The shuttle is undocked and getting ready for a March 28th landing. It performed an incredible 360 flyby around the space station before moving off to its earth bound trajectory. Landing is scheduled for 1:39 p.m. Saturday at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida with a second opportunity one orbit later at 3:14 p.m.

On March 30th at around 8:50pm Pacific Time, I will be able to look up and watch the ISS pass overhead traveling at 27,700 kilometres (17,210 mi) per hour and 350 km (190 nautical miles) above. With it’s new solar array, the ISS is expected to be shine at magnitude -3.6. I’ve been a skywatcher since I was 10 years old and I’ve seen only two things ever shine anywhere near that expected brightness: Venus and the fireball that landed in Monterey Bay, California back in 1984(?). I can’t wait to see what this looks like.

Today Expedition 19 launched from Khazakhstan in a Soyuz TMA-14 rocket with astronauts on board heading for the ISS.

The Kepler Space Telescope is now 1.5 million kilometers (930,000 miles) from Earth and still receding. The final tests on its calibrations are finished and all systems check out. Take the lens cap off already!!

All of the 340 worlds we’ve discovered orbiting other suns are Jupiter sized…or larger. Jupiter is really big. I mean truly staggering in size. The “great red spot” itself, a hurricane that has lasted about 300 years, is a bit larger than the earth.

I think this photo montage puts things in perspective nicely. 

Now imagine worlds two to three times that size orbiting their suns at a distance closer than that of the planet Mercury. Such expoplanets are called “Hot Jupiters”, and man are they HOT. Some of them orbit their suns at only 1/8 the distance of Mercury. Their “sunward” side bakes at thousands of degrees while the dark side glows red hot as the heat whips winds around the planet at speeds exceeding supersonic velocities. Not a great place to take a vacation. 

But now we are going to search for the smaller worlds using the Kepler Space Telescope. This is really tough science but NASA has 100,000 stars picked out to scan repeatedly. They are about 3,000 light years away. As of today, NASA reports the telescope is in the process of calibration and still has its lens cap on. Probably be at least another week before that cap is removed and Kepler takes its first look into deep space. This could be very cool.

We’ve discovered over 340 Jupiter sized (or larger) exoplanets orbiting other stars since 1995. Now its time to search for worlds more our own size.  Kepler will analyze the light from 100,000 stars every 30 minutes with a 95 million pixel camera. The NASA team I watched last night said there are about 15,000 high probability candidate stars that could have earth-sized worlds. As far as we know, it’s a good thing to have a Jupiter sized world orbiting in the same solar system in order to suck up or deflect dangerous asteroids hurtling around.  So, solar systems with tiny worlds like our own with larger worlds like Jupiter in them would most approximate what we know as a good thing.

Kepler will be in service orbiting the earth for the next 3 1/2 years. The prediction is that the list of known Jupiter class planets in our catalog will jump exponentially. But its that first earth like world, if it exists, that will really be riveting.

To anyone that might know, I have a question. I know that our G-class yellow dwarf sun is somewhat of an oddity being without a companion star (unless you believe the Nemesis theory…hey it’s just bizarre enough to be true). Would it be possible for a habitable zone to exist in a binary star system? What about a trinary system?

Is it possible that a racist backlash could be the result of the severe amount of violence being imported from Mexico? When I lived in Spokane, Washington I thought the Russian mafia was bad, but the Mexican cartels definitely raise the bar.  They may also be the root cause of a coming racist back lash in America toward Mexicans that could, in my opinion, result in severe persecution, part of which could be internment camps.

Consider this data:
http://www.cis.org/ImmigrantGangs
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,479906,00.html

Add to this our own economic instability and you have a volatile cocktail of possibilities.

Arizona is considered the #1 abduction state in the U.S., and this is directly attributed to the activities of the Mexican drug cartel. This means that citizens of another country are terrorizing citizens of our country. The last time I checked, this sort of thing fits the definition of a clear and present danger.

Are You Part of the Problem?

A major revenue stream for cartels relies on a highly structured corporate model of marijuana distribution. They are highly organized and sophisticated. If you smoke pot, and cannot be 100% sure that it did not originate somewhere within a cartel supply line, then you could be supporting domestic terrorism. Not a possibility I would want to be associated with.

If your neighbor is smoking pot, and you know FOR SURE that it’s NOT for medical purposes, your obligation is to turn them in…anonymously of course. Any other means will only put your life, and the life of your family, in mortal danger. So, if you can’t get away with it, don’t do it.

If you are in law enforcement, a cop or otherwise, and you are turning the other cheek for a friend you know is smoking pot illegally, and you cannot be 100% sure the pot did not originate within a cartel supply line, you are no different than the pathetically weak Mexican police force that is largely in a cartel’s back pocket. Get a spine and do your job. Better yet, if you are a citizen aware of someone in law enforcement behaving this way, turn them in. But be VERY careful. If you cannot do this anonymously, then don’t do it. Your life and that of your family could otherwise be put in mortal danger.

If you are indirectly supporting the cartels as mentioned above, and a racist backlash occurs by Americans fed up with their friends and family being threatened, abducted, and murdered by Mexicans (they will not make the distinction of “Mexicans involved with cartels”…that’s why it’s racist) then you must hold yourself as one of those that helped perpetuate the persecution if/when it happens. Not only have you supported the cartels, you are now indirectly responsible for the social backlash. If this is who you want to be, then leave the U.S. immediately, because I promise you that rooting out supporters of the “hated Mexicans” will not be far behind (McCarthyism was not all that long ago, think about the parallels) and you will in turn be labeled a traitor and it won’t be long before you are chopping rocks next to the gang member that supplied your high.

It Can’t Happen Here
Nobody wakes up in the morning believing their country is capable of slipping into barbarism. Yet, it happens throughout history on a regular basis, even to the most “civilized” societies. Let’s not fool ourselves.

Since the U.S. government has been unwilling to secure the safety of its citizens from foreign aggression by enforcing border security with ruthless efficiency, the lives of both Mexican Americans citizens and Mexican nationals living here illegally could actually be in danger. Not all illegal “immigrants” are bad people. To say otherwise would be racist. For their own safety, and the safety of Americans with Mexican heritage, we need to demand that our borders be made secure by every means possible.  Otherwise I see the real possibility of racism supplanting reason and terrible consequences on the horizon.