

It said the satellite loss was “100 percent” covered by insurance, a point that seemed aimed at a domestic population often skeptical of the government’s spending on big projects.

The ministry said it still planned to launch another communications satellite from Cape Canaveral, Fla., aboard a Lockheed Martin rocket in October.

Gerardo Ruiz Esparza, the transportation and communications secretary, said that the lost satellite and its launching were valued at $390 million.

“I regret the mission was not a success,” Mr. Esparza said. “If Mexico is joining in these high technologies, we are going to have to learn to live with the risks that are not uncommon in this industry. The benefit is not so much being in the space era so much as the service it could provide to Mexicans.”

Randal C. Archibold contributed reporting from Mexico City.

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7 Reasons You Need More Magnesium

May 16, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Margie King, GuestMagnesium is the fourth most abundant mineral in your body.  But few people fully appreciate this miraculous mineral. The human genome project reveals that 3,751 human proteins have binding sites for magnesium.[i]  And so far we know this one essential mineral activates over 350 biochemical processes in the body to keep things flowing.Here are just seven good reasons to get more magnesium today. 1. Prevent Migraines. According to University of Vermo [...]

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The Class-Domination Theory of Power

May 9, 2015 / / 0 Comments

by G. William DomhoffNOTE: WhoRulesAmerica.net is largely based on my book,Who Rules America?, first published in 1967 and now in its7th edition. This on-line document is presented as a summary of some of the main ideas in that book.Who has predominant power in the United States? The short answer, from 1776 to the present, is: Those who have the money -- or more specifically, who own income-producing land and businesses -- have the power. George Washington was one of the biggest landowner [...]

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UFO-Alien Abduction Still Haunts Travis Walton

May 7, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Excerpt from huffingtonpost.comClose encounters of the FOURTH kind. That's when a person claims to have been kidnapped by a UFO and its reportedly otherworldly occupants.Of course, there's no tangible evidence that anyone has ever been taken aboard ...

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Secretive X-37B Military Space Plane Preps for Another Mystery Mission

April 26, 2015 / / 0 Comments


X-37B Space Plane in Orbit: Artist’s Concept
Artist's illustration of the U.S. Air Force's X-37B space plane in orbit. The mysterious spacecraft is scheduled to launch on its fourth mission on May 20, 2015.
Credit: NASA Marshall Space Flight Center




Excerpt from space.com


The United States Air Force's X-37B space plane will launch on its fourth mystery mission next month.
The unmanned X-37B space plane, which looks like a miniature version of NASA's now-retired space shuttle orbiter, is scheduled to blast off atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on May 20.

"We are excited about our fourth X-37B mission," Randy Walden, director of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, said in a statement. "With the demonstrated success of the first three missions, we’re able to shift our focus from initial checkouts of the vehicle to testing of experimental payloads." 

The X-37B's payloads and specific activities are classified, so it's unclear exactly what the spacecraft does while zipping around the Earth. But Air Force officials have revealed a few clues about the upcoming mission.

"The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) and the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office (AFRCO) are investigating an experimental propulsion system on the X-37B on Mission 4," Capt. Chris Hoyler, an Air Force spokesman, told Space.com via email.  

"AFRCO will also host a number of advance materials onboard the X-37B for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to study the durability of various materials in the space environment," Hoyler added.

The Air Force owns two X-37B space planes, both of which were built by Boeing's Phantom Works division. The solar-powered spacecraft are about 29 feet long by 9.5 feet tall (8.8 by 2.9 meters), with a wingspan of 15 feet (4.6 m) and a payload bay the size of a pickup-truck bed. The X-37B launches vertically atop a rocket and lands horizontally on a runway, like the space shuttle did.

One of the two X-37B vehicles flew the program's first and third missions, which were known as OTV-1 and OTV-3, respectively. ("OTV" is short for "Orbital Test Vehicle.") The other spacecraft flew OTV-2. Air Force officials have not revealed which space plane will be going to orbit on the upcoming mission.

OTV-1 launched in April 2010 and landed in December of that year, staying in orbit for 225 days. OTV-2 blasted off in March 2011 and circled Earth for 469 days, coming down in June 2012. OTV-3 launched in December 2012 and stayed aloft for a record-breaking 675 days, finally landing in October 2014.

Recovery Crew Processes X-37B Space Plane
A recovery team processes the U.S. Air Force's X-37B space plane after the robotic spacecraft's successful landing at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Oct. 17, 2014. The touchdown marked the end of the X-37B’s third space mission.
Credit: Boeing

If Air Force officials know how long OTV-4 is going to last, they're not saying.

"The X-37B is designed for an on-orbit duration of 270 days," Hoyler said. "Longer missions have been demonstrated. As with previous missions, the actual duration will depend on test objectives, on-orbit vehicle performance and conditions at the landing facility."

The secrecy surrounding the X-37B and its payloads has fueled speculation in some quarters that the vehicle could be a space weapon of some sort. But Air Force officials have repeatedly refuted that notion.

"The primary objectives of the X-37B are twofold: reusable spacecraft technologies for America's future in space, and operating experiments which can be returned to, and examined, on Earth," Air Force officials wrote in on online X-37B fact sheet. 

"Technologies being tested in the program include advanced guidance, navigation and control; thermal protection systems; avionics; high-temperature structures and seals; conformal reusable insulation, lightweight electromechanical flight systems; and autonomous orbital flight, re-entry and landing."

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Huge Alien Planet Bathes in the Light of Four Suns

April 5, 2015 / / 0 Comments



30 Ari with its newly discovered companion stars
Karen Teramura

Excerpt from nbcnews.com


Astronomers have spotted a fourth star in a planetary system called 30 Ari, bringing the number of known planet-harboring quadruple-sun systems to two. 

"Star systems come in myriad forms. There can be single stars, binary stars, triple stars, even quintuple star systems," study lead author Lewis Roberts, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement. "It's amazing the way nature puts these things together." 

30 Ari lies 136 light-years from the sun in the constellation Aries. Astronomers discovered a giant planet in the system in 2009; the world is about 10 times more massive than Jupiter and orbits its primary star every 335 days. There's also a pair of stars that lie approximately 1,670 astronomical units away. (One AU is the distance between Earth and the sun — about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers).

The newfound star circles its companion once every 80 years, at a distance of just 22 AU, but it does not appear to affect the exoplanet's orbit despite such proximity. This is a surprising result that will require further observations to understand, researchers said. 

To a hypothetical observer cruising through the giant planet's atmosphere, the sky would appear to host one small sun and two bright stars visible in daylight. With a large enough telescope, one of the bright stars could be resolved into a binary pair. 

The discovery marks just the second time a planet has been identified in a four-star system. The first four-star planet, PH1b or Kepler-64b, was spotted in 2012 by citizen scientists using publicly available data from NASA's Kepler mission. 

Planets with multiple suns have become less of a novelty in recent years, as astronomers have found a number of real worlds that resemble Tatooine, Luke Skywalker's home planet in the Star Wars films. 

The research was published online this month in the Astronomical Journal.

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Skywatch: Venus and Jupiter continue to accentuate the night heavens

February 28, 2015 / / 0 Comments


Venus (right) & Jupiter


Excerpt from washingtonpost.com
By Blaine Friedlander Jr. 
In winter’s waning weeks, Venus and Jupiter continue to accentuate the night heavens, we change our clocks forward and we grab spring with no intention of letting go.

Check the west-southwestern heavens at dusk to spy the vivacious Venus and the dim Mars. In late February, the two planets met for a sweet cosmic waltz, but in March, they appear to separate. Venus approaches negative fourth magnitude (very bright) while Mars makes do at magnitude 1.3 (dim, hard to find in urban light pollution). With a clear sky, Mars looks like a red pinpoint. 

A young, waxing crescent moon visits Mars on the evening of March 21, and on the next evening the crescent flirts with Venus.
Robust Jupiter ascends the evening’s eastern sky. Find this gas giant at a -2.5 magnitude, very bright, in the constellation Cancer. The lion in the constellation Leo appears to stare at the planet. By the Ides of March, find it south around 10:30 p.m. 

The waxing gibbous moon drops by the dazzling Jupiter on March 2, days before the moon itself becomes full on March 5. 

Catch the ringed Saturn rising after midnight in the east-southeast now, hanging out near a gang of constellations, Scorpius, Ophiuchus and Libra. It’s a zero magnitude object, bright enough that it can be seen under urban skies. The waning moon loiters near Saturn before dawn on March 12. On that morning, the reddish star below them is Antares.
We adjust our clocks to Daylight Saving Time at 2 a.m. March 8. Spring forward, moving the clock ahead one hour. 

Winter is almost over. Spring is weeks away. The vernal equinox brings spring’s official arrival on March 20 at 6:45 p.m. 

Also on March 20 — the day a new moon — the North Atlantic and the Arctic waters get a short total eclipse. We won’t see it here, but Slooh.com will carry it live. Totality will start seconds after 5:44 a.m. and end at 5:47 a.m., according to Geoff Chester of the U.S. Naval Observatory. 

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The Obstacles To Peace – Episode IV

February 2, 2015 / / 0 Comments

The Obstacles To PeaceThe Fourth Obstacle 'The Fear Of God'Episode IVThe End of the World Serieswww.themasterteacher.tv

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California breaks ground on bullet train project despite opposition, as price tag soars

January 7, 2015 / / 0 Comments





Excerpt from foxnews.com

Despite cost overruns, lawsuits, public opposition and a projected completion date 13 years behind schedule, California Gov. Jerry Brown broke ground Tuesday on what is to become the most expensive public works project in U.S. history: the California bullet train. 

Over the next 1,000 days, California is estimated to spend roughly $4 million a day on the project. 

The high-speed train, set to be finished in 2033, originally was supposed to deliver passengers from San Francisco to Los Angeles in two hours and 40 minutes. That was the promise when voters narrowly approved $10 billion in bonds for the project in 2008. Since then, however, the estimated trip time has grown considerably, and the train has encountered persistent problems -- as experts uncovered misrepresentations in the ballot proposition, and opponents sued to stop the project on environmental and fiscal grounds. 

"We're talking about real money here," said Kris Vosburgh, executive director of taxpayer watchdog group Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. "This is money that's not available for health care or education, for public safety, or put back in taxpayers' pockets so they have something to spend. This is money being drawn out of the system for a program that is going to serve very few people." 

Much about the project has changed since it was sold to the public. 
Voters were told the project would cost just $33 billion. Once experts crunched the numbers, however, the price tag soared to $98 billion. It was supposed to whoosh riders from Southern California to the Bay Area in less than three hours, but now it’s more than four hours due to changing track configurations and route adjustments. The train was supposed to get people off the freeway and reduce carbon emissions, but a panel of experts now says any carbon savings will be nominal. (A drive by car takes just over 6 hours. Ed.) 

Further, ridership projections have been cut by two-thirds from a projected 90 million to 30 million a year. Fewer riders means higher prices. According to a panel of transportation experts hired by the Reason Foundation, Citizens Against Government Waste and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, tickets will exceed $80 -- not $50 -- and the system will require annual subsidies of more than $300 million annually. 

"The public has turned sour on this plan but the governor, to paraphrase Admiral Farragut, has taken a position of 'damn the people, full speed ahead'," Vosburgh said. 

Undaunted by critics, Brown broke ground in Fresno on Tuesday on the first 29-mile segment of the train's system. Under Brown's direction, the California High Speed Rail Authority has gone to court to seek an exemption from an environmental quality law the state imposes on other projects but not this one. Brown also convinced the state Legislature to dedicate an annual revenue stream from the state's carbon tax, to help pay for the bullet train. 
"It's a long project, a bold project and one that will transform the Central Valley," Brown said Monday as he began his fourth and final term as governor. 

Once construction begins, supporters say it will be harder to stop the project. Several lawsuits linger, but a bigger question concerns the money: Where will it come from? If every penny committed to the project is added up, the project is still more than $30 billion short. Republicans in Congress are vowing not to commit a dollar more than President Obama approved in 2012. 

"For years now, Governor Brown and the high-speed rail authority have turned the idea of high-speed rail into a public albatross far beyond what Californians envisioned or voted for," House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said in a statement released Tuesday. "Sadly, today's groundbreaking is a political maneuver. Supporters of the railroad in Sacramento can't admit their project is deeply flawed, and they won't give up on it despite the cost. But these political tricks are exactly what the American people are tired of and what the new Republican Congress is committed to ending." 

Supporters don't see waste. They argue the project will reduce freeway gridlock, offer competition to air travel and provide an alternative to trucking freight. 

Environmentalists also have opposed the project, suing and claiming the construction project would harm 11 endangered species and worsen air quality in the already dirty Central Valley. They lost when a federal judge ruled the project did not have to adhere to the state Environmental Quality Act, unlike other projects. Additional legal challenges remain, but supporters believe once the train leaves the station and ground is broken, there's no going back. 

"The legacy of the Brown family is that they have been big thinkers, but also big builders," said Democratic state Assemblyman Henry Perea. "I think this is an opportunity for the legislature to step up, support Governor Brown. "

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The (Not So) Curious Case of Galaxy IC 335

January 2, 2015 / / 0 Comments

This odd-looking galaxy has recently become famous in the media, not for what it has but for what is missing!Excerpt from huffingtonpost.comA recent Hubble image of this galaxy shows it to be a star-filled galaxy with a flat shape not unlike our own M...

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Who Were the Three Wise Men & What Really Was the Star They Followed? An Intriguing Investigation

December 24, 2014 / / 0 Comments

They are one of the most recognized symbols of the festive season, emulated in nativity plays all over the world and whose imagery adorns the front of millions of Christmas cards.However the three wise men who presented the newborn baby Jesus with ...

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Discovery Sparks Interest – NASA’s Mission to Mars Gets Its Own New Show

December 19, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Excerpt from sciencetimes.comOften in the media, it's what's new and fresh that brings in the ratings. But what about looking for something potentially millions of years old? What if it wasn't on this planet even? Peak your interest yet? Well, if so...

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