A former Nasa astronaut claims plans to blast Earth-bound asteroids out of space with nuclear weapons is not the best way to beat the threat. Schweickart wants to alter the course of asteroids. Apollo 9 legend Rusty Schweickart, who clocked up more than 240 hours in space, was responding to a Nasa report which said nukes were the best option to avert a catastrophic asteroid collision with Earth. He says most heavenly bodies could be redirected by ramming them from behind or towing them to safety with unmanned spacecraft. Speaking at a public meeting in San Francisco, Mr Schweickart says Nasa was put under political pressure to come up with the nuclear missile solution. The astronaut-turned-scientist, who piloted the lunar capsule in Apollo 9, now heads the B612 Foundation, which promotes plans to alter the course of asteroids hurtling towards Earth. He says that at present we simply do not know what is heading towards us, but as new powerful telescopes come online, we will have a clearer picture. “The good news is that we can do something about this,” he said. “The marriage of we human beings and the machines that we’ve created are now at a level of capability which enables us to … stop this process from occurring.” In May 2005, he told the US Congress that a mission to attach a device such as a radio transmitter to asteroid 99942 Apophis should be a high priority. It is estimated that this asteroid has a 1 in 6,000 probability of striking the Earth in the 21st Century.The latest data indicates that the chance of Apophis impacting the Earth is 1 in 45,000 in 2036.
Astrology: Ex-Astronaut Slams Asteroid Plan
July 30, 2008 by usanewsDark Knight Makes Record-Breaking $300M in 10 Days
July 29, 2008 by usanewsThe Batman adventure, starring Christian Bale and Heath Ledger, shattered another box-office benchmark this weekend – reaching beyond the $300 million mark in a mere 10 days. The movie grossed $75.6 million in its second weekend in theaters, bringing its North American box-office total to $314,245,000, Warner Bros. head of distribution Dan Fellman tells the Associated Press. The number breaks the record established by 2006’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, which hit $300 million after 16 days.
Fellman says Dark Knight could conceivably reach the $400-million mark in about 18 days – placing it ahead of Shrek 2’s 43-day record in 2004. Hold on to your life preservers – The Dark Knight might also surpass 1997’s Titanic as the highest-grossing film in U.S. history, according to Paul Dergarabedian, president of Media By Numbers. That sinking-ship saga, starring Leonardo Di Caprio, made $600,788,188 domestically.
Rounding out this weekend’s top five at the box office were Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly in Step Brothers, with an estimated $30 million; Meryl Streep in Mamma Mia!, $17.9 million; David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson in The X-Files: I Want to Believe, $10.2 million; and Brendan Fraser in Journey to the Center of the Earth, $9.4 million.
Top 10 ‘Hollywood Bachelors’
July 28, 2008 by usanews1. George Clooney
2. Leonardo DiCaprio
3. Matthew MCConaughey
4. Ryan Seacrest
5. Vince Vaughn
6. Jamie Foxx
7. Owen Wilson
8. Orlando Bloom
9. Bruce Willis
10. John Mayer
Miss Universe 2008 Dayana Mendoza
July 28, 2008 by usanewsLatino Commission on AIDS Welcomes Miss Universe 2008 Dayana Mendoza as its Newest ‘Madrina’ in the Fight Against AIDS
July 24, 2008 “It is important to me, and the Miss Universe Organization to show our commitment and solidarity with those impacted by HIV/AIDS,” said Dayana Mendoza. “I will spend my reign advocating all individuals to take the HIV test and encouraging safe sex.”
“The needs of prevention and access to care of Latinos are complex and diverse and get more challenging every year,” said Dennis deLeon, President of the Latino Commission on AIDS. “I am honored that Miss Universe, Dayana Mendoza is taking action and joining our cause to promote the HIV test as an important step for prevention and education.”
Pregnant man Thomas Beatie unveils first baby photos
July 26, 2008 by usanewsPregnant man Thomas Beatie unveils first baby photos
Beatie is legally male but was born female and underwent gender reassignment surgery and hormone treatment. He kept his female reproductive organs so when he and his wife Nancy decided to have a child, he conceived through artificial insemination with donor sperm. Nancy is breastfeeding the baby though a process called induced lactation.
Magnetic energy blasts make Northern Lights ‘dance’: NASA
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Explosions of magnetic energy between Earth and the moon are behind the sparkles and wavy glows of the Northern Lights that color the night sky, NASA has said.
Danica Patrick: America’s Hottest Racer
July 25, 2008 by usanewsDanica Patrick: America’s Hottest Racer
IndyCar star Danica Patrick, fresh off a spat with a fellow female racer last weekend, arrived in the city yesterday for the Rexall Edmonton Indy. In 2007, Forbes Magazine estimated her earnings for the year to be $5 million. Won the Japan IndyCar 300 in 2008 – became the first woman to win an Indy race.
Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman Have A Daughter on 7th July.
Keith Urban gets Nicole Kidman $73,000 ring when she gives birth. Nicole Kidman’s adopted children Connor and Isabella met the actress’s new baby over the weekend.She invited her children from her marriage to ex-husband Tom Cruise to meet the new addition to their family at her Nashville home.
iphone = phone,ipod,internet & more
Introducing iPhone 3G. With fast 3G wireless technology, GPS mapping, support for enterprise features like Microsoft Exchange, and the new App Store, iPhone 3G puts even more features at your fingertips. And like the original iPhone, it combines three products in one — a revolutionary phone, a widescreen iPod, and a breakthrough Internet device with rich HTML email and a desktop-class web browser. iPhone 3G. It redefines what a mobile phone can do — again.
Prince Charles Go Green
Prince Charles’ office announced this week that the British royal has converted his Aston Martin to run on biofuel made from wine. The prince has coverted other cars to run on fuel made from cooking oil. Prince Charles has appealed to Asian billionaires including Indian steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal and Tata chief Ratan Tata to help him protect the environment.
Imagination takes a flight to Mars
July 24, 2008 by usanewsThe success of NASA’s Phoenix lander has capped a decade of robotic derring-do and discoveries by uncovering chips of ice on the barren surface of the Red Planet’s north pole. The find proves the existence of water, a key ingredient of life.
“It’s such a thrill to find ice under our lander,” said Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, chief scientist of the Phoenix mission, at a news conference in June.
But economic and political uncertainties are casting doubt on the future of such exploration as budgets are cut, priorities are questioned and the unknowns about the next president shadow the horizon.
Golden Triangle, Tiger and Udaipur Tour India
The appeal of Mars
Such grandiose notions died in the 1970s after the Apollo lunar landings revealed the costs and dangers of manned spaceflight. But Mars still commands great interest from the public and scientists alike.
“Mars is the planet, although it’s very different, that is most Earth-like in our solar system,” says A. Thomas Young, a retired Lockheed Martin manager and vice chair of the National Research Council’s Space Studies Board. “Every time we go there, we are pleasantly surprised by the results.
“Phoenix is just the latest example. And Mars is one of those things that has really captured the imagination of the public.”
Since July 4, 1997, when the Mars Pathfinder rover riveted the nation with Martian vistas, the space agency has spent about $5 billion on Mars exploration. The goal has always been to look for signs that water either exists or existed, which would indicate the possibility of life, even if it’s just microscopic.
Water on Mars makes a difference for people on Earth for at least three reasons, says Michael Meyer, science chief of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program. Exploring Mars may clear up the mystery behind the disappearance of its once-thick atmosphere and surface water, he says, and help us understand our own climate.
Second, Mars may preserve the best record of conditions in the solar system at the time life started on Earth, as well as holding remnants of its own early life.
Third, “Mars could be a future home,” Meyer says. Water makes habitation a more likely prospect.
NASA has five Mars probes in action that arrived on the planet in this decade:
•Mars Odyssey (2001), a $300 million orbiter that scans Mars for signs of past water and volcanic activity. The probe reported indications of ice under the Martian surface in 2002.
•Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity (2004). The $830 million doughty rovers, still exploring Mars, discovered water-layered rock in Martian craters.
•Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (2006). The $720 million orbiter scans Mars for future landing sites, studies weather and makes high-resolution maps.
•Phoenix (2008). The $420 million lander recently dug up ice cubes on Mars and reported water vapor in a soil sample.
“The things we are doing on Mars are going to be remembered in a millennia when the planets are explored,” Meyer says. “It is one thing we do as a nation that provides inspiration to people everywhere, who see us exploring our solar system.”
A question of money
In 2004, President Bush outlined his “Vision for Space Exploration,” a strategy for finishing the International Space Station and retiring the space shuttle by 2010. A new spacecraft would land people on the moon by 2020. “With the experience and knowledge gained on the moon, we will then be ready to take the next steps of space exploration: human missions to Mars and to worlds beyond,” Bush said.
Says space policy expert John Logsdon of George Washington University, “The president’s strategy was actually a good one — well-thought-out with reasonable targets and milestones.”
But the extra money to support the plan and NASA’s science goals hasn’t come through in an era of budget deficits and a costly war in Iraq, Logsdon says. “Neither the White House nor Congress, with a few notable exceptions, seems to care.”
At NASA, the economic fallout has led to cutbacks:
•The president’s 2009 budget request cuts Mars spending in half from 2007 to 2010, down to $300 million.
•A proposed 2018 Mars sample-return mission will be deferred, Meyer says. The mission would send soil, rock and other samples back to Earth by rocket.
•Science chief S. Alan Stern resigned in April after his move to trim $4 million from the Mars rovers to help pay for a $200 million overrun in construction of the Mars Science Laboratory was rejected by NASA administrator Mike Griffin. The $2 billion science lab is scheduled to land on Mars in 2010.
“Why are we even contemplating sending people to Mars someday?” asks federal science spending expert Al Teich of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, D.C. “Robotic mission seems to be generating plenty of excitement.”
Says David Goldston, former chief of staff for the House Science Committee and columnist at Nature magazine: “One big misconception people have is that NASA is spending a lot of money on sending people to Mars. It doesn’t really spend anything.”
In fact, Congress barred NASA from spending any money on Mars astronauts in 2008, and the agency didn’t ask for any in next year’s budget. Most of the $8 billion NASA spends on manned missions goes to the space shuttle program, the International Space Station and Constellation, the new manned rocket intended for trips to the station in 2015 and the moon in 2020.
Although the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in Washington opened a Space: A Journey to Our Future exhibit in June (sponsored by NASA, General Motors and Lockheed Martin) that features a Mars base station, NASA doesn’t have any astronaut landings planned for Mars.
So what now?
For the future, the space agency contemplates Mars missions in 2013 and 2016 in addition to next year’s small-car-size Mars Science Laboratory.
But the next president could shift NASA’s focus away from Bush’s lunar exploration vision and toward the need to address climate change or forge more global partnerships, says Sadeh.
Mars exploration would fit comfortably in a NASA refocused on climate, says David Grinspoon of the Denver Museum of Natural Sciences, a mission scientist for both Mars and Venus probes. The Red Planet’s atmosphere is comparable to Earth’s, and atmospheric measurements there have already begun.
Among planetary scientists, there is some feeling that NASA has slighted other planets for Mars, Grinspoon says. Venus is closer than Mars and has its own bizarre atmosphere, for example, and Jupiter’s icy moons are a priority for planetary scientists.
“And the impression I get is that NASA headquarters is aware of the concern,” he says. “Of course, against the backdrop of huge financial challenges agency-wide, managers there are stuck between a rock and a hard place in making exploration decisions.”
Space scientist Lennard Fisk of the University of Michigan, who heads the National Resource Council’s Space Studies Board, says, “NASA’s programs are inconsistent with the budget the agency possesses.”
Last year, the board said NASA hasn’t spent enough on other programs, such as the Deep Space Network, which facilitates communications with satellites via high-powered antennas placed around the world.
Fisk sees “a mismatch between what NASA is being asked to do and the resources it has for space science. There’s going to be a train wreck at some point.” If NASA keeps deferring missions such as the Mars sample-return probe, he contends, the costs to keep the programs alive will eat into the budget without providing the science needed for future exploration. His reservations aside, Fisk states, “Any country that can spend $800 billion on a war in Iraq can afford a space program.” NASA’s entire $17 billion budget, he notes, equals the exploration tax breaks given to oil companies every year.
“The real problem is that NASA needs to be tied to a real, overriding national priority,” he says, such as protecting the planet from asteroids or controlling global warming. “Otherwise, NASA will just limp along.”
