Behind The Black – Robert Zimmerman

Ingenuity successfully completes its 18th flight

December 17, 2021 1:26 pm Robert Zimmerman

According to a JPL Twitter post today, on December 15th Ingenuity successfully completed its 18th flight, flying 754 feet for just over two minutes.

The plan had been to continue north to cross the rough Seitah region as the helicopter heads back to the spot where Perseverance initially dropped it. Though at this moment no specific information about the flight’s direction or landing place have been revealed, its success suggests it went exactly as planned.

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Pushback: NY gym owners will not comply with new mask mandates

December 17, 2021 12:18 pm Robert Zimmerman

The owners of World Gym Greece will not comply.

Do not comply: The owners of a gym in Rochester, New York, World Gym Greece, have announced that they will not comply with the new mask mandates imposed unilaterally by New York State’s Democratic Party governor, Kathy Hochul.

The owners, Michelle Sember, Ron Sember, and Tim Dougherty, say that they aren’t worried about fines or punishment, as the oppressive edicts of their state and city governments have already been catastrophic. According to Ron Sember,

“The fine is irrelevant at this point. They’ve already destroyed our businesses.”

They have found their membership dropping because people do not want to exercise in a mask. Given a choice between losing more customers or getting punished by the state, they have decided their customers are more important, and are telling everyone to come and work out and throw the mask away.

At the moment the local county government in Rochester is saying it will enforce Hochul’s mandate, while also equivocating on how it will do so.
» Read more

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SpaceX accused of sexual harassment by same “Woke” venue that accused Blue Origin

December 17, 2021 10:40 am Robert Zimmerman

SpaceX this week was accused of sexual harassment by one named former employee and several anonymous accusers, published in same venue that back in September had published similar anonymous accusations against Blue Origin.

No need to go into the details. The accusations are as light weight and as petty as those against Blue Origin, which the FAA dismissed last week as having no merit because the anonymous accusers refused to identify themselves while the only named accuser’s allegations were deemed meritless. From CNN’s report:

[I]nvestigators had to rely on current and former Blue Origin employees voluntarily coming forward to offer information. But “no technical experts have reached out to us or provided any specific documentation regarding the safety allegations.”

CNN of course spins this in favor of the accusers, claiming that they don’t have any legal whistle-blower protections. I say balderdash. If such people won’t go public, such accusations are worthless. Blue Origin has the right to be faced in public by its accusers.

All in all, the allegations against both companies reek of modern “woke” politics, aiming to smear and slander successful companies because some people are filled with leftist rage and hate and want to destroy anyone who doesn’t obey their every command. I expect the charges against SpaceX will evaporate as well because the anonymous accusers will also refuse to go public, while the actual accusations from the one person willing to go public read like the whining of a mentally unstable person (admitted to in her own statement) who simply can’t handle a modern competitive work environment where you are expected to perform.

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SpaceX proposes new launchpads for Starship at Kennedy

December 17, 2021 10:12 am Robert Zimmerman

Long term Land Use map for Kennedy Space Center
From NASA’s long term road map for Kennedy,

Capitalism in space: SpaceX has submitted a new proposal for building several launchpads at the Kennedy Space Center for its Starship heavy lift rocket, including rebuilding one old pad (LC-39A) and building another at a new site (the never used LC-49).

The project for LC-49 comes in addition to the previously announced work that SpaceX began within the perimeter of Launch Complex 39A, the K Environmental Program Office said. In September 2019, an environmental assessment was completed and a finding of “no significant impact” was issued.

Musk confirmed via Twitter on Dec. 3 that construction of SpaceX’s Starship orbital launch pad at LC-39A was underway. “Construction of Starship orbital launch pad at the Cape has begun”.

The KEP [Kennedy Environmental Program] office noted that this new proposed expansion would allow for not only redundancy with launches of Starship, but also “allow SpaceX to increase the flight rate of Starship and minimize potential disruptions to Falcon, Falcon Heavy and Dragon missions at LC-39A.”

LC-49 is a 175 acre area just north of LC-39B, the launchpad NASA plans to use for its SLS rocket.

It also appears that SpaceX plans on creating a new Starship orbital launchpad at LC-39A that will not impact the use of that site by Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, though in the long run launches of those latter rockets will decrease as Starship becomes operational.

All these plans will need a full environmental assessment, but according to the article at the link, the process will be different than at Boca Chica in Texas.

The [environmental assessment]process likely won’t involve live discussions with the public, according to [Don Dankert, the technical lead for the Kennedy Environmental Planning Office], but the public will get comparable information, like with an EIS [Environmental Impact Statement]. “We will put out the same information,” Dankert said. “We’ll put out an informational packet with a .PDF chart, a description of the project and instructions on how to provide comments back to us and SpaceX.”

Engler said there may also be some lessons learned from the process of getting the launch facilities at Starbase approved for an orbital launch, but how that crossover would work has yet to be determined.

Sounds to me that this is all a pointless paperwork dance. The construction will be approved, no matter what, because Florida and Cape Canaveral desperately wants this new business and the jobs and tax dollars it will bring to the state.

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Perseverance scientists: First volcanics then water in Jezero Crater

December 17, 2021 9:45 am Robert Zimmerman

On December 15th the Perseverance science team presented a summary of the rover’s first nine months exploring the floor of Jezero Crater, finding evidence first of volcanic lava activity followed by several periods where water covered the these same rocks.

“These rocks that we originally thought might be sedimentary rocks, these are in fact igneous [volcanic] rocks,” said Kelsey Moore at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). “And even more excitingly, they’re not just igneous rocks – there’s more history to the story.”

The analysis of the rocks’ compositions revealed minerals that are generally produced by interactions between water and rock, as well as traces of two different salts that were probably left behind as salty water flowed through the cracks and pores in the volcanic rock.

The variety of minerals indicates that these rocks were probably underwater at least twice. “Two different types of liquid with two different types of chemistries points towards two different episodes of liquid water interaction,” said Eva Scheller, also at Caltech.

It seems strange that the scientists were surprised that Jezero Crater has a history of volcanic activity. Most craters when formed have what is called impact melt in their crater interior. The impact not only carves out the crater, the heat of impact melts the rock. Possibly the scientists expected such impact melt to be well buried and not accessible to Perseverance.

Regardless, this data will be used as the baseline for documenting the geological history of this region on Mars as Perseverance continues its journey across the floor of the crater, up onto the delta, and then out of the crater into the uplands beyond.

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Dido – Thank You

December 16, 2021 6:01 pm Robert Zimmerman

An evening pause: Hat tip Dan Morris.

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Cracking glaciers on Mars

December 16, 2021 11:47 am Robert Zimmerman

Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was released today as the picture of the day for the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Located in the 2,000 long northern mid-latitude strip that I dub Mars’ glacier country, it shows many of the numerous glacial features that are routinely found in images taken in this region. According to Dan Berman, senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona, who wrote the caption,

This observation shows a lobe-shaped debris apron emanating from a massif (shown in the upper left of the image) in the Protonilus Mensae region in the Northern Hemisphere of Mars. These aprons are composed of nearly pure water ice with a layer of debris on the surface protecting the ice from sublimation (going directly from a solid to gaseous state). This image shows different terrain types on the apron that indicate the presence and flow of ice, from smoother polygonal terrain closer to the massif, to rougher, patterned ground commonly called “brain terrain.” Also visible on the apron are a series of linear pits.

Protonilus Mensae is the central mensae region in that mid-latitude strip of glaciers.The overview map below shows the location of this photo in that region. Also below is a close-up of the linear pits and cracked terrain surrounding that oblong mound, as indicated by the white rectangle.
» Read more

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Pushback against blacklists: Harvard students relaunch conservative newspaper

December 16, 2021 10:59 am Robert Zimmerman

Among some of Harvard's students, freedom of thought might still exist.
Among some of Harvard’s students, freedom of
thought might still exist.

In an effort to push back against the effort by leftist students at Harvard to silence and blackball conservatives, a group of students have revived the publication of a conservative college newspaper, The Salient, that had folded sometime around 2010.

Harvard student Jacob Cremers, spokesperson for the Salient, said in an email to The College Fix on Nov. 30 that the revival of the paper is meant “to fill the vacuum and to encourage diversity of opinion on Harvard’s campus.”

“The Salient has traditionally served as a source and platform of independent and contrarian thought at Harvard; it seemed to us a shame that it had vanished without leaving another newspaper to take its place,” Cremers said.

About 5,000 copies of the new edition were distributed, he said, including under the doors of every student dorm and over 800 faculty offices on campus. The November 2021 edition was titled: “Revising America: The Deconstruction of the American Commonwealth and the Patriot’s Reply.” It featured eight articles written by students using pseudonyms.

“Pseudonyms are used in order to encourage freedom of expression and attract contributors who would otherwise be too shy of public exposure. The pseudonyms also allow readers to focus on the ideas communicated, rather than the writer behind them,” Cremers told The College Fix. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted quote should be translated: “We allow authors to publish anonymously because we know the intolerant left that dominates Harvard will immediately move to destroy anyone who writes for us, once they find out who they are.”

Significantly, it appears this effort is being funded by alumni and “others” who apparently want to encourage freedom of speech at Harvard while working to break up its monolithic and oppressive leftist culture. After years of sleepy disinterest, it looks like those dedicated to free thought have finally decided to fight.

Right now the plan is to publish The Salient two to three times per year. When the next issue is distributed throughout the college, do not be surprised if the leftist thugs who run Harvard to have organized a plan to steal and destroy all copies. It is the left’s playbook to silence all debate and opposition.

The publishers of The Salient had better be prepared for such thuggery, and arrange the distribution in order to defeat it.

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Scientists discover underground reservoir of hydrogen, likely ice, near Martian equator

December 16, 2021 8:58 am Robert Zimmerman

Click for full image.

In what could be a very significant discovery, scientists using Europe’s Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) have discovered a surprisingly large underground reservoir of hydrogen, likely ice, near Martian equator and inside the solar system’s largest known canyon, Valles Marineris.

The map to the right, reduced to post here, provides all the important data. From its caption:

The coloured scale at the bottom of the frame shows the amount of ‘water-equivalent hydrogen’ (WEH) by weight (wt%). As reflected on these scales, the purple contours in the centre of this figure show the most water-rich region. In the area marked with a ‘C’, up to 40% of the near-surface material appears to be composed of water (by weight). The area marked ‘C’ is about the size of the Netherlands and overlaps with the deep valleys of Candor Chaos, part of the canyon system considered promising in our hunt for water on Mars.

What the caption does not note is the latitude of this hydrogen, about 3 to 10 degrees south latitude. Assuming the hydrogen represents underground ice, this would be the first detection on Mars below 30 degrees latitude, and the very first in the equatorial regions. Data from orbit has suggested that Mars has a lot of water ice, found near the surface more and more as you move into higher latitudes above 30 degrees and making Mars much like Antarctica. Almost no ice however had until now been detected below 30 degrees latitude. As the European Space Agency’s press release noted,
» Read more

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China’s Kuaizhou-1A rocket fails during launch

December 16, 2021 8:33 am Robert Zimmerman

China’s Kuaizhou-1A rocket experienced its second launch failure on December 14th, though few details about what went wrong have been released.

The Kuaizhou-1A rocket is built by one of China’s pseudo-private companies, Expace.

Expace had been encouraged by three successful Kuaizhou-1A launches across September, October and November, which followed the Kuaizhou-1A being grounded for one year as a result of a failure in September 2020.

Since the rocket’s first three stages use solid rocket motors, it must have been derived from military missile technology. Thus, the company is not private, even if it has obtained Chinese private investment capital, but closely supervised by the Chinese government and its military.

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