Behind The Black – Robert Zimmerman

Increase push to get Ryan to run for House Speaker

October 9, 2015 9:41 am Robert Zimmerman

The push to nominate Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) to run for the House Speaker position has apparently accelerated.

In all this, Ryan appears uninterested in running. My guess as to why is that he right now has a far more conservative reputation than he deserves, and becoming Speaker would reveal his moderate tendencies to everyone. He does not want this. At the same time, Ryan is more conservative than John Boehner, and would be an improvement.

Update: A Washington Post story today says that Ryan is reconsidering his opposition to running for Speaker.

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Next New Shepard test flight expected before December

October 9, 2015 9:21 am Robert Zimmerman

The competition heats up: Blue Origins has revealed that the next test flight of its suborbital New Shepard capsule and launch rocket will take place before the end of 2015.

They also noted that they will not be selling any tickets for suborbital flights for at least two more years, until they are satisfied that the test flights have proven the system. This is a far cry from other suborbital companies like Virgin Galactic and XCOR, who have made big promises to garner ticket sales, and have yet to deliver. Jeff Bezos’s company has instead decided to deliver first, and then sell tickets.

In the end, we shall see who wins the race to put the first tourists into space. What is certain in all this however is that Virgin Galactic has squandered the ten-year headstart it had when it started out in 2004.

In related news, Virgin Galactic says that construction of its second SpaceShipTwo ship is progressing well.

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3D image of Comet 67P/C-G

October 9, 2015 9:06 am Robert Zimmerman

Do you own red-blue 3-D glasses? Get them out and go to this link. Rosetta scientists have created a 3-D image of Comet 67P/C-G, including the jets of material shooting out from its surface.

[C]reating a 3d anaglyph of dynamic events like this is notoriously difficult: often the jets are too faint or their duration is too short to find two high-quality images taken several minutes apart that are suitable to pair together to create this type of view. However, the OSIRIS team got lucky with this particular event, capturing two images separated by about two-and-a-half minutes.

The image shows a bright, collimated jet embedded in a broader emission structure. The three dimensional perspective also reveals the conical shape of the jet and that the collimated feature is emitted towards the observer.

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Russian lunar mission delayed again

October 9, 2015 9:02 am Robert Zimmerman

The Russian Luna-Glob has been delayed again, partly due to embargoes imposed by the Ukraine war, and partly due to a lack of money.

The article notes that Russia’s participation in the European ExoMars project has left little resources for this lunar mission, causing delays. It also notes the possibility that the second mission in ExoMars, scheduled for 2018, might be delayed as well. (The first ExoMars mission is scheduled to launch next year.)

All-in-all, this story indicates to me that the Russians continue to have serious underlying financial and management problems throughout their society. Having lost faith in capitalism, after 20 years of not really doing it right, they have returned to a soviet-style big government top-down approach. I doubt it will solve their problems.

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Sunlight rolled the rocks on an asteroid

October 9, 2015 8:53 am Robert Zimmerman

Scientists studying the rounded rocks on the surface of the asteroid 25143 Itokawa, photographed by the Japanese probe Hayabusa, have concluded that sunlight combined with the asteroid’s tiny gravity caused them move and thus erode themselves.

As sunlight bounced off the orbiting boulders, photons provided a tiny push. As they radiated back outward as heat, they triggered a recoil effect that added a gentle spin. Over time, these slowly spinning boulders bumped into each other with enough force to wear their edges into smooth surfaces.

Warning! This is only a model, and thus could very well be wrong. It is reasonable however and worth considering as a factor in studying the early formation history of asteroids.

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Another EPA wastewater spill in Colorado

October 8, 2015 10:06 pm Robert Zimmerman

We’re here to help you! EPA workers have caused another wastewater spill in Colorado.

According to the Denver Post, an EPA mine crew working Thursday at the Standard Mine in the mountains near Crested Butte, triggered another spill of some 2,000 gallons of wastewater into a nearby mountain creek. Supporting Tipton’s remarks to Watchdog Arena, the Denver Post report states that the EPA had failed to release a report about the incident at the time of its writing.

Unlike the Gold King Mine, where on Aug. 5, an EPA mine crew exploring possible clean-up options, blew out a structural plug in the mine releasing over 3 million gallons of toxic waste into the Animas River, the Standard Mine is an EPA-designated superfund site, where the federal agency has been directing ongoing clean-up efforts.

According to a the Washington Times regarding this latest spill, Tipton’s spokesman, Josh Green, said that locals in the Crested Butte area confirmed the spill. Watchdog Arena spoke directly with Tipton Thursday afternoon who claimed, “They are reporting that the spill consisted of “gray water,” and was not toxic. But the definition of gray water does not preclude the presence of possible toxic substances.”

It doesn’t matter that this spill is smaller and at a superfund site. If a private landowner screwed up like this, and didn’t report it, as required by the EPA, the EPA would move in faster than the speed of light to take everything they owned and to put them in prison.

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To Scale: The Solar System

October 8, 2015 6:01 pm Robert Zimmerman

An evening pause: What this attempt achieves more than anything else is to demonstrate that the scale of the universe is almost impossible to simulate or to conceive. There is a lot of emptiness out there.

Hat tip Rocco.

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More confirmation from Curiosity of past lakes in Gale Crater

October 8, 2015 2:25 pm Robert Zimmerman

New data from Curiosity has now provided further confirmation that the deeper sedimentary layers seen in Gale Crater were likely formed far in the past by flowing water.

“Paradoxically, where there is a mountain today there was once a basin, and it was sometimes filled with water,” said John Grotzinger, the former project scientist for Mars Science Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and lead author of the new report. “We see evidence of about 250 feet (75 meters) of sedimentary fill, and based on mapping data from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and images from Curiosity’s camera, it appears that the water-transported sedimentary deposition could have extended at least 500 to 650 feet (150 to 200) meters above the crater floor.”

Furthermore, the total thickness of sedimentary deposits in Gale Crater that indicate interaction with water could extend higher still, perhaps up to one-half mile (800 meters) above the crater floor.

Above 800 meters, Mount Sharp shows no evidence of hydrated strata, and that is the bulk of what forms Mount Sharp. Grotzinger suggests that perhaps this later segment of the crater’s history may have been dominated by dry, wind-driven deposits, as was once imagined for the lower part explored by Curiosity.

This was always the reason to go and climb Mount Sharp. As Curiosity heads uphill it begins to map out the geological history of Mars, first as a wet place with liquid water, then as a dry place in which the water is gone.

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Ice and blue skies on Pluto

October 8, 2015 11:59 am Robert Zimmerman

New data downloaded from New Horizons has confirmed the presence of ice on the planet’s surface, as well as suggesting that the planet’s sky might actually be colored blue.

The haze particles themselves are likely gray or red, but the way they scatter blue light has gotten the attention of the New Horizons science team. “That striking blue tint tells us about the size and composition of the haze particles,” said science team researcher Carly Howett, also of SwRI. “A blue sky often results from scattering of sunlight by very small particles. On Earth, those particles are very tiny nitrogen molecules. On Pluto they appear to be larger — but still relatively small — soot-like particles we call tholins.”

Scientists believe the tholin particles form high in the atmosphere, where ultraviolet sunlight breaks apart and ionizes nitrogen and methane molecules and allows them to react with each other to form more and more complex negatively and positively charged ions. When they recombine, they form very complex macromolecules, a process first found to occur in the upper atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan. The more complex molecules continue to combine and grow until they become small particles; volatile gases condense and coat their surfaces with ice frost before they have time to fall through the atmosphere to the surface, where they add to Pluto’s red coloring.

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Kevin McCarthy drops out of Speaker election

October 8, 2015 10:06 am Robert Zimmerman

Congressman Kevin McCarthy (R-California) has just announced that he is dropping out of the race for House Speaker.

This is a breaking story, so details remain sparse. However, McCarthy’s exit today suggests that the power of the conservatives, who just yesterday threw their backing to Daniel Webster (R-Florida), is very strong. With two of the top guys from the old Republican leadership out, things are now certainly going to change in the House. This opens up the Speaker election, making it possible for a new compromise candidate to step forward. More important, that candidate is going to have to respect the demands of the conservative wing, which forced this election.

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Army building its first operational ray gun?

October 8, 2015 9:45 am Robert Zimmerman

Lockheed Martin has begun production on a laser weapon designed to be mounted to U.S. Army vehicles.

The ATHENA laser can be operated by a single person and is made up of multiple fiber laser modules, which not only allows for greater flexibility, but also lessens the chance of the weapon being knocked out by a minor malfunction, so frequent repairs aren’t required. Lockhead Martin also says that the modular design means that the laser power can be varied across an extremely wide range to suit specific mission needs. Using off-the-shelf commercial fiber laser components to keep down costs, the modules can be linked together to produce lasers of up to 120 kW.

ATHENA was tested in March when it took out a pickup truck with a sustained 30 kW burst.

While stun and disintegration ray guns seem cool in science fiction, in battle something as complex and as cutting edge as this is likely not be be very practical. New technology needs a lot of testing to make its workings robust, something that is essential in the harsh conditions of battle. To me, this sounds more like pork, government money being wasted to keep people employed.

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Cygnus grabs March Atlas 5 launch slot

October 8, 2015 9:15 am Robert Zimmerman

The competition heats up: Taking advantage of delays in prepping a NOAA weather satellite, Orbital ATK has grabbed a March launch slot on the Atlas 5 for its Cygnus capsule.

Originally Orbital was going to launch on an Atlas 5 in December and then late in 2016 (based on Atlas 5 launch manifest availability), with the Antares launching a Cygnus in-between. By taking this March Atlas 5 launch, they can push the Antares return-to-flight launch back, thus giving themselves more time to install and test its new Russian first stage engines.

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Second Atlas 5 launch in only six days

October 8, 2015 9:04 am Robert Zimmerman

The competition heats up: Only six days after its previous launch, a ULA Atlas 5 today successfully launched an American surveillance satellite.

This was the shortest time yet between Atlas 5 launches. While the most likely reason for the quick turnaround was centered on the needs of the satellites, I also suspect the increased competition for launch services has prodded ULA to demonstrate improved capabilities.

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Sierra Nevada touts new work on Dream Chaser

October 7, 2015 9:14 pm Robert Zimmerman

The competition heats up: As part of the normal lobbying that companies due prior the awarding of a government contract, Sierra Nevada today put out a press release describing the work they are doing to prepare both their Dream Chaser engineering test article (ETA) for glide tests and their Dream Chaser orbital vehicle for flight tests.

The announcement describes how they plan to do the next ETA glide test early in 2016, followed by orbital test flights of the orbital vehicle. Of course, that plan depends entirely on whether NASA picks them as one of the two companies for the second round of contracts to provide cargo to ISS.

The release however does include a nice picture of the ETA, which looks completely ship-shape following the failure at landing of one of its landing wheels during the first glide test. They have since replaced those wheels, which came from an airplane and were not the intending wheels for the actual spacecraft.

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Construction by helicopter

October 7, 2015 6:01 pm Robert Zimmerman

An evening pause: As noted on the youtube webpage, “The last two components of the Incity Tower spire were put in place by helicopter on Sunday 21 June [2015]. This metallic spire, which measures 50 metres and weighs 25.9 tonnes, took the building to its final height of 200 metres. This confirms its position as the highest tower in Lyon and the third highest in France. Three aerial beacons and a lightning rod will now be placed at the top.”

Hat tip Phill Oltmann.

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Conservative Republicans back Webster for Speaker

October 7, 2015 4:24 pm Robert Zimmerman

The fight is on! The Freedom Caucus, a group of about 40 to 50 conservative tea party Republicans in the House, has announced that they intend to back Daniel Webster (R-Florida) for Speaker, rejecting the establishment choice of Kevin McCarthy (R-California).

Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) said Webster’s focus on procedural changes convinced conservatives to back him. “We need to have a voice, we need to have power rather than have the speaker dictate to us,” he said. “It is clear that our constituents will simply not accept a continuation of the status quo, and that the viability of the Republican Party depends on whether we start listening to our voters and fighting to keep our promises,” the Freedom Caucus said in a statement. “We accordingly believe that, under the present circumstances and without significant changes to Conference leadership and process, Rep. Daniel Webster would be best equipped to earn back the trust of the American people as Speaker of the House.”

In the end I suspect the Speaker will not be Webster, but this announcement is going to force the Republican leadership to concede power to the conservatives, something the voters have clearly wanted for the past few elections.

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Government admits whole milk was always good for you

October 7, 2015 4:06 pm Robert Zimmerman

The uncertainty of science: A new study has found that whole milk not only does not increase heart disease, it might even help prevent it.

The most significant part of this story however is that when the federal government made the original recommendation that people stop drinking whole milk to avoid fats, the science behind that recommendation was flawed and inconclusive.

But even as a Senate committee was developing the Dietary Goals, some experts were lamenting that the case against saturated fats was, though thinly supported, was being presented as if it were a sure thing. “The vibrant certainty of scientists claiming to be authorities on these matters is disturbing,” George V. Mann, a biochemist at Vanderbilt’s med school wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine. Ambitious scientists and food companies, he said, had “transformed [a] fragile hypothesis into treatment dogma.”

As Morrissey says at the link, “Golly, doesn’t that sound … familiar?”

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How the Republican Party might break-up

October 7, 2015 12:06 pm Robert Zimmerman

Devin Nunes (R-California), a establishment Republican supporting Kevin McCarthy (R-California) for House Speaker, said today that any Republicans who don’t vote for McCarthy should be kicked out of the party.

Nunes is talking about the final House-wide vote for Speaker. First the Republicans vote in private among themselves, picking their nominee. McCarthy is expected to easily win that vote. Then the entire House votes. Some conservatives are threatening to not vote for McCarthy in that House-wide vote in order to extract greater influence over the entire party. Nunes wants them ejected from the party if they do that.

I have also read another story, the link to which I can’t find now, where establishment Republicans want to codify what Nunes is saying, so that any Republican who voted against McCarthy in the final vote would be kicked out of the party. If this happens, then we might very well see the Republican Party split, something that I increasingly see as a possibility. Right now the party is trying to be too big a tent, including conservatives and many moderate Democrats who find the modern Democratic Party unacceptable. (This is one reason why the Republican presidential field is so large.)

Should the party split, we might also eventually see the withering away of the Democratic Party, which today is very corrupt and far too leftwing for most Americans. If the Republicans split into conservative and moderate wings, many of those disenchanted Democrats would move to the moderate Republican faction. The result would be to cut off the corrupt modern Democratic Party from the reins of power.

I am of course being hopeful and naively optimistic. A more likely scenario would be for the Republican Party to split in such a way that the unified Democrats, still corrupt, would take over.

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Ozone-destroying gas suddenly decreases for no reason

October 7, 2015 11:49 am Robert Zimmerman

The uncertainty of science: Scientists are baffled by the sudden drop in one kind of atmospheric hydrochlorofluorocarbon (HCFC) gas that is thought to help create the hole in the ozone layer above the south pole.

New measurements show that after a rapid increase of the compound in the atmosphere of the Northern Hemisphere from 0.13 parts per trillion (ppt) in 2000 to 0.50 ppt in 2013, the concentration suddenly dropped to about 0.44 ppt by early 2015. This drop in concentration is equivalent to a 50 percent decline in global emissions percent of the gas: from 3,000 metric tons (3,300 US tons) in 2011 to about 1,500 metric tons (1,700 tons) in 2014, according to the new study.

Now for the kicker: They not only don’t know why this HCFC suddenly declined, they also don’t know where it is coming from. This gas is not one of the gases that were restricted decades ago to save the ozone hole. Until last year, scientists hadn’t even known it existed. And though the article claims it is human-caused, they haven’t yet identified how humans cause it. They hope its sudden decline in the atmosphere will help them pin down its source.

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A planet-forming disk with mysterious ripples

October 7, 2015 11:40 am Robert Zimmerman

cropped image of dust disk and ripples

The mysteries of science: Astronomers have detected ripples and blobs moving outward through the dust disk surrounding a nearby star, and have no idea what is causing them.

The images reveal a train of wave-like arches, resembling ripples in water. After spotting the features in the SPHERE data the team turned to earlier Hubble images of the disk, taken in 2010 and 2011. The wave-like nature of some of these features were not recognized in the initial Hubble observations. But once astronomers reprocessed the Hubble images they not only identified the features but realized that they had changed over time. The researchers report that these ripples are moving — and they are moving very fast. “We ended up with enough information to track the movement of these strange features over a 3- to 4-year period,” explained team member Christian Thalmann of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. “By doing this, we found that the arches are racing away from the star at speeds of up to 10 kilometers per second (22,000 miles per hour)!” Co-investigator Carol Grady of Eureka Scientific in Oakland, California, added, “Because nothing like this has been observed or predicted in theory we can only hypothesize when it comes to what we are seeing and how it came about.”

The one theory that is still not refuted is that the star’s flaring activity, which is significant, causes the ripples somehow.

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Yale makes available online 170,000 photographs from WWII period

October 7, 2015 9:34 am Robert Zimmerman

History: Yale University had posted online 170,000 Library of Congress photographs taken in the United States from 1935 to 1945.

The photos come from all over the U.S., and can be accessed with this easy-to-use inactive map. They also used the original captions, thus avoiding any editing for politically correct reasons and allowing the viewer to get an honest feel for the time period.

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China launches first commercial Earth-observation satellite

October 7, 2015 9:21 am Robert Zimmerman

The competition heats up: China today successfully launched its first Earth-observation satellite for providing commercial images to the public.

A Long March 2C rocket launched the Jilin 1 satellite constellation, which consists of a primary high definition optical satellite, as well as two Lingqiao video satellites and a fourth, LQSat, to test space technology. Xuan Ming, from the Chang Guang Satellite Technology Co., Ltd, earlier told Xinhua the satellites will focus on providing images to commercial clients, while helping with harvest assessment, geological disaster prevention and resource surveys. Jilin-1 is reported to be capable of very high definition images, boasting a resolution of 0.72m with a pan-chromatic camera and a 4m resolution multi-spectral camera.

The article also provides a short but nice summary of China’s space plans for 2016, including its first manned mission since 2013.

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Russian proposes private lunar satellite to prove Apollo landings

October 7, 2015 9:12 am Robert Zimmerman

A Russian public relations specialist has raised by crowd-funding more than a million rubles to build a lunar-orbiting satellite to take high resolution images of the Apollo landing sites to prove they happened.

I like it, but recognize that a million rubles is only about $15k. He will need a lot more to get the satellite built and launched.

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Another Google Lunar X-Prize contestant announces launch contract

October 7, 2015 8:59 am Robert Zimmerman

The competition heats up: Another Google Lunar X-Prize team, SpaceIL, has announced the signing of a launch contract, this time as a secondary payload on a Falcon 9 launch in the latter half of 2017.

Their press release says they are the first to produce an actual contract to the contest, which only means the Moon Express contract hasn’t yet been delivered.

This two launch contracts suggest that the competition for the X-Prize will get interesting in 2017. As a secondary payload, SpaceIL will not be able to schedule its launch. And while Moon Express, as a primary payload on smallsat rocket, can schedule its launch, it is depending on a new untried rocket, Electron, being developed by a new untried rocket company, Rocket Labs.

And since SpaceIL is an Israeli company, be prepared for some Muslim and leftwing heads to explode should it win the X-Prize. How dare they oppress those Palestinians by getting their rover to the Moon first!

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Sounds of a Glass Armonica

October 6, 2015 6:03 pm Robert Zimmerman

An evening pause: Supposedly this is Ben Franklin’s favorite invention.

Hat tip Edward Thelen.

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Government workers earn 78% more than private workers

October 6, 2015 5:29 pm Robert Zimmerman

We’re here to help us! A new study has found that Federal employees earn 78% more than private sector workers.

The Cato Institute’s Chris Edwards compared data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis to show that, in his view, civilian federal workers are overcompensated. Factoring both salary and benefits, Edwards pointed to BEA data showing the average federal employee earns about $119,000 annually, compared to the private sector worker who earns $67,000 per year. When comparing just salaries, feds collect 50 percent bigger paychecks, Edwards said.

The wage gap between the federal and private sectors has grown since the 1990s, Cato’s director of tax policy studies found. The divide has doubled since 1990, when it was just 39 percent. The growth, he said, came from not just raising pay levels and offering more generous benefits, but also a more “top-heavy” bureaucracy that routinely moves employees into higher salary brackets and redefines jobs as higher earning positions. “The federal government has become an elite island of secure and high-paid employment, separated from the ocean of average Americans competing in the economy,” Edwards wrote in his findings.

I wonder, do you think we are getting our money’s worth?

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An avalanche on Mars, as it happens

October 6, 2015 4:49 pm Robert Zimmerman

Avalanche on Mars

Cool image time! In their routine monitoring for avalanches at the layered deposits at the Martian north pole, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter science team captured the avalanche on the right, as it happened.

This picture managed to capture a small avalanche in progress, right in the color strip. … The small white cloud in front of the brick red cliff is likely carbon dioxide frost dislodged from the layers above, caught in the act of cascading down the cliff. It is larger than it looks, more than 20 meters across, and (based on previous examples) it will likely kick up clouds of dust when it hits the ground.

They note that avalanches in this area of Mars are common in the spring when things are warming, and have been documented previously, but possibly not so dramatically.

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Guess where?

October 6, 2015 3:12 pm Robert Zimmerman

Pluto lake

I found the image on the right while trolling about on the various raw image sites for NASA’s planetary missions. No press release yet, and maybe there never will be one. I do know the scientists involved in this particular mission are right now drooling over the details available in the full resolution image, which I have cropped and reduced to fit on the right. Take a look and you will drool as well.

Want to know where this is? I bet you have already guessed, but if you need help, click on the “read more” link below, where I have also added some comments.
» Read more

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IPPC replaces head with economist

October 6, 2015 2:34 pm Robert Zimmerman

The politics of climate science: The IPCC has selected an economist, Hoesung Lee, to replace the disgraced railroad engineer, Rajendra Pachauri, who had previously been its leader.

That neither Pachauri nor Lee is an actual climate scientist, nor have they ever even done any climate science, tells us all we need to know about the IPCC. It is a political body, designed to push the political agenda of the advocates of human-caused global warming regardless of the scientific evidence. And that political agenda has nothing to do with science or climate, but using science and climate as a tool to impose Marxist fascist rule on everyone.

And if you doubt me, read this article in the science journal Nature describing the possible directions the IPCC will take under Lee’s leadership.

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Ramp down in sunspots continues

October 6, 2015 12:59 pm Robert Zimmerman

Correction! For reasons I do not understand, the graph below, originally posted on the NOAA website, was incorrect and was changed several days after I posted my piece below. See this post for the correct graph and analysis.

The uncertainty of science: On Monday NOAA posted its monthly update of the solar cycle, showing the Sun’s sunspot activity in September. Once again I post it here, below the fold, with annotations to give it context.

For the third month in a row the sunspot count dropped a tiny amount, lingering at about the same number as the previous two months. Moreover, the rate of decline seems to have transitioned down from the 2009 prediction (red curve) to the 2007 weak prediction (lower green curve). This doesn’t real mean much, as the sunspot number can still vary up and down considerable before we reach solar minimum in two or three years.

» Read more

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Winner of the 2003 Eugene M. Emme Award of the American Astronautical Society.