Author: Robert Zimmerman

Today’s blacklisted American: Space Force officer fired for criticizing Marxism and condemning bigotry

11:12 am

Twitter's idea of debate
Show trials: What America’s Space Force apparently wants.

Blacklists are back and the military’s got ’em: Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier, a fourteen year veteran of the Air Force who became one of the first officers in the Space Force, has been fired by his superiors because he wrote a book criticizing Marxism and compounded that sin by repeating the criticisms, along with criticisms of the undeniable bigotry of critical race theory, on a public podcast.

From a military pr officer:

“This decision was based on public comments made by Lt. Col. Lohmeier in a recent podcast,” a Space Force spokesperson said in an email. “Lt. Gen. Whiting has initiated a Command Directed Investigation on whether these comments constituted prohibited partisan political activity.”

Lohmeier’s temporary assignment in the wake of his removal was not immediately clear. [emphasis mine]

In addition, Amazon has decided to shadow ban Lohmeier’s book, Irresistible Revolution.

Irresistible Revolution has debuted in a strong position and as of this writing, it is #2 and #3 in military policy on Amazon, despite the fact that within hours of Lohmeier being relieved of his command, the book was no longer searchable on the publishing giant’s website. Only a direct link to the book’s page works at this time. It is available at Barnes & Nobles and other online booksellers such as Hudson and AbeBooks.

Lohmeier notes that he wrote the book entirely on his own time. He also informed the military of its existence and offered to have them review it before publication. The Pentagon said such a review was not required.

So what exactly did Lohmeier say that made his superior, Lt. Gen. Steven Whiting, believe he was participating in “partisan political activity”? From the Military.com come article:
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SpaceX launches 52 Starlink + 2 customer satellites

4:09 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully launched another 52 Starlink satellites along with two smallsat satellites.

They have put just under 1,700 Starlink satellites into orbit. The first stage completed its 8th launch, and the fourth in 2021, according to the SpaceX announcer. Let me repeat that: That’s four launches of the first stage in less than five months. The fairing halves were also flying on their second flight.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

15 SpaceX
12 China
7 Russia
2 Rocket Lab

The U.S. now leads China 20 to 12 in the national rankings.

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Rocket Lab launch fails

9:22 am

Rocket Lab’s launch yesterday of its Electron rocket failed when the upper stage began tumbling right after stage separation and engine start.

This was the second Electron failure in twenty launches. The last, in July 2020, was also caused by a problem in the upper stage, though far less dramatic. In that case an electric failure caused the upper stage engine to shut down prematurely before it had reached orbit.

Though the launch was a failure, the recovery of the first stage as part of Rocket Lab’s effort to make it reusable appears to be proceeding as planned. According to the company’s statement:

Electron’s first stage safely completed a successful splashdown under parachute and Rocket Lab’s recovery team is working to retrieve the stage from the ocean as planned.

I have embedded below the fold the Rocket Lab live feed, cued to just before the failure. You can see that as soon as the upper stage fires it begins to tumble.
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China’s Zhurong rover successfully lands on Mars

10:45 pm

The rover landing site for Tianwen-1's rover

The new colonial movement: China’s today successfully landed its Zhurong rover on the northern lowland plains of Mars dubbed Utopia Planitia.

China’s lander and rover began their descent to the surface at about 4:00 p.m. EDT (2000 GMT) by separating from the Tianwen-1 orbiter, which since March has been used to capture imagery of the targeted landing site for study. An aeroshell protected the stacked probes as they plunged into the atmosphere at 3 miles per second (4.8 km per second), generating tremendous heat in the process.

Once inside the atmosphere, while traveling at supersonic speeds, the spacecraft deployed a 2,150-square-foot (200 sq. meter) parachute to slow its approach to less than 328 feet per second (100 m per second). China based the canopy design on the parachutes it has used on Shenzhou missions to return astronauts to Earth.

Finally, the Tianwen-1 lander fired thrusters similar to the type on China’s Chang’e lunar landers to make the final descent. A laser range finder and a velocity sensor helped guide the craft as it hovered at about 328 feet (100 m) to identify obstacles and measure the slopes of the surface before touching down safely.

We don’t yet know the exact touchdown point. The image above is a mosaic of two wide angle photos from the context camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), with the white cross marking the spot previously leaked by the Chinese press as the landing site. The white box shows the area covered by the only high resolution MRO photo, as of October 2020. Since then MRO has taken a number of additional high resolution images of this area. The red boxes are the areas covered by the only two high resolution images released by China from its Tianwen-1 Mars orbiter

Note that the rover is actually not yet on the ground. It still sits on the lander. A ramp will be deployed and it will then roll down on the ground to begin what China says is a planned 90 day mission, with the most important data likely coming from the rover’s ground penetrating radar, looking for underground ice.

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The flaking and cracked floor of a Martian crater

1:10 pm

The flaking and cracked floor of a Martian crater
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on April 1, 2021 by the high resolution camera of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the central portion of the floor of an unnamed 5-mile-wide crater in northeast corner of Hellas Basin, the deepest large depression on Mars.

The latitude is 33 degrees south, where many glacier features have been identified, especially inside craters.

In this case, the cracked and flaked surface of this crater floor suggests what geologists call exfoliation, “the breaking off of thin concentric shells, sheets, scales, plates, and so on.” On Earth exfoliation generally refers to an erosion process seen on rock faces, though you can see it on other types of materials.

In this Martian crater we appear to be seeing the exfoliation of different ice layers, sublimating away at different rates as they are exposed to the Sun. The layers probably suggest different periods on Mars when snow was falling here, causing the glaciers to grow. The sublimation we see now suggest periods when this region was warmer and the ice was shrinking. Whether we are in such a period now is not yet determined by scientists.

Either way, the photo suggests at least two such cycles, though if we could drill down into this material we would likely find evidence of many more.

Below the fold is a global map of Mars, showing the location of this crater with a red cross in Hellas. The regions surrounded by white borders are areas where many glacial features have been found.
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Today’s blacklisted American: The Spectator magazine, by Google’s YouTube and Vimeo

12:11 pm

The Bill of Rights cancelled at Facebook and Instagram
Doesn’t exist at Google, YouTube, or Vimeo.

They’re coming for you next: Simply because an interview by The Spectator with Trump lawyer John Eastman discussed the many indications of election fraud and vote tampering in the November election, both Vimeo and Google’s YouTube decided that the video needed to be banned, forever.

YouTube said that the video violated its policy on misinformation. When the Steamboat Institute attempted to post the video under a different title, YouTube removed it again and revoked Steamboat’s ability to post videos for a full week. Vimeo also removed the video, saying that they ‘do not permit content that seeks to spread false or misleading information about voting.’

Steamboat was finally able to upload the interview to the Canadian video platform Rumble. You can watch it here and decide for yourself if this video is as dangerous as Big Tech claims.

As usual for these big tech censors, they cite no specific examples of “false or misleading information” expressed during the interview. They just claimed it existed, and banned everything.

It is important to also understand that the interviewer, Amber Athey, repeatedly pressed Eastman about his statements and position. The goal was not to allow him to simply sell his position, but to provide the viewer a legitimate discussion of the facts, pro and con, and thus allow that viewer the ability to decide for themselves whether Eastman’s concerns about the election have some merit.

This however is not good enough for YouTube or Vimeo. And they banned this Spectator interview at the same time they allowed with no complaints far more egregious lying and misinformation being spread by Democrats and leftists on their platforms:
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SpaceX in FCC filing outlines first orbital flight plan for Starship

9:40 am

The flight plan for Starship's first orbital flight
Click for full images.

Capitalism in space: This week SpaceX filed the flight plan for the first orbital flight of its Starship/Superheavy rocket, taking off from Boca Chica and landing in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.

The images to the right are from the filing, which also states:

The Starship Orbital test flight will originate from Starbase, TX. The Booster stage will separate
approximately 170 seconds into flight. The Booster will then perform a partial return and land in the Gulf of Mexico approximately 20 miles from the shore. The Orbital Starship will continue on flying between the Florida Straits. It will achieve orbit until performing a powered, targeted landing approximately 100km (~62 miles) off the northwest coast of Kauai in a soft ocean landing.

No date is listed as yet, though the filing suggests they are aiming for a launch before the end of the year. It also appears that though both Starship and Superheavy will make controlled vertical landings, both will target locations in the ocean. It could be that SpaceX plans to place its two refurbished oil rigs at both of those locations, but this is not stated in the filing.

Achieving this flight before the end of the year remains a serious hill to climb, though if any company could do it, SpaceX is the most likely.
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Tampering and serious discrepancies found in Arizona election audit

4:00 pm

The audit of the more than two million votes cast in Maricopa County, Arizona, in November 2020 is not yet complete, but auditors in the past week have revealed that they have already uncovered significant evidence of tampering and major discrepancies that throw great doubt on the victory given to Joe Biden.

First, the auditors forced the county election board to admit that the voting machines were not protected by a password at the administrative level, thus allowing anyone to change anything on every machine, during the vote count.

That doesn’t prove fraud or election tampering, it only proves that it was amazingly easy for it to happen.

Second, it appears from further work that something very fishy was going on. The auditors for example have discovered that Maricopa County officials illegally tampered with the voter database records before turning them over to the auditors, including the deletion of an entire database.
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Today’s blacklisted American: Conservative commencement speakers at all American universities

11:24 am

Today's modern witch hunt
Burning witches: What most colleges want to do to conservatives.

Blacklists are back and academia’s got ’em: Though for years universities have routinely favored leftist or Democratic Party politicians in picking their annual graduation commencement speakers, 2021 is turning out to be a record year in academia’s effort to blackball conservatives.

In its annual survey, Young America’s Foundation [YAF] said that of the 100 top schools that have identified their speaker, 37 are featuring notable and national liberals and one a conservative. By comparison to other years, the group said that 2021 may be the worst-ever showing for conservatives.

You can see the full list here [pdf]. As noted at the YAF announcement,
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