Tag: freedom

Nobel Prize for Physics awarded to three LIGO scientists

10:20 am

The 2017 Nobel Prize for Physics has been awarded to three scientists involved in the development of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), which detected the first gravitational waves in 2015.

While some of the recent Nobel Prizes have been absurd (such as the Peace award to Obama), this award is absolutely deserved and appropriate. Until LIGO detected that gravitational wave they were merely a theory. The detection proved the theory to be real.

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One Chute

9:58 am

Part 4 of Doug Messier’s series on commercial space history, A Niche in Time, is now available. It is entitled “One Chute” and focuses on the long and sad history of Virgin Galactic.

One new detail that Messier notes struck me:

At the time of the accident, Virgin Galactic had about 700 customers signed up to fly on SpaceShipTwo. Officials now say the number is around 650. Assuming full ships with six passengers aboard, Virgin Galactic would need 109 flights just to fly out its current manifest. The figure doesn’t include flight tests and missions filled with microgravity experiments. That’s a lot of launches to make without expecting at least one catastrophic failure, possibly involving prominent wealthy passengers.

It increasingly appears that this will be a total loss for the investors who poured money into Virgin Galactic.

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Falcon Heavy launch delayed?

9:43 am

In quelling a false rumor that said NASA was forcing SpaceX to change the launchpad location for its Falcon Heavy (it is not), SpaceX noted that Falcon Heavy’s first launch will occur “no earlier than the end of 2017.”

Previously they have said that they are aiming for November 2017, following the reconfiguration of the 39-A launchpad from Falcon 9 launches to Falcon Heavy launches. This statement suggests that a November launch is now considered unlikely. The reconfiguration will take 60 days, and cannot occur until SpaceX switches its Falcon 9 launches from launchpad 39-A back to launchpad 40. Since a Falcon 9 launch is presently scheduled for launchpad 39-A this Saturday, that reconfiguration cannot begin before then. Moreover, the launchpad for an October 30 Falcon 9 launch remains unnamed, suggesting that launchpad 40 might not be ready by then and therefore forcing SpaceX to use 39-A for Falcon 9. This would in turn delay the first Falcon Heavy launch to the very end of December, at the earliest.

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UAE announces manned spaceflight plans

1:38 pm

The new colonial movement: The United Arab Emirates has announced their plans to establish an astronaut corps that would fly on the manned spacecraft of other nations.

The first of those astronauts would fly by the end of 2021, the 50th anniversary of the founding of the UAE. “We have not decided on who will be flying us yet,” he said. “We do envisage that we partner up with all of the major space agencies, somehow and in some structure.”

There would be several options for the UAE to choose from, including Soyuz flights by Russia to the International Space Station and Shenzhou flights to a Chinese space station slated to be completed by the early 2020s. Other options include flights on commercial crew vehicles being developed by Boeing and SpaceX.

To me, the really exciting aspect of this is that the UAE is now a new customer looking for a means to get its people into space, which makes all those manned programs, including the American private companies, competitors for that business.

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Sierra Nevada and German space center increase ties

1:42 pm

Capitalism in space: Sierra Nevada and the German Aerospace Center have signed a new agreement increasing their partnership for using Dream Chaser in space.

The current MOU follows a 2013 Technical Understanding between the parties that initiated cooperation on space activities. This new agreement allows the two entities to establish goals and baseline objectives on future missions, scientific contributions and future space architecture for LEO, Cislunar and lunar operations, and deep space exploration.

It is clear once again that Sierra Nevada is trying to find partners who can pay to keep Dream Chaser flying as much as possible, between its cargo missions to ISS.

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Leftists brownshirts stalk and plan violence against conservatives

10:21 am

This post is actually about two stories. The first describes the actions of Berkeley brownshirts as they stalk members of the college Republican club. The second describes the planning of violence against conservatives attending a lecture by conservative Ben Shapiro (whom they call a Nazi despite being an orthodox Jew).

Someone is going to get killed by these masked thugs, merely because those murdered happen to be conservative and believe in freedom.

I have posted below the fold the video of Steven Crowder’s report from the second link. While his evidence shows the violent intent of these leftist thugs, the most damning part of his report is the part where he tries to show this evidence to major news reporters and gets dismissed out of hand. As Crowder notes on the video,

Even being shown the footage in the presence of police officers to confirm its authenticity, they walked away… We were delivering a story to local and national news on a silver platter which included infiltration, violence, and exposing the roots of a national domestic terrorist organization and no one wanted to give it a glimpse, not one person. It didn’t even get mentioned [in later mainstream media reports].

Remember, if you depend on mainstream news sources for your news, you are not simply being uninformed, you are being willfully misinformed.

» Read more

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Boeing delays first manned Starliner flight

9:34 am

Capitalism in space: It appears that Boeing has pushed back the first manned flight of its Starliner capsule from August 2018 to early 2019.

In an interview at the conference, Ferguson said that the company’s current schedule calls for a pad abort test at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico in the second quarter of 2018. That would be followed by an uncrewed orbital test flight of the vehicle, launched on an Atlas V, in the third quarter of 2018. “If the results of that are very favorable,” he said of the uncrewed flight test, “our crewed flight test is fourth quarter — perhaps, depending on the outcome, maybe the first quarter of the following year.”

This schedule appears to be an overall three to five month delay in their program.

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Elon Musk’s economic version of SLS

8:48 am

Last night Elon Musk gave a speech providing an update on his vision for building an interplanetary spaceship, and in the process described at length how he intends to make such a rocket/spacecraft affordable, efficient, and profitable. His update included outlining how he hopes this rocket could even be used as a transportation vehicle on Earth. However, this was what I consider the most significant:

But most importantly came a timeline that, while aspirational – something even Mr. Musk noted – is encouraging.

Currently, SpaceX will begin full-scale construction of the first BFRs in the second quarter of 2018, with the aim to launch the first two BFR missions in the 2022 interplanetary alignment and launch window to Mars. Those first two BFR missions will be scouting missions of sorts to “confirm water resources and identify hazards and place power, mining, and life support infrastructure for future flights” on the surface. Those two missions will then be followed by four BFR missions in 2024 to the red planet.

Excitingly, two of those missions will be crew missions taking the first people to Mars, while the other two will be cargo ships bringing more equipment and supplies.

Will Musk achieve this schedule? I have doubts, but I also think he has a reasonable chance, based on his track record. More important, if he even comes close he, along with Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin with their New Glenn rocket, will demonstrate the utter absurdity of our federal government spending a further dime on SLS, Orion, or NASA’s new boondoggle, a lunar space station.

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The unspoken contract

7:07 pm

Link here. Beautifully written, and encompasses very clearly why there is a growing revolt across America. The so-called elites are treating like scum the ordinary people that make their elite status possible, and the ordinary people are getting fed up with it.

People are tired. They’re just tired of constantly being told they’re racists when they have no idea what they’ve done wrong. They’re trying to keep the mortgage paid and get the kids through school and have enough money for Christmas presents and keep the cars out of the shop and lose that extra fifteen pounds and afford health insurance and maybe even take the family to a beach somewhere once a year. They love America, they love the flag, they support the troops and they are racking their brains to figure out what they can do to remedy the problem these rich, physical specimens seem to have with the country. If someone would just tell them what to do, most of them would gladly do it. But a blatant disrespect of something their grandpas and uncles and fathers and brothers fought and died for …is a breach of the unspoken contract.

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