July 12, 2023 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
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Category: Points of Information
Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
July 12, 2023 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
- Satellite imagery of Vega-C second stage after static fire test failure on June 28, 2023
The pictures do not show any obvious damage that I can spot.
- China unveils proposed plan for first manned lunar mission before 2030
The plan calls for separate rockets, one for the manned ascent/descent Earth capsule, and the second for the lunar lander/ascent spacecraft. The two will rendezvous and dock in lunar orbit. This is all engineering by powerpoint at this point, though based on China’s track record I’d give it more credence than most of NASA’s recent promises.
- Israel’s Beresheet-2 future uncertain with loss of major donor
The donor backed out in May, and there has been no word whether the non-profit SpaceIL has found any replacement funds.
More sightseeing in Valles Marineris on Mars
Click for original image.
The opportunity to see more mind-blowing examples of spectacular views on Mars compels me to post another great view of a mesatop within Valles Marineris, the biggest known canyon in the solar system. The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on May 14, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows an 800-foot-high mesa with two points at its end, the cliff wall below highlighted by numerous layers, many alternating between light and dark material.
The erosion features on the top of the mesa suggests some flow down its middle and into the gap between its two end points. This is the dry equatorial region of Mars, so no near surface water is presently found. In the far past maybe ice, or theorized catastrophic floods of water, caused this erosion.
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Real pushback: Montana’s library withdraws from ALA because it elected a Marxist/Queer leader
Emily Drabinski, president of the ALA and proudly
Marxist and queer
Bring a gun to a knife fight: Upon learning that the American Library Association (ALA) had voted as its new president, Emily Drabinski, a woman who is not only proudly queer (in her own words), she also is proudly Marxist, the commission for Montana’s state library yesterday voted to withdraw from ALA.
The Montana State Library Commission’s decision came in response to a 2022 tweet posted by current ALA President Emily Drabinski describing herself as a “Marxist Lesbian,” which quickly drew the attention of conservative media outlets nationwide. In his motion to “immediately withdraw” the state library from the association, commissioner Tom Burnett directed that a letter be sent to the ALA explaining that “our oath of office and resulting duty to the Constitution forbids association with an organization led by a Marxist.”
Burnett was joined by five other members of the commission in supporting the motion, among them state Superintendent Elsie Arntzen. Newly seated commissioner Brian Rossmann, who works as an associate professor at the Montana State University Library, cast the sole opposing vote. Commission Chair Peggy Taylor abstained.
Amidst the mountains on Mount Sharp on Mars
Click for higher resolution. Original images can be found here, here, and here.
Click for interactive map.
The panorama above, created from three images, was taken by Curiosity on July 12, 2023 using its right navigation camera. It looks south in the direction that the science team eventually plans to send the rover, as indicated by the red dotted line on both the panorama and the overview map to the right. The yellow lines on the overview map indicate approximately the area covered by the panorama. Kukenan’s peak rises about 500 feet above the rover, and I guarantee there will be many planetary geologists that are going to study the pictures of its many layers for many years.
At present however Curiosity is heading west, away from that planned route, to visit the small craters about 500 feet away. For almost all of the rover’s decade-long journey in Gale Crater, it has seen relatively few craters, and since it left the floor of the crater and began its climb up the flanks of Mount Sharp three years ago, it has seen none.
Inspecting the floors and surrounding ejecta of these small craters will give the scientists a look at materials that are presently below the surface. While it is likely that material will be of geological layers Curiosity has already traveled over lower down the mountain, it is also possible there will be surprises. The scientists decided they couldn’t pass up this opportunity to find out.
Why have there been so few craters in Gale Crater? Though Mars is hardly as active as Earth, its geological history is almost as dynamic. The surface of Gale has been reshaped by the processes that created Mount Sharp, processes that destroyed craters from early in Mars’ history. The craters the rover is about to see are almost certainly relatively young.
The Earth and Moon, as seen by Mars Express in Mars orbit
Click to see four image movie.
The science team for Europe’s Mars Express orbiter recently turned the spacecraft’s camera upward to capture a sequence of four images of the Earth with the Moon circling around it.
The images were taken at 14:08, 03:10 and 19:49 UTC on 15, 21, 27 May 2023 respectively, and at 15:00 UTC on 2 June 2023. This covers a bit more than half of the Moon’s monthly motion around the Earth. The distance between Earth and Mars varied from 279 186 624 km to 301 016 265 km during this time. The image resolution is about 2570 km per pixel.
To the right is the June 2nd image, cropped and enhanced to post there. The Earth is the larger spot to the left. The picture gives a sense of what the Earth-Moon double planet system looks like from Mars. Unlike all other planets, where the size difference between planet and moon is great, the Earth/Moon system is comprised of a Moon quite large in comparison to its central planet.
ISRO completes launch rehearsal for Chandrayaan-3’s launch on July 14th
Click for interactive map.
India’s space agency ISRO yesterday completed a full launch dress rehearsal of its Launch Vehicle Mark-3 rocket (LV-M3), in preparation for its July 14, 2023 launch that will put Chandrayaan-3 on its way to the Moon, India’s second attempt to soft land on another world.
More information here. The spacecraft will not reach the Moon until mid-August, and if all goes as planned, the lander Vikram will attempt its landing on August 23rd. If successful, the Pragyan rover will roll off the lander and begin exploration lasting about two weeks, or one lunar day. It is not designed to survive the long lunar night.
The LV-M3 rocket is simply the most powerful variation of India’s Geosynchronous Launch Vehicle (GSLV) rocket, capable of putting large payloads into space or sending probes to other planets.
Black Georgia Democrat switches to Republican Party
Mesha Mainor, a black Democrat state legislator representing a largely black district in Georgia announced today that she is leaving the Democratic Party to become a Republican.
“When I decided to stand up on behalf of disadvantaged children in support of school choice, my Democrat colleagues didn’t stand by me,” Mainor told Fox News Digital, asserting that her Democrat colleagues “crucified” her for supporting school choice and standing against efforts to defund police. She said she has always stood as the type of politician who will “work across the aisle to deliver results for my community and the people I was elected to represent.” But her leftist colleagues did not support her.
“They abandoned me,” she said, explaining again that her decision to leave the Democrat Party is not a political decision but a moral one. “For far too long, the Democrat Party has gotten away with using and abusing the black community,” Mainor said. “For decades, the Democrat Party has received the support of more than 90 percent of the black community. And what do we have to show for it? I represent a solidly blue district in the city of Atlanta. This isn’t a political decision for me. It’s a moral one,” she continued.
Such party switches have been going on since 1994, most of which have gone from Democrat to Republican. What makes this switch significant is that it involves a black representative, in a largely black district. When she runs in the next election her presence might cause a lot of blacks to vote Republican for the first time. And all it takes is one such vote for a person to begin to look at Democrats with open eyes.
And if she is defeated by a Democrat, it will tell us that nothing has changed, and the local black population is still on the Democratic Party plantation, afraid to leave.
Thus, the next election in this district could be a significant bellwether on the future trends in politics.
Chinese pseudo-company successfully completes first orbital launch of methane-fueled rocket
The Chinese pseudo-company Landspace on July 12 (Chinese time) successfully completed the first orbital launch of methane-fueled rocket, Zhuque-2, placing a test payload into orbit after lifting off from China’s interior Jiuquan spaceport.
No word on where the first stage crashed, or whether it landed near habitable areas. The following sentence from the news report struck me as significant, considering the decade-long effort by Blue Origin to develop its own BE-4 methane-fueled engine:
Testing of the TQ-12 engine started in July 2019, with Wednesday’s launch coming after four years of research and development by the company.
It took this pseudo-company four years of testing to finally achieve its first orbital launch. Blue Origin began testing the BE-4 engine in 2017, and still hasn’t gotten off that first launch.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
46 SpaceX
26 China
9 Russia
5 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 52 to 26, and the entire world combined 52 to 44, while SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world (excluding other American companies) 46 to 44.
Note: I do not consider these Chinese companies private or independent of the Chinese government. There is no independent ownership. They might obtain investment capital and win Chinese contracts and make profits, but nothing they do belongs to the company management, and everything they do is closely supervised by the Chinese government. At any moment that government can take that company from its management. Thus, I will never list these companies separately.
July 11, 2023 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay
- Russia’s Luna-25 lander delivered to launchpad in Vostochny
The official launch date has not been released, but it is now expected to be in mid-August.
- Vast hires former NASA astronaut as “advisor”
The job description implies retired astronaut Garrett Reisman is only a consultant.
- Japan announces August 26, 2023 launch date for next H2A rocket launch
Though the payload includes a Japanese lunar lander as well as an X-ray space telescope, the real importance of this announcement is that it tells us that Japan’s investigation into its H3 rocket failure has learned enough to no longer block H2A launches as well.
Blue Origin BE-4 rocket engine explodes during test
This failure has been kept very quiet, but on June 11, 2023 during a static fire engine test of a Blue Origin BE-4 rocket engine, it exploded 10 seconds into the test.
During a firing on June 30 at a West Texas facility of Jeff Bezos’ space company, a BE-4 engine detonated about 10 seconds into the test, according to several people familiar with the matter. Those people described having seen video of a dramatic explosion that destroyed the engine and heavily damaged the test stand infrastructure. The people spoke to CNBC on the condition of anonymity to discuss nonpublic matters.
The engine that exploded was expected to finish testing in July. It was then scheduled to ship to Blue Origin’s customer United Launch Alliance for use on ULA’s second Vulcan rocket launch, those people said.
The story is based on anonymous sources, but if true it means another serious setback for both ULA’s Vulcan rocket and Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket. Vulcan has the BE-4 engines it needs to launch its first Vulcan, but it might feel forced to delay that launch until it receives the analysis of this failed test.
It also means that even after more than a decade of development, Blue Origin has still not worked out all the kinks in its BE-4 engine. This inability does not speak well for the company. Are they not testing enough? Are they not questioning their designs enough?
Citizens are fleeing cities run by Democrats in record numbers
This story is simply another data point in a well known trend that became very clear during and after the panic over COVID: The populations of cities run by Democrats are dropping faster than ever before, as citizen flee these badly run crime-ridden hellholes where only honest citizens get punished for defending themselves.
The number of people who used to live in Los Angeles County and Cook County in Illinois continues to plummet.
Los Angeles County posted the largest population decline of all counties in the United States in 2022, falling by 90,704 and continuing a downward trend. It lost nearly twice that amount (180,394) in 2021, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Vintage 2022 estimates released Thursday. Cook County, home to Chicago, lost 68,314 people from July 2021 to July of last year.
…The biggest losers were Los Angeles County, California (-90,704); Cook County, Illinois (-68,314); Queens County, New York (-50,112); Kings County, New York (-46,970); and Bronx County, New York (-41,143).
Not surprisingly, the counties with the greatest influx of new residents were in traditionally conservative states, Texas, Florida, and Arizona, though Arizona will probably lose that status as its many refugees from California arrive and continue to vote for Democrats.
Can anyone explain this trend? It seems so puzzling that people would flee cities run by Democrats to go places where Republican rule has dominated.