The Solar wind tonight is cooking at 459 km/sec and there are 7 sunspot clusters on the
Sun today. In November 2013, Comet ISON could become one of the brightest and most
active comets in years when it races through the hot atmosphere of the sun. Right now,
though, it is just a dim speck in the deep-freeze of space near the orbit of Jupiter. Also
check out Jupiter and the crescent Moon tonight. Spectacular. A coronal mass ejection
(CME) swept past Earth on April 13th around 22:55 UT. The impact rattled Earth's magnetic
field and induced electrical currents in the ground around the Arctic Circle.
Trust in Gold Not Bernanke as U.S. States Promote Bullion
By Amanda J. Crawford - Apr 8, 2013 12:01 AM ET.
Distrust of the Federal Reserve and concern that U.S. dollars may become worthless are fueling a
push in more than a dozen states to recognize gold and silver coins as legal tender. Lawmakers in
Arizona are poised to follow Utah, which authorized bullion for currency in 2011. Similar bills
are advancing in Kansas, South Carolina and other states. In Utah, officials haven’t yet figured
out how to accept gold and silver for tax payments -- though some residents have asked to pay
that way.
U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has pushed interest rates to near zero since the 18month recession that began December 2007. Utah Precious Metals Association, established after
passage of the 2011 law to advocate for the use of gold and silver coins, has established a pilot
program in which members can make deposits that are held in gold and access money using a
bill pay service.
The measures backed by the limited-government Tea Party movement are mostly symbolic -you still can’t pay for groceries or gasoline with gold in Utah, but that day is not far away. They
reflect lingering dollar concerns, amplified by the Fed’s unconventional moves in recent years to
stabilize the economy by printing boatloads of magic money each month. BTW that money
never reaches you or me. It is deposited way up there in the major credit markets, which is why
the Stock market is busting out the roof every week. But like the magic beanstalk, it must come
down eventually, although someone in the white house prays every day it will be on the next
guy’s watch.
“The various State’s legislation is about signaling discontent with monetary policy and about
what Ben Bernanke is doing,” said Gatch, who studies alternative currencies at the Edmond,
Oklahoma-based school. “There is a fear that the government, or Bernanke in particular and the
Federal Reserve, is pursuing a policy that will lead to the collapse of the dollar. That’s what is
behind it.”
Bernanke has pushed interest rates to near zero since the 18-month recession that began in
December 2007. The Fed said in March it would continue buying $85 billion in securities each
month in a program known as quantitative easing that has ballooned its assets beyond $3 trillion
and is aimed at keeping long-term borrowing costs low to support economic growth.
Consumer prices rose just 1.3 percent in February from a year earlier, according to an inflation
measure favored by the Fed. That was below the central bank’s 2 percent target and compares
with occasional bouts of more-than 10 percent increases in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Bets that inflation would pick up because of economic- stimulus measures helped fuel a 78
percent jump in gold since December 2008. The dollar’s rise to less than 1 percent below a oneyear high set in July and monthly increases of about 2 percent or less in the U.S. consumer price
index have curbed demand for bullion. Since reaching a record $1,923.70 an ounce in 2011, gold
prices have fallen and are near a bear market. Gold futures for June delivery fell 1.2 percent last
week, to $1,575.90 an ounce on the Comex in New York, after touching $1,539.40 April 4, a 10month low for a most-active contract.
Texas Depository
In Texas, lawmakers are considering a measure supported by Republican Governor Rick Perry to
establish the Texas Bullion Depository to store gold bars valued at about $1 billion and held in a
New York bank warehouse. The gold is owned by the University of Texas Investment
Management Co., or Utimco, which took delivery of 6,643 bars of the precious metal in 2011
amid concern that demand for it would overwhelm supply.
The proposed facility would also accept deposits from the public, and would provide a basis for a
payments system in the state in the event of a “systemic dislocation in a national and
international financial system,” according to the measure.
Should Texas take such a step, it would offer sovereign backing for deposits and make buying
and storing gold easier, said Jim Rickards, senior managing director at Tangent Capital Partners
LLC in New York and author of “Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis.” He
said the coin measures, while impractical, have symbolic value.
“We are seeing a distinct movement back to a world where gold is considered money,” Rickards
said.
Inflation Protection
The measures give “people the option of using money that won’t lose any purchasing power to
inflation,” said Rich Danker, economics director at the American Principles Project. The
Washington-based public-policy group supports the steps as well as a return to the gold standard,
which pegged the dollar’s value to bullion. President Richard Nixon formally ended the
convertibility of U.S. currency to the precious metal in 1971.
“People in these states find the idea of having the option to use hard currencies appealing over
these policies they have no control over,” Danker said.
The U.S. Constitution bars states from coining money and also forbids them from making
anything except gold and silver coin tender for paying debts. Advocates say that opens the door
for the states to allow bullion as legal tender. The measure being considered in South Carolina
would recognize foreign or domestic minted coins as legal tender.
Utah’s law applies only to U.S.-minted coins, while other states are less clear on whether
privately produced coins qualify. Arizona leaves the door open for private coins if they are
declared legal by a non-appealable court order.
Tax Breaks
In Utah and some other states, the measures also eliminate state capital gains or other taxes on
the coins. Critics say the state measures are unwieldy. In Arizona, Senator Steve Farley, a
Democrat, unsuccessfully offered an amendment that would have recognized as legal tender
other state commodities, such as citrus fruit, as well as sunbeams. The amendment was intended
to reflect the absurdity of the bill, said the 50-year-old lawmaker from Tucson.
“It is simply grandstanding to get people afraid that somehow President Obama’s agenda is
going to drive us into hyperinflation and economic collapse,” Farley said. “We have enough real
problems to deal with. I don’t see undercutting our entire financial structure as a priority.”
In Utah, officials haven’t yet figured out how to accept gold and silver for tax payments -though some residents have asked to pay that way -- or integrate the precious metals into
commerce, state Treasurer Richard Ellis said. Lawmakers have established a task-force to study
implementing the law and to examine how the state can accept gold and silver, with their
fluctuating values, for payment, Ellis said. He’s not optimistic that it will work, he said.
Regulatory Barriers
“People point to Utah and say we are leading the way, but nothing much has happened because
regulatory hurdles have gotten in the way,” said Ellis, a Republican. If gold and silver is being
used in the state as legal tender, it is probably only in transactions between individuals, he said.
The Utah Precious Metals Association, established after passage of the 2011 law to advocate for
the use of gold and silver coins, has about two dozen members enrolled in a two month-old billpay service in which their accounts are held in gold, said Lawrence Hilton, the group’s chairman.
Hilton envisions a future with an alternative monetary system based on precious metals in which
merchants accept silver coin while gold mostly backs electronic transfers.
Gold Producers
The Arizona measure, sponsored by Republicans, won preliminary approval in the House of
Representatives April 4 after passing the Senate on a party line vote Feb. 28. Gold is mined in
both Arizona and Utah, while Nevada is the largest U.S. producer, according to National Mining
Association figures.
The bill’s sponsor, Senator Chester Crandell, 66 of Heber, said he is convinced the move is the
“logical thing for the state of Arizona to do.”
“I think you look at some of the things that are happening and the amount of money printed by
the Federal Reserve and who has control of that money, and I think anybody would be
concerned,” Crandell said. “Gold and silver have been around a long time and people are secure
with it and we should give them an opportunity to use it.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Amanda J. Crawford in Phoenix at
acrawford24@bloomberg.net
Dutch company offers one way ticket to Mars (2:22)
March 27 - A Dutch company called Mars One is looking for volunteer astronauts to participate
in the first manned-mission to Mars. The company wants to send four people to the Red Planet to
start a colony in 2023 although there is one catch - the successful applicants will have no way of
coming back. Jim Drury has more.
AUDIO LINK
BITCOINS
The Real Significance of the Bitcoin Boom (and Bust)
By Michael SivyApril 12, 20130
The volatile rise and fall of Bitcoins has prompted lots of stories explaining why the online virtual
currency is a classic bubble. Many compare it with Tulipmania in 17th Century Holland, where the
prices of rare tulip bulbs soared to absurd heights and then crashed, ruining the speculative investors
who had bought them. But the Bitcoin phenomenon is more than a bubble. It says something
important about the current and future state of the global economy.
The scale of the recent boom and bust has been staggering indeed. At the start of the year, a Bitcoin
was worth $13.51. Earlier this week, it traded as high as $266. And on Thursday, it plummeted to less
than $100, as one of the exchanges where Bitcoins are traded closed temporarily. This would be
comparable to the exchange rate for the British pound soaring from $1.62 (where it was on Jan. 1) to
$31.90 and then falling back to $12.
Such monumental appreciation and volatility is clearly the result of speculation – people buying the
online currency just because they think its value will rise, not because they want to use it to purchase
goods and services. But Bitcoins’ gains are not the result of speculation alone. They partly reflect the
fact that the Bitcoin system is much better designed than previous online currencies. And more
significantly, the runup also reflects anxiety about the safety of the global banking system and the
stability of major international currencies.
The technicalities of the Bitcoin system are complex, but to make this online currency more
successful than previous versions, the designers overcame two key challenges. First, to prevent
counterfeiting, they attached a history of transactions to each currency unit – but allowed users to
keep their transactions nearly anonymous. Counterfeiting is hard because fake Bitcoins would need
an authenticated history to pass muster.
Second, they strictly controlled the supply of Bitcoins outstanding — thereby saving it from the
disastrous fate of, for example, the paper currency known as assignats that were issued during the
later stages of the French Revolution. Initially, assignats were backed by land and buildings that had
been seized from the Church. If the French Government had issued only enough assignats for that
property, there would have been plenty of assignats to spend until the property was disposed of. But
the Government liked having extra money and didn’t cancel the assignats as the property was sold.
In fact, France kept printing more, and within five years there was very serious inflation.
Unlike assignats, Bitcoins have no backing at all. What they do have, however – and what has turned
out to be more important – is a formula limiting the growth of the supply outstanding. Over time the
formula for the Bitcoin supply actually reduces the amount of new currency added to the system.
And the new Bitcoins are not created by fiat, but in exchange for valuable labor: They are paid to
computer hobbyists who monitor the Bitcoin system to keep it running and prevent counterfeiting.
Critics have argued that a currency like Bitcoins would be inherently deflationary because the supply
can’t be adjusted in response to economic conditions. The same argument could be made about a
gold standard, of course, or an extremely hard currency like the Swiss franc. Moreover, the relatively
small supply of such hard currencies means that the inflow and outflow of hot money can make them
highly volatile. The price of gold, for example, climbed from less than $300 an ounce 11 years ago to
almost $1,800 late last year before dropping to $1,564 today; and the Swiss franc rose from $0.82 in
2008 to $1.38 three years later before settling back to $1.07.
But there’s a strong argument that the appreciation and volatility of all these currencies reflects
reasonable concerns about the global economy and banking system. The economic debacle in Cyprus
keeps getting worse, after all; in fact, the losses there figure to be far greater than any that have
occurred in the Bitcoin universe. In addition, the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and
the Bank of Japan are pumping out money like French assignats.
Of course, real countries do have massive wealth backing their currencies and their bonds, as well as
the police power to arrest counterfeiters. And as I’ve argued in an earlier article, the U.S. dollar
appears to be in better shape for the near term than most other major currencies. But the Bitcoin is
doubtless only the first well-designed online virtual currency – and is sure to be followed by Bitcoin
2.0 and other even more sophisticated successors.
Could these online currencies ever reach a level at which they altered or obstructed government
policy? President Clinton’s adviser James Carville famously joked that if he were reincarnated, he
would want to come back as the bond market because “you can intimidate everyone.” Just as the socalled bond vigilantes acted as a brake on Washington’s fiscal policy in the 1990s, one day “currency
vigilantes” could act as a similar brake on monetary policy.
The Internet will almost certainly offer access to a growing number of currencies in one form or
another that are beyond national control. If a future Fed Chairman tries to repeat Ben Bernanke’s
policy of Quantitative Easing (effectively printing money), worried investors could start pulling their
savings out of the dollar and send it streaming into the Cloud so fast that the Fed would be forced to
change course.
Governments will fight back, no doubt. But virtual currencies will be no easier to control than
Facebook. Stopping the movement of capital will be possible only if countries are willing to impose
harsh taxes and capital controls. Once alternative currencies are frictionlessly available on the
Internet, every laptop will become its own Cayman Island. However the current boom-and-bust
plays out, Bitcoin is the beginning of something, not the end.
AUDIO LINK
Hundreds stranded on drifting ice floes
By LUKE FUNK, Senior Web Producer -
There are reports out of northern Europe that more than 500 people were adrift on two ice floes
that broke away and began drifting away from the coast of Latvia.
Among the stranded were families with women and children but most of the stranded were ice
fishermen.
Rescue operations were underway and many of the people had been rescued.
One of the blocks of ice was off of the Vakarbulli coast and the other drifted into the Gulf of
Riga near Majori. One of the floes had reportedly floated 4 kilometers from shore.
Latvian Defense Minister Artis Pabriks, who is overseeing the rescues, told the Voice of Russia
that the Navy and helicopters have been dispatched.
U.N. passes sweeping international arms regulation viewed by some as
Second Amendment override
The United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday signed off on a sweeping, first-of-its-kind
treaty to regulate the international arms trade, brushing aside worries from U.S. gun rights
advocates that the pact could lead to a national firearms registry and disrupt the American gun
market.
The long-debated U.N. Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) requires countries to regulate and control the
export of weaponry such as battle tanks, combat vehicles and aircraft and attack helicopters, as
well as parts and ammunition for such weapons. It also provides that signatories will not violate
arms embargoes, international treaties regarding illicit trafficking, or sell weaponry to countries
for genocide, crimes against humanity or other war crimes.
With the Obama administration supporting the final treaty draft, the General Assembly vote was
154 to 3, with 23 abstentions. Iran, Syria and North Korea voted against it.
American gun rights activists, though, insist the treaty is riddled with loopholes and is
unworkable in part because it includes “small arms and light weapons” in its list of weaponry
subject to international regulations. They do not trust U.N. assertions that the pact is meant to
regulate only cross-border trade and would have no impact on domestic U.S. laws and markets.
Critics of the treaty were heartened by the U.S. Senate’s resistance to ratifying the document,
assuming President Obama sent it to the chamber for ratification. In its budget debate late last
month, the Senate approved a non-binding amendment opposing the treaty offered by Sen.
James M. Inhofe, Oklahoma Republican, with eight Democrats joining all 45 Republicans
backing the amendment.
Sen. Jerry Moran, Kansas Republican, said Tuesday that passing a treaty Iran, Syria and North
Korea will just ignore will only serve to constrain law-abiding counties like the U.S.
“The U.S. Senate is united in strong opposition to a treaty that puts us on level ground with
dictatorships who abuse human rights and arm terrorists, but there is real concern that the
Administration feels pressured to sign a treaty that violates our Constitutional rights,” Mr. Moran
said. “Given the apparent support of the Obama Administration for the ATT, members of the
U.S. Senate must continue to make clear that any treaty that violates our Second Amendment
freedoms will be an absolute nonstarter for ratification.”
Mr. Inhofe likewise said Mr. Obama should take the Senate vote seriously.
SEE RELATED: New Connecticut gun law to ban another 100 weapons
“It’s time the Obama Administration recognizes [the treaty] is already a non-starter, and
Americans will not stand for internationalists limiting and infringing upon their Constitutional
rights,” the Oklahoma Republican said. “Furthermore, this treaty could also disrupt diplomatic
and national security efforts by preventing our government from assisting allies like Taiwan,
South Korea or Israel when they require assistance.”
White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday that “we are pleased to join with the
consensus” on the treaty, adding that before the White House gets to planning on how to get it
through the Senate, it will first review and assess the language of the treaty itself.
Despite the Senate vote, numerous groups have pressured Mr. Obama to support the treaty,
and Amnesty International hailed Tuesday’s vote.
“The voices of reason triumphed over skeptics, treaty opponents and dealers in death to
establish a revolutionary treaty that constitutes a major step toward keeping assault rifles,
rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons out of the hands of despots and warlords who
use them to kill and maim civilians, recruit child soldiers and commit other serious abuses,” said
Frank Jannuzi, deputy executive director of Amnesty International USA.
The American Bar Association also released a white paper arguing that the treaty would not
affect Second Amendment rights.
General Assembly President Vuk Jeremic said Tuesday that the lack of a regulatory framework
on the import and transfer of conventional arms “has made a daunting contribution to ongoing
conflict, regional instabilities, displacement of peoples, terrorism and transnational organized
crime.”
“Whatever the outcome of today’s meeting, for a treaty to be effective, we will need to keep
working together to fulfill its goals,” he said
(Reuters) - The Bank of Japan unleashed the world's most intense
burst of monetary stimulus on Thursday, promising to inject about $1.4
trillion into the economy in less than two years, a radical gamble that
sent the yen reeling and bond yields to record lows.
New Governor Haruhiko Kuroda committed the BOJ to open-ended asset buying and said the
monetary base would nearly double to 270 trillion yen ($2.9 trillion) by the end of 2014 in a shock
therapy to end two decades of stagnation.
The U.S. Federal Reserve may buy more debt under its quantitative easing, but with the Japanese
economy about one-third of the size of the United States, the scope of Kuroda's "Quantitative and
Qualitative Monetary Easing" is unmatched.
"This is an unprecedented degree of monetary easing," a smiling Kuroda told a news conference
after his first policy meeting at the helm of the central bank.
"We took all available steps we can think of. I'm confident that all necessary measures to achieve 2
percent inflation in two years were taken today," he said.
One of those steps was to abandon interest rates as a target and become the only major central
bank to primarily target the monetary base -- the amount of cash it pumps out to the economy. It
adopted a similar policy in 2001-2006, but not on this scale.
The scope of the changes Kuroda pushed through, and the fact he secured unanimous board
support for them, drove the yen down sharply, knocked the 10-year bond yield to a record low, and
nudged Tokyo share prices just shy of a 4-1/2 year closing high.
"The result is nothing short of regime change," HSBC's Japan economist Izumi Devalier said in a
report.
"The BOJ has now made a much firmer commitment to achieving its 2 percent inflation goal, and has
demonstrated that it will do anything short of foreign-bond buying to achieve this goal."
The scope of Kuroda's overhaul offered immediate comfort to Japanese markets, but contains major
risks.
It could leave the central bank heavily exposed to government debt and potentially huge losses if it
failed to stoke inflation and investors lost faith in its efforts to revive the economy, and it could trigger
a currency war as other Asian exporters seek to remain competitive with a weaker yen.
"It is as if we've gone back to the quantitative easing of the 2000s," said Hiroaki Muto, senior
economist at Sumitomo Mitsui Asset Management in Tokyo.
"Targeting the monetary base will lead to a huge increase in current account balances that
commercial banks keep at the BOJ, but I'm still not sure if this money will move through the
economy."
Monetary base, or cash and reserves at the BOJ, already hit a record in March, but the huge pile of
money has failed to end deflation or boost wages.
PERFECT ANSWER
Kuroda's first policy meeting since taking office on March 20 was seen as a big test of his ability to
steer the BOJ towards unorthodox measures to meet the inflation target it adopted in January, and
markets liked what they saw.
Government bond futures soared and the benchmark 10-year bond yield hit 0.425 percent, its lowest
ever. The yen, which had been creeping up in the run-up to the meeting, plunged, driving the dollar
up by more than 2 percent to around 95.25 yen from around 92.90 before the decision.
The Nikkei stock index unwound losses of more than 2 percent to end up 2.2 percent, just shy of a
4-1/2 year closing high hit last month.
The BOJ will buy 7.5 trillion yen of long-term government bonds per month, roughly 70 percent of
bonds sold in markets. It combined two bond-buying schemes, its asset-buying and lending program
and the "rinban" market operation, to buy longer-dated government bonds, including those with
duration of 40 years.
The central bank will also increase purchases of exchange-traded funds (ETF) by 1 trillion yen per
year and real-estate trust funds (REIT) by 30 billion yen per year.
"I can say that the BOJ came up with a perfect answer in response to market expectations," said
Junko Nishioka, chief Japan economist at RBS Securities.
"Kuroda made good on his promise of boosting monetary easing in terms of both volume and types
of assets that the bank purchases."
Kuroda said the BOJ wanted to push down bond yields enough so that investors will start buying
riskier assets, such as property and stocks, and to prompt households and companies to spend now
rather than later on expectations of rising prices.
The central bank temporarily scrapped a self-imposed rule of capping its holdings of government
bonds to the value of bank notes in circulation, despite reservations by some board members that
doing so could nudge it closer to monetizing public debt -- or directly underwriting government
borrowing.
Kuroda brushed aside concerns that excess money printing by the BOJ will sow the seeds of a
future asset price bubble, which was repeatedly mentioned by his predecessor.
"I don't see a risk of a sudden spike in long-term interest rates or a creation of an asset price
bubble," Kuroda said.
($1 = 92.8600 Japanese yen)
US won’t be returning to moon, NASA chief
says
Posted: Apr 08, 2013 11:27 AM EDT<em class="wnDate">Monday, April 8, 2013 11:27 AM EST</em>Updated: Apr 08, 2013
12:07 PM EDT<em class="wnDate">Monday, April 8, 2013 12:07 PM EST</em>
By FOX News
America won't be repeating that historic one small step anytime soon -- not according to
NASA chief Charlie Bolden, anyway.
"NASA is not going to the Moon with a human as a primary project probably in my
lifetime," Bolden told a joint meeting of the Space Studies Board and the Aeronautics
and Space Engineering Board in Washington last week, according to Jeff Foust of
SpacePolitics.com . "And the reason is, we can only do so many things."
Instead, he said the focus would remain on human missions to asteroids and to Mars.
"We intend to do that, and we think it can be done." Meanwhile, interest in the moon has
been growing in both the private sector and in foreign countries.
Last week, Russia rekindled its plans for a robotic moon exploration program, unveiling
its first new moon mission since the Soviet Union launched Luna 24 in 1976. Russian
space scientists are scripting a new plan to reconnect with the moon, one scientist
explained.
"Exploration of the moon is an important part of the program," said Igor Mitrofanov of
the Institute for Space Research during Microsymposium 54 on "Lunar Farside and
Poles — New Destinations for Exploration," held in The Woodlands, Texas, on March
16 and 17.
'I just want to emphasize that Russia is a spacefaring country not only with the robotic
but also manned flight," he added.
And private interest in the moon as a resource is heating up. Several companies have
announced plans to mine the moon , thought to contain a ransom in precious minerals
including titanium, platinum, and helium 3, a rare isotope of helium that many feel could
be the future of energy on Earth and in space.
Moon Express, one of the companies targeting the moon and competing in Google's
Lunar X Prize to reach our satellite, recently said it plans a mission to begin exploring
the moon in 2015.
In his remarks last Thursday, NASA's Bolden acknowledged the widespread interest in
the moon from other nations, and said his agency would be willing to help.
"They all have dreams of putting humans on the Moon," he said. "I have told every head
of agency of every partner agency that if you assume the lead in a human lunar
mission, NASA will be a part of that. NASA wants to be a participant."
Navy Deploying Laser Weapon Prototype Near Iran
By THOM SHANKER
WASHINGTON — The Navy is going to sea for the first time with a laser attack weapon that has
been shown in tests to disable patrol boats and blind or destroy surveillance drones.
A prototype shipboard laser will be deployed on a converted amphibious transport and docking ship
in the Persian Gulf, where Iranian fast-attack boats have harassed American warships and where
the government in Tehran is building remotely piloted aircraft carrying surveillance pods and,
someday potentially, rockets.
The laser will not be operational until next year, but the announcement on Monday by Adm.
Jonathan W. Greenert, the chief of naval operations, seemed meant as a warning to Iran not to step
up activity in the gulf in the next few months if tensions increase because of sanctions and the
impasse in negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program. The Navy released video and still images
of the laser weapon burning through a drone during a test firing.
The laser is designed to carry out a graduated scale of missions, from burning through a fast-attack
boat or a drone to producing a nonlethal burst to “dazzle” an adversary’s sensors and render them
useless without causing any other physical damage.
The Pentagon has a long history of grossly inflating claims for its experimental weapons, but a
nonpartisan study for Congress said the weapon offered the Navy historic opportunities.
“Equipping Navy surface ships with lasers could lead to changes in naval tactics, ship design and
procurement plans for ship-based weapons, bringing about a technological shift for the Navy — a
‘game changer’ — comparable to the advent of shipboard missiles in the 1950s,” said the
assessment, by the Congressional Research Service, a branch of the Library of Congress.
The study found that the new high-energy laser “could provide Navy surface ships with a more costeffective means of countering certain surface, air and ballistic missile targets.”
Among the limitations, according to the research service, is that lasers are not effective in bad
weather because the beam can be disturbed or scattered by water vapor, as well as by smoke, sand
and dust. It is also a “line of sight” weapon, meaning that the target has to be visible, so it cannot
handle threats over the horizon. And enemies can take countermeasures like coating vessels and
drones with reflective surfaces.
Navy officials acknowledge that the first prototype weapon to be deployed is not powerful enough to
take on jet fighters or missiles on their approach. That capability is a goal of researchers.
Among the advantages cited in the study for Congress was the low cost — less than $1 per
sustained pulse — of using a high-energy laser against certain targets. By comparison, current
short-range air-defense interceptor missiles cost up to $1.4 million each.
The laser weapon also has a limitless supply of ammunition — pulses of high energy — so long as
the ship can generate electricity. The beam can reach its target at the speed of light and can track
fast-moving targets.
Rear Adm. Matthew L. Klunder, the chief of naval research, said the high-energy laser system was
developed as part of the Navy’s search for “new, innovative, disruptive technologies.” In essence,
the Navy is trying to harness technological advances in battling adversaries that are thinking of
inventive ways to counter American power.
Admiral Klunder said the weapon had destroyed targets in all 12 of its field tests.
The laser prototype cost just under $32 million, officials said. But if the weapon proves itself during
its sea trials, and the order is given to buy the laser system for service across the fleet, the price per
unit is expected to drop.
Rear Adm. Thomas J. Eccles, the deputy commander for naval systems engineering, said the first
laser device would be deployed on the Ponce, which serves as a floating base for military operations
and humanitarian assistance in the waters of the Middle East and southwestern Asia.
Iran has two navies: a traditional force of large older ships and a rival one run by the Islamic
Revolutionary Guards Corps that consists of fast-attack speedboats with high-powered machine
guns and crews that employ guerrilla tactics, including swarming perilously close to American
warships.
A significant confrontation between the United States and the Revolutionary Guards occurred in
2008, when five of Iran’s armed speedboats made aggressive maneuvers as they approached three
American warships in international waters in the Strait of Hormuz. Pentagon officials said the
commander of a Navy destroyer was on the verge of issuing an order to fire when the speedboats
pulled away; no shots were fired.
ISON Cometary
Early indications from students who have been processing data from NASA’s Swift satellite,
estimate the comet to be around 3 miles in diameter. They have reached this conclusion by
observing the amount of ice and dust emitted from ISON’s surface as it falls through space
toward the Sun.
NASA OPINION
Like all comets, ISON is a clump of frozen gases mixed with dust. Often described as "dirty
snowballs," comets emit gas and dust whenever they venture near enough to the sun that the
icy material transforms from a solid to gas, a process called sublimation. Jets powered by
sublimating ice also release dust, which reflects sunlight and brightens the comet.
Typically, a comet's water content remains frozen until it comes within about three times Earth's
distance to the sun. While Swift's UVOT cannot detect water directly, the molecule quickly
breaks into hydrogen atoms and hydroxyl (OH) molecules when exposed to ultraviolet sunlight.
The UVOT detects light emitted by hydroxyl and other important molecular fragments as well as
sunlight reflected from dust.
The Jan. 30 UVOT observations reveal that ISON was shedding about 112,000 pounds (51,000
kg) of dust, or about two-thirds the mass of an unfueled space shuttle, every minute. By
contrast, the comet was producing only about 130 pounds (60 kg) of water every minute, or
about four times the amount flowing out of a residential sprinkler system.
"The mismatch we detect between the amount of dust and water produced tells us that ISON's
water sublimation is not yet powering its jets because the comet is still too far from the sun,"
Bodewits said. "Other more volatile materials, such as carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide ice,
evaporate at greater distances and are now fueling ISON's activity."
At the time, the comet was 375 million miles (604 million km) from Earth and 460 million miles
(740 million km) from the sun. ISON was at magnitude 15.7 on the astronomical brightness
scale, or about 5,000 times fainter that the threshold of human vision.
Similar levels of activity were observed in February, and the team plans additional UVOT
observations.
While the water and dust production rates are relatively uncertain because of the comet's
faintness, they can be used to estimate the size of ISON's icy body. Comparing the amount of
gas needed for a normal comet to blow off dust at the rate observed for ISON, the scientists
estimate that the nucleus is roughly 3 miles (5 km) across, a typical size for a comet. This
assumes that only the fraction of the surface most directly exposed to the sun, about 10 percent
of the total, is actively producing jets.
An important question is whether ISON will continue to brighten at the same pace once water
evaporation becomes the dominant source for its jets. Will the comet sizzle or fizzle?
"It looks promising, but that's all we can say for sure now," said Matthew Knight, an astronomer
at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz., and a member of the Swift and CIOC teams. "Past
comets have failed to live up to expectations once they reached the inner solar system, and only
observations over the next few months will improve our knowledge of how ISON will perform."
This is a very large comet. Although observers say is is not violently offgassing yet, hence the
absence of a tail, rest assured it will offgas. It will come within 750 thousand miles of the Sun
and will be offgassing like a steaming bomb. Two things will happen:
1.
The Roche Limit will be skirted, causing the head to break up into numerous corporeal
parts, that will not have tremendous integrity. These large pieces will not travel in
exactly the same path. Some will fall into the Sun, and some will go around the Sun like
the Hyperbolic orbit dictates.
2. They will be spinning like pinwheels as the steam rockets out of holes within the large
pieces. This retro-rocket activity will propel the pieces in all directions. That’s why the
path of Comets are is impossible to predict.
Will Mars be hit? Not likely as the nearest ISON will get is still estimated beyond 6.7 million
miles from Mars.
Based on ISON's orbit, astronomers think the comet is making its first-ever trip through the inner
solar system. Before beginning its long fall toward the sun, the comet resided in the Oort comet
cloud, a vast shell of perhaps a trillion icy bodies that extends from the outer reaches of the
planetary system to about a third of the distance to the star nearest the sun.
Formally designated C/2012 S1 (ISON), the comet was discovered on Sept. 21, 2012, by
Russian astronomers Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok using a telescope of the
International Scientific Optical Network located near Kislovodsk.
The first of several intriguing observing opportunities occurs on Oct. 1, when the inbound comet
passes about 6.7 million miles (10.8 million km) from Mars.
"During this close encounter, comet ISON may be observable to NASA and ESA spacecraft now
working at Mars," said Michael Kelley, an astronomer at UMCP and also a Swift and CIOC team
member. "Personally, I'm hoping we'll see a dramatic postcard image taken by NASA's latest
Mars explorer, the Curiosity rover."
Fifty-eight days later, on Nov. 28, ISON will make a sweltering passage around the sun. The
comet will approach within about 730,000 miles (1.2 million km) of its visible surface, which
classifies ISON as a sungrazing comet. In late November, its icy material will furiously sublimate
and release torrents of dust as the surface erodes under the sun's fierce heat, all as sunmonitoring satellites look on. Around this time, the comet may become bright enough to glimpse
just by holding up a hand to block the sun's glare.
Sungrazing comets often shed large fragments or even completely beak apart following close
encounters with the sun as the Roche Limit shades the very weak internal gravity of the Comet,
but for ISON neither fate is a forgone conclusion.
"We estimate that as much as 10 percent of the comet's diameter may erode away, but this
probably won't devastate it," explained Knight. Nearly all of the energy reaching the comet acts
to sublimate its ice, an evaporative process that cools the comet's surface and keeps it from
reaching extreme temperatures despite its proximity to the sun. It’s sort of like getting out the
pool after dark in Phoenix. It’s 100 degrees outside, but the water evaporates so quickly off
your body that it can plunge the skin into hypothermia at under 50 degrees F. You can be
shivering and convulsing within seconds, if you don’t dry the water off your body with a towel.
This same process will recool the Comet’s body as fast as the Sun is boiling the surface away.
Following ISON's solar encounter, the comet will depart the sun and move toward Earth,
appearing in evening twilight through December. It will swing past Earth on Dec. 26,
approaching within 39.9 million miles (64.2 million km) or about 167 times farther than the
moon.
Whether we'll look back on ISON as a "comet of the century" or as an overhyped cosmic dud
remains to be seen, but astronomers are planning to learn the most they can about this unusual
visitor no matter what happens.
This is by no means the end of the story. The Comet will likely be shattered into a few hundred
smaller chunks and one of the most massive tails ever seen by modern man. This may be
water vapor, and it could harbor billions of cubic yards of frozen methane. If Earth passes
through any of this debris field, it will be eventful to say the least. Highly charged methane can
ignite when encountering oxygen in the atmosphere, creating a flaming hurricane. This was
seen as the cause of the great Chicago fire on Octiber 8th, 1871 that devastated five states
simultaneously.
The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 Was Caused By A Comet
I've condensed this from a larger article, the entirety of which can be read at http://www.sott.net/article/148414-Comet-Biela-and-Mrs-O-Leary-s-Cow
Ruins of the City of Chicago following the great fire in 1871
In 1843, there appeared one of the greatest comets of history. The Great Comet of 1843
formally designated C/1843 D1 and 1843 I, was discovered on February 5, 1843 and rapidly
brightened. It was a member of the Kreutz Sungrazers, a family of comets resulting from the
breakup of a parent comet (X/1106 C1) into multiple fragments in about 1106. These comets
pass extremely close to the Sun - within a few solar radii - and this is why they often become
very bright.
C/1843 D1 moved rapidly toward an incredibly close perihelion of less than 830,000 km on
February 27, 1843, at which time it could be seen in broad daylight just a degree away from the
Sun! It swung around and passed close to earth on March 6, 1843, and seemed to manifest its
greatest brilliance the following day. It was last observed on April 19, 1843. At that time this
comet had passed closer to the sun than any other known object. The American Journal of
Science and The New York Tribune devoted special sections to this comet at the time. You
could say that "comet fever" was pandemic!
The Great Comet of 1843 - still unnamed - developed a tail over 2 Astronomical Units in length,
the longest known cometary tail until measurements in 1996 showed that Comet Hyakutake's
tail was almost twice as long.
In 1857, an anonymous German astrologer predicted that a comet would strike the earth on
June 13 of that year. The impending catastrophe became the talk of all of Europe. The French
astronomer, Jacques Babinet, tried to reassure people by stating that a collision between the
earth and a comet would do no harm. He compared the impact to "a railway train being hit by a
fly". His words, apparently, had little effect. The Paris correspondent for the American journal,
Harper's Weekly, wrote:
Women have miscarried; crops have been neglected; wills have been made; comet-proof suits
of clothing have been invented; a cometary life insurance company (premiums payable in
advance) has been created... all because an almanac maker... thought proper to insert, under
the week commencing June 13, 'About this time, expect a comet'.
Let's back up just a minute here, to 1826. In 1826, comet 3D/Biela was discovered by Wilhelm
von Biela. It has become known as Comet Biela or Biela's Comet. This comet had been first
seen in 1772 by Charles Messier and again in 1805 by Jean-Louis Pons. It was von Biela who
discovered it in its 1826 perihelion approach (on February 27) and calculated its orbit,
discovering it to be periodic with a period of 6.6 years which is why it was named after him and
not Messier or Pons. It was only the third comet (at the time) found to be periodic, after the
famous comets Halley and Encke. French astronomer M. Damoiseau subsequently calculated
its path, and announced that on its next return the comet would cross the orbit of the earth,
within twenty thousand miles of its track, and about one month before the earth would arrive at
the same spot!
When the comet came in 1832, the earth did, indeed, miss it by one month. It returned again in
1839 and 1846. In its 1846 appearance, the comet was observed to have broken up into two
pieces. It was observed again in 1852 with the two parts being 1.5 million miles apart. Each part
had a head and tail of its own.
©Unknown
The comet did not come in 1852, 1859, or 1866. The Edinburgh Review notes about this
strange state of affairs:
The puzzled astronomers were left in a state of tantalizing uncertainty as to what had become of
it. At the beginning of the year 1866 this feeling of bewilderment gained expression in the
Annual Report of the Council of the Royal Astronomical Society. The matter continued,
nevertheless, in the same state of provoking uncertainty for another six years. The third period
of the perihelion passage had then passed, and nothing had been seen of the missing luminary.
But on the night of November 27, 1872, night-watchers were startled by a sudden and a very
magnificent display of falling stars or meteors, of which there had been no previous forecast...
[source]
The meteors were radiating from the part of the sky where the comet had been expected to
cross in September. In other words, the trajectory was the same, and the earth intersected it,
but the velocity was somewhat altered. The American Journal of Science said they fell like
snowflakes. Professor Olmstead, a mathematician at Yale University estimated 34,640 shooting
stars per hour. The New York Journal of Commerce wrote that no philosopher or scholar has
ever recorded an event like this. These meteors became known as the Andromedids or "Bielids"
and it seems apparent that they indicated the death of the comet. The meteors were seen again
on subsequent occasions for the rest of the 19th century, but have now faded away.
Is that all there is to that?
Maybe not.
As it happens, on Sunday, the 8th of October, in the year 1871, at half past nine o'clock in the
evening, events occurred which caused the death of hundreds of human beings, and the
destruction of vast amounts of property, across three different States of the American Union,
sending millions of people into fits of the wildest alarm and terror. The following passages are
extracted from the History of the Great Conflagration, Sheahan & Upton, Chicago 1871. [source]
The summer of 1871 had been excessively dry; the moisture seemed to be evaporated out of
the air; and on the Sunday above named the atmospheric conditions all through the Northwest
were of the most peculiar character. The writer was living at the time in Minnesota, hundreds of
miles from the scene of the disasters, and he can never forget the condition of things. There
was a parched, combustible, inflammable, furnace-like feeling in the air, that was really
alarming. It felt as if there were needed but a match, a spark, to cause a world-wide explosion. It
was weird and unnatural. I have never seen nor felt anything like it before or since. Those who
experienced it will bear me out in these statements.
At that hour, half past nine o'clock in the evening, at apparently the same moment, at points
hundreds of miles apart, in three different States, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Illinois, fires of the
most peculiar and devastating kind broke out, so far as we know, by spontaneous combustion.
In Wisconsin, on its eastern borders, in a heavily timbered country, near Lake Michigan, a
region embracing four hundred square miles, extending north from Brown County, and
containing Peshtigo, Manistee, Holland, and numerous villages on the shores of Green Bay,
was swept bare by an absolute whirlwind of flame. There were seven hundred and fifty people
killed outright, besides great numbers of the wounded, maimed, and burned, who died
afterward. More than three million dollars' worth of property was destroyed. (pp 393, 394, etc.)
©Unknown
"At sundown there was a lull in the wind and comparative stillness. For two hours there were no
signs of danger; but at a few minutes after nine o'clock, and by a singular coincidence, precisely
the time at which the Chicago fire commenced, the people of the village heard a terrible roar. It
was that of a tornado, crushing through the forests. Instantly the heavens were illuminated with
a terrible glare. The sky, which had been so dark a moment before, burst into clouds of flame.
A spectator of the terrible scene says the fire did not come upon them gradually from burning
trees and other objects to the windward, but the first notice they had of it was a whirlwind of
flame in great clouds from above the tops of the trees, which fell upon and entirely enveloped
everything. The poor people inhaled it, or the intensely hot air, and fell down dead. This is
verified by the appearance of many of the corpses. They were found dead in the roads and
open spaces, where there were no visible marks of fire near by, with not a trace of burning upon
their bodies or clothing. At the Sugar Bush, which is an extended clearing, in some places four
miles in width, corpses were found in the open road, between fences only slightly burned. No
mark of fire was upon them; they lay there as if asleep. This phenomenon seems to explain the
fact that so many were killed in compact masses. They seemed to have huddled together, in
what were evidently regarded at the moment the safest places, far away from buildings, trees,
or other inflammable material, and there to have died together. (p. 372)
Another spectator says:
"Much has been said of the intense heat of the fires which destroyed Peshtigo, Menekaune,
Williamsonville, etc., but all that has been said can give the stranger but a faint conception of
the reality. The heat has been compared to that engendered by a flame concentrated on an
object by a blow-pipe; but even that would not account for some of the phenomena. For
instance, we have in our possession a copper cent taken from the pocket of a dead man in the
Peshtigo Sugar Bush, which will illustrate our point. This cent has been partially fused, but still
retains its round form, and the inscription upon it is legible. Others, in the same pocket, were
partially melted, and yet the clothing and the body of the man were not even singed. We do not
know in what way to account for this, unless, as is asserted by some, the tornado and fire were
accompanied by electrical phenomena" (373).
"It is the universal testimony that the prevailing idea among the people was, that the last day
had come. Accustomed as they were to fire, nothing like this had ever been known. They could
give no other interpretation to this ominous roar, this bursting of the sky with flame, and this
dropping down of fire out of the very heavens, consuming instantly everything it touched.
© Inconnu
"No two give a like description of the great tornado as it smote and devoured the village. It
seemed as if 'the fiery fiends of hell had been loosened,' says one. 'It came in great sheeted
flames from heaven,' says another. 'There was a pitiless rain of fire and *sand*.' 'The
atmosphere was all afire.' Some speak of 'great balls of fire unrolling and shooting forth in
streams.' The fire leaped over roofs and trees, and ignited whole streets at once. No one could
stand before the blast. It was a race with death, above, behind, and before them" (Ibid 374).
A civil engineer, doing business in Peshtigo, says:
"The heat increased so rapidly, as things got well afire, that, when about four hundred feet from
the bridge and the nearest building, I was obliged to lie down behind a log that was aground in
about two feet of water, and by going under water now and then, and holding my head close to
the water behind the log, I managed to breathe. There were a dozen others behind the same
log. If I had succeeded in crossing the river and gone among the buildings on the other side,
probably I should have been lost, as many were."
In Michigan, one Allison Weaver, near Port Huron, determined to remain, to protect, if possible,
some mill-property of which he had charge. He knew the fire was coming, and dug himself a
shallow well or pit, made a thick plank cover to place over it, and thus prepared to bide the
conflagration. I quote:
"He filled it nearly full of water, and took care to saturate the ground around it for a distance of
several rods. Going to the mill, he dragged out a four-inch plank, sawed it in two, and saw that
the parts tightly covered the mouth of the little well. 'I calculated it would be touch and go,' said
he, 'but it was the best I could do.' At midnight he had everything arranged, and the roaring then
was awful to hear. The clearing was ten to twelve acres in extent, and Weaver says that, for two
hours before the fire reached him, there was a constant flight across the ground of small
animals. As he rested a moment from giving the house another wetting down, a horse dashed
into the opening at full speed and made for the house. Weaver could see him tremble and
shake with excitement and terror, and felt a pity for him. After a moment, the animal gave
utterance to a snort of dismay, ran two or three times around the house, and then shot off into
the woods like a rocket."
"Not long after this the fire came. Weaver stood by his well, ready for the emergency, yet
curious to see the breaking-in of the flames. The roaring increased in volume, the air became
oppressive, a cloud of dust and cinders came showering down, and he could see the flame
through the trees. It did not run along the ground, or leap from tree to tree, but it came on like a
tornado, a sheet of flame reaching from the earth to the tops of the trees. As it struck the
clearing he jumped into his well, and closed over the planks. He could no longer see, but he
could hear. He says that the flames made no halt whatever, or ceased their roaring for an
instant, but he hardly got the opening closed before the house and mill were burning tinder, and
both were down in five minutes. The smoke came down upon him powerfully, and his den was
so hot he could hardly breathe.
"He knew that the planks above him were on fire, but, remembering their thickness, he waited till
the roaring of the flames had died away, and then with his head and hands turned them over
and put our the fire by dashing up water with his hands. Although it was a cold night, and the
water had at first chilled him, the heat gradually warmed him up until he felt quite comfortable.
He remained in his den until daylight, frequently turning over the planks and putting out the fire,
and then the worst had passed. The earth around was on fire in spots, house and mill were
gone, leaves, brush, and logs were swept clean away as if shaved off and swept with a broom,
and nothing but soot and ashes were to be seen" (390).
In Wisconsin, at Williamson's Mills, there was a large but shallow well on the premises
belonging to a Mr. Boorman. The people, when cut off by the flames and wild with terror, and
thinking they would find safety in the water, leaped into this well.
"The relentless fury of the flames drove them pell-mell into the pit, to struggle with each other
and die - some by drowning, and others by fire and suffocation. None escaped. Thirty-two
bodies were found there. They were in every imaginable position; but the contortions of their
limbs and the agonizing expressions of their faces told the awful tale". (386)
James B. Clark, of Detroit, who was at Uniontown, Wisconsin, writes:
"The fire suddenly made a rush, like the flash of a train of gunpowder, and swept in the shape of
a crescent around the settlement. It is almost impossible to conceive the frightful rapidity of the
advance of the flames. The rushing fire seemed to eat up and annihilate the trees."
They saw a black mass coming toward them from the wall of flame:
"It was a stampede of cattle and horses thundering toward us, bellowing, moaning, and neighing
as they galloped on; rushing with fearful speed, their eyeballs dilated and glaring with terror, and
every motion betokening delirium of fright. Some had been badly burned, and must have
plunged through a long space of flame in the desperate effort to escape.
Following considerably behind came a solitary horse, panting and snorting and nearly
exhausted. He was saddled and bridled, and, as we first thought, had a bag lashed to his back.
As he came up we were startled at the sight of a young lad lying fallen over the animal's neck,
the bridle wound around his hands, and the mane being clinched by the fingers. Little effort was
needed to stop the jaded horse, and at once release the helpless boy. He was taken into the
house, and all that we could do was done; but he had inhaled the smoke, and was seemingly
dying. Some time elapsed and he revived enough to speak. He told his name - Patrick Byrnes and said: 'Father and mother and the children got into the wagon. I don't know what became of
them. Everything is burned up. I am dying. Oh! Is hell any worse than this?'" (383)
When we leave Wisconsin and pass about two hundred and fifty miles eastward, over Lake
Michigan and across the whole width of the State of Michigan, we find much the same condition
of things, but not so terrible in the loss of life. Fully fifteen thousand people were rendered
homeless by the fires; and their food, clothing, crops, horses, and cattle were destroyed. Of
these five to six thousand were burned out the same night that the fires broke out in Chicago
and Wisconsin. The total destruction of property exceeded one million dollars; not only villages
and cities, but whole townships, were swept bare
NASA-backed fusion engine could cut Mars trip down to 30 days
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FDR for the stars
By Iain Thomson in San Francisco • Get more from this author
Posted in Science, 10th April 2013 00:40 GMT
Free whitepaper – EMA advanced performance analytics report
NASA, and plenty of private individuals, want to put mankind on Mars. Now a team at the University
of Washington, with funding from the space agency, is about to start building a fusion engine that
could get humans there in just 30 days and make other forms of space travel obsolete.
Rocket fuel is just so last century
"Using existing rocket fuels, it's nearly impossible for humans to explore much beyond Earth," said
lead researcher John Slough, a UW research associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics in
a statement. "We are hoping to give us a much more powerful source of energy in space that could
eventually lead to making interplanetary travel commonplace."
The proposed Fusion Driven Rocket (FDR) is a 150-ton system that uses magnetism to compress
lithium or aluminum metal bands around a deuterium-tritium fuel pellet to initiate fusion. The
resultant microsecond reaction forces the propellant mass out at 30 kilometers per second, and
would be able to pulse every minute or so and not cause g-force damage to the spacecraft's
occupants.
The spent fuel pellet is ejected behind the motor to provide propulsion, and because the whole
process is magnetically controlled there's relatively little wear and tear on the engines. A pellet the
size of a grain of sand would provide the same propellant as a gallon of conventional rocket fuel.
All this requires electrical power to control and contain the reaction, but Dr. Anthony Pancotti, an
advanced propulsion engineer with the team, told The Register that the advantages of magnetic
inertial confinement fusion (over that requiring massive lasers, for example) mean that the
spacecraft could power itself on solar energy alone.
"It's very scalable; we can achieve fusion at a much smaller scale," he said. "We could run the
designed engine off 200KW of solar panels, which is about the same power as generated by the
panels around the International Space Station"
Using the FDR system, flight times to the Red Planet could take between 30 and 90 days, compared
to over eight months that it took to send the Curiosity rover to Mars. The 30-day trip would require
three days of engine operation to get the spacecraft up to speed and another three to slow it down
into orbit around Mars.
Such a motor would also be considerably cheaper to launch than a chemical rocket system, since
there is much less fuel to hoist out of the gravity well before it starts a trip. The proposed design for a
150-ton spacecraft would allow around a third of that mass to be used for cargo – human or
otherwise – and the reduced flight time would reduce the exposure of astronauts to the effects of
solar radiation.
Many space missions use aerobraking – using the friction of a planet's atmosphere to slow down –
as a way of saving the propellant. This drive, however, is so efficient that aerobraking makes little
sense, since the weight of the shielding needed for the maneuver is greater than the propellant FDR
needs to slow down.
The FDR fusion drive prototype in a Washington lab
The team has tested all the parts of the FDR in the lab, and is now going to start building a fully
working engine that brings these elements together, thanks to funding from NASA's Innovative
Advanced Concepts Program, which aims to fund long-term space technology.
The FDR is one of only ten projects to get Stage Two funding from the program. This $600,000
award will provide the proof-of-concept FDR system over the next 18 months, and a working
spacecraft would be ready as soon as 2020, Pancotti predicted – but if NASA wanted to throw
money at the project, this timescale could be cut.
Given the tight financial strictures of the US government this is unlikely, but the FDR engine has the
potential to make chemical or ion drives for spacecraft as obsolete as the steam engine for earthbound transportation.
The rise of robot wars: Google chief warns armed drones will soon be in
the hands of terrorists and miniature models could be used to spy on
neighbors
By Daily Mail Reporter
PUBLISHED:23:26 EST, 12 April 2013| UPDATED:23:26 EST, 12 April 2013
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The head of Google has warned drone technology proves a serious danger to
global security and privacy unless an international treaty is put into place
controlling the technology fast.
Eric Schmidt today said that the technology for armed unmanned planes will
soon pass into the hands of terrorists posing huge security concerns across the
globe.
He also said that ever expanding drone technology is making smaller and
cheaper models, including nano-drones, which could be used by nosy neighbors
spying on each other in a dispute.
'You're having a dispute with you neighbor,' he told The Guardian. 'How
would you feel if your neighbor went over and bought a commercial observation
drone that they can launch from their back yard. It just flies over your house all
day. How would you feel about it?'
On Thursday, Idaho's Republican governor signed a law restricting the use of
such pilot-less aircraft by police and other public agencies in a bid to protect
privacy rights.
The state now requires law enforcement to obtain warrants to collect evidence
using drones following in the footsteps of Virginia, which also introduced such
a measure.
'We're trying to prevent high-tech window-peeping,' Idaho Senate Assistant
Majority Leader Chuck Winder, sponsor of the measure told Reuters.
Law enforcement agencies have been known to use small drones, which cost as
little as $30,000, to locate marijuana farms and track fugitives.
Schmidt also warned that deadly armed drones could soon be used by terrorists
following the proliferation of state drone strikes over recent years.
'I'm not going to pass judgement on whether armies should exist, but I would
prefer to not spread and democratize the ability to fight war to every single
human being,' he said.
'It's got to be regulated. It's one thing for governments, who have some
legitimacy in what they're doing, but have other people doing it...It's not going
to happen.'
He added that drone technology will become more and more normalized part of
warfare.
'It's probable that robotics becomes a significant component of nation state
warfare,' he told the newspaper.
(Reuters) - Idaho's Republican governor signed a law on Thursday
that restricts use of drone aircraft by police and other public agencies
as the use of pilotless aircraft inside U.S. borders is increasing. The
measure aims to protect privacy rights.
In approving the law, which requires law enforcement to obtain warrants to collect
evidence using drones in most cases, Idaho becomes the second U.S. state after
Virginia to restrict uses of pilotless aircraft over privacy concerns.
"We're trying to prevent high-tech window-peeping," Idaho Senate Assistant Majority
Leader Chuck Winder, sponsor of the measure in the Republican-led Idaho legislature,
told Reuters earlier this year as the bill was pending in the legislature.
Current federal regulations sharply limit the number and types of drones that can fly in
American airspace to just a few dozen law enforcement agencies, including one in
Idaho, public agencies including the Department of Homeland Security and universities
for scientific research.
But unmanned aircraft are expected to be widely permitted in coming years, raising
fears about misuse of miniature devices that can carry cameras which capture video
and still images by day and by night.
Lawmakers in Idaho and more than a dozen states this year introduced legislation to
safeguard privacy in the face of an emerging market the unmanned aerial vehicle
industry forecasts will drive $89 billion in worldwide expenditures over the next decade.
The measure Idaho Governor C.L. "Butch" Otter signed into law on Thursday requires
police to obtain warrants to use drones to collect evidence about suspected criminal
activity unless it involves illegal drugs or unless the unmanned aircraft is being used for
public emergencies or search-and-rescue missions.
The Idaho bill, approved last week by the state Senate and the state House of
Representatives, also bans authorities, or anyone else, from using drones to conduct
surveillance on people or their property, including agricultural operations, without written
consent.
Idaho's Republican governor couldn't be immediately reached for comment.
Americans are most familiar with drones because of the use of armed, unmanned
aircraft by the United States for counter terrorism operations against Islamist militants in
countries like Pakistan and Yemen.
The majority of unarmed drones expected to operate in U.S. airspace when restrictions
are rolled back by the Federal Aviation Administration in 2015 weigh less than 55
pounds and fly below 400 feet, according to a September report by the U.S.
Government Accountability Office.
Cash-strapped law enforcement agencies see small drones, which cost as little as
$30,000, as money-saving, low-manpower tools that could locate illegal marijuana
farms, seek missing children and track dangerous fugitives.
Yet worries about widespread snooping persist. In February, privacy concerns prompted
the Virginia legislature to put a hold on drone use for two years, and grounded a plan by
Seattle police to deploy two camera-equipped drones.
Civil uses for drones would likely emerge first after 2015, while a commercial market
would develop more slowly as airspace issues are resolved, the GAO report shows.
Possible uses include pipeline inspection, crop dusting and traffic monitoring.
The FAA's goal is to eventually allow, to the greatest extent possible, routine drone
operations in U.S. airspace.