Category: Points of Information

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

SLS static fire abort not caused by malfunction but too-tight parameters

1:51 pm

According to NASA today the reason the SLS static fire test cut off after only one minute was because of too conservative margins set in the computer software.

In an update today, however, NASA said it was engine 2 that caused the abort. At that moment, the engines were underdoing a gimble test where they are rotated in different directions just as they must do during ascent to steer the rocket. Actuators in the Thrust Vector Control system that generate the force to gimble an engine are powered by hydraulic Core Stage Auxiliary Power Units (CAPUs). The CAPUs for engine 2 exceeded pre-set test limits and the computer system automatically shut down the test as it was designed to do, but NASA said it would not have been a problem during a launch.

According to NASA’s update,

The specific logic that stopped the test is unique to the ground test when the core stage is mounted in the B-2 test stand at Stennis. If this scenario occurred during a flight, the rocket would have continued to fly using the remaining CAPUs to power the thrust vector control systems for the engines.

Note too that another issue during the test needs resolution:

Initial data indicate the sensor reading for a major component failure, or MCF, that occurred about 1.5 seconds after engine start was not related to the hot fire shutdown. It involved the loss of one leg of redundancy prior to T-0 in the instrumentation for Engine 4, also known as engine number E2060. Engine ignition begins 6 seconds prior to T-0, and they fire in sequence about 120 milliseconds apart. Test constraints for hot fire were set up to allow the test to proceed with this condition, because the engine control system still has sufficient redundancy to ensure safe engine operation during the test. The team plans to investigate and resolve the Engine 4 instrumentation issue before the next use of the core stage.

No decision has been made yet whether they will do another static fire test before shipping the core stage to Florida for launch. They are under a time limit, as they have begun stacking the SLS rocket’s strap-on solid rocket side boosters, and those only have a life expectancy of one year once stacking has begun.

As far as I am concerned, nothing about the development of this rocket makes sense. I would never fly on it no matter how much money was offered to me, and anyone who does must know the terrible risk they take.

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New daily record for search engine DuckDuckGo

1:22 pm

DuckDuckGo, the search engine that respects the privacy of its users, has set a new record for use with more than a 100 million daily search requests for the first time.

Privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo reached a major milestone in its 12-year-old history this week when it recorded on Monday its first-ever day with more than 100 million user search queries.

The achievement comes after a period of sustained growth the company has been seeing for the past two years, and especially since August 2020, when the search engine began seeing more than 2 billion search queries a month on a regular basis. The numbers are small in comparison to Google’s 5 billion daily search queries but it’s a positive sign that users are looking for alternatives.

The numbers are still too small. Why is anyone who reads this still using Google? It is incredibly trivial to switch. More important, you will find that you are getting better information in your searches, as DuckDuckGo does not play favorites nor does it squelch results from some websites because it disagrees with their politics.

And best of all, your privacy will be better protected.

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Today’s blacklisted conservative: Lawyer who represented Trump fired by university

1:03 pm

They’re coming for you next: A lawyer who both represented Trump in his legal challenges to the November 3rd vote count as well as gave a public speech in support of Trump has been fired by his university.

Chapman University President Daniele Struppa promptly denounced Eastman for engaging in constitutionally protected free speech. Struppa accused Eastman in a Jan. 8 statement of playing “a role in the tragic events in Washington, D.C., that jeopardized our democracy. … Eastman’s actions are in direct opposition to the values and beliefs of our institution. He has now put Chapman in the position of being publicly disparaged for the actions of a single faculty member, and for what many call my failure to punish and fire him,” Struppa wrote.

Struppa also said, “This week has also demonstrated that this country has a great deal of work to do for social justice and equity.”

Lisa Leitz, a professor of peace studies at Chapman, was one of 169 faculty members who signed an open letter addressed to the university demanding Eastman be fired. She told a local media outlet that Eastman’s appearance at the rally and his Trump campaign activities have damaged the university. “It associates us with a racist insurrection against the U.S. democracy, and it undermines the credibility of every faculty member,” she said.

On Jan. 13, Struppa announced that a settlement had been reached with Eastman and that he would be leaving his post “effective immediately.”

And what exactly did this man do? Nothing illegal, that’s for sure. All he did was express his opinion, in public, and then take action as a lawyer to represent his client.

I plan on posting one of these “newly blacklisted” stories daily for as long as they keep happening. Sadly, I already have a backlog. I could be reporting these stories of oppression and blacklisting I think for the next four years, daily, without any trouble at all. That is assuming of course they don’t come after me and get this website shut down, something I fully expect is a possibility in the next four years.

And remember, these attacks against outspoken conservatives are only a precursor for when these thugs come after you, no matter who you are. You might not be speaking out publicly, but you have had the temerity to read this material, something that the cultural dictators who now rule us cannot allow.

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More evidence Mars’s glaciers formed across many ice ages

11:26 am

The uncertainty of science: New research using the boulders found on the top of Martian glaciers has now strengthened the evidence that Mars must have undergone many previous ice age cycles going back as much as 800 million years, with those glaciers waxing and waning during each cycle.

This new data helps map the cycles earlier than 20 million years ago, which have been difficult to map out based solely on the orbital data available from Earth and from Mars orbit. The results suggest that before then there were from six to twenty additional cycles during the last 300 to 800 million years.

These numbers are decidedly uncertain. It is likely that there were many more cycles, as suggested by the many layers seen at the edges of the north and south polar ice caps.

Be aware as well that if you read the press release you should know that it falsely implies that this research is the first to map out these ice age cycles. This is not true. All this research has done is provide more evidence for cycles prior to 20 million years ago, cycles that scientists have long believed must have happened based on other data.

In the end, for us to map out the full climate history of Mars will require numerous ice core samples at the planet’s poles, something that will not be possible until people are living and working on Mars routinely.

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Mysterious colors on Mars, near the landing site of Europe’s rover

10:17 am

Mysterious colors on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! Today the science team for the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) released a new captioned image, which I have cropped and reduced to post here to the right.

The photo was taken October 12, 2020, and shows a small very colorful area on top of an isolated hill. To quote the caption, written by Sharon Wilson:

An isolated, elongated mound (about 1 mile wide and 3.75 miles long) rises above the smooth, surrounding plains. Horizontal layers are exposed at the northern end of the mound, and its surface is characterized by a very unusual quasi-circular pattern with varying colors that likely reflect diverse mineral compositions.

…The origin of this mound is unknown, but its formation may be related to the clay-bearing rocks in the nearby Oxia Planum region.

» Read more

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Chang’e-5’s lunar samples less dense than expected

8:59 am

Because the lunar samples retrieved by China’s Chang’e-5 probe were less dense than expected, it ended up recovering only 3.8 pounds of material rather than the targeted 4.4 pounds.

The probe had estimated the lunar rocks to have a density of 1.6 grams per cubic millimetre, based on data from past missions by other countries, said Pei Zhaoyu, the mission spokesman. Going by that figure, the probe stopped taking samples after just 12 hours, apparently assessing that the target had been reached. “However, from tests, the actual density might not be that high,” Pei told reporters.

This is not a failure, but a discovery. In order to make sure the lander did not recover too much material, weighing too much, they needed to set limits based on the expected weight of the material recovered. That these samples taken from the Mons Rümker volcano complex are lighter than expected reveals something about them. It suggests the lava here was different than lava samples taken elsewhere.

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Today’s new member of the blacklist: conservative radio host Robert Pratt

3:44 pm

Without warning the marketing heads of the corporation that manages the radio stations that air the conservative Pratt on Texas radio show for the past fifteen years announced today they were cancelling the program, despite its profitable status and high ratings.

Robert Pratt’s comments on this decision:

Since I began the program, in April of 2006 taking the time slot of the syndicated Michael Reagan show, Pratt on Texas has more than paid the show’s way increasing TM’s take during the time slot significantly. It was setup that way with Clear Channel in 2006; if successful it was to be a complete win-win proposition and if not it would fold.

And thanks to each of you, I had it confirmed Friday night, that ratings for Pratt on Texas are as great as ever. We have consistently been not just the top talk or news program in our base KFYO market in “afternoon drive,” we have generally been the top, second, or third spot with our intended adult demographic, in all radio formats, in each ratings book for 14 years – almost unheard of. But those things are not valued in Cancel Culture because the goal is to have fewer hear differences of opinion, not more.

Despite what one TM employee has intimated this weekend to a former TM employ, there has been no contractual or other dispute between TM and Perstruo Texas, Inc. (Perstruo Texas, Inc. is the entity that owns and contracted with TM to provide Pratt on Texas and of which I am an employee and officer.)

So no, there is no money losing, no sagging ratings, nor business disputes (other than the cancellation executed Friday night of course.)

Understand that Cancel Culture doesn’t care about money. Cancel Culture is about advancing a political agenda and operates outside of the idea of making money and being successful financially. The goal is to marginalize, at minimum, and to de-platform and destroy the ability of opposing viewpoints from reaching an audience.

Post election certification, Cancel Culture has rapidly grown beyond its roots in social media to include all forms of media and political thought sharing. It will flourish without mass opposition.

I have no doubt this is the reason behind this decision as well, based on numerous discussions I’ve had with other conservative media people. They are scared, they have ample evidence that the fascist left is coming for them, and they don’t know what to do about it.

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Where I was this past weekend

11:15 am

Bob Zimmerman underground

Several readers have asked in the comments for a report on what I did this past weekend.

I went caving. The photo to the right, taken on a previous trip several years ago, will give you an idea. The cave is amazingly beautiful. The trip was to designed to give a bunch of people a chance to see it.

I won’t say much more than this, mostly because it is unwise to reveal too much about the caves one visits because this then attracts people to them who are often either inexperienced (and thus a risk to themselves) or untrustworthy in terms of protecting the cave’s beauty. I am totally willing and open to bring anyone who wants to go to the caves I visit, but a newbie should go the first time with someone experienced, for the reasons already outlined.

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Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne successfully reaches orbit

9:35 am

Capitalism in space: After eight years of development, Virgin Orbit has finally used its LauncherOne air-launched rocket to successfully put ten satellites into orbit.

After an eight month stand down to resolve issues revealed during the first mission of Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne rocket, the company made their second orbital launch attempt on Sunday, January 17. The air-launched rocket successfully carried ten CubeSats to their target orbit for NASA’s Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) program.

This makes Virgin Orbit the second smallsat rocket company to achieve orbit, following Rocket Lab. They have beat out a large number of startups, and are now well positioned to gain some of the market share in this new component of the launch market.

They have also made true my September 2016 prediction that Virgin Orbit would complete its first commercial launch before Virgin Galactic’s first suborbital commercial flight, even though Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo began development eight years earlier.

As for the 2021 launch race, right now only SpaceX and Virgin Orbit have launched in 2021. They are tied for the lead, and also combine to put the U.S. ahead 2 to nothing over everyone else.

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SLS core stage static fire test aborts after only one minute

9:23 pm

During the crucial first static fire test of SLS’s core stage yesterday — meant to last a full eight minutes — the booster aborted the test after only one minute.

It’s still too early to know exactly what caused the early shutdown in Saturday’s engine test.

Flight controllers could be heard during the test referring to an “MCF” (a major component failure) apparently related to engine No. 4 on the SLS booster. John Honeycutt, NASA’s SLS program manager, added that at about the 60-second mark, cameras caught a flash in a protective thermal blanket on the engine, though its cause and significance remain to be determined.

Honeycutt said it’s too early to know if a second hot-fire test will be required at Stennis, or if it can be done later at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the SLS is scheduled to launch the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission around the moon by the end of this year. Similarly, it’s too early to know if Artemis 1 will still be able to launch this year. “I think it’s still too early to tell,” Bridenstine said of whether a 2021 launch for Artemis 1 is still in the cards. “As we figure out what went wrong, we’re going to know kind of what the future holds.” [emphasis mine]

If this engine abort had occurred during a launch, with the two strap-on solid rocket boosters still firing (and no way to turn them off), the entire rocket would have been lost. Thus, for NASA to even consider shipping this core stage to Florida before figuring out the problem and fixing it is downright insane.

They need to figure out what went wrong, fix it, and then test again, even if if means the first unmanned Artemis flight experiences a serious delay. If they don’t then this whole program is proved to be an idiotic sham (something I have believed for about a decade), and should be shut down by Congress and the new President, immediately.

I am reporting this late because this weekend I was out in the country on a caving trip, taking a very much needed break from the truly horrible news of modern America.

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SpaceX replacing two engines on Starship prototype #9

1:11 pm

Capitalism in space: After the static fire engine tests earlier this week, SpaceX has decided to replace two of the Raptor engines in its ninth Starship prototype before moving on to its 50,000 foot test flight.

“Two of the engines need slight repairs, so will be switched out,” SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk said via Twitter early this morning (Jan. 15).

Musk did not give a target launch date for SN9. But he did say, in another tweet, that it’s “probably wise” to perform another static fire with the vehicle after the engine swap is complete. So a weekend launch for SN9 seems pretty unlikely.

Makes sense, but I must admit a bit of disappointment. I was really hoping that the next flight would occur on the same day NASA attempts its first static fire test of the core stage of SLS. The contrast would have been edifying.

Personally this delay is great for me, as I will be out in the country caving this entire weekend, and would have missed it if it had occurred during the weekend. I will miss the SLS static fire test, but that will be far less interesting (unless something goes wrong).

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