Category: Behind The Black

Falcon Heavy launchpad work begun

8:50 am

The competition heats up: SpaceX has begun the construction work necessary to convert the launchpad it will use at the Kennedy Space Center for its first test flight of the Falcon Heavy rocket, now scheduled for summer 2015.

Most of the current work appears to be taking place on the perimeter area of the pad, with the construction of a hanger building – known as the Horizontal Integration Facility (HIF) – that will house the Falcon Heavy rocket and associated hardware and payloads during processing. During rollout, the Falcon Heavy will be transported atop the Transporter Erector (TE), which will ride on rails, up the famous 39A ramp that once saw Space Shuttle and Apollo stacks arrive via the Crawler Transporters.

The July launch date is considered preliminary and a target date only and is of course subject to change.

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Russias pulling out of ISS in 2020

8:41 am

Another news story from Russia has confirmed that the Russian government intends to break off its partnership at ISS in 2020, and that it will instead start assembling its owns space station in 2017 and will use some modules now docked with ISS to do it.

This event was always possible, and one of the many reasons I always opposed Bill Clinton’s decision to form the ISS partnership. The partnership acted as a crutch for NASA and the U.S, allowing us to avoid spending the money to build a self-sufficient space station. When the Russians leave in 2020 ISS will lack some crucial facilities that it now depends on, and will require some fast scrambling and additions to the station by NASA to keep it going at that point.

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Philae spotted before and after first bounce

8:32 am

A close review of a series of Rosetta images has identified Philae’s first landing site, as well as the spacecraft itself as it approached and bounced away.

The second link is especially amazing, as it includes a gif animation of the landing site, showing the before situation, the puff of dust just after impact, and then Philae drifting away with its shadow hitting the surface of the comet.

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Philae has gone to sleep

7:49 pm

Despite several attempts to reposition the lander to get more sunlight to its solar panels, Philae went into hibernation on Saturday.

There is still a chance the lander will come back awake, but right now the Rosetta science team considers its mission complete. Meanwhile, Rosetta will continue its flight with Comet 67P/C-G, tracking it closely for the next year as it makes its next close approach to the sun.

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Been underground

7:41 pm

I just got back from a cave project weekend in the mountains of southeastern Arizona, which is why I have not posted this past weekend. The project involves surveying and mapping one of the more significant caves in Arizona, and has been on-going now for almost three years. We hope to finish sometime next year. I am the cartographer and project leader.

Posting to resume shortly. Stay tuned.

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Drill baby drill!

8:57 am

Faced with a loss of power in Philae’s batteries due to a lack of sunlight, scientists plan to activate the lander’s drill today.

This action might push the lander off the surface again, but it also might move it into daylight. At the least it might get them some geological data.

If the reserve battery runs out of power and the spacecraft shuts down on Saturday, there is still a chance that it could come back to life at a later time, should Comet 67P/C-G’s position change enough to put its solar panels in daylight and it can charge its main battery.

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Obamacare is forcing the closure of small rural hospitals nationwide

9:42 pm

Finding out what’s in it: The regulations imposed by Obamacare have raised costs so much that dozens of small rural hospitals, generally serving poorer communities, have been forced to close.

Since the beginning of 2010, 43 rural hospitals — with a total of more than 1,500 beds — have closed, according to data from the North Carolina Rural Health Research Program. The pace of closures has quickened: from 3 in 2010 to 13 in 2013, and 12 already this year. Georgia alone has lost five rural hospitals since 2012, and at least six more are teetering on the brink of collapse. Each of the state’s closed hospitals served about 10,000 people — a lot for remaining area hospitals to absorb.

The Affordable Care Act was designed to improve access to health care for all Americans and will give them another chance at getting health insurance during open enrollment starting this Saturday. But critics say the ACA is also accelerating the demise of rural outposts that cater to many of society’s most vulnerable. These hospitals treat some of the sickest and poorest patients — those least aware of how to stay healthy. Hospital officials contend that the law’s penalties for having to re-admit patients soon after they’re released are impossible to avoid and create a crushing burden.

The article also describes how the high cost converting all hospital records from paper to electronic, something that Obamacare requires, is also forcing the shut down of these hospitals.

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Engineers have until Saturday to reposition Philae before its batteries go dead

3:58 pm

Sitting in the shade under a cliff and on its side, engineers have until Saturday to nudge it into brighter territory before Philae’s batteries go dead.

One of Philae’s major scientific goals is to analyse the comet for organic molecules. To do that, the lander must get samples from the comet into several different instruments, named Ptolemy, Cosac and Civa. There are two ways to do this: sniffing and drilling. Sniffing involves opening the instruments to allow molecules from the surface to drift inside. The instruments are already doing this and returning data.

Drilling is much riskier because it could make the lander topple over. Newton’s third law of motion says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. In the minuscule gravity of the comet, any movement on Philae will cause motion. The drill turning one way will make Philae want to turn the other. Pushing down into the surface will push the lander off again. “We don’t want to start drilling and end the mission,” said Bibring.

But the team has decided to operate another moving instrument, named Mupus, on Thursday evening. This could cause Philae to shift, but calculations show that it would be in a direction that could improve the amount of sunlight falling on the probe. A change in angle of only a few degrees could help. A new panoramic image will be taken after the Mupus deployment to see if there has been any movement.

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Japanese investor sues Excalibur Almaz

9:24 am

The billionaire investor in the company Excalibur Almaz is suing the lawyer in charge for fraud.

Using the $49 million the billionaire invested, the lawyer purchased several Soviet-era capsules and a Almaz space station module from the Russians, claiming they would use this equipment, once refurbished, to establish a commercial space company. What the lawyer, Art Dura, did not tell anyone was, as the lawsuit explains:

“The purchase contracts had to be approved by the Russian government, and unbeknownst to plaintiff … expressly excluded the right to modify the Russian hardware, thus relegating it to display uses only! The items were only museum pieces, a secret Dula would keep until well after he acquired control of plaintiff’s investment.”

Dula’s vehicle for the scheme was Excalibur Almaz Limited, an entity he set up in the Isle of Man, into which he transferred Horie’s $49 million investment, according to the complaint.

What I find amazing is that the company, Excalibur Almaz, also put out a lot of press releases describing how they were going to use this Russian equipment as part of their space effort. I reported on these releases myself. That Dura was able to keep the contract terms secret, that even the Russians didn’t publicly protest his false statements, is most interesting. Apparently, the Russians were glad to take his money and even help with the fraud, by not revealing the truth when Dura made public claims that were impossible according to the contract.

This story illustrates one of the less obvious investment risks inherent in a new industry such as commercial space. Not only can vehicles crash and burn, there are also a lot of con artists out there willing to take advantage of naive individuals who are so passionate about space exploration that they don’t look closely at what they are doing.

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Philae’s status on the surface

8:55 am

European engineers have released an overall status update on Philae’s generally good condition after its landing on Comet 67P/C-G.

Later on 12 November, after analysing lander telemetry, the Lander Control Centre (in Cologne) and Philae Science, Operations and Navigation Centre (SONC, Toulouse) reported;There were three touchdowns at 15:34, 17:25 and 17:32 UTC; in other words, the lander bounced. The firing of the harpoons did not occur. The primary battery is working properly. The mass memory is working fine (all data acquired until lander loss of signal at 17:59 UTC were transmitted to the orbiter). Systems on board the lander recorded a rotation of the lander after the first touchdown. This is confirmed by ROMAP instrument data, which recorded a rotation around the Z-axis (vertical).

The lander did receive some power from the solar panels on Wall No. 2 (technical description of the lander’s solar walls here), but it appears that parts of the lander were in shadow during the time that last night’s surface telemetry were being transmitted.

An additional update here.

Philae is between a rock and a hard place. More specifically, it’s on its side, one leg sticking up in the air — and in the shadows of a looming crater wall a few meters away. Solar panels are receiving only about 1.5 hours of light a day, when the goal was for 6 or 7 hours per day to recharge the lander’s batteries. Drilling into the subsurface would have to wait until the very end of Philae’s 60 hours of battery life — for fear that it could upset the lander. Yet mission leaders were largely upbeat about being alive and doing science. Most of the lander’s 10 instruments were taking data, and engineers were exploring options to use the spring of the lander legs or other ground-poking instruments to jostle the lander into a more favorable position.

Even more here, including the first image from the surface.

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Philae might have bounced

4:07 pm

Data from the Philae lander suggests that, when the spacecraft’s harpoons failed to fire, the probe might have bounced and then settled to the surface.

[T]elemetry from the craft suggested it might have drifted off the surface after landing and started to turn. This subsequently came to an end, which the German Space Agency official interpreted as a possible “second landing” on Comet 67P. This “bounce” was always a possibility, but had been made more likely by the failure of the harpoons to deploy, and the failure of a thruster intended to push the robot into the surface.

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More than 200 colleges slash work hours to avoid Obamacare

3:06 pm

Finding out what’s in it: More than 200 colleges have capped student and faculty work hours below 30 hours per week to avoid the costs of Obamacare.

Those who have seen their paychecks shrink as a result of the Affordable Care Act include students who work on campus at restaurants, bookstores or gyms, teaching assistants, Residence Advisers, officer workers, student journalists, and a variety of other workers, such as part-time maintenance crews and groundskeepers. Educators’ work hours have also been cut due to the mandate, including part-time instructors and adjunct professors.

I guarantee that 70% or more of these individuals voted for Obama and the Democrats, as the political beliefs of the academic population is almost all partisan liberal. I wonder if they now have the intellectual honesty to assign blame for their woes to Obama and the Democrats .

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A comet picture taken by Philae on the way down

1:06 pm

Comet 67P/C-G as seen by Philae during its descent

I am not sure if the actual landing site is visible in this image. I don’t think so as nothing seems to match what was on the earlier close-up. Moreover, the Rosetta website does not say.

No images on the surface have yet been released. There are also issues that could prevent a full success.

However, while the lander has touched down on the comet using its harpoons, scientists said that it had not yet deployed its anchors which meant that it was not completely attached to the surface. The surface was much softer than they expected, so there were some concerns that it was not securely fixed on the comet – although from a software point of view things seemed to be fine. Engineers will attempt to fire the anchors again soon in order to keep Philae attached to the surface of the comet.

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More penalties from Obamacare

9:42 am

Finding out what’s in it: The Obamacare penalty for not having health insurance is about to triple.

Uninsured Americans who decide not to enroll will face a penalty of $325 per person, more than tripling the $95 penalty those who did not enroll had to pay the first time around. Children under the age of 18 will be fined $162.50. The maximum amount an uninsured family will be penalized is $975 under the flat-rate method. “The penalty is meant to incentivize people to get coverage,” Laura Adams, senior analyst of InsuranceQuotes.com, told CBS News. “This year, I think a lot of people are going to be in for a shock.”

Nor is this the end. According to how the law was written, the penalties will continue to rise in the coming years. Just in time for the next election in fact!

When the law first passed I had said that Obamacare was going to be an election millstone around the necks of Democrats for years, and that is definitely turning out to be true. Expect more Democratic election losses in future elections, unless they change course and join the Republicans in getting this law repealed.

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Philae has landed successfully!

9:14 am

Philae has landed successfully on Comet 67P/C-G.

Philae is on the surface, its harpoons have fired and the landing gear has been moved inside, and Philae is in contact. It’s incredible! Massive smiles on everyone’s faces. The room went mad. Twice — when we first had the hint, and then when Stephan Ulamec and Andrea Accomazzo confirmed it. Unbelievable.

More information and data will be coming in a few hours. Stay tuned.

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More crushing Obama regulation to come

9:12 am

Despite the just completed elections, where the voters clearly indicated their disinterest in the additional environmental rules supported by Democrats, Obama is gearing up for an “onslaught” of new regulations.

The Obama administration is set to roll out a series of climate and pollution measures that rivals any president’s environmental actions of the past quarter-century — a reality check for Republicans who think last week’s election gave them a mandate to end what they call the White House’s “War on Coal.”

Tied to court-ordered deadlines, legal mandates and international climate talks, the efforts scheduled for the next two months show that President Barack Obama is prepared to spend the remainder of his term unleashing sweeping executive actions to combat global warming. And incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will have few options for stopping the onslaught, though Republicans may be able to slow pieces of it.

If anyone has any doubt left that this president, and the left, doesn’t care what the American public wants, this story lays that doubt to rest forever. Barack Obama dislikes the idea of democracy, of following the will of the people. Instead, he wants to rule as a dictator, dictating the rules that he thinks are right. And the left that supports him supports this tyrannical approach.

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A third video of Obamacare’s creator found, insulting Americans

9:04 am

Finding out who wrote it: A third video of Obamacare’s architect, Jonathan Gruber, has been discovered in which he bluntly insults the American public.

“It’s a very clever, you know, basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter,” Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said during a speech at the University of Rhode Island in November 2012. He was discussing what is known as the Cadillac tax and how it came into being.

Video has also been found where Gruber saying, “Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical to get the thing to pass.” Other video shows him saying “the American people are too stupid to understand the difference” between various components of Obamacare.

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Philae is go for separation, despite problem

12:25 am

Engineers have given a go for the separation of the Philae lander from Rosetta, despite the failure of a thruster to operate.

During checks on the lander’s health, it was discovered that the active descent system, which provides a thrust upwards to avoid rebound at the moment of touchdown, cannot be activated.

At touchdown, landing gear will absorb the forces of the landing while ice screws in each of the probe’s feet and a harpoon system will lock Philae to the surface. At the same time, the thruster on top of the lander is supposed to push it down to counteract the impulse of the harpoon imparted in the opposite direction. “The cold gas thruster on top of the lander does not appear to be working so we will have to rely fully on the harpoons at touchdown,”says Stephan Ulamec, Philae Lander Manager at the DLR German Aerospace Center. “We’ll need some luck not to land on a boulder or a steep slope.”

Update: Separation has occurred and signal reacquired from Philae. We wait for landing.

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Police seize $100K without a warrant

9:09 am

Theft by government: Two men who were detained, their car searched without a warrant, and had more than $100K in cash seized illegally, have now filed suit claiming their constitutional rights were violated.

By the time the encounter was over, the gamblers had been detained for more than two hours. Their car was searched without a warrant. And their cellphones, a computer and $100,020 of their gambling “bankroll” were seized under state civil asset-forfeiture laws. The troopers allowed them to leave, without their money, after issuing a traffic warning and a citation for possession of marijuana paraphernalia that carried a $65 fine, court records show.

Months later, an attorney for the men obtained a video of the stop. It showed that the motorists were detained for a violation they did not commit — a failure to signal during a lane change — and authorities were compelled to return 90 percent of the money.

Now the men are questioning the police tactics in an unusual federal civil rights lawsuit. In the suit, filed Sept. 29, William Barton Davis, 51, and John Newmer­zhycky, 43, both from Humboldt County, Calif., claim their constitutional rights against unreasonable searches and seizures were violated. They also contend the stop was part of a pattern connected to the teachings of a private police-training firm that promotes aggressive tactics.

I hope they win big, very big. As far as I can tell, there is nothing legal about this police action. Nothing. It is theft, pure and simple, and thieves are supposed to be punished if caught.

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