Year: 2019

Eagle undocks, Apollo 11, July 20, 1969

6:01 pm

An evening pause: In honor of the fiftieth anniversary of Apollo 11, today’s evening pause shows the moment when the lunar module Eagle undocked from the command module Columbia. Though this video includes communications with mission control at the start, the actual undocking occurred on the back side of the moon, when the astronauts were out of touch with the Earth.

Near the end of the video, after they have reacquired communications with the ground, you can hear a recitation of a long string of numbers. This is mission control providing the astronauts the numbers that had to be uploaded into their onboard computer so that it could correctly fire the spacecraft engines at the right time and for the right duration.

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A wave on the Moon

3:01 pm

A lunar ejector blanket

Continuing this week’s celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission means we get to look at another cool image from the Moon. The photograph on the right, reduced to post here, was released by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) science team in 2016.

What are we looking at? At first glance it looks like a black & white photograph of The Wave in northern Arizona. What it is instead is the pattern of ejecta laid down across the surrounding terrain immediately after the impact that created relatively fresh Chaplygin Crater. From the website:

The delicate patterns of flow across, over, and down local topography clearly show that ejecta traveled as a ground hugging flow for great distances, rather than simply being tossed out on a ballistic trajectory. Very near the rim lies a dark, lacy, discontinuous crust of now frozen impact melt. Clearly this dark material is on top of the bright material so it was the very last material ejected from the crater.

Below the fold is a wider shot of the entire crater and its surrounding terrain, with the rectangle indicating the region covered by the close-up above The dark crust near the rim mentioned in the quote can clearly be seen.
» Read more

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Off to Grand Canyon again

11:05 am

Diane heading down in 2016

Diane and I are now on our way north to do an overnight hike to Phantom Ranch at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, hiking down tomorrow. We were unable to go together to the Canyon last year for a number of reasons, so this trip will be an especially nice treat. And since we live in Arizona, we have the advantage of being able to simply jump in the car and go. It would be a mistake not to do it.

The photo to the right was taken by me during our 2016 trip. Diane, the tiny blue speak near the bottom of the image, is hiking ahead of me on the South Kaibad trail, the traditional route down for those doing an overnight down and up trip. We shall do the same this weekend.

I will likely do some posting today, while I remain above the rim. I have also scheduled a bunch of posts for the next few days, so the website will not go dark.

Posted heading north from Tucson.

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NASA admits that 1st SLS launch likely to be delayed to 2021

8:43 am

In testimony yesterday at a House hearing NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine twice hinted that SLS’s first launch will not occur as scheduled in 2020, but will be delayed until 2021.

Twice during testimony before the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Bridenstine referenced 2021 as the expected launch date for Artemis-1. “I think 2021 is definitely achievable for the Artemis-1 launch vehicle,” Bridenstine said in response to a question from Sen. Roger Wicker, the Mississippi Republican who chairs the committee.

However, Bridenstine said he would not set a new date for the mission yet.

Meanwhile, internal NASA sources say the launch can’t happen earlier than late 2021, and then only if the agency gets a lot more money, over and above the more than $25 billion that Congress has alocated.

Falcon Heavy was developed for $500 million. It took seven years, and is now operational, having flown three times. If the first launch of SLS does not occur until 2021 it will have taken NASA seventeen years to make that flight, for fifty times the money.

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India reschedules Chandrayaan-2 launch

8:36 am

The new colonial movement: India’s space agency ISRO have rescheduled the launch of Chandrayaan-2 lunar orbiter/lander/rover now for July 22, 2019.

The new launch date apparently requires a very short launch window.

July 15 had offered the most comfortable launch window of 10 minutes for the Mission. But Isro has managed to successfully launch several satellites within one-minute windows in the past. However, delaying beyond July 31 could have potentially reduced the Orbiter’s life around the Moon.

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Protesters continue to block telescope construction in Hawaii

8:20 am

The number of protesters daily blocking access to Mauna Kea in Hawaii and thus prevent the start of construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) grew to more than 2,000 yesterday.

The police arrested 33 people, but did nothing else to clear the road. Meanwhile, Democratic governor David Ige finally took some action, albeit mild.

After a day of growing crowds and arrests of elderly demonstrators, Hawaii Gov. David Ige signed an emergency proclamation giving law enforcement more options to end the blockade. The state hadn’t decided whether to remove protesters from the mountain, but the proclamation makes that an option, Ige said. “We are certainly committed to ensuring the project has access to the construction site,” Ige said. “We’ve been patient in trying to allow the protesters to express their feelings about the project.”

If Ige had moved firmly at the beginning of the week, the situation would likely not have escalated, as it has. Removing the protesters now will be far more difficult.

As is usual for modern reporting, the article spends most of its time promoting the perspective of the protesters. However, it does get one quote from a native Hawaiian who supports the telescope’s construction, and that quote reveals how little this protest has to do with religion:

Some Native Hawaiians say they don’t believe the project will desecrate Mauna Kea. Most of the cultural practices on the mountain take place away from the summit, said Annette Reyes, a Native Hawaiian from the Big Island. “It’s going to be out of sight, out of mind,” she said.

During the legal battle the court took testimony from many native Hawaiians who confirmed this position. Moreover, the public negotiations that produced the agreement to build the telescope (while removing five other telescopes on the mountaintop) included the most important religious leaders among the native population.

This is a power game being played here by the protest leaders. They are vying for power and influence both within their community as well as across Hawaii. Moreover, they want a level of power that will make them immune from any legal or democratic process. If they win they will have obtained the dictatorial right to unilaterally rule, on any issue.

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It no longer makes sense to recycle

5:58 pm

Link here.

For one, China’s decision in 2017 to no longer accept imported recycled materials is still in place, and is likely not to change in the near future..

For decades, the country was content to accept, process, and transform recycled materials from across the globe, but no longer. In July 2017, the government announced new policies that would effectively ban imports of most recyclables, particularly plastics. They went into effect last March. Considering that China has imported a cumulative 45% of plastic waste since 1992, this is a huge deal.

Where once China offered a market for the world’s plastic bottles, tubs, and other packaging to be turned into – for example – polyester clothing, now, that market is gone. This means that recycling costs have skyrocketed. A few years ago, Franklin, New Hampsire could sell recyclables for $6 per ton. Now, it costs the town $125 per ton to recycle that same stuff!

Municipalities across the country are facing this startling arithmetic, so hundreds are choosing the drastically cheaper option: throw most traditionally recycled materials in the trash, instead.

For another, it has become even more obvious that the cost of recycling is more damaging to the environment.

As Kinnaman discovered in a 2014 study – a complete life cycle analysis of the recycling process – it currently doesn’t make much economic or environmental sense to recycle plastic and glass in much of the developed world. Both of these materials are fairly easy on the environment to produce, but oftentimes very tricky and intense to recycle. When you factor in all of the water used to decontaminate plastic and glass, the immense distances traversed transporting them (usually by truck, train or ship), and the mechanical and chemical processes utilized to transform them into new goods, it becomes clear that they are better off in a landfill.

Will these facts cause local governments to change their laws and end recycling? Don’t bet on it. Recycling has never had anything to do with actually saving the environment. Its purpose has always been to make people feel good about themselves. Those emotions make it impossible for most people to consider these facts.

Try it. Tell you friends and family about these facts. You will find yourself faced with an unalterable skepticism that no fact can change.

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House kills Trump impeachment articles, despite large Democratic approval

4:23 pm

The House today defeated articles of impeachment against President Trump by a vote of 332-95, with all 95 votes for coming from Democrats.

While the Democrats voted 137 to 95 to defeat the articles, this vote demonstrates that a very large minority of that party, 40%, are now on record in favor of overturning a legal election, merely because they disagree with the choice of the electorate.

For any ordinary citizen who happens to be a registered Democrat, these events today should cause significant pause. This is no longer a party that believes in elections. Instead, it believes in power and maintaining it, by any means necessary, with a large contingent in that party hostile to the United States. Some are downright anti-American.

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Weird lunar crater

2:58 pm

Concentric crater in Apollo Basin on the Moon

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, it is time for another cool image from the Moon. The photograph on the right, reduced to post here, was taken by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) in 2013. It shows a weird crater with concentric features that is found within Apollo Basin, a large 334-mile-wide double-ringed impact feature in the southern hemisphere of the Moon’s far side.

Concentric craters have an inner rim whose formation mechanism is not yet entirely understood, but the concentric mounds may indicate that there is a discontinuity, such as layers with different strengths, in the subsurface excavated by the impact.

Or to put it more bluntly, they really have no idea why this crater ended up looking as it does.

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Justice Dept dismisses as harmless death threat against Republican

11:08 am

They’re coming for you next: A U.S. attorney has determined that an obscenity-laced phonecall threatening to kill a Republican congressman is harmless, even after it had identified the caller.

The text of the phone call:

Gaetz, you pathetic piece of #$%^. Do you know that I could blow your &’^$”@ head clean off your shoulders from over a mile away. Watch your back, &#%@!. You pathetic little piece of #$%^. You got your head so far up Trump’s ass, I could still take it off your shoulders. &’^$”@ you Gaetz. I’m coming after you, &#%@!.

According th Matt Gaetz (R-Florida), the U.S. attorney “made the determination that this was a closed matter, that they would bring no charges, and that we’re just supposed to deal with that.”

Apparently after interviewing the caller the Justice Department decided he had done nothing wrong, despite the fact that it is against the law to make a death threat, and this is exactly what the caller did.

Video of Gaetz’s television interview, including the actual audio of the call, is below the fold.

It appears from this story that parts of the Justice Department approve of death threats against Republicans.
» Read more

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