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Congress frees Europa Clipper from SLS

9:10 am

It appears that Congress has at last removed its requirement that the unmanned probe Europa Clipper must be launched on the continually delayed and very expensive SLS rocket.

Almost unnoticed, tucked into the 2021 fiscal NASA funding section of the recently passed omnibus spending bill, is a provision that would seem to liberate the upcoming Europa Clipper mission from the Space Launch System (SLS).

According to Space News, the mandate that the Europa Clipper mission be launched on an SLS remains in place only if the behind-schedule and overpriced heavy lift rocket is available and if concerns about hardware compatibility between the probe and the launcher are resolved. Otherwise, NASA is free to search for commercial alternatives to get the Europa Clipper to Jupiter’s ice-shrouded moon.

Not only will this secure Europa Clipper’s launch schedule, which had deadlines imposed by orbital mechanics that SLS was not going to meet, the more than $1 billion in savings by using a SpaceX Falcon Heavy will allow the probe to do more while giving NASA more money for other planetary missions.

This is excellent news. It signals that Congress’s long love affair with SLS because of the ample pork it sends to many districts might finally be waning. If so, there is a good chance it will finally be killed, freeing up its bloated budget.

Sadly, in a sane world some of those savings would be used to reduce the overall federal deficit even as some was also used to expand NASA’s space effort. We are not in a sane world, however, so expect no reduction in the federal budget, at all.

Still, this is a move by Congress towards some fiscal responsibility that will make NASA’s efforts more efficient. For that small improvement we should be grateful.

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Another new rocket startup, ABL Space, to launch its rocket in ’21

9:02 am

Capitalism in space: ABL Space, another one of the many startups attempting to enter the launch market using private investment capital, now predicts it will attempt its first orbital launch sometime before June of this year.

The company was formed by veterans of SpaceX and Wall Street, and uses that company’s philosophy of building as much of the rocket in-house as possible. That rocket is also more powerful than Rocket Lab’s, aiming for bigger payloads, and is designed with a very simple launchpad arrangement, so that it can launch from practically anywhere there is a concrete pad and do it quickly.

ABL now has about 105 employees, with about 90,000 square feet of space in several buildings in El Segundo, as well as testing facilities at Edwards Air Force Base and at Spaceport America in New Mexico. “We can build and ship a launch vehicle about every 30 days, based on infrastructure we have now,” Piemont said. “We’re tracking towards eight or nine [rockets] a year based on existing infrastructure.”

While ABL has significant contracts and relationships with the Pentagon, Piemont said the company’s customer pipeline is 60% private, or commercial, versus 40% government payloads. The company has customers lined up to launch payloads on its first few missions, although ABL may fly mass simulators, which are often a slab of concrete to represent a spacecraft’s weight, for the first RS1 launch.

By my count, this makes seven new rocket companies — Virgin Orbit, Firefly, Astra, Relativity Space, Aevum, ABL Space, and Blue Origin — all planning their inaugural launches in ’21. The competition for business thus should be very fierce, which is all to the good, as it will encourage these companies to all find ways to cut costs.

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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

The new dark age of silencing

10:52 pm

Screen capture of Rantingly on January 8, 2021
Click for most recent page.

The dark age has arrived! The screen capture on the right, cropped, rearranged, and color adjusted slightly to fit here, comes from the front page of the conservative news aggregate site Rantingly from tonight, the evening of January 8, 2021, only two days after Congress certified Joe Biden as president-elect and only three days after the Democrats had confirmed that they will have majority control of the both the House and Senate in Congress.

I have highlighted in red the pertinent stories. Very quickly, the Democratic Party’s allies in at Google, Twitter, Facebook, and Apple have moved to shut down many legitimate and popular conservative and Republican news outlets, including the Twitter feed of the President of the United States. With the Democrats in control of the government, these leftist internet platforms know they have nothing to fear by doing this, that if anything the Democrats controlling Congress will applaud them and encourage them to censor more conservative and Republican outlets, to shut them all down if possible.

Beforehand, these social media platforms had held their fire somewhat out of fear that the Republicans would change their special tax status exemptions that define them as open platforms, not publishers. No longer. Their desire to silence their opponents can now swing into high gear, and they are pushing it for all it is worth, including attempting to silence their direct competitors, such as Parler, a twitter-like platform that prides itself on censoring no one.

It is also very important to recognize that this isn’t being done only by the big corporate bosses. No, sirree, this censorship of conservatives and Republicans is fully endorsed by the workforce at these companies. Today’s young generation, properly indoctrinated in leftist-controlled universities to hate conservatives and view them all as white supremacists, have been eager to do this for the last two years, and have actually been held back by their corporate bosses. The reins are now off, and their modern culture of oppression and intolerance has moved to the forefront. Persecution is now cool!

This is only the beginning. Even as I wrote this post more links appeared at Rantingly of more examples of censorship.

For myself, because I for years refused to do business with corrupt companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, and Twitter, there is not much they can do right now to hurt me. But these actions today point to the future, and I am not confident my immunity will last very long. The leftists doing this have the power and the willing support of a large percentage of the population. They will use that power and support to jam their boot into every one of their opponent’s faces, given time.

The worst part of this horror is that the people who should read it and learn from it, the low information Democratic Party supporters who really don’t understand how evil that party has become, will never see it. My readers generally agree with me. Those that do not generally fall into two categories, those who are strongly partisan and will deny these facts whole-heartedly, or hacks working for the Democratic Party who come here merely to spread misinformation and lies.

The decent and moderate people who are knee-jerk Democrats and who desperately need to read this and to see the intolerance spreading across America from the party they support are just not interested. They will turn away, dismissing what I write with a wave of the hand. This can’t be true! It must be some mad conspiracy claims of the racist alt-right! And maybe those sites are bad and should be silenced!

And I write this from direct knowledge. I have been surrounded by these people my entire life, being a secular Jew who has also been a college teacher, a film maker, and a science journalist. All these communities are dominated by low information Democrats. I have known them all and have I spent my life trying to get them to wake up, all to no avail.

They will not see. They will not hear. And they will not speak up. And so, worse is coming. We no longer live in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Soon, it will be a land of oppression and murder and genocide, all because too many Americans decided to close their minds and do nothing.

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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.

Colliding galaxies!

2:19 pm

Colliding galaxies!
Click here and here to see full images.

Cool images from Hubble! The two photos to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, shows two different galaxies undergoing a collision with another galaxy. Both images are from of a montage of six galaxy merger images from the Hubble Space Telescope, released yesterday.

To celebrate a new year, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has published a montage of six beautiful galaxy mergers. Each of these merging systems was studied as part of the recent HiPEEC survey to investigate the rate of new star formation within such systems. These interactions are a key aspect of galaxy evolution and are among the most spectacular events in the lifetime of a galaxy.

It is during rare merging events that galaxies undergo dramatic changes in their appearance and in their stellar content. These systems are excellent laboratories to trace the formation of star clusters under extreme physical conditions.

The first galaxy merger to the right is dubbed NGC 6052, and is located in the constellation of Hercules about 230 million light-years away. This pair of colliding galaxies, according to the caption, “were first discovered in 1784 by William Herschel and were originally classified as a single irregular galaxy because of their odd shape. However, we now know that NGC 6052 actually consists of two galaxies that are in the process of colliding.”

The second image shows two galaxies, IC 694 and NGC 3690, about 700 millions after they had completed a close pass of each other. From the caption: “As a result of this interaction, the system underwent a fierce burst of star formation. In the last fifteen years or so six supernovae have popped off in the outer reaches of the galaxy, making this system a distinguished supernova factory.”

You can see all six merger images here, though to my eye these two are the most impressive.

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Draping moraines on Mars

1:07 pm

Draping moraines on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo on the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and annotated to post here, was taken by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on October 6, 2020. It shows the northern interior rim of 42-mile-wide Greg Crater in the southern cratered highlands of Mars.

What makes it interesting is the curving ridge that appears to drape itself around several larger hilltops. That ridge is a moraine, the debris or glacial till that accumulates at the foot of glaciers as push their way down hill. As the glacier had flowed those hills became obstacles, so that the glacier (and its moraine) were forced to go around.

The overview map and wider view from the context camera on MRO below give the setting.
» Read more

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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

Momentus forced to delay its first mission due to FAA bureaucrats

9:34 am

Capitalism in space? Momentus, aiming to provide satellite makers a tug that can move satellites to their preferred orbit, has delayed its first mission because the many bureaucrats in the federal government need more time to review the paperwork.

In a Jan. 4 statement, Momentus said the flight of its first Vigoride tug, which was to be part of the payloads on a Falcon 9 dedicated rideshare mission launching as soon as Jan. 14, will be delayed to later in the year because it was unable to get approval from the Federal Aviation Administration for the mission. “This move will allow for the additional time necessary to secure FAA approval of Momentus’ payloads, including completion of a standard interagency review,” the company said in a statement.

The company did not elaborate on that review, but part of the FAA commercial launch licensing process is a review of the payload that the agency describes as intended “to determine whether its launch would jeopardize public health and safety, safety of property, U.S. national security or foreign policy interests, or international obligations of the United States.” That process can include consultation with other government agencies.

In a Jan. 5 document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the form of an interview, Fred Kennedy, president of Momentus, said there was no specific issue that was delaying that review. “The FAA did not express any specific concerns of its own, but rather indicated that more time was needed to complete its interagency review of Momentus’ payload,” he said. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words reveal the truth. There is nothing wrong with the payload or its tasks. The problem is that several government agencies have not completed the paperwork, and so Momentus must wait. I imagine that there is a thick application sitting on some bureaucrat’s desk, requiring a signature, and that bureaucrat has been too busy collecting his or her paycheck at home because God forbid he or she might get the cororavirus by coming into work.

This is modern America. You don’t have the real freedom to do what you want. You must sit, twiddling your thumbs, while your betters in Washington decide whether they will allow you to do it. It doesn’t matter they know little or nothing about your goals. All that matters is that they are in charge, and can boss you around at their whim.

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Yesterday

2:11 pm

Because I have come down with a cold that has sapped my energy, I will let J.J. Sefton sum up my thoughts about what happened yesterday, as well as the last four decades. This is the key quote:

Tragically, a victim who has been identified as a Trump supporter was shot and killed in the chaos and confusion. Now the propagandists, the Democrats, and the GOP are condemning Trump as well as anyone and everyone who voted for or otherwise support him as traitors, engaging in violent treason and sedition. Given everything we have endured this past year and going back into the Obama years and beyond really, that attitude is risible in the extreme. It’s also infuriating beyond my capacity to describe the emotion.

My rage this morning is directed in particular at the GOP. Given everything we have seen and endured, these bastards – with the exception of the handful of patriotic members of the Senate and House who exercised their legitimate Constitutional authority and right to challenge the Electoral College votes – including Vice President Mike Pence stabbed us in the heart. Correction, they along with the state legislatures in question as well as the majority on the Supreme Court stabbed us in the heart weeks if not months ago. Pence et al were just twisting the knife. Meh, it happened the moment President Trump said “so help me G-d” four years ago when the GOP controlled both houses of Congress and sabotaged him at every turn for two years, until Paul Ryno delivered the House to Malig-Nancy Pelosi.

Year after year, election after election, we begged and pleaded with that party to stop what is now inevitable and imminent from happening. I blame them for what happened yesterday. For what happened nine weeks ago. For what has happened to this country for the past 60 years by not opposing the overthrow of America as founded and going along to get along, either out of denial, greed or some combination of both.

I was once in Moscow interviewing a Soviet-era scientist. She was curious about America and asked me some questions. Eventually the conversation turned to freedom, the law, and the Constitution. She, in the typical Russia way, extolled the wonders of Mother Russia. I then made it clear to her that I did not care one whit for the country I lived in. What I cared about was the principles that founded it. I said bluntly, “If the United States abandons those principles it will not be my country any longer.”

I fear we have reached that point.

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Rover update: Curiosity on the shore of a sand sea

1:24 pm

Curiosity stops on the shore of a sand sea, while Yutu-2 continues its journey west away from Chang’e-2. On the way: Perseverance and China’s first Mars rover on Tianwen-1.

A sand sea on Mars
Click for full image.

Curiosity

The photo on the right, taken in late December, shows the large sand lake the science team has labeled “the Sands of Forvie” that the rover has been working its way uphill to reach since it left the Mary Anning drill site back in November.

Since they arrived there, they have used the rover to roll across the sand, cutting into a ripple to expose its interior, followed by high resolution close-up images. They have also used the rover to analyze the chemical composition of the sand’s grains, from that interior section, from the top of several ripples, and from the troughs in between.

Once finished here, the rover will be turned east again to continue its journey around this sand sea to the very base of Mount Sharp. The overview map below shows the planned route.
» Read more

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DARPA cubesats damaged in mishap at SpaceX facility

10:07 am

Though no details have been released, DARPA revealed yesterday that two experimental cubesats being prepared for launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 were damaged when the payload separation system was accidently activated.

As these were military satellites not much information was revealed by DARPA, and SpaceX made no comment.

Such things do happen rarely, but for SpaceX it is still an embarrassment and a problem. They will certainly have to figure out how this could have happened by accident, and make sure it does not happen again.

Who pays the cost for repair or replacement (more likely) is a tangled question, and will be buried in the launch contracts between DARPA and SpaceX.

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Starship prototype #9 completes first static fire test

10:00 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX engineers yesterday successfully completed the first static fire test of the ninth prototype of Starship, in preparation for its first 50,000 foot flight.

The SN9 vehicle’s three engines lit up for about one second today (Jan. 6) at 5:07 p.m. EST (2200 GMT) during a static-fire test at SpaceX’s South Texas facilities, near the Gulf Coast village of Boca Chica.

It is possible they will do additional static fire tests before that flight, as they did this with the eighth prototype. It is also possible that all went right in this first test, and they will proceed to launch, as soon as January 8th.

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Margaret Thatcher does “Yes Minister” skit

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Yes Minister was a British comedy show set within the halls of Parliament. In the past year I have posted a number of clips from the show (here, here, here and here) that illustrate how truthfully it skewed the political class.

Today we have a skit with two of the show’s stars performing with the actual prime minister at the time, Margaret Thatcher. She clearly understood the truthful humor of the show, as she explained once during an interview.

Hat tip Andrew Worth.

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A glacier filled canyon on Mars?

11:26 am

Large glacial flow exiting Mamers Valles
Click for full image.

The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on September 9, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the northern half of a 15-mile wide canyon on Mars whose floor appears to be completely filled by a glacier. The full picture shows both the north and south rims, and captures the canyon’s outlet from the southern cratered highlands into the chaotic terrain of Deuteronilus Mensae, the region of Mars I like to call glacier country. This region of canyons and mesas forms the transition zone down to the northern lowland plains, and is a region where almost every MRO image shows glacial-type features.

The size and age of this glacial feature is what makes it stand out. First, note the craters on its surface. The glacier has to be quite old and inactive for a long time for those craters to still exist as they appear. Any movement would have distorted them, and they show little distortion.

The overview map below gives a sense of this glacier’s size.
» Read more

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NASA targets Jan 17th for full static fire test of SLS core stage

8:34 am

After analyzing the data from an aborted fueling dress rehearsal, NASA engineers have decided they understand and have fixed the issue that caused the abort and have now scheduled the full static fire test of SLS’s core stage for January 17th.

NASA conducted the seventh test of the SLS core stage Green Run test series – the wet dress rehearsal – on Dec. 20 at NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi and marked the first time cryogenic, or super cold, liquid propellant was fully loaded into, and drained from, the SLS core stage’s two immense tanks. The wet dress rehearsal provided structural and environmental data, verified the stage’s cryogenic storage capabilities, demonstrated software with the stage’s flight computers and avionics, and conducted functional checks of all the stage’s systems. The end of the test was automatically stopped a few minutes early due to timing on a valve closure. Subsequent analysis of the data determined the valve’s predicted closure was off by a fraction of a second, and the hardware, software, and stage controller all performed properly to stop the test. The team has corrected the timing and is ready to proceed with the final test of the Green Run series.

…The upcoming hot fire test will fire all four of the stage’s RS-25 engines simultaneously for up to eight minutes to simulate the core stage’s performance during launch. After the firing at Stennis, the core stage for SLS will be refurbished and shipped on the agency’s Pegasus barge to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The stage will then be assembled with the other parts of the rocket and NASA’s Orion spacecraft in preparation for Artemis I, the first integrated flight of SLS and Orion and the first mission of the agency’s Artemis program.

The agency had been hoping to complete this test series before the end of 2020. Whether the delay will effect the planned launch date in November is unclear. I suspect they are already anticipating another postponement, in that this press release strangely makes no mention of that launch date.

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Tianwen-1 to arrive in Mars orbit February 10

4:03 pm

The new colonial movement: China’s space agency, CNSA, today announced that its first Mars orbiter/lander/rover, Tianwen-1, will arrive in Mars orbit on February 10th, with the lander/rover dropping to the surface in May.

After entering orbit, Tianwen-1 will begin to prepare for a landing attempt of the mission’s rover. The orbiter will begin imaging the main candidate landing site within the huge impact basin Utopia Planitia, to the south of NASA’s Viking 2 landing site.

Getting ready for the attempt will take time however, with CNSA stating that the landing won’t take place until May.

At the moment they say that all systems are working as planned, and that they have one more course correction, the fourth, to do before entering orbit.

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Updates on Starship development: next 50K foot flight this weekend?

11:22 am

Two different updates yesterday and today on the development of Starship by SpaceX suggest strongly that the company is aiming for its next test flight to about 50,000 feet as early as this coming weekend.

The second story notes how the company has apparently decided it was not worthwhile keeping much of the debris left over from the crash of the eighth Starship prototype after its successful test flight on December 9th. They have instead focused entirely on clearing the landing pad as quickly as possible, even if it meant destroying some of the prototype’s remains.

The first story outlines the ongoing pressure tests for the ninth prototype, now on the launchpad, and how those tests have so far proceeded very smoothly. All that remains is SpaceX’s standard dress rehearsal countdown ending in a static fire test of the prototype. This is presently scheduled for tomorrow. Once it is accomplished, the test flight can follow quickly, probably no more than a week later, depending on weather, the data from the static fire test, and the innumerable uncertainties that routinely occur in a robust test program such as this.

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China targets 40-plus launches in ’21

3:56 pm

The new colonial movement: China’s space agency announced today that it is aiming to complete at least 40 launches in 2021.

A terse summary of the report in a CASC press release (Chinese) stated that missions related to the Chinese Space Station complex would be among the planned 40-plus launches. Recent reports state that the space station core module will be launched in the coming months, followed by the Tianzhou-2 cargo vessel and Shenzhou-12 crewed missions. The missions will require Long March 5B and Long March 7 launches from Wenchang and a Long March 2F launch from Jiuquan in the Gobi Desert.

Other major highlighted activities include the Tianwen-1 Mars spacecraft, which is due to enter Mars orbit around Feb. 10 with a rover landing attempt to follow in May. Development work will focus on the two experiment modules for the Chinese Space Station and, notably, crewed lunar exploration. No further details on the latter were provided but earlier indications are available.

Assuming they experience no major launch failures, 2021 should be a ground-breaking year for China.

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A Martian “glacier” made of volcanic ash

2:19 pm

A Martian
Click for full image.

Of the numerous cool images I’ve posted on Mars, many have documented the growing evidence that in the mid-latitudes of the Red Planet are many buried glaciers of ice.

Today’s cool image to the right, rotated, cropped and reduced to post here, shows something that at first might resemble the features one would expect from an ice glacier, but in reality is actually a flow of volcanic ash being blown almost like a river, with the prevailing winds blowing from the south to the north.

The photo was taken by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on November 1, 2020. The location, very close to the equator and in the transition zone dubbed the Cerberus Plains, is also smack dab between Mars’s biggest volcanoes, a region I like to dub Mars’s volcano country. The overview map below gives the context.
» Read more

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Sunspot update: December sunspot activity once again higher than predicted

1:11 pm

The uncertainty of science: It is time to once again take a look at the state of the Sun’s on-going sunspot cycle. Below is NOAA’s January 1, 2021 monthly graph, documenting the Sun’s monthly sunspot activity and annotated by me to show previous solar cycle predictions.

The ramp up to solar maximum continued in December. Though there was a drop from the very high activity seen in November, the number of sunspots in December still far exceeded the prediction as indicated by the red curve.

» Read more

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Is the ultimate Republican Party failure theater about to happen?

12:30 pm

The dead Constitution

For the past thirty years the Republican Party has been amazingly consistent in almost every political battle put before it by the increasingly leftist and radical Democratic Party. Almost every single time, the leaders of this so-called conservative political party have put on a big show of resisting the leftist and radical proposals put forth by Democrats, only in the end to back down, making a deal that allows those policies to take effect in some manner or another.

I am not sure who originally coined the term, but in recent years this incompetence has often been called “failure theater.” The Republican Party justifies its failures by citing the big theatrical fight they put on. They then promise they will fight harder next time, only to fail again. And again. And again.

This failure theater has been going on repeatedly for decades, since Ronald Reagan was president. Then Donald Trump came along. Unlike the establishment Republicans who ran for president since Reagan (Bush Sr., Dole, Bush Jr., McCain, Romney), Trump generally does not back down easily. He does not participate in failure theater. When he fights he fights to win, which has made the corrupt leadership in the Republican Party very uncomfortable for the past four years.
» Read more

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Data scientists: In PA more than 400K Trump votes removed during tabulation

9:51 am

A careful review of the tabulation process by data scientists of the tabulation of votes in Pennsylvania during the November 3rd election has found numerous examples, totaling more than 432,000 votes, where Trump’s total went down, even though the tabulation process should never decrease, only stay flat or increase as the votes are counted.

According to an analysis by the Data Integrity Group, obtained exclusively by The Epoch Times, votes for Trump—from both Election Day and mail-in ballots—were removed from the totals in at least 15 counties. Time-series election data shows Trump’s votes decrementing in various counties at numerous time points instead of increasing as would be expected under normal circumstances.

The group said that Election Day vote removals happened during the vote tabulation process in at least 15 counties, including Lehigh County, Chester County, Allegheny County, Armstrong County, Westmoreland County, Northhampton County, Delaware County, Montgomery County, Lackawanna County, Dauphin County, Pike County, Carbon County, Washington County, Erie County, and Luzerne County. Meanwhile, absentee vote removals happened in Allegheny County, Chester County, and Lehigh County.

At least 432,116 votes—213,707 election day votes and 218,409 absentee votes—were removed in total.

“There were vote movements across all candidates. However, we did not see the same type of negative decrements to any of the [other] candidates that we saw with President Trump’s tallies, and they happened repeatedly with no explanation,” Lynda McLaughlin, a member of the group, told The Epoch Times.

The video at the link shows this widespread activity very clearly.

The removal of a handful of votes here and there might make sense, as election officials review the ballots and reject some for various legitimate reasons. Such action however should only remove a small number, and the changes will normally occur for both candidates. For so many votes to be removed solely from one candidate, Trump, is beyond suspicious. Moreover, election officials have so far failed to provide any reasonable explain these subtractions.

The most damning aspect of these findings, along with similar findings in Georgia and Arizona, is the unwillingness and even outright stonewalling by election officials to investigate anything. If these vote removals are justified, one would think they would move quickly to allow others to examine the data closely, and provide detailed explanations for them all.

Instead, they stonewall, resist, and block any investigation.

And in Georgia, where the state legislature has mandated a forensic audit, shots have now been fired at the auditors.

The election was stolen. Whether you voted for Trump or Biden it matters not. It now appears that government officials can and will manipulate the vote totals to make sure their choice wins every time. Your vote no longer means anything.

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Eleven senators announce decision to challenge election results

11:43 am

A group of eleven senators, led by Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) today announced that they will challenge the election results in the disputed states, demanding that Congress set up a commission to investigate the results and prove them legitimate before certification. From their statement:

To wit, Congress should immediately appoint an Electoral Commission, with full investigatory and fact-finding authority, to conduct an emergency 10-day audit of the election returns in the disputed states. Once completed, individual states would evaluate the Commission’s findings and could convene a special legislative session to certify a change in their vote, if needed.

“Accordingly, we intend to vote on January 6 to reject the electors from disputed states as not ‘regularly given’ and ‘lawfully certified’ (the statutory requisite), unless and until that emergency 10-day audit is completed.

This group joins Senator Josh Hawley (R-Kansas), who has already announced he will vote against certification, and about 140 House Representatives, who have said the same.

Their statement is thoughtful and detailed, not an emotional soundbite. It also states the following:

We are not naïve. We fully expect most if not all Democrats, and perhaps more than a few Republicans, to vote otherwise. But support of election integrity should not be a partisan issue. A fair and credible audit-conducted expeditiously and completed well before January 20-would dramatically improve Americans’ faith in our electoral process and would significantly enhance the legitimacy of whoever becomes our next President. We owe that to the People.

These are matters worthy of the Congress, and entrusted to us to defend. We do not take this action lightly. We are acting not to thwart the democratic process, but rather to protect it. And every one of us should act together to ensure that the election was lawfully conducted under the Constitution and to do everything we can to restore faith in our Democracy. [emphasis mine]

That election integrity is now a partisan issue is the real problem. There are more than enough reasonable allegations and evidence suggesting widespread fraud in the disputed states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona, and no election should be accepted until those allegations are investigated properly. Otherwise no one is ever going to trust any election again.

And it does not matter who wins. If a proper investigation debunks the allegations and calls Biden the winner, then so be it. Our goal should not be keeping Trump in office, but to make sure the voting process is fair, honest, and reliable.

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Data Scientists: Outright fraud in Georgia election

11:23 am

Below is the testimony this week in front of the Georgia state senate from three data scientists analyzing the Dominion computer systems and the November 3rd raw vote tally data. Watch it, please. As one of the three scientists bluntly said,

There was fraud in Georgia’s election. We can prove it with data. and because we can prove it with data the voting will of the voters of Georgia is not reflected in what was certified by the secretary of state.

They found three very shocking facts. First and most important, in a system that should only be tabulating votes, so that the numbers only go up, they found more than forty examples where the numbers for Trump went down. As another scientist noted, “There is no reason that at any point that something should be subtracted.”

Worse, they also found that Biden’s numbers would then go up at the same time, by the exact same amount. The total votes affected exceeded 200K.

In other words, votes were being switched.

Second, they found that the computer system too easily allows a human access to the data, and worse, permits that human to make wholesale changes, with no oversight. Their testimony confirmed previous video evidence by one election supervisor in other testimony.

Third, they found that the Dominion system was specifically designed to destroy the original ballot whenever that ballot was reviewed and its vote adjusted or changed by that human. This means that any later audit is worthless, as it cannot go back and compare the original vote with the final software vote.

I found out about this particular testimony from a report by Dilbert cartoonist, Scott Adams, who after watching it concluded, “Looks like Trump won.”

After this and other testimony, including another computer expert who during the testimony was able to hack into the Dominion systems presently tabulating on-going polling for the senate, even though we have been told this was impossible, it is very clear that the results from the Georgia November election are untrustworthy, likely fraudulent.

At a minimum they must be reviewed entirely. More properly, they should be decertified.

This evidence also raises legitimate questions about the totals tabulated by Dominion machines in any other state.

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