Update: NASA says the bombing of the moon was a success. We can all sleep soundly tonight knowing that NASA can hit the moon with a missile.

In a project that apparently stemmed from NASA’s first annual “Let a Group of 12-Year-Old Boys Design A Mission Day,” NASA will shoot the moon with a missile on Friday to look for water.

The Lunar Crater Observing and Sensing Satellite or LCROSS mission will send a missile traveling at twice the speed of a bullet to blast a hole in the lunar surface of the moon on Friday.

Scientists expect the impact of the powerful Centaur rocket would release a huge plume of moon dust and debris. The moon dust blast should be large enough for amateur scientists to view from Earth through telescopes 10-to-12 inches and larger, says NASA.

Forget about the national deficit man, we are bombing the moon!

(Cross-posted at Underdog Soldier)

Peter Lawler has written a must-read account at The Weekly Standard of The Chosen One’s termination of the Bioethics Council.  Bush’s creation of the Council was the greatest indication of the President’s real thinking on science and the public good.  Far from ‘politicizing science,’ Bush brought together a group of broadly trained, highly intelligent people to debate the implications of various policy proposals under the leadership of Leon Kass of the University of Chicago.

For Obama, a valuable Council does nothing but offer advice to the administration. The Bush Council was actually given the additional mandate of public education, of developing a national dialogue on controversial bioethical issues. It’s with that Socratic second mandate in mind that President Bush chose for his first chairman a man trained in medicine, natural science, and the wisdom about being human embodied in the Great Books from Plato through Shakespeare to Genesis–Leon Kass. For Obama, it would appear, there’s no need for such moral and political discussion or such “humanistic” guidance because the experts know the nonideological and objective answer to the key questions that face us in our high-tech and increasingly biotech world. Personal opinion is trumped by what the “studies show,” and public opinion should be guided toward a consensus based on those studies.

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Would you sign?

I am most grateful that Feddie has graciously allowed me contribute to SA!

A little bit of background – I have lived in the Great State of Mississippi for my entire life  except for a  brief foray up north for college. Once I got my hands on a biology degree I headed back to Mississippi with my wife where I am now a first year law student at Ole Miss.

In college, I developed an interest in bioethics. My contributions to SA will mostly revolve around these issues, including but not limited to: abortion, stem cell research, cloning, genetic engineering, health care, and pre-implantation genetics.

More to the point -  I am a gun owning, church going, SA reading, pro-life Conservative with a libertarian streak and I am fired up about joining the folks here at SA.

Go thou to Mark Shea for an interesting discussion of Adam and Eve, and polygenism.  It is illuminating both for its subject matter, and for the principles of Catholic doctrine and interaction with science in general that undergird the discussion.

Today is World AIDS Day.  One of the articles I have seen indicates that Eastern Europe stands at the threshold of an AIDS epidemic of catastrophic proportions.  Read about it here. 

Remember when you were a kid? Ever have a book that told you how the zebra got his stripes, the elephant got his trunk, or how the giraffe got such a long neck? They were funny little fairy tales and I can’t help but think of them when I read the following spurred on by the finding of a dolphin with a set of rear fins (not legs as earlier reported):

It is thought the dolphin’s land-loving ancestors first crawled into the sea to escape predators or seek food between 50million and 35million years ago.

Their hind legs became smaller and smaller before eventually disappearing altogether. The new aerodynamic shape reduced drag in the water, speeding their swimming.

Mark Simmonds, of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, said: “They became more and more streamlined, lost their hair and developed a layer of fat for insulation.”

I’m not an evolution-hata. I’m really not. Don’t care if it’s dead on correct. I wouldn’t lose a moment’s sleep. But doesn’t any of this stuff sound a little incredible?

A mysterious debris field around the space shuttle is vexing the NASA folks. Magnified image of the space bag revealed……

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So, what will be the energy source that helps weans us away from our dependence on foreign oil? Nuclear power, solar power, fuel cells?  I betcha a good many people didn’t think of this one: (more…)

The European Space Agency and the Australian National University have succesfully tested a new ion engine that could be used on spacecraft.  The engine exhaust travelled at the speed of 210,000 meters per second, that’s approx. 470,000 miles per hour in American terms.  To put that in perspective: the average distance between Earth and the Moon is approx. 238,700 miles.

That’s pretty cool.

(via Dean’s World)