Eideard

A two-and-a-half ton German satellite came within minutes of crashing into Beijing the European Space Agency has disclosed…

“Our calculations showed that, if Rosat had crashed to the ground just seven to 10 minutes later, it would have hit Beijing,” Heiner Klinkrad, head of the agency’s space debris team, told German magazine Der Spiegel, adding that an impact on the city “was very much within the realm of possibility.” The satellite eventually landed, as hoped, in the Indian Ocean.

Although most space debris burns up on entering the earth’s atmosphere Rosat, a defunct satellite launched 20 years ago, was made of durable material. Experts said that as much as 60 per cent of its bulk survived re-entry so if it had crashed into a highly populated like Beijing it could have caused the worst disaster in the history of space exploration.

The satellite’s remnants, travelling at speeds of 280mph, would have destroyed buildings, left craters and would have almost certainly caused casualties…

If it had crashed into Beijing it would also have landed the German government with an expensive bill. Under an international agreement the country responsible for placing the satellite in orbit is also responsible for any damage caused when it comes down.

Can you imagine the conspiracy theories that would have circled the Earth faster than any satellite?

Now, imagine the dead satellite being Russian and crashing, say, into Chicago. Phew!

A young Peruvian waitress whose body was recovered from the shipwrecked Costa Concordia off the Tuscan island of Giglio has been hailed a heroine.

Erika Fani Soriamolina’s body was found by divers on the sixth deck of the vessel wearing the ship’s uniform but no life jacket.

Witnesses said Soriamolina had helped dozens of terrified passengers into lifeboats on the night of the disaster before giving the life jacket to an elderly man.

A tourism graduate, Soriamolina was working on only her third cruise on the Costa Concordia.

The recovery of the young woman’s body ended a desperate search by her parents and sister Madeleine who were among the family members of passengers and crew waiting for news of their loved ones on Giglio…

Seventeen people are now confirmed dead after the cruise ship struck rocks and ran aground on January 13 with 4,200 passengers and crew on board and more than 15 people are still missing.

Time after time, the worst circumstances bring out the best in that class of people termed “ordinary” by our culture, by all the rules that say who is important in our society – and who isn’t. The same applies to my grayhead peer whose life she probably saved.

Let us remember her courage, her concern for another person in peril.

The cruise ship Costa Serena sails as its sister ship Costa Concordia cruise ship lays on its side after it ran aground off the west coast of Italy at Giglio island.

Business as usual – for some vacationers.

Photo from DigitialGlobe

Click on photo to enlarge

Italians are to leave Rome over fears a giant earthquake is coming following a seismologist’s 1915 prediction that “the big one” would hit the capital on May 11, 2011. Here is a list of end of the world predictions:

Oct 3 1533 – Michael Stifel, a German associate of Martin Luther, urged his small band of followers to sell all their property after becoming convinced by his mathematical study of the Bible that the end of the world was approaching. On the appointed day he led his followers to the top of a hill so they could be delivered to heaven. A few hours later, with the world very much intact, he hurried down the hill and had to be locked in a local prison for his own protection.

Oct 22 1844 – Millerites, followers of the American Baptist preacher William Miller, became convinced that the end of the world had been predicted in Daniel 8:14. After a few false dawns, the date was set as Oct 22 1844. That day is now known, for obvious reasons, as the Great Disappointment…

1914 – Jehovah’s Witnesses have now stopped predicting exact dates for the end of the world after a string of high-profile failures. Charles Taze Russell, who founded the Watch Tower magazine, calculated that Jesus Christ would impose his rule on earth in 1914. The outbreak of the First World War seemed to lend support to his Armageddon prediction, but there was no Second Coming.

RTFA – for more of the same.

At this site, it will continue to be treated as the crap ideology it always has been. Maniacs and hustlers accumulating the life savings of people ignorant enough to be led by their noses into a grand celebration of death is about as low as it gets.

Aerospace giant Northrop Grumman Corp. has quietly developed a new spy plane that can listen in on phone conversations, use high-powered radar and shoot live video footage as it flies at 30,000 feet above the Earth.

And the spy plane…would operate with or without a pilot sitting in the cockpit.

Until now, U.S. military aircraft have been designed to either have a pilot on board or be an unmanned drone. But Northrop’s new plane, dubbed the Firebird, can switch from being a traditional aircraft to a drone with just a few modifications.

The Century City company is developing the propeller-powered Firebird at its own expense. It is betting that the hybrid plane will appeal to the Pentagon as defense budget cuts loom and the federal government deals with rising deficits…

If the military has a plane that can do both missions, it may save money on maintenance personnel and spare parts, Captain said. “It’s the same engine. It’s the same airframe. The only difference is how it’s piloted.”

The Firebird would compete for Pentagon contracts with the Predator and Reaper drones that have become ubiquitous in skies over Iraq and Afghanistan. Made by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. of the San Diego area, Predators and Reapers are often armed with Hellfire missiles or laser-guided bombs as they buzz over the war zone.

Although the Firebird is being touted mainly as an unarmed spy plane, Northrop officials said the Firebird would have the capability to be outfitted with missiles.

Northrop has been testing the aircraft, which resembles a massive dragonfly, at the Mojave Air and Space Port for more than a year as engineers fine-tune the technology…

Designed to fly for as long as 40 hours at a time with a top speed of about 230 mph, Northrop foresees the Firebird carrying out a variety of reconnaissance and surveillance missions for the military, said Rick Crooks, the company’s program manager…

Crooks also sees the Firebird appealing to law-enforcement organizations for surveillance and government agencies that need spy planes to assess damage after natural disasters.

RTFA for the range of Wargeek potential. Cripes, I can even think of a TV series that could spin from this critter.

Candles used in voodoo sex ceremony caused a fatal five alarm fire after they tipped over and ignited bed sheets in a Brooklyn, New York, apartment…

The fire left an elderly woman dead and injured 20 firefighters and three Brooklyn residents, according to a New York Fire Department statement.

A voodoo priest allegedly placed the candles on the floor around the bed on Saturday after a woman paid him $300 to perform a ceremony with a sexual component, that was meant to bring her good luck, fire department officials said.

The candles were accidentally knocked over during the ceremony prompting the man to douse the flames with water and open a window in an effort to clear smoke from the room, the statement said.

Forty mile-per-hour wind gusts instead shot the flames back inside the room, it said, creating a “blowtorch effect” that whipped through the open window and pushed the fire into the building’s fourth floor hallway.

“Time and time again we respond to tragedies that could have been so easily prevented,” Fire Commissioner Salvatore J. Cassano said in the statement. “This fire had so many of those elements … hopefully others will learn from this tragedy.” The occupants fled the apartment, leaving the door open, the statement said.

Nearly 200 firefighters from 44 companies took seven hours to bring the fire under control.

So, uh, could this be the one true religion?

And aren’t they all?

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

The Justice Department on Wednesday sued BP and eight other companies in the Gulf oil spill disaster in an effort to recover billions of dollars from the largest offshore spill in U.S. history.

The Obama administration’s lawsuit asks that the companies be held liable without limitation under the Oil Pollution Act for all removal costs and damages caused by the oil spill, including damages to natural resources. The lawsuit also seeks civil penalties under the Clean Water Act…

The federal lawsuit says inadequate cementing of the well contributed to the disaster. Similar charges were made by BP in its internal investigation, and by the independent presidential oil spill commission. But Halliburton Co., the contractor in charge of mixing and pumping the cement, is not named in the suit…

An explosion that killed 11 workers at BP’s Macondo well last April led to oil spewing from the company’s undersea well — more than 200 million gallons in all by the government’s estimate. BP disputes the figure…

The lawsuit alleges that safety and operating regulations were violated in the period leading up to April 20.

It says that the defendants failed to keep the Macondo well under control during that period and failed to use the best available and safest drilling technology to monitor the well’s conditions. They also failed to maintain continuous surveillance and failed to maintain equipment and material that were available and necessary to ensure the safety and protection of personnel, equipment, natural resources and the environment, the suit charges.

Democratic Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., a member of the House energy panel that is investigating the spill, acknowledged the government will have a tough fight on its hands since BP has already taken an aggressive stance regarding its liability.

“It may have taken these companies months to cap their well, but they will spend years trying to cap their financial obligations to the people of the Gulf,” Markey said. “That is why it is vital for the Obama administration to swiftly advance this legal action.”

And so it begins. I wonder if the suit will be resolved in my lifetime. Between judicial processes, laws written for lawyers, decisions promulgated to protect corporate wealth, it will be years if not decades for anything approaching justice. It’s the American way.

Ukraine says it will lift restrictions on tourism in the zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 2011, formally opening the scene of the world’s worst nuclear accident to visitors.

[The] Chernobyl nuclear power plant … exploded and burned in 1986.

Background radiation in the accident zone is still well above normal. But far from being a wasteland, wildlife has rebounded in the exclusion zone and trees are reclaiming the ghost city of Pripyat, said Mary Mycio, author of “Wormwood Forest”…

Currently, guides from the Chernobyl Zone Authority take about 20 to 30 people into the exclusion zone a day during the summers, said Yuri Rozgoni, whose Toronto-based travel agency, Ukrainianweb, books tours to the site.

Guides monitor radiation levels and “know where the people can go and where the people cannot go,” he said.

Mycio said tourists should wear “something that you wouldn’t mind leaving behind in case it does get dirty.” But most radioactive material has sunk into the soil…

“The only concern I would have is if too many people come in and it becomes this nuclear Disneyland,” Mycio said.

Uh, o.k.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

The oil well spewing crude into the Gulf of Mexico didn’t have a remote-control shut-off switch used in two other major oil-producing nations as last-resort protection against underwater spills.

The lack of the device, called an acoustic switch, could amplify concerns over the environmental impact of offshore drilling after the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig last week.

The accident has led to one of the largest ever oil spills in U.S. water and the loss of 11 lives…

U.S. regulators don’t mandate use of the remote-control device on offshore rigs, and the Deepwater Horizon, hired by oil giant BP PLC, didn’t have one. With the remote control, a crew can attempt to trigger an underwater valve that shuts down the well even if the oil rig itself is damaged or evacuated…

Nevertheless, regulators in two major oil-producing countries, Norway and Brazil, in effect require them. Norway has had acoustic triggers on almost every offshore rig since 1993.

The U.S. considered requiring a remote-controlled shut-off mechanism several years ago, but drilling companies questioned its cost and effectiveness, according to the agency overseeing offshore drilling. The agency, the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service, says it decided the remote device wasn’t needed because rigs had other back-up plans to cut off a well.

What that means in plain and simple English is that the Oil Patch Boys bought enough politicians and bureaucrats to stop regulation.

The U.K., where BP is headquartered, doesn’t require the use of acoustic triggers.

An acoustic trigger costs about $500,000, industry officials said. The Deepwater Horizon had a replacement cost of about $560 million, and BP says it is spending $6 million a day to battle the oil spill…

RTFA. Lots of history, lots of detail. You do the math!

It’s been decades since I left the offshore oil drilling industry – but, I stay in touch with the tech. This is a drilling rig which could have had better safeguards. Industry payoffs made the difference.