October 2, 2020 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
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Year: 2020
Antares launches; Falcon 9 aborts
Of the two launches scheduled for tonight, Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket was the only one to launch, lifting off on schedule at 9:16 pm (Eastern). This was the company’s third launch this year.
SpaceX’s launch however aborted at T-2 seconds. No word on why the rocket’s computer’s shut down, or when they will reschedule.
The leaders in the 2020 launch race remain unchanged:
25 China
15 SpaceX
10 Russia
4 ULA
4 Europe (Arianespace)
The Antares launch however puts the U.S. back into a tie with China, 25-25, in the national rankings.
Canvas – The Simpsons theme song
An evening pause: About two years ago I said to Diane that I’d never seen any of The Simpsons animated TV show. Neither had she. Since then we have watched all the available episodes on DVD, covering most of the first twenty seasons.
What first impressed us about the show was how actually normal and family-oriented it was, in the beginning. It was not the “edgy” ugly portrayal of America its reputation had implied.
Over time that theme was more and more lost, though whenever the writers went back to those roots the show shined. Even so, what was most impressive was how the show managed somehow to remain fresh, for most of that time period. Except for a period around season nine, the satire and jokes remained solid for almost all of the first twenty years.
Since the last ten years have not been put on DVD, we won’t likely see them. No matter. Twenty years of The Simpsons was great, but it was more than enough.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman, who used numerous musical quotes from the series to find many great evening pauses.
Michigan Supreme Court calls lock down orders by governor illegal
The Michigan Supreme Court today struck down the endless number of arbitrary lock down orders imposed by Democratic governor Gretchen Witmer, stating that her actions were “an unlawful delegation of legislative power to the executive branch in violation of the Michigan Constitution.”
In a 4-3 ruling, the court determined the governor did not have the authority under state law to issue any additional emergency declarations pertaining to the pandemic after April 30. That was the last date when the legislature allowed the governor to declare an emergency.
Whitmer has relied on an interpretation of an emergency powers law passed in 1945 and the Emergency Powers Act of 1976 to issue a litany of executive orders related to the pandemic. The orders mandated the closure of businesses and restricted the number of people allowed to gather at events, all in the name of safety and preventing the spread of coronavirus.
Everyone whose businesses were damaged or lost their job because of her illegal actions should sue Witmer personally. This abuse of power should cost her, in the hope that other governors down the road will think twice before trying the same thing.
Sunspot update: Practically no sunspots for a month
It is sunspot update time again! NOAA today updated its monthly graph for tracking the Sun’s monthly sunspot activity, and I have posted it below, with additional annotations by me to show the past solar cycle predictions.
July and August had seen sunspot numbers higher than the new NOAA prediction (shown by the red curve on the graph below). September however was almost totally blank, with only two weak sunspots for the entire month, as shown on the SILSO graph below.
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Two launches scheduled for tonight, 27 minutes apart
The numerous launch scrubs this past week has created an unprecedented situation tonight, two orbital launches scheduled only 27 minutes apart from two different East Coast spaceports.
First Northrop Grumman will try again to launch its Cygnus cargo freighter to ISS from Wallops Island, Virginia, with the launch scheduled for 9:12 pm (Eastern). The first launch attempt last night was aborted 2:21 seconds before liftoff “after receiving off-nominal data from ground support equipment.”
Second, SpaceX will try to launch two Air Force GPS satellites from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with the launch scheduled for 9:43 pm (Eastern). This launch has been delayed several times because of the repeated launch scrubs of ULA’s Delta 4 Heavy rocket, attempting to launch a military reconnaissance satellite. ULA’s launch had priority for the range, but with it delayed due to the investigation over the T-7 second launch abort on September 30th, the SpaceX’s GPS launch moves up in line.
The first will be live streamed on NASA TV, the second by SpaceX. I have embedded the live streams for both below the fold.
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Cygnus launch scrubbed less than 3 minutes from launch
The scrubs keep coming! Northrop Grumman’s launch team tonight scrubbed the launch of its Antares rocket and Cygnus cargo freighter at T-2:21 minutes.
It appears, listening to the countdown, that the abort came from the engineers monitoring the propellants on the first stage, but this remains preliminary. More information is needed. (Update: It appears the issue was related to ground support equipment, not the rocket itself.)
They can recycle and launch tomorrow from Wallops Island, but this is also not confirmed. SpaceX also wishes to launch at almost the exact same time tomorrow from Cape Canaveral, and I am not sure both launches can occur simultaneously.
September 30, 2020 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
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Don Gibson – Woman Sensuous Woman
An evening pause: Performed live 1971.
Hat tip Jim Mallamace.
Doctors: COVID-19 case counts, hospitalization numbers, and death counts are “meaningless”
It has all been lies upon lies upon lies: According to an editorial written by Kristin Held, president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), the case counts, hospitalization numbers, and death counts published by government agencies across the United States are “meaningless” and “manipulated.”
From her full editorial [pdf]:
The COVID-19 case counts, hospitalization numbers, and death counts are meaningless in their current fluid form. Their malleability primarily serves those who seek to distort reality.
The morphable numbers are reported, then manipulated by federal, state, county, city, and hospital authorities and agencies. The manipulation is driven by power and money and fueled by fearmongering, panic stoking, and promise of monetary and political gain. All this is bought and paid for under the guise of trying to save the world from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read it all. She carefully documents the changes imposed by the CDC around June 14-16 that ballooned the numbers, often for entirely unjustified reasons. For example, hospitals get a lot of federal money for labeling a hospitalization from the coronavirus. The result?
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Hubble creates time lapse movie of fading supernova
Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have created a time lapse movie showing the fading of a supernova in a nearby galaxy over a year.
The supernova is captured by Hubble in exquisite detail within this galaxy in the left portion of the image. It appears as a very bright star located on the outer edge of one of its beautiful swirling spiral arms. This new and unique time-lapse of Hubble images created by the ESA/Hubble team shows the once bright supernova initially outshining the brightest stars in the galaxy, before fading into obscurity during the year of observations. This time-lapse consists of observations taken over the course of one year, from February 2018 to February 2019.
The video of that time lapse is embedded below the fold.
The galaxy itself is located 70 million light years away. That the supernova of this single star initially outshone the entire galaxy indicates the almost unimaginable power of the explosion.
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Starship prototype #8 on launchpad
Capitalism in space: The eighth Starship prototype, with landing flaps (looking just like fins) has now been moved to its launchpad in preparation for static fire tests followed by a 50,000 foot or nine mile hop.
According to Elon Musk, SpaceX will static fire SN8 twice before attempting its 15 km (~50,000 ft) launch debut. More likely than not, SpaceX will attempt a triple-engine static fire with the Starship as-is, install SN8’s nosecone and forward flaps, and attempt a second static fire while only drawing propellant from tbe rocket’s smaller header tanks (one of which is located in the tip of its nose).
Previously the hop was supposed to go to 60,000 feet, or 11 miles. It appears they’ve scaled it back slightly.
If all these tests go well, the company’s license for the flight opens as soon as October 11th, though it is likely it will not happen quite that soon. More likely by the end of the month, or early in November. Regardless, the prototype looks quite impressive with its flaps, and in fact is now beginning to resemble a spaceship, not a silo.