Devo – Uncontrollable Urge
An evening pause: Performed live c1981.
Hat tip Jim Mallamace.
Boeing and NASA set July 30th for 2nd unmanned Starliner demo mission
Capitalism in space: Boeing and NASA today announced that they have now scheduled the second unmanned Starliner demo mission to ISS for July 30th.
In separate statements, the agency and the company said they were planning to launch the Starliner on a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 at 2:53 p.m. Eastern July 30 on the Orbital Flight Test (OFT) 2 mission. A launch that day would allow the spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station on the evening of July 31.
The new launch date comes after NASA and Boeing completed an “integrated mission dress rehearsal” for the mission using a simulator at a Boeing facility in Houston. The five-day simulation covered activities starting 26 hours before launch and going through landing, including docking and undocking from the station.
Both Boeing and NASA are still hopeful that the first manned flight of Starliner can still take place before the end of this year. Whether it does or not will largely depend on how well things go on this unmanned demo flight.
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
No plans to shoot down Long March 5B booster; revised prediction
The Biden administration will make no attempt to shoot down the 21-ton core stage of China’s Long March 5B rocket, according to the Defense secretary Lloyd Austin:
At this point we don’t have a plan to shoot the rocket down. We’re hopeful it will land in a place where it won’t harm anyone. Hopefully in the ocean or someplace like that. I think this speaks to the fact that for those of us who operate in the space domain that there should be a requirement to operate in a safe and thoughtful mode and make sure that we take those kinds of things into consideration as we plan and conduct operations.
Meanwhile, the predicted reentry window has shrunk again, to 16 hours, and shifted so that its centerpoint is now over Egypt, as shown on this map by the Aerospace Corporation:
» Read more
Martian volcanic eruption thought to be only 50,000-210,000 years old
Using Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) images scientists now believe they have located a volcanic eruption on Mars that could have erupted violently as recently as only 50,000 years ago, and is located deep within Mars’ volcano country. The overview map to the right indicates the location of this volcanic with the blue cross. The red dots surrounded by white ovals are distinct quakes that InSight has detected. From their paper’s abstract:
Stratigraphic relationships indicate a relative age younger than the surrounding volcanic plains and the [nearby] Zunil impact crater (~0.1–1 [million years]), with crater counting suggesting that the deposit has an absolute model age of 53 ± 7 to 210 ± 12 [thousand years]. This young age implies that if this deposit is volcanic then the Cerberus Fossae region may not be extinct and that Mars may still be volcanically active. This interpretation is consistent with the identification of seismicity in this region by the [InSight] lander, and has additional implications for astrobiology.
The Cerberus Fossae region is a series of long fissures that scientists think were created when the underground magma pushed up, stretched the surface, and thus caused it to crack. This particular feature suggests that when the ground cracked it sometimes also did so in conjunction with a volcanic eruption.
Below is a zoomed-in context mosaic, taken from figure 1 of the above paper, showing the feature itself and the surrounding terrain.
» Read more
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.
Today’s blacklisted American: NJ cop fired for calling Black Lives Matter rioters “terrorists”
Doesn’t exist in Hopewell Township, NJ.
Blacklists are back and the Dems’ have got ’em: A New Jersey policewoman, Sara Erwin, has been fired by her local township, Hopewell Township, because she strongly criticized the violent and Marxist organization Black Lives Matter, noting that the riots they had instigated last year after the death of George Floyd made them “terrorists.”
For expressing support for Erwin’s comments, Hopewell township also demoted and suspended another female cop, Mandy Grey, as well as punished five other of its employees for expressing support for Erwin’s post.
Six township employees, including five members of the police department, were put on leave for appearing to support Erwin’s post, The Trentonian reported in June.
Hopewell Township Police Chief Lance Maloney, who has since retired, declined to identify the employees at the time, but a source identified them as Grey, Detective Mark Panzano, Officers Erwin and John Ferner, dispatcher Gregory Peck and public works truck driver Steve Harbat, the newspaper reported.
Their crime? This is what Erwin had written that they had endorsed:
» Read more
Long March 5B booster reentry prediction still centers on evening of May 8th off coast of Australia
Click for full image.
Today’s most recent prediction by the Aerospace Corporation for the reentry of China’s out-of-control Long March 5B 21-ton core stage is still centered at 10:34 pm (Eastern) on May 8th, with a total uncertainty of 21 hours. As the company notes,
The prediction is currently holding steady for Saturday evening for the US, and the error bars are shrinking.
As shown on the map to the right, the centerpoint is just off the southwest coast of Australia. However, with a window 21 hours long, the booster could still come down in a large number of high population locations.
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
Bezos sells $2.4 billion in Amazon stock
Capitalism in space: According to SEC filings, Jeff Bezos this week sold $2.4 billion in Amazon stock, adding to all his increasing stock sales in recent years.
Bezos said in 2017 that he was selling $1 billion a year to fund his Blue Origin space venture, but he has been increasing the size and frequency of the stock sales recently. He sold more than $7 billion last year. This is his first stock sale of 2021.
By my count of all his sales since 2017, Bezos has raised about $12 billion in cash. Of this, he has said that he wants to spend $10 billion on fighting “climate change,” as well as at least $1 billion per year on Blue Origin.
One way or the other, Blue Origin has far more cash available to it than SpaceX. Too bad Bezos’ company has done so little with it in the past four years. Four years ago the company was truly a viable competitor to SpaceX, though behind it in the curve. Then Bezos hired a new CEO, Bob Smith, to run the company. The development pace slowed to a crawl as the company shifted gears from using Bezos’ money to fund development to trying to obtain government money instead. That shift forced Blue Origin to bow to government demands, which in turn slowed development of their New Glenn orbital rocket. The company also took the big space approach toward development of its lunar lander, pausing all real design and construction until it won the NASA contract. This made it less attractive a bid, which is one reason SpaceX’s Starship won the contract instead.
In addition, the company ended the many and frequent test flights of New Shepard that had been occurring, slowing the pace to about one launch per year.
In that time Blue Origin lost so much ground that it will now be difficult, but not impossible, to catch up. Maybe these cash sales by Bezos is to give him the capital to catch up. I hope so. We need real competitors to SpaceX.
May 5, 2021 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
» Read more
Alejandro Aguanta – Zorba’s Dance
An evening pause: The main them form Mikis Theodorakis’ score from the movie Zorba the Greek (1964).
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
Starship #15 launches AND lands successfully
Capitalism in space: On the 60th anniversary of Alan Shepard’s suborbital flight, making him the first American to fly in space, SpaceX has successfully launched and landed its fifteenth Starship prototype.
The flight appeared remarkably smooth, except for the cameras on board which dropped out for much of the flight. The first image shows the rocket coming down just before touch down. At this moment it was dropping very smoothly, and landed very gently on the landing pad.
The second image was taken about thirty seconds after landing. There was a fire at the rocket’s base being extinguished by the water fire control system. Other than that, the rocket appears whole and undamaged.
As I write this, it is about ten minutes after landing, the fires at the rocket’s base have been put out, and all seems under control. I expect that SpaceX engineers will finally have a fully intact prototype that they can inspect for future design revisions. For example, the skin of this prototype has many thermal tiles attached. They can now see if their attachment system works.
I have embedded the 16 minute live stream of the flight below the fold. Enjoy!
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How to watch the first flight of Starship prototype #15
Screen capture from LabPadre Nerdle camera live stream.
UPDATED and BUMPED. The SpaceX live stream is now embedded below the fold. It is set to go live in about five minutes before launch, with the launch now set for about 5:25 pm (Central).
Capitalism in space: The roads have now closed at Boca Chica, Texas, in preparation for today’s test flight of SpaceX’s 15th Starship prototype.
The following live streams are presently available if you wish to watch:
- Labpadre’s 24/7 live stream, with six other cameras also available
- NASASpaceFlight’s live stream
- Everyday Astronaut’s live stream
I will add other live streams as they become available. If SpaceX adds its own live stream I will embed it below.
» Read more
Breakthrough Listen finds no signs of alien transmissions from 60 million stars
Where are those alien civilizations? Breakthrough Listen, a privately funded project searching for evidence of alien life, has released the first results from its survey of 60 million stars in an area looking towards the galactic center, noting that it found no evidence of any technological transmissions signaling an alien civilization from any of those stars.
The paper can be downloaded here [pdf].
The kind of signals they were looking for were not beacons sent out intentionally by alien civilizations, such as television or radio broadcasts, but unintentional transmissions, such as radar transmissions meant for other purposes but still beamed into space. They found none.