February 24, 2021 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
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Category: Points of Information
Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.
Another detailed essay demanding SLS be cancelled
Link here.
The analysis is detailed, thoughtful, thorough, and technical. It is worthwhile to read every word, slowly, carefully, and with an open-mind. The lead:
The SLS axiomatically cannot provide good value to the US taxpayer. In that regard it has already failed, regardless of whether it eventually manages to limp to orbit with a Falcon Heavy payload or two.
The question here is whether it is allowed to inflict humiliation and tragedy on the US public, who so richly deserve an actual legitimate launch program run by and for actual technical experts.
The best time to cancel SLS was 15 years ago. The second best time is now.
While this essay is brilliant, its real significance is that it is another data point in the growing sense I have that the Washington community is preparing itself for cancelling SLS at last. Such an essay would not have been written or paid attention to five years ago. I know. I wrote my own and got no traction.
Today attention is getting paid. More importantly, we are seeing a range of people and news organizations advocating similar anti-SLS positions, positions that would have been thought politically impossible only a few short years ago.
The clock is ticking on SLS. If any of its planned upcoming tests or flights fail, it will face a firestorm of hostility. And even if they succeed, its days appear numbered.
Parker looks at Venus
Click for full image.
During its July 2020 fly-by of Venus, the Parker Solar Probe used its wide field camera to snap a picture of the planet, cropped and reduced to post here on the right.
The photo surprised the scientists in that it apparently was able to detect some major surface features through Venus’ thick cloud cover.
WISPR is designed to take images of the solar corona and inner heliosphere in visible light, as well as images of the solar wind and its structures as they approach and fly by the spacecraft. At Venus, the camera detected a bright rim around the edge of the planet that may be nightglow — light emitted by oxygen atoms high in the atmosphere that recombine into molecules in the nightside. The prominent dark feature in the center of the image is Aphrodite Terra, the largest highland region on the Venusian surface. The feature appears dark because of its lower temperature, about 85 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius) cooler than its surroundings.
That aspect of the image took the team by surprise, said Angelos Vourlidas, the WISPR project scientist from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, who coordinated a WISPR imaging campaign with Japan’s Venus-orbiting Akatsuki mission. “WISPR is tailored and tested for visible light observations. We expected to see clouds, but the camera peered right through to the surface.”
“WISPR effectively captured the thermal emission of the Venusian surface,” said Brian Wood, an astrophysicist and WISPR team member from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. “It’s very similar to images acquired by the Akatsuki spacecraft at near-infrared wavelengths.”
This surprising observation sent the WISPR team back to the lab to measure the instrument’s sensitivity to infrared light. If WISPR can indeed pick up near-infrared wavelengths of light, the unforeseen capability would provide new opportunities to study dust around the Sun and in the inner solar system. If it can’t pick up extra infrared wavelengths, then these images — showing signatures of features on Venus’ surface — may have revealed a previously unknown “window” through the Venusian atmosphere.
The streaks in the picture come from cosmic rays.
Land of rovers
Today’s cool image is in honor the two newest Martian rovers, Perseverance (which now sits quite comfortably in Jezero Crater, ready to begin what will probably be more than a decade of exploration on the Martian surface) and China’s yet-to-be-named rover (set to hopefully soft land on Mars some time in late April).
The overview map to the right shows us the region where both rovers shall wander. The black box in Jezero Crater is where Perseverance now sits. The red cross about 1,400 miles away is the believed landing zone for China’s rover, located in Utopia Planitia at about 25 degrees north latitude. The Viking 2 landing site is just off the edge of the northeast corner of the map.
The latitude of 30 degrees, as indicated by the white line, is presently an important dividing line based on our present knowledge of Mars. South of that line the terrain is generally dry, though there is evidence that water in some form (liquid or ice) was once present. North of that line scientists have found evidence of considerable ice below the surface, with its presence becoming increasingly obvious the farther north you go.
Today’s cool image, shown below, is north of that line at 33 degrees latitude in Utopia Planitia, and is marked by the white cross, about 500 miles to the northwest of the Chinese rover’s landing site.
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Today’s blacklisted American: Leftist journalist who called for blacklisting finds his work blacklisted by YouTube
They’re coming for you next: Jordan Chariton, a leftist journalist who had called for the widespread blacklisting of anyone who discussed the allegations of vote tampering and election fraud during the November 3rd election — many of which were quite creditable and deserve a hard investigation — has discovered that blacklisting is really bad, especially when he discovered YouTube blacklisting some his own work.
On January 6th Chariton had tweeted the following:
EVERY media outlet that pushed this INSANE election fraud conspiracy for clicks should be taken off the air. They’ve incited a Civil War.
Less than a month later YouTube endorsed his advice and took down one of his own videos that had featured footage of the protests at the Capitol Building on January 6th. As usual, YouTube’s reasoning was dishonest, claiming that footage violated its policies against “spam and deceptive practices.” Yet, as Chariton noted, that same footage was being aired and posted on YouTube by CNN and many other mainstream news outlets, with no negative consequences.
Chariton however deserves some credit. He openly admitted in a new tweet that his initial position had been wrong.
With time to reflect, & seeing Silicon Valley’s censorship onslaught, I regret this tweet made in [the] heat of moment. Whether certain cable/YouTube outlets mislead audiences w/ dishonest claims lacking real evidence, they shouldn’t be targeted.
Too bad it took some actual personal censorship for Chariton to come to his senses. Beforehand he was like the rest of the left, living in a fantasy world that imagined the censors and blacklisters and storm troopers would never come for them.
Hah! Just give it time. For these thugs what people actually say is really irrelevant. What they really care about is having the power to censor and blacklist. When they run out of conservatives they will then point their guns at the naive leftists like Chariton who had stupidly worked to give those thugs such power.
India officially delays both its manned mission and next lunar lander
The new colonial movement: India has now officially delayed the launch of both its manned mission Gaganyaan as well as its next lunar lander/rover Chandrayaan-3.
They hope to launch an unmanned test Gaganyaan mission before the end of this year, but the manned mission will not occur until after a second unmanned mission scheduled very tentatively in the 2022-2023 time frame.
As for Chandrayaan-3, they had initially hoped to launch it last fall, but they panic over the coronavirus that shut down their entire space industry for a years has now apparently pushed that launch back ’22, a delay of more than a year.
Tianwen-1 enters parking orbit around Mars
The new colonial movement: According to the Chinese state-run press, the Tianwen-1 orbiter has entered the parking orbit around Mars that it will use for the next three months to conduct reconnaissance of its lander/rover’s landing site.
At 6:29 a.m. (Beijing Time), Tianwen-1 entered the parking orbit, with its closest point to the planet at 280 km and the farthest point at 59,000 km. It will take Tianwen-1 about two Martian days to complete a circle (a Martian day is approximately 40 minutes longer than a day on Earth), the CNSA said.
Tianwen-1, including an orbiter, a lander and a rover, will run in the orbit for about three months.
The CNSA added that payloads on the orbiter will all be switched on for scientific exploration. The medium-resolution camera, high-resolution camera and spectrometer will carry out a detailed investigation on the topography and dusty weather of the pre-selected landing area in preparation for a landing.
China has also begun prepping the rocket that will launch Tianhe, the first module in its space station, sometime this spring. A total of eleven launches are planned over the next two years to assemble the station.
First air leak crack on ISS has not grown
A inspection of the first air leak crack that had been found and patched in the Zvezda module on ISS last year has found that it apparently not increased in size since then.
The size of a crack in the intermediate chamber of the Russian Zvezda module aboard the International Space Station (ISS) remains unchanged, cosmonaut Sergei Ryzhikov reported to Russia’s Flight Control Center on Wednesday. “It [the length] has not changed. As in the previous measurements, I do not see any changes,” Ryzhikov said during his talks with Mission Control broadcast on NASA’s website.
On February 23, the cosmonaut carried out work with a microscope to trace another possible air leak. The photos of the work were transmitted to Earth and the video from GoPro cameras will be sent via the Russian broadband communications system. After completing the work, the cosmonaut reinstalled the patch in the area of the crack.
This Russian report is decidedly unclear about some details. Though it appears the astronaut was using the microscope to inspect another leak, he also apparently removed the patch on the first leak to check the crack for any changes, then replaced it. How one removes and replaces such a patch is a puzzle however. Such things are generally not removable.
No matter. The important detail is that the crack has not grown. If it was a stress fracture the recent dockings of spacecraft to the nearby port might cause it to grow. That it has not is good news.
The bad news is that the inspection did not find the second small leak that is thought to be in this same Zvezda module.
China’s Long March 4C rocket launches three military satellites
China today successfully launched three military reconnaissance satellites using its Long March 4C rocket.
No word on whether the rocket’s first stage landed on any villages.
The 2021 launch race:
5 SpaceX
4 China
2 Russia
1 Rocket Lab
1 Virgin Orbit
1 Northrop Grumman
The U.S. still leads China 8 to 4 in the national rankings.
Starship #10 completes launch dress rehearsal & static fire test
Screen capture from LabPadre live stream.
Capitalism in space: Starship #10 today successfully completed a launch dress rehearsal and static fire test in preparation for a planned 30 to 40 thousand foot test flight, possibly as soon as February 25th.
The Starship SN10 (“Serial No. 10”) vehicle performed its first “static fire” test on Tuesday (Feb. 23), lighting up its three Raptor engines for a few seconds at 6:03 p.m. EST (2303 GMT) at SpaceX’s South Texas site, near the Gulf Coast settlement of Boca Chica Village.
Static fires, in which engines briefly ignite while a rocket stays anchored to the ground, are a common preflight checkout for SpaceX. If all went well with today’s test, SN10 remains on track to launch soon — perhaps as early as Thursday (Feb. 25) — on a 6-mile-high (10 kilometers) demonstration flight into the South Texas skies.
I personally think it would be quite ironic if this Starship flies on the same day the second SLS static fire test had been originally scheduled but postponed. The contrast between the two development programs continues to be stark and astonishing. While one program has been flying test articles repeatedly as well as doing numerous engine and tank tests, the other has had trouble getting one static fire test completed without a hitch.
UPDATE: Apparently they have decided to swap out one Raptor engine based on the results of the static fire test, and thus will not do a flight tomorrow.
Today’s blacklisted American: Pro-life news organization blacklisted by Google’s YouTube
They’re coming for you next: The pro-life news organization, LifteSiteNews, has been blacklisted by Google’s YouTube, which on February 10th without warning removed all the organization’s videos.
This was not the first time YouTube had banned the organization’s work. The reasons as always were specious.
A spokesman for Google, the company that owns YouTube, told The Blaze the LifeSiteNews channel was shut down for repeated violations of the company’s COVID-19 misinformation policy. Any content promoting prevention methods that differs from information given by local health authorities or the WHO is prohibited. “Any channel that violates our COVID-19 misinformation policy will receive a strike, which temporarily restricts uploading or live-streaming. Channels that receive three strikes in the same 90-day period will be permanently removed from YouTube,” the spokesman said.
In other words, the only medical opinions allowed free speech by YouTube and Google are those that agree with “local health authorities or the WHO.” I emphasize the word “authorities” because of its fundamental meaning, someone in charge who must be obeyed, not because they know more but because they are in charge.
No one else is allowed to speak. If you wish to dispute these authorities their and their minion’s answer will be “Shut up!”, an action hostile at its core to free speech and the First Amendment.
Note that LifeSiteNews is not dead. They were prepared for Google’s action, and had backed up their videos and quickly moved their site to the new video site, Rumble.
Which by the way I encourage everyone else to do. The more people upload videos and view videos there, the less power and impact future blacklists by the fascist thugs at Google and YouTube will have.
San Fran school board abandons plan to blacklist Lincoln & Washington
Beating the blacklist: In response to an enormous outcry of outrage from parents and citizens, the San Francisco school board that in January had voted to rename 44 schools named after many traditional American historical figures, including Lincoln and Washington, has now abandoned that effort.
The San Francisco school board has halted its effort to rename 44 schools named after George Washington and other Americans board members concluded held “racist” or other beliefs of which they disapproved. “I acknowledge and take responsibility that mistakes were made in the renaming process,” Gabriela Lopez, president of the San Francisco Unified School District board, said Sunday.
Lopez said school district officials will instead focus on re-opening classroom for in-person learning and called the months-long controversy about the re-naming school “one of the many distracting debates.”
Don’t be fooled. These politicians have not changed their mind about America and its history. They still think it evil and want to blacklist it. They will now simply move to do so in a more quiet and unobtrusive way.
What really needs to happen is for San Francisco citizens to wake up and vote these anti-American bigots out of power. Sadly I am doubtful this will happen. Once the fervor dies down the public will go back to the sheeplike state of somnolence that it has been living in for now more than three-quarters of a century, and these thugs will go about their business of transforming America from a free nation of educated citizens to a socialist state of ignorant slaves.