The history of SpaceX’s Big Falcon Rocket

9:42 am

Link here. This is a ten part very detailed history, and includes a great deal of background into the history of SpaceX as well. Very much worth reading.

In the end, I remain skeptical that this rocket will end up being built as SpaceX presently envisions it. I also believe however that out of this engineering research will come a new rocket that is nonetheless revolutionary.

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Magnetism helps shape Jupiter’s colorful jet stream bands

9:38 am

The uncertainty of science: New computer models, combined with new data from Juno, suggest that magnetism explains why Jupiter’s colored jet stream bands go as deep below the visible cloud-tops as they do.

Dr Navid Constantinou from the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences, one of the researchers on the study, said that until recently little was known about what happened below Jupiter’s clouds. “We know a lot about the jet streams in Earth’s atmosphere and the key role they play in the weather and climate, but we still have a lot to learn about Jupiter’s atmosphere,” he said. “Scientists have long debated how deep the jet streams reach beneath the surfaces of Jupiter and other gas giants, and why they do not appear in the sun’s interior.”

Recent evidence from NASA’s spacecraft Juno indicates these jet streams reach as deep as 3,000 kilometres below Jupiter’s clouds.

Co-researcher Dr Jeffrey Parker from Livermore National Laboratory in the United States said their theory showed that jet streams were suppressed by a strong magnetic field. “The gas in the interior of Jupiter is magnetised, so we think our new theory explains why the jet streams go as deep as they do under the gas giant’s surface but don’t go any deeper,” said Dr Parker.

This theory is intriguing, but very tentative, to put it mildly.

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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

Computer simulations suggest solar system was partly shaped by star flyby

9:29 am

The uncertainty of science: New computer simulations now suggest that the solar systems outer regions were shaped by the near approach of another sun-like star billions of years ago.

Susanne Pfalzner and her co-workers suggest that a star was approaching the Sun at an early stage, ‘stealing’ most of the outer material from the Sun’s protoplanetary disk and throwing what was left over into inclined and eccentric orbits. Performing thousands of computer simulations they checked what would happen when a star passes very close-by and perturbs the once larger disk. It turned out that the best fit for today’s outer solar systems comes from a perturbing star which had the same mass as the Sun or somewhat lighter (0.5-1 solar masses) and flew past at approximately 3 times the distance of Neptune.

However, the most surprising thing for the researchers was that a fly-by does not only explain the strange orbits of the objects of the outer solar system, but also gives a natural explanation for several unexplained features of our Solar System, including the mass ratio between Neptune and Uranus, and the existence of two distinct populations of Kuiper Belt objects.

An intriguing result, but to put it mildly it carries a great deal of uncertainty. If true, however, it suggests — as does other research — that our solar system might be somewhat unique. The other research into the solar system’s history suggests we have been traveling through galactic quiet regions for a long time, which helped make things more friendly for the development of life. Together all this work says that in the beginning the solar system was in crowded regions, with its later history then drifting into empty regions.

Thus, the history of our solar system within the galaxy might play a very important part in why we are here.

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There were Viking cats

12:02 am

News you can use: New research now suggests that cats spread through human society, with the second wave involving sea-faring people such as the Vikings.

The first wave is a story you’re probably familiar with. When the team looked the mitochondrial DNA – genetic information that’s passed on from the mother only – they found that wild cats from the Middle East and the fertile eastern Mediterranean shared a similar mitochondrial lineage.

This suggests that small wild cats spread through early agricultural communities, because they were attracted to the mice that were attracted to the grains. The farmers likely encouraged their presence, because, let’s face it, those rodent-killing machines would have been mighty cute company.

Then, thousands of years after this, the research points to a separate mitochondrial connection between cats descended from those in Egypt to ones in Eurasia and Africa. “A mitochondrial lineage common in Egyptian cat mummies from the end of the 4th century BC to the 4th century AD was also carried by cats in Bulgaria, Turkey and sub-Saharan Africa from around the same time,” Callaway reports.

This second wave of expansion has been attributed to ancient sea-faring people – farmers, sailors, and Vikings – because the cats were likely encouraged to stay on board to keep their rodent problem in check.

It makes perfect sense. Our ruling lords needed more space, and thus they compelled humans to begin the great explorations that eventually allowed them to conquer the western hemisphere, as well as the internet.

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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.

The Great Race – Pies Upon Pies

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Getting hit in the face with a pie had once been a running gag in many Hollywood comedies, beginning in the silent era but continued repeatedly in movies for decades. This scene, from the 1965 film The Great Race could be one of the last. It surely wins for the most pies ever thrown.

Hat tip Danae.

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Scientists create coldest spot ever on ISS

5:29 pm

Using a compact lab called the Cold Atom Lab and launched to ISS in a Cygnus freighter in May, scientists have now successfully created coldest spot ever.

The government agency created atoms known as Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) for the first time in orbit to focus on their unusual quantum behavior. A team of astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) was able to take the Cold Atom Lab (CAL), which was loaded with lasers and a vacuum chamber, to understand how BECs interact with gravity.

…The scientists produced the BECs with temperatures as “as low as 100 nanoKelvin, or one ten-millionth of one Kelvin above absolute zero,” NASA added, in the statement. Zero Kelvin, also known as absolute zero, is the equivalent of minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit. The average temperature of space is approximately 3 Kelvin or minus 454 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a sense, they didn’t so much create a cold spot as create conditions that allowed the Bose-Einstein condensates to form so that they could study them. The article provides some background about this research, which is focused mostly on trying to figure out how to unify quantum mechanics (which explains the interactions at the atomic level) with general relativity (which explains the actions of matter and energy at large scales). Physicists have been trying unify both for decades, with little success.

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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

Fascist who attacked conservative protesters with bike lock goes free

3:42 pm

Fascism means never having to say you’re sorry: Eric Clanton, the fascist masked antifa protester who used a bike lock to smash conservative protesters on the head has struck a deal with Berkeley prosecutors that dismisses most of the charges against him and subjects him merely to three years prohibition.

Eric Clanton had been linked by police to violent assaults with a metal bike lock during a “free speech” rally in Berkeley on April 15, 2017. Before his arrest, Clanton had been “outed” online, on the website 4chan, as someone who used a bike lock to strike a man in the head. The assault was captured in a video clip that drew widespread attention and anger after it was posted on YouTube.

Wednesday, Clanton was supposed to have had his preliminary hearing, where a judge decides whether there’s enough evidence in a case for it to move ahead to trial. Instead, there was no hearing, and information about Clanton’s plea deal became available online.

According to Alameda County Superior Court records, Clanton entered a “no contest” plea Wednesday to one misdemeanor battery charge. The felony charges against him were dismissed, and an allegation that he had caused serious bodily injury was stricken. A misdemeanor charge that Clanton wore a mask during the commission of the crime also was dropped.

I am not surprised. Leftists are never called to account for their evil acts, no matter how well documented. Clanton has temporarily lost his college teaching job, but don’t worry for him. I am sure some college will soon hire him. He has all the right qualifications!

And if you doubt the evil that this man did, watch the video at the link. Though it is difficult to identify him in that clip, other evidence links him to this violent act of smashing another person in the head with a bike lock.

Three years from now, when his prohibition ends, I am sure he will be out there again, using violence to attack anyone who disagrees with him. And don’t be surprised if he comes for you next:

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Weird Martian crater?

1:17 pm

Weird crater on Mars

Time for another cool image! The image on the left, cropped to post here, was taken by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) on May 31, 2018, and shows a very strange layered mesa sitting in what looks like a crater or collapse feature. If you click on the image you can see the entire picture.

The location of this image is out in the middle of the vast northern plains of Mars. This region has few pronounced features, and generally sits at a lower elevation to the rest of Mars. It is suspected by some scientists that an intermittent ocean was once here, and that we are looking at the floor of a now dry sea.

This image was part of the July image release from MRO, and thus included no caption. They simply refer to it as a layered feature. It sits about a half mile (about 800 meters) to the west of a rough and indistinct cliff that drops down into an area of rougher terrain. This suggests that if this was formed by an impact, it cut down into that lower rougher layer, and since the impact there has been some upwelling from below creating the layered mesa.

I would not take my hypothesis very seriously, however. This feature could have nothing to do with an impact. It might also have been a mesa that now sits in a collapsed sinkhole. Or not. I could come up with many theories, all of which are likely wrong. What I do see here is something that geologically is very strange and baffling.

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Yesterday’s election

11:03 am

The elections that took place yesterday indicated both good and bad things for the future of the United States. First, every socialist candidate who was endorsed and campaigned-for by socialist and Democratic candidate for Congress Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was defeated. It appears that Americans are not yet convinced that socialism, a nice word for communism and its centrally-controlled society, is the way to go.

At the same time, her candidates did get a lot of votes in every one of their primary races. From this we can surmise that Democratic Party voters are increasingly enthusiastic about the idea of a full government take over of all aspects of our society, including the end of private property and capitalism, as advocated by Ocasio-Cortez. In the past such candidates would not have been able to garner more than a handful of votes. That has changed, and in a bad direction.

Similarly, it appears that the conservative Republicans supported by Trump were almost all winners. Yet, most won by the skin of their teeth. Worse, supporters of the Democratic Party almost immediately questioned the legitimacy of these wins, with some claiming that it could only have happened because of Russian interference.

Expect more of this in the future. It really appears that most Democrats truly believe that all decent people agree with them, and that only racists and bigots or Russian plants vote against Democratic candidates. If they win back power in any election they are going to move to oppress their opponents. They’re coming for you next.

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Laid off workers supported by Hamas, take over UN refugee headquarters

10:41 am

Chaos in Gaza: Union workers for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) have seized control of its headquarters in protest of lay-offs caused by the withdrawal of financial support by the United States.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) announced last month more than 250 staff in Gaza and Judea and Samaria would lose their jobs, after a $300 million cut in annual funding from the United States. The redundancies have prompted daily protests by the agency’s labour union in the enclave, which UNRWA’s Gaza head said have led to security concerns. “They have taken over the compound where my office and other offices are,” said Matthias Schmale.

The agency’s Gaza chief admitted UNRWA does not have full control over the site, in Gaza City, explaining he has not been able to access his own office for more than two weeks. “I am the captain of the ship which has 13,000 sailors on it and they have basically thrown me off the bridge and consigned me to my captain’s quarters,” he told AFP, referring to the number of employees in Gaza.

Schmale accused the labor union of multiple incidents of “threatening and intimidating other fellow Palestinian staff. For me that crosses a red line. … I am very concerned about the safety and security of my Palestinian colleagues,” he added.

It appears the take over is backed by Hamas.

What we are seeing here is the possible collapse of the entire UN/Arab structure that has for decades used the Arab refugees from Israel — and their descendants — as political pawns. Rather than repatriate these people into Egypt or Jordan, both countries as well as the entire Arab world, with the help of the UN and sadly a lot of U.S. money, forced them into refugee camps and thus used them as a hammer against Israel

Without U.S. financial support, however, this ploy cannot work. The protests and violence coming from Gaza in the past year has been a response to this collapse. Hamas has depended on that funding to keep itself in power. Without it, it cannot pay off its supporters.

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Perseid meteor shower this weekend

10:24 am

The annual Perseid meteor shower upcoming on August 12 is expected to be especially good this year because there will be no moon in the sky.

The Perseid meteors seem to come from a single point, the `radiant’, situated in the constellation Perseus, giving the shower its name. This is however just an effect of perspective, as the meteors move parallel to each other, much like drivers see when driving in heavy rain.

The radiant will be visible from around 10pm and at this time there will be the highest chance of seeing `Earth grazing meteors’. These are meteors that skim the Earth’s atmosphere and so have long, blazing tails.

Observers can expect to see a few tens of meteors per hour, or one every few minutes, once darkness has fallen on 12 August. The number of meteors will peak in the early hours of 13 August, when up to around seventy each hour should be visible.

It is worth it to find a nice dark place and stay up all night at least once in your life to watch this shower. Get a nice camp chair that allows you to lie back, make sure you are dressed comfortably, and sit back and enjoy.

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Company aims to sell its rocket engines to smallsat rocket companies

10:13 am

Capitalism in space: The new rocket engine manufacturer Ursa Major is aiming to sell its rocket engines to the new wave of smallsat rocket companies now emerging.

Ursa Major has taken up the challenge of trying to convince launch startups to outsource their engines rather than follow the models of SpaceX and Blue Origin. “The first gut response is ‘our engines are special and we don’t have a company without our engines,’ but if there is a way to increase their margin by flying someone else’s engines, most companies will be interested in coming around,” Ursa Major founder and CEO Joe Laurienti says.

Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbit and Vector Space Systems — three frontrunners fielding dedicated smallsat launchers — are building engines in house. Currently, just two launch startups — Generation Orbit and ABL Space Systems — have gone public with plans to depend on Laurienti’s 26-person team in Berthoud, Colorado, to supply the engines for the satellite launchers they’re developing.

That we now have companies that have successfully raised investment capital for both building rocket engines in-house for their own rockets as well buying them from independent subcontractors is firm proof that the upcoming boom in smallsat rockets is real, and very robust. The 20s should be a very exciting decade for rocketry.

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Short of money, Planetary Resources to auction off equipment

10:02 am

Capitalism in space: Because its last fund-raising effort failed to hit its target, Planetary Resources is now auctioning off equipment from its headquarters.

The online auction will be conducted by James G. Murphy & Co. from Aug. 21 to 28, with a preview scheduled on Aug. 27 at Planetary Resources’ machine shop, lab and offices at 6742 185th Ave. NE in Redmond.

“We are preparing to sell some equipment that we’ve identified as not currently needed and easily replaceable,” Chris Lewicki, Planetary Resources’ president, CEO and chief asteroid miner, told GeekWire in an email. “This is a result of reducing overhead as we go forward with our smaller team.”

This could simply be an effort to maximize their financial resources as they reorganize. Nonetheless, it does not look good.

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Rocket Lab signs deal with UAE company for 10 Electron launches

9:56 am

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab today announced the signing of a 10-launch contract with Circle Aerospace, a new UAE satellite company.

The agreement sees Rocket Lab selected as the sole launch provider and primary provider of associated mission services for Circle Aerospace clients. Circle Aerospace missions will primarily launch from Rocket Lab’s private orbital launch site, Launch Complex-1, in New Zealand. Launches may also be conducted from Rocket Lab’s US launch site as required.

Circle Aerospace appears to be positioning itself as a smallsat manufacturer for others, but it is unclear at this point who its customers are. What is somewhat clear is that the company has deep pockets, either from private UAE oil money or government money (which are usually the same thing in the Arab Middle East).

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Rocket Lab and Ecliptic agree to use Electron kick stage as a payload platform

10:07 am

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab has struck a deal with Ecliptic Enterprises, the company that provides the on-board launch cameras for ULA and others, for using the Electron upper kick stage as a platform for payloads.

For those missions designated by Rocket Lab to accommodate hosted payloads, Electron’s capable kick stage, proven on the Electron’s first successful launch to orbit in January this year (“Still Testing”), will serve as the platform for one to several hosted payloads per mission, providing a structure for payload mounting, power, command and telemetry functions and attitude control. Ecliptic will deliver fully integrated hosted payloads to Rocket Lab for final integration onto Electron’s kick stage. Once in orbit, Ecliptic avionics will control all hosted payload operations and related data handling; Ecliptic will also manage the end-to-end mission service and experience for its customers. Ecliptic’s U.S. domestic and international customers will be from commercial and government sectors, as well as from academia, media and non-profit arenas.

This is fascinating. The whole reason the smallsat rocket industry is booming is because smallsat builders no longer wanted to be secondary payloads on the bigger rockets. They needed smaller rockets specifically catered to their needs as the primary payload. Because of this, Rocket Lab and Vector and a host of other smallsat rocket companies are now racing to fulfill that need.

Yet, Rocket Lab is now going to offer space on its tiny Electron rocket for even smaller secondary payloads. Ecliptic will act to sign up and coordinate the secondary payloads.

There is money to be made in space, and this competition to make it is creating opportunities for everyone. If you build a very small, very cheap cubesat in your garage, you likely can now go to Ecliptic to arrange to fly it on Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket.

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True color images of Pluto and Charon

9:24 am

The New Horizons science team has released mosaic global images of Pluto and Charon, calibrated to capture their true colors as closely as possible.

These natural-color images result from refined calibrations of data gathered by New Horizons’ Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC).”That processing creates images that would approximate the colors that the human eye would perceive – bringing them closer to ‘true color’ than the images released near the encounter,” said Alex Parker, a New Horizons science team co-investigator from Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colorado.

Because MVIC’s color filters don’t closely match the wavelengths sensed by human vision, mission scientists applied special processing to translate the raw MVIC data into an estimate of the colors that the eye would see. The colors are more subdued than those constructed from the raw MVIC color data, because of the narrower wavelength range sensed by the human eye.

Both images were taken as New Horizons zipped toward closest approach to Pluto and its moons on July 14, 2015; Charon was taken from a range of 46,091 miles (74,176 kilometers) and Pluto from 22,025 miles (35,445 kilometers). Each is a single color MVIC scan, with no data from other New Horizons imagers or instruments added. The striking features on each are clearly visible, from Charon’s reddish north-polar region known as Mordor Macula, to the bright expanse of Pluto’s, nitrogen-and-methane-ice rich “heart,” named Sputnik Planitia.

I must add that these images show only one hemisphere, since the New Horizons flyby did not get a good look at the opposite hemisphere. We won’t know what the other half of both planets look like for many decades.

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The shrinking and growth of the poles of Mars

9:19 am

Using infrared data from several Mars orbiters over a period of a full Martian year, equivalent to two Earth years, scientists have created an animation showing the growth and retreat and regrowth of the carbon dioxide icecaps of the red planet’s two poles.

This animation shows a side-by-side comparison of CO2 ice at the north (left) and south (right) Martian poles over the course of a typical year (two Earth years). This simulation isn’t based on photos; instead, the data used to create it came from two infrared instruments capable of studying the poles even when they’re in complete darkness.

As Mars enters fall and winter, reduced sunlight allows CO2 ice to grow, covering each pole. While ice at the north pole is fairly symmetrical, it’s somewhat asymmetrical during its retreat from the south pole for reasons scientists still don’t understand. Scientists are especially interested in studying how global dust events affect the growth and retreat of this polar ice. Mars’ seasons are caused by a tilt in the planet, resulting in winter at one of the planet’s poles while it’s summer at the other.

I have embedded the animation below the fold.
» Read more

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Aristarchus Crater on the Moon

9:08 am

Aristarchus Crater

Cool image time! The image on the right, reduced in resolution to post here, shows Aristarchus Crater, one of the more geological intriguing locations on the Moon. This oblique image was taken by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), still operating in lunar orbit. If you click on the image you can see the full resolution image.

Aristarchus crater is 40 kilometers (25 miles) in diameter and 2700 meters (1.7 miles) deep, with a central peak that rises 300 meters (almost a thousand feet) above the crater floor. When LRO pointed back towards the Sun, LROC was able to capture this magnificent view highlighting subtle differences in albedo (brightness). Some of the albedo contrast is due to maturity (young material is generally brighter than older material) and some reveal true differences in rock type. The central peak shows the complexity of what lies beneath the now hardened impact melt sea that filled the bottom of the crater.

The best part however is the close-up they provided of the crater’s central peaks, posted below.
» Read more

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Tess captures comet, variable stars, asteroids, and Martian light

8:44 am

During its testing period prior to beginning science operations this month, the exoplanet space telescope TESS spotted in one series of images a comet, a host of variable stars, some asteroids, and even the faint hint of some reflected light from Mars.

Over the course of these tests, TESS took images of C/2018 N1, a comet discovered by NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) satellite on June 29. The comet, located about 29 million miles (48 million kilometers) from Earth in the southern constellation Piscis Austrinus, is seen to move across the frame from right to left as it orbits the Sun. The comet’s tail, which consists of gases carried away from the comet by an outflow from the Sun called the solar wind, extends to the top of the frame and gradually pivots as the comet glides across the field of view.

In addition to the comet, the images reveal a treasure trove of other astronomical activity. The stars appear to shift between white and black as a result of image processing. The shift also highlights variable stars — which change brightness either as a result of pulsation, rapid rotation, or by eclipsing binary neighbors. Asteroids in our solar system appear as small white dots moving across the field of view. Towards the end of the video, one can see a faint broad arc of light moving across the middle section of the frame from left to right. This is stray light from Mars, which is located outside the frame. The images were taken when Mars was at its brightest near opposition, or its closest distance, to Earth.

The video that was compiled from these images is embedded below the fold.
» Read more

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SpaceX launches commercial satellite with first used Block 5 first stage

8:34 am

Capitalism in space: Last night SpaceX successfully placed a commercial communications satellite into orbit using a previously flown Block 5 first stage.

The turnaround for this first stage was only a little over two months. It successfully landed on the drone ship in the Atlantic, and they plan to fly it a third time later this year. You can watch the launch here.

The leaders in the 2018 launch race:

22 China
15 SpaceX
8 Russia
5 ULA
4 Japan
4 Europe

China still leads the U.S. 22 to 21 in the national rankings.

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Want to earn a college degree in mining in space? You can!

2:12 pm

Capitalism in space: Link here.

Classes begin Aug. 20 for the first 35 students enrolled in the program. With courses held online, students around the world can earn a post-baccalaureate certificate, master’s degree, or doctorate focused on finding and pulling resources from space.

Many asteroids and nearby planets contain rare platinum-group metals and industrial metals like iron and nickel that are needed for building exploration infrastructure. Right now, though, the most sought-after resource in space is one that is actually quite abundant on the Blue Planet. “If you think about it, water in space would be the oil of space, because that is going to power and transport, give us energy, enable the whole space economy and allow us to keep going further and further,” Abbud-Madrid said. “Such an elemental product as water would be the first one we go after.”

It can be argued that this is premature. It can also be argued that the time is coming, and knowing more about the resources in space can be an advantage in the competitive free market.

Hat tip Robert Pratt of Pratt on Texas.

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Leftist thugs harass conservative black woman and white man eating lunch

12:08 pm

They’re coming for you next: Two of the leaders of the conservative Turning Point USA, Candace Owen and Charlie Kirk, were harassed today in Philadelphia by leftist antifa protesters, with one throwing a liquid on Kirk.

Police were required to prevent the protesters from getting violent.

It must be noted the Owens is black and Kirk is white. It appears that the leftists have a problem with them eating together. In fact, somehow this black activist is in favor of “white supremacy” according to these protesters.

This has only just begun. Should the Democrats make gains in the November elections, expect them to throw a great deal of financial support to these thugs, empowering them to do more violence against anyone who dissents from the leftist Democratic power structure.

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Sunspot update for July 2018: The Sun flatlines!

10:50 am

Yesterday NOAA posted its monthly update of the solar cycle, covering sunspot activity for July 2018. As I do every month, I am posting it below, annotated to give it some context.

This might be the most significant month of solar activity that has been observed since Galileo. Except for two very short-lived and very weak sunspots that observers hardly noted, the Sun was blank for entire month of July. This has not happened since 2009, during the height of the last solar minimum.

What makes this so significant and unique is that it almost certainly signals the return of the next solar minimum, a return that comes more than a year early. The solar cycle the Sun is now completing has only been ten years long. It is also one of the weakest in more than a hundred years. This combination is unprecedented. In the past such a weak cycle required a long cycle, not a short one.
» Read more

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How to build a scaled-down version of Curiosity, all by yourself!

9:50 am

JPL has released open-source plans for building a scaled down version of the rover Curiosity at a total cost of only $2,500.

This project is a successor to an earlier educational rover model called “ROV-E,” which received positive responses in schools and museums, NASA said. The Open Source Rover offers a more affordable, less complicated model, and according to agency officials, people can assemble the new model with off-the-shelf parts for about $2,500.

“While the OSR [Open Source Rover] instructions are quite detailed, they still allow the builder the option of making their own design choices,” JPL officials said. “For example, builders can decide what controllers to use, weigh the trade-offs of adding USB cameras or solar panels and even attach science payloads. The baseline design of OSR … will allow users to choose how they want to customize and add to their rover, touching on multiple hardware and software principles along the way.”

I wonder how heavy a home-built rover would be, and whether it could be launched on a Falcon Heavy to Mars.

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Next Rocket Lab launch set for November

9:40 am

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab has now announced its next launch will take place in November, with plans for a second launch one month later.

Rocket Lab stood down from an earlier launch window for It’s Business Time in June 2018, after unusual behavior was identified in a motor controller during pre-launch operations. Initially, it was thought the recycle would be a matter of days, before the decision was made to rollback the vehicle and change out the controller.

…Now Rocket Lab has noted that, following analysis, the motor controllers have been modified and – as such – required new qualification testing ahead of the next launch which won’t take place until November

In a sense this delay and their response to it speaks well of the company. Rather than proceed with another controller, they dug deeper, located a more fundamental problem, and have moved to fix it. And it appears they have done this relatively quickly.

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Chandrayaan-2 delayed again, until January 2019

9:13 am

The new colonial movement: ISRO, India’s space agency, has revealed that the launch of its lunar rover/lander Chandrayaan-2 has been delayed from October to Janaury 2019.

Dr M Annadurai, Director of U R Rao Satellite Centre confirmed to NDTV that the launch date for Chandryaan-2 “is slipping to 2019” from the initially planned launch in October this year.

Dr Annadurai said that India’s moon mission now aims to land in February and the rocket launch will take place in January next year.

Moreover, since the weight of the Chandrayaan-2 satellite has increased, Dr Annadurai said that now instead of GSLV MK-II, GSLV MK-III will be used. Geo-synchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle MK-III (GSLV MK-III), also called the ‘The Bahubali’, is India’s heaviest rocket that weighs nearly 640 tons and will be used to hoist the Chandrayaan-2 satellite from India’s rocket port at Sriharikota.

It appears that in building the spacecraft they have not been able to keep its weight low enough, and have been forced to switch launch vehicles, with this switch causing the delay.

The article also provides a tidbit of information about the GLSV MK-III rocket, that they have an real name for it, Bahubali. If so, they should use it. It sells much better than GLSV MK-III.

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Rogue giant exoplanet or brown dwarf discovered about 20 light years away

5:16 pm

Using the Jansky VLA radio telescope astronomers have detected evidence of rogue giant exoplanet or brown dwarf about 20 light years away

Astronomers using the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) have made the first radio-telescope detection of a planetary-mass object beyond our Solar System. The object, about a dozen times more massive than Jupiter, is a surprisingly strong magnetic powerhouse and a “rogue,” traveling through space unaccompanied by any parent star.

“This object is right at the boundary between a planet and a brown dwarf, or ‘failed star,’ and is giving us some surprises that can potentially help us understand magnetic processes on both stars and planets,” said Melodie Kao, who led this study while a graduate student at Caltech, and is now a Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow at Arizona State University.

The data is not sufficient yet to determine whether this is an exoplanet or a brown dwarf. It is big, and it is floating independent of any other objects, which makes it interesting in of itself.

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