Category: Behind The Black

SpaceX attempting another Starship hop today

9:15 am

Capitalism in space: Engineers at SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility in Texas are today preparing the sixth Starship prototype for its first 150 meter hop, the second hop of a Starship prototype overall.

The launch window is anytime between 8 am and 8 pm (Central). I have embedded the livesteam below the fold if you wish to watch. Based on previous attempts, they will try for a morning launch before noon, and if there are issues they will recycle and try again in the afternoon.
» Read more

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Northrop Grumman successfully tests SLS solid rocket booster

9:03 am

Northrop Grumman yesterday successfully test fired a solid rocket booster to confirm its design for use on NASA’s long-delayed and overbudget SLS rocket.

The test, completed at the T97 test area at Northrop Grumman‘s facility in Promontory, Utah, took place on Wednesday, September 2, 2020, at 1:05 PM Mountain Daylight Time (19:05 UTC). A single five-segment SLS solid rocket motor with a thrust of up to 3.6 million pounds was ignited, and burned for approximately two minutes.

The booster is an expanded version of the solid rocket boosters used on the space shuttle, with five segments instead of four, and in fact will use previously flown segments from past shuttle launches. Since this booster will not be recovered, these launches will be the last time those segments fly.

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Arianespace’s Vega rocket successfully launches 53 satellites

9:02 pm

Capitalism in space: Arianespace’s Vega rocket tonight finally resumed commercial operations more than a year after a July 2019 launch failure, successfully placing 53 small commercial satellites into orbit.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

20 China
14 SpaceX
9 Russia
4 ULA
4 Europe (Arianespace)

The U.S.’s lead over China in the national rankings remains at 23 to 20.

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COVID-19 numbers surge after mask mandate in Hawaii

5:45 pm

More evidence masks are a very bad idea: Soon after Hawaii imposed new rules requiring masks both indoor and outdoor, the number of Wuhan virus cases and hospitalizations zoomed upwards.

Just like in the Philippines and Peru, Hawaii’s government has imposed a long, strict lockdown and has never emerged from it beyond a modified phase one reopening. Additionally, the state has had an indoor mask mandate in place since April 20 and an outdoor mandate (even while jogging!) since July 7. It is the model for what the political elites believe to be the key to stopping the spread. Yet the results are the same as they have been in every place that tried to put up a cloth in front of the inexorable spread of viral particles that can only be seen with an electron microscope.

As [indicated by the graph], Hawaii’s daily case count grew more than tenfold in July and August. All along, state officials thought they were steering this ship cleanly throughout the spring and that their draconian efforts avoided the spread of the virus. Instead, it has become clear that the virus simply arrives at southern latitudes several months later and spreads for six to eight weeks, as it does everywhere else. [emphasis mine]

I must emphasize what the author notes, that Hawaii is the most isolated U.S. state with one of the most stringent lock down and quarantine rules for visitors. Basically entering Hawaii has become difficult if not impossible, and if you do go you are required to quarantine for weeks.

Yet, as soon as they required masks, the disease’s spread accelerated.

Masks are fake science. Not only is there no solid science proving they are a benefit, the data clearly shows that if used improperly (which the general public is doing routinely) they are unsanitary and will easily promote infection and the spread of pathogens.

This data from Hawaii also proves the utter pointlessness of the lock downs. Even on this remote island the disease has arrived, and is spreading. This is what these respiratory viruses do. The best way to fight them is let them spread as fast as possible among the young and healthy population, which will easily fight them off and become immune and thus act to choke off any further spread to more vulnerable populations.

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Biggest black hole merger yet detected by gravitational waves

3:30 pm

The uncertainty of science: In May 2020 scientists using the LIGO and VIGO gravitational waves telescopes detected evidence of a merger from two giant black holes, one of which was of a size that according to all theories had been considered “impossible.”

The short gravitational wave signal, GW190521, captured by the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave observatories in the United States and Europe on 21 May last year, came from two highly spinning, mammoth black holes weighing in at a massive 85 times and 66 times the mass of the Sun, respectively.

But that is not the only reason this system is very special. The larger of the two black holes is considered `impossible’. Astronomers predict that stars between 65 – 130 times the mass of the Sun undergo a process called pair instability, resulting in the star being blown apart, leaving nothing behind.

With a mass of 85 solar masses, the larger black hole falls squarely in that forbidden range, referred to as the upper black hole mass gap, and should be `impossible’.

The explanation the scientists propose is that this black hole initially formed with a mass smaller than 65 solar masses, and then sucked in matter, including a possible additional black hole merger, that raised its weight to 85 solar masses.

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A nation of control freaks

12:19 pm

Americans have not simply in the past six months become trapped in terror and fear over a relatively low-level virus, they have compounded that fear with a strong and ever-growing desire to tell everyone else what to do.

The conservative internet has been pushing the term “Karen” to apply to any busybody who wishes out of outrage to wield petty power over everyone around them. I find that term too vague. A much more apropos term would be to call them what they are: control freaks.

And sadly, there now are a lot of them, many of which are downright insane in their demands and willingness to commit violence to impose their will.

Want to hold a small wedding in Hawaii near the beach, with maybe no more than ten people attending? Nope, you can’t, because someone will arrive to harass you rudely and demand you be arrested. The Democratic state government there has declared the beaches closed, public weddings illegal, and private enterprise under strict control, all over a virus that appears only mildly more dangerous than the flu.

Want to sing in church and you live in California? Nope, you can’t, because Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of that state has declared such singing and chanting dangerous. It will spread the Wuhan flu! (He doesn’t have a problem with leftist Antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters chanting “Death to America” slogans however. Leftist protesters are immune from the virus.)

It isn’t just the rules imposed over COVID-19 however. » Read more

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The longest lava tube in the solar system?

9:19 am

A lava tube on Mars
Click for full image.

Before I delve into today’s cool image, I think it important to explain to my readers why I seem to post so many cool images from Mars. The simple explanation is that Mars right now is where almost all the cutting edge planetary research is taking place, and as a science journalist focused on space exploration I must go to that cutting edge. My dear readers know that I love variety (just consider the evening pauses on Behind the Black), but you can’t ignore the reporting of real discoveries simply to increase the diversity of one’s posts. This is too often what modern news outlets do, which is also why they often miss the real story.

Anyway, today’s cool image to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, shows only a small section of what might be the longest lava tube in the entire solar system. Taken on May 5, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), it shows a string of pits along a meandering depression coming down the northwest flank of the giant volcano Arsia Mons. The image was a follow-up to a July 2014 photo of the same location, and was taken to produce a stereo pair.

The feature strongly suggests a lava tube, with the pits being skylights into the meandering underground void. From top to bottom this section of the tube is a little over three miles long. Since there are lava tubes on Earth far longer, this one image hardly makes this the longest tube in the solar system.

The tube, however, extends off the image both at the bottom and at the top. Not many high resolution images have been taken in this area, so it is therefore hard to say how far the tube extends. Other nearby high resolution images in this area however have found similar lava tubes, which conceivably could be part of the same tube. The overview map below shows the relationship.
» Read more

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Musk gives update on Starship/Super Heavy

8:11 am

Capitalism in space: During a phone conversation at a conference earlier this week, SpaceX founder Elon Musk gave an update on the development of Starship/Super Heavy, intended to be the first completely reusable rocket.

He did not reveal much that isn’t already known but his broad overview is helpful for understand what is happening at the company’s development facility in Boca Chica, Texas. One detail of note:

Asked on Monday when SpaceX might perform the first orbital Starship launch and re-entry, Musk replied: “Probably next year.”

“I hope we do a lot of flights,” Musk continued. “The first ones might not work. This is uncharted territory. Nobody has ever made a fully reusable orbital rocket. So just having that at all is pretty significant.”

Musk also said that they plan to do a lot of orbital flights before upgrading the ship for humans. I think his experience with Dragon has influenced him on this score.

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COVID-19 illnesses after half million people attend Sturgis rally: almost none

10:24 pm

Can we please put aside our fear? Almost two weeks after about a half a million people attended the Sturgis motorcyle rally in South Dakota (an event that spanned ten days), only three hospitalizations from COVID-19 have been linked to this event, and two of those have already recovered.

I can only find confirmation of three hospitalizations at this point in the reporting. Two of the patients have confirmed discharges indicating they will fully recover. Since they had symptoms and developed them within fourteen days of the rally, contracting the virus during their travels or attendance seems likely. By way of contrast, there were four fatal crashes at the Sturgis event that killed five people.

Even using the largest number of positive tests and granting they all 222 resulted from rally attendance, 0.048% of attendees and contacts tested positive for COVID-19. Some states have done contact-tracing on people who tested positive post-rally and included those individuals in their reporting.

You won’t see this reported in the media nationally. It is too much good news. If almost half a million people can gather for an event that spans 10 days with this outcome, it puts their COVID-19 panic porn to rest.

If you saw any videos from this rally, you saw that most people were not social distancing, were not wearing masks, and were having a darn good time.

COVID-19 is not dangerous. You won’t get it easily, or if you do, you are likely not to even know. And if you do get sick, you will almost certainly recover, like the flu. The only people who should be concerned about the virus are those with other serious illnesses who likely should not attend such large events anyway.

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A collapsed Martian crater in a glacier?

12:43 pm

Collapsed crater in glacier?
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, is another example of evidence that the mid-latitudes of Mars are covered with glaciers and ice. The photo, taken on April 25, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), shows many of the squashed and blobby features found in these mid-latitudes.

What makes the image even more interesting is the small crater in the center of the larger crater. The floor of that larger crater seems filled with glacial fill, and it appears that when that smaller impact occurred it caused the nearby surrounding fill to collapse downward, producing the oblong off-center depression. At least that’s my uneducated guess, which I admit could easily be wrong.

Even if my hypothesis is wrong, the visual evidence here supports the theory that this region, dubbed Deuteronilus Mensae, has lots of buried ice glaciers. Consider for example the distorted crater to the southwest of the big crater. It sure looks like at some point it was heated suddenly, maybe by the impact of the main crater, so that its rim was warped and reshaped, in the manner that ice would be warped and reshaped by sudden heat. Moreover, all the craters in full image appear to have glacial fill.

The overview map below adds weight to this conclusion.
» Read more

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COVID-19 is simply not life-threatening

9:50 am


The fading and not very threatening COVID-19 epidemic
in California. Note how masks appear to increase the
disease’s spread. Note also how this doesn’t seem to
change the death toll significantly. Go here for more details.

In the past few days there have been a flurry of new reports proving once again that the panic over the Wuhan virus was completely unnecessary, that the disease was exactly what the initial data suggested, a variation on the flu that would be, like the flu, harmless to the healthy and young while dangerous to the elderly sick.

And like the flu, the Wuhan virus required no extreme measures. All we had to do was protect those elderly sick, and let everyone else continue living their lives normally.

First we have the revelation this weekend, from the CDC no less, that the number of people who died only from COVID-19, with no other health issues, was only about 6% of the total deaths assigned to the disease, or only about 9,700 people total, an infinitesimal percentage of the total population.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website disclosed the shockingly small number of people who died from only the Wuhan coronavirus, with no other cause of death mentioned. Hold on to your hat because here it is: out of the 161,392 deaths in the CDC data, just six percent, about 9,700 deaths, were attributed to the coronavirus alone. According to the CDC, the other 94 percent had an average of 2.6 additional conditions or causes of deaths, such as heart disease, diabetes, and sepsis. [emphasis mine]

Let that sink in. The Wuhan virus killed you only if you had an average of slightly less than three serious chronic health conditions. And generally you had to be elderly, with the average age of death 78 years old. Otherwise, just like the flu you might have been sick for a few days, but you would have recovered and been able to go on with your life as normal. This data once again demonstrates that the masks, the shut downs, and the economic disaster were all unnecessary.

Then on Friday we had another research paper, one of a long continuing string of papers, finding once again that COVID-19 is of no threat to young children at all, that they not only don’t get sick from it they also don’t infect anyone else.
» Read more

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Revisiting Mars’ glacier country

1:16 pm

Glacial cracks or pits on Mars
Click for full image.

With today’s cool image we return to what I have labeled glacier country on Mars, though this time the image shows a Martian glacial feature that while resembling vaguely such features seen on Earth, has an alienness to it that requires some explanation.

The photo to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on March 24, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The section I have focused on is the floor of a depression with a number of parallel pits, more or less aligned with the packed north-south ridges that cover the entire floor.

Normally, the north-south ridges would suggest repeated glacial flows moving to either the west or to the east. Such movement could over time, cause the ridges to separate, creating the cracks or pits that we see here. The trouble is that the slope of this depression is very unclear. In fact, the wider view below shows that this depression appears mostly enclosed, or if not it does not seem to be flowing in any particular direction.
» Read more

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What really happened this past weekend in American rocketry

9:44 am

SpaceX's first Starship prototype
SpaceX’s first Starship mock-up,
January 2019

Three days ago it appeared that the past weekend would see four private Americans companies attempt to launch six different times with five different rockets from four different spaceports, all in less than two days.

Not surprisingly, things didn’t happen as planned. Of the six launches, three were rescheduled because of poor weather. First, bad weather in Kodiak, Alaska forced the new startup Astra to cancel its first attempt to complete an orbital flight with its Rocket 3.0, rescheduling to no earlier than September 10th.

Then, in Boca Chica, Texas, SpaceX twice tried on August 30th to launch its sixth Starship prototype on a 500 meter hop, both times scrubbing because of high winds. They are going to wait a few days before trying again.

Finally, in Florida SpaceX scrubbed its first Falcon 9 launch on August 30th for the same reason, rescheduling it for tomorrow, September 1st.

A fourth cancelled launch, by ULA using its Delta 4 Heavy rocket, occurred when the rocket did an automatic launch abort three seconds before liftoff. The company has not yet rescheduled as they try to figure out what caused the problem.

Two launches however did get off this weekend. both on August 30th. First the weather at Cape Canaveral cleared enough by evening for SpaceX to successfully launch a Falcon 9 rocket, putting an Argentinian satellite into orbit. Next that same evening Rocket Lab returned to flight after a July failure with the launch of its Electron rocket from New Zealand.

So, only two of six launches lifted off. While some of today’s fear-mongers and fans of misfortune would call this a sign of failure, it is nothing of the sort. If anything, it illustrates the slow maturing of American rocketry, from a technology that once only rarely could launch to one that now has the potential to dominate the world with multiple companies competing aggressively in an open free market, assuming of course that our increasingly fascist society doesn’t decide to shut it down.
» Read more

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Rocket Lab successfully launches a commercial radar satellite

8:53 pm

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab tonight successfully resumed launches after its launch failure last month by placing a a commercial radar satellite into orbit.

This was Rocket Lab’s third successful launch in 2020, so they don’t make the leader board. The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

20 China
14 SpaceX
9 Russia
4 ULA

The U.S. now leads China 23 to 20 in the national rankings.

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SpaceX successfully launches Argentina satellite

4:37 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX tonight successfully launched an Argentinian radar satellite into polar orbit, the first such launch from Cape Canaveral since the 1960s.

The company also successfully landed the first stage at the Cape, completing that stage’s fourth flight. As I write this they still have two more smallsats to deploy, but it is very unlikely they will have an issue doing so.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

20 China
14 SpaceX
9 Russia
4 ULA

The U.S. now leads China 22 to 20 in the national rankings. With a scheduled launch by Rocket Lab from New Zealand later tonight, these numbers could change again before the day is out.

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SpaceX scrubs Starship prototype hop

3:32 pm

Capitalism in space: Though it appeared twice today that SpaceX engineers were on the verge of executing their second Starship prototype hop, the first for prototype #6, in both cases they stood down.

It appears according to road closures in Boca Chica they will try again tomorrow. The live stream is available here. The closures go from 8 am to 8 pm (Central), within which the hop could occur at almost any time, but likely not before 9 am.

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Problem with InSight’s weather station

3:18 pm

Engineers are troubleshooting a problem with the weather sensors on the InSight lander on Mars that has prevented them from collecting data since August 16th.

[The weather system] is in safe mode and unlikely to be reset before the end of the month while mission team members work toward a diagnosis. JPL engineers are optimistic that resetting the control computer may address the issue but need to investigate the situation further before returning the sensors to normal.

Overall InSight has turned out to be of mixed success. The seismometer has worked as planned, but the mole designed to drill the heat thermometer sixteen feet into the ground has so far failed to work, and now the weather station has shut down, though hopefully only temporarily.

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Confirmed: SpaceX plans two launches for tomorrow

1:02 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX has now confirmed that it will attempt two Falcon 9 launches tomorrow at its launch facility at Cape Canaveral, the first to launch 60 Starlink satellites at 10:12 am (Eastern) and the second to launch an Argentinian radar satellite at 7:18 pm (Eastern).

In the first launch the first stage, used once before, will attempt to land on the drone ship in the Atlantic. On the second launch the first stage, used three times previously, will return to Cape Canaveral for its landing attempt.

The live stream for both will be available here.

SpaceX will also tomorrow attempt a 500 meter hop of its sixth Starship prototype. The live stream of that can be seen here.

Meanwhile Rocket Lab has shifted its launch this weekend in New Zealand from tonight to tomorrow night at 11:05 pm (Eastern). The live stream will be aired here.

That means on August 30, 2020 there could be three American launches as well as another test flight of a new reusable rocket.

Note: Astra has delayed the first orbital test flight of its rocket to no early than September 10th due to poor weather in Kodiak, Alaska.

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ULA’s Delta 4 Heavy: Launch abort at T-3 seconds tonight

1:14 am

Delta 4 Heavy immediately after engine shutdown

UPDATE: It appears ULA will need at least a week to analyze the situation before attempting another launch. It also appears that SpaceX is going forward with its two launches on August 30.

—————————
Tonight’s attempt by ULA to launch a National Reconnaissance Satellite on its Delta 4 Heavy rocket was aborted at T-3 seconds when the rocket’s main engines did an automatic abort. The image to the right shows the rocket immediately after the engines shut down, the smoke clearing and the rocket still sitting on the launch pad.

They are presently unfueling the rocket and will not launch tonight. They have not set a new launch date, and there is also no word on whether this launch delay will force delays in the two SpaceX launches set for August 30th. My guess is that the issue tonight will take time to assess, so they will give up their place in line and let SpaceX proceed as planned.

In watching ULA’s broadcast tonight, as well as reviewing the issues that prevented launch two days ago, I was struck by several things. First, ULA’s promo films to tout the wonders of the Delta family of rockets actually made them seem incredibly clunky and complex. There seemed to be too many pieces and complex operations to get the rocket ready for launch, which makes sense as Delta rockets are very costly and not competitive with today’s market. This is the exact reason ULA is in the process of retiring the entire Delta family. They will complete the already purchased and scheduled launches, but in the future will use their new Vulcan rocket for similar future bids.

Second, the number of minor and major technical issues during both countdowns reinforced my impressions above. This is a very complex rocket to launch, and that complexity apparently leads to many issues that make launch difficult.

For the scrub on August 26 they first had two blown fuses in a launchpad heater that had to be replaced, then a pneumatics system issue that was apparently not solved during the countdown. When they scrubbed, however, they said they did it because of “several problems,” not just this one.

On tonight’s launch they first had an issue with a fuel valve, then several fuel sensor alarms gave them problems, requiring them to disable them to proceed, then the temperatures in the payload electronics posed an issue that after some analysis was considered acceptable. These issues caused the launch to be delayed by about an hour and a half.

Finally, the rocket’s main engines shut down at the rescheduled lift-off time.

It might not be fair, but in comparing this ULA launch effort with the numerous countdowns by SpaceX the differences were stark. SpaceX has had comparable few issues during recent launches, with only one launch recently scrubbed due to a technical issue in July. Moreover, the company’s launch team has several times had similar launch aborts at T-0, and still were able to recycle everything and proceed to launch immediately.

All these impressions once again suggest that ULA is making the right decision to retire Delta. That it is going to take them several more years however to launch several more government surveillance satellites raises questions about the decisions of our government to pay for such a unwieldy and expensive rocket. There now are better and cheaper options available.

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Another Chinese national arrested for spying

5:52 pm

The Department of Justice on August 25th arrested a Chinese national as he was trying to leave the country with classified military computer software.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection stopped Hu Haizhou, a researcher from the University of Virginia’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering [who] also work[ed] for a Chinese military-linked university too, before he could board a flight to Qingdao, China, from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on Tuesday, said an FBI special agent in an 11-page affidavit filed on Friday in federal court in Virginia.

According to the agent, Matthew Rader, CBP investigators questioned Hu and searched his electronic devices, which revealed UVA-research-related files stored on his laptop, including “bio-inspired research simulation software code” developed by “Professor 1.” Bio-inspired research relates to studying the complexities of flying and swimming creatures in nature and applying that to manned flight or submersibles — often with military applications.

Hu “did not have lawful, authorized access to this material, and he admitted that Professor 1 would not want him to have it and would be upset to learn that HU possessed it,” the FBI said. The professor, who runs the multiuniversity Flow Simulations Group, has been developing this code over the last 17 years and is sponsored by the U.S. government’s National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research. The FBI special agent said that probable cause existed to charge Hu federally with fraud-related illicit computer intrusions and the theft of trade secrets.

More here.

These stories are beginning to sound repetitious, as they keep happening on almost a weekly basis. It appears that until the Trump administration the swamp in Washington had absolutely no interest for decades in protecting this nation from spying and the theft of military secrets from China or from anyone else.

Seems par for the course. At best our so-called elites are incredibly incompetent. At worst they have shown themselves to be traitors, with their loyalties aligned more with foreign powers than with the United States.

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AI software beats real pilot in simulated dogfight

5:35 pm

The Terminator is coming: In a DARPA competition between a number of AI software teams, the finalist AI team, called Heron Systems, went up against a real F-16 pilot in a simulated dogfight and went undefeated, beating him five times in a row.

Heron Systems, a company with just 30 employees, had beaten out Aurora Flight Sciences, EpiSys Science, Georgia Tech Research Institute, Lockheed Martin, Perspecta Labs, PhysicsAI, and SoarTech to claim the top spot in the last of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) AlphaDogfight Trials. This three-day event had started on Aug. 18, 2020.

The software then beat the real pilot.

There is a lot of blather on the website, though there is this interesting analysis by F/A-18 Squadron commander that in the end concludes that we are only a generation or two away from making all fighter pilots obsolete.

Or to look at it from another perspective, we are only a short time away from putting the ability to fight war entirely into the hands of computers and software, with abilities that humans will not be able to match.

Does no one but me see the potential problems with this? Have all of these military experts never seen any science fiction movies or read any science fiction novels?

Hat tip Tom Biggar.

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Boeing’s CEO vows to hire based on race, not qualifications

3:40 pm

The coming dark age: Boeing’s CEO today vowed to raise the number of blacks working at the company by 20%, apparently with no regard to qualifications.

Boeing is seeking to increase black US employees throughout the company by 20 percent and mandate benchmarks for hiring people of color, Chief Executive Dave Calhoun told employees in a memo on Friday reviewed by Reuters.

…The changes at Boeing, a stalwart defense contractor with its corporate headquarters in Chicago and largest factories in Washington state and South Carolina, appeared to mark the first concrete steps by the planemaker to address the issue. “We understand we have work to do,” Calhoun said in the memo, which was released on the 57th anniversary of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech and included references to the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin on Sunday.

Boeing declined to provide its current number of black employees or a timeline for the new target.

The planemaker separately has had to lay off thousands of workers as it grapples with the financial fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and the 17-month-old grounding of the 737 MAX after two fatal crashes.

In the memo, Calhoun said the company would establish an internal Racial Justice think-tank to guide its policies.

As a company, Boeing’s bad performance in almost every area in the last year is bad enough. If they are going to lay off thousands and then replace some with workers based merely on racial quotas the company’s future will be worse, since their ability to produce quality airplanes and spacecraft is certain to go down.

And for those hate-mongers who will immediately try to accuse me of saying blacks are not as smart, go to hell. The goal should be to hire the best, instead of members of a specific race. If you favor one race over another you simply prove yourself to be a bigot, as this company’s CEO is now amply doing.

I also hope a lot of fired Boeing employees sue Boeing for racial discrimination.

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Cracks and scallops on the lowland plains of Mars

2:37 pm

Utopia Basin cracks and scallops
Click for full image.

Cool image time! To the right is some of the strange terrain seen in the northern lowland plains of Mars. The photo, cropped to post here, was taken on May 4, 2020 by the high resolution camera of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) of an area in the northwest part of Utopia Planitia.

Next year China’s first attempt to soft land a rover on Mars will occur somewhere in Utopia Planitia. Utopia Planitia, also called Utopia Basin, is quite large, however, and in fact is the largest recognizable impact basin on Mars, with a diameter of more than 2,000 miles or about two thirds the width of the United States. If this strange spot was put near Seattle, Tianwen-1 is expected to touch down somewhere near Houston, Texas.

The MRO science team labeled the image “Scalloped terrain in Utopia Planitia.” The curved cliffs in the image illustrate those scallops, found frequently in Utopia. Their formation is believed related to the sublimation of underground ice, changing directly from ice to gas. The theories of this process however are somewhat uncertain at this time.

What stuck me about the image were the north-south oriented cracks. They extend through the full image, all oriented in the same direction. I haven’t the faintest idea what caused them, but they are intriguing, are they not?

This terrain is also different than most Utopia Planitia images I have previously posted. Most look squishy and blobby and distorted, suggesting the presence of soft slush and underground ice. This image instead suggests hard bedrock, even though it is farther north than the previous images and should thus be expected to have more ice underground. Quite mysterious.

I suspect the ice is here, but is simply not made obvious by any surface event. Then again, who knows? The geology of Mars is definitely not obvious, no matter how obvious it sometimes seems.

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