Could You Repeat That?

Bill Maher said that?

I find that a bit hard to believe,  but if he did, he was 100% correct.
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Gliese 667cc

Another earth-type planet has been found at the ho-hum distance of only 22 light years away.
The planet lies in what they describe as a 'habitable zone', neither too near its sun to dry out or too far away which freezes it.

And the discovery could help answer the question of whether we are alone in the universe, which has been plagued astronomers and alien fanatics for years.

Scientists found the planet, Gliese 667Cc, orbiting around a red dwarf star, 22 light years away from the earth.
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 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/9230801/Astronomers-find-new-planet-capable-of-supporting-life.html

Perhaps now, when someone yells "Stop the world! I want to get off!", we can suggest a destination for them.
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Earth From 4 Billion Miles Away

Thanks to Yellowdog Granny

The Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2

The  Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 just completed it's second flight test.

The  arrowhead-shaped unmanned aircraft  was launched from from Vandenberg Air Force Base, northwest of Santa Barbara, into the upper reaches of the Earth's atmosphere aboard an eight-story Minotaur IV rocket.

http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-darpa-hypersonic-missile-20120420,0,4564567.story

After reaching an undisclosed altitude, the aircraft jettisoned its protective cover atop the rocket, then nose-dived back toward Earth, leveled out and glided above the Pacific at  Mach 20.

At a speed of almost 13,000 MPH, portions of the Falcon’s skin peeled away from it's surface which abruptly destroyed the vehicle.

It lasted almost three minutes at that speed and in the searing heat of over 3,500F.

Well and good, one must suppose. But then, one might ask what the purpose of this vehicle is?

We are told this new technology would provide the Pentagon with a lightning-fast vehicle, capable of delivering a military strike anywhere in the world in less than an hour.

Hmmmm.

We already have lightning-fast vehicles that can deliver a military strike anywhere in the world... In less than 20 minutes,  three times faster than this new 320 million-dollar(so far) craft. They are called ICBM's.

This vehicle needs to be launched aboard an eight-story Minotaur IV rocket, which could be an effective ICBM all by itself.  So why is this new additional stage - with it's additional cost - being introduced in the process of delivering a warhead on target?

What's the advantage of being able to fly at 13,000MPH in the atmosphere? If the purpose is to deliver a military strike in the fastest time possible, flying through the atmosphere is certainly not the way to do it.

If this thing is to be developed into a delivery vehicle that can zip over to a target and launch a missile or warhead,  it may be able to get there in a hurry, but it will have to slow WAY down to launch  anything, since it's weapons will have to be carried inside the craft or be  ripped off in flight.  At that point, it becomes just another everyday drone over the target, doing what we can already do from many of our many overseas bases. If it is intended to be a one-way flight to destroy itself  along with the target, we have cruise missiles doing that already.

So, in a time where we are all trying to get a handle on spending in an effort to keep from enslaving our kids for their entire lives trying to pay off government-created debt, we find the military-industrial complex blowing hundreds of millions on things we just don't need right now, to do jobs we can already do.

Low-altitude high-speed research is a fine thing to do when it can be afforded. Right now we can't afford it.

From Civilization To The Caves

I've been fascinated by all the civilization ending scenarios being bandied about on TV and the blogs. We have huge asteroid hits, super volcanoes, pandemic diseases, nuclear war, a large sun flare, even a black hole wandering by.

The end of civilization doesn't need to be that dramatic. All we need to do is shut off the electricity. Civilization - as we know it - cannot exist without it.

Consider: One fine day(or night) your electric service suddenly stops. A bit of checking around and you discover that the neighbors have lost their electricity also. Now, that's a bit inconvenient, at least for the first few hours.

If you live in a hot area, the loss of your air-conditioning suddenly becomes a real problem. No electricity, no cooling.

If you live in a cold area, you discover your furnace has stopped. Even if your furnace is gas or propane fueled, it has a large electric motor to move the air around in your house. No electricity, no heating.

Then, you realize that all the food in the refrigerator is starting to spoil.

But you have planned ahead, you have an emergency generator in the garage. Just gas it up and you can save all that frozen food in the refrigerator and the freezer. Drive down to the gas station and get a can of gas.

Oops, the gas station has electric motors that pump their gas. They don't have any electricity either. Sorry, no gas today.... Say goodbye to all that food.

You go to the restroom, use the toilet, flush, and then notice the tank is not refilling. You see, the water delivered to your house, no matter where it comes from, needs pumps run by big motors to get that water to your house. And 99% of those motors are electric.

If you live in an all-electric home, everything has stopped working. Your electric range is a big useless chunk of metal in the kitchen... you can't even warm up water or cook your food. Your TV, your hair dryer, your electric razor... all useless. Your computer doesn't work. You can't recharge your cell phone, your I-Pad or your I-Pod.  All those fancy electronic gadgets are  now just expensive pieces of junk.

To summarize, your house is now no different than a $29.95 tent, just bigger. You have to cook with an open fire. You have to haul your water from the nearest pond or lake. You use the nearest bush out in the yard for a toilet. You tolerate whatever the weather tosses at you. Want to wash your clothes? Hah... your washer and dryer ran on electricity. Want to wash your dishes, your pots and pans? There's no water, remember? Want to take a shower? Dream on.

You might as well go live in a cave. It's more defendable than that tract home or apartment you live in.

Now, in a more serious vein, the Obama administration and it's gaggle of flunkies want to close down 40% of our coal fired electrical plants with those all-new regulations from that madwoman Lisa Jackson and the EPA.

What will you lose in your enviorment if 40% of your electricity vanishes?

Or, far more likley, how will you manage through rolling blackouts that will last for hours, sometimes days?

Remember, nationwide, coal-fired plants create more than half of our electricity.

Obama, his little band of lunatics, and the globalist puppet masters that control them, are using the global warming hoax as a mechanism to gain more wealth, power and control.

They want us to believe that the world is warming, It is not.  It's been cooling for at least the last fourteen years. They tell us this non-existant warming is caused by our coal-fired plants. It is not.

They are all lying. They all know they are lying.  And, they all think you are too stupid to see the truth, that they will ultimately win,  that if they lie long enough, you will eventually believe them. 

None of them deserve any more time in positions of power.
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Wow! What A Great Day For America!

Space Shuttle Discovery makes it's last flight around Washington landmarks

Today, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood delivered some welcoming remarks while standing in front of the space shuttle Discovery at Dulles International Airport in Virginia April 17, 2012.

One of his remarks was the above headline, "Wow! What A Great Day For America!"

I almost fell out of my chair when he said that.

As the Shuttle is lugged off to the Smithsonian Museum to gather dust, our astronauts are learning how to say "Please, can I have a ride?" in Russian.

A "great day"? What a sick joke. Today highlights how America has given up fifty years of leadership and dominance in the space race. As Obama continues to drain money from NASA to give to bankrupt solar panel factories and algae pond scummers, NASA's present leadership continues to lead the organization on it's self-inflicted death march.

What the hell happened?

It's a long, sad story, but this is what happens when an organization loses it's focus. Forces inside NASA and Washington have worked tirelessly to re-mold NASA into a politically correct entity of social experimentation. They were wildly successful, and in the timely words of some unknown doctor...

"The operation was successful, but the patient died".

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, with his unbelievable remark, aptly demonstrated the complete absence of leadership and understanding this administration has continuously shown.

A great day for America? You gotta be kidding.
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The Next Space Port

Astro tickled a bone of mine in a recent post about New Mexico and decent places to live there. Got me to thinking about one of my old stomping grounds, the White Sands Missile Range.

I worked at a place called Stallion Site, up near the 90-mile area, where aircraft from various bases would come and drop bombs, shoot rockets, and do other neat stuff.

My primary job responsibility was keeping two obsolete radars working, an SPS-30 air search and a antiquated FPS-6 height finder in good operating order, and when they were running, go man the scopes and operate them.

Surprising that I can still remember those radar designators.



That's me messing around on the FPS-6 antenna. Actually we were on the way to replace the feed horn plexiglass window which had started leaking air from the pressurized waveguide. The thing in the upper right that looks kinda like a highway traffic cone is the feed horn. And yes, I had on a safely belt and a tool pouch, you just can't see them in the photo.

Straying a bit off the point here... But I think WSMR has a lot going for it for us to launch our next series of vehicles. Our spacecraft are now reliable enough to be launched over populated sections of the continent, something we definitely did not want to do when the vehicles had a tendency to blow up at any time.

That extra mile of free elevation weighs heavily in favor for WSMR, particularly when cost has become such a huge factor.

But cooler heads will have to make decisions like that, because another factor that entered into the consideration of where to launch our spacecraft from was: Most of those fancy pants scientists and the like didn't like the isolation of the WSMR sites, or the rather primitive little towns that surrounded it that they would have to live in, where those odd natives sutbbornly clung to their green chile and beer.



Yum.
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The Fuse... She Is Lit

Reuters) - Two white men accused of shooting five black people in Tulsa, Oklahoma, killing three of them, have confessed to authorities, media reports said on Monday, citing police and court documents.

Jake England, 19, has admitted to police that he shot three of the victims and Alvin Watts, 33, has said that he shot two others, a Tulsa police spokesman told the New York Times.

Here's the rest of the story:

Shortly before Friday's killings, England had lamented on his Facebook page that two years had passed since his father was killed by a black man, who he referred to with a racial slur.

Hmmm... racial slur it's called. Political correctness has no place in a case like this, because it deflects and reduces the impact of the words and the incident.

His Facebook page has been taken down, so verification is no longer available about what he said. But it was quite nasty, according to some reports.

The Black Panthers are calling for bloodshed. Looks like they're liable to get exactly what they want, except for all of the unanticipated consequences, of which there will be many. You just can't repeatedly threaten a huge section of the population with murder and bloodshed without eventually triggering a response.

And it may just be that these two Oklahoma boys have shown us all what that response could look like.

Not good... not good.

Those panthers need to start thinking through what they are trying to do. They're kicking and stabbing at a presently passive giant that may - without warning - suddenly flash into rage and stomp them into the dust.
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Keeping The Lid On May Soon Be Impossible

A 78-year-old white man in East Toledo was viciously attacked by six black males, the youngest being only 11, as he was on his way home from the nearby Mini-Mart.

Mr. Dallas Watts said one of the boys delivered a single blow to the back of his head during the incident, knocking him to the ground. At one point, he recalled being lifted from the ground so one of the boys could "drop-kick" him in the chest.

One boy, he said, put his foot on the back of the victim's neck, with another shouting, "Kill him."

While Mr. Watts was down the boys kicked him, over and over, shouting, "[Get] that white [man]. This is for Trayvon ... Trayvon lives, white [man]. Kill that white [man]," according to a police report.

Sadly, this is another example of how so many in the black community are using this Trayvon shooting only as an excuse to show their deep hatred for whites... Any whites.

No good will come of this - only unparalleled disaster - which needs to be placed solely at the feet of the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, lifelong anti-white race baiters.

When you have a black 11-year-old kicking a 78 year-old white man lying helplessly on the ground for the only reason that he is white, race relations in this country may have reached a point that may impossible to step back from.

I fear much blood will be spilled before this is all over.

What Was The Point?

77-year-old Charles Manson is a gray-haired and gray-bearded bitter old man who never once felt regret for his crimes, never once expressed any sympathy for his idiotic cult followers who killed for him, and never became even partially penitent. Inside, he remains the insane killer he was back in 1969.

Next Wednesday, Manson goes up for his his 12th parole hearing. It could be his last because state law now allows a denial of parole for up to 15 years.

Ok. He's been in prison for over forty years, a ward of the State of California, a burden on the California taxpayer for over four decades. So why did they not just put him down? Why bother to let him live all these years? He hasn't changed, he will not change.

The one good thing he has done for all of us is to show what a waste of time, effort and resources life sentences are.

If we are going to lock somebody away for his entire life only to see him die behind bars, don't wait decades to watch them die. Let them appeal - once - and if they lose, lights out. No lifetime free ride.

With over six billion now alive on this overburdened planet, we certainly won't miss one wasted, useless life.

Another Drone Crashes

VICTORIA (Reuters) - A U.S. drone crash-landed at the Seychelles main airport and careered into the ocean on Wednesday, the second remotely piloted MQ-9 Reaper aircraft to crash on the Indian Ocean archipelago in four months.

The Seychelles Civil Aviation Authority (SCAA) said the aircraft had technical problems soon after taking off and tried to land at Seychelles International Airport on the main island of Mahe.

What we are not hearing is whether or not there had been radio interference interrupting the drone's command channels, something I suspect is being attempted everywhere we fly our drones.

Of course we are not hearing anything like that... It would be really bad for the drone projects worldwide, bad for the military, bad for the contractors that build the things, bad for the politicians that get the kickbacks.

What the Washington crowd doesn't seem to understand is that if a drone can be remotely controlled by us, it can be remotely messed with by somebody else. There is no foolproof way to protect a drone from enemy interference, anymore than there is a foolproof way to protect a computer from hackers. It's the arms race all over again, except it's over us finding an all-new secure communications channel and them finding how to crack it.

When you hear some putz claim that we have totally secure communications with our drones, what you are really hearing is whistling in the dark. Nothing is totally secure, and even if the enemy can't break the latest control codes quickly, they can easily jam the signals to the drone. I suspect that's how the Iranians got their drone: They jammed the control signals, so the drone went into automatic mode and landed itself... in enemy territory.

Keep in mind that today's engineers are products of today's Colleges and Universities, where they learned more about feminism and socialism than they did about good design, so don't expect any sort of excellence-in-design by them. What you can expect from them is a fierce defence of their mediocrity.

Also remember that in an all-volunteer military, we are not getting the best and brightest in the services, so a lot of members of the maintenance crews may not be the brightest bulbs in the box and not performing proper maintenance routines. As an ex-military member, I could cite numerous occasions where maintenance - preventive and corrective - was less than required. I can imagine that short-cutting and cheating on maintenance is as bad a problem today as it ever was... probably worse, since training and schooling nowadays is a poor echo of what it used to be.

As the government and the military lose drone after drone, us lucky taxpayers get to pick up the tab.

In our downward slide to mediocrity, nothing has changed but the price tag.
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