Atlas V booster flies on Russian engines

Atlas V, one of America's three big booster rockets,  is powered by RD-180 rocket engines supplied by NPO Energomash in Russia.  Aviation Week ran a piece speculating upon the effects of a Russian embargo upon these engines.  Due to worries about the reliability of Russian suppliers, USAF maintains a two year stockpile of the engines.  That's gotta be expensive, although Aviation Week didn't comment upon the expense.  Anyhow  Atlas V could keep flying until the stockpile is exhausted.  And  launches could continue using the Delta IV rocket, which is powered by US built RS-68 engines.  Both Atlas and Delta are built and operated by United Launch Alliance, a spinoff/merger of the booster operations of Boeing and Lockheed Martin.  Pentagon sources say it would cost $1 billion and take five years to set up production of the Russian RD-180 in the US.  Which is prohibitively costly.  They would scrap Atlas V before spending that sort of money. 
   Elon Musk of SpaceX says that his Falcon 9 booster could handle all the launches.  Falcon has made several successful flights to the International Space Station carrying supplies.  USAF is "certifying" Falcon to launch national security payloads.  Certification could happen anytime USAF feels like it.  It's just a paperwork exercise. 
   All three boosters, Atlas, Delta and Falcon are in the same class.  They can all boost the same payloads, give or take maybe 10%.  So loss of Atlas isn't the end of the world. 
   The Russian have made no threats to cut off RD-180 engines.  Presumably they are making good money selling them to the Americans, and they don't want to ruin it.  I doubt that the Russians want to let a little unpleasantness over the Crimea mess up a good thing. 

Group of 8 now back to Group of 7

The world's rich country club, originally the US,France,Germany, Italy, Japan, and Canada, just black balled its newest member, Russia, over the Ukraine invasion. 
So it is back to being the G7.  There is  room for more members.  Brazil and India come to mind.  Brazil's GNP is actually larger than Russia's.  India's is right behind Russia, and ahead of Canada's.  Both countries are democracies, and believers in the things we care about, like freedom, capitalism, free markets, human rights, self determination, and not invading other countries.  And they are friendly to us.
   The other potential member, based on GNP size is of course China.  Unfortunately, the Chinese do not believe in the things we deem important, and in fact are actively hostile to them.  And they are not very friendly, to us, or to anyone else for that matter.  So,  we don't have to invite them in. 

Game of Thrones, Season 3 [Caution spoilers}

I've watched it all.  Ten episodes, which doesn't seem like very many.  After all there are 52 weeks in a season.  Used to be, they would make 25-30 episodes.  Season opened in September, and there would be new episodes enough to last til spring, before reruns started.
  It's entertaining.  Better than CSI, or "reality" TV, or cop shows or Walking Dead.  The medieval setting is well done, convincing costumes and sets.  It's dark, very dark.  Plenty of scenes of outright cruelty.  Interpersonal relationships all have strong elements of coercion, oppression, and violence.  Nobody is happily married, at least not since they beheaded Lord Eddart Stark (Sean Bean) back last season.  John Snow's relationship with a wilder girl ends with the wilder girl shooting him full of arrows.  Rob Stark and Catlin, his mother, are treacherously slain at the red wedding.  Dani Targaryen is still the single war queen leading the Dothraki hordes, no consort for her. 
  I've previously commented on the poor soundtrack, lack of distinctive costumes, and lack of personal names.  The show would be better if all three failings were improved.  But the non stop action, the swords and sorcery theme, and attractive characters (those who are still alive) make it quite watchable.  The Imp (Tyrion Lannister) emerges as perhaps the most well rounded and interesting character.  He's born on the bad side (Lannisters are bad guys), he drinks too much, but he is a decent sort, ingenious and brave. 

Jimmy Carter uses snail mail

Because he thinks NSA is snooping his email.  He said this on Meet the Press this morning.   He might be onto something....

To pay college athletes

David Gregory's Meet the Press spent a lot of time discussing this one today.  With the Russians invading Ukraine, the US economy in the doldrums, the missing airliner still missing,  the Democrats in a tailspin, Gregory figured this was his topic for the morning.  Good pick there Gregory.
   It's not an issue that resonates with me.  After paying to send three children thru college, the thought of an athletic scholarship picking up the $100,000 four year tuition tab sounds like plenty of compensation to this veteran parent. So I don't really feel that college athletes are exploited. You play ball, we pick up tuition room and board, sounds like a pretty good deal to me.  Too bad none of my kids was athletic enough to get such a deal. 
   There was some talk about low graduation rates among athletic scholarship students, although nobody mentioned any numbers.  Like how bad is the problem?  Newsies are innumerate. 
    Failure to graduate student athletes is shameful.  The college is reneging on it's part of the deal.  Granted, teen aged boys with an athletic bend, from poor backgrounds, may not be very motivated to crack the books, study, turn in the papers on time, and get to class.  But I do feel it is the college's job to motivate them.  A simple rule, you must maintain a C average in order to play, ought to be plenty of motivation.  Plus, student athletes should be required to take a major with some economic value.  Science, math, computer science, business administration, English, History, a foreign language.  Nix on black studies, gender studies, phys ed. 
 

Canon SX170 IS, My new camera

Since elderly Kodak ZX1485 was getting flaky after some 5 years of service, I bought a new, jazzier Canon point-n-shoot.  Fixed zoom lens, LCD view finder, built it flash.  Comes with a non standard lithium battery and a battery charger. Won't run off AA cells like the Kodak would.  Needs you to purchase a memory card.  Comes in black, the proper color for a camera IMHO.  I'm down on pink for cameras, hand tools, electric trains, or handguns.
   Memory card is 16 Gig, and will fit into the memory card slots on my Compaq SR1750 NX desktop.  A "card present" LED even lights up.  But Windows XP does not recognize the card.  Same slot, had recognized the lesser 2 Gig memory card from the Kodak.  Some web surfing discovered the existence of a Microsoft patch to handle memory cards greater than 2 gig.  Said patch came with a lot of  weasel words about not guaranteed, and you ought to wait for the next service pack, and some other stuff that says, "We Microsoft, made this patch 'cause they demanded it of us, but we don't like it, we don't trust it, proceed at your own risk."
   So, I went back to Staples  to buy a USB cable for the Canon.  They had one in stock!  It was a Staples branded Mini USB cable.  Even cooler, the cable came in a clever blister pack that left the "Mini USB" connector open to touch, and even plug into the camera, just to make sure it really fit. Cute packaging design.  To my surprise, Canon had used an industry standard connector on the camera.  Plugged 'er in, and Windows recognized the camera and good old Picassa photography program was able to down load photos from the Canon.  Cool.
   After uploading the photos to my desktop and labeling them I noticed that the camera date was off by seven months. I had set the date during the get-acquainted-and-power-up session.  I had to refer to the camera manual to get back to the date setting menu.  Somewhere in the camera manual it mentioned that there was a separate tiny battery to hold the date while the main battery was out of the camera for recharging.   And it takes four hours for the date holding battery to charge off the main battery.  Result, I had set the date before the date holder battery had charged, so the date didn't stick.

NH Republicans NEED candidates

Here we are, going into what looks like a very good year for Republicans.  Obama and the national Democrats have stuck us with Obamacare, and even the dimmest voter is beginning to sense that Obamacare is bad for him.  We need candidates to run for both US representative seats, the governor's office, and Shaheen's US senate seat. 
  So far, the only really competitive Republican candidate is Scott Brown, from MA, who is running for US senate.  I haven't met Brown, but he managed win Ted Kennedy's senate seat in 2010.  That's impressive in deep blue Massachusetts.  I have met Jim Reubins the other declared candidate, nice guy, but I don't think he is setting the voters on fire.  The talk down at the local breakfast place (The Coffee Pot) was not encouraging for Brown.  Just about everyone called him a carpetbagger, and disparaged his Massachusetts background.  Let's hope he can do some fence mending, quick. 
  We have Frank Guinta running in the other US rep district against Shea Porter.  Frank might be able to do it, he held the seat once, and lost to Shea Porter in 2012.  Maybe he can do a comeback like Charlie Bass did in 2010.  As far as the other US rep district (my district) we don't even have a candidate. 
    We do have a candidate for governor, Andrew Hemingway, nice guy. I've met him.  He is pretty young, and hasn't even gotten elected to the State House of Representatives yet.  He has only held town offices.  I'm thinking a successful governor has to have better name recognition and know more people that Andrew does.