OSIRIS-REx team confirms date for sample grab from Bennu

12:16 pm

Nightingale landing site on Bennu
Click for full image.

The OSIRIS-REx science team has confirmed October 20, 2020 as the date the spacecraft will attempt a sample grab from the asteroid Bennu.

OSIRIS-REx is charged with collecting at least 2 oz. (60 grams) of Bennu’s rocky material to deliver back to Earth – the largest sample return from space since the Apollo program – and the mission developed two methods to verify that this sample collection occurred. On Oct. 22, OSIRIS-REx’s SamCam camera will capture images of the TAGSAM head to see whether it contains Bennu’s surface material. The spacecraft will also perform a spin maneuver on Oct. 24 to determine the mass of collected material. If these measures show successful collection, the decision will be made to place the sample in the Sample Return Capsule (SRC) for return to Earth. If sufficient sample has not been collected from [the primary landing site] Nightingale, the spacecraft has onboard nitrogen charges for two more attempts. A TAG attempt at the back-up Osprey site would be made no earlier than January 2021.

The press release at the link provides a lot of technical and interesting details about the sample-grab-and-go attempt, expected to put the spacecraft in contact with the asteroid’s surface for no more than sixteen seconds.

The maneuver itself is quite risky, as the available smooth landing area, as shown in the image above, is only half the size the equipment was designed for, and surrounded by large boulders.

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Corroding glacier in crater rim gully?

9:45 am

Gully in crater rim
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image to the right, rotated and cropped to post here, shows a gully flowing down the north facing rim of a 30-mile-wide crater in the southern cratered highlands. It was taken on June 30, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

To my eye the corroded ridges and pits running down the western side of this gully look like a corroded ice, as if we are looking at a glacier that the light of the Sun, which in the southern hemisphere hits this north-facing slope more directly and for longer periods of time, is causing it to sublimate away with time.

The wider shot below shows the entire rim, flowing downhill from the south to the north.
» Read more

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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

On the radio

9:06 pm

Tomorrow, September 24, 2020, at 6:00 pm (Central) I will be spending an hour on Pratt on Texas with Robert Pratt, aired on 790-AM KFYO in Lubbock, 1470-AM KYYW in Abilene, and 1290-AM KWFS in Wichita Falls. Also available here.

We will talk space a bit, but the bulk of the hour will be talking about the insane panic over the Wuhan virus, and the refusal of people to see that the epidemic is fading, and that it wasn’t the horror it has been sold has.

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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.

California to ban all gas-powered vehicles

8:55 pm

This is not the Babylon Bee: California Democratic governor Gavin Newsom today announced that as of 2035 the state will outlaw all gas-powered vehicles.

Newsom said that his new executive order would “eliminate” the sales of “internal combustion engines” and move to electric vehicles — a move that he said would create jobs and allow California to “dominate” the market, and address climate change. Those who currently own gas-powered vehicles would still be allowed to operate them and to sell them on the used market.

2035 happens to be the same year that former Vice President Joe Biden has set as a deadline for the U.S. to eliminate fossil fuels from electricity production, five years later than originally proposed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in her “Green New Deal.” Ocasio-Cortez led the climate change panel on the “Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force” earlier this year.

The ignorance displayed by this policy decision is spectacular. These Democrats obviously believe that the power from electric cars comes from magic. They also seem to believe that new technology can magically be decreed, by government fiat.

What this degree will do is bankrupt California, and make living there a living hell, suitable only for the very very rich or the very very poor (whose survival will be wholly dependent on those very very rich).

Remember this when you go to vote in November. Newsom, Ocasio-Cortez, and Biden are very typical of the modern Democratic Party. Give it power and it will do the same for the entire nation.

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Survival rates for COVID-19

8:43 pm

The CDC last week posted its new estimate of the survival rates for COVID-19, broken up by age.

This link put those number in clear terms:

0-19 years: 99.997%
20-49 years: 99.98%
50-69 years: 99.5%
70+ years: 94.6%

Those numbers are practically identical to those of the flu. In other words, practically no one dies from it. It makes some people sick for a week or so, and then goes away.

And we have destroyed western civilization over this. It boggles the mind (for those who are still using it).

The worst part is that no one will believe me. Instead, too many will be outraged that anyone would even hint that this virus is not the plague.

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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

Four graphs prove the utter failure of lockdowns and masks

5:43 pm

The data is now in. Not only is the coronavirus nothing more than a very bad flu, harmless to the vast majority of the population, the bad policy imposed by almost all governments worldwide has done nothing to alleviate it, and in fact has probably helped kill people, from both the virus and their bad policy.

This conclusion is starkly illustrated in the following four graphs (source), all of which show the history of COVID-19 during the entire 2020 epidemic, now clearly ending. All four graphs are updates of graphs I’ve referenced previously, but now they take us through the epidemic’s present waning, and give us a better context of both the virus’ flu-like nature and the terrible policies imposed by governments in their panic over it.

Daily mortality from COVID-19 in the U.S.

First to the right we have the daily mortality numbers for the entire United States. The steady drop in deaths since epidemic’s second peak on August 12th is very evident. The epidemic appears to be winding down, though very slowly. Furthermore, it had an unusual summer peak that is almost never seen in such respiratory diseases. The reasons for both the slowness of the virus’s decay and its second peak will become clear as we look at the next three graphs, covering the epidemic’s peak in New York, New Jersey, and California.
» Read more

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The first Starlink user test results

9:50 am

Capitalism in space: The first Starlink test results by actual users are finally coming out, and they suggest that the constellation will deliver very fast internet speeds indeed.

The article however reveals this tidbit that up until now SpaceX has managed to keep nicely obscured:

While Starlink will provide the kind of speeds and latency that should work for many services and games, Musk said the company simply won’t have the capacity to compete in major metro markets—a caveat often left unmentioned in Starlink coverage. “It’s not good for high-density situations,” Musk said. “We’ll have some small number of customers in LA. But we can’t do a lot of customers in LA because the bandwidth per cell is simply not high enough.”

As a result, Starlink won’t do much for the estimated 83 million Americans stuck under a broadband monopoly (usually Comcast), or the millions more whose only options are a duopoly; usually either the cable company or a sluggish DSL line from the local phone company.

In other words, the service will likely not be made available in dense urban areas, at least not initially.

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New Shepard test flight set for tomorrow

9:42 am

Capitalism in space: Blue Origin has scheduled a New Shepard test flight set for tomorrow morning at 10 am (Central), the first test flight in ten months.

This will be the seventh flight of this particular New Shepard spacecraft, the thirteenth overall for the program.

In March the company’s CEO had promised three flights by the end of 2020, with the last manned. The press release above howeveronly mentions that tomorrow’s test flight is the first of two, both now emphasizing how they will be flying payloads testing technology for lunar landings. No mention is made of a later manned mission.

It seems increasingly that Blue Origin is abandoning its suborbital space tourism business. If not, they sure don’t seem very enthusiastic about it any longer. Instead, they appear to be hyping New Shepard as a testbed for their effort to develop the manned lunar lander for NASA.

That same March update from the CEO had also said they would be initiating commercial production of their BE-4 rocket engine this year. All we have had so far is delivery of one testbed engine — not flightworthy — to ULA. ULA soon revealed there are problems with the engine.

All in all, Blue Origin is becoming less and less impressive, as time passes. Their suborbital tourism project appears to be abandoned. Their rocket engine has problems. And their New Glenn orbital rocket appears stalled.

All they have right now is their development contract with NASA to build a manned lunar lander, and in that case Blue Origin is only a minor player, even if the company is listed as the lead contractor. Their big partners (Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Draper) will build the bulk of the lander, should NASA finally get the project financed by Congress.

The company’s failure to deliver so far is a true shame, as the company has ample finances, backed by Jeff Bezos’ billions.

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A patch of chaos in the Martian cratered southern highlands

1:12 pm

A patch of chaos in the southern cratered highlands of Mars
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, takes us to the cratered southern highlands of Mars. Taken by the context wide angle camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, this image shows us a strange isolated patch of what appears to be chaos terrain, which on Mars generally means an area of random knobs and mesas cut by canyons and channels.

The large bulk of chaos terrain on Mars is found near or in the transition zone between the lowland northern plains and the southern cratered highlands, and is thought to have been created by slow erosion, possibly by glaciers. This erosion process is aided by the gradient downhill from those highlands to the lowlands.

This location however is in the middle of the cratered highlands, and shows no obvious slope in any direction. And though the location is in the mid-southern latitudes, there is no obvious evidence of glaciers among these knobs and mesas. Furthermore, the mesas are not all the same height. Instead, a large portion appear to have been shaved off, as if some giant came in with a putty knife and scrapped away at them.

This can be clearly seen by the close-up below, taken by MRO’s high resolution camera on July 16, 2002 of the area indicated by the white box, which for scale is about 2 1/4 miles square.
» Read more

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