Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
The Cassini science team has released the spacecraft’s last shot of Titan, taken during its last fly-by of that moon of Saturn on September 11, 2017, and posted below.
Using data collected by an American instrument on India’s Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter scientists have produced the first global map showing the locations and quantities of trace water on the Moon.
The map above, reduced to post here, is the result. The green areas at high latitudes show the most evidence of water, but the amounts remain very tiny, and the evidence remains somewhat uncertain.
Regardless, this map indicates that the high latitudes of the Moon will likely be the most valuable real estate for future colonists.
Engineers have confirmed that Cassini is now on its final approach to Saturn, with a scheduled dive into the gas giant set for Friday, September 15.
The mission’s final calculations predict loss of contact with the Cassini spacecraft will take place on Sept. 15 at 7:55 a.m. EDT (4:55 a.m. PDT). Cassini will enter Saturn’s atmosphere approximately one minute earlier, at an altitude of about 1,190 miles (1,915 kilometers) above the planet’s estimated cloud tops (the altitude where the air pressure is 1-bar, equivalent to sea level on Earth). During its dive into the atmosphere, the spacecraft’s speed will be approximately 70,000 miles (113,000 kilometers) per hour. The final plunge will take place on the day side of Saturn, near local noon, with the spacecraft entering the atmosphere around 10 degrees north latitude.
We will get Cassini’s last images about 90 minutes after its death.
Imran Awan, Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s IT guy who is now charged with bank fraud, was initially banned when it was discovered that he was funnelling data and emails of numerous Democratic congressmen to a secret server and to Dropbox — against House rules — and then tried to hide this fact from investigators.
Now-indicted former congressional IT aide Imran Awan allegedly routed data from numerous House Democrats to a secret server. Police grew suspicious and requested a copy of the server early this year, but they were provided with an elaborate falsified image designed to hide the massive violations. The falsified image is what ultimately triggered their ban from the House network Feb. 2, according to a senior House official with direct knowledge of the investigation.
The secret server was connected to the House Democratic Caucus, an organization chaired by then-Rep. Xavier Becerra. Police informed Becerra that the server was the subject of an investigation and requested a copy of it. Authorities considered the false image they received to be interference in a criminal investigation, the senior official said.
Data was also backed up to Dropbox in huge quantities, the official said. Congressional offices are prohibited from using Dropbox, so an unofficial account was used, meaning Awan could have still had access to the data even though he was banned from the congressional network.
Awan had access to all emails and office computer files of 45 members of Congress who are listed below. Fear among members that Awan could release embarrassing information if they cooperated with prosecutors could explain why the Democrats have refused to acknowledge the cybersecurity breach publicly or criticize the suspects.
It appears that Awan might have been blackmailing these Democrats. There is also the strong possibility, though no direct evidence has as yet been found for this, that he and his co-workers were working for foreign powers in the Islamic world.
Link here. The article gives us a hint that the oppressive, thug-like, brownshirt behavior coming from many on the left is actually backfiring, and backfiring in a big way.
The term “taking the red pill” derives from the movie “The Matrix,” the trippy sci-fi classic. Morpheus, the resistance leader played by Laurence Fishburne offers Neo, the movie’s hero played by Keanu Reeves, a choice: He can take the blue pill and remain in the repressive artificial world known as the Matrix where “you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.” Or he can take the red pill and tumble down the “rabbit hole” where he will come to realize that everything about his life was a lie.
The left’s intensifying war on free speech has produced a surge of red pill videos. Some take Owens’ in-your-face approach. Others are meandering, hipster confessionals delivered with the wordy earnestness of characters in a Duplass brothers movie.
Read it. It provides a lot of examples of former leftists suddenly realizing that they have little in common with the modern left.
Is this happening? I suspect it is, but it is doing so very far below the radar of the mainstream press and our bankrupt intelligentsia.
The NIH has quietly shelved all funding for gun research, most of which had been instigated under the Obama administration as a propaganda tool to promote gun control.
The article from Science is remarkable — coming from a mainstream academic source — in that it provides a fair description of the perspective of the NRA and gun-owners.
Note: Reader Kirk noted my error in originally crediting this article to Nature, when it truth it was Science that published it. Post corrected. Sorry!
Link here. Those who have read my book on the building of the Hubble Space Telescope will recognize many of the same people and political maneuvers used to get the project off the ground and funded.
Note too that the idea of Cassini was first proposed in 1982, but it didn’t actually launch until 1997. Fifteen years. While today I think such a spacecraft could go from concept to launch much faster, this timeline gives us a guide on when the next Saturn orbiter might launch. At the earliest do not expect another mission to Saturn to launch before 2025.
Capitalism in space: Virgin Orbit today announced it has signed a contract with Cloud Constellation to launch the first dozen satellites in their SpaceBelt constellation.
The initial deployment of the SpaceBelt network will be powered by a dozen ~400 kilogram satellites placed into low inclination orbits. Taking full advantage of LauncherOne as a dedicated launch service for small satellites and as a uniquely flexible service enabled by air-launch, the SpaceBelt constellation will be deployed using single-manifested launches occurring in rapid sequence. The initial launch is expected to occur as early as 2019.
This definitely puts pressure on Virgin Orbit to produce its first launches as promised.
The Russians today launched three astronauts to ISS using their Soyuz rocket.
That ties Russia with SpaceX for the most successful launches in 2017.
China’s Tianzhou-1 test cargo freighter successfully completed its third docking with the prototype test space station module Tiangong-2 today.
Commands for the rendezvous and docking were issued at 17:24 Beijing time, according to the China Manned Space Agency, with the new ‘fast’ process taking 6.5 hours to complete.
Previously the rendezvous and docking process took around two days, or 30 orbits. The breakthrough will be used to allow crewed Shenzhou craft to reach the future Chinese Space Station (CSS) much sooner after launch.
Tianzhou-1 will soon perform a third and final refuelling test with Tiangong-2, before the cargo spacecraft is carefully deorbited over the South Pacific.
No word yet on when China might resume launches however. Since the July launch failure of their largest rocket, Long March 5, the country has launched nothing. There have also been stories that suggest the planned December launch of their Chang’e 5 lunar mission will be delayed now until the spring.
An evening pause: From their live concert, July 2, 1977 in Oakland.
I want to especially note the flag that drapes the entire back of their stage. Twas a free time in California then. I wonder if a band would dare hang such a flag in that oppressive place now.
Hat tip Mike Nelson.
Finding out what’s in it: With the departure from Virginia of the last insurance companies because of Obamacare’s unworkable rules, in 2018 people will be unable to buy individual health insurance in more than half the state.
Should nothing change before the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid’s Sept. 27 deadline for insurers to participate, parts of Virginia, including the Roanoke and New River valleys, will be the only places in the U.S. without at least one insurer, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Open enrollment starts Nov. 1 for policies that take effect Jan. 1.
This year, three insurance companies offered individual policies in the Roanoke and New River valleys.
But this spring, Aetna announced that it would no longer participate in the marketplace. Last month, Anthem followed suit. And Optima Health said last week that it would no longer offer individual policies in areas of Virginia where its parent, Sentara Health, did not have hospitals and providers. Although Optima covered only a small percentage of people in western Virginia, the company had been expected to fill the void after Anthem announced its departure, meaning it would have been on track to sell 100 percent of the individual policies in the region.
Of course, the blame falls on the Republicans, who had nothing to do with writing or passing Obamacare and have tried endlessly to either get it repealed or revised but have had all these actions blocked by the Democrats and a handful of fake Republicans who really are Democrats in sheep’s clothing. Sadly, it appears that most of the Republican Party has thrown in the towel and has decided it isn’t worth the effort any longer fixing Obamacare. Instead, we shall see the entire collapse of the health insurance industry.
Too bad no one predicted this collapse, except for every single reasonable conservative in the entire country.
The coming dark age: Because of the Democratic/Trump deal raising the debt limit, the federal government’s debt officially topped $20 trillion last week.
From March 16 through Sept. 7, every Daily Treasury Statement showed the total federal debt subject to the legal limit opening and closing each day at $19,808,747,000,000. That was because the previous suspension of the debt limit had expired on March 15 and the debt limit had been reset at the level the debt reached at the close of business that day–which was $19,808,772,381,624.74. The Treasury then started using what it calls “extraordinary measures” to keep the debt subject to the limit about $25 milion below the limit.
This is all a fraud. Not only do they cook the numbers to make the debt ceiling appear legal for as long as possible, the debt is actually far larger, as this doesn’t include the raids to the Social Security trust fund that Congress has routinely been making for the past few decades, and never paying back.
But hey, who cares? What is really important is that we call looters “heroes” and any cops who try to arrest them “racists!”
Our bankrupt intelligentsia: Journalist and author Sarah Jaffe went on Twitter yesterday to claim that the police effort to catch and arrest looters in Florida is the equivalent of “white supremacy.”
When she was lambasted by numerous other Twitter users for this dumb statement she doubled down, implying (with an obscenity) that her critics were all Nazis.
This minor story illustrates two things. First, that someone as uneducated and thoughtless as this person can get published and be treated as a respected author demonstrates the intellectual bankruptcy of our modern elites. Everything to her is race and bigotry. Capitalism is evil. Anyone who disagrees with her is a racist or a Nazi. Comparing this childishness with the thought processes seen when you read Shakespeare, John Adams, or William Butler Yeats, and you will see that the future of modern western civilization does not look good.
Second, this story shows again why anyone who has any intelligence should avoid Twitter. That venue is not for thoughtful discussion. It is specifically designed to cause people to hurl insults at each other, and only serves to lower the level of our intellectual discourse. And I am not alone in this opinion.
Far more fundamental is the way Twitter intensifies and amplifies pathological social tendencies among those who act within, report on, and write about the political world. It turns politicians, political staffers, reporters, editors, pundits, and analysts into petty, vain, childish, showoffy, hostile, vindictive, dogmatic, impulsive, careless versions of their best and most professional selves. This makes Twitter horrible for our politics and equally bad for journalism. The single best thing for both politics and journalism would be for Twitter to go out of business tomorrow.
Citizen scientist Gerald Eichstädt has done it again, assembling and enhancing the images taken by Juno in its September 1, 2017 fly-by of Jupiter to produce a spectacular movie, embedded below.
In his words,
This animation reconstructs the two and a half hours from 2017-09-01T20:45:00 to 2017-09-01T23:15:00 in 125-fold time-lapse with 25 frames per second, using 20 raw JunoCam images. JunoCam is Juno’s optical and near infrared Education and Public Outreach camera.
Trajectory data are retrieved from SPICE kernels via the NAIF spy.exe tool. The NAIF/SPICE environment is the way NASA provides spacecraft navigation data.
The movie shows Jupiter in a heavily enhanced way, in order to reveal detail.
Some of the raw images cover only part of the area required to render a still of the movie. In these cases, you’ll see the border of the raw image.
Each image is rendered into a short scene. The scences overlap and are blended.
Rendering the movie took about five days. Any shortcomings of the movie are a result of imperfect image processing.
The image above is a reduced resolution version of a panorama created by reader Phil Veerkamp of images downloaded today from Curiosity. If you click on the image you can see the full resolution image. It looks to more to the east than the panorama shown in my September 6 rover update, revealing more of the type of surface the rover will have to cross on its drive forward on this new geological layer called the Hematite Unit.
Curiosity has now topped Vera Rubin Ridge, but the plateau above is really not as flat as the image implies. The Hematite Unit that the rover is now traversing still climbs upward, and they will continue to gain altitude now with almost every drive.
Capitalism in space: Arianespace today announced it has won a new launch contract for two different satellites, bringing its launch manifest to 53.
The press release contains a lot of interesting tidbits:
Overall, it looks like this European private/government partnership is doing reasonably well in the new very competitive launch market. I still expect their business to shrink in the coming years, but I think they will be around for awhile.
Capitalism in space: A private British rocket company, Starchaser Industries, successfully launched a small rocket from the back of a truck yesterday and sent it about 4,000 feet in the air.
All the articles covering this event appeared to essentially be rewrites of the company’s press release, and provide little usable information about the flight. The test launch had the rocket split into three sections at 4,000 feet and return to Earth by parachute. This apparently was the intended test goal, though one parachute did not release.
Based on what I read, I must admit I am not impressed. The head of the company made a lot of claims about flying humans on a bigger rocket soon to come, but based on this launch I think that is almost all hogwash. Essentially this launch looked like a big model rocket, with little capabilities beyond that. Previous stories about this company and its head have been equally dubious. In one, he made ridiculous claims. In another, it was reported that his bookkeeper had embezzled 200K pounds over six years from the company.
All in all, I think my real issue here is with the press. I read five different stories about this launch from so-called major British news sources like the Times of London and the Daily Telegraph, and not one had the slightest skepticism, or did the slightest research. Each journalist also appeared completely ignorant of space engineering and the history of space exploration, and seemed more interested in touting the wonders to come from this British entrepreneur. As a journalist myself I found this incredibly embarrassing.
The New Horizons science team is hoping to send their probe past a second more distant Kuiper Belt object after its January 1, 2019 flyby of 2014 MU69, if they can find an object that the spacecraft can reach.
They haven’t found any candidates yet, NASA has not agreed to a mission extension anyway, and their focus now remains the 2019 flyby. Still, if they are lucky and can get another target, this would be a nice bonus for the mission.
The competition heats up: Russia today successfully placed a Spanish communications satellite into orbit using its Proton rocket.
Russia remains one launch behind SpaceX, 13 to 12, for 2017, but they have three more launches scheduled for September, while SpaceX has nothing planned. Overall I think it is going to be a neck and neck race between the American private company and Russia, the former perennial leader in launches, for the final 2017 lead.
During its first meeting this year at Amherst College the local Republicans club was accused of being linked with the KKK (a former Democratic Party organization).
“The perverse equation of Republicanism with white supremacy is now de riguer on the left. And nowhere is the lunacy of leftism more visible than at Amherst College, where a diversity of viewpoint and freedom of expression have long been vanquished.” Maximos Nikitas, an alumni and former Vice President of ACR [Amherst College Republicans] told Campus Reform. “That a virulently racist act was perpetrated at the school should incense any decent human being, but to impute that act to those with whom you politically disagree is vilely dishonest.”
The “virulently racist act” mentioned above was the discovery of a rope on campus, tied in what looked like a noose. Since such recent incidents at colleges have almost all routinely turned out to be hoaxes perpetrated by leftist protesters, I would not be surprised if this turns out to be the case here. Either way, it appears to me that this is another college parents and high school students might consider rejecting.
More important, this illustrates the increasing blind hate coming from the left. Increasingly, anyone who merely disagrees with them is labeled a bigot, a white supremacist, a racist, a member of the KKK, and any number of other slanderous insults. Worse, that blind hate is increasingly turning violent. If something is not done to squelch it, I can see some very bad things happening in the near future.
Capitalism in space: A privately-funded 3D printed rocket engine, built at Australian university, has successfully undergone its first test firing.
The engine also tested an aerospike nozzle, which is theorized to significantly increase engine efficiency but to date has never been flow.
Despite having four working communications and Earth observation satellites in orbit, Nigeria officials complain there is a lack of interest in using them by both private companies and international governments.
The reasons? Well, two Nigerian officials said this:
[The Director, Centre for Satellite Technology Development (CSTD), Dr Spencer Onuh, told Daily Trust in an exclusive interview. “What do you want them to do when there is a failure? Let me tell you, NigComSat 1R is not enough for this country; it is not sufficient. There must be a backup. Many TV stations and even the national TV network will be very careful to transfer their services fully to NigComSat 1R because it is just one. The stations are set up for business, and they would not want anything to disrupt their services,” Dr Onu said.
He said it was not an issue of redundancy, adding that there was a need for market expansion…. He said: “Even private companies that own satellites don’t have only one. Some of them have five to six satellites, but mostly communication satellites which spin money. The return on investment is very fast but what happens in most advanced satellite countries is that these things are given out to the private sector to manage; they are not under government management and you can see the results.”
But a NIGCOMSAT official, Abdulraheem Isah Adajah, disagreed. Adajah who is the NIGCOMSAT’s General Manager, Satellite Applications, told Daily Trust that it was not entirely true that Nigcomsat1-R was recording low patronage due to lack of backup. According to him, inferiority complex and the mentality that ‘if it is Nigerian it can’t be good’ is the main reason. He called on the Federal Executive Council to come up with a policy which would make it compulsory for government agencies to patronise Nigeria’s satellites. [emphasis mine]
Typical thinking from government types. One government official lobbies for the government to build more satellites, while the other says the law should require their use. Neither seems very interested in discussing the actual lack of market demand that might be making these satellites unprofitable.
The article quotes a number of other government officials, most of whom remind me of the two above. Only one hints at the major source of the problem (the government), by noting that bickering between different Nigerian government agencies has been a factor. For example, the government agency that provides satellite television to Nigeria no longer buys time on these satellites, claiming that they have no backup should something go wrong.
It is a good thing that Nigeria is doing this. The problem is that it is their government doing it, instead of a private industry looking for profit.
According to one Iranian aviation official, Iran plans to put a man into space within the next 8 years.
[H]ead of the Aviation Research Centre at Iran’s Ministry of Science, Research and Technology, Fat’hollah Ami, says Iran’s space programme is going on smoothly and efforts are underway to send a manned spaceship into space within the next eight years.
He said the Aviation Research Centre is now focused on its main goal to send man into the space by the next eight years. “We have had serious negotiations with Russian space centres and they are expected to give us their final reply,” he said.
The key fact revealed here is Russia. Iran isn’t going to do the flying. It is trying to purchase a seat in a Soyuz capsule from the Russians. Whether Russia will sell it to them depends on many factors, including Iran’s status in world politics and how cash desperate the Russians are.
Because some of its employees needed for a California launch in next week live in Florida, ULA has decided to delay that launch so that those employees can focus on preparing for and recovering from Hurricane Irma in Florida.
What I find interesting about this story is that it reveals that ULA, unlike SpaceX, apparently does not have more than one launch team, even though their staffing has historically been much higher. This limits their ability to do frequent launches, as well as launches from both coasts.
Embedded below the fold.
» Read more
Surprise, surprise! The Trump administration has decided that it will not consider prosecuting Lois Lerner for her harassment of conservative organizations when she worked for the IRS.
More and more, I think that this prediction of a Trump presidency, made in February 2016, will accurately portray most of the policies he achieves. This quote is especially clairvoyant:
The Senate and House remained strongly Republican, but they seemed to learn nothing. The promised repeal and replacement of Obamacare slipped from a Day One priority to a Day 90 priority to a “Somewhere down the road” priority. Trump also half-heartedly tried to build a wall, but then gave up, explaining, “Well, Mexico refuses to pay for it and we shouldn’t have to.” It was not long before Trump began to “grow in office,” and soon he was explaining how, “We really need these people here, these illegal people to do the dirty jobs Americans just won’t do. We need them and it would kill our economy if we stopped it.” He soon signed a comprehensive immigration law legalizing the millions of illegals already here and expanding legal immigration; there were no firm border security provisions in the bill. When confronted by a Fox News reporter at a news conference about this flip-flop, Trump responded, “That’s a very, very rude and stupid question coming from you. The voters, they understand you have to compromise and make deals and we’ve made a very strong deal. You are probably saying this because it is that time of the month and you women say crazy things then.”
He decided not to repudiate the Iran deal, claiming, “It seems to have been going very well.” The Iranians detonated a nuclear warhead in December 2017. Vladimir Putin sent his armored divisions into unoccupied Ukraine and reintegrated the country into Russia. President Trump called it, “Very disturbing, very scary, but it’s their internal business. It’s not our business, so we are staying out of it.” Trump’s 45% tariff on Chinese goods died in the House of Representatives, but only after Republicans beat back a coalition of Democrats and a few Trump-leaning Republicans.
Trump allied himself with Democrats frequently in a series of “deals” that sometimes passed, sometimes failed. For their part, the Democrats held their fire on President Trump and focused on the GOP Congress. But in the run-up to the 2018 mid-terms, the Democrats leveraged the fact that the economy was not improving and foreign policy fiascos like ISIS’ taking of all of Syria and expanding the caliphate. They turned on Donald Trump with a vengeance and re-took the Senate as well as many House seats.
While Trump does appear to be trying to rein in the out-of-control environmental movement with the federal government, and appears to be appointing good judges, when it comes to the swamp of Washington, do not expect him to drain any of it.
Prosecutors have provided a copy of the contents of a laptop belonging to Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (that had been apparently purposely abandoned by former Democratic IT specialist Imran Awan), suggesting that they intend to use the contents as important evidence in their bank fraud case against Awan.
Imran entered a House office building the night of April 6, two months after he was banned by House authorities from touching its network, and placed the laptop, a copy of his ID, and letters to the US Attorney in a phone booth, according to a police report. There would be little reason to enter the phone booth, and it would be difficult to forget items there.
Imran also left in the phone booth a notebook that said “attorney client privilege,” which could be a reason why prosecutors gave Imran’s lawyer a copy of what could be Wasserman Schultz’s laptop. Prosecutors said they were giving him a copy under the legal process of discovery, in which defendants have a right to evidence being used against them.
…Immediately after prosecutors gave Imran a copy of the laptop, Imran’s wife, Hina Alvi, told prosecutors she would agree to return from Pakistan to face charges, seemingly indicating she has confidence that she won’t face serious punishment for theft or cyberviolations, despite authorities being in possession of massive quantities of invoices that were systematically altered to prevent the equipment from appearing in House inventories.
Overall, it appears, though I am being very optimistic here, that the prosecutors might be making a deal with the Awans in order to gather evidence on bigger fish.
Read the whole article at the link. It provides a good summary of the scandal, and shows why Wasserman Schultz and many Democrats in Congress might be very threatened by it.
Our beloved Democratic-controlled Senate: A Senate committee today rejected Trump’s proposal to cut all UN spending for its global warming bureaucracy, including the IPCC, and re-installed the $10 million budget item.
It is important to note how the vote went:
The amendment passed 16-14. Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee voted in favor, as did all committee Democrats except for West Virginia’s Joe Manchin.
Essentially, the Senate is now controlled by the Democrats, with the help of a handful of fake Republicans. I should add that the Republican leadership is partly allowing this, by not imposing any party discipline on any of its members.
Link here.
The author tries to quantify the suspected bias of Google against conservative and climate-skeptic websites, and is successful in showing that these sites definitely show up much less in Google search results. In some cases he labels the search results so low he calls it blacklisting.
The results show that Google Search is heavily biased against conservative domains, and some respectable conservative domains seem to be blacklisted: thegatewaypundit.com, pjmedia.com, americanthinker.com, redstate.com, powerlineblog.com, drudgereport.com
The numbers for Drudge are especially damning, as they come up in Google searches less than any other site measured, despite having routinely more traffic than anyone, conservative or liberal.
It is still possible that the differences here are just a reflection of society, and that conservative sites simple get less traffic, but I increasingly do not believe this and this paper adds weight to the growing conclusion by many that Google has its thumb on the scale.
