New Australian government cancels $1.2 billion program to launch four government satellites

10:09 am

The new Australian Labor government has canceled a $1.2 billion program funded by the previous government to pay for four satellites to provide both civilian and military data from orbit.

The cut will primarily affect the NSMEO program, which was to have four satellites launched between 2028 and 2033 to give Australia a new stream of information from space. While the goal was primarily for civil use, maritime situational awareness data — crucial for keeping an eye on Australia’s sovereign waters — was also part of the project. Also, the weather and earth observation capabilities would have had clear military applications.

Instead the new government has decided to continue the previous policy of using the space capabilities of “its international partners.”

It is unclear whether this decision is good or bad. If the money was to be spent buying these satellites from new Australian satellite companies, it could have helped jump start that nation’s satellite industry. If the plan had instead been to have the government design and build the satellites, then it likely would have merely been a government jobs program that would have cost a lot and accomplished little. In the latter case the new government would thus be shutting down a wasteful program. In the former it prevents a new private industry from forming.

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Orbex to expand facilities in Scotland and Denmark

9:57 am

The British rocket startup Orbex today announced that it is expanding its factory and office space in its facilities in Scotland and Denmark, the former at its facility it leases at the new spaceport in Sutherland.

The company is adding an extra 1,500 square metres of factory and office space to its existing 4,750 square metre estate in Forres, Scotland and Copenhagen, Denmark. The additional space will increase the company’s launch vehicle production and propulsion system manufacturing capacity and add an extra software laboratory and an avionics clean room space with ISO 8 and ISO 9 sections. The additional capacity in Forres is just 3km from its test site at Kinloss, allowing for quick turnaround between the two sites, as Orbex ramps up its testing in the countdown to launch.

The press release doesn’t give any information about the expansion in Denmark. I wonder if it is occurring as a hedge against the kind of bureaucratic delays in the UK that destroyed Virgin Orbit. Orbex’s Prime rocket is presently under construction in Scotland, with its first launch planned for this year out of Sutherland. Whether it can get a launch permit promptly is doubtful, based on the fifteen months it took Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to approve Virgin Orbit. Orbex applied for the launch license in February 2022 (seventeen months ago) and so far there is no word from CAA about its approval.

Other Scandinavian spaceports are under construction in Sweden and Norway, which suggests establishing facilities in Denmark could strengthen Orbex’s ties to these new spaceports, especially in Sweden as both Sweden and Denmark are members of the European Union. Norway meanwhile as strong trades ties to the EU. Orbex has also signed a deal with Arianespace to launch ESA payloads, and it could be those launches could occur in French Guiana.

It seems wise if Orbex prepares for launch problems in the UK. Today’s announcement could be signalling that preparation.

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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 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

ISRO to transfer ownership of its smallsat SSLV rocket to a private company

9:38 am

India’s space agency ISRO has now announced that it is planning to transfer full ownership of its new smallsat SSLV rocket to a private company, with that transfer conducted through open bidding.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will soon transfer its Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) to the private sector, after conducting two development flights of the rocket that seeks to provide on-demand services to put satellites weighing up to 500 kg in a low-earth orbit. The space agency has decided to opt for the bidding route to transfer the mini-rocket to the industry, a senior official said. “We will be transferring the SSLV completely to the private sector. Not just the manufacturing, but full transfer,” the official said.

The article does not provide a source, so this story is at present unconfirmed. It does fit with the overall policy of the Modi government, but it also clashes with the power structure in India’s vast bureaucracy that is resisting that policy. It is very possible that the story has been leaked as part of that struggle, likely by bureaucracy to gin up opposition prior to the transfer being implemented.

Up to now under the Modi government’s efforts to force ISRO to give up power, the assets of ISRO that have been used to generate commercial profits — such as its rockets — have generally been transferred to a new separate bureaucracy created by ISRO dubbed NSIL. NSIL supposed to operate like a private company, but it is wholly owned by the government, and is thus structured to retain control within that government.

If this news story is correct, the Modi government is about to bypass NSIL and force ISRO to sell off SSLV. If so this is excellent news, though the devil will certainly be hidden in the final details of the sale.

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SpaceX launches 22 Starlink satellites using a first stage for 16th time

9:11 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched 22 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral using a first stage for a record sixteenth time, all achieved with a period of just over three years.

The stage successfully landed on its drone ship in the Atlantic. In addition, the two fairing halves each successfully completed its ninth flight.

In those three years this one first stage flew almost as many times as all of the launches of Russia (24), ULA (20), and Europe (20). Somehow, with those sixteen launches I think SpaceX has fully gotten its full value for what it spent building and refurbishing that stage.

To understand how routine SpaceX has made all this, when that first stage landed tonight there were no cheers at SpaceX, at all. There was just routine silence, as the launch crew proceeded with what has become an entirely routine procedure.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

46 SpaceX
25 China
9 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads China in launches 52 to 25, and the entire world combined 52 to 43, with SpaceX by itself leading the rest of the world, excluding American companies, 46 to 43.

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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.

China launches classified technology test satellite

9:37 am

According to China’s state-run press, it used its Long March 2C rocket to launch a satellite to test “internet technologies” today, lifting off from its interior Jiuquan spaceport in the northwest of China.

This is all that press told us. Nor did it say where the rocket’s first stage crashed in China, whether it used parachutes to control its descent, or whether it came down uncontrolled near habitable territories.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

45 SpaceX (with a planned Starlink launch tonight)
25 China
9 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads China in launches 51 to 25, and the entire world combined 51 to 43, with SpaceX by itself leading the rest of the world, excluding American companies, 45 to 43.

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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

July 7, 2023 Quick space links

5:06 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

  • Blue Origin to launch Iranian satellite?

    • The article, unfortunately behind a paywall, is about Iran getting an extension from regulators to launch a long delayed communications satellite. Its headline adds “Blue Origin launch in 2024,” which is the real story. As Jay correctly notes, “What on Earth are they talking about? Using Blue Origin to launch an Iranian satellite? Are they out of their minds? Iran is our enemy.” In searching the web, I could only find one hint (which I can no longer find) that Blue Origin offered to do the launch (though it still lacks a rocket to do so), but no indication that any deal with Iran was ever signed.

 

  • China predicts it will reach 70 launches in 2023, a new record

    • With only 24 launches in the first half of the year, China would almost have to do that number twice over in the second half to meet this target. Since it historically has launched at a much higher pace in November and December, this is not impossible, though still difficult.

 

 

  • Europe shifting more launches to SpaceX due to Ariane-6 delays

    • The article lists six payloads that have or will likely switch to the Falcon 9. That’s a lot of money suddenly flowing to SpaceX, from $200 million to $500 million, depending on price per launch. And it is all happening because Europe first denied the importance of reuseability and second moved too slowly in trying to compete. As Jay notes, “SpaceX did not choose to become a monopoly.”

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The coming rise of an American royal class, as incompetent and as privileged as all past royalists

3:29 pm


A modern Ivy League education: “But Brawndo’s got what plants crave.
It’s got electrolytes!”

The move by the general public away from public schools and universities has become well documented. I have noted this movement in a number of essays, the most recent of which in February showed with ample evidence that these government schools have done such an excellent job of smearing their own reputations so thoroughly that parents and students are fleeing from them in record-breaking and unprecedented numbers.

Similarly, Glenn Reynolds in an essay last week about the recent Supreme Court decision outlawing the use of racial quotas in universities noted this trend as well, and how the Court’s ruling only reinforced the decision by many to avoid these institutions and their routine bigotry.

[W]ho trusts higher education anymore? At the turn of the millennium, when Grutter [a 2003 Supreme Court decision that narrowly allowed university racial quotas] was decided, American higher ed was at its zenith. Since then a series of scandals – just today a famous “ethicist” at Harvard was charged with fraudulent ethics research – has undermined its reputation for probity (and the Hollywood admissions scandal of a few years back certainly undermined the perceived integrity of its admissions process), even as everything else about universities came to seem less serious. With 57 genders, coloring books and crying rooms for election results, endless crusades against “whiteness” and “heterosexism,” and the like, the notion of deferring to the educational seriousness and expertise of those in charge of the asylums of higher ed seemed much less appealing. Whom the gods would destroy, they first make ridiculous. But higher education has supplied the ridiculousness itself.

Both Reynolds and I missed however a much more fundamental point that was then made by one of the commenters to his essay. It isn’t so much that ordinary people are fleeing established universities for other colleges, it is that ordinary people are deciding in increasing numbers to forego a college education entirely, concluding that it is a waste of time. As this commenter noted:
» Read more

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Puzzling crater on alien Mars

2:08 pm

Puzzling crater on alien Mars
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image once again illustrates that the things that orbiters photograph on the Martian surface are not always what they seem at first glance. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on March 23, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label as “layering” in this small mile-wide crater.

That layering, seen on both the interior and exterior slopes of its circular rim, is what makes this crater puzzling. It suggests this crater was not formed by an impact, but by volcanism. The layers suggest repeated eruptive events. That the crater sits above the surround plain by about 100 feet strengthens this conclusion.

And yet, a look at the overview map below suggests this conclusion is premature.
» Read more

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SpaceX launches another 48 Starlink satellites

12:39 pm

Using its Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX today successfully launched another 48 Starlink satellites, lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base.

The first stage completed its twelfth flight, landing softly on a drone ship in the Pacific. The two fairing halves completed their fourth and seventh flights respectively.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

45 SpaceX
24 China
9 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

In successful launches, American private enterprise now leads China 51 to 24 in the national rankings, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world combined, excluding American companies, 45 to 42.

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Taiwan wants and needs Starlink, but local law is blocking a deal

9:46 am

After three years of discussions, negotiations between Taiwan and SpaceX to provide Starlink to that nation broke off in 2022 because of a local Taiwanese law that requires local ownership of at least 51%.

SpaceX would not agree to these conditions, and ended the negotiations. In response, Taiwan has been struggling to get its own communications satellite into orbit, with limited success.

To address that vulnerability, the Taiwan Space Agency (TASA) intends to launch its first self-made low-Earth orbit communication satellite in 2026 and at least one more by 2028, Director General Wu Jong-shinn said. Taiwan also will have rockets capable of carrying payloads weighing over 100 kilograms, he added in an interview.

Since the country doesn’t yet have those rockets, this plan remains dependent on foreign launchers. Moreover, to be effective in low-orbit will require not two satellites but a constellation of 20 to 30. Taiwan is years from being to launch such a constellation.

It seems Taiwan is cutting off its nose to spite its face by not changing this ownership law. Its entire internet access is dependent on 14 undersea cables, and China has already demonstrated the ability to destroy these cables when it cut two in February. No foreign operation is going to give up its ownership to make a deal in Taiwan.

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Students complete first suborbital launch from new Nova Scotia spaceport

9:37 am

Students today completed the first suborbital launch from the new Nova Scotia spaceport being run by Maritime Launch Services.

The launch was completed by Arbalest Rocketry, a rocketry team from Ontario’s York University. It in turn is part of a nationwide Canadian student program called Launch Canada involving “over 1000 students nationwide from over 25 universities and colleges.”

Maritime hopes to offer both a launchpad and a rocket to satellite companies. It has deals with rocket startups in both the Ukraine and the United Kingdom, whereby satellite companies can come to Martitime and get full launch services.

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Large mass of granite unexpectedly detected on Moon

9:12 am

Using archival data from four lunar orbiters (two American and two Chinese), researchers have unexpectedly detected evidence suggesting the existence of a large 20-mile-wide mass of granite under a lunar volcanic caldera.

“We have discovered extra heat coming out of the ground at a location on the Moon believed to be a long dead volcano which last erupted over 3.5 billion years ago. It’s around 50km across, and the only solution that we can think of which produces that much heat is a large body of granite, a rock which forms when a magma body – the unerupted lava – below a volcano cools. Granite has high concentrations of radioactive elements like uranium and thorium compared to other rocks in the lunar crust, causing the heating we can sense at the lunar surface”.

Except for some small grains found in Apollo lunar samples, granite has not been found anywhere in the solar system except on Earth. This discovery, if confirmed, will strengthen the theory that the Moon was once part of the Earth and was created from the impact of a second large body.

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Update on preparations at Boca Chica for next Starship/Superheavy test launch

9:03 am

Link here. The article provides an excellent review of the extensive work SpaceX is doing, especially in repairing and upgrading the Superheavy launch facility.

Overall, SpaceX is moving fast, suggesting that Elon Musk’s prediction that it will be ready technically to launch in August quite believable. I remain doubtful that launch will happen in August, however, as I fully expect the FAA and the Biden administration will not issue a launch license on time, but will delay it.

8 comments

July 6, 2023 Quick space links

3:57 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

  • Another Vega-C engine failure during static fire test

    • The test was part of the investigation following a failure of an identical engine during a Vega-C December 2022 launch. This new failure was on an engine that had been upgraded, so the European Space Agency has now begun an independent review. Vega-C will thus not resume launches this year.

 

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Pushback: Non-profit legal firm warns 200 law schools they will be sued if they defy the Supreme Court’s decision ending all racial quotas

12:47 pm

AFL logo
Only one in an army of lawyers willing to
fight for freedom and the Bill of Rights

Bring a gun to a knife fight: One day after the Supreme Court ruled on June 29, 2023 [pdf] that affirmative action was nothing more than outright racial discrimination and that universities must stop using race as a criteria for admitting students or hiring faculty, the non-profit legal firm America’s First Legal (AFL) wasted no time and sent demand letters to the deans of every law school in the United States, numbering 200, warning them to stop these racist policies or it will sue them.

America First Legal’s letter demands that law schools immediately halt these discriminatory and unlawful practices. It further puts the deans of every law school on notice: if they do not stop, America First Legal will bring legal action against them.

The letter to the Harvard University Law School, found here [pdf], is a good sample. In it AFL makes very clear it will immediately take action if this or any other law school develops “an admissions scheme through pretext or proxy to achieve the same discriminatory outcome.”
» Read more

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Swirls draining into a Martian crater

11:59 am

Swirls draining into a Martian crater
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, sharpened, and annotated to post here, was taken on April 8, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The picture shows a terrain of swirls and terraced mesas. Because the shadows are deceptive, I have annotated the picture to show the actual drainage pattern of those swirls, suggesting that whatever material forms these swirls is not only draining about 200-250 feet down into the low point at the picture’s center, the swirls are also draining toward the small 1,000-foot-wide crater in the upper left. That crater however appears to lie on top of the swirls, which means it came after them.

What are the swirls made of?
» Read more

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Scientists claim discovery of most distant supermassive black hole yet

9:28 am

The overwhelming uncertainty of some science: Using data from the infrared Webb Space Telescope, scientists are now claiming they have discovered most distant supermassive black hole yet, sitting at the center of an active galaxy only about a half billion years after the Big Bang. From the press release:

The galaxy, CEERS 1019, existed just over 570 million years after the big bang, and its black hole is less massive than any other yet identified in the early universe. Not only that, they’ve easily “shaken out” two more black holes that are also on the smaller side, and existed 1 and 1.1 billion years after the big bang. Webb also identified eleven galaxies that existed when the universe was 470 to 675 million years old. The evidence was provided by Webb’s Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey, led by Steven Finkelstein of the University of Texas at Austin. The program combines Webb’s highly detailed near- and mid-infrared images and data known as spectra, all of which were used to make these discoveries.

CEERS 1019 is not only notable for how long ago it existed, but also how relatively little its black hole weighs. This black hole clocks in at about 9 million solar masses, far less than other black holes that also existed in the early universe and were detected by other telescopes. Those behemoths typically contain more than 1 billion times the mass of the Sun – and they are easier to detect because they are much brighter. (They are actively “eating” matter, which lights up as it swirls toward the black hole.) The black hole within CEERS 1019 is more similar to the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, which is 4.6 million times the mass of the Sun. This black hole is also not as bright as the more massive behemoths previously detected. Though smaller, this black hole existed so much earlier that it is still difficult to explain how it formed so soon after the universe began.

I have great doubts about this research, especially because the press release makes no effort to explain how the black holes were identified. Black holes emit no light, and were only first confirmed by watching the orbits of stars or objects near them over long periods of time. More distant supermassive black holes in the center of galaxies were later guessed at by what appears to be the relationship between the size of a galaxy’s nucleus and the presence of a black hole. Astronomers also assume that a very active and energetic galaxy (such as a quasar) is a sign a supermassive black hole exists at the center.

These primitive galaxies have only been observed at most a handful of times. They are so distant that they only are at most a few pixels wide. Spectra from these objects can tell us roughly how far away they are, and thus how close to the Big Bang they are thought to be, but it is impossible to say with any certainty that there is a black hole there.

I am made even more skeptical by this press release claim: “Webb’s data are practically overflowing with precise information that makes these confirmations so easy to pull out of the data.” Such language makes me suspicious that there is an underlying effort to justify Webb’s expense with this release by overstating its capabilities.

The press release provides links to the research. Take a look. I’d be glad if someone could clearly show me why I’m wrong to be so doubtful.

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Duane Eddy – Rebel Rouser

6:01 pm

An evening pause: As the first comment on the youtube page notes, “Before there was Duelin’ Banjos, there were Duane Eddy and his great sax player going back and forth.”

Hat tip Dave McCooey.

UPDATE: The first version I had embedded was removed by Youtube between the time I scheduled it and tonight. The version below is just as good.

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July 5, 2023 Quick space links

3:58 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who trolls Twitter so I don’t have to. For the past few days Twitter links were unavailable to anyone who did not register there. I won’t link to such sites, so we held off doing the daily quick links. It seems that Twitter has reopened access to everyone, though Jay indicates there might still be some issues. If you have difficulty accessing any one of these links, please comment below.

 

 

 

 

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Europe’s Ariane-5 rocket completes its last launch

3:30 pm

The Ariane-5 rocket today successfully completed its final launch, lifting off from French Guiana and placing two communications satellites into orbit.

At the moment Europe has no capability of putting anything into orbit. Ariane-5 is retired. Ariane-6, its replacement, is far behind schedule will probably not make its first test flight until next year. The Vega-C rocket is grounded because of a launch failure in December 2022.

This was only the second launch for Europe in 2023, so the the leader board in the 2023 launch race remains the same:

44 SpaceX
24 China
9 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

In successful launches, American private enterprise still leads China 50 to 24 in the national rankings, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world combined, excluding American companies, 44 to 42.

6 comments

Pushback: Federal judge confirms and shuts down censorship campaign of Biden administration

12:50 pm

The Bill of Rights, cancelled
Cancelled by the Democratic Party led by Joe Biden

Blacklists are back and the Democrats have got “em: On July 4th (an appropriate date), Terry Doughty, chief U.S. district judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, ruled that the evidence clearly showed that the Biden administration, in league with most big social media companies, had been running an aggressive censorship operation against conservatives for the past two-plus years, and issued an injunction banning “numerous top Biden administration officials and agencies from communicating and meeting with social media companies.”

You can read Doughty’s ruling here [pdf]. I strongly urge you to do so, as he is harshly blunt about the ugly actions of the Democrats running the federal government since 2021. His introduction sets the tone, beginning with this quote, “I may disapprove of what you say, but I would defend to the death your right to say it,” and then getting more blunt from there:

This case is about the Free Speech Clause in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The explosion of social-media platforms has resulted in unique free speech issues—this is especially true in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history. In their attempts to suppress alleged disinformation, the Federal Government, and particularly the Defendants named here, are alleged to have blatantly ignored the First Amendment’s right to free speech. [emphasis mine]

In his detailed review of the history, he begins by listing the number of examples of this attack against free speech by the Biden administration:
» Read more

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Alien Mars

11:19 am

Alien Mars
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image illustrates again the alien geology of Mars, often disguised as geological features that at first glance seem familiar. The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on April 9, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Its most distinct feature, the mile-wide double crater in the center bottom, at first appears typical of such craters found on the Moon and elsewhere, suggesting that the bolide that caused it broke in two as it cut through the Martian atmosphere.

This double crater however is not like lunar double craters, in that the shape of both craters is deformed, and the deformation is not quite the same in each. Moreover, the crater does not appear to have an upraised rim or to have thrown out any obvious ejecta. Instead, the two objects hit what looks like soft ground, such as when you drop a pebble into snow.

There’s more.
» Read more

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Curiosity’s most damaged wheel appears to be surviving the rough terrain on Mount Sharp

9:46 am

Curiosity's middle left wheel, from November 2022 to July 2023
For original images go here and here.

In today’s download of images from Curiosity was a set of pictures taken by its Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) of the rover’s wheels, as part of the science team’s routine inspection procedures after every 500 meters of travel.

The picture to the right shows what I think is the rover’s left middle wheel, its most heavily damaged, comparing what that wheel looks like now versus what it looked like in November 2022. At that time five of the wheel’s zig-zag grouser treads were broken, three of which are visible in both pictures. The numbers indicate identical wheel treads.

As you can see, after more than seven months of travel across some of the roughest and rockiest ground so far seen on Mars, no more grousers have broken in the new picture. The plus (“+”) signs indicate places where I think some additional metal between the grousers appears to have broken away, but even here the additional damage appears minimal.

Based on past wheel inspections, I expect more images will be taken in the next day or so. We shall see if those pictures indicate any further damage elsewhere. Based on this new picture, however, it appears that the care the science team takes in picking Curiosity’s route, as well as its software (designed to avoid the worst terrain), is continuing to preserve the wheels from further significant damage.

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Scientists: Quasar data shows time running five times slower in the early universe

8:53 am

The uncertainty of science: According to new research using data from almost 200 quasars collected over the two decades, scientists now believe they have detected the difference between the rate of time now and as we see it in the early universe.

“Looking back to a time when the universe was just over a billion years old, we see time appearing to flow five times slower,” said lead author of the study, Professor Geraint Lewis from the School of Physics and Sydney Institute for Astronomy at the University of Sydney. “If you were there, in this infant universe, one second would seem like one second – but from our position, more than 12 billion years into the future, that early time appears to drag.”

…Professor Lewis worked with astro-statistician Dr Brewer to examine details of 190 quasars observed over two decades. Combining the observations taken at different colours (or wavelengths) – green light, red light and into the infrared – they were able to standardise the ‘ticking’ of each quasar. Through the application of Bayesian analysis, they found the expansion of the universe imprinted on each quasar’s ticking.

“With these exquisite data, we were able to chart the tick of the quasar clocks, revealing the influence of expanding space,” Professor Lewis said.

These results further confirm Einstein’s picture of an expanding universe but contrast earlier studies that had failed to identify the time dilation of distant quasars. [emphasis mine]

I have highlighted the word “exquisite” because it is a favorite buzzword of scientists when they are trying to oversell conclusions that carry many uncertainties. As good as this data might be, it is still incredibly sparse, and the interpretation of it requires many assumptions.

Nonetheless, these results are likely correct, in some manner, because they match well with Einstein’s predictions. It is also most likely that there are many errors and incorrect aspects to those results that the scientists do not yet understand. Above all, confirmation bias remains a concern.

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South Korea: North Korean spy satellite of “no military utility”

8:36 am

Having completed its salvage operations to recover rocket and satellite remains from North Korea’s failed launch on May 31st, the South Korean military today revealed that the satellite had “no military utility as a reconnaissance satellite.”

As expected, it also provided few details to back up that claim:

The JCS [South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff] did not detail the findings through the allies’ analysis of the wreckage nor did it disclose any photos of the retrieved part of the satellite. Last month, a Seoul official struck a cautious note, insinuating that disclosing all the information the military gleaned from the salvage operation would rather benefit the North Korean military.

It is likely true that the North Korea satellite was of limited value, but it is also true that secrecy and disinformation works to the advantage of South Korea’s military. We therefore would be wise to remain skeptical about any of its claims, one way or the other.

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