Category: Points of Information

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

Heading directly for Balanced Rock

9:32 am

Curiosity's course to Balanced Rock

As I predicted Sunday, the Curiosity science team is aiming the rover directly towards the gap in the mesas, dubbed the Murray Buttes, that also has the balanced rock seen in earlier images.

The image on the right shows the rover’s most recent two traverses, superimposed on a Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter image. I have cropped it to focus in on the area of most interest.

Based on the rover’s general rate of travel, I would expect them to enter the gap after about two or three more traverses. This means they will be there in about a week, since after each traverse they usually stop and do science and reconnaissance before resuming travel.

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ExoMars successfully completes long mid-course burn

9:13 am

ExoMars 2016, the European/Russia orbiter/lander mission on its way to Mars, successfully completed a 52 minute mid-course engine burn today in preparation for its October 19th arrival at Mars.

Officially known as the deep-space maneuver, DSM, it was the longest engine burn for the ExoMars-2016 mission before the Mars orbit insertion on October 19, 2016. As a result of the July 28 orbit correction, the spacecraft will need less propellant during its maneuvers in the vicinity of the planet and the Schiaparelli lander will experience slightly less thermal loads during its planned entry into the Martian atmosphere.

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How Comet 67P/C-G was made

9:06 am

Using the data from Rosetta, scientists have developed a detailed scenario for the birth process that created Comet 67P/C-G.

During its two-year sojourn at Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, Rosetta has revealed a picture of the comet as a low-density, high-porosity, double-lobed body with extensive layering, suggesting that the lobes accumulated material over time before they merged.

The unusually high porosity of the interior of the nucleus provides the first indication that this growth cannot have been via violent collisions, as these would have compacted the fragile material. Structures and features on different size scales observed by Rosetta’s cameras provide further information on how this growth may have taken place.

Earlier work showed that the head and body were originally separate objects, but the collision that merged them must have been at low speed in order not to destroy both of them. The fact that both parts have similar layering also tells us that they must have undergone similar evolutionary histories and that survival rates against catastrophic collision must have been high for a significant period of time.

In other words, the comet’s two lobes formed slowly as separate bodies but always in the same general region, and then moved closer and closer together until they gently merged. Based on this scenario, Comet 67P/C-G had to have formed very early in the solar system, and also was not in the inner solar system — as it is now — when the great early bombardment occurred there about a billion years ago.

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Atlas 5 successfully launches U.S. surveillance satellite

8:53 am

Atlas 5

The competition heats up: A ULA Atlas 5 rocket today successfully launched a National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) surveillance satellite, dubbed NROL-61.

The image on the right is courtesy of Orbital ATK. From the link above:

NROL-61, however, launched atop an Atlas V 421 rocket, a configuration that has not previously been used by the NRO. The spacecraft itself was encapsulated within an Extra-Extended Payload Fairing (XEPF) – at 14 metres (46 feet) in length the longest of three available four-metre (13-foot) diameter fairings – which has also never before been used for an NRO mission.

…The most likely explanation is that NROL-61 will be the first in a new generation of Quasar satellite; which would appear to be larger in both size and mass than its predecessors. Quasar, also known as the Satellite Data System, or SDS, is a constellation of communications satellites operated by the NRO to support its other intelligence-gathering activities; relaying data from other satellites to the ground in real-time, without having to wait for the intelligence-gathering satellites to pass over ground stations on friendly territory. If NROL-61 represents a new version of Quasar, it will be the fourth generation of the constellation.

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GAO warns of more cost overruns for SLS/Orion

9:09 pm

The Government Accountability Office today issued two reports, both of which said that the SLS and Orion programs are faced with more cost overruns and schedule delays.

The GAO found that cost overruns for Orion could be as high as $707 million and that work is “not being accomplished as scheduled.” It also found challenges with the capsule’s software and heat shield, and said that the space capsule’s cost and schedule “estimates are not reliable.”

Other than that, everything is peachy keen! These reports, (the Orion report is found here [pdf] and the SLS report here [pdf], especially the Orion one, also suggest that the first manned Orion mission, now scheduled for 2021, stands a good chance of being delayed again, possibly for two more years.

This just confirms what I have written in my soon-to-be published policy paper, Exploring Space in the 21st Century. In fact, I need to add these GAO reports to my sources!

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NASA guesses SpaceX’s Dragon-Mars mission will cost $300 million

6:20 pm

At a meeting of NASA’s Advisory Council yesterday a NASA official estimated that SpaceX will probably spend about $300 million on its Dragon mission to Mars.

Asked by the committee how much SpaceX was spending, Reuter indicated that the company’s investment was 10 times that of NASA. “They did talk to us about a 10-to-1 arrangement in terms of cost: theirs 10, ours 1,” he said. “I think that’s in the ballpark.” Given NASA’s investment, that implies SpaceX is spending around $300 million on Red Dragon.

SpaceX has not disclosed its estimated cost of the mission, or how it will pay for it. “I have no knowledge” of how the company is financing the mission, Reuter said when asked by the committee.

I suspect that the guess is significantly wrong. NASA is providing $32 million. SpaceX plans to charge customers $90 million for a single Falcon Heavy launch, which means its cost for that launch is likely half that, say $45 million. That adds up to $77 million. The cost for a Dragon capsule is not even close to $223 million, which is what remains if NASA’s guess is right, which based on this rough estimate I seriously doubt. I would bet that a single Dragon probably costs far less than $20 million. Remember, they are nothing more than basic manned capsules, and SpaceX is building enough of them to almost have an assembly line going.

So, let’s round up and say that the cost for the mission is really about $100 million (including NASA’s contribution). Other costs, such as the staff to run the mission for at least a year, will increase this cost, but not enough to bring the total to NASA’s guess of $300 million. I suspect that SpaceX will not spend anything close to $100 million of its own money for this Dragon mission to Mars.

All in all, this amount of investment seems reasonable, based on the scale of costs in the launch industry. And SpaceX’s willingness to invest some of its own money for this mission is probably wise. In publicity alone it is priceless.

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Great Red Spot hottest spot on Jupiter

6:05 pm

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot, a giant storm that has been raging for at least three centuries, turns out to be the hottest spot on Jupiter.

They suspect that the spot is heated from below, but really understand much else, or even that.

Juno is specifically designed to study the weather patterns of Jupiter, so we will get some of these answers, plus a lot more questions, in the coming years as the spacecraft gathers its data.

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The pro-Clinton mainstream media, challenged by one guy with a camera

10:07 am

The video I have posted below the fold, posted at this link, was taken outside the convention after Bernie Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton.

[O]nce Bernie Sanders endorsed Secretary Clinton via a rules change request throwing all delegate votes to Hillary, the vast majority of movement democrats left the arena. Immediately following the roll call vote, the DNC quickly moved to bar any pro-Sanders signage from the venue. Anyone holding Sanders signs was warned they were subject to forced removal and loss of convention credentials. Outside the arena the Bernie Sanders supporters gathered to voice their protest to the strong arm tactics. [emphasis in original]

The video shows a pro-Clinton (and former Sanders) delegate talking to the press about how wrong the Sanders protesters are. As he talks he is challenged by one of those protesters, who loudly disagrees with him.

What the video shows clearly is that the mainstream press is only interested in recording and interviewing the pro-Clinton guy. In fact, when the guy taking this video begins to note loudly this obvious bias to everyone (beginning at around 1:50), the press suddenly realizes how biased they look and some make a half-hearted effort to make believe they are interested in talking to the Sanders protester.

What I find most significant about this video, and quite entertaining, is how it demonstrates how completely useless today’s mainstream press is, and how that press is increasingly losing all influence because the general public has access to many other lone guys with a camera, videotaping events and showing us what is really happening.

In other words, don’t depend on just television news for your information. You will not only be uninformed, you will be misinformed.

» Read more

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Astrobiologists meet to better their search for exoplanet life

9:25 am

The uncertainty of science: Astrobiologists are meeting this week in Seattle to discuss and refine their methods for detecting astrobiology on exoplanets.

The Seattle meeting aims to compile a working list of biosignature gases and their chemical properties. The information will feed into how astronomers analyse data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, slated for launch in 2018. The telescope will be able to look at only a handful of habitable planets, but it will provide the first detailed glimpse of what gases surround which world, says Nikole Lewis, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.

No single gas is likely to be a slam-dunk indicator of alien life. But Domagal-Goldman hopes that the workshop will produce a framework for understanding where scientists could trip themselves up. “We don’t want to have a great press release,” he says, “and then a week later have egg on everybody’s faces.”

A few years ago I was told by one astronomer that the field’s biggest and most exciting area of research in the coming decades will be the effort to study the thousands exoplanets they only just discovered. I agree. The Webb telescope might have been built to study cosmology, but the data it will produce about exoplanets will be much more real and less uncertain, thus making it more compelling and convincing.

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China unveils world’s largest amphibious plane

9:15 am

China has built the world’s largest amphibious plane, designed initially for rescue and fire-fighting duties.

Made by the state’s aircraft maker, the AG600 is around the size of a Boeing 737 and will be used to douse forest fires and rescue people in danger offshore. Measuring 37 m (121 ft) long with a wingspan of 38.8 m (127 ft), the gargantuan amphibious aircraft is capable of taking off and landing both on terra firma and stretches of water, provided they are more than 1,500 m long, 200 m wide and 2.5 m deep (0.93 mi, 656 ft and 8.2 ft). It has a maximum take-off weight of 53.5 tonnes (59 tons), a top cruising speed of 500 km/h (310.7 mph) and a range of 4,500 km (2,800 mi), and can fly for 12 hours at a time, according to its builder, the Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC).

Much like the Russians, the Chinese aerospace industry is controlled and supervised by the government. Unlike the Russians, however, the Chinese for the moment seem much more capable under this top-down system to develop new designs. They say for example that this new amphibious plane already has 17 domestic orders.

I must admit to a bit of skepticism however. Was this plane built because there was a demand, or because the powers-that-be decided they wanted it built? I am not sure. The video at the link suggests to me the latter, with its hard core sales pitch similar to a lot of other government projects I have seen, where the project is built because some politician or bureaucrat conceived and pushed it, but it doesn’t really have a viable purpose.

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“They can’t be real.”

8:56 am

The uncertainty of science: Astronomers have now detected and measured a new class of large but very dim galaxy that previously was not expected to exist.

‘Ultradiffuse’ galaxies came to attention only last year, after Pieter van Dokkum of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and Roberto Abraham of the University of Toronto in Canada built an array of sensitive telephoto lenses named Dragonfly. The astronomers and their colleagues observed the Coma galaxy cluster 101 megaparsecs (330 million light years) away and detected 47 faint smudges.

“They can’t be real,” van Dokkum recalls thinking when he first saw the galaxies on his laptop computer. But their distribution in space matched that of the cluster’s other galaxies, indicating that they were true members. Since then, hundreds more of these galaxies have turned up in the Coma cluster and elsewhere.

Ultradiffuse galaxies are large like the Milky Way — which is much bigger than most — but they glow as dimly as mere dwarf galaxies. It’s as though a city as big as London emitted as little light as Kalamazoo, Michigan.

More significantly, they have now found that these dim galaxies can be as big and as massive as the biggest bright galaxies, suggesting that, surprise!, there are a lot more stars and mass hidden out there and unseen than anyone had previously predicted.

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New smallsat company plans 200 satellite constellation

8:45 am

The competition heats up: A new smallsat satellite company, Sky and Space Global, is planning to launch a 200 nanosat communications constellation for less than $160 million.

More important, they have funded and built the first three, which they will launch in 2017:

The company, located in the U.K., Israel and Australia, has fully funded the first three satellites to precede an initial constellation of 200 nanosatellites. Coined the “Three Diamonds,” the nanosatellites are scheduled to launch as a rideshare aboard a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) from the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) in the second quarter of 2017.

The pilot satellites are to determine the final characteristics of Sky and Space Global’s operational satellites, which are scheduled to begin launching in 2018 via Virgin Galactic’s LauncherOne. Sky and Space Global’s goal is to field a constellation that will eventually become global for low cost telecommunications services such as voice, instant messaging and data forwarding.

What this story illustrates is that the smallsat market is about to become a reality, and in doing so it will shake up the entire geosynchronous communications satellite industry, much as SpaceX has shook up the launch industry. As I’ve noted earlier, these new smallsats suggest that the space industry is splitting, with unmanned Earth-orbit satellites going small and manned capabilities staying large.

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ULA interns launch record-breaking model rocket

4:49 pm

The competition heats up: A team of ULA interns, working in their spare time, have successfully launched the largest model rocket every built.

On Sunday (July 24), ULA launched the 50-foot-tall (15.24 meters) Future Heavy rocket out of Fort Carson Army Post, breaking the record for “the largest sport rocket launched anywhere in the world,” according to a statement from ULA. The Future Heavy is also notable because it was built entirely by company interns and their mentors. “We like [our interns] to have a very realistic experience,” ULA President and CEO Tory Bruno told Space.com at the Space Symposium meeting in Colorado Springs, Colorado, last April.

Calling it a “model rocket” really isn’t fair. The thing is big, and really ranks up there with many of the suborbital rockets NASA used to routinely fly out of Wallops Island. That ULA has provided support for this effort again suggests that the leadership of Bruno is reshaping the company into a much more innovative and competitive company.

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The Sun is blank again

2:01 pm

More signs that we are easing down to solar minimum: After a period of two weeks of sunspots, the Sun has once again gone blank.

It takes the Sun’s about four weeks to rotate and complete one “day”. What has essentially happened is that right now one face of the Sun is blank while the other face has sunspots. For two weeks, from the last week in June to the first week in July, the blank face was turned towards the Earth. Then the face with sunspots rotated into view for two weeks, and now the blank face has rotated back to face us.

Though new sunspots can always form on either face, I expect this blank stretch to last a few days, at least.

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Ceres lacks large craters

10:59 am

The uncertainty of science: Using data from Dawn, scientists have found that the solar system’s largest asteroid, Ceres (also called a dwarf planet by confused scientists), has a mysterious lack of large craters.

Marchi and colleagues modeled collisions of other bodies with Ceres since the dwarf planet formed, and predicted the number of large craters that should have been present on its surface. These models predicted Ceres should have up to 10 to 15 craters larger than 250 miles (400 kilometers) in diameter, and at least 40 craters larger than 60 miles (100 kilometers) wide. However, Dawn has shown that Ceres has only 16 craters larger than 60 miles, and none larger than 175 miles (280 kilometers) across.

They postulate two theories to explain the lack. First, Ceres might have formed far out beyond Neptune, though this theory is not favored because some models still say that even here Ceres should have large craters. Second,

One reason for the lack of large craters could be related the interior structure of Ceres. There is evidence from Dawn that the upper layers of Ceres contain ice. Because ice is less dense than rock, the topography could “relax,” or smooth out, more quickly if ice or another lower-density material, such as salt, dominates the subsurface composition. Recent analysis of the center of Ceres’ Occator Crater suggests that the salts found there could be remnants of a frozen ocean under the surface, and that liquid water could have been present in Ceres’ interior.

Past hydrothermal activity, which may have influenced the salts rising to the surface at Occator, could also have something to do with the erasure of craters. If Ceres had widespread cryovolcanic activity in the past — the eruption of volatiles such as water — these cryogenic materials also could have flowed across the surface, possibly burying pre-existing large craters. Smaller impacts would have then created new craters on the resurfaced area.

This theory doesn’t really work that well either, because it fails to explain why only the big craters got erased.

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Two different kinds of boos

9:52 am

The American election process can be messy and entertaining, frightening and exhilarating, confusing and educational. In the past week we have had one great example of this during the nominating conventions of our two main political parties. In both cases, the convention-going party attendees have broken out in loud boos, loudly attacking people on the podium for their positions. Such behavior is not what you would expect from the modern conventions, which for several decades have been nothing more than staged propaganda events designed to sell their candidates to the American public. One doesn’t usually boo during such staged events.

First we had at the Republican convention the response to Ted Cruz’s speech, where when he refused to endorse Donald Trump he was almost literally driven from the stage by boos from the audience.

Then, yesterday we had Bernie Sanders supporters overwhelm the Democratic convention with boos, first during an appearance of former Democratic chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and then during the convention’s opening prayer.

It is important to understand the difference between these boos, as they are a strong marker of what will happen in November. In the case of the Republicans, the booing was in support of the Republican candidate, hostile to the implied opposition to Donald Trump by Ted Cruz. In the case of the Democrats, the booing was in opposition to the Democrat candidate, hostile to Hillary Clinton’s nomination and the perception that the Democratic Party stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders.

I have always believed that Hillary Clinton was the worst presidential candidate I have seen in my lifetime. It seems to me that this difference illustrates this fact once again. Sadly for me, the Republicans have wasted this opportunity and picked a liberal Democrat as their candidate, losing the best opportunity since 1980 to put an honest and principled conservative into office.

All I can do now is hope that Donald Trump will surprise me and be far more conservative than I expect, when he becomes President in January.

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Hackers devise method to take over wireless keyboards/mouses

9:21 am

Your modern wireless computer is not safe: Hackers have devised an attack that is capable of not only recording the keystrokes and mouse actions of wireless devices, it can also take over the computer, and it can do it from hundreds of feet away.

On Tuesday Bastille’s research team revealed a new set of wireless keyboard attacks they’re calling Keysniffer. The technique, which they’re planning to detail at the Defcon hacker conference in two weeks, allows any hacker with a $12 radio device to intercept the connection between any of eight wireless keyboards and a computer from 250 feet away. What’s more, it gives the hacker the ability to both type keystrokes on the victim machine and silently record the target’s typing.

The keyboards’ vulnerability, according to Bastille’s chief research officer Ivan O’Sullivan, comes from the fact that they all transmit keystrokes entirely without encryption. The manufacturers’ only plan against attackers spoofing or eavesdropping on their devices’ communications is to depend on the obscurity of the radio protocols used. “We were stunned,” says O’Sullivan. “We had no expectation that in 2016 these companies would be selling keyboards with no encryption.”

In other words, if you use a wireless keyboard or mouse, your system is very vulnerable and exposed.

I find this story amusing in a sense, since my friends constantly make fun of me for not upgrading to these devises. I however see no reason to spend money on a new keyboard when the old wired one I have works fine. Now I have good reason, when I do upgrade, to avoid the wireless route.

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Swedish engineer test flies human-carrying drone

9:09 am

A Swedish engineer, in his garage, has built a flying vehicle using drones and gasoline engines.

You have to see the thing to understand how insanely simple, crazy, and cool this is. For example, the whole thing is essentially nothing more than a seat surrounded by eight drones, their spinning propellers rotating only about two feet from the passenger.

But it appears to work, though the design is without doubt not quite finalized. I have embedded a video of one of his test flights below the fold. This was fortunately an unmanned flight, because about three minutes in the vehicle goes out of control and crashes.
» Read more

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India faces $1 billion in damages for space contract cancellation

8:52 am

An arbitration court at the Hague yesterday ruled that India faces $1 billion in damages because of its unilateral cancellation in 2011 of a satellite deal between itself and a private company.

More info here. Essentially the ruling says that India had made a legal commitment when it signed the contract, and by unilaterally cancelled it they did harm to the private company’s shareholders.

This case illustrates that, despite India’s successes in space, it is still running a government space program, with all the flaws that come with it. Paying off these damages will likely put a serious crimp in the country’s space effort in the next few years.

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Rosetta says goodbye to Philae

8:35 am

The Rosetta science team has decided to shut off tomorrow the communications equipment the spacecraft uses in its continuing attempts to re-establish communications with its Philae lander.

Switching off the ESS is part of the preparations for Rosetta’s end of mission. By the end of July 2016, the spacecraft will be some 520 million km from the Sun, and will start facing a significant loss of power – about 4W per day. In order to continue scientific operations over the next two months and to maximise their return, it became necessary to start reducing the power consumed by the non-essential payload components on board.

Though until now they have never stopped trying to contact Philae, they have heard nothing since July 2015. Moreover, the recent close sweeps down to the comet’s surface have failed so far to locate the lander. Unless they are holding back the lander’s discovery for a big splash press conference, it appears that we will never known exactly where the lander touched down.

That is, we will never know. Someday, many decades in the future, some asteroid/comet mining operation will show up and find it. I hope at that time they will carefully pack it up and bring it back for humans to admire as a testament to our human ability to push the unknown. Even better, I hope they put it in the “History of Space” museum, located not on Earth but on Mars, built to educate the children of the colonists who are making possible the expansion of humanity out to the stars.

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Democrats add space language to platform

9:05 am

The Democrats have added language to their party platform that expresses support for NASA and continuing its funding.

It’s only a single paragraph filled with the typical blather we see in both parties’ platforms: We support it! It’s great! It’s for the children!. The last line however gives a sense of where they’d like to focus their funding:

We will strengthen support for NASA and work in partnership with the international scientific community to launch new missions to space.

Not surprisingly, if compelled to support space the Democrats see it mostly as a vehicle for increased international cooperation.

Despite my cynical analysis above, the fact that both parties feel compelled right now to express positions supporting the exploration of space is a sign indicating where the political winds are blowing. The excitement created by SpaceX’s low prices and successful vertical first stage landings has even reached into the thick skulls of politicians from both parties. Rather than mouth the Democratic half-century-old mantra that “We should solve our problems here on Earth before spending it in space” (first pushed hard by Ted Kennedy in a speech the night before Apollo 11 was launched to the Moon), Democrats have not only apparently concluded that this won’t sell anymore, they now feel it necessary to express support for space funding.

Now, if only we can convince them to stop wasting it on SLS we might actually build a thriving and competitive space industry, capable of doing it all.

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Another da Vinci discovery

8:52 am

A historian doing a detailed study of Leonardo da Vinci’s research on the nature of friction has discovered his first notes on the subject, where da Vinci outlined the laws of friction two hundred years before they were finally documented by a French scientist.

“The sketches and text show Leonardo understood the fundamentals of friction in 1493,” says Hutchings. “He knew that the force of friction acting between two sliding surfaces is proportional to the load pressing the surfaces together and that friction is independent of the apparent area of contact between the two surfaces. These are the ‘laws of friction’ that we nowadays usually credit to a French scientist, Guillaume Amontons, working 200 years later.”

It is an unfortunate thing that da Vinci lived and worked in Italy. Though this was where the Renaissance blossomed, it is also the place where some scientists at the time were persecuted for being too honest about their research. To protect himself da Vinci confined his scientific genius to his private diaries, written in a backwards script he created so that no one could easily understand what he wrote. Thus, while his brilliance as a painter was recognized in his lifetime and after, the discoveries he had made about engineering and science were lost for literally centuries.

I wonder if there are individuals, especially in the climate field, who are now experimenting with similar techniques to hide their work.

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A good summary of the Wikileaks DNC emails

10:09 am

Link here. This Reddit post essential lists several dozen links to specific DNC emails at the Wikileaks site, all illustrating some pretty unsavory behavior by Democratic Party officials and politicians as well as a number of so-called journalists.

Many of these stories are simply the ordinary dirty business of politics, laid bare to see. Others though reveal the significant levels of corruption that permeate the Democratic Party, levels I think that far worse than anything one could find among the Republicans, bad as that party’s leadership happens to be.

Above all, the emails that document the close teamwork between the press and the Democratic Party are probably the most important. It is not that this is surprising. The emails merely prove it beyond a shadow of doubt. MSNBC and its head Phil Griffin especially are revealed to be nothing more than Democratic operatives, working closely with the DNC to push its agenda.

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More speculations about Trump’s cabinet

8:43 pm

This article gives a nice overview of the people who it appears are being considered for positions in a Trump presidency, should he win.

Unfortunately, it does not give a lot of background about the people mentioned. Many, like Chris Christie, Jeff Sessions, Rudy Giuliani, and Newt Gingrich, are well known. Others, like businessman Donald McGahn, are unknown. Some, like Senator Bob Corker, suggested as potential Secretary of State, would be a disaster, based on his past history of getting the Iran deal approved.
Some. like Harold Hamm and Steve Mnuchin, have been described here at BtB at the links behind their names, Hamm positively and Mnuchin negatively..

There is more at the link. Read it all. This list is a start. It will require vetting to get a sense of what we can expect from a Trump administration.

Note that there is a reason I am so focused on Trump and not Clinton. Trump remains an unknown, who might be worth voting for if it appears his plans as President are reasonable, something that might still be possible, despite all the negative reports I’ve given him. Moreover, there is a chance that Trump can be positively influenced. Learning as much about him as possible increases that possibility.

Clinton however is not an unknown. She is corrupt, a liar, and an avowed socialist who believes strongly in increasing the size and power of the federal government, as does the entire political party that supports her. To deny any of this is to live with your head in the sand. She thus needs no vetting.

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New smallsat rocket company plans first launch in 2018

4:59 pm

The competition heats up: Vector Space Systems now plans its first test flights of its Vector 1 will begin in 2017 with the first orbital flights in 2018.

[Chief executive Jim Cantrell] said he expects to do three or four orbital launches in 2018, increasing to 12 in 2019. “We’re going to call them test launches,” he said of the planned 2018 launches, “but we have a number of people who want to buy those launches already.”

Cantrell said Vector Space Systems has signed up one customer, and is in negotiations with a second customer, both of whom he declined to name. Both customers, he said, are planning satellite constellations. “Between those two, we will have sold close to 30 launches,” he said, with those launches spread out over several years.

Vector 1 is being designed to launch very small satellites weighing generally less than 100 pounds.

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Trump considers funding super-PACs to defeat Cruz and Kasich in later elections

4:48 pm

Update on the November Democratic primary: Donald Trump is considering creating two super-pacs expressly focused at destroying the political careers of Ohio Governor John Kasich and Texas Senator Ted Cruz.

During an event in Cleveland on Friday, Trump hinted at the prospect of funding an outside group against Cruz in the future.“Maybe I’ll set up a super-PAC if he decides to run,” Trump said of Cruz. Turning to his running mate Mike Pence he asked rhetorically, “Are you allowed to set up a super-PAC…if you are the president, to fight someone?”

The source close to Trump’s thinking indicated that Trump would consider forming the super-PAC whether or not he wins the presidential election in November.

This sure doesn’t sound like the actions of a Republican and conservative looking for allies within his party. Instead, it sounds like a Democrat who, having gotten the Republican nomination for President, can now stop pretending and begin the process of using his position to destroy the conservative movement in the United States in order to make it easier to impose liberal policies.

Trump’s supporters keep screaming that Cruz should have endorsed Trump for party unity. Well, the same applies to Trump — to bring the party together — only more so, since he has the nomination for president and as such is the de facto leader of the party. Moreover, while Cruz’s speech could have been more carefully worded, it nonetheless laid out the arguments for voting against Hillary Clinton and supporting all Republicans nationwide, even Trump (though unstated). Trump however is clearly doing the exact opposite, considering the investment of millions of his own money to actively work to defeat two of the party’s more conservative Republicans.

But hey, Trump can win! Who cares what he stands for!

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