Category: Points of Information

Sunspot update: The boom in sunspots returns!

October 5, 2021 12:11 pm Robert Zimmerman

It is time for my monthly sunspot update, based on the most recent NOAA monthly graph, showing the changes in the Sun’s sunspot activity during September. That graph is below, annotated to show the previous solar cycle predictions and thus provide context.

In September sunspot activity boomed once again, producing the most sunspots in a month since 2016 and ending the slight drop in activity in August to return to the pattern the Sun has exhibited since the end of solar minimum. Consistently the number of sunspots on the visible hemisphere of the Sun since 2020 has exceeded the April 2020 prediction of the NOAA scientist panel, as indicated by the red curve in the graph.

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2018 review by Blue Origin suggested changes that were not adopted

October 5, 2021 10:52 am Robert Zimmerman

Capitalism in space: Shortly after Bob Smith took over as CEO of Blue Origin he hired a consulting firm to review the company’s corporate culture and management policies, then had a top management briefing to review what that analysis had found.

Notes from that meeting by Blue Origin’s management have now become available, and suggest that the company’s management recognized it needed to make some changes in how it operated in order to better compete with SpaceX. Blue Origin had become hidebound, timid, and structured in a manner that made the creation of cost-effective engineering difficult. For example,

“Traditionally Blue team has not been focused on producibility and cost when designing,” another executive commented.

In response to the Avascent’s report on SpaceX’s cost focus, Blue Origin officials also acknowledged that they did not have an effective means of estimating costs before beginning a project. “Blue is riddled with poor estimating,” one executive wrote, specifically citing the New Glenn rocket. “The estimates barely cover the spot cost buy of that material based on market price, let alone the entire part material purchase. How did SpaceX keep to their target cost? They probably did a good job estimating. How they accomplished such good estimating is beyond me right now, but they did it somehow for their early years.” [emphasis mine]

As noted at the link, however, there is no evidence the company every made any of the suggested changes:

Whatever Bob Smith hoped to glean from the Avascent study, it’s not clear that the work has had a salutary effect on Blue Origin’s culture.

In the nearly three years since the report’s completion, SpaceX has gone on to launch more than 60 rockets, including four human missions, into orbit. SpaceX also has leaped ahead on a number of other fronts, including winning a multi-billion contract from NASA to build a Human Landing System for the Artemis Moon Program.

Blue Origin, by contrast, has succeeded in launching a single human flight on its New Shepard system—carrying Bezos into space for a few minutes in July. The company’s first orbital flight likely remains about three years away. Far from embracing openness, it remains more opaque than ever. And there are emerging questions about the company’s culture.

I would be more blunt. Prior to Bob Smith’s arrival in 2017 Blue Origin’s management style appeared somewhat similar to SpaceX’s, with regular almost monthly test flights of New Shepard. After he arrived everything slowed down, with the management style becoming all the things the 2018 Avascent study found wrong. And in the three years since that report and management meeting, it appears Smith did nothing to change anything. Blue Origin appears to remain a hidebound company going nowhere.

The company has vast resources due to the cash that Jeff Bezos has poured into it. It needs some good courageous leadership however. The main question will be whether Bezos can provide that.

Due to cracks, Russia will no longer use Zvezda’s docking port

October 5, 2021 9:39 am Robert Zimmerman

Russian officials today revealed that they will no longer use the docking port on its Zvezda module on ISS because of the stress fracture cracks they have found in the section where that port is located.

Russia is unable to use one of the docking ports of the ISS to its full extent due to cracks in the transitional chamber of the Zvezda module, the general designer of Russia’s Energia corporation, associate member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Solovyov said on Monday. “The transitional chamber’s loss of airtightness is often mentioned these days. We are very fortunate the cracks are at the end. We shut down that compartment, thus losing one docking port, which narrows our opportunities somewhat. The crack is very insignificant, though,”

In other words, they have sealed the aft section of Zvezda to reduce further air leaks, thus also closing off access to the port.

The Russian portion of ISS presently has two docking ports on two different modules. When Roscosmos launches its Prichal docking hub in November, to be attached to Nauka’s port, they will then add four more ports.

This decision underlines the impending end to ISS’s life span. Zvezda is not the only old Russian module on ISS where stress fractures have been found. “In August they found cracks in the module Zarya, the oldest module on ISS.

Though the U.S. part of ISS shows no such problem, it is designed to rely on the Russian half for its operations. If Russia must shut down its modules then the station will not be able to function for much longer.

The U.S. will likely overcome some of these issues with the planned launch in ’24 of Axiom’s private commercial module to ISS, which will eventually evolve into an complete space station separate from ISS. For the Russians the pressure to design and launch their own new station has become more critical. Whether they can do it however is unknown. Russia has not built a new space station module in decades. Their new ISS module, Nauka, was built in the 1990s.

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Space Force payload problems force delay until ’22 of next Falcon Heavy launch

October 5, 2021 9:18 am Robert Zimmerman

Capitalism in space: The Space Force has announced that because more time is needed to prepare its military payload, the next Falcon Heavy launch, scheduled later this month, will be delayed until ’22.

This is not the first time payload issues have delayed the launch, which had been previously scheduled for July. The Space Force has not announced a new launch date, nor was it very specific in describing the issues that has forced this delay.

As for the Falcon Heavy, though there has been a long delay since its last flight in June 2019, it appears that SpaceX has four launches scheduled for ’22, with another six already contracted and scheduled for later.

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Russia imposes new restrictions on any reporting of Roscosmos

October 5, 2021 9:08 am Robert Zimmerman

According to this report of today’s launch by Russia of a movie crew to ISS, Putin’s government has just passed new restrictions on reporting of its space effort by Russian citizens, either in or out of Russia.

The new regulations, which took effect on September 29, 2021, essentially prohibit Russians from reporting on the Russian space program outside of Russia. Violators of these regulations will be classified as “foreign agents” — which would create numerous legal issues for Russian citizens.

Specifically, the new regulations target the field of military and technical activities that are not related to or connected in any way with state secrets but which, with vague language, “can be used against Russia.” Most of the activities on the newly released list by the FSB specifically focus on Roscosmos. Prohibited topics of reporting regarding Roscosmos now include information on investigations conducted by the agency, the organization’s financials, condition of rockets and ground support equipment, development plans for Roscosmos vehicles, Roscosmos’ cooperation with other nations for space activities, and new technologies.

These rules essentially forbid Russian citizens from publishing almost anything that Roscosmos itself does not publish. If they do so without permission from outside the country, returning to Russia will become very problematic.

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UAE to launch probe to asteroid belt

October 5, 2021 9:01 am Robert Zimmerman

The new colonial movement: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) today announced that it is planning an unmanned probe to visit a number of asteroids in the asteroid belt.

The project targets a 2028 launch with a landing in 2033, a five-year journey in which the spacecraft will travel some 3.6 billion kilometers (2.2 billion miles). The spacecraft would need to slingshot first around Venus and then the Earth to gather enough speed to reach an asteroid some 560 million kilometers (350 million miles) away.

It appears they have not yet chosen their targets in the belt.

The big question will be how much of this project will be built in the UAE, and how much they will have to farm out to others. For their Al-Amal Mars orbiter, the satellite was mostly built by U.S. universities, as they trained UAE engineers, who now run the mission entire.

Russia launches movie director and actor to ISS

October 5, 2021 8:40 am Robert Zimmerman

Capitalism in space: Early today Russia successfully used its Soyuz-2 rocket and Soyuz capsule to launch a movie crew to ISS to begin a twelve day visit where they will film scenes for a science fiction movie.

An actress Yulia Peresild and a movie director Klim Shipenko arrived at the International Space Station aboard the Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft on Oct. 5, 2021, for a 12-day visit to shoot scenes of a sci-fi drama. They were accompanied by a professional cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, who had to switch to manual control during the final approach to the station due to a failure of the Kurs automated rendezvous system aboard Soyuz. Shkaplerov will remain aboard the station for nearly six months.

This is the second in a steady string of passenger commercial spaceflights that have been purchased by various people from either Roscosmos in Russia or SpaceX in the U.S. We shall see two more such flights in December, and another early in ’22, with additional flights to be scheduled beyond that. The full list, at this time:

September 15, 2021: SpaceX’s Dragon capsule flew four private citizens on a three day orbital flight
October 2021: The Russians launch two passengers to ISS for 12 days to shoot a movie
December 2021: The Russians will fly billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and his assistant to ISS for 12 days
cDecember 2021: Space Adventures, using a Dragon capsule, will fly four in orbit for five days
January/February 2022: Axiom, using a Dragon capsule, will fly four tourists to ISS
2022-2024: Three more Axiom tourist flights on Dragon to ISS
2024: Axiom begins launching its own modules to ISS, starting construction of its own private space station
c2024: SpaceX’s Starship takes Yusaku Maezawa and several others on a journey around the Moon.

Expect this list to grow. There appears to be plenty of demand for such commercial manned spaceflights, and with more flights and more competition (once Boeing’s Starliner enters the game) the cost will certainly drop.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

34 China
23 SpaceX
16 Russia
4 Northrop Grumman

With this launch Russia has now exceeded the number of launches it completed last year. If they complete all their presently scheduled launches for ’21, Roscosmos will have its best year since 2015.

The U.S still leads China 35 to 34 in the national rankings.

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Worldview to once again develop stratospheric tourist balloon flights

October 4, 2021 8:55 pm Robert Zimmerman

Capitalism in space: The Tucson-based high altitude balloon company Worldview has now announced that it is going to once again develop tourist balloon flights.

World View, based in Tucson, Ariz., announced Oct. 4 it is developing a passenger capsule that will be carried aloft by balloons to altitudes of about 30 kilometers. The Explorer Space Capsule will host eight passengers and two crew for flights lasting 6 to 12 hours, giving people a view of the Earth the company argues resembles that seen from space.

Tickets will cost $50,000 per person, with World View providing what it calls “flexible financing options.” The company expects the first flight no earlier than early 2024, with the nonprofit organization Space for Humanity, which offers spaceflight experiences for those who cannot afford tickets, buying the inaugural flight….

This project is a return to World View’s origins nearly a decade ago. The company originally said it would develop a stratospheric balloon system called Voyager for carrying people, offering them an aspect of the spaceflight experience without actually going to space. However, several years later the company shifted its attention to uncrewed balloons called “stratollites” that carry imaging and communications payloads into the stratosphere for weeks at a time.

The company’s CEO said they are hoping to pick up business from the suborbital market by offering a near-space experience that lasts hours for about one tenth the cost.

Worldview is now in direct competition with Space Perspectives, based in Florida and intending to fly passengers on high altitude balloon flights by ’24, but for $125k per ticket. That company was founded by the same people that founded Worldview.

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October 1, 2021 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast

October 4, 2021 1:39 pm Robert Zimmerman

Embedded below the fold in two parts.
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Land of Martian slope streaks

October 4, 2021 12:37 pm Robert Zimmerman

Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on May 21, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a typical example of the many slope streaks found in the rough and very broken region north of the Martian volcano Olympus Mons, the largest in the solar system.

See this May 2019 post for a detailed explanation of slope streaks. While they appear to be avalanches, they do not change the topography of the ground, sometimes flow over rises, and appear to be a phenomenon entirely unique to Mars. While no theory as yet explains them fully, the two most favored postulate that they are either dust avalanches or the percolation of a brine of chloride and/or perchlorate in a thin layer several inches thick close to the surface. In both cases the streak is mostly only a stain on the surface that fades with time.

The location of this cool image however tells us something more about them.
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Today’s blacklisted American: Chief editor on Oklahoma State U’s student newspaper forced to resign for holding a dissenting opinion

October 4, 2021 10:51 am Robert Zimmerman

The Bill of Rights cancelled at Oklahoma State University
No freedom of speech allowed at
Oklahoma State University.

The new dark age of silencing: Maddison Farris, the editor-in-chief for Oklahoma State U’s student newspaper The O’Colly was forced to resign her position after she wrote an op-ed opposing any mask mandate on campus and her fellow editors ganged up on her, demanding she leave.

Two days after publication the newspaper’s editorial board issued “a correction”, essentially condemning Farris’s op-ed. They followed this up two days later with a meeting where they demanded Farris resign.

Farris submitted a letter of “forced resignation,” explaining that she had been called into a September 13 meeting with the rest of the editors and pressed into leaving her post.

Farris told Campus Reform that although most students at Oklahoma State support free speech, but there is a “portion of students who value free speech until it makes them uncomfortable.”

More details here. It appears Farris wrote her op-ed as a result of being forced to leave a classroom because she would not wear a mask, even though the law apparently allows her to do so.
» Read more

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Italy switches from Arianespace to SpaceX for launch contract

October 4, 2021 9:05 am Robert Zimmerman

Capitalism in space: Because of the two recent launch failures of Arianespace’s Vega rocket (built mostly in Italy), the Italian space agency (ASI) has decided to take the launch of an Earth observation satellite from Arianespace and award the launch contract instead to SpaceX.

The article at the link describes in detail the history and politics that make this decision significant. Essentially, because Arianespace in the past decade has failed to meet the challenge of SpaceX, so that its launches continue to be more expensive, this government-subsidized business has tried to force nations in the European Space Agency (ESA) to use Arianespace rockets via political agreements.

With this decision Italy is defying that pressure, which in turn is going to increase the pressure on Arianespace to finally step up its game, or die from lack of business. For example, when the ESA agreed to have Arianespace build its next generation rocket, the Ariane 6, it failed to require it to be reuseable. The Ariane 6 rocket was therefore designed as an expendable rocket, which meant that right from the start it could not compete with SpaceX’s Falcon 9. It has therefore failed to win launch contracts.

Expect the Ariane 6 to continue to fade as the years pass, simply because the bureaucrats in ESA and Arianespace refused to take their competition seriously.

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William Shatner to fly on next New Shepard suborbital flight

October 4, 2021 8:47 am Robert Zimmerman

Capitalism in space: Blue Origin today announced that William Shatner will join three other passengers on its next New Shepard suborbital flight, presently scheduled for October 12th.

Today, Blue Origin announced actor William Shatner and Audrey Powers, Blue Origin’s Vice President of Mission & Flight Operations, will fly on board New Shepard NS-18. They will join crewmates Chris Boshuizen and Glen de Vries for the flight which lifts off from Launch Site One on October 12.

Powers appears to be flying as both a reward for her work at Blue Origin and as a engineer to observe the operation of the spacecraft.

Shatner, an actor for more than six decades and most famous for his role as James T. Kirk in Star Trek, is 90 years old, which will make him the oldest person to ever fly into space.

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BeppiColombo’s first images of Mercury

October 3, 2021 10:52 pm Robert Zimmerman

Click for full image.

This past weekend the European/Japanese duel-orbiter mission made its first flyby of Mercury, taking its first images of that planet.

The photo to the right is one example, cropped and reduced slightly to post here. It was taken by the spacecraft’s monitoring cameras, designed for engineering purposes, which means the resolution is not very high and the camera is positioned so that parts of the spacecraft were visible in each shot. For example, the white strut in the lower right is the spacecraft’s magnetometer boom, which also was used to gather data during the flyby.

Still, the photos demonstrated that the spacecraft is pointing correctly and on course. It will complete five more Mercury fly-bys before going into orbit in 2025.

The next flyby will occur in June ’22.

NASA issues request for commercially-built spacesuits for its Artemis program

October 3, 2021 10:39 pm Robert Zimmerman

Capitalism in space: After more than a decade of delays in building its own in-house next generation spacesuits, NASA this week issued a request for proposals from the commercial space industry for new spacesuits for its Artemis program.

Bidders can use the technology NASA developed for [its unfinished upgraded spacesuits] in its proposals, or they can use their own designs, the document states. The suits must be able to meet a variety of requirements, including up to six spacewalks on the lunar surface during initial Artemis Moon missions. They must also be made of materials such that less than 100 grams of lunar regolith is brought back into the “cabin environment” after each spacewalk on the Moon. NASA plans to award a contract by next April.

The plan is comparable to what NASA has been doing across the board now for the last three years, buy the product from the commercial sector in a fixed price contract. The company that builds the suits will retain ownership of the design, and can make money selling its use to others.

This policy approach continues the agency’s acceptance of almost all the recommendations put forth in my 2017 policy paper, Capitalism in Space, a free pdf download.

It also likely means NASA might finally get the spacesuits it needs for future lunar missions quickly and at a reasonable cost, something the agency itself has been unable to do.

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Inactive volcano vent on Mars

October 1, 2021 1:57 pm Robert Zimmerman

Click for full image.

Overview map

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped, reduced and annotated to post here, was taken on July 30, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The left image shows a pit that the scientists label a “vent” near the giant volcano Pavonis Mons. The right image is identical, except that I have brightened it considerably to bring out the details in the shadowed area.

As you can see, this pit is filled, and does not appear to have any existing openings into more extensive underground passages.

The white dot on the overview map on the right shows this vent’s location, to the south of Pavonis Mons, and in line with the giant crack that splits three of Mars’ four largest volcanoes. The vent is even aligned the same as that crack, from the northeast to the southwest. The black dots mark the locations of the many cave pits found in this region.

Was this a volcanic vent? If you look at the full image you will see that this pit aligns with a shallower pit to the southwest, with a depression linking the two. Visually this suggests this is a faultline which in turn makes for a good outlet point for lava flow.

Though the data suggests this is a volcanic vent, that supposition is as yet unproven. The full image does not show much evidence of a flow from the pit, which suggests instead that we are merely looking at a spot where the ground cracked along fault lines.

The Arizona election audit found significant issues that could easily have changed the final result

October 1, 2021 12:22 pm Robert Zimmerman

Click for full graph.

Now that the election audit of the biggest county in Arizona is complete and released, it is necessary to look at what it found. This article does a nice job of summarizing the audit’s conclusions, which in total make it very clear that a lot of corruption and incompetence occurred in the 2020 election in Maricopa County, some of it possibly bordering on outright election fraud.

The graph to the right, from the audit, illustrates this. In twenty-two different categories the audit found votes that should not have been counted because they were illegal or invalid in some manner. Of those, seven categories described illegal or invalid votes totaling more than 53,000 votes, five times the 10,457 vote margin of Joe Biden’s victory in the state.

Does this meant Trump won Arizona? Who knows? The audit did not determine the number of illegal or invalid votes that went to either candidate. What it did find, however, is that the entire voting system is corrupted and untrustworthy, and must be fixed.

The audit results have also revealed why the election officials in Maricopa County have been fighting this audit from day one. They clearly knew the election system was untrustworthy, and wanted to hide this fact, either to protect themselves from prosecution or to maintain their ability to defraud the voters.

Today’s blacklisted American: Louisiana health company to punish employees with unvaccinated spouses

October 1, 2021 11:27 am Robert Zimmerman

Coming to your town in America soon!
Death camps are coming for the unclean unvaccinated.

They’re coming for you next: A Louisiana hospital system, Ochsner Health Systems, has informed its employees that they will be fined $100 per salary check for having an unvaccinated spouse on their health plan.

From the memo sent to all employees:

New in 2022: Ochsner is implementing a new Spousal COVId Vaccine Fee as part of its 2022 medical plan premiums. This means, if a spouse/domestic partner is covered by one of our medical plans in 2022 and unvaccinated against COVID-19, a $100-per-pay-period fee will apply.

The chutzpah and irrationality of this policy is really beyond words. » Read more

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Two nearby asteroids found with more precious metals than Earth’s entire global supply

October 1, 2021 10:04 am Robert Zimmerman

The precious metals on asteroid 1986 DA, compared to the world's reserves

Capitalism in space: Astronomers have now identified two metal-rich asteroids in orbit near the Earth, with one having a precious metal content that likely exceeds the Earth’s entire reserves.

From the paper’s conclusion:

We estimated that the amounts of Fe, Ni, Co, and the PGM present in 1986 DA could exceed the reserves worldwide. Moreover, if 1986 DA is mined and the metals marketed over 50 yr, the annual value of precious metals for this object would be ∼$233 billion.

The graphic to the right, figure 13 from the paper, illustrates the amount of precious metals available in asteroid 1986 DA, compared to the world’s entire reserves (FE=iron, Ni=nickel, Co=cobalt, Cu=copper, PGM=platinum group metals, Au=gold). From this single metal asteroid a mining operation could literally double the metal that had been previously mined on Earth.

In estimating the value of these metals, the paper tries to account for the certain drop in price caused by the flooding of so much material into the market. It is a guess however. What is clear is that this asteroid could easily serve as a supply house not for Earth but for all future colonies in space. While expensive for Earth use, for colonies already in space the material would be relatively easy to reach and mine. The colonies will already have the transportation infrastructure, since they couldn’t exist without rockets and interplanetary spacecraft. And mining and processing this asteroid material will be far easier and cheaper than trying to find it on Mars and then process it.

Asteroid 1986 DA is estimated to be about 1.7 miles across, based on radar data obtained during a close Earth fly-by in 2019. The second asteroid, 2016 ED85, appears to have a similar content from spectroscopy, but no radar data has as yet been obtained of it, so much less is known.

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Biden signs budget continuing resolution, preventing shutdown

October 1, 2021 9:00 am Robert Zimmerman

At the very last second Congress and President Biden passed and signed another budget continuing resolution that will keep the federal government operating till December and thus preventing another shutdown.

From NASA’s narrow perspective, the action means that the asteroid mission Lucy will likely launch in October as planned. From the perspective of the nation, this last second action merely illustrates the overall failure of the federal government and the elected officials who have been tasked to run it. They are all incompetent, and wouldn’t last five seconds in a real job outside the government.

That the voters keep re-electing them also speaks poorly of America today. We all should be ashamed.

Dennis Praeger asks: Do you know anyone whom you could trust to hide you from the Nazis?

September 30, 2021 9:24 pm Robert Zimmerman

Link here. The essay begins with something that is always in the back of the mind of every Jew since the day the Romans kicked our ancestors out of Israel:

There is something about most Jews that few non-Jews know: We Jews often ask ourselves if a non-Jew in our lives would hide us in the event of a Nazi-like outbreak.

I don’t know if young Jews think about this, but nearly all Jews who grew up in the decades following the Holocaust often wondered: Would this non-Jew hide me?

If you are Jewish and have been educated at all about your people’s history, you can’t help thinking about this. It is a variation of an essay I wrote back in January, when it was clear the intolerant and power-hungry Democratic Party was going to take power. At that time I said that America was becoming like Soviet Russia, where you chose your friends very carefully because if you didn’t, you might find yourself betrayed and reported to the secret police.

My example was generic, applying to everyone under the thumb of a dictatorship. Praeger gives a more nuanced example, from the Jewish perspective where repeatedly the larger society decided all Jews must be killed. In both cases, you no longer can be at ease with everyone you meet. You need to look at each new acquaintance in very stark and cold terms. And as Praeger notes, you need to ask: Would this person turn me over to the Gestapo to save their own lives, or would they do the righteous thing, no matter the risk, and protect me?

These are questions Americans now unfortunately have to think about. More significantly, we are at a moment where we can not only think them, but we can ask them aloud, to people’s faces. We can say to people we know: Would you save me from the Nazis? Or would you hide in fear, or turn me in? By asking that bluntly we might finally get some of the “go-along-to-get-along” types to finally wake up.

Read Praeger’s essay. He goes into great detail describing the kind of people who are more likely to protect the innocent from evil, no matter the risk. You might be surprised by what he says.

The question you next have to ask: Does this describe myself?

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Today’s blacklisted American: Private school threatened with shut down by Colorado

September 30, 2021 1:05 pm Robert Zimmerman

Still asleep, and tragically, too many refuse to wake up.

They’re coming for you next: A private Christian school in Loveland, Colorado, is planning to sue the local health department because it demanded their students wear masks or else the school would be shut down.

Parents at Resurrection Christian School in Loveland, Colorado, were told on Sept. 15 that all persons entering school buildings the next day must wear a mask, by order of the Larimer County Health Department, or their school would be closed. The order allowed for medical exemptions but made no distinction in regards to vaccination status or acquired immunity.

The same evening, school Superintendent Jerry Eshleman vowed in a video message to parents and staff to fight the health department’s edict in court. He urged parents to comply with the public health order for the time being, so that the students wouldn’t have their school year disrupted by a forced school closure while the case was being fought.

Based on the article, it appears that many parents are trying to get medical exemptions for their children, with some succeeding.

Regardless, forcing kids to put on masks is the height of stupidity. » Read more

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Former Blue Origin employee blasts company for sexism and safety issues

September 30, 2021 12:04 pm Robert Zimmerman

Food fight! While the past two days have been filled with silly back-and-forth barbs between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, none of which really matters (which is why I haven’t posted anything about it here), today came the publication of a long scree by a former Blue Origin employee blasting the company for sexism and safety issues.

The rant by Alexandra Abrams, former head of Blue Origin Employee Communications, claims it is co-signed by twenty other present and former Blue Origin employees, but provides no information as who those individuals are. The accusations themselves are all hearsay, since Abrams simply recounts experiences of unnamed others, without any documentation.

Could there be management problems at Blue Origin? Certainly. The real evidence in the past five years suggests that CEO Bob Smith has not done well to get the company off the ground. Not only has Blue Origin accomplished little under his tenure, employees are apparently not happy there, with many fleeing the company.

Abrams’ rant however comes off more like she is a disgruntled former employee who was let go because she was pushing social justice issues rather than focusing on getting her job done. Her use of worn leftist phrases like “climate justice” and “gender gaps” suggests this strongly. The response from Blue Origin to her essay reinforces that impression, noting that she was fired for doing things that could have gotten Blue Origin shut down by the federal government:

Ms. Abrams was dismissed for cause two years ago after repeated warnings for issues involving federal export control regulations.

If so, and Blue Origin would not say this publicly if it wasn’t true, Abrams misconduct could have been very serious indeed. Moreover, as noted at this last link, she was the head of the company’s employee communications department, a division that shouldn’t really be involved in such issues anyway.

This whole kerfuffle reminds me of a similar affair at SpaceX several years ago. A disgruntled former employee made all sorts of similar charges, sued, and lost. I expect a similar result here.

Both companies are in the business of building rockets. Their goal is not “gender equality” or “climate justice”. If that becomes any employee’s first priority, as it appears might have been the case with Abrams, that employee has got to be culled from the company, as that person will only become a cancer that will destroy what everyone else there is trying to accomplish.

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FAA extends comment period for SpaceX Starship/Superheavy environmental reassessment

September 30, 2021 11:11 am Robert Zimmerman

Capitalism in space: The FAA today announced that it has extended the comment period for its environmental reassessment of SpaceX’s operations at Boca Chica, Texas two weeks until November 1st.

From the email announcement:

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has received requests for an extension of the public comment period for the Draft Programmatic Environmental Assessment for the SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy Launch Vehicle Program at the SpaceX Boca Chica Launch Site in Cameron County, Texas (Draft PEA). In consideration of these requests, the FAA is extending the public comment period.

The agency has also changed the dates for the two public hearings it will hold to October 18 and October 20. It will announce more information on those hearings on October 15th.

Orbit of biggest comet ever detected refined

September 30, 2021 10:59 am Robert Zimmerman

Astronomers have now been able to better refine the orbit and size of Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein, comet with the largest nucleus ever detected.

A new analysis, led by Bernardinelli and Bernstein themselves, found that the comet nucleus is around 150 km wide, based on its brightness. If so, that makes it the largest comet ever discovered, by quite a margin. Most are only a few kilometers to several dozen kilometers wide, while some particularly big ones, like Hale-Bopp, may be up to 80 km (50 miles) wide. The previous record-holder, Sarabat’s Comet of 1729, has been estimated at about 100 km wide.

The team was also able to calculate the orbit of Comet BB in more detail. This object is on an incredibly long round trip into and out of the solar system – at its most distant point, some 1.5 million years ago, it was about 40,400 AU away. Last time it swung through our neighborhood was about 3.5 million years ago, when it came within 18 AU of the Sun.

But its current inward journey will be its closest so far. Astronomers have already calculated that in 2031, Comet BB will peak at 10.9 AU, almost reaching the orbit of Saturn.

It is presently unclear how bright the comet will be when it reachest its closest point. It will be much farther from the Sun than most bright comets, but its large size may change what is normally expected.

Yutu-2 and Chang’e-4 successfully complete another lunar day on the Moon

September 30, 2021 10:52 am Robert Zimmerman

According to China’s state-run press, its lunar rover Yutu-2 and the lander Chang’e-4 have now successfully completed another lunar day on the far side of the Moon, with both still functioning well.

Yutu-2 has traveled a total of 839.37 meters, or about 2,753 feet. They are aiming for a location that is still about 3,400 feet away. Based on the rover’s travel pace, about 100 feet per lunar day, it will take them about another two or four years to get there.

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FAA clears Virgin Galactic to fly

September 30, 2021 10:35 am Robert Zimmerman

Capitalism in space: FAA yesterday closed out its investigation into the flight path deviation during the July Virgin Galactic suborbital flight, clearing the company to resume flights.

To prevent future issues, the company will request that a larger zone be restricted on future flights. The FAA also criticized the company for not revealing the flight deviation to the FAA immediately, and demanded the company make sure it doesn’t happen again.

The article at the link also notes that the Virgin Galactic employee whose job it was to provide that information to the FAA resigned the day before this announcement. There is no evidence however that there is any link to the two events, though it is very likely that person was made the fall guy to satisfy the FAA and Virgin Galactic.

Whether flights will resume in mid-October as the company has stated earlier is not clear, as there is no word about whether the manufacturing defect in the flight control equipment revealed by a third-party supplier has been resolved.

Ingenuity’s 14th flight scrubbed by helicopter

September 30, 2021 10:22 am Robert Zimmerman

Though Ingenuity successfully completed a preflight high speed test of its rotors on September 15th, when it came time to do its fourteenth flight two days later, intended as a short airborne test of that high speed, the helicopter’s computer sensed an issue prior to take-off and scrubbed the flight.

The goal of the high speed test and short flight were to see if Ingenuity could fly during the winter months when the atmosphere of Mars is thinner, thus requiring a higher rotor speed. Initially it was not expected the helicopter would still be operational at this point, so this is another example of it pushing its expected capabilities. The scrub however might be signalling the end date for Ingenuity, related to servo motors that help control the helicpoter:

Ingenuity performs an automated check on the servos before every flight. This self-test drives the six servos through a sequence of steps over their range of motion and verifies that they reach their commanded positions after each step. We affectionately refer to the Ingenuity servo self-test as the “servo wiggle.”

The data from the anomalous pre-flight servo wiggle shows that two of the upper rotor swashplate servos – servos 1 and 2 – began to oscillate with an amplitude of approximately 1 degree about their commanded positions just after the second step of the sequence. Ingenuity’s software detected this oscillation and promptly canceled the self-test and flight.

Our team is still looking into the anomaly. To gather more data, we had Ingenuity execute additional servo wiggle tests during the past week, with one wiggle test on Sept. 21, 2021 (Sol 209) and one on Sept. 23, 2021 (Sol 211). Both of the wiggle tests ran successfully, so the issue isn’t entirely repeatable.

One theory for what’s happening is that moving parts in the servo gearboxes and swashplate linkages are beginning to show some wear now that Ingenuity has flown well over twice as many flights as originally planned (13 completed versus five planned). Wear in these moving parts would cause increased clearances and increased looseness, and could explain servo oscillation. Another theory is that the high-speed spin test left the upper rotor at a position that loads servos 1 and 2 in a unique, oscillation-inducing way that we haven’t encountered before.

Because communications with Mars are now paused for two weeks because the Sun is in the way, the engineering team is holding off further tests until communications resume.