Year: 2022

Ingenuity completes 23rd flight on Mars

11:05 pm

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

JPL announced tonight in a tweet that Ingenuity today completed its 23rd successful flight on Mars.

23 flights and counting! #MarsHelicopter successfully completed its 23rd excursion. It flew for 129.1 seconds over 358 meters [1,175 feet].

The overview map to the right was taken from the “Where is Perseverance?” webpage and annotated by me to show the planned future routes of both Perseverance and Ingenuity. The white dotted line shows Perseverance’s path, now having almost circled the rough ground on its way to the delta and Three Forks. The tan dotted line indicates Perseverance’s future route. The dashed pink and green lines indicate two possible future flight paths for Ingenuity.

The green dot marks the position the science team marked on the map for where Ingenuity landed after today’s flight. They have not yet calculated the actual flight path, which is why it is shown by the tan dashed line. This also means there is as yet some uncertainty about this landing spot.

Originally, the plan had been to get to this spot in one flight. For reasons not yet explained, when the helicopter took off on its 22nd flight during the March 19-20th weekend, it stopped after only about 100 feet. Today’s flight apparently completed the plan, putting the helicopter where it was supposed to be.

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The Ukraine War: Another week, little change

5:16 pm

The Ukraine War as of March 17, 2022
The Ukraine War as of March 17, 2022. Click for full map.

The Ukraine War as of March 24, 2022
The Ukraine War as of March 24, 2022. Click for full map.

Since my last post on the state of the Ukraine war one week ago, on March 17, very little has changed, with tiny gains and losses in territory by both sides.

The two maps to the right, the top from last week, the bottom from today, both created by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and simplified, annotated, reduced by me to post here, illustrate the somewhat static situation. The three green arrows in the bottom map point to the regions where the most significant changes have occurred. The red areas of regions under Russian control. The light red regions are areas the Russian claim control, but have not been confirmed. The blue dots and areas indicate Ukrainian advances or resistance.

For the Russians, the biggest territorial gains took place in the northeast, solidly linking two different fronts. The Russians also made minor gains near Chernihiv, northwest of Kiev, and near Donetsk.

Meanwhile, the Russians have still not taken the besieged city of Mariupol, though their forces have finally made some inroads into the city’s center.

For the Ukrainians, a Russian push beyond Mykolaiv in the south was completely defeated and forced to retreat. More importantly, Ukrainian forces have pushed the Russians back on the western outskirts of Kiev.

The primary question remains: Is this situation indicating that Russia is bogged down and facing a long protracted quagmire? Or does it more resemble the American situation shortly after D-Day, when Allied forces were stymied somewhat close to the beaches for almost two months before suddenly breaking out and overrunning much of France in the next two months.
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Today’s blacklisted American: Forbes terminates journalist for documenting Fauci’s salary

12:51 pm

Adam Andrzejewski, journalist banned for doing good journalism
Adam Andrzejewski, journalist banned for doing good
journalism

The new dark age of silencing: Adam Andrzejewski, a long time journalist for Forbes magazine, was fired when the magazine was pressured by NIH to stop him from documenting accurately the large income that Anthony Fauci and his wife derived from their government jobs.

As Andrzejewski concludes in outlining his blackballing by Forbes:

Two directors, two bureau chiefs, and two top PR officers [from NIH] didn’t send an email to the Forbes’ chief on a Sunday morning because they wanted to correct the record about Fauci’s travel reimbursements. They sent that email to subliminally send a message: We don’t like Andrzejewski’s oversight work, and we want you to do something about it.

Unfortunately, Forbes folded quickly. Within 24 hours of the NIH email to Randall Lane, my regular Forbes editor called and announced new rules. Forbes barred me from writing about Fauci and mandated pre-approval for all future topics.

Then, Forbes went silent and terminated my column roughly 10 days later on January 28.

On the day Forbes cancelled me, the editors bent the knee. A new piece on Fauci published: “Fauci’s Portrait Will Soon Hang In The Smithsonian.”

The shameful part of this story was the way a news organization took the side of government agents, rather than their own journalist. The press is not supposed to be a state-run organization, but a free press intent on uncovering government malfeasance. The people who run Forbes apparently don’t understand this, and are quite willing to become panting toadies to the federal government.

Andrzejewski however understands his role as a journalist far better. In 2011 he founded Open The Books, a non-profit focused on documenting government spending precisely, at all levels from the smallest school district to the largest agency in the federal government. To do this the organization has filed almost 50,000 Freedom of Information requests. As he noted at the link above,
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SpaceX raises launch prices

10:55 am

Capitalism in space: Though most of the press has focused on the Starlink announcement on March 22nd that it was raising its subscriber rates, that same day SpaceX announced that it too was raising its prices, increasing its launch fees by 8% to 10%.

The starting prices for a Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy rocket will each increase by about 8%. A Falcon 9 launch will cost $67 million, up from $62 million, and a Falcon Heavy launch will now run $97 million, up from $90 million. A footnote on SpaceX’s pricing page notes that “missions purchased in 2022 but flown beyond 2023 may be subject to additional adjustments due to inflation.”

..The company also adjusted its prices for its small satellite rideshare program. Those flights will now start at $1.1 million to fly a payload weighing 200 kilograms to a sun-synchronous orbit, up from a base price of $1 million. SpaceX increased the cost of additional payload mass by 10% as well and will now charge $5,500 per extra kilogram, up from a previous $5,000 per kilogram.

As with the Starlink announcement, SpaceX officials stated that the price increase was due entirely by inflation.

The irony here is that SpaceX could easily raise its rocket prices by 20%, and still be undercutting its entire competition. Even with these increases it is still by far the cheapest game in town.

Nonetheless, when it comes to inflation we have only just begun. The consequences of the Ukraine war, the sanctions against Russia, the Biden administration’s restrictions on domestic oil production, and the various COVID regulations restricting commerce are all still in effect, and are all putting pressure on supply. Prices will continue to rise.

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Biden administration demands that all NASA grantees hire minorities/women

10:44 am

“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” The Biden administration has proposed a new rule for anyone receiving financial grants from NASA, requiring those grantees to solicit bids for any subcontracting work from minorities and/or women.

The Grants Policy and Compliance Branch (GPC) in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Office of the Chief Financial Officer is soliciting public comment on the Agency’s proposed implementation of a new term and condition that requires recipients of NASA financial assistance to obtain a quotation from small and/or minority businesses, women’s business enterprises or labor surplus area firms when the acquisition of goods or services exceeds the simplified acquisition threshold.

…NASA’s expectation is that this action will result in an increase in contracting opportunities for small and/or minority businesses, women’s business enterprises and labor surplus area firms that contract with NASA financial assistance recipients.

The rule is not yet in effect. NASA is simply seeking public comment. However, the intent of this “equity” regulation is the same as all critical race theory implementations, to favor minorities and women and discriminate against whites and men. And if you don’t believe me, read this further explanation for this new rule at the link:

On January 25, 2021, President Biden issued E.O. 13985, “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,” outlining a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all, including people of color and others who have been historically underserved, marginalized, and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality. Given that advancing equity requires a systematic approach to embedding fairness in the decision-making process, the E.O. instructs agencies to recognize and work to redress inequities in their policies and programs that serve as barriers to equal opportunity.

Since everyone has the same equal opportunity to compete for bids, this new Biden rule, which is designed to tilt the scale and discriminate in favor of “people of color and others who have been historically underserved”, it is actually creating barriers to equal opportunity. It is also a bald-faced violation of every civil rights law passed since 1964, which required that no one should be discriminated against because of their race, ethnicity, religion, or sex, be they white, black, red, yellow, green, or orange.

But then, this is our Democratic Party, led by Joe Biden. It has eagerly returned to its slave/segregation roots, where it sees race as a person’s only important attribute, with some races deserving favored treatment and other races to be oppressed. Until the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s Democrats favored whites and oppressed minorities. Now the party favors minorities and oppresses whites.

Nothing has really changed however. The Democratic Party, led by Joe Biden, remains the party of racism and bigotry.

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SpaceX’s fourth manned Dragon capsule named “Freedom”

9:38 am

Capitalism in space: The astronauts who will fly to ISS on April 19th on the SpaceX’s fourth manned Dragon capsule announced yesterday that they named it “Freedom,” both to honor that fundamental human right that is also fundamental to American history as well as to honor the memory of the first American spacecraft, Freedom 7, which launched Alan Shepard on his short suborbital flight in 1961.

Once launched, SpaceX will have a fleet of four manned capsules, Endeavour, Resilience, Endurance, and Freedom.

Endeavour has carried humans aloft twice for NASA, and is scheduled to fly a record third time on April 3rd when it carries four commercial passengers to ISS for the company Axiom.

Resilience has also flown twice, once for NASA and once for SpaceX itself, launching a crew of commercial passengers in the fall of 2021.

Endurance has flown once, for NASA.

With the addition of Freedom, SpaceX will have a fleet of four manned spacecraft, matching the size of NASA’s now gone shuttle fleet. Whether the company will need to build more will depend on demand and on the number of missions it thinks these reusable capsules can complete safely.

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NASA solicits proposals for second commercial manned lunar lander

9:25 am

Having received a budget boost from Congress for its manned lunar lander Artemis program, NASA yesterday announced that it is soliciting proposals from the private sector for a second lunar lander, so that the agency will not be reliant only on SpaceX’s Starship.

To bring a second entrant to market for the development of a lunar lander in parallel with SpaceX, NASA will issue a draft solicitation in the coming weeks. This upcoming activity will lay out requirements for a future development and demonstration lunar landing capability to take astronauts between orbit and the surface of the Moon. This effort is meant to maximize NASA’s support for competition and provides redundancy in services to help ensure NASA’s ability to transport astronauts to the lunar surface.

As part of this revised program, NASA also is negotiating a revision to its contract with SpaceX. It appears that this change will have SpaceX fly an additional manned mission with Starship, after which NASA would open up competition to everyone on future flights. The press release however is not entirely clear on this point.

This new competition will of course be a boon to the losers in the first manned lunar lander competition, Blue Origin and Dynetics. Both will certainly submit bids, as will others.

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Blue Origin delays 1st New Glenn launch again

9:10 am

Capitalism in space: At a conference earlier this week Blue Origin officials confirmed that the first test flight of its orbital New Glenn rocket will not occur in ’22, but will be delayed again, into ’23.

New Glenn was originally supposed to launch in 2020, and has been delayed repeatedly since then, first because of new requirements imposed by the military and then because of delays in getting Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engine operational.

Though ULA is still aiming to launch its Vulcan rocket using the BE-4 in 2022, expect it to eventually recognize reality and delay also to ’23. That rocket was also supposed to make its first launch in ’20, and has been delayed for the same reasons.

These delays have cost both companies dearly. For example, had each been operational as planned, they might have won some or all of the launch contracts that OneWeb lost from the Russians. Instead, that business went to SpaceX.

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Update on the lie that was COVID

4:12 pm

How governments determined policy against COVID
How our governments determined policy against COVID during
the past two years.

Now that the crisis of the day has shifted to the Ukraine War, bringing with it new demands by our so-called rulers to once again panic in order to begin a world war, it pays to look back at the last fake panic, what I like to call the lie that was COVID.

Below are a only few examples of the never-ending new stories daily that illustrate starkly the foolishness and the over-reaction to COVID. Take some time to read them all.

First, was COVID the deadly disease that could kill you, as claimed by our academic and political leaders? In a word, no. The two stories below simply show its harmlessness to children, something that was obvious almost from the beginning of the panic.

In the past two years anyone with any interest in the truth could have easily found and read similar stories. The threat was routinely exaggerated, sometimes to the point of faking data. These two stories are merely the tip of the iceberg. If I wanted I could add twenty, thirty, fifty more and still not list them all.

Both of these stories however illustrate the evil of the next two:

The New York petty tyrant in the first story is not alone. Democratic Party politicians nationwide, from President Joe Biden down to local school boards, have repeatedly shown themselves obsessed with putting masks on little kids, sometimes even by physical and vicious force.

As for the second story, note that it occurred two days ago in Chicago, the first day that Chicago schools had shifted to a “mask-optional” policy. Yet the teacher smacked a mask of the toddler, who ended up coming home crying. His father’s reaction:
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