May 9, 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.
- Sierra Space’s Tenacity mini-shuttle successfully completes all pre-launch testing at NASA facility in Ohio
It is now going to be shipped to Cape Canaveral for final testing before it is stacked on ULA’s Vulcan rocket. They are still targeting a launch before the end of the year.
- Chinese university touts the launch yesterday of the first satellite of what it claims will be internet constellation
One wonders. The constellation is dubbed Skynet, which is the same name China uses for its ground-based video surveillance network, using 600 million cameras to record and track every Chinese citizen everywhere.
- Chinese-French high energy space telescope being readied for June launch on a Chinese rocket
Dubbed SVOM, working it both gamma and optical wavelengths, it will attempt to identify gamma ray bursts as they happen. It is essentially a new version of the Gehrels Swift space telescope that has been doing this work since 2004.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
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You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
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.
- Sierra Space’s Tenacity mini-shuttle successfully completes all pre-launch testing at NASA facility in Ohio
It is now going to be shipped to Cape Canaveral for final testing before it is stacked on ULA’s Vulcan rocket. They are still targeting a launch before the end of the year.
- Chinese university touts the launch yesterday of the first satellite of what it claims will be internet constellation
One wonders. The constellation is dubbed Skynet, which is the same name China uses for its ground-based video surveillance network, using 600 million cameras to record and track every Chinese citizen everywhere.
- Chinese-French high energy space telescope being readied for June launch on a Chinese rocket
Dubbed SVOM, working it both gamma and optical wavelengths, it will attempt to identify gamma ray bursts as they happen. It is essentially a new version of the Gehrels Swift space telescope that has been doing this work since 2004.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
‘Skynet’? That sounds like something out of sci-fi. This stuff isn’t:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/17/technology/china-surveillance.html
https://www.businessinsider.com/china-facial-recognition-technology-works-in-one-second-2018-3
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/25/technology/china-surveillance-police.html