Author: Robert Zimmerman

Today’s blacklisted American: Whites to be segregated at American University

10:29 am

The Civil Rights Act of 1964: repealed at American University in DC.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964: Doesn’t exist at American University in DC.

“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” American University in Washington, D.C., has now instituted a policy segregating students by race in a course on racism, with the segregation specifically designed to give minorities a “safe space.”

According to The Eagle, the university added a Black affinity course section to AUx2, a class where students learn about “race, social identity, and structures of power.” In the course, students will “evaluate how racism intersects with other systems of oppression.”

The student newspaper states that all-Black sections of the course began during the spring 2020 semester, an addition that had been considered for a few years. “We’ve definitely heard from Black students and other students of color that the material can be a lot for them because it is part of their lived experiences,” Izzi Stern, the AUx program manager told the student newspaper. “And we wanted to create a space where they could be together in community and have an overall positive experience with the course.”

» Read more

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The problem Starship poses to NASA and Congress

8:30 am

An interesting essay published earlier this week in The Space Review raises the coming dilemma that both NASA and Congress will soon have to face once Starship is operational and launching large cargoes and crews to orbit, both near Earth and to the Moon.

That dilemma: What do about SLS and Lunar Gateway once it becomes ridiculously obvious that they are inferior vessels for future space travel?

I think this quote from the article more than any illustrates the reality that these government officials will soon have to deal with in some manner:

[When] the Lunar Starship ever docks with Gateway, the size comparison with Gateway will appear silly and beg the question as to whether Gateway is actually necessary. Does this even make sense? Couldn’t two Starships simply dock with each other and transfer propellant from one to another. Is there really a need for a middleman?

The author, Doug Plata, also notes other contrasts that will make SLS and Lunar Gateway look absurd, such as when two Starships begin transferring fuel in orbit or when a Starship launches 400 satellites in one go, or when a private Starship mission circles the Moon and returns to Earth for later reuse.

All of these scenarios are actually being planned, with the first something NASA itself is paying for, since the lunar landing Starship will dock with Lunar Gateway to pick up and drop off its passengers for the Moon.

The bottom line for Plata is that the federal government needs to stop wasting money on bad programs like SLS and Lunar Gateway and switch its focus to buying products from commercial sources like SpaceX. They will get far more bang for the buck, while actually getting something accomplished in space.

Though he uses different words, and has the advantage of recent events to reference, Plata is essentially repeating my recommendations from my 2017 policy paper, Capitalism in Space [free pdf]. Plata draws as his proof for his argument the recent developments with Starship. I drew as my proof a comparison between SLS and what private commercial space was doing for NASA, as starkly illustrated by this one table:

The cost difference between SLS and private space

The government has got to stop trying to build things, as it does an abysmal job. It instead must buy what it needs from private commercial vendors who know how to do it and have proven they can do it well.

If the government does this, will not only save money, it will fuel an American renaissance in space. As we see already beginning to see happen now in rocketry and the unmanned lunar landing business.

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Firefly first launch attempt fails after liftoff, shortly before stage separation

7:11 pm

Alpha rocket exploding
Screen capture from Everyday Astronaut live stream.

Capitalism in space: Firefly’s first attempt to launch its Alpha rocket to orbit failed at T+2:30 minutes, shortly after it went supersonic and just before first stage engine cut-off and stage separation.

The screen capture to the right shows that explosion.

Lift-off procedures went very well, though the rocket itself appeared to reach supersonic speeds later than their timeline predicted, suggesting it was underpowered.

In fact, the whole operation reminded me of SpaceX’s early attempts to launch its Falcon-1 rocket. Just as happened in one of those early SpaceX launches, there was a launch abort at liftoff, the launch team quickly figured out what happened, recycled the rocket, and successfully lifted off an hour later. Kudos to that team!

The failure is unfortunate, but to repeat the cliche, this is rocket science. They will try again.

18 comments

A peanut-shaped crater in the northern plains of Mars

1:21 pm

Context camera image of peanut-shaped crater
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken in May 2008 by the wide angle context camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists have since labeled a “peanut-shaped crater.”

What caused this unusual shape? The obvious and most likely explanation is that this was a double impact that occurred simultaneously. Imagine the ground being hit either by an asteroid with two lobes or by two similar-sized asteroids falling side-by-side.

Fast forward thirteen years to 2021. In the fifteen years since 2006 when MRO begin science operations in orbit around Mars no high resolution images were taken of this crater. Finally, on July 30, 2021, scientists finally decided to take a high resolution image of this crater’s western half. You can see that image below, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here.
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Lyft driver fired because his radio was tuned to a black conservative

11:33 am

No freedom of speech allowed by Lyft!
No freedom of speech allowed at Lyft!

The new dark age of silencing: A driver has been fired by Lyft because a passenger complained that he was listening to a racist on the radio, when in fact his radio was tuned to a black conservative.

Ryan Alexander, who had been a Lyft driver for years, tells “The Dan O’Donnell Show” that a Lyft representative told him during a phone call Saturday that his account was suspended because he had been listening to “racist talk radio programming,” a violation of the app’s terms of service.

Alexander says he was listening to former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke fill in for Mark Belling during the “Mark Belling Late Afternoon Show” Thursday evening when a passenger took exception to the discussion Clarke was having about Black Lives Matter and abortion rates in the African-American community.

“She called Clarke trash, slammed the door to my car when she got out, and specifically referenced abortion which Clarke did talk about briefly while she was in the car,” Alexander says.

During the portion of the program that the passenger heard, Clarke, who is Black, expressed the opinion that the Black Lives Matter organization did not truly care about Black lives because it was not upset about the rate of abortions among Black mothers.

» Read more

9 comments

The troubled politics of ground-based astronomy

10:54 am

Link here. The article outlines the politics and negotiations now going on during the writing of the next astronomy decadal survey, the document American astronomers have published every decade since the 1960s to provide the science agencies in the federal government guidance on how to spend the taxpayers’ money on the next decade’s astronomy projects.

The focus is on the problems now faced by the two big American ground-based telescopes, the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) and the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT).

The future of the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) likely depends on whether the survey recommends that NSF spend what sources put at $1.8 billion to support a recently forged partnership between the projects. If it does, other proposals could lose out, such as a ­continent-spanning radio array and detectors for neutrinos and other cosmic particles.

While some astronomers are pushing for this $1.8 billion bailout to save both, others are arguing the money can be better spent elsewhere. There is also a third option, not mentioned, which would be to abandon one of these telescopes and instead build just one.

The story is focused entirely on ground-based astronomy, which is remarkably very near-sighted for scientists whose job it is to see a far as possible. The future of astronomy is in space, and to not consider that alternative in this discussion means you aren’t considering all your options. For $1.8 billion, using private rockets and competitive construction approaches, I strongly believe a very large optical telescope could be launched that would provide far more cutting edge astronomy than any larger ground-based telescope. Hubble has proven that endlessly for the past thirty years.

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Prototype of reusable suborbital spaceplane from new startup completes five flights

10:40 am

Capitalism in space: Another rocket startup company, Dawn Aerospace, has completed a five flight test program of a prototype of its proposed reusable suborbital spaceplane, dubbed Aurora.

Dawn Aerospace has successfully completed five test flights of its uncrewed Mk-II Aurora suborbital spaceplane in the skies over Glentanner Aerodrome on New Zealand’s South Island. The flights were conducted by the New Zealand-Dutch space transportation company from July 28 to 30, 2021 at altitudes of up to 3,400 feet (1,036 m), with the prototype airframe fitted with surrogate jet engines.

The three-days of test flights to assess the airframe and avionics of the aircraft took place under a certificate issued to Dawn by the New Zealand Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), which allowed the Mk-II Aurora to operate from conventional airports without airspace restrictions after ground tests were completed.

The company claims this is a demonstrator for their fullscale two-stage-to orbit version that will take off from a runway and then launch small satellites into orbit.

Looks impressive, but my impression of this prototype is that it is a small scale model, only slightly more sophisticated and larger than a model airplane. That impression is reinforced by the video at the link, which provides no visible markers to judge size.

This company needs to get a lot more done if it wants to compete in this new market.

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Firefly set for first orbital launch today

9:42 am

Capitalism in space: If all goes right, Firefly Aerospace will attempt its first orbital launch today from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, using its Alpha rocket to place a test payload of science experiments in space.

The launch window is from 6 pm to 10 pm Pacific.

If you wish to watch, I have embedded the live stream below. That stream however have been very poor. The stream is working better here.

Note: They had a launch abort right at launch, and appear to be recycling to try again.

7 comments

China building Ingenuity copycat

9:36 am

Ingenuity vs China

China’s space program revealed yesterday that it is designing its own Mars helicopter for future missions to the Red Planet.

The picture to the right shows this Chinese helicopter prototype on the bottom, with Ingenuity on Mars on top.

Notice the similarity? In fact, one could almost say that the Chinese helicopter is an outright steal of the JPL design.

But then, why not? According to an 2019 inspector general report [pdf], China hacked into JPL’s computers twice from 2009 to 2017 and stole 500MB of data. That data almost certainly included the design plans for Ingenuity, under development at the time.

Copying the work of others is expected, especially when that design is found to work. In this case however it almost certainly isn’t copying, but outright theft.

Of course, that has been par for the course for China’s space program. They don’t appear to be capable of innovating on their own. They first must steal someone else’s design, and then revise and upgrade from that. Their final products might be of high quality, but in the end their long term ability to build something new is going to be severely limited, if they cannot start inventing things on their own.

7 comments

Flight anomalies occurred during Branson’s suborbital flight in July

9:08 am

Capitalism in space: According to a New Yorker story today, the suborbital flight of Richard Branson in July experienced several flight anomalies that the article suggests should have caused it to end early before reaching space.

The rocket motor on Virgin Galactic’s ship is programmed to burn for a minute. On July 11th, it had a few more seconds to go when a red light also appeared on the console: an entry glide-cone warning. This was a big deal. I once sat in on a meeting, in 2015, during which the pilots on the July 11th mission—Dave Mackay, a former Virgin Atlantic pilot and veteran of the U.K.’s Royal Air Force, and Mike Masucci, a retired Air Force pilot—and others discussed procedures for responding to an entry glide-cone warning. C. J. Sturckow, a former marine and nasa astronaut, said that a yellow light should “scare the [“#$%#] out of you,” because “when it turns red it’s gonna be too late”; Masucci was less concerned about the yellow light but said, “Red should scare the crap out of you.” Based on pilot procedures, Mackay and Masucci had basically two options: implement immediate corrective action, or abort the rocket motor. According to multiple sources in the company, the safest way to respond to the warning would have been to abort. (A Virgin Galactic spokesperson disputed this contention.)

Aborting at that moment, however, would have dashed Branson’s hopes of beating his rival Bezos, whose flight was scheduled for later in the month, into space. Mackay and Masucci did not abort.

Virgin Galactic’s response, including the FAA’s statement, can be found here. The company noted that the flight deviation occurred because of unexpected high altitude winds. The FAA’s comment I think provides some reasonably perspective:
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Cancelled by his bank for being pro-life, he started his own

12:10 pm

Banks blacklisting conservatives
What too many banks want to do to conservatives.

Today’s story is similar to my blacklist story two days ago about former national security advisor Michael Flynn [See the bottom of this post for an update on the Flynn story!]

Just as Flynn was blackballed by Chase bank, evangelist and motivational speaker Nick Vujicic found himself frozen out by his own bank because of his Christian, political, and pro-life beliefs.

Vujicic said he began to speak out against the innocent killing of unborn babies in March 2019. Within 16 weeks of doing that, he revealed, “we had a grenade at our house, a false magazine article published against me, a lawsuit threat, a spying drone, and a bank kicked me out.”

…”I got kicked out of a bank with no warning. They froze my credit cards, froze my debit cards,” he said. “They gave me a letter to say that they did a review of me as a client and they don’t want anything to do with me.”

What makes this story different from the Flynn story is that Vujicic responded by starting a project to found his own bank.
» Read more

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A Martian sunset in Jezero Crater

10:15 am

Sunset on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, reduced slightly to post here, was taken by the left navigation camera on the Mars rover Perseverance. Looking west to the rim of Jezero Crater, it catches the Sun as it sets behind that rim.

The image was taken on July 20, 2021, the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon. Seems somehow fitting to catch a sunset on Mars on this date, to illustrate how far we have come in that half century.

To my mind, not enough. Our ability to send robots to other worlds has certainly improved, but in 1969 we were able to put a human on another world. Since 1972 we no longer have had that capability, so that in 2021 all we can do is fly robots elsewhere.

It is time for this to change. I’d much prefer to make believe this photo was a sunrise suggesting a bright future, than the sunset it actually is, indicating a coming dark age.

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Launch schedules impacted by shortages and delivery delays of oxygen/nitrogen

9:53 am

The launch dates of several upcoming launches have been pushed back because of a shortage of liquid oxygen, needed instead for medical purposes, which in turn has slowed deliveries of liquid nitrogen because trucks have been reassigned to delivering oxygen to hospitals..

The effects of a nationwide liquid oxygen shortage caused by the recent spike in hospitalized coronavirus patients has already delayed the launch of a Landsat imaging satellite by a week, and threatens to impact more missions from launch sites in Florida and California.

NASA said last week that the launch of the Landsat 9 satellite aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California would be delayed one week until no earlier than Sept. 23 due to a lack of liquid nitrogen at the military base. ULA uses gaseous nitrogen, which is converted from liquid nitrogen, for purges during testing and countdown operations.

The space agency said pandemic demands for medical liquid oxygen impacted the delivery of liquid nitrogen to Vandenberg.

SpaceX officials have also indicated that their launch schedule may be effected as well.

While the Wuhan flu is being blamed for this shortage, I think it is possibly more related to the rise in launches themselves. Such flu epidemics have happened in the past, causing similar spikes in hospitals, without causing delays in rocket launches. However, the U.S. this year has already almost doubled the number of yearly launches as had occurred during most of the 21st century. In addition, there are now numerous companies building and testing new rockets, all of which require liquid oxygen. The demand by rocket companies for such fuels is thus far higher than it has been for decades.

So, what is the solution? I just described it. The high demand will force the price up for liquid oxygen, which in turn will make it profitable for new providers to enter the market producing liquid oxygen to meet the new demand. It simply appears that at this moment the industry that produces these gases has been slow in reacting to its new demand.

We need only give the situation time and freedom to get solved and, most important, stay out of the way. Freedom and capitalism will solve the problem, as it always does.

19 comments

Prep of first SLS rocket continues to suggest no launch in ’21

9:28 pm

Though NASA and Boeing crews and management have been striving very hard to get the SLS rocket on the launchpad for a liftoff before the end of this year, the schedule has as expected continued to slip, with the chances of a launch by December now increasingly unlikely.

NASA engineers have not discovered any major problems during the SLS testing, but key milestones leading up to the Artemis 1 launch have been steadily sliding to the right in NASA’s processing schedule.

Before NASA raised the Boeing-made SLS core stage onto its mobile launch platform inside High Bay 3 of the VAB in June, managers hoped to connect he Orion spacecraft for the Artemis 1 mission on top of the rocket in August. That’s now expected this fall.

The first rollout of the 322-foot-tall (98-meter) rocket from the VAB to launch pad 39B was scheduled no earlier than September. That’s now expected in late November, at the soonest, according to [Cliff Lanham, senior vehicle operations manager for NASA’s exploration ground systems program].

The schedule slips, while not significant amid the history of SLS program delays, have put a major crunch on NASA’s ambition to launch the Artemis 1 mission this year. The agency is evaluating Artemis 1 launch opportunities in the second half of December, multiple sources said, but that would require NASA to cut in half the time it originally allotted between the SLS fueling test and the actual launch date.

None of this is really a surprise. NASA had always said it would take about six to ten months to get the rocket ready for launch once it arrived in Florida, and it only got there in May. That meant a late November launch could only occur if everything went perfectly. As this is the first time this rocket has ever been assembled, it is not reasonable to expect such perfection.

Based on all factors, the launch will likely occur no earlier than January, but more likely in February, at the earliest. On that schedule it is very likely SpaceX’s Starship will reach orbit first.

13 comments

Stucco on Mars!

12:33 pm

Stucco on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on June 8, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a strangely flat plain with a complex stucco-type surface of ridges and depressions. The sunlight is coming from the west, which makes the smoother flat areas depressions.

What are we looking at? What causes this strange surface? Make sure you look at the full image, because the section I cropped out doesn’t give a true sense of the terrain’s vastness.

The MRO science team labeled the photo “volcanic terrain,” but that tells only part of the story, since this volcanic terrain is actually part of Mars’ most interesting lava plains, as the overview map below shows.
» Read more

2 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Mother of slain soldier censored by Instagram and Facebook

11:27 am

Screenshot of Instagram censoring

The new dark age of silencing: Apparently because her posts on Instagram and Facebook were highly critical of Democrat President Joe Biden, both social media companies immediately either shut down or restricted the accounts of Shana Chappell, the mother of one of the soldiers killed in the Kabul Airport suicide bombing.

The mother of a Marine killed in the suicide bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan, last week had her account removed from Instagram and “incorrectly deleted” from Facebook following her fierce criticism of President Biden in the wake of her son’s death.

Shana Chappell, the mother of Kareem Nikoui, 20, took to Facebook on Monday to slam Instagram for removing her account after she started posting about what happened to her son and her belief that Biden is to blame. Chappell claimed the social media platform started to flag several of her “posts from months ago,” and began to send her warnings that she could have her account disabled.

“It seems Instagram took it upon themselves to delete my account because i am assuming it was because i gained so many followers over my sons death due to Biden’s negligence, ignorance and him being a traitor,” she wrote on Facebook. “I’m gonna assume that Facebook is gonna delete me next! Funny how these leftist one sided pieces of crap don’t want the truth to come out!

It appears both Instagram and Facebook have since restored her accounts and apologized, with both saying that her account was “accidentally deleted.” Hogwash. These actions are never an accident. They are almost always against people criticizing the left or the Democratic Party (I repeat myself), with many such bannings never explained or corrected.
» Read more

19 comments

South Korea to launch its own rocket in October

9:47 am

The new colonial movement: South Korea is now targeting October 21, 2021 for the first test launch of its home-built Nuri rocket.

The October flight will be South Korea’s first domestic orbital launch attempt in more than eight years. On Jan. 30, 2013, a Naro-1 rocket placed the STSAT-2C technology demonstration satellite into low Earth orbit.

It was the final of three launches for now retired Naro-1, which consisted of a Russian Angara first stage with a downgraded engine and a South Korean developed solid-fuel upper stage. Two previous Naro-1 launches failed in 2009 and 2010.

They have also scheduled a follow-up test launch in May ’22, assuming all goes well on this first test launch.

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Zhurong completes 100 days on Mars

9:39 am

Zhurong's loaction, August 31, 2021

The new colonial movement: In announcing today that its Mars rover Zhurong has completed 100 days on the Martian surface, the state-run Chinese press released one very low-resolution panorama taken at the rover’s new position, and a map showing its full route since landing.

The map to the right, created by placing that route on a high resolution Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter image, shows us where Zhurong presently sits as well as where it might travel next. It still appears that they are attempting to reach the heat shield used during landing, which also suggests that they are giving high priority to the engineering aspects of this mission, possibly ranking that component higher than any science they get.

If high resolution versions of that panorama are available, they are probably only available on the Chinese language sites, which makes it very difficult for a non-Chinese-speaker to find.

According to the release, the rover has now traveled just under 3,500 feet, which means it is maintaining a pace greater than 1,000 feet per month. The release also noted this fact about the rover’s upcoming travels, as well as the Tianwen-1 orbiter being used as a communications relay satellite:

The probes will experience a sun outage in mid-to-late September when the Sun is aligned with Earth and Mars, with the solar radiation interfering with the communication between the probes and ground stations. The orbiter and rover will stop working until the sun outage comes to an end.

This conjunction occurs every two years. It means there will also be a pause in data from the American rovers and orbiters. When the last conjunction occurred in September 2019, the communications shutdown lasted about two weeks.

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New cracks discovered on a different Russian ISS module

12:38 am

Russian officials revealed today that their astronauts have discovered new cracks on a different Russian ISS module, dubbed Zarya.

“Superficial fissures have been found in some places on the Zarya module,” Vladimir Solovyov, chief engineer of rocket and space corporation Energia, told RIA news agency, according to Reuters. “This is bad and suggests that the fissures will begin to spread over time.” The Zarya module, also called the Functional Cargo Block, was the first component of the ISS ever launched, having blasted into orbit on Nov. 20, 1998, according to NASA.

Russians have now found what appear to be age stress fractures on both Zarya and Zvezda, the two oldest modules of ISS. More important, the Russians are finally admitting that the cracks are stress fractures, something they had earlier denied.

The need to launch new commercial American modules to ISS as quickly as possible has now become even more urgent. Axiom plans to do so, but its first module is not scheduled to arrive before ’24. It now looks increasingly that the Russian modules might not make it till then.

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German rocket company successfully tests first stage to failure

9:55 pm

Capitalism in space: The German startup rocket company Rocket Factory Augsburg has successfully completed a tank pressure test of its rocket’s core first stage, testing that stage to failure.

The German startup Rocket Factory Augsburg, or RFA, has concluded another test of their RFA One rocket. In the test, the company performed a destructive cryogenic pressure test of their first stage prototype. The company has shown a video in which the prototype stage broke apart after it was fueled with cryogenic nitrogen to test the quality of the welds and determine the pressure at which the structure fails.

The milestone is the latest for the company which is aiming to develop a reusable launch vehicle for small payloads. The first flight of RFA One is currently slated for late 2022, following more testing and development.

The video of the test, with a dramatic soundtrack (as has sadly become the practice today since all life always has its own soundtrack) can be seen at the link.

This company is one of three German private rocket startups vying to enter the smallsat launch market — Isar, RFA, and HyImpulse — with two hoping to make their first launch next year.

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Report: 43K of 61K absentee ballots in Georgia county were counted despite being illegal

3:19 pm

According to a newspaper in Georgia, 72% of the absentee ballots (43K out of 61K) obtained from drop boxes in DeKalb County, which covers part of Atlanta, violated the legal chain-of-custody requirements, and thus should have been deemed invalid.

The problem was actually worse than that:

All told, 43,907 absentee ballots deposited in drop boxes in DeKalb County … were counted in the certified results of the November 3, 2020 election despite being delivered to the registrar’s office in clear violation of the chain of custody documentation of the Georgia State Election Board’s July 2020 rule.

Another 24 percent – 14,925 absentee ballots collected from drop boxes – were documented as received by the elections official more than an hour after being collected by a two-person collection team, but on the same calendar day. Arguably, these additional 14,925 absentee ballots could also be considered in violation of the election code rule that requires absentee ballots placed in drop boxes “shall be immediately transported to the county registrar.”

Less than 5 percent of the absentee ballots collected from drop boxes during the November 2020 election were recorded as being received by the elections official in an hour or less. [emphasis in original]

That a chain of custody for the drop-box absentee ballots was not maintained means that during the time gap someone could have gone through the ballots and eliminated votes they do not like, or replaced those votes with “corrected” votes.

The newspaper also reports similar issues with drop box absentee ballots in other counties.

While these problems do not necessarily suggest fraud or vote tampering in this county, it certainly stinks to high heaven, especially since the drop boxes themselves were a very bad idea that made election fraud easy.

Biden won Georgia by only 11,779 votes. Who knows what the real count was? We shall probably never know.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Chase Bank closes Lt. General Mike Flynn’s credit card accounts because they don’t like his opinions

12:10 pm

Chase Bank blackballs Mike Flynn

They’re coming for you next: Chase Bank has unilaterally closed the credit card accounts held by President Trump’s first National Security Advisor Lieutenant General Mike Flynn, either because they don’t like his political opinions or are terrified of the left’s wrath if they don’t blackball him.

The language from Chase’s terse cancellation letter to Flynn, also shown to the right, is most revealing:
» Read more

27 comments

An ancient curving channel on Mars

10:30 am

Context image of curving channels
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken by the wide angle context camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) in April 2019. It shows an area on Mars where a number of meandering curving channels flow downhill from the west to the east.

Earlier MRO images had already spotted these channels, so when this context image was taken the scientists also took a high resolution image of the same channels, with the white box indicating the area covered by the rotated, cropped, and reduced image below.

Both images are today’s MRO image of the day, where the MRO team notes that “The objective of this observation is to examine a complex network of channels. Some parts of the channels are quite curved.”
» Read more

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Astra launch failure caused by one of five 1st stage engines shutting down at liftoff

8:57 am

Capitalism in space: According to an Astra press release, its launch failure on August 28th was caused when one of the rocket’s five 1st stage engines shut down one second after liftoff.

One of the five main engines shut down less than one second after liftoff, causing the vehicle to slowly lift off the pad before resuming its trajectory. After approximately two minutes and thirty seconds of flight, the range issued an all engine-shutdown command, ending the flight.

The lack of one engine explains the rocket’s strange take-off, where it initially tilted slightly, shifted sideways, and then straightened up and began rising upward. From that point onward the ground controllers knew the mission would not reach orbit, and were only waiting until it reached a safe altitude to cut off the engines and have the rocket fall into the ocean safely.

While the launch failed, Astra’s engineers should be very satisfied by how the software on the rocket functioned. Rather than shut everything down and crashing into the launchpad fully fueled where it could do a lot of damage, the rocket immediately compensated for the loss of one engine and resumed a stable flight, allowing it to get clear.

This success does not negate the failure however. Astra needs to find out why one engine shut down.

7 comments

SpaceX successfully launches cargo Dragon to ISS

12:35 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX tonight successfully used its Falcon 9 rocket to launch cargo Dragon to ISS.

The first stage completed its fourth flight, landing successfully on the drone ship in the Atlantic. The cargo Dragon is making its second cargo mission for NASA. It will dock tomorrow.

This was SpaceX’s first launch since June 30th, a gap of almost two months as they initiated operations of a new drone ship in the Atlantic and shifted an older drone ship to the Pacific. In the next few weeks expect their fast launch pace for ’21 to resume, with at least one Starlink launch and the September 15th Inspiration4 commercial manned orbital flight.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

29 China
21 SpaceX
13 Russia
4 Northrop Grumman

The U.S. now leads China 32 to 29 in the national rankings.

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