Category: Points of Information

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

Global warming in Tucson!

10:07 am

Global warming in Tucson!

As I start writing this post it is snowing hard here in normally sunny and warm Tucson. In fact, this winter has been one of the coldest in years, averaging about 15 degrees below average, according to one long time resident and friend. He might have his number wrong, but without doubt this is the coldest winter I’ve experienced since we moved here in 2011. The image on the right was taken looking out across my backyard about ten minutes ago. The city of Tucson and the Santa Catalina mountains should be plainly visible in the distance. Instead, between falling snowflakes all one can see is whiteout.

Obviously, this is proof of global warming!

I am of course joking. A single storm, a single cold winter, or even a half dozen cold or warm winters, are nothing more than weather. Such events tell you nothing about the Earth’s climate or any of its global trends. Unfortunately, the global warming crowd does not seem to understand this. Get the temperature above normal for an hour, and they are screaming about how we are burning up and it is now necessary to abandon our constitutional rights to give the government the power to do whatever it wants, with them in charge.

And when the weather is cold? These same “experts” then claim that this also is proof of global warming. To any rational person, such claims are absurd, and serve only to prove that these experts are untrustworthy.

Today, Tony Heller at his The Deplorable Climate Science Blog put together a masterful essay outlining the failure of these irrational experts, entitled “The Five Top Arguments Against Climate Alarmism”, then summarized what this means in a second essay, “The Malicious Intent Behind Climate Alarmism.” As he so correctly concludes:

We need to have a robust discussion about our energy future centered around engineers – not decisions based on hysteria by politicians and academics who don’t know the first thing about climate or energy. The American people need to be educated, not fed propaganda and have their information sources censored. Our survival depends on an adequate supply of energy, not mindless hysteria and fear over an essential trace gas. Without carbon dioxide, life itself can not exist.

Without a reliable supply of energy, modern civilization can’t exist.

Read both of Heller’s posts. He backs up his conclusions with facts.

And by the way, by the time I finished this short post it stopped snowing. More proof of global warming!

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NASA schedules Orion/SLS launch abort test

8:29 am

My heart be still! NASA has now scheduled June 12 for its second Orion/SLS launch abort test.

Called Ascent Abort-2, the upcoming uncrewed test will launch from a pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida and last less than 3 minutes. Once Orion reaches an altitude of 31,000 feet (9,448 meters) about 55 seconds after liftoff, the tower-mounted abort rocket motor will rip the Orion space capsule from its booster to simulate a launch emergency escape.

The article also notes that this second abort test follows the last, which took place in May 2010, nine years previously. I want that amount of time to sink in. NASA allowed nine years to pass between its first and second Orion abort tests. Nine years. We fought and won World War II in about a third of that amount of time. The Civil War took about half that time. In fact, it took SpaceX less time to conceive, design, and launch the Falcon Heavy.

Any project that takes this long to accomplish anything is a fraud. It indicates that the goal of SLS/Orion is not to build and fly a manned capsule, but to suck money from the taxpayer for as long as possible.

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Astronomer discovers newest farthest solar system object

8:16 am

Worlds without end: An astronomer leading a team looking for a large planet beyond Pluto has broken their own record and found a new solar system object that is the farthest known from the Sun.

That’s when he saw it, a faint object at a distance 140 times farther from the sun than Earth — the farthest solar system object yet known, some 3.5 times more distant than Pluto. The object, if confirmed, would break his team’s own discovery, announced in December, of a dwarf planet 120 times farther out than Earth, which they nicknamed “Farout.” For now, they are jokingly calling the new object “FarFarOut”. “This is hot off the presses,” he said during his rescheduled talk on 21 February.

I like the names for both.

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Sweden fines man for writing insults about Somalis

9:28 pm

They’re coming for you next: A man has been convicted of the crime in Sweden of daring to write something derogatory about Somalis.

A 70-year-old man who recently was prosecuted for writing that Somalis are lazy and don’t work, has now been convicted of the crime in Sweden. It is “derogatory to the group of Somalis’ reputation” according to the District Court.

The man, who lives in western Sweden, wrote in connection with a Facebook post that linked to an SVT article, which stated that only one out of five Somalis have a job, that “no Somali can work they are the laziest people in this world”.

The verdict came last week. The man was convicted of hate speech by a unanimous District Court, and ordered to pay 60 daily fines of SEK 120, totaling SEK 7200 (700 euro’s).

It is astonishing to me how completely we have forgotten the concept of freedom of speech, which by definition must allow everyone the right to insult others. Without the ability to offend, there is no point to free speech, because no one will be allowed to point out the mistakes or foibles of others.

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Confirmed: Hayabusa-2 grabbed got a sample of Ryugu

9:22 pm

The Hayabusa-2 science team has confirmed that in the spacecraft’s quick touchdown on the surface of the asteroid Ryugu today it successfully snagged an asteroid sample.

Mission team members announced at about 6:30 p.m. EST (2330 GMT) today that the order to fire the bullet had been issued, and that Hayabusa2 had moved away from Ryugu as planned. But it took a few more hours for them to confirm that the bullet had indeed fired, and that sample collection occurred.

…The collected samples are key to this objective: The Ryugu material will come down to Earth in a special return capsule in December 2020. Scientists in labs around the world can then scrutinize the stuff with far more advanced equipment than the Hayabusa2 team could pack onto a single spacecraft.

The sample bounty will include more than just the material Hayabusa2 collected today. The mothership is expected to grab two more samples in the coming weeks and months. The second sampling sortie will unfold much like today’s did, but the third will be dramatically different: Hayabusa2 will fire a copper projectile into Ryugu, wait a bit for the dust to clear, and then swoop in to grab material from the newly created crater. This formerly subsurface stuff will be pristine, unaffected by weathering from deep-space radiation.

More thrills to come, obviously.

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SpaceX successfully launches three satellites

7:02 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX tonight used its Falcon 9 rocket, including a first stage that had already flown twice before, to launch an Indonesian communications satellite, an Air Force smallsat, and most importantly, the Israeli-built Beresheet lunar lander, the first planetary mission entirely funded from private sources.

You can get some details about Beresheet here. If all goes as planned, it will land on the Moon on April 11 and operate for two Earth days on the surface.

SpaceX was also able to successfully land that first stage, which I think is the first time they have successfully used and recovered a first stage three times. Look for this first stage to fly a fourth time.

The 2019 launch race:

2 China
2 SpaceX
1 ULA
1 Japan
1 India
1 Europe
1 Russia

The U.S. now leads China in the national rankings, 3-2.

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NASA selects experiments it wants to put on commercial lunar spacecraft

4:51 pm

Capitalism in space: NASA has selected a dozen experiments/instruments it wants to put on private commercial lunar spacecraft, either landers or rovers.

According to the press release, some of these could fly as early as before the end of this year. If so, I suspect they will go on one of the finalists for the Google Lunar X-prize, some of whom are planning to fly this year.

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Russia’s first 2019 launch has launch issues

1:01 pm

Russia’s first launch in 2019, putting an Egyptian Earth observation satellite in orbit with their Soyuz rocket, has had problems reaching its planned orbit.

Fregat is released shortly afterwards, firing its S5.98M engine to inject EgyptSat-A into an initial transfer orbit. Fregat will likely make a second burn following a coast phase – typically around 45 minutes after the first burn – circularise the orbit. After this burn EgyptSat-A separated, and Fregat will make an additional deorbit burn to dispose of itself into the atmosphere.

It was during the Fregat burn that Russian media reported it was tracking in a lower orbit than planned, although various reports point to the issue occurring during either the third stage flight or during the first Fregat burn.

Amazingly, Roscosmos then noted the mission was a success, potentially achieved by Fregat burning longer to catch up with the shortfall.

Remember, this is the rocket and aerospace nation that NASA prefers to use to send our astronauts into space. This is the second launch problem during a Soyuz launch in less than six months.

The standings in the 2019 launch race:

2 China
1 SpaceX
1 ULA
1 Japan
1 India
1 Europe
1 Russia

The U.S. and China remain tied at 2 in the national rankings. A SpaceX launch is set for tonight however.

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Even as NASA announces schedule for SpaceX Dragon test flight, anti-American forces at NASA work to block that flight

9:40 am

There were two stories today impacting the future of American manned spaceflight. The first is positive, the second is downright hostile to that effort, and could literally be called treasonous by some.

The first story outlines in detail NASA’s press coverage and schedule leading up to and including the March 2nd SpaceX unmanned Dragon test flight. The key event will be the flight readiness review on February 22nd. NASA will televise a post review press conference no earlier that 6 pm (Eastern) that night. That review will determine whether the flight goes on March 2nd.

That NASA has made this announcement indicates that the agency is slowly being dragged, kicking and screaming, into allowing the test flight to finally happen, after years of bureaucratic delay.

The second story illustrates some of the ongoing kicking and screaming that is still going on inside NASA. It is also more disturbing. As far as I can tell from the story, some of the anti-American forces within NASA’s bureaucracy teamed up with Reuters today to publish this hit piece on the manned capsules of both SpaceX and Boeing.

Two people with direct knowledge of the program told Reuters that the space agency’s concerns go beyond the four items listed, and include a risk ledger that as of early February contained 30 to 35 lingering technical concerns each for SpaceX and Boeing. Reuters could not verify what all of the nearly three dozen items are. But the sources familiar with the matter said the companies must address “most” of those concerns before flying astronauts and, eventually, tourists to space. [emphasis mine]

Note that these are anonymous sources. Note that their attack, a bunch of unsubstantiated leaks, is directly aimed at discrediting the efforts of both companies. Note also that if they succeed the ultimate and only benefactor will be Russia, since NASA will then be forced to buy more Soyuz flights from them, on a rocket that has recently had a launch failure and in a capsule that someone in Russia actually sabotaged during assembly.

The last highlighted phrase, suggesting that NASA is going to use its power to block the ability of these free American companies from privately selling tourist flights on their capsules, is even more egregious. Once again, the only benefactors of this action would be the Russians, who will then be able to grab that tourist business.

It is for these reasons I call these sources, with the help of Reuters, anti-American.

Moreover, the issues that are outlined in this article are very dubious, to put it mildly. Suddenly, after years of reviews that never mentioned any issues with SpaceX’s parachutes as well as seventeen successful parachute test flights, NASA has suddenly deemed that the parachute design has “some design discrepancies.”

As for Boeing, the article mentions the valve leak failures during a engine test last year. In response Boeing has had the valves redesigned and reordered, but they still need further testing. While this is a legitimate issue, I suspect it is being used here as a sledge hammer against this American company, not as an issue that requires intelligent review.

Where is our “America-First” president in all this? Political forces in Washington and within NASA are actively working to block our country’s effort to fly in space, for the benefit of a foreign power. Why isn’t Trump doing something about this?

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Buzz Aldrin’s son acts to block his father’s access to his assets

8:58 am

Sad: Andrew Aldrin, son to Buzz Aldrin, has moved to try to block his father’s access to the funds in two of his financial accounts.

Andrew Aldrin’s lawyer sent a letter last month to an associate in Morgan Stanley’s private wealth management division with instructions not to transfer any assets in two financial accounts in a trust of which Andrew Aldrin is a trustee. Buzz Aldrin, 89, has tried to terminate the trust and wants the assets distributed to him.
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, member of the first landingBuy Photo

The letter from Andrew Aldrin’s lawyer warns Morgan Stanley that the son, acting as trustee, will seek damages if his instructions aren’t followed. “Please govern yourself accordingly,” the letter said.

Morgan Stanley asked a Florida court last week to decide if it should follow the instructions of Buzz Aldrin or his son.

The family has been fighting for control of Aldrin’s assets, with two of his children saying he has memory loss and is delusional.

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Bezos comparing New Shepard to SpaceShipTwo: “No asterisks.”

8:53 am

Capitalism in space: During an event yesterday, Blue Origin’s owner Jeff Bezos made it a point to note the superior launch capabilities of Blue Origin’s suborbital New Shepard spacecraft over Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo.

Bezos, in the interview, pointed out the altitude difference between the two vehicles. New Shepard has typically exceeded 100 kilometers, an altitude known as the Karman Line, on its test flights. SpaceShipTwo reached a peak altitude of 82.7 kilometers on its most recent test flight Dec. 13, its first above the 50-mile boundary used by U.S. government agencies to award astronaut wings. “One of the issues that Virgin Galactic will have to address, eventually, is that they are not flying above the Karman Line, not yet,” Bezos said. “I think one of the things they will have to figure out how to get above the Karman Line.”

“We’ve always had as our mission that we wanted to fly above the Karman Line, because we didn’t want there to be any asterisks next to your name about whether you’re an astronaut or not,” he continued. “That’s something they’re going to have to address, in my opinion.”

For those who fly on New Shepard, he said, there’ll be “no asterisks.”

Bezos also indicated that he is increasingly hopeful that the first manned test flights of New Shepard will occur this year.

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Hayabusa-2 has begun approach to Ryugu

8:37 am

Ryugu during approach

Hayabusa-2 has begun its approach to Ryugu, aiming for a quick touchdown and sample grab at approximately 7:06 pm (Eastern) tonight. The image at the right is the most recent taken during the approach.

The risks? From the Hayabusa-2 website:

Our original schedule planned for touchdown in late October of last year (2018). However, Ryugu was revealed as a boulder strewn landscape that extended across the entire surface, with no flat or wide-open regions. Before arriving at Ryugu, it was assumed there would be flat areas around 100 meters in size. But far than finding this, we have not even seen flat planes 30 meters across!

During the scheduled time for touchdown in late October, we did not touchdown but descended and dropped a target marker near the intended landing site. We were able to drop the target marker in almost the planned spot and afterwards we examined the vicinity of the target marker landing site in detail. Finally, the area denoted L08-E1 was selected as the place for touchdown.

From the first link above you can see approach images as they are downloaded today, about once every half hour.

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Ohio music shop will refuse service to Trump supporters

5:05 pm

They’re coming for you next: An Ohio music shop owner has announced that they no longer wish to provide any service to anyone who supports Donald Trump.

“Dear Trump sympathizers. I am truly sorry, however I feel unclean and dirty accepting money from you. Please, politely shop somewhere else. Sorry, I would rather starve and close the store than participate in wrong-doing. Many blessings to you. I hope you understand,” the sign said.

First, in a free society this owner would have the right to do this.

Second, in a free society this owner’s customers can all choose to go elsewhere, sending their business to places not so filled with hate, and thus giving him his wish and putting him out of business.

Third, the hypocrisy is tragically hilarious. Wasn’t it the left that insisted that bakeries, wedding photographers, and such must provide service to anyone who wants it, and if they refuse for religious reasons the state has the right to destroy their lives?

Fourth, and most important: Imagine the amount of close-minded hate that is required for this shop owner to do this. Blindly, he lumps everyone who supported Trump into a single basket of “wrong-doing”, without evidence or even a rational basis.

Sadly, he represents too many in today’s the leftist political and cultural world. And if you support such people, you are no different.

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Hayabusa-2 prepares to land

9:54 am

Ryugu's northen hemisphere

The JAXA science team has released a set of images taken in January by Hayabusa-2 of its landing site on Ryugu, describing how those images helped map the region where touchdown will occur on February 22. The image on the right is one such image.

[It] shows a diagonally imaged photograph of Ryugu, captured by moving the spacecraft towards the direction of the north pole. The upper side of the image shows the north pole and reveals a landscape dominated with many large boulders. The white band extending to the left and right slightly below the center of the image is the equatorial ridge (Ryujin Ridge). The arrow tip marks the planned touchdown site and you can see this site is on the main ridge.

This is the first time we have images the northern hemisphere of Ryugu. In this observation, we acquired data on the equatorial region of Ryugu, the southern and northern hemisphere. Imaging the entire area is very important for creating accurate global shape models for Ryugu.

They should begin beaming images down of the landing approach sometime tomorrow, and will do so about every 30 minutes throughout the sequence.

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How NASA’s X-34 ended up rotting in someone’s backyard

9:41 am

Link here. The story is a wonderful illustration of the epic failure that NASA has represented for the past thirty years. They spent billions, and threw it all away before even one flight.

How the two partly built X-34 spacecraft ended up in someone’s backyard is fascinating in itself, and worth the read.

One detail the article misses is why the X-34 got cancelled in 2001: politics. This program was part of a range of space initiatives under the Clinton administration (including the X-33). All were overpriced and essentially boondoggles. When George Bush Jr. became president, his administration reviewed them all and junked them, replacing them with his own boondoggles (Constellation and Orion).

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ISRO to launch new smallsat rocket by summer

9:34 am

Capitalism in space: K. Sivan, the head of India’s space agency ISRO, revealed today that they plan to launch two satellites on the maiden flight of their smallsat rocket, dubbed the Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV), this coming summer.

Sivan also said that they hope to be making between two to three launches a month with this smallsat rocket. In other words, as the satellite industry shifts to tiny satellites, they intend to directly compete against the American private companies and the Chinese government for this new commercial business.

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Air Force awards launch contracts (3 each) to ULA and SpaceX

9:27 am

Capitalism in space: The Air Force yesterday announced the awarding of launch contracts to both SpaceX and ULA, giving each company three launches.

ULA will receive $441.76 million under a fixed-price contract to launch SBIRS GEO-5, SBIRS GEO-6 and Silent Barker, a classified space situational awareness mission.

SpaceX will receive $297 million to launch AFSPC-44, NROL-85, and NROL-87.

Note the difference in price. While the specific missions might have requirements that make the ULA launches more expensive, I suspect that most of the difference has to do with SpaceX’s ability to simply do it cheaper. The Air Force however did not give all the contracts to SpaceX because it has strategic reasons to have two independent launch companies. It also faces political pressure to support both companies, regardless of cost, as illustrated by recent stories about the political gamesmanship between SpaceX and ULA.

This story does illustrate however how the competition from SpaceX has forced ULA to lower its prices. For these three launches they are charging an average of about $147 million. Before SpaceX’s competition, their price per launch generally averaged more than $225 million. Isn’t competition wonderful?

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Trump signs directive outlining Space Force proposal

9:03 am

President Trump yesterday signed a directive that roughly outlines the creation of a Space Force office operating within the Air Force.

This directive lays out the groundwork that Congress and Air Force official must still work out in detail. The essence however is that this new office will initially be small, will takeover all military space operations, and will be a separate division within the Air Force, for now.

[The directive] does not kill the idea of a separate department but defers it to a later time, after the Space Force has a chance to mature as a service. “What we don’t want to do is do it all at once,” the senior administration official said. If the White House had pressed for a separate department, he said, “we would spend a lot of time dealing with bureaucracy and structure and not focusing on warfighting. We decided to leverage the capabilities and the expertise that is already resident in the Air Force.”

An Air Force spokesman said that if the draft legislative proposal is enacted, “it will be our responsibility to deter and defeat threats in space through the U.S. Space Force, which will organize, train, and equip military space forces.”

But while the Air Force has owned the space mission and has the technical expertise, it still faces enormous political and logistical challenges organizing a new branch that has to be independent and will have to be staffed with members from other services who must be qualified for space-related work.

“Personnel issues are critical,” the senior administration official said. “People in the space business tend to be very highly trained and specialized.” Key personnel issues are being addressed in the legislative proposal, which will suggest a process to transfer service members from other branches to the Space Force. “We’ll focus on the headquarters functions to begin with,” he said. So the Space Force initially would be a few dozen people and then would grow over time. [emphasis mine]

The reason they are emphasizing the small size initially is that they got a lot of opposition to the idea of creating a new and large bureaucracy, something the Air Force and Trump initially pushed. Whether its stays small once Congress joins in the negotiations remains doubtful, however, consider that at least one politician is already lobbying to have a new Space Force headquarters established in Florida.

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Lawyers for Covington high schooler file first lawsuit, against Washington Post

4:42 pm

You reap what you sow: Lawyers for Covington high school student Nicholas Samdmann have filed their first defamation lawsuit, this time against Washington Post.

The Post’s campaign to target Nicholas in furtherance of its political agenda was carried out by using its vast financial resources to enter the bully pulpit by publishing a series of false and defamatory print and online articles which effectively provided a worldwide megaphone to Phillips and other anti-Trump individuals and entities to smear a young boy who was in its view an acceptable casualty in their war against the President.

Unlike the Post’s abuse of the profession of journalism, Plaintiffs do not bring this lawsuit to use the judicial system to further a political agenda. This lawsuit is brought against the Post to seek legal redress for its negligent, reckless, and malicious attacks on Nicholas which caused permanent damage to his life and reputation.

The Post bullied an innocent child with an absolute disregard for the pain and destruction its attacks would cause to his life.

The Post proved itself to be a loud and aggressive bully with a bully pulpit.

The link provides the full text of the filing, which also serves as a nice summary of the entire story. Essentially, this was another example of the mob going after someone — this time a 16-year-old boy — because he happened to be white and an apparent Trump supporter. For those reasons as well as a bunch of unproven allegations, the kid was accused of being a vicious racist. In this case however the facts show the complete opposite, and every media outlet and celebrity that participated in the onslaught is very vulnerable to significant damages in court for slander and defamation. The lawyers have merely begun with the Washington Post, because it has the deepest pockets.

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Leftists reject Wisconsin judge candidate merely because he is Christian

12:15 pm

They’re coming for you next: A variety of leftists media outlets and organizations are running a campaign to reject Wisconsin judge candidate Brian Hagedorn simply because he is a faithful Christian who is also on the board of a small Christian private school.

The argument against Hagedorn seems to be that no faithful religious believer can also be a good public official, in line with a crop of similar attacks on federal nominees at the federal level from prominent Democrats including Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Sen. Cory Booker, Sen. Kamala Harris, Sen. Mazie Hirono, and Sen. Bernie Sanders. How convenient for the minority of secularists to define their tribe as the only one eligible for rule. And whatever happened to tolerance and pluralism, and not discriminating against people based on their identity?

“My job as a judge is to say what the law is and not what it should be,” Hagedorn said. “This is an effort to attack me for my faith and take this [campaign] in directions that are irrelevant to the job that I’m doing of applying the law faithfully.”

Not only are these kinds of attacks against people of faith the real bigotry at play, they are massively ignorant, in bad faith, and unconstitutional: “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States,” says the U.S. Constitution’s article six.

Make no mistake, we are only seeing the beginning this anti-religious bigotry. In only a short time the only people the American left will consider qualified for any government post, whether it be judge, jury, lawmaker, or bureaucrat, will be atheists and leftist activists. All others need not apply. And should their attempts to publicly slander their political opponents fail to persuade the public, they will next move to impose their agenda, by force. As the left has consistently done, repeatedly, for the past century, whether it be in Russia, Germany, Italy, Venezuela, Vietnam, China, or any number of other places.

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New sky survey uncovers hundreds of thousands of previously unknown galaxies

11:02 am

Galaxies without end: A new radio telescope sky survey has discovered hundreds of thousands of previously unknown galaxies.

This discovery is part of a major release of papers outlining a number of discoveries made by this new sky survey.

I could of course also subheaded this post “The uncertainty of science.” Wanna bet that even with this discovery we have only seen the tip of the iceberg of the number of galaxies out there?

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The InSight Martian weather station

10:47 am

InSight’s weather station is now providing daily weather updates to the public.

Starting today, the public can get a daily weather report from NASA’s InSight lander.

This public tool includes stats on temperature, wind and air pressure recorded by InSight. Sunday’s weather was typical for the lander’s location during late northern winter: a high of 2 degrees Fahrenheit (-17 degrees Celsius) and low of -138 degrees Fahrenheit (-95 degrees Celsius), with a top wind speed of 37.8 mph (16.9 m/s) in a southwest direction.

This daily weather data can be found here. For the weather from Curiosity, go here. Weekly global weather reports from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are found here.

Comparing the weather at the two landers, you will notice that it is generally warmer at InSight. This is not surprising, as Curiosity is climbing a mountain, and is now at a much higher elevation.

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Russia signs contract for two more tourists to ISS

10:40 am

Capitalism in space: Russia has signed a new contract with the American company Space Adventures to send two more tourist flights to ISS, this time at the same time on one Soyuz capsule near the end of 2021.

The article says that the contract is funding the construction of the rocket and capsule.

This deal suggests to me that NASA’s slow-walking of the American private manned effort has resulted in those private companies losing business to the Russians. Had both SpaceX and Boeing been able to launch their capsules by now, as I think they should have, it is quite likely that one of them might have gotten this deal. Instead, they can only look from the sidelines while Russia garners income using our space station.

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The military components of China’s space effort

10:32 am

Link here. Key quote:

Beijing now has a goal of “[building] China into a space power in all respects.” Its rapidly growing space program—China is second only to the United States in the number of operational satellites—is a source of national pride and part of President Xi Jinping’s “China Dream” to establish a powerful and prosperous China. The space program supports both civil and military interests, including strengthening its science and technology sector, international relationships, and military modernization efforts. China seeks to achieve these goals rapidly through advances in the research and development of space systems and space-related technology.

China officially advocates for peaceful use of space, and it is pursuing agreements at the United Nations on the non weaponization of space. Nonetheless, China continues to improve its counterspace weapons capabilities and has enacted military reforms to better integrate cyberspace, space, and EW into joint military operations.

The PLA [People’s Liberation Army] views space superiority, the ability to control the information sphere, and denying adversaries the same as key components of conducting modern “informatized” wars. Since observing the U.S. military’s performance during the 1991 Gulf War, the PLA embarked on an effort to modernize weapon systems and update doctrine to place the focus on using and countering adversary information-enabled warfare.

What this report makes clear is that while China’s space program might have many visibly peaceful components, it is still tightly integrated with China’s military. Everything China does in space goes through the PLA.

We should also be aware that former managers of their space program are dominate throughout China’s entire political structure. Being a good manager in space has become the best route to gaining a powerful political position.

Both facts suggest that China’s space program will for the next few decades only grow in size and ambitions, for many military and nationalistic reasons. This also tells us that it is likely not a good idea to do any cooperative projects with them. They will not really be your partner, but will be using you to further their own ends, entirely.

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A very old white dwarf star with rings?

10:19 am

The uncertainty of science: A citizen scientist has discovered a very old white dwarf star that apparently has one or more dust rings it should not have.

The star, LSPM J0207+3331 or J0207 for short, is forcing researchers to reconsider models of planetary systems and could help us learn about the distant future of our solar system. “This white dwarf is so old that whatever process is feeding material into its rings must operate on billion-year timescales,” said John Debes, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. “Most of the models scientists have created to explain rings around white dwarfs only work well up to around 100 million years, so this star is really challenging our assumptions of how planetary systems evolve.”

In other words, we don’t really yet understand the processes that form solar systems or even stars. This isn’t because we can’t figure this out, but because we don’t yet have enough information on hand. What we do know tells us that stars and solar systems both form from accretion disks. The information also gives us a general idea of the pattern of formation, but not much more.

For example, one question I have asked a number of astronomers is: Why are some stars gigantic monsters and others dwarfs? Based on present theories of stellar evolution, it seems to me that all stars should be the same size, as accretion is thought to end when the star reaches a heavy enough mass to ignite its nuclear engine. Yet this is not what we find. Why? I’ve never gotten a good answer.

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A river valley floor on Mars

12:50 pm

Overview of Reull Valles region

Today’s cool image focuses in on a Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) uncaptioned photograph taken of the valley floor of Reull Vallis, a meandering canyon that drains into Hellas Basin, the bottom of Mars.

The image on the right is not that photograph. Instead, it is an overview of the area surrounding it. The image location is indicated by the black cross, dead center within the floor of Reull Vallis itself. This valley, as well as Dao and Niger to the northwest but lower in elevation are all thought to have been formed from flowing water, all of which apparently drained from the east and to the west into Hellas Basin.

This last detail is very important and bears repeating before looking at today’s subject image. The river that formed Reull Vallis flowed from the east to the west. Now for that picture.
» Read more

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Branson seeks new capital for Virgin Galactic/Orbit

8:31 am

Capitalism in space: Apparently short of cash because of his cancellation of a $1 billion investment space deal with Saudi Arabia, Richard Branson has hired a finance firm to find him new capital for his two space companies Virgin Galactic and Virgin Orbit.

Sources said this weekend that Sir Richard was seeking funding that would value Virgin Galactic and Virgin Orbit, which launches satellites for commercial customers, at a combined sum of well over $2bn (£1.55bn).

The precise amount that he is looking to raise has yet to be determined, but people close to the process suggested it would be at least $250m (£193m), representing a minority stake.

The structure of a deal could see new shareholders injecting money into either, or both, Virgin-branded space companies.

I will not be surprised if Branson gets the investment capital for Virgin Orbit. I will also not be surprised if he has trouble finding anyone willing to invest a lot in Virgin Galactic. In fact, this shortage in capital might spell the end of this fourteen year effort at building a reusable spacecraft designed to provide suborbital tourism.

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Belarus willing to remerge with Russia

8:45 pm

The Russian empire resurgent: Belarus’s leader yesterday said his country is now willing to re-unite with Russia.

Putin has built his reputation as the man who added territory to the Russian Federation, not one who allows it to be taken away. However, there is a higher calling in a formal union of the two countries. It seems the Kremlin may believe that upon such a real union, the Russian constitution becomes ‘invalid’ and guess what, the new country needs a new president – none other than Vladimir Putin! Those pesky term limits of the old constitution will no longer be a problem.

“The two of us could unite tomorrow, no problem,” Lukashenko said in a video shared by a Komsomolskaya Pravda tabloid Kremlin reporter on Twitter Friday, reported The Moscow Times.

Russia has been applying strong pressure to force Belarus back into its fold, and it appears that pressure is working. And as the article correctly notes, nations neighboring Russia should be prepared for the same treatment.

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