Is Anyone Out There?

Mars taken by MOM 29 Sept 2014

Mars Again

The Indians put their probe in orbit around Mars this week. India’s successful, low-cost Mars mission is a major milestone for the country’s space program, with experts predicting that it could open the door to lucrative space deals with the U.S. and Europe.  India joined the select group of space nations on Wednesday when the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) successfully placed a satellite into orbit around Mars. This is a big deal for two reasons.  Firstly, it's a difficult task: More than half the world's previous attempts -- 23 out of 41 missions -- have failed, including one by Japan in 1999. The United States had its first success with a 1964 flyby by a spacecraft called Mariner 4, returning 21 images of the surface of the planet. The former Soviet Union reached the planet in 1971, and the European Space Agency in 2003.  And secondly, India joins an exclusive club comprised of only the United States and Russia, along with the European Union in reaching Mars.  India's Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) will study the Marian surface and mineral composition and scan its atmosphere for methane, an indicator of life.

US Air Force X-37B Space Plane

X-37B with solar array deployed

There's been much speculation concerning the US Air Force's secretive X-37B space plane and it's mysterious missions.  Not much larger than a conventional private aircraft, the X-37B resembles a miniature shuttle.  The vehicle is unmanned, launched atop an Atlas 5 rocket, and lands like a conventional aircraft.  Today, it has winged beyond 600 days in orbit on a classified military mission that seems to have no end. The solar-powered winged spacecraft has spent more than 620 days in orbit as part of the military's secret OTV-3 mission, which launched in December 2012.

Alien Planet Found

WASP 18b and "hot Jupiter" planet

A nearby star is not acting its age, thanks to the influence of a massive exoplanet.  The close-orbiting alien planet, known as WASP-18b, is apparently disrupting the magnetic field of its host star so much that the object is behaving like a much older star, researchers said.  "WASP-18b is an extreme exoplanet," study lead author Ignazio Pillitteri, of the Instituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF)-Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo in Italy, said in a statement. "It is one of the most massive hot Jupiters known and one of the closest to its host star, and these characteristics lead to unexpected behavior. The planet is causing its host star to act old before its time." The star WASP-18, which lies about 330 light-years away, is about as massive as our own sun. The gas giant WASP-18b weighs in at more than 10 times the mass of Jupiter and completes one orbit around the star in less than 23 hours, leading scientists to classify it as a "hot Jupiter."

Commercial Space is Alive and Well, But Delayed

Virgin Galactic Space Ship Two

Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Galactic, said almost 800 would-be space tourists signed up for $250,000 flights with his Virgin Galactic venture have been understanding about glitches that caused commercial services to be delayed until 2015. Pushback from clients who include physicist Stephen Hawking, singer Sarah Brightman and X-Men director Bryan Singer has amounted to “almost none whatsoever,” the U.K. billionaire told Bloomberg Television. “Everyone’s been very patient. They realize that it’s rocket science. They want to make sure that we don’t hurry them up there, and they want to come back.”

Virgin Galactic won’t now make a commercial flight until early spring, with Branson and his son on the first launch, the U.K. billionaire confirmed today after revealing earlier this month that a target of commencing operations this year had become unrealistic. The resolution of issues with the spacecraft’s rockets may mean a vehicle carrying flight crew but no passengers still reaches space during 2014, he added.  “It took us a lot longer to build rockets that we felt completely comfortable with,” Branson said today. “I’m confident that we’re as good as there now. We’ve got some more test flights to go, but I think you’ll start seeing Virgin going into space by the end of this year and then starting the whole space program in the spring.”

Regulations, not technology, are hindrances, and the flights are likely to reach only about 360,000 feet (about 68 miles high), which is on the very outer edge of Earth's atmosphere.  Dark sky and weightlessness will be some of the memorable elements of passengers' trip. Cool.  Save me a seat on the seventh launch.

Some Thoughts On That

The Kenyan: A Man of Firsts.  
Always eager to embellish his legacy, the Kenyan is somewhat shying away from his landmark ObamaCare destruction of the world's finest health care system as his legacy, focusing instead on more - um - bourgeois accomplishments that are easier to understand.  Consider just some of  these "firsts" from the Kenyan:

• He's the first community organizer from complete national oblivion to become US President in only two years
• He's the first non-natural born US President (please don't insult me by citing that lame, sophomoric Hawaiian photo shopped birth certificate)
• He's the first President with several aliases, and fraudulent Social Security numbers 
• He's the first mulatto President
• He's the first Muslim President
• He's the first Communist President (there have been progressive presidents, but none compare to his scale)
• He's the first President to emulate Jimmy Carter's foreign policies 
• He's the first quasi-open homosexual President
• He's the first President with a common law transvestite "wife"

 One can only gaze in awe at the machine that put this poser into office - twice! Through lies, deceit and a plethora of unqualified voters voting early and often, the American electorate has, I fear, been handed a one-two knockout punch.  A sucker punch at that. The destruction to the US Constitution and to the American culture is yet to be fully understood, but when it is, it ain't gonna be pretty.
 

In Defense of Bigotry, Hate and Intolerance

Folks, I rise in support of personal freedoms as may be manifested by Bigotry, Hate, and Intolerance.  You might say I'm tolerant of intolerance. Yes, I am.  I'm all for it.  Here's why:  Let's just say I hate Brits.  Can't stand 'em.  Hate their culture of colonization and global domination.  Hate their bloody accents and even hate their cuisine.  Now let's say you are of British ancestry, and you are seriously at odds with my position of Bigotry, Hate, and Intolerance regarding the British.  Why should you be wrapped around the axle about what I think or believe?  And why should I be forced to cease and desist in my Bigotry, Hate, and Intolerance to suit your personal preference?  The answer is, I shouldn't, and neither should you.  Know why?  Because Bigotry, Hate, and Intolerance are the bedrock of our rights and freedoms embedded in notions such as Freedom of Association, Freedom of Speech, Religious Freedom and many, many more.  If you really are supportive of personal freedom, then you should be the last guy to decry Bigotry, Hate, and Intolerance in others.  Hate Jews?  Let's have a beer!  Member of  the Ku Klux Klan?  Dinner's on me!  PETA devotee and Sierra Club advocate?  I'll drive you to work!  But no, we have to homogenize our beliefs to keep us on point in the Orwellian progressive narrative.  And as such we have endless pointless civil lawsuits about who may not be denied service, or to whom one may not refuse commerce.  We have racial riots, social unrest and all sorts of other chaos arising directly from the absence of letting people believing what they believe. If an owner of a restaurant won't serve Jews or homosexuals, so be it.  They can and will eat elsewhere. They aren't welcome here so why force a situation that is uncomfortable for both parties?  There should be no law or public pressure to force me to engage in practices of which I disapprove, nor of you to accommodate me in such.  Live and let live.  But that said, however, if you're a member of a movement that promotes violence and terrorism to further your ends, whether Black Panthers, jihadist Muslims, Green Peace or some other cowardly-driven bully like the United States federal government, then I'm going to hit you back, with extreme prejudice.  And I am both able and capable to do so efficiently, effectively and quickly.  Be advised.  

 

So lawmakers, pass no law that infringes upon or diminishes my personal freedoms to act, think and believe as I please.  It's simply not possible to legislate personal tolerance, and it's not advisable to do so. Let laissez faire prevail as our founding fathers always intended.  And in exchange I'll hold you harmless for the social adjustments that will be made when others trespass on my God given freedoms and rights.

Random Shots

Where to begin?  Such is the question whilst trying to make sense of all the nonsense, from ill conceived foreign policy to tyrannical domestic policy.  The answer, of course, is that it is all nonsense, and it's put there purposely.  To distract, obfuscate and confuse.

Adventures Abroad

The US is now engaged in yet another military action (despite yet more broken promises by the Kenyan about getting us out of Iraq at all costs).  Not learning from earlier lessons, we're committed to aiding and arming radical religious groups that will undoubtedly turn against us in the near future.  See al Qaeda, 1980s.  Even though it was a noble enterprise at the time, the unintended consequence was horrific in terms of blood and treasure.  And, it eventually had to be undone.

While striking from afar and above in Syria, yet protecting our troops from harm on the battlefield, e.g. no boots on the ground, the Kenyan boldly orders 3,000 American reservists into West Africa to "combat" Ebola. Well, no bullets are flying or bombs exploding, so where's the harm?   Let's not consider the exponential element of infection spreading to the US after the troops are rotated back home.   But Ebola, to the Kenyan, is a greater threat to Africa than ISIL is to the free world.  No matter; it's all part of his evil nonsensical plan.  And it's all for show.

Adventures in Babysitting

And speaking of diseases spreading across open borders, the hypocrisy of this administration regarding disease and borders is astounding.  Why, we must send troops - American troops! - to Africa to stop this spread, but the federal government will stay, investigate, harass, sue and arrest anyone attempting to do so at the US southern border.  We must be the designated caregivers - babysitters - to these youths seeking asylum here.  Right.  It's an invasion of sovereign US territory, and as it's being orchestrated from the White House, it's treason on it's very face.  Meanwhile, the undesirables continue to stream across, and the feds transport them to cities across the country, to ensure maximum damage to the culture and  economy.

But the nanny state knows no bounds.  Enter now the politically correct vipers into the NFL, where it's the public's business what goes on in one's private life.  Suspensions abound; forced resignations threatened!  Now I'm not in any way offended if some athlete takes it out on the misses.  Nor do I care if she slugs him upside the head.  They alone are the sole actors and audience in their little passion play, and neither I, nor the NFL, nor the perpetually offended have anything to say about it.  But this is an ideal way to continue the distraction:  let's debate whether this behavior is somehow inconsistent with the standards of the NFL.  Are you kidding?  Who cares, except to the extent that it can further the progressive left's radical, totalitarian agenda.  Anyone debating this non-issue - I'm speaking of so called "domestic violence" - is furthering the destruction of the American culture of individual privacy.  Hit your wife, spank your children however you please - it's nobody's damn business but yours.  And that's as it should be.

Dude.  You're old.  Go Die.

Ezekiel Emanuel

One of the most shocking parts of ObamaCare was the notion that after a certain age, one was expected to merely  ahem - die - in order to spare the "community" from further medical costs associated with keeping one alive.  The progressive left mocked and ridiculed anyone who questioned or even pointed out this particular gruesome tenet in the plan.  Until now.  Ezekiel Emanuel, one of the architects of ObamaCare - Rahm Emanuel's brother, no less - has publicly endorsed the concept by stating he'd like to just die at age 75.  This should tell a thinking person all one needs to know about the discordant world view of the progressive left.  This and their stance on abortions is indicative of their view on life:  they hate themselves so thoroughly, that they wish they had never been born, and now that that have been, that they die soon. Is self-hate a Jewish thing?  It must be.  I just hope someone visits Ezekiel Emanuel on his 75th birthday with pistol or syringe in hand.  We'll see how he feels about dying then.      

The progressive left is simply evil.  It is quite open about its ambitions, and it is never satisfied.  Everything must be homogenized, equalized, quantified, qualified and bastardized.  Elevate women into men; emasculate men into women, blur the lines.  Kill the unborn, infect the living.  Erase standards, morals, borders, cultures, and individualism in favor of the dull gray world of homogenized totalitarianism under their tight control.  And that is, and always has been, their goal.