On his maiden voyage outside U.S. borders as president, Barack Obama sought to reassure free-trading Canadians that his country is not cultivating a protectionist streak as its economy tanks and hemorrhages jobs.
"I want to grow trade and not contract it," Obama declared Thursday during a quick visit to court warmer relations with America's snowy northern neighbor.
The president stuck to his pledge to eventually seek changes in the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement to increase enforcement of labor and environmental standards. But he said he intends to do so in a way "that is not disruptive to the extraordinarily important trade relationships that exist between the United States and Canada."
His host, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, said he might be willing to negotiate but not by "opening the whole NAFTA and unraveling what is a very complex agreement." Canada is the United States' largest trading partner and with $1.5 billion in trade between the two nations, they have the largest trading relationship in the world.
Harper sounded a similar warning on a "Buy American" clause that Congress added to the $787 billion economic stimulus package that Obama signed this week. "We expect the United States to adhere to its international obligations," Harper said. "I can't emphasize how important it is that we do that."
Source: Associated Press
Friday, February 20, 2009
Space junk clogging earth's orbit
Think of it as a galactic garbage dump. With a recent satellite collision still fresh on minds, participants at a meeting in the Austrian capital this week are discussing ways to deal with space debris — junk that is clogging up the orbit around the Earth.
Some suggest a cosmic cleanup is the way to go. Others say time, energy and funds are better spent on minimizing the likelihood of future crashes by improving information sharing.
The informal discussions on the sidelines of a meeting of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, which began Feb. 9 and ends Friday, arose from concern about the collision of a derelict Russian spacecraft and a working U.S. Iridium commercial satellite.
The Feb. 10 incident, which is still under investigation, generated space junk that could circle the Earth and threaten other satellites for the next 10,000 years; it added to the already worrying amount of debris surrounding the planet.
Nicholas L. Johnson, NASA's chief scientist for orbital debris, said about 19,000 objects are present in the low and high orbit around the Earth — including about 900 satellites, but much of it is just plain junk.
He estimated that included in the 19,000 count are about a thousand objects larger than 10 centimeters (4 inches) that were created by last week's satellite collision, in addition to many smaller ones. He predicted that if more junk accumulates, the likelihood of similar collisions — currently very rare — will increase by 2050.
To Johnson, the "true solution" in the long run is to go get the junk — or push it away to a higher altitude before it has time to crash into anything.
"Today's environment is all right but the environment is going to get worse, therefore I need to start thinking about the future and how can I clean up sometime in the future," he said.
Johnson is the co-lead of an International Academy of Astronautics study that is exploring ways of extracting space debris from Earth orbit.
Some of the suggestions sound pretty spaced out.
One proposes attaching balloons to pieces of debris to increase their atmospheric drag and bring them back to Earth faster. Another, said Johnson, foresees attaching a 10-mile (16-kilometer) electrodynamic tether to debris that would generate a current, which then could be controlled from the ground enabling technicians to bring it down.
Many scientists are skeptical about the possibility of a cleanup.
Source: Associated Press
Some suggest a cosmic cleanup is the way to go. Others say time, energy and funds are better spent on minimizing the likelihood of future crashes by improving information sharing.
The informal discussions on the sidelines of a meeting of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, which began Feb. 9 and ends Friday, arose from concern about the collision of a derelict Russian spacecraft and a working U.S. Iridium commercial satellite.
The Feb. 10 incident, which is still under investigation, generated space junk that could circle the Earth and threaten other satellites for the next 10,000 years; it added to the already worrying amount of debris surrounding the planet.
Nicholas L. Johnson, NASA's chief scientist for orbital debris, said about 19,000 objects are present in the low and high orbit around the Earth — including about 900 satellites, but much of it is just plain junk.
He estimated that included in the 19,000 count are about a thousand objects larger than 10 centimeters (4 inches) that were created by last week's satellite collision, in addition to many smaller ones. He predicted that if more junk accumulates, the likelihood of similar collisions — currently very rare — will increase by 2050.
To Johnson, the "true solution" in the long run is to go get the junk — or push it away to a higher altitude before it has time to crash into anything.
"Today's environment is all right but the environment is going to get worse, therefore I need to start thinking about the future and how can I clean up sometime in the future," he said.
Johnson is the co-lead of an International Academy of Astronautics study that is exploring ways of extracting space debris from Earth orbit.
Some of the suggestions sound pretty spaced out.
One proposes attaching balloons to pieces of debris to increase their atmospheric drag and bring them back to Earth faster. Another, said Johnson, foresees attaching a 10-mile (16-kilometer) electrodynamic tether to debris that would generate a current, which then could be controlled from the ground enabling technicians to bring it down.
Many scientists are skeptical about the possibility of a cleanup.
Source: Associated Press
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)