Tag: government

Questions raised about NEOWISE asteroid data analysis

10:05 am

A computer entrepreneur has raised questions about the data analysis used by the scientists in charge of NASA’s NEOWISE space telescope (formerly called the Wide-field Infrared Space Telescope, or WISE).

Myhrvold, a former chief technologist for Microsoft, founded the patent-buying firm Intellectual Ventures in Bellevue, Washington, in 2000; on the side, he pursues interests ranging from modernist cuisine to palaeontology. A few years ago, he began exploring ways to detect dangerous space rocks. He soon argued3 that the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, a ground-based telescope being built in Chile, would have the capacity to find nearly all the same asteroids as NASA’s proposed successor to NEOWISE, called NEOCam.

That turned his attention to how asteroids could be studied in space, and to the NEOWISE data. “I thought, this will be great, maybe we’ll be able to find some new and interesting things in here,” he says. But Myhrvold soon became frustrated with the quality and analysis of the data. He posted a critical preprint on arXiv in May 2016, and the peer-review game was on.

His first peer-reviewed critique was published in Icarus in March4. In it, he explored the mathematics of how asteroids radiate heat, and said that the NEOWISE team should have accounted for such effects more thoroughly in its work.

The latest paper1 holds the bulk of the NEOWISE critique. Among other things, Myhrvold argues that the NEOWISE team applied many different modelling techniques to many different combinations of data to achieve its final results. He also criticizes the choice to include previously published data on the diameter of certain asteroids in the data set, rather than using NEOWISE measurements — which, though less precise, are at least consistent with the rest of the database. Such choices undermine the statistical rigour of the database, he says.

Alan Harris, a planetary scientist with the consulting firm MoreData! in La Cañada Flintridge, California, was one of the paper’s reviewers. “In my opinion, it has important things to say,” he says. “It is my hope that the scientific community will read the paper and pay attention to the analysis Myhrvold has presented, as he has raised a number of significant issues.”

The disagreement involves the NEOWISE team’s estimate of asteroid sizes, based on the infrared data. Myhrvoid questions their estimates.

More details about the clashes between Myhrvoid and the NEOWISE science team over the past two years can be found here. The NASA scientists do not come off well. They appear to be very defensive, acting to stonewall any review of their work. Repeatedly they attempted to defy Myhrvoid’s FOIA requests (only made when they refused to release their raw data), including redacting significant information for no justifiable reason.

I have really only one question: Does the behavior of these NASA planetary scientists sound familiar? To me it does, and what it reminds me of speaks very badly for the science being done in the NEOWISE mission at NASA.

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The Justice Dept Inspector General report on FBI corruption

11:59 am

The Justice Dept Inspector General report on FBI corruption is now available [pdf].

The report is 568 pages long. I guarantee that almost every news report you read about it today will be based not on a careful reading of the entire report, but on a reading of its executive summary plus some quick dives into relevant but juicy segments within.

Nonetheless, this paragraph in the executive report I think is significant:

During the course of the review, the OIG [Office of the Inspector General] discovered text messages and instant messages between some FBI employees on the [FBI] investigation team, conducted using FBI mobile devices and computers, that expressed statements of hostility toward then candidate Donald Trump and statements of support for then candidate Clinton.

The quote that is making the biggest headlines so far is Peter Strzok’s statement, in response to Lisa Page’s text that Trump might win, that “No, no he’s not, we’ll stop it.”

However, I did a quick scan of chapter twelve of the report, which is focused on all the texts by FBI officials, and find that this is merely one very minor example of a deeply partisan FBI that was closely aligned with the Democratic Party. Not only were Strzok and Page passionately willing to use the FBI’s powers overturn a legal election because they didn’t like the winning candidate, a Republican, there were other agents that felt the same way.

My own read of the executive summary shows that most of the report covers ground that has already been revealed in past news reports. The report does reveal that former FBI director James Comey was generally incompetent, not partisan. He had a very hot potato in his hands (clearly illegal acts by presidential candidate Hillary Clinton), and didn’t know how to handle the situation. He tried to abstain, then found this was a bad idea. In the end, he only made things worse for everyone, including himself. Moreover, his waffling and inability to demand a straightforward and honest investigation allowed partisan subordinates like Strzok, Page, and others to misuse the FBI and its powers to play politics and corrupt the agency’s investigations.

And without doubt the FBI did misuse its powers and investigative position. This report puts a stain on everything it does, now and into the future. And the bottom line remains the same: The culture in the Washington bureaucracy, and in the FBI, is blindly partisan, and willing to do illegal acts to help the Democratic Party. Trump had better start cleaning house soon, or else this modern praetorian guard will overthrown our democracy.

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UCLA students file criminal complaints against violent meeting disruptors

11:20 am

After seeing no action by UCLA for weeks after protesters disrupted and shutdown a pro-Israel meeting at the university, the students have now begun filing criminal complaints directly with the police.

After the media disclosure [that UCLA had done nothing], numerous students stepped forward to file complaints. The first was Justin Feldman, president of the SSI chapter at Santa Monica College, enrolled at UCLA for the fall semester. Feldman stated he feared for his personal safety during the incident. On June 11, Feldman, who had previously completed a StandWithUs [SWU] high school training program, appeared at the UCLA police department accompanied by Yael Lerman, SWU legal director, to formally file his complaint.

More than a few of the students harassed during the May 17 event were trepidatious about filing a police report. But, according to Lerman, the police made the whole process “comfortable,” acting “helpful and respectful.” After a short wait at the station, officers Robert Chavez and Lowell Rose escorted Feldman into a small room where his report was taken during an hour-long interview in what Lerman described as an “unrushed” session.

Lerman credited Feldman for his actions. “What Justin did in filing was critical in moving the process forward. The [UCLA] administration has known about this for weeks and has chosen not to move this forward. So now the students have to.”

There is video of the protest at the link. It shows a man tearing down one flag and appearing to physically threaten one of the speakers. A mob, following him into the room, then begins chanting (using bullhorns) and blowing whistles. (The main chant, “Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea,” invokes for me many previous bigoted and hateful proclamations by the Arabs that they intent to drive all the Jews “into the sea” to get rid of them.) The police finally arrive, but appear somewhat uninterested in stopping the disruption or allowing the event to continue. Eventually the brownshirts move out into the hall, but continue to chant and make noises, including banging on the door of the classroom where the event was being held. The police continue to do nothing.

This might be a significant development. The article cites several specific California laws that were violated by these protesters. If conservative event organizers and participants begin filing formal criminal complaints every time their event gets shut down by these violent thugs, they might finally force some action by the government and university to stop this misbehavior.

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Private company to offer tourist trips to its own facility on ISS

9:00 am

Capitalism in space: The private company Axiom has announced that it will offer tourist trips to its own facility it will add to ISS, and then eventually detach when the station is retired.

Axiom’s timeline has some flex, because it’s not yet clear how long the larger station will keep going, or what the assembly schedule will be for the company’s custom-built habitation module. But a weekend feature about the project in The New York Times cited 2022 as the supposed opening date.

In addition to the 10-day orbital stay, the $55 million would cover a 15-week training experience on Earth. Axiom is targeting space tourists as well as researchers and entrepreneurs who want to develop in-space manufacturing facilities.

Is this doable? Axiom isn’t yet laying out the complete logistical details, but the company will almost certainly rely on the likes of SpaceX and Boeing, which are developing space taxis for NASA’s use. Once those spaceships go into operation, sometime in the 2018-2019 period, there’s likely to be excess transportation capacity that Axiom could buy into.

This is the future of ISS, a privately run hotel. The Russians have announced a similar plan, attaching a module to ISS that will be designed as a hotel room for tourists. I expect others will eventually do the same. Once these profitable operations take hold, I guarantee that ISS will not be retired. There will be vested interests who will apply the right political pressure to keep it in orbit.

Will that be a good thing? It depends. From a taxpayer perspective, it might not be. ISS is very expensive to operate. Privately built and independent stations would be much cheaper, and would not involve any federal subsidy. At the same time, these private stations might not be doable at affordable prices in the near term. Maintaining ISS for these private companies might in this case be a very reasonably use of federal funds. As the profits rise, the companies will eventually be able to afford building their own stations that will serve their needs better than ISS. That will then be the time to retire ISS, when other private and profitable stations are there, ready to replace it.

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Proposal to split California into three states makes ballot

9:28 pm

A proposal to split California into three states has obtained sufficient signatures to be placed on the ballot in November.

Adding the proposal to the ballot is the first in a long number of steps that would be required to actually split the country’s largest state. Even if California voters supported the proposal in November, the California legislature would still have to vote in favor of it. The breakup would also likely be challenged in court and would need congressional approval, a tough get in today’s hyperpartisan Washington.

The initiative proposes the state to be split into three new states: California, Northern California and Southern California. Each state, though different in size, would have roughly the same population, according to the proposal.

I would not be surprised if the voters approve this proposal, as the state’s fascist and leftist urban areas along the coast have been making life miserable for the rest of the state. And when you treat people badly, they tend to vote against you.

Whether it can make it through the state legislature, dominated by the left, is more doubtful. It is likely the split would reduce the left’s power, and since the legislature is controlled by the left, I suspect they will not go along.

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Connecticut locks all train bathrooms because half are not ADA compliant

4:18 pm

The coming dark age: Because of a complaint, Hartford officials have locked all bathrooms on a new train line because half are not ADA compliant.

Restrooms on half of the Hartford Line trains — those operated by the state as opposed to Amtrak — will remain closed until they are made accessible to individuals with disabilities in early 2019, the state Department of Transportation announced Tuesday. The closure comes in response to a reversed decision from the Federal Railroad Administration, which had previously granted the state a temporary exemption from the Americans for Disabilities Act, according to the DOT.

Disability Rights Connecticut, a nonprofit advocacy group for state residents with disabilities, said it filed an ADA complaint with the FRA on June 8 regarding the new commuter line, which is scheduled to open June 16.

In other words, because a small number of people are unhappy, no one can be happy. They rule, and if they don’t get what they want then no one will get anything.

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Trump-Kim summit ends

8:57 am

The summit meeting between President Trump and North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un took place yesterday with much fanfare, ending with a signed agreement that did little but outline some future negotiating goals.

1. The United States and the DPRK commit to establish new U.S.–DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity.
2. The United States and the DPRK will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.
3. Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
4. The United States and the DPRK commit to recovering POW/MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.

While Trump’s hard-nosed policies toward North Korea has clearly forced that nation to back away from its former bellicose positions, threatening war with everyone, we will have to wait and see if this summit really forces them to abandon their nuclear weapons and missile programs.

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California police raid home, confiscate guns, from man who tried to register AR-15

8:48 am

Fascist California: Police raided the home and confiscated the guns of a man who had made a sincere effort to follow new California laws requiring the registration of his AR-15.

The man also now faces a dozen felony charges.

Jeffrey Scott Kirschenmann attempted to register an AR-15 with the California Department of Justice last month but instead found himself in significant legal trouble. The California DOJ accused Kirschenmann of illegally modifying the rifle he attempted to register. Law enforcement officials raided his home in Bakersfield before ultimately confiscating a dozen firearms and a few hundred rounds of ammunition, then charging him with a dozen felonies, KGET reports. Kirschenmann was accused of possession of assault weapons, two silencers, and something referred to as a “multi-burst trigger activator.” He does not appear to have been charged with any violent crimes.

All this does is drive decent ordinary gun-owners underground. It makes them criminals for doing nothing morally wrong, and thus a target that the state can now oppress.

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Hayabusa-2 takes first photos of target asteroid Ryugu

8:34 am

On June 10 Hayabusa-2 took its first photos of Ryugu, the asteroid it will reach later this month.

The Sunday photos were taken when Hayabusa2 was about 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) from Ryugu. Last week, JAXA released a few ONC-T images taken on June 6, when the probe was 1,615 miles (2,600 km) from the space rock.

Hayabusa2, which launched in December 2014, is scheduled to arrive at Ryugu on or around June 27. At that time, the probe will begin orbiting the asteroid at an altitude of about 12 miles (20 km), JAXA officials have said.

Hayabusa2 will then start prepping for a series of complex, up-close studies of the space rock. If all goes according to plan, over the ensuing 12 months, the spacecraft will deploy three rovers and a lander on Ryugu’s surface, gouge out a small crater using an explosives-bearing impactor, and collect samples from the newly created crater.

The spacecraft will depart Ryugu in November or December 2019, and its collected samples will come back to Earth in a special return capsule in late 2020.

The image suggests that the asteroid is “not significantly elongated.”

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China cracks down on corrupt science

8:38 am

The Chinese government has instituted new policies aimed at shutting down corrupt practices in journal peer review and funding that have previously encouraged scientific misconduct.

The country’s most powerful bodies, the Chinese Communist Party and the State Council, introduced a raft of reforms on 30 May aimed at improving integrity across the research spectrum, from funding and job applications to peer-review and publications.

Under the new policy, the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) will be responsible for managing investigations and ruling on cases of scientific misconduct, a role previously performed by individual institutions. And for the first time, misconduct cases will be logged in a national database that is currently being designed by MOST.

Inclusion in the list could disqualify researchers from future funding or research positions, and might also affect their ability to get jobs outside academia. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences will oversee the same process for social scientists. The policy also states that MOST will establish a blacklist of ‘poor quality’ scientific journals, including domestic and international titles. Scientists who publish in these journals will receive a warning, and those papers will not be considered in assessments for promotions, jobs and grants. A couple of such blacklists already exist, but rarely are they run formally by a government agency.

In recent years China has been the source of many examples of blatant scientific misconduct, from faking data in papers to getting them peer reviewed by non-existent reviewers. This policy change is aimed at stopping this misconduct, and is likely happening because much of China’s leadership comes from its space industry, which requires honesty in its work or the rockets will crash.

At the same time, the policy gives the government great power over all scientific work, and we all know what happens eventually when you give the government great power. While the goals here are laudable, and will likely in the near future produce positive results, the long term consequences will likely end up stifling independent research.

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The history of the second amendment

10:31 pm

Link here. Anyone who wishes to avoid being willfully ignorant about the reasons and background to the second amendment and presently feels lacking in knowledge will find this essay immensely clarifying. Bottom line:

Again, both sides [in the debate over the ratification of the Constitution] not only agreed that the people had a right to be armed, both sides assumed the existence of an armed population as an essential element to preserving liberty. The framers quite clearly had adopted James Harrington’s political theory that the measure of liberty attained and retained was a direct function of an armed citizenry’s ability to claim and hold those rights from domestic and foreign enemies.

And from the conclusion:

English history made two things clear to the American revolutionaries: force of arms was the only effective check on government, and standing armies threatened liberty. Recognition of these premises meant that the force of arms necessary to check government had to be placed in the hands of citizens. The English theorists Blackstone and Harrington advocated these tenants. Because the public purpose of the right to keep arms was to check government, the right necessarily belonged to the individual and, as a matter of theory, was thought to be absolute in that it could not be abrogated by the prevailing rulers.

These views were adopted by the framers, both Federalists and Antifederalists. Neither group trusted government. Both believed the greatest danger to the new republic was tyrannical government and that the ultimate check on tyranny was an armed population. It is beyond dispute that the second amendment right was to serve the same public purpose as advocated by the English theorists. The check on all government, not simply the federal government, was the armed population, the militia. Government would not be accorded the power to create a select militia since such a body would become the government’s instrument. The whole of the population would comprise the militia. As the constitutional debates prove, the framers recognized that the common public purpose of preserving freedom would be served by protecting each individual’s right to arms, thus empowering the people to resist tyranny and preserve the republic. The intent was not to create a right for other governments, the individual states; it was to preserve the people’s right to a free state, just as it says. [emphasis in original]

Read it all. It puts this issue of gun rights into historical and accurate context. That there are Americans today that do not know these facts, and refuse to learn them, speaks very poorly of them. It also suggests their goal is not the prevention of violence but the oppression of others. Such a goal is directly threatened by these historical facts — describing the British and American search for liberty and freedom — which is why they do not wish them known, and often do whatever they can to suppress them.

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House passes tiny $15 billion budget cut

11:06 pm

The corruption runs deep: House today passed, by the tiniest of margins, a minuscule $15 billion budget cut designed to make believe they are being fiscally responsible after their passage of a two year budget deal that added $300 billion of additional spending to the already bankrupt federal budget.

They will break their arms patting themselves on the back about this bill, even though they also know there is almost no chance this bill will make it through the Senate.

In other words, this is failure theater. After passing the bloated budget deal the Republicans in Congress went home to discover that the voters meant it when they said they wanted the budget slashed. They are now trying to manufacture a lie that says they are trying to cut the budget. They are lying however. They have no intention of trimming the budget. In this matter they are as corrupt as the Democrats.

And they wonder why we got Trump.

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New texts from former FBI officials reveal contempt for Congress and the law

12:09 pm

Newly released and unredacted texts from former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page not only reveal an effort to stonewall Congress from doing its Constitutionally-mandated oversight, they reveal an utter contempt for the law.

The article focuses on their contempt of Congress, but it really reveals that these two FBI agents, who now appear to be quite typical of much of the FBI’s upper management, were aggressively promoting a cover-up of illegal FBI actions and defying Congress in the process.

About a week after Comey’s press conference, Strzok wrote to Page that he was “Worried about work.” He was worried about “How much we decide to release, the prospect of second guessing.” It’s one thing if the second-guessing came from DoJ’s inspector general, but Strzok wasn’t about to be overseen by lawmakers: “The IG doing that bugs me;” Strzok texted, “Congress doing so infuriates me.”

He was doubly worried because, that day, Chaffetz and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte had sent a criminal referral to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia asking that Hillary Clinton be investigated, and perhaps prosecuted, for perjury. For Strzok, the referral was yet another reason to withhold information requested by Congress: “You read the referral yet?” Strzok asks Page. “We really want to drop the LHM [a summary of an investigation called a Letterhead Memorandum] and 302s [FBI interview notes] into that environment?”

Page called the requests from the Hill, “insulting” and Strzok declared “I just have no faith in Congress to respect our investigative information. The LHM and no more. Not even senior people’s 302, unless what we’d release via foia [the Freedom of Information Act].”

Even when the FBI was cornered into making documents available, they did their best to hobble efforts to read them. Here’s Peter Strzok texting Lisa Page on August 16, 2016, the day the FBI finally turned over a single heavily redacted copy of the 302 notes of Hillary Clinton’s FBI interview: “I’m strongly opposed to making any more copies for Congress. We limited on purpose, After careful consideration. If they let any particular committee get the copy, tough. Let them sort it out.” [emphasis mine]

Peter Strzok very eloquently sums up their attitude in one later text: “F them.”

Contempt for Congress is perfectly reasonable. I actually agree with them here. Refusing to obey the orders of elected officials, however, is an abuse of power, is illegal, and at a minimum should have gotten them fired, immediately. Instead, the FBI leadership (Comey, McCabe, Rosenstein, etc) worked with them to defy Congress.

As I said yesterday, these people should also go to jail. They not only broke their oaths to defend and obey the Constitution, they participated in a criminal cover-up, in this case acting to protect the Democratic Party’s candidate for President from criminal prosecution.

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Rigged poll claims Americans want NASA to do climate research

10:00 am

A new Pew Research Center poll, that is getting lots of play in the press today and claims that Americans want climate research to be NASA’s number one purpose, appears very rigged to me.

First their main conclusion:

NASA oversees a diverse portfolio of space-related missions, from sending robotic probes to explore distant planets to launching satellites that study Earth’s atmosphere and oceans.

When asked to rate the importance of nine of these missions, majorities of Americans say a top priority for NASA should be monitoring key parts of the Earth’s climate system (63%) or monitoring asteroids and other objects that could potentially collide with the Earth (62%).

Slightly fewer than half of Americans (47%) believe that conducting basic scientific research to increase knowledge and understanding of space should be a top priority, with 40% saying such research is an important but lower priority.

…Missions for human astronauts to explore Mars and return to the moon are among NASA’s most high-profile programs. The Trump administration has expressed strong support for these initiatives, saying that exploring the solar system should be NASA’s core mission, beginning with a return of astronauts to the moon.

However, compared with other NASA programs, fewer Americans say such space exploration should be a top priority. Just 18% and 13%, respectively, say that sending astronauts to Mars or back to the moon should be a top priority; 37% and 44%, respectively, express the view that these missions are not too important or that NASA shouldn’t undertake these missions. [emphasis mine]

You can download the full report here [pdf].

While it is very possible that the high numbers for NASA climate research and low numbers for a NASA mission to the Moon or Mars reflect a growing skepticism about NASA’s ability to do space work, the poll itself simply isn’t trustworthy. Buried deep in Pew’s press announcement (three webpages down) was a graph that showed that, while the sample population surveyed was distributed reasonably in most ways, the numbers Republicans and Democrats polled was very skewed, 981 Republicans to 1,483 Democrats.

This is absurd. Every recent election has shown that the nation is very evenly split between these two parties. If anything, the results of the 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016 elections would suggest there are more Republicans than Democrats. To favor Democrats by one third is simply dishonest and inaccurate. Even if they claim that they are merely polling Americans, not voters, the split shouldn’t be weighed that much in favor of Democrats.

Moreover, the poll shows how this skew warps the results, as it also admits that 78 percent of the Democrats polled love NASA’s climate research, while only 44 percent of Republicans do. The poll did find that both Democrats and Republicans had no interest in NASA’s deep space exploration plans, but once again, the poll did not ask why. I strongly suspect that NASA’s inability to get SLS launched explains this. No one believes the agency will ever do it.

With climate research the agency has an easier job, and has done better, but even here many Republicans have strong doubts, and would rather give the job to someone else.

It seems to me that the time has come to completely ignore political polling operations like Pew. They really have only one goal, and that is to push the Democratic Party’s political agenda.

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8 times FBI colluded with Democrats during election

11:15 am

Link here. The author carefully summarizes what we now know about the partnership between the upper management at the FBI and CIA with the campaign of Hillary Clinton.

The intelligence bureaucracies spied on the Donald Trump campaign: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants were granted because of a Hillary Clinton-funded and unverified document, national-security letters were issued to allow warrantless spying, and the unprecedented but not-illegal-per-se unmasking of Trump officials’ conversations with non-U.S. persons was shockingly routine.

Yet the news of a CIA-connected human source operating as far back as April or May of 2016 is about more than just spying. It is the latest example in what now looks to be a long line of attempted setups by the Clinton team, many times aided and abetted by our intelligence bureaucracies.

These events should anger any red blooded American who believes in representative democracy and the importance of the rule of law.

He then details eight examples, all well documented, where the leadership at the FBI and CIA worked hand-in-glove with the Democratic Party to help throw the election to Hillary Clinton, and failing that worked to invalidate the election results by trying to manufacture evidence that would justify removing Trump from office.

A large number of people should face prison terms for this. And it appears that at least one, former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, fears this possibility greatly.

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Aerojet Rocketdyne completes first rocket engine for DARPA’s quick launch rocket

9:32 am

Aerojet Rocketdyne has completed assembly of the first rocket engine for DARPA’s quick launch rocket, Phantom Express, being built by Boeing.

[The engine] can fly for 55 missions with servicing only every 10. To speed up turnarounds, the engines will be installed in a hinged nacelle for better access and the entire spacecraft will use an operations procedure similar to those developed for aircraft.

The first AR-22 engines will be used for daily hot-fire tests at Rocketdyne’s Stennis Space Center facility in Mississippi to demonstrate that it can handle multi-mission conditions and that the fast turnarounds are both feasible and practical. In addition, Rocketdyne says that the test information will help spaceplane builder Boeing to improve the Phantom Express ground infrastructure.

Boeing and Aerojet Rocketdyne both have it very sweet. They have gotten DARPA to fund the development of their own low-cost reusable rocket, while other private companies have to go it alone.

Still, it appears that Boeing is leveraging its engineering experience from building the X-37B for the Air Force for this project. Whether the company can expand the rocket’s customer base beyond the Air Force remains unclear.

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Northrop Grumman purchase of Orbital ATK approved

9:24 am

Capitalism in space: Northrop Grumman’s acquisition of Orbital ATK has been approved by the Federal Trade Commission.

With this purchase, the name Orbital ATK will recede into history. This division of Northrop Grumman will now be called Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems. Here at Behind the Black I will simple call it Northrop Grumman.

The FTC ruling carried with it one caveat:

As a condition for the approval of the merger, the company will have to supply solid rocket motors “on a non-discriminatory basis under specified circumstances,” the FTC ruled.

Ensuring competition in the solid rocket motors industry is a key issue for the Defense Department because only two manufacturers remain in the business, Orbital ATK and Aerojet Rocketdyne. The Air Force plans to acquire a new strategic intercontinental ballistic missile, the so-called Ground Based Strategic Deterrent, with Northrop Grumman and Boeing competing for the award. The intent was for both Orbital ATK and Aerojet to supply both prime contractors. The FTC decision requires Northrop Grumman to separate its solid rocket motors business with a firewall so it can continue to support Boeing.

It will be up to the Defense Department to ensure compliance with the firewall mandate.

It is unclear from the press report what this firewall accomplishes. It sounds like there was fear that Northrop Grumman would not have sold its solid rocket boosters to competitor Boeing, but I don’t see that happening. This acquisition was designed to put Northrop Grumman back in the rocket business just as that business is booming. Part of that business is selling solid rockets.

Either way, the company that David Thompson started in the early 1980s to challenge the big space companies, Orbital Sciences, has now completely vanished into one of those big space companies.

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China offers big bucks to attract foreign science talent

9:10 am

Link here. In China’s recent push to build big science facilities, such as the giant radio telescope FAST, it has faced a shortage of qualified homegrown Chinese scientists to run those new facilities.

To solve this problem, China is now offering big bucks to any scientist, even foreigners, willing to move to China.

On 22 May, the Ministry of Science and Technology issued guidelines that encourage science ministries and commissions to consult foreign experts and attract non-Chinese to full-time positions within China. In a striking change, foreign scientists are now allowed to lead public research projects.

In the past decade, China has aimed to build up its scientific capacity by luring back some of the tens of thousands of Chinese scientists working abroad. The latest measures emphasize that non-Chinese talent is also welcome. Drafted in December 2017 but not previously made public, they are “a confirmation of things that have been going on for a while,” says Denis Simon, an expert on China’s science policy at Duke Kunshan University in China, a branch campus of the Durham, North Carolina–based Duke University.

Simon says foreign scientists are drawn by China’s increased spending on R&D, which is rising twice as fast as its economic growth. Increasingly ambitious big science projects, such as a massive particle accelerator now under study, are a lure as well, says Cao Cong, a science policy specialist at the University of Nottingham Ningbo in China, an affiliate of the U.K. university. The opportunity for foreign scientists to serve as principal investigators for publicly funded programs is a significant new incentive, says Liang Zheng, who studies science and technology policy at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Of course, moving to a nation ruled under totalitarian communist rule has its drawbacks:

Relocating to China comes with challenges. Gibson teaches in English but needs Chinese language help handling administrative matters and grant applications. Restricted access to internet sites such as Google is also a hurdle. “My research and my teaching regularly rely on access to online resources and search platforms [that are] blocked in China, so this is an impediment to my work,” Gibson says. But he has found workarounds. China shut down many virtual private networks, which provide access to blocked overseas sites, but a few remain. “There’s a saying: ‘Everything in China is difficult, but nothing is impossible,’ which I think reflects the situation very accurately,” Gibson says.

I would also expect that any American who makes this move will face significant security problems with the U.S. government upon their return.

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California outlaws same day laundry and showers

11:09 am

Fascist California: A new draconian law in California makes it a crime to shower and do laundry on the same day.

Essentially, the law limits water use to levels that make it impossible to shower/bathe and do laundry on the same day. It also threatens fines of $1,000 and $10,000 per day, and requires water utilities to track customer use to find violators. And not surprisingly for a fascist state, it provides a method for allowing waivers to its inner circle:

Oh, and don’t worry, rich people. There will be “provisions for swimming pools, spas, and other water features.” So you can still have your pretty fountains and pools while the rest of the peons take 2 showers a week. One might wonder if ‘variances” will apply to the wealthy for their landscaping needs. “The State Water Resources Control Board, which will oversee local agencies’ progress, will also consider possible ‘variances’ for some districts that need additional allowances due to specific local circumstances.”

There’s more. Read it all. The author also makes the important point that this law will likely raise the cost of food nationwide, or cause some shortages because it will make life hell for California’s farmers.

More and more, it appears that the leftist Democrats in control in California are working to turn the Golden State into Venezuela.

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Homeland Security to track bloggers and journalists

10:45 am

You gotta have your KGB: Homeland Security has revealed that it is putting together a program to track bloggers, journalists, and what it calls “Social Media Influencers.”

[T]he Department of Homeland Security has just announced that it intends to compile a comprehensive list of hundreds of thousands of “journalists, editors, correspondents, social media influencers, bloggers etc.”, and collect any “information that could be relevant” about them.

So if you have a website, an important blog or you are just very active on social media, the Department of Homeland Security is going to put you on a list and will start collecting information about you. The DHS has already announced that it will hire a contractor to aid in monitoring media coverage, and they will definitely need plenty of help because it is going to be a very big job…

The article above then quotes from another news story describing this Orwellian plan:

As part of its “media monitoring,” the DHS seeks to track more than 290,000 global news sources as well as social media in over 100 languages, including Arabic, Chinese and Russian, for instant translation into English. The successful contracting company will have “24/7 access to a password protected, media influencer database, including journalists, editors, correspondents, social media influencers, bloggers etc.” in order to “identify any and all media coverage related to the Department of Homeland Security or a particular event.”

This is quite vile, but no surprise. From its very inception after 9/11 Homeland Security was designed to violate numerous rights listed in the Bill of Rights. We are now seeing those violations play out. Worse should certainly be expected as well.

I hope they track Behind the Black. If they try to squelch me the publicity might do the site good.

Meanwhile, where is Trump in this? That this program is going forward under his watch illustrates once again that Trump really is not that much different than the swamp in Washington he claims a desire to drain. He has undeniably forced a lot of positive change in DC, but his lack of understanding of the philosophical battle allows him to permit this kind of abuse. This program centers power in the executive branch, something that Trump doesn’t really mind.

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NASA administrator in talks about commercializing ISS

9:48 am

In a wide-ranging news article today, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine revealed that the agency is in discussions with many private corporations about the possibility of privatizing ISS.

Bridenstine declined to name the companies that have expressed interest in managing the station, and said he was aware that companies may find it “hard to close the business case.” But he said there was still seven years to plan for the future of the station, and with the White House’s budget request “we have forced the conversation.”

Bridenstine’s approach to ISS’s future seems reasonable to me. At some point the federal government needs to face the station’s future, and now is a better time to do it then later.

The article however confirmed my generally meh opinion of Bridenstine. First, he reiterated his born-again new belief in human-caused global warming, a belief that seemed to arrive solely for him to gain the votes to get him confirmed in the Senate.

Second, he said this about LOP-G, NASA’s proposed international space station that would fly in lunar space.

Known as the Lunar Orbiting Platform Gateway, the system would be built by NASA in partnership with industry and its international partners, he said.

“I’ve met with a lot of leaders of space agencies from around the world,” he said. “There is a lot of interest in the Gateway in the lunar outpost because a lot of countries want to have access to the surface of the moon. And this can help them as well and they can help us. It helps expand the partnership that we’ve seen in low Earth orbit with the International Space Station.”

But the first element of the system wouldn’t be launched until 2021 or 2022, he said. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words illustrate why Bridenstine seems like a lightweight to me. LOP-G might be flying near the Moon, but nothing about it will provide anyone any access to the lunar surface. Not only will it not be operational in any manner for more than a decade, at the soonest, but it doesn’t appear designed to make reaching the lunar surface any easier. Instead, it mostly seems designed to justify SLS and Orion, and provide that boondoggle a mission.

Still, Bridenstine has in the past been generally in favor of commercial space, and that position appears to be benefiting NASA’s commercial crew partners. Prior to Bridenstine’s arrival the decisions of NASA’s safety panel acted to repeatedly delay the launch of the manned capsules being built by SpaceX and Boeing. Now that safety panel seems to have seen the light, and is suddenly more confident in these capsules. I suspect Bridenstine might have had some influence here.

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Russia announces plans to build reusable rocket

9:17 am

I’ll believe it when I see it: Russia announced this week new plans to build a reusable smallsat rocket where the first stage would fly back and land vertically.

According to preliminary estimates, the reusable system will cut the cost of payload delivery by 1.5 or 2 times compared to traditional rockets. Every self-guided booster will be designed to fly 50 missions without replacement of its main engines burning a mix of cryogenic liquid oxygen and liquid methane. The system was expected to be based on mobile launchers and its maiden flight was scheduled for 2022, the FPI press release said.

If this project actually does happen, it will be because there has been a political shift within Russia’s government-run space industry. I suspect this because last week they cancelled plans to build a lightweight but expendable smaller version of Proton. Now they are aiming to build a reusable rocket instead. It appears that they have realized they need to cut their costs to compete, and the expendable Proton wasn’t doing it, while a reusable rocket might.

If this is true, then this is good news for Russia’s space future. At the same time, the slowness at which they have made this shift illustrates the disadvantage of their centralized government-run system. Instead of competition within Russia pushing many different independent companies to move forward quickly, all decisions must be made through political maneuvering within Roscosmos, a process that is always slower and more cumbersome.

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Customs steals $58K, a man’s life savings

12:59 pm

Theft by government: U.S. Customs stole $58,000 from a man traveling to Albania, his life savings, though they charged him with no crime.

“This is to notify you that Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) seized the property described below at Cleveland, OH on October 24, 2017: $57,330 in U.S. Currency,” the notice states. “Enforcement activity indicates that the currency was involved in a smuggling/drug trafficking/money laundering operation.”

The first thing the Kazazis noticed was that the dollar amount listed was $770 less than the amount that Kazazi said he took with him. The family said that the cash was all in $100 bills, making it impossible for it to add up to $57,330.

Customs might claim this had to do with “smuggling/drug trafficking/money laundering” but they found no evidence of such when they strip-searched the man, and have followed up with no charges. And that $770 of the cash that appears missing suggests strongly that several Customs agents pocketed the difference, a nice illegal bonus for these despicable thieves.

Civil forfeiture on its face violates the Fifth Amendment of the Bill of Rights, which clearly states that citizens are not to “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” These Customs agents, the Custom managers, and everyone else involved with this crime should be fired immediately.

It won’t happen, unfortunately. Our corrupt federal government no longer follows the Constitution. It follows its own corrupt power games, for its own benefit. And the people who should act to stop this, our elected officials, are part of the game.

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Proposed new FCC regulations would shut out student cubesats

9:38 am

We’re here to help you! Proposed new FCC regulations on the licensing of smallsats would raise the licensing cost for student-built cubesats so much that universities would likely have to shut down the programs.

In a move that threatens U.S. education in science, technology, engineering and math, and could have repercussions throughout the country’s aerospace industry, the FCC is proposing regulations that may license some educational satellite programs as commercial enterprises. That could force schools to pay a US$135,350 annual fee – plus a $30,000 application fee for the first year – to get the federal license required for a U.S. organization to operate satellite communications.

It would be a dramatic increase in costs. The most common type of small satellite used in education is the U.S.-developed CubeSat. Each is about 10 inches on a side and weighs 2 or 3 pounds. A working CubeSat that can take pictures of the Earth can be developed for only $5,000 in parts. They’re assembled by volunteer students and launched by NASA at no charge to the school or college. Currently, most missions pay under $100 to the FCC for an experimental license, as well as several hundred dollars to the International Telecommunications Union, which coordinates satellite positions and frequencies. [emphasis mine]

If these new and very high licensing fees are correct I find them shocking. As noted in the quote, building a cubesat costs practically nothing, only about $5,000. The new fees thus add gigantic costs to the satellite’s development, and could literally wipe the market out entirely. They certainly will end most university programs that have students build cubesats as a first step towards learning how to build satellites.

These new regulations appear to be part of the Trump administration’s effort to streamline and update the regulatory process for commercial space. It also appears that the FCC has fumbled badly here in its part of this process.

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Why you got Trump, part 2,398,105

2:08 pm

Link here. The author focuses on the “Never Trump” wing of the Republican Party, individuals who have completely abandoned any pretense that they stand for conservative values in their no-holds-barred opposition to Trump, even when he does things they should like.

This quote illustrates however why Trump won, and continues to be popular with the general public:

[T]he main point these [Never Trumpers] whom we have no choice but to refer to as former conservatives miss is that in our political system the choice is still binary. Other conservatives may not like Trump but they understand that the voters preferred him in no small measure because they were sick of the clubby elitism that characterizes the anti-Trump alliance.

Moreover, they understand that, thanks to Trump’s unlikely victory, the choice isn’t between a conservatism tainted by association with Trump and one that isn’t. Rather the choice is between a Trump-led Republican Party that is championing the same issues that the pre-Trump GOP supported and liberals who want a return to the Obama era of high taxes and appeasement of Iran to mention just two key issues on which many Never Trumpers have abandoned their principles. [emphasis mine]

It is that clubby elitism of Washington — and the bankrupt incompetent government it has given us — that most offends the voters who went for Trump. Trump’s actions since his elections, though imperfect for sure, have confirmed the wisdom of this choice. It has also revealed the fake conservatives in the Republican Party who clearly prefer that clubby elitism above any effort that might try to fix the problem.

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