Old Style Rockets

Going Back to the Moon

Old masters NASA have finally sent their Artemis rocket to the moon. Back in the day I would've been -pardon the pun - over the moon with joy that they were doing this kind of thing but of course Elon Musk and his Space X have stolen their thunder quite a bit. The Artemis is a single-use rocket unlike the fancy things Space X have built with their multiple launches. Dare I say, the thing is more of the mid-20th century than the 21st Century. Since being conceived during the Dubya administration, the project has been overtaken quite a bit by technological developments around the world. 

Elon Musk himself has launched himself into what might as well be the Moon for him with his Twitter purchase. It's all very messy right now, but lest we forget it's also the same dude that made rockets and electric vehicles viable. He may pull that one out of the hat as well.  

We sure live in interesting times. I wonder what Chuck Yeager would make of all this. 

'Astronaughty'

Straight From The Headlines

Sometimes a song just happens. A heading is there and you just know how the whole song goes, and this one was one of those.

This song is about Capt. Lisa Nowak, who was an astronaut that made herself famous for let's just say, the wrong reasons. In truth, looking back on the story, it still seems surreal, perhaps even hyper-real. There's the weird juxtaposition space and earthbound passions; there's the contrast between the demands of being an astronaut and more private feelings; there's the absurdity of obsessive love and the impossibility of owning love; there's the long drive during which she thought god-knows-what; and the absurdity of trial by media over something that probably should have been sorted out discreetly private.

I feel sorry for the good Captain Nowak to this day. You don't get many bites at real love in this life. I'm not surprised somebody as fiercely competitive as a NASA astronaut sought to fight for hers. It's hard to judge her harshly - I certainly don't.
So you could say I really mean it in this song.



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News That's Fit To Punt - 02/Oct/2015

The Bubble We Had To Have

Not sure how people construct notions like that, but here you can see it as the headline.

"The government has to try and talk it down and say it's inflated, but at the same time all they can try and do is control the ongoing growth as best they can," Mr Van-Petersen said. "If they wanted to prick it, they could, but Australia simply cannot afford to." 

New Zealand and Singapore have enacted strong policies to force adjustments in housing markets and Mr Van-Petersen said Australia could easily deflate the bubble by pulling the stamp duty tax charged to foreign buyers from properties of more than $15 million to, say, $1.5 million. 

But the property market is one of the few areas of the economy that is growing adequately as terms of trade plummet and mining companies shed value because commodity prices are falling in light of a slowing China. 

"Australia can't afford for property to have a hard landing. If housing prices bust, the banks will get hit hard. And then what is there? It's in everyone's interests right now."

Pretty spooky when they couch it that way. There are lots of places and things that can't afford to have hard landing - for instance China - but we know they're going through one as we speak; and if we are to understand correctly how our real estate market is connected to the Chinese economy and the money trying to get out of China, then it's likely not going to be the happy 9.8% growth prognostication.

What Banks Are Doing To Hide Bad Credit

You won't hear this anywhere else. This is my exclusive. :)
Recently a 20year old kid borrowed 25k from one of the Big Four banks. At the time he had a steady job, and he had the patter to sound like he was a good bet to pay it back. So they lent him 25k with a 5year repayment schedule. He then went and splurged the 25k on what you and I might surmise are more toys than chattels or assets. Then he lost his job and couldn't pay. Thus he marched into the bank and told them the situation. They asked him just how much he could pay, and he replied $20 a month. So the bank said that was okay and took the $20 per month on good faith. It took a few months for him to find a job again but by then the bank unilaterally closed out the account, saying the 25k had ben paid (news to the kid, he couldn't imagine who it might be). What happened is unclear, but basically the bank told him because the loan had been paid off, the loan account was closed.

I know it sound amazing but it's true. The bank closed out the 25k in bad debt by writing it off quietly, rather than pursue the money. The 20year old kid effectively walked out of the bank 20k or so richer, for no reason other than the bank didn't want that bad loan on its books. So the banks purged the bad loan off its books.

The question you should be asking yourself is, just how much of this kind of things going on? How safe then are the Big Four banks? I'll leave that with you to decide.

There's Water On Mars

The big announcement of the week was that NASA says there's liquid water on Mars. It seems like it's been coming for a long time, but it's taken until 2015 for NASA to verify all the data and say, yes, there's liquid water on Mars. If you stop to think about it, it seems quite obvious that there would be water, and liquid water at that given the conditions of the planet, but that is just an aside. Science says, not until all the data is in, is it incontrovertible, so here we are.

The weirder turn was how Ridley Scott knew that NASA knew, but couldn't revise his film 'The Martian' to include that new discovery, because it would have let the cat out of the bag. Ridley Scott also made news in that he spoke to Foreign Minister Julie Bishop saying he wanted to shoot the sequels to 'Prometheus' in Australia.

The fact that there is liquid water on Mars bodes well for a possible future human colony on Mars.What doesn't bode well still are the low gravity, thin atmosphere and punishingly cold temperatures. It's not like we can grow things with much ease on Mars which means we won't be getting a food cycle happening easily. Ironically, what Mars needs for human habitation is a good dose of greenhouse effect.

Mars Direct Is Back

Spacefreak Moment For Mr. Obama

Back in the day when this blog's predecessor was the 'Spacefreaks Weblog', and shared writers - yes it wasn't just me writing stuff - the big topic in 2004 was whether the space program should be looking to Mars or not and whether the Shuttle program should be continued in light of the Columbia disaster. There are a lot of pros and cons to both these ideas but the most important thing to come out of those discussions was how direct flight to Mars was probably going to yield far more knowledge than space stations and shuttle programs whose operations were always limited in scope.

So it's good to find today that President Obama has scrapped the Lunar missions for a Mars mission.

US President Barack Obama says he is aiming to send US astronauts into Mars orbit in the mid-2030s as he seeks to quell protests over his earlier space policies.

"By 2025 we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first ever crew missions beyond the moon into deep space," Obama told an audience at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.

"So, we'll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history. By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to earth, and a landing on Mars will follow."

Obama, who was accompanied on his trip by astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man to set foot on the moon, vowed he was "100 per cent committed" to NASA's mission as he sought to set a new course for future US space travel.

The US president was making a whirlwind trip to the heart of the US space industry after he was hit with stinging criticism for dropping the costly Constellation project which had aimed to put Americans back on the moon.

"We should attempt a return to the surface of the moon first, as previously planned. But I just have to say, pretty bluntly here, we've been there before. Buzz has been there," Obama said.

"There's a lot more of space to explore and a lot more to learn when we do," the president said, as he unveiled a plan to increase NASA's budget by $US6 billion ($6.4 billion) over the next five years.

His plan includes ramping up "robotic exploration of the solar system, including a probe of the sun's atmosphere, new scouting missions to Mars and other destinations, and an advanced telescope to follow Hubble", he said.

"As president, I believe that space exploration is not a luxury, it's not an afterthought in America's quest for a brighter future. It is an essential part of that quest," he said at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.

"I am 100 per cent committed to the mission of NASA and its future."

Which is great. Back when George W Bush put forward his space project, the feeling was overwhelmingly, "why are we going back to the moon? Why are we wasting our money re-doing that trip?" At least this plan makes sense.

That being said I do sort of wonder what he means by "...new spacecraft designed..." The beauty of the Mars Direct plan is that it doesn't really need too much new in the way of new spacecraft.

40th Anniversary Of Lunar Landing

Distant Moon

When I was first starting up with this blogging thing, I started off talking about NASA in the wake of the Columbia shuttle disaster. You can go look it up. Partly because back then, it seemed NASA had failed on it s promises much more than they had fulfilled them. So as we sit here today and ponder the 40 years since Apollo 11 landed on the moon, I can't help but get a little nostalgic about all this stuff.

"The touchstone for excellence in exploration and discovery is always going to be represented by the men of Apollo 11," Obama said. He said their work sparked "innovation, the drive, the entrepreneurship, the creativity back here on Earth".

The president said he recalled watching Apollo astronauts return to Hawaii after splashing down in the Pacific Ocean. He said he'd sit on his grandfather's shoulders and "we'd pretend like they could see us as we were waving at folks coming home".

Obama praised Armstrong, Aldrin and command module pilot Michael Collins for their "calm under pressure, the grace with which these three gentlemen operated".

Obama did not talk about future NASA missions. Aldrin, Collins and six other Apollo astronauts used the anniversary to make a pitch for a mission to Mars.

Here is an interesting profile about Neil Armstrong and how uninteresting he's tried to be in the wake of his historic fame.

In his limited public utterances, Armstrong has always turned the subject away from himself. He usually deflects credit to the 400,000 people who built and maintained the vehicles and managed the bureaucracy that enabled him and Aldrin to reach the moon.

In his own book, Men From Earth, Aldrin wrote that he thought the man who preceded him onto the lunar surface had worked his way through his career "carefully watching everything he did and said".

Talkative and opinionated, Aldrin may be the antithesis of Armstrong. In his post-Apollo career, Aldrin has done what Armstrong would find inconceivable. He once did a guest voice on The Simpsons, sat for a hilarious interview with Ali G, made a rap video with Snoop Dogg and Quincy Jones, and lent his name to a computer game, Buzz Aldrin's Race Into Space. Just in time for the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, there's Aldrin in a US ad for - what? - Louis Vuitton luggage. Aldrin once punched a guy who accused him of "lying" about the moon landing.

Someone once described Aldrin and Armstrong as "amiable strangers", but Hansen says that's inaccurate. "I'm not even sure 'amiable' is the right word. Neil did not appreciate how [Aldrin] went off in such strong, aggressive ways with his ideas. They worked well together, but I'm not sure there was much personal rapport. Buzz never figured Neil out." From time to time, Hansen says, Aldrin would contact him and ask for help to persuade Armstrong to attend some event - a reflection, Hansen says, of the astronauts' uneasy relationship.

Hansen says Armstrong's reticence may have been reinforced by the example of Charles Lindbergh, another 20th century pioneer who knew much about the soul-twisting powers of fame. The two men met in 1968, and Lindbergh and his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, were Armstrong's guests for the Apollo 11 launch. They corresponded until Lindbergh's death in 1974.

And that was the fascination with the man. Perhaps our own perception that he was like Columbus or Lindbergh or Amundsen - when in reality, he was the very last chain in a finely calculated system project - was such a mismatch that he knew he could not live up to it. It's not as if he created a rocket in the backyard and flew to the moon himself. And yet here we are, we still remember their names - Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins.

It's really unclear what promises NASA can fulfill. The forecast is a return to the moon and perhaps a Mars mission. It seemed like we would be there by no had we not been diverted by the Space Shuttle project which has busily (and haphazardly) gone into low Earth Orbit over and over and over again. Thus it becomes important to look at the achievements as they are.

I hope to see a Mars project in my lifetime, yet we may not even get to the starting line.

Voyage Of The Doomed

NASA Releases Details On Deaths Of Columbia Crew

In a newly released research from NASA, it is revealed the astronauts had no chance of surviving the critical mishap that befell Columbia.

The last seconds of the astronauts aboard the doomed Columbia space shuttle have been described in graphic and harrowing detail by Nasa after a four-year investigation into the 2003 disaster.

The 400-page report reveals that they had no more than 40 seconds to react — not long enough to seal their suits and avoid blacking out from hypoxia, a condition said to be similar to extreme alcoholic intoxication.

None of the crew of seven had a helmet visor closed during re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere over Texas on February 1. One was not wearing a helmet, and three were not wearing the gloves that came with their orange pressure suits. This was a response to a design flaw with the suits — if the astronauts kept their helmet visors closed it allowed too much oxygen to build up in the cabin, and the gloves were too bulky to allow them to operate the spacecraft’s controls.

The crew members, returning from a 16-day mission, would have lost consciousness almost immediately after superheated gases entered a small ragged hole in the shuttle’s left-wing heat shield — caused by a briefcase-sized chunk of foam from the external fuel bank breaking off 81.7 seconds after lift-off. The gas melted the spacecraft’s frame, sending it into an uncontrollable spin at 203,000ft and 12,500mph. Moments later the nose section — where the crew were seated — broke away from the fuselage.

The nose cone began to break up in the intense heat of re-entry, causing a violent cabin decompression. If the decompression alone did not kill the astronauts, the violent shaking and spinning of the nose section probably did, because they were not property restrained in their seats. According to the report: “The inertial reel mechanisms on the crews’ shoulder harnesses did not lock . . . As a result, the unconscious or deceased crew was exposed to cyclical rotational motion while restrained only at the lower body.” It added that “crew helmets do not conform to the head . . . consequently, lethal trauma occurred to the . . . crew due to the lack of upper body support and restraint”.

The last words from the stricken spacecraft came at 8.59am, when commander Rick Husband said: “Roger, uh, buh . . .” as alarms began to go off in the cabin simultaneously. A minute later the nose section had fallen to 137,000ft. Within the next 24 seconds it was destroyed. The report concludes that even if the harnesses and suits had been working perfectly, the accident would have been unsurvivable, because ultimately the crew members, practically torn in half by their lap belts, were thrown out of the nose section into superheated, near-vacuum conditions. It goes on to make 30 recommendations for improving crew safety. “I call on spacecraft designers from all the other nations of the world, as well as the commercial and personal spacecraft designers here at home to read this report and apply these hard lessons, which have been paid for so dearly,” said Wayne Hale, a Nasa associate administrator.

“This report confirms that although the valiant Columbia crew tried every possible way to maintain control of their vehicle, the accident was not ultimately survivable.”

I guess that covers that.

One of the things that prompted me to start blogging was actually the aftermath of the Columbia disaster. I think it kind of hit me that for years NASA had been doing the shuttle program only to have lost 2 of a fleet of 5 shuttles, while accomplishing relatively little, even when compared to the Apollo program. In the years since then, we've all come to understand that perhaps the concept of the shuttle was always a little sketchy, and all the technical problems it contained led to both the Challenger and Columbia disasters.

In a nutshell, they are the most complicated machines ever built by mankind, which means that it has the most parts that can fail. The effect of any of the failed pieces of the shuttle can be absolutely overwhelmingly catastrophic, which in a sense accounts for both accidents. In response to the Columbia disaster, NASA grounded its fleet, and then 4 years ago, gingerly proceeded to continue with the flights. The fleet of shuttles will be retired in 2010, which is now less than 2 years away.

Things That Make You Wonder

They Come In Threes

Jaret Wright, who has so far been hit by a line drive and a broken bat got hit in the chest by another come-baker today in the first inning. What are the odds of that? At least it didn't hit him in the nuts, but he's got to be thinking he's jinxed. The way I figure it, these things come in threes.

So here he is again lying on the ground, then throwing him out and then collapsing. All in the first inning. He's a tough dude, I'll give you that. I'd be like, "What? Why me Again?".

Jaret Wright must feel as though there's a bull's-eye on his back -- not to mention his neck, chest and elbow.

Bruised by a line drive again, Wright was ineffective and the Toronto Blue Jays ended New York's five-game winning streak Saturday with a 7-4 victory over the Yankees.

``A bat, two balls -- I don't know,'' Wright said. ``When it keeps happening, it's definitely frustrating.''

A bat and two balls you say. That would look like a...
He's only got one more shot at redemption in the 30 September game against the Red Sox. If he dominates them at Fenway, he's a hero; if he loses that one he's a bust. If he gets hit by a come-backer again he's a fricken' monkey's ass. Having said all that, at the bottom of my heart, I've decided I'll root for this guy to pitch well. Not only do the Yanks need him to do well, I feel sorry that he hasn't really been able to pitch at his peak level too often this season. He deserves to let us know why he was considered good bet by the Tampa brass, and that he has a shot at 'life as a good pitcher after Atlanta'.

He might be a crappy, injury prone guy, but the performance peaks have been high, and he's certainly been game. He's sort of the Ace in the hole that could turn out okay yet. I certainly don't expect Aaron Small to win the next 2 games.

The Yanks took a 4-7 loss to the Blue Jays while the Bosox won, so they are now tied in the lead for the AL East. 9 games to go. Even if the Yanks sweep the Orioles and take out the rest of the two games with the Blue Jays, they'd need to be another game better than the Bosox to go into the Boston Series on top. Chances are, both teams will go 4 wins from 7 games before they meet, so this is going down to the wire.
Bet we knew that before today. :)

Shark Attack Again

I promise I'm not obsessive; another man was attacked by a shark off the coast of South Australia.

A surfer is recovering in hospital from lacerations to his legs after being attacked by a shark at a remote location off Kangaroo Island, south of Adelaide today.

The 25-year-old man was surfing with a group of four friends near Cape du Couedic, on the island's south-western tip in Flinders Chase National Park, when he was bitten by a great white shark about 12.05pm (CST).

Cape du Couedic is not a renowned surfing location and is famous for its magnificent sandstone lighthouse that was erected in 1909.

Today's attack follows one on Friday, when surfer Brad Satchell fought off a shark by punching it in the head at Perth's Scarborough Beach. Mr Satchell was not injured.

SA Ambulance spokesman Lee Francis said following today's shark attack, the man was treated at the scene before being airlifted to the Flinders Medical Centre where he underwent surgery for lacerations to both of his legs.

"He's very lucky to be alive on this occasion," Mr Francis said.
"It could've been a fatal attack if it wasn't for the quick-thinking of his friends."

Two of the man's friends dragged him out of the water after the attack and pulled their injured mate onto rocks at the base of a cliff, before climbing up steep cliffs to make an emergency call from a nearby ranger station.

National Parks and Wildlife officer Anthony McGuire, who was on duty at the time of the incident, said while emergency crews were notified immediately they took some time to arrive because of the remoteness of the location.

"It's a fairly rugged spot and it's a long way from Adelaide - it's not really a common surfing beach either," Mr McGuire said.

Today's incident is the latest in a series of recent shark attacks in South Australian waters.

I ain't going' back into the sea down there.
BC35 once told me that they see Great Whites all the time as they windsurf between the mainland and Kangaroo Island. Clearly, they've got a taste for us now.

Pleiades Mailbag-Drop



Weather Wars?
The number one with a bullet from the mailbag is this page at NASA showing the pictures and video of how a hurricane evolves.

There's also this link on the more out-there takes on these pics. And I warn you, their conviction that this is part of the 'weather wars' is pretty un-nerving.

Next up...


What's Going On here?
I haven't a clue. However, check this out.
First, it was Brits being arrested by Iraqi police.
Then it was allegations that they shot some Iraqi police. Why would they do that?
Then it turns out they were from the SAS. Oka-a-aay
Then the Brits 'rescue' them (read bust them out) with tanks and helicopter gunships. Now that's like some Hollywood movie.
Then the British government denies it happened and says the prisoners were handed over after negotiations.

British troops had arrived at the police station where the two men were being held and encircled the building, where they were attacked by demonstrators with stones and petrol bombs.

One soldier was seen engulfed by flames tumbling from a tank and gunfire was exchanged between the two sides, leaving three soldiers injured and two civilians dead while 15 others were injured.

Earlier an MoD spokesman said: "We can confirm that two military personnel were detained by Iraqi authorities earlier today."

He added: "We are continuing to try to thrash out with the Iraqi authorities what's happened and what can be done. We are trying to get to the bottom of what happened but at the moment we don't know."

Photographs showed the unshaven pair in custody, dressed casually in T-shirts and trousers, and sitting on the floor with their hands behind their backs.

One of the men had his head swathed in bandages and appeared to have bloodstains on his top. The other, who apparently had blood smeared on his trousers, had plasters on his head.

Nadhim al-Jabari, the Basra provincial council's spokesman, said the two men were likely to go before an Iraqi court. It was unclear if they had yet been charged.

He said top officials from Basra province were negotiating to defuse the crisis.

The Basra governor called the rescue of two Britons from the city's jail by British troops a barbaric act of aggression.

Mohammed al Waili, the governor of the province, said the British raid was "barbaric, savage and irresponsible".

"A British force of more than 10 tanks backed by helicopters attacked the central jail and destroyed it," he said.

"This is an irresponsible act."

He added that the British force had spirited the prisoners away to an unknown location.

Naturally, the Arab take on it is incredulous

Yet the BSBC, along with the rest of the Western media continues to put out endless reams of disinformation about ‘al-Zarqawi’ and his connection to the fictitious ‘al-Queda in Iraq’. Given the long-held assertion by the West that goes back to 2003, that Iraq was on the verge of ‘civil war’, it’s instructive to note that as the military situation of the occupation forces has deteriorated, so too has the level of so-called al-Queda operations increased, in a transparent attempt to divide the Iraqi national resistance, thus the increasing stories about impending civil war and the wave of ‘suicide’ bombings.

The exposure of the undercover SAS operations will only add to the resolve of Iraqi resistance forces to step up their campaign to expel the occupiers regardless of what kind of blatant propaganda line the UK government puts out.

It furthermore exposes the untenable position of the Iraqi ‘government’ which is now being squeezed by both sides, thus we get contradictory positions from the Iraqi ‘government’, with one denying that the SAS operatives had been handed over to ‘Shiite militia’ and the other trying desperately to tread an almost invisible line between condemning the actions of the British government whilst blaming the actions of the Iraqi police in Basra on ‘insurgents’ who have ‘infiltrated’ the police force. Yet it is a fact that at best, perhaps only 25% of the Iraqi military can be relied upon to serve their colonial masters.

Continuing to call them insurgents is itself an admission that the majority of Iraqis are opposed to the occupation and indeed, the bulk of the fighting is being carried out by the Kurdish Peshmerga as Iraqi forces simply cannot be relied on. It’s a classic situation that the US and UK military top brass know only too well having ‘been there and done that’ before.

Thus the occupiers become more desperate to destabilise the situation and no doubt we’ll see more SAS and US provocations revealed over the coming weeks as the situation continues to deteriorate.

Right.
So who do you believe? Who washes the Washmen?

More on 'Weather Warfare'
There's this link to 'Weather warfare'.
Inside it is this link

Others are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can
alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the
use of electromagnetic waves. So there are plenty of ingenious minds out
there that are at work finding ways in which they can wreak terror upon
other nations. It's real, and that's the reason why we have to
intensify our efforts, and that's why this is so important."

—Former Defense Secretary William S. Cohen
DoD News Briefing, Monday, April 28, 1997

"All countries, where appropriate, should develop and implement
resettlement programmes that address the specific problems of displaces
populations in their respective countries."

— Agenda 21, Chapter 7, Section 7.9, paragraph (g)

Latest update for this section: Wednesday, 14-Sep-2005 04:39:12 EDT

Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025
Air Force report on governmental manipulation of the weather as a tool
to enhance military operations.

Tsunami Bomb NZ's Devastating War Secret
New Zealand Herald, June 30, 2000
"Top-secret wartime experiments were conducted off the coast of
Auckland to perfect a tidal wave bomb, declassified files reveal. An Auckland
University professor seconded to the Army set off a series of
underwater explosions triggering mini-tidal waves at Whangaparaoa in 1944 and
1945. Professor Thomas Leech's work was considered so significant that
United States defence chiefs said that if the project had been completed
before the end of the war it could have played a role as effective as
that of the atom bomb."

To Own the Weather
Frontline Magazine, January 1999
"The U.S. has covertly pursued a military operation, launched during
the Vietnam War, to acquire weather modification technology for possible
use in combat."

Weather Modification: The Law
Weather modification, as written into the United States Code.

Sustainable Development and Natural Hazzards Mitigation
Is Weather/Climate Manipulation being used to relocate populations of
people into tightly-controlled sustainable communities, in accordance
with Agenda 21? (pdf format)
"...one of the roadblocks to implementation is the fact that much of
the land within local jurisdictions has already been developed according
to practices and traditions that are far from sustainable... the time
immediately following a natural disaster provides a community with a
unique window of opportunity for inserting an ethic of sustainability...."
(page 19)

Methods of Artificial Weather Manipulation Help Agriculture, Devastate
the Enemy, and Control the World Economy
"Computer models obviously focused on the ionosphere, which acts as a
filter for the solar radiations to reach the earth. If one can
manipulate and control the filter, it becomes a potential source of massive
weather modification."

Katrina Fuels Global Warming Storm
Human activity is blamed for a phenomenon called "global warming".
Articles like this one from the CONtrolled press, often quote "experts" who
say rising temperatures are causing weather anomalies. At the same
time, they fail to mention who the experts are, and that there are many
experts who do not agree with the global warming rhetoric.

The Leipzig Declaration
"As the debate unfolds, it has become increasingly clear that --
contrary to the conventional wisdom -- there does not exist today a general
scientific consensus about the importance of greenhouse warming from
rising levels of carbon dioxide. In fact, many climate specialists now
agree that actual observations from weather satellites show no global
warming whatsoever... based on all the evidence available to us, we cannot
subscribe to the politically-inspired world view that envisages climate
catastrophes and calls for hasty actions..."

That's all very cyberpunk and I'm probably like the Danny DeVito character in 'LA Confidential' when I say, "It's all on the hush hush, on the QT". Somebody is compiling this stuff; but some of our good friends have been saying for sometime these statements on their own are weird but taken as a whole, might indicate something- an 'insight' for which I credit Mr. 'Avon Brandt'.

The other thing to look at is this week's Hoagland blog entry where he discusses this stuff.
I'm still undecided as to the nature of this 'scalar technology' because I'm still a sceptic with regards to a technology I don't understand the physics thereof. Just to be sure, I present this link which goes through why 'scalar technology' is utter bunk.

If you do a Google search for "Tesla Scalar Weapon" you will find about 3,810 articles about these "horrible weapons." All of those websites are WRONG. No Scalar device can ever be used as a weapon.

In science, there are two types of mathematical quantities, Vector and Scalar. A vector quantity has two parts, magnitude and direction. But a scalar quantity only has magnitude or the "scale" of the quantity, but no direction.

Vector Example: When you shoot a bow and arrow or a gun, the arrow or bullet has a magnitude of mass, and it also has a velocity or direction - where you aimed it. If the bullet or arrow is just sitting on the table it has mass, but no direction. So the bullet or arrow is not a weapon until you fire it in some direction.

Scalar Example: There are several examples of scalar measurements. One is the air pressure in your room. Another is the temperature in your room and and third is the electrostatic charge in your room. You can measure the pressure, temperature and electrical charge and it may change, but it has no direction. It is always the same everywhere in the room. Therefore those can never be used as a weapon since they are not aimed at anything.

Can the scalar heat in the oven in your kitchen be used as a weapon? Well, you can stick someone in the oven and that might kill them. But you can't aim the heat from the oven across the room and try to use it as a weapon. As soon as you take the heat from the oven and somehow focus the heat at someone, then that becomes a vector weapon - the direction where the heat is focused. It is no longer a scalar device. An oven by itself is just a scalar device.

The very same is true for any scalar quantity of pressure or electrostatic charge. As scalar devices they cannot be used as weapons, until they are turned into a vector quantity by aiming them in a certain direction. But then they are NOT called Scalar devices. They become Vector weapons.

I now know exactly what Tesla's Scalar Device is and how it works. As a senior scientist and physicist, I have actually built many models and they all work the same way. I made my first one back in 1967, and I've even have had one of my home-made Tesla Scalar devices running in my bedroom for the last 3 years.

Its not a weapon at all, and could never be. It is simply an "air ionizer" which first went on sale as a health device and air cleaner in the 1960's. They are often called Negative Ion Generators. You can buy an updated scalar device as the Spring Aire negative ion air cleaner from Sharper Image.

It will increase the electrostatic charge or scalar charge in your room. That's all a Scalar Device is. It radiates electrons, or electrical energy in all directions. It is not directional or not Vector energy -- it is Scalar or non-directional. The electrostatic energy in your room is a Scalar quantity, just as is the temperature and pressure in your room.

Professor Tesla was clearly an early electronic genius. But, his "Scalar Device" was a big mistake, a complete flop. But then, he could not prove or disprove it 100 years ago. Tesla thought the electrons or negative ions which he measured streaming from the ball on top of his conical RF coil could be spread in all directions and then they could be "rectified" or captured and converted back to DC energy at some remote location.

Tesla actually thought his device could be used to replace the very expensive long-distance electrical transmission lines. He was wrong, but he didn't know it, only because 100 years ago there was no "receiving" device to collect the energy -- so he was never able to test his "scalar invention."

But today we do have such devices to collect non-directional scalar energy. Today we call it Radio. Every AM, FM and TV station in the world is a "Scalar Device" that is not aimed, but broadcasts in all directions. That broadcast scalar energy is gathered out of the air and then the energy is used to make the speakers move in your stereo receiver to make sounds - or move the electrons on your TV screen to make pictures.

So, there are NO hundreds of scalar weapons around the world. And No, they are not used to control the weather. It can be questioned whether the thousands of broadcast scalar devices are being used to control populations by the propaganda and false news they broadcast, but that is not a property of the non-directional scalar waves coming from the radio station.

Therefore: HAARP is NOT a Tesla Scalar device. Especially since, HAARP is a higly focused vector device aimed directly upward at the ionosphere, and nowhere else. And there are NO such things as scalar weapons. Be sure to tell that to all those websites which promote false stories about how the military or the government is using horrible Tesla Scalar Weapons to control weather, the environment, armies or population. And now you know why.

The only people who are using "Tesla's Scalar Weapons" are those people who run websites or sell books in an attempt to terrorize you into believing that horrible Scalar weapons actually exist. These "scalar" terrorists are using the false scalar weapon stories to promote their latest book, or promote themselves.

Some of these "scalar" terrorists may even have advanced credentials, such as a Ph.D., but not in science. Any scientist knows there are no such things as scalar weapons, anymore than there is an elves union at the north pole. Why? Because neither Santa nor Wal-Mart allows unions. Case Closed.

Right. I understand that scientific line of thought. It's properly reasoned and satisfactory for any sceptic and it even fits my understanding of electro-magnetics.

However, weather-war devices might still exist. The Russians had EMP weapons. As in, Electro-Magnetic Pulse weapons designed to scramble computer technology from across the street. The EMP device is portrayed even in 'Ocean's Eleven' where it blows out a whole section of grid (but hey, that's a movie). As observers, we're pretty sure such a device exists at a military grade, with lots of money behind it.
Well, what happens if such a thing got pointed at the Ionosphere for a prolonged period of time? I actually don't know. But I tell you what, these folks are doing exactly that.

Where does that leave us? In the seat knowing that something dastardly might be possible; that some people have the means; they've said they have the means; they've said other have the means; and a crowd of people saying it's already going - but those people also believed a comet was going to hit the North Atlantic earlier this year.
So what do we have? We have Rumsfleds 'Known Unknowns, and Unknown Unknowns' and a perfectly reasonable sceptic's seat.
At best we've only got anecdotal evidence, and snippets of phrases here and there; and lots of speculation. Not knowing is tough. Knowing might be tougher.

Cassini Update Plus Randy's Amazing Implosion

Cassini Update
From the mailbag from Pleiades:

The Cassini spacecraft, a cooperative project between NASA, ESA and Agenzia Spaziale Italiana, has indicated that Saturn's ring system has its own atmosphere.

Data from the Cassini spacecraft indicate that Saturn's majestic ring system has its own atmosphere, separate from that of the planet, according to an August 17 press release from the European Space Agency (ESA).

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA and Agenzia Spaziale Italiana, the Italian space agency.

During its close fly-bys of Saturn’s ring system, Cassini's instruments showed that the environment around the rings is an atmosphere composed mainly of oxygen molecules, similar to the atmospheres of Jupiter's moons Europa and Ganymede.

“As water comes off the rings, it is split by sunlight; the resulting hydrogen and atomic oxygen are then lost, leaving molecular oxygen,” said Andrew Coates, a co-investigator for one of the instruments from University College London.

Saturn's rings are mainly water ice mixed with smaller amounts of dust and rocky matter. They are very thin – no more than 1.5 kilometers, although they are 250,000 kilometers or more in diameter.

The rings’ origin is unknown. Scientists once thought they formed at the same time as the planets, coalescing from swirling clouds of interstellar gas 4,000 million years ago. But the rings now appear to be young, perhaps only hundreds of millions of years old.

Another theory suggests that a comet flew too close to Saturn and was broken up by the planet’s tidal forces. Alternatively, one of Saturn's moons might have been struck by an asteroid, smashing it into the pieces that now form the rings.

The ring system is unstable and must be constantly regenerated, probably by the breakup of larger planetary bodies. The atmosphere is likely kept in place by gravitational forces and a balance between the loss and replacement of ring particles, Coates said.

Last month, mission scientists celebrated Cassini’s first year in orbit around Saturn. The spacecraft began to orbit Saturn in July 2004 after a six-year journey of more than 3 billion kilometers.

Additional information about the mission is available on both the NASA Web site and the European Space Agency Web site.

Text of the ESA press release follows:

European Space Agency
[Paris, France]
Press release, August 17, 2005

Saturn’s rings have own atmosphere

Spectrum from Cassini instruments indicating atmosphere over rings

Data from the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini spacecraft indicate that Saturn's majestic ring system has its own atmosphere -- separate from that of the planet itself.

During its close fly-bys of the ring system, instruments on Cassini have been able to determine that the environment around the rings is like an atmosphere, composed principally of molecular oxygen.

This atmosphere is very similar to that of Jupiter's moons Europa and Ganymede.

The finding was made by two instruments on Cassini, both of which have European involvement: the Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) has co-investigators from USA and Germany, and the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS) instrument has co-investigators from US, Finland, Hungary, France, Norway and UK.

Saturn's rings consist largely of water ice mixed with smaller amounts of dust and rocky matter. They are extraordinarily thin: though they are 250 000 kilometres or more in diameter they are no more than 1.5 kilometres thick.

Despite their impressive appearance, there is very little material in the rings -- if the rings were compressed into a single body it would be no more than 100 kilometres across.

The origin of the rings is unknown. Scientists once thought that the rings were formed at the same time as the planets, coalescing out of swirling clouds of interstellar gas 4000 million years ago. However, the rings now appear to be young, perhaps only hundreds of millions of years old. Another theory suggests that a comet flew too close to Saturn and was broken up by tidal forces. Possibly one of Saturn's moons was struck by an asteroid smashing it to pieces that now form the rings.

Though Saturn may have had rings since it formed, the ring system is not stable and must be regenerated by ongoing processes, probably the break-up of larger satellites.

Water molecules are first driven off the ring particles by solar ultraviolet light. They are then split into hydrogen, and molecular and atomic oxygen, by photodissocation. The hydrogen gas is lost to space, the atomic oxygen and any remaining water are frozen back into the ring material due to the low temperatures, and this leaves behind a concentration of oxygen molecules.

Dr Andrew Coates, co-investigator for CAPS, from the Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL) at University College London, said: "As water comes off the rings, it is split by sunlight; the resulting hydrogen and atomic oxygen are then lost, leaving molecular oxygen.

"The INMS sees the neutral oxygen gas, CAPS sees molecular oxygen ions and an ‘electron view’ of the rings. These represent the ionised products of that oxygen and some additional electrons driven off the rings by sunlight."

Dr Coates said the ring atmosphere was probably kept in check by gravitational forces and a balance between loss of material from the ring system and a re-supply of material from the ring particles. Last month, Cassini-Huygens mission scientists celebrated the spacecraft's first year in orbit around Saturn. Cassini performed its Saturn Orbit Insertion (SOI) on 1 July 2004 after its six-year journey to the ringed planet, travelling over three thousand million kilometres.

Way cool. Now, to wait for the Hoagland version of this story. :)

Randy Implodes
Randy Johnson has been having a bitch of a season in the Big Apple, where expectations run about as high as King Kong climbed. It's just the nature of that city and its denizens. he has alternatively been referred to as 'The Big Disappointment' or 'The Big Uselss' , or 'The Mediocre Unit' amongst other nasty epithets instead of his famous 'Big Unit' tag. The press has been particularly pointed with Randy Johnson since his snarling arrival. It's like he didn't throw that perfect game last year.

They (as in the Yankee brass) say that it takes a long time for the superstars to acclimate to playing in NYC, so I d cut some slack with the big fella', but then you have games like today.

AP - Aug 21, 6:33 pm EDT
More PhotosCHICAGO (AP) -- Randy Johnson sat by his locker and shook his head as he searched for reasons, an effort that was futile.

A dazed and frustrated Johnson allowed home runs to three consecutive batters for the first time in his major league career and four in all during the fourth inning, and the Chicago White Sox beat the New York Yankees 6-2 Sunday to stop a seven-game losing streak.

``I felt great,'' said Johnson, who allowed the homers in a 16-pitch span. ``The velocity was there.''

But afterward, he felt miserable.

Given a 1-0 lead, Johnson allowed consecutive solo homers to Tadahito Iguchi, Aaron Rowand and Paul Konerko with one out in the fourth and, after singles by Jermaine Dye and Juan Uribe, a three-run shot to Chris Widger.

Johnson (11-8) has allowed 29 homers, the most in the American League and second in the major leagues behind Cincinnati's Eric Milton (35). The most Johnson has allowed in a season was 30 with Arizona in 1999.

The Big Unit, who missed a start earlier this month because of a bad back, allowed 10 hits, struck out eight and walked none in his fourth complete game this season. His ERA rose to 4.34, but both Johnson and manager Joe Torre said he pitched well.

``His stuff was good,'' Torre said. ``He's going to win games pitching like that.''

It was just the second time in his career Johnson allowed four home runs in a start, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. The other was on June 20, 1999, for Arizona against Atlanta.

Scott Sanderson and Catfish Hunter were the only other Yankees pitchers to allow four homers in an inning.

Chicago tied a franchise record by hitting four in an inning for the third time, the first since May 3, 2000, against Toronto.

``The energy was good today early,'' Konerko said. ``I knew we'd be in the game. I hope guys realize that we can't wait for good things to happen and then have energy. You've got to come with it first, and then good things follow.''

Former-Yankee Jose Contreras (8-7) allowed two runs -- one earned-- and 11 hits, and matched his career-high by pitching eight innings. He struck out five and walked none.

"We got 11 hits off of him, so we had some opportunities,'' Torre said. ``It looked like the right-handers were having better swings than the left-handers. We really never had him on the ropes. He had a great splitter, and it looked like that was what was getting the left-handed hitters. They just couldn't identify it and he was getting a lot of swings and misses.''

After allowing a leadoff single to Pablo Ozuna in the first, Johnson retired nine straight batters before a White Sox offense that scored two runs in its previous three games came to life.

Iguchi homered to right on a 2-0 pitch, and Rowand homered to right after fouling off a 2-2 pitch to put Chicago ahead.

Konerko, who missed the first two games of the series with a strained lower back, fell behind 0-2 before sending a drive to left for his 32nd homer.

It was the seventh time in franchise history the White Sox hit three consecutive homers. Johnson was the first Yankees pitcher to give up three straight since Bill Fulton in the eighth inning against Minnesota on Sept. 12, 1987.

After the singles by Dye and Uribe, Widger hit his fourth home run of the season, connecting on a high 1-2 pitch that Johnson wanted him to chase.

``How do you explain something like that?'' Johnson said. ``It's the one thing that I'll walk away from this game not really understanding.''

Johnson is 0-2 with two no-decisions since pitching eight scoreless innings against Minnesota on July 26.

``I felt very comfortable watching Randy pitch,'' Torre said. ``The first three innings it looked like he was having an easy time locating the ball. But that inning, it seemed like the more pitches he tried to make, the less success he had trying to locate them.''

I don't know what to make of it, but Randy Johnson seems to have imploded under the weight of his own reputation.
Today, he gave up 4 homeruns in an inning; three of them consecutive; giving up 6 runs in total in a complete game 6-2 loss. In other words, had he not had that one bad inning, he had a shutout going. Let's rephrase this another way. The difference between an ERA of 0.00 and 9.00 was made up of 6 pitches. As in HR, HR, HR, single, single, HR. Well of course, that would undo 17 innings, let alone 8 good innings of shut-out ball. This just does not look like a Yankee team headed for the play-offs.

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

After Delay, A Launch
MRO (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter) has been launched. here's the article in whole:

Delayed by three days for bad weather and a last-minute software glitch, a giant two-ton spacecraft was bound for Mars today carrying telescopes, cameras and an array of instruments designed to examine the planet from orbit in far closer detail than any Mars flight has ever achieved before.

The spacecraft rose from its Cape Canaveral launch pad early in the morning aboard an Atlas V rocket and headed on a six-month voyage toward its target 72 million miles away.

"It couldn't have gone any smoother," said launch manager Charles Dovale, and James Garvin, NASA's chief scientist, exclaimed. "I'm bouncing off the walls. We're ecstatic."

Flying over both Martian poles at an average altitude of only 190 miles, the new spacecraft will cover Mars' entire surface for nearly two years during its $720 million mission, pinpointing features as small as a desk top and probing nearly half a mile deep beneath the planet's shifting sands with specialized Italian-built radar.

No planet aside from Earth has undergone such intense scientific scrutiny as Mars. It is a full 40 years since, in the early days of the space age, America sent the world's first Mariner mission swinging by the red planet to begin an unceasing quest for understanding a planet that just might prove to be one of the solar system's earliest abodes for life.

Now, with two weather-beaten but still lively robot rovers continuing their explorations across the Martian surface more than a full year beyond their expected lifetime, and with two other craft circling high above the planet on different paths, the fourth planet from the sun is about to be probed by the new Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Like all the American and European missions before it, this spacecraft, known simply as MRO, is assigned, as NASA scientists say, to "follow the water." It will hunt for evidence that the single-most critical ingredient for life as we know it exists or once existed abundantly somewhere amid the stony plains, the deep canyons, the crater beds, the layered rocks, the icy polar caps and the rolling red hills of the ever-beckoning planet.

The orbiting spacecraft's uniquely high-resolution camera will also seek safe landing sites for future Mars missions, some already scheduled and others still in the planning stages: For example, MRO will scout out the edges of the planet's polar caps for the 2007 Phoenix lander whose robotic shovel will dig beneath the permafrost. The spacecraft will seek another site for a full-scale roving analytical laboratory scheduled for launch in 2009 in search of hospitable habitats for life.

With NASA's Mars Odyssey and the European Space Agency's Mars Express already in orbit around the planet, MRO will add a third communication link to the array data being relayed back to Earth from the two exploration vehicles, Spirit and Opportunity. The Spirit and Opportunity have been traversing the planet's landscape since their arrival in January of last year.

Among the spacecraft's six instruments are three cameras, one more powerful than any ever sent to explore another planet, according to project scientist Richard Zurek, who told reporters recently that "higher resolution is a major driver for this mission."

Another instrument is an imaging spectrometer for identifying key minerals in patches of terrain as small as a swimming pool -- minerals that could reveal whether they were originally formed in water eons ago.

Two other instruments will look both downward and horizontally to measure variations of water vapor, dust and temperatures in the Martian atmosphere and track changes in the planet's weather and wind patterns.

"Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is many things," said Zurek. "It's a weather satellite, it's a geologic surveyor, and it's a pathfinder for future missions."

Richard Hoagland's blog has an article on it too.

Also unlike any previous unmanned Mars missions, not only is the on-board imaging capability of MRO unprecedented ... but there is also an unprecedented political framework created specifically for this Mission ... to solicit public images during the nominal orbital surveys of this spacecraft! Needless to say, we will be thoroughly testing this unique aspect of the MRO Mission in the months and years ahead ....

What makes this policy position of the MRO Mission so challenging and tantalazing is that, for the first time in the history of the NASA Program, the American People will have a legal framework to challenge any NASA or Principle Investigator, to acquire a specificly requested image! And, subsequently, to challenge the scientific and imaging quality of any images so acquired ... that are "mysteriously" degraded.

This already-in-place political and scientific infrastructure guarantees that "we the People" will FINALLY get to really look at Mars ... or, the full weight of the American legal and media systems will descend on a NASA committment not fulfilled ... asking the embarrassing question "why not!?"

Obviously, Cydonia will be high on our own Enterprise initial target list; knowing what we know about Cydonia ... MRO's unique HiRISE camera (to say nothing of its other instruments' multi-spectral capabilities ...) will finally be able to resolve (literally) the overwhelmingly important question: are there intelligently-designed artifacts on Mars?!

Make of that what you will. The reference to getting more info about Cydonia is where I get cold feet. :)

Landing Discovery

She's Back Home Safe

After what seemed like an interminably long 24 hours, Discovery finally made her way back to dirt-side intact, landing at Edwards Air Force Base - home of the mercury seven and 'The Right Stuff'. Noises coming out of NASA are already indicating that the shuttle might find it hard to get back to orbit.

"I think we met the milestone of return to flight and the next test-flight is in the works," said shuttle program manager Bill Parsons.

But the planned launch of Atlantis on NASA's next shuttle mission in September was in doubt after the space agency found that the $1 billion and 2-1/2 years of effort spent on fixing a problem that doomed Columbia had failed to produce the hoped-for results.

Columbia was destroyed after falling foam from its external fuel tank ruptured the wing on takeoff. Sixteen days later, on Feb. 1, 2003, the spacecraft fell apart over Texas when the tremendous heat of re-entry ate into the breach.

When Discovery took off on July 26, foam insulation also fell from its tank, which had been billed as the safest ever to fly. NASA was forced to ground the rest of the fleet until the problem is solved.

PRELIMINARY FINDINGS DUE

NASA has appointed several teams to investigate the foam loss and recommend a fix. Parsons said he expects to get some preliminary findings as early as this week.

"Now that we have Discovery on terra firma, we'll go work these other issues," he said.

It's looking like the shuttle might have flown its last mission for a while.

Shuttle Update

What Goes Up Must Come Down
Or so goes the saying. NASA of course delayed the shuttle re-entry for 24 hours .

"We are going to officially wave you off for 24 hours," shuttle communicator Ken Ham told Eileen Collins, commander of Discovery. The shuttle crew are unlikely to be disappointed, said astronaut Mark Polanski, in Florida to watch the landing: "A bad day in space is better than any day on Earth."

The weather forecast for Florida on Tuesday still predicts a slight chance of rain. If weather conditions remain unsuitable, the shuttle could also land at Edwards Air Force base in California - where the weather forecast is excellent - or even at White Sands in New Mexico. NASA prefers not to land in these western locations as the shuttle then has to be transported back to Florida for its next launch at a cost of millions of dollars.

In theory the shuttle could remain in space until Wednesday, but NASA will be extremely reluctant to leave the shuttle in orbit until then, as it would then be forced to land whatever the weather. It is therefore all but certain that Discovery will land in Tuesday.

The touchdown will be the first since Columbia disintegrated during re-entry to the Earth's atmosphere in February 2003, and is certain to jangle nerves at NASA and beyond.

Damp Night

Earlier on Monday, practice touchdowns by the Shuttle Training Aircraft at the Florida landing strip helped evaluate the weather, and found a deck of broken cloud at 300 metres (1000 feet) altitude. This could restrict the returning shuttle's view of the well-lit runway, and so entry flight director Leroy Cain chose to delay the landing.

The weather around the space center had been damp for most of the night.

Rain prevents a landing as the moisture damages the heat shield tiles. That does not endanger the craft, which would have already experienced the heat of re-entry, but would require repairs before the shuttle's next mission.

Once cleared for landing, Discovery's Orbital Maneuvering System engines begin their de-orbit burn about 90 minutes before touchdown. This marks the start of the fiery descent through the atmosphere. At the end of the three-minute burn, the craft is committed to landing at the chosen site.

So it's no big deal. It's just the weather.

Cowra Visit Part II
The second day of our Cowra visit was to do with the 61st anniversary commemorative events. Or as Geoff put it, 'commercials for Cowra'. We got up early to observe the ceremonies in 3 different locations as well as bugle-calls and speeches. Then it was off to the studios being built in Cowra. For the first time, there was also a wreath laid on behalf of Featherstone, NZ where a similar turn of events took place albeit on a much smaller scale, in 1943. Geoff, being the most prominent and possibly only New Zealander present got asked to lay the wreath at the cemetery. It should be noted that there was a sudden drop in temperature as proceedings got under way at the cemetery.

Basically we were there to check it out, and check it out we did. Brian Burgess swung into his hard-question mode and once again, I was hearing the same questions being fired in two languages at once. I won't go into the details, because that would be too indiscreet, but I will report that Geoff felt that we could start shooting on their premises tomorrow if we had to. That doesn't mean that's what we'll do, but Cowra studio did make a big impression on the team.


The general inspection of the studio was followed by an interview with the News/CAff from PRIME TV with Brian, Brian, Geoff and studio boss, Graham Patrick. The piece aired and went for 90 seconds, which means it was significant local news. Brian Williams also did an interview for ABC radio.


Then it was lunch at the Japanese Gardens with Don Kibbler, the deputy mayor of Cowra and other important dignitaries.
After the lunch, we headed back to Sydney with our heads filled with the things we'd seen and heard. It was a very good fact-finding mission indeed. Hideki seemed quite surprised by the scale and the detail of the Japanese Gardens.

Yankee Season In Doldrums
It's that time of the week where I grumble about the Yanks. First of all, the week saw the Yankees drop a series to the Cleveland Indians, and then squeezed out a series win against the Toronto Blue Jays. What's really annoying was the way the Yankees lost the 2 games pitched by recent arrival Shawn Chacon who pitched quite okay; as well as the 2 rather crappy starts by Randy Johnson; a bad start by Moose; all making the starting rotation seemingly a black hole - as in no-light and all-suck. Al Leiter got a 6-2 win today and Aaron Small picked up his third win on the trot but these fill-in guys aren't supposed to be the ones doing the winning. In the absence of Carl Pavano Tiger Wang and Jaret Wright it's supposed to be Randy, Moose and Shawn (though it was the bullpen that squandered both of Shawn Chacon's good outings). I guess you take any wins you can get, but the pitching situation is looking worse than grim.

Now we find Carl Pavano might need surgery as his shoulder has turned out to be a bigger problem than thought; and Randy might be hurt too. On top of this, the Bosox have been playing well, moving further away in the standings, and the Oakland A's have been securing ground in the Wildcard race as the Yankees played .500 ball this week.
So you can see I've got a lot to grumble about.

The Ashes Series.
I just had a thought while I was watching some of the second Test this week. The Aussies looked tired, bored, lackluster and a little panicky without Glen McGrath. They failed to contain the English bats. In stark contrast, I don't think I've seen a English side as hungry-looking as these guys the Aussies faced. They remind me of the very young 1989 Aussie side that ushered in a decade and a half of Australian dominance. I'm not saying the current crop of English are as talented as that side, but it seemed very clear to me they were as hungry. Unless the Australians find a bit of fight in themselves, they have a real battle on their hands.

The Fixit Stuff

Repair Time On The Fly

The shuttle crew are going to carry out some repairs on the shuttle .

Astronauts have never ventured beneath an orbiting shuttle before, and have never attempted repairs to the fragile thermal skin in space.

"No doubt about it, this is going to be a very delicate task, but as I say, a simple one," Robinson said Tuesday before the astronauts went to sleep.

They awoke late Tuesday to the inspirational song "Where My Heart Will Take Me" and were poised for the high-stakes repair job, which was set to begin about five hours later.

Mission Control told the astronauts the song from a Star Trek sound track reflects how much Deputy Shuttle Program Manager Wayne Hale — who picked the tune — believes in them.

Thirty-five years ago, a group of NASA engineers concocted a plan using plastic bags, cardboard and duct tape to save Apollo 13's astronauts after an oxygen tank exploded, crippling their spacecraft.

The latest repair plan was carefully worked out on the ground over the past four days. It called for maneuvering Robinson underneath Discovery — a no man's land, up to now — on the end of the linked international space station's 58-foot robot arm.

The waking up to the song bit kind of would irk me, if I were one of the astronauts. To be honest, the whole being-an-astronaut-aboard-the-shuttle-thing would irk me, but that aside, the choice of music is a bit... errr... tough.
Still, the NYT reports that the astronauts are very confident. Which is nice, but not nice enough.
So why are they doing this space-walk again?

NASA's concern about the cloth strips is that they will, in the parlance of aerothermodynamics, "trip the boundary layer" earlier than usual for a shuttle flight. The bottom of the shuttle has to be very smooth to extend as long as possible the part of entry known as laminar flow, when the plasma slides smoothly by with a protective boundary layer of air surrounding it.

After the shuttle has slowed considerably, the boundary layer breaks up into what is known as turbulent flow in what is known as boundary layer transition. The strips might trigger early boundary layer transition at much higher speeds than usual, which could cause heating of some 25 percent greater than it usually experiences. Insulating tiles that are usually exposed to temperatures of 2300 degrees could experience temperatures closer to 2900 degrees, and portions of the wing leading edge could undergo heating that, by some estimates, is slightly greater than the maximum temperature they are rated to resist.

Over three days of intense aerothermodynamic analysis, NASA mission managers struggled to balance the risks of trying a spacewalk - the first ever to the underside of the shuttle, and the first emergency on-orbit shuttle repair in the history of the program - and the risks of coming back with dangling gap fillers. Astronaut Charles Camarda said "in this particular case, it was a very close call."

The problem, he said, is that "We know very little about boundary layer transition at about Mach 21 to 24. Conservative estimates indicate that we'll be just at the limit of the hottest portion of the leading edge."

Because the operation is so straightforward, he said, "It's worth that risk."

Yeah. So it's spacewalk time.

Mailbag Funnies

Important Lessons In English

Pretty self explanatory. It's just that it's hard to imagine it comes from a Japanese-English textbook.

This Woman Is Completely Naked

...according to the sender. Hope she doesn't catch a cold. :)

Funny In A Strange Way
This link was sent in by somebody who thinks it's funny. I found it rather depressing that there's somebody this stupid. Or maybe it's just a trick.

What They're Doing With The Shuttle

This is a diagram of what they're going to fix in EVA. Don't roll downward-open-ended.

The Shuttle Woes

It Seems To Get Better, Then Worse
This NYTimes article came in from the RSS Feeder.

Last Tuesday morning, NASA's contention that it had produced the safest fuel tank in shuttle history was shattered two minutes into the Discovery's mission to the International Space Station. Two spacewalking astronauts tested repair techniques at the station yesterday.

The 0.9-pound piece of foam that fell from the PAL ramp on liftoff, which could have led to another catastrophe if it had ripped away a minute sooner, forced the immediate suspension of future shuttle flights until the problem could be resolved.

How did it happen? In hindsight, it is clear that the effort to resolve the PAL ramp problem was a chain of missed opportunities and questionable judgments, not just since the Columbia disaster but over the life of the shuttle program.

Potentially useful tests were not performed. Innovative solutions were not seriously pursued. Tantalizing clues were missed. In the end, the old engineering maxim "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" trumped vague misgivings about a part that had not shed any foam, as far as anyone knew, since 1983.

"After two and a half years, they should have been able to fix the foam," said Paul A. Czysz, a professor emeritus of aeronautical engineering at St. Louis University and a veteran consultant to NASA.

Well, that last statement seems rather open to debate. There's nothing to suggest that if they couldn't solve it in the 80s and 90s, that there has been a fundamental technologoical breakthrough that allowed them to solve it in the last 2 and a half years.

Anyway, the NYT article goes on to say:

At the dawn of the shuttle program, NASA rules said no foam at all should be allowed to hit the shuttle and possibly damage the fragile heat-resistant tiles that cover its aluminum skin.

But fidelity to those standards was relaxed over time; in fact, foam fell from a PAL ramp in two early missions, including the one in June 1983 on which Sally Ride became the first American woman in space. There may have been many more incidents, but dozens of shuttle missions have been launched in darkness, with no visual record of foam, and the tanks themselves cannot be retrieved from the ocean for analysis.

As the early tank was replaced with two lighter successors, the PAL ramps remained - one a 19-foot baffle along a channel for cables and pressurized lines along the forward end of the tank and the other the 37-foot strip along the flank of the cylindrical midsection of the fuel tank. And as experience showed NASA that shuttles returned safely despite well over 100 nicks and gouges requiring repair on many flights, the concerns abated over time.

Until Feb. 1, 2003, the day the Columbia disintegrated on its way home to Cape Canaveral.
---
After the accident, NASA examined all possible sources of liftoff debris, eventually identifying more than 170. Engineers recognized that they could not eliminate all risk from debris, but they could do a much better job of reducing it.

We of course know what happened after that in the CAIB report. Then here's this little bit:

For many aeronautical engineers, a central rule in developing an aircraft is taking its components beyond the breaking point.

"If you don't break a wing, you just have assumptions about what might make it break," said Aldo J. Bordano, a retired NASA aerosciences chief who was on a panel that studied the agency's analysis of the external tank and foam.

He said that while it was premature to conclude whether mistakes were made, many panel members were frustrated with the lack of physical testing of the foam under liftoff conditions.

In any event, NASA decided that the tank without the ramp would expose the cables and hoses to destructive winds; agency engineers and managers considered alternatives but could not come up with any that inspired confidence.

"The community was very diligent about looking at this," Mr. Parsons said in announcing the PAL ramp problem last week. "We did realize that eventually one day we needed to put together a program to remove this PAL ramp if at all possible. But at the time, we didn't have enough data where we could technically do that and be safe."

So they went with the devil they knew. Now they have to reconsider that bargain.Yet, there's still this problem:

A NASA engineer who works on tank safety issues said other areas of foam shedding from the Discovery's tank were even more troubling than the PAL ramp loss, especially a divot that popped from the vicinity of the left-hand bipod strut, the spot that shed the foam that brought down the Columbia.

"We worked the hell out of that," said the engineer, who was given anonymity because he said disclosure of his name would jeopardize his career. The loss of foam from that spot after so much work to correct the problem, he went on, proves that the problem is still far more complex than NASA understands.

So the space agency is back to the drawing board. Some of the options under consideration have come up before, including the elimination of the ramp, a "miniramp" that shrinks the size of the strip by two-thirds, and a small "fence" on the opposite side of the tray that would smooth airflow further. Another possibility, rotating the tank so the ramp faces away from the shuttle, would take years, engineers say.

It makes one groan with frustration when one reads somebody is scared to speak up because it might jeopardise his career, when 7 astronauts are going up in the craft with the same infrastructure flaws as the ones that burnt up Columbia. So much for the great cause of accountability.

The above is Dr. Soichi Noguchi of Japan, doing it hard in EVA.
Discovery looks like it's going to spend an extra day on its schedule.

The extra day in orbit will allow the crew to get a head start on tasks that could be affected by the suspension of those flights: removal of trash and old equipment from the space station.

Some 11 tonnes of waste have piled up over three years, cramping residents on the space station.

Astronauts will pack it into the Rafaello transport module, which the seven shuttle crew members and two space station residents began on Friday to unload of 13.5 tonnes of food and equipment.

Rafaello is an Italian-built pressurized transport module that rides in Discovery's cargo bay and was lifted to the space station with the help of the shuttle's Canadian-built robot arm.

The spacewalk formally began at 4:46 am (0946 GMT), an hour later than scheduled, NASA said, as Discovery remained moored to the space station.

After depressurizing an airlock between the shuttle and its open cargo bay, Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi and American Steve Robinson switched to the batteries of their spacesuits, a procedure that, NASA says, formally marks the beginning of a spacewalk.

They then opened a massive hatch and began making their way into the shuttle's cargo bay to start six and a half hours of work.

The spacewalk, the first of three, included testing new ceramic tile repair methods and work on the ISS.

So they get the Japanese guy to take out the garbage. That'd be right. :)
At least he gets to go to space. Now, to see if he can come back home alive...

Yankees Scratch Out A Win


It was close and down to the bottom of the ninth . The Yankees got out of jail with Hideki Matsui hitting a game-winning double off K-Rod's 36th pitch. You gotta like that kind of fight. At least you don't see the Yankees sending him out to take out the garbage. Still, the Yankees are 2.5 games behind now after a couple of tough losses.

Meanwhile there are rumours coming out of Boston of a Manny Ramirez for Mike Cameron trade .

Ramirez was removed just before Boston's game against Minnesota. The Red Sox said they had no trade to announce and an official involved in the talks said Saturday evening that the sides were still far apart in the much-discussed, three-team trade involving the Red Sox, Mets and Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

After saying he didn't want to talk about the deal, Cameron volunteered that he didn't sleep much Friday night because he'd gotten "calls all day and night long" -- and that he didn't like being the subject of rumors.

"I can't even take it," he said. "I thought I can handle it. I can't."

It sounds unlikely, but you never know. Boston might manage to move Manny Ramirez and his gargantuan contract that was a sort of parting gift from the previous ownership and GM. As onerous contracts go, it's been a very productive one. Except there are strong rumours that the man has asked to be traded for the fourth time in 3 seasons, so it is possible Manny just wants out from Boston, even if he ended up with the Devi Rays - Though that's about as likely as Boston winning a World Series. Oh wait... :)

Today Is Another Day

Space Shuttle Discovery Does A Backflip

And as it turns out, so does NASA as it suspends further Space Shuttle flights.

"As with any unexpected occurrence, we will closely and thoroughly evaluate this event and make any needed modifications to the shuttle before we launch again," the NASA administrator, Michael Griffin, said in a statement on the NASA Web site. "This is a test flight. Among the things we are testing are the integrity of the foam insulation and the performance of new camera equipment installed to detect problems. The cameras worked well. The foam did not."The foam does not appear to have struck the Discovery, so the decision to ground the shuttle fleet will not curtail its 12½-day mission to the International Space Station, the officials said. But further flights will be postponed indefinitely, starting with that of the Atlantis, which was to have lifted off as early as September.

"Until we fix this, we're not ready to go fly again," William W. Parsons, the manager of the shuttle program, said at a news briefing at the Johnson Space Center here on Wednesday evening.

John Shannon, a NASA flight operation and integration manager, said today that NASA asked the mission management team on Wednesday to think about what they would do differently if the Atlantis does not fly in September.

"That decision certainly hasn't been made," he said. "But we have to face reality, we had a significant problem that we had to go address and fix."

It goes to show 100% safety is actually quite difficult to accomplish. BTW, here's another spectacular pickie from the NYT:


From The Pleiades Cable Wire Service
This came in this morning from Pleiades who keeps an eye on this sort of thing.
The recent police shooting of a Brazillian Electrician in England has some people scratching their heads.

Ok, this thing with the murdered Brazilian is just too much. Why isn't anybody talking about this in what would seem to be an extremely logical deduction. Consider:

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/07/22/london.eyewitness/index.html

"As the man got on the train I looked at his face. He looked from left to right, but he basically looked like a cornered rabbit, like a cornered fox. He looked absolutely petrified," said Whitby.

"The next thing I saw was this guy jump over the barriers and the police officers were chasing after him and everyone was just shouting 'Get out, get out,'" Wells said.

"He half-tripped, was half-pushed to the floor. The policeman nearest to me had the black automatic pistol in his left hand, he held it down to the guy and unloaded five shots into him."
------------------------------------

Now this is saying they thought he was a suicide bomber... well is that how you confront a suicide bomber? I mean the man is wearing pounds of explosives, or must be, so is it the best tactic to chase him into a crowded area, throw him to the ground, and fire at his torso five times, exactly where the explosives must be...?

We all know, now, that Menezes was not a suicide bomber. He was just a Brazilian electrician. So why, then, was he so scared or as the witness says "petrified". I mean if the police are chasing you (or just some random 3 guys, as by some account the "police" were plainly clothed) then would you be "petrified"?

You might be startled, a nerved, surprised, ready to defend yourself or maybe scream for help (as he was in a crowded area). But not petrified!

It seems we have both the victim and the officers behaving not at all as they should have been. The police behaved as though Menezes was not a suicide bomber (or at least not one about to blow up) and Menezes did not act as the innocent electrician that we're told he was.

http://rense.com/general67/cops.htm

"Jean was followed from the apartment building where he resided, to a subway station, where he was then accosted by 'plain clothes officers' who chased him down to the train, tripped him, jumped on him, and then shot him five times in the torso."

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/07/22/london.tube/index.html

Go figure. The rest of the article is as unnsettling as they come.

Yankee Ups & Downs
The Yankees lost yesterday 7-3, to the reigning Cy Young winner Johann Santana and the Minnesota Twins. The game featured this play by Joe Mauer of the twins:



Take a look at Mauer's legs. Not only is he blocking the basepath, he's on the outside of the 3B line. His left leg is actually stretched out practically tripping the runner (which just sso happens to be our man, St. Derek of the Pinstripes) . Technicallly, in any rulebook (even the one used by the Major Leagues) this is obstruction. The runner's safe. But of course in the major leagues, all sorts of things go on. The amazing thing, is, nobody says anything. Nary a comment - which is why I'm taking this opportunity to point it out. :).

I remarked on the Nomo signing yesteerday. here's the NYT take on the signing :

Nomo, who turns 37 next month, will join Class AAA Columbus today and is not a candidate to start Saturday because he has not pitched since July 15. That was his 19th and final start for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, who released him after he went 5-8 with a 7.24 earned run average.

"He's got to get some work in, sharpen up and get a feel for it," Manager Joe Torre said. "It's just like being on the D.L. He just needs to get some action down there and have them tell us what they think."

Even if Nomo cannot help the Yankees this weekend, Cashman said it made sense to sign him considering the state of the rotation. Nomo has pitched for six teams over 11 major league seasons, with a 123-109 record.

"He's Hideo Nomo - he's one of the premier pitchers of probably all-time, for what he accomplished coming over from Japan to come here," Cashman said. "You know he's not afraid. He's one of those rare special ones. If you look at Nomo and compare him to some of our other in-house choices, it's a no-brainer."

Goodness. With that logic, you'd bring back Ron Guidry.
More Jeter hagiography as a palette of icons

Emergency starter Aaron Small had his second outing and came up very big today .

Against the Twins, he gave up three runs and six hits in seven innings, walked none and struck out one, retiring his final 12 batters after Jacque Jones' tying double in the fourth. It was the longest outing in the major league career of Small, who has just five starts among his 149 appearances.

Tom Gordon pitched the eighth, and Mariano Rivera finished for his 26th save -- all in a row since failing in his first two chances of the season. New York, with only Randy Johnson and Mike Mussina remaining from its original five-man rotation, closed within 1 1/2 games of idle first-place Boston in the AL East.

Sheffield hooked a three-run homer just inside the left-field foul pole in the first inning off Joe Mays (5-6). After Minnesota tied it on Luis Rodriguez's two-run single in the second and Jones' double, Sheffield put the Yankees ahead for good with a run-scoring single in the fifth. He is batting .396 (38-for-96) with runners in scoring position this year.

So the Yankees still sit 1.5 games behind the Bosox.

A Night At The Opera
I attended a function held by the NSWFTO with Pleiades and Mrs. Pleiades last night. The FTO function was for the regional film fund and the various film bodies in rural Australia. So we got to meet important liaison people from Cowra for our 'Giants at Dawn' project, which of course is starting to gather momentum.

There's a lot of industry interest in this production now that we are talking to a big time Hollywood Agent about a certain star he represents; as well as having sewn up some big names at the Australian end; not to mention the mighty Geoff Murphy being signed on as our director (and he's not fading away!)

We got to speak to people from Northern Rivers; Film Mid North Coast Armidale; the ACT Production Liaison officer; Broken Hill's Tourism Services Manager various FTO officials and they were all very positive and enthusiastic. All in all it was a very encouraging night. Stay tuned for that one too.