August 17, 2018 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
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Author: Robert Zimmerman
Rossini – Overture to The Thieving Magpie
An evening pause: Boian Videnoff conducts the Mannheim Philharmonic Orchestra.
And no, this was not written for Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange (1971).
Hat tip Jim Mallamace.
Liberal media tries to dox jurors in Manafort case
They’re coming for you next: A coalition of partisan liberal news outlets, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, the Associated Press, CNN, NBC, Politico and BuzzFeed, this week asked that the names and addresses of the jurors in the Manafort trial be released to the public.
The judge today denied the request, noting that he has received death threats and does not want to expose the jurors to similar threats.
Let’s be clear about this: The only reason these Democratic Party advocates disguised as news sources want this information is so that they use it to attack the jurors should they acquit Paul Manafort. This wouldn’t change this particular juror decision, but it would put all future jurors on notice: Don’t you dare rule in a manner the left opposes or you will face retribution and harsh payback.
SpaceX unveils access arm jetway astronauts will use to board Dragon
Capitalism in space: SpaceX has begun installing its airport-jetway-like access arm that astronauts will use to board Dragon at Launchpad 39A in anticipation of the first manned flight in April 2019.
They were originally going to install the jetway after the first unmanned demo flight, which they hoped to fly this month. That plan has now changed.
Prior to the visual milestone this week of the Crew Access Arm, or CAA, being moved to the pad surface and the base of the Fixed Service Structure (launch tower), previous information from SpaceX and NASA indicated that the arm would be installed after the Dragon’s uncrewed demo flight.
However, that schedule was based around a launch of the uncrewed Dragon flight, DM-1, in August 2018.
With NASA announcing a 3-month slip to the DM-1 flight (largely due to ISS scheduling and crew reduction aboard the International Space Station in the coming months), SpaceX found itself with an unanticipated delay to the DM-1 flight – which in turn opened up a possibility that didn’t exist before to install the CAA in August.…But now that DM-1 is NET (No Earlier Than) November – a date Gwynne Shotwell is confident the company will meet, SpaceX is forging ahead with CAA installation because, quite simply, there is no reason to wait, at this point, to install the arm after DM-1.
Making the crew access arm resemble an airport jetway is a fine example of the pizazz that helps sell SpaceX. It also helps make space operations appear more like an ordinary transportation option, something that is necessary if the human race is ever going to become truly spacefaring.
Hat tip to reader Kirk.
3D-printed solar panels for cubesats!
The image on the right was sent to me last night by engineer Joe Latrell. It shows a 3D-printed solar panel designed for use on a cubesat. As he wrote,
[This is] the first integration of a solar panel with the 3D printed material. The panel is not attached but rather embedded in the plastic during the printing process. This helps protect the panel from transport damage and makes it easier to assemble the final satellite. This design needs a slight adjustment but is almost there.
What makes Joe’s work most interesting is where he is doing it. Last week, in posting a link to a story about a Rocket Lab deal that would make secondary payloads possible on its smallsat rocket Electron, I noted that things were moving to a point where someone could build a satellite for launch in his garage.
This in turn elicited this comment from Joe:
As a matter of fact, I am building a PocketQube satellite for launch in Q3 2019. Yes, I am working in a small shop – just behind the garage. Nothing fancy but the price was right. I am working with Alba Orbital and the flight is scheduled on the Electron. These are very exciting times.
Alba Orbital is smallsat company aimed at building lots of mass produced smallsats weighing only about two pounds.
Anyway, Joe then followed up with another comment with more information:
This first [satellite] is just to see if it can be done. I plan to have it take a couple images and relay data regarding the orientation methods I am planning to use (gravity and magnetic fields). If it works, I am hoping to get funding to develop a small series of satellites to track global water use.
It is also a good way to test some of the materials I think would make spacecraft lighter and cheaper.
Yesterday he sent me the above image. This is the future of unmanned satellites and planetary probes, small, light, cheap, and built with 3D printers by single entrepreneurs. And because of their inexpensive nature, the possibilities for profit and growth are truly almost infinite, which in turn will provide developments that make space travel for humans increasingly smaller, lighter, cheaper, and easier to build as well.
To repeat Joe’s comment, these are very exciting times.
Roscosmos in the news!
Three news stories from Russia, two from today and one from last week, provide us a flavor of the kind of space stories that come out of Russia almost daily, either making big promises of future great achievements, or making blustery excuses for the failure of those big promises to come true.
- Musk deliberately understates prices of commercial rocket launches — Roscosmos chief
- Research module Nauka to be launched to ISS in November 2019
- Russia’s Proton rockets to stay in service till at least 2024
In the first the head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, rationalizes the failure of Russia to compete successfully with SpaceX.
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Opportunity’s uncertain future
Link here. This article from JPL provides a detailed status report on the rover, as well as what will happen if they should regain communications.
After the first time engineers hear from Opportunity, there could be a lag of several weeks before a second time. It’s like a patient coming out of a coma: It takes time to fully recover. It may take several communication sessions before engineers have enough information to take action.
The first thing to do is learn more about the state of the rover. Opportunity’s team will ask for a history of the rover’s battery and solar cells and take its temperature. If the clock lost track of time, it will be reset. The rover would take pictures of itself to see whether dust might be caked on sensitive parts, and test actuators to see if dust slipped inside, affecting its joints.
Once they’ve gathered all this data, the team would take a poll about whether they’re ready to attempt a full recovery.
Even if engineers hear back from Opportunity, there’s a real possibility the rover won’t be the same. The rover’s batteries could have discharged so much power — and stayed inactive so long — that their capacity is reduced. If those batteries can’t hold as much charge, it could affect the rover’s continued operations. It could also mean that energy-draining behavior, like running its heaters during winter, could cause the batteries to brown out.
They remain hopeful, but this article is clearly meant to prepare the public for the possibility that Opportunity’s long journey on Mars might have finally ended.
An update on Trump appointments to the federal circuit courts
Link here. The article provides a very clear status report on the number of remaining vacancies nationwide, and the politics that explain the nomination status for the 9th circuit court.
The Senate has confirmed a record 24 new circuit court judges nationwide in 20 months — with two more nominees scheduled for votes this week. But Trump has made far less progress in the jurisdiction he criticizes the most: the liberal-leaning U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, including California and eight other Western states.
Since Trump took office, the Senate has confirmed only one 9th Circuit judge — in Hawaii — leaving seven openings. A nominee in Oregon was abruptly withdrawn last month when it became clear he lacked the votes for Senate approval. And Trump has yet to even nominate anyone for the three vacancies in California, partly because of a standoff with Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris.
But there are signs that the administration is beginning to set its sights on the 9th Circuit, likely triggering a bruising fight with Democrats. For one thing, Trump is running out of vacancies in other circuits, particularly in conservative states where confirmation is easier. “They’ve been focusing on lower-hanging fruit,” said Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute. “After a while there are only so many seats to fill.”
More than half of the 13 vacancies remaining nationwide are on the 9th Circuit.
It appears to me that the Trump administration strategy has been to hold off in these liberal states until after the November election, betting that the Democrats will lose seats in the Senate and thus have less ability to block these nominations. This is a risky but reasonable strategy, considering the number of vulnerable Democratic Senators up for election in states Trump won handily in 2016.
Eric Clapton – Tears In Heaven
An evening pause: Hat tip Danae, who suggested a different performance that I posted back in 2015. I also posted a third version in 2011. No matter. There is something very heartfelt about the song and every Clapton performance that makes it worth watching again and again. The song was written following the death of Clapton’s four-year-old son, Conor, after falling from a window of the 53rd-floor New York apartment on March 20, 1991.
Warren: Federal government must have more control over large corporations
They’re coming for you next: Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) this week proposed a new law that would give the federal government more control and power over large corporations.
The bill would create a new bureaucracy, would require all corporations with more than $1 billion in annual revenue to get that bureaucracy’s permission to operate, and require that 40% of their corporate boards be elected by employees.
To translate this into plain language, this is simply a power grab by Democrat Warren, which of course is par for the course for any Democrat. Give them the power to run things, and everything will be perfect! We can see what they mean simply by looking at the past fascist efforts of socialists in Venezuela, the Soviet Union, East Germany, North Korea, and every other socialist paradise where all power was centralized into the hands of ideologues like Warren.
Don’t you want the same here for America?
Ancient drainage on Mars?
Cool image time! The image on the right, cropped from the original to post here, was taken by Mars Odyssey on May 13, 2018, and shows what clearly looks like a point where a south-to-north drainage broke through a cliff wall to allow a liquid to flow down into the larger and deeper east-west flowing canyon.
The caption at the website for this image provides only a little analysis.
The right angle intersection of the depressions in this VIS image is one of the graben that form Sacra Fossae. The fossae are located on Sacra Mensa, near the beginning of Kasei Valles. Graben are depressions caused by parallel faults where a block of material drops down along the fault face.
According to this geological interpretation, the depressions initially formed due to this geological process. The image however suggests that a flow of liquid also played a part.
This region, indicated by the white cross on the map to the right, is part of the vast drainages that flow down from Mars’ four giant Martian volcanoes. It is located north of Valles Marineris, the largest of all these drainages. This region is also where you find a lot of chaos terrain, which is what the hummocky depression at the bottom of the image resembles. Much of this mysterious geology is thought to have been formed by the liquid water that is theorized to have once flowed down from the volcanoes. Here, it appears that the liquid ponded in the depression at the bottom of the image until it found a path along the north-south graben to break through into the east-west deeper graben.
State Department claims orbiting Russian satellite is a military threat
At a conference yesterday a State Department official claimed that an orbiting Russian satellite is behavior in a manner that suggests an unstated military purpose.
Russia has described the satellite in question as a “space apparatus inspector,” Yleem Poblete, assistant secretary for arms control, verification and compliance at the U.S. State Department, said at a conference on disarmament in Geneva yesterday. “But its behavior on orbit was inconsistent with anything seen before from on-orbit inspection or space situational-awareness capabilities, including other Russian inspection-satellite activities. We are concerned with what appears to be very abnormal behavior by a declared ‘space apparatus inspector,”’ Poblete said.
“We don’t know for certain what it is, and there is no way to verify it,” she added. “But Russian intentions with respect to this satellite are unclear and are obviously a very troubling development — particularly when considered in concert with statements by Russia’s Space Force commander, who highlighted that ‘assimilate[ing] new prototypes of weapons [into] Space Forces’ military units’ is a ‘main task facing the Aerospace Forces space troops.'”
If you read the whole speech, you will discover that much of this is somewhat overstated, and that it is simply part of the Trump administration’s aggressive lobbying in favor of creating a Space Force. I don’t deny that this satellite could be testing technologies that could have military uses. I can also recognize it when a government official is trying to use the press to advocate for more funding. At no point does Poblete describe in detail the behavior that makes them think this satellite is doing things “inconsistent with anything seen before from on-orbit inspection or space situational-awareness capabilities.” In fact, if it is making unusual orbital changes that is very consistent with these purposes since any satellite designed to make orbital inspections of other facilities would need that capability.
In fact, I bet it isn’t the satellite’s activity that concerns them, but its vague description. The Russians really haven’t told us what it is. While this is surely a concern, this speech’s purpose is to lobby for the Space Force, not pressure the Russians to provide more information.
Second Japanese official indicted in JAXA bribery scandal
Japanese authorities have now indicted a second government official for taking bribes in connection with space work by the country’s space agency JAXA.
Kazuaki Kawabata, 57, the former director-general for international affairs at the ministry, allegedly received bribes worth about 1.5 million yen ($13,570) in the form of wining and dining.
Koji Taniguchi, 47, who served as an executive of a medical care consulting company, was also indicted on Aug. 15 on a charge of providing the bribes to Kawabata. Taniguchi had already been indicted in a different scandal on a charge of helping another education ministry official, Futoshi Sano, receive bribes from Tokyo Medical University executives.
According to the announcement by the Special Investigation Department of the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office, Kawabata was on loan to JAXA from August 2015 to March 2017, where he worked as a vice president. During the period, he was wined and dined more than 20 times in return for giving favors to the consulting company. The lavish drinks and dining totaled 1.5 million yen, including taxi fares.
None of this is really news. It is standard operating procedure at the higher levels of most government operations. These guys simply weren’t smart enough to disguise their corruption very well.
China unveils next lunar rover
The new colonial movement: In unveiling its next lunar rover, China today also announced they will hold a contest to name it.
Images displayed at Wednesday’s press conference showed the rover was a rectangular box with two foldable solar panels and six wheels. It is 1.5 meters long, 1 meter wide and 1.1 meters high.
Wu Weiren, the chief designer of China’s lunar probe program, said the Chang’e-4 rover largely kept the shape and conditions of its predecessor, Yutu (Jade Rabbit), China’s first lunar rover for the Chang’e-3 lunar probe in 2013. However, it also has adaptable parts and an adjustable payload configuration to deal with the complex terrain on the far side of the moon, the demand of relay communication, and the actual needs of the scientific objectives, according to space scientists.
Like Yutu, the rover will be equipped with four scientific payloads, including a panoramic camera, infrared imaging spectrometer and radar measurement devices, to obtain images of moon’s surface and detect lunar soil and structure.
The Chang’e-4 lunar probe will land on the Aitken Basin of the lunar south pole region on the far side of the moon, which is a hot spot for scientific and space exploration. Direct communication with the far side of the moon, however, is not possible, which is one of the many challenges for the Chang’e-4 lunar probe mission. China launched a relay satellite, named Queqiao, in May, to set up a communication link between the Earth and Chang’e-4 lunar probe.
I am not sure what they mean by “adaptable parts and an adjustable payload configuration.” That sounds like they upgraded this rover’s design to allow them to use it to build many similar rovers for use elsewhere, not just on the Moon. This sounds good, but the conditions on other planets are so different I’m not sure a direct transfer of the rover will work very well.
Chang’e-4’s launch is presently scheduled for December.
A gas giant exoplanet so hot it resembles a star
Link here. Key quote:
This sweltering exoplanet, located about 620 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Cygnus, is what astronomers call an “ultrahot Jupiter.” KELT-9b is a giant gas world like Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. But it’s way bigger — it has three times the mass and twice the diameter of Jupiter — and it orbits extremely close to its hot parent star, KELT-9.
“Ultrahot Jupiter” is an unofficial term for a hot Jupiter exoplanet with temperatures exceeding 3,100 degrees Fahrenheit (1,700 degrees Celsius). They “are so hot that they have some resemblance to being stars even though they’re planets,” Kevin Heng, an astrophysicist at the University of Bern in Switzerland who participated in the study, told Space.com. KELT-9b can reach temperatures of up to 7,800 degrees F (4,300 degrees C).
This record-breaking heat enabled astronomers to detect iron and titanium in KELT-9b’s atmosphere. While researchers have long suspected that these elements are present on some exoplanets — iron is one of the most abundant elements in the universe — it’s difficult to detect them in cooler environments because the atoms are mostly “trapped in other molecules,” Heng said. However, KELT-9b is so hot that the clouds don’t condense in its atmosphere, allowing individual atoms of iron and other metals to fly solo.
Titanium has been found previously in the atmosphere’s of other exoplanets, but only as part of a molecule.
Russian astronauts complete 8 hour spacewalk
Link here. Besides doing some basic maintenance work as well as literally tossing four cubesats into independent orbit, the most intriguing work was the installation of a German/Russian antenna designed to track animals.
Icarus is a collaborative environmental experiment between the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and Roscosmos to study the migratory patterns of small animals on Earth. It consists of an antenna and GPS hardware to track the movements of animals that have been tagged with small GPS receivers.
The experiment may provide data about how animals move from one location to another, how animal population density shifts over time, and how diseases spread.
August 14, 2018 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
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Anna Nalick – Breathe (2am)
An evening pause: Hat tip Edward Thelen.
Trump revokes Brennan’s security clearance
As threatened last week, President Trump today revoked the security clearance for former CIA director and anti-Trump CNN talking head John Brennan.
President Trump on Wednesday revoked the security clearance of former CIA director John Brennan, citing his “erratic conduct and behavior.” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, reading a statement from the president, said Mr. Brennan “leveraged his status as a former high-ranking official” to make false charges against the administration.
Mr. Trump’s statement began, “As the head of the executive branch and commander-in-chief, I have a unique constitutional responsibility to protect the nation’s classified information, including by controlling access to it. Today in fulfilling that responsibility, I’ve decided to revoke the security clearance of John Brennan, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency.”
The president said Mr. Brennan’s actions have “exceeded the limits of any professional courtesy.”
I’m not sure what difference this will make, as it seems a large percentage of the people who work for the CIA are as partisan as Brennan, will gladly leak any information to him that might harm Trump, and know that they likely face no consequences because the law seemingly does not apply to those allied with the Democrats.
Cryptic terrain in Martian high southern latitudes
Cool image time! The image on the right is a small cropped section from a larger image taken of the floor of Reynolds Crater, near the margins of the Martian southern polar carbon dioxide icecap.
The image was part of the August 1, 2018 image release from the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and was taken on July 5, 2018. Because that was during the peak of now clearing global dust storm, a large majority of MRO’s images were obscured. Only images taken at high latitudes appeared clear and sharp.
The image link, which has no caption, calls this “cryptic terrain.” Since this is at the margin of the polar cap, the white areas are almost certainly still-frozen dry ice. The white strip down the center of the image appears to be a low drainage gully, made even more evident on the full image.
What are the dark spots however? These are probably related to the dark spiders that appear wherever the carbon dioxide starts to melt and evaporate into gas, releasing the darker dust from below to coat the surface. The dark spots in this image are probably that same darker dust, but why it is scattered about as spots and splotches is a mystery. It does appear that the dark areas more completely cover the higher terrain, but why and if so is definitely unclear.
Back in 1999 I attended a press conference just prior to the failure of Mars Polar Lander. One of the mission’s investigators explained that, based on the orbiter images available at the time, they expected the lander to see some very weird land forms once it reached the surface, shaped in ways that are not seen on Earth. Unfortunately, contact with the spacecraft was lost just before it entered the Martian atmosphere, and was never recovered.
This image however remains me of that scientist’s lost expectation. The seasonal growth and retreat of the Martian icecaps will likely create some strange geology, which is only hinted at in this particular MRO image.