LightSail 2 Spacecraft Successfully Demonstrates Flight by Light
August 2nd, 2019Via: Planetary Society:
Years of computer simulations. Countless ground tests. They’ve all led up to now. The Planetary Society’s crowdfunded LightSail 2 spacecraft is successfully raising its orbit solely on the power of sunlight.
Since unfurling the spacecraft’s silver solar sail last week, mission managers have been optimizing the way the spacecraft orients itself during solar sailing. After a few tweaks, LightSail 2 began raising its orbit around the Earth. In the past 4 days, the spacecraft has raised its orbital high point, or apogee, by about 2 kilometers. The mission team has confirmed the apogee increase can only be attributed to solar sailing, meaning LightSail 2 has successfully completed its primary goal of demonstrating flight by light for CubeSats.
California Farmers Are Planting Solar Panels as Water Supplies Dry Up
August 2nd, 2019In Blade Runner 2049, the California Central Valley looks like this:
(In case you’re wondering, the solar concentrators in the opening scene of the film were inspired by the idiotic Ivanpah Solar Power Facility, which is based on concentrated solar thermal energy.)
Nestled in among the heliostat fields are protein farms:
They grow some variety of weevil which seems to have been genetically modified to live in vats of liquid.
Mmm mmm good.
Concentrated solar (as shown in the film) isn’t going to take off. However, if the place gets covered with the more conventional photovoltaic panels, it will be interesting to see if insect protein farms come along too.
After all, in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick wrote, “Insects…are especially sacrosanct.”
That’s interesting, considering the fact that Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was published in 1968.
Flash forward several decades and there are a steady stream of articles related to insect population declines, and even, “The Earth may not have any insects at all by 2119.”
Via: Los Angeles Times:
Jon Reiter banked the four-seat Cessna aircraft hard to the right, angling to get a better look at the solar panels glinting in the afternoon sun far below.
The silvery panels looked like an interloper amid a patchwork landscape of lush almond groves, barren brown dirt and saltbush scrub, framed by the blue-green strip of the California Aqueduct bringing water from the north. Reiter, a renewable energy developer and farmer, built these solar panels and is working to add a lot more to the San Joaquin Valley landscape.
“The next project is going to be 100 megawatts. It’s going to be five times this size,” Reiter said.
Solar energy projects could replace some of the jobs and tax revenues that may be lost as constrained water supplies force California’s agriculture industry to scale back. In the San Joaquin Valley alone, farmers may need to take more than half a million acres out of production to comply with the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, which will ultimately put restrictions on pumping.
“FBI Document Warns Conspiracy Theories Are a New Domestic Terrorism Threat”
August 2nd, 2019Via: Yahoo News:
The FBI for the first time has identified fringe conspiracy theories as a domestic terrorist threat, according to a previously unpublicized document obtained by Yahoo News. (Read the document below.)
The FBI intelligence bulletin from the bureau’s Phoenix field office, dated May 30, 2019, describes “conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists,” as a growing threat, and notes that it is the first such report to do so. It lists a number of arrests, including some that haven’t been publicized, related to violent incidents motivated by fringe beliefs.
The document specifically mentions QAnon, a shadowy network that believes in a deep state conspiracy against President Trump, and Pizzagate, the theory that a pedophile ring including Clinton associates was being run out of the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant (which didn’t actually have a basement).
“The FBI assesses these conspiracy theories very likely will emerge, spread, and evolve in the modern information marketplace, occasionally driving both groups and individual extremists to carry out criminal or violent acts,” the document states. It also goes on to say the FBI believes conspiracy theory-driven extremists are likely to increase during the 2020 presidential election cycle.
The FBI said another factor driving the intensity of this threat is “the uncovering of real conspiracies or cover-ups involving illegal, harmful, or unconstitutional activities by government officials or leading political figures.” The FBI does not specify which political leaders or which cover-ups it was referring to.
New York Area Fire Commissioners Call for New 9/11 Investigation, “Overwhelming Evidence” that “Pre-planted Explosives . . . Caused the Destruction of the Three World Trade Center Buildings”
August 1st, 2019Via: Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth:
They started off by saying the Pledge of Allegiance. Ten minutes later, they were reading the text of a resolution claiming the existence of “overwhelming evidence” that “pre-planted explosives . . . caused the destruction of the three World Trade Center buildings.”
And so it was, on July 24, 2019 — nearly 18 years after the horrific attacks that traumatized a nation and changed the world forever — the Franklin Square and Munson Fire District, which oversees a volunteer fire department serving a hamlet of 30,000 residents just outside of Queens, New York, became the first legislative body in the country to officially support a new investigation into the events of 9/11.
The resolution, drafted and introduced by Commissioner Christopher Gioia, was unanimously approved by the five commissioners. Members of the audience — including the families of fallen firefighters Thomas J. Hetzel and Robert Evans, both Franklin Square natives — joined in solemn but celebratory applause after the fifth “ay” was spoken.
Spanish Scientists Create Human-Monkey Chimera in China
August 1st, 2019Via: El Pais:
Researchers led by Spanish scientist Juan Carlos Izpisúa have created for the first time a human-monkey hybrid in a laboratory in China – an important step towards using animals for human organ transplants, project collaborator Estrella Núñez confirmed to EL PAÍS.
The team, made up of members of the Salk Institute in the United States and the Murcia Catholic University (UCAM) in Spain, genetically modified monkey embryos to deactivate genes that are essential to the formation of organs. The scientists then injected human stem cells, which are capable of creating any type of tissue, into the embryo. The product of this work is a monkey with human cells that has not been born, because researchers stopped the process. The experiment took place in China to avoid legal issues.
“The results are very promising,” says Núñez, a biologist and vice chancellor of research at UCAM.
EPSTEIN BECAME FBI INFORMANT IN 2008
August 1st, 2019Via: Daily Mail:
Jeffrey Epstein managed to shut down a federal probe into his illicit and illegal activities with underage girls and secure his sweetheart plea deal by providing information’ to the government, FBI reports confirm.
A federal investigation into the pedophile led by the FBI was closed out on September 18, 2008 when Epstein ‘provided information to the FBI as agreed upon’ according to the case agent.
That investigation had been underway for two years at that point, but it was noted in the final report that ‘no prosecution will occur in this matter as long as Epstein continues to uphold his agreement with the State of Florida.’
The investigation had been dormant for seven months by then, with FBI records obtained by DailyMail.com showing that the lead agent had not filed a report since February 11 at the time he closed the case.
That February report notes that ‘that the criminal investigation into activities of Jeffrey Epstein is ongoing,’ and that the case agent had been told the matter was ‘highly sensitive’ by the United States Attorney’s Office.
More: Epstein Wanted Baby Ranch, Was Interested in Transhumanism
On Costliest U.S. Warship Ever, Navy Can’t Get Munitions on Deck
July 30th, 2019Put a few F-35s on it. She’ll be right.
Via: Bloomberg:
Only two of 11 elevators needed to lift munitions to the deck of the U.S. Navy’s new $13 billion aircraft carrier have been installed, according to a Navy veteran who serves on a key House committee.
“I don’t see an end in sight right now” to getting all the elevators working on the USS Gerald R. Ford, the costliest warship ever, Democratic Representative Elaine Luria of Virginia said in an interview. The ship was supposed to be delivered with the Advanced Weapons Elevators, which are moved by magnets rather than cables, working in May 2017.
Gigantic, Mysterious Radiation Leak Traced to Facility in Russia
July 29th, 2019Via: New Scientist:
The source of a gigantic, mysterious leak of radioactive material that swept across Europe in 2017 has been traced to a Russian nuclear facility, which appears to have been preparing materials for experiments in Italy.
The leak released up to 100 times the amount of radiation into the atmosphere that the Fukushima disaster did. Italian scientists were the first to raise the alarm on 2 October, when they noticed a burst of the radioactive ruthenium-106 in the atmosphere. This was quickly corroborated by other monitoring laboratories across Europe.
Georg Steinhauser at Leibniz University Hannover in Germany says he was “stunned” when he first noticed the event. Routine surveillance detects several radiation leaks each year, mostly of extremely low levels of radionuclides used in medicine. But this event was different.
“The ruthenium-106 was one of a kind. We had never measured anything like this before,” says Steinhauser. Even so, the radiation level wasn’t high enough to impact human health in Europe, although exposure closer to the site of release would have been far greater.
…
The leak was unusual because the release was limited to radioactive ruthenium. “If there is a reactor accident, one would expect the release of radioactive isotopes of many different elements,” says Steinhauser. Exactly why such a specific element was released remained a mystery until Steinhauser learned that an Italian nuclear research facility had ordered a consignment of cerium-144 from Mayak before the incident. “There are several indications that the release of ruthenium-106 was linked to this order,” he says.
“Trillion-Dollar Annual Deficits”
July 29th, 2019You’ve got unshakable, bipartisan control of a ship of fools.
Enjoy the 2020 election circus!
Via: Bloomberg:
The Treasury Department is expected to hold its quarterly note and bond sales at record levels for the third straight time as Washington’s latest budget deal shows that the U.S.’s debt binge will continue.
President Donald Trump once said he would eliminate the national debt, but now he’s set to approve a budget that will help usher in trillion-dollar annual deficits. In part because of that, Wall Street securities firms predict that a boost in Treasury issuance may be coming in a year’s time.
…
With the president shoving aside past Republican orthodoxy on fiscal restraint and the issue not prominent among Democrats campaigning to take his job, Washington is showing no signs of slowing spending.
The House passed the debt-ceiling expansion and budget bill on July 25 and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he expects his chamber to clear it this week for Trump’s signature.
Oh, Look, Rats!
July 29th, 2019Rats. Rats. Rats.
In other news:
Trump and Clinton Associate, Jeffrey Epstein, Purchased Child Sex Slave, Bragged About It
Back to our regularly scheduled programming…
Rats. Rats. Rats.
Or was it, Storm Area 51?
Jeffrey who?
Via: Paul Watson:
