Hubble looks at a tight cluster of five galaxies

1:33 pm

Hickson Compact Group 40
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope to celebrate the telescope’s 32nd year in orbit. This cluster of five galaxies is dubbed Hickson Compact Group 40.

This menagerie includes three spiral-shaped galaxies, an elliptical galaxy, and a lenticular (lens-like) galaxy. Somehow, these different galaxies crossed paths in their evolution to create an exceptionally crowded and eclectic galaxy sampler.

Caught in a leisurely gravitational dance, the whole group is so crowded that it could fit within a region of space that is less than twice the diameter of our Milky Way’s stellar disk.

Though such cozy galaxy groupings can be found in the heart of huge galaxy clusters, these galaxies are notably isolated in their own small patch of the universe, in the direction of the constellation Hydra.

The red streaks in three galaxies is thought to be dust, suggesting that stars are still forming in these galaxies. The vertical galaxy on the right is seen edge on. Note too the tilted ring that appears to surround the galaxy on the left.

As for Hubble’s anniversary, the press release notes that since launch in 1990 the space telescope has made 1.5 million observations covering 50,000 heavenly objects, an archive of data available to anyone to access.

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Pushback: College that demanded professor use fake pronouns loses lawsuit, must pay him $400K

1:14 pm

A victory for free speech
A victory for free speech

Don’t comply: When in 2018 the public college Shawnee State University in Ohio tried to force philosophy professor Nicholas Meriwether to use a student’s preferred female pronouns, even though the student was a biological male, Meriwether refused.

The school then performed “a formal investigation” which declared that Meriwether was creating “a hostile environment” for the student, simply because Meriwether refused to let that student force him to say things he disagreed with.

Shawnee State officials then placed a written warning in the professor’s file, demanding he change the way he addresses transgender students to avoid being fired or suspended without pay.

Rather than bow, Meriwether contacted the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a free speech law firm focused on protecting the first amendment rights of Americans. They sued, and have now won a big victory for freedom of speech.
» 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, any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. 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

Perseverance spots its parachute

11:50 am

Perseverance spots its parachute
Click for full resolution. Original images found here and here.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Cool image time! Today the Perseverance science team released two photos taken on April 6th that captured the parachute that the rover had used to land on Mars on February 18, 2021. The enhanced panorama above is from those images. The white feature near the center is the parachute. The mountains in the distance are the southern rim of Jezero Crater, about 40 miles away.

The overview map to the right gives the context. The red dot is Perserverance’s location as of yesterday, on sol 413. The black dot marks its location on April 6th, when it took the pictures. The green dot marks Ingenuity’s present position. The yellow lines indicate the approximate area covered by the panorama.

Ingenuity had not completed its 25th flight until April 8th, two days after these photos were taken, so it isn’t actually just off the edge of these photos, it is beyond the near ridgeline out of sight.

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Biden administration vows to cease anti-satellite tests

9:35 am

The Biden administration yesterday announced that it is prohibiting the military from conducting any further anti-satellite tests that would result in the destruction of an orbiting target satellite.

The ban is focused entirely on preventing further space junk produced by such tests.

It … is extremely limited in scope to testing of direct ascent destructive ASAT missiles — a formulation that leaves open the possibility of using such ASATs in conflict, not to mention testing and use of a host of other types of both destructive (think directed energy) weapons and those such as jammers that create temporary disruptions to functionality.

The goal appears to be to encourage other nations, such as China and Russia, to agree to their own bans. Considering the present state of world tensions, I think that is a pie-in-the-sky expectation. Both Russia and China have made it clear they are pursuing this space military capability aggressively. Neither has indicated the slightest interest in backing off.

The result? The U.S. under our bankrupt establishment leadership has once again unilaterally weakened its capabilities to protect itself, even as other hostile powers work to become stronger. And I say “once again” because this has been the pattern from Washington and Europe now for five decades. Except for outsider Trump, all western leaders have repeatedly acted as if they lived in a fantasy world of unicorns and rainbows. Consider for example Europe’s decision in the past decade to rely on Russia energy. They now find themselves at Russia’s aggressive mercy.

This decision is another example of this pie-in-the-sky approach. Since every previous American anti-satellite test had aimed at satellites already about to burn up in the atmosphere, those tests produced no space junk. Thus, banning the military’s ability to conduct such tests has done nothing to reduce future junk. All it has done is tied the U.S.’s hands, under a fantasy that acting nice will somehow get the Russians and Chinese to do the same.

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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.

SLS launch now definitely delayed until July, at the earliest

9:05 am

NASA yesterday admitted that with the decision to return SLS to the vehicle assembly building (VAB) before completing its dress rehearsal countdown, it is now impossible to launch SLS in the June launch window as planned, and that the earliest the rocket could launch would be July.

This summary of the issues that dogged the rocket during the three attempts to complete that dress rehearsal illustrates the likelihood that SLS has many engineering loose ends still unresolved:

On April 3 it was malfunctioning fans on the Mobile Launcher needed to clear hazardous fumes. On April 4, it was a defective helium check valve on the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage, ICPS, the Space Launch System’s second stage. On April 14, it was a hydrogen leak on the SLS first stage, or Core Stage.

Once again, having such problems during the first countdown of a new rocket is not unusual. What is questionable is only finding them now, at the very end of the rocket’s development.

I predict the launch will be further delayed until the fall, at which time NASA might face a much more serious issue regarding SLS’s two strap-on solid rocket boosters. During the shuttle era NASA had always placed a one year limit on their use once they were stacked, because it was believed that standing in a vertical position for too long could warp and distort the solid rocket fuel, thus causing it to burn improperly during launch.

These boosters were first stacked near the end of 2020, so their use-by date should have been January 2022, at the latest. Not launching until the fall will place them nine to eleven months past that date. And since these boosters are taller than the one’s used by the shuttle, they are heavier which makes extending that lifespan even riskier.

Thus, if NASA decides it must replace the boosters, that will likely delay the launch another three to six months, pushing it into ’23 at the earliest. If NASA decides to go with these boosters, it poses a real risk of failure during launch, a failure that will certainly destroy the rocket.

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Return of first Axiom commercial crew from ISS delayed

8:55 am

Capitalism in space: Because of iffy weather at their planned splashdown point, SpaceX and Axiom have delayed the return of Axiom’s first commercial crew at ISS so that they will splashdown tomorrow.

Weather permitting, the four-member private astronaut crew now is targeted to undock at about 10 p.m. Tuesday, April 19, to begin the journey home with splashdown off the coast of Florida no earlier than approximately 3:24 p.m. EDT Wednesday, April 20.

If weather remains an issue, the return to Earth of Endeavour could be delayed further.

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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

Dawn on the Moon

5:34 pm

Dawn on the Moon's far side
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, reduced to post here, was taken on August 25, 2019 by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). It shows an oblique view looking west just after lunar dawn of an unnamed 13-mile-wide crater in Mare Moscoviense on the far side of the Moon. From the caption:

Mare Moscoviense is one of the few volcanic plains on the farside, which is largely comprised of ancient cratered highland terrain. The fact that the farside was strikingly different from the familiar nearside was a surprise when the Soviet Luna 3 spacecraft returned the first farside images in 1959. The highland crust is thicker on the farside than on the nearside, which is thought to have inhibited magmas from reaching the surface as frequently as they once did on the nearside.

As seen in the image above, Mare Moscoviense lies within a large impact basin, the formation of which thinned the local crust, perhaps making it easier for lavas to erupt that would have otherwise stalled below the surface. But why does this global asymmetry in crustal thickness exist? This is still a mystery, like the origins of the large-scale asymmetries observed on Mars and Mercury, though ideas like a giant impact event that stripped off a portion of the crust or asymmetric overturn of the mantle have been proposed.

Note the dark shadow obscuring the foreground on the left. It appears from the topography in the overhead map at the link that the ridgeline that marks the eastern border of Mare Moscoviense is just high enough at dawn to keep the mare in shadow while allowing the sun’s dawn light to peek over and illuminate the crater’s rim. That ridgeline however only extends so far to the north, thus allowing sunlight to hit the plains on the right sooner.

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Pushback: Threatened with blacklisting, a conservative student fought back so hard she is now in charge

12:20 pm

Olivia Gallegos
Gallegos is also participating in Wichita State’s
first Collegiate Leadership Competition

Don’t comply! In February I wrote a pushback story about Olivia Gallegos, an Hispanic conservative at Wichita State University who, when denied nomination as a candidate for the student government for daring to nominate a conservative for recognition, not only refused to take a racial sensitivity class, put together a write-in campaign and won election to the student government anyway.

Her victory also included getting the Wichita student supreme court to overturn the decision of the student government to deny her conservative student club from getting official status at the college.

It appears Gallegos did not take even these victories lying down. She followed them up by running for president of that student government, and then winning that election on April 6th. The election also saw the defeat of one of the main accusers against Gallegos who had led the charge to block the conservative student club.

As a result, Gallegos is now the leader of the student government that only six months earlier had been dedicated to censoring and blacklisting conservatives.

Gallegos did not campaign and win as a conservative, however, but as someone dedicated to “a four-point platform of transparency, financial literacy, mental health and safety.” As she said during a public town hall meeting during the campaign:
» Read more

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White sediment in Martian slot canyon

9:43 am

White sediment in Martian slot canyon
Click for full image.

Yesterday’s Picture of the Day from the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) revisited a captioned image first posted in February 2014 by the science team. That picture, cropped and enhanced, is to the right. From the 2014 caption:

There is a large channel system that flows into the basin, called Ladon Valles, and scientists think that the basin may have once filled with water before another channel to the north formed and drained it. These exposures of light-toned layered sediments provide clues about the environment that existed within Ladon Basin when water may have ponded and deposited these sediments.

Later research has generally concluded that these white sediments are iron and magnesium smectites, often appearing as white tuff material whose deposition is generally associated with precipitation of water or snow and its subsequent evaporation or sublimation.
» Read more

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Pieces of old Long March 3B rocket fall in India

9:09 am

It appears that pieces of an old Long March 3B rocket, launched on February 4, 2021, have fallen in India earlier this month.

On April 2, locals of Sindewahi tehsil were shocked to see six metallic spheres, metal balls and a metallic ring falling from the sky. Similar objects fell from the sky simultaneously in parts of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat.

This is not an example of China dumping the expendable first stage of a rocket on the ground during launch. These pieces came from the rocket’s upper stage, which reached orbit in ’21 and only now fell to Earth when its orbit decayed. Usually, most of the upper stage of a rocket burns up upon re-entry. However, certain pieces, such as the inner helium tanks that keep the larger fuel and oxidizer tanks pressurized, are sometimes strong enough to survive re-entry. It is likely that these tanks are the metallic spheres.

To avoid this, the rocket’s upper stage engine needs to be fired one last time to aim the re-entry over the ocean. SpaceX does this routinely. It appears at least in this one case China did not.

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NASA abandons 4th attempt to complete SLS dress rehearsal countdown

9:15 am

UPDATE: NASA today decided to scrub a fourth attempt to complete a full dress rehearsal countdown of its SLS rocket on April 21 later this week, and roll the rocket back to the vehicle assembly building (VAB).

NASA said that its contractors, as well as its agency’s, will use the next several weeks to address problems that cropped up during the fueling tests when the SLS rocket returns to the large Vehicle Assembly Building. For example, gaseous nitrogen system supplier Air Liquide will upgrade its capabilities. NASA will also replace a faulty check valve on the upper stage of the rocket, as well as fix a leak on the mobile launch tower’s “tail service mast umbilical,” a 10-meter-tall structure that provides propellant and electricity lines to the rocket on the pad.

This situation is increasingly becoming a big problem for NASA, and the SLS rocket. After returning it to the VAB it will take several weeks to address the issues that caused the aborts on the previous attempts. If the agency then repeats the wet dress rehearsal to make sure all is well and then returns the rocket again to the VAB, it would delay the actual launch to late summer or early fall. At that point the two strap-on solid rocket boosters will have been stacked almost two years, almost twice as long as they are supposed to before launch.

The agency could attempt to roll out the rocket for a dress rehearsal, and then proceed directly to launch. That would allow the possibility of a launch in the early summer, but for that plan to work everything must work perfectly.

The many problems during the dress rehearsal were in themselves not bad marks against the rocket or program. This was a test to iron out kinks in the launch procedures, and such issues should be expected. The real problem is that these kinks during launch countdown are being worked out now, at the very end of development, rather at the beginning. They suggest that the rocket has a lot of engineering loose ends that were not thoroughly tested and worked out in development, thus increasing the likelihood of a complete failure during actual launch.

This rocket was first conceived in 2004. Its development, in fits and starts, has now been on-going for 18 years. The total cost exceeds $30 billion (not including the $20 billion or so spent on the Orion capsule). That it is not ready to launch is a striking condemnation of our entire government. The rocket was designed by Congress, and NASA’s program to build it has been costly, slow, and poorly managed, from the beginning.

As I wrote in 2011, it should have been scrapped more than a decade ago, replaced with rockets from the private sector. Had our incompetent federal government done that we would likely be launching humans to the Moon, now, and saved a lot of money in the process.

Original post:
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NASA has now scheduled for no earlier than April 21, 2022 its fourth attempt to complete a SLS dress rehearsal countdown, stymied the last time by a hydrogen fuel leak.

Each delay puts further pressure on the agency’s hope of launching in June. And each launch delay puts the rocket’s solid rocket boosters farther and farther past their use-by date that officially arrived in January.

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Astronauts return from Chinese station; China launches satellite

9:06 am

Late yesterday China’s Shenzhou descent capsule successfully brought home three astronauts from its Tiangong-3 space station after spending six months in space.return from Chinese station.

During their stay they completed two spacewalks and prepared the station for the arrival of two more large modules in the next six months.

China yesterday also used its Long March 4C rocket to launch a new radar satellite designed to observe the Earth’s atmosphere.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

13 SpaceX
11 China
5 Russia
2 ULA
2 Rocket Lab

The U.S. still leads China 20 to 11 in the national rankings. Note that at this moment the U.S. total is more than all other nations combined (19).

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The Ukraine War: Little change in the past week

5:30 pm

The Ukraine War as of April 7, 2022
The Ukraine War as of April 7, 2022. Click for full map.

Since my last weekly report on the Ukraine War, so little has changed that I am not bothering posting a new map. The one to the right is from April 7th, and other than some minor changes, including the completion of Russia’s full withdrawal from the entire northern regions, the front line in the east remains essentially the same. The most recent map from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) can be found here for comparison. In one place Russia appears to have pushed forward, while in another it has pulled back. Meanwhile, ISW reports increased Ukrainian resistance efforts in one large area.

Overall, the Russians appear bogged down, while the Ukrainians show renewed military strength.

The Institute today also published its weekly summary of the entire war situation. The most important takeaway is that it appears all negotiations between the two nations have collapsed.

Ukraine and Russia are both unlikely to advance ceasefire negotiations until the ongoing Russian campaign in eastern Ukraine develops further. The Kremlin likely seeks to capture at minimum the entirety of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, while Kyiv seeks to further degrade the Russian military and potentially conduct major counteroffensives.

This fact suggests strongly to me that the Ukraine has concluded its military situation is excellent, and that negotiations serve it no purpose. While Russia has been focusing its invasion effort entirely in the east in the hope it might make more gains that way, it has also made very little progress. While it continues to slowly take control of Mariupol street-by-street, the city has remained unconquered now many weeks longer than expected. This failure of Russia to quickly take the city not only ties up a large part of their military, it sows morale issues in its own army while the Ukraine resistance is enlivened by it.

The next few weeks will reveal whether Russia will be able to harness the necessary forces to make further gains in the east, or whether the Ukraine will begin to retake territory back from Russia. Right now it is difficult to predict which way the war will go.

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Apollo 16 on Moon, as visualized by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

3:44 pm

In celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 16 mission to the Moon in April 1972, scientists using images from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) have created a short digital visualization of the lunar surface where astronauts John Young and Charles Duke completed three different excursions across the lunar surface.

I have embedded that video below. The audio is the discussion between John Young and the capcom at mission control during the last excursion. The key moment is when John Young reaches the rim of North Ray crater, and realizes he cannot see its floor because the interior slopes are so steep.
» Read more

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The spiral galaxy M91

3:38 pm

spiral galaxy M91
Click for full release image.

Cool image time! The image to the right, reduced to post here, was released today by the Space Telescope Science Institute as part of a regular program using the Hubble Space Telescope to photograph galaxies.

This observation is part of an effort to build a treasure trove of astronomical data exploring the connections between young stars and the clouds of cold gas in which they form. To do this, astronomers used Hubble to obtain ultraviolet and visible observations of galaxies already seen at radio wavelengths by the ground-based Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array.

The galaxy is estimated to be about 55 million light years away, and is thought to have a supermassive black hole at its center with a mass somewhere between 9 and 38 million times the mass of the Sun.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Two colleges hold segregated debate tournament that bans whites from competing

1:28 pm

Academia: dedicated to segregation!
Modern academia: dedicated to segregation!

“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” Boston College and Northeastern University partnered together to run a debate tournament in October 2021 that explicitly banned whites from participating, merely because of their race.

In an email obtained by Campus Reform, Devesh Kodnani, president of the Chicago Debate Society, writes “The goal of this tournament is to promote affinity among non-white APDA debaters and cultivate racial diversity on the league.”

The email was sent to members of the University of Chicago Debate Society and clarified that “BIPOC is defined as anyone who does not identify as white.”

Topics for the debate tournament include “issues relating to race and social justice.”

While White students were ineligible to compete in the event, they were able to apply for a judging position, though the university clarified that White students would be “selected with lower priority” than students of color, Chicago Thinker reported. [emphasis mine]

More information here.
» Read more

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China’s astronauts to return after six month mission

12:40 pm

The new colonial movement: The three astronauts who have been on China’s Tiangong space station are about to return to Earth after completing a record six month mission.

Airspace closure notices indicate that Shenzhou-13 will return to Earth between 9:35 and 10:05 p.m. Eastern April 15 (9:35-10:05 local time, April 16) following departure from Tianhe.

The Shenzhou return capsule is planned to set down in a designated landing zone near Dongfeng in the Gobi Desert, Inner Mongolia.

Previous landings occurred in the grasslands of Siziwang, Inner Mongolia. Factors for the change include increasing population density around Siziwang, and the need to optimize for astronaut recovery as the duration of China’s spaceflight missions increases.

I suspect the change in landing location to inside China is also for security reasons. Tensions created by the Ukraine War has probably made China’s leaders reluctant to have their astronauts land anywhere but in China itself.

The article also outlines the upcoming plans for the next crew to Tiangong, which will be on board during the arrival of the station’s next two large modules.

The three-person Shenzhou-14 crew will be aboard the Tianhe space module for the arrival of two new modules, named Wentian and Mengtian, which will complete the three-module, T-shaped Chinese space station, later in the year.

Both of these large modules will be launched by China’s Long March 5B rocket. The previous launches of this rocket resulted in the crash of an out-of-control core stage because once it reached orbit it could not restart its engines to control its de-orbit. Though there have been hints that China may have upgraded the core stage’s engines, we do not know yet for certain if that includes the ability to restart it. If not, China should once again be prepared for some bad press as it threatens populated areas worldwide with these stages.

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Don’t launch it! Don’t spin it! Fire your orbital payloads from a gun!

11:59 am

Capitalism in space: It appears there is another company attempting to develop a different radical method for getting payloads into space. Instead of launching them on a rocket, or spinning them up to escape velocity (as Spinlaunch proposes), the startup Green Launch proposes to fire them from a cannon!

Green Launch COO and Chief Science officer Dr. John W. Hunter directed the Super High Altitude Research Project (SHARP) program at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory some 30 years ago, and in the process led the development of the world’s largest and most powerful “hydrogen impulse launcher.”

This is effectively a long tube, filled with hydrogen, with helium and oxygen mixed in, and a projectile in front of it. When this gas cannon is fired, the gases expand extremely rapidly, and the projectile gets an enormous kick in the backside. The SHARP program built and tested a 400-foot (122-m) impulse launcher in 1992, breaking all railgun-style electric launcher records for energy and velocity, and launching payloads (including hypersonic scramjet test engines) with muzzle velocities up to Mach 9.

This approach, says Green Launch Business Development Director Eric Robinson, scales up far better than a spinning accelerator like the SpinLaunch system.

On its website the company claims this technology could not only be used for bulk payloads, like oxygen or water, but also “acceleration-tolerant payloads in the cube-sat class and smaller.” I am not sure how any complex hardware in any satellite, no matter how small, could withstand such accelerations, but once again, such technology could provide a cheap way to get simple cargo into orbit.

Below is a video of the company’s December 21, 2021 vertical test.
» Read more

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Ingenuity completes 25th flight, the longest yet

10:51 am

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

On April 8th the Mars helicopter Ingenuity successfully completed its 25th flight on Mars, traveling 2,310 feet at 18 feet per second while flying for 161.3 seconds.

The long distance was designed to take it out from the rough region dubbed Seitah and near the delta that is the prime geological target of the rover Perseverance.

The overview map shows the location of both rover and helicopter as of today. The red dot is Perseverance, the green dot is Ingenuity. The rover has now completed its entire planned travels, as announced in June 2021. Where it goes next has not as yet not been announced. According to the team, they plan to use Ingenuity to scout out possibly routes up onto the delta. This likely means the rover will likely spend some time at the base of the delta, getting as much data as it can, while Ingenuity does this scouting work.

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Boeing and NASA set May 19th for second Starliner unmanned demo launch

10:21 am

NASA yesterday announced May 19th as the new launch date for Boeing’s second attempt to complete the first unmanned Starliner demo mission to ISS.

The uncrewed mission will test the end-to-end capabilities of the Starliner spacecraft and Atlas V rocket from launch to docking and return to Earth at one of five designated landing zones in the western United States. Following a successful completion of the OFT-2 mission, NASA and Boeing will determine a launch window for NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test (CFT), Starliner’s first flight with astronauts aboard.

The first unmanned demo flight in December 2019 failed to dock with ISS and had to be cut short due to serious software issues. The launch of the second unmanned demo flight was scrubbed mere hours before launch in August of 2021 due to serious valve issues.

Thus, Boeing’s manned capsule is more than two years behind schedule. Not only has Boeing had to pay more than $400 million for a second demo mission, the delays have caused a lot of business with NASA and with tourists to instead go to SpaceX. Hopefully, the company has finally fixed all issues and will succeed and begin manned operations later this year.

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TASS: China has suspended science partnerships with Russia

9:59 am

According to Alexander Sergeev, President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Chinese scientists have also suspended all cooperation with Russia’s Academy of Sciences, as have all western nations due to its invasion of the Ukraine.

“If we talk about the southern or eastern directions, unfortunately, I can say directly that our Chinese scientific colleagues have also pressed the pause [button], and over the past month we have not been able to enter into serious discussions, despite the fact that we had excellent cooperation along with regular communication,” Sergeev said.

It is impossible to say at this point whether the actions of these Chinese scientists to refuse cooperation with Russia is based on a decision of the Chinese government, or simply reflects the decision of the scientists themselves. I would suspect the former, but if so it is quite surprising, as China’s communist government has made no such announcement. It could also be that China has decided it does not want to appear a party to Russia’s invasion in any way, but also does not want to make that decision public. Thus, it might have told its scientists to pause all work, but do this quietly.

Let me add that this statement by Sergeev could also be simply disinformation, demanded on him by Putin’s government. While Russian scientists tend to deal straight with other scientists, the situation is unique. For example, Dmitry Rogozin today claimed in TASS that the private space company Axiom owes Russia about $25 million for the nearly year-long flight of Mark Vande Hei to ISS. The problem is that this is utterly wrong. Axiom had nothing to do with Vande Hei’s flight. He was a NASA astronaut. Rogozin’s statement however is aimed at the Russian public — which has limited resources to question his statements — and is designed to slander both NASA and the private companies that now compete with Roscosmos.

If Rogozin can so nonchalantly issue false statements like this for propaganda reasons, so can Sergeev.

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China’s Long March 3B/E rocket launches communications satellite

9:50 am

China today successfully placed a commercial communications satellite into orbit using an upgraded version of its Long March 3B rocket, dubbed the Long March 3B/E.

The 3B/E includes a larger first stage using more powerful engines as well as upgraded strap-on boosters. No word if these upgrades included either grid fins or parachutes or any ability to control the crash of the stage or boosters. As the launch was from one of China’s interior spaceports, these stages crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

13 SpaceX
10 China
5 Russia
2 ULA
2 Rocket Lab

The U.S. still leads China 20 to 10 in the national rankings.

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Third SLS dress rehearsal countdown scrubbed before completion

1:29 pm

NASA engineers today scrubbed their third attempt to complete a dress rehearsal countdown of the agency’s giant SLS rocket when a leak was detected in a hydrogen fuel line.

The team will not conduct the terminal countdown activities today as planned and will assess next steps after today’s operations.

The problem appears to be “a leak … in the tail service mast umbilical.”

It is not clear yet how much of the countdown and fueling will be completed. Because of a faulty valve in the upper stage, NASA management had already decided to eliminate fueling of the rocket’s upper stage from the rehearsal. The problem today appears to involve the core first stage’s hydrogen tanks, which are presently partly filled only about 5%. Based on their last tweet, it appears they have not drained the tank, though they apparently will not continue the rehearsal today.

UPDATE: NASA just tweeted the following:

Teams have confirmed they have satisfied the test objectives for the ICPS [upper stage] LH2 [hydrogen tank] chilldown and after gathering additional data, will work to drain propellant from the rocket. They will inspect the TSMU umbilical connection, review data, and establish a go-forward plan.

This sounds as if the agency might decide they have completed enough of the dress rehearsal to consider it complete, and will now roll the rocket back to the vehicle assembly building for further check out.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Twitter blocks Libs of Tik Tok for the crime of reposting actual leftist statements

11:44 am

Twitter: Home for censorship
Twitter: Home for censorship.

The new dark age of silencing: Twitter yesterday suspended for twelve hours the account of “Libs of Tik Tok,” preventing the anonymous woman who runs it from continuing to post actual Tik Tok rants by leftists as well as the public school teachers who insist on promoting sexual perversion to children (but then I repeat myself).

The account was suspended for “hateful conduct,” which is a broad and vague category used by Twitter to suspend accounts that violate a policy that is equally broad and vague.

The policy says that “You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.”

So what specifically was Libs of Tik Tok’s “hateful conduct?” We do not know, since Twitter as usual did not provide any specific information. However, Libs of Tik Tok has been in the forefront of making the public especially aware of the large number of very sick and dangerous people who now teach in the public schools. And she does this with very little commentary. Instead, she simply digs about in Tik Tok and finds their own rants, and simply republishes them on Twitter. As they tend to be ugly hateful screes that actually promote the idea of perverting young children without the knowledge of their parents, no commentary is needed. They condemn themselves. More important, their own words have done much to energize parents nationwide to retake school boards and force such evil people from the schools.

If you don’t believe me just take a look at the site. Right now there are several such rants from leftist teachers, insisting that parents should have no say in what the schools teach their young children.

Of course, the leftists who run Twitter cannot have this, since they are allied with these corrupt teachers. Too much free speech reveals their agenda, and that is a threat. So yesterday Libs of Tik Tok was shut down temporarily, though you can bet this is only a shot across the bow. As Libs of Tik Tok has previous written:
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The spread of the oceans’ sea floors appears to be slowing

9:33 am

The uncertainty of science: Based on data covering the last 19 million years, scientists now believe that the rate in which the Earth’s ocean sea floors are spreading has been slowing steadily.

Today, spreading rates top out around 140 millimeters per year, but peaked around 200 millimeters per year just 15 million years ago in some places, according to the new study. The study was published in the AGU journal Geophysical Research Letters, which publishes high-impact, short-format reports with immediate implications spanning all Earth and space sciences.

The slowdown is a global average, the result of varying spreading rates from ridge to ridge. The study examined 18 ridges, but took a particularly close look at the eastern Pacific, home to some of the globe’s fastest spreading ridges. Because these slowed greatly, some by nearly 100 millimeters per year slower compared to 19 million years ago, they dragged down the world’s average spreading rates.

You can read the actual paper here.

To put it mildly, the conclusion here is uncertain. The difference between 140 and 200 millimeters is less than two and a half inches. A hundred millimeters is less than four inches. Such small differences over millions of years could simple be caused by random fluctuations over time. Furthermore, the scientists did not actually detect the spreading rates from millions of years ago. They instead inferred it based on the data we do have of the changes in the Earth’s magnetic field over time.

Still, this result is very intriguing indeed. More than anything, it should help geologists develop better theories to explain plate tectonics, and what drives it. At the moment no theory adequate explains it.

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