April 8, 2022 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, well worth your time, go here.
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Category: Points of Information
Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
Splonk went the crater!
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on February 18, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label as a “degraded crater in Utopia Planitia.”
There is a lot of intriguing geology in this one image. First of course is the crater itself. We have to ask, is it from an impact or from some volcanic process? The location, at 44 degrees north latitude, argues that some form of ice or mud process was involved. Maybe we are looking at a frozen eruption from an underground ice layer. If this was instead caused by an impact, the crater’s ringlike structure could have been created by the ripples of melted ice and mud emanating away but then quickly refreezing.
Surrounding the crater are many small fissures, the largest ones all oriented in a north-south direction. If there is an ice layer near the surface, these cracks might be caused by that ice sublimating away. Why the largest cracks orient in the same direction however is a mystery.
The color variations suggest [pdf] dust (red-orange) as well as a variety of minerals (green). Since no blue appears visible in this version of the photo, if this crater was shaped by melting or erupting ice, that ice is well covered by that layer of dust and debris.
The location map below as always provides context.
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Pushback: NJ gym-owners who refused to obey COVID edicts regain business license
The Bill of Rights, canceled in New Jersey
these past two years.
A profile in courage: The owners of a New Jersey gym, Atilis Gym, who refused to comply with any of the absurd Wuhan flu restrictions imposed by Democratic Party Governor Phil Murphy and his health department have had their business license restored after two years, during which they managed to keep the gym functioning by asking for donations by those who used it.
[Ian] Smith claimed that as a result of not complying with lockdown orders, he and [Frank] Trumbetti received more than 90 citations, along with ten gym members who received citations; 9 criminal charges; that both he and Trumbetti were arrested, as well as one member; that local police changed the locks on the building, backed up their plumbing, and eventually boarded up the gym; that they were fined $15,497.76 every day they remained open, for 5 months; that $173,000 in fundraising for their legal defense was seized by the state; and that they owe more than $300,000 in legal bills. “And they took our business license,” Smith wrote. “Our ability to pursue the American dream. All for what? We were right all along. To date, 391,683 visits to our facility and people got healthier, happier, and better.”
“Well, it paid off,” Smith continued. “The township folded. They reinstated our business license. It took them 2 years to realize that nothing would make us kneel. … We made it. 2 years without charging a single member – just donations and [T-Shirt] sales. All the legal bills, fines, normal overhead, and safety equipment. We were able to do it because of you all. Thank you all again.”
Expect these owners to follow up with lawsuits to recover damages for the state’s illegal acts to try to destroy them.
Their resistance to tyranny was very painful for these brave men, but their courage cannot be applauded enough. They did what more Americans should have done, and did not. They stood up to the idiotic health orders of the state, that were based on no science at all and were completely useless:
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New data contradicts accepted standard model of particle physics
The uncertainty of science: After years of analysis, physicists have refined their measurement of the mass of one important subatomic particle, and discovered that its weight violates the accepted standard model of particle physics, threatening to overthrow it entirely.
W bosons are elementary particles that carry the weak force, mediating nuclear processes like those at work in the Sun. According to the Standard Model, their mass is linked to the masses of the Higgs boson and a subatomic particle called the top quark. In a new study, almost 400 scientists on the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) collaboration spent a decade examining 4.2 million W boson candidates collected from 26 years of data at the Tevatron collider. From this treasure trove, the team was able to calculate the mass of the W boson to within 0.01 percent, making it twice as precise as the previous best measurement.
By their calculations, the W boson has a mass of 80,433.5 Mega-electronvolts (MeV), with an uncertainty of just 9.4 MeV either side. That’s within the range of some previous measurements, but well outside that predicted by the Standard Model, which puts it at 80,357 MeV, give or take 6 MeV. That means the new value is off by a whopping seven standard deviations.
Further cementing the anomaly, the W boson mass was also recently measured using data from the Large Hadron Collider, in a paper published in January. That team came to a value of 80,354 MeV (+/- 32 MeV), which is comfortably close to that given by the Standard Model.
Personally, I always take this level of physics with a great deal of skepticism. The data involves a lot of assumptions and uncertainties. That other researchers came up with a different number illustrates this.
Nonetheless, these results could suggest that the standard model, the consensus theory for decades, is either incomplete, or wrong. The former would be more likely, but no possibility should be dismissed. And even if wrong, much of that model still works so well any new model must include large parts of it.
French company raises €2 million to launch commercial solar sail
Capitalism in space: The French startup Gama has successfully raised €2 million to build and launch its first test solar sail, with the goal of eventually selling those sails for other interplanetary missions.
Gama plans to deploy a 73.3-sq-metre solar sail in a 550km-altitude orbit in October. It will be launched as an additional payload on a SpaceX rocket.
There have been a number of previous solar sail deployment tests by Nasa and the American space advocacy group the Planetary Society. However, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency had been the only organisation to successfully sail on sunlight. In 2010 it used a solar sail to power the experimental Ikaros (Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation of the Sun) spacecraft to Venus.
If successful the company will follow with two more test missions in ’24 and ’25, first testing at higher orbit and testing in interplanetary space.
Starlink delivers 5,000 terminals to Ukraine; loses license in France
Capitalism in space: Starlink today continued its aggressive support for the Ukraine in its war with Russia by delivering another 5,000 terminals to that beleaguered country.
Space reporter Joey Roulette tweeted Wednesday that the majority of the terminals — 3,667, to be exact — as well as the associated internet service were donated directly by SpaceX at a cost of “roughly $10 million,” with USAID purchasing the remaining 1,333 terminals. These numbers apparently came from an earlier version of the USAID release; the updated release doesn’t give dollar figures and refers only to 5,000 Starlink terminals donated by a public-private partnership.
Roulette also suggested in another tweet that France and Poland had made contributions to the Starlink shipments to Ukraine, citing an earlier conversation with SpaceX president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell. The USAID announcement only refers to the American partnership, however.
In a second story today, however, Starlink lost its ability to provide service in France, when a court ruled its license had been issued improperly.
France’s Conseil d’État ruled April 5 that French telecoms regulator ARCEP should have launched a public consultation before authorizing Starlink in February 2021.
“In law, they should normally cease [providing services] immediately, pending ARCEP’s public consultation” following the court’s decision, a Conseil d’État spokesperson told SpaceNews.
The court case was apparently instigated by two French environmental groups, who are demanding more regulations against the large satellite constellations.
Relativity still targeting a ’22 first launch
Capitalism in space: The startup rocket company Relativity is still targeting this year for the first test launch of its 3D-printed Terran-1 rocket, according to its CEO Tim Ellis.
The company has raised more than $1 billion in private investment capital.
If successful, Relativity will join Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbit, and Astra as a small satellite launch provider, all capable of launching military and commercial smallsats quickly. The competition will guarantee that their prices will be low as well.
SpaceX successfully launches Axiom’s first commercial flight to ISS
Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully launched the first commercial mission to ISS by the private company Axiom, carrying three passengers and one Axiom astronaut as commander.
The replay of the live stream of the launch is embedded below.
The first stage, which landed successfully on the drone ship in the Atlantic, completed its fifth flight. The capsule Endeavour was making its third flight. This is also the second private manned mission launched by SpaceX.
Docking with ISS is scheduled for early tomorrow morning.
All in all, it was a perfect launch, on time and as planned. This has become so routine for SpaceX that we tend to take it for granted. We shouldn’t. Launching people into space remains one of the hardest things humans do, and will likely always be so.
The leaders in the 2022 launch race:
13 SpaceX
9 China
5 Russia
2 ULA
2 Rocket Lab
The U.S. now leads China 20 to 9 in the national rankings.
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Video of panel discussion of Ukraine War’s impact on the global space industry
Stephen Fleming, who founded the Arizona Space Business Roundtable which co-hosted the Ukraine War panel discussion on April 5th with the Arizona Technology Council has now made the video of that event available on line.
The event was intended to outline and review what the impact of the Ukraine War on the global space industry might be.
You can download a video podcast of the event here.
The speakers:
Robert Zimmerman: The impact on Russia and the Ukraine space industries
Alex Rodriguez: The impact on the world’s space-related defense and military industries
Stephen Fleming [moderator]: The impact on the rest of the world’s commercial space industries
Also speaking remotely was Jim Cantrell, former CEO of Vector and now in charge of Phantom Space.
As expected, the event ran long, though no one left or fell asleep. Instead, there were good questions and comments. Alex reminded me of something I had completely forgotten about: When NATO had expanded after the fall of the Soviet Union, it only did so after signing an agreement with Russia calling for joint military operations, in order to convince the Russians that the expansion was not intended as a threat. That agreement, signed by Yeltsin, was essentially “shredded by Putin,” as Alex noted.
Give it a watch. You might find it enlightening.
Commercial imaging satellites prove their military worth in the Ukraine War
Capitalism in space: Because of the ability of private commercial satellites to obtain high resolution reconnaissance and radar images of the ground quickly, U.S. intelligence agencies decided right before the Russian invasion of the Ukraine to not only use those satellites, but to funnel that data both to the public and to the Ukraine.
“We partner with over 100 companies, we’re currently using imagery from at least 200 commercial satellites and we have about 20 or so different analytic services in our pipeline,” David Gauthier, director of commercial and business operations at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), said during a panel discussion at the 37th Space Symposium. “Because of all that, when Russia prepared to invade, we and the NRO [National Reconnaissance Office] increased and accelerated several efforts that were underway commercially,” said Gauthier.
The daily flow of intelligence that previously was only available from government sources and seldom released to the public is no accident, said Gauthier. “This moment has really been set up by a lot of hard work by many companies and many in the government to prepare ourselves to take better advantage of commercial capabilities.”
Leading up to the conflict, he said, “we more than doubled the commercial electro-optical imagery that was bought over Ukraine.” Imagery from companies like Maxar, BlackSky and Planet “was able to flow directly to those who need it, EUCOM [U.S. European Command], NATO and directly to Ukrainians,” Gauthier said.
The military’s increased reliance on reconnaissance imagery from these private commercial satellite constellations during this war is likely to accelerate the military’s switch from building its own big and expensive government satellites — which also launch rarely and provide little redundancy — to using the private sector for its needs.
In other words, the success of the private sector in this area during this war has once again proved the validity of the recommendations in my 2017 policy paper, Capitalism in Space [pdf].
The government should stop being a builder and instead become merely a customer. Let competing private companies do the work. Not only will the government get what it needs faster and for far less, the competition will fuel innovation and prosperity for the American people.
Update on SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy operations at Boca Chica
Link here. Though the permitting process for launching Starship from Boca Chica is stalled or maybe even blocked, SpaceX is continuing to use this waiting time to upgrade and improve the design of both Starship and its giant booster, Superheavy, abandoning earlier prototypes for newer versions incorporating those upgrades.
[Superheavy] Booster 4 and [Star]Ship 20, having served as articles to test the ground systems and verify the major design outlines of booster and ship, have now been phased out, with Elon Musk confirming on Twitter that these wouldn’t perform the long-awaited orbital velocity test flight.
Instead, it is now expected that Booster 7 and Ship 24 will be the duo performing this duty. For that same reason, SpaceX cleared the way for Booster 7 by removing Booster 4 from the OLM on March 24.
The company has been doing tank tests and stack tests of these new prototypes at a fast pace, even as it is assembling even newer prototypes.
ISRO once again delays first launch of its new SSLV rocket
India’s space agency ISRO today announced that it is once again delaying the first launch of its new Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) rocket.
This rocket, designed to launch cubesats and compete with private companies like Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbit, and Astra, was first going to launch in the summer of 2019. That launch was delayed until 2020, only to be blocked entirely for two more years because of India’s panic over the Wuhan flu.
Last month ISRO announced the successful completion of static fire tests of the rocket’s solid rocket first stage, suggesting a spring launch in ’22 would occur. That has now been delayed again, now targeting early summer.
The delays have cost India a great deal in market share. Had SSLV launched in 2020, it would have been well positioned to garner business now captured by Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbit, and Astra, the latter two of which were not yet operational at that time. Now India trails all these companies, with other American companies (Firefly, Relativity, ABL) on the horizon as well.