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ArianeGroup successfully tests solid rocket booster

10:11 pm

Capitalism in space: ArianeGroup today successfully tested the solid rocket booster that it will use on both its Ariane 6 and Vega-C rockets in the 2020s.

The test success is good news for ArianeGroup, but this quote is actually more significant:

A compromise reached in May by European Space Agency members funding launch vehicle development will keep production of the P120C in Italy, allowing Avio to produce up to 35 boosters annually. A previous arrangement would have split production between Colleferro, Italy-based Avio and MT Aerospace of Augsburg, Germany.

The economies of scale provided by using the same booster for two rockets and concentrating production in one place are a key aspect of reducing the price for Ariane 6 missions by 40 to 50 percent compared to the Ariane 5 in use today.

Faced with stiff competition from SpaceX, the European Space Agency (ESA) gave ArianeGroup the power to structure operations more efficiently rather than cater to the pork desires of the agency’s many member nations.

Whether either Ariane 6 or Vega-C can compete with SpaceX’s reusuable rockets however remains doubtful. I expect that almost all of ArianeGroup’s customers in the next decade will be ESA member nations, required to buy its more expensive services.

5 comments

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 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.

A weird lunar lava field

2:43 pm

Weird terrain at Ina on the Moon

Cool image time! The image on the right, reduced and rotated 180 degrees to post here, comes from a recent release for Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). It shows a flow of lava that partly covers an older terrain.

Some scientists propose that Ina formed as very young (less than 100 million years) volcanic eruptions because only a few larger impact craters (>20 m) have formed on its surface. Others believe it is quite ancient (3.5 billion years), possessing highly unusual physical properties that stifle the formation of normal impact craters. At least everybody agrees it was formed as basalt was erupted to the surface! But how and when Ina formed remains open.

Ina’s morphology is so unusual that it is easy to see inverted topography – that is, craters appear as bubbles rather than bowls! Think of Ina as a cast iron frying pan with freshly poured pancake batter; the wiggly textured material is the frying pan and the bulbous smoother mounds are the batter.

The image to the right has been rotated 180 degrees so that my mind at least can see it with the craters as bowls and the uplifted smooth lava as uplifted. If this doesn’t work for you, click on the link and look at the original image.

While some scientists think the lava flows are recent, no one knows at present the origins of the rougher terrain that the lava has partly obscured.

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The federal black hole of lost nuclear bomb material

2:08 pm

Link here. Key quote:

Unlike civilian stocks, which are closely monitored by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and openly regulated – with reports of thefts or disappearances sent to an international agency in Vienna — the handling of military stocks tended by the Department of Energy is much less transparent.

The Energy Department, which declined comment for this story, doesn’t talk about instances of lost and stolen nuclear material produced for the military. It also has been less willing than the commission to punish its contractors when they lose track of such material, several incidents suggest.

As much as six tons of nuclear material is recorded as missing and unaccounted. Worse,

Regarding transfers to academic researchers, government agencies, or commercial firms within the United States, the Energy Department’s inspector general concluded in 2009 –the most recent public accounting – that at least a pound of plutonium and 45 pounds of highly-enriched uranium loaned from military stocks had been officially listed until 2004 as securely stored, when in fact it was missing.

The most important point made by the article is that the federal government imposes no consequences on anyone in the government who screws up in this matter. In fact, the article cites examples where the incompetent were given awards afterward. Meanwhile, this same federal government has punished private contractors very severely for similar mishaps.

This really is par for the course. The federal government today is terribly run, and those in charge routinely get away with being incompetent, and often get bonuses for being so. If we had any sense, we’d shut it down, firing everyone. We could quickly hire new people and get things done better.

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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 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

Boeing puts foam insulation on one SLS tank

9:10 am

My heart be still: Asked by NASA management to pick up the pace, Boeing managed to put foam insulation on one of the SLS oxygen tanks in less than two weeks.

The reason NASA wanted to pick up the pace? In May contamination had been found in the system’s supply lines.

“The prime contractor determined the vendor was not fully cleaning the tubes and it was leaving residue in the tubes,” McErlean said. “This was retained as a requirement in the prime contractor’s spec, but it was not properly carried out.” Boeing is the prime contractor for the SLS core stage, but he did not disclose the vendor who provided the contaminated tubing.

The contamination was initially found in a single tube, he said, but later checks found similar residue in other tubes. All the tubing in the core stage is now being inspected and cleaned, a process he said is not straightforward because of the “mass of tubing” in the engine section and also because cleaning is a “non-trivial process.”

In reading the first link above, however, I do not get the sense that things with SLS are really moving quickly. Instead, I get, as I have for this entire project, the sense that the pace is designed to proceed at a glacial pace. Thus, when they need to get things done more more quickly, they can easily do so. Whether that increased speed is really fast, however, remains to me quite questionable.

Note: My appearance tomorrow night on the John Batchelor Show will be focused entirely on NASA’s effort to slow commercial space down, so as to reduce the embarrassment to SLS. I am going to make believe I am giving a briefing to Mike Pence and the National Space Council, explaining in detail why NASA actually seems hostile to getting anything done.

It is our hope that maybe someone in the administration might hear it, and rethink the Trump space policy.

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United Kingdom picks location in Scotland for spaceport

10:34 pm

The British government, after years of study, has chosen a location in northern Scotland for its first homegrown spaceport.

In a statement issued in advance of the start of the Farnborough International Airshow, the U.K. Space Agency said it will provide initial funding of 2.5 million pounds ($3.3 million) to begin development of a vertical launch site in Sutherland, on the Atlantic coast in northern Scotland.

In its announcement, the agency said it selected the site “because Scotland is the best place in the U.K. to reach highly sought-after satellite orbits with vertically launched rockets.” The site would allow launches to the north, supporting spacecraft operating in sun-synchronous or other highly inclined orbits.

The announcement gave few details about the facility or indicated what company, or companies, would use it, but noted launches would begin there in the early 2020s. More information is expected to be announced July 16 at the air show.

This announcement contradicts a 2016 policy decision that had instead opened up spaceport licensing to whatever location wished to do it. Now the British government appears to have stepped in and picked this one site, though the article also says they are considering a second site for horizontal launches, using such systems as the Pegasus rocket, Stratolaunch, and LauncherOne.

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Leaving Earth cover

There are now only 3 copies left of the now out-of-print hardback of Leaving Earth. The price for an autographed copy of this rare collector's item is now $150 (plus $5 shipping).

 

To get your copy while the getting is good, please send a $155 check (which includes $5 shipping) payable to Robert Zimmerman to
 

Behind The Black, c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

Leaving Earth is also available as an inexpensive ebook!

 

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

Binary asteroid imaged by radio telescopes

10:18 am

Three radio telescopes have successfully imaged the rotation of a binary asteroid, the fourth such binary so far discovered.

On June 21, the asteroid 2017 YE5 made its closest approach to Earth for at least the next 170 years, coming to within 3.7 million miles (6 million kilometers) of Earth, or about 16 times the distance between Earth and the Moon. On June 21 and 22, observations by NASA’s Goldstone Solar System Radar (GSSR) in California showed the first signs that 2017 YE5 could be a binary system. The observations revealed two distinct lobes, but the asteroid’s orientation was such that scientists could not see if the two bodies were separate or joined. Eventually, the two objects rotated to expose a distinct gap between them.

Scientists at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico had already planned to observe 2017 YE5, and they were alerted by their colleagues at Goldstone of the asteroid’s unique properties. On June 24, the scientists teamed up with researchers at the Green Bank Observatory (GBO) in West Virginia and used the two observatories together in a bi-static radar configuration (in which Arecibo transmits the radar signal and Green Bank receives the return signal). Together, they were able to confirm that 2017 YE5 consists of two separated objects. By June 26, both Goldstone and Arecibo had independently confirmed the asteroid’s binary nature.

The new observations obtained between June 21 and 26 indicate that the two objects revolve around each other once every 20 to 24 hours. This was confirmed with visible-light observations of brightness variations by Brian Warner at the Center for Solar System Studies in Rancho Cucamonga, California.

I have embedded below the fold a short video that includes the radio images showing this rotation. Most cool!
» Read more

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Astronomers track neutrino from galaxy 3.7 billion light years away

10:04 am

Using multiple telescopes astronomers have successfully tracked the source of a neutrino that was detected on September 22 2017 by the IceCube neutrino telescope in Antarctica to a galaxy 3.7 billion light years away.

Because scientists on the IceCube experiment had worked out the path the particle took through their subterranean ice instrument, astronomers knew where in the sky to look for the particle’s source. A string of early observations came up blank, but days later Nasa’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope spotted the likely source: a flaring “blazar”.

Most galaxies are thought to have spinning supermassive black holes at their centres. But some of these black holes appear to pull in material at ferocious rates, a process that simultaneously sends streams of highly energetic particles out into space. Such galaxies are called blazars, although the term only applies when one of these streams is directed straight at Earth.

The blazar that appears to have sent the neutrino our way lies 3.7bn light years from Earth, just off the left shoulder of the constellation of Orion. While a single detection is not strong evidence, the IceCube scientists went back through their records and found a flurry of neutrinos coming from the same spot over 150 days in 2014 and 2015.

This I think is the first time scientists have linked a neutrino to its source, outside our solar system. Most neutrino detections come from the Sun. That they could trace this one back to a blazar so far away means their neutrino telescopes are now becoming sensitive enough to find and study the neutrinos coming from other sources.

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SpaceX’s first test crew Dragon capsule arrives in Florida

9:52 am

Capitalism in space: The first man-rated Dragon capsule set to fly has arrived in Florida to be prepped for launch.

Even though the vehicle is called a “Crew Dragon,” this Dragon won’t carry crew on its first flight. Instead, it’s due to make an uncrewed practice run to the space station during what’s known as Demonstration Mission 1, or DM-1.

Before this week’s shipment to Florida, the Dragon underwent thermal vacuum tests as well as acoustic tests at NASA’s Plum Brook Station in Ohio. Today SpaceX showed off a picture of the Crew Dragon, which is a redesigned, beefed-up version of its robotic cargo-carrying Dragon, via Twitter and Instagram.

NASA’s current schedule calls for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket to launch the DM-1 mission next month from Kennedy Space Center. However, that schedule is dependent not only on the pace of preparations, but also on the timetable for station arrivals and departures.

SpaceX is clearly on schedule to fly the first unmanned test flight in September, and the first manned flight in January 2019. And once that manned flight take place, I can see no reason why operational flights shouldn’t follow soon thereafter.

Yet, NASA said earlier this week that those operational flights will almost certainly be delayed until 2020, mainly because SpaceX might not be able to get the paperwork filled out fast enough.

Here’s my prediction: If SpaceX flies that manned mission in early 2019, expect their operational flights to begin soon thereafter, not in 2020. NASA will have no choice but to accept the capsule and begin flights.

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A science journal describes how evil Trump is destroying EPA

9:31 am

Link here.

If you have no idea why we have Trump, and why we are likely to get more of him, read this article from the science journal Nature. It is a carefully written screed, written entirely from the point of view of those hostile to Trump and his effort to rein in the EPA’s regulatory culture. No one is interviewed to give the Trump perspective, and even if some had been, the author is so certain that Trump is evil and wrong in his efforts that I am sure the Trump perspective would have been misinterpreted, or even slandered. (This I am sure is why the article says that EPA management did not “respond to requests to comment on the article’s allegations.” The allegations were already set. Nothing anyone said from the administration would change those conclusions.)

Still, I am certain the author could have gotten opinions from some of the skeptical scientists whom the Trump administration has brought in to advise EPA. None however were interviewed.

What is most embarrassing about the article is its description of two of the main changes the Trump administration has imposed on EPA to widen and make more transparent the scientific work it does. First,
» Read more

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SpaceX delivers huge supply tank to Boca Chica spaceport site

9:06 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX yesterday delivered a huge oxygen supply tank to its future Boca Chica spaceport site, now aimed as the main initial test site for its Big Falcon Rocket.

“Delivery of a new liquid oxygen tank, which will be used to support propellant-loading operations during launch and vehicle tests, represents the latest major piece of launch hardware to arrive at the site for installation,” he said.

In February, SpaceX CEO and lead designer Elon Musk said brief “hopper flights” of the company’s Big Falcon Rocket spacecraft component probably will take place at Boca Chica, possibly next year.

SpaceX is focusing on the development of the BFR to get the first humans to Mars, Musk’s ultimate goal, though it had originally planned to develop the smaller Falcon Heavy rockets for the purpose. The BFR rocket/spacecraft system will be built at a SpaceX facility at the Port of Los Angeles. Fully assembled, it is expected to stand 340 feet tall, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Do not put much faith in the predicted dates above. I am confident that we will not see a test flight of BFR for at least three, if not five years. I think it will happen, but not as quickly as Musk and SpaceX likes to predict.

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Conflict in Hubble constant increases with new data from Hubble and Gaia

8:52 am

The uncertainty of science: New data from the Hubble Space Telescope and Gaia continues to measure a different Hubble constant for the expansion rate of the universe, when compared with data from the Planck space telescope.

Using Hubble and newly released data from Gaia, Riess’ team measured the present rate of expansion to be 73.5 kilometers (45.6 miles) per second per megaparsec. This means that for every 3.3 million light-years farther away a galaxy is from us, it appears to be moving 73.5 kilometers per second faster. However, the Planck results predict the universe should be expanding today at only 67.0 kilometers (41.6 miles) per second per megaparsec. As the teams’ measurements have become more and more precise, the chasm between them has continued to widen, and is now about 4 times the size of their combined uncertainty.

The problem really is very simple: We haven’t the faintest idea what is going on. We have some data, but we also have enormous gaps in our knowledge of the cosmos. Moreover, most of our cosmological data is reliant on too many assumptions that could be wrong, or simply in error. And the errors can be tiny and still throw the results off by large amounts.

The one thing that good science and skepticism teaches is humbleness. Do not be too sure of your conclusions. The universe is a large and complex place. It likes to throw curve balls at us, and if we swing too soon we will certainly miss.

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GAO report indicates NASA forcing more delays in commercial crew

11:22 pm

A Government Accountability Office report released today suggests that NASA’s complex certification requirements will cause further delays in first operational missions of the commercial crew capsules of Boeing and SpaceX.

The report shows when NASA believes Boeing and SpaceX will each have completed a single non-crewed test flight, a test flight with crew, and then undergo a certification process to become ready for operational flights. This is known as the “certification milestone.”

Based on NASA’s “schedule risk analysis” from April, the agency estimates that Boeing will reach this milestone sometime between May 1, 2019, and August 30, 2020. For SpaceX, the estimated range is August 1, 2019, and November 30, 2020. The analysis’ average certification date was December, 2019, for Boeing and January, 2020, for SpaceX.

These are obviously razor-thin margins, but the new report also indicates that Boeing is ahead in submitting paperwork needed for approval of its various flight systems and processes. This is consistent with what independent sources have told Ars, that Boeing is more familiar with NASA and better positioned to comply with its complex certification processes. [emphasis mine]

This does not surprise me. From the beginning of commercial crew there have been people at NASA working to slow SpaceX down so as to not embarrass Boeing as well as SLS/Orion. By using the “complex certification process,” which really has little to do with engineering and everything to do with bureaucracy and power politics, NASA has effectively succeeded in preventing SpaceX from getting off the ground. The company could have flown a manned Dragon at least a year ago, if NASA had not stood in the way and imposed numerous safety demands, some of which make no sense.

Meanwhile, NASA’s bureaucracy and certification process has created a situation where neither company might be ready to fly when the ticketed flights on Russian Soyuz capsules end. To solve this gap the agency is actually thinking of stretching out ISS missions so it doesn’t have to fly ferry missions as much. While longer missions to ISS make sense — if your goal is to learn how to get to Mars — this isn’t why NASA is thinking of doing it. Instead, it is doing it so that it can make private space, especially SpaceX, look bad.

All in all, NASA’s management seems entirely uninterested in real space exploration, and the risks it entails. Instead, they are focused on power politics and serving the needs of the big space contractors that they have worked with for decades, accomplishing little while spending a lot of taxpayer dollars.

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California’s coming crash

9:45 pm

Link here. Money quote:

Economist Herbert Stein once said: “If something can’t go on forever, it won’t.” California, on its current trajectory and with its new Socialist-inspired leadership, cannot go on forever. There simply isn’t enough money. The state will ultimately fail because the math says it has to.

Or as the article’s author also notes, “California’s aspiring new Socialists have already run out of other people’s money.” Worse, they don’t even know it, and plan to spend even more money they don’t have on more pie-in-the-sky communist fantasies.

California today reminds me of Venezuela ten years ago, when things started to go sour but no one there wanted to admit it. It also reminds me of the Soviet Union under Brezhnev in the 1970s. The collapse is coming, but the insane culture and leadership in California continues to do the same failed thing, over and over, expecting a different result. Instead, everything is going to crash. My big fear is that they will take everyone else down with them.

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Ghost dunes on Mars

9:40 am

Scientists have found Martian pits formed by the leftover remains of dunes that long ago blew away.

Scientists have discovered hundreds of crescent-shaped pits on Mars where sand dunes the size of the U.S. Capitol stood billions of years ago. The curves of these ancient dune impressions record the direction of prevailing winds on the Red Planet, providing potential clues to Mars’s past climate, and may hold evidence of ancient life, according to a new study detailing the findings in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, a publication of the American Geophysical Union.

Ghost dunes are the negative space left behind by long-vanished sand dunes. Lava or water-borne sediments partially buried the dunes and hardened, preserving the dunes’ contours. Wind subsequently blew sand off the exposed tops and scoured it out from inside, leaving a solid mold in the shape of the lost dune.

The claim that these geological features “may hold evidence of ancient life” is pure hyperbole, and absurd. However, the features are important because they will help date the sediment or lava flows around them, while also providing markers to help understand the history of the Martian climate.

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SpaceX installs much larger arms for net on ship for fairing recapture

9:30 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX has completed the installation of much larger arms for the net that will be used to try catching rocket fairings.

While it’s difficult to estimate from photos alone, it appears that Mr Steven’s new arms are minimum of roughly 65 meters squared, assuming a square aspect ratio. In other words, the vessel’s next and newest net could have an area as large as 3600 square meters (~40,000 square feet, ~0.85 acres), easily more than quadruple the size of Mr Steven’s previous net. For comparison, the massive autonomous spaceport drone ships (ASDS) SpaceX often recovers its Falcon 9 and Heavy boosters aboard have a usable landing area of roughly 45,000 square feet, a little more than 10% larger than Mr Steven’s new net.

With these vast new arms, struts, and (soon enough) net, SpaceX is likely as close as they have ever been to successfully catching a Falcon 9 fairing, an achievement that would likely allow the company to begin reusing the large carbon fiber-composite shrouds almost immediately. Critically, although SpaceX appears to have begun attaching recovery hardware to both fairing halves in recent West Coast attempts, it remains to be seen whether Mr Steven’s new claw apparatus will be able to catch both halves, thus closing the gap on fairing recovery without necessitating the leasing and modification of perhaps three additional copies of the vessel.

This new net setup is big. We shall see if it works during an Iridium launch later this month.

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Engine tests for reusable Phantom Express space plane completed

9:22 am

Boeing and Aerojet Rocketdyne have successfully completed ten engine firings in ten days of an rocket engine originally designed for the space shuttle and now being recycled as part of Boeing’s Phantom Express reusable rocket being built for DARPA.

I honestly am not that excited by this. The Merlin engine has been able to do some variation of this now for a half decade. Firing an engine repeatedly is required to get satellites into geosynchronous orbit. This really isn’t news.

Nonetheless, it will be news if they can get this engine installed in a rocket that they actually fly to orbit ten times in ten days.

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Rocket Lab plans second launch site in U.S.

9:01 am

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab is considering opening a second launch site in U.S.

American sites being considered were Cape Canaveral in Florida, Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, Pacific Spaceport Complex in Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, Rocket Lab said.

The firm expected its first launch from the United States would take place in the second quarter of 2019.

Since the company has not yet succeeded in initiating commercial operations, we should not get too excited by this news. At the same time, that they are considering doing this suggests they are increasingly confident about their future.

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Cygnus fires engine to test reboost of ISS

8:56 am

The Cygnus freighter presently berthed to ISS yesterday did a successful test engine firing to see if it could raise the orbit of ISS.

The cargo resupply vehicle provided a reboost to the Station at 4:25 pm Eastern, with a short 50 second burn of its main engine on the aft of the vehicle, raising the Station’s altitude by 295 feet. This test will pave the way for future, longer burns, removing some of the orbital stationkeeping strain from the Russian assets.

This was the first time since the retirement of the Space Shuttle fleet in July 2011, a US spacecraft had performed a reboost of the ISS.

Northrop Grumman proposed the idea, considering it a way to enhance the value of Cygnus for future NASA contracts. It also appears that NASA is looking to see if the Dragon and Starliner capsule can do this. If so, it will free the U.S. from another dependency it presently has with Russia, who today has the only approved ability to raise the station’s orbit, using Progress and Soyuz capsules and sometimes the engine on its Zvezda module.

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Eric Whitacre – The Seal Lullaby

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Originally written for a film that was never made, this song speaks to the emotion of every parent, watching their child asleep.

Oh, hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us
And black are the waters that sparkled so green
The moon, o’er the combers, looks downward to find us
At rest in the hollows that rustle between

Where billow meets billow, then soft be thy pillow
Oh weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease
The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee
Asleep in the arms of the slow swinging seas

Asleep in the arms
Of the slow swinging seas

Whitacre is the conductor in this performance by Junges Vokalensemble Hannover.

Hat tip Edward Thelen.

One comment

Inventor of 3D gun wins lawsuit against Justice

5:14 pm

The inventor of a 3D gun has won a free speech lawsuit against the Justice Department for its order blocking the publication of his 3D gun designs.

Cody Wilson’s Defense Distributed and Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) reached a settlement with the Department of Justice allowing unfettered publication of 3D gun files and other information in a case centered on free speech. Breitbart News reported that SAF filed a suit on behalf of Defense Distributed on May 6, 2015, seeking to free Wilson from a federal mandate that he not post blueprints for The Liberator pistol online.

Over three years later, the announcement comes that Wilson and SAF won. SAF sent a press release to Breitbart News, explaining details of settlement, saying, “The government has agreed to waive its prior restraint against the plaintiffs, allowing them to freely publish the 3-D files and other information at issue. The government has also agreed to pay a significant portion of the plaintiffs’ attorney’s fees, and to return $10,000 in State Department registration dues paid by Defense Distributed as a result of the prior restraint.”

In other words, the Justice Department had no authority under the Constitution to block the publication of these 3D gun plans, and in its effort to try it has lost badly.

What this really means is that it is now literally impossible for any government to impose gun control. If you want a gun, all you will need is the right kind of 3D printer (getting better all the time) and the right plans, soon to be available on the web. While this might make guns more available for bad guys, I guarantee that they will quickly be outnumbered by the good guys.

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Tory Party opposition to Theresa May’s Brexit deal grows

4:15 pm

Seven Tory officials have now resigned from Theresa May’s Conservative government in protest to her planned “Chequers” deal with the European Union for Britian’s exit.

It appears that the deal leaves Britain subject to EU regulations, something that the voters did not want. As noted by one Tory rebel,

Mr Bradley said the Chequers plan would wreck opportunities to develop global trade and be ‘an outward-looking nation in control of our own destiny’. ‘Being tied to EU regulations and the EU tying our hands when seeking to make new trade agreements will be the worst of all worlds,’ wrote the Mansfield MP, who voted Remain in a constituency where 70 per cent of voters opted to Leave.

The resignations follow those of Brexit Secretary Mr Davis, his junior minister Steve Baker, Foreign Secretary Mr Johnson and ministerial aides Conor Burns and Chris Green.

Right now it appears that this deal will likely fail, and that Great Britain will leave the EU without a deal, something that will probably please the voters. The EU’s regulations, created not by elected officials but by unelected bureaucrats, stifle competition and free enterprise as every stage of industry.

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