Future Commercial Communications Satellites for Shuttle Launch

Commercial communications satellites have grown from infancy seventeen years ago to a major element of the spaceflight program. The paper describes the major commercial communications satellites and their development with emphasis on INTELSAT, United States and foreign domestic and MARISAT/INMARSAT. Future direct broadcast satellites and the possibilities for geostationary platforms are also discussed. These commercial communications satellites and their offsprings will constitute a stable, growing payload base for shuttle launches throughout this decade. It will be necessary that the costs of Shuttle launches remain economic so this payload base is not eroded by other launch vehicles

False Beliefs About Asylum Seekers to Australia: The Role of Confidence in Such Beliefs, Prejudice, and the Third Person Effect

There has been much controversy about the treatment of asylum seekers in Australia in recent years, with the Australian Government continuing to enforce a very hard-line stance on asylum seekers who arrive to Australia by boat. The present study examined attitudes towards asylum seekers using 164 Australian community members during June 2015 by way of questionnaire. Our primary research question involved how five variables predicted false beliefs about asylum seekers. Specifically, we measured prejudice, the third-person effect, and confidence in the answers given to false beliefs about asylum seekers. Regression results indicated that the main predictors of false beliefs were right-wing political orientation, prejudice, confidence in espousing false beliefs, and the third-person effect (politicians). Furthermore, most of our community participants accepted a large number of false beliefs as being true, with approximately two-thirds of our participants scoring above the midpoint. This reflects similar findings over the last decade or so. Our results indicate that, if one believes in bottom-up change, a more nuanced approach needs to be undertaken with community anti-prejudice interventions