Category: Behind The Black

Alternatives to PayPal for supporting Behind the Black

12:24 am

In the past two days a large number of my subscribers have suddenly canceled their PayPal subscriptions to Behind the Black. I am certain this sudden activity is because these subscribers have also canceled all of their business with PayPal, because of its announcement that if it doesn’t like what someone says or writes, it will literally steal up to $2,500 from that person’s PayPal account. See this article describing the sudden exodus from Paypal due to this unethical policy.

For the past two years I have been steadily adding additional payment options so that neither I nor my supporters will have to depend on PayPal. These have included Patreon, Zelle, and mailing a check to me directly.

I have now added one more, Gabpay. This payment service has been formed by the same people who created Gab as a free speech alternative to Twitter. Gabpay appears to work almost identical to PayPal, but its fees are less and it has no intention of stealing anyone’s money because it doesn’t like what someone says or writes.

Thus, regular readers can now support Behind The Black in one of five ways:

  • Send me a check payable to Robert Zimmerman c/o Behind The Black, P.O.Box 1262
    Cortaro, AZ 85652 . With this method every dime you contribute goes to me.
  • Subscribe or donate through Zelle, using my email address zimmerman @ nasw dot org. This method also charges no fees. Every dime you spend goes only to me.
  • NEW! Donate through Gabpay, using my email address zimmerman @ nasw dot org. Gabpay takes a cut of about 2%.
  • Subscribe or donate at my Patreon website, which takes a cut of about 12%.
  • Subscribe or donate through Paypal using the buttons in the tip jar elsewhere on this page. PayPal also takes a cut of about 12%.

I encourage my regular subscribers on both Paypal and Patreon to consider switching to Zelle. Several subscribers have done so, and have found the process simple and easy, while also guaranteeing all of your donation reaches me. If you use Zelle to either newly subscribe or switch your old subscription, please use my email address to send me a separate email telling me the monthly amount of your subscription and your chosen payment date. Zelle does not send notifications for such things.

Regardless, I celebrate my readers who are quitting PayPal. It has proven itself as unethical as companies like Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, all of which I avoid at all costs. Rather than sit back like sheep, these readers are proving that they are free citizens willing to fight. Kudos to you all!

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InSight’s power levels rise very slightly

9:55 pm

InSight's power level through October 8, 2022

In a status report issued today, the science team for the InSight lander on Mars noted a slight increase in the amount of power produced daily by its solar panels. The graph to the right indicates that increase.

On October 8, 2022, InSight was generating an average of 300 watt-hours of energy per Martian day, or sol – an increase after a sharp decline last week from 430 watt-hours per sol to a low of 275 watt-hours per sol.

It appears that the atmosphere has begun to clear from the very large dust storm that occurred more than two thousand miles away. Despite that distance, the storm apparently reduced the available light above InSight significantly, and could take months to clear.

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October 10, 2022 Quick space links

3:08 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s very own stringer Jay, trolling Twitter so none of us have to.

 

  • ULA gets one BE-4 engine, the 2nd expected in November

    • The company is targeting its first static fire tests of its Vulcan rocket in December, with the first launch in “early 2023”. Don’t bet on it. I expect ULA will not be able to get off the ground before March.

 

 

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Icebergs of Martian lava

1:52 pm

Icebergs of Martian lava
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on July 24, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The scientists label this “platy-ridged lava” but to my eye this more resembles lava ice bergs trapped within a now frozen lava stream flowing I think from the northeast to the southwest.

My guess that the flow follows that direction is based on two bits of data. First, the shape of the lava ice flows suggests vaguely a flow to the southwest. The wiggling black ridges inside the streams suggest that these flows occurred in two parts, a stronger wide flow that narrowed as the lava on the edges hardened. When the edges solidified the interior flow scraped against it, forming the wiggling ridges.

Second, the location of this image, as shown on the overview map below, strongly suggests the lava streams flowed to the southwest.
» Read more

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The dam is about to break on the COVID shots

12:02 pm

Democrats might soon enter the Truth booth
Advocates of the jab are about to be forced, against their will,
to enter that door.

The research continues to pour in every day showing increasingly that the COVID shots that Democrats and Joe Biden forced down the throats of ordinary Americans are not only relatively ineffective at stopping COVID, they are downright risky to take, especially for the young and healthy.

One story however — having nothing to do with this scientific research — suggests strongly that the left’s fantasy-world about the jab is about to break, and break in a big way. These mind-numbed robots are suddenly discovering directly and personally how harmful the jab can be, in the worst possible manner.

Before I tell you about this one story, however, we first must review some of the new research and data that has popped up in just the past week. (For the substantial previous research about the harmful risks and uselessness of the COVID shots see Part 1 of my three part series on the COVID lie from the end of September, with parts 2 and 3 here and here.)

First, the uselessness of the jab:
» Read more

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New computer simulation of theorized impact that created the Moon

8:56 am

The uncertainty of science: Before I even begin to describe this story, I must emphasize that it is pure science fiction. As much as it is founded on known data, that data is simply not sufficient to tell us exactly how the Moon was created. The data merely points to many hundreds of possibilities, of which the model below is simply one:

Computer programmers using a supercomputer at a United Kingdom university have created a new simulation of the theorized impact of a Mars-sized body to the Earth that some believe created the Moon, and determined it was possible for that impact to have created the Moon quickly, within hours.

You can read the research paper here.

The fun part of this story is to watch the video of this simulation, which I have embedded below. Whether it describes what actually happened is pure speculation, and in fact cannot be confirmed in any way at all.

It is intriguing, nonetheless.
» Read more

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Soyuz-2 launches new Russian GPS-type satellite

8:41 am

Russia early today launched another satellite for its Glonass GPS-type constellation, using its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its Plesetsk launch site.

After the Soviet Union fell in 1991, Russia’s Glonass constellation withered, with the country for years unable to replace the satellites as they aged and died. Only after free enterprise was encouraged in the 1990s and 2000s and the economy began to boom did the Russian government finally have enough tax dollars to begin launching replacements.

The Russian invasion of the Ukraine will certainly put a crimp in this recovery. As has Putin’s policy of using the government to nationalize many industries, such as its aerospace sector.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

46 SpaceX
43 China
13 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 66 to 43 in the national rankings, and the entire globe combined 66 to 64.

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China launches solar science telescope

1:46 pm

China today used its Long March 2D rocket to launch its first solar science telescope, Advanced Space-borne Solar Observatory (ASO-S), also known as Kuafu-1.

The probe, which was first proposed in 1976 (!), has a four year nominal mission and is designed to monitor the Sun as goes through its next sunspot maximum. More information can be found here.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

46 SpaceX
43 China
12 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 66 to 43 in the national rankings, and the entire globe combined 66 to 63.

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SpaceX launches two Intelsat communications satellites

4:17 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully launched two Intelsat communications satellites using its Falcon 9 rocket.

The first stage completed its fourteenth flight, landing successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

46 SpaceX
42 China
12 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 66 to 42 in the national rankings, and the entire globe combined 66 to 62.

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InSight shut down temporarily because of lack of power

10:14 am

InSight's power levels over recent time

Because a dust storm has caused a further decline in the power being generated by InSight’s solar panels, the science team has decided to put the lander into safe mode for the next two weeks in the hope that the air will then clear, allowing its power levels to rise.

The graph to the right shows that drop. From the press release:

By Monday, Oct. 3, the storm had grown large enough and was lofting so much dust that the thickness of the dusty haze in the Martian atmosphere had increased by nearly 40% around InSight. With less sunlight reaching the lander’s panels, its energy fell from 425 watt-hours per Martian day, or sol, to just 275 watt-hours per sol.

InSight’s seismometer has been operating for about 24 hours every other Martian day. But the drop in solar power does not leave enough energy to completely charge the batteries every sol. At the current rate of discharge, the lander would be able to operate only for several weeks. So to conserve energy, the mission will turn off InSight’s seismometer for the next two weeks.

The real problem however is the dust covering the solar panels. If that dust gets thicker due to this storm, the lander will not recover when they power it up in two weeks. It will still generate electricity at this low number, making future operations likely impossible.

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Engineers regain full control of CAPSTONE

9:21 pm

After a month of careful tests and analysis, engineers today successfully regained full control of the CAPSTONE lunar orbiter, on its way to the Moon.

The most likely cause of the anomaly was identified as a valve related issue on one of the spacecraft’s eight (8) thrusters. The partially open valve resulted in thrust from the associated thruster whenever the propulsion system was pressurized. To attempt a recovery from this condition, the mission team conducted multiple tests on the vehicle and evaluated extensive telemetry and simulation data and then formulated a plan for attempting recovery of the vehicle’s full 3-axis control.

This recovery sequence was uploaded to the spacecraft yesterday (Thursday) and was executed early this morning (Friday 10/7). Initial telemetry and observation data after the recovery attempt points to a successful recovery of the system which has now regained 3-axis attitude control. The updated spacecraft attitude has oriented the spacecraft solar arrays to the Sun and implemented an orientation for the downlink antennas which significantly improves data downlink performance as compared to the pre-recovery attitude.

The spacecraft is not out of the woods yet. The engineers still need to figure out how to do future course corrections with “the possible presence of a valve that remains partially open.”

Nonetheless, that they have successfully regained full control means they have a very good handle on the issue, which bodes well for the lunar orbital insertion maneuver on November 13, 2022.

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