Northrop Grumman successfully tests SLS solid rocket booster

9:03 am

Northrop Grumman yesterday successfully test fired a solid rocket booster to confirm its design for use on NASA’s long-delayed and overbudget SLS rocket.

The test, completed at the T97 test area at Northrop Grumman‘s facility in Promontory, Utah, took place on Wednesday, September 2, 2020, at 1:05 PM Mountain Daylight Time (19:05 UTC). A single five-segment SLS solid rocket motor with a thrust of up to 3.6 million pounds was ignited, and burned for approximately two minutes.

The booster is an expanded version of the solid rocket boosters used on the space shuttle, with five segments instead of four, and in fact will use previously flown segments from past shuttle launches. Since this booster will not be recovered, these launches will be the last time those segments fly.

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SpaceX’s Falcon 9 successfully launches 60 Starlink satellites

8:52 am

Falcon 9 1st stage after landing

Capitalism in space: SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket this morning successfully launched another 60 Starlink satellites into orbit.

It also successfully landed its first stage, the second time this stage has done so.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

20 China
15 SpaceX
9 Russia
4 ULA
4 Europe (Arianespace)

The U.S now leads China in the national rankings 24 to 20.

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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

Arianespace’s Vega rocket successfully launches 53 satellites

9:02 pm

Capitalism in space: Arianespace’s Vega rocket tonight finally resumed commercial operations more than a year after a July 2019 launch failure, successfully placing 53 small commercial satellites into orbit.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

20 China
14 SpaceX
9 Russia
4 ULA
4 Europe (Arianespace)

The U.S.’s lead over China in the national rankings remains at 23 to 20.

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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.

COVID-19 numbers surge after mask mandate in Hawaii

5:45 pm

More evidence masks are a very bad idea: Soon after Hawaii imposed new rules requiring masks both indoor and outdoor, the number of Wuhan virus cases and hospitalizations zoomed upwards.

Just like in the Philippines and Peru, Hawaii’s government has imposed a long, strict lockdown and has never emerged from it beyond a modified phase one reopening. Additionally, the state has had an indoor mask mandate in place since April 20 and an outdoor mandate (even while jogging!) since July 7. It is the model for what the political elites believe to be the key to stopping the spread. Yet the results are the same as they have been in every place that tried to put up a cloth in front of the inexorable spread of viral particles that can only be seen with an electron microscope.

As [indicated by the graph], Hawaii’s daily case count grew more than tenfold in July and August. All along, state officials thought they were steering this ship cleanly throughout the spring and that their draconian efforts avoided the spread of the virus. Instead, it has become clear that the virus simply arrives at southern latitudes several months later and spreads for six to eight weeks, as it does everywhere else. [emphasis mine]

I must emphasize what the author notes, that Hawaii is the most isolated U.S. state with one of the most stringent lock down and quarantine rules for visitors. Basically entering Hawaii has become difficult if not impossible, and if you do go you are required to quarantine for weeks.

Yet, as soon as they required masks, the disease’s spread accelerated.

Masks are fake science. Not only is there no solid science proving they are a benefit, the data clearly shows that if used improperly (which the general public is doing routinely) they are unsanitary and will easily promote infection and the spread of pathogens.

This data from Hawaii also proves the utter pointlessness of the lock downs. Even on this remote island the disease has arrived, and is spreading. This is what these respiratory viruses do. The best way to fight them is let them spread as fast as possible among the young and healthy population, which will easily fight them off and become immune and thus act to choke off any further spread to more vulnerable populations.

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Biggest black hole merger yet detected by gravitational waves

3:30 pm

The uncertainty of science: In May 2020 scientists using the LIGO and VIGO gravitational waves telescopes detected evidence of a merger from two giant black holes, one of which was of a size that according to all theories had been considered “impossible.”

The short gravitational wave signal, GW190521, captured by the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave observatories in the United States and Europe on 21 May last year, came from two highly spinning, mammoth black holes weighing in at a massive 85 times and 66 times the mass of the Sun, respectively.

But that is not the only reason this system is very special. The larger of the two black holes is considered `impossible’. Astronomers predict that stars between 65 – 130 times the mass of the Sun undergo a process called pair instability, resulting in the star being blown apart, leaving nothing behind.

With a mass of 85 solar masses, the larger black hole falls squarely in that forbidden range, referred to as the upper black hole mass gap, and should be `impossible’.

The explanation the scientists propose is that this black hole initially formed with a mass smaller than 65 solar masses, and then sucked in matter, including a possible additional black hole merger, that raised its weight to 85 solar masses.

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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

A nation of control freaks

12:19 pm

Americans have not simply in the past six months become trapped in terror and fear over a relatively low-level virus, they have compounded that fear with a strong and ever-growing desire to tell everyone else what to do.

The conservative internet has been pushing the term “Karen” to apply to any busybody who wishes out of outrage to wield petty power over everyone around them. I find that term too vague. A much more apropos term would be to call them what they are: control freaks.

And sadly, there now are a lot of them, many of which are downright insane in their demands and willingness to commit violence to impose their will.

Want to hold a small wedding in Hawaii near the beach, with maybe no more than ten people attending? Nope, you can’t, because someone will arrive to harass you rudely and demand you be arrested. The Democratic state government there has declared the beaches closed, public weddings illegal, and private enterprise under strict control, all over a virus that appears only mildly more dangerous than the flu.

Want to sing in church and you live in California? Nope, you can’t, because Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of that state has declared such singing and chanting dangerous. It will spread the Wuhan flu! (He doesn’t have a problem with leftist Antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters chanting “Death to America” slogans however. Leftist protesters are immune from the virus.)

It isn’t just the rules imposed over COVID-19 however. » Read more

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The longest lava tube in the solar system?

9:19 am

A lava tube on Mars
Click for full image.

Before I delve into today’s cool image, I think it important to explain to my readers why I seem to post so many cool images from Mars. The simple explanation is that Mars right now is where almost all the cutting edge planetary research is taking place, and as a science journalist focused on space exploration I must go to that cutting edge. My dear readers know that I love variety (just consider the evening pauses on Behind the Black), but you can’t ignore the reporting of real discoveries simply to increase the diversity of one’s posts. This is too often what modern news outlets do, which is also why they often miss the real story.

Anyway, today’s cool image to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, shows only a small section of what might be the longest lava tube in the entire solar system. Taken on May 5, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), it shows a string of pits along a meandering depression coming down the northwest flank of the giant volcano Arsia Mons. The image was a follow-up to a July 2014 photo of the same location, and was taken to produce a stereo pair.

The feature strongly suggests a lava tube, with the pits being skylights into the meandering underground void. From top to bottom this section of the tube is a little over three miles long. Since there are lava tubes on Earth far longer, this one image hardly makes this the longest tube in the solar system.

The tube, however, extends off the image both at the bottom and at the top. Not many high resolution images have been taken in this area, so it is therefore hard to say how far the tube extends. Other nearby high resolution images in this area however have found similar lava tubes, which conceivably could be part of the same tube. The overview map below shows the relationship.
» Read more

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Musk gives update on Starship/Super Heavy

8:11 am

Capitalism in space: During a phone conversation at a conference earlier this week, SpaceX founder Elon Musk gave an update on the development of Starship/Super Heavy, intended to be the first completely reusable rocket.

He did not reveal much that isn’t already known but his broad overview is helpful for understand what is happening at the company’s development facility in Boca Chica, Texas. One detail of note:

Asked on Monday when SpaceX might perform the first orbital Starship launch and re-entry, Musk replied: “Probably next year.”

“I hope we do a lot of flights,” Musk continued. “The first ones might not work. This is uncharted territory. Nobody has ever made a fully reusable orbital rocket. So just having that at all is pretty significant.”

Musk also said that they plan to do a lot of orbital flights before upgrading the ship for humans. I think his experience with Dragon has influenced him on this score.

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COVID-19 illnesses after half million people attend Sturgis rally: almost none

10:24 pm

Can we please put aside our fear? Almost two weeks after about a half a million people attended the Sturgis motorcyle rally in South Dakota (an event that spanned ten days), only three hospitalizations from COVID-19 have been linked to this event, and two of those have already recovered.

I can only find confirmation of three hospitalizations at this point in the reporting. Two of the patients have confirmed discharges indicating they will fully recover. Since they had symptoms and developed them within fourteen days of the rally, contracting the virus during their travels or attendance seems likely. By way of contrast, there were four fatal crashes at the Sturgis event that killed five people.

Even using the largest number of positive tests and granting they all 222 resulted from rally attendance, 0.048% of attendees and contacts tested positive for COVID-19. Some states have done contact-tracing on people who tested positive post-rally and included those individuals in their reporting.

You won’t see this reported in the media nationally. It is too much good news. If almost half a million people can gather for an event that spans 10 days with this outcome, it puts their COVID-19 panic porn to rest.

If you saw any videos from this rally, you saw that most people were not social distancing, were not wearing masks, and were having a darn good time.

COVID-19 is not dangerous. You won’t get it easily, or if you do, you are likely not to even know. And if you do get sick, you will almost certainly recover, like the flu. The only people who should be concerned about the virus are those with other serious illnesses who likely should not attend such large events anyway.

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A collapsed Martian crater in a glacier?

12:43 pm

Collapsed crater in glacier?
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, is another example of evidence that the mid-latitudes of Mars are covered with glaciers and ice. The photo, taken on April 25, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), shows many of the squashed and blobby features found in these mid-latitudes.

What makes the image even more interesting is the small crater in the center of the larger crater. The floor of that larger crater seems filled with glacial fill, and it appears that when that smaller impact occurred it caused the nearby surrounding fill to collapse downward, producing the oblong off-center depression. At least that’s my uneducated guess, which I admit could easily be wrong.

Even if my hypothesis is wrong, the visual evidence here supports the theory that this region, dubbed Deuteronilus Mensae, has lots of buried ice glaciers. Consider for example the distorted crater to the southwest of the big crater. It sure looks like at some point it was heated suddenly, maybe by the impact of the main crater, so that its rim was warped and reshaped, in the manner that ice would be warped and reshaped by sudden heat. Moreover, all the craters in full image appear to have glacial fill.

The overview map below adds weight to this conclusion.
» Read more

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