Indonesia & SpaceX considering launchsite there

8:26 am

Capitalism in space: Indonesia has been in discussions with SpaceX and Elon Musk about establishing a SpaceX launch site in that country.

President Joko Widodo discussed the idea with SpaceX founder Elon Musk during a phone call on Friday, the Coordinating Ministry for Maritime and Investment Affairs said in the statement. Musk intends to send a team to Indonesia in January to study partnership opportunities, it said.

Makes sense for Musk to consider such a move, especially if the U.S. and Texas governments start to turn the screws on his Boca Chica launch site. Furthermore, it is his intention to eventually launch Starship/Super Heavy from a floating launch platform. Establishing arrangements with other foreign nations for putting it in their waters gives the company more flexibility.

People always migrate toward freedom. For two hundred and fifty years, that meant they moved to the United States. This now is changing, as the U.S. culture is signaling its increased hostility to this most important founding principle. Expect more stories like this in the coming decades.

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Supreme Court dismisses Texas suit on election

7:04 pm

The dead Constitution

The Supreme Court today dismissed the Texas lawsuit asking it to invalid the election results in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Georgia because of election law changes made by bureaucrats rather than the state legislatures as directed by the Constitution.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday evening rejected the state of Texas’ challenge to the 2020 election results in four battleground states, extinguishing one of the last remaining hopes for President Trump’s campaign to reverse Joe Biden’s lead in those states.

“The State of Texas’s motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution,” the justices ruled. “Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot.”

No one should be surprised by this. It is not the court’s job to give permission to the state legislatures to do their job. It is their responsibility to act, and they have ample evidence that the vote has been, if not stolen, very unreliable and not trustworthy.

They are just too cowardly to do it. They’d rather have an excuse to cop out. They will now do so, saying that they can’t do anything because the Supreme Court told them they couldn’t. This is a lie, and a joke.

The election has been stolen. Do not expect there ever again to be a legitimate election in the United States. Expect Democrats to begin winning every race, in every battleground swing state.

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Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

Conscious Choice cover

Now available in hardback and paperback as well as ebook!

From the press release: In this ground-breaking new history of early America, historian Robert Zimmerman not only exposes the lie behind The New York Times 1619 Project that falsely claims slavery is central to the history of the United States, he also provides profound lessons about the nature of human societies, lessons important for Americans today as well as for all future settlers on Mars and elsewhere in space.

 
Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space, is a riveting page-turning story that documents how slavery slowly became pervasive in the southern British colonies of North America, colonies founded by a people and culture that not only did not allow slavery but in every way were hostile to the practice.  
Conscious Choice does more however. In telling the tragic history of the Virginia colony and the rise of slavery there, Zimmerman lays out the proper path for creating healthy societies in places like the Moon and Mars.

 

“Zimmerman’s ground-breaking history provides every future generation the basic framework for establishing new societies on other worlds. We would be wise to heed what he says.” —Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society.

 

All editions are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all book vendors, with the ebook priced at $5.99 before discount. All editions can also be purchased direct from the ebook publisher, ebookit, in which case you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Autographed printed copies are also available at discount directly from the author (hardback $29.95; paperback $14.95; Shipping cost for either: $6.00). Just send an email to zimmerman @ nasw dot org.

New data confirms and localizes uplifted lunar dust as seen by Apollo astronauts

1:11 pm

The uncertainty of science: In a paper released today, scientists reveal the detection of electrostatic dust events on the Moon similar to those observed by Apollo astronauts, and find that these events might not be global but instead confined to craters during twilight. From the abstract:

Lunar horizon glows observed by the Apollo missions suggested a dense dust exosphere near the lunar terminator. But later missions failed to see such a high‐density dust exosphere. Why the Apollo missions could observe so large number of dust grains remains a mystery. For the first time, we report five dust enhancement events observed by the Lunar Dust Experiment on board Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer [LADEE] mission, which happen near a twilight crater with dust densities comparable to the Apollo measurements. Moreover, the dust densities are larger on the downstream side of the crater and favor a higher solar wind temperature, consistent with an electrostatic dust lofting from the negatively charged crater floor. We also check the Apollo observations and find similar twilight craters, suggesting that the so‐called dust exosphere is not a global phenomenon but just a local electrified dust fountain near twilight craters.

The dust clouds the astronauts thought they saw near the horizon have been theorized to be dust uplifted by static electricity. However, all later missions had so far failed to detect this phenomenon, until now. That the result also pinpoints the location and ties it to twilight is important for future missions to the Moon. Astronauts can thus minimize any damage by this dust by shutting down operations during lunar twilight periods.

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Breaking: Starship prototype #9 tips over inside assembly building

12:43 pm

It appears from the 24-hour live stream provided by LabPadre that the ninth Starship prototype tipped over inside the assembly building to rest against one wall. You can see it happen at about 8 seconds into the video below:

No word on whether anyone was hurt, nor any information about the cause. My guess is that it occurred during the operations to move this prototype to the launchpad.

UPDATE: It appears no one was hurt, but there is damage to the fins, which might also mean damage to the hull. This in turn might make it unsafe to fly this prototype, as the hull forms the walls of the methane/oxygen tanks.

The day has not been good for SpaceX. Earlier they had to scrub the launch of a commercial communications satellite at T-30 seconds for reasons that they did not provide. High altitude winds had delayed the launch an hour or so, but it appears this was not the reason. According to SpaceX’s website, “SpaceX is standing down from Friday’s launch attempt of the SXM-7 mission to perform additional ground system checkouts.” They are targeting Sunday for the next launch attempt.

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Leaving Earth cover

Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel, can be purchased as an ebook everywhere for only $3.99 (before discount) at amazon, Barnes & Noble, all ebook vendors, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.

If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big oppressive tech companies and I get a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Winner of the 2003 Eugene M. Emme Award of the American Astronautical Society.

 
"Leaving Earth is one of the best and certainly the most comprehensive summary of our drive into space that I have ever read. It will be invaluable to future scholars because it will tell them how the next chapter of human history opened." -- Arthur C. Clarke

Strange crater in the basement of Mars

12:25 pm

Strange crater in Hellas Basin
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, is intriguing for a number of reasons. Taken on September 11, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), it shows a partially buried crater found in the middle of Hellas Basin, the lowest point on Mars and what I like to call the red planet’s basement.

What makes this crater intriguing is the layered pile of material filling its interior. If I didn’t know any better, I would think some construction crew has used a bulldozer to push debris from the crater’s right half in order to smooth the ground in preparation for building a strip mall, office building, or housing development.

This of course is not what happened. Then what did create those layered piles in the crater’s left half?
» Read more

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Boeing and NASA delay again the 2nd unmanned demo flight of Starliner

12:23 am

Boeing and NASA yesterday announced that they now plan to fly the second unmanned demo flight of Starliner in late March, rather in January as last scheduled.

Though there have been hints for awhile that a launch close to the start of the new year was no longer likely, this announcement confirms those hints. This means that it will have taken Boeing more than a year to fix the software issues that forced the first demo mission to abort its docking with ISS and come back early.

Whether this will delay the manned mission, which they are still targeting for as early as the summer of ’21, remains unclear. I think it will all depend on how well that the demo mission goes.

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ULA’s Delta-4 Heavy successfully launches reconnaissance satellite

6:18 pm

Capitalism in space: After a several month delay, ULA’s Delta-4 Heavy tonight successfully launched a reconnaissance satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

33 China
23 SpaceX
13 Russia
6 ULA
5 Rocket Lab
5 Europe (Arianespace)

The U.S. now leads China 37 to 33 in the national rankings. The U.S. launch total this year matches the number of launches achieved in 1969, and is the most launches by the U.S. in a single year since then.

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Arizona state senate to hold official hearing tomorrow on election

3:23 pm

In a major shift, the Arizona state senate will tomorrow to hold an official hearing, with subpoena powers, on the questions relating to the vote count of the November 3rd election.

The hearing will be live streamed on the Arizona government’s website.

Whether it will be substantive, or designed to obscure the issues, remains unclear. The track record of the Republican leadership nationwide for the past two decades has consistently had them mouth platitudes in order to con their conservative base into thinking they were working in their interest, when in truth that leadership was repeatedly trying to do the exact opposite.

I hope I am wrong. It does appear that the many serious and substantive allegations relating to the vote are forcing the Republican leadership to respond, even if it is against their desire. Such an official Senate hearing would have to be called by the Senate president, Republican Karen Fann, which means it must have her endorsement.

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Morocco agrees to Abraham accords, normalizing relations with Israel

2:23 pm

Today President Trump announced that Morocco has agreed to become the fourth Islamic/Arab nation to sign the Abraham Accords, thus establishing normal diplomatic relations with Israel.

America gave Morocco an important concession as part of the deal. “Today, I signed a proclamation recognizing Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara,” Trump added. “Morocco’s serious, credible, and realistic autonomy proposal is the ONLY basis for a just and lasting solution for enduring peace and prosperity! Morocco recognized the United States in 1777. It is thus fitting we recognize their sovereignty over the Western Sahara.”

Whether these deals will survive a Biden administration remains unclear. What is clear is that unlike any administration since the Carter administration in the late 1970s, Trump has successfully achieved the first peace deals between Israel and its Arab neighbors. His approach, different than the accepted wisdoms of the Washington establishment, succeeded where those accepted wisdoms had failed.

It is a shame that the unmitigated and irrational hate that so many on the left have of Trump has made them incapable of recognizing this accomplishment. The nation, in fact the world, should be celebrating these deals with enthusiastic joy. It is not, for these childish reasons.

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