Last month I read Ukraine Update June 14, which begins:
Russia has de-dollarized, and the yuan will now be the main trading currency for Russian citizens. China’s takeover is nearing completion.
This remined me of Robert Heinlein’s novel Sixth Column (originally serialized in 1941, first published in book form in 1949). Continue reading
Ivory found in Kyiv in 12th century originated from Greenland – study
Fragments of walrus tusks unearthed in 2007 were traced back to Greenland, indicating that trading routes in the Middle Ages were more advanced than previously thought.
The article originally identified the bomber as a Sukhoi T-4, an aircraft that did not fly until 1972. The mistake was obvious to me from the picture, which has not (as of today) been replaced. That is not a bomber from the early 1950’s. The bomb was dropped from a Tupolev Tu-4, the Soviet copy of of the U.S. B-29 bomber, which was used in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Also see
Of course, they will be officially denied by the Kremlin.
http://io9.com/what-europe-will-look-like-in-2035-if-russian-tabloids-1587988556
Continue reading
I posted about this before.
Yuri Gagarin was one of the good guys in this story. Another was a KGB officer. The villains were Leonid Brezhnev and Dmitry Ustinov.
I can remember when Brezhnev and Ustinov were names known to everybody. However, younger readers may not recognize them, so I included the Wikipedia links. In the grand scheme of human history, they deserve to fall into obscurity.
Putin unveils $50 bn Russian space drive
The total proposed NASA budget for Fiscal Year 2014 (which starts Oct. 1, 2013) is $17.7 billion. This is $55 million lower than 2012, and $170 lower than 2013. That’s a drop of roughly only 1 percent, which these days can be considered holding steady.
46 Years and Still Soaring High
While many improvements have been made to the Soyuz rockets and spacecraft since the first launch in 1966, the bottom line is that the Soyuz have become the world’s most used launch vehicles due to their consistent performance and relatively low cost.
“This is a safe and reliable and proven way to leave the Earth, and each successive Soyuz is different; each one has small changes. The role of the astronaut is to learn those small changes… and learn to apply them.”
– Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield
From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 