Ron Kenoly- Ancient of Days
An evening pause: Great gospel song, performed magnificently by Kenoly, his orchestra, and the audience.
Hat tip James Street.
Category: Behind The Black
July 17, 2024 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. 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 links below.
- SpaceX touts an artist’s illustration of its proposed ISS de-orbit spacecrat
- Rocket Factory Augsburg releases video of full duration static fire test of its rocket’s third stage engine
The tweet notes the vehicle will have ” 6x more propellant and 4x the power of today’s Dragon spacecraft.”
The test duplicated the two firings that would occur on the flight, with a 40 minute coasting phase in between. It is now ready for launch.
One thing I found fascinating was that the engineers doing the test did it in English, even though this is a German company working in Germany.
A pit on the Moon reveals some really bad journalism
At the start of this week three different major news organizations posted articles about a so-called “discovery” of a cave on the Moon that could sustain a human colony.
What all three articles [now updated with a fourth] demonstrated however was how little research was done by the journalists who wrote the articles, as well as the lack of any editorial supervision to make sure the news organization publishing the stories didn’t look stupid.
Here are the articles in question:
- The Guardian: Underground cave found on moon could be ideal base for explorers
- BBC: Cave discovered on Moon could be home for humans
- New Scientist: Scientists have confirmed a cave on the moon that could be used to shelter future explorers
- Space.com: Newly discovered cave on the moon could house future lunar astronauts [Added July 18]
The original paper that these stories are based on can be read here. It didn’t take me more than five seconds to immediately recognize that the pit in question, dubbed the Mare Tranquillitatis pit, has been known about for years. I in fact wrote about it as long ago as 2011, when researchers used Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) to take oblique images of it. One such image is to the right, cropped and enhanced to post here.
The new research has simply used the radar instrument on LRO to take oblique radar data to see if there are any cave passages at its base, and found that there could be voids leading off from the pit as much as “tens of meters” long, or about 100 feet or so.
This is good research, but the finding is hardly significant. Numerous other studies have suggested the same results, all tantalizing but entirely unconfirmed until we can send some probe (manned or manned) into these pits. In addition, hundreds of similar lunar pits have been documented for more than a decade.
Yet the first two articles above treated this cave as God’s gift to humanity, as if it was the first such pit found on the Moon that could hold a human base, while the third provided so little information about the background of this work that the article was essentially worthless.
I write this as a warning to my readers. Mainstream news sources no longer do the proper due diligence that should be expected from writers and editors. If you want good information, you need to go to sources that specialize in the subject (such this website), and you must go to more than one in order to understand the subject entirely.
Today’s blacklisted American: Marvel bans all Jewish or Israelis characters
Apparently Marvel is okay with these facts.
Courtesy of Doug Ross.
They’re coming for you next: In a sign that the corporate world is still kow-towing to pro-Hamas anti-Semites, Marvel Studios had decided to erase a long-standing Israeli character from its next Captain America movie, changing her from a former Israeli Mossad agent to a former Soviet spy with no links to any Jewish heritage.
While in the original Marvel comics continuity, Ruth Bat-Seraph serves as the Mossad agent mutant superhero Sabra, in a recent summary for the February 2025 film Bat-Seraph is described as a former member of the Soviet Russian Black Widow super spy program – the same program that trained Scarlett Johansson’s Avengers of the same name.
The summary made no mention of Bat-Seraph’s codename, Sabra, which comes from the slang term for native-born Israeli, though other characters are referred to by their alter-egos.
Anti-Israel activists have taken issue with the inclusion of Sabra in the film since the unorthodox star’s casting was announced by Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige at the 2022 D23 Expo event in Anaheim, California.
American Muslims for Palestine launched a letter campaign against Disney and Marvel Studios soon after the “distasteful” announcement, complaining that the character served “a state that is recognized by the entire human rights community as an apartheid regime, guilty of ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Palestinian people.”
Layered Martian mesa inside crater
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on May 14, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label as a “layered butte inside small crater.”
The crater is only about 1.8 miles across, and is only a couple of hundred feet deep, at the most. Because this crater sits on a large slope rising to the southwest, the mesa’s peak is actually about thirty feet higher than the crater’s northern rim, but is still below the southern rim by about 70 feet.
A close look at the mesa’s slopes suggests about a dozen obvious layers, though based on data from the rovers Curiosity and Perseverance, those obvious layers are probably divided into many hundreds of thinner layers in between.
What caused these layers? And how did such a small crater get such a relatively large mesa in its center? As always, the overview map provides some clues, but as always it does not provide a definitive answer.
» Read more
SpaceX to FAA: Allow launches to resume before completion of July 11th launch failure investigation
SpaceX on July 15, 2024 submitted a request to the FAA to quickly determine that the July 11th Falcon-9 launch failure posed no threat to public safety, and thus allow the company to resume Falcon 9 launches before the investigation of that failure is completed.
The FAA has two means of allowing a rocket to return to flight operations following a mishap. The first is that it approves a launch operator-led mishap investigation final report, which would include “the identification of any corrective actions.” Those actions need to be put in place and all related licensing requirement need to be met.
The other option is for a public safety determination to be issued. This would be an option if “the mishap did not involve safety-critical systems or otherwise jeopardize public safety,” according to the FAA.
“The FAA will review the request, and if in agreement, authorize a return to flight operations while the mishap investigation remains open and provided the operator meets all relevant licensing requirements,” the FAA wrote on its website.
SpaceX is apparently expecting the FAA to quickly approve this request, as it has now scheduled its next Falcon 9 launch for July 19, 2024, at the end of this week.
The lower level workers at the FAA probably want to get out of the way, but they have to obey orders from above, and it is my suspicion that the White House is applying pressure to make life hard for SpaceX. As I have noted, the FAA has not required the same level of due diligence from either NASA and its SLS rocket, or Boeing’s Starliner capsule.
Europe targets 2031 for the first mission of its own lunar lander
The European Space Agency (ESA) has approved a target date of 2031 for the first mission of its own unmanned lunar lander, dubbed Argonaut, and launched on the most powerful version of the Ariane-6.
On 16 July, the agency published a call for Argonaut Mission 1 Phase A/B1 development aimed at demonstrating the technical and programmatic feasibility of the Argonaut mission concept. The call included a proposed launch date of 2031 for the first Argonaut mission to the Moon.
The Argonaut lunar lander will be launched aboard an Ariane 64 rocket. Once operational, ESA envisions it being used for a wide variety of applications, from cargo logistics to acting as an in-situ resource utilization plant. The agency has already completed pre-phase A studies for what it calls the European Charging Station for the Moon. This system would be launched aboard an Argonaut lunar lander and would essentially act as a gas station on the Moon that would be used to support crewed missions on the surface of the Moon.
As I’ve noted previously, ESA routinely sets a glacial pace on all its government-run projects. Do not expect this government lander to fly on this schedule. More likely by 2031 there will be many cheaper and available options from the private sector, and European companies wanting to put payloads down on the Moon will turn to those, especially because Argonaut is apparently being forced to use the expensive expendable Ariane-6 rocket. The cost for going on Argonaut is simply going to be too high.
Valentina Lisitsa – Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2
An evening pause: Performed live 2010. This is a person who is in contact with her inner piano.Her fingerwork is astonishingly natural and at ease.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
July 16, 2024 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who has now returned from a business trip to the People’s Republic of California. 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 links below.
- Firefly CEO accused of “inappropriate relationship” with female employee
The allegations are less significant than the indications that there has been an exodus of “multiple executives in the last six months due to problems with the company’s leadership.”
- New artist renderings of Stoke Space’s proposed Nova rocket
More info here. The tweet above suggests the rocket has changed significantly from earlier versions.
- New Chinese pseudo-company, Cosmoleap, proposes catching its rockets with tower chopsticks
I wonder where they stole that idea.
- On this day in 1969 Apollo 11 was launched
Armstrong and Aldrin would land on the Moon five days later.
- On this day in 1945 the U.S. detonated its first nuclear weapon near Alamogordo, New Mexico
Since the fall of the Soviet Unioni, people seem to forget that we are still living with the threat of nuclear war capable of destroying all life on Earth.
Musk: SpaceX is moving its headquarters from California to Texas
Because of the bill signed into law this week by California governor Gavin Newsom that allows schools to groom little kids sexually and hide that fact from their parents, Elon Musk announced today that SpaceX is moving its headquarters from California to Texas. From Musk’s tweet:
This is the final straw.
Because of this law and the many others that preceded it, attacking both families and companies, SpaceX will now move its HQ from Hawthorne, California, to Starbase, Texas.
Musk also noted that X will also relocate from California to Texas.
If you establish a government that oppresses and encourages insane behavior, you will discover that people will flee your tyranny enthusiastically. The Democrats who run California have achieved this goal quite skillfully. May they enjoy their enduring bankruptcy.
Part 2: The left’s lies are now exposed to the non-political general public
Trump defiant
In my column yesterday, I described what I thought the short term cultural ramifications of the attempt on Donald Trump’s life on July 13, 2024 would be. I concluded that it is going to make it very hard for the Democrats to continue their slander campaigns against him and all Republicans.
Today I intend to write about the political ramifications.
To understand those ramifications however you have to leave the bubble of political world. Numerous readers commenting on yesterday’s column noted quite rightly that many Democrats (both in and out of the party) are not going to change, that their hate of Republicans and Trump is too ingrained, that they will simply pause expressing that hate for a few weeks and then begin anew.
Some leftists have not even waited that long, as was seen during a Jack Black concert in Australia one day after the assassination attack, when one member of the band, Kyle Gass, publicly expressed disappointment that Trump was not murdered.
» Read more
Martian taffy terrain
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on April 11, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a typical area of what scientists have labeled “taffy terrain,” a landscape made up of strangely twisted bands that look like someone was pulling the ground repeatedly, just like taffy.
Based on the lower crater count found here, taffy terrain is thought to be relative young, formed around three billion years ago. While the exact formation process is not yet understood, scientists theorize that it was caused by some type of “viscous fluid” that settled into localized depressions.
The location is 40 degrees south latitude, so it is entirely possible we are seeing some form of glacial material, ice in these low spots that has no place to go but is warped over time by the same kind of tidal and rotational planetary effects that cause waves and tides in the oceans on Earth.
» Read more