Tag: freedom

More problems at Virgin Galactic?

10:02 am

The story outlines what appear to significant problems at Virgin Galactic:

  • Some sources say the company has shelved LauncherOne in favor of a bigger launcher that would be deployed from the bottom of a 747, not WhiteKnightTwo.
  • The company however says LauncherOne is still under development.
  • The company admits that they recently had a LauncherOne test rocket engine explode during testing.

It appears that they have discovered that LauncherOne is not cost effective for meeting their contract with OneWeb to launch 39 satellites. It would only be able put up one satellite at a time. A more powerful launcher however would be too heavy for WhiteKnightTwo.

Thus, after 10 years of development, nothing they have built to date is useful for a profitable operation, and they apparently have to start over.

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Russians confirm their commitment to ISS through 2024

9:36 am

Even as a new crew arrived at ISS, the head of Roscosmos confirmed that the Russians are now committed to sticking with ISS through 2024, as requested by the U.S.

I’ll make a prediction: The station’s life will be extended beyond 2024, but not necessarily under the control of its present international partnership. If the governments involved consider backing out at that time, there will be private companies then capable of taking it over, and will demand that the U.S. transfer ownership to them. This will in turn act to pressure the governments to continue the station’s operation.

Either way, ISS will continue.

Meanwhile, quality control issues continue to pop up with the Russians. One of the solar panels on the Soyuz capsule that delivered crew to ISS yesterday had failed to open when commanded, then decided to pop open unannounced during the docking. They had enough power to get to the station with only one panel, and the panel opening at the wrong time fortunately did not cause any problems, but for the panel to open as it did is without doubt worrisome.

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SpaceX pinpoints likely cause of Falcon 9 failure

4:31 pm

The investigation into the failure of the Falcon 9 launch June 28 now thinks the cause was a failed strut in the upper stage.

The struts are 2 feet long and about an inch thick at its thickest. SpaceX does not make the struts, a supplier does. From now on, each one will be individually checked, Musk said, and the design and material may be altered for added strength. The struts are designed to handle 10,000 pounds of force at liftoff; at the time of the accident, they would have been seeing only 2,000 pounds of force. A failure at such a low threshold is “pretty crazy,” Musk said. The strut most likely failed at its attachment point, he added.

Another change: Beginning with its next launch, each Dragon cargo carrier will be equipped with software for deploying its parachutes. The Dragon destroyed last month, along with an estimated $110 million worth of NASA equipment and supplies, would have survived if the parachutes normally used for descent at mission’s end could have been activated, Musk said.

The investigation is still not finalized, but is likely close to completion.

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Apple makes the conservative internet vanish

11:55 am

The state religion will not be challenged! Apple`s new news service considers leftwing news outlets the only outlets worth listing.

Their unwillingness to consider almost any conservative sites for listing not only illustrates their biased leftwing perspective, it also shows us their deep-seated close-mindedness. They believe in liberalism/socialism/big government so much they make it a point to refuse to even read opposing sites, no less deny access to them.

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The government-run Russian space program trims its budget

9:27 am

In the heat of competition: Even as the Russians consolidate their entire aerospace industry into a single entity run by the government, the government has revealed that — due to the country’s recent economic troubles — the budget for space will have to be trimmed.

I found the juxtaposition of these two stories today quite revealing, and illustrates to me the fundamental problem with the Russian Soviet-style government-run approach. Under the competitive, capitalist system that the U.S. is finally beginning to adopt for its space program, when the economy forces budget cuts, competition naturally requires the different companies in the industry to lower costs and innovate. If they don’t, their competitors will get the business. This in turn keeps the industry vibrant, and actually acts to end the tough economic times.

In the Soviet-style system, there is no incentive to compete or innovate. There is only one company, no competition, and everything is decided by a single leadership on top. The government can demand innovation by command from above, but this is not the most effective way to make it happen. Some will obey the commands and try harder. Most however will simply hunker down during hard times, taking fewer risks to cover their asses so they won’t be a target for those budget cuts.

Moreover, with a single government entity running everything, if the economy goes sour the budget must be cut to the entire industry. And since the cuts are determined by a handful of powerful government officials at the top, using money they obtained by coercion (tax-dollars) and not from customers who voluntarily purchased the product, they have no guidance on what parts of the industry to cut. They are just as likely cut the best because it involves too much risk, or because their buddies in a poorly run agency bribed them more.

Capitalism, however, provides competing independent companies, some of which are going to have their own sources of income that might flow independent of a shrinking economy. And it is quality that determines who lives and who dies, not corrupt and powerful government officials. The better companies gain customers, while the less efficient companies naturally fall by the wayside. Thus, during hard economic times competitive capitalism actually works to increase an industry’s efficiency while simultaneously helping to reinvigorate the industry.

This all suggests to me once again that while the consolidation in Russia of its aerospace industry might provide them a short-term burst of success, in the long run they will find it difficult to keep up with America’s private companies.

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Why the Jews are the canary in the coal mine

10:04 am

Link here.

This is a long article, but deeply thoughtful and well researched. Take the time to read it. It documents why the Jewish people have always been the target of tyrants. The reason is not what you think, ethnic hatred.

The Jews are like the canary in the coal mine, not because the Jews, like the canary, succumb to the poison before everyone else. It is because the enemies of liberty know that all humanism, all doctrines of liberty and sanctity of human life in Western Civilization come from the Jews; from Jewish sources and from Jewish thinkers. In order to put those ideas to rest, they have to eliminate the Jewish roots, the Jewish frames of reference and the Jews, whose very presence is a reminder that people have the God-given right to live in freedom and equality. The goal of Jew-bashing is the destruction of everyone’s freedom, and that is why everyone should take warning.

The author correctly documents this conclusion. And anyone who has spent any time reading the Old Testament of the Bible will also know that he is correct.

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Hawaii officials vote to limit access to Mauna Kea

6:08 pm

Hawaii’s Board of Land and Natural Resources voted 5 to 2 on Friday to restrict access to Mauna Kea.

The rule restricts being within a mile (1.6 kilometres) of the mountain’s access road during certain nighttime hours, unless in a moving vehicle, and prohibits camping gear. It would allow construction to resume on the $1.4 billion Thirty Meter Telescope, the subject of months of protests. Many Native Hawaiians consider the mountain sacred. Camping was already prohibited on the mountain. “We need the tools to keep order on the mountain,” said board member Chris Yuen. “It’s sad that it has come to this point.”

Not surprisingly, the leader of the protesters said they would ignore the rule and continue their overnight protests.

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SpaceX in no hurry to launch 4000 satellite constellation

10:23 am

In the heat of competition: During an interview on July 7, Elon Musk noted that SpaceX’s project to launch a 4,000 satellite communications constellation will be not be hurried.

“A lot of companies have tried it and broken their pick on it,” Musk said in response to an audience question during an appearance at the International Space Station Research and Development Conference here. “We want to be really careful about how we make this thing work, and not overextend ourselves.”… “We’re hopefully going to launch a test satellite next year,” Musk said in Boston, not going into detail about the satellite’s capabilities.

Musk indicated that SpaceX was not in a rush to develop the system. “We’re still in the early stages of a big LEO constellation communications idea,” he said. “I think the long-term potential of it is pretty great, but I don’t want to overplay or overstate things.”

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NASA names its astronauts for the first Dragon and CST-100 flights

10:04 am

The competition heats up: NASA today named the four government astronauts that will fly on the first manned demo flights to ISS of SpaceX’s Dragon and Boeing’s CST-100.

Bob Behnken, Eric Boe, Doug Hurley and Sunita Williams are veteran test pilots who have flown on the shuttle and the International Space Station. ….

NASA said the four astronauts will train with both companies and have not yet been assigned to flights. Two-person crews will fly the first test flights by each capsule, after they have completed an orbital test flight without people on board. Company proposals anticipate an all-NASA crew flying SpaceX’s Dragon test flight, with Boeing’s CST-100 carrying a split NASA-Boeing crew. Boeing has not yet identified its astronaut.

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Some results from SpaceX’s Dragon launchpad abort test

10:17 am

SpaceX has revealed some of the results from their Dragon launchpad abort test in May, which may explain why they have delayed the launch abort test until next year.

SpaceX engineers are evaluating the results of the May 6 pad abort test, in which the prototype Crew Dragon rocketed away from Cape Canaveral’s Complex 40 launch pad, reached an altitude of nearly one mile, and splashed down under parachutes just offshore in the Atlantic Ocean. Officials said data from the test showed a slight underperformance of the SuperDraco jetpack, and capsule did not reach the top speed and altitude targeted by engineers. But the test was successful by NASA’s standards, and the space agency awarded SpaceX a $30 million milestone payment after data reviews. [emphasis mine]

The article says that the delay is to make sure they are doing a launch abort test with the capsule design they intend to use, rather than an earlier design. I wonder if they also have decided they need more time to tweak their designs after this first test, and thus don’t want to use the capsule they had original planned to use since it has an older design.

Instead, the plan is to use the actual capsule after it has flown to ISS in their unmanned demo test flight of the manned capsule. They will not only be using their in-flight design for the test, this will give them extra time to study the results from the first test and revise the SuperDraco engines.

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Oregon bakers raise $200K from supporters

9:24 am

The bakers that the state of Oregon is attempting to bankrupt and gag for opposing same-sex marriage have raised $200K from supporters.

The State of Oregon has failed in its attempt to bankrupt Aaron and Melissa Klein for the crime of declining to bake a cake – as the preposterous $135,000 fine it levied was no match for the willingness of good people to help out the Kleins and their now exclusively online business, Sweet Cakes by Melissa. Through a campaign via Continue to Give, people who still respect both faith and freedom have responded to the following appeal by contributing more than $200,000.

There are two aspects of this story that are important. First, the bakers are defying the state’s order. Though their physical business has closed, they now have an online business. Second, though Go Fund Me decided recently to ban fund-raising drives that try to help Christians under attack by the homosexual fascist community, another on-line funding-raising site has appeared to replace it.

Both suggest that the rule of the leftwing state religion is going to be challenged.

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Musk makes first extended public comments since Falcon 9 failure

11:43 pm

In the heat of competition: Elon Musk on Tuesday made his first detailed public comments about the Falcon 9 accident, the on-going investigation, and the aftermath.

Musk hopes to release more details on the failure by the end of this week after further data analysis and engineering reviews. “At this point, the only thing that’s really clear was there was some kind of over-pressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank, but the exact cause and sequence of events, there’s still no clear theory that fits with all the data,” Musk said. “So we have to determine if some of the data is a measurement error of some kind, or if there’s actually a theory that matches what appear to be conflicting data points.”

He also had no word on when launches would resume.

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New Horizons team proposes cool names for Charon and Pluto features

11:39 pm

In anticipation of their discovering many previously unseen features on both Pluto and Charon, the New Horizons science team released today a proposed list of names, including “Kirk”, “Spock”, and many other fictional science fiction characters.

Many of these suggestions were proposed by the public. Personally, I prefer the part of their proposal where they suggest naming features after real people, like Lewis Carroll and Arthur Clarke.

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Great Britain space agency calls for an increased space effort

9:43 am

The competition heats up: The United Kingdom’s space agency has issued its proposed future strategy, focusing on a renewed involvement with ISS and the European Space Agency.

Following a public consultation and lengthy discussions across government, the new strategy, published today, concludes that continued involvement in the ISS and other programs via ESA membership is the best way to involve U.K. scientists and industry in human spaceflight. The document says the government will consider bilateral projects with other space agencies but fears always being the junior partner since the United Kingdom has no launchers or space stations. It does not think that the commercial launch industry is sufficiently mature for the United Kingdom to buy services commercially. The report also states: “The Agency will also consider its role in human exploration missions beyond Earth orbit, especially where this complements science and technology goals for robotic exploration.”

I wonder if the newly elected conservative British government agrees with this strategy. It appears to me that it was researched and written prior to the election.

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New poll finds hostility to the federal government growing

9:08 am

A new poll has found that the public’s hostility to the federal government, including the Supreme Court, has grown in recent years and jumped significantly in the past six months.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 33% of Likely U.S. Voters now believe that states should have the right to ignore federal court rulings if their elected officials agree with them. That’s up nine points from 24% when we first asked this question in February. Just over half (52%) disagree, down from 58% in the earlier survey. Fifteen percent (15%) are undecided. …

Support for ignoring the federal courts is up among most demographic groups, however. Most voters have long believed that the Supreme Court justices have their own political agenda, and they still tend to feel that that agenda is more liberal than conservative.

That’s just the public’s changing attitude to the Supreme Court. Overall trust in the federal government is down as well:

A plurality (47%) of voters continues to believe the federal government has too much influence over state governments, and 54% think states should have the right to opt out of federal government programs that they don’t agree with. Even more (61%) think states should have the right to opt out of federally mandated programs if the federal government doesn’t help pay for them.

The Declaration of Independence, the foundational document that Americans honor on the Fourth of July, says that governments derive their authority from the consent of the governed, but just 25% believe that to be true of the federal government today. Only 20% now consider the federal government a protector of individual liberty. Sixty percent (60%) see the government as a threat to individual liberty instead.

The more power the federal government grabs, the more the public will resist. Eventually, the federal government, and all of society, will break under this strain. The sooner the public reins in the federal government, by voting for legislators who will do that reining, the better chance we will have of avoiding that collapse.

From what I can see right now, however, I must sadly say that I am not hopeful. Since 2010 the voters have clearly made their position clear: They want the government reined in. Our society’s intellectual class, including the Republican leadership in Congress working with the congressional Democratic minority, doesn’t seem to want to listen to that message unfortunately.

Then again, this update on the growing power of the Freedom Caucus in the House suggests that the voters might finally get their way if the next election puts more conservatives in office.

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Dragon/Falcon 9 launch abort test moved from Vandenberg to Kennedy

8:50 am

Instead of using the Air Force’s Vandenberg launch complex in California, NASA and SpaceX have shifted their plans for the final launch abort test of the manned version of Dragon capsule to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The date for the test has not been finalized, but it appears it will be delayed until after the next Dragon flight to ISS, itself delayed following the Falcon 9 failure on Sunday. The test will also be delayed until after the completion of the unmanned demo flight to ISS of the manned version of Dragon. SpaceX will then refurbish that demo capsule and re-use it for the launch abort test.

Update: I have rewritten the paragraph above, correcting my first version, which had mistakenly said that a refurbished cargo version of Dragon would be used for the launch abort test. My very knowledgeable readers noted the error and set me straight.

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Rocket Labs picks New Zealand for its launch site

10:08 am

The competition heats up: The small sat rocket company Rocket Labs has chosen a location in New Zealand as its future launch site.

Rocket Lab’s all-black Electron booster offers launch for less than $5 million. The company, whose investors include Lockheed Martin, is targeting clients such as university programs and small start-ups, Beck said, and it already has 30 potential clients.

The company didn’t specify how much it was investing in the site, which is due to be completed in the fourth quarter. New Zealand, which has been used in the past by the National Aeronautical and Space Administration, is considered a prime location because rockets launched from that deep in the Southern hemisphere can reach a wide range of Earth orbits. Rocket Lab’s remote site on the Kaitorete Spit in the Canterbury region also means it has less air and sea traffic, which translates into more frequent launches and economies of scale, the company said. It also will no longer compete for airspace with the U.S. government.

Rocket Labs will have to actually launch something to really make the competition heat up. This announcement, however, illustrates that in the long run, the United States has some significant disadvantages as a spaceport location.

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The negative, depressing mainstream press

10:08 am

Sunday’s Falcon 9 failure has given us a great opportunity to learn something about the mainstream press and the elite culture that dominates it. As expected, while the space-oriented press focused on what happened and what will be done to fix the problem, almost every mainstream press outlet immediately concluded that the failure was a disaster that could and (with some outlets) should ring the death knell for private space. Here are just a few examples:

I could go on. Notice that these are almost all mainstream news sources. The few that specialize in science reporting, such as Scientific American, New Scientist, and National Geographic, also tend to push the left wing science agenda.

If you can force yourself to read these articles, as I have, you will find yourself inundated with negativity, pessimism, and a can’t-do attitude. Moreover, many of these articles seem expressly designed to encourage the public and politicians to withdraw their support for space exploration. For example, the Scientific American article, in outlining the history of recent ISS cargo failures, includes this quote:

Public support for the private space industry also took a blow last October (just three days after the Orbital Sciences ATK mishap) when Virgin Galactic’s suborbital space plane SpaceShipTwo crashed during a test flight, killing one of its pilots. [emphasis mine]

Does Scientific American provide us any evidence that public support had dropped after these failures? No. In fact, there is absolutely no evidence that support dropped, and if anything, based on the budget increases over the years for commercial space (despite Congressional efforts to trim that budget), support has continued to grow through thick and thin.

No, Scientific American inserted this statement because they want support to drop, and have tailored their article to help make that a self-fulfilling prophecy. The negativity of all these other articles suggest that their writers and outlets feel the same. Life is hard! Bad things can happen! Better that we stick our head in the sand and hide from the evil thunder gods rather than look up to try to figure out what thunder is!

For myself, I do not find the Falcon 9 failure this past weekend depressing in the slightest. This is a company and a rocket that hadn’t even existed a little more than decade ago, and in that short time they have revolutionized the rocket industry. Rockets fail. This is no surprise. Their track record, however, tells us that they will figure out what went wrong and start flying again, as soon as they can.

What I do find depressing is the failure culture of today’s modern intellectual society. It is one reason I do not depend on them for news, and in general try to depend on them for as little as possible for anything else.

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Road to Mauna Kea to remain closed for the rest of the week

10:22 am

The University of Hawaii, which manages the astronomy facilities on top of Mauna Kea, said today that the road to the summit will remained closed for at least the rest of this week so that they can do repairs and maintenance resulting from the protests last week.

I think I finally understand what is going on, and why the protesters themselves offered last week to remove the boulder barricades they had built, something that had not made sense to me at the time.

Because of landslides and the hostile environment, the road needs constant maintenance. The barricades prevented that, which gave the governor and the University the justification to shut the road. And by shutting the road, the University has essentially locked the protesters out. I am sure that the repairs could be done much faster, but the University is probably dragging its feet to make sure they get all the protesters out and things cool down. When the reopen the road, I expect them to make sure it is secure and only official personal use it.

This is why the protesters suddenly offered to remove the barricades. They realized that they had shot themselves in the foot, and wanted to remedy the situation in a way that would allow them to continue protesting. It appears they have failed.

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NASA to waste $150 million on SLS engine that will be used once.

10:01 am

Government marches on! NASA’s safety panel has noticed that NASA’s SLS program either plans to spend $150 million man-rating a rocket engine it will only use once, or will fly a manned mission without man-rating that engine.

The Block 1 SLS is the “basic model”, sporting a Delta Cryogenic Second Stage (DCSS), renamed the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion System (ICPS) for SLS. The current plan calls for this [interim] stage to be used on [the unmanned] Exploration Mission -1 (EM-1) and [manned] Exploration Mission -2 (EM-2), prior to moving to the [Exploration Upper Stage] – also to be built by Boeing – that will become the workhorse for SLS.

However, using the [interim upper stage] on a crewed mission will require it to be human rated. It is likely NASA will also need to fly the [Exploration Upper Stage] on an unmanned mission to validate the new stage ahead of human missions. This has been presenting NASA with a headache for some time, although it took the recent ASAP meeting to finally confirm those concerns to the public.

Up until now, no one at NASA would admit that their SLS plans called for flying humans with an upper stage that has not been man-rated. They don’t have the funds to man-rate it, and even if they get those funds, man-rating it will likely cause SLS’s schedule to slip even more, something NASA fears because they expect the commercial manned ships to be flying sooner and with increasing capability. The contrast — a delayed and unflown and very expensive SLS vs a flying and inexpensive commercial effort — will not do SLS good politically.

However, if they are going to insist (properly I think) that SpaceX and Boeing man-rate their capsules and rockets, then NASA is going to have to man-rate its SLS systems as well. The result: more problems for SLS, contributing to what I believe will be its inevitable cancellation.

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Falcon 9 explodes two minutes into launch

9:43 am

Today’s Falcon 9 rocket launch of a Dragon freighter to ISS ended in failure slightly past 2 minutes after lift-off when the upper stage exploded.

My first thought about this failure is the supply problems it causes at ISS. The Progress failure in April strained the supply lines, making this Dragon flight somewhat critical.

In a presentation to a committee of the NASA Advisory Council here April 9, NASA officials said that food supplies on the ISS would reach a threshold called “reserve level” on July 24, and go to zero by Sept. 5. That assumed that the station received no more supplies beyond a SpaceX Dragon cargo mission launched to the station in April.

The other major limiting consumable is a solid waste container known by the Russian acronym KTO. Without additional cargo missions beyond the Dragon flight, KTO supplies would reach the reserve level July 20 and be exhausted on Sept. 2. Other consumables, including water, would not reach reserve levels until later in the year or early 2016.

In other words, some of the station’s toilets are going to begin to overflow without more supplies. It is possible however that this problem will be alleviated by the planned July 3 launch of the next Progress, especially since NASA officials claimed just prior to the launch failure today that ISS had enough supplies to last through October.

As for the launch failure, I expect that SpaceX will quickly pinpoint the problem and schedule another launch. I have embedded video of the launch below the fold. Prior to the explosion of the first stage all looks completely normal. In fact, immediately before the failure the announcer notes this fact, making what happens next especially shocking.

Update: I have corrected the first paragraph, correcting it from “first stage” to “upper stage.”
» Read more

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Audi joins race to the Moon

9:55 am

The competition heats up: The carmaker Audi has joined one of the teams competing for the Google Lunar X-Prize.

Audi’s part in the project will be to supply technical know how though its Audi Concept Design Studio, including the application of its quattro all-wheel drive technology and its experience in lightweight construction, electric mobility, and piloted driving. The company says it will also help in testing, trials, and quality assurance.

The rover, now named the “Audi lunar quattro,” is scheduled to launch sometime in 2017 and is aimed at a landing zone north of the lunar equator somewhere near 1972 Apollo 17 mission landing site, through the law prevents the rover from actually visiting it because it’s a protected area. “The concept of a privately financed mission to the moon is fascinating,” says Luca de Meo, Audi Board Member for Sales and Marketing. “And innovative ideas need supporters that promote them. We want to send a signal with our involvement with the Part‑Time Scientists and also motivate other partners to contribute their know‑how.”

I should note that the article is wrong when it states “the law prevents the rover from actually visiting” the Apollo 17 site. This law was passed by the U.S. Congress, and this Google team and Audi are not based in the U.S. They are not under its jurisdiction.

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