Prickly City - this is a damn funny comic strip

Stupid Artist Tricks

It's probably a good thing this guy is an artist, as opposed to working with, say, sharp objects or heavy machniery:

(AP) BAKER, Calif. An artist who chained his legs together to draw a picture of the image hopped 12 hours through the desert after realizing he lost the key and couldn't unlock the restraints, authorities said Wednesday.

Trevor Corneliusien, 26, tightly wrapped and locked a long, thick chain around his bare ankles Tuesday while camping in an abandoned mine shaft about 5 miles north of Baker, San Bernardino County sheriff's Deputy Ryan Ford said.

The Baker-area artist often sketched images inside mines in the Southwest.When he finished his chain drawing, he realized he would have to seek help in Baker, the deputy said.

"It took him over 12 hours because he had to hop through boulders and sand," Ford said. "He did put on his shoes before hopping."

Corneliusien finally made it to a gas station on the edge of Baker. He called the Sheriff's Department, which sent paramedics and deputies with bolt cutters.

Corneliusien's legs were bruised, but he was otherwise in good health, Ford said. The artist did not have a listed phone number and could not be reached for comment.

And the drawing?"He brought it down with him," Ford said. "It was a pretty good depiction of how a chain would look wrapped around your legs."

[also posted at BabbleFest]

Doubts about asteroid probe as deadline nears

With a December 10 deadline looming, recent reports indicate there are doubts about the return of Japan’s Hayabusa asteroid probe, and doubts about whether it fulfilled its primary mission of gathering a sample of asteroid particles for return to Earth for study.

TOKYO - A Japanese space probe thought to have landed on an asteroid last month may not have collected a surface sample, calling into question the success of the unprecedented mission to bring the extraterrestrial material back to Earth, an official said Wednesday.

Data from the Hayabusa probe, now hovering several miles from the Itokawa asteroid, did not indicate that the vessel had fired a metal projectile onto the asteroid's surface during its landing as previously thought, said Seiji Oyama of Japan's space agency, JAXA.

The purpose of firing the projectile was to kick up asteroid dust and particles for the probe to collect. While JAXA is saying there is a “slight possibility” that just the landings may have disturbed enough material for a sample to be collected, the agency does not sound overly optimistic.

An additional difficulty confronting the mission is that the probe appears to have had another problem with its thrusters after leaving the asteroid’s surface, and the engines had to be shut down. If JAXA is unable to fix the problem by December 10, the return of the probe by the planned 2007 date will become virtually impossible.

Given the vast distances involved, if the probe’s return flight does not start on time, its orbital path around the sun will carry it out of range, and it will be two years before the probe will again be in a position from which a return to Earth is feasible.

JAXA now reporting asteroid probe did make landing

According to JAXA, the official Japanese space agency, reports that the Hayubasa asteroid probe had failed to touch down were erroneous. Re-examination of data seems to indcate that the landing (and apparently, lift-off) had occurred, but the probe had failed to collect samples:

Japan's space agency said Wednesday its spacecraft had successfully touched down on an asteroid 180 million miles from Earth despite an earlier announcement that it had failed.

On Sunday, JAXA officials had said the Hayabusa probe, on a mission to land on the asteroid named Itokawa, collect material, then bring it back to Earth, failed to touch down after maneuvering within yards of the surface.

However, the agency said Wednesday that data confirmed that Hayabusa had landed on the surface Sunday for a half-hour, although it failed to collect material.

JAXA officials had said earlier that Hayabusa dropped a small object as a touchdown target from 130 feet above the asteroid and then descended to 56 feet from the surface, at which point ground control lost contact with the probe for about three hours.

But after analyzing data, the agency said the probe landed on the asteroid within about 99 feet of the initial landing target.

The agency officials were still analyzing the data and will decide by Thursday whether to conduct a second landing attempt Friday, according to Seiji Koyama, a spokesman for the space agency.

Reading between the lines of these reports, it looks like the landing was accomplished, but direct communication with the probe was, or has been, lost. It apparently touched down, based on analysis of other types of data transfer, but did not complete the primary mission of collecting samples.

It must be assumed that the lander was then able to lift off again, since a second landing, presumably to again attempt to collect samples, is being considered.

It is of course the collection of samples and their return to earth that is the key to this mission. In 2001 NASA landed a probe on an asteroid and collected data transmissions, but the probe did not collect samples or return to earth.

[also posted at BabbleFest]

Japan's asteroid probe fails to make landing

The BBC reports that Japan’s Hayabusa (it means Falcon) space probe, an ambitious undertaking intended to bring back samples from an asteroid, failed to make its scheduled landing on the asteroid:

An unmanned Japanese space probe sent to collect what would be the world's first samples from an asteroid has failed to touch down on its target.

The Japanese space agency said the Hayabusa probe had got to within 17 metres (56ft) of the asteroid before they temporarily lost contact with it.

The agency said it hoped to make a second attempt to land the craft.

The mission has had several setbacks - last week a mini-robot due to collect data from the asteroid disappeared.

The probe apparently made its descent as planned then hovered above the asteroid surface without touching down. At the time of this report, JAXA (the Japanese space agency) was unsure whether the failure was caused by a failsafe device or a technical problem.

The mission has had a number of difficulties, including the loss of power in two of three stabilizers and the disappearance of a mini-robot that previously attempted to land and collect data from the asteroid, which is named Itokawa after its discoverer.

A practice descent by the main probe also was aborted.

JAXA intends to make a second attempt to land the craft.

The JAXA image above was captured by the probe, and shows the probe's own shadow on the asteroid surface.

As I have said many times before, all space missions are inherently complicated, tricky and dangerous.

Free Saddam!

J.P. Jones, posting at BabbleFest, has a unique take on how to insure that Saddam gets justice:

Ramsey Clark and some of the other "human rights" activists are afraid Saddam Hussein won't get a fair trial.

Where were they when Saddam and his monstrous children were feeding people into the industrial plastic shredder? And murdering Iraqis by the thousands? And starving children to bribe UN officials and build palaces?

Ironically, one of their chief complaints is that the Special Tribunal isn't operating according to US criminal standards and applying the "beyond a reasonable doubt" burden of proof. Instead, the tribunal is operating according to Iraqi law, which provides for conviction if the judges are "satisfied" that the accused is guilty. The ironic part? That's the standard Saddam imposed on the Iraqi legal system, the same standard Saddam's judges used for thirty years.

So here's a thought: let's quit worrying about LEGAL formalities, and apply JUSTICE instead.

How?

Set Saddam free. In broad daylight. In the town square of any Kurdish village he wants to pick.

Disenfranchised voters

The next time somebody talks about voters being deprived of their vote because a black couple in Cincinnati thought someone might check their ID's, or voters in Cleveland were required to follow long-standing state law and vote in the precinct where they live, or people had to wait in line for twenty minutes, keep this photo in mind.

These Iraqis are lined up to vote in the constitutional referendum in the city of Mosul. Note the very long line. Note the barbed-wire barriers. Note that these people are waiting in this line knowing that there are terrorrists on the loose who are in fact willing, and hoping, to kill them for exercising their newly-acquired right to vote. Yet here they are, waiting to vote.

Voter turn-out appears to have been between 60-70%. Despite what the media wants you to believe, the election has not resulted in a clear Sunni-Shiite split destined to result in immediate civil war. In fact, two of the four largely Sunni provinces, by preliminary counts, voted for the Constitution by between 70-80%. That means overwhelming support from Sunni and Shiite voters alike.

I keep hearing people say "you can't give a country democracy" or "you can't impose democracy". Have these people never heard of Japan?

It begins, more and more, to look like the Iraqis "get it". There appears to be widespread and broad-based support for democracy.

What they'll do with it, and what will come of it all, remains to be seen. But for the time being, the Constitutional Refendum looks like a resounding success.

European Space Agency suffers another setback

As reported in USA Today, the European Space Agency has suffered another major setback with the loss of a satellite that failed to reach orbit and broke up.

MOSCOW (AP) — A European Space Agency satellite that was to have collected data on polar ice broke up in flight after being launched on a converted ballistic missile, a Russian space agency official said Saturday.

Remnants of the satellite crashed into the ocean, Vyacheslav Davidenko, a spokesman for the Russian Federal Space Agency, told The Associated Press.

The loss of the CryoSat satellite is a major blow to the agency, which had hoped to conduct a three-year mapping of polar sea ice and provide more reliable data for the study of global warming.

The incident also damaged the reputation of the Russian space agency, which is aggressively trying to move into the commercial satellite launch business. German news reports said the satellite cost an estimated $210 million.

The problem appeared to be with the booster rocket that was supposed to lift the CryoSat unit into orbit, Davidenko said.

"The booster unit did not switch on and it resulted in the failure of the satellite to reach orbit," he said. "The remnants of the satellite have fallen into the northern Arctic Ocean."

This major mission failure follows on the heels of the ESA's disastrous Mars lander mission, where the lander separated from the orbiter and headed for the Martian surface, never to be heard from again. And it points out a simple fact that is sometimes lost on the American public: space missions, manned or otherwise, are extremely complex undertakings. There are a multitude of highly complicated procedures and processes, for the most part computer-controlled, which must take place exctly as planned for any space mission to succeed.

We really shouldn't be surprised when a mission fails. We should be surprised that so many go as planned. And we should be astonished at the ingenuity and technical expertise and flexibility that has enabled many missions which experienced difficulties, such as Apollo 13 and the Hubble Space Telescope, to be salvaged short of the worst possible outcome.