Security Schmecurity

Trying to access CNSS (Committee on National Security Systems) web site to read about commercial solutions to protect national security systems (fun reading, i know)...

www.cnss.gov shows me this!

 

Have you seen these articles on global warming?

As you may be well aware of,  'global warming' is making the news more and more frequently. Here is a sample of what we have seen in 2016:

• Washington Post, Jan 2016: 2015 was way worse than 2014. The change/delta/increase in metrics was big, year over year.

• Slate, March 2016: NASA confirms that February 2016 was not only the most unusually warm month ever measured globally, at 1.35 degrees Celsius above the long-term average—it was more than 0.2 degrees Celsius warmer than the previously most unusually warm month ever measured: January 2016.  [Let this one sink in for a minute, will you?]

• National Geographic, June 2016: First Mammal Species Goes Extinct Due to Climate Change

• Independent, Oct 2016:Global warming doubles size of forest fires in US West, NASA [again!] study finds.
  
  
• xkcd: A timeline of earth's average temperature... for a perspective.

 

 

If you think there are other good articles [more data, the better] on this topic, please add them in the comments section.

Epipen price history and breakdown

Mercury News published a great article on price breakdown of Mylan's Epi-pen, which describes the cost of each component in the auto-injector, calculated by Roland Krevitt and Bob Wallace. Before the scandal, two Epi-pen injectors were $608 in a single pack. The price analysis of all the components (case, sleeves, medication, mechanism, etc.) shows that the cost of manufacturing comes down to, wait for it, $8.02 for the package. Click on the image for a link to the article. Manufacture for 8 bucks; sell for $608. Something's not right here. Plus, the same package used to be around $60 few years back. I actually remember buying a pair for about $65 or so in 2009 (before a trip to an area where there were a lot of scorpions). The price of this medication/applicator should have decreased instead of shooting up like this. Here is chart that may explain this pricing behavior: This one is from Forbes and it shows the prices of Epi-Pen and its competition Auvi-Q.

(from Forbes) 

Two competing companies increasing the price of the same medication almost synchronously during multiple years. (For more details, see here). Huh?!

Of course, insurance holders were completely unaware of this price hike; our co-pays hide this fact from us.

New data on KIC 8462852

Following up on KIC 8462852...

Montet and Simon published a manuscript on the irregularities with KIC 8462852. They conclude:

There is no known or proposed stellar phenomenon

that can fully explain all aspects of the observed light

curve. Non-stellar explanations, such as circumstellar

material, o er the best opportunity to provide an expla-

nation for the observed light curve, but simple models

are unable to match the light curve as observed over the

last century. We strongly encourage further refinements,

alternative hypotheses, and new data in order to explain

the full suite of observations of this very mysterious ob-

ject.

Read more here.

Elon Musk at IAC 2016: Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species

In case you missed it, SpaceX's Elon Musk's talk titled 'Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species' is below (linked from YouTube). This is an entertaining video, packed with interesting data, lasting an hour:

Here are some random notes, in no particular order:

• 01:13: Talk starts
• Musk is a nerd, and comes off as awkward while speaking. Do not pay attention to the style, listen to him.
• There are some really interesting scientific/engineering data on some of the slides. They are very very cool!
• 8:25: Estimate of an average one-way ticket cost to Mars
• 11:04: Southwest advertisement around
• You gotta love this guy; he mentioned a few times that going to Mars at scale will be a bit 'tricky'.
• 12:10: Discussion on refueling.
• 14:25: Propellant discussion
• 16:55: Simulation of the overall system (a.k.a, movie with extremely high cheese quotient) starts. Make sure you pay attention to the numbers shown.
• Cheesy video? Yes, but you need to listen to what he is going to say around 21:35.
• 23:00: Don't skip slide shown; very interesting re-use numbers on that page.
• 24:36: Size discussion. His comment on size at 23:45 is priceless. 
• And, the comment at 27:03.
• 29:24: Nice comparison of past and current space vehicles on the slide. Pay attention to the last two on the right, and the 'white bars.'
• Engine numbers at 32:30 mark; rocket booster intro at 33:45. 
• There will be 42 engines, folks! Interesting choice of number :)
• 36:42: Raptor engine configuration at the base of booster
• 37:22: Spaceship intro starts.
• 37:43: Musk says that "liquid oxygen tank on the spaceship is probably the hardest piece of the whole vehicle, and [...] they started work on that piece."
• Cool ship capacity chart at 39:42.
• 40:10: "Mars transit times as little as 30 days in the distant future."
• 40:36: Heat shield technology info starts
• 41:15: Fly-thru of the crew compartment. (Smaller version of 'Ascension' ship; needs music.) He claims that the environment on the ship will be really fun. If it is going to be anything like the first Tesla cars, it probably will be.
• 42:47: Details of the propellant plant on Mars.
• 43:22: More details about reuse. New cost number is $140K per ton.
•  44:15: Founding sources!
• 46:35: Timelines (of SpaceX). Don't miss the pictures.
• 48:34: One of the most exciting engineering timeline in the history of human civilization. This is one fast startup!
• 53:09: "Most of our missions (60%) are commeircial geo missions."
• 53:37: Timeline for Mars launches. First development ship in 4 years. Also, potential FedEx killer (54:30 :)
• 56:30: Trying to send Dragon 2 to Mars in a couple of years; another mission in 2020.
•  58:45: Raptor engine vs Merlin; same size, 3 times operating pressure. 
• Producing 300 engines per year!
• 59:00: Raptor firing test video
• 1:00:30: Carbon fiber tank, requirements, production issues and picture (at 1:01:31)
• More cool pictures at 1:02:17 and 1:02:24
• 1:02:44: Beyond Mars! No, no, he is serious! Lotsa cool pictures; he has a plan...

Related:

• Video: First stage landing on drone ship
• Video: Falcon 9 first stage landing on drone ship 
• Video: SpaceX Falcon 9 Launch with Dragon & Successful Landing at Sea
• Gnomes episode of South Park