China gets failed satellite to proper orbit

9:19 am

A Chinese satellite launched in late September that failed to reach its designated orbit after deployment has now reached that correct orbit.

During the launch of the Chinasat 9A mission in June 2017, the Reaction Control System (RCS) of the rocket stopped working during the coast phase, which resulted in a sub-planned payload release. The satellite, however, used its onboard propulsion to reach the desired orbit even with the rocket underperforming.

In September the limited information released by China suggested the launch had been a success but the satellite failed after deployment. Based on this new information, the launch in September only became a success now, as the failure was in the rocket’s upper stage.

China has not revealed the purpose of this satellite, though it is part of a program known to launch satellites for testing cutting edge technology.

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NASA document: Starship orbital flight in March ’22

9:11 am

Starship orbital flight date?
Click for full image.

According to a NASA proposal to observe and measure the temperatures on Starship’s thermal protection during its return to Earth from orbit, that flight is now tentatively scheduled for March ’22.

The graphic to the right highlights the pertinent language in the poster presentation.

It must be noted that the poster might not be telling us when Starship will first launch, but when the designers of the camera system will be ready to film. The two are different. Still, the slowdown in flight testing at Boca Chica by SpaceX since July suggests there may be some truth to this date. That date also seems more reasonable now in connection with the FAA’s regulatory pace, which still needs to provide the final approval of SpaceX’s environmental reassessment of its Boca Chica launch site.

It also seems to me that the March ’22 date would be very convenient for NASA, as it almost certainly guarantees that Starship will reach orbit after SLS, thus avoiding for the agency a very big public relations embarrassment. I would not be surprised at all if the Biden administration and NASA’s top administrators, led by Bill Nelson, are purposely pressuring the FAA to make sure that Starship orbital flight is delayed until after the first SLS test flight, now expected in the January/February time frame.

There is also the possibility that SpaceX’s targeted launch dates were unrealistically optimistic. The company had a lot of work it needed to do prior to launch on its orbital launch facility at Boca Chica, and that work could not go forward while test flights and static fire tests were taking place. Pausing those tests has allowed the launch facility work to move forward aggressively.

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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

A Lucy solar panel on Lucy fails to latch properly after deployment

8:40 am

Partly deployed panel

Engineers at Lockheed Martin (the prime contractor) and Northrop Grumann (which built the panels) are now troubleshooting an issue with one of the solar panels on the asteroid probe Lucy, which failed to latch properly after deployment.

The NASA graphic to the right illustrates this issue, though the graphic might not accurately portray the exact circumstance at Lucy. To get more solar power, Lucy’s panels are larger, and thus were designed to unfurl like a fan rather than the more commonly used accordion design. One panel has not completed that unfurling.

NASA’s announcement tries to minimize the issue but this quote from the link makes it clear that this could be a very big problem.

It’s not yet clear whether the array in question is, in fact, fully deployed but not latched in place or whether it did not reach full deployment and is not generating the same amount of power as its counterpart. It’s also not yet clear whether Lucy can safely fire its maneuvering thrusters with an unlatched array.

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Monaco’s government establishes “Bureau of Space Affairs”

9:27 am

Capitalism in space: Monaco’s government announced this week that it has created a Bureau of Space Affairs, aimed at encouraging commercial space operations within the country.

By setting up a ‘one-stop-shop’ for aerospace-related matters, and reporting to the Digital Platforms and Resources Department (under the authority of the Minister of State), the Principality is taking its first steps towards supporting the growth and development of these companies by streamlining administrative procedures, and will also act as the welcome office for any prospective aerospace-related businesses looking to set up in Monaco.

At the international level, the Office of Space Affairs will represent the Princely Government in the relevant international organizations, in co-operation with the Department of External Relations and Cooperation. The Office of Space Affairs will interact with its counterparts in other countries for knowledge sharing, to foster economic cooperation, and to benefit Monegasque companies in aerospace and related fields.

Such government agencies are popping up in third world countries worldwide, with almost all having goals focused on helping and encouraging the booming private commercial marketplace and attracting it to their countries. This is great news.

That these countries are also competing worldwide for this business is also great news. It will discourage them from trying to take control, as government agencies are wont to do and as NASA did in the U.S. in the 1970s. Instead, the competition will force them all to keep their bureaucracies as streamlined as possible, so as to attract as many businesses as possible.

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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.

Russian filmmakers safely return to Earth

11:59 pm

Capitalism in space: A Russian Soyuz capsule safely returned three Russian astronauts to Earth today, including the two filmmakers that spent the last twelve days filming scenes on ISS for a movie.

Russian actress Yulia Peresild and producer Klim Shipenko landed with cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy of the Russian federal space corporation Roscosmos on Sunday (Oct. 17). The three descended aboard the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft to a touchdown at 12:35 a.m. EDT (0435 GMT or 10:35 a.m. local time) on the steppe of Kazakhstan.

The landing concluded 191 days in space for Novitskiy, who wrapped up his stay on the station by playing a bit part in the movie Peresild and Shipenko were there to film. A joint production of Roscosmos, the Russian television station Channel One and the studio Yellow, Black and White, “Вызов” (“Challenge” in English) follows the story of a surgeon (Peresild) who is launched to the station to perform emergency surgery on a cosmonaut (Novitskiy).

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ULA’a Atlas-5 successfully launches the Lucy asteroid probe

6:08 pm

ULA’a Atlas-5 rocket early this morning successfully launched the Lucy asteroid probe on a 12 year mission to study eight Trojan asteroids over a period from 2025 to 2031. One tidbit about the mission is especially creative:

Scientists named the Lucy mission after the fossilized remains of a human ancestor, called Lucy by the scientists who discovered her in Ethiopia in 1974.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

36 China
23 SpaceX
17 Russia
4 Northrop Grumman
4 ULA

The U.S. and China are once again tied in the national rankings, at 36 each.

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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

Thrusters on Soyuz docked to ISS fire improperly

10:00 pm

The thrusters on the Soyuz capsule to be used to return the two filmmakers and one Russian astronaut back to Earth on October 17th would not stop firing when they were supposed to during routine testing in preparation for undocking.

From the NASA announcement, which by the way buried this event in the announcement’s eighth paragraph:

At 5:02 a.m. EDT today, Russian flight controllers conducted a scheduled thruster firing test on the Soyuz MS-18 spacecraft that is scheduled to return to Earth Saturday night with three crew members aboard. The thruster firing unexpectedly continued after the end of the test window, resulting in a loss of attitude control for the International Space Station at 5:13 a.m. Within 30 minutes, flight controllers regained attitude control of the space station, which is now in a stable configuration. The crew was awake at the time of the event and was not in any danger.

Flight controllers are continuing to evaluate data on the station’s brief attitude change due to the thruster firing. NASA and Roscosmos are collaborating to understand the root cause.

According to the first link, the thrusters tilted the entire station 57 degrees from its correct orientation.

Not only do they not know why the thrusters did not shut down when commanded, they do not know why they eventually stopped firing. They suspect it was because the thrusters ran out of fuel, but this is not yet confirmed.

The Russians still plan to use this Soyuz to return the film crew in two days. The story does not say whether these thrusters are needed in any way to deorbit the capsule.

That’s the second uncontrolled thruster firing from a Russian spacecraft docked to ISS in less than three months. Yet, no such thing had occurred for many decades prior to this. In fact, the last such events that I can remember occurred in the 1960s.

Why such events are suddenly occurring now with such frequency is very concerning, to put it mildly. It brings to my mind the drilled hole in an earlier Soyuz capsule, a hole that was clearly drilled in Russia when the capsule was on the ground and then covered up so it was not detected until the capsule was docked to ISS. The Russians investigated, said they solved the mystery, but have never told anyone what that solution was.

To paraphrase Shakespeare, something is very rotten in Roscosmos.

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California environment overregulation sole cause of shipping backup

3:32 pm

California environment regulations that ban the use of any truck more than three years old, essentially banning half of all fleet trucks and practically all small private truck companies, is the real cause of the shipping backlog that is piling up outside the ports of Los Angles and Long Beach.

This banning was established by a deal the EPA made with California in October 2020, when Trump was still president.

In effect, what this 2020 determination and settlement created was an inability of half the nation’s truckers from picking up anything from the Port of LA or Port of Long Beach. Virtually all private owner operator trucks and half of the fleet trucks that are used for moving containers across the nation were shut out.

In an effort to offset the problem, transportation companies started using compliant trucks (low emission) to take the products to the California state line, where they could be transferred to non-compliant trucks who cannot enter California. However, the scale of the problem creates an immediate bottleneck that builds over time. It doesn’t matter if the ports start working 24/7, they are only going to end up with even more containers waiting on a limited amount of available trucks.

Essentially, California is now holding the entire nation hostage. The backlog is only going to get worse. Moreover, the deal as designed favored big operations, such as Amazon, Walmart, UPS, FedEx, Samsung, The Home Depot and Target, because they can afford the extra costs of shipping to alternative ports. The small companies are essentially shut out.

So much for protecting the little guy, Mr. Trump. This highlights again Trump’s primary failure. He did not clean house when in office, and thus allowed the bureaucracy — clearly operating as agents of the Democratic Party — to double cross and stymie him at every opportunity.

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Dry Martian chaos

1:52 pm

Dry chaos on Mars
Click for full image.

On Mars, one of the most common kinds of landscape is called chaos terrain. Made up of mesas, buttes, and cross-cutting random canyons, this geology is not seen on Earth, and when first identified by scientists in early orbital pictures in the 1970s, it baffled them. While it is clear that some form of erosion process caused it, the scientists did not have enough data then to figure out what that process was.

Today scientists have a rough theory, based on what they now know about Mars’ overall geology and its climate and orbital history. The canyons of chaos terrain were originally fault lines where either water or ice could seep through and widen. See this January 2020 post for a more detailed explanation.

Most of the cool images I have posted of chaos terrain have been in places in the mid-latitudes that are covered with glaciers. See for example this December 2019 post of one particular mesa in glacier country, with numerous glaciers flowing down its slopes on all sides. That mesa is quite typical of all such mesas in the mid-latitudes.

Today’s cool image above, cropped to post here, takes us instead to the Martian very dry equatorial regions. The photo was taken on May 17, 2021 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and like mid-latitude chaos, it shows a collection of random mesas with canyons cut almost randomly between.

Unlike the mid-latitudes, however, there is no evidence of glaciers here. Instead, the canyons and mesa slopes are covered with dust, shaped into wind-blown dunes.

As always, the overview map below gives us some context.
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Fired from a school for having a “Keep America Great” bumper sticker

12:22 pm

Cancelled Bill of Rights
Doesn’t exist at the University of San Diego.

The new dark age of silencing: Nicholas Ratekin, a masters student at the University of San Diego (USD), was fired from a teaching position, and then booted from the school’s masters program, because he apparently had a “Keep America Great” bumper sticker on his car.

Ratekin is now suing the university for kicking him out without cause. More information here.

As part of the requirements for Ratekin to earn his masters at USD, he needed to also do some student teaching. To do so he got a job a local high school, Canyon Crest Academy. He also worked there as the head coach of the high school’s water polo team, leading the team to back-to-back championships in his first two years of coaching.

Apparently, Ratekin made it a point to avoid discussing politics, both at USD and at the high school. However, because of his bumper stick, his colleagues at both assumed he was a Republican and Trump supporter and began harassing him. They could not tolerate having anyone from a different political party working with them. It was be a Democrat or be nothing.
» Read more

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China successfully launches three astronauts to its space station

9:36 am

Launch of Shenzhou

The new colonial movement: China today successfully used its Long March 2F rocket to place three astronauts into orbit to begin a six month mission to that country’s new space station.

The image to the right is a screen capture from the live stream, mere seconds after launch.

It appeared to me that the rocket’s first stage might have had grid fins to control its reentry, but I am not certain. Either way both it and the four strap-on boosters will crash in China.

The Shenzhou capsule will dock with the station in a few hours.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

36 China
23 SpaceX
17 Russia
4 Northrop Grumman

China has now moved ahead of the U.S. in the national rankings, 36 to 35.

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FAA announces details for SpaceX Boca Chica environmental public hearings

9:20 am

Capitalism in space: The FAA today announced the details for attending its public hearings about the new environmental assessment it wishes to issue for SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy operations in Boca Chica, Texas.

The hearings will be on Monday, October 18, 2021, 5:00 p.m. (Central Time) and Wednesday, October 20, 2021, 5:00 p.m. (Central Time). Both will be virtual. If you want to participate you need to register first and follow these instructions:

VIRTUAL PUBLIC HEARING REGISTRATION: Please register to attend a virtual public hearing and indicate if you would like to provide an oral comment:

http://spacexbocachicapublichearings.eventbrite.com/?s=144095269

VIRTUAL PUBLIC HEARING INSTRUCTIONS: Connect using the Zoom link below. https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88394232774 Password: FAA2021 Please only use the telephone number provided below if you are not going to connect using the Zoom Link. 1-833-548-0276 Meeting ID: 883 9423 2774 Meeting Password: 4300505

ONLINE MEETING TIPS: Prior to the meeting, please access the Zoom link above and download any needed software. This may take a few minutes, so it is best to download software in advance of the meeting. When logging-on to the meeting, please indicate your organization name in parentheses after your last name, if you represent one. If you registered to speak, this is how you will be identified during the meeting. Please also provide your email address. All lines will be muted during the meeting. To hear audio when connecting through the Zoom link, please make sure the volume on your computer speakers is on and that you do not have any programs with audio features (e.g., Skype, Spotify, YouTube) open that may interfere with the online meeting audio.

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High altitude tourist balloon company, Space Perspective, raises $40 million

9:12 am

Capitalism in space: The Florida-based high altitude tourist balloon company, Space Perspective, has successfully secured $40 million in investment capital funding, which the company says will be sufficient for them to begin flights by 2024.

Unlike other space-tourism companies, Space Perspective isn’t relying on rockets to send passengers to space. Instead, it will use a balloon to carry its roomy pressurized “Spaceship Neptune” capsule up to 100,000 feet before gently coming back down to Earth and splashing down in the Gulf of Mexico.

Each trip is expected to last about six hours with about two hours at the 100,000-foot mark.

They say their ticket price will be $125,000, which is far less than the suborbital space missions of Blue Origin or Virgin Galactic, but significantly more than the $50,000 that the other U.S. high altitude balloon company, Arizona-based Worldview, says it will charge for similar flights.

Nonetheless, the company’s CEO says they have already booked 25 flights.

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Watch launch of next crew to Chinese space station

9:00 am

I have embedded the live stream of today’s launch of three astronauts to China’s space station, presently being assembled in orbit. This crew’s mission is planned for six months. More details here. From China’s state-run press is this description of the planned tasks during the mission, including two or three spacewalks as well as the addition of two more large modules to the station.

Liftoff is set for 12:23:44 p.m. (Eastern).

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Virgin Galactic delays next Unity suborbital flight until next year

12:18 am

Capitalism in space: Virgin Galactic announced today that it is delaying its next Unity suborbital manned flight until next year so that it can first complete a planned maintenance inspection and overhaul of both Unity and its carrier airplane WhiteKnightTwo.

The company said Oct. 14 that it decided to move directly intended a planned maintenance period after a recent lab test of materials used on the vehicles “flagged a possible reduction in the strength margins of certain materials used to modify specific joints” that “requires further physical inspection.”

…That decision means that the company will delay Unity 23, a mission for the Italian Air Force that had been scheduled for as soon as mid-October, until after the maintenance period is completed next year. That flight had been previously scheduled for late September or early October but postponed to look into a potential manufacturing defect with a component in a flight control actuation system.

The endless delays at Virgin Galactic, stretching out now for almost fifteen years, threaten this company’s competitive standing. With Blue Origin now apparently able to fly commercially and regularly, one wonders why anyone would risk flying on Unity. Of course, people will, once the ship is cleared for commercial flights, but right now the price will likely have to be less than what Blue Origin is charging to garner business.

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China launches eleven satellites on Long March 2D rocket

12:08 am

China today launched eleven satellites using its Long March 2D rocket, with the primary payload a solar observation telescope, designed to observe the Sun in the hydrogen-alpha wavebands.

The hydrogen-alpha wavelength is deep red and is centered at 656.28 nanometers – for comparison, visible light runs from 400 to 700 nanometers. Observing the Sun at the hydrogen-alpha wavelength can reveal structures, evolution, and dynamic processes associated with solar flares and filaments. Hydrogen-alpha observations can also reveal solar wave phenomena, which are precursors to coronal mass ejections, and the dynamics of activity in the Sun’s lower atmosphere.

The rocket’s first stage was also equipped with grid fins similar to those used on SpaceX’s Falcon 9. Their goal at this time is simply to more precisely guide that expendable first stage back to its drop zone in the interior of China, thereby preventing it from crashing into habitable areas.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

35 China
23 SpaceX
17 Russia
4 Northrop Grumman

The U.S. and China are now tied at 35 successful launches in the national rankings. With three more launches expected in the next three days, one by China and two by the U.S., expect these numbers to rise quickly.

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Hubble data detects persistent water vapor on one of Europa’s hemispheres

1:30 pm

Using data from the Hubble Space Telescope spanning sixteen Earth years, scientists have detected the presence of water vapor on Europa, but strangely spread only across one of the moon’s hemispheres.

Previous observations of water vapor on Europa have been associated with plumes erupting through the ice, as photographed by Hubble in 2013. They are analogous to geysers on Earth, but extend more than 60 miles high. They produce transient blobs of water vapor in the moon’s atmosphere, which is only one-billionth the surface pressure of Earth’s atmosphere.

The new results, however, show similar amounts of water vapor spread over a larger area of Europa in Hubble observations spanning from 1999 to 2015. This suggests a long-term presence of a water vapor atmosphere only in Europa’s trailing hemisphere – that portion of the moon that is always opposite its direction of motion along its orbit. The cause of this asymmetry between the leading and trailing hemisphere is not fully understood.

First, it must be emphasized that the amounts of atmospheric water being discussed are tiny, so tiny that on Earth we might consider this a vacuum.

Second, that the water vapor is only seen on the trailing hemisphere suggests there is some sort of orbital influence involved, though what that influence is remains unknown.

Hopefully when Europa Clipper finally arrives in orbit around Jupiter in 2030, with a path that will fly past Europa fifty times, we will some clarity on these questions.

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A gecko on Mars

12:24 pm

Gecko on Mars
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image is also today’s picture of the day from the science team of the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO. That picture, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, can be seen to the right. As the caption authors Sharon Wilson and Sarah Sutton write:

The smooth volcanic surfaces in the Gordii Fossae region are sometimes interrupted by long, narrow troughs, or fissures. These fissures form when underground faults, possibly involving magma movement, reach the near-surface, allowing material to collapse into pits or an elongated trough. This fissure appears to have erupted material that flowed onto the surface.

If you use your imagination, this trough resembles a gecko with its long tail and web-shaped feet!

This impression is even more evident in the wider image taken by MRO’s context camera below.
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Thomas Jefferson blacklisted by NY mayor de Blasio

11:19 am

Thomas Jefferson banned in New York
Thomas Jefferson, banned by New York’s Democrats

The modern dark age: A commission appointed by New York’s Democratic Party mayor, Bill de Blasio, which is also headed by his wife, has quietly moved to remove a statue of Thomas Jefferson from the city’s council chambers, where it has stood since 1834.

The city is apparently going to indefinitely loan the statue — which is a plaster copy of the original that presently stands in the Rotunda of the Capitol in Washington — to the New-York Historical Society. The present plans call for it to be removed by October 21st, well before de Blasio leaves office at the end of this year.

The explanation for this action by Councilman I. Daneek Miller (D-Queens) illustrates well the level of hate and ignorance about the United States and its noble history by our modern so-called elite:

“There’s so much about Thomas Jefferson and his own personal writings, memoirs about how he treated his slaves, his family members and things of that nature and how he perceived African Americans and slaves — that they lacked intelligence, that they were not to assimilate into society,” Miller told The Post.

As someone who has read all of Jefferson’s writings, I can tell you that Miller is an ignorant fool, who is expressly cherry-picking phrases from Jefferson to create a false slanderous picture of the man. Miller might be better to go to the Jefferson Memorial in Washington and read the words inscribed there:
» Read more

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Shatner vs today’s America

9:17 am

Shatner vs everyone else
Shatner, on the left, turns away from Bezos and the spray of champagne.

Capitalism in space: The profound, emotional, and thoughtful reaction of William Shatner to his short suborbital flight yesterday on Blue Origin’s New Shepard space capsule contrasted starkly with the crass, rude, and shallow response of his co-passengers and Jeff Bezos.

You can watch Shatner’s comments right after landing at the video at the link. Watch how he tries to express his thoughts to Bezos immediately, and is almost ignored as Bezos and the others instead want to spritz champagne at each other. Shatner turns away, almost in disgust. The screen capture to the right shows him turning away, not because he doesn’t want to be hit by champagne but because he doesn’t want that shallowness to steal from him the emotions he now feels.

Eventually Bezos realizes Shatner is going to say his peace, and that he better pay attention. Shatner, almost in tears, struggles to note how shocked he was at the relative thinness of the atmosphere. To him, the rocket so quickly zipped out of a blue sky into blackness. As he said,

“This air, which is keeping us alive, is thinner than your skin. It’s a sliver. It’s immeasurably small when you think in terms of the universe.

…”What you have given me is the most profound experience I can imagine. I’m so filled with emotion about what just happened … it’s extraordinary. I hope I never recover, that I can maintain what I feel now. I don’t want to lose it. It’s so much larger than me and life.”

Shatner is an actor. For him, the emotion is the most important thing, as that is what he has specialized in expressing on screen to others for his entire life. At this moment, however, he was not expressing the emotions of a imaginary character he was creating on screen, but his own personal emotions. He managed to do it, in the best way possible. God speed William Shatner. We shall miss you when you are gone.

That Bezos was so unprepared for this moment from Shatner was very unfortunate. It made him look very shallow and foolish, which is a shame because, as Shatner so correctly noted, Bezos was the one who made that moment possible.

Shatner, at ninety years of age, is of a different more civilized generation that believed strongly in applying thought to one’s emotions, rather than letting those emotions rule. The contrast between him and all the younger people in this clip gives us a clear snapshot of an America now gone, replaced by the thoughtless emotional America of today.

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Russia launches another 36 OneWeb satellites

8:37 am

A Russian Soyuz-2 rocket today successfully launched 36 more OneWeb satellites, raising the total of the satellite constellation in orbit to 358.

The launch was from Russia’s new spaceport Vostochny. As with all launches from Russia, the expendable first stage core and strap-ons landed inside Russia within designated drop zones. And as usual, no word from Russia on whether they landed on anyone’s head.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

34 China
23 SpaceX
17 Russia
4 Northrop Grumman

The U.S. still leads China in the national rankings, 35 to 34. With launches scheduled by both countries (two by the U.S. and one by China) over the next three days, these numbers will continue upward.

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Webb telescope finally arrives at launch site in French Guiana

2:54 pm

Webb deployment

After almost twenty years of construction (a decade behind schedule) and a cost of $10 billion, ($9.5 billion over budget), the James Webb Space Telescope today arrived at the processing facility at Arianespace’s French Guiana spaceport, where it will be prepared for a December 18, 2021 launch on an Ariane 5 rocket.

Once launched the telescope, which is not a replacement for Hubble because it observes in the infrared (not optical) and is optimized for deep space cosmology, will take two weeks to reach its orbital position about a million miles from Earth, as shown in the graphic.

Let us all cross our fingers and toes that it all works as designed, for if it doesn’t this will be the biggest failure ever in the history of NASA.

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Astronaut blood samples suggest long-term exposure to weightlessness causes brain damage

2:10 pm

New research comparing blood samples taken from five Russian astronauts before and after long term missions to ISS suggests that weightlessness can cause brain damage.

Published in JAMA Neurology, the new research looked at five male Russian cosmonauts. Each spent an average of 169 days in space. Blood samples were taken from each subject before leaving Earth, and then at three points after returning.

Five different blood-based biomarkers were measured, each known to correlate with some kind of brain damage. Three biomarkers in particular were found to be significantly elevated after the cosmonauts returned to Earth – neurofilament light (NfL), glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), and a specific type of amyloid beta protein.

The researchers hypothesize the increases in NfL and GFAP levels may indicate a type of neurodegeneration called axonal disintegration. Elevated NfL levels are currently being investigated as a way of detecting the earliest stages of brain damage associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

It must be emphasized that the research did not find brain damage, only data within the blood samples that is often associated with brain damage. More research is required to determine if these biomarkers indicate the same thing in space as they do on Earth.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Brownstone Institute blackballed by LinkedIn for associating with famed Harvard epidemiologist

11:12 am

They’re coming for you next: The non-profit Brownstone Institute, founded in 2021 to provide an outlet for educated dissent on science and economic issues, has found itself repeatedly censored by LinkedIn in the past two weeks because one of its founders is famed Harvard epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff.

Brownstone Institute: Censored

If you are a regular reader of this column you might remember Kulldorff’s name. He was blacklisted by the CDC, Twitter, and LinkedIn in late August because he dissents from the oppressive lockdown policies those organizations advocate. He was also one of the leading authors of the Great Barrington Declaration [also available here a pdf], which strongly opposes the policies of lockdowns, mandates, and the other totalitarian actions taken by governments since 2020, and instead calls for the more traditional (and successful) “focused” approach for dealing with epidemics and diseases: Protect the vulnerable (the old and sick) from the disease while letting everyone else (the young and healthy) live normal lives and thus get infected quickly, become immune, and thus squelch off the virus.

Kulldorff is also one of the world’s preeminent experts on vaccine safety and “helped develop the CDC’s current system for monitoring potential vaccine risks.”

Anyway, it appears that on October 1st, LinkedIn suddenly discovered that Kulldorff was one of the senior scholars at the Brownstone Institute, and began deleting the institute’s posts.
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Australia to build unmanned lunar rover for NASA

7:06 am

NASA and Australia have signed a deal whereby Australia will provide an unmanned lunar rover on which NASA will put its science instruments, with the package taken to the Moon by a commercial lander.

As part of the agreement, a consortium of Australian businesses and research organizations will develop a small rover that can operate on the lunar surface. The rover would have the ability to pick up and transfer lunar regolith (broken rock and dust) to a NASA-operated in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) system on a commercial lunar lander. Such a rover could fly to the Moon as early as 2026.

While this agreement helps widen the competition in the commercial unmanned planetary aerospace industry, it does so by helping the industry of another country. This policy fits the general philosophy of the Democratic Party and the Biden administration, which generally focuses on aiding other countries before the U.S.

Posted on the road to Phoenix.

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Watching the New Shepard suborbital flight with William Shatner

10:44 pm

I have embedded the live stream of the Blue Origin suborbital flight today of its New Shepard spacecraft, carrying four passengers including William Shatner.

The launch is presently scheduled for 7 am (Pacific). The live stream will start about 5:30 am (Pacific).

As I have noted previously, the announcers for Blue Origin tend to blather quite a bit, hyping the situation to a point of nausea. Hopefully during the flight they will shut up and allow the voices of the passengers to take center stage.

I meanwhile will be on the road during the flight. I will try to post updates as well as my normal news stories, but both might have to wait until I return home in the early afternoon. Regardless, the live stream is below for you to enjoy.

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