Category: Points of Information

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

Reality show to fly contestant to ISS

10:35 am

Capitalism in space: A new reality show, dubbed Space Hero, will have audiences watch contestants compete to be a passenger on a private capsule, likely SpaceX’s Dragon, and fly to ISS for ten days.

The selected group of contestants will undergo extensive training and face challenges testing their physical, mental and emotional strength, qualities that are essential for an astronaut in space. I hear the idea is for the culmination of the competition to be in a an episode broadcast live around the world where viewers from different countries can vote for the contestant they want to see going to space. The show will then chronicle the winner’s takeoff; their stay at the ISS for 10 days alongside professional astronauts traveling at 17,000 mph, orbiting the Earth 16 times a day; and end with their return to Earth. The Space Hero company is currently in discussions with NASA for a potential partnership on STEM initiatives onboard the ISS.

The trip of the Space Hero winner is expected be on a SpaceX Dragon rocket though a launch provider is yet to be officially selected. Space Hero, billed as the first space media company, is working with Axiom Space, manufacturer of the world’s first privately funded commercial space station — a module for the ISS where the private astronauts can stay — and full-service human spaceflight mission provider.

The project seems more viable and realistic than previous such attempts, aided by the fact that tickets can now be purchased on a private and operational manned capsule.

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Due to Wuhan panic, India might launch no rockets in 2020

10:21 am

The new colonial movement: Due to Wuhan panic, it is now possible that India’s space agency ISRO will launch no rockets in 2020, delaying all until 2021.

ISRO’s launch calendar has been heavily impacted by the pandemic, and there has been no launch from its spaceport, Sriharikota, this year. In fact, the only ISRO launch this year was G-SAT 30, but it was carried by a French rocket, Ariane, which took off from French Guiana on January 17. Although officials confirm that there may be around three to four launches before the year is over, they admit that the deadlines of several launches planned for the latter half of this year may slip into the next calendar year. This could have a cascading effect on the next year’s plans, too.

The article outlines in detail the status of many of India’s space projects, all of which seem stymied by the lock down restrictions that have been imposed. It also notes how other countries, such as China and the U.S., have not allowed the epidemic to shut them down as drastically.

India had hoped to complete a record twelve launches in 2020.

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NASA reorganizes its manned space bureaucracy

10:10 am

Gotta rearrange those deck chairs! NASA has finally completed a long-planned reorganization of its manned space bureaucracy, first begun several years ago.

At a Sept. 16 Washington Space Business Roundtable webinar, Kathy Lueders, who took over as NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations three months ago, said that NASA Associate Administrator Steve Jurczyk formally approved a reorganization of her mission directorate the previous day. “It addressed some of the concerns that folks have had and is really getting us set up for our future missions going forward,” she said of the reorganization.

Those concerns include findings from a review called a Program Status Assessment carried out earlier this year. That review cited issues with system engineering oversight for the Artemis program and a lack of a formal Artemis program organization. “We are also using these adjustments to solidify and better define division roles,” the agency said in a statement to SpaceNews.

NASA does this Potemkin-type reorganization about once every decade or so, with little major effect other than to allow the upper management preen itself as it makes believe it has accomplished something. This particular rearrangement however might be a bit more beneficial that past ones, in that it appears aimed at aligning the agency’s bureaucracy with its new status of being a customer of the private sector, rather than its boss and overseer.

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Hubble snaps new hi-res photo of Jupiter

10:01 am

Jupiter, as seen by Hubble in 2020
Click for full image.

Astronomers have used the Hubble Space Telescope to take a new global image of Jupiter, aimed to provide an global census of the gas giant’s storm systems.

This latest image of Jupiter, taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope on August 25, 2020, was captured when the planet was 406 million miles from Earth. Hubble’s sharp view is giving researchers an updated weather report on the monster planet’s turbulent atmosphere, including a remarkable new storm brewing, and a cousin of the famous Great Red Spot region gearing up to change color – again.

The moon seen to the left is Europa. Hubble takes annual images of the planets outward from Earth in order to provide scientists this global view.

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Rocket Lab completes first full launch dress rehearsal at Wallops

9:47 am

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab announced yesterday that it had successfully completed its first full dress rehearsal of an Electron rocket launch from its new launchpad on Wallops Island, Virginia.

This clears the way for that first launch, though the actual launch date is not yet set.

Before a launch window can be set, NASA is conducting the final development and certification of its Autonomous Flight Termination System (AFTS) software for the mission. This flight will be the first time an AFTS has been has flown from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport and represents a valuable new capability for the spaceport.

The company has said it wishes to launch before the end of September, so expect an announcement momentarily. Once achieved Rocket Lab will have two launch sites, in New Zealand and the U.S., and will be able to double its launch rate.

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Practically no COVID-19 illnesses among professional athletes

3:24 pm

In another example of data that shows the coronavirus is essentially harmless to the young and healthy, there have been practically no deaths or even serious illnesses among professional athletes, even though these athletes have been aggressively tested for COVID-19, resulting in a lot of positive tests.

Despite hundreds of thousands of tests, vanishingly few serious cases have been reported among professional athletes. Most players testing positive had apparently few or no symptoms.

…What’s clear from the statistics that are made available, though, is that the infection rate for those athletes involved in return to play is vanishingly small, and that they may have been more protected by resuming work with their teams, especially as societies gradually reopened. The Premier League, for instance, ran some 20,500 tests in its 14 rounds between the middle of May and mid-July. According to the league’s own website, only 20 players tested positive, a rate of just 0.1 percent, or about one in 1,000 tests—lower than most estimates for the virus’s spread throughout the general population.

In the rare cases where more detailed reporting is available, it’s notable that even among the small number of positive cases, few players developed symptoms. Though news of the first ten German players to test positive prompted speculation that the league would call off the restart, none of those ten displayed symptoms. Shortly before the European women’s Champions League was to resume in mid-August, officials announced five positive tests among players at Spain’s Athletico Madrid, but subsequent reporting showed that all five were asymptomatic. When 16 NBA players tested positive in late June heading to the league’s “bubble” in Orlando, league commissioner Adam Silver noted all were either asymptomatic or displayed mild symptoms.

We have become insanely afraid of a relatively normal respiratory virus, that poses no threat to the general population at all, and requires no extreme measures. If anything, the best thing we could do is go about our lives normally, allowing the virus’s harmless spread through that general population to eventually kill it off.

This common sense approach, which the human race has followed throughout history, is no longer acceptable. Instead, we must do stupid things, such as this: Soccer team loses 37-0 in socially distanced match:

A German football team lost 37-0 to their local rivals after fielding only seven players who socially distanced throughout the match. Ripdorf fielded the minimum number of players on Sunday because their opponents SV Holdenstedt II came into contact in a previous game with someone who tested positive for Covid-19. Their team tested negative but Ripdorf said the conditions were not safe. If Ripdorf had not played, they would have faced a €200 (£182) fine.

During the game Ripdorf players were ordered to never get closer than six feet to anyone. Holdenstedt took full advantage, scoring every time they got the ball. As the Holdenstedt coach said quite logically, “There was no reason not to play this game.”

Logic and ordinary courage however no longer applies in the dark age that has now arrived. Instead, we must fear everything. like stone age savages huddled in their caves at the sound of thunder.

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Dynetics’ manned lunar lander requires multiple launches and in-space refueling

9:49 am

According to company officials, the manned lunar lander being developed by Dynetics — one of three under NASA contract — will require three quick ULA Vulcan launches and in-space refueling before it will be capable of landing humans on the Moon.

Dynetics’ proposed Human Landing System (HLS) depends upon fuel depots and multiple rocket launches to achieve NASA’s goal of landing two astronauts on the moon in 2024, officials said during a webinar earlier this week. “Our lander is unique in that we need lunar fueling to accomplish our mission. In the next couple years, we will take in-space cryogenic propellant refueling technologies from the lab to [technology readiness level] 10 and operational,” said Kathy Laurini, payloads and commercialization lead for Dynetics’ HLS program.

The lander would launch on one Vulcan rocket, with the next two launches bringing the additional fuel.

More details here.

While it is good that this design does not require the long delayed and likely not-ready SLS rocket, it appears to require in-space capabilities that will not be ready by 2024, the Trump administration’s target date for its manned lunar landing. Instead, this design seems more aimed at subsequent operations in later years.

Since Congress has not yet funded the 2024 mission, though both parties seem interested in later manned lunar operations, this design seems cleverly aimed at that reality, designed to encourage long term government funding.

Regardless, everything hangs on the November elections, and who ends up in charge, both in the White House and in Congress. We presently have really have no way of predicting what will happen, until we know those election results.

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Anti-maskers invade Target, demanding everyone “Take off that mask!”

9:54 pm

We need more of this: Anti-maskers this week marched through a Florida Target shouting “This is the United States of America, take off that mask!”

They didn’t harass anyone, they simply went down the aisles cheerfully calling for people to get rid of the mask. Watch the video below the fold.

The sad part is how few people in the store remove their masks. Many clearly agreed with the protesters, but still kept the mask on.
» Read more

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Nashville authorities cover up proof bars & restaurants do not spread COVID-19

9:44 pm

Local authorities in the mayor’s office and health department in Nashville, rather than release the data and open things up, kept secret evidence that showed there was no reason to close bars or restaurants. [The quote below comes from a local Fox TV news story that has since been taken down.]

Emails between the mayor’s senior advisor and the health department reveal only a partial picture. But what they reveal is disturbing. The discussion involves the low number of coronavirus cases emerging from bars and restaurants and how to handle that and most disturbingly, how to keep it from the public.

On June 30th, contact tracing was giving a small view of coronavirus clusters. Construction and nursing homes causing problems more than a thousand cases traced to each category, but bars and restaurants reported just 22 cases.

Leslie Waller from the health department asks “This isn’t going to be publicly released, right? Just info for Mayor’s Office?”

“Correct, not for public consumption.” Writes senior advisor Benjamin Eagles. [emphasis mine]

In other words, these corrupt officials, who appear quite typical of today’s government rank and file, had found in June that closing bars and restaurants was pointless, that their focus should be nursing homes and construction (though I suspect a deeper dive in the data would discount construction as well). Instead, they kept this data secret so that the lockdown of bars and restaurants could continue, putting thousands out of work.

The fact that they should have been focusing on nursing homes once again confirms the nature of this virus. Like the flu, it attacks the sick elderly, with everyone else barely noticing their symptoms, or if they do, recovering without serious harm.

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ULA reveals Chinese-owned company attempted to steal rocket data

3:42 pm

In an interview yesterday ULA’s CEO Tory Bruno revealed that a Chinese-owned software company tried to infiltrate the supply chain being set up to build their next generation Vulcan rocket.

Bruno said the Chinese-owned vendor identified in ULA’s supply chain was a provider of software for tools used to manufacture the company’s next-generation rocket Vulcan Centaur. Because the issue was detected quickly, no sensitive information was extracted by that supplier, Bruno said.

The company flagged as a risk was a tool supplier working with KUKA Robotics. According to ULA, KUKA had no access to ULA’s intellectual property. “ULA envisions no further future work involving KUKA or KUKA products,” the spokesperson said. “There was no evidence they attempted to obtain data, however, we have an obligation to our customers as well as our company to ensure we have taken all necessary steps to protect our IP as well as information the government has entrusted us with.”

The Pentagon has shown growing concern about Chinese ownership of U.S. suppliers and continues to impose cybersecurity requirements on contractors. “But I have to tell you this is just shocking in terms of the scale and ubiquity of this threat and this effort on the part of China to not only gain access to intellectual property through traditional means — hacking or espionage — but through infiltration of the supply chain,” Bruno said.

The article also notes that while the top tier subcontractors ULA might hire are almost all American owned, foreign companies own 70% of the smaller subvendors, and the number of Chinese-owned subvendors has grown 420% since 2010.

China’s effort to steal American technology has been a serious problem that has been ignored for too long.

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Astronomers detect the first exoplanet orbiting a white dwarf

3:33 pm

Astronomers announced today that they have detected the first exoplanet orbiting a white dwarf, meaning that it somehow survived the star’s expansion into a red giant.

The way a white dwarf is created destroys nearby objects either by incineration or gravitational destruction. White dwarfs form when stars like the Sun near the end of their life cycles. They swell up, expand to hundreds and even thousands of times their regular size, forming a red giant. Eventually, that outer, expanded layer is ejected from the star and only a hot, dense white dwarf core remains.

So how did a planet, known as WD 1856 b, that is Jupiter-like get into such a close proximity that it completes an orbit of the white dwarf (that is only 18,000 km / 11,000 miles across) every 34 hours?

“WD 1856 b somehow got very close to its white dwarf and managed to stay in one piece,” said Andrew Vanderburg, an assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “The white dwarf creation process destroys nearby planets, and anything that later gets too close is usually torn apart by the star’s immense gravity. We still have many questions about how WD 1856 b arrived at its current location without meeting one of those fates.”

Here we go again: This news story, as well as all of the press releases for this announcement (here, here, here, and here) — in their effort to hype this release — all conveniently forget to mention that the very first exoplanets ever discovered back in 1992 actually orbited a pulsar, the remains of a star that had not only died but had died in a cataclysmic supernova explosion. Moreover, that discovery was not of one exoplanet, but three, forming a solar system of three rocky terrestrial exoplanets all orbiting the pulsar at distances less than 43 million miles, which would put them inside the orbit of Venus.

How those terrestrial planets survived a supernova was a mystery. Today’s discovery only heightens that same puzzle, as this Jupiter-sized exoplanet orbits much closer to its white dwarf.

Regardless, the press releases from these universities and NASA should have made these facts clear. Instead, they pump up this discovery as if it is the very first ever. Today’s discovery might have unique components (the first hot Jupiter exoplanet orbiting a white dwarf) but it isn’t the first of this kind, not by a long shot.

Expect the press by tomorrow to compound this failure. Modern reporters seem completely uneducated about the subjects they write about, and also seem all-to-willing to accept on faith whatever public relations departments tell them.

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