Year: 2018

The two things SpaceX must do for NASA to okay the first manned Dragon mission

10:08 am

Link here.

First, they must successfully recover the Dragon capsule from the first unmanned test flight in November so that they can use it in a launch abort test to follow.

Second, they must demonstrate seven successful flights of the Block 5 version of the Falcon 9 rocket.

Right now it appears that, though the schedule is very very tight, it is possible that SpaceX will be able to accomplish these tasks in time to do its manned flight in April 2019, as presently scheduled. At the moment SpaceX’s launch schedule calls for 11 Falcon 9 launches between now and April. Getting seven Block 5 launches should therefore be likely, though not certain, since some of those launches will probably not use the final full Block 5 configuration.

I notice that the article makes no mention of the massive paperwork that the GAO says must be done before a manned flight. No surprise. In the end the paperwork will not delay this mission, despite what the GAO and NASA’s bureaucracy says.

UPDATE: NASA has now withdrawn its objections to SpaceX’s fueling plans. This is also no surprise, as their objections to fueling the rocket while astronauts were on board were always bogus. The risks are essentially the same whether you fuel before boarding or after. Either way, there is a lot of very explosive fuel present. To say NASA’s way, fueling first, is the only way never made sense.

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UK estimates its new spaceport could capture thousands of smallsat launches

9:51 am

Capitalism in space: Estimates by the United Kingdom’s space agency suggest that its new spaceport in Scotland could capture thousands of smallsat launches by the end of the 2020s.

Figures released … suggest that existing ‘rideshare’ small satellite launches (small satellites piggybacking on larger missions) are capable of meeting less than 35% of the total demand. This reveals a significant gap in commercial small satellite launch provision for which future UK spaceports are well placed to compete.

The press release also gives an update on the recent actions of the two smallsat rocket companies, Orbex and Lockheed Martin (in partnership with Rocket Lab), to establish operations in Scotland.

It remains to be seen whether these predictions will come true. Right now it appears that a giant boom in the smallsat industry is about to happen, and if it does the need for launchpads will become critical. If so, the policy shift in the UK to favor private spaceflight is arriving at just the right time.

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The history of SpaceX’s Big Falcon Rocket

9:42 am

Link here. This is a ten part very detailed history, and includes a great deal of background into the history of SpaceX as well. Very much worth reading.

In the end, I remain skeptical that this rocket will end up being built as SpaceX presently envisions it. I also believe however that out of this engineering research will come a new rocket that is nonetheless revolutionary.

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Magnetism helps shape Jupiter’s colorful jet stream bands

9:38 am

The uncertainty of science: New computer models, combined with new data from Juno, suggest that magnetism explains why Jupiter’s colored jet stream bands go as deep below the visible cloud-tops as they do.

Dr Navid Constantinou from the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences, one of the researchers on the study, said that until recently little was known about what happened below Jupiter’s clouds. “We know a lot about the jet streams in Earth’s atmosphere and the key role they play in the weather and climate, but we still have a lot to learn about Jupiter’s atmosphere,” he said. “Scientists have long debated how deep the jet streams reach beneath the surfaces of Jupiter and other gas giants, and why they do not appear in the sun’s interior.”

Recent evidence from NASA’s spacecraft Juno indicates these jet streams reach as deep as 3,000 kilometres below Jupiter’s clouds.

Co-researcher Dr Jeffrey Parker from Livermore National Laboratory in the United States said their theory showed that jet streams were suppressed by a strong magnetic field. “The gas in the interior of Jupiter is magnetised, so we think our new theory explains why the jet streams go as deep as they do under the gas giant’s surface but don’t go any deeper,” said Dr Parker.

This theory is intriguing, but very tentative, to put it mildly.

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Computer simulations suggest solar system was partly shaped by star flyby

9:29 am

The uncertainty of science: New computer simulations now suggest that the solar systems outer regions were shaped by the near approach of another sun-like star billions of years ago.

Susanne Pfalzner and her co-workers suggest that a star was approaching the Sun at an early stage, ‘stealing’ most of the outer material from the Sun’s protoplanetary disk and throwing what was left over into inclined and eccentric orbits. Performing thousands of computer simulations they checked what would happen when a star passes very close-by and perturbs the once larger disk. It turned out that the best fit for today’s outer solar systems comes from a perturbing star which had the same mass as the Sun or somewhat lighter (0.5-1 solar masses) and flew past at approximately 3 times the distance of Neptune.

However, the most surprising thing for the researchers was that a fly-by does not only explain the strange orbits of the objects of the outer solar system, but also gives a natural explanation for several unexplained features of our Solar System, including the mass ratio between Neptune and Uranus, and the existence of two distinct populations of Kuiper Belt objects.

An intriguing result, but to put it mildly it carries a great deal of uncertainty. If true, however, it suggests — as does other research — that our solar system might be somewhat unique. The other research into the solar system’s history suggests we have been traveling through galactic quiet regions for a long time, which helped make things more friendly for the development of life. Together all this work says that in the beginning the solar system was in crowded regions, with its later history then drifting into empty regions.

Thus, the history of our solar system within the galaxy might play a very important part in why we are here.

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There were Viking cats

12:02 am

News you can use: New research now suggests that cats spread through human society, with the second wave involving sea-faring people such as the Vikings.

The first wave is a story you’re probably familiar with. When the team looked the mitochondrial DNA – genetic information that’s passed on from the mother only – they found that wild cats from the Middle East and the fertile eastern Mediterranean shared a similar mitochondrial lineage.

This suggests that small wild cats spread through early agricultural communities, because they were attracted to the mice that were attracted to the grains. The farmers likely encouraged their presence, because, let’s face it, those rodent-killing machines would have been mighty cute company.

Then, thousands of years after this, the research points to a separate mitochondrial connection between cats descended from those in Egypt to ones in Eurasia and Africa. “A mitochondrial lineage common in Egyptian cat mummies from the end of the 4th century BC to the 4th century AD was also carried by cats in Bulgaria, Turkey and sub-Saharan Africa from around the same time,” Callaway reports.

This second wave of expansion has been attributed to ancient sea-faring people – farmers, sailors, and Vikings – because the cats were likely encouraged to stay on board to keep their rodent problem in check.

It makes perfect sense. Our ruling lords needed more space, and thus they compelled humans to begin the great explorations that eventually allowed them to conquer the western hemisphere, as well as the internet.

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Scientists create coldest spot ever on ISS

5:29 pm

Using a compact lab called the Cold Atom Lab and launched to ISS in a Cygnus freighter in May, scientists have now successfully created coldest spot ever.

The government agency created atoms known as Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) for the first time in orbit to focus on their unusual quantum behavior. A team of astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) was able to take the Cold Atom Lab (CAL), which was loaded with lasers and a vacuum chamber, to understand how BECs interact with gravity.

…The scientists produced the BECs with temperatures as “as low as 100 nanoKelvin, or one ten-millionth of one Kelvin above absolute zero,” NASA added, in the statement. Zero Kelvin, also known as absolute zero, is the equivalent of minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit. The average temperature of space is approximately 3 Kelvin or minus 454 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a sense, they didn’t so much create a cold spot as create conditions that allowed the Bose-Einstein condensates to form so that they could study them. The article provides some background about this research, which is focused mostly on trying to figure out how to unify quantum mechanics (which explains the interactions at the atomic level) with general relativity (which explains the actions of matter and energy at large scales). Physicists have been trying unify both for decades, with little success.

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Fascist who attacked conservative protesters with bike lock goes free

3:42 pm

Fascism means never having to say you’re sorry: Eric Clanton, the fascist masked antifa protester who used a bike lock to smash conservative protesters on the head has struck a deal with Berkeley prosecutors that dismisses most of the charges against him and subjects him merely to three years prohibition.

Eric Clanton had been linked by police to violent assaults with a metal bike lock during a “free speech” rally in Berkeley on April 15, 2017. Before his arrest, Clanton had been “outed” online, on the website 4chan, as someone who used a bike lock to strike a man in the head. The assault was captured in a video clip that drew widespread attention and anger after it was posted on YouTube.

Wednesday, Clanton was supposed to have had his preliminary hearing, where a judge decides whether there’s enough evidence in a case for it to move ahead to trial. Instead, there was no hearing, and information about Clanton’s plea deal became available online.

According to Alameda County Superior Court records, Clanton entered a “no contest” plea Wednesday to one misdemeanor battery charge. The felony charges against him were dismissed, and an allegation that he had caused serious bodily injury was stricken. A misdemeanor charge that Clanton wore a mask during the commission of the crime also was dropped.

I am not surprised. Leftists are never called to account for their evil acts, no matter how well documented. Clanton has temporarily lost his college teaching job, but don’t worry for him. I am sure some college will soon hire him. He has all the right qualifications!

And if you doubt the evil that this man did, watch the video at the link. Though it is difficult to identify him in that clip, other evidence links him to this violent act of smashing another person in the head with a bike lock.

Three years from now, when his prohibition ends, I am sure he will be out there again, using violence to attack anyone who disagrees with him. And don’t be surprised if he comes for you next:

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Weird Martian crater?

1:17 pm

Weird crater on Mars

Time for another cool image! The image on the left, cropped to post here, was taken by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on May 31, 2018, and shows a very strange layered mesa sitting in what looks like a crater or collapse feature. If you click on the image you can see the entire picture.

The location of this image is out in the middle of the vast northern plains of Mars. This region has few pronounced features, and generally sits at a lower elevation to the rest of Mars. It is suspected by some scientists that an intermittent ocean was once here, and that we are looking at the floor of a now dry sea.

This image was part of the July image release from MRO, and thus included no caption. They simply refer to it as a layered feature. It sits about a half mile (about 800 meters) to the west of a rough and indistinct cliff that drops down into an area of rougher terrain. This suggests that if this was formed by an impact, it cut down into that lower rougher layer, and since the impact there has been some upwelling from below creating the layered mesa.

I would not take my hypothesis very seriously, however. This feature could have nothing to do with an impact. It might also have been a mesa that now sits in a collapsed sinkhole. Or not. I could come up with many theories, all of which are likely wrong. What I do see here is something that geologically is very strange and baffling.

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Yesterday’s election

11:03 am

The elections that took place yesterday indicated both good and bad things for the future of the United States. First, every socialist candidate who was endorsed and campaigned-for by socialist and Democratic candidate for Congress Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was defeated. It appears that Americans are not yet convinced that socialism, a nice word for communism and its centrally-controlled society, is the way to go.

At the same time, her candidates did get a lot of votes in every one of their primary races. From this we can surmise that Democratic Party voters are increasingly enthusiastic about the idea of a full government take over of all aspects of our society, including the end of private property and capitalism, as advocated by Ocasio-Cortez. In the past such candidates would not have been able to garner more than a handful of votes. That has changed, and in a bad direction.

Similarly, it appears that the conservative Republicans supported by Trump were almost all winners. Yet, most won by the skin of their teeth. Worse, supporters of the Democratic Party almost immediately questioned the legitimacy of these wins, with some claiming that it could only have happened because of Russian interference.

Expect more of this in the future. It really appears that most Democrats truly believe that all decent people agree with them, and that only racists and bigots or Russian plants vote against Democratic candidates. If they win back power in any election they are going to move to oppress their opponents. They’re coming for you next.

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Laid off workers supported by Hamas, take over UN refugee headquarters

10:41 am

Chaos in Gaza: Union workers for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) have seized control of its headquarters in protest of lay-offs caused by the withdrawal of financial support by the United States.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) announced last month more than 250 staff in Gaza and Judea and Samaria would lose their jobs, after a $300 million cut in annual funding from the United States. The redundancies have prompted daily protests by the agency’s labour union in the enclave, which UNRWA’s Gaza head said have led to security concerns. “They have taken over the compound where my office and other offices are,” said Matthias Schmale.

The agency’s Gaza chief admitted UNRWA does not have full control over the site, in Gaza City, explaining he has not been able to access his own office for more than two weeks. “I am the captain of the ship which has 13,000 sailors on it and they have basically thrown me off the bridge and consigned me to my captain’s quarters,” he told AFP, referring to the number of employees in Gaza.

Schmale accused the labor union of multiple incidents of “threatening and intimidating other fellow Palestinian staff. For me that crosses a red line. … I am very concerned about the safety and security of my Palestinian colleagues,” he added.

It appears the take over is backed by Hamas.

What we are seeing here is the possible collapse of the entire UN/Arab structure that has for decades used the Arab refugees from Israel — and their descendants — as political pawns. Rather than repatriate these people into Egypt or Jordan, both countries as well as the entire Arab world, with the help of the UN and sadly a lot of U.S. money, forced them into refugee camps and thus used them as a hammer against Israel

Without U.S. financial support, however, this ploy cannot work. The protests and violence coming from Gaza in the past year has been a response to this collapse. Hamas has depended on that funding to keep itself in power. Without it, it cannot pay off its supporters.

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