Category: Points of Information

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

Sixty-six programs slated for elimination in Trump budget

10:38 am

The Trump budget followed through in one area very clearly: It proposes to completely eliminate sixty-six government programs.

The programs eliminated would only save $26.7 billion, which in terms of the deficit is chicken-feed. Still it would be a step in the right direction.

The pigs are squealing however, including one recent failed presidential candidate:
Clinton: Trump Budget Shows ‘Unimaginable Level of Cruelty’

Based on past experience, expect the Republican leadership in Congress to gut most of these cuts. The budget will grow. The deficit will grow. The federal debt will grow. The power of the people in Washington will grow. And we will be one step closer to bankruptcy and collapse.

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Lawsuit by fired SpaceX employee goes to court

8:57 am

The jury trail of a lawsuit by a fired SpaceX employee, claiming that he was dismissed because he complained about bad practices at the company, has now begun.

A Los Angeles state court jury will be asked to decide whether Blasdell had good reason to believe testing documents were falsified and whether his firing was unjustified. “He went up the chain of command as he had learned in the Marines was the proper procedure,” Blasdell’s lawyer, Carney Shegerian, told jurors in his opening statement Tuesday. “He had nothing personal to benefit from this other than to do the right thing.” SpaceX made misrepresentations to the federal government, cut corners in areas where safety was concerned and labeled Blasdell “insubordinate” for pressing his concerns, Shegerian said.

Not surprisingly, the SpaceX lawyer disagreed:

“Jason Blasdell is not a whistle-blower and this is not a whistle-blower case,” SpaceX’s lawyer, Lynne Hermle, said in her opening statement. He never observed or conducted any unlawful testing of rocket parts, never complained about unlawful testing, and never brought any concerns about unlawful testing to federal authorities, Hermle told jurors.

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California woman arrested for selling space technology to China

8:51 am

A California woman has been arrested for smuggling space communications technology and equipment to China illegally.

Chen, a resident of the Los Angeles suburb of Pomona, is accused of violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which controls the export of certain goods and technology from the United States.

Specifically, the indictment alleges Chen purchased and smuggled sensitive materials to China without obtaining required export licenses, including components commonly used in military communications “jammers.” She also is accused of smuggling devices typically used in space communications applications, and falsifying the paperwork used in shipping those items to list them as worth $500, rather than their true value of more than $100,000.

The exports in question date from March 2013 to December 2015.

How dare they arrest her! All she is doing is supporting international diversity against the white power oppression of the evil United States. Moreover, we must allow her to express her beliefs. Treason is merely an expression of one’s opinion, and must not be oppressed!

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Spacewalkers successfully replace failed unit on ISS

7:59 am

In a a short spacewalk just under three hours two astronauts today successfully replaced the failed MDM data relay unit on the outside of ISS.

Some additional details about this unit:

The MDM that failed and an identical unit are part of the tier 2 command architecture and relay commands to a variety of critical station systems, including the station’s guidance, navigation and control system, the lab’s stabilizing gyros, the environmental control system, the station’s cooling system and others.

Both tier 2 computers were installed during spacewalks March 30 and March 24 respectively, replacing two older units with models featuring upgraded data processing cards. It is not yet known whether the problem with MDM-1 involved the upgraded components or some other circuitry or software

I suspect this upgraded but failed unit is going to be looked at very carefully.

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Democrats have worst fundraising April since 2009

6:11 pm

The Democrats this year took in the lowest amount of donations for the month of April since 2009.

The Democratic National Committee reported its worst April of fundraising since 2009, according to Federal Election Commission records released Monday. The DNC reported taking in $4.7 million last month. While this is an off-year for fundraising, the DNC hauled $8.5 million last year, and nearly $5 million in 2015. Between 2010 and 2014, the Democrats received anywhere from $6.3 million to $14.4 million per year.

However, the drop in donations coincides with an effort by DNC Chair Tom Perez and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to rally support for the party. The two traveled the country on a “unity tour.”

Could it have something to do with the violent behavior of their supporters? Or maybe the outright childish and obscene behavior of California elected officials?

The anti-Trump fervor at California’s Democratic Party convention this weekend can be summarized in choice words from outgoing chair of the California Democratic Party, John Burton: “#*%! Donald Trump.”

The always foul-mouthed Burton, 84, stood before thousands of Democratic delegates at Saturday’s general assembly and as a rallying cry asked the crowd to join in. He then shoved two fists in the air, flipping the bird. Across the room at the Sacramento Convention Center, others onstage and in the audience followed suit.

Onstage were House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, Rep, Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, state Sen. Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, and others.

Such behavior by elected officials is not just childish, it is barbaric, uncivilized, and uneducated, and should disqualify everyone who condones it from getting anyone’s votes, forever. Sadly, the Democrats now have a sizable population of voters who are as barbaric, uncivilized, and uneducated, and will vote for Democrats because they are barbaric, uncivilized, and uneducated, and will use that barbarism to further their uncivilized aims. Remember, even though the Democrats had a bad fund-raising month in April, they still garnered $4.7 million in donations. That indicates the existence of a lot of supporters of this behavior.

I am once again reminded of this:
» Read more

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The face of Ceres

9:35 am

The face of Ceres

Cool image time! The image on the right, reduced in resolution to show here, was taken by Dawn on April 29, 2017, when the spacecraft had been positioned between the Sun and the dwarf planet at a moment when its entire surface was lit. They have enhanced the colors to bring out the contrasts.

Images combining these different color filter perspectives reveal fine details of Ceres’ surface. For example, they emphasize the distinct compositions and textures of the material ejected from craters. The brightest region on Ceres, called Cerealia Facula, is highlighted in Occator Crater in the center of this image. Vinalia Faculae, the set of secondary bright spots in the same crater, are located to the right of Cerealia Facula.

One of the darkest regions on Ceres is next to Occator, and represents ejected material from the impact that formed the crater. The ejected material forms a large arc that extends over several hundred kilometers, below the center of Ceres in this image. That material’s distribution is partly determined by Ceres’ rotation.

Be sure to take a close look at the full image. It isn’t super high resolution, but it reveals a lot of interesting details

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Emergency spacewalk on ISS to replace electronics relay box

11:23 pm

Astronauts will perform an emergency spacewalk on May 23 to replace the failed MDM electronics relay box that failed on Saturday.

So, they have a spare on board, which is good. The article does note, however, that the unit that failed had only been installed less than two months ago, on March 30. This is not good. These units should last longer than two months, especially considering how critical they appear to be.

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Rocket Lab launch delayed

7:55 am

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab has delayed its first test launch of its Electron rocket because of predicted high winds.

The company has not yet said if they have rescheduled for Tuesday.

This article gives a very detailed overview of the rocket, its engines, and the history of its launch site. It also notes that if successful, the launch will be first orbital flight ever from a commercial company from its own commercial launch site.

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Primary data relay electronics unit on ISS truss fails

9:00 pm

ISS managers are meeting to make a plan to deal with the failure on Saturday of the #1 data relay electronics box on the S0 truss of the station.

The unit, called an MDM, has an identical backup in place so no station operations have so far been effected. However, that backup had failed back in 2014 and required a spacewalk to replace it, so it is not clear to me as yet whether the station has any additional spares available to replace the newly failed unit. If so, it will still require a spacewalk to make the switch.

If there is no spare, they will likely have to ship one up on the next cargo flight, as the MDM is essential for operating the solar panels and radiators as well as the robot arms.

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Academic journal publishes another hoax paper

1:39 pm

The coming dark age: The academic journal Cogent Social Science has published a hoax paper that claims the penis is a social construct that is causing global warming.

The authors begin, “Anatomical penises may exist,” but the “conceptual penis is better understood not as an anatomical organ but as a social construct.” It goes downhill from there. “There are many women who have penises,” they boldly claim. Then, they gratuitously listed some crude synonyms for the penis, such as: “beaver basher,” “custard launcher,” “pork sword,” and “mayo shooting hotdog gun.” They explained that “manspreading” — when a man sits with his legs open — is “akin to raping the empty space around him.”

At this point, it is worth stopping to ponder that this didn’t raise any red flags with the editors of the journal. Not only did they think this was perfectly intellectual, publishable material, they praised the authors for their work.

Yet, the absurdity didn’t end there. The authors tied everything in to climate change.

Even more astonishing was this statement by the authors:

In their tell-all article in Skeptic, the authors admit they jammed the paper full of jargon and made it purposefully incoherent. They said, “After completing the paper, we read it carefully to ensure it didn’t say anything meaningful, and as neither one of us could determine what it is actually about, we deemed it a success.” Finally, they made this particularly damning observation: “We assumed that if we were merely clear in our moral implications that maleness is intrinsically bad and that the penis is somehow at the root of it, we could get the paper published in a respectable journal.”

Make sure you read the tell all article, which step by step reveals the utter bankruptcy of the entire social science field that would allow this fraud to get published, getting passed by two reviewers and a partner journal that recommended the paper to Cogent Social Science.

As I said earlier this week, the time has come to cut off all funding to any university that supports anyone who teaches this crap. Donations from alumni should cease. Parents should refuse to send their children there. And the students there now should rise up in outright revolt, demanding their money back.

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Court of Appeals rules FAA drone registry illegal

9:02 am

The law is such an inconvenient thing: The U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled that a recently imposed FAA requirement that amateur drone operators register their drone with the FAA is illegal.

Introduced in 2015, the mandatory drone registry required owners of unmanned aircraft weighing between 0.55 and 55 lb (250 g and 25 kg) to register their machines with the FAA. If not, they faced fines of up to $250,000.

This drew the ire of some in the drone industry, and the many hobbyists who had been flying small aircraft recreationally for years. One such hobbyist, John Taylor, went to the lengths of challenging the FAA’s new rule in the US Court of Appeals. Today, that court ruled in his favor.

“Taylor is right,” the decision reads. “In 2012, Congress passed and President Obama signed the FAA Modernization and Reform Act. Section 336(a) of that Act states that the FAA ‘may not promulgate any rule or regulation regarding a model aircraft’ … The FAA’s 2015 Registration Rule, which applies to model aircraft, directly violates that clear statutory prohibition. We therefore grant Taylor’s petition and vacate the Registration Rule to the extent it applies to model aircraft.”

It is not surprising that a bureaucrat or government agency would try to impose more regulations on the public than is required or allowed. It is all about power, and these regulations give power to the regulators. What is different today is that the federal bureaucracy is now so large and so involved with regulating so many private activities, while the law has simultaneously become so complex and difficult to track, that these abuses happen routinely, unless someone with enough personal resources and determination decides to fight. And even here there is no guarantee that the courts will apply the proper law.

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White House decision on embassy move only after Trump’s Middle East trip

8:39 am

The White House has denied reports that they have decided not to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, and have instead said that the decision on whether to move the embassy will only be made after Trump’s Middle East trip.

Since neither story identified the White House official making the claims, either for or against the move, I suppose we should file this whole thing under fake news. These are unsubstantiated leaks, and should not be taken seriously.

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The first 3 of a 200 nanosat constellation delivered for launch

8:24 am

Capitalism in space: Sky and Space Global (SAS) has delivered the first three nanosats — of a planned 200 nanosat constellation — to India for launch.

The first three nanosats are to be launched by India on its PSLV rocket, but SAS has contracted Virgin Orbit to use its LauncherOne to put the next 197 up. They had made this first announcement last summer, saying the first three would launch in the second quarter of 2017. It appears that they are holding to that schedule.

They also said that LauncherOne would begin launching the other 197 satellites in 2018. For this I remain far more skeptical, since the track record at Virgin in getting its spacecraft off the ground on schedule has not been good.

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Republican Trumpcare bill might require another vote

4:06 pm

Failure theater: The House Republican leadership has not yet officially sent their Obamacare revision bill to the Senate because they have discovered they may have to vote on it again.

According to several aides and other procedural experts, if Republicans send the bill to the Senate now and the CBO later concludes it doesn’t save at least $2 billion, it would doom the bill and Republicans would have to start their repeal effort all over with a new budget resolution. Congressional rules would likely prevent Republicans from fixing the bill after it’s in the Senate, the aides said…

If Republican leaders hold onto the bill until the CBO report is released, then Ryan and his team could still redo it if necessary. That would require at least one more House vote of some sort…

The Republican leadership is a joke. If required to toss a rock into the ocean while standing at the end of a 500 foot long pier they’d still miss, and hit themselves in the face in the process.

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Moon discovered around Kuiper belt dwarf planet

11:28 am

Astronomers have discovered a moon orbiting 2007 OR10, one of the Kuiper Belt’s larger objects.

With this discovery, most of the known dwarf planets in the Kuiper Belt larger than 600 miles across have companions. These bodies provide insight into how moons formed in the young solar system. “The discovery of satellites around all of the known large dwarf planets — except for Sedna — means that at the time these bodies formed billions of years ago, collisions must have been more frequent, and that’s a constraint on the formation models,” said Csaba Kiss of the Konkoly Observatory in Budapest, Hungary. He is the lead author of the science paper announcing the moon’s discovery. “If there were frequent collisions, then it was quite easy to form these satellites.”

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