A evening pause: Hat tip Jim Mallamace, who wrote, “This is a case of art imitating life. Keith Whitley battled alcoholism for years. He died at age 33 of acute alcohol poisoning 6 months after this performance.”
Astronomers announced today that the Zwicky Transient Facility at the Palomar Observatory in California has seen first light, and will begin full operations in 2018.
When fully operational in 2018, the ZTF will scan almost the entire northern sky every night. Based at the Palomar Observatory in southern California and operated by Caltech, the ZTF’s goal is to use these nightly images to identify “transient” objects that vary between observations — identifying events ranging from supernovae millions of light years away to near-Earth asteroids.
an image of stars and the night sky
In 2016, the UW Department of Astronomy formally joined the ZTF team and will help develop new methods to identify the most “interesting” of the millions of changes in the sky — including new objects — that the ZTF will detect each night and alert scientists. That way, these high-priority transient objects can be followed up in detail by larger telescopes, including the UW’s share of the Apache Point Observatory 3.5-meter telescope.
By producing new high resolution images of the entire northern sky every night, this telescope instrument is going to discover gobs of new transients, from supernovae to binaries to novae to things we haven’t even seen before.
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.
"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
For the past two weeks JPL’s image site has been releasing a string of images taken by Mars Odyssey of the smallest of Mars’ four giant volcanoes.
Pavonis Mons is one of the three aligned Tharsis Volcanoes. The four Tharsis volcanoes are Ascreaus Mons, Pavonis Mons, Arsia Mons, and Olympus Mars. All four are shield type volcanoes. Shield volcanoes are formed by lava flows originating near or at the summit, building up layers upon layers of lava. The Hawaiian islands on Earth are shield volcanoes. The three aligned volcanoes are located along a topographic rise in the Tharsis region. Along this trend there are increased tectonic features and additional lava flows. Pavonis Mons is the smallest of the four volcanoes, rising 14km above the mean Mars surface level with a width of 375km. It has a complex summit caldera, with the smallest caldera deeper than the larger caldera. Like most shield volcanoes the surface has a low profile. In the case of Pavonis Mons the average slope is only 4 degrees.
The image on the right is the context image, annotated by me to show where all these images were taken. The images can accessed individually below.
Each of these images has some interesting geological features, such as collapses, lava tubes, faults, and flow features. Meanwhile, the central calderas are remarkable smooth, with only a few craters indicating their relatively young age.
The most fascinating geological fact gleaned from these images is that they reveal a larger geological trend that runs through all of the three aligned giant volcanoes to the east of Olympus Mons.
The linear and sinuous features mark the locations of lava tubes and graben that occur on both sides of the volcano along a regional trend that passes thru Pavonis Mons, Ascreaus Mons (to the north), and Arsia Mons (to the south).
This trend probably also indicates the fundamental geology that caused all three volcanoes to align as they have.
Arsia Mons is of particular interest in that water clouds form periodically above its western slope, where there is also evidence of past glaciation. Scientists strongly suspect that there is a lot of water ice trapped underground here, possibly inside the many lava tubes that meander down its slopes. These facts also suggest that this might be one of the first places humans go to live, when they finally go to live on Mars.
JAXA, Japan’s space agency, has announced that it will make a second launch attempt in December of what would be the world’s smallest orbital rocket.
The rocket, measuring 10 meters long and 50 cm in diameter, will carry a “micro-mini” satellite weighing about 3 kg developed by the University of Tokyo to collect imagery of the Earth’s surface.
The launch scheduled for Dec. 25 will feature the fifth rocket in the SS-520 series. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is hoping small rockets made with commercially available components at low cost will help fuel the growing global demand for micro-mini satellites. JAXA used components found in home electronics and smartphones for the rocket, which is about the size of a utility pole.
The previous launch failed when vibrations during liftoff caused a short-circuit that cut off communications, forcing them to terminate the flight.
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.
“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.
Boston Dynamics has released a short teaser video of a sleeker, dressed up, and possibly friendlier-looking version of its SpotMini robot.
The thing still moves in a way that makes me think of Terminator and a coming robot take-over.
Capitalism in space: Sierra Nevada has declared Sunday’s glide test of its Dream Chaser engineering prototype a success.
I have embedded a video of the flight below the fold. It is especially fascinating to watch the vehicle make small maneuvers as it begins its runway appoach.
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.
"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
Capitalism in space: Billionaire Yuri Milner, who already funds several astronomy projects aimed at interstellar travel, is now considering funding a planetary probe to the Saturn moon Enceladus.
At the moment all he is doing is holding workshops with scientists and engineers to see if such a mission can be done for an amount he can afford. Considering that Elon Musk’s first concept to send a private probe to Mars, before SpaceX existed, was stopped because of high launch costs, thus becoming the inspiration for SpaceX itself in order to lower those costs, Milner’s private effort might actually be affordable now.
Capitalism in space: The CEO of ARCA Space was arrested in Georgia yesterday for fraud and embezzlement and extradited back to New Mexico.
ARCA is the company developing an aerospike test engine that was supposedly ready for ground tests in late September but as of yet I am unaware of any actual tests taking place.
An evening pause: On this August 2017 flight the model averaged 451 mph, with a top speed of 461 mph.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
The robot prop from the classic 1956 science fiction film Forbidden Planet, Robby the Robot, is going up for auction on November 21.
The robot was purchased by its present owner in 1979, and has been sitting in his home since then.
In related auction news, one of eighty medals carried on the Apollo 17 mission is also going up for auction.
Phil Berardelli, who periodically comments here and who is a veteran science journalist who worked for the journal Science for a number of years, has written a very cogent four part essay on the subject of climate change for the think tank Capital Research Center.
Berardelli very carefully outlines the uncertainties that dominate our knowledge of the Earth’s climate, while explaining clearly why consensus is never what good science relies upon. As he notes,
Science is not primarily about proof; science is about disproof. Nothing in science, absolutely nothing, should ever be taken at face value. This view isn’t new; it’s age old.
Read it all, especially if you are one of the people who reads my writing and questions my skepticism about much of what I see in the climate field, especially coming from NASA and NOAA. Berardelli illustrates how doubt and skepticism are the hallmarks of science, and should always be honored, not denigrated with slurs like “denier.”
Full disclosure: Phil Berardelli was also my editor when I did a weekly column for UPI called Space Watch for six months in 2005.
Capitalism in space: NASA revealed today that it is close to approving the use of a Falcon 9 reused first stage for the next Dragon cargo mission to ISS.
During a press conference at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility here Nov. 10 about the launch of a Cygnus cargo mission to the ISS, a NASA manager said the agency would likely approve the use of a reused booster on that mission, designated SpX-13, assuming it clears an upcoming review. “We’re in the final stages of doing all those assessments,” Dan Hartman, ISS deputy program manager, said. SpaceX first requested to use a previously-flown booster for a cargo mission about a year ago. “On the NASA side, we’ve had a lot of major reviews.”
He said SpaceX itself had one more readiness review for the booster they’re planning to refly before deciding if they can use it for the SpX-13 mission, scheduled for launch Dec. 4. “If that comes back positive,” he said, “I’d say the chances are that we’ll be flying a reuse on SpX-13.”
It appears that about a year from now the use of reused boosters will have become completely normalized, with no one thinking anything unusual about their use. This, after almost a half century of old-school engineers and managers repeatedly saying such a thing made no sense and was impossible in terms of engineering and economics.
Capitalism in space: Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser test vehicle today completed its second glide test, the first since 2013, successfully gliding to a perfect landing after being dropped from a helicopter at an altitude of 10,000 feet.
Unlike the 2013 glide test, the landing gear worked perfectly. With two such tests under their belt, the company I think has demonstrated that the spacecraft will be able to execute a landing. Next comes the building and test flight of the actual spacecraft.
Capitalism in space: After a day delay caused by a stray airplane in the launch zone, Orbital ATK this morning successfully launched Cygnus cargo freighter to ISS with its Antares rocket.
This was the second launch of Antares using new Russian engines rather than refurbished Russian engines from the 1960s.
Embedded below the fold. The podcasts are now organized as they were aired, including the second half of this podcast.
» Read more
An evening pause: “It costs money to die poor.”
For those who don’t know, Chuck Jones directed some of the best Bugs Bunny cartoons that Warner Brothers ever produced.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
Saudi Arabia has launched a military strike against Yemen’s defense ministry.
It wasn’t immediately clear if the attacks were air or missile strikes, but they came following reports that Iran had manufactured the ballistic missile fired by Yemen’s Shiite rebels toward the Saudi capital a week ago.
Remnants of the missile bore “Iranian markings,” the top US Air Force official in the Mideast said Friday, backing the kingdom’s earlier allegations.
This isn’t that much of a surprise, considering the recent purge in Saudi Arabia as well as the recent reports of both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait warning their citizens to leave Lebanon. The military strike today in Yemen appears to therefore merely be a precursor of a more significant escalation.
Cool image time! The image above, reduced in resolution to post here, was taken during Juno’s ninth close fly-by of Jupiter in late October, and shows one particular storm swirl in the gas giant’s southern hemisphere.
The Juno team today highlighted an image taken during this fly-by of Jupiter’s entire southern hemisphere, but I find this close-up more interesting. Be sure to check out the full resolution version. It appears to me that the white swirls have risen up above the gold and blue regions, casting shadows down upon them.
Unfortunately, I cannot tell you the scale of this storm, as the release does not give any details, including where in the full hemisphere image it is located. I suspect, however, that it is large enough to likely cover the Earth.
Both the full hemisphere image and the image above were processed by citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran.
Because of high costs and a refocus in research goals, physicists have reduced the size of their proposed next big particle accelerator, which they hope will be built in Japan.
On 7 November, the International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA), which oversees work on the ILC, endorsed halving the machine’s planned energy from 500 to 250 gigaelectronvolts (GeV), and shortening its proposed 33.5-kilometre-long tunnel by as much as 13 kilometres. The scaled-down version would have to forego some of its planned research such as studies of the ‘top’ flavour of quark, which is produced only at higher energies.
Instead, the collider would focus on studying the particle that endows all others with mass — the Higgs boson, which was detected in 2012 by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Europe’s particle-physics lab near Geneva, Switzerland.
Part of the reason for these changes is that the Large Hadron Collider has not discovered any new particles, other than the Higgs Boson. The cost to discover any remaining theorized particles was judged as simply too high. Better to focus on studying the Higgs Boson itself.
The new colonial movement: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has signed a memorandum of understanding with the German Aerospace Center.
The press release doesn’t say much, other than the agreement will facilitate the exchange of information. Since the UAE can contribute little here but money, and none appears to be offered, I am curious as to exactly what is involved. It could be that Germany is looking at this as a form of inexpensive foreign aid, providing help to the UAE’s nascent space effort in order to establish good will and good relations.
Link here. The article provides a lot of interesting details about Blue Origin’s plans and status, including this tidbit about the New Glenn assembly facility, now expected to be finished by February 2018 at the latest:
The facility will largely be used to build the second and third stages for New Glenn, with Blue Origin actually planning to construct very few first stage boosters.
With each first stage booster planned to be reused up to 100 times, the factory will mainly concentrate on – and for large periods of time is only planned to – produce 2nd and 3rd stages. Mr. Henderson noted that once the first stage boosters are retrieved after flight, their storage will be managed across the refurbishment facility at LC-36 (capable of holding three or four boosters), the integration facility at LC-36 (also capable of holding “at least” three or four boosters), and the Merritt Island production facility (which can hold four boosters).
This would seemingly reveal that Blue Origin plans to rely on roughly only 12 first stage boosters at a time (once New Glenn is fully operational and recovery is “routine”), relying almost exclusively on booster recovery and refurbishment to maintain its first stage boosters manifest.
The article also notes the Blue Origin intends to always land its stages on a barge, and is about to finalize the purchase of that barge.
What I am puzzled about is the almost complete disappearance from the news of the company’s suborbital project, New Shepard. The last news story I’ve seen, from mid-September, said they hoped to resume test flights before the end of the year, with manned flights in 2018. Since then, however, there has been no updates, which makes me wonder if Blue Origin has decided to put that suborbital tourism project aside.
A crowdfunding campaign has been started to build a 5-foot-tall bronze statue in honor of Félicette, the only cat to fly in space.
While the first dog in space, Laika, has a statue, and the first chimp, Ham, has a memorial, Félicette has close to nothing. There are some commemorative stamps honoring a mythical space cat “Felix.” But Felix’s portrait doesn’t look like Félicette and it has a male name, so this is not enough for Guy. If anything, he says, the stamps simply help erase the existence of female astronauts.
The French space program gathered 14 cats, implanted electrodes into their brains, and put them through training similar to the way that they train human astronauts. They ultimately chose Félicette to make the trip, either because of her docile personality, or because she had not put on too much weight, according to differing accounts.
She was launched into space from Algeria [in 1963], and made it nearly 100 miles above Earth. For five minutes, she was weightless. Félicette came back to Earth unharmed, parachuting down and being retrieved only 13 minutes after having left her home planet. She stayed at the program’s lab for two to three months, according to Guy, but scientists later killed her to study the effects of space travel on her body.
Seems to me to be the right thing to do.
Capitalism in space: Unable to find new investors, XCOR Aerospace filed for bankruptcy earlier this week, beginning the process that will liquidate the company.
Freedom and competition produce wealth and success better than any other approach, but they also allow for risk and failure. Sadly, XCOR has now demonstrated this downside.
Congressman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) today expressed strong disappointment with the repeated delays in the the launch of SLS and Orion, noting that the problems could lead to Congress considering “other options.”
“After all these years, after billions of dollars spent, we are facing more delays and cost overruns,” Smith said. While he noted that some delays were caused by factors out of NASA’s control, like a tornado that damaged the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans in February, “many of the problems are self-inflicted.”
“It is very disappointing to hear about delays caused by poor execution, when the U.S. taxpayer has invested so much in these programs,” he added.
Smith, who announced Nov. 2 he would not run for reelection next year after more than three decades in the House, including serving as chairman of the science committee since 2013, warned about eroding support for the programs should there be additional delays. “NASA and the contractors should not assume future delays and cost overruns will have no consequences,” he said. “If delays continue, if costs rise, and if foreseeable technical challenges arise, no one should assume the U.S. taxpayers or their representatives will tolerate this forever.”
“The more setbacks SLS and Orion face, the more support builds for other options,” he said, not elaborating on what those options would be.
Smith is part of the establishment in Congress that has been supporting SLS and Orion blindly for years. Unfortunately, he is retiring this year, and the other members of his committee did not seem as bothered by SLS’s endless delays.
This week’s collection of stories illustrating the fascist culture that permeates today’s academic community actually includes some good news. (My last fascist academia post can be seen here.)
First the bad:
The first story illustrates that this intolerance is not limited to the left. In this case a conservative university kicked out a speaker with more moderate views.
Nonetheless, the majority of these attacks on freedom of speech continue to come from the left or from left-leaning organizations. The last story indicates the trends, which include a significant shift towards violence and a disrespect for property rights.
Now for the good news.
In the first story we see a rare example of someone experiencing bad consequences for their bad fascist behavior. If only this would happen more often. In the second story the theatrical community, including the normally very leftwing partisan Dramatists Guild of America (!), has actually come out against censorship, even if that censorship involves opinions that attack modern liberal sacred cows, such as the racist Black Lives Matter movement. This action is so out of the norm that I am somewhat speechless.
The election results from Tuesday, where Democrats won most of the significant races, has produced a lot of commentary, from both conservatives and liberals, about its significance.
To me, however, these results merely confirmed the increasingly regional nature of today’s partisan politics. This story, about a victory by a Democrat state senator candidate that puts the Democrats in complete control of Washington’s legislature, illustrates this best.
Dhingra’s victory in Washington state over Republican Jinyoung Englund means the West Coast is now the solid center of the resistance, with Democrats controlling legislatures and governorships from Seattle down to San Diego.
The Democratic victories on Tuesday all took place in areas where they strongly dominate (the coasts and urban centers), thus merely solidifying their control over those localized regions. I expect that future elections will show Republicans solidifying their control over their own regions (which is the rest of the country). In other words, people are beginning to choose sides, and we are heading to a regional and political divide that can only be solved in one of two ways: The U.S. splits, or a civil war (in the literal sense) breaks out.
A simple and inexpensive skin cancer detector has won the $40,000 2017 James Dyson award.
Designed by a team from McMaster University in Canada, the sKan can make more accurate diagnoses quickly and reasonably cheaply. It’s based around the fact that cancer cells have a faster metabolic rate than healthy cells, meaning they release more heat. To check if a patch of skin has the beginnings of a melanoma, the suspected area is first cooled with an ice pack before the sKan device is placed against the skin.
Using an array of temperature sensors called thermistors, the sKan will then monitor the area as the skin warms back up. If there’s a melanoma present, it will warm up faster than the surrounding skin, revealing itself on a heat map and temperature difference time plot created through a connected computer program.
Once this device is in the hands of dermatologists, they will be able to very quickly diagnose whether a skin mole or freckle is dangerous or not.
Capitalism in space: ISRO officials said yesterday that the agency plans to double its launch rate next year, while also shifting as much of its space manufacturing effort to the private sector.
Currently, the space agency launches 9 to 10 spacecraft built by it every year. Dr K Sivan, director of Thiruvananthapuram-based Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, said, “Isro is targeting to double the number of launches from 9-10 to 18-19 launches per year.”
On outsourcing of jobs to the private industry, Isro chairman A S Kiran Kumar said the space agency does as much activity as possible with the industry. “Wherever it’s possible to get things done through the industry, we are doing and it will only increase in the coming days because we need to do more frequent activities,” he told a news agency. [emphasis mine]
The highlighted language is patently false. India has never launched 9 spacecraft in a year. Last year it set a record with 7 launches. This false overstatement casts some doubt to me of the sincerity of the second claim, that the agency wishes to shift as much responsibility to the private sector as possible. Government agencies rarely give up power. In the U.S. the decision by NASA to shift from NASA-built rockets to commercially-built rockets took decades (occurring reluctantly in 2008 after years of lobbying), and even a decade after that decision the transition is hardly guaranteed.
Nonetheless, that ISRO officials are setting a goal of 18-19 launches a year indicates that they truly do want to compete with the big launch players.
