Tag: government

Today’s blacklisted Americans: Farm banned from farmers market because owners are Christian

1:36 pm

Country Mills Farms-banned!
The Tennes are a normal family! We must blacklist them!

They’re coming for you next: A Michigan farmer was banned from a local farmers market by the city government of East Lansing because the owners, Steve and Bridget Tennes, are Christian and had publicly stated their opposition to homosexual marriage.

The ban against their business, Country Mill Farms, was begun in 2016. Though a court quickly ruled that it was unconstitutional, the city renewed the ban in 2018 and has maintained it since, claiming the court’s ruling only applied to the 2017 season.

The logic of the East Lansing government is actually quite blatent: It believes it has the right to dictate what others can or cannot say in public, the first amendment be damned.

[C]ity officials asserted that the Tennes’ expression conflicted with East Lansing’s marriage views and its new market policy. The policy requires vendors to agree to comply with the city’s “Human Relations Ordinance and its public policy against discrimination while at the market and as a general business practice.”

It’s illegal for anyone to “make a statement which indicates that an individual’s patronage or presence at a place of public accommodation is unwelcome or unacceptable because of sexual orientation, gender identity, or expression…” among other designated classes. [emphasis mine]

In other words, East Lansing wants to forbid any dissent to the modern and very perverse sexual movement. You will not be allowed to disagree, under any condition. And if you try, you will be blackballed, censored, and squashed, as is the right of our all-knowing government.

Stalin would be proud. So would Hitler, Mussolini, and all past despots who liked killing people who disagreed with them.
» Read more

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Boeing to return Starliner to factory

11:11 am

Capitalism in space: According to a Wall Street Journal story today, Boeing and NASA have decided to remove the Starliner capsule from the Atlas-5 rocket and return it to Boeing’s factory in order to do a more thorough inverstigation into the capsule’s failing valves.

This decision means that the launch of the second unmanned demo test flight of Starliner will not occur in August, and will likely be delayed several more months. NASA and Boeing just held a press conference in which they made this decision official. During that conference they said they think the moist environment at Kennedy might have caused corrosion in the valves, which caused them to stick.

I once again wonder if Boeing has any quality control systems at all. For such a serious problem — the failure of 13 valves out of 24 — to suddenly pop up just hours before launch, when they have been developing this capsule for years, and even had an extra year and a half to check the capsule out after the failures during the first unmanned demo flight in December 2019, is somewhat astonishing, and very disturbing.

Others will argue that problems like this can always appear unexpectedly in space hardware. I say hogwash. Boeing is not inventing something new with Starliner. This is a capsule, using heritage engineering first invented in the late 1950s. It should not be so hard to get this right.

57 comments

Russians accuse American astronaut of drilling hole in Soyuz

10:41 am

In several articles published today in the state-run Russian press, the Russians made the accusation that the hole and drilling damage that had been found on an in-orbit Soyuz capsule was put there by an American astronaut.

The first link above notes that while the Russians took a lie detector test, showing they didn’t drill the hole, the Americans refused. A second TASS link argues that their investigation proves that all the drill damage had to been done in orbit, for two reasons. First, they always test the capsule’s intergrity in a vacuum chamber before launch, and would have discovered it then. Second, the nature of the drill damage suggests it was done in zero gravity.

A third link provides an English translation of the more detailed Russian report, which made this direct accusation:

Firstly, the illness of the female astronaut, which is the first known incident of deep vein thrombosis in orbit, and the fact that Serena Maria Auñón-Chancellor had suffered the condition was published in a scientific article only after she had returned to Earth. This could have provoked ‘an acute psychological crisis’, which could have led to attempts by various means to speed up her return to the planet, according to my anonymous source. Secondly, for some reason unknown to Roscosmos, the video camera at the junction of the Russian and American segments was not working at that time. Thirdly, the Americans refused to perform a polygraph examination, while the Russian cosmonauts were polygraphed. Fourthly, Russia never had an opportunity to study the tools and the drill which are aboard the ISS to see if there are any signs of metal shavings from the hull of our ship’s orbital module.

This longer article also makes the claim that, because of the location of some of the drill attempts, whoever did drilling had no knowledge of the Soyuz’s construction.

All this may be true, but it conveniently ignores several very important facts: The one successful drillhole that caused the leak had been patched, which would have prevented any leak during the vacuum tests on the ground. The leak occurred because the patch was not designed to survive the hostile environment of space and eventually failed.

Also, the Russians’ own investigation had found that there was plenty of time on the ground for this sabotage to have occurred, so saying it had to have happened in space is incorrect.

Finally, the claim that the drill damage had to have been done in zero gravity is pure opinion, and hardly evidence.

In other words, it sounds as if the Russians are trying to shift blame from themselves (and an unknown ground worker) to an American astronaut. It is certainly possible that their claims are true, but they seem incredibly implausible. Much more likely would be sabotage on the ground by a very disgruntled Russian worker, routinely underpaid and resentful of the corruption that permeates Roscosmos and all of Russian society.

Such a conclusion however would be beyond embarrassing for the Putin government and the head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin. It is far better to place the blame on an American, especially because the end of the U.S.-Russian partnership on ISS is only a few years away.

11 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Leftist activist group wants Fox News banned

1:04 pm

Fox News: Banned!

Blacklists are back and the Democrats have got ’em: A leftist activist veterans group aligned closely with the Democratic Party has begun a campaign to get Fox News banned from all military bases.

The group VoteVets, which works to elect liberal veterans to public office, took specific aim at controversial Fox News personality Tucker Carlson. Mr. Carlson has been at odds with Pentagon leaders in recent months after segments in which he seemed to suggest the U.S. military has become more concerned with diversity and political correctness than winning wars.

But the VoteVets petition steered clear of those issues. Instead, it took aim at Mr. Carlson‘s ambivalent comments about COVID-19 vaccines and specifically blasted a recent segment in which the Fox host said that Democrats want to make life difficult for the unvaccinated.

Essentially, this Democratic Party political organization wants to ban on military bases the speech of anyone who might express skepticism about any policy put forth by that party.

And why not? This tactic by Democrats and their ilk — of blacklisting and silencing their opponents — has been working like a dream. They are finding that Americans are afraid of them, and are willing to meet their every demand in order to avoid being attacked themselves.
» Read more

8 comments

China to fly asteroid sample mission in ’24

9:19 am

The new colonial movement: Chinese scientists have revealed that China is now building an asteroid sample mission to launch in ’24 and grab samples in ’25 from the near Earth asteroid dubbed Kamoʻoalewa.

According to a correspondence in Nature Astronomy, there are two typical approaches to sampling asteroids like Kamoʻoalewa, namely anchor-and-attach and touch-and-go.

The former requires delicate and dangerous interactions with the planetary body but allows more controllable sampling and more chances for surface analysis. The latter, used by Hayabusa 2 and OSIRIS-Rex, is a quick interaction facilitated by advanced navigation, guidance and control and fine control of thrusters.

China’s mission will use both architectures in order to “guarantee that at least one works.” The paper states that there is “still no successful precedent for the anchor-and-attach architecture,” meaning a possible deep space first. A 2019 presentation reveals that China’s spacecraft will attempt to land on the asteroid using four robotic arms, with a drill on the end of each for anchoring.

The attempt to do both these approaches is audacious, especially because the evidence from both OSIRIS-REx and Hayabusa-2 is that it will be difficult to safely land and hold onto a rubble pile asteroid. The material is too loosely held together.

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India’s GSLV rocket fails in first launch since 2019

6:09 pm

India’s attempt today to resume launches of its large GSLV rocket, stalled because of the Wuhan panic since its last launch in 2019, failed today when something went wrong with the third stage.

This entirely Indian-built rocket is the one they plan to use for their manned missions. This failure will certainly set that program back, already delayed significantly because of the shut down of their entire launch industry because of COVID-19.

The satellite, also Indian-built, is also a big loss. It was to be the first in a series of Earth observation satellites.

6 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: YouTube blacklists U.S. senator for saying things YouTube dislikes

11:40 am

Censored by YouTube
Senator Rand Paul: censored by YouTube

The new dark age of silencing: YouTube has once again removed videos of Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) while also suspending him for a week, because he stated facts about COVID-19 and masks that YouTube dislikes.

YouTube last week removed a video of an interview the Kentucky Republican senator did on Newsmax. Paul discussed his suspicions about the origins of the coronavirus, his feud with Anthony Fauci over what funding for research in China’s Wuhan lab came from the United States, and argued that most face coverings do not help stop the spread of the virus.

Paul, an eye doctor, then recorded, and on Aug. 3 uploaded, a second video chastising YouTube for taking down the video and promoted one of its competitors, Rumble. He defended his comments on masks. “Saying cloth masks work, when they don’t, actually risks lives, as someone may choose to care for a loved one with COVID while only wearing a cloth mask. This is not only bad advice but also potentially deadly misinformation,” Paul said in the video.

YouTube responded by taking down that video as well, saying that it violated YouTube’s community guidelines. On Tuesday, Paul’s office said that the company imposed a seven-day ban from posting more videos.

» Read more

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India begins countdown for 1st GSLV rocket launch since 2019

9:52 am

India today began the countdown for its first GSLV rocket launch in more than two years, since it launched the lunar orbiter Chandrayaan-2 with the lunar rover/lander that crashed onto the surface shortly thereafter.

The launch is targeted for 8:13 p.m (Eastern) tonight.

The long gap in GSLV launches was almost entirely because of India’s panic over the Wuhan flu. For the past year and a half its space agency ISRO has completed three just launches, all of which were delayed until late in 2020 because of the panic. Prior to that panic, India had hoped to launch as many as 8 to 12 times in ’20 and ’21 each. Instead, their space industry shut down, and the commercial business they hoped to capture went to American private companies instead.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Medical student expelled for expressing political opinions

12:02 pm

Baby killing okay at University of Kentucky
Harming babies and children appears to be official
policy at the University of Louisville.

Less than a year from completing his four year program as a medical student at the University of Louisville, Austin Clark was expelled because he had revealed his Christian pro-life beliefs by inviting a pro-life advocate to speak at the campus.

In July, 2021 he filed a lawsuit in an attempt to get reinstated.

The medical student’s complaint is against President Neeli Bendapudi of the University of Louisville School of Medicine along 13 others connected to the school. Why does he say he was so suddenly expelled?

In his lawsuit, Austin alleges that the trouble with the school began when his pro-life group hosted speaker Alex McFarland in Fall, 2018. Austin was on the leadership board of the Medical Students for Life group [SFLA] at University of Louisville School of Medicine. The administration did everything they could to prevent the event from happening, largely by mandating impossibly expensive security fees – a common tactic of schools trying to silence views of the students they don’t like, as SFLAction/SFLA President Kristan Hawkins observed in her Wall Street Journal opinion piece. The student group even had to involve Alliance Defending Freedom, a legal foundation committed to the free speech of conservative students, to ensure that the event took place.

As noted in SFLA’s news release on the lawsuit, Austin says that from that point until his 2020 dismissal from the medical school, professors retaliated against him for his views, calling him “stupid” and questioning if his “brain was working” among the derogatory comments made. He was subjected to abuse, changes to his grades and forced to sign a “professionalism contract” that other students had not been required to sign. In his lawsuit, Clark alleges that he was “was physically harassed and bullied” as well.

The article at the link also cites a great deal of evidence that the university’s is closely tied with “the only remaining abortion clinic in Kentucky.”
» Read more

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Eric Berger: FAA regulators should get out of the way

10:16 am

In a essay today for Ars Technica, Eric Berger makes note of the progress that SpaceX is making on its Starship/Superheavy rocket, and points out that the one major obstacle that SpaceX cannot control and that stands in its way is the revised “environmental assessment” the FAA still must approve to permit the rocket to launch from Boca Chica.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle of all will be clearance from the Federal Aviation Administration, which is working with SpaceX to conduct an environmental assessment of launching such a mammoth rocket from these South Texas wetlands. After a “draft” of this assessment is published, there will be an approximately 30-day period for public comments. This will be followed by other steps, including a determination by the FAA on whether SpaceX’s proposed environmental mitigations will be enough or if more work is required.

The stacking of the rocket late last week, and the photos released by Musk of that stacking, Berger sees as Musk’s effort to quietly apply pressure on those bureaucrats to get their work done already. As he writes, “Holding back Starship means holding back this progress, Musk wanted regulators to understand.”

Read the whole essay. In addition to illustrating the poltical games required by SpaceX to get past the stifling rules of our modern government, it very nicely shows how America has changed since the early 20th century. Then, no such regulators stood in the way, and Americans were thus about to build fast and with great skill, reshaping the cities of the world forever.

Though I expect the politics of the moment to favor SpaceX, forcing the FAA to get its work done quickly to allow the rocket to take off as planned, this is only going to happen because of the political clout SpaceX has with the public, and thus with politicians. For small companies no such clout exists, and thus expect U.S. innovation to continue to suffer in the coming years because we have given our govenrment too much power over our lives.

8 comments

China gives vague hints about its manned lunar lander

10:02 am

According to this Space News article today, China has recently allowed some tantalizing hints become public about its plans to build a manned lunar lander.

The brief news report from Xiamen University School of Aeronautics and Astronautics July 1 (Chinese) names individuals leading projects pertinent to China’s human lunar landing plans and notably refers to the landing project as a “national strategy”.

…The report names Yang Lei as “chief commander of the crewed lunar landing vehicle system” at the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), a subordinate to the state-owned space and defense contractor China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC). Yang was accompanied for the visit to Xiamen University by the project’s deputy chief commander and another involved in CAST’s new-generation crew spacecraft developed for deep space journeys. Other CASC subsidiaries are working on a new human-rated launch vehicle.

No details of the lander were provided during the meeting, in which current progress and future plans for human moon landings were presented. A number of slides were published but were intentionally blurred out.

Such secrecy is not unusual for China. It is one of the reasons it opposes the Artemis Accords, which require a transparancy in plans that China does not wish to give.

The secrecy however suggests that while they have now named the individuals in charge of the project, they have not yet settled on their design for that lander, and are exploring options. Based on long term schedule for lunar exploration that China and Russia have jointly announced, the first manned landings are planned sometime after ’26.

To meet that schedule they need to get moving on building that lander, now. This story suggests they are now gearing up to do that.

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Update on SLS: launch prep continues, launch in 2021 remains doubtful

9:49 am

Link here. The key milestone recently achieved was powering up the core stage with all stages stacked.

The initial power up was a significant milestone in pre-launch processing, marking the beginning of the systematic checkouts of the vehicle and ground systems that will be used for the first launch on Artemis 1.

It continues to appear that NASA and its SLS contractors are striving hard to avoid another delay and get the rocket off on its first unmanned test flight in the November/December timeframe that has been penciled in for the last two years. However, as noted in the article, meeting that deadline will be difficult, and the launch date is still likely to slip into early ’22.

The complexity of the tasks needed to get SLS ready becomes obvious if you read the article. This remains a very cumbersome and difficult rocket to launch. Though the prep this time is greater because it is the first time they are doing it, the assembly for later launches will not be much simpler. At best NASA hopes to trim the prep time from one year to six months.

Compare that with SpaceX’s goals on Starship/Superheavy. It is clear the company is aiming for the ability to prep the rocket and get it to the launchpad in mere days, not months, and by all measures it seems to be achieving that goal.

Even if one ignores the gigantic development cost difference ($50+ billion for SLS, $6 billion for Starship/Superheavy), the difference in getting the two rockets to the launchpad makes SLS the clear loser. How can NASA possibly expect to settle the solar system with a rocket that at best can only launch twice a year?

9 comments

Starliner launch scrub: 13 of 24 of the capsule’s propulsion valves failed to work

9:23 am

It now appears that the launch scrub last week of Boeing’s Starliner second unmanned demo flight to ISS occurred because thirteen valves in the capsule’s propulsion valves all failed to open during prelaunch testing.

Over the weekend, the team made “positive progress,” a spokesperson said Monday, allowing the company to continue to plan for a launch this month. The company has found “no signs of damage or external corrosion,” Boeing said in a statement Monday. “Test teams are now applying mechanical, electrical and thermal techniques to prompt the valves open.” As a result, more than half of the valves “are now operating as designed,” it said, and work would continue on the others “in the days ahead.”

In a blog post, NASA said that “if all valve functionality can be restored and root cause identified, NASA will work with Boeing to determine a path to flight for the important uncrewed mission to the space station.” The earliest opportunity would come in mid-August, it said.

But Boeing still does not know what caused the valves to remain closed when they needed to be in the open position, and it is unclear how long determining that would take. As a result, some in the aerospace industry are skeptical the company could launch this month.

They have managed to get seven of those thirteen valves working again.

That 13 of 24 failed to function correct strongly suggests the problem isn’t random but is instead a fundamental design problem that needs to be identified prior to launch.

That such a problem has only been discovered now, during the launch countdown, does not reflect well on Boeing or its capsule. That the problem was not noticed in the year and a half delay caused by the software problems during the first unmanned demo flight in December 2019 makes this problem even more disturbing.

In fact, it is downright shocking. It makes one wonder about Boeing’s entire operation, considering the disastrous problems the company has also had with its commercial and military airplane projects in recent years. Does the company have no quality control systems in place, at all?

I truly hope Boeing gets this fixed and Starliner flying, but right now they need to fly a number of times, including reusing a capsule a few times, before I’d recommend anyone buying a ticket.

19 comments

Evidence proves lockdowns bad; Democrats scream, “We must have more lockdowns!”

3:55 pm

Modern science!
How Democratic Party policy makers interpret data!

Almost a year and a half since the Wuhan panic swept across the world, the evidence continues to show that the policy decisions by our so-called “intellectual” class of experts to impose mandates and lockdowns were almost all stupid, producing disaster after disaster while completely failing to achieve any of their goals.

First we have Sweden, which refused to impose any lockdowns and now has practically no COVID-19 deaths at all.

An Imperial College model suggested that 85,000 people would die without a lockdown, and an Uppsala University team projected that 40,000 people would die from COVID-19 by May 1, 2020 and nearly 100,000 by June.

But by May, Sweden reported roughly six deaths for every one million people, according to the Financial Times, with 48.9% of its initial coronavirus deaths taking place in nursing homes, according to an analysis by the Swedish Public Health Agency. More than a year later, Sweden recorded 1.1 million coronavirus cases with 1.07 million people having recovered from the virus, and 14,620 coronavirus-linked deaths, according to woldometers.info as of Aug. 8, 2021.

Of the currently 12,248 people who have tested positive for COVID-19, 12, 219 are experiencing mild symptoms (99.8%) and 29 (0.2%) are in serious or critical condition, according to woldometers.info.

In other words, the models were so ridiculously wrong they weren’t even in the same galaxy as the results in the real world. Sweden’s population very quickly reached herd immunity and is now relatively immune from the virus and its later variants.

Moreover, Sweden’s economy has suffered little during the epidemic, and is doing nicely. Not so much in the U.S., where power-hungry politicians with their lockdowns have caused the destruction of 40% of all small businesses.

Nor is Sweden the only data point. A new study of 43 countries as well as all 50 U.S. states has found that lockdowns were worthless.
» Read more

19 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: For too many, it ain’t my problem

11:52 am

Rick, stating the truth in Casablanca
Still asleep, and tragically, they refuse to wake up.

Last week I took a break from publishing my daily “Today’s blacklisted American” column. It is without doubt a depressing chore to detail day after day examples where power-hungry thugs smash their jackboots on the faces of innocent people, merely because those innocent people committed the horrible crime of disagreeing with thugs.

I found I needed that break. I also had sensed — from the overall decreasing interest by news aggregate sites in my column — that the news business, even the conservative news business, was becoming bored with these stories.

Worse, I sensed that many readers found these stories distasteful and wished to avoid them. Though I don’t give a rat’s ass that these ostriches (with their heads in the sand) were bothered, it was nonetheless depressing to sense such people existed, and nothing I did could ever penetrate their close-minded brains.

My post announcing this break sadly confirmed my worse fears.
» Read more

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Hawaiian TMT protesters found not guilty of obstructing the road they obstructed

9:05 am

The law for thee but not for me: An Hawaiian judge has ruled that the protesters of the Thirty Meter Telesecope (TMT) who had obstructed the access road to the top of Mauna Kea are not guilty of obstructing that road.

[I]n announcing her verdict, the judge noted that during the trial, officials testified that the access road was closed and there were no permits issued for oversized vehicles. “Evidence that Mauna Kea access road was closed or restricted to the public, coupled with no permits, equals no obstruction,” Laubach said. “There would be no unreasonable inconvenience or hazard.”

The state failed to meet its burden beyond a reasonable doubt, she said.

This ruling is a joke. The reason the officials closed the road was because the protesters were there. The officials did not want anyone hurt by the oversized trucks that had legal permission to drive through carrying TMT construction equipment.

Such a ruling however is not a surprise. From top to bottom Hawaii’s government in controlled by the Democratic Party. The judge almost certainly was a Democrat. The Democrats favor the bigoted anti-white and anti-technology agenda of the protesters, and have gone out of their way to help them in their protests.

In general, protesters for Democratic Party causes can loot, burn, kill, obstruct traffic, and do all sorts of violent things — including physically attacking women and children in a park in Portland — and are either never arrested, quickly released on dropped charges, or found innocent.

Be a conservative and spend a dozen minutes inside the Capitol Building taking a few selfies, however, and you will find yourself imprisoned for months, with no charges brought and no sign they ever will be brought. You are guilty, and you will be punished. How dare you do anything that opposes the Democratic Party and its storm trooper thugs?

TMT is never going to be built in Hawaii. In fact, I am beginning to doubt it will ever be built anywhere. Considering the increasing difficulty that ground-based astronomy is going to have dealing with the many satellite constellations now being launched, it is very possible the support for the telescope will begin to dry up. And maybe this failure will be a signal to astronomers that they should finally begin spending their money on space-based optical telescopes.

Meanwhile, Hawaii has become a place hostile to science, to new knowledge, and even to tourism. The dark age there has come quite quickly.

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Rocket Lab shifts another launch from Virginia to New Zealand

12:15 pm

Foot-dragging by NASA bureaucrats has apparently forced Rocket Lab to shift the launch of its CAPSTONE lunar orbit cubesat from its new launchpad in Wallops Island, Virgina, to its New Zealand launchpad.

CAPSTONE would be the second Rocket Lab mission in recent weeks that shifted from Virginia to New Zealand. The most recent Electron launch July 26 placed into orbit Monolith, a smallsat developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory. Monolith was originally going to launch on the first Electron mission from Virginia.

Rocket Lab said at the time that it shifted the launch of Monolith because of ongoing work by NASA to certify the software for the rocket’s autonomous flight termination system. A NASA spokesman said in July that the agency expected to complete certification of the unit by the end of the year.

Note too that Rocket Lab had originally hoped to launch from Wallops in 2020, but was forced to delay that launch to 2021 then because of NASA’s inability to approve this system. Now it looks like they won’t be able to launch in ’21 either.

This flight termination system is likely the same one that Rocket Lab has successfully used now for four years and more than twenty launches in New Zealand. Why it should take NASA literally years to approve it is shameful. As I wrote in November,

While I have no evidence of this, I cannot help being suspicious of these various government agencies. For years numerous people in the government put fake roadblocks up to slow or stop SpaceX’s first manned launch, merely because it threatened their turfs. This autonomous termination system will make the ground crews at Vandenberg and at Cape Canaveral irrelevant, and I would not be surprised if some of these issues were drummed up to delay or block this system because of that.

I know I am being cynical, but based on history it is not unreasonable to be so.

I think we are seeing evidence now that my cynicism was entirely justified.

11 comments

China launches military communications satellite

9:48 am

China’s Long March 3B rocket yesterday successfully launched a military communications satellite.

This was China’s eighth government launch since the beginning of July, in a span of only five weeks.

The launch was from an interior spaceport, so the rocket’s strap-on boosters and first stage core landed within China. No word if any landed near or on habitable areas, or if the Chinese were using parachutes or grid fins to control their landing.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

26 China
20 SpaceX
12 Russia
3 Northrop Grumman
3 Rocket Lab

The U.S. still leads China 30 to 26 in the national rankings.

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As thousands of teachers endorse critical race theory, home schooling surges

12:45 pm

What apparently Critical Race Theory sees as education for elementary school kids.
What apparently Critical Race Theory sees as education for
elementary school kids.

In the past few months state legislatures across the country have passed resolutions that ban schools from teaching the Marxist and bigoted program dubbed Critical Race Theory (CRT).

Not surprisingly, the leftists who dominate our school systems have fought back. The very leftist Zinn Education Project immediately created a petition calling for teachers to defy such laws and to continue to teach CRT, which teaches children to hate whites and to give minorities privileged status.

In the two months this petition has been on line almost 6,000 teachers have signed it, with many adding comments of defiance. This one is typical:
» Read more

18 comments

China’s Long March 6 launches two military technology test satellites

8:47 am

Using its Long March 6 rocket, China yesterday successfully placed two military technology test satellites into orbit, designed to test “new interference suppression technology for Ka-band mobile communications satellites.”

The launch occurred at one of China’s interior spaceports. No word on whether the rocket’s first stage crashed near habitable area.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

25 China
20 SpaceX
12 Russia
3 Northrop Grumman
3 Rocket Lab

The U.S. still leads China 30 to 25 in the national rankings.

8 comments

Details on the Russian movie to be shot on ISS in October

9:13 pm

Link here. The article provides a lot of details about who will fly, who will do what, and who is slated as back-ups if the primary crew of actress and director fail their training. However, I found the description of the movie to be the most interesting thing:

Shipenko revealed the script is still being fine-tuned, but the plot involves a cosmonaut who suffers a cardiac arrest during a spacewalk and, although he survives, he will require surgery to ensure he can handle the Soyuz return to Earth. A female cardiac surgeon, named Zhenya, has to be sent to the ISS to perform the procedure with only a few weeks to prepare for the trip.

Unlike the American space films like Gravity, this story is incredibly well grounded in reality. The Russians have actually experienced examples of station astronauts getting so sick in space that their missions had to be aborted early. In one case it was a prostate infection. In another it was the mental illness of the entire crew.

This story is also comparable to situations that have occurred in Antarctica, a very similar environment to the station. In the early 2000s the doctor in Antarctica had to perform surgery on herself because she had developed cancer. Then in 2016 Buzz Aldrin had to be evacuated due health issues.

If done right, this could not only make a damn good movie, it will also do so by revealing the true dangers of going to space.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Cybersecurity experts want people fired for expressing unpopular opinions on line

1:09 pm

1966 in communist China
Mao’s cultural revolution in 1966, what the leftists
at Respect in Security want for America and the world.

Persecution is now cool! A new project being developed by leftist cybersecurity experts calls for corporations to use their software to identify and fire individuals that their software identifies as having expressed what they define as “offensive” speech online.

Cancel Culture and Big Tech are a match made in hell, as cybersecurity experts call to target the livelihood of internet users who get too edgy online. “The initiative, called Respect in Security, was launched on Tuesday by two cybersecurity experts. According to the founders, several companies have already signed up,” Reclaim The Net reported. “For a lot of people, it’s a no man’s land,” founder Lisa Forte and Red Goat Cyber Security employee told the BBC. “It can feel like the platforms do nothing, the police don’t do a lot, lawyers are expensive and the publicity legal action generates can be negative.”

The BBC reported that co-founder and Trend Micro Vice President Rik Ferguson said “many companies had anti-bullying policies but they tended to focus on internal behaviour.” In what may be a reference to his Respect in Security program, he wrote a few weeks ago: “Inside my ‘Projects’ email folder resides a subfolder called ‘Kill Trolls’ and it is now only a couple of weeks away from becoming a real thing (sadly not with that name).”

Free speech advocates concerned about Ferguson and Forte’s work may have good reason to be. Forte explained her clear fix for people saying offensive statements via the internet: “The best solution we have, if the culprit is identifiable, is to approach their employer.” [emphasis mine]

It is bad enough that the big social media companies — Google, Facebook, Twitter — are routinely banning conservatives for expressing opinions or even facts they don’t like. Now the storm troopers above want to extend the blacklisting to get those same people fired for daring to speak their mind publicly. From another story:
» Read more

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Chinese pseudo-private rocket fails during launch

2:23 pm

A launch attempt by the pseudo-private Chinese company iSpace failed today, the second failure in a row for this company following a success.

A Hyperbola 1 rocket lifted off from the Jiuquan launch base at 3:39 a.m. EDT (0739 GMT; 3:39 p.m. Beijing time), China’s government-run Xinhua news agency said. Xinhua, which described the launch as a “flight test,” said the rocket exhibited “abnormal performance” after liftoff. Officials did not immediately specify when during the flight the rocket failed.

The news agency said a satellite carried by the rocket “did not enter orbit as scheduled.” Chinese officials did not identify the payload lost on the mission.

This is the second launch failure in a row, following the first successful orbital launch in July 2019.

The rocket is made of four solid-fueled stages, which means it most certainly is using military tecnology and is being closely supervised by the Chinese government. ISpace is one of about four such pseudo-private Chines companies. In each case, China is allowing private Chinese capital to finance the development of these rockets, for use both by the Chinese government as well as sale to customers (but only with the government’s approval and control).

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Today’s blacklisted American: 65,000 Americans censored by social media

12:03 pm

The Bill of Rights cancelled by Google, Facebook, and Twitter
The Bill of Rights cancelled by
Google, Facebook, and Twitter.

The new dark age of silencing According to the legal team for former president Donald Trump, almost 65,000 people have submitted examples of censorship by the social media companies Google, Facebook, and Twitter, and the lawyers have amended Trump’s the lawsuit to add those individuals to it.

According to the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), Trump’s July 7 lawsuit against Facebook, Twitter, and Google is adding ”additional censorship experiences” from some of the nearly 65,000 people who submitted them to the institute. ”Late last night, Amended Complaints were filed in the Big Tech lawsuits against Facebook, Inc., Mark Zuckerberg, Twitter, Inc., Jack Dorsey, Google LLC, and Sundar Pichai,” AFPI said in a July 28 statement.

“Since the initial filing on July 7, 2021, nearly 65,000 American people have submitted their stories of censorship through America First Policy Institute’s (AFPI) Constitutional Litigation Partnership (CLP) at TakeOnBigTech.com,” AFPI added.

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Nauka shook up ISS more than first revealed

9:50 pm

According to new reporting, when the new Russian module Nauka unexpectedly began firing its engines, it rotated the International Space Station far more than first revealed, requiring a much more complicated effort to bring the station back to its correct orientation.

Zebulon Scoville, the flight director at NASA mission control in Houston, revealed that the 45 degrees that was initially reported as the amount ISS rotated was incorrect.

According to Scoville, the event has “been a little incorrectly reported.” He said that after Nauka incorrectly fired up, the station “spun one-and-a-half revolutions — about 540 degrees — before coming to a stop upside down. The space station then did a 180-degree forward flip to get back to its original orientation,” according to the report.

Scoville also shared that this was the first time that he has ever declared a “spacecraft emergency.”

It appears that though the station spun far more than first reported, the rate of rotation was still relatively slow, so it apparently did no harm to the station.

Scoville also revealed that, based on the data on hand during the event, it appeared Nauka was also trying to undock itself from the station. Mission controllers tried to counter this by firing engines on a Russian Progress freighter as well as on the Zvezda module.

Had Nauka’s engines had not stopped firing (for unknown reasons, though probably because they ran out of fuel), there was the real chance the accelerations could have shaken the station apart. Moreover, that other engines were brought into play suggests that the Russians not only did not know why Nauka’s engines fired, they had at the time no way to shut them down, and were thus forced to improvise other actions to try to save the increasingly dangerous situation.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Biracial physician demoted by hospital for criticizing the left

12:54 pm

What apparently passes for medical treatment at the Hennepin Healthcare system
Beliefs apparently required of doctors at the Hennepin Healthcare system

The new dark age of silencing: Tara Gustilo, a biracial physician from the Philippines, found herself quickly demoted from her position as chairwoman of the OB-GYN department for the Hennepin Healthcare system in Minnesota when she dared to post on social media commentary against the Marxist and bigoted Black Lives Matter organization and the equally bigoted critical race theory being pushed by leftist educators in the public schools.
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Zhurong continues south, inspecting dunes

10:40 am

Zhurong's travels as of July 31, 2021

The Chinese science team for their Zhurong Mars rover released new images yesterday, including a map showing the rover’s present position.

The new images and location has confirmed that the white streaks seen in orbital pictures are small dunes of sand blown by the thin Martian wind.

The map to the right, created using their map but annotated and providing a wider context, shows their present location relative to the lander and surrounding terrain. So far the rover has traveled about 1,900 feet, about 1,000 feet per month. Since it seems to be operating as planned, I expect China will extend the mission once it completes its nominal three-month tour in about two weeks.

At that travel pace there is much of interest that is within the rover’s range. I expect they are heading south partly because this brings them closer to their original landing site, which is an area they probably studied at length before landing. Whether they head to the largest crater, visible only partly on the image’s south edge, remains unclear.

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Russia offers conflicting causes for Nauka engine firing

9:34 am

Russian officials have now suggested two explanations for the accidently ignition of the engines on the new Nauka module to ISS, neither of which appears to have involved any real investigation.

Vladimir Solovyov, flight director of the space station’s Russian segment, blamed the incident on a “short-term software failure.” In a statement released Friday by the Russian space agency Roscosmos, Solovyov said because of the failure, a direct command to turn on the lab’s engines was mistakenly implemented.

He added the incident was “quickly countered by the propulsion system” of another Russian component at the station and “at the moment, the station is in its normal orientation” and all its systems “are operating normally.”

Roscosmos director Dmitry Rogozin later Friday suggested that “human factor” may have been at play. “There was such euphoria (after Nauka successfully docked with the space station), people relaxed to some extent,” Rogozin said in a radio interview. “Perhaps one of the operators didn’t take into account that the control system of the block will continue to adjust itself in space. And it determined a moment three hours after (the docking) and turned on the engines.” [emphasis mine]

So, was it human error? Or was it the software programming? Or both?

No matter what the specific cause, these conflicting stories, thrown out in almost an offhand manner, demonstrate that the real fundamental cause was the terrible, sloppy, and error-prone quality control systems at Roscosmos and all the aerospace companies it has taken over since the Putin administration consolidated Russia’s aerospace industry into a single government-run corporation.

These kinds of failures seem to happen with Russia now repeatedly. From launch aborts to launch failures to corruption in contracting to corruption in engine construction to plain simple sabotage, mistakes and errors and poor planning and dishonesty seem to hound their space effort at every level. Thank God Americans no longer have to fly on a Soyuz capsule, though one American on board ISS is still scheduled to come home on one.

Without competition and freedom, there is no pressure in Russia to improve, to improvise, to rethink, and to clean house when a management gets stale or corrupt. Instead, operations stultify and develop dry rot. They can’t see problems or even fix them efficiently. If anything, management circles the wagons to protect itself, while often deliberately ignoring the problems.

Rocket science is hard. It can quickly kill people when done poorly.

I think it will be a great relief to end this partnership. And the sooner the better.

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GAO rejects protests by Blue Origin and Dynectics over lunar lander award

12:50 am

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) today rejected the protests by Blue Origin and Dynectics against the award by NASA of its manned lunar lander contract to SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft.

In denying the protests, GAO first concluded that NASA did not violate procurement law or regulation when it decided to make only one award. NASA’s announcement provided that the number of awards the agency would make was subject to the amount of funding available for the program. In addition, the announcement reserved the right to make multiple awards, a single award, or no award at all. In reaching its award decision, NASA concluded that it only had sufficient funding for one contract award. GAO further concluded there was no requirement for NASA to engage in discussions, amend, or cancel the announcement as a result of the amount of funding available for the program. As a result, GAO denied the protest arguments that NASA acted improperly in making a single award to SpaceX.

GAO next concluded that the evaluation of all three proposals was reasonable, and consistent with applicable procurement law, regulation, and the announcement’s terms.

Finally, GAO agreed with the protesters that in one limited instance NASA waived a requirement of the announcement for SpaceX. Despite this finding, the decision also concludes that the protesters could not establish any reasonable possibility of competitive prejudice arising from this limited discrepancy in the evaluation.

This decision will likely allow NASA to proceed with the contract, and for SpaceX to begin work on the revisions it will need to make to Starship to make it a lunar lander.

The decision also puts companies like Blue Origin and Dynectics on notice: You need to prove you have the goods, or you won’t win customers. Commit some of your own funds to research and development, start building actual prototypes you can test, and the world will begin to beat a path to your door.

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Arianespace successfully completes first Ariane 5 launch in almost a year

11:23 pm

Arianespace today successfully completed its first Ariane 5 launch since August 2020, placing in orbit two commercial communications satellites.

The long gap in launches occurred because of a vibration issue discovered during that August 2020 launch durng the release of the rocket’s two fairing halves.

Engineers introduced modifications to the Ariane 5’s payload fairing, or nose cone, to reduce vibrations imparted on the satellites during separation of the shroud, which protects payloads during the first few minutes of flight through the atmosphere. Ground teams will analyze data from the rocket to make sure the changes reduced the vibrations.

Another launch is scheduled for September, followed next by the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in either November or December. The results from today’s launch as well as the one in September will determine if the Webb launch will go forward on time.

These issues with Ariane 5, delays imposed by the company in fear of the Wuhan flu, and other launch problems with Arianespace’s Vega rocket, has meant that this is only its second launch in 2021, a pace that is below its pace for most of the last decade. Whether the company can recover and pick up the pace before the end of the year will depend on what they learn during today’s launch.

With only two launches total, Europe’s Arianespace remains off the leader board in the 2021 launch race:

24 China
20 SpaceX
12 Russia
3 Northrop Grumman
3 Rocket Lab

The U.S. lead over China in the national rankings remains 30 to 24.

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