It is the PARTY of Biden that must lose big in November

Modern Fifth Avenue in New York
Today’s bankrupt New York,
a typical Democrat-run city

With the upcoming November presidential election, only two months away, the major focus continues to be on Trump and Biden. Who should win? Who is better? Do we want four more years of Trump or another four years of a Obama-type rule?

My readers will know immediately where I stand. Biden would be major disaster for the country, especially because it appears he is declining both physically and mentally and seems owned by the most radical leftist elements of his Democratic Party.

This essay, however, is a call for voters to not just vote for Trump. It is a desperate call for voters from both parties and from all ethnic, religious, and racial cohorts to vote for Republicans in every election and at every level of government. Biden is only the figurehead. It is the body of the now very corrupt, anti-American, and radical Democratic Party that must be killed, thoroughly and at all levels, including the House, the Senate, and in every state, city, and local council election.

The riots and looting and the almost willing endorsement and support given to those riots and looting by local Democratic mayors and councils and state governors demonstrates their incompetence to hold office. For the United States to survive as a nation ruled by law that also supports the freedom of its citizens, voters must reject them, unequivocally.
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Hubble maps giant gas halo around Andromeda

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope’s ability to observe in ultraviolet wavelengths have now mapped the giant halo of gas that surrounds the Andromeda galaxy 2.5 million light years away.

The work found that the halo appears to have both an inner and outer shell.

“We find the inner shell that extends to about a half million light-years is far more complex and dynamic,” explained study leader Nicolas Lehner of the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. “The outer shell is smoother and hotter. This difference is a likely result from the impact of supernova activity in the galaxy’s disk more directly affecting the inner halo.”

A signature of this activity is the team’s discovery of a large amount of heavy elements in the gaseous halo of Andromeda. Heavier elements are cooked up in the interiors of stars and then ejected into space—sometimes violently as a star dies. The halo is then contaminated with this material from stellar explosions.

The Andromeda galaxy, also known as M31, is a majestic spiral of perhaps as many as 1 trillion stars and comparable in size to our Milky Way. At a distance of 2.5 million light-years, it is so close to us that the galaxy appears as a cigar-shaped smudge of light high in the autumn sky. If its gaseous halo could be viewed with the naked eye, it would be about three times the width of the Big Dipper. This would easily be the biggest feature on the nighttime sky.

Though there is of course uncertainty here, this research is confirming earlier work, making its conclusions more robust.

A side note: Ultraviolet observations can only be done in space, as the atmosphere blocks it. Hubble I think is the only telescope in space right now with this capability. There used to be others, the most noteworthy of all being the International Ultraviolet Explorer, which functioned from 1978 to 1996 but was then decommissioned because neither NASA nor ESA were willing to fund its operation any longer.

No replacements have been launched because the budget for space astronomy has almost entirely been eaten by the overbudget and long delayed James Webb Space Telescope, with future budgets to be eaten similarly by the Roman.Space Telescope.

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Canada proposes new global treaty to control mining in space

The globalists at the UN fight back! A Canada-led effort, endorsed by more than 140 academics, politicians, and diplomats, has proposed that the UN and international community create a new treaty to control mining in space.

Signatories to the request for the UN to intervene believe space must be regulated internationally – similarly to Antarctica or the world’s seabeds – and all countries, including non-space-faring ones, get a say in decision-making. The alternative, they warn, could be a splintered approach where companies conduct flag-of-convenience resource extraction in space under whichever country has the least onerous rules. [emphasis mine]

The Trump administration has made it clear that it wants the ability to establish U.S. law on its space operations, both in spacecraft and on its future bases on the Moon and elsewhere, an ability that the Outer Space Treaty forbids. To get around the treaty, the administration has created what it calls the Artemis Accords. The accords require that any nation that wishes to partner in the American-led Artemis program to explore and colonize the Moon must agree to support the establishment of private enterprise and ownership, with the laws of each nation applied to its own operations. To do this the Trump administration is negotiating individual bi-lateral agreements with its Artemis partners.

In essence, the U.S. is using the strategy of dividing and conquering to overcome the Outer Space Treaty’s restrictions.

Canada’s effort is designed to counter the U.S. approach, which is a strong sign that the Trump effort is working. I suspect the battle-lines are now being drawn between China and the many nations that are not operating in space (note the highlighted text), and the U.S. and those space-faring capitalistic nations that wish to partner with it, such as India and the European Space Agency. In fact, Japan and the U.S. today announced continuing negotiations leading to an agreement endorsing their partnership in Artemis, including the Artemis Accords.

Where Russia stands in this battle remains uncertain. They desperately need to partner with someone in the new effort to get to the Moon, since they no longer have the economic resources to do it themselves. The U.S. has made it clear they could join Artemis, but the Putin government opposes the Artemis Accords, preferring that the international community (meaning governments such as them) retain ownership over space resources. They have begun negotiations to partner with China, but it is unclear how much China wishes to partner with anyone.

Regardless, it would be terrible blow to freedom and private enterprise for the U.S. to agree to this Canadian-led effort. Should that approach win, it would make provide ownership and capitalism in space impossible. All power and control will devolve to the global international community, which will then dictate that nothing can happen but what it wants. For example, all the many nations incapable of doing anything in space will want a piece of the action from those nations and companies that are capable, and the result will be that no one will do anything because it simply will not be profitable. Space will simply become another failed communist state, dying before it even becomes born.

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Skylab astronaut Gerry Carr passes away at 88

R.I.P. Gerry Carr, the commander of the last and longest Skylab mission in the 1970s, has passed away at 88.

Carr’s first and only spaceflight was as the commander of Skylab 4 (also referred to as SL-4 or “Skylab 3” as appeared on the crew’s mission patch). The third of three crewed stays of increasing duration aboard the orbital workshop, Carr and his Skylab 4 crewmates, Ed Gibson and William “Bill” Pogue, set what was then a record spending 84 days in space.

“We proved, I think, just absolutely, positively that the human being can live in weightless environment for an extended period of time,” Carr said during a NASA oral history interview in October 2000. “But medically, we gathered the data that I think gave the Russians and other people the understanding and the courage to say, ‘Okay, we can stay up for longer periods of time.'”

The obituary at the link includes Carr’s lifelong effort to explain that the crew never “mutinied,” as the press has tried to say for decades. Instead, they spent days and repeated long communications with mission control trying to get it to understand that the crew was being overworked because NASA was micro-managing their workload from the ground. They finally made mission control recognize this, after a long public conversation. Sadly, NASA had to relearn this lesson again in the 1990s during its first long missions on the Russian Mir space station (See chapters 3 and 12 in Leaving Earth).

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UAE’S Hope Mars Orbiter images Mars

The United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) Hope Mars Orbiter has successfully imaged Mars for the first time using its star tracker camera, proving both that the spacecraft is on course and that its pointing capabilities are working as well .

“The Hope probe is officially 100 million km [60 million miles] into its journey to the Red Planet,” Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, prime minister of the UAE, wrote on Twitter on Monday (Aug. 24). “Mars, as demonstrated in the image captured by the probe’s star tracker, is ahead of us, leaving Saturn and Jupiter behind. The Hope probe is expected to arrive to Mars in February 2021.”

The star tracker is designed to keep Hope on course, telling the spacecraft precisely where it is. In addition, the probe carries a more traditional camera for use once it arrives at Mars and begins its science work.

Arrival in Mars orbit will take place in February ’21.

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Astronomers discover three merging supermassive black holes

Using telescopes on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, astronomers have discovered three different galaxies that have pairs of supermassive black holes at their center, with all three likely to merge at some point in the future.

First the scientists used the Subaru Telescope to survey more than 34,000 known quasars, high energy supermassive black holes.

The team identified 421 promising cases. However, there was still the chance many of these were not bona-fide dual quasars but rather chance projections such as starlight from our own galaxy. Confirmation required detailed analysis of the light from the candidates to search for definitive signs of two distinct quasars.

Using Keck Observatory’s Low Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (LRIS) and Gemini Observatory’s Near-Infrared Integral Field Spectrometer, Silverman and his team identified three dual quasars, two of which were previously unknown. Each object in the pair showed the signature of gas moving at thousands of kilometers per second under the influence of a supermassive black hole.

From this survey work they now tentatively estimate that only 0.3% of all known quasars are likely made up of a binary, which in turn gives them a rough estimate of how often galaxies with such supermassive black holes collide and merge. This in turn helps them develop theories on galaxy formation.

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Delta 4 Heavy launch scrubbed

Tonight’s launch of ULA’s Delta 4 Heavy was scrubbed due to a variety of technical problems. They have not set a new launch time, though they say they are aiming for the early morning hours of August 28.

This was to have been the first of four American launches in the next four days. The next, a Falcon 9 launch of an Argentinian radar Earth observation satellite, was scheduled for tomorrow, August 27th, at 7:19 pm (Eastern). No word on whether it is going forward as planned, though it might be since the ULA launch has shifted after it, to August 28th.

The third, by Rocket Lab, is presently scheduled also for August 28rd at 11:05 pm (Eastern), launching out of New Zealand.

The fourth, another SpaceX launch of more Starlink satellites, had been scheduled for 10:30 am (Eastern) on August 29th. Once again, this schedule could change due to tonight’s ULA scrub.

Stay tuned. I suspect all three companies are going to aggressively work to get all four launches off as fast as possible, even if not exactly as presently scheduled.

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What OSIRIS-REx will grab from the asteroid Bennu in October

Closest view of Nightingale taken by OSIRIS-REx

On August 11th the spacecraft OSIRIS-REx did a sample grab-and-go rehearsal that put the spacecraft as close as 135 feet from the asteroid Bennu. During the rehearsal the spacecraft’s mapping camera (MapCam) snapped 22 images of the approach, showing the landing site, dubbed Nightingale, at the highest resolution yet.

From those images the science team created a movie. To the right is the closest image from that movie, lightened slightly and reduced to post here. It gives us the best view of the Nightingale landing site we will have prior to the October sample grab.

In essence, we are looking at the material that OSIRIS-REx will grab, though which particular rocks will be grabbed from this gravel pile are of course unknown. The spacecraft’s equipment is designed to capture pebbles smaller than 0.8 inches across. There are a good number of such rocks here, interspersed with a lot of larger rocks, including the several more than a foot across.

As I have noted previously, this landing site is about half the diameter of the landing sites the spacecraft was designed to touch down on. The rehearsal however gives us strong hope that OSIRIS-REx will be able to hit the bullseye. See this second movie, which shows the approach from two different cameras, with a wider context image provided to show how the spacecraft successfully hones in on its target.

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The view from the cockpit

An evening pause: This short video shows us what it is like for the pilot and co-pilot as they prepare for departure from Frankfurt, Germany, on a cargo flight to Africa and beyond. Note that even though the crew is German and the airport is German, all communications with the control tower are in English. Note also that their altitude is recorded in feet, not meters. The American big lead in the commercial airline industry in the first half of the 20th century allowed it to set the standards, including the use of feet and English in these matters.

Hat tip Tom Biggar.

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Five charts prove the continuing COVID-19 panic unwarranted

Link here. Not surprisingly, the U.S. is doing better than almost every other country in the world, and the numbers also show that the epidemic is dying off.

On confirmed cases per million, the U.S. ranks 9th, but this is in part due to the extensive testing we’ve done. In fact, despite what Biden and Co. will have you believe, we are in the top of the pack when it comes to COVID-19 tests per capita. (Note that only four of the other 36 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations do better than the U.S. on tests per capita. Also, every country that does better than the U.S. has a significantly smaller population — some just tens of thousands. In fact, if you add up the populations of every country in the top 17, it equals a little more than half the U.S. population. )

When it comes to the case fatality rate – the share of confirmed cases who have died – there is no comparison. Not only does the U.S. outperform most countries – as well as the world overall – the case fatality rate in the U.S. has been steadily declining.

Finally, there’s the chart Democrats really don’t want you to see: The number of new COVID-19 cases peaked a month ago and has been trending downward ever since.

Make sure you take a look at where Sweden stands when compared to everyone else. For a country that imposed no odious lock downs, their numbers are quite good, and in fact beat nations like Italy and the United Kingdom, which imposed strict rules and house arrests.

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NASA/Boeing set summer ’21 for first manned Starliner mission

Capitalism in space: NASA and Boeing have tentatively scheduled the launch of the first manned Starliner mission to ISS for the summer of 2021.

Boeing Co said on Tuesday it aims to redo its unmanned Starliner crew capsule flight test to the International Space Station (ISS) in December or January, depending on when it completes software and test hardware production development.

If the test mission is successful, Boeing and NASA will fly Starliner’s first crewed mission in summer 2021, with a post-certification mission roughly scheduled for the following winter, the company added.

Everything of course depends on the success of the unmanned demo flight. If the capsule has any further problems, as it did on its first unmanned demo flight, the manned flight will likely be delayed again.

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Wormlike glacier on Mars

Glacial flow in the mid-latitude southern cratered highlands
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The image to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, shows a very typical glacial-type feature found frequently in the mid-latitudes of Mars. Taken on May 23, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), it is labeled a “Lobate Flow Feature within Channel in Nereidum Montes.” Nereidum Montes is a rough mountainous region along the northwestern margin of Argyre Basin, the second largest impact basin on Mars, after Hellas Basin.

Scientists using Europe’s Mars Express orbiter have already found a great deal of glacial evidence in these mountains. I have also posted images of other glacial features on the north edge of Argyre. This image just reinforces that data.

This particular glacier however resembles the kind of glaciers one sees on Earth more than most Martian glaciers. As it meanders down its valley, large cracks form near its edges as friction slows their passage and drags them apart. In fact, the glacier itself might have very well carved the canyon. According to Dan Berman, senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona, who had requested this image,

While I can’t say for sure, the canyon was likely formed by a glacier. Whether or not the ice that remains today is part of that glacier, or one that formed later, is impossible to say.

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