February 2, 2022 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, well worth your time, go here.
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The Partridge Family – I think I love You
An evening pause: From the 1970s television show.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
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
SpaceX launches spy satellite using new first stage
Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base a National Reconnaissance Office spy satellite .
What made this launch unusual was that it used a new first stage, only the third time SpaceX has done so since the beginning of 2020. Last year, of 31 launches all but two used a used first stage. This new first stage landed successfully at Vandenberg.
5 SpaceX
2 China
1 Virgin Orbit
1 ULA
Today’s blacklisted American: HS student suspended for expressing opinions in private texts
Freedom of speech banned at Plainwell High School.
They’re coming for you next: The faculty at Plainwell High School in Michigan suspended student David Stouts for three days because he dared to express his Christian religious beliefs in private texts to his friends.
Some of the things he discussed were the love God has for sinners, Stout’s love for his friends, and, here is where the “problems” began, Stout said he believed homosexuality is a sin and….drum roll…there are only two genders!
Before Stout was suspended, he claims he was asked by a faculty member [band leader Austin Hunt] why he didn’t turn himself in for his private discussions involving religion and “inappropriate” jokes shared amongst friends, (Stout allegedly chuckled at homophobic/racial jokes his friends made during band camp in July 2021).
Stout claims he was informed that speaking about religion on campus was verboten because he might hurt someone’s feelings, and that students who overhear his opinions (on text message???) might feel “unsafe.”
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.
SpaceX’s failure to win space station NASA contract reveals where the company is weak
Jeff Foust of Space News today has a detailed article detailing NASA’s decision-making process that led to its awarding Blue Origin, Northrop Grummann, and Nanoracks development contracts for their proposed commercial and private space station.
The article not only describes NASA’s analysis of each winning bid, it also describes the analysis of some of the eight bids that lost. Most interesting were the strengths and weaknesses NASA saw from SpaceX’s bid.
The company won strengths based on its technical maturity linked to HLS proposal (the Starship lunar lander) and a “strong approach” to communications that appeared to be associated with SpaceX’s Starlink constellation. However, NASA assessed several weaknesses because of a lack of details about its concept, including how it will accommodate payloads and scale up an environmental control system for long-duration missions. [emphasis mine]
While SpaceX so far has proven itself to be a brilliant rocket and engineering company — achieving things that everyone else said couldn’t be done and doing so so quickly it takes your breath away — the company has so far appeared to have little understanding or knowledge about the complexities of building an interplanetary manned vessel. This NASA analysis, as noted by the highlighted phrases in the quote above, underlines that impression.
None of this precludes SpaceX from gaining that knowledge and applying it to the engineering of future Starship designs. This information however shows that the company still lacks this knowledge. It apparently has still not tackled the job of designing the insides of Starship, only its rocketry for getting into orbit.
Sunspot Update: The Sun quiets down, but just a little
With the posting yesterday by NOAA of its monthly update to its graph showing the long term trends in the Sun’s sunspot activity, it is time for me to do my own update, showing this graph below with annotations in order to provide some context.
While sunspot activity dropped slightly in January, the activity still remained well above the prediction made by NOAA’s panel of solar scientists in 2020, with the upward trend towards a solar maximum much steeper than predicted as well.
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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
Astronomers confirm asteroid discovered in 2020 is an Earth Trojan
Astronomers have now confirmed that an asteroid discovered in 2020, dubbed 2020 XL5, is an orbit that makes it the second Earth Trojan asteroid discovered, orbiting the Sun in the same orbit as the Earth but 60 degrees ahead of us.
In December 2020, 2020 XL5 was spotted by astronomers with the Pan-STARRS 1 survey telescope in Hawaii and added to the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center database. Amateur astronomer Tony Dunn went on to calculate the object’s trajectory using NASA’s publicly-available JPL-Horizon’s software and found that it orbits L4, the fourth Earth-sun Lagrange point, a gravitationally balanced region around our planet and star. 2010 TK7, the first-confirmed Earth Trojan asteroid, is also at L4.
The confirmation that it is definitely a Trojan was then made using both new observations as well as a review of archival images, allowing the astronomers to not only refine the asteroid’s orbit, but determine that it is a C-type asteroid, dark with lots of carbon. The data also suggests that in about 4,000 years, 2020 XL5 will drift from its Trojan point.
There are certainly more such asteroids, but detecting them is difficult from Earth because they can only be seen in twilight.
Blue Origin successfully tests fairing for New Glenn rocket
Capitalism in space: Blue Origin has successfully tested the jettison of the two fairing halves that will be used on its orbital New Glenn rocket.
The test took place at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Ohio. The company’s video, available at the link, is like all such videos made by all these companies nowadays, filled with dramatic music in order to make it seem like a movie trailer. The jettison itself occurs near the end of the video, and only shows the separation..
This success is encouraging. Moreover, according to Scott Henderson, Blue Origin’s vice president of test and flight operations and Florida site director, they have also completed the launchpad in Florida.
The first launch of New Glenn is presently targeted for late this year, so these successes indicate that launch is getting close. However, everything still hinges on the production of the company’s BE-4 rocket engine, more than two years behind schedule. Until a flightworthy engine is finally available, that first New Glenn launch will remain an ephemeral dream.
Another SLS delay
NASA today announced in an update for its Artemis program that the wet dress rehearsal of its SLS rocket, essentially a full countdown on the launchpad fully fueled to T-0, has been delayed from February to March.
NASA has added additional time to complete closeout activities inside the VAB prior to rolling the integrated rocket and spacecraft out for the first time. While the teams are not working any major issues, engineers continue work associated with final closeout tasks and flight termination system testing ahead of the wet dress rehearsal. [emphasis mine]
Engineers and managers are now reviewing the schedule to see if the actual launch can be scheduled for April or May, assuming the dress rehearsal goes well.
Even if all goes well, I predict a June launch at the earliest, with mid-summer more likely. While private companies like SpaceX work incessantly to compress schedules to get things done, government agencies like NASA like to expand schedules — as NASA has done here — so that no one feels they are under too much pressure.
The Jack Benny Show – Casting For Television Special
An evening pause: Originally aired January 1, 1961. For those too young to know, Benny had two running gags that help explain some of the humor. First, he was ridiculously cheap, and second, he never admitted he was older than 39. Above all, you must recognize the intended silliness of everything said or done.
Note also that the telegram delivery man is Mel Blanc, who provided the voices for Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and almost all Warner Brothers cartoons from the 1940s to the 1960s.
Pioneer game update: Kickstarter campaign delayed again
I wish I could be reporting that the Kickstarter campaign for the video game of my science fiction book, Pioneer, has begun today as planned. Unfortunately, it has not, but for entirely good reasons. To quote the producer Aaron Jenkin in his update last night to newsletter subscribers:
Jellop, the Kickstarter marketing company I mentioned in our last newsletter, has asked us to make some changes to our reward tiers – changes that make sense, but that will require some major revisions. The request came last minute, and so we need more time to knock it all out properly.
Instead of announcing a new launch date and risking another false start, we’ll finish the changes and then communicate the date to you.
Since there’s no Kickstarter launch tomorrow, we will do the next best thing – we will release the game demo in the next newsletter instead! On Windows, Mac, & Linux. Be on the look out for that and after you play, please send us your feedback!
For those who want to get that newsletter update so they can try the demo, you can subscribe at PioneerSpaceGame.com. I’ve played it, and found it both fun and challenging, even though I wrote the book!
For those who want to get a sense of of what the game itself will be like now, below the fold is the game’s trailer, this time with an audio narration added for effect.
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The first signs of a coming revolution for freedom — from the next generation
“A little child shall lead them,” painting by James L. Johnson.
If there is any hopeful sign coming out of the last two years of Wuhan panic, it might be the long term reaction of the young to how the political community has treated them.
Let me explain. For decades it has been assumed, quite rightly, that the young would automatically gravitate to the Democratic Party. That party’s tendency to favor social programs based on helping everyone fit well with the young’s lack of experience, their natural instinct to think emotionally, and their personal lives so tightly bound to their school’s social community. The young lived in a type of emotional and socialist existence, so it was natural for them to instinctively favor the socialist ideas based on feel-good emotions put forth routinely by the Democratic Party.
Polls and voting patterns have consistently for decades proven this assumption to be true. For example, small college towns found the politics of their communities suddenly shift significantly leftward when the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18. The large but temporary college population in their towns, mostly leaning left, suddenly swamped out the more moderate voting patterns of the smaller general population.
This assumption has also been illustrated by many get-out-the-vote campaigns put forth by the Democratic Party. Rather than try to get voters of all stripes to vote, the Democrats would routinely focus these campaigns inside college campuses, a tactic that for decades has repeatedly brought them great success.
Above all — and most important — the Democratic Party never put forth policy proposals that would offend the young. Instead, the party would aim its policies at businesses, which the young did not own and would thus not be impacted by any negative consequences of any new leftist laws.
The Democrats love affair with “green” policies is a perfect example. A campaign to save the planet from global warming is something that sounds so good to the emotionally-driven young. For children under eighteen environmental issues would especially resonant. They would naturally like the high-minded idealistic sounding goals of environmentalism while feeling none of the negative effects of its sometimes draconian regulation. When these youngsters reached voting age they would thus instinctively pick the Democratic Party as their home, since it had portrayed itself as the true representative of their idealistic but very naive beliefs.
Environmentalism is just one of a whole slate of policy positions taken by the Democrats, from poverty to police abuse to civil rights, that have been designed to please the young without impacting them negatively in any way. The result has been a young population that routinely favored in great numbers the Democratic Party.
The Wuhan panic however has changed this situation radically. » Read more