Lois Lane Saves the World!
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by Ines SuljMercury has just gone retrograde again. This time in Gemini, the sign it rules.All the planets, except Sun and Moon, go in apparent backward motion from time to time, yet the Mercury retrograde seems to be the most famous one. Almost everyone knows about it, including the people who know nothing about astrology and those who don’t even believe in it.In astrology, when a planet is in retrograde, it doesn’t actually move backwards in the sky. It only a [...]
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| 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.
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.
Excerpt from spacenews.com
by Jeff Foust
Virgin Galactic announced Feb. 12 that the company is opening a new facility in Long Beach, California, devoted to development of its small satellite launch vehicle. Virgin Galactic said that it is leasing a 13,900-square-meter building at the Long Beach Airport that it will use for the design and manufacturing of LauncherOne.
The company did not disclose the terms of the lease. “The technical progress our team has made designing and testing LauncherOne has enabled a move into a dedicated facility to produce the rocket at quantity,” Virgin Galactic chief executive George Whitesides said in a statement announcing the new facility.
LauncherOne work has been based to date in Mojave, California. LauncherOne is an air-launch system for satellites weighing up to 225 kilograms. The system will use the same aircraft, WhiteKnightTwo, as the company’s SpaceShipTwo suborbital vehicle, but replaces SpaceShipTwo with a two-stage launch vehicle using engines fueled by liquid oxygen and kerosene. At the Federal Aviation Administration Commercial Space Transportation Conference Feb. 4, William Pomerantz, vice president of special projects for Virgin Galactic, said the company has already tested engines and other “core infrastructure” of LauncherOne.
“We are a fairly vertically-integrated team,” he said. “We really do control a lot of the production in house.” Pomerantz said that about 60 of the 450 employees of Virgin Galactic and its wholly-owned subsidiary, The Spaceship Company, are currently dedicated to the LauncherOne program. Virgin Galactic said it will hold a job fair at its new Long Beach facility March 7, but did not disclose how many people it plans to hire there. The Virgin Galactic website lists approximately 20 job opening related to the LauncherOne program as of Feb. 12. When Virgin Galactic announced the LauncherOne program in 2012, it said it had signed up several companies as initial customers, including Planetary Resources, GeoOptics, Spaceflight Inc., and Skybox Imaging, since acquired by Google.
In January, the Virgin Group announced it was investing in OneWeb, a venture that plans a constellation of nearly 650 satellites in low Earth orbit to provide broadband communications, with at least some of those satellites to be launched by LauncherOne.
Virgin Galactic Opens LauncherOne Facility in Long Beach
by Jeff Foust — February 12, 2015
WASHINGTON — Virgin Galactic announced Feb. 12 that the company is opening a new facility in Long Beach, California, devoted to development of its small satellite launch vehicle.
Virgin Galactic said that it is leasing a 13,900-square-meter building at the Long Beach Airport that it will use for the design and manufacturing of LauncherOne. The company did not disclose the terms of the lease.
“The technical progress our team has made designing and testing LauncherOne has enabled a move into a dedicated facility to produce the rocket at quantity,” Virgin Galactic chief executive George Whitesides said in a statement announcing the new facility. LauncherOne work has been based to date in Mojave, California.
LauncherOne is an air-launch system for satellites weighing up to 225 kilograms. The system will use the same aircraft, WhiteKnightTwo, as the company’s SpaceShipTwo suborbital vehicle, but replaces SpaceShipTwo with a two-stage launch vehicle using engines fueled by liquid oxygen and kerosene.
At the Federal Aviation Administration Commercial Space Transportation Conference Feb. 4, William Pomerantz, vice president of special projects for Virgin Galactic, said the company has already tested engines and other “core infrastructure” of LauncherOne. “We are a fairly vertically-integrated team,” he said. “We really do control a lot of the production in house.”
Pomerantz said that about 60 of the 450 employees of Virgin Galactic and its wholly-owned subsidiary, The Spaceship Company, are currently dedicated to the LauncherOne program.
Virgin Galactic said it will hold a job fair at its new Long Beach facility March 7, but did not disclose how many people it plans to hire there. The Virgin Galactic website lists approximately 20 job opening related to the LauncherOne program as of Feb. 12.
When Virgin Galactic announced the LauncherOne program in 2012, it said it had signed up several companies as initial customers, including Planetary Resources, GeoOptics, Spaceflight Inc., and Skybox Imaging, since acquired by Google.
In January, the Virgin Group announced it was investing in OneWeb, a venture that plans a constellation of nearly 650 satellites in low Earth orbit to provide broadband communications, with at least some of those satellites to be launched by LauncherOne.
Virgin Galactic said that it is leasing a 13,900-square-meter building at the Long Beach Airport that it will use for the design and manufacturing of LauncherOne. The company did not disclose the terms of the lease.
“The technical progress our team has made designing and testing LauncherOne has enabled a move into a dedicated facility to produce the rocket at quantity,” Virgin Galactic chief executive George Whitesides said in a statement announcing the new facility. LauncherOne work has been based to date in Mojave, California.
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At the Federal Aviation Administration Commercial Space Transportation Conference Feb. 4, William Pomerantz, vice president of special projects for Virgin Galactic, said the company has already tested engines and other “core infrastructure” of LauncherOne. “We are a fairly vertically-integrated team,” he said. “We really do control a lot of the production in house.”
Pomerantz said that about 60 of the 450 employees of Virgin Galactic and its wholly-owned subsidiary, The Spaceship Company, are currently dedicated to the LauncherOne program.
Virgin Galactic said it will hold a job fair at its new Long Beach facility March 7, but did not disclose how many people it plans to hire there. The Virgin Galactic website lists approximately 20 job opening related to the LauncherOne program as of Feb. 12.
When Virgin Galactic announced the LauncherOne program in 2012, it said it had signed up several companies as initial customers, including Planetary Resources, GeoOptics, Spaceflight Inc., and Skybox Imaging, since acquired by Google.
In January, the Virgin Group announced it was investing in OneWeb, a venture that plans a constellation of nearly 650 satellites in low Earth orbit to provide broadband communications, with at least some of those satellites to be launched by LauncherOne.
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| President Barack Obama's new $4 trillion budget plan is distributed by the Senate Budget Committee as it arrives on Capitol Hill in Washington, early Monday, Feb. 02, 2015. The fiscal blueprint for the budget year that begins Oct. 1, seeks to raise taxes on wealthier Americans and corporations and use the extra income to lift the fortunes of families who have felt squeezed during tough economic times. Republicans, who now hold the power in Congress, are accusing the president of seeking to revert to tax-and-spend policies that will harm the economy while failing to do anything about soaring spending on government benefit programs. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) |
WASHINGTON — Sure, $4 trillion sounds like a lot. But it goes fast when your budget stretches from aging highways to medical care to space travel and more.
Here's an agency-by-agency look at how President Barack Obama would spend Americans' money in the 2016 budget year beginning Oct. 1:
HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES
Up or down? Up 4.3 percent
What's new? Medicare could negotiate prices for cutting-edge drugs.
Highlights:
— The president's proposed health care budget asks Congress to authorize Medicare to negotiate what it pays for high-cost prescription drugs and for biologics, including advanced medications for diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. Currently, private insurers bargain on behalf of Medicare beneficiaries. Drug makers have beaten back prior proposals to give Medicare direct pricing power. But the introduction of a $1,000-a-pill hepatitis-C drug last year may have shifted the debate.
— Tobacco taxes would nearly double, to extend health insurance for low-income children. The federal cigarette tax would rise from just under $1.01 per pack to about $1.95 per pack. Taxes on other tobacco products also would go up. That would provide financing to pay for the Children's Health Insurance Program through 2019. The federal-state program serves about 8 million children, and funding technically expires Sept. 30. The tobacco tax hike would take effect in 2016.
— Starting in 2019, the proposal increases Medicare premiums for high-income beneficiaries and adds charges for new enrollees. The charges for new enrollees include a home health copayment, changes to the Part B deductible, and a premium surcharge for seniors who've also purchased a kind of supplemental insurance whose generous benefits are seen as encouraging overuse of Medicare services.
— There's full funding for ongoing implementation of Obama's health care law.
—The plan would end the budget sequester's 2 percent cut in Medicare payments to service providers and repeal another budget formula that otherwise will result in sharply lower payments for doctors. But what one hand gives, the other hand takes away. The budget also calls for Medicare cuts to hospitals, insurers, drug companies and other service providers.
The numbers:
Total spending: $1.1 trillion, including about $1 trillion on benefit programs including Medicare and Medicaid, already required by law.
Spending that needs Congress' annual approval: $80 billion.
NASA
Up or down? Up 2.9 percent
What's new? Not much. Just more money for planned missions.
Highlights:
—The exploration budget — which includes NASA's plans to grab either an asteroid or a chunk of an asteroid and haul it closer to Earth for exploration by astronauts — gets a slight bump in funding. But the details within the overall exploration proposal are key. The Obama plan would put more money into cutting-edge non-rocket space technology; give a 54 percent spending jump to money sent to private firms to develop ships to taxi astronauts to the International Space Station; and cut by nearly 12 percent spending to build the next government big rocket and capsule to carry astronauts. Congress in the past has cut the president's proposed spending on the private firms and technology and boosted the spending on the government big rocket and capsule.
—The president's 0.8 percent proposed increase in NASA science spending is his first proposed jump in that category in four years. It's also the first proposed jump in years in exploring other planets. It includes extra money for a 2020 unmanned Martian rover and continued funding for an eventual robotic mission to Jupiter's moon Europa. But the biggest extra science spending goes to study Earth.
— Obama's budget would cut aeronautics research 12 percent from current spending and slash NASA's educational spending by 25 percent. It also slightly trims the annual spending to build the over-budget multi-billion dollar James Webb Space Telescope, which will eventually replace the Hubble Space Telescope and is scheduled to launch in 2018.
The numbers:
Total spending: $18.5 billion
Spending that needs Congress' annual approval: $18.5 billion
TRANSPORTATION
Up or down? Up 31 percent
What's new? A plan to tackle an estimated $2 trillion in deferred maintenance for the nation's aging infrastructure by boosting highway and transit spending to $478 billion over six years.
Highlights:
— The six-year highway and transit plan would get a one-time $238 billion infusion from the general treasury. Some of the money would be offset by taxing the profits of U.S. companies that haven't been paying taxes on income made overseas. That infusion comes on top of the $35 billion a year that normally comes from gasoline and diesel taxes and other transportation fees.
— The proposal also includes tax incentives to encourage private investment in infrastructure, and an infrastructure investment bank to help finance major transportation projects.
— The new infrastructure investment would be front-loaded. The budget proposes to spend the money over six years and pay for the programs over 10 years.
— The proposal also includes a new Interagency Infrastructure Permitting Improvement Center to coordinate efforts across nearly 20 federal agencies and bureaus to speed up the permitting process. For example, the Coast Guard, Corps of Engineers and Transportation Department are trying to synchronize their reviews of projects such as bridges that cross navigation channels.
The numbers:
Total spending: $94.5 billion, including more than $80 billion already required by law, mostly for highway and transit aid to states and improvement grants to airports.
Spending that needs Congress' annual approval: $14.3 billion.
Associated Press writers Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Seth Borenstein, Joan Lowy and Connie Cass contributed to this report.
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. "
Arizona Department of Transportation: "We might have spotted a family of sasquatches" Amazing photo!
Through their official Facebook page, the Arizona Department of Transportation has posted these photographs posting " We might have spotted a family of sasquatches on SR 260 near Heber this afternoon. What do you think?"The mysterious creatures can be ...
Excerpt from
thespacereporter.com
According to a NASA statement, on December 23, the agency released the names of the four American companies selected for future developmental collaborations. The companies were chosen under the auspices of the Collaborators for Commercial Space Capabilities program, which facilities industry access to NASA’s spaceflight resources. The products of the partnerships will be made available to governmental and non-governmental entities within the next five years.
The four companies that have been chosen are the following: ATK Space Systems of Beltsville, Maryland, which is space transportation capacity; Final Frontier Design of Brooklyn, New York, which is developing space suits for intra-vehicular operations; Space Exploration Technologies of Hawthorne, California, which is developing space transportation means that could be used to facilitate future deep space missions; and United Launch Alliance of Centennial, Colorado, which is developing new, less expensive launch vehicles with greater performance.
“These awards demonstrate the diversity and maturity of the commercial space industry. We look forward to working with these partners to advance space capabilities and make them available to NASA and other customers in the coming years,” said Phil McAlister, director of commercial spaceflight at NASA. Although NASA will contribute expertise, technology, evaluations and the resultant data and insights, it is up to the four companies to cover the costs of their collaboration with NASA.
Google's latest prototype of its self-driving vehicle was unveiled Monday, Dec. 22, 2014. (Google photo) Excerpt from mercurynews.comMOUNTAIN VIEW -- Google unveiled its first "fully functional" prototype for its own self-driving car Monday and plans...
Excerpt from abcnews.go.comEveryone moans about the high price of airline tickets and sometimes they're very high. Like now, when non-stops between New York and Los Angeles in July are running about $600+, whereas May flights could be had for less t...
Excerpt from huffingtonpost.comIn early December, NASA will take an important step into the future with the first flight test of the Orion spacecraft -- the first vehicle in history capable of taking humans to multiple destinations in deep space. An...
Excerpt from AP-LOS ANGELES — The pilot of the Virgin Galactic spaceship that tore apart over the Mojave Desert didn’t know his co-pilot had prematurely unlocked its brakes, though protocol for the test flight required the co-pilot to announce the step, federal investigators said Wednesday.
Pilot Peter Siebold told the National Transportation Safety Board that he was not aware co-pilot Mike Alsbury had pulled a brake-unlocking lever before the rocket designed one day to fly tourists to the edge of space was done accelerating. Seconds later, SpaceShipTwo began to disintegrate over Southern California.
Protocol for the flight was to announce the unlocking, an agency spokesman said.
It is not clear if Siebold didn’t hear Alsbury or the co-pilot never indicated he was taking the action. The safety board plans to analyze flight audio next week, spokesman Eric Weiss said.
Virgin Galactic and said it could not comment on the investigation and referred questions to the NTSB. Siebold has not spoken publicly.
Pilots and co-pilots typically agree in advance before making important decisions, said Michael Lopez-Alegria, a former space shuttle astronaut who now consults on commercial space flight. One method is a “challenge and response” system in which one voices an intended action and the other confirms it before the action is taken.
Lopez-Alegria said he did not know whether the unlocking of SpaceShipTwo’s brakes was considered critical enough to require agreement, but “you would never take that action on your own.” He noted that in the cockpit of a commercial airliner, the pilot and co-pilot call out and confirm an action as routine as raising the wheels after takeoff.
The Oct. 31 crash about 120 miles north of downtown Los Angeles killed Alsbury, injured Siebold and cast a shadow over the immediate future of space tourism. It could take a year for the NTSB to determine the cause, though Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides said last week the company wants to resume test flights as early as next summer with a replacement craft.
The eventual goal is to launch spaceships carrying six passengers from a spaceport in New Mexico. For their $250,000 ticket, passengers would get a fleeting feeling of weightlessness and a spectacular view of Earth from about 62 miles up.
Pilot Siebold was hospitalized after the crash, but when he spoke to investigators Friday he had been discharged.
He told them that he was flung from the vehicle when it disintegrated. He said he unbuckled from his seat at some point during his fall that began miles above Earth, and his parachute deployed automatically.
Investigators have not revealed the exact altitude of the breakup, but previous SpaceShipTwo test flights peaked at about 10 miles, much lower than the height expected for commercial flights.
Co-pilot Alsbury could be seen on inflight video unlocking the system before the vehicle had reached Mach 1.0, Hart has said. The feathers aren’t supposed to be unlocked until the craft reaches Mach 1.4, or more than 1,000 mph. At that point, it would have reached an altitude where the thinner air would not have provided so much violent resistance.
Even after Alsbury unlocked them, the feathers were not supposed to move. For that to happen, the crew would pull a second lever. The crew didn’t take the second step, but the system engaged anyway. Two or three seconds later, the craft began to break apart.
The NTSB has said the feathers could have deployed because of aerodynamic forces on the craft. The agency said Wednesday that it is looking at those forces and reviewing safety documentation and the feather system’s design.
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Associated Press writers Brian Melley and John Antczak contributed to this report.
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Despite crash of Spaceship Two ~ Virgin Galactic will continue pursuing mission to fly tourists to space
csmonitor.com
By Bryan Cronan, Staff Writer
It's been two weeks since the fatal crash of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo. As authorities continue to investigate what caused the crash, Virgin Galactic says the accident will not hinder the company's plans to send tourists to space.
Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides told a crowd Thursday that the company will continue pursuing its mission to take tourists to space. He made the comments while speaking in Culver City, Calif., to a panel organized by the Rand Corporation.