Blogs / Bad Astronomy

I have it on good word that SpaceX successfully tested the engine that powers their rocket, the Falcon 1. They fire the engine with the rocket essentially strapped down so it doesn’t launch. This is called a static test or static firing, and it went very smoothly. Unfortunately, no video is available (the image above is from an old test).

SpaceX is a start-up private space launch company helmed by Elon Musk– one of the cofounders of PayPal. Last year, almost to the very day, they attempted to launch the first Falcon 1 rocket, but the rocket was lost. A corroded nut allowed a fuel leak which doomed the rocket.

However, extensive testing should avoid that and other problems. We can hope! The actual launch of the Falcon 1 rocket is planned to be soon, but no date has yet been released. It’ll probably be next week sometime.

Update: I just wrote a quick blog entry about this at The Huffington Post.

Update 2: Welcome Diggers! First, some folks at Digg were upset this was posted in the "Space" category. Sorry about that; my Digg It button defaults to Space. I’ll see if I can figure out a way around that. Also, the software at Digg didn’t like my "less than" sign in my title, so the title just says "Congress". Ironically, even that isn’t correct; I should have written "House". Anyway, I can’t correct it without screwing up all the links, so I’ll leave it as is.

Second, a link I had below to a tally of members of the House went to a specific Congressman’s page. I missed that somehow, so I corrected it.

Did the devil just shiver? Or was that the White House?

Congress just passed extensive protection for whistleblowers, including scientists who think their work is being suppressed for political reasons:

The House of Representatives today overwhelmingly passed the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, which would, for the first time, grant federal scientists and contractors the right to expose political interference in their research without fear of retribution. The bill passed by a 331 to 94 vote, with 229 Democrats and 102 Republicans voting in favor.

Yeehaw!

But 94 voted against it. Hmmm. Here’s an interesting little tidbit: not one Democrat voted against this bill. Not one.

All 94 nay votes were from Republicans. All of them.

There are currently 233 Democrats and 202 Republicans in the House. That means 4 Dems abstained, both Independants, and 6 Repubs.

Hmmm.

So this bill had essentially 100% support among Democrats, but only about half of the Republicans.

Hmmm.

Are you a Republican? Did your rep vote against this bill? Maybe you have something to say to them.

Postscript: I went to the House site to find out how many from each party made up Congress. It says:

There are 222 Republicans, 211 Democrats, and two Independents in the House of Representatives. In the Senate, there are 50 Democrats and 49 Republicans and one Independent.

Someone should tell them the election was now 4 months ago, and they should update that. Or did I miss something? I recall the Democrats holding the majority right now.

That was a link to Congressman Fattah’s site; I missed that somehow when I read the page. As commenter Skepted56 pointed out, the website for the Office of the Clerk of the House has it right.

The new Skeptics Circle of critical thinking blogs is up at Scientia Natura! Go there, read the blog entries, and know that there are people out there who actually do know how to think.