The moment of truth is close at hand. As the countdown clock shows, Curiosity will soon enter the Martian stratosphere and the Internet is abuzz with excitement and no small amount of anxiety. The seven minutes of terror will soon begin for real. There’s a lot riding on it, both literally and figuratively. [Read more…]
Watch very closely, one of these Olympic athletes, Oscar Pistorius — nicknamed Blade Runner — is not like the others …
Curiosity will be landing, or trying to land, at about 12:30 AM Central Time in the US. A press conference is in progress here, the panelist all opened by saying they’re having to remind themselves to breathe. I’ll be adding to this post throughout the day.
At a press conference today Richard Cook described what is planned. The deep space tracking network will be relaying real time communication with the rover, the first opportunity to hear from the vehicle is likely to be within seconds of landing. Shortly after 12:31 AM engineers will probably know if the landing was a success and there could be images returned a little after that time. On the next pass by an orbiter about two hours later images will probably be returned by the fish eye HazCam.
Remember Dan Senor, the man who was dead wrong about, well, everything when he was the Bush-Cheney head PR honcho in Iraq? Senor was so incredibly wrong and at such tragic cost that off course Mit Romney had to snatch him up for that foreign policy expertise! But the guy who’s been making economic forecasts and was involved in crafting the disastrous Mittastrophe plan now being panned makes Senor look like fucking Nostradamus. There’s more, oh so much more. [Read more…]
Prefaced with the usual double standard notice: imagine if the pornstress had picked a ‘filthy immoral’ democrat instead of a ‘fastidious Christian’ conservative: [Read more…]
Dream Chaser, a shuttle replacement vehicle under development by Sierra Nevada Corporation (NYSE ticker symbol SNC)
NASA announced today it would dole out a billion dollars to three newspace firms in an effort to accelerate development of a man-rated spacecraft. And without further adieu ado, the winners are: [Read more…]
Without populations of adults stem cells in our tissues we’d be screwed. There would be no way to heal after injury or disease. But they come at a price, stem cells can mutate, lose their off switch or go astray, replicating fast and integrating into the circulatory system, they can form a cluster of cells that are business for themselves, one that can fool the body’s immune system. After all, the cells making it up are natives. Usually the owner won’t know what’s going on until they feel a lump or get a scan, then the battle is on. A new three-pronged study sheds light on the fascinating and deadly phenamenon: [Read more…]
Mitt Romney already had a simmering Dooh Nibor problem, reverse Robin Hood, as in give to the rich and take from the rest. Fresh off a series of overseas gaffes team Romney decided to tap his Wile Coyote, super fnancial genius, credentials. They miscalculated, badly, in more ways than one, and the plan they released has now been widely panned: [Read more…]
You can always count on the racist wing of the conservative caucus to stir up trouble anyway they can. And if Rep Steve King (R-batshit) is thrown into the mix it’s guaranteed to be even funnier and nuttier. But the growing ties between the GOP and white nationalists are anything but funny: [Read more…]
Bored and no doubt mostly male missile defense techs have been caught with their hands in the virtual cookie jar, or maybe they’ve just spend too much time thinking about missile shaped objects penetrating virgin airspace under the cover of darkness. But US defense techs have been told to thinking about hitting that on taxpayer time, when that is not a tactical or strategic target for nukes: [Read more…]