Year: 2020

The muzzle of oppression

1:58 pm

WHO's do's and don't's for mask use
For the full images, go here and here.

Previously I had labeled the masks that our control-freak society is demanding everyone wear, wherever they go and whatever they do, as a mask of ignorance. While the evidence is still uncertain on whether high quality masks, used properly, can stop the spread of COVID-19, the improper use of masks guarantees that they will contribute to the virus’s spread.

Take a look at the WHO graph to the right. Do you use the mask as they advise? I guarantee you do not. Masks are routinely handled all the time, are reused, are not kept antiseptic, and are not made of the right materials. Rather than blocking the virus, people are instead wearing a pathogen gatherer on their face, exactly where they breath.

No wonder the number of cases have been skyrocketing worldwide. I would not be surprised at all if the widespread improper use of unsanitary masks since the early summer has contributed to that rise.

I however no longer see masks as simply a symbol of ignorance. I now see masks as a symbol of oppression, and the willingness of Americans to submit to that oppression, without a whimper. In fact, the mask will prevent anyone from really hearing that whimper. It tells everyone you are willing to be silenced and subjugated, like a dog..
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A spray of Martian meteorites

12:27 pm

A spray of small secondary impacts
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on October 26, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It is what the camera team calls a “terrain sample,” meaning it was not specifically requested by a researcher but was instead chosen by the camera team because they need to regularly take images to maintain the camera’s temperature. When they do this, they try to pick a location that hasn’t been photographed in high resolution previously, and that might have some interesting features. Sometimes the photo is boring. Sometimes they hit pay dirt.

In this case, the photo captured an small impact crater, about 1,300 feet across, surrounded by a spray of secondary impacts. The color portion of the image shows what I suspect are dust devil tracks cutting across a surface that, because of its blue tint, is either rough or has frost or ice within it. At 48 degrees north latitude, the possibility of the latter is high, especially because this location is northwest of the Erebus mountains, where SpaceX has its prime Starship candidate landing zone and where scientists suspect ice is readily available very close to the surface. The overview map below shows this context.
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LRO looks at Yutu-2

9:40 am

Yutu-2's travels on the Moon through October 2020
Click for full image.

The new colonial movement: The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) science team today released an update of the travels of China’s Yutu-2 lunar rover, presently operating on the far side of the Moon.

The photo to the right, reduced and annotated to post here, shows the rover’s present position, having traveled about 1,650 feet to the northwest in the 22 months since landing. The goal, according to Yutu-2’s science team, is to get the rover beyond the present ejecta field of debris thrown from a large impact to the north, and reach a basalt covered region about a mile away. At the pace they are setting, about 100 feet per lunar day, it is going to take them about another three years to get there. Whether the rover will last that long is the question, but I suspect they are hopeful, based on the almost two years of operations so far.

If you go to the link you can also see a short movie showing month-by-month where the rover ended up when it shut down for each long lunar night.

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Chang’e-5 lands on Moon

9:09 am

The new colonial movement: According to official Chinese reports, Chang’e-5 has successfully soft-landed on the Moon in preparation for its gathering of samples to bring back to Earth.

The Chang’e 5 lander began final descent at 09:58 EST (14:58 UTC) with an expected touchdown 15 minutes later at 10:13 EST (15:13 UTC).

All broadcasts of the event were abruptly stopped just before the landing burn was to begin — throwing the mission into question with CCTV in China at first saying landing coverage would resume at 21:00 EST — an 11 hour delay to the landing. Minutes later, official sources — via social media — proclaimed a successful landing.

Blocking a broadcast like this is very typical of totalitarian governments, and totalitarian societies. Think about that the next time Youtube or Google or Facebook or Twitter or an American university silences speech they don’t like.

As for the lander, all other news reports that I have so far found provide no further details. It appears that all we know comes from a single sentence announcement of success from the Chinese press.

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Arecibo’s suspended instrument platform has collapsed onto dish

8:59 am

The suspended 900-ton instrument panel of the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico collapsed early today, crashing down onto the radio telescope’s dish.

[Ramon Lugo, director of the Florida Space Institute at the University of Central Florida] says no one was near the dish when the platform fell. But he did not have all the details on how the structure came down. He believes it was because of a failure of one of the remaining cables connecting the platform to one of three support towers. These cables were carrying extra stress following the two previous failures. And since the Thanksgiving holiday, Lugo says, wires were breaking in these remaining cables at a rate of about one a day. He says he told NSF the structure only had a week or two remaining before it would collapse.

They plan on figuring out exactly what caused the collapse, but that is only to facilitate the planned decommissioning and removal of the telescope.

To me, this is another indicator of the arriving dark age. Earlier American generations would not only have never allowed this facility to fall into such disrepair, they would have never considered dismantling it. Instead, they would be planning how to make it bigger and better. Not today.

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New problem found on Orion that could delay its launch by a year

12:11 am

The failure of a power unit on the Orion capsule slated to fly on SLS’s first test flight late in ’21 could delay that test flight by as much as an additional year.

Replacing the PDU isn’t easy. The component is difficult to reach: it’s located inside an adapter that connects Orion to its service module — a cylindrical trunk that provides support, propulsion, and power for the capsule during its trip through space. To get to the PDU, Lockheed Martin could remove the Orion crew capsule from its service module, but it’s a lengthy process that could take up to a year. As many as nine months would be needed to take the vehicle apart and put it back together again, in addition to three months for subsequent testing, according to the presentation.

Lockheed has another option, but it’s never been done before and may carry extra risks, Lockheed Martin engineers acknowledge in their presentation. To do it, engineers would have to tunnel through the adapter’s exterior by removing some of the outer panels of the adapter to get to the PDU. The panels weren’t designed to be removed this way, but this scenario may only take up to four months to complete if engineers figure out a way to do it.

A third option is that Lockheed Martin and NASA could fly the Orion capsule as is. The PDU failed in such a way that it lost redundancy within the unit, so it can still function. But at a risk-averse agency like NASA, flying a vehicle without a backup plan is not exactly an attractive option. It’s still not clear what went wrong inside the unit, which was tested before it was installed on the spacecraft, according to a person familiar with the matter.

None of these options are good. The first two will certainly delay the planned November 2021 launch, which by the way is already four years behind schedule. The third will risk a failure of the mission, which though unmanned would certainly lead to further delays in the manned mission expected one or two years later.

That they don’t know why the unit failed and cannot fix it easily speaks very badly to the design of Orion and SLS. Compare this with SpaceX, which in the past month has demonstrated it can in only days switch out engines on both its commercial Falcon 9 rocket and its new next generation Starship rocket. Moreover, SpaceX has demonstrated repeatedly that once they identify an issue they move immediately to understand it and fix it.

With NASA, Orion, and Orion’s contractor Lockheed Martin, such flexibility and agility appears all but impossible. They have designed a monster that cannot be fixed easily, cannot launched quickly, and costs an ungodly amount of money.

I increasingly believe that Starship will reach orbit before SLS/Orion, even though the latter has been in development for almost three times longer, and will cost 25 times more.

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The election has been stolen

6:02 pm

The dead Constitution

Today the Republican leaders of the Pennsylvania state legislative rejected a resolution by 26 members of their caucus to open an investigation into the questions of election fraud in their state, claiming that they simply do not have time to address their resolution based on the state’s laws.

Speaker of the House Bryan Cutler, R-Lancaster County, and Majority Leader Kerry Benninghoff, R-Centre County, said in a statement issued as the caucus broke that they agreed the state’s elections processes and procedures need a top-to-bottom review for consistency and fairness, but they said there is no time to take legislative action on this year’s results and they will not be calling the House back into session. Their joint statement read, in part:

“We are physically unable to consider any new legislation before the end of session. A simple resolution takes three legislative days for consideration and a concurrent resolution takes five legislative days to move through both chambers, which means we do not have the time needed to address any new resolutions in our current session,” which expires Monday as per the state constitution.

The Republican leaders made it clear they will address the election irregularities in their next session. Whoopie! By then it will be too late. I expect the same thing to now happen in Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Republican-controlled statehouses are going to acquiesce to these results, despite amply evidence that demands a thorough review. (And I say this even though my own Republican state representative, Mark Finchem, today called for Arizona to withhold its electoral votes. He might be fighting the good fight, but he is also fighting his own party leadership.)

Let me make several predictions:
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A place on Mars where lakes, snowfall, and rivers once existed

2:19 pm

Inverted channels near Juventae Chasma
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and enhanced to post here, attracted my immediate interest when I was going through the November image dump from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) because of its meandering sharp ridges, estimated to be about sixty feet high on average. While I have previously posted MRO images of inverted channels such as these, their particular sharpness, plus their large number in this localized single image, aroused my curiosity. What is their history? Does this illustrate an particularly interesting place on Mars?

The picture itself was taken was on September 29, 2020 by MRO’s high resolution camera. The blue areas in the color strip probably indicate coarser-grained surface. This makes sense, as these ridges are believed to have been initially carved as channels by flowing water or ice, which compressed their riverbed and thus made it resistant to erosion. Over time, the surrounding terrain eroded away, leaving that channel behind now as a upstanding ridge. The surrounding eroded terrain should thus be expected to be rougher.

Where did the water for these rivers come from, however? As always, the overview maps below give the context, and a possible explanation.
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Election fraud update

9:40 am

Below the fold is an embed of today’s Arizona hearing on the possibility of election fraud. As this is posted it just begun. Whether you think fraud occurred on November 3rd or not, you should listen. It either should reassure you, or make you reconsider your doubt about there being any fraud.

The hearing itself is not an official legislative hearing, because the Republican leadership has refused to allow such a hearing. Because of this, this hearing does not have subpoena power in order to initiate an actual investigation.

In other words, it appears the Republican leadership in Arizona is allying itself with the Democrats to block any investigation. If this does not change fast, I would expect that the support the Republican Party presently gets will disintegrate rather quickly. Why vote for these weasels if they won’t do what their supporters want.

Once again, it is crucial for Arizona voters to call the Republican leadership in the state House and state Senate and tell them this:

  • Senate President: Karen Fann, 602-926-5874
  • Senate Majority leader: Rick Gray, 602-926-5413
  • Speaker of the House: Russell Bowers, 602-926-3128
  • House Majority leader: Warren Petersen, 602-926-4136

Meanwhile in Georgia, a judge has, after some indecision, now ordered that no Dominion voting machine should be rebooted or wiped for the next ten days in order for investigations to proceed in connection with a variety of lawsuits.

Amazingly, at the same time yesterday the Dominion system in the county that covers Atlanta crashed, delaying the recount and investigation. How convenient.

In Pennsylvania, it is now known that, during a mere ninety-minute period 99.4% of almost 600,000 votes went to Joe Biden. The only place you get that kind of percentage is either in Soviet Russia, or if fraud was perpetuated. And if by some miracle these numbers are legitimate, some detailed explaination must be provided.

Based on this and other data, a state judge has blocked any certification of the vote, pending a full investigation, noting in her decision that based on that data the lawsuits outstanding are likely to prevail.

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Japan launches experimental military communications satellite

8:39 am

The new colonial movement: Japan today successfully used its H2A rocket to launch an experimental military communications satellite aimed at testing long range optical communications by laser.

The JDRS-1 will relay optical and radar data from Japan’s Information Gathering Satellites (IGS) and other data from science satellites to Earth. Few details of the satellite have been revealed due to the largely military nature of its mission.

The new satellite carries Laser Utilizing Communication System (LUCAS) developed by JAXA. LUCAS uses infrared light to facilitate inter-satellite links at rates of up to 1.8 gigabits per second.

This launch is the fourth for Japan in 2020, and puts it in a tie with Europe. The leader board in the 2020 launch race however remains unchanged:

31 China
22 SpaceX
12 Russia
5 ULA
5 Rocket Lab

The U.S. remains ahead of China 35 to 31 in the national rankings.

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