Category: Behind The Black

NASA approves 2020 launch window for first Dream Chaser flight

8:32 am

Capitalism in space: Sierra Nevada has gotten the okay from NASA to aim for a 2020 launch window for the first flight of its reusable Dream Chaser mini-shuttle.

SNC announced Feb. 7 that it had received “authority to proceed” on that mission using the company’s Dream Chaser vehicle. The mission will launch on a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket in late 2020. The mission is the first of six in the company’s Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) 2 contract it won in 2016 to transport cargo to and from the ISS. SNC received a CRS-2 contract along with current CRS providers Orbital ATK and SpaceX.

“While we won the contract a couple of years ago, the contract still needed to be validated by a task order,” said Mark Sirangelo, executive vice president of SNC’s Space Systems business area, in a Feb. 7 speech at the Federal Aviation Administration’s Commercial Space Transportation Conference here. That order, he said, is the “biggest step” to date on the program. That flight will be a “full scale, fully operational mission,” he said, even though it will represent the first orbital flight of the Dream Chaser. Orbital ATK and SpaceX, who developed their Cygnus and Dragon spacecraft, respectively, under earlier NASA Space Act Agreements, flew demonstration missions before starting their operational CRS cargo flights.

Do not be surprised if this flight does not launch on schedule. I fully expect that development will push it back into 2021, a delay that would not be unreasonable.

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Tiangong-1 reentry now estimated between March 25 and April 17

8:26 am

China’s first space station, a test module called Tiangong-1, is now expected to reenter the atmosphere and crash to Earth sometime between March 25 and April 17.

The Tiangong-1 space lab was launched in 2011 to test docking technology and life support by hosting two crews, but loss of control over the spacecraft’s propulsion means it cannot be deorbited in a controlled manner.

The spacecraft’s orbit is decaying due to atmospheric drag and that process is accelerating as Tiangong-1 runs into denser concentrations of particles at lower altitudes.

The station will break-up during reentry, and most of it will burn up. However, some chunks will hit the ground. The article gives details about how they are tracking it in preparation for reentry.

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Off hunting javelinas again

8:01 pm

A javelina

Posting on Friday and over this weekend will be nil, as I am leaving tonight, Thursday, and will be in the back country with no phone or internet service on my second javelina hunt. If we bag something early we will be back early, but that can hardly be guaranteed.

For a description of my javelina hunt last February, go here.

Note that there will be an evening pause on Friday night, regardless.

Update: Due to technical issues, I am instead heading out tomorrow afternoon, so posting will resume for the morning hours.

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Mars rover update: February 8, 2018

2:01 pm

Summary: Curiosity remains on Vera Rubin Ridge, though it has begun moving toward the point where it will move down off the ridge. Opportunity remains in Perseverance Valley, though it has finally taken the north fork down.

Before providing today’s update, I have decided it is time to provide links to all previous updates, in chronological order. This will allow my new readers to catch up and have a better understanding of where each rover is, where each is heading, and what fascinating things they have seen in the past year and a half.

These updates began when I decided to figure out the overall context of Curiosity’s travels, which resulted in my March 2016 post, Pinpointing Curiosity’s location in Gale Crater. Then, when Curiosity started to travel through the fascinating and rough Murray Buttes terrain in the summer of 2016, I stated to post regular updates. To understand the press releases from NASA on the rover’s discoveries it is really necessary to understand the larger picture, which is what these updates provide. Soon, I added Opportunity to the updates, with the larger context of its recent travels along the rim of Endeavour Crater explained in my May 15, 2017 rover update.

Now to talk about the most recent news from both rovers!
» Read more

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Can you spot the racist xenophobic politician in this quiz?

11:48 am

Link here. Here’s the first question:

“Those who enter the country illegally and those who employ them disrespect the rule of law, and they are showing disregard for those who are following the law. We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented (and) unchecked, and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently and lawfully to become immigrants in this country.”

A) Adolf Hitler
B) Donald Trump
C) Barack Obama

Answer: Then-Sen. Obama, news conference, 2005

The quiz continues, each time providing a quote that sounds remarkably like Trump or numerous conservative Republican politicians in discussing the problems of illegal immigration, with the answer instead being almost always Barack Obama or Bill Clinton.

The point here is not that Democratic politicians were once against illegal immigration. No, what this quiz illustrates is how completely insane the left has become since Trump became president. Their hatred of Trump has caused them to accuse him and Republicans of the most ridiculous slanders, based on nothing. Thus, this quiz illustrates how completely unqualified any Democratic politician is that spouts accusations of racism and xenophobia against Trump and the Republicans. Such politicians don’t know what they are talking about, have only a single goal of blocking any actions by Republicans, no matter how sensible, and cannot be trusted with legislative power.

The sad thing is that the voters who put such Democrats into power are not likely to change their votes, as they are as much consumed by a bigoted hatred of Trump and Republicans as the Democratic Party.

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Update on Falcon Heavy core stage landing failure

8:26 am

Link here. According to Musk, the reason the core stage hit the water so fast is that some engines did not fire as intended.

He said engineers believed only one of three engines fired during a final burn designed to slow the rocket’s descent before touchdown. The stage only missed the boat by about the length of a football field, but the force of its water impact was enough to “take out” two engines on the nearby drone ship and spray it with debris.

This is proper engineering procedure. They flew a test, and learned something. They now need to figure out why it happened, and fix it.

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Linux beats Windows and Apple for security

10:10 pm

Another reason I use Linux: A survey of computer security experts confirms that they generally consider Linux superior to either the Windows or Apple operating systems when it comes to security.

Obviously, if you are used to Windows or Apple, making the switch seems daunting. It isn’t, as I know from experience, having been a Linux user now for almost a dozen years. And if you want to try out Linux, all you really need is a spare laptop or desktop, one or two years old, that you aren’t using any more, and to then follow the instructions provided here on Behind the Black by reader James Stephens for Getting and Installing Linux:

Put a flavor of Linux on that old computer, and begin playing with it. Before long you will find that you don’t need Microsoft or Apple anymore.

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Obama ignored Russian treaty violations to give it U.S. uranium mining rights

10:01 pm

The real Russian collusion: In testimony before Congress an FBI informant outlined today how the Obama administration gave Russian control of the company Uranium One, that owned 20% of the U.S. uranium mining rights, despite being given clear evidence that Russia was providing aid to Iran in violation of treaties.

Campbell [the informant] had provided the FBI with evidence of the criminal network and delivered the information to the FBI. which was monitoring his work as an informant and approving his transfer of bribery money to the Russians. Those transfers, which were made in bulk $50,000 sums and at times delivered in cash, occurred between senior executives of the American transportation company and the Russian executives connected to Rosatom. He had given the FBI irrefutable evidence showing how contracts obtained from the same Russian energy company Tenex, were based on contract bribery and other nefarious actions, he said.

Senior members of the FBI, Department of Treasury, Department of Energy and Department of Justice were also briefed on Campbell’s information and were apprised of the various facets pertaining to Russia’s acquisition of the Canadian company. In fact, Campbell had been told by his FBI handlers that his work had made it at least twice into President Obama’s classified presidential daily briefings.

…Despite the insurmountable evidence collected by Campbell, the Obama administration’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States approved Russia’s purchase of Uranium One in the fall of 2010.

The real question that his testimony apparently did not address (though earlier reporting had said it would) is the connection between then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who approved the Uranium One deal, her Clinton Foundation that received millions from the Russians at this time, and the $500,000 in speaking fees that Bill Clinton also got from the Russians then. Those fees sure look like a quid pro quo, but this testimony did not provide any evidence to show that.

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New budget deal dumps budget caps

8:43 pm

The swamp wins again! The new budget deal negotiated today between Senate leaders Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) and Chuck Schumer (D-New York) eliminates the sequestration budget caps that for the past half dozen or so years have put at least a few limits on government spending.

The deal removes sequestration budget caps for two years, increases defense spending and also boosts funding for domestic programs that were priorities for Democrats, such as opioid addiction programs. It also raises the debt ceiling until 2019.

It was unclear if the Senate deal will get enough support when it goes to the House.

According to this report, the deal will raise government spending by $300 billion over the next two years.

Even as the two parties make a lot of noise over the FBI scandal, their leaders move to keep the spigot of cash flowing to their buddies, and thus to themselves. And as they do so the federal debt grows, and grows, and grows. And we get closer and closer to outright bankruptcy and collapse.

Update: Trump has endorsed the deal.

“The Budget Agreement today is so important for our great Military,” he wrote on Twitter. “It ends the dangerous sequester and gives Secretary Mattis what he needs to keep America Great.”

“Dangerous sequester”? The sequestration rule has been the only thing that has kept any reins on budget spending for the past few years. In this matter Trump reveals his old liberal Democrat roots.

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Mayor of bankrupt Stockton wants to hand out $6000 to every resident

8:29 pm

California madness: The 26-year-old mayor of Stockton, California, which went bankrupt in 2012, wants to give every resident $6000 no questions asked.

Stockton is experimenting with a welfare program called “universal basic income,” which gives low-income residents $500 a month, no questions asked. The money is coming from a private grant. The California city, which went bankrupt in 2012, has recently made strides to become more economically viable, but is still struggling.

Mayor Tubbs, who was endorsed by Barack Obama, took office in January 2017. He is Stockton’s first black mayor, and its youngest-ever at age 26. “I feel that as mayor it’s my responsibility to do all I could to begin figuring out what’s the best way to make sure that folks in our community have a real economic floor,” Tubbs said.

Now we have an idea why the city went bankrupt. The money is coming from a private grant, but I guarantee it will not have the results the mayor expects.

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New anti-Trump emails: Obama “wants to know everything we’re doing.”

5:01 pm

Newly released emails between two anti-Trump FBI agents reveal that not only did they despise Trump, they had contempt for all Republicans and the “ignorant hillbillys” who voted for them, and most important, President Obama wanted “to know everything we’re doing.”

The timing of the texts reveal that Obama was not interested in any investigations of the Clintons, but in the work these agents were doing in trying to build a Russian collusion case against Trump.

More here.

Both links also provide video of Obama speaking just prior to this text’s date where he pointedly claims that he does “not talk to FBI Directors about pending investigations.”

Overall, the evidence here is building that these FBI officials, their superiors, and Obama himself, were conspiring to use the power of the government to attack a political opponent from the opposition party, a direct attack on our democracy.

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Falcon Heavy reactions post launch

8:00 am

I could provide links to probably a hundred articles, but most simply say the same things, while generally being awed and excited. The handful below sum things up well, plus provide some additional details:

The first two stories provide a good overview of the excitement caused by the launch. The third story, about California’s tax on rocket launches, is really an op-ed opposing the tax. (I don’t expect that state’s leftist legislature to cancel it.) The third story also outlines what happened, but provides this significant quote from Musk, illustrating starkly how revolutionary this rocket is:

Musk said he personally inspected the landed boosters, adding that SpaceX could even reuse them if it wanted. Even after seeing the results of the launch, Musk said he was having difficulty comprehending the magnitude of the flight, saying it was surreal for him to see such success.

“It can launch things direct to Pluto and beyond. Don’t even need gravity assist or anything,” Musk said. “You can go back to the moon.”

He estimated the total SpaceX investment was over $500 million dollars to develop Falcon Heavy. Musk noted those funds were “all internal,” and not from taxpayers or fundraising.

In other words, the taxpayer now has available, at no development cost, the heavy-lift rocket that NASA has been trying and failing to build for tens of billions since 2004.

Finally, the last story isn’t really about Falcon Heavy, but about how SpaceX is in the driver’s seat in the prices it charges. The company is saving quite a lot by reusing its first stage boosters. For the first initial launches reusing these boosters they offered discounts to get customers to use them. Now they no longer have to, because their normal prices beat everyone else anyway. They can pocket the extra profits.

And all this has happened because of freedom, competition, and the vision of one man. Musk deserves all the accolades he is receiving today.

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Falcon Heavy launch a success!

1:51 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX has just successfully launched its Falcon Heavy into space.

The key to this launch was to get the three first stage boosters to all work in unison, and for the two side boosters to successfully separate. All worked.

As I write this we are waiting for the two side boosters on their way back to land, and the central core heading back to land at sea.

The two side boosters landed like synchronized swimmers. The core stage barge landing remains unconfirmed. Update: SpaceX has confirmed that the core stage failed to land correctly, crashing into the ocean.

Two Falcon Heavy boosters landing simultanously

Even so, the upper stage and its payload are in orbit. They will fire its engines in about a half hour, and then again in six hours to put the Tesla into solar orbit. Update: The first firing occurred as scheduled, and Musk has now confirmed that the final burn has placed the Tesla in a solar orbit that reaches out into the asteroid belt.

SpaceX has now started a live stream from the Tesla, showing its mannequin dubbed “Starman” sitting in the driver’s seat.

Even if the core stage failed to land successfully, and even if the upper stage fails to send the Tesla towards Mars, this launch is an unqualified success. SpaceX has demonstrated that the Falcon Heavy works. It is now the most powerful rocket in operation, and only matched or beaten in capability by the Saturn 5, Energia, and the Space Shuttle, none of which exist any longer.

The 2018 launch standings:

6 China
3 SpaceX
2 ULA
2 Japan

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More evidence of data tampering at NOAA

11:09 am

A close review of NOAA’s historic temperature data for New York shows that the agency appears to have been adjusting its records to cool past records or warm recent ones, without any explanation.

The author took a look at NOAA’s graph this year showing New York’s average January temperatures going back to 1890, and noticed that, according to that graph, 1943 was 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than 2014. Yet, a close look at the actual data from 1943 strongly suggested that 1943 was actually 2.7F warmer, not 0.9F. Somehow, NOAA had adjusted the numbers, either in 1943 or in 2014, to make the present warmer or the past colder. Further analysis, removing the one station that appears to have experienced the most heat island influence, thus distorting its long term record, suggested the adjustments might actually be worse.

These results, while certainly not covering all weather stations and years, are still consistent with every other close look at NOAA’s adjustments. Those adjustments always cool the past and warm the present, so as to provide confirmation of the theory of global warming. More important, there is never any explanation for those adjustments.

Of the seven sites, six have remained at the same locations, within a few yards. The station at Auburn has moved by a couple of miles, but is still in similar terrain.

There is no reason then why any major adjustments should have been required at any site.

Apologists for temperature tampering usually say it is all due to TOBS (Time of Observation). Yet the station at Ithaca, based at Cornell University, has used morning readings throughout. With a temperature difference of 2.9C, this is typical of the other sites, suggesting that any bias from TOBS is minor.

Either there is outright fraud going on here in the climate divisions at NOAA, or they are entirely blind to their own confirmation bias. Either way, this data once again illustrates why there is great distrust in their results. Global warming might be happening, and human activity might be causing it, but these strange adjustments in the data leave many in doubt.

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Watching the Falcon Heavy launch

8:59 am

This morning there are dozens of stories across the entire media about SpaceX’s first test launch today of its Falcon Heavy rocket, generally pushing out all other space news. Most repeat the same information, about the rocket, the company, the goals, its history, and its consequences, all subjects that I have already covered extensively here at Behind the Black or elsewhere.

One story however is not only fun, and demonstrates the value of freedom and private enterprise. An uber-type car transportation company called Lyft is offering half-price rides from Orlando to watch the Falcon Heavy launch.

The benefits of innovation and competition will be routinely surprising, and come from places unexpected. Lyft is doing this because of the high traffic being generated by SpaceX’s launch. It gives them margin to cut prices while also generating some good PR.

Meanwhile, if you want to watch the launch (launch now delayed to 2:00 pm Eastern), you can either go to SpaceX’s video stream on its website, or on youtube, or you can go to the live feed at Spaceflightnow.

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Audit finds Pentagon dept lost hundreds of millions of dollars

11:12 am

Our government in action! An audit by the private audit firm Ernst & Young has found that the Pentagon department that handles the logistical needs of the military has lost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Ernst & Young found that the Defense Logistics Agency failed to properly document more than $800 million in construction projects, just one of a series of examples where it lacks a paper trail for millions of dollars in property and equipment. Across the board, its financial management is so weak that its leaders and oversight bodies have no reliable way to track the huge sums it’s responsible for, the firm warned in its initial audit of the massive Pentagon purchasing agent.

…In one part of the audit, completed in mid-December, Ernst & Young found that misstatements in the agency’s books totaled at least $465 million for construction projects it financed for the Army Corps of Engineers and other agencies. For construction projects designated as still “in progress,” meanwhile, it didn’t have sufficient documentation — or any documentation at all — for another $384 million worth of spending.

The agency also couldn’t produce supporting evidence for many items that are documented in some form — including records for $100 million worth of assets in the computer systems that conduct the agency’s day-to-day business.

There’s more. In fact, it goes on and on, listing numerous examples of shoddy accounting. One wonders who is benefiting by this incompetence, assuming it isn’t downright corruption.

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Large study finds saturated fats good!

9:53 am

The uncertainty of science: A new and very large health study has found that eating a high fat diets is actually healthy, and that the previous government dietary recommendations are seriously flawed.

That’s the conclusion of a massive new study published in Lancet that followed 135,335 people in 18 countries on five continents. The study found that consumption of fat was associated with a lower risk of mortality, while consumption of carbohydrates was associated with a higher risk. It found that the kind of fat didn’t matter when it came to heart disease, and that saturated fat consumption was inversely related to strokes.

The researchers say, ever so politely, that “dietary guidelines should be reconsidered in light of these findings.”

I’m not sure this new study should be trusted that much either. Regardless, it does indicate that the field of diet and health has a great deal of uncertainty, and that we should all consider with great skepticism any recommendations from the government, based on that science.

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More info on Trappist-1 solar system

9:25 am

Astronomers, using ground-based and orbiting telescopes, have obtained more information about the seven Earth-sized exoplanets that orbit the star Trappist-1 forty light years away.

First, a European effort has found that the planets probably all have loads of water.

A new study has found that the seven planets orbiting the nearby ultra-cool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 are all made mostly of rock, and some could potentially hold more water than Earth. The planets’ densities, now known much more precisely than before, suggest that some of them could have up to 5 percent of their mass in the form of water — about 250 times more than Earth’s oceans. The hotter planets closest to their parent star are likely to have dense steamy atmospheres and the more distant ones probably have icy surfaces. In terms of size, density and the amount of radiation it receives from its star, the fourth planet out is the most similar to Earth. It seems to be the rockiest planet of the seven, and has the potential to host liquid water.

Data from the Hubble Space Telescope has meanwhile found that three of the seven planets do not have hydrogen in their atmospheres, which at first seems to contradict the European data.

The Hubble observations took advantage of the fact that the planets cross in front of their star every few days. Using the Wide Field Camera 3, astronomers made spectroscopic observations in infrared light, looking for the signature of hydrogen that would filter through a puffy, extended atmosphere, if it were present. “The planets are close enough to their host star, and they have very short orbital periods, which means there are lots of opportunities to make observations,” Lewis said.

Although Hubble did not find evidence of hydrogen, the researchers suspect the planetary atmospheres could have contained this lightweight gaseous element when they first formed. The planets may have formed farther away from their parent star in a colder region of the gaseous protostellar disk that once encircled the infant star.

The Hubble results are actually not very significant. They show only that they did not detect hydrogen in the atmospheres of these three exoplanets, which does not mean it isn’t there. Moreover, this Hubble press release appears to have been issued as much to sell the James Webb Space Telescope and to say that Hubble is looking at Trappist-1 also!

I should add that all of these results are very uncertain. We are looking at something that is very small and is also very far away. Any data obtained is certainly not a precise measurement of what is actually there, only a mere hint.

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Russia’s next ISS module, Nauka, delayed again

9:09 am

Russia is apparently going to have to delay the launch of its next ISS module, Nauka, into 2019.

Nauka was initially built in the 1990s as a back-up module for one of Russia’s first ISS first modules, Zarya. It has undergone numerous concept changes, and even more numerous delays, including the most recent and worst, where it was discovered that they had to scrub clean the module’s fueling system because they had become contaminated.

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Falcon Heavy launch tomorrow

8:58 am

Capitalism in space: Several stories today about tomorrow’s long-awaited Falcon Heavy launch, with a launch window opening at 1:30 pm (eastern).

First, the FAA has approved SpaceX’s launch license. This is an example of the absolute irrelevance of government. There was no way this launch license was going to be denied, which means that the FAA’s only purpose here was to simply make work for some bureaucrats.

Second, this story by Bill Harwood provides a nice summary of the context of the launch, including SpaceX’s success at shaking up the launch history in the past decade. The money quote, however, comes when Harwood quotes John Logsdon, founder and now retired director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. For years Logsdon has been the media’s go-to expert on the policy of space, and has consistently expressed unbounded faith and love for NASA projects like SLS. His perspective has always been that of the 1960s, when the space race then established the concept that in order to succeed in space you needed to have a government space program. The idea of a chaotic, competitive effort by private companies has always been inconceivable to him and most liberal policy experts. Thus, when asked about the purpose behind Falcon Heavy as well as Musk’s even bigger proposed rocket, the Big Falcon Rocket (BFR), Logsdon was totally baffled.

“I don’t understand what they’re doing,” Logsdon said. “Elon’s out talking about they’re not going to pursue the Falcon line of rockets, he’s going to put all his efforts into the BFR. So, what is the future of Heavy?”

…Logsdon said he believes it is “good for the country to have two alternative heavy lift vehicles, at least for a little while, to see which one works better.” But he also believes the SLS enjoys enough solid congressional support to “sustain it for some few more years, anyway.”

What Logsdon, being an academic his whole life, has never understood is the concept of profit and efficiency. Unlike the government projects like SLS that Logsdon tends to favor, Falcon Heavy is designed to provide customers a cheap way to get large payloads into orbit. That ability is going to soon provide SpaceX plenty of business, and will make SLS look like a complete waste of money. Furthermore, the BFR is Musk’s declaration that, as the head of a cutting edge private company, he is not going to stand still, but will keep pushing the envelope to provide his customers even better products in the future.

Finally, this CNN article, while typically shallow and not very knowledgeable, does provide one piece of important information, about the launchpad being used.

Because of a special walkway that has been constructed for it, Pad 39A is the only site that can host flights of SpaceX’s new spacecraft, Crew Dragon. That’s the spacecraft the company is developing to help NASA ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Crew Dragon has already faced delays. And destroying the launch pad could mean pushing deadlines back even further, according to U.S. Government Accountability Office Director Cristina Chaplain.

A launch failure on the launchpad would therefore significantly impact the schedule for SpaceX’s private manned capsule. This also explains why Musk has said he would consider this launch a success if the Falcon Heavy simply cleared the launch tower.

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Sunspot update for January 2018

11:51 pm

Today NOAA posted its monthly update of the solar cycle, covering sunspot activity for January 2018. Below is my annotated version of that graph.

As you can see, the low sunspot activity of the past two months continued in January. November 2017 remains the most inactive month for sunspots since the middle of 2009. January is now the second most inactive month, with December a very close third.

January 2018 Solar Cycle graph

The graph above has been modified to show the predictions of the solar science community. The green curves show the community’s two original predictions from April 2007, with half the scientists predicting a very strong maximum and half predicting a weak one. The red curve is their revised May 2009 prediction.

Though activity continues to track close to but considerably below the 2007 weak prediction, the difference appears to be increasing as the ramp down to solar minimum continues. While I have said in past updates that the trend suggests an early arrival of the solar minimum, a close look at the previous ramp down in 2007 and 2008 shows that when activity became this weak, the ramp down slowed considerably. This previous pattern suggests that we could see another year or two of similarly low activity before the minimum arrives.

Regardless, the low activity, this soon, continues to suggest that the next maximum will also be weak, and might even not come at all, as some solar scientists have proposed. Instead, we might be heading toward another Grand Minimum, with no significant sunspots for decades.

Will that Grand Minimum produce cold weather worldwide, as it appears to have done during the last Grand Minimum in the 1600s? There is circumstantial evidence in the past decade that it might. We will not know, however, until it happens, and that possibility remains very uncertain.

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