The Final Frontier

China launched a moon probe today. It will explore stuff which the U.S. and Russia have already explored. What is the point? This topless woman wants to know! If space is to be explored, why mimic the same competitive spirit and adversarial nature that people on Earth have experienced for thousands of years already? What's the use of exploring space and setting up colonies and all the rest if at the end, nothing but strife and poverty will result? Anyone know? We are simply exporting misery out to space. Really.

Dumb idea

How many different ways are there to foolishly spend tax money? Anatoly Perminov, a Russian pseudo-scientist has come up with one. He wants to have several nations fund a project which he dreamed up. He needs several hundred million dollars, he said. hehehe The project involves coming up with a way to deal with an asteroid which might hit Earth sometime in 2029. The asteroid is about the size of a city block. American scientists who have calculated the trajectory of the asteroid have stated that the worst case scenario is that the thing will miss Earth by 18,000 miles. Perminov, in the meantime, wants to start working on his foolish idea immediately. He is getting on in years and wants to make sure he has time to enjoy some of the funding. Of that I'm absolutely certain. Please. Even this topless woman knows better.

Going to the moon

A recent report from the Pan American Development Foundation says that about 225,000 children in Haiti live as unpaid household servants. These kids come from households that are too poor to care for them. In other parts of the world, people clamor for more funding for space exploration programs. This topless woman does not care either way. She did not create this problem.

The spying business

From an October 20, 2009 news story: “WASHINGTON – Prosecutors say a scientist who worked on the cutting edge of moon exploration has been caught trying to sell classified secrets to an FBI agent posing as an Israeli intelligence agent. Stewart David Nozette, who is credited with helping discover evidence of water on the moon and has been a leader in recent lunar exploration work, was arrested Monday and charged in a criminal complaint with attempting to communicate, deliver and transmit classified information, the Justice Department said. Nozette worked in various jobs for the Energy Department and NASA. At Energy, Nozette held a special security clearance equivalent to the Defense Department's top secret and "critical nuclear weapon design information" clearances. Prosecutors also quote an unnamed colleague of Nozette who said the scientist said that if the U.S. government ever tried to put him in jail for an unrelated criminal offense, he would go to Israel or another foreign country and "tell them everything" he knows.” So, being highly intelligent does not guarantee anything. Always be aware that people are always looking to catch you doing something bad. This man forgot that he needed to spy on the spies before getting into this nasty business. He will no longer be able to talk to this topless woman, or anyone like her. Too bad.

British Petroleum

From a recent news story: “NEW YORK – Nearly seven miles below the Gulf of Mexico, oil company BP has tapped into a vast pool of crude after digging the deepest oil well in the world. The Tiber Prospect is expected to rank among the largest petroleum discoveries in the United States, potentially producing half as much crude in a day as Alaska's famous North Slope oil field. The company's chief of exploration on Wednesday estimated that the Tiber deposit holds between 4 billion and 6 billion barrels of oil equivalent, which includes natural gas. That would be enough to satisfy U.S. demand for crude for nearly one year. But BP does not yet know how much it can extract.” I find this rather scary. Drilling that deeply into the Earth’s crust – does that not harm the environment somehow? I do not know, but I have a funny feeling about this. I don't think this topless woman likes it either.

Not possible

From a news story on the internet: “CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Thunderstorms once again forced NASA to call off the launch of space shuttle Endeavour on Monday, the fifth delay for the space station construction mission. NASA said it would try again Wednesday, after taking a one-day break. In a scene nearly identical to Sunday, launch managers halted the countdown just minutes before Endeavour and seven astronauts were supposed to blast off in the early evening. This time, storms packed with lightning popped up on opposite sides of the launching site, one after the other, close enough to violate NASA's safety rules. Endeavour has been grounded for an entire month now, first by leaks, then stormy weather. This was the third day in a row that thunderstorms prevented Endeavour from blasting off with the final piece of Japan's space station lab.”
Ok, now…. If mankind is to go into outer space some day, he must solve little problems like inconvenient thunderstorms. Even Ann Coulter would agree with me. Please.

Dangerous neighborhood

From a Yahoo! News story: “WASHINGTON – Space shuttle Atlantis is now in a rough orbital neighborhood — a place littered with thousands of pieces of space junk zipping around the Earth at nearly 20,000 mph. There are more pieces of shattered satellites and used-up rockets in this region than astronauts have ever encountered. As soon as the job is complete, the shuttle will scamper to safety - all those tiny projectiles raise the constant threat of a potentially fatal collision. NASA now puts the risk for a catastrophic collision with junk during the mission at 1 in 229 — greater than typical flights to the space station but lower than the agency's initial estimates. The Air Force is tracking more than 19,000 objects in all sorts of orbits — most of it junk. The dirtiest spots are at 525 miles up where a Chinese satellite was destroyed and 490 miles, where an Russian-American satellite collision occurred. And the higher the space junk orbits, the longer it stays aloft because there's even less drag from the ultra-thin atmosphere pulling stuff down. For example, a 4-inch object 490 miles up will stay in orbit for more than a century, Johnson said. Objects between one-tenth of an inch and 4 inches are dangerous enough to cause major and even fatal damage, but cannot be specifically tracked.” So, why are all the green revolution people not saying anything about this? And, we want to travel to Mars? What for? To pollute it? Please.

Plutonium

From a Yahoo! News story: “WASHINGTON – NASA is running out of nuclear fuel needed for its deep space exploration. The end of the Cold War's nuclear weapons buildup means that the U.S. space agency does not have enough plutonium for future faraway space probes — except for a few missions already scheduled — according to a new study released Thursday by the National Academy of Sciences. Deep space probes beyond Jupiter can't use solar power because they're too far from the sun. The National Academy report says it would cost the Energy Department at least $150 million to resume making it for the 11 pounds a year that NASA needs for its space probes. Solar power is preferable to plutonium because it is cheaper and has fewer safety concerns, but solar power just doesn't work in the darkest areas of space.” To begin with, I have not the slightest clue why we need to be exploring outer space when we need to explore solutions to serious problems we have here on this planet. Secondly, I really don’t need to be told that solar power does not work in the dark and that it’s cheaper than plutonium. Please. Either way, the woman at left does not seem to care.

Predictions

You probably read this in a Yahoo! News story: PASADENA, Calif. – “An asteroid about the size of one that blasted Siberia a century ago just buzzed by Earth. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory reported that the asteroid zoomed past Monday morning. The asteroid named 2009 DD45 was about 48,800 miles from Earth. That is just twice the height of some telecommunications satellites and about a fifth of the distance to the Moon. The space ball measured between 69 feet and 154 feet in diameter. The Planetary Society said that made it the same size as an asteroid that exploded over Siberia in 1908 and leveled more than 800 square miles of forest…. The asteroid was only spotted two days ago and at its closest point passed over the Pacific Ocean near Tahiti.” All that damage from an asteroid smaller than my backyard. This is pretty scary, especially if nobody saw it coming until two days before it flew by. What to do???