Year: 2022

Increasing push back against NYU’s firing of a chemistry teacher for demanding excellence from students

12:30 pm

NYU: proud to graduate substandard students!

Since early October, when the story broke about New York University firing organic chemistry teacher Maitland Jones because a student petition claimed his course was too hard, there has been a growing push back from the college’s faculty as well as at least one pro-free speech organization.

The petition itself was signed by 82 of Jones’ 350 students (less than a quarter of the class) and complained that “too many [students] were failing and that this was unacceptable” and that the course’s challenges caused “emotional and mental health” issues.

The course in question however is organic chemistry, traditionally designed as a very tough entry-level course in order to weed out students not capable of becoming doctors or doing the real work necessary in the hard sciences. Under normal circumstances one third to one half of all students who take the course fail, which means this petition was likely signed by those who were failing.

Rather than push themselves, these spoiled students wanted the course made easier. They might then have passed, but if they became doctors later in life their patients would certainly be under risk.

What made Jones’ firing more horrifying however is that the university instigated the action. The students themselves hadn’t asked for his firing, they only wanted his course made easier.
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Russian government okays ISS partnership through ’27

9:08 am

The Russian government yesterday approved an order allowing Roscosmos to continue to send its astronauts and spacecraft to ISS through 2027.

“The expected results are as follows: transport and technical support for the Russian segment of the International Space Station in 2023-2027, including the delivery to the station and return to Earth of Russian crews, as well as the delivery to the ISS of fuel and cargo crucial to maintaining the ISS in flight and the implementation of a long-term program for authorized works,” the instruction says.

Putin’s government is essentially admitting that it will not be able to launch its own space station by ’27, so it has to stay on ISS because that’s all it has. Whether ISS can last that long, considering the somewhat delicate state of some of the oldest Russian modules, remains unclear.

The American private stations should all be coming on line in the years from 2024 to 2030, so it appears the U.S. is covered. What Russia will do however remains unknown. I suspect it will be far more difficult politically for it to buy time on the American private stations, compared to Europe. But if it doesn’t get its own station launched, buying time might be its only option, assuming of course the U.S. government allows it to do so. And considering that other Russian officials are threatening America’s private space assets, the likelihood that Russia will be allowed on future American space stations seems remote indeed.

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European nations struggle with the new private commercial space station concept

8:59 am

The European partners that have been doing research and work on ISS are now struggling to figure out their future on the multiple new private commercial space stations American private enterprise is now building to replace ISS.

The ISS today relies extensively on barter arrangements among participating agencies, providing services to cover their share of operations of the station. Such arrangements are unlikely to work for commercial stations, however. “We need to find a new way of cooperating,” said Nicolas Maubert, space counselor at the French Embassy in the U.S. and representative of the French space agency CNES in the U.S., citing the challenges of extending current barter arrangements to commercial stations. “We need to put on the table every option.”

The simplest approach — direct payments from space agencies to the companies operating commercial stations — could face political obstacles. “The taxpayers in Europe don’t want to pay directly to private American companies,” he said. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words illustrate the fundamental problem. Europe on ISS has been for decades like a welfare queen. It has gotten access to space mostly free, since what it has offered in exchange for that access has never come close to matching what its work on ISS cost American taxpayers. Now that it will have to pay for that access in real dollars, some of its member nations are balking.

France for example still wants a free ride. Maubert suggested that Europe build its own space station, which means France wants its other ESA partners to help pay for the station that France wants to use.

I say, too bad. The costs on the private stations — built for profit and efficiency — will be far less that ISS. That cost will also be far far less than anything Europe might spend trying to build its own government station. Europe should bite the bullet and pay up. It won’t regret it.

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Boeing’s write-off due to Starliner delays goes up to nearly $900 million

8:45 am

Capitalism in space: In a SEC filing on October 26, 2022, Boeing revealed that it has been required to spend another $195 million to cover the additional costs due to the further delays in getting Starliner launched, bringing the company’s total expense now to $883 million.

Boeing acknowledged today that it is taking a further $195 million charge against earnings for the CST-100 Starliner commercial crew program. Developed through a fixed-price contract with NASA, Starliner has encoutered a number of delays and Boeing must cover those costs. Added to $688 million already taken, the company now is spending $883 million of its own money on the program.

Boeing’s original fixed-price contract was for $4.2 billion, and included the test flights as well as six operational flights to ISS. However, numerous problems caused repeated delays and the need to fly a second unmanned test flight. Originally planned for the spring of 2020, the first manned Starliner flight is now targeting February 2023, three years behind schedule. Due to that delay, SpaceX’s Dragon ended up getting new contracts that included many of the later operational flights that Boeing would have earned. Right now, even if the capsule begins flying in ’23, NASA’s already purchased six flights will cover its needs through around ’26.

After that, NASA will still need to buy manned flights, if only to get to the new commercial space stations being built, and Starliner will then be an option. This just means however that it will take Boeing a long time to recover its Starliner losses. And that assumes customers begin to line up to buy flights.

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Martian rectilinear ridges

1:16 pm

Martian rectilinear ridges
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image is also a bafflement. The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on July 25, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The ridges in this picture are labeled by the scientists “Rectilinear Ridges,” but they really do not resemble any of the Martian rectilinear ridge types outlined in this paper [pdf], all of which appear to have a much more pronounced criss-cross pattern.

These ridges however are more meandering, and instead to my eye seem more like inverted channels, ancient channels whose beds became compacted and then became ridges when the less dense surrounding material eroded away. The problem with this conclusion however is the lack of any obvious tributary pattern. If these were once channels where either liquid water or glaciers once flowed, none of them seem to exhibit any drainage pattern. The ridges go in all directions.

The context map below only increases the mystery.
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Today’s blacklisted American: School officials in Florida and Michigan retaliate against parents for being involved in their kids’ schooling

11:02 am

As I did last week on October 20 and 21, today’s blacklist column will cover two stories, both of which are similar and show a pattern of abuse by those in power.

The October 20th story focused on hospitals blacklisting nurses, either for being white or Christian. The October 21st story told the story of teachers being fired for opposing the introduction of the queer agenda in toddler daycare and in elementary schools.

Today’s story describes how school officials in two different states instigated investigations designed solely to destroy the livelihood of parents, simply because those parents questioned the way those officials were doing their job.

Note that in all three cases, the nurses, teachers, and parents were blacklisted simply because they had expressed in public a disagreement with the policies of those in charge. Apparently, to those now in charge, the first amendment has been suspended, so that any dissent against them can be punished harshly.
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Orbit Fab, the company building gas stations in space, gets new investor

8:51 am

Though the amount invested has not been revealed, Orbit Fab announced yesterday that it has obtained a new investor to fuel its effort to build the first gas stations in space.

Orbit Fab said that 8090 Industries was a “new major investor” in the company, but did not disclose the size of the investment. The company had previously raised a total of $17 million, including more than $10 million in a September 2021 round that included Lockheed Martin Ventures and Northrop Grumman.

Orbit Fab’s goal is to provide satellite makers a way to more easily and cheaply refuel their satellites, thus allowing them to not only launch for less cost but to last longer once in orbit. In August it announced it is aiming to launch a hydrazine refueling depot for geosynchronous satellites by 2025.

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Lucy’s view of the Earth-Moon system during its October fly-by

8:35 am

The Earth and Moon system, as seen by Lucy
Click for original image.

Lucy's planned route
Lucy’s planned route to explore the Trojan asteroids

In the days prior to its October 16, 2022 fly-by of the Earth, the Lucy asteroid probe took several calibration images of the Earth and the Moon. The photo above, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, shows both the Earth and the Moon together. From the caption:

On October 13, 2022, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft captured this image of the Earth and the Moon from a distance of 890,000 miles (1.4 million km). The image was taken as part of an instrument calibration sequence as the spacecraft approached Earth for its first of three Earth gravity assists. These Earth flybys provide Lucy with the speed required to reach the Trojan asteroids — small bodies that orbit the Sun at the same distance as Jupiter.

In the original, the Moon is so dim, compared to the Earth, that it was hard to find in the picture. I therefore brightened it considerably more than the Earth to make it easily seen above.

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After 50 years Edward Stone retires as the project scientist for Voyagers 1 and 2

8:23 am

Edward Stone, the only project scientist the interstellar spacecraft Voyagers 1 and 2 have ever known, has now retired after 50 years service.

Stone accepted scientific leadership of the historic mission in 1972, five years before the launch of its two spacecraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. Under his guidance, the Voyagers explored the four giant planets and became the first human-made objects to reach interstellar space, the region between the stars containing material generated by the death of nearby stars.

Until now, Stone was the only person to have served as project scientist for Voyager, maintaining his position even while serving as director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California from 1991 to 2001. JPL manages the Voyager mission for NASA. Stone retired from JPL in 2001 but continued to serve as the mission’s project scientist.

The new Voyager project scientist however is not new to the project.

Linda Spilker will succeed Stone as Voyager’s project scientist as the twin probes continue to explore interstellar space. Spilker was a member of the Voyager science team during the mission’s flybys of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. She later became project scientist for NASA’s now-retired Cassini mission to Saturn, and rejoined Voyager as deputy project scientist in 2021.

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InSight still hangs in, barely

11:43 pm

InSight's power status as of October 22, 2022

A new update on the status of the Mars lander InSight was released today, showing its power output daily through October 22, 2022. The graph to the right shows this update. From the report:

As of October 22, 2022, InSight’s seismometer is collecting data again after being switched off to conserve energy after a recent dust storm. The lander was generating an average of 280 watt-hours of energy per Martian day, or sol. The tau, or level of dust cover in the atmosphere, was estimated at 1.45 (typical tau levels outside of dust season range from 0.6-0.7).

These power levels are very low, so low I am surprised the science team thought it was able to start the seismometer again. It could be they expect the lander to fail any moment, and decided to maximize the data it can get in the little time it has left.

A press conference is planned for Thursday, October 27, 2022 to provide an update on InSight’s future, as well it appears to describe a recent discovery (likely the exact moment some recent impacts took place) based on data from InSight and images from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). This was already reported in mid-September, but more impacts might have been identified.

It is also possible the MRO images detected some other change on the surface (not an impact) that InSight’s seismometer picked up. If so, the briefing will be far more interesting.

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