August 30, 2023 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
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Category: Behind The Black
Minh Ngọc Ng – Handel’s Passacaglia
An evening pause: Hat tip Alton Blevins.
August 30, 2023 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
- Engineers attach solar panel to the cargo module of Sierra Space’s first Dream Chaser mini-shuttle, Tenacity
It does appear that the company, after many years of delays, is finally getting somewhere close to launch.
- Technical issues involving fueling operations forces ESA to scrub hot fire dress rehearsal of its new as yet unlaunched Ariane-6 rocket
The previous test ran out of time during the countdown, so no static fire test occurred. The next attempt will take place on September 5th.
- Long interview with one of the founders of Skyroot, one of India’s new private rocket startups
I haven’t watched it yet, but its length (1:43 hours) and the table of contents at the link suggests it will contain a lot of good information.
The utter ignorance of modern educators on proud display the last two days in Colorado
Click to watch the video
In the last few days a story about a 12-year-old boy who was banned from classes because he had a Gadsden flag sticker on his backpack has gone viral, with the school, The Vanguard School, forced to cancel its parents night because of the outrage.
School officials had claimed that the Gadsden flag was not allowed at the school because it had “its origins in slavery and the slave trade,” a false statement of such utter ignorance of American history it leaves anyone with any education breathless with astonishment. The picture to the right shows the student Jaiden reacting in bemused disbelief at the moment that school official (in the background) made this absurd claim. He clearly knows more about American history than this brainless school official.
Not surprisingly, the uproar quickly caused the school’s board of directors to call an emergency meeting in which they backed down, especially as Jaiden had said he intended to continue to come to classes with the sticker on his pack, and would even do a sit-in if they dared try to kick him out again.
My purpose in mentioning this story however is to show how it illustrates so completely the bankruptcy of our education system today. Educators simply do not know American history, even though they are the people we expect to teach it. And when that ignorance is discovered, as in this case, they can’t just admit error and apologize, they have to equivocate and add more lies to their foolishness.
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Reviewing a book blacklisted by Amazon because it dared say things Amazon doesn’t like
The Plague of Models, blacklisted by Amazon
They’re coming for you next: Last week I posted an essay on the over-use and misuse of computer modeling in today’s scientific community, focused specifically on the unreliability of all climate models to successfully predict any actual climate trends.
One of the individuals who read my essay, Kenneth Green, immediately commented here on Behind the Black to note that he had just published a book on this very subject, entitled The Plague of Models: How Computer Modeling Corrupted Environmental, Health, and Safety Regulations, describing how the misuse of models has resulted in the proliferation of government regulations based not on actual data but on computer models that in many ways are nothing more than the opinions of the computer programs.
Green also noted that Amazon has refused to make his book available for sale, essentially banning it for no justifiable reason. As he explained to me in an email,
My publisher, who is a start-up small Canadian publisher specializing in public policy books, tried to upload The Plague of Models to Amazon, as he had previously done with half a dozen other books while working at previous institutions as in-house publisher.
This time, unlike his previous experiences, the book was taken down shortly after it was uploaded (and we know the upload process worked, since the book was available briefly for preview, so there was no technical issue with the manuscript file). The publisher got a form-letter email saying that the book had been taken down because it may have violated some (non-specific) Amazon Term of Service. When he sent a note back requesting clarification/appeal, he got another form letter, this one repeating that the book may have violated some term of service, and warning that any attempt to re-upload would get his entire account terminated.
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Buried ridges at the bottom of a Martian abyss
Click for full image.
Today’s cool image could be labeled a “What the heck?!” photo, as the origin of its most distinct feature is utterly baffling. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 18, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows what look like a collection of meandering ridges peeking out from a terrain covered by thick dust.
The scientists label this dust-covered ground, as well as the ripple dunes to the south in the full image, “sand sheets.” Without question, the ground here seems to resemble a Sahara-like terrain. It is utterly featureless, other than the few bedrock features that poke up out of that sand. In the full image some peaks stick out, but it the meandering ridges in this section that are most intriguing. They are reminiscent of rimstone dams in caves, but what formed them remains baffling, since cave rimstone dams are formed by the interaction of limestone and water, and there is absolutely no evidence of any near surface ice at this location in the dry equatorial regions of Mars.
All the ridges signify is a buried terrain formed in some inexplicable way.
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Scientists believe they have recovered the first known interstellar meteorite
A scientific expedition in the Pacific off the coast of Papua New Guinea has found what it thinks are spherules from the first known interstellar meteorite that hit the Earth on January 8, 2014 and dubbed IM1. From their preprint paper [pdf]:
On 8 January 2014 US government satellite sensors detected three atmospheric detonations in rapid succession about 84 km north of Manus Island, outside the territorial waters of Papua New Guinea (20 km). Analysis of the trajectory suggested an interstellar origin of the causative object CNEOS 2014-01-08: an arrival velocity relative to Earth in excess of ∼ 45 km s−1, and a vector tracked back to outside the plane of the ecliptic. The object’s speed relative to the Local Standard of Rest of the Milky-Way galaxy, ∼ 60 km s−1, was higher than 95% of the stars in the Sun’s vicinity.
In 2022 the US Space Command issued a formal letter to NASA certifying a 99.999% likelihood that the object was interstellar in origin.
Using a “magnetic sled” that they dragged across the seafloor, the scientists collected about 700 spherules thought to come from the meteorite, of which 57 have been analyzed and found to have properties that confirm their interstellar origin. As they note in their paper, “The spherules with enrichment of beryllium (Be), lanthanum (La) and uranium (U), labeled “BeLaU”, appear to have an exotic composition different from other solar system materials.”
The “BeLaU” elemental abundance pattern does not match terrestrial alloys, fallout from nuclear explosions, magma ocean abundances of Earth, its Moon or Mars or other natural meteorites in the solar system. This supports the interstellar origin of IM1 independently of the measurement of its high speed, as reported in the CNEOS catalog and confirmed by the US Space Command.
Based on the sparse data, the scientists speculate that these spherules could have come from the crust of an exoplanet, the core collapse of a supernova, the merger of two neutron stars, and even possibly “an extraterrestrial technological origin.” They have no idea, but all these are among the possibilities.
Starlink makes deal with Japanese cell phone company
SpaceX has now partnered with the Japanese cell phone company KDDI to provide satellite-to-cellular service in remote areas of Japan that do not have good cell tower service.
The companies plan to start with SMS text services as early as 2024 and will eventually provide voice and data services. Almost all existing smartphones on KDDI network will be compatible with this new service as it employs the device’s existing radio services.
Since Starlink now has more than 5,000 satellites in orbit, it can offer its services to a wider ranger of customers worldwide, and has been slowly signing them up, from country to country.
Pragyan snaps first pictures of Vikram sitting on the Moon
Click for original image.
India’s space agency ISRO has released the first two pictures from the Pragyan rover showing the Vikram lander that bought both to the Moon safely.
The picture to the right is the close-up image, which shows two of Vikram’s science instruments. CHASTE is a probe that has been measuring the temperature of the Moon’s regolith at this spot, while ILSA is a seismometer for measuring the seismicity around the landing site.
Both spacecraft have been on the lunar surface now for one week, which means they are both halfway through their nominal two-week mission that lasts until lunar sunset, occurring on September 4th. Neither were designed to survive the 14-day-long lunar night, though engineers will attempt to kept both alive.
Van Morrison – Moondance
An evening pause: Performed live on television, and includes Etta James, George Benson, Carlos Santana, Dr. John, and Tom Scott.
Hat tip Mike Nelson.
August 29, 2023 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
- Pragyan makes first lunar in situ detection of sulphur
India’s rover also detected as expected Al, Ca, Fe, Cr, Ti, Mn, Si, and O, and is presently searching for the big prize, hydrogen.
- China completes 10,000 seconds of test firing of rocket engine for its Long March 10 rocket
The link describes it as for the crew rocket in China’s lunar base project.
- South Africa signs deal with China to work on its lunar base
No details provided, though it appears from the language at the link that the deal involves simply installing a research instrument at the Chinese lunar base.
- Flight path of planned August 30, 2023 launch of China’s Long March 2D
The path crosses all of southeast China, as well as Taiwan, but it appears the crash zones for the first stage and strap on boosters are in Guizhou, Hunan, and Jiangxi provinces, with the last close to Ganzhou, a city of about 9 million.
- Some details on the main engine for China’s manned lunar lander
It appears from one graphic at the link that the lander will have four such engines, distributed at four points around the outside of the lander.
- Startup gets $850K contract from NASA to build a demo inflatable bag for capturing orbiting space junk
The contract is to build and demonstrate the bag, on the ground. Orbital test missions would require a great deal more money.
Pushback: Court rules against East Lansing’s attempt to blacklist Christian for following his beliefs
The Tennes are a normal family! We must blacklist them!
They’re coming for you next: Today’s blacklist story is a follow-up on a August 2021 post, and is a victory, of a sort. As I reported then, after farmer Steve Tennes (shown to the right with his family) made the egregious error of stating his strongly held Christian belief that marriage is for a man and a woman only, and he would only rent his farm for such marriages, and not same-sex marriages, the city government of East Lansing decided to specifically write rules that would ban his farm from participating in its local farmer’s market.
The ban against their business, Country Mill Farms, was begun in 2016. Though a court quickly ruled that it was unconstitutional, the city renewed the ban in 2018 and has maintained it since, claiming the court’s ruling only applied to the 2017 season.
The logic of the East Lansing government is actually quite blatent: It believes it has the right to dictate what others can or cannot say in public, the first amendment be damned.
The city’s new rules quite clearly stated it was illegal for anyone to “make a statement which indicates that an individual’s patronage or presence at a place of public accommodation is unwelcome or unacceptable because of sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression.” You essentially had to agree to its queer agenda policies in all things, even if you were not in East Lansing or were doing business in a farm many miles away. And you better not express any dissent to those policies either!
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