Capitalism in space: SpaceX has successfully launched a used Dragon cargo ship to ISS using a new Falcon 9 rocket.
They also successfully landed the first stage, the 39th time they have done so. Dragon will arrive at ISS in two days.
The leaders in the 2019 launch race:
6 China
5 SpaceX
4 Europe (Arianespace)
3 Russia
The U.S. has extended its lead over China 9-6 in the national rankings.
North Korea today conducted its first missile tests since November 2017, firing off several short-range “projectiles” into the Sea of Japan.
These are not the long-range ballistic missiles that North Korea was testing two years ago that had the potential of reaching the U.S. Still, this test indicates that this country remains an unpredictable threat to its neighbors and the world. The test also indicates we don’t yet have any agreement from them concerning demilitarization.
Posting has been somewhat mixed this week because Diane and I are out in Oregon at a beach-side hotel in Cannon Beach. We and my oldest friend Lloyd and his family are here to visit and see some sites.
On the right is a picture of the beach and Haystack Rock, which rises more than 230 feet above the sea. We did two hikes to its base, one when the tide was out and you could get very close and see the aquatic life in the tidal pools. Quite beautiful.
This location is where Lewis & Clark first saw the Pacific during their expedition. The local museum, the Cannon Beach History Center & Museum, was fascinating. For one thing I had not known that the town was named after an actual ship cannon from the shipwreck of the American Navy ship the Shark, which foundered here in 1846. The crew was all saved, but the ship and its military equipment were lost.
In October 1846, Lieutenant Howison received information through the Tillamook people that part of the ship’s hull “with guns upon it,” had come ashore south of Tillamook Head. The lieutenant sent Midshipman Simes to visit the location. Simes reported finding the wreckage and succeeded in “getting one cannon above the high-water mark,” while two others were left buried.
Then in December 1863, mail carrier John Hobson reported seeing a cannon at present-day Arch Cape Creek. Soon after, this cannon became lost when tides buried it in sand. In June 1898, however, it was spotted once again-this time by mail carrier George Luce. With the help of his Nehalem neighbors John and Mary Gerritse and their team of horses, Luce succeeded in pulling the cannon out of the sand, after which time it stood in front of the Austin House Post Office in Arch Cape for several years.
Hobson by the way spent the last thirty years of his life, from 1864 to 1894, searching in vain for the cannon. It was only found four years after his death.
The cannon is now in the museum. In addition, the other two cannons were finally found in 2008.
An evening pause: Performed live in 2012 by Luka Sulic and Stjepan Hauser.
Hat tip Danae.
Capitalism in space: With less than fifteen minutes to launch SpaceX has scrubbed its Dragon cargo launch to ISS due to what appears to have been an issue with the drone ship where they had planned to land the first stage.
They are rescheduling for a launch tomorrow.
An evening pause: From 1965.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
Using the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave telescopes astronomers have detected two more gravitational waves.
On April 25, 2019, one of the twin LIGO instruments and the Virgo detector observed a candidate signal which – if confirmed – would be the first binary neutron star merger during the third observation run, which began on April 1. A second candidate signal was seen on April 26, which – if confirmed – could be a never-observed-before collision of a neutron star with a black hole. The latter candidate was observed by both LIGO instruments and the Virgo detector. Dozens of telescopes on the Earth and in space are searching for electromagnetic or astro-particle counterparts. No identification with an electromagnetic transient signal nor a host galaxy has been made to date for either candidate.
The resolution of LIGO and VIRGO are somewhat limited, so other telescopes have to scan a very large part of the sky to spot a counterpart. It is therefore likely that it will be years before the first counterpart event is identified. When it is however it will tell us how far away the event was and confirm what kind of event it was. Right now, they are only making educated guesses.
India’s space agency ISRO has announced that the launch of Chandrayaan-2 will take place in a window from July 9 to July 16, and the landing of its Vikram rover will occur on September 6.
The delay in the landing is probably to allow Chandrayaan-2 to get to the Moon, then review the landing site to make sure it is acceptable.
This is not the first time they have announced a launch schedule for Chandrayaan-2 and then delayed it. This time however I think the dates are firm.
Capitalism in space: Blue Origin is planning to do another New Shepard test flight within the next hour.
You can watch it here.
The flight was successful. It was the fifth flight of this spacecraft and booster. They reached 346,000 feet elevation, about 65 miles.
During the telecast the announcer said that Blue Origin hopes to initiate passenger flights before the end of this year.
Using the station’s robot arm astronauts on ISS have replaced a failed electrical component, restoring the station to full power and allowing a Dragon cargo launch to go forward early tomorrow morning.
The failure had reduced the station’s power by 25%. It also shut down some redundancy in the system that ran the robot arm that will grab and berth Dragon. NASA did not want to do that berthing without that redundancy, which they once again have.
The SpaceX launch is set for 3:11 am (eastern) tonight, or just past midnight on the west coast.
Push back: The lawyers for Kentucky teenager Nick Sandman have filed their third defamation lawsuit, this time against NBC/MSNBC for $275 million.
The previous suits were against the Washington Post for $250 million and CNN for $275 million. All three outlets have had a a truly dismal and partisan track record in the past two decades, which only grew more unreliable with the election of Donald Trump. They repeatedly get their facts wrong, and then refuse to correct the record when it is shown how wrong they were. As a prime example, all three bought into the Russian collusion hoax, spending two years selling the blatantly absurd idea that Donald Trump was a Russian agent who colluded with them to steal the 2016 election.
Trump however is a politician, and an adult. No one is surprised or horrified by that kind of dirty politics. Nick Sandman however was an innocent sixteen-year-old minor, attacked viciously for merely being white, pro-life, and for wearing a MAGA hat. With the evidence available that clearly shows how these leftist news outlets slandered him, all three outlets are very vulnerable to a big loss when this case gets before a Kentucky jury. In fact, I think his lawyers would be fools to settle.
An evening pause: A quick review, with images, of the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. Like them, I was tickled by the gigantic scale of technological improvement that took place in this field in such a relatively short time.
Hat tip Ben K.
