Musings from the Peanut Gallery

SpaceX issued a press release yesterday highlighting progress on Falcon 9.
McGregor TX ? Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) conducted the first three-engine firing of its Falcon 9 medium to heavy lift rocket at its Texas Test Facility outside McGregor, on March 8, 2008. At full power the engines generated over 270,000 pounds of force, and [...]

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Over at Star Stryder, Dr. Pamela Gay has a post on Legos and space in the classroom, complete with an image of a functional lego telescope. Now that’s cool!

Technorati Tags:
Astronomy

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Paul Graham has an essay on why we weren’t meant to have a boss. An interesting analysis of our situation in the typical workplace in corporate America, or anywhere else.
Update: Found via Pamela Slim.

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According to Crave, via AnchorDesk, there’s a new exploit that allows malicious code consume all the memory available to Safari. This will cause your iPhone or iPod Touch to freeze, or crash Safari on your Macintosh or Windows computer.
Apparently the only work-around at this point is to disable Javascript in Safari. Hopefully Apple will fix [...]

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This Universe Today entry discusses experiments using cyanobacteria to break down simulated lunar soil into useful ingredients.
Cyanobacteria harvested from the chambers could then be further processed to make use of the elements they extract from the lunar soil. For example, they could be broken down by other bacteria, resulting in a nutrient-rich soup that [...]

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Taylor Dinerman has a good article in The Space Review dealing with the serious economic costs that ITAR, the International Trafficing in Arms Regulations has had on our commercial space business.
I know first-hand the hassle factor that ITAR brings to business, even large businesses that are used to dealing with government bureaucracies and military secrets. [...]

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Via Dr. Pamela Gay at StarStrider, comes this YouTube video.

Take a look. It’s about 3:45 long and fascinating.

Technorati Tags:
Astronomy, Mars

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I noted that I’m reading Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years, here. Thought I’d point out some more facts from the beginning of the book today.
Some recent climate history:
600-200 BC: Unnamed cold period that preceded the Roman Warming.
200 BC-AD 600: Roman Warming.
600-900: Dark Ages cold period.
900-1300: Medieval Warming or Little Climate Optimum.
1300-1850: Little Ice Age [...]

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Universe Today has a post about finding Sirius in the night sky using binoculars. Then using Sirius as a guide to find other stars and star clusters that you’ll need the binoculars for.

Technorati Tags:
Astronomy

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Universe Today had this stunning image of the Earth-Moon system, as seen from Mars.

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