Cab Calloway – Minnie the Moocher
An evening pause: Performed live 1958.
Hat tip sippin_bourbon.
Year: 2023
October 23, 2023 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
- China touts proposed in-orbiting manufacturing technology, including 3D printing
This is merely engineering by powerpoint. No actual prototypes appear to yet exist.
- Heavy rains cause flooding at construction site of commercial launchpad at China’s Wenchang coastal spaceport
No other details provided, such as the impact this might have on the first launch
- NASA convenes team to reassess design of Mars sample return mission
Common sense would cause them to consider a major restructuring that even might include Starship. The track record of Washington suggests instead they will only make some superficial changes, claiming it saves money and addresses the problems outlined by the recent very critical independent review. And most important, they will ask for more money!
“Formerly clandestine Nazis will continue protesting, sometimes violently”
The left is now enthusiastically cheering for another
Jewish genocide in Israel
The headline sums up the situation. It is a quote from an article about the Israeli army’s green light to invade Gaza and take as long as necessary in order to utterly destroy Hamas. In its conclusion that article couldn’t help noting the expected and guaranteed enraged protests from all the usual suspects when that invasion begins.
The attempt by Israel to defend itself after a brutal terrorist attack by Hamas, torturing and killing what appears to be more than a thousand people, including many women, children, and babies, has accomplished one and only one good thing: It has caused the Nazis among us — almost all of which are on the left — to finally make clear their true feelings and goals: It’s all right to kill Israelis, especially if they are Jews. And it’s also all right to torture little children before you do it.
The examples of this are so many it is difficult to document them all. Over and over people from all walks of life but especially our elitist intellectual class enthusiatically called for the massacre of Jews while demanding Israel stand down and let Hamas do it. Here are only a few examples:
» Read more
A low mid-latitude crater on Mars apparently filled to overflowing with ice
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 18, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a steep 1,000-foot-high cliff with what appears to be extensive glacial material at its base.
The many layers all suggest past climate cycles, where snow was deposited and the glacier grew, followed by a period when no snow fell and the glacier either shrank or remained unchanged. The terraced nature of the layers near the base of the cliff suggest that with each active cycle less snow was deposited and the glacier grew less.
The latitude is 33 degrees south, which puts it just outside the dry equatorial regions of Mars and inside the mid-latitude region where many such glacial features are found. Its closeness to the tropics however is significant, because by this point we should be seeing a diminishment of such features. Instead, the wider view shows us that the near surface ice in this region is extensive and in fact appears to cover everything.
» Read more
Ingenuity completes 63rd flight on Mars
Click for interactive map.
On October 19, 2023 the Mars helicopter Ingenuity successfully completed its 63rd flight on Mars, traveling 1,901 feet (its third longest flight) for 142.6 seconds.
On the overview map above the two dots and the green line mark the flight path, to the southwest and landing about 2,000 feet to the west of where the rover Perseverance presently sits (indicated by the blue dot).
Both the flight time and distance were slightly longer than the flight plan, likely caused by the helicopter making sure it had a safe landing spot before lowering itself to the ground.
Ingenuity is no longer simply an engineering test of whether flight is possible on Mars. It is now serving wholly as a scout for Perseverance, either moving ahead of its planned route (the red dotted line) in order to provide pictures of the ground so that the rover’s science team can better plan their future travels, or going into territory that the rover is not intended to travel in order to gather data that would previously been unavailable.
Near collision of Australian satellite with Chinese military satellite
According to one Australian military official, a Chinese military satellite earlier this month came within a kilometer of a Australian satellite.
Analysis conducted after the event by the company LeoLabs shows both satellites were predicted to have an “miss” distance of just 100 metres 24 hours before the anticipated “conjunction”.
According to the data, the Yaogan 37 satellite manoeuvred 16 hours prior to the conjunction, increasing the miss distance to 978 metres at the closest approach.
The official’s presentation emphasized the increasing threat of collisions from the high number of satellites being launched, but this incident instead suggests to me that the problem is actually under some control by satellite operators. It continues the pattern seen repeatedly, whereby satellite operators detect a potential collision before it happens, and take preventive measures to avoid it.
The real problem has to do with defunct equipment in orbit that no one is in contact with or can control. Such objects pose are a bigger threat, because they cannot be maneuvered.
Space Perspective unveils restroom for its high altitude tourist balloon
Click for original image.
The Florida company Space Perspective yesterday unveiled the restroom for its high altitude tourist balloon, Neptune, that intends to take passengers on six to eight hour flights to nineteen miles elevation.
The goal was to provide an environment closer to a spa than to a typical aircraft setting, said Dan Window, who oversees all aspects of design at Space Perspective alongside Isabella Trani. “Overall, we embraced softness and optimistic color tones in the Space Spa, which play nicely with the contrasting colors you will see through its two windows,” Window said in the same statement. “We’re also using light washes, for example, to create ambience and allow for customization of the environment as well as discourage reflections in the windows. Soothing soundscapes will be unique to what you experience in the Space Lounge, and we brought in plants as a callback to the experience that Space Perspective’s founders had in Biosphere 2.
Based on the artist’s renderning to the right, the restroom is still a very small space, smaller than the smallest bathroom in most homes.
Space Perspective says it has received deposits for more than 1,600 flight tickets at 125K each, representing $200 million in potential income. It hopes to complete its first test flight next year.
Scientists: The activity at the few known fast radio bursts suggests they resemble earthquakes
By analyzing 7,000 fast radio bursts (FRBs) detected from the three known FRBs, two scientists have found that the behavior appears to resemble the main quake and aftershocks seen in earthquakes.
The duo found that the arrival times of bursts from FRB20121102A showed a high degree of correlation, with many more bursts arriving within a second of each other than would be expected if the generation of bursts were completely random. This correlation faded away at longer timescales, with bursts separated by over a second arriving completely at random.
They drew similarities with this behaviour to how earthquakes produce secondary aftershocks in the hours or days following a tremor, but then become completely unpredictable once an episode of aftershocks passes. Moreover, they found that the rate of these FRB “aftershocks” follows the same Omori-Utsu law that characterises the occurrence of earthquake aftershocks on Earth. The law states that shortly after a large earthquake, the rate of aftershocks remains constant over a brief period of minutes to hours, after which the aftershock rate drops, decaying as roughly the inverse of the time since the main shock.
As always there is uncertainty about this conclusion. The magnitudes of the main quake and the pre- and after-shocks do not follow the curve pattern of earthquakes. Instead pre- and after-shocks can be as powerful.
The present theory is that FRBs are quakes in the crust of neutron stars, though this remains unconfirmed.
SpaceX successfully completes two Starlink satellite launches today
SpaceX today successfully completed two Starlink satellite launches, first putting 21 satellites in orbit from Vandenberg in the early morning hours and then launching another 23 satellites from Cape Canaveral in the evening.
Both first stages successfully landed on their drone ships, respectively in the Pacific and Atlantic. The first completed its sixteenth flight, the second its fourth flight.
The leaders in 2023 launch race:
76 SpaceX
46 China
13 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India
American private enterprise now leads China in successfully launches 88 to 46, and the entire world combined 88 to 74. SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world combined (excluding American companies) 76 to 74.
First Bennu asteroid samples recovered from OSIRIS-REx return capsule
Scientists have successfully removed the asteroid samples from the OSIRIS-REx return capsule that the spacecraft obtained from the asteroid Bennu in 2020.
What is more exciting is that though they now have slightly more material than the mission hoped to bring back, they haven’t even opened the capsule’s sample compartment.
The curation team processing NASA’s asteroid Bennu sample has removed and collected 2.48 ounces (70.3 grams) of rocks and dust from the sampler hardware – surpassing the agency’s goal of bringing at least 60 grams to Earth.
And the good news is, there’s still more of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security–Regolith Explorer) sample to collect.
The sample processed so far includes the rocks and dust found on the outside of the sampler head, as well as a portion of the bulk sample from inside the head, which was accessed through the head’s mylar flap. Additional material remaining inside the sampler head, called the Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism, or TAGSAM, is set for removal later, adding to the mass total.
The large amount of material means there will be plenty to distribute to many scientists for study.
The reason the recovery process is going so slowly is to ensure the samples do not get contaminated by the Earth’s atmosphere. The capsule is inside a glovebox filled with nitrogen. The only way any work can be done is by inserting hands inside gloves that extend into the box. This keeps the samples protected but prevents any direct contact, which makes work slow and difficult.
The reshuffling of Blue Origin’s management continues
With the announcement yesterday that another high level executive was leaving the company — the third in less than a month — Blue Origin does appear to be making major changes in its management as well as its entire organizational structure.
Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith told employees in an email on Friday that Mike Eilola, the company’s senior vice president of operations since 2021, “is leaving the company for personal reasons” on Nov. 3 and will have his unit split into two new organizations.
Eilola’s departure follows plans announced last month by Bezos to replace Smith, who has been Blue Origin’s CEO since 2017, with longtime Amazon executive Dave Limp by the end of the year. And Brent Sherwood, the head of what had been the company’s research and development unit, will depart next month, Reuters has reported.
This is not the only management restructuring. It has also shifted its lunar lander project into its own division, as well as created a new separate division for developing in-space robotic servicing and orbital tug products.
It finally appears that Jeff Bezos is taking action to get his company working again, after more than a half decade of non-achievement since Bob Smith took over in 2017. Hopefully these changes finally will produce results.
Gaganyaan abort test flight flies successfully after short delay
When I went to bed last night India’s Gaganyaan abort test flight had been cancelled due to a launch abort at T-0, with the live stream ending and an expectation that engineers would need at least another day to fly.
When I woke up it turned out that ISRO behaved more like SpaceX than a government agency. It quickly figured out what was wrong, recycled the countdown, and two hours later successfully flew the test of its launch abort rescue system for its manned Gaganyaan capsule.
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully executed the Test Flight Abort Mission, for the Gaganyaan mission on Saturday after the first test flight was aborted at 8:45 am due to a problem in the engine ignition. ISRO Chief S Somanth said the planned lift off the TV-D1 rocket could not happen following an anomaly that will be analysed. He said that the engine ignition of the TV-D1 rocket did not happen over time.
The space agency then said that the errors have been identified and corrected and the second launch was scheduled for 10:00 Hrs today.
And at 10 am, ISRO successfully launched the test vehicle from Sriharikota today. Chairman Somanath expressed happiness and said, “I am very happy to announce the successful accomplishment of Gaganyaan TV-D1 mission”.
The test rocket launched, the abort system separated from the rocket as planned, the capsule was released from the abort system, its parachutes then opened, and the capsule then safely splashed down in the Bay of Bengal about ten miles off the coast, where it was recovered successfully.
ISRO plans a second launch abort test prior to flying the actual manned mission, but at this moment it appears very close to being ready for a manned mission in 2024, its present goal.