Earth’s Other Moons

Earth usually has more than one moon, according to a team of astronomers from the University of Helsinki, the Paris Observatory and the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

It appears that the Earth captures a small asteroid ( or more than one) each year.  Either the asteroid enters the atmosphere and burns up, or it resumes an orbit around the sun.

The article cites this paper, which can be purchased as a pdf.  A quote from the abstract:

The average temporarily-captured orbiter (TCO; an object that makes at least one revolution around the Earth in a co-rotating coordinate system) completes (2.88 ± 0.82) rev around the Earth during a capture event that lasts (286 ± 18) d. We find a small preference for capture events starting in either January or July.

So, I speculated in a previous post about these things being captured and mined.   A certain percentage of them will be class M asteroids, which would be rich in PGM ( platinum group metals).  Also, there would be carbonaceous asteroids, which could also hold water.  In other words, a lot of good, useful stuff could be mined off these things, but not if they burn up in the atmosphere, or go back to a solar orbit.

If you're looking for a economic justification for space, this could be it.  Or cleaning up space junk.  Or both.


h/t Behind the Black

Drilling IS The Answer!

Dick Morris TV: Lunch Alert!

Morris says "Yes, we can!" , while Obama says "No, we can't."

Sign of the times

Why Don't Young Americans Buy Cars?

This week, the New York Times pulled back the curtain on General Motors' recent, slightly bewildered efforts to connect with the Millennials -- that giant generational cohort born in the 1980s and 1990s whose growing consumer power is reshaping the way corporate America markets its wares. Unfortunately for car companies, today's teens and twenty-somethings don't seem all that interested in buying a set of wheels. They're not even particularly keen on driving.

Comment:

It seems that the cards are stacked against young people.  Now that ObamaCare has been passed, the young will be even more constrained.  If the Supreme Court upholds ObamaCare, it will be just one more nail in the coffin, as a manner of speaking.  Why should a youngster buy a car?  No job, no money, and the government is making things harder, not easier.

It is really a curious thing that so many youngsters vote for Democrats.   Talking about voting against your interests.  That's what the left likes to say about voting for the right, but look at what they themselves are doing to the people who vote for them.

h/t Free Republic

The Heart of the Matter

With respect to the ObamaCare arguments before the Supreme Court, the following quote hits the bullseye exactly, as far as I'm concerned:

JUSTICE ALITO: But isn't that a very small part of what the mandate is doing? You can correct me if these figures are wrong, but it appears to me that the CBO has estimated that the average premium for a single insurance policy in the non-group market would be roughly $5,800 in -- in 2016.

Respondents -- the economists have supported -- the Respondents estimate that a young, healthy individual targeted by the mandate on average consumes about $854 in health services each year. So the mandate is forcing these people to provide a huge subsidy to the insurance companies for other purposes that the act wishes to serve, but isn't -- if those figures are right, isn't it the case that what this mandate is really doing is not requiring the people who are subject to it to pay for the services that they are going to consume? It is requiring them to subsidize services that will be received by somebody else. [emphasis added]

What we have here is a solution seeking a problem. The "solution" being that everybody pays for what somebody else gets. But if everybody paid for their own, we'd have a system that wouldn't need fixing. In other words, this law is breaking something in order to "fix it". What's the hell is wrong with just paying for your own stuff?

The New Dismal Science: Are Environmentalists Trying to Rid the Earth of Surplus People?

Uploaded by Pajamasmedia on Mar 21, 2012



Comment:

It's not about helping people or the planet. It's about power.

How Containerization Shaped the Modern World

Uploaded by TEDEducation on Mar 11, 2012  h/t Ace of Spades



Comment:

Moving stuff from one place to another- that's what I've done for a living for the past 28 years. So this little video is interesting on that aspect alone.

But more than that. The concept of what wealth actually is and where it comes from is perfectly illustrated here. What is wealth? I've seen a definition of it as availability of goods. The video points out that containerization of cargo makes goods available to everybody, not just the very rich. This is wealth and how it is produced. Goods that weren't available prior to this idea being implemented are now commonplace. The world and everyone in it is wealthier as a result.

Secondly, the idea was considered crazy by naysayers at the time of its introduction. That pattern is repeated again and again for every new idea that comes along. Somebody thinks it's crazy, but it turns out to be a great thing. The moral of that story is this: for every new idea, check it out. There may be something of great value right under your nose.

The four best legal arguments against Obamacare.

behindtheblack

1. The Individual Mandate Threatens the Foundations of Contract Law
2. The individual mandate cannot be justified under existing Supreme Court precedent.
3. The individual mandate rests on an unbounded and unprincipled assertion of federal power.
4. The individual mandate violates the original meaning of the Constitution.