Year: 2019

Chick-fil-A banned from another airport

9:34 pm

They’re coming for you next: A second airport has decided to not allow a Chick-fil-A franchise there because its owners are conservative.

New York Assemblyman Sean Ryan, a Democrat, celebrated the decision by the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority (NFTA) and Delaware North to not move forward with plans to bring Chick-fil-A to the Buffalo Niagara International Airport. “A publicly financed facility like the Buffalo Niagara International Airport is not the appropriate venue for a Chick-fil-A restaurant,” Mr. Ryan said in a statement Friday. “I applaud the decision that has been made to remove Chick-fil-A from the plans for this project.”

Mr. Ryan said he opposes the popular chicken chain because of its “long history of supporting and funding anti-LGBTQ organizations.” [emphasis mine]

And exactly what are the evil causes that Chick-fil-A support?

The criticism of Chick-fil-A’s donating practices was renewed last month after the left-wing ThinkProgress released a report saying the chain’s foundation donated $1.8 million in 2017 to Christian and socially conservative groups with an alleged history of anti-LGBTQ bias, including the Salvation Army. The allegations are part of an ongoing backlash against Chick-fil-A that started in 2012 after CEO Dan Cathy, a conservative Christian, revealed his disapproval of gay marriage.

In other words, you are no longer allowed to express any dissent to the idea of gay marriage. You must be silenced, your businesses destroyed, and your families hounded from public life. In fact, why not simply round all these evil Christians up and put them in concentration camps? That would be the best way to stop them from expressing their evil ideas in public.

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Mars Express confirms Curiosity 2013 methane detection

8:40 pm

The uncertainty of science: The Mars Express science team today announced that a reanalysis of the orbiter’s data showed the same spike spike of methane detection as seen by Curiosity on June 15, 2013.

The study exploited a new observation technique, allowing the collection of several hundred measurements in one area over a short period of time. The teams also developed a refined analysis technique to get the best out of their data.

“In general we did not detect any methane, aside from one definite detection of about 15 parts per billion by volume of methane in the atmosphere, which turned out to be a day after Curiosity reported a spike of about six parts per billion,” says Marco Giuranna from the Institute for Space Astrophysics and Planetology in Rome, Italy, the principal investigator for the PFS experiment, and lead author of the paper reporting the results in Nature Geoscience today.

“Although parts per billion in general means a relatively small amount, it is quite remarkable for Mars – our measurement corresponds to an average of about 46 tonnes of methane that was present in the area of 49 000 square kilometres observed from our orbit.”

Ten other observations in the Mars Express study period that reported no detections at the limit of the spectrometer’s sensitivity corresponded to a period of low measurements reported by Curiosity.

The data, along with their estimate about the source location for the methane, suggests that this was a geological event, not the result of biological life. They think the methane was trapped in ice-filled fissures, and released when that ice either broke or melted. Whether the methane itself was formed by past microbial life sometime in the past remains completely unknown.

To put it mildly, there are a lot of uncertainties in this result.

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NASA head says that Falcon Heavy remains a future option for Orion

4:56 pm

At an agency meeting for employees NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine reiterated that NASA is still seriously considering the use of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy for future Orion lunar missions instead of SLS.

Bridenstine then laid out one scenario that has huge implications, not for a 2020 launch, but one later on. Until now, it was thought that only NASA’s Space Launch System could directly inject the Orion spacecraft into a lunar orbit, which made it the preferred option for getting astronauts to the Moon for any potential landing by 2024. However, Bridenstine said there was another option: a Falcon Heavy rocket with an Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage built by United Launch Alliance. “Talk about strange bedfellows,” he mused about the two rocket rivals.

This plan has the ability to put humans on the Moon by 2024, Bridenstine said. He then emphasized—twice—that NASA’s chief of human spaceflight, William Gerstenmaier, has yet to bless this approach due to a number of technical details. His reservations include the challenge of integrating the Falcon Heavy rocket in a horizontal position and then loading Orion with fuel in a vertical configuration on the launchpad. The Falcon Heavy would also require a larger payload fairing than it normally flies with. This would place uncertain stress on the rocket’s side-mounted boosters.

All the problems outlined in the second paragraph are the result of bad past management at NASA. Just as you design your rocket based the rocket engines you have — in order to save time and money — you design your capsule and manned vehicles based on the rockets that are available. NASA did not do this. It built Orion in a fantasy la-la land, without addressing the real world rocket options available. Now it has to either reconfigure, or get SpaceX to rethink the Falcon Heavy. Neither option will be cheap.

Regardless, Bridenstine’s statement is another shot across the bow to the porkmeisters in Congress. SLS is on shaky financial ground. It cannot compete in price with the commercial options. More significantly, it cannot come close to matching the launch rates of the private rockets. In the time NASA could put together one SLS launch, SpaceX could likely fly five to ten Falcon Heavies, and still do it for less money overall.

SLS is now tasked with a December 2020 deadline for launching that first unmanned test flight. Should it fail to meet that date, the political battle lines are now being laid for replacing it.

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Circular feature on Mars?

2:52 pm

A circular feature on Mars?
Click for full resolution image.

Today’s cool image is cool for two reasons. First and foremost, the image, found in the archive of the high resolution camera of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), is titled “Circular Feature.” On the right is the full image, reduced to post here. I have searched it high and low, at low resolution as well as full resolution, and can find nothing, nothing at all, that invokes a circular feature to me.

This strange terrain is located very close to the southern icecap. If anything, the knobs and features that fill this image remind me of brain terrain, partly obscured by a layer of partly melted snow or frost. Nothing however seems circular in the slightest.

The second reason this image is cool is that it is very representative of its very large surrounding region. For what appears to be several hundred miles in all directions this is all that one can see, in a variety of MRO images, here, here, here, here, here, and here, to show only a few. Ever so often a craterlike feature pops out, like in the last example, but generally the surface continues in this undulating bland manner, endlessly. The only changing aspect is the dark streaks that cut across, likely dust devil tracks made over a long period of time.

Below the fold is a section of the full resolution image, at full resolution. It doesn’t really matter where I took the crop, as anywhere in the full image everything looks pretty much the same. The only slow change that I can perceive is that the surface seems to be descending to the north, with the lighter areas implying the existence of terraces.

Take a look, and try to figure out for yourself what is going on here.
» Read more

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Democracy comes to Turkey?

9:26 am

In local elections yesterday the party of Turkey’s long-time president Recep Tayyip Erdogan was pounded by several startling defeats.

The party of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has lost control of the capital, Ankara, in local elections, in a blow to his 16-year rule.

The main opposition is also slightly ahead in the contest for mayor of Istanbul, figures published by the state-run Anadolu news agency suggest.

But the president’s AKP party is challenging the result in both cities.

Municipal elections were held across the nation on Sunday and an AKP-led alliance won more than 51% of the vote. [emphasis mine]

The article at the link hints at a depressed economy as the cause of these defeats, but I wonder if Erdogan’s recent moves trending in support of radical Islam also contributed. I also suspect that Erodgan’s support was actually a lot less than indicated by these numbers. Turkey is not really a democracy as an American would perceive it.

With most media either pro-government or controlled by Mr Erdogan’s supporters, critics believe opposition parties campaigned at a disadvantage. Mr Erdogan’s rallies dominated TV coverage.

The opposition pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) said the elections were unfair and refused to put forward candidates in several cities. Some of its leaders have been jailed on terrorism charges, accusations they reject.

I will not be surprised if the results flip in the coming week’s so that Erdogan’s party retains control in both cities. If this happens, however, I would also expect more turmoil there, as we are also seeing in many other places worldwide. Elections results recently have repeatedly slammed the status quo in places ruled by globalists, leftists, or Islamists. The establishment that has been in control then maneuvers things to nullify those elections.

The result: protests, violence, revolution, and bloodshed. Expect this in Turkey if the vote changes.

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Comedian wins plurality in Ukrainian election; run-off April 21

9:14 am

A Trump-type non-politician who plays a comedian-turned-president has won a plurality in Sunday’s Ukrainian election, with a run-off between the two top vote-getters set for April 21.

Volodymyr Zelensky, who plays a fictional president in a popular TV show, secured 30.4 percent of the vote on Sunday, early results showed. Petro Poroshenko, a billionaire magnate and Ukraine’s current leader, received 17.8 percent. With no-one expected to secure a majority when the final results are confirmed later on Monday, the two largely pro-EU candidates are set to go head-to-head in a run-off vote on April 21.

Though his lead in the first election is large, no one should assume he will win the plurality.

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India launches military satellite plus 28 smallsats

8:47 am

Capitalism in space: India today successfully used its PSLV rocket to launch one Indian military satellite plus 28 smallsats.

The rocket’s fourth stage demonstrated an additional capability.

Monday’s launch, the second of the year for India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), was tasked with a series of maneuvers for the rocket’s upper stage to insert twenty-nine deployable payloads into their pre-planned orbits over the first two hours of its flight.

Following separation of the last payload, the upper stage will maneuver to a final orbit where it will operate as a research platform, hosting three attached payloads to demonstrate this capability for future missions. The launch also tests out a new configuration for the PSLV, a further intermediate between the lightest and heaviest versions of the rocket.

UPDATE: Yesterday China also launched a communications satellite designed to facilitate in-space communications, using its Long March 3B rocket.

The leaders in the 2019 launch race:

4 China
3 SpaceX
3 Europe (Arianespace)
2 Russia
2 India

The U.S. continues to lead China in the national rankings 6 to 4.

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Cruz’s Space Frontier Act reintroduced; extends ISS to 2030

10:33 am

This week a bi-partisan group of senators reintroduced Senator Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) Space Frontier Act.

The bill closely follows last year’s version of the Space Frontier Act, which Cruz and then-Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) shepherded through the Senate. Most of the bill covers efforts to reform commercial launch and remote sensing regulations in parallel with rulemaking activities currently underway by the Commerce and Transportation Departments. The bill also authorizes an extension of the International Space Station from 2024 to 2030 and elevates the Office of Space Commerce within the Commerce Department to the Bureau of Space Commerce.

They have changed one item that caused the House to reject the bill last year, one that exempted space-related bureaucracies from “the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which sets requirements for public meetings by such committees.” I suspect the exemption was an attempt to keep the job simple for these bureaucracies. At the same time, allowing them to function in the dark as they make regulations is not good either.

I have read through the bill [pdf], and my impression is that it really won’t change much. That it mandates the extension of ISS to 2030 however is important, as this means this big government project will continue to be funded, whether or not it makes sense to do so. Many in the space station private sector have said that it would be better that ISS was gone so that their efforts would not have to compete with it. I’m not sure this is true, however. All NASA really has to do to make ISS more commercially viable is to allow more commercial activities on it, including allowing private companies to attach their own modules that they own and control. Should NASA do this, the objections of the private space station community would become moot.

On a positive note, forcing NASA to continue to support ISS — which does have great value — will make it harder for NASA to find money for its Lunar Gateway boondoggle, a project that to my mind has far less obvious value, especially because it will cost far more than ISS to build and operate.

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André Rieu – Hava Nagila

6:01 pm

An evening pause: From the Wikipedia page:

Havah Nagilah…was composed in 1915 in Ottoman Palestine, when Hebrew was being revived as a spoken language after falling into disuse in this form for approximately 1,700 years, following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE and the Bar Kokhba revolt in 132–136 CE. For the first time, Jews were being encouraged to speak Hebrew as a common language, instead of Yiddish, Arabic, Ladino, or other regional Jewish languages.

The lyrics reflect these events:

Let’s rejoice
Let’s rejoice
Let’s rejoice and be happy
Let’s sing
Let’s sing
Let’s sing and be happy
Awake, awake, my brothers!
Awake my brothers with a happy heart
Awake, my brothers, awake, my brothers!
With a happy heart

May we all sing with as much joy.

Hat tip Edward Thelen.

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A look at the March 31 Ukrainian election

4:39 pm

Link here. It appears to be a race between a Trump and two established politicians of mixed qualities.

The choice is stark.

Stay the slow and not-quite-steady course with a deeply unpopular but seasoned leader [incumbent President Petro Poroshenko] who knows the ropes and has taken Ukraine westward despite foot-dragging on reforms and a failure to tackle entrenched corruption.

Go with another veteran [former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko], a political survivor with a dodgy past twice imprisoned by opponents who has lost two presidential elections but is banking on public disappointment and populist promises to carry her to victory.

Or take a chance on a comedian [Volodymyr Zelenskyy]with no experience in politics and governing but who has managed to tap into an antiestablishment mood similar to what’s brought unconventional leaders to power in the West by appealing directly to them for answers.

Right now, the comedian leads in the polls, and in looking at the videos at the link, it sure looks like he is trying to duplicate Trump’s success.

If no one gets 50% in the March 31 election, they will hold a run-off on April 21.

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