Squiggles on Mars

9:17 am

Squiggles on Mars

Cool image time! The image on the right, reduced and cropped to post here, shows a sand dune slope with numerous squiggly troughs that end either in a small pit or slowly fade away. At first glance one things the troughs were caused by a boulder rolling downhill, but there are no boulders at the base of the slope, and a rolling boulder wouldn’t create so many similar squiggles like this.

The explanation is that the boulders are made of carbon dioxide ice.

Just like on Earth, high-latitude regions on Mars are covered with frost in the winter. However, the winter frost on Mars is made of carbon dioxide ice (dry ice) instead of water ice. We believe linear gullies are the result of this dry ice breaking apart into blocks, which then slide or roll down warmer sandy slopes, sublimating and carving as they go.

The linear gullies exhibit exceptional sinuosity (the squiggle pattern) and we believe this to be the result of repeated movement of dry ice blocks in the same path, possibly in combination with different hardness or flow resistance of the sand within the dune slopes.

For a really entertaining explanation of this process, take a look at the embedded video below the fold.
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Lockheed Martin earnings down due to its commercial space divisions

9:00 am

Capitalism in space: Lockheed Martin’s third quarter earnings were down by one percent, partly due to reduced earnings in its commercial space divisions.

While other factors contributed to the drop in earnings, this quote highlights an important detail about the competition in the launch industry:

Reduced profits from Centennial-based rocketmaker United Launch Alliance caused some of LMSS’ decline, the company said. ULA is a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing Co. LMSS’ share of ULA’s launch-business profits dropped by $20 million to $45 million in the third quarter, the company said.

ULA’s profits dropped by one-third, which suggests that they are continuing to lose business to SpaceX because of its lower launch prices.

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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

Russia to up ISS crew back to three

8:55 am

In order to integrate the new Nauka module, expected to launch in 2019, the Russians plan to increase their crew size on ISS back to three in late 2018.

[L]ong before the Nauka’s arrival, the Russian crew members aboard the ISS will have their hands full with various chores preceding the docking of the 20-ton spacecraft, which will increase the size and mass of the Russian Segment by almost a third. Moreover, once the module is in place, Russian cosmonauts are expected to labor into the 2020 to fully plug all the systems of the new room into their home in orbit. The total time required to integrate Nauka is expected to reach 2,000 work hours, including 11 spacewalks!

The preparations for the addition of the long-awaited module were scheduled to begin less than a year from now on Sept. 8, 2018, with the launch of the three members of Expedition 57 crew aboard the Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft. The launch will mark the first time since October 2016 that a Soyuz will lift more than one Russian cosmonaut.

Nauka is more than a decade behind schedule, which puts it in the same league as SLS and Orion. But then, Nauka, like SLS and Orion, is a government-built project, so no one should be surprised that it has taken so long. The goal isn’t the exploration of space. The goal is to create jobs, even if they don’t accomplish anything for decades.

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NanoRacks successfully deploys its largest commercial smallsat from ISS

9:24 pm

Capitalism in space: NanoRacks today successfully deployed its largest commercial smallsat yet from ISS.

NanoRacks Kaber Deployment Program allows for a larger EXPRESS class of satellites to be deployed from the International Space Station, up to 100 kilograms. NanoRacks deploys these Kaber-class satellites currently through the Japanese Experiment Module Airlock, and will shift deployments to the NanoRacks Airlock Module when the Company’s commercial Airlock becomes operational (planned for 2019).

The key here is that NanoRacks is making money providing launch services to smallsats in partnership with ISS and others. They act as the go-between between the smallsat companies and the NASA bureaucracy, thus earning money by simplifying NASA’s generally Byzantine approval and launch process for private satellite companies.

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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.

Since 2016 almost a 1000 published papers have challenged the theory of human-caused climate change

9:02 am

Link here. What the author does is quote from numerous scientific papers where they either note the lack of evidence that human activity has caused the recent warming of the climate since the 1600s, or note other natural phenomenon where the evidence of influence is far stronger. Here’s one example:

Rosenblum and Eisenman, 2017

Observations indicate that the Arctic sea ice cover is rapidly retreating while the Antarctic sea ice cover is steadily expanding. State-of-the-art climate models, by contrast, typically simulate a moderate decrease in both the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice covers.

Here’s another, with a link to the actual peer-reviewed published paper:

Blaauw, 2017 [pdf]

This paper demonstrates that global warming can be explained without recourse to the greenhouse theory

He quotes many more, and has found 900 papers since 2016 that challenge the accepted-wisdoms pushed by global-warming theories.

The point here is not to say the climate doesn’t change, or that increased CO2 is not a concern, but to point out that the science is not settled, and anyone who makes that claim is either ignorant, or lying.

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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

Vector’s third suborbital test flight set for January 2018

8:27 am

Capitalism in space: The third suborbital test flight of Vector’s Vector-R rocket has been scheduled for January 2018 in Mohave.

Vector has, to date, performed two test flights of the Vector, both only to very low altitudes. The first took place in May in California’s Mojave Desert and the second in August at the future site of Spaceport Camden on Georgia’s Atlantic coast. A third test, [company head Jim] Cantrell said, is planned for January, back in the Mojave Desert.

He raised a note of caution about that test. “We have a high chance of planting that one in the desert, because it’s using thrust vector control. We’re taking the training wheels off,” he said.

The article is mostly about Vector’s deal to launch from Wallops Island, which I noted last week. Much of that however is public relations that is far from reality. The important thing now is for Vector to finish its test program and prove its rocket can reach orbit.

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Timeline of Russian uranium deal and Clinton donations

2:48 pm

Link here. The timeline not only puts the quid pro quo nature of the Russian uranium deal in context, it helps clarify the players and the different parts they played. It appears this deal not only involved giving Russia control of 20 percent of American uranium, that control included the corrupt Kazakhstan government.

All told, the Clintons and the Clinton Foundation appears to have received in the range of $55 million for their help in making the deal happen, all from players who benefited financially from the deal.

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Engineers develop new technique to resume drill use on Curiosity

12:27 pm

Engineers have successfully tested a new drill procedure on a duplicate rover on Earth that bypasses the problem in Curiosity’s drill.

The problem with the drill has been its feed mechanism, which pushes the drill bit downward as it drills its hole. The tests with the duplicate rover on Earth have instead had the drill bit fully extended and used the robot arm itself to push downward. It worked, but the problem on Mars is holding the drill bit perfectly straight and not slipping sideways. They are now doing a test with Curiosity to address this.

Curiosity touched its drill to the ground Oct. 17 for the first time in 10 months. It pressed the drill bit downward, and then applied smaller sideways forces while taking measurements with a force sensor. “This is the first time we’ve ever placed the drill bit directly on a Martian rock without stabilizers,” said JPL’s Douglas Klein, chief engineer for the mission’s return-to-drilling development. “The test is to gain better understanding of how the force/torque sensor on the arm provides information about side forces.”

This sensor gives the arm a sense of touch about how hard it is pressing down or sideways. Avoiding too much side force in drilling into a rock and extracting the bit from the rock is crucial to avoid having the bit get stuck in the rock.

Stay tuned for a Mars rover update, coming shortly!

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WHO fakes data to claim weedkiller causes cancer

8:43 am

Par for the course: IARC, the agency of the World Health Organization (WHO) that focuses on cancer research, has apparently faked data so that it could make the claim — in opposition to every other published paper in the world — that a commonly used weedkiller causes cancer.

This detail about the man in charge might explain what happened:

The chairman of the IARC sub-group tasked with reviewing evidence of glyphosate’s effect on laboratory animals was Charles Jameson, an American toxicologist. In testimony as part of personal-injury lawsuits against Monsanto in the United States, Jameson told lawyers for Monsanto he did not know when, why or by whom the edits had been made.

Monsanto is facing multiple legal claims in the U.S. from plaintiffs who allege glyphosate gave them or their loved ones cancer. Jameson is an expert witness for the plaintiffs. He did not respond to questions for this article. [emphasis mine]

If you want to read the whole ugly story, go to the second link above. This report cites numerous examples where IARC clearly fudged their reports to hide the fact that their conclusions were consistently debunked by other research.

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The glory of Cassini’s Saturn

8:31 am

The glory of Saturn

Cool image time! The image on the right, reduced in resolution to post here, was taken by Cassini on August 17, 2017, one month before the spacecraft dived into Saturn to end its mission.

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 19 degrees above the ringplane. The image was taken in green light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Aug. 12, 2017. Pandora was brightened by a factor of 2 to increase its visibility.

The view was obtained at a distance to Saturn of approximately 581,000 miles (935,000 kilometers) from Saturn. Image scale is 35 miles (56 kilometers) per pixel. The distance to Pandora was 691,000 miles (1.1 million kilometers) for a scale of 41 miles (66 kilometers) per pixel.

The moon Pandora can be seen in the full resolution image just beyond the outermost ring near the top of the screen.

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SpaceX barge damaged from fire after 1st stage landing

8:22 am

The drone barge used by SpaceX to successfully land a 1st stage during its October 11 launch was subsequently damaged by a fire on board during the return to port.

The exact series of events is unclear, but it is understood the booster leaked some of its residue RP-1 fuel, which flowed along the deck of the ASDS and pooled near the containers at the aft of the drone ship.

The booster then continued post-landing operations, designed to safe the booster ahead of crews boarding the ship to complete the safing process ahead of the trip back to port. At some point shortly after landing there was an ignition of the pooled RP-1, likely via the purging of the Triethylaluminum-Triethylborane (TEA-TEB) that is used as the first stage ignitor. This has to be purged as part of the safing procedures for allowing crew near the rocket. Fire hoses – staged on the deck of the ship – quickly doused the fire. However, the garage containing the robot – nicknamed “Roomba” or “OctaGrabber” (among other names) – was caught in the fire and damaged.

This was confirmed by the lack of the robot in view under the rocket during the ASDS’ return to Port.

It appears they are repairing the damages and that future barge landings will not be affected.

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Iranian scientist sentenced to death

8:13 am

An Iranian judge has sentenced an Iranian scientist to execution in 20 days.

The scientist, who appears to have mostly worked in Sweden, was convicted of spying for Israel. He in turn says he was railroaded because he refused to spy on his colleagues for the Iranian intelligence service.

What baffles me here is that he was arrested when returned to Iran for a short visit. He must have known that going back was going to put him in great risk. Why do it?

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Could North Korea use its missiles to fill orbital space with debris?

7:52 pm

Link here. While most of the discussion about the missile threat from North Korea has focused on the possibility of it detonating a nuclear bomb high enough to cause an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that would disable most electronic equipment, this article notes that they could much more easily do almost as much harm by simply using their ballistic missiles to fill low-Earth-orbit (LEO) space with space junk, thus disabling much of the world’s military surveillance and reconnaissance satellites.

I am not sure how much of a threat this might be, but I find the article somewhat worrisome because it proposes something that seems quite reasonable and doable, with the technology that North Korea appears to have, right this minute.

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NASA still hasn’t established a baseline cost for SLS’s future missions

5:01 pm

Despite being told to do so in an 2014 GAO report, NASA has still not developed a budget to determine what it would cost to use SLS for any future beyond-Earth-orbit missions.

Worse, NASA says it doesn’t have to do this.

The government report notes that it previously recommended to NASA and Congress that costs of the first (and subsequent) human missions be calculated and disclosed three years ago in 2014. Since then, the report says, a senior official at NASA’s Exploration Systems Development program, which manages the rocket and spacecraft programs, replied that NASA does not intend to establish a baseline cost for Exploration Mission 2 because it does not have to.

This response must have struck investigators with the General Accountability Office—Congress’ auditing service—as a bit in-your-face. Later in the report, the director of acquisition and sourcing management for the accountability office, Cristina Chaplain, notes that, “While later stages of the Mars mission are well in the future, getting to that point in time will require a funding commitment from the Congress and other stakeholders. Much of their willingness to make that commitment is likely to be based on the ability to assess the extent to which NASA has met prior goals within predicted cost and schedule targets.” [emphasis mine]

In other words, NASA expects Congress to give NASA and SLS a blank check, forever. Sadly, based on the behavior of Congress now and in the past two decades, NASA might very well have reasonable expectations here.

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Trump administration backs off plans to end or reduce ethanol policy

9:48 am

The swamp wins: Scott Pruitt, EPA head, has retreated from his plans to reduce or end the program that subsidizes and encourages the use of ethanol in automobile gasoline.

After heavy pressure from lawmakers and other stakeholders, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt on Thursday night sided with pro-ethanol lawmakers and said his agency will abandon many controversial changes to the nation’s ethanol mandate — prompting a top biofuels leader to claim that Mr. Pruitt apparently has had an “epiphany” over the past few days.

In a letter to seven key senators, Mr. Pruitt — who had been critical of ethanol during his time as Oklahoma attorney general — shot down several major concerns about looming adjustments to the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), the federal law that requires the blending of ethanol with gasoline.

The letter comes just days after Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican and perhaps the loudest pro-ethanol voice in Congress, threatened to hold up nominees for top-level EPA posts if Mr. Pruitt didn’t acquiesce to their demands on the RFS.

It is going to take many years to drain the swamp, since it presently holds great power and is willing to use it to maintain its corrupt control over taxpayer money.

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Today in fascist academia

9:06 am

As I noted last week, it has gotten tiresome, depressing, and repetitive to post numerous individual links of stories each day that highlight the oppressive culture that apparently permeates much of today’s academic community. I found that by doing these posts individually, I would not post every important story.

To solve this, I have decided to periodically post the stories in a bunch, and have so far found that I still have had to do it twice a week. Below is today’s list. Check each out. The pattern that disturbs me most is that while much of the intolerance is coming from the students, the administrations and faculty of most of these schools appear quite content to either appease, or support, that intolerance.

And then there is this story from the journal Science: Analysis of China’s one-child policy sparks uproar

A new study of China’s one-child policy is roiling demography, sparking calls for the field’s leading journal to withdraw the paper. The controversy has ignited a debate over scholarly values in a discipline that some say often prioritizes reducing population growth above all else.

It is definitely worthwhile reading this story. While I have serious doubts about the scientific rigorousness of the paper in question, I find it remarkable and disturbing that the first instinct of the scientists in this field who question the paper is to demand its retraction. In other words, rather than argue their doubts and questions publicly and let the chips fall where they may, they prefer to grind their boots into the author’s face, silencing him entirely.

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Vector signs deal to launch from Wallops

8:37 am

Capitalism in space: Vector has signed an agreement with the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island, Virginia to do commercial launches of its smallsat rocket there.

Vector Space Systems officials and Virginia Secretary of Transportation Aubrey Layne announced during a demonstration of the Vector-R launch vehicle at Launch Pad 0-B on Wallops Island that Vector has contracted to conduct three commercial orbital missions in the next two years from the Wallops spaceport, with an option for five additional launches.

Vector still needs to complete its test program, as its Vector-R rocket has not yet reached orbit.

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Wearing Mars and Moon spacesuit prototypes

6:01 pm

An evening pause: This video to me was interesting because it illustrated (though the reporter either does not realize it or is being kind by not mentioning it) how poorly designed both these suits are. They require a crew to put on something that would be impractical on either the Moon or Mars, and appears heavy and clumsy. For Mars especially a much lighter and more natural suit is going to be essential. This is not it, though I am sure it is a worthwhile first attempt.

Hat tip Edward Thelen.

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Background of Mueller’s lead investigator confirms it is a witch hunt

5:43 pm

Link here. The article provides some detailed information about the background of Robert Mueller’s chief investigator, Andrew Weissmann, that strongly illustrates the likelihood that Mueller’s investigation is the witch hunt.

Time after time, courts have reversed Weissmann’s most touted “victories” for his tactics. This is hardly the stuff of a hero in the law.

Weissmann, as deputy and later director of the Enron Task Force, destroyed the venerable accounting firm of Arthur Andersen LLP and its 85,000 jobs worldwide — only to be reversed several years later by a unanimous Supreme Court.

Next, Weissmann creatively criminalized a business transaction between Merrill Lynch and Enron. Four Merrill executives went to prison for as long as a year. Weissmann’s team made sure they did not even get bail pending their appeals, even though the charges Weissmann concocted, like those against Andersen, were literally unprecedented. Weissmann’s prosecution devastated the lives and families of the Merrill executives, causing enormous defense costs, unimaginable stress and torturous prison time. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the mass of the case.

Weissmann quietly resigned from the Enron Task Force just as the judge in the Enron Broadband prosecution began excoriating Weissmann’s team, and the press began catching on to Weissmann’s modus operandi.

Links are provided to every one of Weissmann’s previous cases above. I clicked on each, and confirmed that not only did he intimidate witnesses, each one of these major prosecutions was thrown out because of aggressive improprieties. Weissmann approach is to find a crime, and prosecute it, whether any real crime occurred or not.

I post once again below the fold the Congressional testimony of “Republican” Robert Mueller when he was head of the FBI and was being questioned about the investigation he was leading into the Obama administration’s use of the IRS to harass its political opponents. It illustrates forcefully how much a tool Mueller was, and is, for the Democratic Party.
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NASA instrument for European space telescope flawed and must be rebuilt

5:29 pm

The NASA instrument for Europe’s Euclid optical/near-infrared space telescope has been found defective and must be rebuilt, thus delaying the launch of the telescope by at least one year.

What interested me about this telescope is its goals and specifications:

Euclid is a two-ton space telescope selected by ESA in 2011 as a medium-class mission in its Cosmic Vision program of space science missions. The spacecraft features a 1.2-meter telescope with visible and near-infrared instruments to study dark energy and dark matter, which combined account for about 95 percent of the universe. Euclid will operate at the Earth-sun L-2 Lagrange point, 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, that is used by other infrared astronomy missions.

With a mirror about half the size of Hubble’s, this telescope will act as a partial replacement and back up for it. In fact, it will likely make numerous ground-breaking discoveries, as every optical telescope placed above the atmosphere has so far done.

Meanwhile, the article provided no information on the flaws, who built the flawed instrument, and who will pay for the delays its failure will cause.

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Blue Origin successfully completes first test of BE-4 rocket engine

5:22 pm

Capitalism in space: Blue Origin has successfully conducted the first static fire test of its BE-4 rocket engine.

The test was six seconds long. The company has not released any further details, other than to say it was a success. This not only puts them closer to building their New Glenn rocket, it increases the chances that ULA will choose this engine for its Vulcan rocket.

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