A short mixed bag

Mail 718 Thursday, March 29, 2012

Space Access ’12 Conference – April 12-14 – Phoenix Arizona

SA ’12 will be the next round of Space Access Society’s long-running annual get-together for people seriously interested in the technology, business, and politics of radically cheaper space transportation. This year’s conference sessions will run from Thursday morning April 12th through Saturday evening April 14th. (Our Space Access hospitality suite will be open Wednesday evening for early arrivers.)

Conference location is the Grace Inn, 10831 South 51st Street, Phoenix, AZ, about ten freeway miles from the Phoenix airport. For room reservations, call 800 843-6010 or 480 893-3000, and mention "space access" to get our discount $69/night single-or-double breakfast-included rate. (This rate is good for up to three days before or after the conference.)

Conference registration is $120 in advance, $140 at the door, student rate $40 either way.

There are two options for advance registration:

– You can mail us a check or money order. Include for each registrant the name and affiliation (if any) to be listed on the badge, plus their email address. Make the check out to Space Access ’12, and mail it to:

Space Access ’12, PO Box 16034, Phoenix AZ 85011.

– You can go to

http://www.space-access.org/updates/sa12paypalbutton.html to register online with your credit card or Paypal account.

Either way, advance registrations need to be in our hands by COB Friday April 6th, so our volunteer Registration crew has the weekend before the conference to produce your badges.

Two weeks till the conference begins! It’s time to book that flight to Phoenix; it’ll only cost more if you wait longer. And reserve your hotel room soon, as the hotel is filling up faster than usual this year.

Population decline in the West? Not everywhere.

SO MUCH has changed, yet so much is strikingly familiar.

The census results for 2011 reveal a country of contrasts. Dublin’s commuter belt has grown rapidly and our population is more diverse than ever, but Ireland remains a predominantly Catholic country rooted in tradition, where marriage is enduringly popular and the nuclear family is resilient.

Overall, the census shows the population reached 4.6 million in April 2011, the highest level in 150 years. Population growth has been surprisingly high despite emigration and the economic downturn, driven mainly by an extraordinarily high birth rate with more than 70,000 births per year.

In fact, the natural increase – the number of births minus deaths – is the highest on record for any previous census…..

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2012/0330/1224314102324.html?cmpid=morning-digest&utm_source=morning-digest&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=digests

Which is striking and definitely something to think about. Thanks.

Texas Hospital

My Conclusion: Nuns can run a hospital for a hundred years, businessmen haven’t a clue.

http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/03/29/3845682/jps-to-tear-down-vacant-st-joseph.html

excerpt:

FORT WORTH — The Tarrant County Hospital District plans to spend about $5.5 million to tear down the vacant St. Joseph Hospital complex on south Main Street, with work to begin this summer.

St. Joseph Hospital was founded by nuns in 1885 as Tarrant County’s first hospital. The property was expanded several times. In 1994, Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp. bought St. Joseph and closed the facilities a year later. The property was sold in 1997 to a California company that operated an Alzheimer’s center from part of the complex before going into bankruptcy.

John Paul Robinson

And in general, local communities can manage things better than the federal government. Civil defense works better than FEMA. Sometime local government is corrupt and inefficient; it then looks to the state and the federal government to bail it out. If that bailout is not possible, the locals understand that they get the government they allow, and a reform movement starts. But with federalization and public employee unions reform cannot happen until there is bankruptcy. And even then the beat goes on for a while.

Dr. Brin is expressing his own damn lie

He implies the canard is the middle class will vote themselves largesse. The fact is, it is the unproductive, lower class that does this. Over time the lower class increases without bounds and gains enough political leverage to out vote the productive. At least that seems to be the case today.

Phil=

I would not put it so strongly, but in general the middle class votes for public benefits, but when you know that you must pay the taxes you vote for it tends to put some restraints on it. When all must pay some taxes, and you don’t get to vote taxes on other people, it is different. In today’s world not quite half never pay income tax at all, yet they get to vote on tax increases.

Liberal view?

Almost one half of the nation’s murder victims that year were black and a majority of them were between the ages of 17 and 29. Black people accounted for 13% of the total U.S. population in 2005. Yet they were the victims of 49% of all the nation’s murders. And 93% of black murder victims were killed by other black people, according to the same report.

Good grief, how can anyone read the above in any way but to say:

Almost half of the murders in the country were committed upon and by a minority that consists of 13% of the population.

My mind boggles at that.

-Paul

Does that need a comment?

Lots of superterrans in the Goldilocks Zone of *red dwarfs*?!

<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/9170683/New-life-in-space-hope-after-billions-of-habitable-planets-found-in-Milky-Way.html>

—-

Roland Dobbins

solar power

I once took a tour through the Cappadocia area of Turkey. I noted that virtually every house had a solar hot water heater on the roof. Solar can be used for other things besides generating electricity, which may not be the best use of solar. At least the Turks in that area are using it effectively for hot water.

Joseph P. Martino

Direct solar is often very efficient. In particular, rooftop direct solar heating to heat a swimming pool can be very effective and much more efficient that running a furnace. I know a couple in New Mexico who heat underground gravel in summer, then circulate air through there in winter. Their heating bill is very low even in deep winter. But that takes space and very good insulation. And of course direct solar means you bathe in daytimes if you want hot water.

4 Year Old Picture Leads to Parents Arrest In Canada

Totally 100 percent true, however this is being extensively covered in the new Conservative News Network in Canada, where both the Cops and Teachers are being given intensive scrutiny.

They are currently being sued, and will likely face criminal charges, for violating the Fathers civil rights, turns out they searched his house without a warrant, violated a bunch of police procedure, and worst of all no one can produce a copy of the picture the child drew.

David March

Fusion

Dr. Pournelle

Not that the Huffington Post is the place where I expect to get cutting edge science information, but since you had posted on the issues with making Fusion work, here is a story I came across

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/27/nuclear-fusion-power-sandia_n_1381973.html?ref=science&icid=maing-grid10%7Chtmlws-main-bb%7Cdl17%7Csec3_lnk3%26pLid%3D147124

It shows what we are working on here in the U.S. with some interesting possibilities.

David

David Curtis

The health care case at the Supreme Court

Jerry,

I fail to see why people are objecting to the health care mandate. Clearly taking care of the sick is a good thing and the only way it can be affordable is for the healthy to subsidize the sick. Why should we let the states keep us from doing a good thing and caring for the people? While we are at it, a government free from corruption is also a good thing. A number of Governors in Illinois have been sent to jail for corruption. We need better federal oversight of state governments. Also the State of Rhode Island is nearly bankrupt and California has severe problems with their budgets. Of course the South has a poor record on Civil Rights. We need a way to convince the people in the states to let the benevolent federal authorities have greater control. I have a modest proposal to convince the states it is in their interest to allow greater central control. We should enact a law that requires each state to send two children to Washington each year to participate in a televised game….

Mike Plaster

Subj: Where did the Moon come from?

The recent work on Titanium isotope ratios is not the first indication that the Moon is composed of material that condensed from the solar nebula at the same distance from the Sun as the Earth.

Belbruno and Gott described the astrodynamics of the formation of the Moon in 2004:

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0405372

Briefly: The impactor formed at the L4 and/or L5 points of the ProtoEarth-Sun system. Perturbations would eventually throw it into a horseshoe orbit. Further perturbations would send it to impact with the ProtoEarth on a zero-energy parabolic trajectory.

Rod Montgomery==monty@starfief.com

What You Lose When You Sign That Donor Card

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204603004577269910906351598.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

"Organ transplantation—from procurement of organs to transplant to the first year of postoperative care—is a $20 billion per year business. Average recipients are charged $750,000 for a transplant, and at an average 3.3 organs, that is more than $2 million per body. Neither donors nor their families can be paid for organs."

Just follow the money. Of course they mean well, unless you are getting chopped up.

Do you have the right to sell your organs? The government says not; it protects you from that, just as you cannot sell yourself into slavery. These are deliberate choices, but there has not been much debate on the subject. Certainly someone gets rich on organ transplants, but it isn’t the donor or donor’s family.

Interactive Scale of the Universe

Jerry,

A fun little overview of the small and the large.

<http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120312.html>

Regards, Charles Adams, Bellevue, NE