April 10, 2018 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts. Zuma, Starliner, Virgin Galactic, private space stations, NOAA’s evil bureaucracy, sunspots, and much more!
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Year: 2018
Jimi Hendrix On An Acoustic Guitar
An evening pause: There are two clips, with the second beginning at 4:37. This is I think more interesting than good. The first clip is well shot, but it clearly is an unfinished music video because Hendrix himself I think was unsatisfied with his performance. The second is better performed, as it is a improvised performance at what appears to be a party. Regardless, they are worth watching because even when he played below par you can see he is playing at a level above most.
Hat tip Michael Nelson.
A gun to shoot down drones
A company is now marketing to the military a jamming devise, designed like a gun, that acts to shut down all commercially-made drones.
the gun is as simple as point-and-shoot, with a 30 degree cone of effect on whatever target is being aimed at. And a newer version of the device is even attachable to an assault rifle, similar to how one would attach an M203 grenade launcher. “You point in that direction, and when the drone flies into the cone … the cheaper drones would just crash. But the better ones will fly back to base,” he added. “It can also track the drone and follow it back to home and see who was actually flying it.”
The jammer, which really isn’t a gun, is aimed at disarming the commercial drones used in the Middle East by the radical Islamic fighters, who don’t have the technology to build their own more sophisticated weapons. Sadly, I can see a time in the future where ordinary citizens might want one too.
A real look at Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony to Congress
The satire site the Babylon Bee has been hitting home runs all week with a series of posts poking fun at Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg in connection with his appearance this week at a Senate hearing.
- Facebook Staffers Coach Mark Zuckerberg On Humanlike Behavior
- Zuckerberg Begins Testimony By Reminding Senators He Knows All Their Deepest Thoughts, Hopes, Fears
- Zuckerberg Loses Contact Lens During Senate Hearing Revealing Horrifying Lizard Eye
- Zuckerberg Requires House Members To Accept Terms Of Service Before He Testifies
From the last story:
Passing a set of tablets around the room, the tech billionaire asked every person present to read and accept the full 335,000-word, 6-point-font document before they could proceed. “If you would please just click the button signing all of your personal data over to me, yada yada yada, we can get this show on the road,” Zuckerberg said calmly before taking a sip of water. “It’s your basic, no-frills TOS. Nothing to worry about in there, I promise.”
The congressmen quickly skimmed the first of the 1,342 digital pages before clicking “accept” as per their customary approach to signing important legislation as part of their daily jobs, according to sources present.
We must remember that Facebook had previously tried to censor the Bee for publishing “fake news,” and the Bee has clearly not forgiven them for it.
Jupiter’s North Pole, as seen in infrared by Juno
The Juno science team has released an animation that shows, in infrared and in three dimensions, the storms of Jupiter’s north pole.
The link has three videos. One shows the gas giant’s surprisingly irregular magnetic field, as found by Juno. The first and third show a low and a high fly-over of the north pole, in infrared. I have embedded both fly-overs below the fold. First watch the high fly-over, which is the first video. This will make the low fly-over more understandable as it flies over the eight smaller storms that encircle the pole’s central vortex.
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NanoRacks outlines its private space station plans
Capitalism in space: NanoRacks, which already makes money launching private payloads to ISS, has revealed its plans for building its own private space station using converted Atlas 5 upper stages.
This project was previously called Ixion, but they have dropped that name, and will now call the first station Independence-1.
They have a contract with NASA for the initial development, and hope to convince the agency to pay them to next build a full-size test prototype. The video at the link to me was exceedingly unconvincing however. It shows a robot beginning the process of refurbishing a used upper stage while in orbit, and simplifies the process to an almost ludicrous degree. While I surely believe it can be done, it will not be simple. The difficulties should not be dismissed.
April 9, 2018 Zimmerman/Batchelor/Pappalardo podcast
Embedded below in two parts. This podcast actually features science writer Joe Pappalardo talking about Orbital ATK’s effort to make solid rockets competitive in the commercial rocket industry. John Batchelor asked me to join him in asking some questions.
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Renaissance – Mother Russia
An evening pause: Performed live 1977.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
New York to jail man for possessing a legal gun
Fascist New York: A Hawaiian man is going to jail for two years, simply because he mistakenly brought a legally purchased gun into New York City, locked safely in his car.
Officers interviewed Camp’s girlfriend who told them, out of spite, he says, about a weapon he had in his car. In a small compartment behind the seat of his ’85 Chevrolet El Camino, Camp stored a Hi-point .45 pistol he bought legally in Ohio for $140 and that he kept locked away in a safe. When the officers found the weapon, Camp was arrested and charged with a Class C Felony.
His girlfriend had a far-left stance on guns. She said it frightened her to have one in their apartment and so Camp kept it locked safely away in the car to appease her, he explained.
Even his former girlfriend didn’t realize the draconian nature of New York’s gun laws. “I’ve never used it to menace or threaten anyone, especially not her,” Camp said. “She even later told me she regretted turning me in to the police, saying she believed I would ‘just pay a big fine.’”
No matter. New York City does not recognize the second amendment of the Bill of Rights. You do not have the right to bear arms there, even though the threat of gun violence from criminals is far higher than most of the rest of the country.
Note the absurdity of this. New York’s draconian gun control laws were supposedly passed to prevent criminals from getting guns. Instead, they are being used to jail innocent citizens whose only reason for owning a gun is to protect themselves from those illegally armed criminals.
A Martian snake of collapsed hills
Time to once again delve into this month’s release of high resolution images from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The image above, cropped, rotated, and reduced in resolution to post here, shows a string of strange mounds or hills, each with similar collapse features on their tops. If you click on the picture, you can see the full resolution image, rotated properly with north up. You can also go to the MRO post, which provides some additional information.
The white box indicates the location of the cropped close-up, at full resolution, to the right. This area is typical across the entire snake-like ridge. You have these mounds or hills, each with chaotic depressions at their tops. The depressions suggest that this ridge follows an underground void, like a lava tube. The ridge-like nature of the line of hills also suggest that this tube has been exposed by erosion over time, with the surrounding terrain more easily blown or washed away while the more resistant ridge remains.
At the same time, the line of hills is baffling. Why would a lava tube expand periodically to form something that looks like a string of pearls?
The location of this snaking ridge provides some additional context.
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Status update on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
Link here. The story is focused on the decision by NASA to hold off launching a replacement for MRO and instead keep it operating for another decade. In telling this story, however, the article also provides us a detail look at the spacecraft’s present condition.
[A]ging batteries and gyroscopes, used to store electricity and aid navigation, will have to be carefully watched in the coming years to keep the mission going. “We found that they weren’t charging at full capacity,” Tamppari said of the batteries. MRO charges its batteries through its solar arrays while in sunlight. During night passes over Mars, the orbiter draws electricity from its batteries for about 40 minutes during each two-hour lap around the planet. The spacecraft now charges its batteries higher than before, NASA said, and engineers sent up commands for MRO to reduce the draw on the batteries while in shadow.
MRO’s two inertial measurement units are also showing signs of their age. Each redundant unit contains three gyroscopes and three accelerometers, feeding data about the spacecraft’s orientation to on-board computers. One measurement unit likely in the final months of its useful lifetime, Tamppari said, and the other is showing signs of degradation.
Ground controllers found a work-around by implementing an “all-stellar” navigation mode on MRO in March. The new technique allows the orbiter to sense the positions of the stars to determine which way it is pointing. “In all-stellar mode, we can do normal science and normal relay,” said Dan Johnston, MRO project manager at JPL, in a statement released in February. “The inertial measurement unit powers back on only when it’s needed, such as during safe mode, orbital trim maneuvers, or communications coverage during critical events around a Mars landing.”
There’s more at the link. Since MRO is also used as the main communications relay satellite between the Martian ground-based probes and the Earth, the story also outlines the communications capabilities of all spacecraft presently orbiting Mars. All told, it seems that if MRO fails the research on the surface will be significantly impacted, even if the rovers and landers are all still working.
Absurd monument to Yuri Gagarin lambasted
A new monument to honor Yuri Gagarin in Belgrade, Serbia, is meeting with intense criticism and ridicule because of the absurd proportions between the statue, which is of Gagarin’s head, and its overly tall pedestal.
The bust of Yuri Gagarin was ordered by the city council last year, and was put up on a street that bears his name, the Blic news website reports.
But its appearance – a tiny bust on top of a tall plinth – has been met by a hugely negative reaction, the paper says. “The only way you can see it clearly is to launch yourself into the sky,” the Noizz website says. “While this is somewhat symbolic,” adds writer Ivana Stojanov, “there’s certainly no common sense on show”.
You must click on the link to see this.