SpaceX addresses hitch that could have put mission to space station in doubt (+video)

Friday's launch represents the second formal resupply flight that SpaceX has undertaken under a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to ferry goods to and from the International Space Station.

By Pete Spotts,?Staff writer / March 1, 2013

The unmanned Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket lifts off from launch complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday. The rocket will transport the Dragon capsule to the International Space Station containing more than a ton of food, tools, computer hardware, and science experiments.

John Raoux/AP

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A US cargo mission to the International Space Station has been placed safely on orbit, and after several hours of trouble-shooting, engineers appear to have gotten on top of a problem that could have put the rest of the mission in doubt.

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SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket and its Dragon cargo capsule from Cape Canaveral, Fla., Friday.

At 10:10 a.m., Eastern time, a Falcon 9 rocket and its Dragon cargo capsule launched from its pad at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Built and operated by Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) in Hawthorne, Calif., the Falcon 9's launch appeared to go flawlessly ? a welcome sign after one of the first stage's nine motors shut down prematurely during the company's first commercial launch last October.

The rocket delivered Dragon to its proper orbit, as planned. But shortly after the Dragon capsule separated from the rocket's second stage Friday morning, mission controllers reported that the flight-control system had prevented three of the capsule's four thruster pods from activating. The thrusters allow controllers to adjust the capsule's orbit, maneuver at the space station, and slow and orient the capsule properly for reentry.

The problem appears to have been traced to a balky oxidizer valve or clogged line. Initially, only one pod was functional. The craft needs at least two to put it on a trajectory to reach the space station.

By late afternoon, Elon Musk, the company's founder and chief technology officer, said that all four pods were working and that controllers were preparing to raise Dragon's orbit as it heads for the space station.

Initially, plans called for a rendezvous Saturday morning at 6:30, Eastern time. Now, that has been postponed, although NASA and SpaceX officials say the capsule could reach the station Sunday.

Friday's launch represents the second formal resupply flight that the company has undertaken under a 12-mission, $1.6 billion contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to ferry goods to and from the space station. But it's also the third trip a Falcon 9-Dragon duo has made to the orbiting outpost.

In May 2012, the company launched its first and only demonstration mission to the station, carrying a light load of cargo that at the time NASA said it could stand to lose if something went wrong.

Each mission in its own way has thrown something unexpected at mission controllers, suggesting that the successes so far haven't come without teething issues.

Perhaps the most dramatic so far was the premature shutdown of one engine last October.

The rocket is designed to deliver its payload to orbit if an engine fails, noted company president Gwynne Shotwell during a press briefing ahead of Friday's launch.

"You don't want it to happen. But the fact that the vehicle did exactly what it was supposed to do was impressive," especially to the insurers, she said.

The October mission also endured the shutdown of one of Dragon's three flight-control computers. And after splashdown, enough water leaked into the service section, aft of the crew section, to cut off power to a freezer designed to return lab samples from the space station. Fortunately, no samples were lost, noted Michael Suffredini, who runs NASA's space-station program.

Since then, technicians have worked to more effectively plug the nooks and crannies that allowed water to seep into the service section's electrical system.

Indeed, this ability to bring cargo back to Earth is unique among the Russian, European, and Japanese resupply craft also servicing the space station.

On this mission, Dragon is carrying some 2,300 pounds of cargo up and is slated to return with slightly more than 3,000 pounds.

Whereas in October, the crew was treated to fresh ice cream hauled up in the lab freezer, this time they will receive a package that's a bit healthier, Ms. Shotwell says, adding, "It came from one of our employee's father's orchards."

[Editor's note: This story was revised at 5 p.m., March 1, to reflect updates about the thruster pods.]

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/science/~3/iWm3ig5K0mw/SpaceX-addresses-hitch-that-could-have-put-mission-to-space-station-in-doubt-video

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NFL's?modern mythmaker

Steve Sabol's NFL Films opened America's eyes to the 'elusive magic'
of the sport that rules today's entertainment landscape

/ Courtesy NFL Films

Steve Sabol was "uniquely qualified to make football movies," according to his father, Ed. That may help explain why NFL Films turned into such a success.

THE BIG READ

BY JOE POSNANSKI

updated 9:00 a.m. ET March 1, 2013

PHILADELPHIA - It begins with music and ends with goose bumps. Musicians sit in chairs on the Verizon Hall stage in the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts as the crowd shuffles in from the biting Philadelphia cold. The musicians warm up their instruments, and the hall fills with the strains of strings and horns dancing around each other, like fencers at the opening of a duel.

It will help, I should say, if you read these words in the baritone of John Facenda. Here, to help you tune up, say this word: ?Lombardi.? Say it again, only deeper. ?Lombardi.? Stretch out the BAR in the middle. Lom-BAR-di. Again. Good. Try to hear that voice.

Above the orchestra, a film screen hangs by wires. The screen is blank, a plain white, but soon images will flicker upon it, images of quarterbacks being blindsided, running backs dissolving and reappearing like ghosts, footballs spinning slowly as they float against a white and blue sky, football images that inflamed the imagination of the man being honored in the theater.

You often hear of people being called ?true believers,? but these are rare creatures. Steve Sabol was a true believer.

The orchestra begins to play a sweeping song called ?Molder of Men.? The screen shows a photograph of Steve Sabol, 10 years old, wearing a football outfit straight out of 1953. This night is a tribute to Sabol, president of NFL Films, who died in September, a couple of weeks before his 70th birthday. But, even more, it?s a story of how we got here, to this complicated place where professional football, with all its excitement and violence and beauty and danger, (or as Sabol himself would say, with all its guts and glory) became the most American of all things.

A Steve Sabol quote appears on the screen.

?Life is great,? he said. ?Football is better.?

* * *

He was born Stephen Douglas Sabol in October of 1942, two days before Sid Luckman and his Chicago Bears beat the Cleveland Rams in front of 17,000 or so stragglers at the old Rubber Bowl in Akron. That was a good football crowd in those days. There was a war going on. And pro football was barely twitching in the American consciousness, many miles behind baseball and boxing and track and college football.

But Steve Sabol had been born and he was going to change all that.

Steve was a fusion of his mother and father. His mother, Audrey, owned an art gallery in Philadelphia, one that featured the biggest pop artists of the day. Roy Liechtenstein. Jasper Johns. She loved those who tried to express modern life through the prism of art. His father, Ed ? an actor, a showman, a world class swimmer (he turned down an invitation to swim at the 1936 Olympics), a salesman ? piddled around with a camera night and day. He spent much of that time filming Steve?s 14-year-old football team and then showing the film with classical music playing in the background. Yes, young Steve blended both parents.

From the beginning ? well, starting in the fourth grade ? Steve Sabol would think that football needed its own mythology. He loved football. He wanted others to love it the way he did. Baseball had a mythology ? Babe Ruth and Walter Johnson and the Gashouse Gang and Murderer?s Row and all that. Why not football?

Sure, that?s an odd thing for a fourth grader to wonder, but Steve Sabol was an odd fourth grader. He saw football as pop art. The mud and torn up grass and snow was the canvas. The quarterbacks were commanders of ships. The running backs were ballet dancers and bulldozers. The linebackers were gladiators. The coaches were professors ? or generals ? or circus clowns. Yes, he wanted his art to convey all the colors and textures and rhythms of what football stirred up inside him.

Steve Sabol?s first great football artwork was ? himself. Talk about pop art. He was a good enough football player in the 1960s to go to Colorado College and play occasionally ? take that for what it?s worth. More telling, much more telling, he was a good enough promoter to convince Sports Illustrated to write a 2,500-word story about him ? even though he was an occasional player at Colorado College.

Courtesy NFL Films Steve Sabol and his father, Ed, during the 2004 Sports Emmys. NFL Films has won 107 Sports Emmys since its founding in 1962.

Well, you could not ignore him. He called himself ?Sudden Death Sabol" and he bought newspaper advertisements for himself (complete with photos of himself at age 10 playing pee wee football) and wrote and distributed his own press releases and had T-shirts and other merchandise made featuring his self-written scouting report: ?Sudden Death Sabol is one of the most mysterious, awesome living beings of all times.?

?Football is such a great game, but football players are so dull,? he griped to Sports Illustrated. See: He already knew his calling. Football needed mythology. He gave himself a spectacular backstory. He said he was from Possum Trot, Tenn., and he talked about playing football with alligators, and he wrote a whole story about his legendary achievements in the Colorado College game program, which was easy enough to do because he wrote the whole game program.

Before he left college, his father Ed had convinced NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle to sell him the rights to film the 1962 NFL Championship Game. He won those rights for $5,000 (a record) and by convincing Rozelle that he could sell pro football to the public. That would lead to the company called NFL Films.

When Steve Sabol left college, he went to work for his father. Sudden Death Sabol was ready to give pro football its mythology.

* * *

Steve Sabol never hid his intentions or his motivations. He saw it as his life?s goal to make everyone see pro football the way he saw it ? as the greatest thing in the entire world. Of this, he had no doubts, no uncertainty, no hesitation. This is what it means to be a true believer.

His first big effort for NFL Films was the seminal film, ?They Call It Pro Football,? made in 1966. ?It starts with a whistle and ends with a gun,? John Facenda said at the beginning of that movie, which changed everything and is now listed in the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress.

?It was our Citizen Kane,? Steve Sabol said. He was 24 years old and ready to spill everything he loved about football, everything he believed about football, everything he cherished about football onto the screen. It would be big, it would be bold, it would be over the top ? that was how Sabol did things.

?For the audience crawling in the stands,? the narrator, John Facenda told the viewer, using Sabol?s words, ?the drama begins with a slap of leather and the song of men in motion.?

?The forward pass in the hands of the pro quarterback is a bolt of lightning that can strike anytime, anywhere.?

?These are the runners ? the racehorse halfbacks and locomotive fullbacks. Theirs is the speed and the fury, and to them must go the glory.?

?This is the part of the game rarely seen by the spectator. The shattering impact of a block. The mountainous size of an onrushing defender. The splintering force of a forearm shiver. One ton of muscle with a one-track mind.?

?Pro football. They play it under the autumn moon. And the heat of a Texas afternoon. In the ice-bucket chill of a Wisconsin winter. In the snow, fog and wind. And thousands come to watch ? or sleep. To cheer ? or stand in silent adulation. And millions more sit at home before TV sets, pursuing the elusive magic of the golden game.?

That might have been the subtitle of a Steve Sabol?s book ? ?Pursuing the Elusive Magic of the Golden Game." Yes, everything in Sabol?s first big movie was outsized, overstated, overwrought and filled with emotion and passion. He had his cameras focus close-ups on the players? muddy and bandaged hands (?The hands of combat!?). He had the cameras follow linebackers from their starting point all the way to the inevitable collision (?Search and destroy!?).

He showed the players faces ? ?always the faces,? he told his cameramen for the next 40-plus years. He played jazz music while showing the grace of Gale Sayers running. He showed Vince Lombardi at the chalkboard talking about the famous Green Bay Packers sweep (?If you look at this play what we?re trying to get is a seal here and a seal here and to try and run the play in the alley.?)

?This is pro football,? he had John Facenda say. ?The sport of our time.?

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NFL's?modern mythmaker

Posnanski: Steve Sabol never hid his intentions or his motivations. He saw it as his life?s goal to make everyone see pro football the way he saw it ? as the greatest thing in the entire world. Of this, he had no doubts, no uncertainty, no hesitation. This is what it means to be a true believer.

Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/50996534/ns/sports-nfl/

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Preeminent Cyborg Afraid Google's Glass Design Might Be Wack

Google's been pushing its Project Glass hard lately, with Sergey Brin wearing a pair everywhere, and going so far as to call smartphones "emasculating." The space-age specs do seem pretty cool, but everyone's favorite Canadian cyborg Steve Mann told IEEE Specturm that he's concerned about its design. And he would know. More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/B0oIIqGxxoM/canadian-cyborg-afraid-googles-glass-design-might-be-wack

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Small federal budget cuts may have big effects for Minnesotans (Star Tribune)

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'Girls Gone Wild' files for bankruptcy over debts

The Associated Press ? ? ? 9 hrs.

The company behind the "Girls Gone Wild" video empire has filed for bankruptcy in a move it says is an effort to restructure its legal affairs after several disputed court judgments.

GGW Brands LLC and several subsidiaries filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Wednesday in Los Angeles, listing more than $16 million in disputed claims.

The largest claim is $10.3 million that Wynn Resorts Limited is seeking from the company for judgments entered against "Girls Gone Wild" founder Joe Francis over a gambling debt and statements he has made about the casino and its founder, Steve Wynn.

Francis no longer owns the company, which has made a fortune selling videos and magazines of young women flashing their breasts.

"Girls Gone Wild" issued a statement that it is financially strong but needed to "re-structure its frivolous and burdensome legal affairs."

? 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/girls-gone-wild-files-bankruptcy-over-debts-1C8621475

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SF only team with no black players

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. ? One of the highlights of the spring is when Willie Mays arrives and sits at his customary table in the Scottsdale Stadium clubhouse, and starts chirping at Mike Murphy.

This year, the moment came with a bit of melancholy.

That?s because as I looked around the room, I realized that Mays, and his assistant, were the only people of African-American heritage in it.

We know the trends. You?ve heard about them for a long time. The percentage of African-Americans in baseball, which peaked at close to 30 percent in the 1970s, has dwindled down to single digits.

Sure, there have been times when the Giants did not have a single African-American on the roster. But no representation whatsoever in big league spring training? More than 70 players, and not one African-American in the room? That realization stunned me.

I spent a half-hour going through every roster, and sure enough, the Giants are the only major league organization with zero African-Americans in big league camp. Some teams have more representation than others, sure. The Atlanta Braves will feature three African-Americans in their starting outfield, with the Upton brothers and Jason Heyward. But each of the other 29 teams at least has one African-American player in camp.

This isn?t a Giants-centric phenomenon by any means, and I?m making no suggestion to that effect. The club has spent high draft picks on African-American players, including Wendell Fairley, Fred Lewis and others. And GM Brian Sabean certainly is open-minded to finding talent in all shapes and forms. This is the club that invested in Tim Lincecum and traded for Hunter Pence, after all.

If you look around the Giants clubhouse, you?ll see people of color. The Giants have a vibrant Latino culture, and that extends to their coaching staff with Roberto Kelly (from Panama), Hensley Meulens (Curacao), infield coach Jose Alguacil (Venezuela) and minor league coach Henry Cotto (Puerto Rico).

But no African-American players at all? From the organization that so shined because of Mays and McCovey and Monte Irvin?

I suppose I?m doing little more than making an observation here. There are myriad reasons for the declining numbers of African-Americans in baseball, few of them simple. I can?t pretend to tell you which reasons are the most important, or what should be done, or even if something needs to be done.

I mentioned my observation to Sabean and he is stunned as well. He is a firm believer that the decreasing number of college scholarships has a lot to do with African-American receiving fewer opportunities in baseball. If you?re not from an affluent background, how can you afford to take a partial scholarship when you could get a full ride playing football or basketball? The existence of traveling teams, summer leagues, etc. also make it so much harder for kids to be two- or three-sport stars like in the past. And if you stop playing baseball at a young age, you don't continue to get access to better coaching, you don't continue to hone your skills, etc. Baseball might be your best sport but you don't play it long enough to find out.

I don't buy the garbage that baseball is less lustrous than football or that baseball requires more work than basketball. I've always felt there are some underlying stereotypes in those arguments that I can't accept.

The only thing I know is that equality cannot happen without equal opportunity, and if baseball needs to do anything, it?s to work to provide opportunities for all young people of all backgrounds to continue playing the game if they are interested in doing so.?

Well, here's one more thing I know: Barring a trade or late signing, the Giants will stand on the baseline on April 15, Jackie Robinson Day, 66 years after the color barrier was broken, and they won?t have a single African-American player to reflect on it.

--

It was a hard-hitting day at Camelback Ranch and two-homer hero Brett Pill wasn?t the only one squaring it up. Brandon Belt doubled for his first hit of the spring, and Roger Kieschnick also put a charge in a double to the wall in center field.

[BAGGARLY:?Pill provides thrills as Giants rally to tie Dodgers]

Giants manager Bruce Bochy was glad to see it.

?The kids have been passive with the bats,? he said. ?We?d like to see them be a little more aggressive up there, see them letting it go.?

--

Defensive play of the day was first baseman Ricky Oropesa, making a really nice, twisting stop on a throw that was wide and in the dirt. I?m not sure how Oropesa stayed on the bag, but he did.

No question, Oropesa?s power is his best tool. The 2011 third-rounder out of USC will get a good test at Double-A Richmond this year. I hadn?t heard too much about his defense, but a play like that will open eyes.

--

Tim Lincecum said he was encouraged by his first start of the spring and Bochy concurred.

?Timmy threw well,? Bochy said. ?Pitching out of the stretch, he looked comfortable and had good stuff. He stayed in a consistent delivery with good rhythm. Occasionally he got out of sync last year, he knows it, and he?s worked on tightening it up. I think he should feel good about how he threw and where he wanted to throw the ball.?

--

Ramon Ramirez has a World Series ring from the 2010 club, but he probably isn?t in the lead to win the final spot in the Giants bullpen. Scott Proctor continues to look sharp while throwing the splitter he learned in Korea. Chad Gaudin is an experienced guy as well, and he threw two innings in his first appearance. He?ll be stretched out and could even make some starts.

Ramirez will have to perform to win a job, and while there?s a long way to go this spring, the three-run home run he served up Tuesday (to minor leaguer Alex Castellanos) was not a good beginning.

--

Apropos of nothing, but I was reminded today of last year?s first spring visit to Camelback Ranch. Melky Cabrera homered from both sides of the plate, and that?s when everyone started taking notice ? this guy was going to be a force for the Giants.

Nobody could?ve predicted how it would end up for him, though.

--

Cardinals manager Mike Matheny came out in strong support of a rule change to prevent collisions at home plate, which is a huge about-face for him. Just a year ago, I interviewed him on this very subject and he said he didn?t think the game should legislate against something that has long been a part of baseball.

He explained his position very well in this piece on MLB.com.

I asked Bochy if it was encouraging to hear about Matheny?s conversion.

?It is,? he said. ?There?s a catcher who?s been through it. He certainly has an understanding of what I?m talking about. I?m glad to hear that, and I?m hoping other guys step up. That?s what?s going to be needed to make a change.?

League vice president Joe Torre still needs convincing, but if the voices escalate, I do think the day will come fairly soon when plays at the plate are legislated a little nearer to plays at the other three bases.

And if that happens, if catchers are a little safer as a result, that will be a great legacy for Bochy to leave this game ? greater than winning two World Series rings, even.

Source: http://www.csnbayarea.com/blog/andrew-baggarly/extra-baggs-giants-only-club-no-african-americans-etc

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PFT: 'White guy' Swope runs a 4.3 at Combine

AP

NFL.com has published detailed profiles of almost all of the players who attended this year?s Scouting Combine, and all of those profiles include a section titled ?NFL comparison,? which names the current NFL player who is the most similar to that particular draft prospect. There?s nothing unusual about that.

But here?s what is a little odd: For all four of the white wide receivers that NFL.com profiled, the ?NFL comparison? is another white wide receiver.

I noticed that after I wrote about Texas A&M wide receiver Ryan Swope saying that people are surprised that he?s a white guy who can run a 4.3-second 40-yard dash. When I wrote that, I mentioned that NFL.com seemed to be falling into the usual stereotypes about white receivers, describing Swope as a hard worker with good hands who lacks straight-line speed, while saying the NFL player most similar to Swope is another white guy, Jordan Shipley.

After I wrote about Swope, I got a call from NFL.com Senior Editor Andy Fenelon. He was not happy. Fenelon lectured me about how unfair I was, demanded that I explain myself to him, and informed me that he stands by what NFL.com published.

I didn?t much care for Fenelon?s approach (he apparently never heard the old saw about attracting more flies with honey than vinegar), but I decided to take a closer look at the wide receiver evaluations at NFL.com and see whether I had unfairly represented the way the league?s official site evaluates white wide receivers.

And after taking that closer look, I don?t think I was unfair at all. White receivers are, in fact, exclusively compared to other white receivers. (Read the profiles of Swope and the other white wide receivers, Brandon Kaufman, T.J. Moe and Conner Vernon and see for yourself.) White receivers are praised by NFL.com for their good hands and their toughness, but downgraded for their speed. All four profiles demonstrate the stereotypes we?ve all heard about white receivers a million times.

I mention this not because I think anyone involved in compiling the NFL.com profiles is racist (I don?t) but because I think it?s important for all of us to challenge the stereotypes that we all encounter every day. At NFL.com, the stereotypes about white wide receivers are prevalent. Whether NFL.com wants to admit that or not.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2013/02/28/ryan-swope-people-are-shocked-im-a-white-guy-running-a-4-3/related/

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