Marbles, Magnets, and Music (Synchronized)
An evening pause: Hat tip Phill Oltmann.
Year: 2018
American embassy opens in Jerusalem in May
In order to coincide with the 70th anniversary of Israeli independence, the Trump administration today announced that the American embassy will officially open in Jerusalem in May 2018.
Officials told Fox News the embassy would initially be located in the neighborhood of Arnona on a compound that currently houses the consular operations of the U.S. Consulate General Jerusalem. Initially, the embassy will consist of the Ambassador and a small team. Nauert said that the Consulate General would “continue to operate as an independent mission with an unchanged mandate” from its Agron Road location.
An official also told Fox News that the hope is for the U.S. to develop only a “footprint” there in May, with a target of a fuller complement and facility by the end of 2019.
Much of this is therefore symbolic, but symbolism in diplomacy is often everything. More important, this action lends weight to the likelihood that Trump is firm in keeping this campaign promise, a campaign promise that every past Republican president since the 1990s failed to keep.
You might not like Trump, but an honest appraisal has to give him credit for one thing. He keeps his campaign promises. He said he’d cut taxes. He cut taxes. He said he’d shut down illegal immigration. Everything he has done indicates a sincere effort to do so. He said he’s cut regulation and neuter the EPA. He has done so, in a manner not seen by a president in my lifetime.
While I can certainly criticize Trump for a number of things, including his unwillingness to really cut spending and waste in the federal government, I would dishonest if I did not credit him for this.
Sunspot update for February 2018
It’s time for my monthly sunspot update. On Sunday NOAA posted its monthly update of the solar cycle, covering sunspot activity for February 2018. Below the fold is my annotated version of that graph.
Sunspot activity in February continued the low activity seen in November, December, and January, with November 2017 still the most inactive month for sunspots since the middle of 2009. In fact, the low activity we are seeing now is somewhat comparable to the low activity seen during the ramp down to solar minimum in the first half of 2008. By the end of that year we had hit solar minimum, the deepest and longest in a hundred years, suggesting that we might even hit solar minimum before the end of this year. That would have this happen at least a year earlier than all predictions.
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Utah concealed-carry class for teachers largest ever
A Utah concealed-carry class, organized for teachers and college students, had the largest sign-up ever, about 1,000 people total, with many coming in direct response to the Parkland shooting.
About 1,000 people signed up, which organizers said likely made it the largest concealed carry course ever taught in the state. Concealed firearms may be carried with a permit inside all Utah public schools and universities. “It’s been a very positive reaction,” said Sam Robinson, co-owner of Utah Gun Exchange, which organized the event in the wake of the Florida massacre. “There are a lot of people who want to learn more, who want to become more engaged and take a more active role in the defense of our schools — so they at least have the opportunity to be the last line of defense.”
On the four-hour class agenda: firearm safety, handling, transportation, storage and laws, plus basic tactical skills that instructors said might come in handy during a school shooting. Media were not allowed inside, to “protect the privacy of people who are here,” Robinson said, adding organizers wanted to ensure attendees were not “shamed” for their beliefs about gun rights. [emphasis mine]
The two highlighted quotes are important. First, if safety is a big concern for your kids, Utah is clearly where you should send them. Ordinary citizens, properly trained, are allowed the tools to defend themselves and others.
Second, it is entirely understandable for the organizers to restrict the media’s access to the classes. It would not be there to report, but to continue the hatefest against ordinary Americans who wish to exercise their second amendment rights, in a responsible manner.
I have taken Arizona’s concealed carry class, as well as attended gun training classes in Maryland. Attendance ranged from 15 to 50. A turnout of 1000 people for a single class is astonishing. It is a strong indication that the winds favor the idea of properly allowing teachers and college students the ability to defend themselves. It also suggests that, should politicians decided to eliminate gun-free zones, they would score political points, even as the media and the left were certain to go insane over it.
America’s first space weatherman gets to say “Go!” again
John Meisenheimer, the launch weather officer who gave the go-ahead for the first successful American satellite launch, Explorer 1 on January 31, 1958, was honored at the 60th anniversary of that first launch by having him to give the go-ahead for GovSat 1, launched on January 31, 2018.
The story is very touching, especially because Meisenheimer had scrubbed the Explorer 1 launch twice previously because he did not trust the weather. In 1958 he alone had that power, and no one questioned it. When the rocket flew, it was because he had decided the weather was no longer an issue.
China’s space station delayed to 2020
Because of redesign work required on its Long March 5 rocket, China revealed today that the launch of the first module, Tianhe, of their planned space station, has now been set for 2020.
Launch of Tianhe had earlier been planned for 2018, but the launch failure in July last year of the Long March 5 rocket, a heavy-lift launch vehicle required to loft the 20-tonne space station modules to low Earth orbit, meant a delayed schedule.
The next attempt at a Long March 5 launch, which will send a large telecommunications satellite into a geostationary transfer orbit, will take place from Wenchang in the second half of 2018. If that is successful, it will pave the way for a test launch of the low Earth orbit variant of the rocket, the Long March 5B, around June 2019. The follow-up flight will then launch the Tianhe module, now set to take place in 2020.
During the Soviet era, it was not unusual for the Russians to suddenly invent a new variant of a rocket or space capsule in order to provide cover for their need to redesign or fix problems. That is what I think is happening here. Until the still unexplained launch failure of Long March 5 in July 2017, I had never heard of a Long March 5B. It was the Long March 5 that was going to do all the heavy lifting.
Now we suddenly have a Long March 5B, a “low Earth orbit variant of the rocket.” I increasingly suspect that the problems with Long March 5 were so serious that they have caused a complete redesign. It was able to get its first payload into orbit, but not its second. The failure was not accompanied by any catastrophic event, which suggested, based also on later reports, that the rocket’s first stage engines simply under-performed significantly. I wonder now if what China is doing now is making that weak rocket the 5B, while they redesign the 5 so it can lift the big payloads required.
We also cannot trust them entirely with the naming they use of their rocket for each launch. The next Long March 5 launch in 2018 might actually be the 5B variant, without the name, and the so-called first test of the 5B in June 2019 might actually be the first test of the full powered 5.
Wheels within wheels!
Testing of Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engine continues
Though he released few details, a Blue Origin company official noted at a conference last week that the company has been continuing its tests of the BE-4 engine.
“We’re getting longer duration burn times. We’re going though validating the turbomachinery very closely,” said Jim Centore, group lead for orbital mission operations at Blue Origin, during a panel discussion on launch systems at the conference. Centore didn’t disclose many details about those tests, such as thrust levels or the burn times, either of individual tests or cumulatively. “We’re continuing to make good progress,” he said. “We’ll continue that for the next several months.”
The BE-4 is the linchpin for numerous other future rockets. Blue Origin wants to use it for building its New Glenn rocket. ULA is considering it as the first stage engine for its Vulcan rocket. In both cases, design and construction of the rockets themselves can’t really proceed until the engine is locked down.
March 1, 2018 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
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Lorde – Glory and Gore
An evening pause: Strange, but done incredibly well.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
More weird Mars geology
Cool image time! Yesterday the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter team released 460 images taken by the spacecraft’s high resolution camera, HiRISE, as part of their normal and routine image release program. Obsessed with space exploration as I am, I like to scan through these new images to see if there is anything interesting hidden there that will show up eventually in a press release. For example, the first image in this release is a look at Vera Rubin Ridge and Curiosity. I would not be surprised if there is a press release soon using this image, probably aimed at outlining the rover’s future route up Mount Sharp. (The present overview traverse map is getting out of date.)
Sometimes however I find images that might never get a press release but probably deserve it. The image on the right, reduced in resolution to show here, is one such example. It is a strip taken from rim to rim across an unnamed crater located in the mid-northern latitudes of Mars, west of Olympus Mons. A review of past images by other Mars orbiters/probes suggests that no good high resolution image of this crater had ever been taken before.
If you click on the image on the right, or go to the actual image site, you can see the original in full resolution. It is definitely worthwhile doing this, because the strip shows some strange and inexplicable geology on the floor of the crater as well in its confusing central peak region. Numerous features appear to have been exposed by later erosion. The many small craters for example are I think what planetary geologists call pedestal craters. The surrounding terrain is less erosion-resistant, so as that terrain erodes away it leaves the crater behind, with its floor actually sitting higher than the surrounding flats.
What makes these craters even weirder however is that their rims appear to have eroded away even more than the surrounding terrain, so that all of these small craters (assuming that is what they are) have ringlike depressions surrounding a circular platform.
In the crater’s central peak region the terrain is even more strange. Sticking up out of the ground are some arched short ridgelines, which appear to have been exposed by erosion. That peak area however also has many strange flow features that I find completely baffling. It almost appears to me that as the molten peak area started to solidify after impact, someone went in with a stirring spoon and did some mixing!
The map below the fold provides the location context for this crater, with the crater’s location indicated by the arrow.
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Hayabusa-2 spots its target asteroid
In anticipation of a rendezvous later this year, Japan’s Hayabusa-2 space probe this week made its first visual detection of its target asteroid, Ryugu.
The data and images confirm that the spacecraft is on the correct course for a mid-year arrival, followed by a year and a half of observations using its ion engine.
The left’s hatefest continues
Just thought I put up a few more links of stories illustrating the hate, intolerance, and bigotry of the left.
- Children of Pamela Geller Harassed, threatened and Lose Talk Show After Daily Beast Doxes Them
- New Hampshire store owner bans Republican customers, says they’re ‘evil’
- Chuck Schumer votes against South Carolina federal judge nominee because he’s white
- Louis Farrakhan: ‘Jews are my enemy,’ ‘white folks are going down’
- ADL: Say, Louis Farrakhan seems pretty popular with Women’s March founders
- The Photo That Never Saw The Light of Day: Obama With Farrakhan In 2005
Note that the last four stories demonstrate the bigotry that is ingrained within the Democratic Party itself, while the first two stories demonstrate the cultural intolerance of the supporters of that party. Team them up, give them some election wins, and no one should be surprised when they start arresting their political opponents.
Expect more stories in the same vein in the coming days.