August 6, 2026 Quick space links
ince BtB’s stringer Jay is unavailable due to work, there won’t be many links today, other than what I scrap up. I do invite my readers to send me suggestions however.
This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the link below.
- Lucy probe takes first images of four of its main belt asteroid targets
The images show nothing but dots, and were taken to test the spacecraft’s camera’s in preparation for the fly-bys of all four, scheduled to take place between August 2027 and November 2028.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
From the country that calls a concrete slab a spaceport:
Starlink deal cancelled
Premier Doug Ford has had a severe case of TDS since early last year. For example, he’s banned American liquor from the shelves of the LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario). He frequently makes public pronouncements at which he pours out a bottle of, say, American whiskey as a show of defiance. Cancelling Starlink is yet another one of his “orange man bad” stunts.
Telesat began as a Crown corporation (i. e., government owned and operated) more than 50 years ago. It had a monopoly on satellites and satellite traffic for a while afterward. In the late 1990s, it was sold to Bell Canada and has changed owners a number of times since.
The UK’s recently announced plan to shut down Jodrell Bank was described by one observer as an instance of “national self-harm.” Seems that Canada is now also joining the ranks of sovereign “cutters.” One has to wonder what Oz and Middle Earth may now feel they have to do to keep up.
That’s a good way of describing what’s going on.
Much of what happened was merely meant to poke “bad orange man”. For example, I could never figure out why Telesat’s Lightspeed was considered necessary others than to show that Canada could have its own satellite constellation.
But there have been things that have been completely baffling. A few months ago, Weatheradio Canada shut down its chain of stations after being on the air for about 50 years. They transmitted on VHF between 162.4 and 162.55 MHz and provided weather information and forecasts.
Then, back in June, the National Research Council’s time signal station CHU went off the air for good after more than a century of service. It stopped broadcasting its time signal on the CBC a few years ago and, now, it’s no longer operating on shortwave.
The reason, I gathered, was that the government was strapped for cash, so something had to go. It’s not as if the weather broadcasts or time signals were completely useless. (CHU was often hard to receive for me. I had better luck with WWV, operated by the NIST out of Fort Collins, Colorado.)
On stainless
https://phys.org/news/2026-08-iron-cobalt-curb-stainless-invar.html
ISRU…CO2 to methane via light
https://phys.org/news/2026-08-black-silicon-catalyst-carbon-dioxide.html
I read that CO2-to-methane story and found no mention of water. It is not possible to convert CO2 to methane without a source of hydrogen.
I’ll keep looking….the brines on Mars will supply that of course.
Hello Dick,
It strikes me that the left-liberal paradigm of energy and industrial policy that’s dominant in most of the West now – you might as well call it the Net Zero paradigm – is often breathtakingly performative. It doesn’t eliminate carbon emissions so much as offshore them to distant lands, as if greenhouse gases magically stay put exactly where they are emitted, and as if moving vast strands of your supply chains to the other side of the world could never be at risk for disruption by war, hostile mercantile policy or natural disaster. And where this is not sufficient, just gaslight your population into accepting lower standards of living as not only necessary but virtuous. Only flabby Americans (and, uh, EU commissioners) need air conditioning!
So much of it feels as detached from lived reality as Brezhnev’s nomenklatura. Unfortunately, the Soviet example also tells us that an entrenched elite can play out a self destructive economic fantasy for quite a while before reality finally gets a vote, and unfortunately the 21st century West has a lot more resources to burn through than the old Soviet Union ever did.
Like deinstitutionalization of the homeless, China’s rise and America’s decline stem from bipartisan stupidity.
Capital doesn’t like labor.
Red/Greens don’t like emissions
NIMBY’s hate everything.
Overseas labor can be run Triangle Shirtwaist style, and has no EPA visits. Like Indian casinos, they use greed against the greedy….and have the Long View.
The Cold War made for a more heady time than usual blood-and-soil politics,
The Soviets failed because the individual triumphed over the collective…with the East, the dichotomy is freedom vs stability….with Oversight lacking overall.
China vs Venezuela is another study on socialism, in that it succeeded with capitalism’s aid in the former and failed due to sanctions and interference with the latter. Reagan killed the USSR, but strengthened China. Bernie’s love of the CCCP was honest at least–those who aided China through causing the Rust Belt via Free Trade wore little American Flags and really thought they were heroes…but they also paved the way for the D/S movement.
China played them. They took our factories…and Free Trade turned us into a service/gig economy that COVID targeted in turn. Now they fund “socialists” who want Reagan style open borders and who want ALL military programs dead (Commie Russians loved tanks).
And China wants us Green. They want to be 1950’s America, and want us back as an agrarian society no more advanced than 1780’s colonies. They are playing Greens like they played the Free Trade movement.
OT
A lovely pen
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x7YJ8G73OS4&pp=ugUHEgVlbi1VUw%3D%3D
US reindustrialization is proceeding apace, from big investments in fabs, to building more shipyards, securing raw materials like graphite and scandium, there’s been a Cambrian explosion in drone technology, multiple private new reactors went critical before July 4 (and more are following them); and in space, we’ve seen a similar proliferation of new companies testing and building all sorts of hardware. That’s only a fraction of what’s going on. Free trade isn’t a boogeyman, and it’s not the 1980s anymore.
Also, if China really held the long view, they would not have pursued such a disastrous one-child policy for decades. They’re not superhuman, they make mistakes as much as anyone else.