BouzoukXp – Belenos
An evening pause: The wonders of technology: all played by the same person.
Hat tip Bob Roberts.
Year: 2020
1st countdown dress rehearsal of SLS core stage scrubbed
The attempt by NASA to conduct a full countdown dress rehearsal of the SLS core stage, including loading its tanks, was scrubbed early in the countdown yesterday when engineers encountered problems loading oxygen into the rocket’s tanks.
An issue with the LOX chilldown process run on Monday meant that the LOX propellant tank couldn’t be filled, which meant that the full WDR test wasn’t possible.
NASA’s post-scrub statement indicated the vehicle systems performed well and that the Core Stage engineering community and the test team at Stennis were working on fixes and determining when the tanking and countdown demonstration parts of the WDR test can be retried.
This dress rehearsal is intended to preparatory to what NASA dubs the Green Run test static fire of the core stage, set to last for the full 500 seconds the core stage would fire during an actual launch. Whether this scrub will prevent that Green Run test from occurring before the end of the year remains unclear. Either way it must happen soon if NASA is to maintain its schedule for the long frequently delayed launch of SLS, now scheduled for November ’21.
Launch abort for Starship high altitude flight
Screen capture from SpaceX live feed at T-1 second.
Click for LabPadre live stream.
The attempt today by SpaceX to fly its eighth prototype of Starship to 40,000 feet aborted at T-1 second, apparently because the rocket’s computers sensed something wrong and shut things down.
They have stood down for the day. At the moment there is no word on when they will try again, though they have a back up launch window for tomorrow, and SpaceX’s policy generally is to move forward quickly. The decision will likely depend on the reasons for the abort. I will bet they will try again tomorrow.
I have revised the the live feed post, removing references to today’s launch abort, since this information is now contained in this post. The live feed post however will remain at the top of the page.
Update on audit of Dominion tabulators in Michigan county
Link here. Because of a lawsuit by a local citizen of Antrim County in Michigan, challenging the results of the vote count there, the court had granted that citizen access to the Dominion tabulator machines to obtain their data and do a full audit of the manner in which those machines counted the vote.
The article describes the effort to get that data, including the failed attempt by one local official to delay or block it. To protect the machines, citizens volunteered to stand guard for an entire weekend to make sure they were not tampered with before the lawyers and their software experts could access them.
The result?
After 8 hours, the collection was complete. With 16 CF cards (similar to SIM cards), 16 thumb drives, and forensic images of the Dominion voting machines in hand, the IT team was escorted to the local Antrim County Airport by two Antrim County Sheriff vehicles, where they boarded their jet plane with evidence in hand.
Two of the patriots followed attorney Matthew DePerno for at least half of his long drive home. Like many Americans, these patriots simply wanted to ensure the safety of a man who has risked so much to protect our right to free and fair elections.
Mr. DePerno expects to have the results of the study sometime tomorrow. He explained the forensic images of the thumb drives and the master computer would tell if machines were connected to the internet—and if they were, who were they communicating with? DePerno said the examination would be able to determine the algorithms used by the computer and will provide the number of ballots read through the machine compared to the actual number of paper ballots.
Every American should be demanding this be done with every computer tabulator nationwide, if only to reassure Americans that the vote was not faked by computer trickery.
That an unelected county official resisted such an audit however is very suspicious and indicates his incompetency. Regardless of how the audit comes out, this man, Peter Garwood, should be removed from office immediately. He does not appear to be properly representing the citizens. If he was, he would have gladly cooperated.
Landslides on the edge of Mars’ youngest lava field
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped to post here, was taken by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on September 28, 2020. It shows several indentations in a north-south cliff face, with debris apparently falling down into a flat plain to the east.
The scientific history of this picture is very interesting. The first photo of these landslides was taken in 2006 and was titled, “Landslides on Flat Topography in Elysium Planitia”. The second, taken a few months later in 2007 to produce a stereoscopic view, was labeled “Landslides Along Shoreline in Elysium Planitia.” This most recent 2020 image is merely labeled “Landslides in Elysium Planitia.”
Is the flat terrain to the west a seabed to an ancient ocean, as suggested by the title for the 2007 image, with these landslides erosion caused in the far past by water lapping up against these cliffs?
» Read more
Sunspot update: November most active sunspot month since 2017
My monthly sunspot for December is late this month because I simply forgot to do it. (Thanks to reader Phill Oltmann for prodding my memory.)
Below is NOAA’s monthly graph for tracking the Sun’s monthly sunspot activity, annotated by me to show the past solar cycle predictions.
The increasing sunspot activity we saw in October continued spectacularly in November. In fact, the amount of activity was the most seen since the summer of 2017, when the last solar maximum gave us its last big outburst.
About 300K excess deaths in 2020 based on untrustworthy CDC data
Two different analyses today took a closer look at the Johns Hopkins report last week that claimed there were no excess deaths in 2020, despite the COVID-19 epidemic.
Though I remain unconvinced that the Wuhan virus is the plague that the fear-mongers keep claiming, the first story makes a good argument, using CDC statistics, that there have been excess deaths in 2020, though this same analysis makes no claim as to the cause of those excess deaths. The conclusion:
» Read more
SpaceX’s Starlink constellation wins $885 million in federal subsidies
Capitalism in space: In awarding $9.2 billion in subsidies to providers of rural high-speed internet to rural customers, the FCC gave $885 million of this allocation to SpaceX’s Starlink constellation.
SpaceX was not the biggest beneficiary, however.
Most of the RDOF Phase I subsidies are going to terrestrial broadband service providers, led by LTD Broadband with an award of $1.32 billion. CCO Holdings, a subsidiary of Charter Communications, is due to serve 1.05 million sites around the country, leading the list for that metric.
The FCC said 85% of the 5.2 million sites to be served would get gigabit-speed broadband. SpaceX is due to serve nearly 643,000 sites with download speeds of 100 megabits per second or more.
Regardless of its good intentions, this distribution of federal cash sickens me. These companies don’t need it to do what they are doing, and are all sure to make plenty of profit without it. The federal government meanwhile is trillions in debt. It has to print money to give this away, something that is not going to go well in the long run.
Chang’e-5 ascender sent to crash on Moon
The new colonial movement: Even as the Chang’e-5 orbiter/return capsule awaits its window for leaving lunar orbit, Chinese engineers have separated the ascender capsule that brought the samples from the surface and sent it to crash on the Moon.
This decision makes sense, as lunar orbits tend to be unstable, and to leave the ascender there after the orbiter and return capsule leave could make it a piece of uncontrollable space junk threatening future missions.
The engine burn that will send the orbiter/return capsule back to Earth is expected early December 12th, with the return capsule landing in China on December 16th.
Scientists find method to store natural gas as a solid
Scientists at the National University in Singapore have found a way to quickly convert natural gas into a solid that is much safer to store while using far less space.
The end product is much more convenient and safer to store and transport. As a block of ice it’s shrunk in volume by 90 times, and is non-explosive and stable enough to be stored in a regular freezer at -5 °C (23 °F). The new method also apparently requires less toxic additives than usual.
It also takes only 15 minutes to convert. Essentially, the natural gas is chemically contained within a block of ice. The video at the link explains the entire concept nicely.
Chuck Yeager, 1923-2020
R.I.P. Chuck Yeager, the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound passed away today at the age of 97.
A World War II flying ace, Gen. Yeager achieved his greatest fame by flying on Oct. 14, 1947, the experimental Bell X-1 at the speed of sound, Mach 1, in level flight at 45,000 feet — the first man to do so.
The achievement was not announced to the public though until June 1948 for security reasons.
Yeager epitomized the greatest generation, flying in combat in World War II, and commanding fighter squadrons in both the Korean and Vietnamese wars. More significantly, his 1947 supersonic flight was achieved with two broken ribs, caused when he fell from a horse the week before. He told none of his commanders, and flew anyway.
Pearl Harbor: The Last Word
A evening pause: On the anniversary of Japan’s unprovoked sneak attack on the United States, let’s hear what it was like to be a sailor on the U.S. battleships sunk during that attack, from interviews recorded four years ago for the 75th anniversary of the attack.
And did I mention it was an unprovoked sneak attack? The Japanese of that time brought the war upon themselves. Hiroshima and Nagasaki was their fault, not ours.
I wonder, would today’s Americans have the will to win, for freedom and the rule of law, as 1940s Americans did? Based on our response to 9/11, I think not. Based on our terror of a flu-like illness today, I know not. The tragedy of this is beyond words.