Category: Points of Information

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

Next China lunar lander aimed for farside south pole

5:28 pm

The competition heats up: China announced plans today to send its next lunar lander, Chang’e 4, to the Moon’s farside south pole in 2018.

The lander of Chang’e-4 will be equipped with descent and terrain cameras, and the rover will be equipped with a panoramic camera, he said. Like China’s first lunar rover Yutu, or Jade Rabbit, carried by Chang’e-3, the rover of Chang’e-4 will carry subsurface penetrating radar to detect the near surface structure of the moon, and an infrared spectrometer to analyze the chemical composition of lunar samples.

But unlike Chang’e-3, the new lander will be equipped with an important scientific payload especially designed for the far side of the moon: a low-frequency radio spectrometer. “Since the far side of the moon is shielded from electromagnetic interference from the Earth, it’s an ideal place to research the space environment and solar bursts, and the probe can ‘listen’ to the deeper reaches of the cosmos,” Liu said.

The U.S. had been in the lead in the land rush to gain dominance in the possibly water-rich lunar south pole. We apparently have lost this lead with decision of President Obama and Congress to focus elsewhere, either the asteroids or Mars.

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Democrats work to abolish 2nd amendment merely because the FBI suspects you

10:37 am

Fascists: Senate Democrats are teaming up with a handful of Republicans to re-introduce a bill that would allow the federal government to instantly suspend the second amendment constitutional rights of anyone the FBI happens to declare a suspect.

If the FBI believes there’s a reasonable chance someone is going to use a gun in a terrorist attack, it should be able to make that determination and block the sale,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told a conference call on Monday.

No due process, no conviction, no actual evidence of wrong-doing is needed. Though the law tries to define what the FBI’s determinations should be based on, all the FBI and the federal government would really have to do is declare you a suspect. In other words, if they don’t like you — for example you happen to be a member of a tea party group that opposes Barack Obama, or you happen to be an Occupy Wall Street protester who opposes Donald Trump — they can cancel your second amendment rights and bar you from owning guns.

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Muslim Democratic Congressman reveals his pro-Islam bias toward murder

9:15 am

Fascist: Rather than feel outrage and horror that a madman used Islam as an excuse to commit mass murder, Muslim congressman Keith Ellison (D-Minnesota) instead called Donald Trump’s completely reasonable remarks about the Orlando attack “a villainous rampage against other Americans.”

As noted rightly by the author at the link:

Rather than working for justice for the slaughtered innocents and demanding reform in Islam so terrorists can no longer credibly claim their murderous acts are justified by their God, he pretends that a Republican politician is the real problem. Rather than accurately describe the evil acts in Orlando as a “villainous rampage against other Americans,” Ellison believes that Donald Trump’s speech deserves that designation instead.

Ellison is running for re-election this November and his opponent is Frank Drake. You know what to do.

First, Ellison shows us how corrupt Islam is by his unwillingness to address the religion’s murderous track record. Liberal politicians like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton can try to rationalize its repeated links to terrorism, but Ellison proves undeniably that those links are real, and that the religion is corrupt.

Second, as I’ve said repeatedly, it is essential in this upcoming election for the United States to have as many conservatives win as many elections as possible, if only to help insure that whoever ends up as president can do as little harm as possible. Here is another case where the voters could make a big difference.

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Curiosity heads south

8:53 am

After four years of southwest travel to skirt a large dune field at the base of Mount Sharp, Curiosity has finally turned due south to aim directly up the mountain.

“Now that we’ve skirted our way around the dunes and crossed the plateau, we’ve turned south to climb the mountain head-on,” said Curiosity Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. “Since landing, we’ve been aiming for this gap in the terrain and this left turn. It’s a great moment for the mission.”

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Cygnus to depart ISS, then start a fire

5:40 pm

A fire in space: Orbital ATK’s Cygnus capsule is scheduled to leave ISS on Tuesday, when shortly thereafter it will begin a controlled fire experiment.

“Saffire-I provides a new way to study a realistic fire on a spacecraft. This hasn’t been possible in the past because the risks for performing such studies on crewed spacecraft are too high. Instruments on the returning Cygnus will measure flame growth, oxygen use and more. Results could determine microgravity flammability limits for several spacecraft materials, help to validate NASA’s material selection criteria, and help scientists understand how microgravity and limited oxygen affect flame size. The investigation is crucial for the safety of current and future space missions. – See more at: http://www.space.com/17933-nasa-television-webcasts-live-space-tv.html#sthash.2DjFjJqY.dpuf

The departure is scheduled for 9 am (eastern), and will aired live by NASA.

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Insurance premiums skyrocketing due to Obamacare

11:35 am

Finding out what’s in it: Because of Obamacare health insurance premiums will go up again next year, as much as 60 percent in some cases.

This story isn’t really news. As predicted by every conservative and tea party person before Obamacare was passed in 2010, as Obamacare has kicked in and as it has forced insurance companies to pay for the healthcare of the sick who never paid for health insurance previously, they are forced to raise their rates to cover the costs. These increases are only the start. Worse, they are getting so burdensome that soon no one will be able to afford health insurance at all, which will make it impossible for that insurance to protect anyone.

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Luxembourg purchases 49% stake in Planetary Resources

8:51 am

The competition heats up: Following through in its commitment to invest funds in futures space industries, the government of Luxembourg has signed an agreement with Planetary Resources in which it takes 49% equity share of the company.

It is clear that Luxembourg’s goal is to make itself the center of the world for all future space-based industries, and this quote illustrates this:

The Luxembourg government investment adds a powerful incentive to relocate some of this development to Luxembourg before Ceres satellite production is too solidly anchored on the U.S. West Coast. In May, health-care and agricultural research giant Bayer of Monheim, Germany, and Planetary Resources announced they had signed a memorandum of understanding under which Bayer “intends to purchase data from Planetary Resources to create new agricultural products and improve existing ones. The collaboration will be part of the Digital Farming Initiative at Bayer.” Schneider has said the spaceresources.lu program would distinguish itself from U.S.-based efforts by being more international. Companies setting up shop in Luxembourg need not prove Luxembourg-based majority ownership to receive the full suite of regulatory advantages.

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NASA and United Arab Emirates sign space cooperation deal

7:30 am

The competition heats up (but not in the way you think): NASA and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) space agency have signed an agreement to cooperate in space research and technology development.

The agreement covers cooperation and collaboration in space science, operational Earth observation and Earth science, aeronautics, space operations and exploration, education, technology, safety and mission assurance, and other areas with potential benefits to all nations.

The two countries will continue to identify additional areas of mutual interest for possible future cooperative programs or joint activities on Earth, in airspace, or in outer space. These activities may include the joint use of aircraft, scientific instruments aboard spacecraft, ground-based research facilities, spacecraft and space research platforms, as well as ground-based antennas for tracking, telemetry, and data acquisition. Additionally, the two countries will aim to collaborate on the creation and implementation of education and public outreach programs and joint workshops, with the goal of facilitating the exchange of scientific data, scientists, engineers, and views and experiences on relevant regulatory frameworks and standards.

The competition here is not between these big space government programs, who are increasingly teaming up, but between the big space government programs and the profitable and uncontrolled private sector. I fully expect there to be more calls for government supervision and licensing of private space, just to control it better. And what better way to leverage that control but to link every big space program in the world together, so that there are no independent efforts?

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Successful ULA Delta 4 Heavy launch today

6:03 pm

The competition heats up: ULA today successfully launched a U.S. National Reconnaissance Office spy satellite, using what is presently the world’s most powerful rocket, the Delta 4 Heavy.

In many ways, this rocket’s launch, which you can see in the video embedded below the fold, gives a rough idea of what a Falcon Heavy launch will look like, since the rockets have somewhat similar configurations.
» Read more

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Musk hints details of SpaceX Mars project

4:40 pm

The competition heats up: In an interview with the Washington Post this week, Elon Musk gave some more hints at his company’s future plans to send its Dragon capsules to Mars.

“Essentially what we’re saying is we’re establishing a cargo route to Mars,” [Musk] said. “It’s a regular cargo route. You can count on it. It’s going happen every 26 months. Like a train leaving the station. And if scientists around the world know that they can count on that, and it’s going to be inexpensive, relatively speaking compared to anything in the past, then they will plan accordingly and come up with a lot of great experiments.”

The key to Musk’s effort is that he plans on doing it. He isn’t sitting around waiting for others, or trying to convince others to join him in a partnership before proceeding. He is simply doing it, and is welcoming others to take advantage of the opportunity he is offering.

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Auction of silver medals flown on Apollo brings in $800K

4:18 pm

Coins in space: An auction in May of silver medals carried by astronauts on a variety of Apollo missions has brought in nearly $800,000.

Robbins medallions were minted by the Robbins Co. of Attleboro, Mass. These .925 fine silver medals have been produced for every manned U.S. mission since Apollo 7. The medals were paid for by the crews and available for purchase only by NASA astronauts at the time. Medals that were actually flown on missions are especially coveted.

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San Jose police herded Trump supporters into mob

1:43 pm

In this op-ed today by a Trump supporter, describing how leftwing thugs broke his nose at a Trump rally in San Jose, there was the very significant sentence, highlighted below:

My trouble began once the rally was over.

My friend and I joined a crowd of Trump supporters who had all left the convention center around the same time. The garage where we had parked our car was right next to the building, but police were directing everyone around the block to another garage entrance instead. The farther we walked, the fewer Trump fans were with us — people began peeling off to go to restaurants or bars in the area, or to other garages nearby.

And suddenly, there were protesters everywhere. Some were holding Mexican flags, or burning American ones. They were yelling “F— Trump!” at us and cornering us. [emphasis mine]

In other words, the San Jose police, who had been given the stand-down order by their mayor, who hates Trump and has sent campaign money to Clinton, had arranged things so that Trump supporters couldn’t simply go to their cars. They had to run the gauntlet through these violent thugs, without police protection, thus guaranteeing that some ot them would be hurt.

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Stuck in part-time work or unemployed? Blame Obamacare

11:05 am

Finding out what’s in it: New data strongly suggests that this week’s very bad jobs report is the result of Obamacare.

The economic recovery since 2008 is the weakest since World War II. More people are out of the workforce than ever in history. And the number of people doing part-time work has skyrocketed. Wonder why?

Analysts at Goldman Sachs have noticed this trend for some time, and put the blame on Obamacare. “The evidence suggests that the [Affordable Care Act] has at least modestly elevated involuntary part-time employment,” Goldman Sachs economist Alec Philips wrote in a research note published on Wednesday. Obamacare had the greatest impact on industries that traditionally do not offer strong health insurance coverage, such as retail stores and the hospitality industry. Phillips noted that these have the highest levels of involuntary part-time workers, and believes that the ACA has forced “a few hundred thousand” to take cuts in hours or accept part-time work as a result.

In other words, businesses have had either two choices to avoid the unaffordable costs of Obamacare: stop hiring, or hire only part-time workers. The result has been a stagnant economy where workers are either making less or nothing at all.

Fortunately, come November we will have a real choice: Pick a Democrat who was part of the effort to bring us this law, or pick a Democrat who says he has changed but keeps saying things that suggest othewise! Ain’t that just grand?

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Pluto’s jagged shores

10:43 am

Pluto's jagged shoreline

Cool image time! The picture on the right, taken by New Horizons during its July 2015 flyby and cropped and reduced here, shows the reddish hues of the Krun Macula dark region along the shore of Pluto’s vast nitrogen ice plains. The hillsides here rise about a mile and a half above both the plains and the valleys, making them deeper than the Grand Canyon. The hills are “believed to get its dark red color from tholins, complex molecules found across Pluto.”

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Pay cash for healthcare and save a fortune

9:33 am

Because of the skyrocketing costs for healthcare due to Obamacare, it is now far cheaper to simply pay cash for many medical procedures, bypassing health insurance completely.

“This is one of the dirty little secrets of healthcare,” said Gerald Kominski, director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. “If your insurance has a high deductible, you should always ask the cash price.”

Cash prices are intended for uninsured patients — and are frequently still much higher than insured rates. But cash prices for many common procedures have come down thanks to changing regulations and consumers increasingly being able to shop around for cheaper providers. Blood tests can be performed at CVS MinuteClinics and other pharmacies, for instance. Or as I reported a few years ago, MRIs are available from independent providers for as little as $300, whereas many hospitals will charge thousands of dollars.

The article’s main example is the case where the cost for blood tests, through insurance, was more than $80, while the cash price was only $15, and was still sufficient for the lab to make a profit.

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Republicans in Congress move to limit civil forfeiture

9:23 am

A Republican bill now moving through both houses of Congress will place some limits on the ability of state and federal governments to confiscate private property.

The bills most important provision will be to shift the burden of proof to the government, not the citizen. However,

Unfortunately, while the DUE PROCESS Act contains many of the procedural reforms that The Heritage Foundation and a broad coalition of organizations have called for in our recent Meese Center report, “Arresting Your Property,” it does not tackle two of the most perverse aspects of forfeiture law: the financial incentives that underlie modern civil forfeiture practices and the profit-sharing programs known as “equitable sharing.”

Under federal law, 100 percent of the proceeds of successful forfeitures are retained by the federal law enforcement organization that executed the seizure. This money is available to be spent by these agencies without congressional oversight, meaning they can—and do—self-finance. This profiteering incentive is extended to state and local agencies through programs administered by the Justice and Treasury departments known as “equitable sharing,” which allow property seized at the state and local level to be transferred to federal authorities for forfeiture under federal law. The feds then return up to 80 percent of the resulting revenues to the originating agency.

Thus, federal law provides every law enforcement agency in the country with a direct financial incentive to seize cash and property—sometimes at the expense of investigating, arresting, and prosecuting actual criminals—and simultaneously encourages state and local agencies to circumvent state laws that are more protective of property rights or restrictive as to how forfeiture proceeds may be spent than the federal standard.

The simple fact is that civil forfeiture is already blatantly illegal, as per the plain words in the fifth amendment to the Constitution:

No person . . .[shall] be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

It is a horrible tragedy that so few people today respect these plain words.

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Battle for communications spectrum between private companies

9:09 am

The competition heats up: One group of mobile broadband companies is fighting another group of satellite-based internet companies for control over the use of a part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

A coalition of 5G terrestrial mobile broadband companies led by Charlie Ergen’s Dish Network on June 8 asked U.S. regulators to strip future low-orbiting satellite Internet constellations of their priority access to 500 megahertz of Ku-band spectrum – spectrum coveted by prospective constellation operators including OneWeb LLC and SpaceX. SpaceX and satellite fleet operator Intelsat, a OneWeb investor and partner, immediately filed separate opposition papers to the FCC, arguing that nongeostationary-orbit (NGSO) constellations are very much alive.

In the middle is the FCC and our hapless and increasingly corrupt federal government. I sadly suspect the side that will win this battle will be the side that gives the most campaign money to the right politicians.

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California moves to criminalize journalism

7:57 pm

Fascists: Democrats in the California legislature are pushing a bill that would criminalize undercover videos of healthcare providers like Planned Parenthood.

Hey, who says we need a first amendment or a Bill of Rights? We instead have elected Democrats to protect us, including the guy who introduced this bill and who has received $13,500 in campaign contributions from Planned Parenthood. Why should we worry?

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Mars’ seasonal dust storms

5:53 pm

Data from the many Martian orbiters since 1997 have allowed scientists to roughly outline a seasonal pattern of dust storms on Mars.

Most Martian dust storms are localized, smaller than about 1,200 miles (about 2,000 kilometers) across and dissipating within a few days. Some become regional, affecting up to a third of the planet and persisting up to three weeks. A few encircle Mars, covering the southern hemisphere but not the whole planet. Twice since 1997, global dust storms have fully enshrouded Mars. The behavior of large regional dust storms in Martian years that include global dust storms is currently unclear, and years with a global storm were not included in the new analysis.

They have also found three types of regional dust storms, all of which appear to occur each Martian year.

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Federal court rules against 2nd amendment

11:48 am

Who needs that silly Bill of Rights anyway? A federal court has ruled that the 2nd Amendment does not protect the right of Americans to carry a concealed gun in public.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is ruling in favor of California’s “good cause” requirement, saying the Second Amendment does not protect a right to carry a concealed gun in public.

On February 13 2014 Breibart News reported that a panel of judges from the Ninth Circuit struck down California’s “good cause” requirement. Thereafter–under pressure from State Attorney Kamala Harris–the court announced that it would rehear the case en banc. Today that en banc ruling resulted in the “good cause” requirement being upheld and Americans being told they have not right to carry a concealed gun in public.

This ruling is also a reason I will have as little to do with the fascist state of California as I can. Not only is California now a place where you are denied your right to keep and bear arms, Kamala Harris is likely going to be California’s next Senator, and she is someone quite willing to use the power of government to squelch people she disagrees with. For the people of California, however, that fascist approach to government is a recommendation, not a disqualification.

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India’s government proposes ending satellite competition

11:19 am

The competition cools down? A regulatory agency in India is proposing eliminating commercial satellite competition and consolidating all satellite television broadcasts onto a handful of government owned and launched satellites.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Make in India” campaign seeks to promote India’s domestic industrial base. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on May 23 published what it calls a “pre-consultation paper” that points to the savings satellite-television broadcasters could realize if they stopped beaming the same programs on different satellites, and instead banded together on one or two spacecraft.

As of March 2015, the latest period for which TRAI has produced figures, there were 76 million DTH subscribers in India, of which 41.1 million were considered active. These subscribers received programming from six pay TV DTH providers and one free-to-air satellite broadcast service. TRAI said multiple DTH providers are broadcasting the same channels even as they compete with each other for subscribers. “There is scope for better utilization of available infrastructure,” TRAI said. “There is a need to examine technical and commercial issues in sharing of infrastructure such as satellite transponders, Earth station facilities….”

There is also this important component to the story:

India has been one of the biggest satellite-DTH growth markets in recent years, but one in which barriers to entry by foreigners remain high. Under Indian law, television broadcasters seeking operating licenses are given preferential treatment if they use India’s own Insat telecommunications satellites, owned and operated by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). Non-Indian satellites are permitted if ISRO’s Insat system does not have sufficient capacity to meet programmers’ demand. This has been the case for years as ISRO has been unable to keep up with the market for satellite television.

In other words, the commercial satellite business in India is doing great, so let’s muck it up by having one government agency create a monopoly for another government agency.

The United States tried this in the 1960s when it banned private companies from launching commercial communications satellites and instead required all such satellites to be built by the government-managed Comsat corporation. The result in the U.S. was a squelched satellite and launch industry that did not recover for more than a decade, and only did so when the Nixon administration forced a change in the rules.

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