Author: Robert Zimmerman

NASA sets target launch date for SLS in February ’22

2:51 pm

As expected, the first unmanned demo launch of NASA’s SLS rocket has now been scheduled for a February launch window.

The first launch window for NASA’s Artemis I mission opens on February 12 at 5:56 p.m. EDT – yes, we have dates and times for this long-awaited mission. The February window lasts two weeks, with the first half of that window allowing a six-week mission and a four-week mission on the back half.

If for some reason NASA cannot launch in that firs window, they have back up windows in March and April. These windows exist because the plan is to send the Orion capsule to orbit the Moon from four to six weeks, and then return to Earth.

The announcement came the day after NASA had finally stacked the Orion capsule on top of the SLS rocket, essentially completing the rocket’s assembly.

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Next Ariane 5 launch postponed

11:39 am

Arianespace today announced that it has postponed its next Ariane 5 launch of two communications satellites, scheduled for October 22nd, because of issues with ground equipment.

Though there appear to be no issues with the rocket, this delay could effect the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in December on another Ariane 5 rocket. Arianespace has said that it wants to complete this launch first, to make sure the fixes it completed on the rocket’s fairing are truly working.

It was those problems that shut down all Ariane 5 launches for almost a full year.

No new launch date has been set. Normally, ground equipment issues cause short delays, so we should be hopeful all will be fixed quickly and this launch will be quickly rescheduled and take off without problems.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Teacher suspended for criticizing students for being offended over nothing

11:20 am

1966 in communist China
Mao’s 1966 cultural revolution comes to Coastal Carolina University

The modern dark age: Today’s blacklist story might illustrate better than any I have posted the oppressive, mindless, and emotional madness that is sweeping our country. Let me first sum the story up in a simple way.

–A teacher invites a guest speaker to a class to help the students find friends with like interests.

–The guest writes some student names on the blackboard with this intent.

–The students enter the class, and some immediately assume that because some of those names are minorities, the list has a bigoted intent.

–These students leave the class and immediately begin organizing a protest and a boycott of the teacher.

–Even after it is shown, without doubt, that these protesting students are 100% wrong, that the goal was to help all the students, including the minorities, the school apologizes to the protesters, not to the teacher or the guest speaker. The guest speaker also apologized, even though that speaker did nothing wrong.

–The teacher however does not apologize. He defends his guest, and notes that people should not let their feelings get hurt so easily.

–The student protesters, most of whom it appears did not attend the class and did not even know the teacher, immediately renew their call for a boycott of his classes.

–The administration of Coastal Carolina University agrees, suspending the teacher and accusing him of being “racially insensitive.”

Do you see the madness? The wrong-doers are in charge and it is the innocent who are punished.

Now for the punchline:
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Pop-up clouds on Jupiter

9:12 am

Pop-up clouds on Jupiter
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo above was cropped and enhanced by citizen scientist Gerald Eichstädt from a raw Juno image taken during that spacecraft’s 37th orbit. I have reduced it slightly to post here.

The photo shows what he calls “pop-up” clouds floating above a much larger cloud eddy. Unfortunately, Eichstädt provides no scale, but I suspect this image would easily cover the Earth, with those white clouds probably far larger than the biggest hurricane on Earth.

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Ukraine and Nova Scotia to partner in spaceport deal

8:59 am

The new colonial movement: The Ukraine has agreed to be a partner in the building of a new spaceport in Nova Scotia.

It appears a Canadian company, Maritime Launch Services (MLS) has raised $10.5 million in investment capital to develop both the spaceport and a rocket it dubs Cyclone-4M. That company has also been negotiating with the Ukraine to buy engines from its two rocket engine manufacturers, Yuzhnoye and Yuzhmash, for that rocket. As part of the negotiations, the Ukrainian government has agreed to provide funding to these two companies.

Both sides will hold further meetings in Canada on this partnership in November, including top Ukrainian government officials, Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Uruskyi, State Space Agency of Ukraine Administrator Vladimir Taftai, and Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba.

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China resumes communications with Tianwen-1 Mars orbiter

8:45 am

With the Sun no longer between the Earth and Mars, China has re-established communications with its Tianwen-1 Mars orbiter.

According to the CNSA [China National Space Administration], the orbiter will enter the remote-sensing orbit of Mars in early November to carry out global detection and obtain scientific data such as morphology and geological structure, surface material composition and soil type distribution, atmospheric ionosphere, and space environment of Mars.

The orbiter will also relay the communication between the rover and Earth for the rover’s extended mission, the CNSA added.

Based on this information, full communications with the rover Zhurong will not resume until November because the orbiter needs to re-adjust its orbit.

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Nanoracks and Lockheed Martin to partner in building commercial space station

10:07 pm

Capitalism in space: The companies Nanoracks and Lockheed Martin have announced that they have formed a partnership to build their own private commercial space station, dubbed Starlab.

Nanoracks, its majority owner Voyager Space and Lockheed Martin, will collaborate on the development of a commercial space station as others in industry warn of a potential space station gap.

Nanoracks said Oct. 21 that it was partnering with Lockheed Martin and Voyager Space on a commercial space station called Starlab. Nanoracks will be the prime contractor with Voyager handling strategy and investment and Lockheed serving as the manufacturer and technical integrator.

Starlab would consist of a docking node with an inflatable module attached to one side and a spacecraft bus, providing power and propulsion, attached to the other side. Starlab will have a volume of 340 cubic meters, about three-eighths that of the International Space Station, and generate 60 kilowatts of power. Starlab will be equipped with a robotic arm and “state-of-the-art” lab, and be able to host four astronauts at a time.

They are aiming for a 2027 launch.

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Nebraska AG report blasts FDA and NIH positions on COVID treatment

5:51 pm

In a ruling [pdf] making it clear that doctors are doing nothing wrong if they prescribe ivermectin or hydroxycholoroquine as part of their treatment for patients with COVID-19, the Nebraska attorney general not only provided detailed documentation demonstrating the reasonableness of prescribing those drugs — based on extensive peer-review research by scientists — he blasted the FDA, the NIH, and WHO for their somewhat ignorant hostility to those drugs.

The document is long, but everyone should read it, mostly to get a clear idea whether they or their doctor should consider using these two drugs should they come down with COVID. The answer appears to be an unqualified yes. Both drugs have different purposes, but both appear, if used properly, to be beneficial and reduce the severity of the virus.

The report also makes it clear that the hostility to these drugs by these American health agencies is irrational and somewhat alarming. See for example the one excerpt describing the FDA’s absurd statements in connection with ivermectin, a drug that doctors have been safely prescribing since the 1970s:

From Nebraska report

The report details at length the numerous research that makes these FDA statement so anti-science as to be quite horrifying, especially as this is the federal agency that is supposed to regulate food and drugs.

Once again, download this pdf and read it for yourself. You will find yourself significantly educated, based on actual peer-reviewed science.

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Curiosity’s new mountain views

1:14 pm

Curiosity's future route
Click for full image.

With the resumption of communications with Mars, following the two week hiatus because the Sun was in the way, Curiosity is about to begin its travels again. The view above, taken by the right navigation camera and reduced and annotated to post here, looks forward, with the red dotted line indicating the planned route.

The distinct white outcrop on the right top is the same spectacular outcrop I have highlighted previously.

At the moment however the rover is not going anywhere. Just before the hiatus the scientists had Curiosity move a short distance to crush some nearby nodules so that they could see their interior. At their update they post an image of one crushed nodule, and write the following:

[L]ook closely for very straight imprinted lines in the middle of flattened areas that appear slightly more grey. You can also see cracks, especially clearly on the right of the nodule in the image, but if you look around, you’ll find there are more of them. Some of the scratched areas are looking white, too. All those features will allow us an insight into the nodules and an interpretation beyond what we can otherwise see on the surface.

The image below, also taken by the right navigation camera and reduced to post here, looks back at Curiosity’s earlier travels, across the floor of Gale Crater about 1,500 feet below. The rim, about 25 miles away, can be seen through the atmospheric haze as the distant mountain chain.

See the orbital map at this post in September to get the context of what the two images are viewing. The top image looks south along the cliff line, the bottom looks almost due north.
Looking across Gale Crater
Click for full image.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Connecticut HS teacher of the year to be terminated because of vaccine mandate

12:02 pm

They’re coming for you next: Kahseim Outlaw, a 2020 high school teacher of the year in Connecticut, is faced with termination from his job as gym teacher in Wallingford, Connecticut, because he chooses not to get a COVID-19 vaccination.

Outlaw argued taking the shot should be a personal choice and has therefore chosen not to receive it. “I’m a personal advocate, a big advocate, for personal health and the choices that we make with our medicine and with our medical procedures and therefore I believe it’s my own choice on how to maintain that and how to manage it,” he explained:

Outlaw also noted he is not opposed to the vaccine.

In regard to testing, he said, “Going to test for something that I may or may not have on a consistent basis is deemed for me, on a personal level, an unnecessary medical procedure.”

Outlaw said he was diagnosed with the coronavirus last year and believes he could have antibodies but has not taken a test.

In other words, Outlaw is saying, “My body, my choice.” Too bad the Democrats and the left no longer believe in that mantra, which they have screamed at us for almost a half century. Now they believe in “Your body, OUR choice!”

The school board has not yet decided whether it will fire him. If you are interested in emailing them your thoughts, you can find their contact information here.

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The COVID lies of governments and scientists

9:42 am

Liar Fauci
The man has been lying from day one.

Two stories this morning illustrate once again the utter dishonesty and untrustworthyness of the governments and scientists who have been promoting strict lockdowns and mask and vaccine mandates as a response to COVID-19.

First, the NIH yesterday admitted in a letter to Congress that it had funded the gain-of-function research at China’s Wuhan lab, despite repeated blunt denials by it and former NIH Director Francis Collins and NIAID Director Anthony Fauci.

In a letter addressed to Rep. James Comer (R-KY), NIH Principal Deputy Director Lawrence A. Tabak cites a “limited experiment” to determine whether “spike proteins from naturally occurring bat coronaviruses circulating in China were capable of binding to the human ACE2 receptor in a mouse model.” According to the letter, humanized mice infected with the modified bat virus “became sicker” than those exposed to an unmodified version of the same bat coronavirus.

[Lead scientists Peter] Daszak failed to report this finding, and has been given five days to submit “any and all unpublished data from the experiments and world conducted” under the NIH grant.

When Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) had accused Fauci of funding this research, Fauci had not only denied it, he accused Paul of being a liar. In truth, it was Fauci who was lying in his testimony to Congress. Fauci and the NIH provided a foreign government funding to do secret biological weapons research that, in the end, was used to attack our country.

Fauci should be fired forthwith. Collins had stepped down on October 5th, probably because he knew this information was about to be released, proving he had been lying.

The second story is as egregious. It appears that the mask study that the Australian government has touted to impose mask mandates throughout their country is filled with so many basic errors and faulty research procedures that it should never have been published in the first place.
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