Spaceport America gets ready for first commercial passengers to space

November 18, 2010
Simplistic map of Sierra County, New Mexico, i...

Location of Spaceport America: image via Wikipedia

Reuters reports:

The New Mexico Spaceport Authority, which plans to start launching citizen astronauts on suborbital flights within 18 months, has begun soliciting contract bids from local businesses for day-to-day operations of the facility.

Construction of the world’s first commercial passenger space terminal, dubbed Spaceport America, is slated to be finished next year near the town of Truth or Consequences in southern New Mexico. The 2-mile-long main runway was completed in October.

Spaceport America Wednesday, 10 November 2010 04:09 :image spaceportamerica.com

Two other major structures nearing completion at the nearly $200 million facility are the air-fire rescue facility and a 110,000-square-foot hangar, authority spokesman David Wilson said.

To date, 380 wannabe space cowboys have each plunked down $200,000 each to reserve a seat aboard a Virgin Galactic six-passenger spacecraft for a 2-1/2-hour suborbital flight some 70 miles above the Earth, Wilson said.

Under a 20-year lease with the state, Richard Branson’s firm is Spaceport America’s anchor tenant and principal spaceliner, paying lease charges of up to $200 million, plus user fees to operate their own aircraft and to contract with other aerospace companies.

The site has been providing commercial launch services for the aerospace industry since 2006 and is expected to be fully operational by mid-2011. But Virgin Galactic expects to take another year to begin its private passenger service, once its test-flight program is complete.

The authority’s executive director, Rick Homans, this week issued a call for businesses to submit proposals for three major areas of operation of the spaceport.

They include general services, such as maintenance; protective services for site security, safety and environment health management; and technical services, including airfield and launch support, airspace management and flight safety engineering.

Artists impression of Virgin Galactic: image forums.finalgear.com

Virgin Galactic’s VSS Enterprise made its solo flight in October.

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Belated action on scientific misconduct in India

November 18, 2010

The Calcutta Telegraph carries the sordid story of scientific fraud, establishment denial, paper retractions and finally establishment acceptance of the misconduct.

The Gopal Kundu controversy

A controversy erupted in National Centre for Cell Science (NCCS), Pune in 2006 when an anonymous mail alleged that the authors (H. Rangaswami and Colleagues from the group of Dr. Gopal Kundu) may have misrepresented data in a paper published in Journal of Biological Chemistry. The allegation was that they had rehashed the same set of data which they had published earlier. An internal committee of the NCCS advised the authors to take back their paper, however an independent committee led by G. Padmanabhan, a former director of Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, concluded that there was no manipulation in the data. This led to some heated debate between Indian Scientists with several viewpoints being presented. On 23 February 2007, the Journal of Biological Chemistry withdrew the paper amid allegations of data manipulation. The authors still maintain that the two papers used different set of data though similar experiments.

However the panel set up was not as independent as claimed. Its members were chosen by the Government and – as often when things get politicised in India – they returned a “politically correct” white-wash. But now as The Telegraph reports:

An apex association of Indian scientists today debarred for three years a senior biologist who had been accused of plagiarism by international scientific journals three years ago but was exonerated by a government panel of top scientists.

The unprecedented action by the Bangalore-based Indian Academy of Sciences, after an internal investigation by its ethics committee, appears to vindicate claims by some scientists that the government-appointed panel had tried to shield the accused.

At its annual meeting in Goa today, the academy endorsed the decision by its ethics committee (which was accepted by the academy’s council in July) and barred Gopal Kundu from participating in the academy’s activities for three years, beginning August 2010.

Nor can Kundu, a research scientist at Pune’s National Centre for Cell Science (NCCS), propose any candidates for fellowship of the academy during this period.

The prestigious US-based Journal of Biological Chemistry(JBC) had in February 2007 withdrawn a research paper by Kundu, accusing him of reusing images he had published in an earlier paper.

Another journal, Glycoconjugates Journal, too, had withdrawn a paper by Kundu because it had substantial similarities with a paper he had himself published previously in the JBC.

Better late than never but what is more important is the relatively low value given to ethics by the scientific establishment. Ethics, misconduct and scientific rigour can always be trumped by political correctness. Rahul Siddharthan writes in his excellent post:

An internal investigation at Kundu’s institution found him guilty of misrepresenting data, but a subsequent investigation by an external committee of six eminent scientists exonerated him completely, declaring themselves entirely satisfied that the images, though visually similar, were “indeed different.” I subsequently made my own analysis and published it in Current Science, who followed it with a response from G Padmanaban, the head of the committee that exonerated Kundu.

………

To me, this case is not really about Kundu. It is about our complete lack of appreciation of scientific ethics, and our tendency to “close ranks” when trouble arrives. To succumb to this tendency even after an international journal has conducted its own investigation and made its own decision, and to justify it with a paltry two-page report, merely makes us a laughing-stock.

So it is a good thing that the Academy has, belatedly, tried to correct this.

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Rolls Royce must replace 40 of 80 Trent 900 engines deployed

November 18, 2010

I posted a few days ago that Rolls Royce would need to change out about 40 of the Trent 900 engines on the A380’s in operation with Qantas, Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa.

Now -via Qantas and The Press Association – this number has been confirmed by Rolls Royce:

Up to half of the Rolls-Royce engines of the type which disintegrated on an Airbus superjumbo this month may need to be replaced by the three carriers in Australia, Singapore and Germany, Qantas’s chief executive has said.

Australia’s Qantas, Singapore Airlines and Germany’s Lufthansa fly A380s powered by four giant Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines, with a total of 80 engines on 20 planes.

Qantas chief Alan Joyce said that Rolls-Royce had indicated that up to 40 of them may need to be replaced.

“Rolls-Royce are still working through the criteria for which engines need to be changed,” he said on the sidelines of an event in Sydney unrelated to the A380 incident. He said that 14 of the 24 engines on Qantas planes may have to be replaced.

Whether Rolls Royce knew about the engine fault and the consequent risk prior to the accident on QF32 remains unanswered and whether the European Regulator (EASA) relaxed its inspection frequency Directive in response to Rolls Royce representations also remains unanswered.

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Case of UN cholera reaches Florida from Haiti while UN “spins” information

November 18, 2010

UPDATE from Operational Biosurveillance:

Current official stats are more than 18,382 cases and 1,110 fatalities.  This includes more than 1,800 cases in Port au Prince with over 30 fatalities.

  • Conservative estimates therefore suggest 75,000 cases of cholera in Haiti to-date, the majority of which were subclinical.
  • In some areas of Haiti, we have confirmation that in-patient statistics are under-reported by as much as 400%. In many areas of Haiti, we are documenting outbreaks that are not being accounted for in the official statistics.  We therefore estimate the upper bound of estimated case counts to be 250,000.
  • We are now pursuing answers to the question of uptake by indigenous zooplankton and spread along oceanic currents that pass west of the Gonave Gulf, which is where the Artibonite River discharges, north and west along the northern Cuban coastline and north to the waters east of Florida.
  • Tomorrow is Vertieres Day, where we may see some degree of population mixing, particularly in the north.  It is unclear at this time to what degree the recent violence will affect observance of the holiday.  Holidays are opportunities to spread disease further as populations intermingle.

As noted by HEAS one week ago and yesterday officially acknowledged, cholera is in the  Dominican Republic.  We expect to see medical clinic inundations inside DR in the near future.

As expected, Florida has reported a case of cholera in a returned traveler.  There will be more cases in the United States; we believe it likely more cases are inside the US unreported.  Implications for the United States are neglible.

The cholera introduced into Haiti by the UN has spread not only into the Dominican Republic but also to Florida through a traveller from Haiti. Diplomats have confirmed that the disease has come with UN troops from Nepal where the disease is endemic. It is unlikely to spread in the US since the propagation of cholera is through water or food that is contaminated by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae.  For an epidemic, the source is often the feces of infected people. The New York Times reports:

The first known case of cholera in the United States linked to the outbreak in Haiti was confirmed Wednesday by health officials who said a southwest Florida woman contracted the disease while visiting family in a region at the heart of Haiti’s epidemic.

The Florida Department of Health was investigating several suspected cases of the disease elsewhere in the state. They were not believed to be connected to the verified patient, who sought treatment this month at a hospital emergency room in Collier County. The woman spent five days in hospital after developing diarrhea and dehydration, classic symptoms of cholera, following her return from Haiti, where she had spent time in the Artibonite region. She is expected to recover fully.

“We are lucky in the state of Florida, and the U.S. generally, to have a very sound infrastructure for our food, water and sewage,” said Rob Hayes, spokesman for the Florida Department of Health. “With that in place, and with our aggressive public health practices, we are not concerned about this being a significant public health threat.”

The situation is more dangerous in the Dominican Republic where conditions are more conducive to the spread of the disease. In Haiti official reports give over 1100 deaths and over 18,000 infected.

There are reports that the actual number of cases may be being grossly under-reported.

On November 14, Operational Biosurveillance said it confirmed statistics of up to 400% undercounting.

“We now have nearly 60k cases shedding pathogen into the environment. We believe the true statistic to be closer to more than 100k based on the degree of under-reporting. It is extremely difficult to estimate the true scale of this epidemic now. (It’s) grossly uncontrolled, uncontained, (and) has exceeded public health capacity to investigate and assess every site reported and every sample received.”

It seems that political considerations are now leading to all information being subject to political “spin”.

  1. For reasons of not upsetting the Nepalese Government and to defuse the local anger, the UN officially denies that the cholera originated with the troops from that country.
  2. With elections due in Haiti in just two weeks all information about the cause of the outbreak and the extent of the spread is being down-played to avoid further exploitation by some politicians and further riots.

Haiti – till now – had been free of cholera for over a hundred years. No doubt the priority now must be to treat those infected and contain the spread of the disease. But UN processes are clearly wanting and the sooner they come out of “denial” and address their own methods and processes the better.

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Birds “engulf” US Navy plane

November 17, 2010

The Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8140997/Dramatic-moment-birds-engulf-plane.html

This is the moment a swarm of birds flew up from a runway, engulfing a U.S. Navy E-6B plane as it came in to land.

Birds that were feeding on grass near the runway swarmed upwards as a U.S. Navy E-6B plane approached to land Photo: AP

 

The pilot was able to land the £88 million plane safely – in the past, when birds are caught in the engine of a plane, it has caused engine failure.

The birds were feeding on grass next to the runway at the Fort Smith Regional Airport in Fort Smith, Arkansas, US, and for an unknown reason took off just as the plane made its final descent.

The dramatic images were captured by photographer Kaia Larsen as she drove past the airport on Oct 29.

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Rolls-Royce cancels Zhuhai Air Show press conference

November 17, 2010

Rolls-Royce, beset by criticism over its public handling of the uncontained failures of its Trent 900 and 1000 engines, has canceled its planned Airshow China show briefing.

The engine-maker offered no explanation for the cancellation, leaving media attending the show only to speculate on its sudden change of plans.

http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/flightblogger/2010/11/rolls-royce-cancels-zhuhai-pre.html#comments

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Rolls Royce scrambling to find Trent 900 replacement engines

November 17, 2010
Mechanic working on a Rolls Royce Trent 900 en...

Trent 900: image via Wikipedia

Rolls Royce is asking Airbus to return new engines destined for new aircraft so that they can be supplied to Qantas, Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa for their operations. This in turn is having a knock-on effect on future A380 deliveries.

In the meantime Qantas seems to be having a rash of minor issues which have caused aircraft to return after cockpit fires, bird hits and lightning strikes.

The European Regulator (EASA) has not commented on why they relaxed their Airworthiness Directive and whether this was done in response to representations from Rolls Royce. The engine maker is also silent on whether they knew of the Trent 900 problem and the risk for an engine fire prior to the uncontained explosion of an engine on QF32.

Reuters reports on the logistics problems faced by Rolls Royce:

British enginemaker Rolls-Royce has asked Airbus to return Trent 900 engines from A380 superjumbo production lines so they can be used to replace faulty ones on aircraft already in service.

The Airbus A380 — the world’s largest passenger aircraft with an average list price of about $350 million — has been hit by safety concerns after a Rolls-Royce engine partly disintegrated mid-flight, forcing a fully laden Qantas plane to make an emergency landing in Singapore on Nov 4.

Rolls-Royce’s move could be another blow to a much-delayed A380 program as Airbus was scheduled to deliver over a dozen Rolls-Royce-powered A380s — primarily to Singapore Airlines, Qantas and Lufthansa by the end of next year.

“Until this problem is fully resolved I think the situation with the delivery of A380 to customers … will be in jeopardy,” Standard & Poor’s analyst Sukhor Yusof said. But both Singapore Airlines and Qantas, with a combined 22 A380s still to be delivered, said on Tuesday they had not been informed of any delivery delays.

Airlines using the Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines have been ordered by European aviation authorities to undertake major tests, which analysts said were so strenuous they would likely disrupt schedules.

“I can confirm that Rolls-Royce is arranging to supply some new engines from the production line to replace some engines removed from the serviced aircraft,” an Airbus spokesman in Singapore said, without saying which airlines would receive those engines.

Shares in Rolls-Royce, which on Friday said fixing the fault would lead to only slightly slower profit growth, have suffered during its probe and were 0.2 percent down at 596.50 pence by 1130 GMT on Tuesday, around 9 percent below their last trade before the Qantas incident. Airbus parent EADS has lost 5 percent since the incident and hit a one-month low on Monday. Its shares were 1.3 percent down at 17.78 euros. Qantas is down 4.9 percent since the incident. Airbus said last week that the problem with the Rolls-Royce engine could have an impact on its earnings and delivery target for 2011 but did not give details, and airlines contacted on Tuesday had no knowledge of delivery timetable changes.

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UN cholera spreads from Haiti to Dominican Republic

November 17, 2010
Map of Haiti

Haiti: image via Wikipedia

After diplomats confirmed yesterday that the cholera outbreak in Haiti had been brought in by UN personnel from Nepal, cases have also been detected in the neighbouring Dominican Republic.

While the UN is still denying that its troops from Nepal have introduced the disease, it seems that they are carrying out some mis-judged PR exercise in the face of the following:

  1. the cholera strain found in Haiti is that which is endemic in Nepal,
  2. the UN military camp has had cases,
  3. Haiti has not seen cases of cholera for over 100 years until this outbreak, and
  4. the disease has broken out even in areas which were not affected by the earthquake on 12th January.

It would be quite wrong to blame the poor Nepalese soldiers who face endemic cholera at home but it is certainly an indictment of UN systems and processes that over 1000 have died in Haiti which has not seen cholera for over 100 years.

The BBC reports:

The Dominican Republic has detected its first case of cholera, following the outbreak of the disease in neighbouring Haiti last month.

The patient is a Haitian migrant who had recently returned from his homeland, the health minister said.

The Dominican authorities had stepped up border controls and health checks to try to stop cholera from spreading from Haiti. More than 1,000 Haitians have died of the disease.

Dominican health minister Bautista Rojas said the patient, a 32-year-old Haitian construction worker, was being treated in isolation in the eastern town of Higuey.

Like Haiti, the Dominican Republic had not had a confirmed case of cholera in more than a century until this year.

In Haiti, the government says 1,034 people have died and the disease is still spreading rapidly. The epidemic has provoked fear and anger in Haiti. The country was already struggling to recover from a devastating earthquake in January which killed about 230,000 people in and around the capital Port-au-Prince and shattered its already poor infrastructure. On Monday two people died during violent protests against UN peacekeepers, whom some Haitians accuse of bringing cholera into Haiti. At least one of the men was shot dead by the UN troops.

The UN has said there is no evidence to support allegations that cholera was brought into Haiti by peacekeepers from Nepal, where the disease in endemic.

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So much for biodiversity!

November 16, 2010
Procambarus clarkii taken near a lake in Giron...

Red Swamp Crayfish: Image via Wikipedia

Spain is preparing to rid its shores of foreign species of plants and animals that are considered a danger to the ecosystem says The Telegraph.

Successful species which threaten weaker species but which are considered “foreign” are to be eliminated by human intervention – and all in the name of biodiversity!

An exhaustive list of non-native species has been targeted for control or eradication by Spain’s Environment Ministry to protect the country’s own flora and fauna.

The inventory of 168 “alien invaders” that were introduced accidentally or deliberately to the Iberian Peninsula and are now not welcome includes the American mink and raccoon, which found their way from commercial fur farms into Spain’s countryside where their population has boomed.

Other species have been introduced intentionally but are deemed a threat to native varieties. The Zebra Mussel and Red Swamp Crayfish have both been identified as causing serious harm to indigenous species and habitats and with causing “a negative impact on agricultural production”.

The Ruddy Duck, introduced to Europe as an ornamental species, is one of the worst culprits because of its aggressive courting behaviour and willingness to interbreed with endangered, native duck species.

Besides the impact on biodiversity and agriculture some species can also cause problems for human health.

The Asian Tiger mosquito originally native to areas of south-east Asia has in the last couple of decades invaded many countries because of increasing international travel and transport of goods. The insect is a vector for Chikungunya fever which can cause severe illness in humans. Invasive plants species, such as the Galenia pubescens and Water hyacinth are choking the sand dunes of southern Spain and clogging water courses.

But not all foreign species are considered a threat. The draft proposal includes a measure that will exempt from extermination those species considered beneficial to the environment. The Barbary Sheep, native to North Africa and introduced to a national park in Murcia, will be offered protection. Certain fish species, notably carp, pike and bass, will be restocked in the rivers Ebro and Tagus.

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Cholera in Haiti introduced by UN Nepalese troops confirms Swedish Ambassador

November 16, 2010
A man, apparently turning on a water pipe, is ...

"Turning on the cholera": Image via Wikipedia

It would seem that the cholera tap in Haiti was “turned” on by UN troops.

Translated freely from Svenska Dagbladet:

Violent riots have erupted in Haiti after rumors of the cholera infection
having originated from the Nepalese UN staff – something which the UN denied. But now, the Swedish Ambassador Claes Hammar has confirmed that the rumor is true. ” I’ve had it confirmed by a diplomatic source that the cholera comes from Nepa ” he told Svenska Dagbladet.

Since the earthquake on 12 January, cholera has taken hold in the extreme poor living conditions in Haiti. The epidemic broke out in October and since then more than 900 people have died and 15 000 are believed to be infected.

Violent riots broke out yesterday in the cities of Cap Haitien, Hinche and Milot, when hundreds of people attacked the UN mission, MINUSTAH. The riots began after a rumor that previously infected Nepalese UN personnel took cholera to the island. The UN has always denied the rumors.

But now Claes Hammar, Sweden’s ambassador to the country has confirmed for Svenska Dagbladet that the information is correct. Two weeks ago he visited Haiti. “Yes, unfortunately it is so. It has been shown that the cholera is from Nepal. This is obviously a strain of the disease that is prevalent in Nepal and now it seems that to have ended up in Haiti. I have received the information from a diplomatic source. It is 100 percent accurate. We have taken samples and traced the infection to Nepal”.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that the cholera epidemic in Haiti came from South Asia, but it had not identified any specific country. Cholera has never previously been detected in Haiti.

The cholera began to spread in areas that were not affected by the earthquake and only after the Nepalese forces arrived. The UN has also accepted that health problems exist at the UN base, but says that the soldiers are not behind the cholera outbreak.

“It is of course very sad that this has happened. But one should not forget the disease spreads because of poor hygiene. The UN is making great efforts to combat the outbreak “, said Claes Hammar.

The violence that erupted yesterday in Haiti occurred just two weeks before presidential and parliamentary elections due on November 28. Svenska Dagbladet can also reveal that, according to an internal UN report it is the notorious rebel leader Guy Philippe, wanted by U.S. authorities for drug smuggling, who is behind the riots.  He is thought to have started the riots across Haiti by sending out many text messages in which he asked the locals to attack the UN force. The UN headquarters in Cap Haitien was attacked by hundreds of people who threw stones and bottles.

The violence escalated later in the day, when several police stations were attacked and burned down. A hospital in the town of Milot was attacked by hundreds of people protesting that the hospital was accepting cholera patients. At the same time the Nepalese UN troops were subjected to stone throwing by a large crowd in the town of Hinche. The soldiers responded with tear gas. Local people also opened fire on UN troops in Cap Haitien who were forced to shoot back in self defense, according to a statement from the UN.
Two Haitians have died and dozens were injured in the disturbances. Seven of the United Nations force were injured.

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Posted in Environment, Medicine, Natural Disasters, Urban Living | 4 Comments »

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