This week in leftist fascism

11:06 am

It is only a week since my last report on leftist fascism and bigotry. Yet, in that short week the number of new examples of violence, intolerance, bigotry, and hate coming from liberal and leftwing activists is almost more than I can keep up with. Below is a small sampling, all from the period from March 6 to March 12:

This week’s stories highlight three themes that clearly dominate today’s leftist activist movement of outrage. First, there is the use of violence and mob action to attack things they don’t agree with or dislike, as illustrated in the first two stories. If you click on the link to the Jordan Peterson speech, you can see some video of these demonstrators. It is not pretty.

Videos of the protest, taken by protestors themselves, don’t paint the leftists in a good light. In the video below an exit door is barricaded as one protestor shouts, “Lock ’em in and burn it down!”

The second theme is that of bigotry and race hatred. This leftwing movement clearly hates Jews and whites, and is trying to institutionalize that bigotry so that it becomes acceptable to marginalize and oppress individuals of those groups, merely because of their race or religion. Consider for example the program instituted by Evanston public school district from the fourth link above:
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An even more spectacular movie of Jupiter’s storms

8:45 am

Cool image time! Yesterday I posted a short gif created by citizen scientist Gerald Eichstädt, using twelve Juno images, that showed some cloud changes over time. Today, I discovered that Eichstädt has created an even more spectacular movie, which I have embedded below the fold, based on images taken during Juno’s tenth close fly-by.

This movie shows the short-term dynamics Jupiter’s southern storms derived from raw JunoCam images of Juno’s Perijove-10 flyby on Dec 16, 2017.

You might also notice the effect of changing solar illumination on the appearance of the haze bands. JunoCam usually takes a time-lapse sequence of images during each perijove showing Jupiter’s polar regions. These images are taken from different perspectives along Juno’s trajectory. But it’s possible to reproject the JunoCam images to a common perspective. Displaying such a sequence rapidly reveals cloud motion in Jupiter’s storm systems.

This movie applies this technique. At the same time, it is changing the simulated perspective along Juno’s trajectory. The same short sequence of images is displayed in a loop, but due to the changing way of reprojecting the raw images, the shown surface area is changing more or less continuously.

Eichstädt warns that the blinking nature of the film might make it unsuitable for those with epilepsy. If this is not an issue for you, you should then definitely take a look.
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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 or any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit 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

Funding shortfall causes Planetary Resources to cut back

8:32 am

Because of their failure to close a round of investment fund-raising, Planetary Resources has been forced to cut back, including some layoffs and delaying several proposed later missions.

The delayed investment, though, forced Planetary Resources to lay off some of its employees. Lewicki declined to say how many were let go from a peak of 70 employees prior to the layoffs.

That setback also affects the schedule for future asteroid prospecting missions. In his conference talk, Lewicki showed a video of a planned mission where several small spacecraft, launched as secondary payloads, fly to near Earth asteroids to measure their water content. In past presentations featuring that video, company officials said the mission was scheduled for launch in 2020.

However, Lewicki didn’t state in this talk when that mission would launch, and acknowledged later the funding problems would delay it until some time after 2020. “The 2020 date was assuming we would get all the necessary financing on schedule last year,” he said.

To me, this article illustrates why Planetary Resources failed to obtain its investment funds. They pitch themselves as an asteroid mining company, but very little of what they are doing has anything to do with actual mining, or obtaining profits from that mining. At the moment, they remain an Earth observation company with capabilities not as good as a host of other similar companies expressly dedicated to this task.

I say this not because I am against asteroid mining, or think it cannot make a profit. I just think Planetary Resources has oversold itself, which can be deadly in the harsh competitive market.

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Rocket Lab unaffected by Swarm/FCC kerfuffle

8:25 am

Rocket Lab is proceeding with preparations for its next and first commercial Electron rocket launch, despite the removal of four Swarm nanosats because the FCC had cancelled its launch license.

Rocket Lab spokeswoman Morgan Bailey said the matter was between Swarm and the FCC, and had not caused any delay to preparations for Rocket Lab’s next launch, which is tipped to take place in April. “For us, it doesn’t really create any issues.”

Its Electron rockets are designed to carry a payload of up to 150 kilograms, meaning the tiny Swarm satellites would only be a small part of any cargo.

It appears the launch will occur in April, though an exact date and a description of its payload has not yet been released.

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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.

A Juno movie of cloud motions

9:12 am

Cool image time! Citizen scientist Gerald Eichstädt, using twelve Juno images, has compiled a short gif movie that shows a tiny amount of cloud movement.

I think this is one of the first times Juno has show us even a tiny bit of cloud evolution, information that is essential for gaining a true understanding of Jupiter’s slightly less than 2000 mile deep atmosphere. To see it, go to the link. As Eichstadt notes, “Individual images are noisy, but we see cloud motion.”

When you watch, zoom in on the upper right quarter. This is the area that the cloud motion is seen best.

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Highlight video reel of Falcon Heavy launch

8:30 am

One of the creators of a television science fiction series has produced a highlight video, set to David Bowie’s “Life on Mars?”, of the first Falcon Heavy launch that shows some new footage of the core stage watery crash.

I have embedded the video below the fold. To me, the best part is the footage of the spectators, including the many children, wonder-struck by the launch. Some of that footage is very reminiscent of footage taken during the Apollo Saturn 5 launches in the late 1960s.

To the next generation: We are going to the Moon — and beyond. And this time we are going to stay.
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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

Another age discrimination lawsuit against Dick’s

3:58 pm

Pushback: An 18-year-old Michigan man has filed an age discrimination lawsuit against Dick’s for refusing to sell him a firearm.

This is on top of the other lawsuit in Oregon earlier this week.

Personally, I usually support the freedom of stores to choose whom they will sell their products to, even though I know that this approach has generally not been the law of the land since the 1960s. However, what we have here is pushback by the right, using the same tactics that the left has been using to go after Christian bakeries, wedding dress companies, and wedding photographers. At this point in the culture wars, I think it is time to use these tactics against leftist intolerance, and use them hard and often. If it it somehow okay for leftists to destroy a Christian baker, photographer, or dressmaker simply because they do not wish to do something against their conscience, then maybe it is time to make some corporations feel some pain for joining sides with this intolerant left.

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FCC accuses satellite startup of launching satellites without a license

9:44 pm

Four tiny nanosats built by a California startup that were placed in orbit by India’s PSLV rocket in January now appear to have been launched without an FCC license.

Swarm believes its network could enable satellite communications for orders of magnitude less cost than existing options. It envisages the worldwide tracking of ships and cars, new agricultural technologies, and low cost connectivity for humanitarian efforts anywhere in the world. The four SpaceBees would be the first practical demonstration of Swarm’s prototype hardware and cutting-edge algorithms, swapping data with ground stations for up to eight years.

The only problem is, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had dismissed Swarm’s application for its experimental satellites a month earlier, on safety grounds. The FCC is responsible for regulating commercial satellites, including minimizing the chance of accidents in space. It feared that the four SpaceBees now orbiting the Earth would pose an unacceptable collision risk for other spacecraft.

If confirmed, this would be the first ever unauthorized launch of commercial satellites.

The FCC denied the license because the nanosats were so small there is a fear they could become a space junk hazard. The FCC has now vacated an approved license for launching four more Swarm satellites on a Rocket Lab Electron rocket in April because, “The FCC believes that Swarm launched and is operating its original small satellites, despite having been forbidden to do so.”

If this story is true, it illustrates some incredibly stupid decisions by the people running Swarm. The FCC concerns here appear quite reasonable, and the company’s decision to ignore them now means that they might have gambled their entire company away. Moreover, this does harm to Rocket Lab, which has lost a customer.

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Arianespace successfully places four communications satellites in orbit

9:28 pm

Using a Russian Soyuz rocket and launching from French Guiana Arianespace today successfully launched four communications satellites.

The leaders in the 2018 launch standings:

7 China
5 SpaceX
3 Japan
3 ULA
2 Russia
2 Arianespace

For the purpose of these rankings, I consider the Soyuz rocket, launched from French Guiana, an Arianespace vehicle, since it is marketed, assembled, and launched by that company.

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Martian craters go splat!

2:17 pm

Overview of the volcanic Tharsis Bulge on Mars

Cool image time! In continuing my exploration of this month’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) image release, I found two interesting images of small craters, one as part of that image release, the other found completely by accident.

The map on the right, taken from the MRO HiRISE archive page, shows the locations of these two images. Both are located in the lava plains that surround the giant volcano Pavonis Mons, the central volcano of the three volcanoes to the east of Olympus Mons. Previously, I have done posts focusing specifically on both Pavonis Mons and Arsia Mons. Not only is the geology of these gigantic volcanoes fascinating, there is evidence that ancient glacial ice lurks in lava tubes on their slopes, making them potentially prime real estate for future explorers.

The first image, labeled #1 on the image above, was taken in January 2018 to get a better look at a small crater on the surrounding lava plains, and was part of the MRO March image release. I have cropped it to post here, focusing on the crater itself.

My first reaction on seeing the image was, “Did this impact not go splat when it hit?”
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More big space rumors from China

9:17 am

Two stories today tout two different future big space projects coming out of China.

The first story describes a proposed Chinese X-37B concept, that unlike the X-37B would be launched from a airplane-like mother ship, like Orbital ATK’s Pegasus rocket. This would make the entire vehicle reusable. I would not book passage, however. This is concept stuff, and possibly being touted by the designers to lobby for funding.

The second story is more real, outlining the design work being done right now for a second generation Chinese manned capsule to replace its Shenzhou spacecraft. It appears they want something with greater capacity and more reusability, and also with the robustness to return from lunar missions.

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Vector to launch two cubesats from Alaska later this year

9:06 am

Vector yesterday announced that it plans to complete its first orbital launch from Alaska later this year, placing two commercial cubesats in orbit.

Their original plans had been to do five suborbital test flights, each pushing closer to orbital, with the last possibly reaching orbit. They’ve so far completed two of these five launches. Now it appears they are bypassing the last three test launches and are going straight to orbit on their next launch, and are pitching it as an operational commercial flight. I hope they have their engineering together. I also wonder if it might be wiser to do what Rocket Lab did, which is to tout its first orbital attempts as tests, and only tests, to lower expectations. That made them look good when the second test reached orbit successfully.

The change of plans might also be because Vector is feeling the competition pressure from Rocket Lab and the numerous other smallsat rocket companies that appear to be coming out of the woodwork. They need to get operational to put themselves in the forefront of this new launch industry.

Once again, I hope they have their engineering together. It would be a shame to screw up merely because they pushed things too much, when they right now are ahead of most other smallsat rocket companies.

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Trump plugs private space at cabinet meeting

8:55 am

At the beginning of a cabinet meeting yesterday Trump spent some time talking about the recent successes in commercial space.

Three quotes of interest:

  • “Rich guys, they love rocket ships. And that’s good. Better than us paying for them.”
  • “I notice the prices of the last one they sent. It cost $80 million. If the government did it the same thing would have cost probably 40-50 times that amount of money. I mean literally. … I’m so used to hearing different numbers from NASA.”
  • We’re really at the forefront, nobody is doing what we’re doing. I don’t know if you saw, with Elon, the [Falcon Heavy] rocket boosters where they’re coming back down. To me that was more amazing than watching the rocket go up. ‘Cause I’ve never seen that before. Nobody has seen that before…. They landed so beautifully.

Not unusually, Trump gets some details wrong but understands the essentials, much to the terror of the big space contractors of SLS (Boeing) and Orion (Lockheed Martin). SpaceX will charge $90 million for the launch of a reused Falcon Heavy (using three reused first stages). Estimates for the cost of a single SLS launch are difficult to estimate. In Capitalism in Space I had estimated the project’s overall cost, based on Congressional appropriations, to be about $25 billion come its first manned flight, but that cost is likely going up because the first flight will be delayed. Trump’s numbers estimate a cost of about $4 billion for a single launch, which is a reasonable number considering SLS is not expected to launch more than once a year, and SLS’s annual appropriations, about $3 billion, which will not change once it is operational.

In other words, SLS is an overpriced rip-off, especially now that we have a cost-effective alternative.

Yesterday there were two op-eds warning everyone of the dangers of giving government money to SpaceX.

The first worries that Musk is a “master manipulator” and the king of “crony capitalism” and that we shouldn’t be blinded by this single Falcon Heavy success. Others, like ULA, are better companies to depend on. The second warns that the government mustn’t become so blinded by SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy launch that it decides to invest money in the company.

Both op-eds are laughable. Compared to the crony capitalism of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, which have sucked almost $50 billion from the taxpayers for SLS/Orion while producing no flights, Elon Musk is a piker. And no one has ever suggested investing in SpaceX, like a venture capitalist. The Trump administration has merely proposed buying its rockets to launch future deep space missions, in order to save the taxpayers a lot of money.

There is real fear and terror in the bowels of big space and in the swamp in Washington. Elon Musk and the Falcon Heavy have put it there. Increasingly, it is becoming plainly obvious that SLS is a big over-priced boondoggle that we cannot afford, and Trump’s comments yesterday indicate that this fact is finally beginning to be politically acceptable.

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Trump to meet with North Korean leader

11:27 pm

President Trump has accepted an offer by North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong-Un to meet face-to-face sometime in the next few months to discuss that nation’s nuclear weaponry.

The historic meeting was brokered by the South Korean government, which delivered the invitation to the White House and divulged the details outside the West Wing. “He expressed his eagerness to meet President Trump as soon as possible,” South Korean National Security Director Chung Eui-yong said of Kim. “President Trump appreciated the briefing and said he would meet Kim Jong-Un by May to achieve permanent denuclearization.”

According to Chung, the North also agreed to suspend nuclear and missile tests during such future talks — a longstanding US demand.

There is progress here, but everyone should not assume much will come of this. The last time an American president, Bill Clinton, made a deal with North Korea, it was supposed to have ended North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. That certainly didn’t work, and Trump could be double-crossed just as easily.

Nonetheless, Trump appears to be having more success forcing North Korea to the table than anyone in decades.

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University of Chicago to cease support of Yerkes in October 2018

2:26 pm

The University of Chicago announced today that it will cease all support of the Yerkes Observatory, home of the world’s largest refractive telescope, in October 2018.

The University of Chicago has announced plans to wind down its activities at Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wis., over the next six months and to formally cease on-site operations by Oct. 1, 2018.

The upcoming summer season will therefore be the final season of University activities at Yerkes. The University is announcing the plans well in advance in order to engage with Yerkes staff and nearby communities, including the village of Williams Bay, in considering long-term plans for the property.

The telescope is no longer useful for scientific research, but it is historically important, and as the press release admits, “has continued to make important contributions through its education and outreach programs.” And while I can understand their decision, they sure didn’t leave the staff at Yerkes much time to find new backers. When the National Science Foundation decided it was dropping support for its telescopes at Kitt Peak, it gave them literally several years to round up new support.

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Another smallsat rocket company enters the market

8:57 am

Capitalism in space: A new Australian smallsat rocket company, Gilmour Space Technologies, has successfully test fired a new hybrid rocket engine.

This orbital-class rocket engine, developed by Australia and Singapore-based Gilmour Space Technologies (www.gspacetech.com), has successfully achieved 70,000 newtons (70 kilonewtons or 15,700 pounds-force) of thrust in what could be the world’s largest successful test fire of a single-port hybrid rocket engine. “These results prove that we have the core technology needed to enable low-cost small satellite launches to space,” said its CEO & Founder, Adam Gilmour. The company’s mission: to carry payloads weighing up to 400 kg to low earth orbit (LEO) from 2020.

Unlike the vast majority of commercial rockets today, which use either solid- or liquid-fuelled engines, Gilmour Space is pioneering new hybrid-engine rockets that combine a liquid oxidiser with a proprietary multi-material 3D printed solid fuel. Indeed, the Queensland-based company first made headlines in 2016 when it successfully test launched a subscale rocket to an altitude of 5km using its 3D printed rocket fuel.

The static fire test, which can be seen in a video at the link, was very short, less than 10 seconds. Since one of the big problems of hybrid engines has been to get them to fire smoothly and precisely for long periods of time, I remain skeptical. They might have some good engineering here, but I don’t yet see the makings of a rocket.

Hat tip Doug Messier of Parabolic Arc.

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A detailed look at Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket

8:50 am

Link here. The article provides some details about the first two launches, but its most interesting section discusses the rocket’s Curie kick stage.

“We kind of made a philosophical decision in that we weren’t going to do multiple burns on the second stage because what that does is it puts the second stage in orbit, in high orbit,” said Mr. Beck. “What we’re trying to do here is launch frequently, and the way that we’ve designed our trajectories is that the second stage will always go into a transfer orbit, which is a nice elliptical orbit, where it deorbits very quickly, and then we use the kick stage to do any orbit raising or circularization.”

This design was specifically chosen so that Rocket Lab would not put large second stages into orbit and would fly responsibly by deorbiting Electron’s second stage quickly so as not to contribute significantly to the space debris environment. “We build this infrastructure in orbit in a sustainable way, and leaving second stages in high orbits is not really conducive to that. So what it means is … we’re just putting a little Curie module up into orbit, and we also have deorbit capability on that, too.”

Moreover, the Curie kick-stage was a direct result of Rocket Lab talking to and listening to their customer base – who wanted to make sure that on ride share missions of Electron that all payloads were separate safely and not re-contact other small satellites launched/deployed on that same mission.

No word yet on when they will fly next, though it sounds as if there will be a number of launches this year, at an ever-increasing pace.

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Jupiter has a 1,900 mile deep atmosphere

5:13 pm

The uncertainty of science: New results from Juno reveal that the jet-stream-type bands visible on the surface extend down to 1,900 miles, deeper than expected. Below that,

…the planet rotates nearly as a rigid body.”This is really an amazing result, and future measurements by Juno will help us understand how the transition works between the weather layer and the rigid body below,” said Tristan Guillot, a Juno co-investigator from the Université Côte d’Azur, Nice, France, and lead author of the paper on Jupiter’s deep interior. “Juno’s discovery has implications for other worlds in our solar system and beyond. Our results imply that the outer differentially-rotating region should be at least three times deeper in Saturn and shallower in massive giant planets and brown dwarf stars.”

Scientists had not expected the atmosphere go that deep.

Other results show that that the gas giant’s complex polar regions are surprising as well.

Its north pole is dominated by a central cyclone surrounded by eight circumpolar cyclones with diameters ranging from 2,500 to 2,900 miles (4,000 to 4,600 kilometers) across. Jupiter’s south pole also contains a central cyclone, but it is surrounded by five cyclones with diameters ranging from 3,500 to 4,300 miles (5,600 to 7,000 kilometers) in diameter. Almost all the polar cyclones, at both poles, are so densely packed that their spiral arms come in contact with adjacent cyclones. However, as tightly spaced as the cyclones are, they have remained distinct, with individual morphologies over the seven months of observations detailed in the paper.

“The question is, why do they not merge?” said Adriani. “We know with Cassini data that Saturn has a single cyclonic vortex at each pole. We are beginning to realize that not all gas giants are created equal.”

I am always baffled when scientists are surprised at the infinite variety of the universe. It is absurd to assume Jupiter and Saturn would be alike, especially considering the history of solar system exploration since the dawn of the space age. Since the first probe got a close look at the Moon, every single new object observed has been completely different from every other previously observed object. Every object has been unique. None have been the same.

Jupiter should be no different. And I guarantee that the next fifty gas giants we finally get a close look at out there among the stars will be as different from each other as they are from Jupiter. It is going to take a lot of exploration for us to finally get a handle on the overall patterns of planetary formation.

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Justice Department to give House all “Fast & Furious” documents

4:00 pm

Chickens coming home to roost? The Trump Justice Department has agreed to provide the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee all the “Fast & Furious” documents that the Obama administration had refused to provided.

In June 2012, the House of Representatives voted to hold then-Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt for refusing to turn over certain documents related to the botched sting, which he dismissed as “politically motivated.” The House also approved a civil measure against the attorney general, which allowed the House Oversight Committee to eventually file a lawsuit against Holder over his failure to produce the subpoenaed documents. That lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Washington in August 2012.

Now, it appears that six-year long court battle is coming to an end. “The Department of Justice under my watch is committed to transparency and the rule of law. This settlement agreement is an important step to make sure that the public finally receives all the facts related to Operation Fast and Furious,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement Wednesday.

Why does the House want these documents? And why did Eric Holder stonewall them?

Operation Fast and Furious took place from late 2009 to early 2011 when the Phoenix Field division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives allowed the illegal gun sales of nearly 2,000 firearms with the intent to track the sellers and buyers, believed to be part of Mexican drug cartels.

Two of the weapons linked to the operation were later recovered near the scene of a December 2010 shootout where U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed. This, plus whistleblowing, caused the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to open investigations into the botched operation. [emphasis mine]

This was the first Obama scandal, and at any other time in our history, would have brought him down. Imagine, an administration is purposely allowing illegal guns sales, in large numbers, and then failing to properly track those illegal guns as they move into Mexico to be used by the drug cartels.

In our time, however, the partisan mainstream press is only interested in stories that make Democrats look good, or Republicans look bad. It is shameful, and disgusts me, as a journalist.

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Tiangong-1 reentry update: April 3rd, give or take a week

3:36 pm

Tiangong-1 landing map

Link here. Right now the de-orbit window of the dead Chinese space station suggests it will come down to Earth sometime around April 3, plus or minus a week. As we get closer this will get refined somewhat, but the uncertainties are always going to be great, until the actual moment it hits the atmosphere.

The map on the right, reduced to post here, comes from the link and was produced by the Aerospace Corporation and indicates the relative possibilities of debris falling in a given region.

Yellow indicates locations that have a higher probability while green indicates areas of lower probability. Blue areas have zero probability of debris reentry since Tiangong-1 does not fly over these areas (north of 42.7° N latitude or south of 42.7° S latitude). These zero probability areas constitute about a third of the total Earth’s surface area.

Depending on orbit, and whether the station is heading north or south in its orbital inclination, the odds of it crashing in populated areas changes significantly. If it is moving north the odds of coming down in the populated mid-latitudes of the northern hemisphere go up considerably. Of course, it could just as well come down in the northern mid-latitudes above the Pacific.

Regardless, the risks remain tiny, no matter what. Tiangong-1 is a small module, just large enough for some of it to survive reentry.

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North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un meets with South Korean delegation

9:41 am

In a sign that he is backing off his previous and long maintained belligerent stance, North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un met with a South Korean delegation on March 5.

The above link is a press release by a North Korean news source, so it is hardly informative. This Reuters story has some information from the South Korean delegation:

Next month, North Korea and South Korea will have the first meeting between their leaders since 2007 at the border village of Panmunjom, said Chung Eui-yong, head of the South Korean delegation. “North Korea made clear its willingness to denuclearize the Korean peninsula and the fact there is no reason for it to have a nuclear program if military threats against the North are resolved and its regime is secure,” Chung told a media briefing.

Chung cited North Korea as saying it would not carry out nuclear or missile tests while talks with the international community were under way. North Korea has not carried out any such tests since last November. North Korea also is willing to discuss normalizing ties with the United States, Chung said.

This sudden willingness to talk, after more than a decade of war talk, strongly suggests that Trump’s hardline position, which subsequently forced China and others to follow, has had an effect.

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Leftist fascism at the start of 2018

10:09 am

Beginning in October 2017, I began to do weekly posts listing the free speech atrocities that were occurring on American campuses. I finished the year with a summary which listed all the colleges where such tyranny appeared to be supported and encouraged. As I noted,

[A]lmost every college shown marks a moment when leftist members of an administration, facility, or student body acted to squelch the free speech rights of a conservative. Nor do I think this is because of bias on my part. From the beginning I have recognized the possibility that I might unfairly only report oppressive incidents committed by the left, and have tried to avoid that. Unfortunately, despite my sincere effort to report incidents where conservatives tried to silence liberals, during the whole year I only came across one event where a conservative college acted to shut down a dissenting liberal speaker. I admit that I might have missed a few, but even if I did I do not think this would change the overall pattern. 2017 was a year in which the left decided that it was acceptable to act like fascist thugs and do whatever they could to shut down the free speech of opposing points of view.

I have been lax posting these weekly reports since the beginning of 2018, and this post is my attempt to catch up. Interesting, I got inspired to do this by a story that isn’t directly related to academic fascism at all: Christian Bridal Shop Closes Down Over Fear of LGBT Law After Facing Death Threats.

The local government there is about to pass an ordinance that will make it illegal for these dressmakers to both practice their religion while also making wedding dresses. Rather than violate their conscience, they are shutting down. Worse however was the level of hate directed at them simply because they do not support same-sex marriage:

Because of the store’s refusal to sell dresses for same-sex weddings, Boucher and her family have faced a variety of different threats through social media, email and telephone since 2014. People have not only threatened to burn down their place of business but have also threatened to shoot them in the head. Last summer, the shop closed down temporarily to the public and was only accepting appointments because the harassment got so bad.

Much like the early days of Christianity in the Roman empire, faithful Christians are now finding that they must go underground to practice their faith in America.

It is for this reason that the title of this post uses the term “leftist fascism,” not “academic fascism.” Even though most of the events where jack-booted thugs have attacked innocent people, merely for expressing their freedom of speech, have occurred on college campuses, I realize that this problem has spread beyond the campus. We are now faced with a fascist movement in the U.S., linked to the Democratic Party, that is filled with hate for anyone who disagrees with it, and whose goal is to destroy all dissenters.

If you doubt me, then I dare you to read some of the following stories:
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Twenty-year-old sues Dick’s for refusing to sell him gun

9:59 am

Pushback: A twenty-year-old in Oregon has sued Dick’s Sporting Goods for refusing to sell him a rifle, based on his age.

The plaintiff, Tyler Watson, claims he faced “Unlawful Age Discrimination.” Watson attempted to buy the rifle “on or about February 24” at a Medford, Oregon, Field and Stream store. (Field and Stream is subsidiary of Dick’s.) Watson’s suit, filed in the Circuit Court of Oregon for the County of Jackson, says a store employee refused the purchase and indicated, “He would not sell [Watson] any firearm, including rifles and shotguns, or ammunition for a firearm, because [Watson] is under 21 years old.”

The employee referenced Dick’s recent policy shift, disallowing firearm sales to anyone under 21, and cited the policy as the reason for denying the sale.

Watson’s suit alleges that Dick’s policy violates Oregon law against age-based discrimination for people 18 years and older in places of public accommodations. State law includes prohibitions against discrimination in stores that are open to the general public.

Watson has also sued Walmart, for the same reasons.

The irony here is that Oregon, a decidedly liberal state, was very quick to pass age discrimination laws in the past, a traditional tactic of the left to create groups of victims it can utilize politically in order to maintain its power. Watson here is now using those laws against them.

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ESA successfully tests an air-breathing ion thruster

8:01 am

Engineers from the European Space Agency (ESA) and an Italian company have successfully tested a prototype of an ion engine that would obtain its fuel from the thin atmosphere available in low Earth orbit, thus allowing it to operate practically indefinitely.

From the press release:

Replacing onboard propellant with atmospheric molecules would create a new class of satellites able to operate in very low orbits for long periods. Air-breathing electric thrusters could also be used at the outer fringes of atmospheres of other planets, drawing on the carbon dioxide of Mars, for instance. “This project began with a novel design to scoop up air molecules as propellant from the top of Earth’s atmosphere at around 200 km altitude with a typical speed of 7.8 km/s,” explains ESA’s Louis Walpot.

Think about it. You supply your planetary probe one or more of these engines, and once it reaches orbit around its target it has an unlimited fuel supply to do research just about forever. More important, such technology when further refined is going to enhance human exploration as well. For example, rather than use the atmosphere at it arrives, later designs could simply dive into the atmosphere to get the spaceship’s tank refilled. Such engines would make spacecraft free from the tether of Earth.

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