This week’s launch failure of the Proton rocket leaves two satellite communications firms in a quandary.

5:05 pm

The competition heats up: This week’s launch failure of the Proton rocket leaves two satellite communications firms in a quandary.

Luxembourg-based SES joins London-based Inmarsat among the commercial customers awaiting Proton launches later this year, a prospect that almost certainly disappeared in the fireball that engulfed Proton shortly after liftoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Inmarsat’s entire next-generation high-speed mobile communications product offer is booked on three Proton launches.

It appears that their only other launch options are Arianespace, which is booked up, and SpaceX, which is not yet ready to take on this much new business.

In other words, the launch industry has a need for more launchers from companies willing to compete for that business.

Update: Arianespace has said that if they get the orders quickly, they might be able to fit the launch’s into their 2014 launch manifest. That has the sound of a company that wants to make money, and is willing to do whatever it takes to capture the business.

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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

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.

The FBI has still not contacted any conservative group that was harassed by the IRS.

10:11 am

The FBI has still not contacted any conservative group that was harassed by the IRS.

And we still don’t know who the lead investigator of the FBI investigation is.

This “FBI investigation” is a fraud. Obama might have expressed public outrage over the IRS scandal, but in private it appears he instead ordered that nothing be done and that FBI act as a shield for the guilty parties.

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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

The lawyer for IRS official Lois Lerner is pushing to get her full immunity in exchange for her full testimony to Congress.

9:57 am

The lawyer for IRS official Lois Lerner is pushing to get her full immunity in exchange for her full testimony to Congress.

The article makes two very good points: One, it will be difficult to prosecute anyone at the IRS for its harassment of conservatives, and two, Lerner’s full testimony is likely not going to have any earthshaking bombshells. She will state that the White House had nothing to do with the harassment (whether that is true or not), and that the harassment was merely the result of some bad management decisions.

And thus, the government’s power over us will rise, and freedom will experience another cut in its continuing death of a thousand cuts.

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NASA has revised their plans for the 2017 and 2021 flights of its Orion capsule, making both flights more ambitious.

9:33 am

The competition heats up? NASA has revised their plans for the 2017 and 2021 flights of its Orion capsule, making both flights more ambitious.

[M]anifests have always pointed towards the first SLS/Orion launch being an uncrewed Exploration Mission (EM-1), which was baselined a validation flight that would send Orion on a 7-10 day mission around the Moon.

SLS and Orion would then endure a four year gap – again, mainly due to the advanced 2017 debut relating to ISS crew back up – before repeating a version of EM-1, this time as a CLO (Crewed Lunar Orbit) flight, with four astronauts spending three to four days orbiting our nearest neighbor, as opposed to heading directly home after passing around the Moon – a flight known as Exploration Mission -2 (EM-2).

Much to the surprise of some people deeply involved with SLS and Orion, the order came down from NASA HQ to realign EM-2, based around a 2019 mission tasked with hunting down and capturing an asteroid that would then be placed in the vicinity of the Moon within one to two years. EM-2 is also known as the Asteroid Redirect Crewed Mission (ARCM). [emphasis mine]

It has been my understanding that the plans for the 2017 unmanned test flight have previously described it as sending the Orion capsule into a high several thousand mile orbit, not to the Moon, in order to simulate a re-entry from lunar distances. Making that unmanned mission a lunar orbital mission makes it far more challenging. Similarly, it is incredibly risky to turn the next flight, the first manned flight for Orion, into a duplicate of this mission, or a flight to an asteroid. This will be the first time humans will have ever flown on Orion, and only the second time the capsule has been used. To then send those humans to the Moon or an asteroid seems downright foolish. Even the 1960s NASA, which was quite willing to run risks, would not have attempted such a plan.

It is my guess that the White House has recognized that SLS can’t survive politically with a launch rate once every four years and planned test flights that aren’t very exciting. They are therefore pushing NASA to accelerate the second mission (and first manned flight) from 2021 to 2019, while also making both flights more ambitious and therefore more salable to the public.

Whether this is possible, given NASA’s bloated bureaucracy, is the main question. Moreover, even at this accelerated pace SLS will be competing directly against the private sector, which I expect will continue to do things far faster and, more importantly, far cheaper. Against that competition SLS will be hard put to survive.

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The Proton rocket is now grounded pending an investigation into today’s launch failure.

5:52 pm

The Proton rocket is now grounded pending an investigation into today’s launch failure.

This is no surprise. What is more significant is that the crash today will likely delay all launches out of Baikonur for at least three months.

[C]ontamination will likely suspend activities at Baikonur Cosmodrome for two or three months, Ria Novosti reported, citing an unnamed source within the Russian space industry. The launch of a robotic Progress cargo ship to the International Space Station from Baikonur, currently scheduled for July 27, will probably be delayed as a result, according to this source. The next manned launch from Baikonur is Soyuz 36, which is slated to blast off on Sept. 25 to take three new crewmembers to the International Space Station.

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The White House today announced that it is delaying until 2015 the requirement in Obamacare that companies with more than 50 employees offer health insurance.

4:27 pm

The Obama administration finds out what’s in it: The White House today announced that it is delaying until 2015 the requirement in Obamacare that companies with more than 50 employees offer health insurance.

The law requires companies that employ 50 or more workers to offer coverage or face fines. The Treasury Department and the White House said that, based on complaints by employers that the system for reporting the coverage was too onerous, they would simplify that system and give employers an additional year to comply. “We have heard concerns about the complexity of the requirements and the need for more time to implement them effectively,” Mark J. Mazur, the assistant secretary for tax policy at the Treasury Department, said in a statement posted online. “We have listened to your feedback. And we are taking action.”

The mandate was originally set to kick in for 2014, but will now start in 2015. The decision effectively means that penalties that would have been assessed against non-compliant businesses will be delayed until 2015. The administration encouraged employers to provide insurance anyway.

In other words, they are finally discovering what everyone on the right has been saying for three years: Obamacare is an unworkable law that is also killing business and industry. Look for increasing numbers of Democrats willing to join with the Republicans to repeal is incredibly stupid law.

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A university supervisor orders a student at Sonoma State University in California to remove her cross necklace because “it might offend others.”

10:31 am

A university supervisor orders a student at Sonoma State University in California to remove her cross necklace because “it might offend others.”

The university has responded properly, apologizing and stating that the supervisor was “completely wrong.” However, it remains horrifying that there are individuals in power in a university that somehow don’t understand the very basics of religious liberty.

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The International Astronomical Union has rejected the first choice of voters for naming Pluto’s fourth and fifth moons.

10:03 am

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) has picked names for Pluto’s fourth and fifth moons, rejecting Vulcan, the first choice of the public.

After the discovery [of the moons], the leader of the research team, Mark Showalter (SETI Institute), decided to call for a public vote to suggest names for the two objects. To be consistent with the names of the other Pluto satellites, the names had to be picked from classical mythology, in particular with reference to the underworld — the realm where the souls of the deceased go in the afterlife. The contest concluded with the proposed names Vulcan, Cerberus and Styx ranking first, second and third respectively. Showalter submitted Vulcan and Cerberus to the IAU where the Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature (WGPSN) and the Committee on Small Body Nomenclature (WGSBN) discussed the names for approval.

However, the name Vulcan had already been used for a hypothetical planet between Mercury and the Sun. Although this planet was found not to exist, the term “vulcanoid” remains attached to any asteroid existing inside the orbit of Mercury, and the name Vulcan could not be accepted for one of Pluto’s satellites (also, Vulcan does not fit into the underworld mythological scheme). Instead the third most popular name was chosen — Styx, the name of the goddess who ruled over the underworld river, also called the Styx.

I just can’t wait until there really is a robust population of space-faring colonists, if only because those colonists will then tell the IAU to go to hell when it tries to tell them what to name things.

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The Kickstarter campaign by the private company Planetary Resources has made its $1.5 million goal.

9:16 am

The competition heats up: The Kickstarter campaign by the private company Planetary Resources has made its $1.5 million goal.

That campaign reached its $1 million goal on June 19, opening the way for one of Planetary Resources’ Arkyd-100 space telescopes to be used for educational and personal imaging projects. The biggest crowd-pleaser was a $25 offer that will let backers take “space selfies” — orbital pictures showing a display on the telescope with an image submitted by a backer in the foreground, and Earth in the background.

The Asteroid Zoo plan was [the $1.5 million] stretch goal for the campaign. Planetary Resources will partner with Zooniverse to create a game-like online program to identify asteroids, modeled on other Zooniverse citizen-science efforts such as Galaxy Zoo, Moon Zoo and Planet Hunters. Users would be recruited to join in, and then trained to spot the telltale signs of an asteroid’s movement — for example, by “blinking” multiple images of the same patch of sky, or using more sophisticated techniques. The search would draw upon more than 3 million images from the Catalina Sky Survey.

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A Russian Proton rocket went out of control and crashed mere seconds after launch today at Baikonur.

8:58 am

A Russian Proton rocket went out of control and crashed mere seconds after launch today at Baikonur.

Video below the fold. It appears the rocket’s avionics had completely failed so that the engines could no longer control its flight. Obviously that is speculation. What is clear is that the failure was not because of a problem with the rocket’s Briz-M upper stage, which has been the source of the five Proton failures during the past three years.

This is very very very bad news for the Russian commercial rocket effort. They have been trying to recover from those earlier failures, and with the string of successes this year had appeared to doing so. Instead, they now have had their worst and most spectacular launch failure in decades, so spectacular it is reminiscent of the rocket failures of the 1950s. Worse, the failure is not because of the relatively new Briz-M upper stage, but in their well established, decades old first stage, indicating that there are some fundamental quality control problems in their manufacturing process that they have not fixed.

This cannot be good for their business, especially as they have some serious competition. Arianespace, though expensive, is very reliable. SpaceX, though new and essentially untried, is very competitive in price. So is Orbital Sciences.

Expect a lot of heads to roll.
» Read more

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The Washington Post admits that most of the Democratic claims that sequestration would cause disaster were either outright lies or a gross exaggeration.

10:43 am

The Washington Post admits that most of the Democratic claims that sequestration would cause disaster were either outright lies or a gross exaggeration.

I said it then that they were lying about the consequence of sequestration. I say now that they will be lying again when the the next sequestration cuts arrive in October.

I suspect you could cut the federal budget by at least one third, bringing the numbers back to what they were about ten years ago, and not notice any loss of service.

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NASA’s Space Launch System, costing billions per year, will only make its second manned flight in 2025.

8:50 am

The competition cools off! NASA’s Space Launch System, costing billions per year, will only make its second manned flight in 2025.

SLS is to make its maiden flight in 2017, when it will carry an empty Orion crew capsule to near-Moon space and back. Another flight would follow in 2021 and, depending on factors both technical and political, could see a crew of astronauts travel to a captured asteroid NASA wants to redirect to a high lunar orbit using a yet-to-be-built robotic spacecraft.

Notionally, SLS would next fly in 2025, giving the rocket a launch rate of once every four years. NASA has been spending about $1.8 billion a year on SLS development, including construction of a rocket test stand in Mississippi, and associated launch infrastructure at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Add in the cost of the rocket’s companion crew capsule, the Lockheed Martin-built Orion, and the tab rises to nearly $3 billion a year. [emphasis mine]

At that launch rate, the NASA’s space effort is slower than China’s, which has a pace that I consider extremely tortoise-like.

But don’t worry, buckos! NASA will be keeping the seats warm in its thousands of government facilities, employing thousands of government workers doing little or nothing.

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Third Anniversary

11:48 pm

This past weekend Behind the Black celebrated its third anniversary. I did it by posting very little, as the news in space, to my mind, has been very quiet, while the news in politics and culture has been very depressing, something I am growing tired of reading. It seems to me that freedom is dying, both in the United States and worldwide, being chipped away bit by bit until no one alive knows what the word means anymore.

Moreover, on July 4 Diane and I will head north to the Grand Canyon (our third trip together to the bottom) for ten days vacation, so expect posting for that time period to be very light or nonexistent.

I do intend to post until then and once I get back. If you have liked what I have written and posted these past three years, then please consider the idea of contributing to the website. The tip jar is in the right column, near the bottom.

And if you really want to find out the moment I believe American society began to die, you might want to consider reading the new ebook edition of my first book, Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8. The book tells the story of one of our country’s grandest achievements, and how that triumph ironically ended up teaching an entire generation all the wrong lessons.

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Better not buy bottled water in Virginia: It will put you in jail.

8:21 pm

Better not buy bottled water in Virginia: It will put you in jail.

When a half-dozen men and a woman in street clothes closed in on University of Virginia student Elizabeth Daly, 20, she and two roommates panicked.

That led to Daly spending a night and an afternoon in the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. Her initial offense? Walking to her car with bottled water, cookie dough and ice cream just purchased from the Harris Teeter in the Barracks Road Shopping Center for a sorority benefit fundraiser.

A group of state Alcoholic Beverage Control agents clad in plainclothes approached her, suspecting the blue carton of LaCroix sparkling water to be a 12-pack of beer. Police say one of the agents jumped on the hood of her car. She says one drew a gun. Unsure of who they were, Daly tried to flee the darkened parking lot.

Thugs. What a bunch of thugs.

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A science poster released at an American Geophysical Union conference this week finds again that the global warming climate models used by policy makers have all failed to predict what has actually happened.

3:38 pm

The uncertainty of science: A science poster released at an American Geophysical Union conference this week finds again that the global warming climate models used by policy makers have all failed to predict what has actually happened.

Some devastating quotes from the poster:
» Read more

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“This is the reason the U.S. has the right to bear arms.”

3:21 pm

The words of a Canadian yesterday: “This is the reason the U.S. has the right to bear arms.”

The reason? The Mounties had been breaking into the homes of a town (evacuated due to flooding) and seizing firearms. When the residents found out about this they were not pleased.

Officers laid down a spike belt to stop anyone from attempting to drive past the blockade. That action sent the crowd of residents into a rage.

“What’s next? Tear gas?” shouted one resident. “It’s just like Nazi Germany, just taking orders,” shouted another. “This is the reason the U.S. has the right to bear arms,” said Charles Timpano, pointing to the group of Mounties.

Officers were ordered to fall back about an hour into the standoff in order to diffuse the situation and listen to residents’ concerns. [emphasis mine]

Obviously, the rage of the citizens had some positive effect, as it forced the police to fall back.

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After ten years of operation, NASA has turned off its Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) space telescope.

1:16 pm

After ten years of operation, NASA has turned off its Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) space telescope.

In a first-of-a-kind move for NASA, the agency in May 2012 loaned GALEX to the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, which used private funds to continue operating the satellite while NASA retained ownership. Since then, investigators from around the world have used GALEX to study everything from stars in our own Milky Way galaxy to hundreds of thousands of galaxies 5 billion light-years away.

It appears this loan arrangement has now ended because of a lack of funds. Either way, it always baffles me when NASA shuts down a working science telescope merely because it has been operating for a long time. Eventually the space agency will call for a replacement, the building of which will be far more expensive than it would have been to keep the original in operation.

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The Obama administration issued finalized rules Friday allowing religious-affiliated organizations opposing the use of contraception to opt out of the Obamacare mandate

11:40 am

The Obama administration issued finalized rules Friday allowing religious-affiliated organizations opposing the use of contraception to opt out of the Obamacare mandate.

While this might suggest the Obama administration has backed down, the rules appear very complex and will probably not work for many religious organizations. Moreover, what about individuals or private companies (such as Hobby Lobby) that also object for religious reasons?

As always, if you nonchalantly rely on the government to dictate the rules for everyone, you guarantee those rules will oppress someone along the way.

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The House committee has ruled that Lois Lerner waived her fifth amendment rights when she claimed she did “nothing wrong” before invoking the fifth in testimony last month.

11:24 am

The House committee investigating the IRS scandal has ruled that Lois Lerner waived her fifth amendment rights when she claimed she did “nothing wrong” before invoking the fifth in testimony last month.

“That is the not the way the Fifth Amendment works. You don’t get to tell your side of the story,” and then avoid cross examination, said Republican Trey Gowdy. “She sat there and could have said nothing.”

The vote could clear the way for Republicans to haul Lerner back before the committee, where she would likely again invoke her Fifth Amendment rights. That would likely lead to a vote to hold her in contempt of Congress, Republican aides said.

What I don’t understand is why the focus here is holding her in contempt. I would think the Republicans on this committee are negotiating to give her immunity so she can tell all. Then again, the track record of the left when comes to testimony is not good. Even with immunity I would expect Lerner to lie to protect Obama. Consider for example the absurd claims Holly Paz has made about the IRS harassment of conservatives.

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Voyager 1 has found the edge of the solar system to be far more complex than predicted by scientists.

8:44 am

The uncertainty of science: Voyager 1 has found the edge of the solar system to be far more complex than predicted by scientists.

Scientists had assumed that Voyager 1, launched in 1977, would have exited the solar system by now. That would mean crossing the heliopause and leaving behind the vast bubble known as the heliosphere, which is characterized by particles flung by the sun and by a powerful magnetic field.

The scientists’ assumption turned out to be half-right. On Aug. 25, Voyager 1 saw a sharp drop-off in the solar particles, also known as the solar wind. At the same time, there was a spike in galactic particles coming from all points of the compass. But the sun’s magnetic field still registers, somewhat diminished, on the spacecraft’s magnetometer. So it’s still in the sun’s magnetic embrace, in a sense.

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