A Big Boost For Reusable Rockets
Discovery.com: a “revolutionary step was accomplished on Friday when another SpaceX Falcon rocket dispatched a cargo ship to the International Space Station, then turned around and landed on a platform gently bobbing in the Atlantic Ocean.”
“And they said it couldn’t be done (at least no one has ever done it) until, of course, you did it,” former NASA space shuttle manager Wayne Hale wrote in a congratulatory note to SpaceX on Twitter.
kudos to elon in business insider’s “Tesla and SpaceX aren’t the only things Elon Musk has invested in” which highlighted 18 entities that Musk has reportedly founded, cofounded, invested in, or supported in some way starting with
1. Zip2 Corporation — the web’s first Yellow Pages — in 1995 and
2. online payment company X.com in 1999, which eventually merged with PayPal
wonder if elon will become this era’s de vinci. perhaps he paints and sculpts on the side.
Blue, give this one a look.. :0)
They’ll always despise her: The media has its Hillary narrative, and they’re sticking to it
She’s untrustworthy. She lies. She’s a pawn of the rich and powerful. This is “we-all-know” journalism at its worst
http://www.salon.com/2016/04/12/theyll_always_despise_her_the_media_has_its_hillary_narrative_and_theyre_sticking_to_it_partner/
by Neil Gabler
When Bernie Sanders, Conventional Politician, Called for Still More Mass Incarceration It’s past time for the Vermont pol to start explaining himself.
Michael Tomasky
I just received a box filled with VHS tapes of the Space Age up to about 1990. Now I have to find a VHS player and convert these to DVDs. Having been an aerospace type I enjoy watching the changes. What has not changed is getting stuff off the ground and up. That is a blast.
Martinis – I usually have several brands of gin on the gin shelf. Each gin has a unique flavor, including a couple which are not to be used in a martini. Bombay Sapphire is always my first. Bombay Two shots with a half shot of dry Vermouth; stir well and strain into a cocktail glass. An olive or two on the side, or an onion. Other gins will get more or less vermouth and possibly a dash or two of orange bitters. Vodka lacks the goodness of gin. I use vodka in Bloody Marys and to winterize the water tanks on my boat.
“Going Where No One has gone before” sort of goes with this discussion of the unknown:
Why Are There So Many Sea Monsters on Early World Maps
As a philosophical concept, this is what you can always say about the dangers of the unknown: Here there be dragons.
Greetings from Southern New Mexico…home of the Spaceport…Branson where is your rocket?
I have been enjoying the comments over the past few days…in vitro meat for a guiltless consumption of farm animals. As for wild animals? How did the noble dinosaur turn into the pigeon? Like Pluto having planet status or not, science has been changing on whether birds are dinosaurs. The latest.
Flatus and Pogo…love Jonathan Switfboating style! When I was young, I liked comedy and when I started reading and found Gulliver’s Travels? I was hooked. The writing was way beyond slapstick.
It’s awesome that the rocket could deliver to the ISS and return for a soft landing. I’d love to see the tradeoffs of cargo v. fuel for landing – simplified for lay idiots like me of course.
Musk is a horse of a different color. Sort of a technological JFK. I will never understand how in the world anyone can look at what he’s done with Tesla and doubt that with a concerted application of science and technology renewable energy as the primary source of energy to the country (and the world) isn’t possible within the next few decades – and will drive a huge new industry in the process.
Living in NM, I am surrounded by reminders of space travel, flying saucer crashes, etc. and after years of wanting to see aliens from outer space? I am like that other New Mexican who in 1950 stumbled into the same thought…the Fermi Paradox. I know we want to get off of the beautiful blue planet, but I feel we bags of water are destined to stay within the solar system. Our machines, however, can go anywhere…just like the Voyager twins.
BTW, the Wino household is a divided household on space aliens and space. Hubby is a full out believer…I am not convinced and feel we are so very alone. Universal timing is off for life forms to meet at this time, thank you.
Classic scene full of interesting monsters, music and dialogue. It also introduces the famous Han Solo, as he gets into a shootout with Greedo
BB… a former much loved commentator of this blog… pissedoffpatricia(pop)… had a thing for martinis. She frequently talked about her favorite gin… Hendricks. My hubby never heard of it but tried a bottle based on her recommendation…. now it’s his go to gin.
hmmmmm…. what does that rocket look like?…. maybe a subtle dig at our favorite female candidate for not having one?…. (geez, I’m just kidding…. but now you see how my mind sometimes works)… 🙂
Musk, like Bezos, like Gates….2016 and AI. Musk is part of the elite group and in 2015 signed the Future of Life institute letter.
I recently read in my alumni mag about the development of artificial robot skin where movement is controlled by chemical reactions in the skin rather than metal mechanical movement…more human-like. The robots of today? Archaic…no need for hard plastic over metal with a computer code interface laden with wires.
Blue
If you can find it, here is vodka way too good to winterize tanks. One of the few that can be sipped over rocks with nothing added except the straw in the bottle: Żubrówka
Roy’s Hawaiian martini. I like a vodka martini, dry…but I had a few of these at Roy’s in San Diego many years ago. Delicious.
newsday
In New York, there’s finally a tougher ticket than “Hamilton.”
Seats for the Democratic presidential debate in Brooklyn Thursday are reserved for the party faithful, with none available to the general public.
Eight hundred of the 1,100 seats will go to the campaigns of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, according to CNN.
and here’s another reference to it on cnn:
Clinton said Monday that she was “really looking forward” to the CNN/NY1 Democratic debate in Brooklyn on Thursday, where the former secretary of state is expected to hit Sanders again for the interview.
“I think it will be lively,” Clinton said, a nod to the fact that the race between Clinton and Sanders has grown more acrimonious of late.
Clinton previewed an attack line she will likely use against Sanders on Thursday by blasting the Vermont senator’s stance on immigration.
“I think the best chance we had for immigration reform was under Ted Kennedy’s leadership in 2007. I voted for it. Sen. Sanders voted against it,” Clinton said Monday. “I think our records are very clear. I started co-sponsoring the dream act back in 2002 or ’03. And I consistently did that. Sen. Sanders, by contest, was supporting vigilantes, the so-called Minutemen on the border.”
Not sure what happened to PoP. She hasn’t been on her blog for about three years.
http://morning-martini.blogspot.com/
Back to the birds. One of the books read to me when I was a toddler was Mr Popper’s Penguins.
When I was young and feisty I enjoyed a dry martini made with Beefeater. Now, it would be a martini on the rocks with a twist of lime. One of those will last the evening while others…
flatus et al, speaking of literary favorites, booze, birds….. and unearthly beings
Poe’s taste for brandy, in particular, became legendary after he left Virginia and entered West Point in 1830. His roommate there, Thomas W. Gibson, recalled that Poe was “seldom without a bottle of Benny Haven’s best brandy. … He had already acquired the more dangerous habit of constant drinking.” [the cocktail hour]
the raven drink recipe ingredients: 1 ounce vodka, 1 ounce rum, 1 ounce blue curacao, 1/2 ounce Chambord
Lisa reads “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe. In this adaptation, Bart is depicted as the raven, Homer finds himself in the role of the poem’s lead character, while Lisa and Maggie are seraphim. Marge appears briefly as a painting of Lenore. James Earl Jones narrates.
apple martini my fav
Chambord or Drambuie in a thimble glass make a very nice aperitif. I have serving size bottles of a number of these these things squirreled around somewhere along with other types of booze. Welcome to business-class.
Straight gin –whisper the word vermouth
I like Boodles
30% of Bernits say they will not vote for Clinton.
who are they going to vote for?
A nice single malt scotch (rocks optional) or a dirty martini (3 olives) are my favorite liquor drinks.
Fermi’s thoughts remind me of Milton Friedman’s.
Walking down the street one day with Friedman, Paul Samuelson, spotted a twenty dollar bill on the sidewalk ahead and remarked upon it. Friedman, who had stopped to polish his spectacles, replied that it was impossible. “If a twenty dollar bill had actually appeared there, someone would have picked it up by now.”
Einstein, hearing Fermi’s paradox, counter-paradoxically muttered, “And, they’ve had more than enough time to destroy themselves, too.”
KC, I’m betting they won’t vote, but maybe they’ll write Bernie in.
Dry red wine. Primitivo (Italy) or Plavac Mali (Croatia), a descendant of Zinfandel, is my log time fave. Zin is #2. Shiraz is #3.
Craig
Anyone willing to break bones for the sake of a drink must be taken seriously. ?
OTHO I’m drinking with Pogo
In some ways we live in a science fiction universe, looking somewhat as Heinlein envisioned.
Billionaire Yuri Milner Pledges $100 Million to Build Butterfly-Size Spaceships
Oh yeah… well I’m drinking with xrep as long as we can include a nice pinot noir.
Pogo… young people not voting…. who ever heard of such a thing ~~~~~~~
Speaking of space shots. Stephen Hawking and Russian tech tycoon Yuri Milner announced a $100 million starshot.
Breakthrough Starshot will fund the development of a light-propelled nanocraft – a spaceship just a few grams in size that would fly through space like ships in the sea, with sails pushed by the physical force of light particles instead of by wind. Its destination will be Alpha Centauri, our closest neighboring star system. Once there, it could try to sense habitable conditions – or even life – on the planets.
And on the politics front,
Today’s NBC News/Survey Monkey Tracking poll finds: “Only about half of Cruz supporters and half of Trump supporters said they would vote for the other GOP candidate in a general election should the Democratic candidate be Hillary Clinton.” While this may overstate the case, what this means is that the possibility of a split party remains very real, whether the nominee is Trump or Cruz.
Kinda puts the pugns in a pickle for November, doesn’t it?
I’ll be happy to break open a Pinot Noir, Renee. Make yourself comfy, while I fetch it from the cellar (my 9 bottle wine rack on the kitchen counter).
RR, right – who’da thunk it?
Jack,
One of my all time favorite books is Heinlein’s Time Enough For Love – Talk about enough concepts to rattle your thinking on several fronts, all told with a series of pleasant stories and a couple of very wise “Notebooks of Lazarus Long”
The younger/first time voters should be respected, cultivated & encouraged. Any Campaign wanna hire me? Hello……. I’m a nobody from nowhere & even I get this.
Having a Bad Day? Think of Ronald Wayne
On this day in 1976 Wayne sold his 10% stake in apple for $800, it would now be worth over $58 billion.
Have a nice day
Jack
Oh no…. Pogo… how dare you and I make a little joke about younger voters on this here blog…. why that makes us horrible people…. 😉 wanna pass some of that single malt over here.
Jamie… I also purchased Time Enough For Love based on your recommendation… it’s still in my “to read” pile. I need to rectify that sometime soon.
Old vine zin…oh boy.
Mr. Cracker is big Bernie fan and even he was appalled when Trump started talking about Mrs. Clinton. His face was scrunched up and he looked very scary He said her entire life was a lie.
Well you can read most of the notebooks on the link. They are fun even if you don’t know how they tie in to the overall story that covers the life and loves of a man who cannot die of a natural lifespan
http://minerva.wikia.com/wiki/Lazarus_Long
My favorite humorous sci fi series (as opposed to the serious ones I like) are Spider Robinson’s Callahan novel series. This gang would fit right in at Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon
Do not read if puns make you groan in anguish …
Current sipping whiskey, Elijah Craig, small batch, Kentucky Straight Bourbon.
Guzzling whiskey, Jim Beam, cause it is cheap and good.
The last couple of years we have been sampling local Missouri wine and have settled on a regular white table wine Vidal Blanc, from Stone hHill winery a good cheap table wine.
Most additive local wine is Les Bourgeois’s blackberry wine. it is truly different as it is aged in whiskey barrels and has a sweet smoky ,woody flavored fruit. like a good port wine. I’m out so it is road trip time.
Jack
The nice thing about time enough for love is that it is broken up into a number of short stories on a theme so you can read them then set the book down. It certainly attempted to be prevocative my main problem with it is that I don’t agree with Heinlein nostalgic view of the past.
BTW am also a collector of Robinson fiction Best on his list is star dance , where I could envision zero G dance.
like a lot of authors his early stuff is his best.
Jack
whskyjack,
Wine aged in Bourbon Barrels is becoming quite popular – I’ve had a Cabernet & Zinfandel & they were very good.
The Zin had a smooth vanilla aftertaste; the Cab reminded me of Lapsang Souchong Tea: smoky. Both appealing in their own ways.
had a neighbor who used to make wild elderberry wine in bourbon barrels that still had the dregs in them (he somehow managed to get them from a distillery who generously gave away their used barrels)…. talk about a kick. even if the berries had been domestic that was one wild drink. more like brandy.
her new ad
pogo, Jamie and ye other scotch drinkers, this little tidbit from bruichladdich folk
….thanks to the powerful Coopers Union the law now says that bourbon casks can be used once only. Being cheap and readily available they were eagerly snapped up by voracious Scottish distillers.
The rapid escalation of the use of Bourbon barrels coincided with the weakening in popularity of Sherry, Port and Madeira. The use of Sherry butts fell further with the outlawing of bulk shipments from Spain to the UK in 1981. Today, around 97% of all Scotch whisky is maturing in American oak.
and an even newer ad
https://youtu.be/xqSMtoPC7uw
Top Republicans may skip GOP convention…
including my senator up for re-election this year, Kelly Ayotte. She’s getting a lot of push back for being with Mitch McConnell on not giving Obama’s SC pick a hearing. We’re starting to see numerous television ads for Ayotte… and her Democratic opponent won’t be assured until mid-Sept. I guess this is what happens when you’re really scared you might not win come Nov.
Sanders supporters are harassing delegates and superdelegates.
Longtime Democratic National Committee member and superdelegate Bob Mulholland wrote a letter to Sanders last week excoriating the candidate for failing to call out his supporters for their “bullying” of superdelegates.
Mulholland said he has not received any threats directly but has fielded complaints from other delegates who said they have received harassing emails, Facebook postings and phone calls — including one to a woman at 10:30 p.m. and another that a 12-year-old child picked up.
“Society has been trying to deal with High School bullies and the same Rule should apply to your campaign and your supporters,” wrote Mulholland, who supports Clinton. “Professionally, campaign staff and representatives should be the ones calling delegates.”
“A 12 year old child answering the phone at home should not be hearing threats,” he added.
Saint Bernie needs to speak up, and he needs to wake up. The article is an interesting read. At some point Bernie may learn that working for the party and trying to help those in down ballot races creates support from the party hoi poloi. It’s not only about the top of the ticket.
Whsky, Elijah Craig an ancestor of mine, triple great uncle or something like that, on my mom’s side (Craig her maiden name). He was a travelling preacher who sold his bourbon after services, helped draw crowds. Family lore, tho much disputed, is that he accidentally invented the charred barrel aging process when his stock caught fire and he was too cheap to get rid of it. True or not, it was a good story I always enjoyed hearing my grandfather Ben Craig tell.
HOUSEKEEPING: I’ve updated our link button, hopefully quicker and easier to use. Just highlight text you wish to link, click link icon in menu above comment box and paste in the url. Always better than pasting long nasty urls into your comments,
http://HOUSEKEEPING:
Easy for you to say!
I think both Clintons could go away and the campaign would be in better shape
Does Paul Ryan mean it this time? Didn’t he give the same speech about not wanting Boehner’s job?
Six years a vegetarian this month; it was April of 2010, the day after kitty died. Transitioned off of dairy milk years before that. Applesauce subs for an egg in baked goods. Nothing is a good sub for sugar; love it, but less often.
The Road To Wigan Pier is another great book for Orwell fans.
*Wasn’t it an apple ‘tini that caused that tree to jump out and bite Craig’s arm?
http://Daily News Editorial Board says Vote Hillary Clinton: Her plans to give working- and middle-class Americans a fighting chance at rising incomes are far superior to Bernie Sanders’http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/vote-hillary-clinton-article-1.2598171?utm_content=buffer42c01&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=NYDailyNewsTw
tony,
I will give Senator Sanders this: his television commercials are very well done. I know because I am seeing them (& Secretary Clinton’s) around the dial here in NY. They leap frog each other. Ribbit. Ribbit. Apparently there’s a rumor going around NYS matters this year 😉
Tony, love the links, but you gotta go to school and learn to use the link tool. It’s easy, and it makes Craig smile. As our gracious host says, “Just highlight text you wish to link, click link icon in menu above comment box and paste in the url. Always better than pasting long nasty urls into your comments,”
Pogo
Sometimes it lets me copy/paste in chrome and sometimes it doesn’t…. IE works always but i hate it :0) I will try using IE only for TM…
Some Dems just can’t shake the stupid ‘bipartisan’ tic. Lucky for us, we have Donna Edwards By Markos Moulitsas
Tony, I’m surprised. I use Chrome on all my devices and never have that problem. Took me a while to notice where the functions for that are on my mobile devices, but once I did, et voila! Not that this has anything to do with anything, but I will say that a support guy from Dell told me that Windows 10 wasn’t compatible with the desktop I got about 5 years ago, but W10 disagreed. Through some magic – and I did not try to download and update – the computer did and W10 works fine on it. Could be a version conflict between windows and Chrome – but then again, I don’t know crap about these these things, and if using IE is what you have to do- don’t. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
Toles nails Ryan.