Category: Points of Information

Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.

Update on the investigation of the coup attempt against Trump

5:53 pm

While the world goes childishly insane over the Wuhan flu (which by the way saw today another plunge, to 327 of the daily death toll), the investigation into the coup attempt from 2017 to 2019 against President Trump by high officials in the Justice Department and the FBI continues.

An article today at The Conservative Treehouse provides a detailed look at the attempted cover-up of that coup attempt, based on a review of information from FISA court materials that were released in April by the Justice Department under the leadership of attorney general Bill Barr.

The amount of information is large, and the story is complex. If you are concerned educated citizen however you are obligated to spend the time to read it. It shows how in the summer of 2018 upper management in both the Justice Department and FBI lied to the FISA court in order to prevent their illegal and unjustified investigation against Carter Page and Donald Trump from being discovered. It also shows in detail the corruption of the mainstream leftist press, which had bought into the fake Russian collusion story being promoted by these same high FBI/Justice officials. That press thus could not do its job and investigate the coup, for if it did it would reveal itself to have been dupes. Instead that leftist press decided to become participants in the cover-up.

The complexity of this story might explain why the criminal investigation by John Durham is taking so long. At the same time, the bulk of evidence now available to the public that confirms this coup attempt suggests it is high time for some indictments. If such prosecutions do not happen soon, then it will simply be too late. Above all some indictments must occur prior to the election.

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Martian swirls and curlicues

2:51 pm

glacial features in depression on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, is a great example of how a well known geological process on Earth, glaciers, can form features on Mars that appear most inexplicable.

The image was taken on May 13, 2020 and highlights the geology found in a depression, likely an eroded crater, on the northwest flanks of one of Mars’ largest basins, Argyre Planitia, located in the planet’s southern cratered highlands. The basin is thought to have been formed by a giant impact during the Late Heavy Bombardment around 3.9 billion years ago, when the inner terrestrial planets were sweeping up the last remnants of the Sun’s accretion disk, with that process causing the many craters we see on the Moon, Mercury, and Mars

This particular depression is at 41 degrees south latitude, in the mid-latitudes where scientists have found much evidence of buried glaciers. This is likely what we are looking at here. The section I’ve cropped has a dip to the south, which somewhat fits these flow features. If you look at the full image, you will see comparably weird flow features south of this section, flowing downhill in the opposite direction, to the north.

The problem is that not all the features fit the direction of flow, or any flow at all. I suspect we are seeing evidence of the waxing and waning of glaciers over this terrain over many eons. Disentangling that history however is confounding, especially when we are limited to only studying such objects from orbit.

I must also add that this image was labeled by the MRO science team a “terrain sample,” which means it wasn’t specifically requested by any scientist studying this geology. Instead, they needed to take an image to maintain the spacecraft’s camera temperature, and picked this spot for that snapshot. Their choice wasn’t random, but it also wasn’t based on any focused research.

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Student senate condemns student for daring to criticize the Black Lives Matter organization

9:58 am

They’re coming for you next: Because one student had the nerve to criticize the Black Lives Matter organization, based on what it itself claims are its goals, the Georgetown University Student Association Senate Student senate passed a resolution condemning that specific student and demanding that everyone at the university fall into lockstep support for that Marxist, racist movement.

This is what the future holds. Note that it isn’t the teachers or college administrators calling for this student’s silencing (though I am sure they applaud it), but the students themselves. The modern generation requires oppression and intolerance of dissenting opinions. It does not believe in free speech. It believes instead in tyranny.

This quote from the article sums up the situation, at least at Georgetown University:

Jacob Adams, secretary of Georgetown Republicans, also told Campus Reform that “students are routinely harassed online by their peers for contrarian opinions at Georgetown. It is not a good college environment for conservatives or simply people who disagree with whatever is the prevailing political push. As it stands right now, I would not recommend Georgetown to any prospective student, and I would strongly discourage alumni from donating to the university until they clearly demonstrate Republicans and conservatives are welcome on campus.”

There is one ray of hope, though one that is incredibly depressing in many ways. Too many American colleges have become havens for this kind of intolerance. They are also finding survival difficult if not impossible under the oppressive rules imposed due to the Wuhan virus panic. The result might be that these havens of intolerance might go out of business.

It couldn’t happen fast enough. The problem is that it will be a trade of one form of oppression for another.

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SpaceX about to set reuse record for fastest turnaround ever

9:09 am

Capitalism in space: If tomorrow’s launch of a South Korean military satellite by SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket succeeds, it will set a new all-time record for the fastest turnaround of a used rocket, 44 days.

The previous record was 54 days, set by the space shuttle Atlantis in 1984. The article notes however the spectacular differences:

By far the most impressive aspect of Falcon 9’s imminent record is the comparison between the resources behind Space Shuttle Atlantis’ 54-day turnaround and Falcon 9 booster B1058’s ~44-day turnaround. Around the time NASA and Atlantis set the Shuttle’s longstanding record, some 5000-10000 full-time employees were tasked with refurbishing Space Shuttles and the facilities (and launch pads) that supported them. Based on retrospective analyses done after the STS program’s end in 2011, the average Space Shuttle launch (accounting for the vast infrastructure behind the scenes) ultimately wound up costing more than $1.5 billion per launch – more than the Saturn V rocket the Shuttle theoretically replaced.

According to a uniquely detailed May 2020 AviationWeek interview with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Falcon 9 booster turnaround may cost as little as $1 million apiece and can be managed from start to finish by several dozen employees at most. In other words, even though SpaceX boosters are suborbital and stressed quite a bit less than orbital Space Shuttles, Falcon 9 reuse is approximately a thousandfold more efficient that Space Shuttle reuse. [emphasis in original]

I should add that SpaceX also has three more launches on tap for the rest of July. If all lift off, the company will have launched four rockets in only three weeks, which in itself will be a record. No private rocket company has ever launched so frequently and so routinely. And only Russia during its Soviet Union heydays has come close to launching with this frequency.

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Comet Neowise: NOW is the time to go see it

8:59 am

Comet Neowise is now visible each evening just after sunset. This article shows a bunch of images produced by people worldwide.

The comet will not be back for thousands of years, so this will be your only chance to see it. And usually good evening-view comets occur only once every few decades, usually not more than once or thrice every century. If you want to see a comet in all its glory, Comet Neowise is giving you a chance, and now is the time to look.

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COVID-19 update: Though deaths up slightly, CDC says outbreak no longer qualifies as epidemic

11:40 am

U.S. daily COVID-19 deaths through July 12th

But we’re all supposed to die! Even though the last week has seen a slight uptick in the number of daily deaths from COVID-19 (as shown by the graph to the right [source]), the CDC’s latest data update, through July 4th, notes that as of that date the overall death rate put the Wuhan virus below their “epidemic threshold.”

Based on death certificate data, the percentage of deaths attributed to pneumonia, influenza or COVID-19 (PIC) decreased from 6.9% during week 26 to 5.5% during week 27, representing the eleventh consecutive week during which a declining percentage of deaths due to PIC has been recorded. The percentage is currently below the epidemic threshold but will likely change as additional death certificates for deaths during recent weeks are processed. [emphasis mine]

In other words, at the beginning of this month the numbers said the epidemic was over. To underline this point, the CDC’s totals also include deaths from pneumonia and influenza, which therefore reduces the death rate for the Wuhan flu even more.

(Note: The two spikes on the graph of daily deaths on May 7 and June 25 are because New York and New Jersey suddenly added a whole slew of new deaths, under suspicious circumstances.)

The increase in deaths during the past week probably reflects the increased number of cases in the past month. It also partly explains why the CDC has not officially declared the epidemic over. They expected the death rate to rise, and it has.

However, even that rise hardly ranks as an epidemic. » Read more

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Russia’s next module for ISS passes tests

10:01 am

At last! Russia’s long-delayed next module for ISS, dubbed Nauka, has finally passed its vacuum chamber tests and is now scheduled for shipment to the launch site on July 21 to 23.

Construction of Nauka began in 1995, a quarter of a century ago. For comparison, in the last quarter of the 20th century Russia launched Salyut 1, Salyut 3, Salyut 4, Salyut 5, Salyut 6, Salyut 7, Mir, and its first five modules for ISS. All told those launches involved building and putting into orbit 18 different modules, with 14 comparable to Nauka in size and mass, all built and launched in about the same amount of time it has taken Russia to build Nauka alone.

At this pace it will take centuries for Russia to build its next space station, no less get to the Moon or Mars.

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Problems at Europa Clipper

9:44 am

NASA has fired the project scientist for one overbudget and behind schedule instrument on Europa Clipper, and restructured work on a second instrument for similar reasons.

“We’ve been struggling on cost growth on Clipper for some time,” said Curt Niebur, program scientist for the mission at NASA Headquarters. “Overall, we’ve been largely successful in dealing with it, but late last fall, it became clear that there were three instruments that experiencing some continued and worrisome cost growth.”

The outcome of the reviews, he said, could have ranged from making no changes to the instruments to, in a worst-case scenario, terminating the instruments. The leadership of NASA’s Science Mission Directive recently decided to keep all three instruments, at least for now.

The fired scientist had been in charge of the mass spectrometer. At the moment they have installed a temporary replacement, and have put the instrument team on notice that it now has a very low priority. Should it fall further behind in schedule or budget it could easily be terminated.

The spacecraft’s imaging system also has schedule and budgeting problems, so much so that NASA was considering dropping the wide field camera, leaving Europa Clipper with only a narrow field camera. Right now both have been retained, but the wide field camera might still be dropped if costs continue to rise.

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Police seize guns of Missouri couple used to defend their home from rioters

10:03 pm

They’re coming for you next: St. Louis police today used a warrant to search the home of the Missouri couple and seize the weapons they had used to ward off threatening rioters last month.

Authorities in St. Louis executed a search warrant Friday evening at the home of Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the couple who made headlines last month when they took up arms to defend their homes from protesters. During the search, police seized the rifle that Mark McCloskey was shown holding during the June 28 incident, KSDK-TV of St. Louis reported, citing information from a source.

The pistol that Patricia McCloskey held during the June confrontation was already in the possession of the couple’s attorney, the station reported.

There was no immediate indication that the McCloskeys were arrested or charged with a crime. [emphasis mine]

It appears to me that their only crime was that they are white and that they took up arms to defend their lives and home from a group of trespassers linked to Black Lives Matter/Antifa.

It might be possible that they did not have the guns legally (in the original video it clearly appeared they, especially the woman, had never held or used guns before). Nonetheless, they hurt no one, they were on their own property, the protesters were trespassers, and those trespassers had also made actual threats against them, their property, and even their dog. Their description of what happened matches well with the videos available.

In the June incident, Patricia McCloskey said, the couple was startled just before dinnertime when “300 to 500 people” entered the gated community where they live. “[They said] that they were going to kill us,” Patricia McCloskey told Hannity on Monday night. “They were going to come in there. They were going to burn down the house. They were going to be living in our house after I was dead, and they were pointing to different rooms and said, ‘That’s going to be my bedroom and that’s going to be the living room and I’m going to be taking a shower in that room’.”

So what does the local Democratic government do? Do they prosecute any rioters? No, they release them, and then go after these citizens to deny them the ability to defend themselves.

The McCloskeys fortunately have enough resources to hire a security company to protect themselves. Other ordinary citizens in St. Louis however be warned. If you take action to defend yourself, your local Democratic politicians will come after you. And they will move to disarm you so you will be helpless to the mob.

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COVID-19 and launchpad issues delay Ariane 6

10:00 am

The European Space Agency (ESA) confirmed today that the first launch of Arianespace’s Ariane 6 rocket will be delayed at least six months, to late 2021, due to lock downs related to the Wuhan flu panic, as well as construction issues at the rocket’s new launchpad.

“While we know that the maiden flight will not take place before the second semester of 2021, we cannot at this moment precisely quantify the delay, and we cannot provide an exact launch date,” Daniel Neuenschwander, ESA’s director of space transportation, said according to an ESA translation of remarks at a July 9 press event provided to SpaceNews. The French Association of Professional Journalists in Aeronautics, organized the event at ArianeGroup’s headquarters in Paris.

ESA hopes to have greater clarity on the delays in a few months, he said, according to the ESA translation.

It bodes bad for this rocket that they, at this time, have so little handle on the issues and the length of the delays.

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Launch failure for China’s new Kuaizhou-11 rocket

9:49 am

For reasons not yet specified, China’s new Kuaizhou-11 rocket today failed on its inaugural launch.

Many reports will say that this is a commercial rocket developed by the private company Exspace. That is not true. Like all Chinese aerospace companies, they do their work wholly under the supervision of the Chinese government.

The development of the KZ-11 began in 2015, with a maiden launch originally scheduled for 2018. The rocket is developed by China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASIC) and commercialized by the China Space Sanjiang Group Corporation (Expace).

The launch vehicle can loft a 1,500 kg payload into a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) or 1,00 kg to a 700 km sun-synchronous orbit.

The KZ-11 solid launch vehicle adopts a mobile launch platform, integrated power supply equipment, test and launch control facilities, aiming facility and temperature control facility, to carry vehicles from the technical support center to launch site, complete temperature control of payload, vehicle test and launch.

CASIC is in many ways China’s equivalent of NASA. And everything described in the last paragraph above, from solid rockets to mobile launches, are technologies developed expressly for military purposes. China will not let such things out for commercial companies to use however they wish, no matter what they claim.

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Falcon 9 landing leg falls during retraction

10:15 am

Capitalism in space: During the processing to bring a used Falcon 9 first stage back to its hanger after its June 30th launch, one of the landing legs unexpectedly fell back to the ground during retraction.

I have embedded the video of the incident, cued to the event, below the fold. No one was hurt, and it appeared that nothing was damaged. It appears it happened because a cable holding the leg vertical snapped just before the leg got latched in place on the side of the rocket.
» Read more

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Solar Orbiter operational, first images to be released

10:05 am

Engineers have now confirmed that Solar Orbiter, having completed its first close fly-by of the Sun, is working perfectly and is producing images and data better than expected.

They will release to the public the first images on July 16.

“The first images are exceeding our expectations,” says Daniel Müller, Solar Orbiter Project Scientist at ESA. “We can already see hints of very interesting phenomena that we have not been able to observe in detail before. The 10 instruments on board Solar Orbiter work beautifully, and together provide a holistic view of the Sun and the solar wind. This makes us confident that Solar Orbiter will help us answer profound open questions about the Sun.”

No other images of the Sun have been taken from such a close distance. During its first perihelion, the point in the spacecraft’s elliptical orbit closest to the Sun, Solar Orbiter got as close as 77 million kilometres from the star’s surface, about half the distance between the Sun and Earth. The spacecraft will eventually make much closer approaches to the Sun. The spacecraft is now in its cruise phase, gradually adjusting its orbit around the Sun. Once in its science phase, which will commence in late 2021, the spacecraft will get as close as 42 million kilometres from the Sun’s surface, closer than the planet Mercury. The spacecraft’s operators will gradually tilt Solar Orbiter’s orbit to enable the probe to get the first proper view of the Sun’s poles.

A previous spacecraft, Ulysses, flew over the Sun’s poles, but it did it from far away, and was designed not to take images but to study the Sun’s solar wind. Solar Orbiter is getting in close.

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Putin gov’t arrests journalist working as advisor to Roscomsos

9:24 am

The Putin government yesterday arrested Ivan Safronov, a former journalist presently an advisor to that country’s space agency Roscosmos, for passing military secrets to the Czech government back in 2017 when he was employed by a daily newspaper.

It seems the press in Russia is highly skeptical of these charges.

Kommersant [the daily newspaper in which he had worked] put out a statement in support of Safronov, hailing him as one of the country’s top journalists and a “true patriot” who was deeply concerned about the state of the military and space industries that he covered. The newspaper described the accusations against him as “absurd.” The paper noted that rights activists, journalists, scientists and corporate officials who faced treason accusations found it difficult to defend themselves because of secrecy surrounding their cases and lack of public access. “As a result, the public has to rely on the narrative offered by special services, whose work has increasingly raised questions,” Kommersant said. “Journalists asking those questions find themselves under blow.”

About 20 journalists, including those who worked with Safronov for years, were detained outside FSB headquarters in Moscow when they picketed to protest his arrest. Some were handed court summons for violating a ban on street gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic, an offense punishable by an administrative fine.

Many former colleagues of Safronov alleged that the authorities may have wanted to take revenge for his reporting that exposed Russian military incidents and opaque arms trade deals.

It also appears that the charges have nothing to do with Safronov’s work at Roscosmos.

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NASA completes Starliner review, finds more issues

9:15 am

Capitalism in space: NASA yesterday released the results of its investigation into the issues that prevented Boeing’s manned Starliner capsule from successfully completing its unmanned demo flight to ISS in December, finding an additional 20 issues over the 61 initially identified shortly after the mission.

In closing out the seven-month investigation, NASA officials said Tuesday they have now identified 80 corrective actions, mostly involving software and testing, that must be done before the Starliner capsule launches again. The previous count was 61.

NASA officials also admitted that they had been so focused on making sure SpaceX’s Dragon capsule was going to work that they became lax in reviewing Boeing’s work. Now they not only are going to focus more on Boeing, they actually want to use SpaceX’s approach to software development throughout NASA.

NASA is also borrowing SpaceX’s “robust” approach to software, which involves going back to the designers following testing for feedback, said Kathy Lueders, NASA’s new human spaceflight chief who until a month ago managed commercial crew. She wants to see more of that type of approach across other NASA programs.

Though it seems absurd and incredible that NASA has not been consulting with its designers after testing, it is also not surprising. When it comes to designing and building anything at NASA the management processes there have routinely done a bad job for many years.

As for Starliner, it is expected it will take a few more months to fix these issues, which means the next unmanned test flight is likely still set for sometime in the fall, with the manned mission to follow next spring.

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Results from Yutu-2 determine “gel-like” rocks are impact melt

9:04 am

Chinese scientists have now published their analysis of the “gel-like” rocks seen by China’s Yutu-2 lunar rover back in October 2019, and have concluded that they are glasses produced from melt occurring during an impact.

The authors describe the material as a dark greenish and glistening impact melt breccia, measuring 20 inches by 6 inches (52 by 16 centimeters). These features are signs of possible presence of glasses, which are usually sourced from impact melts or from volcanic eruptions.

According to the paper, the breccia — broken fragment of minerals cemented together — was formed by impact-generated welding, cementing and agglutinating of lunar regolith and breccia. The material, they say, resembles lunar impact melt breccia samples returned by NASA’s Apollo missions. In particular, similarities with the Apollo samples designated 15466 and 70019 are noted, a comparison made earlier by lunar scientist Clive Neal at the University of Notre Dame. Sample 70019, collected by astronaut and trained geologist Harrison “Jack” Schmitt, is made of dark, broken fragments of minerals cemented together and black, shiny glass.

The results are not definitive, however. The paper notes that the analysis is limited by the fact that VNIS measurements were taken under bad illumination conditions and other factors.

This conclusion is not surprising, as the rover has been traveling through a region dominated by impact ejecta.

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Proposed House NASA budget flat, with some surprising support for Artemis

8:51 am

While the first House proposal for NASA’s 2021 budget has rejected the Trump administration’s request for a total $3 billion increase for the agency to fund Artemis so that it can complete a manned mission to the Moon by 2024, it also provided about 18% of the funds requested for building the manned lunar lander required for that mission.

Back in February, the White House asked for $3.37 billion in fiscal year 2021 to accelerate development of the lander.

Democrats in the House have been skeptical of the 2024 launch date—some see it as political due to the timing of the next presidential election—and so have been slow to fund the lander. In its budget, the House appropriates $1.56 billion for “Exploration Research and Development.” This includes funding for the lander, Lunar Gateway, and other activities related to the Moon’s surface, of which more than $600 million can be used for the lander.

The House also provided a boost of $343 million to SLS.

My guess is that the Democrats in the House are working to keep Artemis going because of the jobs it brings to their districts, but want to slow it down enough so that it cannot succeed while Trump is in office. Thus, the release of some funds for the lunar lander, but not enough to build it, now.

The House proposal also includes a loosening on Congress’s mandate that Europa Clipper must launch on SLS. NASA is now given the option to consider other alternatives if SLS is not avaiable, which means that NASA can now consider using the Falcon Heavy instead.

This proposal must still pass the Republican-controlled Senate, so expect more changes.

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InSight’s mole is bouncing again

8:24 am

Plan of action for InSight's mole

The engineering team for InSight’s German-built digging tool, dubbed the mole, yesterday reported that it is once again no longer driving into the ground.

Previously they had been able to make progress by having InSight’s scoop press down on the mole. Once the top of the mole however was below ground, the scoop could no longer provide that support, and at that point the mole began bouncing again with each hammer-stroke, the surrounding Martian dirt unable to provide the friction to hold the mole down.

As shown by the illustration above, they are now going to try using the scoop to fill the hole and then use the scoop to press down on the dirt, with the hope this will provide the structural friction required to hold the mole in place after each hammer stroke. This effort will take time, and will prevent the scoop from doing its other work. They are therefore taking a pause until August before beginning the hole-filling operation.

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Midnight repost: No obscenities on Behind the Black

11:59 pm

The tenth anniversary retrospective of Behind the Black continues: I first posted these rules pertaining to commenting on Behind the Black on December 31, 2017, but have always adhered to them.

Anyone, without registering, can come this website and comment about anything (though preferably in connection to something I have posted), as long as they act like an adult. If they want to point out an error in something I’ve written, great. If they want to disagree with me civilly, even better. All they have to do is keep their language clean and not resort to childish insults.

Over the years since I have been amazed how many people in today’s increasingly barbaric culture can’t seem to do this simple thing. Thus I think these rules bear repeating, if only to outline to my many new readers where I stand on this issue. (Note that since I posted this I have relaxed the rules slightly. First time offenders are now issued a warning instead of being suspended immediately.)
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No obscenities on Behind the Black

I have stated this now bluntly more than a few times. I will not tolerate obscenities or curse words on this website. Despite this, today two different regular commenters thought it was perfectly fine to ignore these rules. One I have suspended for a week. The other might be.

The rest of the world might want to wallow in barbarism and ill behavior, but it will not happen here. This is my workplace. If you want to participate in the conversation on Behind the Black, I expect you to act like a civilized adult. If you can’t abide by these rules, then go somewhere else.

And don’t think it is okay to quote someone else verbatim and get away with this. As I noted just now in a reply to the suspended commenter, when Richard Nixon’s White House used the term [expletive deleted] everyone knew what it meant. It wasn’t a great solution, but it at least showed that they recognized that it was inappropriate to nonchalantly print obscenities, even ones spoken by the president. At the same time, they knew they couldn’t edit the transcripts, so they found a way to make it clear what was on the tapes without adding to the misbehavior.

Consider this a final warning. From now on I will not simply delete the obscenity and issue a warning. From now on, any violation of this rule will get an immediate suspension for a week. A second violation by the same person will get them banned.

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July 5, 2020 Zimmerman podcast on Task Force Gryphon

4:43 pm

The podcast of my two hour appearance on Task Force Gryphon on KGRA radio two days ago on July 5th is now available for download here [mp3]

Twas another fun show. The host did a nice job of allowing me to talk at length about a number of space and science stories, with the lead being almost a half hour about what I call the Wuhan flu panic. According to him, the show’s live stream ratings put it number two at that time, ahead of Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin. Quite nice.

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COVID-19 is dying; no evidence of second wave

12:18 pm

Link here.

Lots of detailed information, all of which confirm what I have been reporting for the past week or so. This quote however I think says it all:

The COVID-19 virus is on its final legs, and while I have filled this post with graphs to prove everything I just said, this is really the only graph you need to see, it’s the CDC’s data, over time, of deaths from COVID-19 here in the U.S., and the trend line is unmistakable:

[Click to see]

If virologists were driving policy about COVID-19 rather than public health officials, we’d all be Sweden right now, which means life would effectively be back to normal. The only thing our lockdowns have done at this point is prolong the agony a little bit, and encouraged Governors to make up more useless rules.

His graph is a smoothed version of the graph I have posted several times recently, showing the continuing decline in daily deaths nationwide from COVID-19.

The bottom line: The Wuhan flu epidemic is petering out. Almost all of us have nothing to fear from it. We need to reject that fear and go back to life as normal.

Sadly, I doubt anyone will believe either him, or me.

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Air Force looking to buy flying cars

9:35 am

The Air Force is looking to buy commercially-made flying cars designed using drone technology.

The advantages of vertical landing and take-off are many. For example, they would not need runways that are targets and must be defended. They can take off and land practically anywhere. In the past however the cost and practicality of making an airplane do this has been a major obstacle.

Normally I would see an article like this in the military press as simply a lobbying effort by a government agency to garner a bigger budget for itself. That still might be the case, but this part of the Air Force’s proposal stood out:

Because a key aim of Agility Prime is to work with commercial industry, there are currently no plans to modify the design of the orbs for military use or arm them for strike missions. “We will not put any military unique requirements on them because the last thing you want to hear as a commercial backer of one of these companies is that the military is coming in and changing a vehicle away from a type that would have domestic use,” Roper said. “We want to create a supply chain in the U.S. that is dual commercial and military.”

In other words, the Air Force wants to buy these unmodified from commercial civilian companies, both to save money and speed utilization. They have issued the general specs for the two types of vehicles they want (one larger than the other) and are accepting bids from private companies for delivery.

If true and if the Air Force sticks to this policy (which is essentially the approach I advocated for NASA in my 2017 policy paper Capitalism in Space), they hope to have these vehicles flying operationally by 2023, and at a cost of only “a few hundred thousand dollars to a few million dollars per unit.”

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Update on Starship test program: First tests for prototype #5

9:11 am

Link here. Lots of good information, including details about the growing assembly line of new Raptor engines.

Meanwhile, labeled “27”, the engine – logically assumed to be Raptor SN27 – SpaceX has just installed on Starship SN5 is also of interest. On top of Musk’s recent confirmation that SpaceX is already building Raptor SN30 (probably SN31 or SN32, now), SN27’s assignment to Starship SN5 confirms that the company has managed to complete (and test) at least one next-generation engines every other week since the first full-scale engine shipped to McGregor, Texas in February 2019.

For a brand new engine as complex as Raptor, that’s an impressive production milestone. Per Musk, the end-goal is to produce at least one Raptor per day in the near term – a necessity given that each Starship and Super Heavy booster pair will require at least 37 engines. To feasibly build a fleet of tens – let alone hundreds or thousands – of Starships and boosters, one engine per day is arguably the bare minimum required just for early orbital launch attempts and initial operations.

They hope to start static fire tests, with prototype #5 by July 8th. If these go well they will likely follow soon thereafter with the first short vertical hop.

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It appears we will have a comet show in July!

8:55 am

After two other comets this spring suggested they might become bright naked eye objects and then fizzled, it now appears that Comet NEOWISE will deliver, having survived its closest approach to the Sun to now brighten towards first magnitude.

For the northern hemisphere, this is what to expect if you wish to see it:

In the morning sky, the first views of NEOWISE could come as early as July 5 or 6 in the morning sky, very low above the northeast horizon. By around July 11, the comet will reach an altitude of nearly 10 degrees — for comparison, 10 degrees is roughly equal to the width of your fist held at arm’s length. Then over the next 10 days it will gradually slide back down toward the north-northeast horizon, eventually disappearing from dawn visibility.

A far-better viewing perspective will become available in the evening sky starting around July 12, when it will appear low in the northwest sky. In the evenings to follow, the comet will rapidly climb higher in the sky.

On July 22, NEOWISE will make its closest approach to the Earth, a distance of 64 million miles (103 million km). By July 25, the comet will appear 30 degrees (“three fists”) up from the west-northwest horizon as darkness falls. And on July 30-31st, the comet will be passing just to the north of the fine star cluster of Coma Berenices or Berenice’s Hair.

Will this comet brighten more to become comparable to glorious Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997? Keep your fingers crossed.

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