Boeing Starliner space mission launch carrying Sunita aborted
NASA discovered in the nick of time that a valve in the Atlas rocket's second stage had a glitch, less than two hours before blastoff. The next pre-determined windows for the launch are Tuesday, Thursday and Friday nights. A success with its limping space mission was also anticipated to restore the image of the failing aircraft division following disastrous mishaps. This is when Musk's SpaceX is already in the good books of NASA.
CAPE CANAVERAL (Florida), May 7: The Boeing Starliner lift-off from the Kennedy
Space Centre in Florida's Cape Canaveral carrying Indian-origin space heroine
Sunita Williams scheduled for Monday night (Tuesday 8:04 am Indian time) was
put off just two hours to the firing. This would have been Sunita's historic
third space mission.
The mission's two NASA astronauts Barry "Butch" Wilmore, 61, and Sunita, 58,
were already strapped to their seats in the spacecraft when the launch was suspended.
The postponement of Starliner's manned inaugural voyage to the International
Space Station (ISS) is for 24 hours so that a technical glitch with the Atlas
V rocket manufactured by Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture United Launch
Alliance could be rectified. With this, Starliner would be joining the private
business of manned space flight after Elon Musk and others. It had done an unmanned
flight to the space lab earlier.
The next pre-determined windows for launch are Tuesday, Thursday and Friday
nights.
The schedule: If all goes to plan after launch, the spacecraft will
break away from the Atlas V rocket after reaching orbit and begin firing its
own engines. The Starliner will then spend more than 24 hours gradually making
its way to the space station. Sunita and Wilmore are set to spend about a week
aboard the orbiting laboratory, joining the seven astronauts and cosmonauts
already on board, while the Starliner remains docked outside. The two will then
return home aboard the same Starliner capsule, which is expected to parachute
to a landing at one of several designated locations across the southwestern
United States.- CNN
Two days earlier, in a similar incident in the area, a domestic help was bitten by a pet dog in the lift when she was going for work.
Tailpiece: Sometimes appearing to outnumnber men and women on the streets, the stray dogs are turning more and more daring with sections of anti-social elements out there to feed and protect them in order to find a window for their unfulfilled love! There is an all-pervading feeling of lack of authority.
Ankit Tiwari had told the employee that “instructions had been received
from the Prime Minister’s Office to conduct an enquiry” and reopen the
“already disposed of” case and asked him to appear before the ED office
at Madurai on October 30, DVAC said. The doctor was allegedly
threatened with arrest and told to pay a bribe of Rs 3 cr to avoid the ED
probe, which was later negotiated down to Rs 50 lakh.
Tailpiece: We are made to believe RBI, CBI, ED, Judiciary as sacrosanct
and all others like railways, transport, revenue, education, PWD
departments are composed of us the mortals, absolutely corrupt! As if in
the sacrosanct places the angels descend from the heavens to work in the
night and fly away before day-break! Let's be true to ourselves, we are all
cut from the same cloth.
Apart from cash, Gill had also taken three planes as bribe and two of them
were leased out to Redbird Aviation Academy. With the result, flying
schools compromised on safety requirements and trainers met with
accidents several times.
Five people were arrested from a banquet hall in Sector 51 Noida on Thursday
where they were called to hold a rave party in a trap laid by the animal
rights group, PFA. They named Yadav but he was not present.
Betting through Dubai-based Mahadev Book in India is conducted through a countrywide network. Probes reveal that the online gambling is worth several millions and top politicians, officials and celebs have been beneficiaries.
TAILPIECE: Polling dates for some States are round the corner. Top
politicians have begun their acrimonious debate who looted more, even as
Mahadev is washing their dirty laundry in the open ghat. Come what may,
one needs to seize power to amass "thy wretched pelf!" One simple
question is, why else one should spend lakhs or crores to get elected! A
question every Indian should ask to oneself at least once a day!
His inaction amounts to defeating the rights of the people of the State to
welfare measures sought to be implemented through the Bills, the Kerala
Government's petition submitted, while the State of Tamil Nadu remarked
that its "Governor is acting as a political rival."
Tailpiece: Coming up back to back, the petitions in their totality seem to question the provision of Raj Bhavan, and not motives of a Governor as a
person.
Hundreds of cars piled up behind the wreckage of crashes occurring one
after other in backing up - continuous crashes to the rhythm of metallic
clanks and bangs back to back. According to reports, some ops required
'Jaws of Life' to pull apart the mangled cars to save lives inside.
The pilots struggled with Emerson to thwart a shut-off as he reached for
the T-handles (see pix). Later he admitted to police he had taken
psychedelic mushrooms and had a "nervous breakdown."
Doctors reasoned how the incidence of heart attacks is spiking over time and
advise the simple way to play safely is to take a break and rehydrate
yourself.
But how come ten people, including children, die of cardiac arrest at
Garba in 24 hours, and that at different places of Gujarat? Garba had been going on
for six days, and every year it is celebrated.
Shocking news from the UK: Leading grocers have started bribing policemen with free food and drinks to persuade them to take action against shoplifters.
Shoplifting has risen by about 27 per cent in 10 major cities across the UK
this year. The cost of retail crime last year was $2.15 billion. Besides, “We
are seeing organised gangs threatening staff with weapons and emptying
stores," Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium,
said. Data shows that the police failed to respond to 73 per cent of serious
retail crimes that included assault and abuse of workers, apart from
shoplifting.
Harris said hip-hop is “the ultimate American art form” that “shapes every
aspect of American popular culture.” “Hip-hop culture is American
culture,” she said in a talk at her official residence at the US Naval
Observatory in Washington, D.C.
The social media had mixed reaction. There was much appreciation that
she dances better than any VP in American history. But some called her
"moves" as “cringe” while others did not like her pink pants - "pink pants
don’t look good.” In fact, her ensembles have always been incongruous.
"Let’s see how the (Governor's) Vice-Chancellors are given salary."
Mamata's extreme statements will put the Marxist Government in Kerala,
which is also facing similar issues, to shame. Has she begun the
countdown for a war on the streets?
It's true Mamata has come to see a conspiracy to demolish the established systems across the country, but lacks the ability to foresee what exactly is being pushed.
Brandishing a sword, Mahant Paramhans told reporters on Tuesday he
himself will behead MK Stalin's son for his remarks against Sanatan
Dharma in case nobody came forward to accept his offer he made in his
video. Udhayanidhi reacted to the saint's Monday video, "I will speak
more. I am the grandson of the artist who put his head on the rail track for
Tamil Nadu."
Somanath elaborated, "I am an explorer. I explore the Moon. I explore the inner
space. So it's a part of the journey of my life to explore both science and
spirituality. So I visit many temples and I read many scriptures. So try to find the
meaning of our existence and our journey in this cosmos. So it's a part of the
culture that we are all built to explore, find out the inner self as well as outer
self. So for the outer, I do science, for the inner I come to temples." (See videos)
Rao the mathematical legend had fathered the path-breaking Rao-Blackwell
theorem, one of the most important theorems in mathematical statistics, at the
age of 25. That brought him global fame. He is also famous for his Cramér-Rao
Bound inequality theorem relating to quality of estimators in statistics which has
had a profound bearing on applications of modern economics and several other
diverse fields. Simply put, with the pioneering statistician computation became a
tool to analyse even socio-economic challenges of modern times.
The alleged incident has received such a flash publicity that a standardised
city's hugely middle class population will have second thoughts about eating
outside for some time. Now everything on the table looks suspicious!
“All subjects directly connected to the people should be shifted to the State List. Particularly the subject of education. Only if this is done can cruel exams like NEET be abolished,” Stalin said. Education was moved from the State List to the Concurrent List with the 42nd Constitution Amendment made by the Central Government in 1976.
Decentralisation has been at the core of Tamil politics since the times of CN Annadurai. Stalin indicated there will be political changes in the offing.
TAILPIECE: While the Centre and the States are at loggerheads, it takes a
different cognitive acumen to know that entrance tests are not the way for
students' admission to courses.