Posts tagged NASA

That Was The Year That Was

7
1 year ago
by dcpetterson in

We’ve had a lively year. Con­gress was active, though the more active it was, the less pop­u­lar it seems to have become. We had high drama two or three times over taxes, the debt and the deficit, and the first ever down­grade of America’s credit rat­ing. The polit­i­cal win­ners and losers are far from clear. The econ­omy has slowly but steadily improved, and con­sumer con­fi­dence is right around the high­est it’s been since the Great Reces­sion, while unem­ploy­ment con­tin­ues to decline. The President’s approval rat­ings have been on a slow rise since its low point in mid-​​August. All these fac­tors may well be related. (more…)

Open Mic September 30

90
1 year ago
by Logarchism.com in
Open Mic Afternoon

Your turn at the mic

There was no Repub­li­can debate this last week. Perry fell in the polls any­way, while those being polled were rais­ing Cain, the “fla­vor of the week”. Chris Christie wavered slightly on his ear­lier insis­tence that he’s not a can­di­date for Pres­i­dent, lead­ing most “pro­fes­sional” com­men­ta­tors to spec­u­late about his inten­tions and and about when he’ll get into the race. The Chi­nese launched their first space sta­tion into orbit. Mes­sen­ger, NASA’s Mer­cury orbiter, returned spec­tac­u­lar pho­tographs and a wealth of data. A flock of way­ward neu­tri­nos report­edly broke the speed limit. No indi­ca­tion of whether they got pulled over and cited.

Don’t see an arti­cle on a par­tic­u­lar topic, but want to talk about it some­where? This is Open Mic. Talk about what­ever you want, but stay respectful.

We cre­ate a new Open Mic every week to give a clean slate, but feel free to add to this topic at any time.

No-​​fly Me to the Moon

8
1 year ago
by dcpetterson in
Landing site photographed by Lunar Reconnaissa...

Apollo 17 land­ing site, via LRO

“No-​​fly” zones are usu­ally imposed for mil­i­tary or diplo­matic rea­sons, or for rea­sons of national secu­rity. They are usu­ally put in place to pre­vent mil­i­tary move­ment, or to pro­tect cer­tain loca­tions of national impor­tance. For instance, the area around Wash­ing­ton, DC is a no-​​fly zone; no air­craft are allowed any­where near the seat of our national government.

Last week, NASA requested a series of no-​​fly zones in per­haps the most unusual areas ever, and for a very dif­fer­ent sort of rea­son. NASA wants to pro­tect “her­itage” sites on the Moon. (more…)

Open Mic September 9

51
1 year ago
by Logarchism.com in

We’ve had a busy week.

President Obama Speaks

Pres­i­dent Obama Speaks

Here at Log­a­rchism, we had ret­ro­spec­tives con­sid­er­ing the decade since the attacks of Sep­tem­ber 11. On Wednes­day, the Repub­li­cans had a pres­i­den­tial debate: Rick Perry had his coming-​​out party. Huge areas of the north­east have flooded from Hur­ri­cane Irene. Texas has enor­mous fires, for which Gov­er­nor Perry sac­ri­ficed his prin­ci­ples and asked for fed­eral aid — from FEMA no less. The NFL had its sea­son opener. Pres­i­dent Obama gave a major speech before a joint ses­sion of Con­gress, propos­ing the Amer­i­can Jobs Act. He went big, and gave a barn­burner of a speech. NASA announced that we’re on the verge of an astro­naut short­age. NASA also released some stun­ning new pho­tos of the Apollo land­ing sites. Home­land Secu­rity has an ele­vated con­cern for New York and Wash­ing­ton, in light of the upcom­ing tenth anniver­sary of Sep­tem­ber 11, say­ing there is a “spe­cific, cred­i­ble” threat.

Seal of the United States Department of Homela...

Image via Wikipedia

Don’t see an arti­cle on a par­tic­u­lar topic, but want to talk about it some­where? This is Open Mic. Talk about what­ever you want, but stay respectful.

We cre­ate a new Open Mic every week to give a clean slate, but feel free to add to this topic at any time.

Related arti­cles

Slip The Surly Bonds

0
2 years ago
by filistro in
Virgin Galactic

Image via Wikipedia

Vir­gin Galac­tic has announced that it will team with NASA to make com­mer­cial space travel pos­si­ble. From a state­ment by Sir Richard Bran­son:

Vir­gin Galac­tic has shown in the past few years how pri­vate sec­tor invest­ment and inno­va­tion can lead to a rapid trans­for­ma­tion of stag­nant tech­nolo­gies. We are now very close to mak­ing the dream of sub-​​orbital space a real­ity for thou­sands of peo­ple at a cost and level of safety unimag­in­able even in the recent past. We know that many of those same peo­ple, includ­ing myself, would also love to take an orbital space trip in the future, so we are putting our weight behind new tech­nolo­gies that could deliver that safely whilst dri­ving down the enor­mous cur­rent costs of manned orbital flight by mil­lions of dol­lars. Today’s announce­ment is an impor­tant step along the way to achiev­ing our ulti­mate and long term goal of lead­ing an indus­try which opens up the huge poten­tial of space to every­one, whether it be for the expe­ri­ence itself, for sci­ence research, for fast and effi­cient trans­porta­tion around the globe or for deliv­er­ing pay­loads to space safely, cleanly and cheaply. We very much look for­ward to work­ing with SNC, OSC and other part­ners in the future to bring this ambi­tion to fruition.

What will space travel be like in the future? (more…)

2010: The Trend is Upward

0
2 years ago
by dcpetterson in

Through­out 2008 and 2009, many con­ser­v­a­tive pun­dits spent some effort in try­ing to con­vince us that the world was in a “cool­ing trend.” 2008 and 2009, while still among the warmest years on record, were a bit cooler than a few of the other years in the first decade of the 21st Century.

Arc­tic Ice Cap (cour­tesy NOAA)

Any nat­ural process is going to have random-​​walk anom­alies. So cli­mate sci­en­tists remained con­vinced that the trend in global tem­per­a­tures remained upward. What does 2010 do to the picture?

Although the Decem­ber data has yet to be released the National Oceanic and Atmos­pheric Admin­is­tra­tion stated that for Jan­u­ary through Novem­ber, “the com­bined global land and ocean sur­face tem­per­a­ture was…the warmest such period since records began in 1880.” (more…)

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