Free Republic

A full three out of four transwomen who undergo hormone therapy to “transition” into being female never reach normal female hormone levels, according to a new scientific study. I know. It's almost like it was designed to be that way or something. Here’s how it works, in a nutshell. Average adult males have testosterone levels ranging anywhere between 270-1,070 nanograms per deciliter (ng/dL). Women’s testosterone levels, on the other hand, average about 15-70 ng/dL – obviously, a much lower level. When a biological male decides he feels like a woman and chooses to medically force his physical body into accepting this delusion, he...

".... NASA has decided to forgo construction of a second mobile launcher for its Space Launch System (SLS). Instead, they will modify the one they have....The first mobile launcher was built and modified for an estimated $300 to $500 million. NASA obviously has decided that the politics & cost is too great, as would be the political embarrassment of admitting they spent about a half a billion for a launcher they will only use once...What this does however is push back the first manned SLS/Orion launch. At present, the first unmanned mission is likely to go in June 2020... If...

...."Last year, my reader sunnydaysall, from BrainHavenNet, posted Dr Christopher’s Herbal Legacy Newsletter from July 7, 2017, ‘The Untimely Death of America’. It is well worth reading, especially for those interested in natural remedies. One would have thought that George Washington would have had the finest medical care available. It seems he did in principle, but, judging from his final days, not in practice. A summary and excerpts follow, emphases mine."...

SLS continues to be this ever receding but very expensive fantasy, scheduled for a future that never arrives, while spending enormous amounts of money that would be far better spent in other ways. The first launch, should it happen in 2020, would be three years later than originally planned, nine years after the initiation of the SLS project, and sixteen years after George Bush first proposed it. For this single unmanned test mission NASA will have spent about $25 billion.

A new analysis of the data obtained when the interstellar object Oumuamua flew through the solar system in October 2016 suggests that it is tumbling in a chaotic manner, and that the surface is spotty....Dr Fraser explains: “Our modelling of this body suggests the tumbling will last for many billions of years to hundreds of billions of years before internal stresses cause it to rotate normally again."

Big Oil is due for a disruption. The world’s most important industry has been carrying on without any significant changes in its day to day routine for far too long. But now, the new tech on the block has its sights set on the multi-trillion-dollar oil and gas sector. It’s official: Blockchain technology has infiltrated Big Oil. The hype behind blockchain has reached a full-blown frenzy. And for good reason. The technology, which creates secure ledgers for digital transactions and rapidly accelerates the pace at which transactions can be made, has the potential to disrupt every major industry: real estate,...

Upgrading our biology may sound like science fiction, but attempts to improve humanity actually date back thousands of years. Every day, we enhance ourselves through seemingly mundane activities such as exercising, meditating, or consuming performance-enhancing drugs, such as caffeine or adderall. However, the tools with which we upgrade our biology are improving at an accelerating rate and becoming increasingly invasive. In recent decades, we have developed a wide array of powerful methods, such as genetic engineering and brain-machine interfaces, that are redefining our humanity. In the short run, such enhancement technologies have medical applications and may be used to treat...

I know almost nothing of the mental condition of confessed mass murderer Nikolas Cruz, and almost certainly, neither do you. There are few, if any, who can give a reliable opinion of the young man’s psychiatric state as he walked into [a FL h.s.] and killed 17. Nevertheless, after his killing spree... many in the media, along with the public at large, were willing at least to imply, if not directly describe, Mr. Cruz as someone who was “mentally disturbed,” “mentally ill,” “crazy,” a “nut-job,” a “psycho,”... and so on. Those with a wide array of varying political and spiritual...

Are you concerned that your child might be autistic and want to know right away? Here is the latest in autism research that could be helpful in answering your questions including a possible blood test for Autism. Health experts are in agreement that the sooner you and your pediatrician know whether your child is autistic, the better are their chances of receiving the help they need to aid their social and mental development. Unfortunately, however, diagnosing autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can be difficult, and is primarily done by observing a child's behavior and development to make a diagnosis. A diagnosis...

Cool image time! The image on the right, cropped to post here, comes from a Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter image that shows a massive relatively recent and dark slope streak that emanates out from a single point on the surface.

First, 2016 was the worst year for the Russian rocket industry in decades...Second, China has been aggressively ramping up its launch rate, and in 2016 moved clearly into the top tier of space-faring nations...Third, the United States is clearly transitioning away from a government owned and operated rocket industry to one owned and operated by the private sector. Since the retirement of the Space Shuttle, the federal government has not launched a single rocket that it designed, built, and owns. Instead, every payload put in space by the U.S. has been put there by a private sector rocket.

"The Turboencabulator or Turbo-Encabulator (and its later incarnations, the Retroencabulator or Retro-encabulator and Micro Encabulator) is a fictional machine whose alleged existence became an in-joke and subject of professional humor among engineers. The explanation of the supposed product makes extensive use of Technobabble."

"Capitalism in space: SpaceX has highlighted the last image from its Tesla car, heading out to the asteroid belt after being lofted into space by its Falcon Heavy rocket... .....this also highlights that a private American company was able to send a payload beyond Earth orbit, and it took them only seven years of development and no government funds. ....[an almost perfect test] according to Musk, the reason the [1st stage] core hit the water so fast is because some engines did not fire as intended. [SpaceX] engineers believed only one of three engines fired during a final burn designed...

"When the Curiosity Rover was launched onto its nine-month-long journey to the planet Mars on Nov. 26, 2011, the rover carried as one of its many scientific packages a calibration target; a 1909 Lincoln cent. The cent is mounted near the bottom of the target, with its obverse facing outward."

"...some HiRISE images taken in 2017 and early 2018 show slight blurring not seen earlier in the mission. The cause is under investigation. The percentage of full-resolution images with blurring peaked at 70 percent last October, at about the time when Mars was at the point in its orbit farthest from the Sun. The percentage has since declined to less than 20 percent. Even before the first blurred images were seen, observations with HiRISE commonly used a technique that covers more ground area at half the resolution. This still provides higher resolution than any other camera orbiting Mars — about...

Curiosity remains on Vera Rubin Ridge, though it has begun moving toward the point where it will move down off the ridge. Opportunity remains in Perseverance Valley, though it has finally taken the north fork down.

"Even as the leftist American mainstream media continues to focus its energies on petty and ineffective attacks of Donald Trump, too many journalists on the right unfortunately appear to be diving right in to join them with their own petty counter-attacks. The result is a press that spends the bulk of its time on irrelevant stories of partisan bickering that have little substance or importance. In the last week of 2017 we had one particularly acute example of this."

As you can see, the low sunspot activity of the past two months continued in January. November 2017 remains the most inactive month for sunspots since the middle of 2009. January is now the second most inactive month, with December a very close third...Regardless, the low activity, this soon, continues to suggest that the next maximum will also be weak, and might even not come at all, as some solar scientists have proposed. Instead, we might be heading toward another Grand Minimum, with no significant sunspots for decades.

Roscosmos, is considering offering future space tourists the chance to do their own spacewalk for $100 million price tag.

It is essential for any nation that wishes to thrive and compete on the world stage to have a successful and flourishing aerospace industry, centered on the capability of putting humans and payloads into space affordably and frequently. This is a bipartisan position held by elected officials from both American political parties since the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957...Unfortunately, since the beginning of the 21st century the U.S. government has struggled to create and maintain a viable launch industry. Even as the government terminated the Space Shuttle program, with its ability to place and return humans and...