Blogs / Bad Astronomy

If bad news comes in threes, someone is bad at math: there was a huge blast at the Mojave Air and Space Port home of Scaled Composites, the company that built SpaceShipOne, the first civilian rocket into space. Two Three [sigh] people were killed. Evidently they were testing the engine for SpaceShipTwo when it blew. It wasn’t an explosion: they were doing a "cold test" with nitrous oxide, which isn’t flammable. I’m guessing a weak spot somewhere resulted in a rupture, and the huge pressure from the gas blew up the works. A bad valve, a weak point in a fuel line or a tank… hard to say. I’m sure we’ll find out more eventually.

Not much detail on this one yet. Cripes, when I went to dinner I was thinking this day was done. Let’s hope any more news will be better.

I can’t comment on this. I just can’t.

A NASA employee embezzled more than $150,000.

This is the most bizarre news day for NASA ever.

CNN is reporting that NASA has found cut wires on computers slated to go onboard the International Space Station, and it may be sabotage.

The U.S. space agency NASA on Thursday confirmed it had discovered the apparent sabotage of a noncritical component of the international space station due to be carried up by the space shuttle Endeavour. It launched an investigation after finding cut wires in a piece of computer equipment intended to transfer data from station sensors to the ground, the agency said.

Yikes. Bizarrely, the rest of the CNN article says nothing more about this, and instead just gives mundane facts about the next Endeavour mission.

(more…)

When it rains, it pours:

On the main CNN.com webpage is a banner saying "[Breaking News] NASA says it has found wires which may have been deliberately cut on computers bound for the international space station."

And that’s it. No listing of source, no info, just that.

More when I find out more. Sigh.

Hat tip to Doodler at the BAUT Forum.

This is astonishing.

According to an article in Aviation Week, on at least two occasions astronauts who were intoxicated — drunk — were allowed to fly on the Space Shuttle [As pointed out in the comments below, the AW article never specifically says they flew on the Shuttle, just that they flew. Many astronauts train in planes, for example, so I jumped to a conclusion myself! I feel it’s somewhat mitigated by knowing that lots of other folks did too. However the article does go on to say that some astronauts were intoxicated within 12 hours of launch, which is against the rules.]

A panel reviewing astronaut health issues in the wake of the Lisa Nowak arrest has found that on at least two occasions astronauts were allowed to fly after flight surgeons and other astronauts warned they were so intoxicated that they posed a flight-safety risk.

The panel, also reported “heavy use of alcohol” by astronauts before launch, within the standard 12-hour “bottle to throttle” rule applied to NASA flight crew members.

I am at a loss for words. I mean, seriously. I know a few astronauts, and I would swear up and down that the last thing they would ever do is drink before a flight. It’s hard to believe anything like this could happen, but the panel — composed of "military and civilian government physicians, psychologists, lawyers, safety experts and astronauts under the chairmanship of U.S. Air Force Col. Richard Bachmann, dean of the Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine" — found otherwise.

All I have to go on here is this article in Aviation Week. To be fair, AW generally gets good inside info, though they have been known to stumble here and again. Given the nature of this story, and only having one source, I wasn’t sure whether to publicize it or not. So I want to be clear that it is way too early to speculate here about fault, veracity, or anything else. But this is really, really important news, and needs to be aired out. It may be a few weeks before we hear more, however.

And please folks: try to keep the conclusion-jumping to a minimum in the comments.

Update: FWIW, USA Today is also reporting on this, but they only have the AW article as a source as well. They do say that the report from the panel will be released Friday at noon. Interestingly, NASA is holding a press conference at noon (Eastern) Friday about astronaut health issues.

Update 2: The Huffington Post has some more info.

I read with great interest an Associated Press article about Oscar the Cat, a 2 year old feline in Providence, R.I., who lives in a nursing home and who, according to the staff there, can accurately predict when a patient is near death.

Stories like this abound, of course, but they are usually very credulous, claiming psychic abilities or some such silliness. One BABlogee who sent this to me (cough cough Emily cough cough) mentioned the article had an unusually skeptical bent. I am skeptical of claims of skepticism, so, skeptically, I checked it out.

(more…)

In my recent post about my advertising survey, lots of people commented on some of the more irritating ads. I am not a big fan of ads that flash, or obscure text, or change size, or go against the mission of this site, or in other ways distract me from what I’m reading — I mean, of course any ad is distracting, but having Scarlett Johansson whisper in my ear is a different kind of distraction from having Donald Trump bellowing in it.

If you get my meaning there.

I have some control over what ads play and what don’t. If you find a particularly irritating one, post a comment in this thread. Let me know as much info as you can — what it is advertising, what spot it was in (the header, the sidebar…), any miscreant behavior — and I’ll look into blocking it (if I agree with you, of course).