Author: Robert Zimmerman

Today’s blacklisted Americans: Trump supporters blackballed by employers

11:28 am

Survey graphic
Click for full image.

Blacklists are back and the Democrats got ’em: According to a new survey, those who publicly supported Trump or expressed conservative opinions on social media are being willingly blackballed by the hiring managers in corporate America.

A new survey of hiring managers provided to Secrets found that backing Trump on social media is the top reason to reject a job applicant.

The apparent reason: Human resources departments want to avoid “tiffs” between employees. “Likely to avoid future office tiffs, a significant portion of hiring managers admitted to negatively judging candidates based on the political content posted. For 27% of hiring managers, social media posts endorsing Donald Trump for president would negatively impact their decision to hire a candidate,” read the analysis of the poll done for Skynova, an online business software company.

While the list of political positions that causes employees heartburn in the graph above also includes some pro-Democratic Party positions — such as endorsing Joe Biden, supporting unions and a minimum wage — the majority are pro-Trump or conservative positions. Though there is a small chance you might be denied a job if you publicly stated your leftist beliefs, you almost certainly will be blackballed if you dared speak out against such beliefs.

Moreover, leftist workers are now eagerly looking for ways to blacklist conservative companies as well. From the survey:
» Read more

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UAE picks two more astronauts

10:31 am

The new colonial movement: UAE has announced that it has chosen two more astronauts to raise its astronaut corp to four, one of whom has already flown to ISS.

The UAE government announced it picked Nora AlMatrooshi and Mohammad AlMulla from a pool of 4,305 applicants to join the country’s small astronaut corps. They join Hazzaa AlMansoori and Sultan AlNeyadi, the first Emirati astronauts selected in 2018.

AlMatrooshi is the first woman selected as an Emirati astronaut. A mechanical engineer, she has been working for the National Petroleum Construction Company in the UAE. AlMulla is a pilot and head of the training department of the Dubai Police’s Air Wing Centre.

Obviously, for an Islamic nation to pick a woman to be an astronaut is significant, and indicates the UAE’s commitment to moderating the more oppressive aspects of its religion.

As significant however is the fact that all four of these UAE astronauts are now undergoing training in the United States. Previously UAE’s astronauts trained in Russia. Though the UAE has not announced when its next manned flight will be, and has also said it wants to use both American and Russia spacecraft, the training in the U.S. strongly suggests the UAE wants to buy an American flight next time, most likely on a SpaceX Dragon capsule.

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CDC admits its almost impossible to catch COVID from surfaces

9:00 am

The CDC last week finally admitted what had been well determined since May of last year, that there is no point in endlessly cleaning all surfaces everywhere because there is practically no chance of catching COVID-19 from surface contamination.

Turns out the risk of getting COVID-19 from touching an infected surface is “generally” 1 in 10,000, according to a new CDC study. That means “that each contact with a contaminated surface has less than a 1 in 10,000 chance of causing an infection,” the CDC explained in a statement.

Instead, the virus is mainly transmitted via the air — which essentially defeats the purpose of all the disinfecting wipes, and business owners feeling the need to obsessively make certain everything in their respective establishments was thoroughly scrubbed.

Of course, the CDC is still demanding everyone wear masks, even though the research for decades shows that unless you wear the right kind of mask properly, it likely does more harm then good. At a minimum it is nothing more than empty theater, a recommendation that has nothing to do with science and data and everything to do with emotions.

From the beginning of this epidemic the CDC has failed at being a trustworthy scientific organization, instead making pronouncements not based on scientific research but on feelings and sometimes a political agenda (defeating Donald Trump). Until there is a real-house-cleaning in that corrupt organization, there is no reason for anyone to trust anything they say.

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Ingenuity test flight delayed

12:08 pm

Due to a software issue identified during testing of the helicopter’s rotary blades, Ingenuity’s engineers have decided to delay its first flight for at least three days.

During a high-speed spin test of the rotors on Friday, the command sequence controlling the test ended early due to a “watchdog” timer expiration. This occurred as it was trying to transition the flight computer from ‘Pre-Flight’ to ‘Flight’ mode. The helicopter is safe and healthy and communicated its full telemetry set to Earth.

They are presently trouble-shooting the issue.

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Ingenuity’s flight schedule

9:07 pm

Ingenuity’s first flight on Mars is now a go for late on April 11th, with the first data arriving in the early hours of April 12th.

The flight plan should that first flight go as expected is as follows:

The helicopter team has 30 Martian sols (roughly 31 days on Earth) to take the first tentative flights. Assuming Ingenuity survives the first flight, it will rest and transmit data before attempting a second flight with lateral movement. Subsequent flights will happen every three or four Martian sols. The fifth flight — if Ingenuity gets that far — will be a chance to really soar. “The probability is it would be unlikely it will land safely because we will go into unsurveyed areas,” Aung said.

They have unlocked and tested the rotary blades, with all working as planned.

To watch JPL will have a live stream which I will embed on Behind the Black when it goes live at about 3:30 am Eastern on the morning of April 12th.

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Lava flooded mountains on Mars

1:56 pm

Lava-flooded mountains on Mars
Click for full image.

Overview map

Today’s cool image to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken in January 2012 by the context camera of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The location is a small section of the Tartarus mountain range that is cut by the Cerberus Fossae fissures, all located in Elysium Planitia, the large volcanic lava plain that lies between Mars’ big volcanoes. The white cross on the overview map below marks the location of the photo.

I picked this photo because it quickly shows us in one picture many of the typical features one finds in that lava plain.

For example, the distinct fissure that cuts across the mountains near the top of the picture is the northernmost large fissure of Cerberus Fossae. In my initial post on Cerberus I mistaken thought its large and many hundreds of miles-long fissures might be evidence of underground lava tubes. Since then I have learned while the depressions may signal underground voids, they are not a lava tubes but graben, cracks formed by the movement of the terrain on each side. The cracks opened when past volcanic activity caused the ground to swell upward, stretching and splitting it.

The dark splotch in the flat area just south of the fissure remains me of the maculae found in these lava plains to the west of Olympus Mons, splotches that for still undetermined reasons dust devils like to congregate, blowing off the red dust so that the dark basalt lava becomes visible. No high resolution image of this spot has yet been taken, so this is a pure guess on my part.

The mountains near the bottom of the photo illustrate the ancient lava flood that inundated these mountain peaks. The white box shows the area covered by the recent MRO high resolution image that I include below.
» Read more

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Biden administration’s proposed ’22 NASA budget boosts spending in all programs

12:33 pm

The just released summary budget by the Biden administration for 2022 includes a $1.5 billion increase in NASA’s budget, with increases for every NASA project across the board.

Maybe the only part of this that is surprising is the $325 million increase to the manned Artemis project to return to the Moon. Democrats have traditionally tried to cut such programs, even as they increased the spending in NASA’s climate budget. Though the Biden administration has shown that its priorities remain in line with this by increasing NASA’s climate budget by a hefty $2.3 billion, it did not cut Artemis but increased its budget also.

This budget proposal is also in line with the general trend in Washington, which is to spend money as if it grows on trees. Trump had also increased NASA’s budget, but tried to counter those increases with cuts in other areas, both in NASA and elsewhere. None of his proposed cuts however were ever really approved, as Congress has no interest in cutting anything.

Now that Biden and the bureaucracy is in power the money to them is going to flow like water from a burst dam. Whether the American people actually benefit from this spending remains to be seen. In general, since the 1960s the payoff from increased federal spending has been poor to terrible. I don’t see any reason to expect otherwise, even if the support of manned space exploration by the Biden administration helps fuel a new commercial renaissance in space. That renaissance cannot last if the country that supports it goes bankrupt.

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Starship #11 debris fuels environmentalist opposition

12:04 pm

They’re coming for you next: The debris that fell as far as five and a half miles away when SpaceX’s Starship #11 prototype exploded just before landing on March 30th has increased the already vocal opposition from various environmentalist activists of the space project.

Environmental organizations such as the Sierra Club, the Friends of Wildlife Corridor, and concerned citizens in the environmental research field have expressed their dissent about the SpaceX activities at Boca Chica.

Chris Sandoval, a science teacher in Brownsville with degrees in Wildlife and Fisheries and Ecotoxicology, has put forth a research paper explaining the possible effects of SpaceX activity in the surrounding natural habitats and economic consequences as a result of their expansion in the region.

Sandoval says research would show that contamination from rocket fluids would harm wildlife in the surrounding area. “Contaminants such as those of hydrocarbons are able to kill aquatic life, both vertebrate and invertebrate, at very low concentrations, especially when it’s in a semi-enclosed area as the Lagunas are,” explained Sandoval.

And yet, none of these claims seem to apply to the government-run spaceports in Florida and California, both of which are also surrounded by wildlife refuges. Why is that? Why do these environmentalists have a particular opposition to the spaceport of this private company, but none or little opposition to the government’s? Could it be that what they really oppose is private enterprise, and are using the environment as a tool to destroy it?

I should add, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that manages this refuge, SpaceX has been working closely with them on mitigating the damage, which in the end I suspect will be quite minimal. The ecology is far stronger than these environmentalist like to portray it. What SpaceX did hardly compares to the damage a hurricane would cause, and that is not an unusual event at this Gulf coast location.

Whether this environmental opposition to SpaceX will result in any major delays or obstacles remains to be seen. Under a Trump administration I would not be too concerned. Under today’s Democratic Party Biden administration, who knows? The tendency of Democrats is to regulate, and to use their power to squeeze others. So far that has not yet happened aggressively in connection to SpaceX, though there have been signs that the Biden administration is interested in increasing the regulatory roadblocks SpaceX must face. We will only have to wait and see.

Above all this increases the urgency for SpaceX to shift as soon as possible its Starship and Super Heavy test flights to the two oil-rigs it purchased and are refitting as floating launch and landing platforms. Once the bulk of those test flights are far away, out in the ocean, the political clout of these protesters will be minimized.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Dennis Prager and his organization PragerU

11:36 am

They’re coming for you next: Joining a host of other big tech software companies in their blackballing of the website PragerU, founded by radio host Dennis Prager, the Chinese owned social media ap TikTok placed its own permanent ban on the site this week.

According to PragerU, TikTok claims the ban is because of “‘multiple violations’ of their community guidelines,” a claim that is utter garbage and a lie. PragerU is simply a conservative website touting the traditional American ideals of life, liberty, personal responsibility. Because these are values that the dominant socialist and Marxist culture in both America and China oppose, PragerU must therefore be censored.

Nor has TikTok been alone among the social media giants in its blacklisting of PragerU. Facebook, YouTube, and Spotify have all taken actions to either block the site and its videos or prevent people from finding them. In every case the reasons cited are always either “a mistake” or a claim that PragerU violated some vague unstated “community standard.”

Make no mistake. The people who work for these big social media companies want to squelch any dissent from the modern Marxist agenda, and will do whatever they can to censor that dissent. Expect this blacklisting to get worse in the next few years, especially because these tech bullies are discovering they pay no penalty for doing so.

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Starship and Super Heavy update

10:09 am

Link here. The fifteenth Starship prototype has now been moved to its launchpad, which you can see here, while further work continues on Starship prototypes #16-20, the first Super Heavy prototypes, #1 and #2, and the orbital launchpad.

Starship #15 sports many changes in design from #11, and is expected to do its first test flight sometime in the coming weeks. As for the first Super Heavy prototype, it will be used to test some ground operations as well as the prototype itself, on the ground. Prototype #2 will hopefully make the first Super Heavy hop.

The construction of a full orbital launchpad lends great weight to SpaceX’s goal of making the first orbital flight before the end of the year.

Meanwhile, SpaceX has likely tightened security at this Boca Chica facility after a youtuber sneaked onto the site recently and posted video of himself wandering around the base of Starship #11, unmolested. He has since removed that video, but another youtuber grabbed it and has re-posted it for you to watch.

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