Early today Russia successfully used its Soyuz-2 rocket to place three Russian communications satellites plus a military satellite into orbit.
The leaders in the 2020 launch race:
31 China
22 SpaceX
13 Russia
5 ULA
5 Rocket Lab
5 Europe (Arianespace)
The U.S. continues to lead China 35 to 31 in the national rankings.
An evening pause: She plays the same Bach piece on three different cellos, valued respectively at $5,000, $180,000, and a $1 million. Can you tell any difference, and if so, which do you like the best?
Hat tip Phill Oltman.
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.
"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
I will be doing a quickly scheduled appearance with Robert Pratt at 5 pm (Central) today on his Pratt on Texas radio network, airing across the Lone Star State. You can listen live here or from an affiliate station available here.
The interview is scheduled for 30 minutes, but it could go longer. The subject will be the muzzle of oppression that so many Americans are now willing to put on their faces.
Click for full image.
The new colonial movement: China’s state-run press has now released several images taken by Chang’e-5 on the lunar surface, including movies showing the landing and the ongoing digging operations.
The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, is part of a fisheye panorama of the entire landing site. I have cropped it to show only the central part. Except for the distant mountain, the terrain is very flat, which is not surprising as this is the Ocean of Storms mare.
Note however how deep the landing pad is pressed into the ground. This gives a sense of the dust layer that covers the surface.
The link above, as well as this link, show additional images as well as the two movies.
Take off is next, followed by the autonomous rendezvous and docking in lunar orbit with the craft that will bring the sample capsule back to Earth sometime around December 16.
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.
“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.
Click for full image.
Cool image time! On Mars things change, but not like on Earth because the atmosphere is not as thick and there is no flowing water. The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and annotated to post here, gives a good example of that slow change. The image was taken on August 29, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows the high escarpment that in this one place separates the planet’s southern cratered highlands from the transition zone down to northern lowland plains.
In this spot that escarpment, approximately 4,000 feet high, shows signs of avalanches and sagging. In the upper steep section, I point to what looks like a dust avalanche that wiped the slope clear of rough terrain as it rolled downhill. At the bottom of the cliff a large section has separated away. Since this cliff is located at 28 degrees north latitude and is in the midst of the chaos terrain regions I like to dub glacier country, it is very possible that this large section is actually buried glacial ice that in shifting down slope cracked, separating the lower section from the upper.
This particular location is east of an area dubbed Nilosyrtis Mensae (where there is a lot of evidence of glaciers and frozen ice), and about 650 miles north of Jezero Crater, where the rover Perseverance will land on February 18, 2021.
Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab has now provided a detailed update on the company’s first successful recovery of the first stage of their Electron rocket from the ocean on November 19, 2020.
Much of the press release reiterates what the company CEO Peter Beck said on November 24th, but in much better engineering detail. Key finding:
The stage held up remarkably well – not bad after experiencing the trip to space and back in just 13 minutes. The carbon composite structure was completely intact. As expected, the heatshield on the base of the stage suffered some heat damage during re-entry. It was never designed for this load case, but before we strengthen the heat shield we wanted to see just how much heat it could take unchanged. With a wealth of data on this now, our team has already started working on upgrades for future recovery missions.
They also intend to re-fly some components from that stage. I have embedded below the fold their footage taken during from the inside of the first stage during its splashdown.
The next recovery attempt in early ’21 will also splash down in the ocean. Before they attempt a helicopter snatch from the air they want gather more data.
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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.
"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
The new colonial movement: According to the state-run Chinese press, Chang’e-5 has successfully obtained its first lunar sample from a 2-meter deep drilled hole.
After making a successful soft landing at 11:00 p.m. BJT on Tuesday, the lander started rolling out its solar panel wings and unlocking some of the payloads onboard to prepare for sample collection.
The lander first drilled a 2-meter-deep hole, digging out soil, and sealed it up at 4:53 a.m. on Wednesday [today]. Next, it will use its robotic arms to scoop up more samples from the lunar surface for backup.
If all goes right, they will collect a second sample from the surface using a scoop, and then the ascent capsule will take off tomorrow. It will then rendezvous and dock with the orbiter and return capsule.
Capitalism in space: Arianespace tonight successfully launched a United Arab Emirates (UAE) military reconnaissance satellite from French Guiana, using Russian Soyuz-2 rocket.
The leaders in the 2020 launch race:
31 China
22 SpaceX
5 ULA
5 Rocket Lab
5 Europe (Arianespace)
The U.S. continues to lead China 35 to 31 in the national rankings.
An evening pause: If you don’t like the cold, or have a fear of heights, then this video is your best way for seeing the natural wonders of Norway.
Hat tip Phill Oltmann.
Throw the mask away: Citing the contact tracing his government has done, the mayor of the Texas city of El Paso now thinks the source of the recent spike in COVID-19 cases in his city is because of shoppers at the big box retailers like Walmart and Costco.
“We did a deep dive in our contact tracing for the week of November the 10th through the 16th and found that 55% of the positives were coming from shopping at large retailers, what we’d term as the big box stores,” Margo said. “And those are considered essential under CISA guidelines under homeland security. And we don’t really have- I don’t have any control over any limitations there.”
He said the city asked retailers like Walmart for “voluntary limitations” regarding occupancy.
No, what he should be doing is telling these retailers to stop requiring masks. These companies were the first to fall in line with the mask mandates, and have been aggressive in requiring them from customers. Smaller retail shops have not imposed such strict mandates, while restaurants don’t require masks at all while you are at the table.
That he has found a link between new cases and shoppers in these mask-filled venues only confirms what common sense tells us: That the improper use of masks by everyone in these stores has acted to speed the spread of the virus, not slow it.
For the full images, go here and here.
Previously I had labeled the masks that our control-freak society is demanding everyone wear, wherever they go and whatever they do, as a mask of ignorance. While the evidence is still uncertain on whether high quality masks, used properly, can stop the spread of COVID-19, the improper use of masks guarantees that they will contribute to the virus’s spread.
Take a look at the WHO graph to the right. Do you use the mask as they advise? I guarantee you do not. Masks are routinely handled all the time, are reused, are not kept antiseptic, and are not made of the right materials. Rather than blocking the virus, people are instead wearing a pathogen gatherer on their face, exactly where they breath.
No wonder the number of cases have been skyrocketing worldwide. I would not be surprised at all if the widespread improper use of unsanitary masks since the early summer has contributed to that rise.
I however no longer see masks as simply a symbol of ignorance. I now see masks as a symbol of oppression, and the willingness of Americans to submit to that oppression, without a whimper. In fact, the mask will prevent anyone from really hearing that whimper. It tells everyone you are willing to be silenced and subjugated, like a dog..
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Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on October 26, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It is what the camera team calls a “terrain sample,” meaning it was not specifically requested by a researcher but was instead chosen by the camera team because they need to regularly take images to maintain the camera’s temperature. When they do this, they try to pick a location that hasn’t been photographed in high resolution previously, and that might have some interesting features. Sometimes the photo is boring. Sometimes they hit pay dirt.
In this case, the photo captured an small impact crater, about 1,300 feet across, surrounded by a spray of secondary impacts. The color portion of the image shows what I suspect are dust devil tracks cutting across a surface that, because of its blue tint, is either rough or has frost or ice within it. At 48 degrees north latitude, the possibility of the latter is high, especially because this location is northwest of the Erebus mountains, where SpaceX has its prime Starship candidate landing zone and where scientists suspect ice is readily available very close to the surface. The overview map below shows this context.
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