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bananas's JournalSpaceX Grasshopper Successfully Flies Sideways Before Returning To Landing Pad [VIDEO]
Source: International Business Times
The SpaceX Grasshopper, a new reusable rocket from the private spaceflight contractor, has set another milestone after launching vertically and then flying sideways for several hundred feet.
In the video released Thursday, the Grasshopper takes off vertically, reaching a height of 820 feet before hovering in the air and laterally shifting 330 feet. After it had successfully completed the maneuver, the Grasshopper safely returned to its landing platform. SpaceX, owned by billionare “hyperloop” pioneer Elon Musk, says that accomplishing such a maneuver is a big step forward in creating a truly reusable rocket.
"The test demonstrated the vehicle's ability to perform more aggressive steering maneuvers than have been attempted in previous flights. Grasshopper is taller than a ten story building, which makes the control problem particularly challenging. Diverts like this are an important part of the trajectory in order to land the rocket precisely back at the launch site after reentering from space at hypersonic velocity," SpaceX explained in a description alongside the video.
Such a maneuverable rocket is a unique idea, one that SpaceX hopes will be immensely useful -- and profitable -- for space agencies across the globe. SpaceX’s ultimate goal with the Grasshopper program is to create a rocket capable of vertically landing back on its launchpad after exiting and re-entering Earth’s atmosphere. The vast majority of rockets are simply discarded by spacecraft and left to burn up on re-entry. With a truly reusable rocket like the Grasshopper, SpaceX believes that space agencies would be able to save much time and money.
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Read more: http://www.ibtimes.com/spacex-grasshopper-successfully-flies-sideways-returning-landing-pad-video-1387943?ft=w14p5
Alex Salmond told nuclear ban out of line with being in Nato
Source: The Guardian
Alex Salmond has been warned by a UK cabinet minister it would be "extraordinarily difficult" for an independent Scotland to join Nato at the same time as banning nuclear weapons.
In a sharp escalation of the clash over Salmond's defence policies, Michael Moore, the Scotland secretary, said it was "absolutely clear" that Scotland would have to accept Nato was a nuclear alliance as a precondition for membership.
Moore confirmed disclosures by the Guardian that senior Nato officials raised serious concerns about the implications of Scottish government plans to force the removal of Trident nuclear weapons from the Clyde soon after independence in a meeting with Scottish civil servants.
They were told that new Nato members are expected not to "import problems" into the alliance, sources said, and to avoid any actions which undermined its nuclear-armed doctrine.
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Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/15/alex-salmond-nuclear-nato-ban
After canceled nuclear plant, Florida legislator seeks repeal of advance fee law
Source: Tampa Bay Times
State Rep. Michelle Rehwinkel Vasilinda, D-Tallahassee, filed a bill Thursday that would repeal the law that allows utilities to charge customers for new nuclear plants before building them.
Rehwinkel Vasilinda filed HB 4001 in response to what she called a "growing public outcry" against the law, which she views as a regressive, anticonsumer energy policy.
"The passage of this bill should be one of our highest priorities for Florida consumers," she said.
The representative noted in a statement to the media that Duke Energy this month canceled its long proposed Levy County nuclear project, despite running up a tab of $1.5 billion by using the so-called nuclear advance fee.
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Read more: http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/energy/after-canceled-nuclear-power-plant-state-legislator-seeks-repeal-of/2136675
Report: U.S. nuclear plants remain vulnerable to terrorists
Source: CNN
None of the 107 nuclear facilities in the United States are protected against a high-force terrorist attack, and some are still vulnerable to the theft of bomb-grade nuclear fuel, or sabotage intended to cause a nuclear meltdown, a new report says.
The Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Project (NPPP) at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas released the report Thursday. It wants to shine a light on the security gaps that still exist more than 10 years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
"It would be a tragedy if the United States had to look back after such an attack on a nuclear reactor and say that we could have and should have done more to prevent the catastrophe," said Prof. Alan J. Kuperman, co-author of the report.
The study was done at the request of the Defense Department after the Pentagon commissioned an academic study of the security vulnerabilities of the nation's 104 commercial nuclear power reactors and three civilian research reactors.
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Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/15/us/nuclear-plants-security/?hpt=hp_t1
Scientists Achieve On-Demand Quantum Teleportation For The First Time
Source: Popular Science
Quantum teleportation has taken another step forward, thanks to two complimentary experiments, one from ETH Zurich and one from the University of Tokyo. The researchers have demonstrated the most reliable yet version of quantum teleportation--what Nature is calling "quantum teleportation on demand."
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Quantum teleportation has some pretty significant implications for communications; it works in a way not that dissimilar from the PGP-secured email we outlined here, except there's literally no physical link between the sender and receiver. (Read more about the implications for communications in Rebecca Boyle's excellent explainer.)
In the new experiments, conducted at the 100-micrometer scale and at temperatures of around 20 millikelvins, "Alice" and "Bob" from the example above are separated by about 5 mm. The University of Tokyo experiment managed to induce entanglement deterministically, which had only been done before at distances about 1,000 times smaller. And those previous experiments had only managed to do so reliably about 1 percent of the time, compared to this experiment, which teleported a qubit about 40 percent of the time (and reproduced it on the other end with about an 88 percent accuracy). So this is a huge leap forward!
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Read more: http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-08/researchers-perform-reliable-demand-quantum-teleportation-first-time
Air Force nuclear missile unit fails key security test, in latest setback
Source: Fox News
An Air Force unit responsible for dozens of nuclear missiles failed a recent safety and security inspection -- a setback that comes just months after the Air Force temporarily sidelined 17 officers in connection with a prior inspection flop.
The latest failure was recorded by the 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont. According to Air Force Global Strike Command, the unit received an "unsatisfactory" rating during the inspection in early August after personnel made "tactical-level errors" during an exercise.
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Last spring the 91st Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base, N.D., received weak grades on an inspection but did not fail it outright; that performance was so poor, however, that 17 officers temporarily lost their authority to operate missiles.
The group's deputy commander said at the time it was suffering "rot" within its ranks.
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Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/08/13/air-force-nuclear-missile-unit-fails-key-security-test/
NASA's Juno Spacecraft Is Halfway to Jupiter
Source: Space.com
A NASA spacecraft has hit the halfway mark of its five-year voyage to the solar system's largest planet: Jupiter.
The odometer on NASA's Juno probe clicked over to 880 million miles (1.415 billion kilometers) on Monday (Aug. 12), space agency officials said. That means the spacecraft is halfway to Jupiter, at least in terms of distance traveled, they added.
The $1.1 billion Juno mission launched in August 2011 and will arrive at the Jovian system in July 2016. The probe is taking an indirect, looping path to its destination, with a close Earth flyby scheduled two months from now to provide a dramatic speed boost.
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The 8,000-pound (3,267 kilograms) Juno probe is the first solar-powered spacecraft ever to visit the outer solar system.Juno has three huge solar arrays, each of which is the size of a tractor-trailer.
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Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/nasas-juno-spacecraft-halfway-jupiter-220428505.html
Court: Obama broke law with nuke delay
Source: The Hill
A federal court on Tuesday ruled that the Obama administration broke the law by delaying a decision on using the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada as a permanent nuclear waste dump.
In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) violated a 1982 federal law by halting its consideration of the project. It ordered the NRC to deny or approve the Energy Department’s application to store nuclear waste at the site.
The decision is a victory for Republicans, who have charged that President Obama’s 2010 decision to pull the plug on the reviews ran afoul of a law that outlines Yucca as the nation's sole waste storage site.
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The administration, including former NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko, contended that the NRC didn’t have the funds to complete the Yucca review. House Republicans have voted to appropriate more funds to complete the process, but those spending levels were never adopted.
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Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/316797-obama-administration-must-rule-on-yucca-federal-court-says
Israel shoots down rocket targeting resort city Eilat
Source: Reuters
Israel shot down a rocket aimed at its southern resort city of Eilat early on Tuesday, blowing it up in mid air near the border with Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, a military official said.
Islamist militants operating in the lawless desert peninsula said they fired the rocket at the city, which was packed with tourists, in retaliation for the killing of four guerrillas in Sinai on Friday.
Air raid sirens rang out and blasts reverberated over the hills surrounding the resort on the shores of the Gulf of Aqaba, witnesses and Israeli news media said. No casualties or damage were reported.
A retired Israeli security official said it was the first time Israel's Iron Dome interceptor system had struck a missile fired at Eilat.
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Read more: http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE97C00420130813?irpc=932
U.K. Discreetly Trimming to 180 or Fewer Nuclear Warheads
Source: Global Security Newswire
The United Kingdom has been decommissioning and breaking down Trident nuclear warheads at a rate of three per year, with a goal of reducing domestic stocks to "no more than 180" by the mid-2020s, the London Guardian reported.
Great Britain currently has a nuclear weapons stockpile of approximately 225 warheads, according to the newspaper. The U.K. government in June 2011 announced that the cache of warheads would be reduced by 45 to meet the intent stated in Britain's 2010 Defense Review.
The quiet and gradual disassembly program has resulted in the modification of a number of warheads "to render them unusable while others identified as no longer being required for service are currently stored and have not yet been disabled or modified," Sue Ford, a Defense Ministry equipment and support policy official, told the Guardian.
The report comes almost a week after the United Kingdom's Liberal Democrats announced they would hold a party vote next month on a proposal to disarm some of the nation's nuclear-missile equipped submarines.
Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/u-k-discreetly-trimming-180-fewer-nuclear-warheads-120204605.html
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