Labor Day Rant

It’s Labor Day and out of habit I got up early and read a newspaper.
For those of you who were wondering when I was going to post something again I thought I’d rant this morning about some thoughts that were provoked by reading that paper, one I don’t usually read (the Pittsburgh Tribune Review) unless Ohligarch links to it.

Apprehended:


The Iraqi National Security Advisor Mouwafak al-Rubaie has announced that “the number two Al Qaida in charge in Iraq”, a terrorist known as “Hamid al-Saeedi” has been captured and arrested.
I suppose I wouldn’t be cynical about this if it weren’t for the DOZENS of times we’ve been informed that the “number two” Al Qaida guy has been killed or captured.
I guess one should surmise that the worse job in the World is to be the chief operating officer of Al Qaida unless your name is al-Zawahri who coincidentally released another one of his “professionally produced videos” this time featuring an American traitor Adam Gadahn (who like John Mark Karr couldn’t find fame as a rock star and thus embraced the dark side).
Of course we are constantly reminded that the number one Al Qaida and the number one Taliban are still at large.

Pluto Gets No Respect:

As you’ve probably heard already, at the big Prague astronomers’ conference mentioned in my last post those assembled reduced Pluto to the status of “dwarf planet” in a voice vote going against the recommendation of its own blue ribbon panel. One of the several cited reasons for the demotion was that Pluto (through its own gravitational pull) had failed to clear its own orbit of other celestial objects.
Now a group of American astronomers primarily based around the University of New Mexico (where Pluto was discovered) has seized upon this particular flaw to declare that by that definition the Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune don’t qualify as planets either.

Unfortunately this group has failed to deal with the contention that Pluto (and its companion Charon) is just a big CHUNK of ICE something unobservable eighty some years ago.



SMART-1

Then there is the matter of SMART-1, something I’m not so sure means much.
Do you remember the scene near the end of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones where Count Dooku (played by Christopher Lee) hightails it out of town after his duel with Yoda? He escapes in what appears to be his own personal craft which once in space suddenly transforms itself into a solar sailer which carries him to his meeting with Darth Sidius on a distant planet.
The technology involved in Smart-I is a primitive form of that craft. Energy is collected by solar panels and then converted by an ion engine into thrust which propels a 27 cubic foot object (with solar arrays attached) through space.
Summarizing SMART-I’s space trip by analogy: Three years ago you sent a box about the size of a washing machine on a journey from your home. It travels around the earth by solar power about 2000 times and returns to crash into your detached garage going 4,475 mph (approximately mach 6)... What a mess!We won’t be seeing the original Smart-I in a space museum anytime soon. Yesterday, the European Space Agency scientists (French) who created it allowed it to crash into the moon where it instantly became just another piece of man made junk after it had traveled on a 62 million mile odyssey . The moon is only 250,000 miles from Earth.
Still, they showed that a solar powered engine would work.