Year: 2022

Georgia voters kill Camden spaceport project

9:41 am

The residents of Camden County in Georgia yesterday voted by a margin of 72% to 28% to end the county’s project to build a project there.

There are hints that county officials might still try to proceed, having already spent more than $10 million on the project. There are also strong indications that if they do, they will be blocked legally on many fronts.

What this vote suggests is that Americans continue to be uninterested in more commerce, and are easily convinced to put environmental claims first in any political battle. The opponents of the spaceport had said that the spaceport threatened local wildlife — something that clearly doesn’t happen based on more than a half century of data at Cape Canaveral — and the voters in Camden were quick to agree. The voters also probably had a bit of not-in-my-backyard behind their vote as well.

Whether Camden would have succeeded as a spaceport of course is unknown. There are a lot of such facilities being proposed and built, and it is unclear if their number fits the actual launch demand.

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SpaceX successfully completes 10th launch in ’22

9:25 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX this morning successfully placed 48 Starlink satellites into orbit, using its Falcon 9 rocket.

The first stage landed successfully, completing its fourth flight. The fairings were new.

SpaceX continues to maintain a one-launch-per-week pace in ’22, suggesting it will succeed in completing more than 50 launches this year, as predicted by the company.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

10 SpaceX
5 China
2 ULA
2 Russia

The U.S. now leads China 15 to 5 in the national rankings. Note that Russia had predicted it would complete about 27 launches in ’22. With the loss of all of its international customers due to its invasion of the Ukraine, that number is likely cut by two-thirds. If Russia completes more than a dozen launches this year we should be surprised.

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Monitoring one glacier flowing off a mesa in Mars’ glacier country

1:28 pm

Vicous glacial flow on Mars
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image takes us back to the mesa in Mars’ glacier country that first clued me in on the prevalence of ice in the Martian mid-latitudes. The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on November 13, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows a viscous flow coming down from a hollow on that mesa’s southern wall.

The new image has likely been taken to see if anything has changed since the previous image was taken in 2014. Based on the resolution published at the MRO website, nothing seems to have changed, though with more sophisticated software higher resolution versions of the images are available that might show some changes.

In my first post about Mars’ glacier country in December 2019, this flow was one of four that I featured coming off this same 30-mile wide mesa, as shown by the first overview map below.
» Read more

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Local Texas state/city politicians pressure congressmen to get Starship approved by FAA

11:42 am

Local state/city politicians from Brownsville are applying pressure on their local congressmen to get the FAA to approve its environmental reassessment of SpaceX’s Starship facility in Boca Chica approved.

Asked if the BND [Brownsville Navigation District] Board of commissioners had made its position known to Reps. Vela and Gonzalez, Lopez said: “Actually, right now, we are in talks with both of them. We want them to help. It is a huge economic impact, having SpaceX here. It makes the Rio Grande Valley and in this case Brownsville more lucrative. It gives global attention to our city, which is something we have needed for a long, long, time.”

A reporter put it to Lopez that the City of Brownsville is hoping to attract thousands of tourists once SpaceX starts sending rockets to the Moon and Mars. “It would be a tremendous loss if we lose that,” Lopez said.

Both Congressmen are members of the Democratic Party, so I doubt seriously if they care that much for the economic benefits brought to Brownsville by SpaceX, no matter what they say in public. For Democrats nowadays it is environmental matters that trump all other issues, and so it would shock me if either Vela or Gonzalez buck their party’s agenda to pressure the FAA to approve the environmental reassessment.

However, the November elections are looming, and the polls do not look good for Democrats. If the FAA rejects the reassessment prior to that election and demands that a full environmental impact statement be written, something I now fear will happen because the FAA cannot get NOAA and the Interior Department to sign on, SpaceX will almost certainly shift its Starship operations to Florida. An impact statement would take years to complete, a delay that SpaceX cannot afford. Such a sequence of events would likely do great harm to the reelection campaigns of both Democrats.

I thus now wonder if the Biden administration will force the FAA to continue delaying its decision, month-by-month, until after that November election, thus allowing these Democrats to mouth support without risking anything.

We shall know I think before the end of the month, which is presently the FAA’s announced target date for making a decision. I am willing to bet they delay again, for the fourth time.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Renowned cancer researcher fired for wearing Halloween costume 13 years ago

11:11 am

Cancer researcher Julie Overbaugh banned
Cancer researcher Julie Overbaugh blacklisted

The new dark age of silencing: A renowned cancer researcher, virologist Julie Overbaugh, was forced out of positions at both the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington School of Medicine because thirteen years previously she had worn a Michael Jackson Halloween costume at a Hutchinson party themed around the singer’s Thriller album.

The accusations at Washington University were especially absurd, though horribly typical of today’s blacklisting culture:

Though the incident didn’t occur at UW Medicine, its CEO and equity officer also waded into the faux controversy. UW Medicine CEO Dr. Paul Ramsey and Chief Equity Officer Paula Houston notified UW Medicine staff in an email that Overbaugh was punished for engaging in the “racist, dehumanizing, and abhorrent act” of “blackface.” During a separate formal review process for UW faculty, the email confirmed, Overbaugh resigned from her UW affiliate faculty member appointment.

Overbaugh released a short statement to me. “I did not know the association of this with blackface at the time, in 2009, but understand the offense that is associated with this now,” she said. “I have apologized for this both publicly and privately and beyond that have no other comments.”

Ramsey and Houston claim that the UW Medicine community was “harmed” by the 13-year-old photo that most staff didn’t know existed until reading about it in the Feb. 25 email. “We acknowledge that our community has been harmed by this incident and the fact that 13 years elapsed before action was taken,” they wrote. “We are convening a series of affinity group meetings in the next few weeks to provide spaces for mutual support, reflection, and response.”

Neither Ramsey nor Houston explained how the photo “harmed” anyone. Indeed, beyond one confirmed complaint, it’s unclear if anyone even cared about the old photo. [emphasis mine]

» Read more

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Iran launches military satellite

8:46 am

The new colonial movement: It appears that Iran has successfully launched a small military satellite into orbit, Noor-2, though exactly when remains unclear.

IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] said the Noor-2 satellite reached a low orbit of 500km (310 miles) above the Earth’s surface on the Ghased satellite carrier, state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported. It described the Ghased as a three-phase, mixed-fuel satellite carrier.

IRGC did not immediately release photos or video of the launch. Putting the second satellite in space would be a major advance for Iran’s military.

The Ghased or Qased rocket uses a mobile launcher design, and was used for Iran’s previous successfully launch in 2020.

In confirming the launch, U.S. Space Command officials called the satellite nothing more than “a tumbling webcam in space,” suggesting it is not very sophisticated. At the same time, the first stage of Qased is essentially a ballistic missile. To be able to use this mobile launcher to get anything into orbit means that same mobile launcher, without the upper stage, could deliver missiles anywhere on Earth, and do so in a manner that is undetectable prior to launch.

This launch, the first for Iran in 2022, does not change the 2022 launch race leader board:

9 SpaceX
5 China
2 Russia
2 ULA

The U.S. leads China 14 to 5 in the national rankings.

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Fractured terrain on Mars

1:39 pm

Fractures on Mars
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image, which at first glance does not seem so puzzling, actually falls into my “What the heck?” category of baffling Martian geology. The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on January 15, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled “Avernus Cavi fractures”, it shows what resembles the well-documented chaos terrain seen in many places on Mars, where erosion over eons along fault lines creates mesas with random criss-crossing canyons.

The problem is that this location is practically on the Martian equator, and chaos terrain tends to be found in the mid-latitude bands where there are many glaciers, suggesting the cyclical waxing and waning of those glaciers is what causes the erosion. Here at the Martian equator the terrain is very dry. No glaciers.

Moreover, note the higher mesa near the top center. Its flat top suggests that once this terrain was covered with an even higher layer of material, almost all of which was stripped away evenly everywhere, except where that mesa sits. As an amateur geologist I can’t think of any sequence of events that would do such a thing. I suspect professionals might have problems themselves.

Then there are the small parallel ridges. They suggest dunes, especially inside the depressions where sand and dust can get trapped. On the mesa tops however these ridges are more mysterious. Why for example are they aligned with the small ridge in some hollows, but not others? They in many ways remind me of the ridges in this earlier “What the heck?” cool image, also right on the equator.

The overview map below provides some help, though not much.
» Read more

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Pushback: Christian HS student sues school for persecuting him because of his religion

12:27 pm

How Mater Academy treats its Christians
How Mater Academy treats the Christian children under its care.

They’re coming for you next: Nicholas Ortiz, then a 14-year-old Christian freshman at the high school level of Florida’s charter school Mater Academy, has sued the school for allowing both students and teachers to slander, harass, and discriminate against him for his religious beliefs, and then punishing him when he reported the abuse to school officials.

Ortiz said he regularly brings his bible to school to read, which he alleges has made him a target for “disparaging comments” from other students, as well as school staff and administrators.

The complaint also outlines what it calls false and defamatory statements that circulated among students claiming Ortiz was planning a school shooting. Screenshots of communications between students show them discussing the rumored shooting and details their plans to physically assault Ortiz as a result.

Due to the shooting allegations, Ortiz was given the maximum allowed punishment of a 10-day suspension.

“Nicholas repeatedly made the school aware of a pattern of pervasive bullying by his fellow students, bullying that was reinforced by the words and actions of the school,” the complaint added. “Yet, the school did not just sweep Nicholas’s bullying claims under the rug — failing to report them as required under the law — they retaliated against Nicholas for reporting the harassment.”

You can read his complaint here [pdf].

Though the whole behavior of the school and its students is intolerant and disgusting, this event — which probably began the persecution — is probably the most egregious:
» Read more

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Bahrain signs Artemis Accords

8:57 am

Bahrain announced today that it has signed Artemis Accords, making it the second Arab country, after the United Arab Emirates (UAE), to do so.

The full list of signatories, now seventeen: Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, South Korea, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, and the United States.

In the past week both Bahrain and Romania have joined the accords. The timing suggests both actions might have been triggered by the Ukraine War. Russia opposes the Artemis Accords, and for Romania, a former Soviet block nation, and Bahrain, an Arab nation, to make such announcements so quickly after Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine suggests both are signalling their willingness to ally themselves against Russia.

For this western alliance in space to be complete however it will require that France and Germany as well as more members of the European Space Agency (ESA) to sign on. Before Russia’s invasion these two nations as well as other ESA partners were considering allying themselves with either Russia or China (which also opposes the accords) in future space endeavors. Such an alliance would have prevented them from signing the accords.

The Russian invasion has almost certainly ended any chance these European nations will partner with Russia in space. Thus, it is very likely Russia’s invasion will force them back into a more firm space alliance with the U.S., and get them to sign the accords. If the American State Department has any competence (something we should not expect) it will be jumping on this situation and ramping up its pressure on Europe to sign on.

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Astra completes investigation into February 10th launch failure

8:44 am

Capitalism in space: Astra today released the results of its investigation into its February 10th launch failure, confirming that the failure occurred because the improper separation of the fairings on the upper stage.

Through their analysis, Astra confirmed that the payload fairing on LV0008 failed to separate properly prior to upper stage engine ignition due to an electrical issue. The five separation mechanisms that are present in the Rocket 3 fairing were triggered in an incorrect order, resulting in unexpected fairing movement that caused a disconnection in the electrical wiring. This meant that one of the five separation mechanisms did not receive the command to open, thereby preventing the fairing from separating completely.

Upon further investigation, Astra narrowed the root cause of the fairing separation issue down to an error in the electrical harness engineering diagram for the separation mechanisms. The harness was built and installed as specified by the drawing and installation procedures, but an error in the drawing itself led to two of the five harness channels being inadvertently swapped.

In addition, the company identified a software problem “that left the upper stage engine, Aether, unable to utilize its thrust vector control (TVC) system – which allows the engine to gimbal and maneuver the vehicle.”

The company states that both issues have been corrected, and is now targeting March 13 for its next launch, taking place from Kodiak, Alaska, and only carrying a test dummy payload that will not be released from the upper stage. Thus, this test launch will be similar to the company’s only orbital launch on November 19, 2021.

Astra’s fast investigation, fix, and determination to launch again quickly speaks well of the company. Why however it doesn’t test its deployment system with a dummy satellite on this next test launch is somewhat puzzling, especially since it would be very easy to release that dummy into an orbit that quickly decays and burns up in the atmosphere.

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