December 20, 2024 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
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Year: 2024
Sydney Philharmonia Choir & Orchestra – Handel’s Hallelujah
An evening pause: If this doesn’t wake you up for the weekend, nothing will.
Hat tip to both Judd Clark and James Street.
Enrollment in colleges nationwide dropped 5% in 2024
Modern college education: “But Brawndo’s got
what plants crave. It’s got electrolytes!”
According to a report by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, college enrollment in 2023 dropped by 5% from the previous year, suggesting that high school students are beginning to question the value of attending colleges where anti-Semitism and bigotry is promoted and white and Asian students are treated like dirt.
It could also be because they are beginning to realize that — at least in the soft sciences like history, sociology, literature, etc — all they will get is leftist/Marxist indoctrination, not a true education.
The statistics point in this direction:
Enrollment declined across racial groups for 18-year-old freshmen, though white students saw the steepest decline, the analysis found. White 18-year-old enrollment dropped 10 percent between fall 2023 and 2024, compared to 8.4 percent for multiracial students, 8.2 percent for Black students, 5.7 percent for Asian students and 2.1 percent for Hispanic students.
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December 20, 2024 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- Samples from the Chang’e-6 mission to the Moon’s far side have provided scientists added detail about its magnetic history
The tweet provides little information. Go here for more information.
- Stratolaunch’s giant Roc airplane completes another flight test
No hypersonic Talon craft was seen attached below it, suggesting either none was flown or it had been dropped for a test prior to anyone spotting the plane.
China launches a communications test satellite
According to China’s uninformative state-run press, it today launched “a test satellite for communication technology,” its Long March 3B rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in southwest China.
No other details about the satellite were released. Nor did the state-run press provide any information about where the rocket’s lower stages, using very toxic hypergolic fuel, crashed inside China.
As is usual for China, it is doing a lot of launches at the end of the year. Though weather might be a factor, I also suspect it is the ordinary “use-it-or-lose-it” symptom of a government-run communist society. Budgets are set for the year. Government agencies find that they better launch or they will lose that budgeted amount in the next year’s budget.
This might not apply to China but if so it would explain its strange end-of-year launch pattern.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
132 SpaceX
64 China
16 Russia
13 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 151 to 96, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 132 to 115.
Perseverance takes its first good look west at its future journey
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, reduced and enhanced to post here, was taken today by the left navigation camera on the Mars rover Perseverance. Though I am not 100% certain, I think this picture looks almost due west, and is aimed not only at the rover’s near term target, Witch Hazel Hill, but the rover’s long term and very important goal, the Nils Fossae ridge and canyon that appears to be crack formed during the impact that created giant 745-mile-wide Isidis Basin. Jezero Crater sits on the western rim of that impact basin.
The rover team expects to reach Witch Hazel Hill within days. To get there quickly the team has moved the rover more than a thousand feet west and dropped down from the rim about 170 feet in just the past ten days.
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Oh no! The sonic booms of SpaceX are coming!
Superheavy after its flight, safely captured at Boca Chica
on October 13, 2024.
When the current (but soon to step down) administrator of the FAA Mike Whitaker testified before Congress in September 2024 and attempted to explain his agency’s red tape that have significantly slowed development of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy rocket, he claimed that the sonic booms produced when Superheavy returned to land at the launchpad posed a “safety issue” that needed a detailed review.
“I think the sonic boom analysis [related to returning Superheavy back to Boca Chica] is a safety related incident.”
The sudden introduction of this issue was somewhat out of the blue. While loud, the sonic boom of a rocket launch is hardly a concern. The space shuttle produced the same for decades when it landed, and that was always considered a fun plus to watching the landing. And even if SpaceX begins launching its rockets once a day from any spaceport, that added noise does nothing to hurt anyone. In fact, it is a local signal of a thriving economy.
Since then it appears the leftist “intellectual elitists” that don’t like it when they don’t run everything — which is one reason they now hate Elon Musk — have run a full court press trying to make these rocket sonic booms a cause celebre that can be used to block SpaceX launches.
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Xaver Varnus – Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor
An evening pause: Played on the great Sauer Organ of the Berliner Dom.
At the time of its dedication in 1905, the great Sauer Organ of the Berliner Dom was the largest in Germany, with its 7269 pipes and 113 registers, distributed across four manuals and pedals.
While not directly related to Christmas or the holidays, I think this piece is still appropriate for the season.
Hat tip Judd Clark, who adds, “Though I had reservations because of its length and because it has been subject to innumerable transcriptions and performances on different organs by different organists it has become cliché. But, it is an exceptional performance on an exceptional organ in an exceptional hall.”
December 19, 2024 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- Astroscale begins work on next space junk removal mission
The next mission will do further proximity and rendezvous testing in orbit, but do it approaching “large satellite debris” rather than an intact upper stage, as done in the first mission.
- Taiwan studying locations for a possible spaceport, even as it discusses a collaboration with Amazon on space matters
Not much real information to go on.
- ISRO to attempt a “tethered satellite capture via robotic arm experiment” on next launch
The launch, using a PSLV rocket, is presently scheduled for December 30, 2024, will launch a payload designed to test autonomous docking. This specific test will involve using a robot arm to capture a tethered cubesat, and is aimed at developing technology for orbital servicing and space junk removal.
- On this day in 1972 Apollo 17 splashed down in the Pacific, completing the last mission to land humans on the Moon
That was 52 years ago. I wonder when Americans will ever do it again.
- On this day in 1999, the shuttle Discovery launched on the third Hubble repair mission
The launch had been moved up six months because of gyroscope failures on Hubble that had put it in safe mode. During three space walks astronauts replaced all six gyroscopes on the telescope, putting it back in operation.
Land of dust devils
Click for original image.
Today’s cool image to the right demonstrates that the atmosphere and climate of Mars is truly different in different places. The picture, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on July 22, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled simply as a “terrain sample”, it was likely taken not as part of any specific research project but to fill a gap in the camera’s schedule in order to maintain its proper temperature.
I post it today almost to illustrate the difference between this location and the spot where the lander Insight landed on Mars. Earlier this week the MRO camera team released a short movie created by images of the lander taken over six years, showing how the dust around it had changed over time. I noted further how those images showed a very small number of dust devil tracks, which explained why no dust devil every crossed over the lander’s solar panels to clean them of dust.
For the picture on the right, however, there are a lot of dust devil tracks, so many near the bottom that they almost completely darken the ground.
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Pushback: Blacklisted doctor gets lawsuit reinstated by higher court
The kind of policies advocated by Hennepin Healthcare system
that Gustilo criticized
Fight! Fight! Fight! Back in August 2021, I reported the horrible blacklisting of Tara Gustilo, a biracial physician from the Philippines, who had been demoted and experienced a $150K cut in salary at the Hennepin Healthcare system in Minnesota simply because she had posted criticisms of the racist Black Lives Matter movement as well as the critical race theory policies, now known as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), that Hennepin was pushing.
In addition to filing a discrimination complaint with the federal government, Gustilo sued, represented by the Minnesota-based Upper Midwest Law Center (UMLC). You can read her lawsuit here [pdf].
That lawsuit however had been dismissed by a lower court. Last week however the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals threw out that decision, reinstating the lawsuit.
The court’s decision can be read here. The court specifically noted that Gustilo’s right to free speech appeared to have been violated, and that fact must be considered by a jury.
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Vast signs deal with SpaceX for two ISS tourist missions
Depending on whether it gets NASA contractual approval, the space station startup Vast has now signed a deal with SpaceX for flying two tourist missions to ISS.
These two missions expand Vast’s launch manifest with SpaceX, which includes the company’s Falcon 9 rocket delivering Haven-1 to low-Earth orbit and a subsequent Dragon mission to fly crew to the commercial space station. Haven-1 will also be supported by Starlink laser-based high-speed internet.
Axiom, which has flown three tourist missions to ISS and has a fourth planned, is also bidding for the next two tourist slots NASA has made available for ISS in the coming years. It is not clear who will get those slots. Axiom has the advantage it has done it before, but the rumors that it lost money on those flights and now has a cash shortage work against it. Vast hasn’t yet flown, but it is moving fast to fly and occupy Haven-1 next year. NASA might want to give it at least one of those slots to balance the scales.
Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.