The US pentagon has announced that the failed reconnaissance satellite speculated around the web to be USA-193/NROL-21 is to be shot down to prevent a possible atmospheric discharge of nearly half a ton of hydrazine monopropellant contained on board.

The ’spy’ satellite, speculatively identified by satellite tracking enthusiasts across the world as USA-193 apparently failed to deploy correctly when it was launched back in December 2006. It would have been in a gradually decaying, uncontrolled orbit thereafter.

US officials say that they will use a RIM-131 Standard Missile 3 (SM-3) to destroy USA-193 before it enters the atmosphere so that the hydrazine propellant will be dispersed safely in space. The SM-3 is a fairly hefty 4-stage missile and part of the Aegis Anti Ballistic Missile System. The missile will be fired from an Aegis cruiser or destroyer. US President George Bush has given approval for one missile to be fired but a further two Aegis ships will be standing-by downrange. In case of a miss by the first ship, a decision will be made on whether or not to fire again from one of the other ships.

General James Cartwright, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff stated that the optimum time frame for the destruction of the satellite would be in a window opening for about one week beginning in four days time. If successful, the satellite would be reduced to small components of debris which would largely burn up on re-entry.

I haven’t been able to find out yet what altitude the satellite will be traveling at yet (perhaps the orbit tracking buffs will come up with it) but with the DoD already playing down any similarities with China’s recent destruction of a satellite with an ASAT missile, it’s possible that it may be over the 100km mark and that could mean a curfuffle with Russia, China and the UN over the outerspace treaty which bans the use of weapons in space.

In the mean time, mind your heads

The thing most likely to cause a change in texture of a Northern Rock shareholder’s undergarments today was the news that the UK treasury would prefer nationalisation of Northern Rock over a private deal if the decision had to be taken today.

The BBC cites a ‘banker’ who is said to be ‘close to the negotiations’ who says that the Prime Minister Gordon Brow (rather than the chancellor, Darling) is calling the shots on any potential deal. Apparently, Brown isn’t averse to the nationalisation of Norther Rock ‘at any cost’ now. He is said to feel that a partial nationalisation deal with Virgin involved may be beneficial but he wants more money in exchange for the billions (£100billion?) in support already doled out to the Rock.

You can read more in Robert Peston’s: Rock Nationalisation ‘back on’ article.

Photo Credit: Alex Gunningham cc-by-2.0

It appears that a certain Mr Stephen Fry, a delightful chap you may have seen in ‘old media’, has decided that Linux is the way forward.

On closer examination of his personal blog post, it appears Mr Fry has obtained an EEEPC, the dinky little device from Asus. Unlike other palmtop-ish sized devices, the EEEPC is essentially a fully featured laptop complete with a 900Mhz Intel Celeron M and 512MB of ram viewed through a 800×480 resolution 7 inch screen. The storage is solid-state (flash based) and both RAM and storage are upgradeable.

Now, the reason Mr Fry is so het up about Linux is that the EEEPC runs a Xandros based software distrubtion and provides an easy-peasy apt or synaptic repository based software installation system. As I found out today when I made an ‘urgent’ reinstall of my Ubuntu desktop (hardware failure), synaptic can shave hours off a system build. My fully featured install consisting of Ubuntu and a huge set of office and design applications took just over an hour to install.

Mr Fry is so taken with the idea that he states:

I’ll just make the outrageous claim that your computer will be running some descendant of those two within the next five years and that your life will be better and happier as a result.

…and somehow I’m a bit inclined to believe him. Of course, I know that every year since 1997 has been hailed as the ‘year of linux on the desktop’ but I starting to think that everything is coming into place for that really to be the case. From Dell offering Ubuntu on their mainstream desktops and laptops through the EEEEEEEPC to low-power embedded devices offering a Linux based platform. Then there’s Microsoft who for reasons only known to themselves spent years developing a product, now known as Vista, which upon release was found to be one of the most pitiful operating systems ever seen.

I don’t think that Linux is going to just drop in your lap but I do think it might sneak up on you from behind

Photo Credit: Red cc-by-3.0

Philips has two nicely specified webcams on the market at the moment, the SPC-1000NC and the SPC-1300NC, both 1.3 megapixel (1280×1024 native resolution) devices.

Now, as many amateur astrophotographers will tell you, the earlier Philips Toucam models had lenses which unscrewed from a M12.5×0.5 thread allowing the easy fitment of a telescope adapter. Alternatively, ‘Micro Video’ lenses of different focal lengths could be fitted to the webcam.

The SPC-1000NC/SPC-1300NC may be a different issue as I’ve read an old post from the QCIUAG via a german astrophotography forum indicating the lens on these camera’s VGA sibling is captive (no M12.5×0.5 thread )

I’d be really grateful if anyone passing this way who knows with certainty whether the lenses can be removed or not post in the comments section below and let me know.

It would also be handy to know if the webcams are permanently attached to their bases or wether they have a normal tripod thread.

The Office of National Statistics has that the assets and liabilities (there seem to be more of the latter than the former) of Northern Rock must be added to the public balance sheet as of 9th October 2007. This is due to the amount of control the government/treasury has taken over the failing bank and the public-funded support that has been given.

This means that the taxpayer is now facing an official increase in their debt burden of about £100 billion (£100,000,000,000) whether Northern Rock is actually nationalised or not.

£100 billion is a frankly terrifying amount. That’s one-hundred-thousand-million pounds. If you had that much money in pound coins and you laid them flat, edge-to-edge, they’d stretch around the equator over 56 times and they’d weight 3/4 of a million tons. Of course, this little practical excercise would be impossible as it would require 67 times more pound coins than actually exist in circulation.

There won’t be any hard news on whether the bank will be privatised or nationalised until the end of march but even in privatisation, current plans would effectively leave the buyer with the business of Northern Rock while the public gets to continue holding the liability for the debt.

Photo Credit: Alex Gunningham cc-by-2.0

…and everybody legs it home from work early!

Just an observation; the weather was pretty mild today and I took some exercise at about 2:30pm. As I walked around my 4 mile course of residential roads, I noticed that the traffic was abnormally dense, the faint whiff of nitrogen dioxide making the air hard to breathe.

Towards the end of my journey I noticed that the traffic wasn’t easing and that the already poor standard of driving was decreasing with more and more motorists displaying the classic British ‘me-first’ attitude in apparent attempts at automotive suicide.

It could, of course, also be the case that it’s the start of the school half-term holidays but I just wish people would calm it down. I recall that ‘holidays’ used to be something to do with ‘relaxation’.