Eugene Cernan has died, age 82. In December of 1972, as commander of Apollo 17, Cernan was the last person to leave a footprint on the moon as he was the last man to step back into the lunar module. Consider that: someone born just after Cernan stood on the moon would now be well along in his or her career. And if this hypothetical person joined the NASA astronaut corps in order to go to the moon, *that* person is now pushing age limits. And by the time NASA *might* get back to the moon in the mid to late 2020’s, that person would be well into their fifties.

Hidden behind SpaceX’s successful Falcon 9 launch and landing was the unfortunate failure of the Japanese SS-520-4. This is a three-stage derivative of the SS-520 two-stage sounding rocket; it was hoped that it would put a 4-kilogram satellite into a 180X1500 km orbit. Sadly, somethign went wrong and the second stage did not ignite. If the SS-520-4 can be made to work, it’ll be one of the smallest space launch systems developed… 31 feet long, 20 inches diameter, 2.9 tons at liftoff.

The NOTS-EV-1 “NOTSNIK” was a substantially smaller & lighter space launcher, but:

Of ten launch attempts, none are confirmed to have succeeded (two *may* have)
It was small, but it had to be hauled to altitude by an F4D-1 Skyray, which was substantially bigger than the SS-520-4.

First there’s this…

First female ringmaster takes reins at Ringling Bros. circus

But then, on the same day…

APNewsBreak: Ringling Bros. circus to close after 146 years

Huh.

Let me guess: that first female ringmaster was Counselor Deanna Troi. They put her behind the wheel and she promptly crashed the circus.

Seriously: I was almost surprised to find out that Ringling Brothers Circus was still a thing. Don’t they have an app for that?

Giggitty. Launch is at about 29 minutes, landing happens at about 37 minutes.

I trust I need not delve into the details of “goldenshowergate.” I also trust that I need not spend to much effort explaining that I’m not a big fan of “conspiracy theories.”

However, sometimes it’s amusing to speculate. So, here are some possibilities to explain the origin and purpose of “goldenshowergate.”

Trump is behind this. Purpose: get Buzzfeed and other news media outlets to run slanderous, scurrilous nonsense because… well, remember Gawker? I’m sure Hulk Hogan and his newfound millions remembers it. Trump is always on the lookout for new sources of income, so perhaps suing some of the more gullible media outlets into bankruptcy might be a way to go.
Trump is behind this. Purpose: get the Big Scandal out of the way right out of the gate. It seems reasonably certain that some *real* scandals will come down the pike sooner or later; if the media has shot their wad with this nonsense, anything that follows will either be disbelieved (“oh, there they go again with more #fakenews”), or people simply won’t care. Scandal inoculation, I suppose.
Some essentially random schmoe produced the “dossier.” Purpose: did it for the lulz, just trolling the media.

Any others?

Well, 2017 is off to a rollicking start…

A Woman Was Killed by a Superbug Resistant to All 26 American Antibiotics

She was seventy and busted her leg in India where she got initial treatment. The particular bacteria in question was not found elsewhere in the US hospital where she died, so it was likely something she picked up in India (or developed within herself), but chances are that this was not a one-and-done incident. We’ll see more of this.

Some years ago there was a docu-drama called “Day After Disaster.” This begins with a ten kiloton terrorist nuke going off in Washington, D.C. It trashes the Capitol building, the National Air and Space Museum, the Library of Congress, and a whole lot of people. The show then goes on to describe the aftermath, both in trying to pick up the pieces in D.C. and in continuity of government.

While there is much to consider in that scenario, there’s one philosophical point that has occurred to me many times over the years: the destruction of *stuff* is always considered of less importance than the lives lost… but is it *really*?

It is easy to say that lives cannot be valued in dollars. And yet… life insurance. Lawsuits. Kidnapping ransoms. Disney just collected $50 million after the death of Carrie Fisher. Like it or not, lives *can* be valued in terms of dollars.

But, ok. Dollars are fungible commodities. If a billion dollars vanishes from the economy as a whole to save one life, it’s straightforward enough to argue that the money can be replaced while the life cannot. But what about physical objects that are *not* replaceable? Let’s say someone steals the Mona Lisa or the original copies of the declaration of independence, the Constitution, the Magna Carta. Or they plant a sub-kiloton nuke in the National Air and Space Museum. Or they surround the Washington Monument or Eiffel Tower or the leaning tower of Pisa with truck bombs powerful enough to bring them down. And the demand is simple, straighforward and right out of bad fiction: they will push the button unless, say, some random twelve-year-old child is beheaded on live television.

Yeah, yeah, it’s a silly scenario. But just go with it.

Assume for the sake of argument that the Bad Guys have demonstrated adequately that they have the ability to carry out their evil deed. Their nuke is a recently stolen, known device and they’ve broadcast images of it properly set up for detonation with all the relevant serial numbers visible. They are sealed in adequately that no conceivable SEAL or Delta Force strike team could possibly get to them before they could push the button, and they have a demonstrated willingness to die to get the job done.

The Bad Guys have given a deadline a sufficient number of hours down the line that the region can be safely evacuated. Nobody except the Bad Guy sitting on the button need die. Or, the innocent child could die, and the bomb will be deactivated (let’s somehow assume that we for some reason trust the Bad Guys to actually back down if their demands are met).

Is the NASM, Eiffel Tower, Mona Lisa worth a single life? The easy answer is “it’s just stuff, and human lives are more important.” That sounds great… but it’s verifiably false. Humans have died for “stuff” for as long as we’ve been making “stuff.” Workers killed building bridges and buildings and dams. Miners dead digging up the coal used to make the paint used to create that masterpiece. Farmers mangled in agricultural equipment, auto workers mashed in car factories, test pilots splattered across the landscape. Now, in these cases those who die are essentially anonymous. And they have chosen to put themselves at risk. In contrast, the Bad Guys want someone who is not responsible, not involved and not willing. This someone will very quickly become non-anonymous. And *somebody* will have to help facilitate this sacrifice.

So is “stuff” worth a single life? I suspect that most people, after reading the preceding rambling gibberish, will continue to say “no.” But consider this: let’s say this exact scenario had occurred 300 years ago with the Mona Lisa… it had been stolen and unless one innocent life was sacrificed it would been burned. And that sacrifice had been made, and so we have the Mona Lisa today. Who would even give that one life a second thought today? Or what if the Library of Alexandria could have been saved if only one poor schmuck had been taken out? Would we say that that life lost so long ago to provide a cultural boon today was not worth it?

Hmmm.

This is the sort of thing I think of when I see a docudrama about D.C. getting nuked. The narrator says that the Mall and the Capitol are destroyed, with everyone in ’em… I shrug. But then the narrator says the LoC and the NASM are trashed, and that gives me a sad.

So I got this email this AM…

Boy, it sure looks official. Pretty sure the United States Postal Service sends ZIP files from Russian email addresses just all the time.

The clickbaity headline:

Star on collision course with solar system to bring MILLIONS of asteroids towards Earth

The less clickbaity details: the star in question, Gliese 710, is currently 64 lightyears away and won;t make its closest approach for another 1.35 million years. But here’s the interesting bit: closest approach will be 77 light *days,* with a possibility of 38 light days. The authors estimate that the passage of Gliese 710 through the Oort cloud will send a shower of comets into the inner solar system at a rate of about ten per year over a span of about 3 to 4 million years.

Sounds like it’ll be a hell of a show. Pity about the wait.

“We’re not in favor of the peaceful transition of power.”

Simply taking these people at their word would, in a rational world, squash the flawed stereotype that it is the Trumpists who are the violent ones. Sadly, this is a world where people actually give a damn about the Kardashians, so a rational world this ain’t.

Something I was surprised I didn’t see during the last election cycle: videos of these sort of people as part of major TV ad campaigns for the *pro* Trump side. Imagine the more unhinged elements of the Left spend the next four years throwing tantrums and firebombs, beating Trump supporters on the streets, torturing Trump supporters live on Facebook. What *better* advertisement could the Campaign to Re-Elect Trump possibly have?