Cosmic Log
Will America come together in the wake of this week’s presidential inauguration? The prospects for that appear dim, based on a trio of surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center.
One of the surveys, released today, hits a new low for political division: Eighty-six percent of the respondents said the country is more politically divided these days than in the past, while only 12 percent say it’s not more divided. That pessimism was shared by Republicans and Democrats in nearly equal measure.
Donald Trump isn’t even sworn in as president yet, but he already has a species named after him: a micro-moth with a bushy head of yellowish-white scales.
Neopalpa donaldtrumpi is found in a habitat that, ironically, stretches across the U.S.-Mexico border – from California to Baja California. Biologists have long known that twirler moths inhabited the region, but until recently, they thought there was only one species in the genus.
Canadian evolutionary biologist Vazrick Nazari discovered that wasn’t the case when he examined insect specimens from the Bohart Museum of Entomology at the University of California at Davis. A few of the moth specimens didn’t match the description for Neopalpa neonata.
Among the distinguishing features for the outliers were yellowish-white scales on the moth’s head, and an orange-yellow coloration on the upper side of the forewing. The scales reminded Nazari of Trump’s signature comb-over, and led him to go with “donaldtrumpi” as the species name.
Nazari’s findings were published online today by the open-access journal ZooKeys.
President-elect Donald Trump says he’ll turn to the tech industry leaders he met with last month to help his administration come up with better measures to guard against hackers in Russia and elsewhere.
During today’s first formal news conference since his surprise win since the presidential election, Trump referred to the summit that he had at Trump Tower in Manhattan with such luminaries as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
He said that meeting attracted “some of the greatest computer minds” in the world.
“We’re going to get those minds together, and we’re going to form a defense” against future computer intrusions, Trump said.
Later on, Trump gave a timetable: “Within 90 days, we will be coming up with a major report on hacking defense,” he said. “How do we stop this new phenomenon, this fairly new phenomenon, because the United States is hacked by everybody. That includes Russia, and China, and everybody.”
After meeting with President-elect Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg says he’s making a “personal commitment” to keep the cost of the next two Air Force One jets below $4 billion.
“We’re going to get it done for less than that, and we’re committed to working together to make sure that happens,” Muilenburg told reporters on Dec. 21.
Trump threatened in a Dec. 6 tweet to have the Air Force One deal canceled because “costs are out of control, more than $4 billion.” But since then, Muilenburg and other executives have smoothed over the dispute. Wednesday’s meeting in Palm Beach appeared to cement the rapprochement with Trump.
The Boeing Co. donated its traditional $1 million to support President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration celebration, days before Trump dinged the jetmaker over the projected multibillion-dollar cost of the future Air Force One planes.
“We are pleased to continue our tradition of supporting presidential inaugurations,” Boeing spokesman Gordon Johndroe told GeekWire in an emailed statement.
That traditional level is $1 million, the same amount that Boeing contributed for President Barack Obama’s inaugural ceremonies in 2013.
The Trump inaugural committee sent out its package for underwriting next month’s festivities a little more than a week ago, and Boeing quickly got on board.
The donation was firmed up by Dec. 5 – a day before Trump tweeted his displeasure about the Air Force One cost estimates, complained that Boeing “is doing a little bit of a number,” and called for a cancellation of the order.
Update for 8:30 p.m. PT Dec. 10: News outlets are reporting that Donald Trump is expected to nominate ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, and not Alan Mulally, as his secretary of state.
Original report from Dec. 8: Former Boeing and Ford executive Alan Mulally was on the schedule to sit down with Donald Trump today, setting off buzz that the president-elect may be considering the management guru as his pick for secretary of state.
Fox News quoted unnamed sources as saying that Trump was expected to discuss the secretary of state scenario with Mulally during a meeting at Trump Tower in New York.
Transition spokesman Jason Miller deflected questions about the issue during a teleconference with reporters, saying only that Trump has been meeting with a wide variety of people to discuss policy as well as potential posts in the incoming administration.
President Obama has expressed a deep appreciation for Air Force One, describing the current Boeing 747-200 planes as the best perk of the job. President-elect Donald Trump, who is accustomed to flying in his own Boeing 757, isn’t as enamored with Boeing’s contract to build a new generation of Air Force One planes.
In a tweet today, Trump claimed that costs on the project are “out of control” and called for the cancellation of a deal with the Boeing Co. for two 747-8 aircraft that would serve as Air Force One.
Boeing is building a brand new 747 Air Force One for future presidents, but costs are out of control, more than $4 billion. Cancel order!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2016
In follow-up comments to reporters in New York, Trump said the cost of the planes was “ridiculous.”
“I think Boeing is doing a little bit of a number,” he said. “We want Boeing to make a lot of money, but not that much money.”
House Republicans are voicing renewed doubts about NASA’s plan to have astronauts study a piece of an asteroid – a turn of events that was expected for the transition to the Trump administration.
The Asteroid Redirect Mission, or ARM, was a trademark space initiative for President Barack Obama but has drawn GOP criticism for years. Critics saw the mission as an ill-planned detour on the road to the moon or Mars.
As currently conceived, the mission calls for a robotic spacecraft to visit a near-Earth asteroid, pull off a piece and bring it back to lunar orbit for study by a crew of astronauts in the mid-2020s.
NASA says the mission would serve as practice for a crewed journey to Mars and could serve as a test for diverting killer asteroids in the future. But leading House Republicans voiced skepticism about the mission’s utility in a letter sent to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden today.
President-elect Donald Trump’s advisers say they want to rely more on commercial ventures to pioneer the space frontier – but some of those ventures’ high-profile backers aren’t exactly in line with other parts of Trump’s policy agenda.
For example, SpaceX’s billionaire CEO, Elon Musk, sees climate change as the biggest challenge facing humanity on Earth and has said a tax on carbon emissions is as necessary as garbage collection fees.
In contrast, Trump has said concerns about climate change are a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese, and has vowed to “cancel” U.S. participation in the recently established Paris climate pact. (The Chinese say they’re trying to set Trump straight on that point.)
Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos, who founded Blue Origin to send passengers and payloads into space, is also the owner of The Washington Post. The Post, Amazon and Bezos were all caught up in Trump’s ire during the campaign.
On the flip side of the issue, there’s at least one space billionaire who can hardly wait for Trump to get into office: Robert Bigelow, the founder of Bigelow Aerospace.
“Christmas arrived early this year!” Bigelow declared at the Space Commerce Conference in Houston on Thursday. “For the United States – and as I do believe will be eventually proven, for NASA – Christmas arrived on November the 8th.”
President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is now part of the government, at least online, in the form of a GreatAgain.gov website.
The website, registered through the General Services Administration, is a traditional element of the federally funded transition between administrations, carried out under the terms of the 2010 Pre-Election Presidential Transition Act.
The GSA has been supporting transition activities for months, not only for the Trump team but for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s team as well.
GreatAgain.gov, which is inspired by Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan, made its public debut on Nov. 9, a day after the election. But it was primed for action even before the outcome was known. On Nov. 6, for example, the website noted that 4,000 political appointees would be leaving to make room for the new administration.
“Finding qualified people to fill these jobs is an enormous undertaking, but it is critically important to making the federal government work effectively for the American public,” according to the posting, which mirrors a notice that was posted by the Center for Presidential Transition back in March.