Missile hits a satellite

A missile launched from a Navy cruiser soared 130 miles above the Pacific and smashed a dying and potentially deadly U.S. spy satellite Wednesday, the Pentagon said. Two defense officials said it apparently achieved the main aim of destroying an onboard tank of toxic fuel.

Should I be waiting for Ted Kennedy and all the others who said this could NEVER work back in 1983 to apologize??? No, hell would have to freeze over first. Thank you Regan, Bush, Clinton and Bush for giving us a basic BMD system that can also protect us from rogue satellites. Yes thank Clinton because he didn't kill the program like he promised to do.

5 Years after Challenger

Five years ago this month, the Space Shuttle Challenger was lost as it returned to earth. President Bush's response was to not abandon space or just write it off as the cost of doing business, but to change the focus of NASA manned space flight from going into orbit to having destinations like the Moon and Mars.

Greenpeace Co-Founder: "My bad. I likes the nuclear power."

Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace now co-chairs the "Clean and Safe Energy Coalition"--a nuke industry association. Money quote:

As a co-founder of Greenpeace, even though I was a scientist, I made the same mistake in those days as all the rest of my colleagues did. We kind of lumped nuclear energy in with nuclear weapons as if all things nuclear were evil. It was an honest mistake.

An honest mistake? Doh. "My bad."

An interesting interview, although I am suspicious of his motives, since he is currently serving as a nuclear industry spokesman of sorts. His interesting take on solar:

Solar photovoltaic simply has no place on the grid. All the money that's going into subsiding solar is a waste of money because it could be being used on more effective technologies that we already have that are not unreliable and intermittent.

His statement rings true concerning the reliability of solar, but I have to, again, question his motives in stating that solar has absolutely no role in supplying our energy needs. Still, it would seem there is hope reasonable people will come around.

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Damned If You Do...Damned If You Don't

...biofuels were held up as a panacea for countries struggling to cope with the rising cost of oil or those looking to reduce greenhouse gas emissions...But in recent months, scientists, private agencies and even the British government have said biofuels could do more harm than good. Rather than protecting the environment, they say energy crops destroy natural forests that actually store carbon and thus are a key tool in the fight to reduce global warming.

Not to mention the destruction wrought on clearcutting jungles and forests for land to grow biofuel crops. As they say, there is no free lunch, especially if it's corn.

(hat tip Instapundit)

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Iraq, Stem Cells, Guns and other news

Yeah, a lot of news out there today and we have rain in SoCal. This is the first major rain of the season as far as I remember and I have to claim full responsibility for it. My wife drove my car yesterday (a Prius with carpool lane stickers) since she had to go to downtown Los Angeles, and being the wonderful woman she is took my car to the car wash for me. So I had a nice clean car yesterday and so of course today we have lots of rain.

Stem Cells created without embryos. If this turns out to be true as the press is reporting, will those who decried President Bush for limiting Federal funding for embryonic stem cell research apologise?

Iraq, why are politicians in favor, against and now more in favor of the war and the reconstruction? Is it because the US and Iraqi people are winning? I have more respect for Sen. Obama who opposed the war all along (even if I disagree with him) then with Sen Edwards who was for the war, then against and now maybe for it again.

Why are Republicans who sign a pledge to uphold a Bush veto on spending voting to override his veto on said spending bill? My own two cents, the earmarks in the bill go to their districts or to their supporters. Another reason why we need transparency in the budget process so we can see who is putting these earmarks in and hold them accountable.

Guns in homes where children play. If you have a gun, make sure it is secure. Know who your kids spend time with. And remember train your kids in firearm safety so they will be safe if they come across a gun in a friends house. The article also selectively uses some statistics to make its case, the folks at Lucianne have some interesting comments.

Making a point about global warming in the Arctic was cancelled due to the extreme cold. So we had to put a lot more carbon dioxide into the air to rescue these fools. If you are going to go to the Arctic or Antarctic, be prepared and don't believe your own hype.

Have a good weekend.

Ultra-capacitors

Capacitors are being used on a limited basis for short range vehicles.

Now capacitors instead of batteries are being used in one drag racer, yes you read that right drag racer.

While the modified EV1 isn't the fastest car out there, yet, its the fastest in its class (electric) and ran the quarter mile in 15.79 seconds. Its top speed was almost 80 MPH. Yes, there are gasoline and alcohol powered vehicles that will top out at 200 MPH and this electric vehicle won't be challenging them at the moment, but this vehicle is powered by capacitors not batteries or any other energy source.

The paper shows there is room for improvement and areas the students will be looking at to increase efficiency of the vehicle and the energy source. It would be very cool if they were able to work out the issues so the car was able compete and beat the conventional drag racers.

Rocket Powered X-Wing

21 foot long scale model of an X-Wing, rocket powered and ready for flight, October 10th. Gallery of pictures after the jump to Gizmodo.

Holy cow!

Its Monday

I'm finally starting to get caught up with life after school.

This weekend got the new fuser unit into the HP 2840 so it is back up and running. Its amazing how much we were using the copy function and how that is a recent luxury to have a copier in the home. Also got most of the bills paid, most of the filing done and my note book computer fixed. Dell did a good job with their tech support, I'm impressed. I also ran our credit reports and everything is as I thought. So all in all it was a productive weekend.

Two stories in the news today.

The first story is about another possible change to how Credit Unions operate. The government is looking to change the tax status of these institutions from tax exempt to regular corporations. This would increase the costs of the organizations and restrict credit or the loans the CU's can make. Banks like this because they feel CU's have an unfair advantage by being tax exempt and therefore can operate at lower costs. The banks are right, it is an unfair advantage. However, one has to look at why CU's started in the first place and why they are still popular today. CU's started because banks were not interested in the accounts of small depositors, they still aren't. Lets face it, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and even WaMu would rather you go else where then have an account open with a balance of $50 and adding $5 dollars a week. Its not cost effective for them to service such accounts and even costlier for them to service the small balance checking accounts. They will make these accounts available because the law requires them too, but there are fees and restrictions on these accounts that can often make them cost prohibitive to the depositors.

So if the CU's have to pay taxes instead of returning all the profits to the shareholders (depositors), the people most likely effected will be those the banks do not want as customers anyway. Those of us who the banks might like, who can have higher balances, can stay at the CU's because the fees will still be comparable to banks. Long live the CU's.


The second story is about a new wonder material called Aerogel. This stuff is an insulator like none other and can be used to clean up oil spills and other hazardous waste sites. If it works as advertised, it will make the company making the stuff very rich. Read the article.
Hat tip Lucianne.

Have a good day and thanks for stopping by.

Teen Fusion

Part-time student, part-time cross-country athlete, part-time nuclear physicist. Thiago Olson has achieved fusion reaction in his basement. Says Olson:

“I have cross-country and track, so during those seasons I don’t have much time to work on it,” says Olson, a high school senior in Michigan. “It’s more of a weekend project.”

So, what did YOU do this last weekend?

Splitting Water

The holy grail of green energy. Taking plain old water and separating it into hydrogen and oxygen to use as a fuel.

From high school, you will remember that by running an electric current through the water, you can split the water into its two components. The only problem is it takes more energy to split the water then you get from the hydrogen when burned. Example, if you use 10 units of energy to split water, the resulting hydrogen will only return 8 units of energy.

But plants do just that and they do it efficiently or they wouldn't be able to grow and provide food for us if it took more energy to break down water to its basic elements. The secrete of plants? They use the sun. We humans cannot utilize the sun as an energy source as efficiently as plant do. Our best solar cells are only 6% efficient, or for every 100 units of sun light that hits the cell, only 6 units of electricity are produced.

Researchers have been looking at how plants use the sun to break down water and think they now have a better understanding on the mechanics, to the point they can start thinking how we can duplicate it. If they can, the transformation from a petroleum to a hydrogen economy will come sooner then later. Oh, and water vapor is a greater green house gas then carbon dioxide, but we will worry about that later, after all, it wasn't so long ago folks were worried about global cooling and the coming ice age.

Hat tip Lucianne.