The Cactus Cuties – The National Anthem
An evening pause: Performed live, 2008. Their singing makes you listen to the words.
Hat tip Doug Johnson.
Year: 2023
Why we really celebrate the Fourth of July
I posted this essay last year on July 4th. Time to repost it. I must add that my hopes for the November 2022 election were not realized, and we are now on the brink of losing our free country, forever, a fact that horrifies me beyond words.
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Why we really celebrate the Fourth of July
If you really want to know why the Fourth of July has been the quintessential American holiday since the founding our this country, you need only return to the words of the document that became public to the world on that day.
Below the fold is the full text of the Declaration. Read it. It isn’t hard to understand, even if the style comes from the late 1700s. Its point however is clear. Governments that abuse the rights of the citizenry don’t deserve to be in power. The most important quote of course is right near the beginning:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed — that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. [emphasis mine]
What a radical concept — a nation founded on the principle of allowing its citizens to pursue happiness.
Right now, however, we have a federal government in America that more fits the description of King George III’s Great Britain in 1776 in the Declaration. The corrupt elitist uni-Party of federal elected officials and the federal bureaucracy in Washington has for too long run roughshod over the general population. If you take the time to read the full text of the Declaration, you will be astonished at the remarkable conceptual similarity between the abuses that Jefferson describes coming from Great Britain and the many abuses of power that are now legion and common by the uni-Party in Washington.
When November comes the American public will likely have its last chance to overthrow the political wing of the uni-Party, led by the Democratic Party. The Republicans are no saints, but at least that party contains within it many decent politicians who honor the Constitution, the rule of law, and the Bill of Rights. Many are right now campaigning on those ideals. Based on the past six years, we now know that no one in the Democratic Party honors those values. What they honor is blacklisting, racism, segregation, anti-American hate, and above all power. If they are not removed from office, they will ramp up that power, in league with quislings like Romney and Cornyn in the Republican Party, to further corrupt our Constitutional government.
These people do not like losing power. The longer they hold it, the more they will work to undermine the election system to make sure they do not lose. The corruption and election fraud in 2020 election was merely a dress rehearsal of what these goons will do if they have the chance next year.
In fact, November 2022 might very well be the last election that has any chance of producing legitimate results. Americans had better not waste this last chance.
» Read more
Instrument designed to detect lightning releases first data
Lightning over Europe. Click for original movie.
The first data from the Lightning Imager launched in December 2022 on Europe’s Meteosat weather satellite has now been released, the images compiled into movies showing lightning activity across Europe, Africa, the Middle East and parts of South America.
While the animations are a first initial result from the Lightning Imager, the Meteosat Third Generation Imager is currently undergoing its commissioning phase during which the instruments are calibrated and the data is validated. Data from the Lightning Imager will be available for operational use in early-2024 at an increased sensitivity.
You can see all the movies here. The lightning is found almost exclusively over land. In fact, you can see the lightning in one storm vanish as the storm drifts out into the Mediterranean.
More evidence found suggesting supernovae occurred near the solar system during its formation
Scientists have now detected more evidence that suggests a supernovae occurred very close to our solar system during its early period of formation.
Astronomers have for decades found such evidence inside meteorites. Small spherical inclusions called chondrules are thought by some to have formed when the heat of a nearby supernova caused melting. The new study finds more evidence in isotopes also found in primitive meteorites dubbed short-lived radionuclides (SLRs).
While SLRs probably existed in the part of the filament where the Sun and Solar System formed, the meteorite samples contained too much of a particular aluminum isotope for the interstellar medium to have been the Solar System’s only SLR source. Cosmic rays, which can convert stable isotopes to radioactive ones, had a better chance of explaining the number of isotopes found in the meteorites. However, it would have taken too long for this process to produce the levels of SLRs found in the early Solar System.
It is most likely that such high SLR levels could have come from either very intense stellar winds, which would have occurred during massive star formation, or from what was left after one of the massive stars went supernova.
You can read the published paper here.
If true, this data adds weight to the possibility that our solar system is somewhat unique, which in turn suggests finding just another like it — with life — might be difficult.
SpaceX and FAA seek dismissal of lawsuit against Starship at Boca Chica
Both the FAA and SpaceX have now submitted their response to the lawsuit filed by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and other environmental and leftist political groups, requesting a dismissal of their lawsuit demanding no more launches at Boca Chica until the federal government completes a new environmental impact statement.
In a filing Friday, the FAA said the groups lack legal standing for their claims against the agency that granted a launch license to SpaceX’s Starship rocket program. Separately, a SpaceX filing said the first Starship launch on April 20 provided no cause for the FAA to conduct a new environmental assessment, a process that could halt further test launches for years. “For the foregoing reasons, defendants request that the court dismiss the complaint in its entirety,” Todd Kim, assistant attorney general for the environment and natural resources division of the U.S. Department of Justice, wrote in the filing in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.
In a sane world, this lawsuit would have been thrown out of court almost instantly. There is no evidence the test launch of Starship/Superheavy caused any environmental damage. Furthermore, launches from Cape Canaveral for the past seven decades have proven this fact repeatedly.
We no longer live in a sane world. There is no guarantee the court will rule in favor of the FAA or SpaceX.
Parker completes 16th orbit of the Sun
On June 22, 2023 the Parker Solar Probe completed its 16th close approach to the Sun, passing within 5.3 million miles of the solar surface while moving at 364,610 miles per hour.
The mission team at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, noted the close approach was preceded by a small trajectory correction maneuver (TCM) on June 7 — the first course correction since March 2022. Mission Design and Navigation Manager Yanping Guo of APL said TCMs are performed periodically to ensure that the spacecraft remains on course, and the latest maneuver kept Parker on track to hit the “aim point” for the mission’s sixth Venus flyby on Aug. 21.
With each perihelion now, Parker sets new records of speed. No human spacecraft has ever flown so fast.
Sunspot update: June saw the most sunspots in more than two decades
Time for our monthly sunspot update, based on NOAA’s monthly graph that tracks the number of sunspots on the Sun’s Earth-facing hemisphere. I have posted that graph below, but have added some extra details to provide some context.
June saw the highest sunspot count in a month since September 2002, when the Sun was just beginning its ramp down after its solar maximum that reached its peak in late 2001. From that time until now, the Sun has been in a very prolonged quiet period, with two solar minimums that were overly long and a single solar maximum that was very weak with a extended double peak lasting almost four years.
» Read more
Dude Dad – If Toddlers Had Lawyers
An evening pause: Definitely not Perry Mason, though certainly inspired by him.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
A Martian volcanic ash field covering an ancient lava flow
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on April 16, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows in the center an ancient tongue of lava flow that is surrounded by thick dust fields on the north and the south.
The arrow indicates the downhill grade. It also shows the direction of the prevailing winds, downhill to sculpt the volcanic ash into long streamers of parallel grooves, with obvious eddies forming around bits of older lava that still stick up through the ash. On the lava flow can also be seen one small volcano cone, on the picture’s right edge, suggesting that either during this flow or after it hardened magma bubbled up from below.
The location is fascinating, and in fact puts this picture into its much more spectacular context.
» Read more
A spiral galaxy as seen by Hubble
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken as part of a research project to use the Hubble Space Telescope to photograph galaxies where supernovae had recently occurred. From the caption:
UGC 11860 lies around 184 million light-years away in the constellation Pegasus, and its untroubled appearance can be deceiving; this galaxy recently played host to an almost unimaginably energetic stellar explosion.
A supernova explosion — the catastrophically violent end of a massive star’s life — was detected in UGC 11860 in 2014 by a robotic telescope dedicated to scouring the skies for transient astronomical phenomena; astronomical objects which are only visible for a short period of time. Two different teams of astronomers used Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 to search through the aftermath and unpick the lingering remnants of this vast cosmic explosion.
This Hubble image once again illustrates the vastness of the universe. Note that every single dot surrounding UGC 11860 in this picture is another far more distant galaxy. As much as UGC 11860 is in our local intergalactic neighborhood, it is still so distant that this field of view is small enough that it contains no stars.
Another flying car gets FAA approval for flight testing
The Aska-5 flying car
The FAA has approved another flying car for flight testing, this time for a flying car designed to also be able to do vertical take-offs if necessary.
The Aska A5 … has four wheels and four seats. Like the Klein Vision [another flying car proposal], it can take off on a runway if there’s one available. Unlike the Klein Vision, it can also takeoff on a very short runway, or indeed no runway at all, thanks to an electric VTOL [vertical take-off and landing] system that folds out at the touch of a button. And unlike, say, the Xpeng AeroHT [a different flying car proposal], it’s capable of transitioning to efficient, winged cruise mode to expand its range.
The A5 will look fairly ridiculous driving down the road, all propellers and struts, a clog with a dishrack full of cutlery piled on top. But when the main rear wing and canard fold out, it all makes a lot more sense. There are six large propellers, four at the back, two at the front, and in VTOL operations these will lift the Aska off the ground and allow it to hover. For forward flight, the two inner rear propellers can tilt forward, allowing horizontal thrust in cruise mode with the rest of the props switched off and the car’s weight supported by its wings.
The proposed price tag for the Aska-5 is presently just under $800K, though it will be a while before you can buy one. The company says it is doing both driving and flight testing, but provided no images or data of it in the air. Thus, a lot of work remains before you could climb in, drive from your home to an airport and take off.
The company says it has $50 million in preorders. If so, at least 50 people think this might be the real deal.
ISRO aborts first static fire test of prototype of a new upper stage rocket engine
According to India’s space agency ISRO, on July 1st engineers were forced to abort the first static fire test of prototype of a new upper stage rocket engine, planned to last 4.5 seconds but stopped after 1.9 seconds.
The test proceeded as predicted till 1.9 s validating the ignition and subsequent performance of PHTA [Power Head Test Article]. At 2.0 s, an unanticipated spike in the turbine pressure and subsequent loss of turbine-speed was observed. As a precautionary step, the test was terminated. Analysis under progress would offer further understanding before proceeding with further hot-tests for longer duration.
This was not a test of a real rocket engine, but an engineering test prototype, designed “to validate the integrated performance of the critical subsystems such as the gas generator, turbo pumps, pre-burner and control components.” That the test showed issues without exploding is actually very good news. Engineers still have the prototype to quickly figure out what went wrong and fix it.