SpaceX enters business of drilling for natural gas

Capitalism in space: SpaceX has decided to enter the natural gas energy business to help fuel its rockets, and is presently in a legal dispute with another natural gas drilling company over rights to drill on a piece of property near its Boca Chica Starship facility.

SpaceX intends to drill wells close to the company’s Boca Chica launchpad, it was revealed during a Friday hearing before the Railroad Commission of Texas, the state’s energy regulator.

Production has yet to start because of a legal dispute between the SpaceX subsidiary Lone Star Mineral Development and another energy company. Tim George, an attorney representing Lone Star, said at the hearing that SpaceX plans to use the methane it extracts from the ground “in connection with their rocket facility operations.”

While it’s unclear what exactly the gas would be used for, SpaceX plans to utilize super-chilled liquid methane and liquid oxygen as fuel for its Raptor engines.

Since methane is the main component of natural gas, I suspect SpaceX hopes to utilize the gas it pumps out to fuel its Starship & Super Heavy rockets. By obtaining the gas from its own wells, SpaceX cuts out any middle men, and has the opportunity to reduce its costs as well.

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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. 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

New leak located in Zvezda on ISS

Russian astronauts have located the suspected new leak location in the Zvezda module on ISS, and also think there might be another, as yet unlocated.

The specialists have discovered one more crack at the International Space Station and suspect that yet another one exists, ISS Russian Segment head Vladimir Solovyov told Rossiya-24. “So far, we have found one place and suspect another, where as some kind of leak exists. We must bring a powerful microscope on a cargo spacecraft and use to examine this place. We are not totally certain so far,” Solovyov said.

These two leaks are in addition to the one inch crack that caused last year’s leak and has been sealed.

All are pointing strongly to stress fractures in this section of Zvezda, one of the station’s oldest modules at twenty-plus years. The leaks are apparently located in the aft section where ships dock to Zvezda, with over a 100 dockings there since launch.

If the cracks and leaks are caused by stress fractures, the life span of Zvezda is now quite limited. It might be possible to seal the cracks and protect the module from further breaks by ending dockings at its port, but I suspect that will not work. Moreover, if I remember correctly Zvezda has the engines that are used to periodically raise ISS’s orbits. If the stress of firing those engines is too risky than another way must be found to maintain the station’s orbit.

In a few years the private company Axiom will be launching its own modules to ISS, designed in the long run to separate from the station and function independently. If NASA and Axiom are smart, they will make sure this new module matches Zvezda’s capabilities, thus making the Russian module redundant and actually superfluous.

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“The solar system is open for business”

Link here. The article gives an independent look at the surging capitalism that appears to be driving the resurgent rocket and space industry in the U.S. and elsewhere.

As the author notes in his conclusion:

There was a time when space enthusiasts waited on taxpayer-funded space programs to realize their dreams of routine spaceflight and humanity’s expansion into the cosmos. It’s been a very long wait. Now, privatized launch services are opening up access to space. A new wave of exploration missions is widening human knowledge of the solar system. It’s only a matter of time before entrepreneurs, particularly those with deep pockets, figure out how to make money out there.

I plug this article not because he quotes me extensively, but because he came to these conclusions independent of me, and only called me for comments because he thought I might add depth to his conclusions. That the ideas I have been pushing since the late 1990s are now percolating into the larger culture is a very very good sign.

While in those early days the reporters I spoke to were routinely horrified by the idea of a privately financed space mission and wondered if the government should even allow it (they really would say this), today the idea is now considered the right way to go.

This is progress, even in this time of blacklists and a government focused on crushing its citizens.

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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.

Today’s blacklisted American: Laura Loomer

They’re coming for you next: First, before I tell the sad situation that journalist and former candidate of Congress Laura Loomer faces, I want to note that this now daily feature has been renamed. For the past week I have called it “Today’s blacklisted conservative.” I have decided this is not accurate, as the people being repressed, squelched, destroyed, and silenced are routinely people whose opinions fall very much in the center of traditional American philosophy, in favor of freedom, the rule of law and the Constitution, and the equal treatment of all regardless of race, color, or creed.

I thought it more appropriate to note this fact, by pointing out that it is Americans who are being oppressed, not simply conservatives. And the people doing the oppression are so un-American it boggles the mind.

Today’s blacklisted American is Laura Loomer, who for many years was an aggressive investigative journalist willing to challenge corrupt politicians to their face. She ran for Congress in 2020, but unfortunately lost.

Earlier this week she announced on her website that she has discovered she has been placed on a “do-not-buy” list that now prevents her from buying a fire-arm anywhere. As she notes,

While I have NEVER been convicted of a felony, domestic violence, and I’ve never been adjudicated mentally unfit by a judge, my name was placed in the Federal National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) and I have been prohibited from ever owning or even touching a firearm.

She also notes in this same post that she has been banned from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Paypal, Venmo, GoFundMe, Uber, and Lyft. Chase bank once attempted to shut down her bank accounts.

And during her campaign for Congress, she added that “Comcast blocked my congressional campaign from sending texts and emails to voters while they donated to my opponent.”

On top of this, she found herself hassled by the government thugs of the TSA when she returned to this country last week after spending the last month or so in El Salvador.

I was singled out with no explanation and subjected to a thorough search, I was not allowed to grab my own suitcases from baggage claim, and I was detained for several hours while different federal officials from Department of Homeland Security interrogated me about my Wikipedia page, which states that I am a right-wing extremist and was an official Republican nominee for Congress, endorsed by President Trump. DHS officers also asked me about the events that occurred on January 6th in Washington DC. Needless to say, I was not in the country at the time, and know nothing about the protest at the US capitol.

Welcome Laura Loomer to the new America, ruled by a Democratic Party and helped by quisling establishment Republicans, all of whom apparently hate and fear ordinary Americans — especially those ordinary Americans unafraid to express their dissent publicly — and are willing to abuse their power to oppress such Americans.

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The pit caves of Mars: Can humans someday live in them?

Four more pits in the Tharsis Bulge on Mars

It has been more than four months since my last report on the pits of Mars. Time to do another.

The collage to the right shows the four different pits photographed by the high resolution camera of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) since October. The links to each image are:

Like almost all the cave pits so far found on Mars, all are in the Tharsis Bulge of giant volcanoes to west of Valles Marineris. The overview map below shows these pits in the context of every other pit in this region that I have featured on Behind the Black.
» Read more

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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

Chinese government gives wrist slap to powerful scientist on fraud and plagiarism charges

In a decision clearing a powerful scientist of charges of fraud and plagiarism in more than sixty papers, several of which have already been retracted, the Chinese government has also allowed that scientist to keep his post as head of one China’s universities.

The Chinese communists did punish him, but in a way that in the long run is mostly meaningless.

Cao [Xuetao, president of Nankai University and an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering] will be barred from applying for national science and technology projects, lose his qualification as a scientific expert, and be forbidden from recruiting graduate students, all for 1 year. The notification also ordered him to investigate and correct the papers. It appears he will keep his job as president of Nankai University, one of China’s most prestigious universities. (On Nankai’s English-language website, Cao is also listed as one of the university’s two chancellors.) Cao did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.

In other words, he keeps his powerful post. To get off so lightly you would almost think he worked for the American FBI and had tried to overthrow a legal election. But then, no, it isn’t the same. The FBI officials who managed the Trump coup have actually seen less punishment. China, as corrupt as its communist government might be, in this case actually managed to administer a tiny bit of justice.

This is the future, as the world’s culture no longer honors law and the truth, but power and authority. And those in power will never be brought to justice, because they are above all those little people who serve them.

This also tells you how little you should trust any results coming from a government scientist. Those results might be real, but before you accept them you better go over them with a fine-tooth comb.

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Parker completes 7th solar fly-by, sets new records

The Parker Solar Probe this week successfully completed its seventh close fly-by of the Sun, coming within 8.4 million miles and traveling at almost 300,000 miles per hour.

Nor is that all for 2021:

The spacecraft will make three more progressively close passes to the Sun in 2021 alone, as well as two gravity-assist flybys at Venus in February and October to adjust the trajectory of its orbit. After zipping past Venus on Feb. 20, Parker Solar Probe will again make close approaches to the Sun on April 29 and Aug. 9. Following another Venus gravity assist on Oct. 16, the spacecraft will make an even closer solar pass on Nov. 21, with perihelion just 5.3 million miles from the Sun’s surface.

Because the fly-bys of Venus are shrinking Parker’s solar orbit, the time between solar fly-bys is also shrinking.

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Northrop Grumman successfully test solid rocket booster for ULA’s Vulcan

Capitalism in space: Northrop Grumman today announced that it has successfully test fired the strap-on solid rocket booster, qualifying it for flight, for use on ULA’s new Vulcan rocket.

In the Jan. 21 static test, the motor fired for approximately 90 seconds, producing nearly 449,000 pounds of thrust to validate the performance capability of the motor, the company said. The firing also verified the motor’s internal insulation, propellant grain ballistics and nozzle in high temperatures.

If all goes right Vulcan will make its inaugural flight later this year.

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