Free Republic

inadvertently set into motion by a Historic! all-female space walk crew. It is currently following a trajectory that precedes the International Space Station (ISS) by two to four minutes and is bright enough to be seen with only the aid of a pair of ordinary binoculars. NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O’Hara are currently on a science mission, living and working aboard the ISS microgravity laboratory. On Wednesday, Nov. 1, the pair completed an impressive 6-hour, 42-minute spacewalk, or extravehicular activity (EVA), during which they made some repairs, failed to make others, and lost a sack of equipment. On...

On May 22, 2010, 10,000 Bitcoin (“BTC”) were exchanged for two Papa John’s pizzas.[1] Because BTC was the first cryptocurrency, this was the first publicly known transaction involving cryptocurrency.[2] Just a little over a decade later, the price per BTC reached $68,000.[3] To put this in perspective, the amount of BTC paid per slice from one of the Papa John’s pies purchased in 2010 would have been worth $42,500,000 in 2021.[4] The cryptocurrency market reached three trillion dollars at its peak in 2021, which sent shockwaves throughout the economy.[5] One survey showed that 11% of people quit their jobs because...

The FTX scandal is only getting started. Another cryptocurrency by the name of Tether is also on the brink of failing and both FTX and Tether appear to have been tools of the Deep State. A week ago TGP reported that FTX was used as a money laundering scheme in Ukraine where money sent there was sent back to US politicians. Revolver added more to this story overnight. In a lengthy article, Revolver notes first that FTX may not be the largest cryptocurrency-related entity to collapse in the coming months. Another crypto by the name of “Tether” or USDT...

The inner workings of Tether remain remarkably opaque. New Tethers are supposed to only be minted, and added to the crypto ecosystem, when somebody gives Tether Limited dollars to create them. And if that’s how it all worked, Tether would be fine. "But there is no evidence Tether actually works this way. We repeat: There is no proof that Tether stablecoins are backed by the store of tangible assets that is supposed to justify their value. Despite first being released eight years ago, Tether has never been audited in any way. It first promised an audit in 2017…to, you know,...

It has long been known that over the past decade Chinese oligarchs who wanted to bypass Beijing's capital controls and anti-money laundering firewall, would smuggle billions of dollars outside of China by using the Macau casino money-laundering infrastructure, prompting Beijing to crack down aggressively on this popular firewall loophole, with mixed success.What is less known is that as the capital controls game of cat and mouse escalated in recent years, so have Chinese money laundering tactics and now according to Caixin, Chinese citizens launder as much as $153 billion per year with the help of online gambling and such cryptocurrency...

Warning, graphic video: Stadium collapse in Russia kills construction worker Raw video: Russian officials say a worker was killed after a Soviet-era sports complex collapsed during planned demolition work in Saint Petersburg.

The tool, called the BolaWrap 100, fires a Kevlar cord that ensnares an individual’s body to restrict mobility, giving officers seconds to swarm the person without using more drastic measures such as a Taser or gun. The handheld device, made by Las Vegas-based Wrap Technologies, sounds like a gun when it deploys a tether to entangle someone between 10 and 25 feet away. Barbs attached to the end of the tether grab hold of the person as it wraps around their arms or legs.

Oakland County officials looking for ways to fight jail overcrowding are being asked to consider a pilot program to provide tethers for low-income offenders. "Only rich people get out?" asked Circuit Judge Steven N. Andrews, a member of the council. "Give me a break. That's not the way the justice system should work. Poor people should not fill up the jails." Inmates pay about $500 a month to be on a tether in place of remaining in jail.

detriot news articles cant be posted in full link only http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060512/METRO/605120365/1003

A team of university graduate students and faculty from Tennessee, with the help of NASA engineers, have "launched" a subscale spacecraft model and caught it in mid-air with a unique rendezvous or "catch" mechanism. Their successful demonstration of this mechanism that could grab a payload or craft traveling in space marks a critical milestone in development of a tether-based propulsion system. The professors and graduate students at Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville designed, built and recently tested the subscale tether catch mechanism in a university laboratory.