Category: Behind The Black

Pushback: Sports anchor sues ESPN for punishing her for expressing opinions on her own time

2:23 pm

ESPN: Proud censor of free speech
ESPN: Proud censor of free speech

They’re coming for you next: Sports anchor Sage Steele last week filed a lawsuit against her employer ESPN for punishing her in 2021 when she expressed strong public reservations — on her own time — about the company’s mandates requiring employees to get COVID shots and boosters or lose their jobs.

In comments last September on a podcast hosted by former National Football League quarterback Jay Cutler, Ms. Steele touched on political and social topics, questioning Covid-19 vaccine mandates and former President Barack Obama’s decision to identify as Black instead of biracial.

After Ms. Steele’s remarks drew criticism in the press and on social media, ESPN forced her to issue an apology and temporarily benched her, according to the suit, which was served in Connecticut, where the network is based. ESPN also retaliated by taking away prime assignments and failing to stop bullying and harassment by Ms. Steele’s colleagues, the suit alleges.

The complaint says ESPN’s handling of Ms. Steele’s situation was an example of selective enforcement of a network policy that bars news personnel from taking positions on political or social issues. ESPN has “violated Connecticut law and Steele’s rights to free speech based upon a faulty understanding of her comments and a nonexistent, unenforced workplace policy that serves as nothing more than pretext,” according to the suit, which seeks unspecified damages.

You can read the lawsuit here [pdf]. It cites numerous examples of other ESPN anchors making public very partisan political statements, on air and while working for ESPN, with no consequences. It also describes in detail the network’s ugly treatment of her– including taking her off prime assignments and forcing her to issue an apology she did not write — all based on this kind of non-research:
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Watch Rocket Lab launch and attempt to capture first stage with helicopter

1:20 pm

I have embedded below the live stream of Rocket Lab’s launch today from New Zealand, scheduled for a 3:41 pm (Pacific) liftoff. The rocket carries 34 satellites for deployment.

More exciting however will be the attempt to recover the first stage. On this launch the Electron rocket’s first stage will control its descent using both thrusters and parachutes so that a helicopter can make the first attempt to snatch it out of the air before it hits the ocean.

If successful, Rocket Lab will then hopefully be able to reuse the first stage on a later launch.

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Navigating a rover on Mars

9:32 am

16 photos taken by Perseverance's right navigation camera on May 2, 2022

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! The photo to the right is actually a screen capture of 16 consecutive photos taken on May 2, 2022 by the right navigation camera on the Mars rover Perseverance.

The overview map below gives the context. The red dot marks Perseverance’s position when the photos were taken. The green dot marks Ingenuity’s position. The small white dot marks the spot where the rover’s parachute landed. The yellow lines indicate I think the area covered by the sixteen navigation images.

There is a reason for showing this panorama in this somewhat crude form. The engineers who run Perseverance have programmed its navigation cameras to send back its pictures so that they immediately line up in this coherent pattern. There is no need to rearrange them upon arrival. The engineers thus can instantly see how each picture relates to the others, and thus get an immediate sense of the nearby terrain in which they must plot the rover’s next move.

Perseverance is now in its second science campaign, focused on studying the base of the delta. As the science team studies the delta’s cliff face, they are also studying the best route to continue uphill. To do both, they have begun slowly moving along that face, going from west to east.

The rough panorama above thus shows them the ground ahead as they continue that traverse. I expect the rover’s next move will be to the northeast, once again moving along the base of the nearest cliff. The panorama shows that while the ground in this area has a few ridges, none are so high as to cause Perseverance any problems.

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Update on Dream Chaser

10:57 am

Link here.

Overall progress has been incredibly slow, considering the NASA contract to build this was awarded in 2016. Sierra Space is only building one spacecraft, designed to be reusable. For six years to have passed and the spacecraft, dubbed Tenacity, is still a year away from flight, seems excessive, especially because the spaceplane is small. It took SpaceX only four years to go from concept to successfully landing first stages. Starship began test flights only three years after the project began.

Still, the spaceplane is moving forward. Hopefully by February ’23 it will finally fly, giving the U.S. another method besides Dragon for getting cargo to and from space. That it might do so before Boeing’s Starliner is somewhat ironic, and puts more pressure on that company to get that capsule operational.

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China and Russia each successfully complete launches

10:25 pm

Both China and Russia successfully completed launches in the past few hours.

First, shortly before midnight today (local time) Russia used its smaller version of its new Angara rocket to place a military satellite into orbit, launching this version of the rocket for the second time.

Next, using its solid rocket Long March 11, China on April 30th (local time) successfully launched five smallsats from an ocean platform in the East China Sea. This was the third launch from sea by the Long March 11.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

17 SpaceX
13 China
6 Russia
2 ULA
2 Rocket Lab

The U.S. still leads China 24 to 13 in the national rankings. The U.S. also still leads all other nations and companies combined, 24 to 22.

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Brain terrain in Mars’ glacier country

3:51 pm

Brain terrain in glacier country
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on February 10, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

It shows what planetary scientists have dubbed “brain terrain”, a truly unique Martian geological feature that is not found on Earth and also remains as yet unexplained. Specifically, the brain terrain is the speckled areas between the larger flow features, all of which are probably ice or glacier related.

What especially drew me to this MRO image however was the particular flow feature in the center left that looks like either a giant squid or something out of Lovecraft horror short story. Talk about a cool image!

The downward grade here is likely to the north, as this spot is inside a north-south canyon, cutting into the southern cratered highlands. The general north-south trend of the depression here reinforce this supposition.

The overview image below provides context.
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SpaceX launches another 53 Starlink satellites

2:37 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully launched another 53 Starlink satellites using its Falcon 9 rocket, the first stage successfully flying and landing for the sixth time.

That first stage had flown only three weeks ago, thus completing the fastest turnaround yet.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

17 SpaceX
12 China
5 Russia
2 ULA
2 Rocket Lab

The U.S. now leads China 24 to 12 in the national rankings.

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Today’s blacklisted American: 15-year-old kills himself after school ignored cruel bullying based on false rumor he hadn’t gotten COVID shots.

1:39 pm

Nate Bronstein, dead because of lies
Nate Bronstein, now dead because of a mob’s lies, and the
willingness of The Latin School of Chicago to ignore them.

They’re coming for you next: A 15-year-old boy, Nate Bronstein, hung himself in January after months of cruel and ceaseless bullying at his private school — which the school, the Latin School of Chicago, apparently refused to stop — based on the false rumor that he had never gotten any COVID shots.

The boy’s parents, Robert and Rosellene Bronstein, are now suing both the school and the instigators of the bullying, demanding $100 million in compensatory damages. You can read their complaint in all its horror here [pdf].

This story illustrates two terrible but fundamental components of today’s blacklist culture. First, that mob is quite willing to oppress the weak and helpless based simply on lies. From the Chicago Tribune report of this story:

A student at the school, whose parents are named in the suit, spread a false rumor that the boy was unvaccinated, the suit alleges. Though he was vaccinated, the boy was harassed about his perceived vaccination status.

Even though the Bronstein’s met with this student’s parents in an attempt to end the bullying, nothing changed, and in fact it worsened, so that the boy even started receiving text messages saying he should kill himself.

Second, the mob’s emotion-driven and hateful conduct often means that those who could stand up to it and stop it are generally unwilling to challenge those lies, and will often instead team up with the mob to encourage the oppression.
» Read more

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Surprise! FAA delays SpaceX approval at Boca Chica another month

11:56 am

As I have been predicting now for months, the FAA today announced that it is once again delaying approval of its environmental reassessment of SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility one more month, to May 31, 2022.

This is the fifth time since December that the FAA has delayed the release of the environmental assessment. When the first delay was announced in December 2021, I predicted that this stone-walling by the government will likely continue for many months, and delay the first orbital launch of Starship “until the latter half of ’22, if then.”

Since then it has become very clear that the other federal bureaucracies at NOAA and Fish & Wildlife which must sign off on the approval are hostile to Elon Musk, SpaceX, and Starship, and are acting to block this approval, with this stone-walling having the unstated support of the Biden administration. When the third delay was announced at the end of February, I predicted no approval would ever occur, that the Biden administration wants to reject the reassessment and force the issuance of a new environmental impact statement, a process that could take years. To do this before the November election however will cost votes, so the administration would instead delay the approval month by month until November.

This prediction has been dead on right, unfortunately. Expect more month-by-month delays until November, when the Biden administration will then announce — conveniently just after the election — the need for a new impact statement requiring years of study.

The one hope to stop this government intransigence will be a complete wipe-out of the Democratic Party in Congress in those November elections. A strong Republican Congress with large majorities in both houses could quickly force the Biden administration to back down on many issues, including this effort to shut SpaceX down in Texas.

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Axiom signs deal with the UAE to fly one astronaut to ISS in ’23

10:52 am

Capitalism in space: Axiom announced today that it has signed an agreement with the United Arab Emirate (UAE) to fly a UAE astronaut to ISS in ’23 for a six month mission.

Axiom was able to put its own passenger on this flight because of a complex deal with NASA that had Axiom act as the go-between for Mark Vande Hei’s launch on a Soyuz in April ’21. Axiom brought the flight for NASA (which didn’t have the funds), and got in exchange a free seat for a passenger on a later American launch. Axiom has now sold that seat to the UAE.

The UAE in turn solidifies its space effort, with a six month manned mission to ISS.

The deal also demonstrates the priceless value of leaving ownership to American companies. Axiom made this deal to sell globally its long term space station plans, and it will use a SpaceX Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket to launch it. Both companies thus make money on their products, instead of the cash going to NASA. Such profits will only encourage further sales, not only to these companies but to other competing American rocket and space station companies.

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