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Successful ULA Delta 4 Heavy launch today

The competition heats up: ULA today successfully launched a U.S. National Reconnaissance Office spy satellite, using what is presently the world’s most powerful rocket, the Delta 4 Heavy.

In many ways, this rocket’s launch, which you can see in the video embedded below the fold, gives a rough idea of what a Falcon Heavy launch will look like, since the rockets have somewhat similar configurations.
» Read more

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.

Musk hints details of SpaceX Mars project

The competition heats up: In an interview with the Washington Post this week, Elon Musk gave some more hints at his company’s future plans to send its Dragon capsules to Mars.

“Essentially what we’re saying is we’re establishing a cargo route to Mars,” [Musk] said. “It’s a regular cargo route. You can count on it. It’s going happen every 26 months. Like a train leaving the station. And if scientists around the world know that they can count on that, and it’s going to be inexpensive, relatively speaking compared to anything in the past, then they will plan accordingly and come up with a lot of great experiments.”

The key to Musk’s effort is that he plans on doing it. He isn’t sitting around waiting for others, or trying to convince others to join him in a partnership before proceeding. He is simply doing it, and is welcoming others to take advantage of the opportunity he is offering.

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

Auction of silver medals flown on Apollo brings in $800K

Coins in space: An auction in May of silver medals carried by astronauts on a variety of Apollo missions has brought in nearly $800,000.

Robbins medallions were minted by the Robbins Co. of Attleboro, Mass. These .925 fine silver medals have been produced for every manned U.S. mission since Apollo 7. The medals were paid for by the crews and available for purchase only by NASA astronauts at the time. Medals that were actually flown on missions are especially coveted.

San Jose police herded Trump supporters into mob

In this op-ed today by a Trump supporter, describing how leftwing thugs broke his nose at a Trump rally in San Jose, there was the very significant sentence, highlighted below:

My trouble began once the rally was over.

My friend and I joined a crowd of Trump supporters who had all left the convention center around the same time. The garage where we had parked our car was right next to the building, but police were directing everyone around the block to another garage entrance instead. The farther we walked, the fewer Trump fans were with us — people began peeling off to go to restaurants or bars in the area, or to other garages nearby.

And suddenly, there were protesters everywhere. Some were holding Mexican flags, or burning American ones. They were yelling “F— Trump!” at us and cornering us. [emphasis mine]

In other words, the San Jose police, who had been given the stand-down order by their mayor, who hates Trump and has sent campaign money to Clinton, had arranged things so that Trump supporters couldn’t simply go to their cars. They had to run the gauntlet through these violent thugs, without police protection, thus guaranteeing that some ot them would be hurt.

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

Stuck in part-time work or unemployed? Blame Obamacare

Finding out what’s in it: New data strongly suggests that this week’s very bad jobs report is the result of Obamacare.

The economic recovery since 2008 is the weakest since World War II. More people are out of the workforce than ever in history. And the number of people doing part-time work has skyrocketed. Wonder why?

Analysts at Goldman Sachs have noticed this trend for some time, and put the blame on Obamacare. “The evidence suggests that the [Affordable Care Act] has at least modestly elevated involuntary part-time employment,” Goldman Sachs economist Alec Philips wrote in a research note published on Wednesday. Obamacare had the greatest impact on industries that traditionally do not offer strong health insurance coverage, such as retail stores and the hospitality industry. Phillips noted that these have the highest levels of involuntary part-time workers, and believes that the ACA has forced “a few hundred thousand” to take cuts in hours or accept part-time work as a result.

In other words, businesses have had either two choices to avoid the unaffordable costs of Obamacare: stop hiring, or hire only part-time workers. The result has been a stagnant economy where workers are either making less or nothing at all.

Fortunately, come November we will have a real choice: Pick a Democrat who was part of the effort to bring us this law, or pick a Democrat who says he has changed but keeps saying things that suggest othewise! Ain’t that just grand?

Pluto’s jagged shores

Pluto's jagged shoreline

Cool image time! The picture on the right, taken by New Horizons during its July 2015 flyby and cropped and reduced here, shows the reddish hues of the Krun Macula dark region along the shore of Pluto’s vast nitrogen ice plains. The hillsides here rise about a mile and a half above both the plains and the valleys, making them deeper than the Grand Canyon. The hills are “believed to get its dark red color from tholins, complex molecules found across Pluto.”

Pay cash for healthcare and save a fortune

Because of the skyrocketing costs for healthcare due to Obamacare, it is now far cheaper to simply pay cash for many medical procedures, bypassing health insurance completely.

“This is one of the dirty little secrets of healthcare,” said Gerald Kominski, director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. “If your insurance has a high deductible, you should always ask the cash price.”

Cash prices are intended for uninsured patients — and are frequently still much higher than insured rates. But cash prices for many common procedures have come down thanks to changing regulations and consumers increasingly being able to shop around for cheaper providers. Blood tests can be performed at CVS MinuteClinics and other pharmacies, for instance. Or as I reported a few years ago, MRIs are available from independent providers for as little as $300, whereas many hospitals will charge thousands of dollars.

The article’s main example is the case where the cost for blood tests, through insurance, was more than $80, while the cash price was only $15, and was still sufficient for the lab to make a profit.

Republicans in Congress move to limit civil forfeiture

A Republican bill now moving through both houses of Congress will place some limits on the ability of state and federal governments to confiscate private property.

The bills most important provision will be to shift the burden of proof to the government, not the citizen. However,

Unfortunately, while the DUE PROCESS Act contains many of the procedural reforms that The Heritage Foundation and a broad coalition of organizations have called for in our recent Meese Center report, “Arresting Your Property,” it does not tackle two of the most perverse aspects of forfeiture law: the financial incentives that underlie modern civil forfeiture practices and the profit-sharing programs known as “equitable sharing.”

Under federal law, 100 percent of the proceeds of successful forfeitures are retained by the federal law enforcement organization that executed the seizure. This money is available to be spent by these agencies without congressional oversight, meaning they can—and do—self-finance. This profiteering incentive is extended to state and local agencies through programs administered by the Justice and Treasury departments known as “equitable sharing,” which allow property seized at the state and local level to be transferred to federal authorities for forfeiture under federal law. The feds then return up to 80 percent of the resulting revenues to the originating agency.

Thus, federal law provides every law enforcement agency in the country with a direct financial incentive to seize cash and property—sometimes at the expense of investigating, arresting, and prosecuting actual criminals—and simultaneously encourages state and local agencies to circumvent state laws that are more protective of property rights or restrictive as to how forfeiture proceeds may be spent than the federal standard.

The simple fact is that civil forfeiture is already blatantly illegal, as per the plain words in the fifth amendment to the Constitution:

No person . . .[shall] be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

It is a horrible tragedy that so few people today respect these plain words.

Battle for communications spectrum between private companies

The competition heats up: One group of mobile broadband companies is fighting another group of satellite-based internet companies for control over the use of a part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

A coalition of 5G terrestrial mobile broadband companies led by Charlie Ergen’s Dish Network on June 8 asked U.S. regulators to strip future low-orbiting satellite Internet constellations of their priority access to 500 megahertz of Ku-band spectrum – spectrum coveted by prospective constellation operators including OneWeb LLC and SpaceX. SpaceX and satellite fleet operator Intelsat, a OneWeb investor and partner, immediately filed separate opposition papers to the FCC, arguing that nongeostationary-orbit (NGSO) constellations are very much alive.

In the middle is the FCC and our hapless and increasingly corrupt federal government. I sadly suspect the side that will win this battle will be the side that gives the most campaign money to the right politicians.

California moves to criminalize journalism

Fascists: Democrats in the California legislature are pushing a bill that would criminalize undercover videos of healthcare providers like Planned Parenthood.

Hey, who says we need a first amendment or a Bill of Rights? We instead have elected Democrats to protect us, including the guy who introduced this bill and who has received $13,500 in campaign contributions from Planned Parenthood. Why should we worry?

Mars’ seasonal dust storms

Data from the many Martian orbiters since 1997 have allowed scientists to roughly outline a seasonal pattern of dust storms on Mars.

Most Martian dust storms are localized, smaller than about 1,200 miles (about 2,000 kilometers) across and dissipating within a few days. Some become regional, affecting up to a third of the planet and persisting up to three weeks. A few encircle Mars, covering the southern hemisphere but not the whole planet. Twice since 1997, global dust storms have fully enshrouded Mars. The behavior of large regional dust storms in Martian years that include global dust storms is currently unclear, and years with a global storm were not included in the new analysis.

They have also found three types of regional dust storms, all of which appear to occur each Martian year.

Federal court rules against 2nd amendment

Who needs that silly Bill of Rights anyway? A federal court has ruled that the 2nd Amendment does not protect the right of Americans to carry a concealed gun in public.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit is ruling in favor of California’s “good cause” requirement, saying the Second Amendment does not protect a right to carry a concealed gun in public.

On February 13 2014 Breibart News reported that a panel of judges from the Ninth Circuit struck down California’s “good cause” requirement. Thereafter–under pressure from State Attorney Kamala Harris–the court announced that it would rehear the case en banc. Today that en banc ruling resulted in the “good cause” requirement being upheld and Americans being told they have not right to carry a concealed gun in public.

This ruling is also a reason I will have as little to do with the fascist state of California as I can. Not only is California now a place where you are denied your right to keep and bear arms, Kamala Harris is likely going to be California’s next Senator, and she is someone quite willing to use the power of government to squelch people she disagrees with. For the people of California, however, that fascist approach to government is a recommendation, not a disqualification.

India’s government proposes ending satellite competition

The competition cools down? A regulatory agency in India is proposing eliminating commercial satellite competition and consolidating all satellite television broadcasts onto a handful of government owned and launched satellites.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Make in India” campaign seeks to promote India’s domestic industrial base. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on May 23 published what it calls a “pre-consultation paper” that points to the savings satellite-television broadcasters could realize if they stopped beaming the same programs on different satellites, and instead banded together on one or two spacecraft.

As of March 2015, the latest period for which TRAI has produced figures, there were 76 million DTH subscribers in India, of which 41.1 million were considered active. These subscribers received programming from six pay TV DTH providers and one free-to-air satellite broadcast service. TRAI said multiple DTH providers are broadcasting the same channels even as they compete with each other for subscribers. “There is scope for better utilization of available infrastructure,” TRAI said. “There is a need to examine technical and commercial issues in sharing of infrastructure such as satellite transponders, Earth station facilities….”

There is also this important component to the story:

India has been one of the biggest satellite-DTH growth markets in recent years, but one in which barriers to entry by foreigners remain high. Under Indian law, television broadcasters seeking operating licenses are given preferential treatment if they use India’s own Insat telecommunications satellites, owned and operated by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). Non-Indian satellites are permitted if ISRO’s Insat system does not have sufficient capacity to meet programmers’ demand. This has been the case for years as ISRO has been unable to keep up with the market for satellite television.

In other words, the commercial satellite business in India is doing great, so let’s muck it up by having one government agency create a monopoly for another government agency.

The United States tried this in the 1960s when it banned private companies from launching commercial communications satellites and instead required all such satellites to be built by the government-managed Comsat corporation. The result in the U.S. was a squelched satellite and launch industry that did not recover for more than a decade, and only did so when the Nixon administration forced a change in the rules.

“For The Race everything. Outside The Race, nothing.”

The recent kerfuffle about Donald Trump’s comments concerning the judge administering the Trump University lawsuit actually miss the real point, which is well documented by this article, The Truth About ‘La Raza’, which is where the quote in the headline comes from.

The article outlines in great detail the racist and bigoted agenda of the organization called “The National Council of La Raza” (or more precisely, “The Council of the Race” when translated into English from Spanish). The Council of the Race has many secondary organizations, one of which is the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan (MEChA). This organization is very powerful on American college campuses, and it is from that organization’s founding principles that we find that headline quote.

MEChA isn’t at all shy about their goals, or their views of other races. Their founding principles are contained in these words in “El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan” (The Spiritual Plan for Aztlan): “In the spirit of a new people that is conscious not only of its proud historical heritage but also of the brutal gringo invasion of our territories, we, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the northern land of Aztlan from whence came our forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth and consecrating the determination of our people of the sun, declare that the call of our blood is our power, our responsibility, and our inevitable destiny. … Aztlan belongs to those who plant the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops and not to the foreign Europeans. … We are a bronze people with a bronze culture. Before the world, before all of North America, before all our brothers in the bronze continent, we are a nation, we are a union of free pueblos, we are Aztlan. For La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada.”

That closing two-sentence motto is chilling to everyone who values equal rights for all. It says: “For The Race everything. Outside The Race, nothing.”

Nor is that all. Once these “bronze people” retake their territories in North America, they will not be done.

The final plan for the La Raza movement includes the ethnic cleansing of Americans of European, African, and Asian descent out of “Aztlan.” As Miguel Perez of Cal State-Northridge’s MEChA chapter has been quoted as saying: “The ultimate ideology is the liberation of Aztlan. Communism would be closest [to it]. Once Aztlan is established, ethnic cleansing would commence: Non-Chicanos would have to be expelled — opposition groups would be quashed because you have to keep power.” [emphasis mine]

Do those words and their racial sentiments remind you of anything?

The worse part of this story is that these sentiments are now mainstream on college campuses across American, because these words can be found on.

the official MEChA sites at Georgetown University, the University of Texas, UCLA, University of Michigan, University of Colorado, University of Oregon, and many other colleges and universities around the country.

Whatever you might think of Donald Trump, his opponents are far worse, and should be opposed loudly, and aggressively. If we don’t we will be faced with an evil far worse than any imagined by most Americans today.

Student sues police for fine after refusing Breathalyzer

Good for her! A Michigan high school student who was fined when she refused to take a Breathalyzer test — even though she was only a passenger in the vehicle — has filed a federal lawsuit claiming her constitutional right to be free from unreasonable searches was violated.

The law violates Guthrie’s Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches, her Detroit lawyer told NBC News. “Her rights were violated when she was forced to submit to Breathalyzer to prove her innocence,” attorney Mike Rataj said. “That is not how the criminal justice system works. This is a girl who has never been in trouble before and has no criminal history.”

It can be argued that a driver has made a deal with the state, which provides roads and regulates their safe use, and must submit. She however was merely a passenger, and thus any search of her body really does require a warrant, as per the Bill of Rights. I hope she wins.

Masten unveils two new reusable suborbital rockets

The competition heats up: Masten Space Systems has unveiled two new small reusable suborbital rockets, designed to be used for short research flights.

The new unmanned rockets can take off and land vertically, can be reused in a short amount of time, and and hover in mid-air. The approximately 15-foot rockets are a lot smaller than the reusable rockets that Blue Origin and SpaceX are launching, landing, and (in Blue Origin’s case) already reusing. They can’t travel as high or carry nearly as heavy of a payload, but they could prove to be useful for gathering science data in suborbital space.

The link has a short video showing the rockets in operation. Very impressive, even if small.

Proton launch delayed 24 hours

Due to an electrical ground system issue, Russia has delayed by one day the launch of an upgraded Proton rocket, from today to tomorrow.

I suspect that the recent tough response by Putin’s government to the one day delay of the first launch at Vostochny, including the firing of one manager, has helped focus the minds in Kazakhstan.

On a side note, below the fold is a nice short video showing this Proton rocket’s journey to the launchpad earlier this week. Hat tip to t-dub for sending me the link. It provides some very nice views of the rocket, which is definitely a marvel of big engineering.
» Read more

Four new names proposed for periodic table

Scientists in Russia, Japan, and the United States have proposed four new names for the elements they helped discover.

The periodic table will soon have four new names added to its lower right-hand corner. Element 113 should be named nihonium (Nh); element 115 moscovium (Mv); element 117 tennessine (Tc) and element 118 oganesson (Og), according to proposals outlined on 8 June by chemistry’s governing body, the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC).

The laboratories who were credited with the discovery of the elements – in Russia, the United States and Japan – got to propose the names under the constraint that elements can only be named after one of their chemical or physical properties, a mythological concept, a mineral, a place or country, or a scientist.

The last choice, oganesson, is only the second element named after a living person. It will one of a more than a dozen elements named after individuals, overall.

The post originally said that ogranesson was only the second named after a person. My readers noted that many elements had been named for people, which implied the article was wrong. In truth, I was wrong. The article was more specific and correct, noting that this was only the second element to be named for a living person, as the editor of Nature wrote to explain. I have thus corrected the post, and noted my error here.

Boeing begins assembling second Starliner manned capsule

The competition heats up: With the arrival of the major capsule components to Boeing’s Florida facility the company has begun assembly of its second Starliner manned capsule.

Following closely behind the joining of the two major hull components for the Structural Test Article (STA) of the CST-100 Starliner, Boeing and NASA are marking the arrival of the upper dome, one half of the Starliner pressure vessel, for the second Starliner module. The three components will undergo separate outfitting operations in the Commercial Crew and Cargo Processing Facility (C3PF) where wiring lines, avionics and other systems will be installed and tested before the pieces are connected to form a complete Starliner.

This second Starliner module is known to Boeing as Spacecraft 1. Once completed inside C3PF, Starliner Spacecraft 1 will be outfitted with electrical and fluid systems before engineers will attach the outer thermal protection shielding and the base heat shield that will eventually protect crewmembers during re-entry. Starliner Spacecraft 1 will be used in the pad abort test to validate that the launch abort system will be able to lift astronauts away from danger in the event of an emergency during launch.

The article provides good detail about the upcoming Starliner test schedule.

Elon Musk sends a tweet and the world listens

The competition heats up: Yesterday Elon Musk sent out a tweet that simply repeated something his company has been saying now for several months — but with one slight additional detail — and the press went gaga.

What Musk said was that SpaceX hopes to reuse one of its used Falcon 9 first stages by September or October. Previously they had merely said they were aiming to do it before the end of the year. Since SES has offered one of its satellites for the job, and since it has had for months two such satellites scheduled for launch by SpaceX in September and October, this announcement by Musk is not really much of a surprise. Yet, the tweet was enough for all of the following mainstream news sources to gin up news-breaking headlines:

I am not really complaining. What I am really noting is how serious the world now takes what Musk and SpaceX are doing. They say they plan to do something new and revolutionary, and people sit up and take notice. And the reasons are twofold. First, everything they have said they were going to do, they have done. Musk’s announcement has to be taken seriously. Second, Musk owns SpaceX, and does not really need anyone’s permission to do this. He isn’t in a negotiation with numerous other players, as has been the case with NASA and its projects for the past half century. We know that if he wants to try something, the only things that could stop him are lack of capital and lack of good engineering, neither of which are an obstacle in this case.

So, be prepared for the first relaunch of a rocket’s first stage sometime this fall. And don’t be surprised if that isn’t the only new thing SpaceX accomplishes at the time.

RINO Ellmers loses in North Carolina

Despite an endorsement from Donald Trump, Representative Renee Ellmers (R-North Carolina), who had been elected as a tea party conservative but became a very moderate Republican with strong allies in the Democratic Party once in power, has been soundly defeated in her primary today.

The Republican who replaces her is a moderate conservative. Moreover, he apparently has been more honest about his positions.

In related news, the conservative with ties to the House Freedom Caucus that John Boehner opposed has won the special election for Boehner’s House seat.

We must remember and continually repeat Milton Friedman’s words, and make them happen:

I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing.

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