Peter Gabriel – The Boy in the Bubble
A evening pause: Somehow, this seems very appropriate for today, this particualar but most important election day.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
Author: Robert Zimmerman
And now we wait
Trying to predict the outcome of today’s election in today’s world of shallow emotions and partisan bickering is beyond impossible. The pollsters, generally favoring the Democrats, have for months slanted their results to favor Joe Biden. The conservative press, desperate to grasp at any straw, has in turn focused on the early voting numbers, broken down by party, to claim that Trump is leading.
I really don’t know which is right, at this moment. Moreover, there is a lot of evidence that we will not even have a result by the end of tonight.
However, I still would like to make some predictions, because there are some things we know are very likely to happen, regardless of who wins the election.
» Read more
In Europe, the use of masks leads to more COVID-19 cases
It appears that the three European countries with the strictest mask mandates and the highest percentage of usage are also the three European countries experiencing the highest surge of COVID-19 cases, signaling once again that masks not only do not protect anyone from the virus, they could actually be contributing to its spread.
The Biden campaign and the Democrats are cynically cashing in on these pandemic fears. “We’re in a circumstance where the president thus far and still has no plan, no comprehensive plan,” Biden ranted at the debate. “What I would do is make sure we have everyone encouraged to wear a mask all the time.”
France, Italy, and Spain tried that. It didn’t work.
The European countries most obsessed with masks are doing the worst. Nearly universal mask wearing in those countries has done little to prevent a surge. Democrats have a weakness for wanting to be like the Europeans. But the only thing the Biden mask mandate would do is turn us into France. The French wore masks through the summer heat only to have three times the cases per capita and per day as the Americans who never adopted a mask mandate.
The author outlines the numbers. In France 78% of the population wear masks. In Italy the number is 81%. And in Spain it is as high as 86%. Yet all three have had the biggest recent surges in new cases since the mask mandates were imposed. Meanwhile countries where fewer than a third or less of the population where masks — Sweden, Norway, and the UK — the number of cases is far less, and for Sweden there has been no surge in cases at all..
While the author outlines the failure of these mask mandates to stop the virus’ spread, he does not note one component that might be contributing to the surges in these mask-obsessed countries. Masks if misused and worn when they are not sanitary, as is common when large numbers of people are required to wear them all the time, become pathogen bombs. Instead of blocking the virus (an ability that remains quite unproven), they likely become carriers of the virus, at the very place people breath.
But don’t worry. Though you might be increasing the chances of getting sick, you will “feel-good” about yourself when you put on that mask. It is a talisman that proves your wonderful virtue to everyone else, especially those evil people who have looked at the data and have decided to forego this pathogen spreader.
NASA officially expresses concerns about proposed private communications constellation
For what appears to be an unprecedented action, NASA has officially expressed opposition to a proposed private satellite constellation by the company AST & Science.
NASA’s position was released in a comment to the FCC, where the company has requested a communications license to operate its satellites.
At issue are plans put forth by AST & Science, which intends to build a constellation of more than 240 large satellites, essentially deploying “cell towers” in space to provide 4G and possibly 5G broadband connection directly to cell phones on Earth. The company, based in Midland, Texas, calls its constellation “SpaceMobile” and has raised an estimated $120 million.
The space agency felt compelled to comment on AST’s proposal for several reasons. Most notably, the proposed altitude for the SpaceMobile constellation lies near the “A-Train,” a group of 10 Earth-science monitoring satellites operated by NASA and the US Geological Survey, as well as partners in France and Japan. “Historical experience with the A-Train constellation has shown that this particular region of space tends to produce a large number of conjunctions between space objects,” the NASA letter states.
The satellites are also very large. In order to provide service, AST plans to build spacecraft with large phased array antennae—900 square meters. According to NASA, in planning for potential conjunctions with other satellites and debris in this orbit, this would require proscribing a “hard-body radius” of 30 meters, or as much as 10 times larger than other satellites.
Maneuvering around the proposed SpaceMobile constellation would be extraordinarily taxing, NASA said. “For the completed constellation of 243 satellites, one can expect 1,500 mitigation actions per year and perhaps 15,000 planning activities,” the space agency stated. “This would equate to four maneuvers and 40 active planning activities on any given day.”
The company has said it is willing to work with NASA to ease its concerns. For NASA to take this particular step however is most strange, especially considering the size of this constellation, 240 satellites. This number is tiny compared to the multi-thousands being proposed by SpaceX, Amazon, and OneWeb. Their large size footprint certainly could be a factor, but it does seem puzzling for the space agency to pick out this particular constellation for opposition, and none of the others.
Signal to Voyager-2 confirms upgrade of NASA’s Deep Space Network
After months of downtime in order to install a major and very badly needed upgrade to NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) (the worldwide array of radio dishes used to communicate with planetary probes throughout the solar system) a test command to Voyager-2 beyond the orbit of Pluto was sent, received, and executed successfully this week, proving the upgrade is working.
The call to Voyager 2 was a test of new hardware recently installed on Deep Space Station 43, the only dish in the world that can send commands to Voyager 2. Located in Canberra, Australia, it is part of NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN), a collection of radio antennas around the world used primarily to communicate with spacecraft operating beyond the Moon. Since the dish went offline, mission operators have been able to receive health updates and science data from Voyager 2, but they haven’t been able to send commands to the far-flung probe, which has traveled billions of miles from Earth since its 1977 launch.
Among the upgrades to DSS43, as the dish is known, are two new radio transmitters. One of them, which is used to talk with Voyager 2, hasn’t been replaced in over 47 years. Engineers have also upgraded heating and cooling equipment, power supply equipment, and other electronics needed to run the new transmitters.
The successful call to Voyager 2 is just one indication that the dish will be back online in February 2021.
The upgrade has been overdue for years, and is essential to provide sufficient communications capability for the future interplanetary mission presently planned.
Yes, Prime Minister – If the right people don’t have power…
An evening pause: In honor of tomorrow’s election day.
Hat tip Phill Oltmann.
Layered mesa on Mars
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on June 24, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a distinctive mesa in a mountainous region in the cratered highlands of Mars, just north of Hellas Basin, the deepest basin on the red planet.
The mesa’s most distinctive feature are its terraced layers, a feature that MRO has found in numerous other places surrounding and inside Hellas Basin (see for example the cool images here, here, here, here, here, and here.)
On Earth the assumption would be that these terraced layers imply different sedimentary layers that erode at different rates, as best illustrated by the Grand Canyon in Arizona. On Mars that assumption is not unreasonable, but unlike Earth, those layers could not have been formed in connection with large ocean bodies creating seafloor layers from the deposit of sealife over centuries. Some other geological process over time formed them, with volcanism, either from volcanoes or impact, being the most likely.
» Read more
Sunspot update: An active October heralds the likely end of solar minimum
With the start of a new month it is once again time to publish another sunspot update. NOAA yesterday updated its monthly graph for tracking the Sun’s monthly sunspot activity. As I have done now every month since this website started in 2011, it is posted below, with additional annotations by me to show the past solar cycle predictions.
Unlike September, which saw almost no sunspots, October was a very active month, with the amount of sunspots far exceeding prediction. Furthermore, every sunspot during the month had a polarity assigning it to the new solar cycle, not the last.
Vote for Trump, but even more, vote Republican across the board
I’ve said it before but I will say it again. Donald Trump is the right candidate for president, and everyone who hasn’t yet voted should vote for him tomorrow, both because he kept his promises and has actually done a decent job as president.
However, it is even more important to vote for Republicans across the board. If Trump is re-elected but the voters do not give him strong majorities in both houses of Congress, his ability to do what the voters want will be seriously circumscribed. And if the Democrats win control of both houses of Congress, expect that their first order of business will be to impeach Trump and then try to remove him from office. The goal will be to quickly nullify your vote for Trump, by the party of segregation, slavery, riots, looting, and stolen elections.
And on the local city and state level things are quite simple. » Read more
SpaceX to live stream 50,000 foot hop of Starship
Capitalism in space: Elon Musk yesterday announced that SpaceX will publicly live stream the 50,000-foot hop of Starship prototype #8, expected sometime in the next two weeks. His tweet:
Sure, although it might be quite a short livestream! Lot can go wrong, but we’ll provide video, warts & all. You will see every frame that we do.
Up until now the public has had to depend on the independent live streams being put out by local residents still living in Boca Chica, Texas, which did not know SpaceX’s exact schedule. When SpaceX does it they will likely provide more specific launch times. They will also probably provide detailed accurate commentary.
Also, this update on the status of Starship development notes that the primary goal of that hop is testing the ability of the ship’s fins and systems to control the ship’s initial descent on its return to Earth, flying on its side like the Space Shuttle. If they have problems getting the ship upright for a vertical landing and it ends up in the ocean that will not surprise them. A successful vertical landing would be icing on the cake.
Another movie of OSIRIS-REx’s sample-grab-and-go at Bennu
The OSIRIS-REx science team has released another movie showing the sample-grab-and-go at Bennu, this time from a different camera.
The movie, made up of 189 images taken over three hours by the spacecraft’s navigation camera NavCam-2, can be seen at the link.
In the middle of the sequence, the spacecraft slews, or rotates, so that NavCam 2 looks away from Bennu, toward space. OSIRIS-REx then performs a final slew to point the camera (and the sampling arm) toward the surface again.
As the spacecraft nears site Nightingale, the sampling arm’s shadow comes into view in the lower part of the frame. Shortly after, the sampling head impacts site Nightingale (just outside the camera’s field of view to the upper right) and fires a nitrogen gas bottle, which mobilizes a substantial amount of the sample site’s material. Several seconds later, the spacecraft performs a back-away burn and the sampling arm’s shadow is visible against the disturbed surface material.
The team continues to investigate what caused the extremely dark areas visible in the upper and middle parts of the frame. The upper area could be the edge of the depression created by the sampling arm, a strong shadow cast by material lofted from the surface, or some combination of the two. Similarly, the middle dark region that first appears in the lower left of the image could be a depression caused by one of the spacecraft thrusters as it fired, a shadow caused by lofted material, or a combination of both.
It strikes me that getting post impact images of Nightingale is essential, if at all possible.
Climate scientists are science’s biggest frequent flyers
From the people who want to shut down all fossil fuel technology: A newly published survey of 1,400 scientists from 59 countries has found that climate scientists fly more than researchers in any other field.
Climate experts — who accounted for about 17% of respondents — take five flights per year on average, the study found, whereas researchers who specialize in other fields took four. Climate scientists also fly more often for work than their peers, but take fewer international flights for personal reasons. Air travel becomes more frequent with job seniority across all disciplines, with climate-change professors flying on average nine times per year, and those in non-climate disciplines flying eight times.
Although the difference isn’t enormous, it adds up to a “colossal amount of flying”, says Lorraine Whitmarsh, an environmental psychologist at the University of Bath, UK, who led the study. “These figures are really quite stark, I think, and should be a wake-up call for all of science.”
The survey took place prior to the Wuhan panic, and thus does not tell us about the new fear-driven flying patterns of scientists.
That this story comes from the journal Nature,. which in recent years has become increasing controlled by the leftist propaganda machine, suggests the data is quite convincing. Nature wouldn’t allow any publication of any paper that throws a bad light on global warming or its researchers, unless the data was overwhelming and impossible to ignore.
It also tells us that climate scientists themselves don’t really believe their own doomsday predictions about global warming. Before the Wuhan panic they would routinely run numerous international conferences, often in wonderful warm-weather vacation spots in the midst of winter, and would flock there in the thousands to enjoy that warm weather even as they repeatedly called for government restrictions on everyone else. The article quotes one scientist, who tries to justify this travel:
International conferences might also have an influence, says Kim Cobb, a climate scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. Meetings to coordinate global mitigation efforts — such as of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — involve hundreds of researchers from different countries. “You need to have a frequent series of meetings to keep up with the data, to advance our findings, to make sure that they are disseminated across the community,” says Cobb. [emphasis mine]
I highlight her quote because her reasons for attending such conferences are unadulterated garbage. While it is important to personally get together periodically with other scientists in the field to exchange results (something that is unfortunately no longer happening because of fear of COVID-19), you don’t need to do this “frequently” in today’s intenet society. Nor do you need to do it to “keep up with the data” or to distribute it to everyone else. If anything, such conferences are very inefficient for achieving these goals. The internet does it far better.
No, the purpose of many of these very big climate conferences had nothing to do with science. I’ve attended a few, and noticed how little real science was discussed. Instead, these conferences were political gatherings, aimed at organizing political action and regulation, as determined by these high-flying climate politicos. And they were always in nice warm weather locations, in winter.
To sum up: Until the climate field acts like it believes its own pontifications about the evils of fossil fuels, no one else should.