Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab today announced that the first official operational launch of its Electron rocket will take place in a window beginning April 20.
If this launch is successful, expect the company to begin to ramp up its launch pace. Their goal is to have the ability to launch once every three days, which will also give them the ability to quickly schedule payloads at a moment’s notice.
Government power grab: At a conference today a NOAA official revealed that its lawyers have decided to liberally interpret federal law so that the agency has the power to license all camera use in space.
According to Tahara Dawkins, director of Commercial Remote Sensing Regulatory Affairs (CRSRA) office,
[p]art of the licensing review for commercial remote sensing systems involves a check of any national security implications of that system, but it’s not clear what issues an onboard camera system, whose views of the Earth are typically low resolution and often obscured by the rocket itself, might pose.
Dawkins said that no previous SpaceX launches had NOAA commercial remote sensing licenses, even though many have flown onboard cameras, including several previous Iridium missions. An April 2 launch of a Falcon 9 from Florida carrying a Dragon cargo spacecraft had no such restrictions, she said, because that was considered a government mission. While the spacecraft is performing a mission under contract to NASA, the launch itself was considered commercial and licensed by the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation.
NOAA was not aware of the previous launches that featured onboard cameras. “Our office is extremely small, and there’s a lot of things out there that we miss,” she said. “The onus is on the companies to come to us and get a license when needed.” [emphasis mine]
The highlighted words prove that the big publicity of the Falcon Heavy launch, showing the Tesla with the Earth in the background, instigated this stupidity. This office doesn’t have the slightest idea what is going on. Footage from rocket launches have become routine now for almost a decade. They saw the Tesla images and decided to exert their power, despite the fact that, as the article notes,
Part of the licensing review for commercial remote sensing systems involves a check of any national security implications of that system, but it’s not clear what issues an onboard camera system, whose views of the Earth are typically low resolution and often obscured by the rocket itself, might pose.
This is government overreach at its worst. If Trump is serious about cutting back regulation, he should step it now to shut this down.
An evening pause: Performed live on the Frank Sinatra Show, November 13, 1951.
Hat tip John Conyers.
SpaceX successfully launched a reused Dragon capsule into orbit yesterday, once again using a reused first stage.
To show you how routine this has become, I myself completely forgot the launch was happening yesterday, and spent that time doing my monthly bills. Oy.
They did not attempt to recover the first stage, using it instead to do re-entry flight tests as it landed in the Atlantic Ocean. I suspect they have decided that it is not cost effective to recover used first stages, and would rather dump them in the ocean than pay the cost to recover, test, and store them.
The leaders in the 2018 launch standings:
10 China
7 SpaceX
4 Russia
3 Japan
3 ULA
China and the U.S. continue to be tied in the national standings.
An evening pause: It is amazing how much sound a modern band can produce.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
One of the prime areas of research for Mars planetary geologists is the region on Mars where the geography appears to transition from the southern cratered, rough terrain to the northern low, generally smooth, and flat plains. It is theorized by some scientists that the northern plains were once an ocean, probably shallow and probably intermittent, but wet nonetheless for considerable periods. The global map of Mars below, created by the laser altimeter on Mars Global Surveyor, clearly shows the obvious elevation differences between the low northern plans (blue) and the high, more cratered southern regions (changing from yellow to orange as you move higher).
Scientists have spent a considerable effort studying this transition zone (green on the map), illustrated by just one example I recently highlighted, showing that, though there does not appear to be a clear shoreline in many places, there is strong evidence that a shallow ocean repeatedly rose and fell in this transition zone, leaving behind geological ripple marks vaguely reminiscent of those seen on a beach caused by the rise and fall of the tides.
Today we highlight another example, taken in January 2018 at the location indicated by the cross on the above map.
» Read more
Another reason to dump these companies: Google and Amazon have both patented devices that are designed to spy on you at all times in your home.
The description of Google’s devices is particularly vile, and almost matches precisely the spying devices George Orwell created in 1984 that allowed the government to monitor its citizens 24 hours a day.
Google’s patent application outlines how audio and visual signals could be used to better understand a speaker’s mood or medical condition, according to the New York Times. The devices could listen to the ‘volume of the user’s voice, detected breathing rate, crying’. They could also detect a user’s coughing and sneezing.
The same patent applications reveals a device that could ‘recognize a T-shirt on a floor of the user’s closet’ with Will Smith’s face. It could then combine this with a browser history that shows searches for Mr Smith. This would allow Google to ‘provide a movie recommendation that displays, ‘You seem to like Will Smith. His new movie is playing in a theatre near you.’
In a separate patent application, Google describes a device that would give advice to parents for ‘areas of improvement’ such as spending more time with their children at supper. When children are near a drinks cabinet or are in their parents’ bedroom alone, the system may infer that mischief is likely to be occurring’, the patent read. On detecting mischievous behaviour, the smart device could even hand out punishments such as restricting mobile phone use.
Both Google and Amazon have made it clear in the past year that they are are increasingly partisan, strongly leftist with agendas favoring the Democratic Party. You therefore have to be a simpleton to think that this information will never be used by them for political reasons someday.
Every Democrat in the House who hired Pakistani Imran Awan to run their computers, 44 in total, also exempted him from the required background checks.
All of them appear to have waived background checks on Imran Awan and his family members, even though the family of server administrators could collectively read all the emails and files of 1 in 5 House Democrats, and despite background checks being recommended for such positions, according to an inspector general’s report. The House security policy requires offices to fill out a form attesting that they’ve initiated background checks, but it also includes a loophole allowing them to simply say that another member vouched for them.
Among the red flags in Abid’s background were a $1.1 million bankruptcy; six lawsuits against him or a company he owned; and at least three misdemeanor convictions including for DUI and driving on a suspended license, according to Virginia court records. Public court records show that Imran and Abid operated a car dealership referred to as CIA that took $100,000 from an Iraqi government official who is a fugitive from U.S. authorities. Numerous members of the family were tied to cryptic LLCs such as New Dawn 2001, operated out of Imran’s residence, Virginia corporation records show. Imran was the subject of repeated calls to police by multiple women and had multiple misdemeanor convictions for driving offenses, according to court records.
This story is particularly disturbing. Either all 44 Democrats were incredibly stupid, or they actually wanted Awan capable of passing classified information to his sources in Pakistan. Either way, everyone of these Democrats is culpable, and if the latter is true, they are also traitors.
The sky is falling! The Tiangong-1 reentry window has now been narrowed to only 3.4 hours and two orbits, centered on 8:30 pm (Eastern) on April 1.
It appears the world might be dodging this very minor bullet. The new window, which the spacecraft has just now entered as I write this, has allowed for the first prediction on where it should come down, and it appears that this will be in the southern hemisphere in the Pacific west of South America.
Update: Tiangong-1 came down in the Pacific Ocean at 8:15 pm (Eastern) on April 1.
Despite its successful launch earlier this week, India has lost contact with the military communications satellite.
They think the failure was due to a loss of power, that this remains unconfirmed.
New calculations of Tiangong-1’s orbit now suggest that it will reenter the atmosphere on April 2 ten minutes after midnight, give or take two and a half hours either way.
It appears that earlier calculations had expected more solar activity to push on the station. Instead, the activity was far less, so that the station will stay in orbit about a half day longer.
Despite tweets from Elon Musk suggesting it had hit the water at “high speed,” SpaceX’s recovery ship appears to have returned with one half of the fairing intact.
There are several images at the link showing the fairing on the ship. That it recovered it out of the water without damage seems surprising and unlikely. Nonetheless, that it looks intact means that the parafoil managed to slow it down enough to limit damage as it hit the water, and the company seems to be making real progress towards making these fairings reusable.
Embedded below the fold in two parts. The first segment was a detailed discussion of Soviet-style nature of China’s space program, while the second segment delved into dark matter and the uncertainty of science.
» Read more
China successfully completed its tenth launch for 2018 today, placing three Landsat-type Earth observation satellites into orbit with its Long March 4C rocket.
The leaders in the 2018 launch standings:
10 China
6 SpaceX
4 Russia
3 Japan
3 ULA
There have now been 29 launches in the year’s first three months, suggesting a pace that will give us about 120 launches total for the year, the most launches since the 1980s. Then, the Soviet Union was putting up a lot of rockets it could not afford and were not really practical. Now, we have some real competition and profits being made putting up satellites that fill a need. The numbers should only get higher in the coming years.
Link here. Based on the solid rocket technology developed for the shuttle and then for Ares, they hope to make the first launch in 2021, and actually do two flights that year to get certified by the Air Force so that they can bid on military launch contracts.
Development money for this rocket has come mostly from the Air Force, not from private funds raised by Orbital ATK. It also seems to me that it has taken far longer to get it built than it should if they really wanted to get a rocket up and running to compete for business. Moreover, they expect the Air Force to certify them after only two launches, while it took SpaceX a lawsuit and far more launches to get the same certification.
Thus, all told there is a bit of crony capitalism involved here. NGL might turn out to be a good deal, in the long run, but forgive me if I reserve my opinion.
An evening pause: As long as there are children, there will always be dreams.
Hat tip Jim Mallamace.
Aerospace Corporation has now narrowed the reentry window for China’s out-of-control Tiangong-1 station to 18 hours, centered at 12:15 pm (Eastern) on April 1st.
In my previous update I had misread their prediction, cutting the window in half by mistake. This new window means the spacecraft is predicted to come down anytime between 3:15 am (Eastern) and 9:15 pm (Eastern) on April 1st.
Government marches on! The NOAA bureaucracy forced SpaceX to shut down its launch telecast this morning because agency bureaucrats had decided that views of Earth in the background were the equivalent of a satellite remote sensing system that the agency is required to regulate.
It was definitely an issue with NOAA, the rocket company said. Apparently NOAA recently asserted that cameras on the second stage of the Falcon 9 rocket, which SpaceX uses for engineering purposes, qualify as a remote sensing system, which are subject to NOAA’s regulation. A provisional license obtained by SpaceX for Friday’s launch of the Iridium-5 mission required it to end views once the second stage reached orbit.
This raises some questions about the real purpose behind NOAA’s action, as the regulation specifically exempts “small, hand-held cameras.” SpaceX intends to obtain a full license for such camera views, and as of now there is apparently no restriction in place for SpaceX’s next launch of a NASA cargo ship from Florida, happening as early as Monday.
One theory put forth is that some bureaucrats at NOAA might not have liked the good press that SpaceX got when it broadcast views of the Tesla in space, launched by the Falcon Heavy, and wanted to exert their petty power. This might not be true. What is true is that this interference by NOAA in SpaceX operations is beyond stupid.
But then, why should be expect anything different from our present federal government?
Still working for the Democratic Party: In a new twist, the Trump Justice Department has decided to backtrack from a settlement with one conservative group, True the Vote, that had been harassed aggressively not only by the IRS but by the FBI, Justice, OSHA, ATF, and numerous other agencies that during the Obama administration suddenly instituted 23 audits against them.
By the beginning of 2018, the DOJ appeared ready to strike a deal. The IRS agreed to a laundry list of wrongdoing, legal protection from further abuse, and they would allow True the Vote to petition for attorney fees for the years this mess was tied up in courts. Engelbrecht and True the Vote agreed and signed the decree. Now, though, the happy headlines have faded and the DOJ has reversed the course and filed a response to the court opposing the True the Vote petition. DOJ denies admitting to anything, stated the consent decree shows that conservative groups had, in fact, lost in court and that in their view the IRS had won. The settlements meant nothing, and not one dime of attorney fees would be awarded.
DOJ now claims that the IRS was right to fight True the Vote. Engelbrecht notes, “The Trump administration is defending the IRS targeting American citizens.” It’s like the Obama DOJ is back in the saddle. True the Vote’s battle continues.
The short embedded video from True the Vote below the fold summarizes the situation, and illustrates that the Trump administration appears no different than the Obama administration. No house cleaning has taken place, and it appears that no house cleaning is planned. The abuse of citizens by these agencies continues.
» Read more
Early in March the European Space Agency successfully completed the first of a series of parachute tests for its 2020 ExoMars rover mission.
The focus of the latest test, conducted in sub-zero conditions in Kiruna, Sweden earlier this month, was the 35 m-diameter second main parachute. The test demonstrated the deployment and inflation of the parachute with its 112 lines connected to a drop test vehicle, via the deployment of a smaller 4.8 m-wide pilot chute.
This test only tested the parachutes deployment system. They still need to do this test at high altitudes to duplicate Mars’ conditions using high-altitude balloons.
When ExoMars reaches Mars, the parachute will act to slow the spacecraft down during descent. For the actual landing, they will be using systems designed and built by the Russians.
