Dad vs Daughter
An evening pause: It seems there is a fourth story plot available to writers (see yesterday’s evening pause).
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
Year: 2021
Today’s blacklisted American: Doctors fired and blackballed for calling for race-neutral policies in medicine
Trofim Lysenko preaching to Stalin. His policies destroyed
Soviet plant research, persecuted anyone who disagreed
with him, and caused famines that killed millions. And they are
all policies now being adopted by the American medical field.
Persecution is now cool! Last year, the University of Pittsburgh fired cardiologist Norman Wang because he wrote and published a peer-reviewed paper calling for race-neutral policies in medicine.
In addition, he was publicly denounced by the American Heart Association (AHA) and the journal retracted his paper, even though no one could cite any errors in his work.
As the criticism mounted, Wang was removed from his position as the director of a fellowship program in clinical cardiac electrophysiology at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and was prohibited from making any contact with students. His boss reportedly told him that his classroom was “inherently unsafe” due to the views he expressed.
Unsafe, eh? Can’t have those students hear any opinions or facts that might contradict the modern “woke” narrative!
Wang is suing both the AHA and the University of Pittsburgh for defamation and violating his first amendment rights. Whether he wins or not remains quite unknown, especially considering the increasingly intolerant nature of today’s society.
The article at the link however goes far beyond simply telling Wang’s story. First, it describes the cases of two other doctors who were forced to resign for similar reasons: they questioned the modern obsession with race and suggested that things would be far better if “race was taken out of the conversation.” The mob immediately rose up against both, and their medical organization, the American Medical Association (AMA), then moved to get them fired or removed.
The article then however goes even farther, outlining how this evil oppressive blacklisting culture is beginning to have a much wider and very negative impact on the practice of medicine and the treatment of patients.
» Read more
Curiosity’s dramatic path forward
Click for full image.
Cool image time! In the coming weeks and months the view from Curiosity is going to give us the most spectacular views of another world since the Apollo astronauts walked on the Moon.
In today’s download of new images from the Mars rover Curiosity was the photo above, reduced to post here. Taken by rover’s right navigation camera, it looks west directly in line with Curiosity’s future travels, and shows that it is now finally entering mountain country.
The overview map below provides the context.
» Read more
New investment capital pours into commercial space
Launcher’s 3D printed E2 engine, claimed by the company
to be the highest performance engine for small rockets.
Capitalism in space: Three stories today underlined superbly the robust and steadily growing state of the commercial space industry. Moreover, these stories suggest that this growth will be permanent with almost no limit to its possibilities.
To begin, we have the public appearance of another startup smallsat rocket company, dubbed Launcher.
Small launch vehicle developer Launcher has raised $11.7 million in a Series A funding round, which the company says puts it on a path to reaching orbit with a fraction of the total investment of other launch startups. Launcher said June 2 that the Series A round was co-led by Boost.VC and the company’s founder, Max Haot, both of whom earlier provided seed funding to the startup. Haot invested $5 million using proceeds of a camera company, Mevo.com, that he sold earlier this year to Logitech. Other existing and new investors also participated in the round, which Haot told SpaceNews was oversubscribed.
…Launcher is working on a small launch vehicle called Launcher Light, intended to be similar in performance to Rocket Lab’s Electron, which can place up to 300 kilograms into low Earth orbit. Launcher Light is a smaller version of Rocket-1, the company’s original vehicle, which Haot said in March should speed up development since it will require fewer engines.
The company hopes to launch by ’24, and is also planning another fund-raising round next year to raise an additional $40 million.
Considering the large number of new rocket companies raising capital, who knows if this company will make it. Certainly some will grab market share and survive, but more likely in the coming decade there will be a shake-out where many will either consolidate or disappear, similar to what happened in the early days of the automobile industry.
That so many similar new rocket companies are attracting so many investors however shows that people with money are now convinced that space is the place, and the future there is very bright for profit. And what lends weight to this sentiment are the other two stories today, both of which involve new space startups that are not rocket companies but the kind of ground facilities required by the satellites those rockets launch.
» Read more
Third set of new results from Parker released
The scientists using the Parker Solar Probe on June 2nd released their third set of new results as part of a special issue of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
The latest articles include data analysis, theory, and modeling. Among the major topics covered are magnetic switchbacks first discovered by Parker Solar Probe, the role of waves in heating solar plasma, solar angular momentum, the near-Sun dust environment, and the diversity of small energetic-particle events.
The most interesting paper I think is the one describing data that lends strong weight to the theory, proposed in 1929 by astronomer Henry Norris Russell, that a dust-free zone exists close to the Sun and all stars. From the abstract:
The observed brightness decrease in the axis of symmetry is interpreted as the signature of the existence of a dust density depletion zone between about 19 [solar radii] and 3 [solar radii] which at the inner limit of WISPR’s field of view of 7.65 [solar radii] has a dust density that is ~5% lower than the density at 19 [solar radii], instead of the expected density which is three times if no depletion zone exists.
In plain English, the data shows that from about 1.3 million to 8.2 million miles from the Sun Parker found far less dust than predicted by other models. As the probe continues to lower its orbit and get closer to the Sun with each fly-by these numbers will be better refined, and are likely to in the end prove Russell’s hypothesis.
Kurt Vonnegut – the Shapes of Stories
An evening pause: There is an old saying that all story plots can be summed into one of the following three categories: Man vs Man, Man vs Nature, and Man vs Himself.
Vonnegut gives us a far better summary.
Hat tip Mike Nelson.
Today’s blacklisted American: The American flag
The American flag: Banned by the NAACP.
The local NAACP chapter at Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) was badly triggered over Memorial Day weekend by the horrible sight of an American flag hanging from the end of a crane’s cable at a university construction site, and demanded the cable and flag be removed.
The NAACP claimed that what really upset them was the standard cable loop just below the flag at the end of the cable, which they immediately assumed was a noose!
Ronald Davis, president of the New Britain NAACP, told FOX 61 that “Regardless of what someone else says about that, what I see, as a black man? That’s a noose. Period. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. Take it down.”
But one intrepid College Fix reader noticed there are several steel cable loops hanging from the crane, and the only one that appears to bother another is the one with the American flag on the end of it. He cites one image of the crane in which viewers can see three or four cable loops.
“I guess they noticed only the one holding the flag, which means that it’s the flag that triggers them,” the reader said. [emphasis mine]
It is clear that because he and the NAACP specifically focused on the one loop where the American flag hung tells us what really offended them. They really wanted the American flag removed. And I am sure if they had their way it would be banned forever.
» Read more
SpaceX successfully launches cargo Dragon to ISS
Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully launched a cargo Dragon to ISS.
The first stage booster successfully landed on its drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.
This Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule were entirely new, making their first flights. This was the first new Falcon 9 to fly since November 2020, with sixteen launches during that period using reused boosters exclusively.
In fact, since November 2020 SpaceX has completed a total of 21 launches, all done in less than seven months. Moreover, the company has scheduled 34 (!) more launches through the rest of the year. If they achieve this ambitious schedule, they will complete 51 launches in ’21, more than doubling their previous annual record of 25 set last year. With all other American companies added in, there will be a good chance the United States launch total could exceed 70, breaking the country’s own annual launch record set in 1966 at the height of the first space race.
The leaders in the 2021 launch race:
17 SpaceX
15 China
8 Russia
2 Rocket Lab
2 ULA
The U.S. now leads China 23 to 15 in the national rankings.
FAA grants Rocket Lab permission to resume launches following launch failure
Capitalism in space: According to a press release from Rocket Lab yesterday, the FAA has granted it permission to resume launches following its May 15th launch failure when a problem with the rocket’s upper stage prevented it from reaching orbit.
Apparently the FAA is satisfied with the thoroughness of Rocket Lab’s investigation into the launch failure, and is thus willing to let launches resume, when the company itself decides it is ready. Rocket Lab’s investigation into the failure however is not complete. According to the press release:
The review team is working through an extensive fault tree analysis to exhaust all potential causes for the anomaly and the full review is expected to be complete in the coming weeks, following which Rocket Lab anticipates a swift return to flight.
Though that review continues, the company has not yet revealed what it thinks caused the upper stage to send the rocket and payload in the wrong direction upon ignition.
United Airlines buys 15 Boom Supersonic airplanes
United Airlines today announced that it has signed a deal with Boom Supersonic to buy fifteen of its supersonic Overture airplanes.
Under the terms of the agreement, United will purchase 15 of Boom’s ‘Overture’ airliners, once Overture meets United’s demanding safety, operating and sustainability requirements, with an option for an additional 35 aircraft. The companies will work together on meeting those requirements before delivery. Once operational, Overture is expected to be the first large commercial aircraft to be net-zero carbon from day one, optimized to run on 100% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). It is slated to roll out in 2025, fly in 2026 and expected to carry passengers by 2029.
Boom has been developing this supersonic passenger plane since 2016, though little progress has appeared to take place during most of the last five years. This contract appears to be the company’s first real sale. It also appears that it makes United a partner in the plane’s development.
Meanwhile, another company, Aerion, is developing its own supersonic passenger jet, in partnership with Boeing and scheduled for launch in 2023.
We shall have to wait to see which company wins the race to begin commercial flights.
Problem with Ariane 5 rocket causes Arianespace to delay Webb telescope launch
As first revealed in mid-May, Arianespace has been forced to delay the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope by at least one month because of a problem with the fairing on its Ariane 5 rocket, found during an August 2020 launch.
There have been no Ariane 5 launches since. According to yesterday’s press briefing, however:
“The origin of the problem has been found. Corrective actions have been taken,” Daniel de Chambure, acting head of Ariane 5 adaptations and future missions at ESA, said. “The qualification review has started, so we should be able to confirm all that within a few days or weeks.” He did not elaborate on the problem or those corrective actions, beyond stating that the problem took place during separation of the payload fairing. Industry sources said in May that, on the two launches, the separation system imparted vibrations on the payload above acceptable limits, but did not damage the payloads.
It appears this new delay to Webb’s launch is because two commercial payloads must lift off first before Webb, with the first now scheduled for July. According to Arianespace, it will take two months prep for the next commercial launch, followed by two months prep for the Webb launch. That puts the launch of Webb in November.
Overall this particular delay is slight, only a few weeks, and pales in comparison to the ten years of delays experienced by NASA during development and construction of Webb. It also will add very little to the telescope’s overall budget, which has grown from an original price of $500 million to now about $10 billion.
China’s Long March 3B rocket launches new weather satellite
China early this morning successfully placed a weather satellite into orbit using its Long March 3B rocket.
No word on where the first stage crashed, though we know because the launch was from an interior launch site that it had to have crashed somewhere within China, hopefully not on any village anywhere.
The leaders in the 2021 launch race:
16 SpaceX
15 China
8 Russia
2 Rocket Lab
2 ULA
The U.S. still leads China 22 to 15 in the national rankings.
This list should change in only a few hours, as SpaceX has a Falcon 9 launch scheduled for 1:29 pm (Eastern), carrying a Dragon cargo freighter to ISS.