Otta Orchestra – Gretela
An evening pause: Performed live 2020.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
Toploader – Dancing in the moon light
An evening pause: Hat tip James Street.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
August 5, 2024 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
Because posting is so difficult at the resort where I am staying, and I have many other things planned for the day, I am posting Jay’s links early.
- FCC Approves AST SpaceMobile launch of first commercial satellites
Each will have the largest-ever communications array ever deployed commercially in low Earth orbit
- Europe’s autonomous orbital laboratory Space Rider undergoes helicopter drop tests
ESA hopes this spacecraft will be its own version of an X-37B
- Cygnus unmanned freighter misses its first burn, and aborts the rescheduled burn
Though NASA says it is still targeting an on scheduled docking to ISS, it is entirely unclear if this will happen.
- Rumors suggest NASA to significantly delay the launch of next crewed Dragion to ISS due to Starliner issues
The reason is that Starliner needs its flight software updated and this will take four weeks. Until Starliner undocks, there is no port for the Dragon to arrive.
I will leave it to my readers to comment on what this new stupidity tells us about Boeing. This flight software worked as planned on the second unmanned demo mission. Why should suddenly need an update while two humans are already in space and relying on it? Furthermore, Boeing had numerous flight software problems on the first unmanned demo mission, and supposedly fixed them for the second.
Posting will continue to be light until tomorrow night.
Sunspot update: In July the Sun produced the most sunspots in almost a quarter century
Every month since this website began fourteen years ago, when NOAA posts its update of its monthly graph tracking the number of sunspots on the Sun’s Earth-facing hemisphere, I post my own analysis, adding some details to provide the larger context.
Of all those updates — numbering about 168 — this month’s is possibly the most significant. Since around 2008, the Sun began a long period where it was unusually quiet, with the solar maximum that occurred in 2014 possibly the weakest in two hundred years. Before that weak maximum begun, half the solar science community predicted it would be a very powerful maximum, while half predicted a weak maximum. Both got it wrong, though the weak prediction was closer though still too high.
When it came time to predict the next solar maximum, expected around 2025, that same solar science community was once again in disagreement. Most approved a NOAA science panel prediction in April 2020 calling for another weak minimum, similar to the one in 2014. A few dissented, however, and instead predicted in June 2020 that the maximum would be one of the strongest ever. In April 2023 however those dissenters chickened out, and revised their prediction downward, still forecasting a peak higher than the NOAA prediction but no longer anywhere as intense.
Based on what happened on the Sun in July, they should have had more faith in their earlier prediction.
» Read more
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.
SpaceX launches Cygnus cargo freighter to ISS
SpaceX today successfully launched Northrup Grumman’s Cygnus capsule to ISS, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.
The first stage completed its tenth flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
77 SpaceX
32 China
9 Rocket Lab
8 Russia
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 91 to 48, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 77 to 62.
I am out of town till late Tuesday. Though I will attempt to do some posting, and have scheduled at least one essay tomorrow, expect posting to be light.
SpaceX launches 20 Starlink satellites
SpaceX tonight successfully launched another 20 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.
The first stage completed its sixth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
76 SpaceX
32 China
9 Rocket Lab
8 Russia
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 90 to 48, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 76 to 62.
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
August 2, 2024 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
» Read more
Ferris Akel – Great Blue Heron
An evening pause: The music is called “Surprise Attack” by James Horner, and was written for the 1982 film, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan. The action is produced by a Great Blue Heron at Sapsucker Woods, Ithaca, New York on July 20, 2024.
May your weekend activities be as successful.
Hat tip Ferris Akel.
August 2, 2024 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- NASA to resume issuing lunar lander contracts after a year-plus pause
The article adds nothing specific or concrete, only a lot of mights and maybes and soons.
- Sierra’s Tenacity mini-shuttle begins final preparations for launch
The press release indicates the launch will be on a ULA Vulcan rocket, but no date is revealed.
- Japanese rocket startup Interstellar releases the payload user’s guide for buying space on its Zero rocket
The guide says the company has launched a number of times, but those must have been suborbital tests. Its Zero orbital rocket is aiming for a 2025 first launch.
- Chinese pseudo-company CAS Space touts an image of its proposed Kinetica-2H rocket
This pseudo-company has posted a variety of graphics in the past year, but there has been very little clear information about actual construction.
- Northrup Grumman and NASA are targeting August 3rd for the Falcon 9 launch of the next Cygnus cargo capsule to ISS
Weather remains the biggest concern, presently holding at a 50%.
Charges against pro-Hamas rioters have routinely been dropped nationwide
The instruction manual of the left
According to an excellent report today at the website Campus Reform, charges against more than 300 pro-Hamas rioters that illegally occupied and damaged campuses at eleven different universities nationwide have been dropped by prosecutors.
The list is discouraging, to put it mildly:
- School of the Art Institute of Chicago: 80 criminal charges were dropped
- University of Texas at Austin: 79 criminal charges were dropped
- Indiana University: 56 criminal charges were dropped
- Columbia University: 31 criminal charges have been dropped
- California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt: 27 criminal charges have been dropped
- University of Minnesota: 9 criminal charges have been dropped
- University of New Hampshire: 8 criminal charges have been dropped
- The City University of New York: 7 criminal charges have been dropped
- Northwestern University: 4 criminal charges have been dropped
The reasons why prosecutors have dropped these charges are manifold. In some cases (such as in California, Illinois, and New York), the prosecutors were partisan Democrats who approved of the riots, and thus acted to protect the rioters by dropping the charges. In several cases however the prosecutors expressed extreme unhappiness with their own action, stating that they did so reluctantly because they did not think they could win in court.
» Read more
A frozen bubbly caldron on Mars
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on April 11, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows a nice collection of what the scientists label “irregular ring structures,” interspersed with clusters of small mesas ranging in heights from 13 to 75 feet.
The location is at 27 degrees north latitude, so the presence of near surface ice, which might explain these strange rings, is less likely though not impossible. The stipled nature of the flat ground suggests that near surface ice might be here, resulting in sublimation of that ice and leaving behind a flat but rough surface.
The location however suggests another possibility, which though vastly different in some ways, is almost identical in others.
» Read more
Rocket Lab successfully launches commercial Earth observation satellite
Rocket Lab today successfully launched a commercial Earth observation satellite from the Japanese company Synspective, its Electron rocket lifting off from New Zealand.
This is the fifth launch of a contract of sixteen launches by Rocket Lab for Synspective.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
75 SpaceX
32 China
9 Rocket Lab
8 Russia
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 89 to 48, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 75 to 62.
It is noteworthy that Rocket Lab now has more launches in 2024 than Russia, and is maintaining a pace of more than one launch-per-month. The company had predicted doing 20 launches this year, which seems unlikely at this point, but not completely impossible. It however has now tied its 2022 record for most launches in a year, and is thus almost certainly guaranteed to smash it.