The Greater World

Jean-Marie le Pen encouraged French voters to act out the plot of the film Brewster's Millions by staying away from the upcoming French battle royale between Nicolas Sarkozy and Segolene... Royal.

A world map cartogram based on population...

[Cartogram via STRANGE MAPS.]

More dope cartograms available at WORLDMAPPER and below.

Fogonazos has posted a great photographic tour of our namesake.

This just in: undisputed evidence that Cosmodrome's readership includes U.S. Senators!

Way back in the spring of '06, our hard-working military aviation staff looked up from its GlobalSecurity.org RSS feed for a moment to tell you about a very special day in the life of a storied U.S. Navy fighter: it was retirement time for the venerable F-14 Tomcat.

Motherfuck, I knew that the U.S. is tops (and by a lot) when it comes to the dollaz, but this map really hammers it in. Each state is labeled with a country with a GDP equivalent to that individual state.

France is allegedly the sixth largest national economy in the world, but that seems prit-tay unimpressive in light of the fact that California, with about half the size in both area and population, is just as ballin as the République française.

My favorite, for reasons beyond my fetish for a certain country that is a sizeable chunk of the Eurasian landmass, is that Russia (area: 6,592,800 sq mi / population: 142,400,000) is rollin in as much ca$h money as...New Jersey (area: 8,729 sq mi / population: 8,414,350). I'd like to think there is some symbolism to this link between my actual homeland and my homeland-in-spirit.

As predicted in Tim Burton's 1996 debacle of a film, terror came to Washington today, as the Democrats took control of Congress. Some notable events of the day:

-Former President and possible future White House resident Bill Clinton turned heads as he commented to the press, "It's a great day for the largest number of women we've ever had in the Congress."

-The first Muslim in Congress, Ralph Ellison, shook hands and patted the shoulder of a man who warned of awful events even worse than those predicted by Mr. Burton (such as more Muslims in Congress). Oh yes, Dennis Kucinich stood by smiling. It's unconfirmed, but this writer is pretty sure that Mr. Kucinich was stoned the whole time.

Read on....

Welcome to the second edition of MASTERS IN SPACE! Come on, you know that, by the eighth season, Jack Bauer is gonna end up battling some weaponized satellite with his bare-and-against-protocol-hands.

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01. First West Coast launch for EELV program
Boeing held the first launch of its Delta 4 rocket for the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program on June 27, 2006, from Vandenberg AFB, Calif. This was the first time an EELV rocket was launched from the West Coast: previously, it had been done entirely from Cape Canaveral, Fla. However, the launches were split between the two coasts as a punishment for Boeing’s misuse of competitor Lockheed Martin’s proprietary information when first bidding on the EELV contract in 1998. Tuesday’s launch was carrying undefined cargo for the National Reconnaissance Organization. Its orbit is unknown, but it is thought to be heading toward a highly elliptical Molniya orbit.
(SpaceFlightNow.com, June 28, 2006)

02. China to build Galileo-type satellite system

As you may have gathered from previous posts, the staff of Cosmodrome has been whipped into a World Cup frenzy over the last few weeks. And this is despite the fact that our knowledge of soccer is pretty minimal for people who have watched (or at least read a live blog of) nearly every match so far. Including the ads.

So of course, I've been consulting with my friends and Wikipedia and beyond to extrapolate whatever I can from my meager knowledge to date. As it turns out, I once played this game - for something like 8 years! In fact, thousands (millions?) [Editor's note - our interns blow, and couldn't find the statistic.] of kids in the United States play the game every year. Will Ferrell even made a movie about this phenomenon, or at least something related to the phenomenon (I've only seen segments of the film when accidentally thinking it's this movie).

Alas, I digress. The best "find", and the one most worth sharing is that all of soccer's history (or most of it) has been saved on YouTube & Wikipedia. Below, you'll find video for all 10 goals selected in FIFA's poll to decide the greatest World Cup goal ever, and a couple of selections from yours truly. Enjoy it, and send us more video of your favorite goals, because you can critique FIFA's selections as much as you want, but considering it came out four years ago, only Cosmdrome will actually listen to what you have to say. ...Get the Videos...

Here are some of the most choice cuts of news on the outer space arms race in this new Cosmodrome seasonal feature: MASTERS OF SPACE! My conviction that government contracts is what my future "consulting firm" must target is fortified by story number seven.

On May 23, 2006, the Pentagon released the 2006 version of its annual report to Congress on “Military Power of the People’s Republic of China.” The Pentagon criticized China’s lack of transparency in military spending. Of interest to readers of this update is the portion on its alleged anti-satellite (ASAT) program: “Beijing continues to pursue an offensive anti-satellite system. China can currently destroy or disable satellites only by launching a ballistic missile or space-launch vehicle armed with a nuclear weapon. However, there are many risks associated with this method, and potentially adverse consequences from the use of nuclear weapons. Evidence exists that China is improving its situational awareness in space, which will give it the ability to track and identify most satellites. Such capability will allow for the deconfliction of Chinese satellites, and would also be required for offensive actions. At least one of the satellite attack systems appears to be a ground-based laser designed to damage or blind imaging satellites.” However, this report is less adamant about China’s reported ASAT programs than earlier versions, and the evidence about the ground-based laser is dubious, to say the least.