Tag: freedom

Next Rocket Lab launch scheduled only three weeks after last launch

8:26 am

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab yesterday announced that its next launch is now scheduled for July 3, less than three weeks after its previous launch, the fastest turnaround the company has attempted so far.

The July launch will place seven cubesats into orbit. The fast turnaround this time is part of the company’s attempt to complete one launch per month through the rest of the year, a pace they have been promising now since 2019 but have been as yet unable to achieve.

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Interstellar suborbital launch ends in failure

10:28 pm

Capitalism in space: A suborbital launch attempt today by Interstellar, a private Japanese smallsat rocket company, failed one minute into flight, with the rocket falling into the sea.

It apparently failed at about 12 kilometers elevation, when it began tumbling. I have embedded the video of the launch below the fold, cued to just before liftoff.

This was their fifth launch attempt. Only the third launch reached their target altitude of 100 kilometers.
» Read more

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Dozens of scientists forced out because of foreign ties, mostly with China

9:19 am

An investigation by the National Institute of Health (NIH) has resulted in 54 scientists either resigning or being fired because they had illegally kept secret their financial ties to foreign governments, almost all of which were with China.

Some 54 scientists have resigned or been fired as a result of an ongoing investigation by the National Institutes of Health into the failure of NIH grantees to disclose financial ties to foreign governments. In 93% of those cases, the hidden funding came from a Chinese institution.

The new numbers come from Michael Lauer, NIH’s head of extramural research. Lauer had previously provided some information on the scope of NIH’s investigation, which had targeted 189 scientists at 87 institutions. But his presentation today to a senior advisory panel offered by far the most detailed breakout of an effort NIH launched in August 2018 that has roiled the U.S. biomedical community, and resulted in criminal charges against some prominent researchers, including Charles Lieber, chair of Harvard University’s department of chemistry and chemical biology.

“It’s not what we had hoped, and it’s not a fun task,” NIH Director Francis Collins said in characterizing the ongoing investigation. He called the data “sobering.”

The article, from the liberal journal Science, tries to imply that there is something bigoted about this investigation because the bulk of those forced out happened to be Asian, but that is junk journalism. China itself is bigoted, and targets those of Asian ancestry for its spying. If we are to defend our nation from them, we have to accept the fact that the ethnic statistics here will not be balanced.

The bottom line remains: If you want to get an American government research grant, you cannot have financial ties with hostile foreign governments. And if you lie about those ties, than we can safely assume you are an agent for those hostile governments, and are really a spy subject to arrest and prosecution.

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Head of NASA’s commercial program picked as chief of manned space

9:05 am

NASA’s administrator Jim Bridenstine yesterday announced that he has chosen Kathy Lueders to be the new head of the agency’s human exploration program.

In her most recent positions at NASA Lueders has been in charge first of the ISS commercial cargo program, followed by the ISS commercial crew program. She now heads the entire manned program, including Artemis.

This appointment appears to be great news for the emerging new commercial space sector (led by SpaceX), as Lueders’ close contact with them for the past half decade or so means she has seen up front the advantages of both competition and private enterprise. I suspect she will not look kindly at the endless delays at SLS and Orion, even if she has to play the political game of publicly appearing to support those projects. Like her predecessor Doug Loverro, she will be open to awarding contracts to whoever can get the job done best, rather than favoring the traditional big space contractors Boeing and Lockheed Martin, as Loverro’s predecessor Bill Gerstenmaier had often done.

NASA’s shift from being the builder of space systems to the buyer of space systems is going to accelerate.

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Successful SpaceX launch

2:38 am

Falcon 9 shortly after launch

Capitalism in space: SpaceX tonight successfully launched 58 Starlink satellites as well as three Planet earth observation satellites. The image to the right looks up at the exhaust from the nine firing Merlin engines of Falcon 9 rocket, about two minutes after launch.

That first stage also successfully landed, the third time this stage has completed a launch. The fairing halves were also reused.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

11 China
9 SpaceX
7 Russia
3 ULA

The U.S. now leads China 15 to 11 in the national rankings.

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Successful Rocket Lab launch

10:27 pm

Electron eleven seconds after liftoff

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab today (June 13 in New Zealand) successfully launched five cubesats into orbit using its Electron rocket. The image to the right was taken eleven seconds after liftoff.

This was Rocket Lab’s second launch in 2020, delayed three months due to the Wuhan flu panic that shut down New Zealand. This does not put them in the leader board, but it does change the national rankings. The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

11 China
8 SpaceX
7 Russia
3 ULA

The U.S. now leads China 14 to 11 among the nations. Since SpaceX has its own Starlink launch later tonight, these numbers will likely change again before the night is over.

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Chinese military officer arrested trying to leave U.S.

3:54 pm

A Chinese military officer who had been participating in research at the University of California in San Francisco under false pretenses was arrested on June 7th as he was trying leave the country with data and information gathered during his stay.

To obtain a visa, Wang allegedly lied about his affiliation with the Chinese military, claiming his service with the People’s Liberation Army had ended in September 2016. In reality, according to the Justice Department, Wang was still associated with the military, which was paying him a stipend while he was in the U.S.

In May, Wang told his supervisor at the university that he was “being recalled to China by his employer, the Fourth Military Medical University, and that he would not return to work at the UCSF lab, thus cutting his fellowship short by approximately one year,” court documents said. Wang also informed his supervisor that he wanted to collaborate remotely from China and that he had already duplicated some of the research conducted at the California laboratory. Court documents said the duplication of research “was previously unbeknownst” to the supervisor in the U.S.

“Wang was instructed by his supervisor in China, the director of the Fourth Military Medical University lab, to observe and document the layout of the lab at UCSF in order to replicate the lab when he returned to China,” the Justice Department said.

The wisdom of the decision by the Trump administration to restrict entry of any Chinese students with ties to the Chinese military is becoming clearer and clearer.

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Astrobotic wins contract to land VIPER rover at Moon’s south pole

9:03 am

Capitalism in space: NASA today awarded the private company Astrobotic a $199 million contract to provide the lander that place place the agency’s VIPER rover down near Moon’s south pole.

The target date for the mission is late 2023, and is intended as a scouting mission for the Artemis manned landing to follow.

During its 100-Earth-day mission, the approximately 1,000-pound VIPER rover will roam several miles and use its four science instruments to sample various soil environments. Versions of its three water-hunting instruments are flying to the Moon on earlier CLPS lander deliveries in 2021 and 2022 to help test their performance on the lunar surface prior to VIPER’s mission. The rover also will have a drill to bore approximately 3 feet into the lunar surface.

The key to this mission continues to be NASA’s shift from building things to hiring others to build them. If Astrobotic is successfully, they will then be positioned to offer their lander design to others, since it belongs to them, not NASA.

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India to give private space access to ISRO facilities

10:00 am

The new colonial movement: India’s government has announced that private commercial space companies will be given full and equal access to the facilities operated by its space agency, ISRO.

The private sector will be allowed to use ISRO’s facilities and assets and they will be provided a level-playing field in satellites, launches and space-based services, Union Minister Jitendra Singh said on Tuesday, days after the government announced opening up of the domain.

Future projects for planetary exploration and outer space travel will be open for the private sector, he added. ‘Private companies to be provided a level-playing field in satellites, launches and space-based services. Future projects for planetary exploration, outer space travel will be open for the private sector,’ he said in a statement.

If true, what this means is that if a private company builds its own rocket, it will be allowed to use ISRO’s launchpads to launch from. It also means that the government does not want ISRO to lord over those private companies.

Whether this will happen as intended however remains a question. In essence this is the same turf war between the private sector and a government-run industry that has been playing out in the U.S. Here, the private sector appears to be winning, mostly because of the effort of SpaceX. I am not sure what will happen in India, as they don’t yet have any companies like SpaceX to push the issue.

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Scientists to appease racist Black Lives Matter movement

9:19 am

Yesterday I received an email press release from the American Astronomical Society (AAS), stating the following:

The American Astronomical Society (AAS) endorses the grassroots efforts to #ShutDownSTEM, #ShutDownAcademia, and #Strike4BlackLives on Wednesday, 10 June. The AAS Board of Trustees encourages everyone in our community to make a lifelong commitment to action to eradicate anti-Black racism in the astronomical sciences, in other STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields, and in academia and research more generally.

Internally at the AAS Executive Office, regularly scheduled Wednesday meetings have been cancelled and staff have been given the option of using the day to find time and space for individual reflection, learning, and action. We have postponed a professional development webinar that was originally scheduled for 10 June and will not be using email, Zoom, or any of our other communication channels for normal Society business that day.

THIS MEANS WE WILL NOT DISTRIBUTE ANY PRESS RELEASES ON WEDNESDAY, 10 JUNE.

This action by the AAS is part of a new kowtowing effort by scientists, dubbed #ShutDownSTEM and ‘Strike For Black Lives’, that is calling for a worldwide pause in all science work today, June 10, to signal their solidarity with that movement. As stated by these quislings at the second link (from the science journal Science):

Those who participate should “stop all usual academic work for the day, including teaching, research, and service responsibilities,” the organizers of Strike For Black Lives write on their website. Black strikers should spend the day doing “whatever nourishes their hearts,” it states, while non-Black strikers should “take actions that center Black lives and agitate for change in our communities.”

I wish to note that what will “nourish my heart” today will be to continue to work, as normal, posting and writing. I am also stating herewith that this feel-good do-nothing protest is a piece of garbage and will do nothing to end bigotry. If anything, it will increase it in its biased political favoritism towards one race over all others. Moreover, this protest is really nothing more than a political movement aimed at gaining power, and since I disagree with its political goals (favoring blacks in all things over everyone else), I will not only not participate, I will bluntly condemn it.

I realize in this increasingly fascist country, this action on my part might cause me trouble. So be it. I do not bow to tyrants, or bigots.

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NASA aiming for late July/early August Dragon crew return

9:39 pm

According to statements made by NASA officials today, the agency is now targeting a late July to early August return date for the first manned Dragon.

Bob Behnken, one of the two Dragon astronauts, will likely do two spacewalks while on ISS to replace batteries on the stations main truss. In addition, they will do a number of tests of Dragon to check out its in-space long term operation.

Mission controllers planned to place the Dragon capsule into a hibernation mode, then wake up the ship’s systems to verify the spacecraft can perform its role as a quick-response lifeboat to scurry astronauts back to Earth in the event of an emergency. Mission managers are also checking data to monitor the status of the solar arrays.

It appears however that the biggest factor for determining the launch date will be weather conditions in the Gulf of Mexico. If they are good in late July mission managers might decide to return the astronauts earlier to take advantage of those conditions.

The next Dragon manned flight, carrying four astronauts, is planned in late August, thus giving NASA time to do a full assessment of this first demo flight before its launch.

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ULA on schedule for maiden flight of Vulcan in early 2021

9:49 am

Capitalism in space: According to ULA, the development program for its new Vulcan rocket remains on schedule, and will make its maiden flight in early 2021 as initially planned.

The launch will send Astrobotic’s privately built Peregrine lander to the Moon, carrying NASA science instruments.

The article provides a good overview not only of the status of construction, but also the political history that forced the development of Vulcan, that being the insistence by Congress that ULA stop using Russian engines in its rockets.

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NASA endorsement allows SpaceX to shift focus to Starship

9:25 am

Capitalism in space: Three different news stories today about SpaceX point out strongly the direction in which the company is heading, both in its design focus and in where it will be doing it.

First, SpaceX has informed the Port of Los Angeles that it is now definitely abandoning all plans to establish a Starship manufacturing facility there.

The company made this announcement on March 27th, which means it is not directly related to the tiff that Musk had with Alameda County officials about keeping his Tesla factory open during the California Wuhan panic lock down, which occurred in early May. Nonetheless, this decision, combined with Musk’s May 9th statement that he was going to move Tesla from California, suggests strongly that he and SpaceX is losing patience with California politics, and is likely to increasingly minimize the presence of Musk’s companies there.

This also means that the company will be expanding its Starship operations in both Texas and Florida.

In a second related story, it appears that — with the success of the first manned Dragon mission — Musk now wants SpaceX to shift its development focus entirely to Starship. Prior to that successful Dragon launch, NASA had made it clear that it did not want the company distracted by Starship, and instead stay focused on fixing any issue that might delay Dragon. As NASA is SpaceX’s biggest customer, the company was obliged to comply.

With the Dragon success however SpaceX has completed the job, so Musk now feels free to shift the company’s development teams over to Starship. And NASA is even helping him do this (today’s third SpaceX story) by agreeing at last to permit the company to use reused Falcon 9 rockets and Dragon capsules for future manned missions.

In a wholly unexpected turn of events, a modification to SpaceX’s ~$3.1 billion NASA Commercial Crew Program (CCP) contract was spotted on June 3rd. Without leaving much room for interpretation, the contract tweak states that SpaceX is now “[allowed to reuse] the Falcon 9 launch vehicle and Crew Dragon spacecraft beginning with” its second operational astronaut launch, known as Post Certification Mission-2 (PCM-2) or Crew-2.

NASA in the past was very slow to accept the use of reused capsules and rockets. It now appears they have abandoned this reluctance entirely, so much so that we could even see American astronauts flying into space on a reused rocket and in a reused capsule before the end of the year.

I want to pause to let this fact sink in. SpaceX has turned what what was considered only a few years ago as an absurd, dangerous, and wholly insane idea into the only and right way to do things.

This big endorsement of reusability by NASA also means that the agency is now willing to let SpaceX make its shift to Starship, since refurbishing rockets and capsules does not take the manpower as building new equipment.

Expect the action in Boca Chica to ramp up quite spectacularly this summer.

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A Catholic archbishop chooses sides, and picks Trump

9:44 am

This might be a first: A Catholic archbishop, Carlo Maria Viganò, has written a public letter condemning very forcefully the “deep state” and those supporting the riots, the looting, the lockdowns, and the race-baiting of the last few months, and telling Trump he is fighting on the side of the angels.

In society, Mr. President, these two opposing realities co-exist as eternal enemies, just as God and Satan are eternal enemies. And it appears that the children of darkness – whom we may easily identify with the deep state which you wisely oppose and which is fiercely waging war against you in these days – have decided to show their cards, so to speak, by now revealing their plans. They seem to be so certain of already having everything under control that they have laid aside that circumspection that until now had at least partially concealed their true intentions. The investigations already under way will reveal the true responsibility of those who managed the Covid emergency not only in the area of health care but also in politics, the economy, and the media. We will probably find that in this colossal operation of social engineering there are people who have decided the fate of humanity, arrogating to themselves the right to act against the will of citizens and their representatives in the governments of nations.

We will also discover that the riots in these days were provoked by those who, seeing that the virus is inevitably fading and that the social alarm of the pandemic is waning, necessarily have had to provoke civil disturbances, because they would be followed by repression which, although legitimate, could be condemned as an unjustified aggression against the population. The same thing is also happening in Europe, in perfect synchrony. It is quite clear that the use of street protests is instrumental to the purposes of those who would like to see someone elected in the upcoming presidential elections who embodies the goals of the deep state and who expresses those goals faithfully and with conviction. It will not be surprising if, in a few months, we learn once again that hidden behind these acts of vandalism and violence there are those who hope to profit from the dissolution of the social order so as to build a world without freedom: Solve et Coagula, as the Masonic adage teaches. [emphasis in original]

This statement by Viganò is significant in that during the past few elections the Catholic church remained disgustingly neutral, even after it was quite clear that the party of Obama was aggressively working to restrict the freedom of religious people, especially in the context of the homosexual agenda. It was as if the order had gone out from on high that they were not to take any sides politically, either out of fear of losing their tax-free status, or (more likely) because too many powerful church leaders cared not a whit for the principles as outlined in the Bible and were in fact in favor of the left’s agenda.

I wonder if the recent madness related to the Wuhan flu and George Floyd has finally caused the scales to fall from their eyes.

Hat tip Tom Biggar.

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Northrop Grumman wins contract to build Gateway habitation module

8:30 am

Capitalism in space: NASA on June 5 awarded Northrop Grumman the contract to design and build the habitation module for the agency’s proposed Lunar Gateway space station.

NASA said it issued a contract to Northrop Grumman valued at $187 million for the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) module, which will serve as an initial habitat for crews visiting the lunar Gateway. The module, described by NASA as the size of a small studio apartment, will be able to support short stays by crews arriving on Orion spacecraft.

The contract does not cover all the work needed for HALO. Instead, the award announced June 5 funds design of the module through a preliminary design review late this year. The contract also allows Northrop Grumman to issue subcontracts for hardware with long lead times. A contract modification will come later to fund full development and testing of HALO.

And why might that contract only award “design” money? It is because the Lunar Gateway, as far as I know, has still never been approved by Congress. It remains still the dream of NASA and its bureaucrats, now with the political support of the Trump administration (who have fortunately revised and de-emphasized its place within the agency’s entire manned lunar program).

In the end I suspect NASA will get that Congressional approval, but when it does it will signal once again how political power in the U.S. has devolved from elected officials, put their by the citizens of the country to be in charge, to unelected bureaucrats within the military-industrial complex in DC. And I say this recognizing that as revised by the Trump administration, Gateway might actually make some sense now.

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A detailed update on SpaceX’s Starlink satellite constellation

9:41 am

Link here. With yesterday’s launch, SpaceX now has put 420 satellites in orbit.

In a recent interview with Aviation Week, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said that they should begin beta testing the network this year and would want to complete around 14 launches before publicly promoting Starlink service. That could allow service to begin as soon as early 2021 depending on how fast launches can be performed.

In a recent ITU filing, SpaceX laid out a very aggressive schedule for continuing the Starlink deployment, with 13 launches in the May to September time period. This schedule is likely to spread out a bit as they run into normal launch cadence issues such as weather, range coordination, booster recovery operations, and booster refurbishment.

The first launch in that group (June 3 in Florida) has been delayed nearly a month for the above reasons. Regardless of exactly how long those launches end up taking, Ms. Shotwell’s comments indicate SpaceX doesn’t think satellite production will be a gating factor for their deployments in the near future.

An interesting feature of the schedule is that after this frenzy of launches, there would be a gap with only one launch in four months, followed by a period of twice-monthly launches to finish out the initial 1584 satellite shell of the constellation. SpaceX may have options to make changes to the satellites during that pause in the deployments, such as adding the optical inter-satellite links that have been mentioned as debuting later in 2020.

The article then provides a great deal of information about the system’s design and status for beginning operations in the U.S. Well worth a close read.

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ArianeGroup developing new rocket engine

9:35 am

Capitalism in space: The private company ArianeGroup has now gotten the okay from the European Space Agency (ESA) to begin full development of its new Prometheus rocket engine, intended to reduce costs 10x.

By applying a design-to-cost approach to manufacturing Prometheus, ESA aims to lower the cost of production by a factor of ten of the current main stage Ariane 5 Vulcain 2 engine. Features such as variable thrust, multiple ignitions, suitability for main and upper stage application, and minimised ground operations before and after flight also make Prometheus a highly flexible engine.

This Prometheus precursor runs on liquid oxygen–methane which brings high efficiency, allows standardisation and operational simplicity. Methane propellant is also widely available and easy to handle.

Essentially, ArianeGroup is going to try to build its own methane-powered rocket engine, having seen the success that SpaceX has so far had with its own Raptor methane engine. This also signals an increased recognition at ESA and ArianeGroup that their new Ariane-6 rocket, whose first launch is still about a year away, is not going to be competitive with SpaceX’s offerings, and needs to be upgraded or replaced.

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Live feed of tonight’s SpaceX Falcon 9 Starlink launch

8:30 am

UPDATE: A successfully launch, with a successful landing of the first stage, the fifth time this particular stage has completed a mission.

10 China
8 SpaceX
7 Russia
3 ULA

The U.S. now leads China 13 to 10 in the national rankings.

Original post:
——————————
Since there was such a positive response to the embedded live feed of SpaceX’s first manned Dragon launch a few days go, I’ve decided to embed below the live feed of their next launch tonight of 60 Starlink satellites. The launch is set for 9:25 pm (Eastern), with the live feed starting fifteen minutes before that.

Enjoy. Watching that first stage land never gets old.

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The coming death of America

6:02 pm

I have been so appalled and horrified by the events of the past three months, culminating in the riots and brutal violence and looting this past week, that I have found myself unable to express myself. I stand for freedom, for justice, for equal protection under law, and for our Constitution and Bill of Rights, fundamental documents that more than any philosophical tract ever written outline the most just way to run a country.

That country however appears to be dying, fast. It strongly appears that a large plurality, maybe even a majority, no longer believes in these ideals. This fact has made me depressed beyond words.

The speech below by Tucker Carlson however does a very good job of summing things up, based on facts, while making it clear what we must do to change this madness. He pulls no punches. He attacks every politician from both parties who have stood by or even supported the rioting and the nullification of our most basic laws. He demands better from them, and he demands that we, the citizenry, demand it as well.

I beg my readers to watch it. Set the speed at 1.25 and you can see it faster.

I also pray that some of my readers, after watching it, will recognize how deadly the situation really is, far beyond rioting, and how necessary it is for us to require proper behavior from our leaders, without exception, based on law and justice. No more race-baiting. No more apologies for enforcing the law meant to protect the innocent. No more cowardice. If our political leaders can’t protect everyone, then they must be fired. All of them.

And if we, the American people, still fail to recognize how bad things are and refuse to do something about it, then my headline above will simply be an accurate prediction. I weep to think I might be right.

I must also add that to understand what I mean, you must watch Carlson’s speech first. Otherwise, you will be doing exactly what I rage against.

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