Draper wins NASA contract to put a lander on the Moon’s far side

9:28 am

Capitalism in space: NASA yesterday awarded a $73 million contract to the space company Draper to place a lander on the Moon’s far side by 2025.

The lander, called SERIES-2 by Draper, will deliver to Schrödinger Basin three experiments to collect seismic data, measure the heat flow and electrical conductivity of the lunar subsurface and measure electromagnetic phenomena created by the interaction of the solar wind and plasma with the lunar surface.

The mission is the eighth NASA has awarded to date as part of CLPS, but the first to go to the lunar farside. The only mission by any country to land on the far side of the moon is China’s Chang’e-4 mission, which successfully landed in Von Kármán Crater in January 2019 and deployed the Yutu 2 rover that remains operational today.

With this award, there are presently five American companies with contracts to put landers on the Moon, Intuitive Machines, Astrobotic, Firefly, and Masten. Masten however shut down operations recently. This new contract to Draper for almost the exact same amount that had been awarded to Masten appears to replace Masten in the program.

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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. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

Using the Wuhan panic to kill children

3:17 pm

Excess mortality by age
The shocking rise of excess mortality since young people
began getting the jab

The evidence continues to pour in: Not only were the authoritarian polices imposed by governments worldwide following the arrival of COVID in 2020 a total failure — doing nothing to prevent the spread of the virus — it now appears the edicts forcing millions to get the COVID jab and wear masks might very well have caused serious harm, even death, to many individuals for whom the virus posed no threat at all.

And it more and more appears that the worst victims of these failed policies were children.

The following stories, all published since my last Wuhan panic update on June 30th, point specifically to the failure of the jab:

These new research confirms many previous studies. For example, in 2021 the American Heart Association issued its own warning about mRNA vaccines, stating that this drug could “dramatically increase risk of developing heart disease.” Other earlier research can be found at my own reports on February 14th, March 23rd, March 30th, May 11th, May 13th, and June 30th. The data increasingly demonstrates that the COVID shots not only accomplished practically nothing in stopping the virus, those shots had side effects that have unnecessarily harmed possibly millions.

Similarly, studies continue to confirm what a hundred years of past research had found, that masks are essentially useless in stopping the spread of a virus such as COVID, and can actually increase your chances of getting this or other diseases.
» Read more

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SpaceX launch aborted 46 seconds before launch

11:03 am

Capitalism in space: In what has become a rare event for SpaceX, the company was forced to abort a launch of a Falcon 9 rocket today carrying 46 Starlink satellites only 46 seconds before launch.

The company has scrubbed a few launches in the past three years due to weather, but I think this is the first launch abort apparently due to a technical issue in several years.

No details were given for the abort, but whatever the issue was, it was apparently not serious, as the launch team immediately announced that they have recycled the launch to its back-up date tomorrow.

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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.

Perseverance spots a string on Mars!

10:54 am

A piece of string on Mars
Click for full image.

According to the Perseverance science team, they believe the strange spaghetti-like object to the right, taken by one of the rover’s hazard avoidance camera’s on July 12, 2022, is actually a piece of string that fell here during the rover’s landing in February 2021.

The string could be from the rover or its descent stage, a component similar to a rocket-powered jet pack used to safely lower the rover to the planet’s surface, according to a spokesperson for the Perseverance mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Perseverance had not previously been in the area where the string was found, so it’s likely the wind blew it there, the spokesperson said.

The string, which appears to be a few inches across, was apparently gone four days later, when another hazard avoidance picture was taken of the same spot

An official description from the scientists is expected in a week or so.

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The earliest galaxy so far seen?

10:37 am

Earliest galaxy?

Scientists using the James Webb Space Telescope now think they have identified a galaxy formed only 330 million years after the Big Bang.

The red smudge in the centre of this image [to the right] is thought to be a galaxy with a redshift of around z=13, as seen by the NIRCam instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope. This redshift estimate is based on photometry so the object remains a candidate rather than a confirmed high-redshift galaxy, but if confirmed spectroscopically this would be the highest-redshift galaxy yet observed.

You can read the research paper itself here [pdf]. The galaxy is actually very young, and its nature, along with a second also described by the research, appears to contradict expectations. From the paper’s abstract:

These sources, if confirmed, join GNz11 in defying number density forecasts for luminous galaxies based on Schechter UV luminosity functions, which require a survey area > 10× larger than we have
studied here to find such luminous sources at such high redshifts. They extend evidence from lower redshifts for little or no evolution in the bright end of the UV luminosity function into the cosmic dawn epoch, with implications for just how early these galaxies began forming. This, in turn, suggests that future deep JWST observations may identify relatively bright galaxies to much earlier epochs than might have been anticipated. [emphasis mine]

In other words, this early data from Webb suggests that galaxies formed much faster than expected after the Big Bang. This either means all the theories describing the Bang are wrong, or that it might not have even happened.

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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

Northrop Grumman delays next Cygnus cargo mission

10:15 am

Northrop Grumman officials have now revealed that it has been forced to delay the next Cygnus cargo mission to ISS from August to October because of “supply chain issues.”

What these supply chain issues were the company did not specify. However, the Antares rocket that launches Cygnus uses Russian engines attached a Ukrainian first stage. Northrop Grumman presently only has enough engines and stages for two more flights. While there are indications that the Ukrainian war has not yet prevented the delivery of future Ukrainian first stages, the Russians have blocked all further engine sales.

A new American rocket engine company, Ursa Major, is building a new engine capable of replacing the Russian engines, but the engine won’t be ready until ’25.

The delay could be Northrop Grumman’s effort to stretch out the schedule of its last two Antares launches in the hope that the Russians will lift their embargo, which might happen based on the firing by Putin of Dmitry Rogozin as head of Roscosmos. Rogozin had been the person who imposed the embargo. His removal suggests that Putin is trying to ease the tensions between the west and Russia, at least in the area of space.

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Axiom signs deal with Hungary

9:56 am

Capitalism in space: Axiom yesterday announced a new agreement with Hungary aimed at launching that nation’s first astronaut to ISS.

Tthe plan is to have Axiom launch the astronaut on one of its planned tourist missions using a Dragon capsule. Whether the mission will happen before or after Axiom begins launching its own modules to ISS is not clear, since no launch schedule was revealed.

Axiom now has deals with Hungary and the UAE to fly their astronauts, and deals with Italy and a UK company to add their own modules to its station. There is thus good financial pressure for it to get its station launched an operational, first as a section of ISS and then flying independently.

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NASA sets tentative launch date for SLS

9:46 am

NASA yesterday announced that it is targeting August 29, 2022 for the first unmanned launch of its SLS rocket.

NASA is tentatively targeting Aug. 29 for the long-awaited maiden flight of the agency’s huge Space Launch System moon rocket, officials said Wednesday. But they cautioned major challenges remain for the oft-delayed rocket and an official date will not be set until later.

As it stands, the launch processing schedule is extremely tight and depends on successful checkout of a repaired hydrogen line fitting, good results from end-to-end pre-flight checks of the rocket’s myriad other systems and getting everything done in time to haul it back out to the launch pad by around Aug. 18.

If any delays occur, this launch window extends until September 6th. If they can’t make that date, the next launch window opens on September 19th.

The mission, to send the Orion capsule around the Moon and back, would last 42 days and if launched as planned would return October 10th.

The announcement also slipped in this tidbit:

If the initial test flight goes well, NASA plans to launch four astronauts atop the second SLS rocket for an around-the-moon shakedown flight in 2024 — Artemis 2 — before sending the first woman and the first person of color to a landing near the moon’s south pole in 2025 or 2026 as part of the Artemis 3 mission. [emphasis mine]

This I think is the first time NASA officials have hinted that the launch might be delayed to ’26. It is no surprise, but as they have always done with SLS, they give these hints softly, prepping the press so that it doesn’t make news.

As for the disgraceful unseemly focus on race and sex, it appears that NASA is now an apartheid state. The make-up of missions will no longer be determined by skill and experience, but by ethnic considerations, with favoritism always given to minorities or women.

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Van Johnson – Flim Flam Floo

6:01 pm

An evening pause: This song comes from the first full television movie, The Pied Piper of Hamelin, first aired on NBC in 1957, and then subsequently re-aired almost yearly for the next decade. If you want to watch it, it is available on the internet archive here.

I post it today because it is a perfect expression of the hopeful culture of the 1960s that made possible the Apollo 11 lunar landing that occurred fifty-three years ago today. As the song says, “The world is filled with wonderment and magic,” and then insists “You can find the beauty in all you perceive/Just believe that it’s there in view.”

I recently rediscovered this movie of my childhood, and was astonished to discover that though I hadn’t heard this song in more than fifty years, I remembered its message as if I had only watched it yesterday. Its message was what my parent’s generation believed, and tried with all their might to pass on to their children. Their belief made the Apollo 11 landing possible. Sadly, most of my baby boomer generation decided to reject this hopeful vision, thus producing the increasingly gloomy society we have today.

Let us work to recapture that wonder and hope. Only then can our children breathe free to achieve some true wonders of their own.

Thanks to Wayne Devette for clipping this song from the full movie for me.

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