Category: Behind The Black

An update on the testing of SLS’s core stage

9:38 am

Link here. The article provides more information on the temperature issue that caused the seventh of eight fueling tests of the core stage to abort early.

The temperature issue arose when NASA transferred superchilled liquid oxygen, to fuel the rocket, from a holding facility to the core stage of the SLS. This procedure has been modeled and verified before, Julie Bassler, SLS stages manager at Marshall, told reporters during the same teleconference. But this was the first time the transfer actually took place.

“We were actually just a few degrees different than what we wanted to see coming in,” she continued, but said the temperature must be precise during the initial phases of filling the tank. The requirement is minus 290.57 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 179.21 degrees Celsius.) But the liquid oxygen was slightly cooler, at minus 296.67 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 182.59 degrees Celsius).

“We filled up [the tank] just enough to pass the phase where we knew we weren’t going to be able to get the temperature to a level that was going to be acceptable to meet the requirement, and that’s when they caught us … in the testing,” Bassler continued.

Despite this issue, NASA still hopes to do the last core stage test, dubbed the Green Run, in the last week in December. During that static fire test they will fuel the core stage entirely and then fire its engines for the full duration of an actual launch — almost ten minutes. If all goes well they will then pack up the stage and ship it to Florida for the planned November unmanned test mission sending Orion around the Moon.

They have no schedule margins, however, because all the components of this very expensive and complex rocket need a lot of time to get anything done. The two solid rocket boosters that will be attached to the sides of the core stage only have a twelve month lifespan once assembled, and they are holding off assembling them pending this test. The core stage itself needs two months to be disassembled, and then two months to be reassembled in Florida. And there remain the issue of a failed power unit in the Orion capsule that could take four to twelve months to repair.

The article however had this telling quote, based on comments from a NASA official, about future launch procedures, that sent a chill up my spine:
» Read more

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House passes bill that attempts to protect Apollo Moon sites

9:10 am

The House today passed a bill that would require any American business planning a Moon mission to agree to not disturb the Apollo lunar landing sites.

[The bill] requires any federal agency that issues a license to conduct a lunar activity to require the applicant to agree to abide by recommendations in the 2011 NASA report “NASA’s Recommendations to Space-Faring Entities: How to Protect and Preserve the Historic and Scientific Value of U.S. Government Artifacts” and any successor recommendations, guidelines or principles issued by NASA.

All well and good, but this does nothing to stop other nations from touching those sites. Moreover, making all of those sites and whatever the astronauts did there totally sacrosanct is not reasonable. On the later Apollo landings the astronauts used a rover to travel considerable distances. Should every spot the astronauts visited by now considered holy? If anything, scientists will wish to return and gather more data at these locations to better understand the initial Apollo results.

Not that any of this really matters. In the long run the decision on how much these sites should be protected will be made by the people who live on the Moon. I suspect, as pioneers living on the edge of survival, they will have less interest in making memorials to past achievements and be more focused on getting things done, now.

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India successfully completes second launch in 2020

8:42 am

Using its PSLV rocket India today successfully placed a communications satellite into orbit.

This was only the second launch by India in 2020. At the start of the year ISRO had predicted they would complete as many as twelve launches. Instead, their panic over COVID-19 shut them down.

The leader board for the 2020 launch race presently stands unchanged, though a SpaceX rocket is on the launchpad and might lift-off in the next 90 minutes. [UPDATE: SpaceX has stood down and will try again tomorrow.]

33 China
24 SpaceX
14 Russia
6 ULA
6 Rocket Lab

The U.S. still leads China 39 to 33 in the national rankings.

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Chang’e-5 sample return capsule successfully recovered in China

6:18 pm

The new colonial movement: The sample return capsule for China’s Chang’e-5 mission, the first to bring lunar samples back to Earth since 1976, has been successfully recovered in the inner Mongolia region of China today.

Chinese officials confirmed the roughly 660-pound (300-kilogram) capsule landed at 12:59 p.m. EST (1759 GMT) Wednesday, or 1:59 a.m. Thursday in Beijing.

Recovery crews dispatched to the remote landing zone converged on the capsule in helicopters and off-road vehicles, traveling across the snow-covered plains of Inner Mongolia in the middle of the night. Ground teams reached the Chang’e 5 return module within minutes to begin operations to secure the capsule, and planted a Chinese flag in the frozen soil next the spacecraft.

Crews plan to transport the module to Beijing, where scientists will open the sample carrier and begin analyzing the moon rocks.

For China this success is a major milestone for its government-run space program. They have demonstrated superb technical capabilities that will serve them on many more future missions. They have also signaled to the world and the U.S. that they mean business in space, and that their published plans to build colonies on the Moon are serious. They have also made it clear that they will enforce control over any territory they occupy, notwithstanding the rules of the Outer Space Treaty. Any American government that makes light of these facts and refuses to aggressively compete with China is going to quickly discover it shut out of the most valuable locations on the Moon.

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InSight: Mars’ crust is thin, and its interior is many layered with a molten core

5:13 pm

Scientists yesterday released results from the seismometer on the Mars InSight lander that suggest that the crust of the red planet is thin and that its interior is many layered with a molten core.

[T]wo moderate quakes, at magnitude 3.7 and 3.3, have been treasure troves for the mission. Traced to Cerberus Fossae, deep fissures in the crust 1600 kilometers east of the landing site that were suspected of being seismically active, the quakes sent a one-two punch of compressive pressure (P) waves, followed by sidewinding shear (S) waves, barreling toward the lander. Some of the waves were confined to the crust; others reflected off the top of the mantle. Offsets in the travel times of the P and S waves hint at the thickness of the crust and suggest distinct layers within it, Brigitte Knapmeyer-Endrun, a seismologist at the University of Cologne, said in an AGU presentation. The top layer may reflect material ground up in the planet’s first billion years, a period of intense asteroid bombardment, says Steven Hauck, a planetary scientist at Case Western Reserve University.

At 20 or 37 kilometers thick, depending on whether the reflections accurately trace the top of the mantle, the martian crust appears to be thinner than Earth’s continental crust—a surprise. Researchers had thought that Mars, a smaller planet with less internal heat, would have built up a thicker crust, with heat escaping through limited conduction and bouts of volcanism. (Though Mars is volcanically dead today, giant volcanoes dot its surface.) A thin crust, however, might mean Mars was losing heat efficiently, recycling its early crust, rather than just building it up, perhaps through a rudimentary form of plate tectonics, Mojzsis says.

The thin crust provides a solid basis for explaining the large volcanoes and vast lava plains on the planet. Combined with the light gravity, magma would have found an easier path to the surface. Handed this knowledge, planetary geologists can now make a first stab at outlining more precisely the planet’s early volcanic history.

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SpinLaunch expands operations at Spaceport America in NM

5:06 pm

Capitalism in space: SpinLaunch, the private launch startup that proposes to fling payloads into orbit rather than launch them in a rocket, has announced that it will be expanding its operations at Spaceport America in New Mexico.

The company already built a $7 million, 10,000-square-foot facility at the Spaceport after announcing plans last year to conduct all testing there on its new technology. Now, the company is doubling down, with plans to hire an additional 59 people and invest another $46 million over 10 years. The state Economic Development Department will support the expansion with $4 million in Local Economic Development Act funding, said EDD Secretary Alicia J. Keyes.

…Under its expansion, the company plans to actually build the centrifuge launch system at the spaceport, with test launches to start next year. “We expect by next summer to begin flight test operations at the spaceport, and we expect to continue to test new flight designs there for the foreseeable future,” Yaney told the Journal. “We see it as a permanent facility for us.”

The idea is fascinating, but I have some doubts. First, the accelerations will be so high that it might limit the company’s customer base, since many satellites will likely not be able to withstand those forces.

If it works, however, the company will have found a truly clever way to eliminate entirely the need for a first stage, and maybe even the second stage.

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ESA funds ArianeGroup prototype vertical landing hopper

4:57 pm

The European Space Agency (ESA) has now committed 33 million euros for ArianeGroup to develop a prototype vertical landing hopper dubbed Themis that would begin testing first stage landings by ’23.

ArianeGroup and its collaborators in Belgium, Switzerland, France and Sweden offer critical technical knowhow gained through the development of Europe’s next-generation engine – Prometheus – which will power Themis.

ESA’s Prometheus is a highly versatile engine capable of providing 1000 kN of variable thrust and is reignitable which makes it suitable for core, booster and upper stage application. An onboard computer handles engine management and monitoring in real time – a crucial feature for reusability.

ArianeGroup is the private consortium led by Airbus and Safran that is building Ariane 6. This deal suggests that ESA amd ArianeGroup has finally recognized that Ariane 6, built without reusability, is a lemon and is not attracting customers. This new contract starts the process of developing a reusable first stage.

They still might be too late. They will only begin testing the Themis prototype in ’23, with no clarity on when a full scale version will follow. Meanwhile, it is very likely that SpaceX’s fully reusable Starship/Super Heavy will be flying orbital missions by then, and likely charging far less than they presently do for their Falcon 9.

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Cones on Mars!

9:35 am

Today’s cool image is actually a bunch, all found recently in the monthly image download from the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

All the photos I post below show pimple-like cones, all of which appear to be a type of small volcano. The cones are found in a wide range of locations, from the northern lowland plains to the cratered highlands to the mid-latitude transition zone between the two. They are also found at the bottom of deep canyons, in the floors of craters, and amidst mountains.

Let us begin.
» Read more

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Dark storm on Neptune changes direction unexpectedly

8:35 am

Dark storm on Neptune
Click for full image.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have found that a dark storm discovered on Neptune in 2018 has been drifting across the gas giant in unexpected ways.

The storm, which is wider than the Atlantic Ocean, was born in the planet’s northern hemisphere and discovered by Hubble in 2018. Observations a year later showed that it began drifting southward toward the equator, where such storms are expected to vanish from sight. To the surprise of observers, Hubble spotted the vortex change direction by August 2020, doubling back to the north. Though Hubble has tracked similar dark spots over the past 30 years, this unpredictable atmospheric behavior is something new to see.

Equally as puzzling, the storm was not alone. Hubble spotted another, smaller dark spot in January this year that temporarily appeared near its larger cousin. It might possibly have been a piece of the giant vortex that broke off, drifted away, and then disappeared in subsequent observations.

The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, shows both storms. The smaller dark spot can be seen faintly to the right of the larger storm.

Since Hubble has been observing Neptune in 1993 it has seen four such storms, all of which have faded away after about two Earth years. What causes the storms as well as their motions in Neptune’s atmosphere remains unknown, and any theories posited (such as those noted at the link) are highly unreliable, considering the paucity of data we have about Neptune’s atmosphere and the meteorology of such gas giants.

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Study: Wearing used mask worse than no mask at all

8:28 am

WHO's do's and don't's for mask use
For the full images, go here and here.

The mask of ignorance: A new study has found that wearing a used mask, even an N95 type, is likely more risky to your health than wearing no mask at all.

Wearing a used mask could be more dangerous than not wearing one at all when it comes to warding off COVID-19, a new study has found.

A new three-layer surgical mask is 65 percent efficient in filtering particles in the air — but when used, that number drops to 25 percent, according to the study published Tuesday in the Physics of Fluids.

Researchers from the University of Massachusetts Lowell and California Baptist University say that masks slow down airflow, making people more susceptible to breathing in particles — and a dirty face mask can’t effectively filter out the tiniest of droplets.

These results are not only not surprising, they are backed up by more than a century of research into mask use for medical purposes. Using masks improperly is not sanitary, and increases your risk for getting ill, as clearly shown by the WHO graphic to the right. The results also illustrate once again that the purpose of mandating mask use has nothing to do with reducing the spread of COVID-19 (which it decidedly has not), but are instead designed to demonstrate the power of our rulers to muzzle and control the population, for the purpose of obtaining power.

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Scientists confirm ample Ryugu material in first Hayabuse sample chamber

8:01 am

Japanese scientists have opened the first chamber that stored the Ryugu asteroid samples obtained during its first touch-and-go sample grab, and confirmed that it holds ample material.

They also noted that the chamber itself contained gas from the asteroid as well.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has confirmed that the gas collected from the sample container inside the re-entry capsule of the asteroid explorer, Hayabusa2, is a gas sample originating from asteroid Ryugu.

The result of the mass spectrometry of the collected gas within the sample container performed at the QLF (Quick Look Facility) established at the Woomera Local Headquarters in Australia on December 7, 2020, suggested that the gas differed from the atmospheric composition of the Earth. For additional confirmation, a similar analysis was performed on December 10 – 11 at the Extraterrestrial Sample Curation Center on the JAXA Sagamihara Campus. This has led to the conclusion that the gas in the sample container is derived from asteroid Ryugu.

They think that this gas must have outgassed from the samples themselves. I suspect it was released either during the long journey or when the samples were subjected to the high accelerations and impact during its return to Earth. Research is going to have to try to pin this down, however.

They plan to open the two remaining sample chambers containing material sometime next week.

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Astra test launch almost reaches orbit

2:53 pm

The view from space on Astra's Rocket

UPDATE: The rocket came up slightly short of orbit. From Eric Berger:

Rocket was 0.5 km/s short of orbit. With a better fuel mixture in the upper stage it would have orbited. Apogee of 390km. Rocket 3.3 will carry a payload, and there will be no hardware or software changes.

Original post:
——————————
Capitalism in space: According to the company’s Twitter feed, the second launch attempt today by Astra of its rocket appears to have reached orbit.

The images to the right were taken by their rocket, which is unimaginatively dubbed Rocket 3.2. I hope they now give this vehicle a more striking name.

If they have succeeded, they will have joined Rocket Lab as one of only two private commercial smallsat startups to launch a rocket to orbit. Two Chinese pseudo-private companies, Galactic Energy and ExSpace, have accomplished this, but I do not count them as real private companies. They might have worked independent of the government and raised investment capital, but nothing they do happens without close government supervision.

We will have to wait for full flight data from the company, but assuming they reached orbit that will be 40th American launch in 2020, the first time the U.S. has topped 40 launches in a single year since 1969, when the country achieved 46 successful orbital launches.

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Subpoena issued to audit all Dominion machines in Phoenix area of Arizona

12:23 pm

The Arizona state senate today issued a subpoena requiring the election board of Maricopa County, which covers the entire Phoenix area, to allow for a full audit of the Dominion tabulators and software used to count the ballots in that county.

More here.

I will repeat what I have said from the beginning. What I want, and what all voters should want, is a complete reassurance that these machines did not miscount the totals, and that the result as presently certified is correct. If the audit finds this is so, that will actually be a great relief, even if it means Joe Biden to my sorrow has become president. Having a reliable election system is more important than who wins any particular election.

However, if the audit finds the kinds of issues revealed in the audit of the Dominion machines used in several counties in Michigan, then the election for president is unreliable and should not stand. Once might be a fluke, or an example of a poor audit. Twice means the issues are real. Moreover, unlike the audit in Michigan, this one will be performed under the guidance of the legislature, not one specific firm hired by an attorney. It will therefore carry more weight, as it will have the input of the Democrats in that legislature.

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A good summary of the status of the election political battle

11:53 am

Link here. The author, William Jacobson, always has a solid legal grounding on the political warfare that is on-going today in America. In this case he argues correctly that the key has always been winning elections, and that the Republicans have consistently failed to play that game hard. They didn’t fight the use of loosely regulated mail-in ballotss They didn’t fight ballot harvesting. They didn’t reject the use of Dominion software. And he gives a classic example in Wisconsin, whose Supreme Court has rejected election lawsuits partly because of the following reason:

There is no better example of why elections matter, and how the 2020 presidential election was lost months ago. Liberal Jill Karofsky defeated conservative sitting Justice Daniel Kelly in an April 2020 election the Wisconsin Republicans completely botched by allowing it to take place the same date as the Democratic presidential primary. Guess who turned out to vote? Democrats. That took the court down to a nominal 4-3 conservative majority, with Justice Brian Hagedorn the weak conservative link.

In many other states, legal and political battles were fought strategically by Democrats over the several months leading up to the election. Democrats organized for a mail-in election, Republicans didn’t. Republicans were out-organized, out-hustled, and out-lawyered.

Even now the Republicans in Georgia are not gearing up to deal with potential election fraud in the upcoming Senatorial runoff elections that will determine who controls the Senate. They are fiddling around as the entire credibility of the election process burns. The odds of them winning even one of those two run-offs I rate is low, because not only will the same cheating take place by the Democrats, Republican voters will not come out to vote, because they don’t see their party as a useful party to vote for.

And yet, the most important and only task Republican-controlled state legislatures have right now is to insure that fraud cannot happen in future elections. It is their last hill to stand on. That in Georgia they seem uninterested in dealing with this now, before these runoffs, tells us how weakly they will likely fight in other states in the coming years.

And if they don’t fight, they will lose. It is that simple.

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Ancient and recent volcanoes on Mars

9:41 am

Volcanic vent on eastern flank of Olympus Mons
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on October 25, 2020. It shows what it calls a “possible volcanic vent east of Olympus Mons”.

Is this active? If not, how old is it. Also, the elongated shape of the vent suggests the possibility of a lava tube, or at least some underground complexity to the release of its magma.

In order to get some clarity, I emailed Sarah Sutton of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory of the University of Arizona, who requested this photograph. Her response:

The image is of a small shield volcano with an elongated vent at the summit. We don’t have complete stereo here yet, so we can’t tell exactly what the height is. This vent might have sourced tube-fed flows, but in this case, we can’t resolve such features in the image data. This and other small shield volcanoes in the vicinity are partially buried by plains-forming lava flows. The lava flows around the base overlap the flows that emanate radially from the summit vent. Therefore we infer that the shield is older than the surrounding lava flows.

The vent, which runs from the southwest to the northeast, sits on top of a sloping wide hill, which is that small shield volcano described by Sutton. The flat plains surrounding this hill are from later eruptions from other and possibly larger volcanoes. The wider overview map below might give us a clue as to the source.
» Read more

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SpaceX in preliminary negotiations for another big fundraising round

9:07 am

Capitalism in space: According to this report, SpaceX is now in preliminary negotiations with investors prior to beginning another big fundraising round, even though the company just raised $1.9 billion in private investment capital in August.

The talks are still in early phases, and exact pricing for the fundraising round has not yet been determined, one of the people said. Terms could still change, and it could take several weeks to decide and firm up allocations, the person added. SpaceX also may not be able to convince investors to give it the lofty valuation it desires. Allocations refer to which investors will be authorized to buy shares and how much they will pay for those shares.

“It’s a pretty big shock to me, honestly,” one of the people said. “What company jumps to double its valuation in six months? I don’t care at what scale you’re operating, it’s kind of crazy,” they added. “If you look at the series, every single valuation is a 10 to 20% bump.”

It appears that the company is trying to leverage its successes with Dragon, Starship, and Starlink to obtain more funding. The story also suggests that SpaceX now has a better sense of what it will cost to get Starship built, and thus is looking to obtain those funds now, when they are in a good position to get them.

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Scientists confirm Hayabusa-2’s return capsule brought back material from Ryugu

8:56 am

Based on their first observations of the return capsule from Hayabusa-1, Japanese scientists yesterday confirmed that it successfully has returned material from the asteroid Ryugu.

JAXA said in a statement that they observed the sandy material at the entrance of the collection chamber, but have yet to look inside to see if more asteroid dust is lurking there. It is only the second time that scientists have returned material from an asteroid.

This find in the entrance portends a gold mine of material in the collection chamber itself.

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Rocket Lab successfully launches Japanese radar satellite

8:48 am

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab early today successfully launched an Japanese radar satellite using its Electron rocket.

This was the company’s sixth successful launch in 2020, matching the count it had predicted at the start of the year it would reach. And this despite one launch failure. The rocket also sported a new and larger faring, giving Rocket Lab the ability to launch larger payloards or more satellites with each launch.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

33 China
24 SpaceX
14 Russia
6 ULA
6 Rocket Lab

The U.S. now leads China 39 to 33 in the national rankings.

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Confirmed: Martian glacial features are ice

10:12 am

Lobate glacial flows on Mars
Click for full image.

Scientists using the radar instrument on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) have now confirmed that the Martian glacial features that most resemble the glaciers seen on Earth are made of substantial amounts of ice, and were possibly active and growing only a few million years ago.

“Our radar analysis shows that at least one of these features is about 500 meters thick and nearly 100 percent ice, with a debris covering at most ten meters thick,” said Berman, lead author of “Ice-rich landforms of the southern mid-latitudes of Mars: A case study in Nereidum Montes” published online in Icarus at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2020.114170. PSI scientists Frank C. Chuang, Isaac B. Smith and David A. Crown are co-authors on the paper.

Global mapping of Viscous Flow Features (VFFs), a general grouping of ice-rich flow features in the southern hemisphere of Mars shows a dense concentration in Nereidum Montes, along the northern rim of Argyre basin. Located within a northwestern subregion of Nereidum Montes is a large number of well-preserved VFFs and ice-rich mantling deposits, the paper says, potentially the largest concentrations of any non-polar region in the southern hemisphere.

…Processed data from the Shallow Radar (SHARAD) instrument aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft were used to search for basal reflections across VFFs within the region. For one in particular, these observations and analysis indicate that it is composed of nearly pure water ice. Model ages obtained from crater counts and their associated size-frequency distributions (SFDs) on both ice-rich mantling deposits and small lobate VFFs suggest that the deposits stabilized several to tens of millions of years ago in the Late Amazonian Epoch, and that small lobate VFFs likely formed due to the mobilization of mantling deposits.

This data here reinforces the impressions from many other places within the 30-60 degree latitude bands on Mars where many such features are found.

Mars might be a desert, but it is a desert like Antarctica, not the Sahara. Any settlement there must use the Earth’s south pole as its guide for construction and design.

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Russia successfully completes second Angara rocket launch

9:46 am

The new colonial movement: After many delays, Russia today successfully completed the second launch of its new Angara rocket, placing a dummy test payload into orbit.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

33 China
24 SpaceX
14 Russia
6 ULA
5 Rocket Lab
5 Europe (Arianespace)

The U.S. lead over China in the national rankings remains 38 to 33. With this launch the total launches in 2020 now matches that achieved last year, something achieved despite the Wuhan virus panic.

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Antrim County election audit: Dominion machines unreliable, evidence suggests vote tampering

9:29 am

The computer audit of the Atrim County election Dominion tabulator machines has found [pdf] irrevocable evidence that these machines and their software is unreliable, that the evidence suggests significant vote tampering, and also suggests criminal activity to do it.

The preliminary findings including 24 points, all of which are shocking. The second sums it up:

We conclude that the Dominion Voting System is intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results. The system intentionally generates an enormously high number of ballot errors. The electronic ballots are then transferred for adjudication. The intentional errors lead to bulk adjudication of ballots with no oversight, no transparency, and no audit trail. This leads to voter or election fraud. Based on our study, we conclude that The Dominion Voting System should not be used in Michigan. We further conclude that the results of Antrim County should not have been certified.

The audit also included data from two other counties as well, all of which confirmed the results from Antrim.
The audit found that the software for this election somehow failed to properly scan a “staggering” number of ballots, up to 81% in one case, requiring a manual unsupervised adjudication of the scan in order to record the vote. This failure rate — averaging 68.05% — was completely different than past election records, and exceeded the allowable election error rate established by the Federal Election Commission guidelines, 1 in 250,000 ballots (.0008%), by many orders of magnitude.

They also found evidence of willful obstruction of justice to hide these facts. The files and adjudication logs are missing. There was also an attempt to zero out the machines before the audit could obtain its data. Finally, the software was updated just before the election, and then just afterward.

The only reason to change software after the election would be to obfuscate evidence of fraud and/or to correct program errors that would de-certify the election. Our findings show that the Central Lake Township tabulator tape totals were significantly altered by utilizing two different program versions (10/232020 and 11/05/2020), both of which were software changes during an election which violates election law, and not just human error associated with the Dominion Election Management System. This is clear evidence of software generated movement of votes. The claims made on the Office of the Secretary of State website are false.

Read it for yourself. More important, download it immediately and pass it to friends. I predict that many of your Democratic Party friends will dismiss it as fake. Some however will not. If just ten percent recognize these facts the election will likely get invalidated.

And make sure you pass it to your legislators. Any state that used these machines needs to review the results, and most likely must invalidate them. We need a new election.

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Data: Hospitals underwhelmed by 2nd COVID wave, as they were with 1st

9:19 pm

Chicken Little report: Federal government data now shows that hospital capacity has never been at full capacity or even strained during the first wave of COVID-19 in the spring, as well as the current spike now.

[F]ederal government data compiled from state-level reports suggests that hospitals nationwide have considerable space left to deal with both routine medical issues and COVID-19 patients. The Department of Health and Human Services offers on its website estimates of hospitalization rates across the United States.

…The HHS numbers belie forecasts of impending collapse of the U.S. medical system. As of Saturday, the department estimated that hospitals nationwide were at about 75% capacity. ICU beds were even lower, at 63.5%. Patients who had tested positive for COVID-19 occupied just under 15% of all beds nationwide. Even in areas that have recently posted huge surges in positive COVID tests, the numbers were largely similar to the national average: In New York, 76% of hospital beds (and 61% of ICU beds) were taken.

In California, where positive test results have skyrocketed, 76% of inpatient beds were likewise filled (though the ICU numbers were notably higher than New York’s, at 79%). Ohio, which has also seen a surge in positive tests over the last few months, has 71% of inpatient beds taken, and 77% of ICU beds.

Those numbers are not far out of line with national average occupancy rates seen in normal times and are, in some cases, lower than what are widely considered optimal rates.

There’s more at the link, but overall the data confirms what I wrote back in March, only two weeks after some states had declared statewide emergencies, imposed lockdowns, and destroyed their economies based on a panicked fear of a gigantic spike that would overwhelm their hospitals. The data then strongly suggested that these fears were unwarranted. This new data confirms that conclusion.

The lockdowns, mandates, and cancellation of the Bill of Rights were all entirely unnecessary. Worse, corrupt politicians (mostly Democrats) have morphed their so-called purpose from easing the sudden arrival of many sick patients (“flatten the curve”) to a vain attempt to prevent the spread of the virus, something that only six months ago sane people knew was impossible.

Under this new impossible mantra (“Stop the spread!”), lockdowns will never end. Which to these corrupt politicians is just fine, as it gives them the kind of absolute power they crave.

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Chang’e-5 on its way back to Earth

3:04 pm

The new colonial movement: Chang’e-5 today successfully fired four engines for 22 minutes to leave lunar orbit and begin its journey back to Earth, with a planned arrival date in China for its sample return capsule around December 15/16th.

The return capsule is expected to land in northern China in the Inner Mongolia region after separating from the rest of the spacecraft and floating down on parachutes. The material would be the first brought back since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 probe in 1976.

The rocks and other debris were obtained both by drilling into the moon’s crust and scooping directly off the surface. They may be billions of years younger than those brought back by earlier U.S. and Soviet missions, possibly offering insights into the moon’s history and that of other bodies in the solar system.

The landing sequence is the last major engineering challenge, though hardly as challenging as the autonomous rendezvous and docking in lunar orbit.

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SpaceX successfully launches commercial radio satellite

1:32 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully launched a new commercial radio satellite for Siruis.

The first stage was making its seventh flight, the fifth in 2020. It successfully landed on the drone ship. The fairings were also both previously flown.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

33 China
24 SpaceX
13 Russia
6 ULA
5 Rocket Lab
5 Europe (Arianespace)

The U.S. now leads China 38 to 33 in the national rankings. The U.S. has also completed the most launches in a single year since 1968. Unlike 1968, all the launches this year were flown by private companies, either for commercial customers or for the government, with rockets owned by the companies. In 1968 almost all the launches were for the government, and the rockets were controlled by the government, even if built by private companies.

Note that this very successful year occurred during a year when many businesses were forced to shutdown due to the Wuhan panic. It appears many rocket companies decided this was not a reason to cease operations.

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Virgin Galactic’s first Unity launch from New Mexico fizzles

3:54 pm

Capitalism in space: Virgin Galactic’s first attempt to launch its SpaceShipTwo Unity suborbital spacecraft from its New Mexico spaceport ended almost immediately after the ship was released from WhiteKnightTwo when its engines did not ignite.

All appeared normal during the flight’s early phases. VSS Unity was carried into the air by its twin-fuselage mothership, known as WhiteKnightTwo VMS Eve, and was released to fly free at an altitude of more than 40,000 feet.

A webcast provided via NASASpaceflight.com showed the flash of the plane’s hybrid rocket motor lighting up, but only for a second. After the flame-out, Test pilots Dave Mackay and C.J. Sturckow brought Unity back down to the spaceport for a gliding landing.

I wish Virgin Galactic well, but at this point consider the company a backwater in the drive to develop a commercial space tourism industry. It took them too long to get to this point. Even if they should start flying tourists next year, they will be competing with orbital tourist flights by SpaceX, and the contrast is stark. I simply no longer see a viable customer base for Virgin Galactic, unless they get a lot of government subsidies.

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Indonesia & SpaceX considering launchsite there

8:26 am

Capitalism in space: Indonesia has been in discussions with SpaceX and Elon Musk about establishing a SpaceX launch site in that country.

President Joko Widodo discussed the idea with SpaceX founder Elon Musk during a phone call on Friday, the Coordinating Ministry for Maritime and Investment Affairs said in the statement. Musk intends to send a team to Indonesia in January to study partnership opportunities, it said.

Makes sense for Musk to consider such a move, especially if the U.S. and Texas governments start to turn the screws on his Boca Chica launch site. Furthermore, it is his intention to eventually launch Starship/Super Heavy from a floating launch platform. Establishing arrangements with other foreign nations for putting it in their waters gives the company more flexibility.

People always migrate toward freedom. For two hundred and fifty years, that meant they moved to the United States. This now is changing, as the U.S. culture is signaling its increased hostility to this most important founding principle. Expect more stories like this in the coming decades.

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