Category: Points of Information

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

SpaceX unveils access arm jetway astronauts will use to board Dragon

2:04 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX has begun installing its airport-jetway-like access arm that astronauts will use to board Dragon at Launchpad 39A in anticipation of the first manned flight in April 2019.

They were originally going to install the jetway after the first unmanned demo flight, which they hoped to fly this month. That plan has now changed.

Prior to the visual milestone this week of the Crew Access Arm, or CAA, being moved to the pad surface and the base of the Fixed Service Structure (launch tower), previous information from SpaceX and NASA indicated that the arm would be installed after the Dragon’s uncrewed demo flight.

However, that schedule was based around a launch of the uncrewed Dragon flight, DM-1, in August 2018.

With NASA announcing a 3-month slip to the DM-1 flight (largely due to ISS scheduling and crew reduction aboard the International Space Station in the coming months), SpaceX found itself with an unanticipated delay to the DM-1 flight – which in turn opened up a possibility that didn’t exist before to install the CAA in August.

…But now that DM-1 is NET (No Earlier Than) November – a date Gwynne Shotwell is confident the company will meet, SpaceX is forging ahead with CAA installation because, quite simply, there is no reason to wait, at this point, to install the arm after DM-1.

Making the crew access arm resemble an airport jetway is a fine example of the pizazz that helps sell SpaceX. It also helps make space operations appear more like an ordinary transportation option, something that is necessary if the human race is ever going to become truly spacefaring.

Hat tip to reader Kirk.

9 comments

Opportunity’s uncertain future

11:24 pm

Link here. This article from JPL provides a detailed status report on the rover, as well as what will happen if they should regain communications.

After the first time engineers hear from Opportunity, there could be a lag of several weeks before a second time. It’s like a patient coming out of a coma: It takes time to fully recover. It may take several communication sessions before engineers have enough information to take action.

The first thing to do is learn more about the state of the rover. Opportunity’s team will ask for a history of the rover’s battery and solar cells and take its temperature. If the clock lost track of time, it will be reset. The rover would take pictures of itself to see whether dust might be caked on sensitive parts, and test actuators to see if dust slipped inside, affecting its joints.

Once they’ve gathered all this data, the team would take a poll about whether they’re ready to attempt a full recovery.

Even if engineers hear back from Opportunity, there’s a real possibility the rover won’t be the same. The rover’s batteries could have discharged so much power — and stayed inactive so long — that their capacity is reduced. If those batteries can’t hold as much charge, it could affect the rover’s continued operations. It could also mean that energy-draining behavior, like running its heaters during winter, could cause the batteries to brown out.

They remain hopeful, but this article is clearly meant to prepare the public for the possibility that Opportunity’s long journey on Mars might have finally ended.

5 comments

An update on Trump appointments to the federal circuit courts

10:13 pm

Link here. The article provides a very clear status report on the number of remaining vacancies nationwide, and the politics that explain the nomination status for the 9th circuit court.

The Senate has confirmed a record 24 new circuit court judges nationwide in 20 months — with two more nominees scheduled for votes this week. But Trump has made far less progress in the jurisdiction he criticizes the most: the liberal-leaning U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, including California and eight other Western states.

Since Trump took office, the Senate has confirmed only one 9th Circuit judge — in Hawaii — leaving seven openings. A nominee in Oregon was abruptly withdrawn last month when it became clear he lacked the votes for Senate approval. And Trump has yet to even nominate anyone for the three vacancies in California, partly because of a standoff with Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris.

But there are signs that the administration is beginning to set its sights on the 9th Circuit, likely triggering a bruising fight with Democrats. For one thing, Trump is running out of vacancies in other circuits, particularly in conservative states where confirmation is easier. “They’ve been focusing on lower-hanging fruit,” said Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute. “After a while there are only so many seats to fill.”

More than half of the 13 vacancies remaining nationwide are on the 9th Circuit.

It appears to me that the Trump administration strategy has been to hold off in these liberal states until after the November election, betting that the Democrats will lose seats in the Senate and thus have less ability to block these nominations. This is a risky but reasonable strategy, considering the number of vulnerable Democratic Senators up for election in states Trump won handily in 2016.

One comment

Warren: Federal government must have more control over large corporations

10:38 am

They’re coming for you next: Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) this week proposed a new law that would give the federal government more control and power over large corporations.

The bill would create a new bureaucracy, would require all corporations with more than $1 billion in annual revenue to get that bureaucracy’s permission to operate, and require that 40% of their corporate boards be elected by employees.

To translate this into plain language, this is simply a power grab by Democrat Warren, which of course is par for the course for any Democrat. Give them the power to run things, and everything will be perfect! We can see what they mean simply by looking at the past fascist efforts of socialists in Venezuela, the Soviet Union, East Germany, North Korea, and every other socialist paradise where all power was centralized into the hands of ideologues like Warren.

Don’t you want the same here for America?

15 comments

Ancient drainage on Mars?

9:49 am

Drainage on Mars?

Cool image time! The image on the right, cropped from the original to post here, was taken by Mars Odyssey on May 13, 2018, and shows what clearly looks like a point where a south-to-north drainage broke through a cliff wall to allow a liquid to flow down into the larger and deeper east-west flowing canyon.

The caption at the website for this image provides only a little analysis.

The right angle intersection of the depressions in this VIS image is one of the graben that form Sacra Fossae. The fossae are located on Sacra Mensa, near the beginning of Kasei Valles. Graben are depressions caused by parallel faults where a block of material drops down along the fault face.

According to this geological interpretation, the depressions initially formed due to this geological process. The image however suggests that a flow of liquid also played a part.

Overview map

This region, indicated by the white cross on the map to the right, is part of the vast drainages that flow down from Mars’ four giant Martian volcanoes. It is located north of Valles Marineris, the largest of all these drainages. This region is also where you find a lot of chaos terrain, which is what the hummocky depression at the bottom of the image resembles. Much of this mysterious geology is thought to have been formed by the liquid water that is theorized to have once flowed down from the volcanoes. Here, it appears that the liquid ponded in the depression at the bottom of the image until it found a path along the north-south graben to break through into the east-west deeper graben.

Leave a comment

State Department claims orbiting Russian satellite is a military threat

9:19 am

At a conference yesterday a State Department official claimed that an orbiting Russian satellite is behavior in a manner that suggests an unstated military purpose.

Russia has described the satellite in question as a “space apparatus inspector,” Yleem Poblete, assistant secretary for arms control, verification and compliance at the U.S. State Department, said at a conference on disarmament in Geneva yesterday. “But its behavior on orbit was inconsistent with anything seen before from on-orbit inspection or space situational-awareness capabilities, including other Russian inspection-satellite activities. We are concerned with what appears to be very abnormal behavior by a declared ‘space apparatus inspector,”’ Poblete said.

“We don’t know for certain what it is, and there is no way to verify it,” she added. “But Russian intentions with respect to this satellite are unclear and are obviously a very troubling development — particularly when considered in concert with statements by Russia’s Space Force commander, who highlighted that ‘assimilate[ing] new prototypes of weapons [into] Space Forces’ military units’ is a ‘main task facing the Aerospace Forces space troops.'”

If you read the whole speech, you will discover that much of this is somewhat overstated, and that it is simply part of the Trump administration’s aggressive lobbying in favor of creating a Space Force. I don’t deny that this satellite could be testing technologies that could have military uses. I can also recognize it when a government official is trying to use the press to advocate for more funding. At no point does Poblete describe in detail the behavior that makes them think this satellite is doing things “inconsistent with anything seen before from on-orbit inspection or space situational-awareness capabilities.” In fact, if it is making unusual orbital changes that is very consistent with these purposes since any satellite designed to make orbital inspections of other facilities would need that capability.

In fact, I bet it isn’t the satellite’s activity that concerns them, but its vague description. The Russians really haven’t told us what it is. While this is surely a concern, this speech’s purpose is to lobby for the Space Force, not pressure the Russians to provide more information.

3 comments

Second Japanese official indicted in JAXA bribery scandal

8:59 am

Japanese authorities have now indicted a second government official for taking bribes in connection with space work by the country’s space agency JAXA.

Kazuaki Kawabata, 57, the former director-general for international affairs at the ministry, allegedly received bribes worth about 1.5 million yen ($13,570) in the form of wining and dining.

Koji Taniguchi, 47, who served as an executive of a medical care consulting company, was also indicted on Aug. 15 on a charge of providing the bribes to Kawabata. Taniguchi had already been indicted in a different scandal on a charge of helping another education ministry official, Futoshi Sano, receive bribes from Tokyo Medical University executives.

According to the announcement by the Special Investigation Department of the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office, Kawabata was on loan to JAXA from August 2015 to March 2017, where he worked as a vice president. During the period, he was wined and dined more than 20 times in return for giving favors to the consulting company. The lavish drinks and dining totaled 1.5 million yen, including taxi fares.

None of this is really news. It is standard operating procedure at the higher levels of most government operations. These guys simply weren’t smart enough to disguise their corruption very well.

Leave a comment

China unveils next lunar rover

8:54 am

The new colonial movement: In unveiling its next lunar rover, China today also announced they will hold a contest to name it.

Images displayed at Wednesday’s press conference showed the rover was a rectangular box with two foldable solar panels and six wheels. It is 1.5 meters long, 1 meter wide and 1.1 meters high.

Wu Weiren, the chief designer of China’s lunar probe program, said the Chang’e-4 rover largely kept the shape and conditions of its predecessor, Yutu (Jade Rabbit), China’s first lunar rover for the Chang’e-3 lunar probe in 2013. However, it also has adaptable parts and an adjustable payload configuration to deal with the complex terrain on the far side of the moon, the demand of relay communication, and the actual needs of the scientific objectives, according to space scientists.

Like Yutu, the rover will be equipped with four scientific payloads, including a panoramic camera, infrared imaging spectrometer and radar measurement devices, to obtain images of moon’s surface and detect lunar soil and structure.

The Chang’e-4 lunar probe will land on the Aitken Basin of the lunar south pole region on the far side of the moon, which is a hot spot for scientific and space exploration. Direct communication with the far side of the moon, however, is not possible, which is one of the many challenges for the Chang’e-4 lunar probe mission. China launched a relay satellite, named Queqiao, in May, to set up a communication link between the Earth and Chang’e-4 lunar probe.

I am not sure what they mean by “adaptable parts and an adjustable payload configuration.” That sounds like they upgraded this rover’s design to allow them to use it to build many similar rovers for use elsewhere, not just on the Moon. This sounds good, but the conditions on other planets are so different I’m not sure a direct transfer of the rover will work very well.

Chang’e-4’s launch is presently scheduled for December.

4 comments

A gas giant exoplanet so hot it resembles a star

8:45 am

Link here. Key quote:

This sweltering exoplanet, located about 620 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Cygnus, is what astronomers call an “ultrahot Jupiter.” KELT-9b is a giant gas world like Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. But it’s way bigger — it has three times the mass and twice the diameter of Jupiter — and it orbits extremely close to its hot parent star, KELT-9.

“Ultrahot Jupiter” is an unofficial term for a hot Jupiter exoplanet with temperatures exceeding 3,100 degrees Fahrenheit (1,700 degrees Celsius). They “are so hot that they have some resemblance to being stars even though they’re planets,” Kevin Heng, an astrophysicist at the University of Bern in Switzerland who participated in the study, told Space.com. KELT-9b can reach temperatures of up to 7,800 degrees F (4,300 degrees C).

This record-breaking heat enabled astronomers to detect iron and titanium in KELT-9b’s atmosphere. While researchers have long suspected that these elements are present on some exoplanets — iron is one of the most abundant elements in the universe — it’s difficult to detect them in cooler environments because the atoms are mostly “trapped in other molecules,” Heng said. However, KELT-9b is so hot that the clouds don’t condense in its atmosphere, allowing individual atoms of iron and other metals to fly solo.

Titanium has been found previously in the atmosphere’s of other exoplanets, but only as part of a molecule.

One comment

Russian astronauts complete 8 hour spacewalk

8:36 am

Link here. Besides doing some basic maintenance work as well as literally tossing four cubesats into independent orbit, the most intriguing work was the installation of a German/Russian antenna designed to track animals.

Icarus is a collaborative environmental experiment between the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and Roscosmos to study the migratory patterns of small animals on Earth. It consists of an antenna and GPS hardware to track the movements of animals that have been tagged with small GPS receivers.

The experiment may provide data about how animals move from one location to another, how animal population density shifts over time, and how diseases spread.

Leave a comment

Trump revokes Brennan’s security clearance

2:39 pm

As threatened last week, President Trump today revoked the security clearance for former CIA director and anti-Trump CNN talking head John Brennan.

President Trump on Wednesday revoked the security clearance of former CIA director John Brennan, citing his “erratic conduct and behavior.” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, reading a statement from the president, said Mr. Brennan “leveraged his status as a former high-ranking official” to make false charges against the administration.

Mr. Trump’s statement began, “As the head of the executive branch and commander-in-chief, I have a unique constitutional responsibility to protect the nation’s classified information, including by controlling access to it. Today in fulfilling that responsibility, I’ve decided to revoke the security clearance of John Brennan, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency.”

The president said Mr. Brennan’s actions have “exceeded the limits of any professional courtesy.”

I’m not sure what difference this will make, as it seems a large percentage of the people who work for the CIA are as partisan as Brennan, will gladly leak any information to him that might harm Trump, and know that they likely face no consequences because the law seemingly does not apply to those allied with the Democrats.

15 comments

Cryptic terrain in Martian high southern latitudes

12:09 pm

Cryptic terrain in Reynolds Crater near Mars south pole

Cool image time! The image on the right is a small cropped section from a larger image taken of the floor of Reynolds Crater, near the margins of the Martian southern polar carbon dioxide icecap.

The image was part of the August 1, 2018 image release from the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and was taken on July 5, 2018. Because that was during the peak of now clearing global dust storm, a large majority of MRO’s images were obscured. Only images taken at high latitudes appeared clear and sharp.

The image link, which has no caption, calls this “cryptic terrain.” Since this is at the margin of the polar cap, the white areas are almost certainly still-frozen dry ice. The white strip down the center of the image appears to be a low drainage gully, made even more evident on the full image.

What are the dark spots however? These are probably related to the dark spiders that appear wherever the carbon dioxide starts to melt and evaporate into gas, releasing the darker dust from below to coat the surface. The dark spots in this image are probably that same darker dust, but why it is scattered about as spots and splotches is a mystery. It does appear that the dark areas more completely cover the higher terrain, but why and if so is definitely unclear.

Back in 1999 I attended a press conference just prior to the failure of Mars Polar Lander. One of the mission’s investigators explained that, based on the orbiter images available at the time, they expected the lander to see some very weird land forms once it reached the surface, shaped in ways that are not seen on Earth. Unfortunately, contact with the spacecraft was lost just before it entered the Martian atmosphere, and was never recovered.

This image however remains me of that scientist’s lost expectation. The seasonal growth and retreat of the Martian icecaps will likely create some strange geology, which is only hinted at in this particular MRO image.

Leave a comment

A different type of color scale for maps that the color-blind can read

11:34 am

Scientists have devised a different type of color scale for scientific maps that makes them more readable for the color-blind.

Data visualizations using rainbow color scales are ubiquitous in many fields of science, depicting everything from ocean temperatures to brain activity to Martian topography. But cartographers have been arguing for decades the “Roy G. Biv” scale makes maps and other figures difficult to interpret, sometimes to the point of being misleading. And for the those with color blindness, they are completely unintelligible.

Now scientists at a U.S. Department of Energy laboratory have developed a color scale that is mathematically optimized to be accurate for both color blind people and those with normal vision. The scale was described Wednesday in a new study in PLOS ONE. “People like to use rainbow because it catches the eye,” says lead author Jamie Nuñez, a chemical and biological data analyst at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). “But once the eye actually gets there and people are trying to figure out what’s actually going on inside of the image, that’s kind of where it falls apart.”

Ditching this multicolored scale may even save lives. Harvard University researchers found that when traditional rainbow-colored 3-D computer models of arteries were replaced by 2-D models using a red-to-black color scale (pdf), doctors’ accuracy in diagnosing heart disease jumped from 39 percent to 91 percent.

For planetary scientists, changing from the rainbow scale will be difficult. Topography maps especially have for almost a century have shown low regions as blue with high regions as red. This is what scientists, and even ordinary people, have come to expect.

Still, to make these maps understandable to the colorblind seems smart. I wonder if the idea will catch on.

Hat tip from reader Milt Hays Jr.

2 comments

A review of yesterday’s primaries

10:50 am

Link here. The results, like last week, are inconclusive as to indicating what might happen in November. The only clear pattern is the continuing increase in the American political divide. Pro-Trump candidates seemed to win more Republican primaries, but radical leftist candidates seemed to win more Democratic primaries.

4 comments

Christian baker files lawsuit against Colorado for continuing harassment

10:32 am

Fascist Colorado: Despite a victory in the Supreme Court allowing him to refuse to back cakes with political themes he disagrees with, the Christian baker in Colorado has been forced to file another lawsuit against the state’s Civil Rights Commission for continuing harassment.

On the same day the high court agreed to review the Masterpiece case, an attorney named Autumn Scardina called Phillips’ shop and asked him to create a cake celebrating a sex transition. The caller asked that the cake include a blue exterior and a pink interior, a reflection of Scardina’s transgender identity. Phillips declined to create the cake, given his religious conviction that sex is immutable, while offering to sell the caller other pre-made baked goods.

In the months that followed, the bakery received requests for cakes featuring marijuana use, sexually explicit messages, and Satanic symbols. One solicitation submitted by email asked the cake shop to create a three-tiered white cake depicting Satan licking a functional 9 inch dildo. Phillips believes Scardina made all these requests.

Scardina filed a complaint with the civil rights commission, alleging discrimination on the basis of gender identity. The matter was held in abeyance while the Supreme Court adjudicated the Masterpiece case.

Three weeks after Phillips won at the high court, the commission issued a probable cause determination, finding there was sufficient evidence to support Scardina’s claim of discrimination. In a somewhat strange development, the probable cause finding reads that Phillips violated state law, even though the proceedings are still in a preliminary stage.

Masterpiece has filed suit against the commission for instituting these proceedings, which clearly contradict the Supreme Court ruling.

Essentially this campaign by one gay rights lawyer in league with the commission, is aimed at destroying this business, merely because of its owner’s personal religious beliefs. He gladly sells his products to anyone, he merely refuses to create cakes with political messages he disagrees with. To try to destroy him for this, using the government, is the epitome of fascism.

16 comments

Ceres’ internal structure

10:21 am

The Dawn science team has released their first artist’s concept of the interior of Ceres, based on data gathered by the spacecraft.

Using information about Ceres’ gravity and topography, scientists found that Ceres is “differentiated,” which means that it has compositionally distinct layers at different depths. The most internal layer, the “mantle” is dominated by hydrated rocks, like clays. The external layer, the 24.85-mile (40-kilometer) thick crust, is a mixture of ice, salts, and hydrated minerals. Between the two is a layer that may contain a little bit of liquid rich in salts, called brine. It extends down at least 62 miles (100 kilometers). The Dawn observations cannot “see” below about 62 miles (100 kilometers) in depth. Hence, it is not possible to tell if Ceres’ deep interior contains more liquid or a core of dense material rich in metal.

The most intriguing part of this concept is the existence of a brine layer below the crust. I suspect it is this layer that they believe is the source of the white salty brine that produces Ceres’ ice volcanoes and bright spots.

Leave a comment

Will SpaceX bail out Tesla?

10:13 am

Link here. There appears to an effort on Wall Street to convince SpaceX to use its significant profits to bail out failing Tesla. It is also unclear whether Musk agrees with this approach.

If SpaceX does this, it will be a very bad thing for the company’s future, throwing good money after bad. Musk might love both companies and what they are trying to accomplish, but the future of the two companies appears to be heading in opposite directions. To weigh SpaceX down with an unprofitable company that has a failing product would seriously harm SpaceX’s abilities in the future.

5 comments

An update on China’s private smallsat rocket companies

10:09 am

Link here. The article describes the most recent news from OneSpace (which recently secured $44 million in financing), Landspace (building larger rockets), and Exspace (next launch planned for September).

While these companies are structured like American private companies, in China nothing having anything to do with space is really private. None of these companies can do anything without the full approval of China’s authoritarian communist government. Unlike Russia, however, China, has decided to allow competition to drive its space industry, not central control. It is encouraging small independent operations to come up with their own ideas and to compete with each other.

In the end, they will all be co-opted by the government, but for now this policy is producing for China some real results.

Leave a comment

SpaceX unveils interior of manned Dragon

10:02 am

Capitalism in space: Earlier this week SpaceX unveiled the interior of its Dragon capsule, along with the suits and other details, to reporters in California.

The article at the link has some good videos showing the capsule interior as well as its touchscreen control panel. It also includes quotes from SpaceX’s president Gwynne Shotwell repeating their intention to launch the manned mission by April 2019.

“Whenever we talk about dates we’re always confident and then something crops up,” Shotwell said. “Predicting launch dates can make a liar out of the best of us. I hope I am not proven to be a liar on this one. We are targeting November for Demo 1 and April for Demo 2.”

“I would love to say that this mission is going to be like every other mission, because I want every rocket and every capsule to be reliable, but I can tell you there will be about 7000 extra sets of eyes on the build of this system, the testing of this system and all the interfaces,” Shotwell added.

I would not be surprised if there was a few months slip in that schedule. I will be surprised if it slips more than that.

3 comments

India’s prime minister: manned mission by 2022

9:43 am

The new colonial movement: Facing an election next year, India’s prime minister Narendra Modi produced his own Kennedy-like space speech today, announcing a plan to launch a manned Indian mission by 2022.

Wearing a flowing saffron turban, the Hindu nationalist leader also announced the plan to take the “Indian tricolor to space” in a manned mission that would make India the fourth nation to launch one, after the United States, Russia and China. “India is proud of our scientists, who are excelling in their research and are at the forefront of innovation,” Modi said from the ramparts of the Mughal-era Red Fort in Delhi to a crowd numbering in the tens of thousands.

“In the year 2022 or, if possible, before, India will unfurl the tricolor in space.”

He also announced a healthcare initiative that has been dubbed “Modicare.” He was elected in a landslide to replace the socialist policies of the leftwing Congress Party. He is now beginning to act like the U.S.’s establishment Republican Party, who love to mouth conservative values but advocate leftist programs to win re-election.

The question is whether the Indian people will be more like Americans of the 20th century, buying into these government programs proposed by a fake-conservative, or whether they will be more like an increasing number of Americans today, sick of too much government. I suspect the former, which will bode ill for India’s future.

Leave a comment

Google lied when it said it would allow you to block it from tracking you

9:46 am

Reason #1,238,435 for not using Google: Google lied when it said you can shut off its location tracking functions on your smartphone. Even if you do so, numerous Google applications ignore that instruction and track you anyway.

Google wants to know where you go so badly that it records your movements even when you explicitly tell it not to.

An Associated Press investigation found that many Google services on Android devices and iPhones store your location data even if you’ve used a privacy setting that says it will prevent Google from doing so. Computer-science researchers at Princeton confirmed these findings at the AP’s request…

Google’s support page on the subject states: “You can turn off Location History at any time. With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored.”

That isn’t true. Even with Location History paused, some Google apps automatically store time-stamped location data without asking.

The article at the link outlines numerous other examples where Google tracks and records your location, even if you have set your privacy functions to prevent that.

Essentially, the large software companies such as Google and Facebook have no ethics. They are not trustworthy partners, which is why I do not use them. And if an alternative to youtube existed, I would switch from that in a nanosecond.

11 comments

One “tiny” storm on Jupiter

9:35 am

A

Cool image time! The image on the right, cropped to post here, shows the white center of one of the smaller giant storms on Jupiter, taken by Juno. The image was processed by citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran. If you click on the image you can see the entire picture, which has a host of spectacular details surrounding the white spot.

Unfortunately, they do not provide a scale. Based on past experience, I would guess that this tiny storm probably exceeds the size of the Earth. What makes the image so impressive however are the white cloudtops visible as they swirl around the storm’s center. Sunlight shadows clearly shows that these thunderheads rise above rest of the storm.

The full image shows even more fascinating details. It is worthwhile studying, though one can certainly get lost in that vast and turbulent Jupiter atmosphere.

Leave a comment

Ghana considers its first national space law

9:20 am

The new colonial movement: Ghana moves to write and pass its first national space law.

In setting out space legislation, Ghana would be following international precedent. More than 25 countries have enacted such laws. The space powers Russia and the US are among them, but so are smaller states like Argentina, Kazakhstan, Indonesia and Iran. Closer to home, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa already have space laws. Other nations on the continent will undoubtedly follow suit.

A national space law would ensure that space activities launched within Ghana’s jurisdiction – whether on land, ships or aircraft – and perhaps even abroad by its nationals or registered companies are appropriately regulated. Such laws may govern a host of space-related ventures. These include launches; remote sensing and space data protection; aeronautics; rocket and satellite development, space tourism and space mining.

Of course, the complexity of space activities combined with the rapid pace at which technology develops means that national space laws are unlikely to cover every eventuality. They do, however, provide a degree of certainty for the public, investors and courts should disputes arise. National laws also facilitate compliance with global obligations. Article 6 of the Outer Space Treaty, for example, requires all space activities to be authorised and continually supervised by the state. National laws which demand licensing of space activities foster adherence to the treaty.

Article 7 makes states liable for damage caused by space objects under its jurisdiction, including those belonging to private commercial entities. A Space Act can be vital in limiting a state’s liability through provisions on indemnities.

Ghana has signed the Outer Space Treaty. The next step will be for the government to ratify it, and then to establish a legislative framework for space activities. [emphasis mine]

I have highlighted the fundamental problem with the Outer Space Treaty. If Ghana wants to attract investment capital for its space industry, they are forced to sign the treaty. It establishes the only existing rules for liability. Unfortunately, the treaty is also hostile to freedom, and puts the government in charge, which is why it has taken so long for private enterprise to finally gain a foothold in space.

Leave a comment

Excavation begins on site for Giant Magellan Telescope

9:05 am

Excavation has begun for the site where the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) will be built in Chile.

Using a combination of hydraulic drilling and hammering, the excavation work is expected to take about five months to complete. Excavation is a key step towards the construction of the GMT, which is expected to see first light as early as 2024.

The 25-meter diameter GMT, expected to have a final weight of about 1,600 metric tons, will comprise seven 8.4-meter mirrors supported by a steel telescope structure that will be seated on the concrete pier. It will be housed inside a rotating enclosure that will measure 65 meters (~22 stories) tall and 56 meters wide. As well as working on the enclosure and telescope pier foundations, Conpax will excavate a recess in the summit rock for the lower portion of the mirror coating chamber and foundations for a utility building and tunnel on the summit.

Of the next generation of big telescopes, GMT is the closest to completion.

One comment

The failed Arctic Ocean predictions of global warming scientists

12:01 pm

Link here. The post at the link carefully documents the endless numbers of failed doomsday predictions foisted upon us for the past decade, claiming that due to global warming the Arctic Ocean icecap would be gone by 2018.

Instead, in the past three years there is evidence that the icecap has begun to thicken and expand, recovering from a two decade decline. Though this is not a certain conclusion, what is certain is that there is no sign of the icecap vanishing, in any sense. Every prediction documented at the link, by so-called experts, is completely bogus.

There is a reason the public does not take global warming very seriously. Its advocates have cried wolf too many times. Their predictions of doom have consistently failed. Every. Single. Time.

11 comments

More testing of “Roc,” Stratolaunch’s giant airplane

10:21 am

This past weekend Stratolaunch completed more tests on its giant airplane, now nicknamed “Roc.”

They had intended to do another taxi test, but didn’t for some reason. Instead, they did test fueling operations. full-power engine tests, and communication tests.

Their upcoming schedule appears to me to be very extended.

Stratolaunch executives laid out the test schedule for the plane, which was built by Mojave-based Scaled Composites, during a space conference in April. The company plans to follow up on the first two taxi tests (at runway speeds of 15 mph and 40 knots) with three more at speeds of 70, 85 and 120 knots.

The last speed is roughly what’s needed for takeoff.

After the fifth taxi test, Stratolaunch would put the plane into the air for a series of flight tests over the course of what’s expected to be 18 to 24 months. In April, executives said they were targeting the first flight test for this summer (which technically runs until Sept. 23).

They also have not yet announced any launch contracts, though there have been announcements that both Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus and Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne will fly on Roc.

2 comments

Curiosity successfully drills another hole

10:05 am

Successful drill hole on Vera Rubin Ridge

Curiosity has finally drilled its first successful hole in the geology layer found on Vera Rubin Ridge.

This weekend’s plan is focused on the Stoer drill hole, the tailings derived from the drill and on portion characterization observations. The portion characterization is done prior to sending samples to the analytical instruments, SAM and CheMin, to ensure that the materials will not pose any threat to the instruments. ChemCam passive and Mastcam multispectral imaging will be taken of the drill tailings, to identify any potential differences between the surface and material from deeper within the drill hole. The ChemCam laser (LIBS) will be used to characterize the Stoer drill hole and a bedrock target “Greian,” which appears to show some colour variations. Mastcam will provide colour documentation for Greian.

In order to find rock soft enough on Vera Rubin Ridge, they had to once again retrace their route, retreating back down off the ridge slightly, to a lower point. The image on the right, cropped to post here, shows the drill hole. If you click on the image you can see the full picture.

With this successful drilling, I suspect they will now finally cross Vera Rubin Ridge and head up Mount Sharp.

2 comments
1 … 410 411 412 413 414 … 925