Tubeway Army – Are Friends Electric?
An evening pause: Music from the late seventies. Reminds me vaguely of a later Laurie Anderson hit.
Hat tip Jim Mallamace.
Category: Points of Information
Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
Trinity College professor calls for death of whites
Bigot: In a series of tweets a Trinity College professor of sociology appears to heartily endorse the idea that first responders should allow whites to die in emergency situations, just because they are white.
He also apparently still works for the college. Is this the kind of place you want your kids to attend?
British government to loosen regulations on space
The British government is about to propose new regulations on space to allow the operation of commercial spaceports while establishing a licensing system for the launch companies that will fly from those spaceports.
These new regulations are likely the legislation the government announced it was preparing back in February. I suspect they are, like other recent legislative proposals, trying to fit the square peg of private enterprise into the round hole of the Outer Space Treaty.
China’s Tianzhou-1 completes second docking test
Tianzhou-1, China’s first unmanned cargo freighter, has successfully completed its second docking with the test space station module Tiangong-2.
The two spacecraft will next separate, fly independent of each other for three months, when Tianzhou-1 will attempt a third more difficult docking attempt.
Largest quake in Yellowstone since 2014
The USGS today recorded a magnitude 4.5 earthquake at Yellowstone today, the largest since a magnitude 4.8 occurred in March 2014, and part of a continuing swarming of small quakes that began on June 12.
This sequence has included approximately thirty earthquakes of magnitude 2 and larger and four earthquakes of magnitude 3 and larger, including today’s magnitude 4.5 event.
It is hard to say whether this swarm of small quakes portend a really big volcanic event, or will simply die off in the coming days. Recent data at Yellowstone has suggested the former is possible, though not imminent.
Update of Kepler exoplanet catalog
Worlds without end: The Kepler science team has released an update of the space telescope’s exoplanet candidate list, adding 219 new exoplanet candidates.
NASA’s Kepler space telescope team has released a mission catalog of planet candidates that introduces 219 new planet candidates, 10 of which are near-Earth size and orbiting in their star’s habitable zone, which is the range of distance from a star where liquid water could pool on the surface of a rocky planet. This is the most comprehensive and detailed catalog release of candidate exoplanets, which are planets outside our solar system, from Kepler’s first four years of data. It’s also the final catalog from the spacecraft’s view of the patch of sky in the Cygnus constellation.
With the release of this catalog, derived from data publicly available on the NASA Exoplanet Archive, there are now 4,034 planet candidates identified by Kepler. Of which, 2,335 have been verified as exoplanets. Of roughly 50 near-Earth size habitable zone candidates detected by Kepler, more than 30 have been verified.
Additionally, results using Kepler data suggest two distinct size groupings of small planets. Both results have significant implications for the search for life. The final Kepler catalog will serve as the foundation for more study to determine the prevalence and demographics of planets in the galaxy, while the discovery of the two distinct planetary populations shows that about half the planets we know of in the galaxy either have no surface, or lie beneath a deep, crushing atmosphere – an environment unlikely to host life.
How cats used humans to conquer the world
Link here. The bottom line is this:
Compared to many other animals, cats have also changed very little in the domestication process. Behaviorally, they’ve become more tolerant of humans. Physically, though, they’re still about the same size and shape. They still like to pounce on small prey. “Cats have done since before they were domesticated what we needed them to do,” says Leslie Lyons, a feline geneticist at the University of Missouri. In other words, unlike dogs that herd sheep or hunt badgers, cats didn’t need humans to breed them to become good mouse hunters.
In other words, cats did what they want (as they always do), and humans paid them with food and companionship, while providing them the transportation they needed to reach every continent.
Did China experience a launch failure today?
The status of a Chinese launch attempt of a communications satellite today remains unknown, hours after launch.
China launched its seventh mission of 2017 on Sunday, lofting the Zhongxing-9A (ChinaSat-9A) communications satellite, but -unusually – there has been no official status update in over three hours since liftoff. The Long March 3B/G2 lifted off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in the hills of Sichuan Province at 00:12 local time on monday (16:12 UTC, 12:12 EDT on Sunday), following on from Thursday’s launch of the country’s first space observatory.
Apparent video footage and locals on social media surprised by the rumbling of the launch vehicle confirmed liftoff. However, official confirmation of launch success, often within an hour, has not followed, bringing speculation of some degree of failure.
Nothing has as yet been confirmed, so this launch might not be a failure.
Update: A problem with the third stage placed the satellite in the wrong orbit.
SpaceX delays Bulgarian satellite launch to replace valve
Capitalism in space: In order to replace a valve in the payload fairing of its Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX has decided to delay its Florida launch of a Bulgarian television satellite until Friday.
Meanwhile, they have another launch scheduled for Sunday out of Vandenberg. If both fly successfully this will make the weekend very busy for SpaceX.
June 16, 2017 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold.
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Illinois facing budget collapse
Leftist governance: Having now gone three years without an official budget and having expenses exceeding revenues by large amounts on a monthly basis, Illinois now faces a budget collapse.
A mix of state law, court orders and pressure from credit rating agencies requires some items be paid first. Those include debt and pension payments, state worker paychecks and some school funding. Mendoza says a recent court order regarding money owed for Medicaid bills means mandated payments will eat up 100 percent of Illinois’ monthly revenue.
There would be no money left for so-called “discretionary” spending – a category that in Illinois includes school buses, domestic violence shelters and some ambulance services
More here. Essentially, this state, run for decades by Democrats (and Republican helpers) and their union buddies, has unfunded pension liabilities that make it impossible to pay its real bills. I saw this happen in New York City in the 1970s, after almost a century of one-party Democratic rule. Watch it happen again here, as well as in California and several other radicalized blue states. They have decided to go full socialist, and as such are guaranteed societal failure.
New smallsat rocket company plans first flight of aerospike engine
ARCA Aerospace has announced that it will perform the first test flight reaching space of an aerospike rocket engine this coming August.
ARCA Space Corporation has announced the first test-launch of its Demonstrator 3 space vehicle at Spaceport America in August. This will mark the first space flight of an aerospike rocket engine. Aerospike rocket engines are described as significantly more fuel efficient than the current engines and could make launches attempting to bring satellite payloads to space more affordable. Demonstrator 3 will perform a suborbital space flight up to an altitude of 100 kilometers above the New Mexico desert.
Their goal is to build a rocket they have dubbed Haas 2CA for the smallsat industry.
There is an interesting video at the link from the company showing their engineers hand-building this first suborbital test rocket, which the company also says is the first of a weekly series leading up to the test launch. More information about the company can be found at their website. According to their schedule, they hope to make the first orbital flight in 2018, and begin commercial operations by the end of that year.
The state of the global aerospace industry
A new European analysis of the global aerospace industry suggests it is both growing and changing significantly.
Several takeaways that indicate future trends.
- The government space spending has been stable the past 5 years, there was a 2% drop in 2016
- The number of nations spending money on space has grown significantly in the past decade, from 47 to 70
- Spending is shifting from military to civilian efforts
- Russia experienced a 25% cut in aerospace spending in 2016
- China passed Russia in spending in 2016
- U.S. government spending stabilized in 2016 after a 25% decline since 2010
A drop in government spending in space is not proof that the industry is shrinking. In fact, it might be a sign of robust growth, in that it is no longer necessary to depend on coerced tax dollars to finance space projects. Instead, it suggests that because there are increasing profits to be made in space, the government is being replaced by a vibrant private sector. It also suggests that the private sector is finding ways to do things cheaper, which is saving the government money and allowing it to lower its budgets.
The second bullet point above reinforces these conclusions. Even though overall government spending has been stable, more countries have entered the market. More is being done with the same amount of money, and these lower costs are allowing new players to participate. The last bullet point also supports these conclusions. Even though the report notes a significant drop in U.S. government spending on space since 2010, it is very clear to me that the industry has actually prospered in these same years, fueled by a growing private sector.
Air Force budget reveals cost differences between ULA and SpaceX
Eric Berger at Ars Technica has found that the most recent Air Force budget provides a good estimate of the price ULA charges the military for its launches.
According to the Air Force estimate, the “unit cost” of a single rocket launch in fiscal year 2020 is $422 million, and $424 million for a year later.
This is a complex number to unpack. But based upon discussions with various space policy experts, this is the maximum amount the Air Force believes it will need to pay, per launch, if United Launch Alliance is selected for all of its launch needs in 2020. ULA launches about a half-dozen payloads for the Air Force in a given year, on variants of its rockets. Therefore, the 2020 unit cost likely includes a mix of mostly Atlas V rockets (sold on the commercial market for about $100 million) and perhaps one Delta rocket launch (up to $350 million on the commercial market for a Heavy variant).
In other words, the $422 million estimate per launch is the most they will pay. Atlas 5 launches will certainly be less, about $100 to $150 million, while the Falcon 9 will likely be under $100 million. What they are doing is budgeting high so they guarantee they have the money they need to pay for the most expensive launches, usually on the Delta Heavy.
From my perspective, they are budgeting far too high, and if I was in Congress I would insist that this number be reduced significantly, especially considering this Air Force statement on page 109 of the budget document [pdf]:
The Air Force, National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) agreed to a coordinated strategy for certification of New Entrants to launch payloads in support of NSS and other USG requirements which has so far resulted in the certification of one New Entrant. The Air Force continues to actively work with potential New Entrants to reliably launch NSS requirements. The Government may award early integration contracts to ensure each potential offeror’s launch system is compatible with the intended payload. Beginning in Fiscal Year 2018, the Air Force will compete all launch service procurements for each mission where more than one certified provider can service the required reference orbit. [emphasis mine]
The “New Entrant” is of course SpaceX. They are also saying that they are going to encourage competitive bidding now on all future launch contracts.
China’s Tianzhou-1 freighter completes second refueling test
Tianzhou-1, China’s first unmanned freighter, has successfully completed its second refueling test while docked with that country’s Tiangong-2 space module.
The test was successfully completed at 18:28 Beijing time on June 15th (10:28 UTC), according to an announcement (Chinese) from the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA).
Tianzhou-1 and the Tiangong-2 space station test bed module have been coupled for 54 days in orbit at around 390 kilometres above the Earth since April 22, following launch of Tianzhou-1 on April 20.
A first 29-step, five-day refuelling process was successfully concluded on April 27, marking a major step in China’s space station plans. The second test is understood to have taken two days.
The freighter will next undock, fly free for several months, and then attempt a third docking, this time doing so in only six hours versus the two day maneuvers it has so far completed.
Titan’s clearing northern skies
The image of Titan on the right, reduced in resolution to show here, was taken by Cassini less than a week ago, on June 9, as it continues its last orbits of Saturn prior to crashing into the gas giant’s atmosphere in September.
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft sees bright methane clouds drifting in the summer skies of Saturn’s moon Titan, along with dark hydrocarbon lakes and seas clustered around the north pole. Compared to earlier in Cassini’s mission, most of the surface in the moon’s northern high latitudes is now illuminated by the sun. …Summer solstice in the Saturn system occurred on May 24, 2017.
When Cassini arrived more than a decade ago, it was winter on Titan’s northern hemisphere, and the atmosphere was thick with haze. Now the sky is clearing as the stormy weather shifts to the winter in the southern hemisphere.
As with yesterday’s global map of Mimas, this image is in many ways a farewell look at Titan. While Cassini will likely get a few more global images of the Saturn moon before the mission ends in September, this image essentially marks the end of our ability to observe this strange planet closely, for decades to come. When Cassini crashes into Saturn, our vision at Saturn will go blind. And no one knows when our sight there will return, as no mission is presently in the works, or is even being considered, to return to Saturn.
Digitizing Venice’s 1,000-year-old archives
Link here. The article describes an ambitious effort to make this archive, much of which has never been read, easily accessible and searchable using modern digital technology.
As Venice’s empire grew, it developed administrative systems that recorded vast amounts of information: who lived where, the details of every boat that entered or left the harbour, every alteration made to buildings or canals. Modern banking was invented in the Rialto, one of Venice’s oldest quarters, and notaries there recorded all trading exchanges and financial transactions.
Crucially, those records survived through turbulent centuries. While the rest of Europe was roiled by its perpetually warring monarchs, from the eighth century onwards Venice began to develop into a stable republic that provided the peace and order required for trade to flourish. In many ways it was a model democracy. The people elected a leader — the doge — supported by various councils, whose members were also usually elected. Governance was secular, but for the most part co-existed tolerantly with religion.
French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte put an end to the Serene Republic in 1797. En route to Vienna during his attempt to conquer the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he declared Venice’s secular and democratic governance to be a form of autocracy, and the city to be an enemy of the revolution. He forced the republic to dissolve itself. In 1815, the old Frari was turned into the State Archives of Venice. Over the next decades, all state administrative documents, including death registers, were transferred there, along with medical records, notary records, maps and architectural plans, patent registers and a miscellany of other documentation, some from elsewhere in Italy. Particularly significant are ambassadors’ reports from wider Europe and the Ottoman Empire, providing a unique source of detailed information about daily life. “Venetian ambassadors were the most observant travellers, trained to find out things like what was being unloaded at the docks, or what a prince or other high-up was like as a person,” says Daston. “Their reports were full of gossip and intrigue.”
Most of the archive, predominantly written in Latin or the Venetian dialect, has never been read by modern historians. Now it will all be systematically fed into the Venice Time Machine, along with more unconventional sources of data, such as paintings and travellers’ logs.
Venice is a particularly important component of European history, as in many ways it was the last remnant of the Roman Empire, founded by Romans even as their empire was collapsing around them. It then lasted almost a thousand years, and became throughout the Middle Ages a powerful and important center of European trade. Moreover, the growth of this strange city in a bog is in many ways a mystery. This archive will actually allow researchers and historians to finally begin to understand how these events unfolded.
Truck driver killed in fire related to crash of Soyuz stage in Kazakhstan
A truck driver has died in an effort to extinguish a fire related to the crash in Kazakhstan of the stages from the Soyuz rocket that earlier this week launched a Progress freighter to ISS.
This story does not indicate any failure on Russia’s part during the launch. What it does highlight is the problematic location of their Baikonur spaceport, which requires expendable first stages to crash on land. In fact, this incident also suggests it wise for the Russians, and the Kazakhstans, to consider developing recoverable first stages that can land in a controlled manner, as SpaceX has, in order to make this spaceport more useful and safer.
China launches X-ray space telescope
China today launched the Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (HXMT), also dubbed Insight by Chinese news sources.
The HXMT carries three x-ray telescopes observing at energies ranging from 20 to 200 kilo-electron volts as well as an instrument to monitor the space environment, according to its designers. While orbiting 550 kilometers above the planet, the HXMT will perform an all-sky survey that is expected to discover a thousand new x-ray sources. Over an expected operating lifetime of 4 years, it will also conduct focused observations of black holes, neutron stars, and gamma ray bursts.
More here. This is China’s first home-grown X-ray space telescope, and its launch once again illustrates that, for at least the next few decades, China intends to be a major player in the exploration of the solar system.
Senate to hold third hearing on commercial space
The Senate next week will hold the third in a series of hearings, organized by Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), to examine the state of the present partnership between the government and the private sector.
Like the previous hearings, the witnesses cover a wide range, though most this time represent companies in the private sector (including Gwynne Shotwell of SpaceX). It appears that what Cruz is doing is using these hearings to get as much feedback from as many private companies as possible, so that their preferences will dominate any decisions Congress eventually makes.