Russia today successfully launched a new Progress freighter to ISS using its Soyuz-2 rocket, bring almost three tons of supplies to the station..
The 2021 launch race:
4 SpaceX
3 China
2 Russia
1 Rocket Lab
1 Virgin Orbit
The U.S. still leads China 6 to 3 in the national rankings. That lead should widen this week with three American launches scheduled, two Starlink launches from SpaceX and one Cygnus freighter from Northrop Grumman.
Click for full image.
The new colonial movement: The leader of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) yesterday released on his twitter feed the first photo of Mars that was beamed back from its Al-Amal (“hope” in English) orbiter, taken shortly after achieving orbit.
That photo is to the right, cropped and reduced to post here. From the article at the link:
[The photo] was captured by Hope’s EXI instrument from an altitude of 24,700 km (15,350 miles) above the Martian surface at 20:36 GMT on Wednesday – so, one day after arriving at the Red Planet.
The north pole of Mars is in the upper left of the image. At centre, just emerging into the early morning sunlight, is Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the Solar System. Look right on the boundary between night and day, the so-called terminator.
The three shield volcanoes in a line are Ascraeus Mons, Pavonis Mons, and Arsia Mons. Look east, to the limb of the planet, and you can see the mighty canyon system, Valles Marineris. It’s part covered by cloud.
Right now the spacecraft’s orbit is very eccentric, ranging from 600 to 30,000 miles above the Martian surface. After several orbital trims, Al-Amal will end up in an orbit about 14,000 by about 27,000 miles, with an inclination of about 25 degrees. From that high orbit it will then focus on studying the Martian atmosphere.
Thus, future images will likely be similar to this, global and mostly aimed at tracking visible phenomenon in the atmosphere (dust storms and clouds).
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.
"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
Capitalism in space: ULA’s first complete Vulcan core stage, meant at this point only for testing launch procedures, has arrived at Cape Canaveral.
After connecting the launch platform and the rocket to gas and electrical systems at the pad, ULA engineers will run the Vulcan booster and the ground infrastructure through a series of exercises, culminating in loading of thousands of gallons of cryogenic liquid methane and liquid oxygen into the rocket.
Once these tests are complete, the stage will be returned to ULA’s facility in Alabama to be refitted with flight worthy BE-4 engines so it can fly on a later mission. The engines presently attached are test engines.
ULA expects the first flightworthy BE-4 engines to be delivered by Blue Origin by the summer. These will then be incorporated into the first Vulcan to fly (hopefully before the end of the year) and carrying Astrobotic’s unmanned Peregrine lunar lander.
That rocket, as will all Vulcan rockets for the foreseeable future, will be entirely expendable. Though ULA says it intends at some point to recover for reuse the engines of the core stage, they have not delineated a time schedule for when that will happen.
At this point the only customer ULA has for this rocket is the government — especially the military. Vulcan cannot compete in price with SpaceX’s rockets, so I doubt any commercial satellite company will be much interested in it. The military will pay the extra bucks, because it wants more than one launch company for redundancy, and it has already committed to buying Vulcans for the next five years.
Of course, that long term commitment to Vulcan by the military will likely change if other cheaper rockets enter the market. At the present the military is limiting bidding on future launches to just SpaceX and ULA. That cannot hold up in court if other viable rocket companies wish to bid. Expect those new companies to do what SpaceX did when the Air Force refused to let it bid on military launches about five years ago, sue, and win in court.
At that point ULA’s an entirely expendable Vulcan will be very vulnerable to losing its last customer. ULA must make this rocket reusable or it will die as a company.
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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.
“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.
An evening pause: On this, the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, I must once again honor his memory, most especially because the Marxist, anti-American bigots who are now running roughshod across our once free nation wish to cancel him by actually accusing the man who freed the slaves of being a racist.
And though he freed the slaves, I think Lincoln’s most enduring contribution to American history, a contribution that now has sadly been lost, was his limitless good will for everyone, even to those who hated him and wished to kill him. Had he not been assassinated, American history might have been far better because Lincoln would have had the clout to ease the worst elements of Reconstruction, while forcing through reforms in the former southern slave states.
The modern Democrats in Congress — and their supporters nationwide — might benefit by reading some history about Lincoln. Alas, I have no hope of this.
As I wrote for last year’s tribute,
Lincoln stood for freedom for all humans, the central heart of the American experiment. He was willing and did die for that stance. We should all be willing to do no less.
The video below shows probably every photograph ever taken of Lincoln, in chronological order. You can see him age and mature. You can also see a gaunt and serious man who appears to care deeply about whatever he does.
They’re coming for you next: When a conservative student at the Illinois Institute of Technology proposed starting a chapter of the national conservative organization Turning Point USA (TPUSA) at the school, a slander campaign was immediately started by other students against both TPUSA and the student, forcing him to back down.
[After his proposal was put forth], classmates began to message his fraternity brothers, asking whether he was attempting to lead a “hate group” on campus. The conservative student said that this occurred on three separate occasions.
On January 27, the conservative student again presented to the student government — this time, to withdraw his proposal. The conservative student emphasized that he had no malicious intent in proposing a TPUSA chapter, but merely aimed to start a political discourse on campus. The conservative student apologized for proposing a TPUSA club and stated that he would consider forming a group under another national conservative organization.
Derek Rhea, the executive vice president of the Student Government Association commented that the “entire campus had been completely mobilized,” leading to a “huge movement on the opposing side” against the prospect of a TPUSA group at Illinois Tech. He applauded the conservative student for withdrawing his request to start a TPUSA chapter.
Senator Hannah-Lauren Moreno asked whether the conservative student was pressured into rescinding his request. The conservative student informed the student government that classmates began to wonder if he, his peers, and his fraternity brothers were “terrible people” for trying to start the club.
Following the January 27 student government meeting, the conservative student provided Campus Reform with screenshots, one of which appears to show a student rejoicing in an online message that “we managed to successfully cyber bully a student org to death.” [emphasis mine]
There is only one reason these partisan leftists (and that’s what they are) wanted to block a new TPUSA chapter. Unlike the moribund and largely uninteresting and dull Republican Party clubs, TPUSA has been very effective on campuses nationwide at countering leftwing hate and censorship while drawing to it large numbers of new students, teaching them that conservative values are about freedom and justice and equal treatment before the law, not the left’s slanderous lies of “white supremacy” and “hate.”
I highlighted the words of Rhea above because if he is telling the truth and a “huge movement” of students formed to blacklist this organization we are in very big trouble. This indicates that the next generation is truly all in with censorship and blacklisting, and will likely soon consider imprisoning anyone who disagrees as perfectly reasonable.
It is also possible that this guy is lying, and that the so-called “huge movement” was a handful of loudmouthed bullies, who have successfully learned how to use social media to intimidate everyone else. In this case Rhea is one of those bullies, and he is using his position as VP of the student government for that depraved purpose.
Either way, I guarantee that should this student return to propose a club linked to a different conservative organization, these same bullies will appear, making the same slanderous claims. They lie when they say they would accept other conservative organizations. They want them all banned, and play this game to make sure none ever appear.
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.
"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
With the imminent landing on Mars of both the American rover Perseverance only days away on February 18th followed by China’s rover in April, I think it time for a new rover update, not only providing my readers a review of the new landing sites but a look at the most recent travels of Curiosity on Mars and Yutu-2 on the Moon.
Click for full resolution image.
The panorama above, made from four images taken by Curiosity’s right navigation camera on February 12, 2021 (found here, here, here, and here), looks south to the base of Mount Sharp, now only a short distance away. The yellow lines on the overview map to the right show the area this panorama covers. The white line indicates Curiosity’s previous travels. The dotted red line in both images shows Curiosity’s planned route.
The two white dots on the overview map are the locations of the two recurring slope lineae along Curiosity’s route, with the plan to get reasonable close to the first and spend some time there studying it. These lineae are one of Mars’ most intriguing phenomenon, seasonal dark streaks that appear on slopes in the spring and fade by the fall. There are several theories attempting to explain their formation, most proposing the seepage of a brine from below ground, but none has been accepted yet with any enthusiasm.
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An evening pause: Nice cover of Boston’s hit song.
Hat tip Saromaya.
In the past week there have been a slew of stories that all suggest strongly that the political support for the NASA-built rocket dubbed the Space Launch System (SLS) is fading very quickly, and might soon be weak enough that the political class in Washington might finally have the courage to cancel it.
First, a group of eleven Democratic Party senators on February 3rd wrote a letter [pdf] to the Biden administration, begging it to continue the manned lunar program dubbed Artemis that the Trump administration had instigated.
What made that letter remarkable was that it made no mention of SLS at all. Instead, its focus was to encourage Biden to not abandon construction of the Artemis manned lunar lander, what NASA dubs the Human Landing System (HLS).
Until that moment it had always been assumed in political circles that if you continue Artemis it means you continue SLS. Artemis itself was conceived as a program to give that heavy-lift rocket a purpose. SLS had been mandated by Congress a decade ago when Obama cancelled Bush’s Ares heavy-lift rocket. The problem was that Congress had not proposed any mission for SLS, and thus Artemis was born to give it that mission.
That these Democrats were pushing Artemis but not SLS was politically significant. It meant that they no longer considered Artemis synonymous with SLS. The former could exist without the latter.
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They’re coming for you next: The Disney corporation yesterday fired conservative actress Gina Carano, who was starring in a Star Wars series, simply because she wrote a tweet describing the entirely truthful fact that the Nazis were able to kill the Jews because they had taught the public to hate them and thus agree with that round-up.
Her tweet is to the right. Not surprisingly, a Twitter mob soon formed demanded her blacklisting. How dare she remind people of the evils of oppression, bigotry, and the genocide of a people merely because of their race, religion, or creed? Since she has been an outspoken conservative who supports Trump, her blacklisting by these storm-troopers seemed entirely reasonable to Disney, and so they finally fired here. The statement from the Lucasfilm division of the company indicates the company’s outright ignorance and close-mindedness.
“Gina Carano is not currently employed by Lucasfilm and there are no plans for her to be in the future,” a Lucasfilm spokesperson said in a statement. “Nevertheless, her social media posts denigrating people based on their cultural and religious identities are abhorrent and unacceptable.”
In other words, it is now unacceptable to retell the history of the Holocaust in order to avoid repeating it. In fact, Disney’s action here suggests the left wants another Holocaust, is using Hitler’s tactics quite openly, and thus must do whatever it can — with the help of big corporations like this — to silence and dehumanize anyone who opposes them. And isn’t this exactly what the Nazis did to the Jews, as Carano so nicely illustrated in her tweet?
If Americans don’t fight back hard soon, worse is coming, and soon. Do you subscribe to Disney’s streaming service? Do you rent its movies? Do you watch Star Wars? If after this action you still do, you are then complicit in this blacklisting, and can count yourself as a willing accessory to the coming genocide.
The uncertainty of science: Scientists have detected faint evidence that suggests the existence of a Neptune-sized exoplanet circling the sunlike star Alpha Centauri A.
After analyzing 100 hours of data gathered by NEAR in May and June of 2019, the scientists detected a thermal fingerprint in the habitable zone of Alpha Centauri A. The signal potentially corresponds to a roughly Neptune-size world orbiting between 1 and 2 astronomical units (AU) from the star, study team members said. (One AU, the average Earth-sun distance, is about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers.)
But that planet has not yet been confirmed, so it remains a candidate for now.
This result is very uncertain at this moment, so we should constrain our enthusiasm. If true, however, it would signal the possibility of more exoplanets circling the stars of the nearest stellar system. Alpha Centauri is actually three stars, a binary of two sunlike stars circled at great distance by the red dwarf Proxima Centauri. Scientists already think there are exoplanets circling Proxima, with one about the size of Earth.
What makes this particular interesting, if true, is that the exoplanet was detected not by the slight wobble its gravity caused in the star, or by a transit across the face of the star, but by its own light. If the detection is real, this would be I think the first time that an exoplanet has been seen directly, even if that detection comprises a few tiny pixels of light.
