Tag: government

Doctors: COVID-19 case counts, hospitalization numbers, and death counts are “meaningless”

3:15 pm

It has all been lies upon lies upon lies: According to an editorial written by Kristin Held, president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), the case counts, hospitalization numbers, and death counts published by government agencies across the United States are “meaningless” and “manipulated.”

From her full editorial [pdf]:

The COVID-19 case counts, hospitalization numbers, and death counts are meaningless in their current fluid form. Their malleability primarily serves those who seek to distort reality.

The morphable numbers are reported, then manipulated by federal, state, county, city, and hospital authorities and agencies. The manipulation is driven by power and money and fueled by fearmongering, panic stoking, and promise of monetary and political gain. All this is bought and paid for under the guise of trying to save the world from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Read it all. She carefully documents the changes imposed by the CDC around June 14-16 that ballooned the numbers, often for entirely unjustified reasons. For example, hospitals get a lot of federal money for labeling a hospitalization from the coronavirus. The result?
» Read more

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UAE leader confirms goal to land rover on Moon by ’24

9:15 am

The new colonial movement: The ruler of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has confirmed the initiation of a project to land a rover on the Moon by 2024, and have it built entirely by UAE engineers.

The Emirates Lunar Mission will be a 100 percent Emirati-built lunar rover that will land on the moon by 2024, according to a series of tweets by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the UAE Prime Minister and Vice President and Ruler of Dubai.

The lunar rover has been named “Rashid” in honour of Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum who ruled Dubai for 32 years from 1958 until his death in 1990 and who “sparked” the emirate’s advancement.

This is an ambitious goal, but not completely unreasonable. Their engineers were closely involved in the construction of their Hope Mars orbiter, mostly built by U.S. universities and subcontractors. That knowledge can now be applied to their own spacecraft. I also suspect that their 2016 agreement with India to invest billions there in exchange for space-related engineering assistance included technical information about India’s own lunar rover missions.

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ISS air leak still unlocated

9:04 am

The small air leak that was found on ISS a year ago has still not been located, despite a second weekend where the crew isolated themselves in one module and closed the hatches on all other modules so that ground engineers could track any air supply changes.

At a Sept. 28 briefing about the upcoming Northrop Grumman NG-14 Cygnus cargo mission to the station, a NASA official said that the weekend isolation in the Zvezda module failed to immediately locate the source of the leak. “As of this morning, there was no clear indication of where the leak is,” said Greg Dorth, manager of the ISS Program External Integration Office at NASA. “The teams are still looking at the data and evaluating it.”

This was the second time the ISS crew confined themselves to Zvezda in an effort to track down the leak. A month earlier, the three also spent a weekend in Zvezda with the other modules sealed off in an effort to locate the leak. “After the three days, there was no indication of where the leak was coming from,” Dorth said.

This latest test, he said, featured some “slightly different configurations” in both the U.S. and Russian segments, although he did not elaborate on the differences between the two tests. In addition, Cassidy used an ultrasonic leak detector to see if the leak was coming from Zvezda itself.

These tests were possible since mid-August because there were only three people on station, allowing them to be confined to one module for a period of time. Moreover, during this time no other spacecraft have arrived or left. It is suspected that the leak is most likely coming from the connection point between two modules, and adding or removing a Soyuz, Dragon, or freighter to the station shifts its center of gravity, changing the stress points at those connections.

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UAE outlines new plans in space

8:57 am

The new colonial movement: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) had put forth a new set of goals in its space program, including sending another astronaut to space, sending an unmanned probe to the Moon, and encouraging the development of UAE-built Earth resource smallsats.

The lunar mission is targeted to launch in 2024, and it appears they wish to build it entirely themselves, rather than subcontract American companies and universities to do the bulk of the work, as they did for the Hope Mars orbiter. It appears they believe that the training their people got from the Hope mission development will make it possible for them to proceed now on their own.

I also suspect that instead of buying a Russian Soyuz launch, they are aiming to hire an American company, either SpaceX or Boeing, to fly their next astronaut, since they have made a deal with NASA for astronaut training.

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It WAS a coup attempt

2:51 pm

In the past few days a number of news stories have confirmed, unequivocally, that the effort in the FBI, CIA, and Justice Department to spy on the Trump campaign before the election and then pin the false accusation of Russian collusion on Trump after his election were all an effort to dictate the results of the election, and then overturn it when Trump won.

It was an out-and-out coup attempt by these government officials, apparently aided and abetted by Obama when he was still president.

First we learn that the FBI agents working on the fake prosecution of former National Security were so worried their misconduct would be uncovered by the Trump administration that they bought liability insurance to protect themselves.
» Read more

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Leak hunt continues on ISS

10:04 am

Two stories today indicate that the search for the elusive source of the slow leak on ISS is continuing.

The problem is that the two stories appear to have no overlap, making it hard to figure out what is planned and why.

The first story describes how engineers, based on the first isolation test, now think the leak must be coming from one of two modules:

…the ones the crew didn’t test because they were inside them while monitoring the rest of the station. One is the Zvezda Service Module, which provides life support for the station’s Russian side. The other is the Poisk Mini-Research Module 2, which serves as a port for docking spaceships and a place where crew members prepare for spacewalks.

The second story, from the Russian press, does not mention this detail. All it says is that the astronauts are going to once again isolate themselves in “the Russian segment” so the rest of the station can be tested for leaks. Since the two modules in question are both in that Russian segment, it is unclear where the astronauts will be isolated, especially since Zvezda is also where the Soyuz descent capsule is docked and if sealed from astronaut access it also seals them from their lifeboat.

It could be that the plan is to do another test of the American side of the station, then do these two Russian modules after the arrival of the next manned Dragon mission in a little less than a month. Dragon can then replace Soyuz as a lifeboat, allowing a test of Zvezda.

Regardless, the leak is a slow one, and is not yet life-threatening. That the leak rate has recently increased however requires action to find and fix it.

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California to ban all gas-powered vehicles

8:55 pm

This is not the Babylon Bee: California Democratic governor Gavin Newsom today announced that as of 2035 the state will outlaw all gas-powered vehicles.

Newsom said that his new executive order would “eliminate” the sales of “internal combustion engines” and move to electric vehicles — a move that he said would create jobs and allow California to “dominate” the market, and address climate change. Those who currently own gas-powered vehicles would still be allowed to operate them and to sell them on the used market.

2035 happens to be the same year that former Vice President Joe Biden has set as a deadline for the U.S. to eliminate fossil fuels from electricity production, five years later than originally proposed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in her “Green New Deal.” Ocasio-Cortez led the climate change panel on the “Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force” earlier this year.

The ignorance displayed by this policy decision is spectacular. These Democrats obviously believe that the power from electric cars comes from magic. They also seem to believe that new technology can magically be decreed, by government fiat.

What this degree will do is bankrupt California, and make living there a living hell, suitable only for the very very rich or the very very poor (whose survival will be wholly dependent on those very very rich).

Remember this when you go to vote in November. Newsom, Ocasio-Cortez, and Biden are very typical of the modern Democratic Party. Give it power and it will do the same for the entire nation.

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Survival rates for COVID-19

8:43 pm

The CDC last week posted its new estimate of the survival rates for COVID-19, broken up by age.

This link put those number in clear terms:

0-19 years: 99.997%
20-49 years: 99.98%
50-69 years: 99.5%
70+ years: 94.6%

Those numbers are practically identical to those of the flu. In other words, practically no one dies from it. It makes some people sick for a week or so, and then goes away.

And we have destroyed western civilization over this. It boggles the mind (for those who are still using it).

The worst part is that no one will believe me. Instead, too many will be outraged that anyone would even hint that this virus is not the plague.

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Four graphs prove the utter failure of lockdowns and masks

5:43 pm

The data is now in. Not only is the coronavirus nothing more than a very bad flu, harmless to the vast majority of the population, the bad policy imposed by almost all governments worldwide has done nothing to alleviate it, and in fact has probably helped kill people, from both the virus and their bad policy.

This conclusion is starkly illustrated in the following four graphs (source), all of which show the history of COVID-19 during the entire 2020 epidemic, now clearly ending. All four graphs are updates of graphs I’ve referenced previously, but now they take us through the epidemic’s present waning, and give us a better context of both the virus’ flu-like nature and the terrible policies imposed by governments in their panic over it.

Daily mortality from COVID-19 in the U.S.

First to the right we have the daily mortality numbers for the entire United States. The steady drop in deaths since epidemic’s second peak on August 12th is very evident. The epidemic appears to be winding down, though very slowly. Furthermore, it had an unusual summer peak that is almost never seen in such respiratory diseases. The reasons for both the slowness of the virus’s decay and its second peak will become clear as we look at the next three graphs, covering the epidemic’s peak in New York, New Jersey, and California.
» Read more

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New Shepard test flight set for tomorrow

9:42 am

Capitalism in space: Blue Origin has scheduled a New Shepard test flight set for tomorrow morning at 10 am (Central), the first test flight in ten months.

This will be the seventh flight of this particular New Shepard spacecraft, the thirteenth overall for the program.

In March the company’s CEO had promised three flights by the end of 2020, with the last manned. The press release above howeveronly mentions that tomorrow’s test flight is the first of two, both now emphasizing how they will be flying payloads testing technology for lunar landings. No mention is made of a later manned mission.

It seems increasingly that Blue Origin is abandoning its suborbital space tourism business. If not, they sure don’t seem very enthusiastic about it any longer. Instead, they appear to be hyping New Shepard as a testbed for their effort to develop the manned lunar lander for NASA.

That same March update from the CEO had also said they would be initiating commercial production of their BE-4 rocket engine this year. All we have had so far is delivery of one testbed engine — not flightworthy — to ULA. ULA soon revealed there are problems with the engine.

All in all, Blue Origin is becoming less and less impressive, as time passes. Their suborbital tourism project appears to be abandoned. Their rocket engine has problems. And their New Glenn orbital rocket appears stalled.

All they have right now is their development contract with NASA to build a manned lunar lander, and in that case Blue Origin is only a minor player, even if the company is listed as the lead contractor. Their big partners (Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Draper) will build the bulk of the lander, should NASA finally get the project financed by Congress.

The company’s failure to deliver so far is a true shame, as the company has ample finances, backed by Jeff Bezos’ billions.

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NASA lays out Artemis budget and plan to get astronauts to Moon

10:10 am

In a obvious lobbying effort to get Congress to fund the Trump administration’s Artemis project to land humans on the Moon by 2024, NASA yesterday released a new updated plan and budget for the program.

More here.

The document [pdf] outlines the specific plans for each of the first three Artemis flights, with the first unmanned, the second manned and designed to fly around the Moon, and the third to land a man and a woman on the Moon. Overall the plan is budgeted at about $28 billion, with $3.2 billion needed immediately to fund construction of the lunar lander. From the second link:

Bridenstine said he remains optimistic Congress will fully fund lander development because of what he described as broad bipartisan support for the Artemis program. He said he’s hopeful an expected continuing resolution that would freeze NASA’s budget at last year’s spending levels will be resolved in an “omnibus” spending bill before Christmas or, if the CR is extended, by early spring. “It is critically important that we get that $3.2 billion,” he said. “And I think that if we can have that done before Christmas, we’re still on track for a 2024 moon landing. … If we go beyond March, and we still don’t have the human landing system funded, it becomes increasingly more difficult.”

And what happens then?

“It’s really simple. If Congress doesn’t fund the moon landing program, then it won’t be achieved (in 2024), I mean it’s really that simple,” Bridenstine said. But he quickly added: “I want to be clear, if they push the funding off, our goal will be to get to the moon at the earliest possible opportunity.”

I remain doubtful the present Congress, with the House controlled by the Democrats, will fund this 2024 lunar landing. Since 2016 the entire political platform of the Democratic Party has been “oppose anything Trump.” They will not fund this project if it means he will get this landing during his second term.

If however Trump loses in November, the lame duck Congress might then go ahead and fund it before December, since the landing in 2024 will then occur during the Biden presidency.

Technically the plan reveals that NASA is trying to accelerate the development of the rendezvous and docking software for Orion. During the second flight, the first manned, the crew will do proximity maneuvers with the upper stage of the rocket. Under previous management NASA had not included this ability, as they had not planned to have Orion do any rendezvouses or dockings. That lack makes it impossible for Orion to fly on any other rocket but SLS. This change means the Trump administration recognizes this is a problem, and wants to fix it, especially because they also recognize that SLS is a poor long term option for future lunar missions.

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UAE to train astronauts at NASA

9:29 am

The United Arab Emirates has signed an agreement with NASA to train its two future astronauts to ISS.

UAE astronauts Hazzaa AlMansoori and Sultan AlNeyadi have already begun their training at Nasa’s Johnson Space Center in Houston starting Monday, Salem AlMarri, head of the UAE Astronaut Programme, at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC), said during a media briefing. AlMansoori and AlNeyadi had earlier trained at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Moscow, in September 2018 as part of their preparation for their launch to the ISS.

The two men will be launched to ISS by Russia using its Soyuz rocket and capsule. However, the UAE is smart to get them training in the U.S., as they need to work with U.S. mission control and U.S. systems on ISS. Moreover, I expect the UAE might wish to buy tickets eventually on either Dragon or Starliner, and this training lays the groundwork for that possibility.

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Despite fading epidemic governments vow to maintain lockdowns

2:52 pm

Graph of U.S. deaths day to day through September 21, 2020

The lockdowns will never end: Despite the continuing and steady decline in COVID-19 deaths and cases, most state governments are vowing to maintain their lockdowns and mask mandates, some forever or until a vaccine is found.

Numerous high-ranking public authorities throughout the United States have pledged to continue enforcing COVID-19 restrictions — including social distancing rules and mask mandates — even as cases of and deaths attributed to the virus continue a steady two-month decline throughout the country.

Those officials have signaled that the restrictions will not be lifted unless and until an effective vaccine is developed, approved, distributed throughout the country and utilized by enough of the population to create functional herd immunity.

The graph to the right, compiled from this source, shows clearly that the epidemic is fading, and even at its peak never came even close to the terrifying predictions, all now proven to be wrong, of a lot of health officials and junk modeling scientists.

In fact, the numbers continue to show that coronavirus is really nothing more than a bad flu. Like the flu, it is relatively harmless to the young and healthy, who either will show no symptoms from it at all, or might get sick for a week or so and then recover completely. And like the flu, it is only really dangerous to the old and sick, who already have serious health problems which make them vulnerable to any new illness.

Note too that the average age at death from COVID-19 is about 78 years old, which is also identical to the average age expectancy of Americans. In other words, the disease did little to change the number of deaths at all. Even if there were excess deaths this year, they were not much more than we’ve had in previous bad flu seasons, and those additional deaths had no effect on the general population.

For such a disease, you do what we have done for centuries, you protect the weak, and let everyone else live their lives normally. We did not do this this time, and are now suffering from it.

Worse, too many people seem unwilling to accept the reality that the epidemic is ending. Instead, they get outraged by anyone who even suggests such a thing. They have fallen in love with their fear, and want to embrace it, forcing masks and restrictions on everyone forever, just so that they have a false sense of safety.

Unfortunately too many of our fascist governors and health bureaucrats have decided to take full advantage of that panicky fear and use it to gain more power over everyone. As it is said, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. For the past six months we have seen a perfect demonstration of this.

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First manned Artemis Moon mission might not go to south pole

3:59 pm

In order to meet the Trump administration’s 2024 deadline for the first Artemis manned lunar landing, NASA is now considering sending that first mission to an equatorial target, rather than the Moon’s south pole.

The Artemis program landing site issue came up at two separate events with agency leaders this week, beginning with NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine’s comments to open a digital meeting held by a NASA advisory group called the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group, on Monday (Sept. 14).

“For the first mission, Artemis 3, our objective is to get to the south pole,” Bridenstine said. “But … it would not surprise me if, for example, if we made a determination that the south pole might be out of reach for Artemis 3, which I’m not saying it is or isn’t,” interest in the Apollo sites may win out.

The engineering to get to the polar regions is more challenging, so rather than delay that first mission they are considering simplifying it instead.

The fact remains that Congress has still not funded any Artemis missions beyond the first unmanned and first manned flights, neither of which will land on the Moon. Whether that money will ever be forthcoming really depends entirely on the November election, as well as the success or failure of the upcoming full-up static fire engine test of the SLS first stage.

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SpaceX raises Falcon Heavy launch price for U.S. military

10:57 am

Capitalism in space: It now appears that SpaceX has significantly raised the price it is charging the U.S. military for its Falcon Heavy rocket

In winning the military’s new long term launch contracts, awarded to both SpaceX and ULA through 2026, SpaceX apparently doubled the Falcon Heavy price.

In 2018 he said the rocket would cost no more than $150 million to loft heavy payloads into orbit. But the award SpaceX received for a single mission in the first year of Phase Two was $316 million. That’s quite an increase.

The article is clearly one of those industry hit pieces against SpaceX. At the same time, I completely accept what it has found to be true. SpaceX no longer needs to undercut ULA by gigantic amounts to gain military contracts. Moreover, since the military decided to restrict bidding for all launches for the next five years to just these two companies, SpaceX has no reason to offer the same low prices it has in the past. All it needs to do is undercut ULA’s high prices by a little, and get the deal.

In a sense, it isn’t SpaceX’s fault the military will now have to pay so much. Blame our vaunted military bureaucracy, which choose to limit the competition to just two companies for the next five years. They are getting what they wanted, even if it ends up screwing the taxpayer.

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Due to Wuhan panic, India might launch no rockets in 2020

10:21 am

The new colonial movement: Due to Wuhan panic, it is now possible that India’s space agency ISRO will launch no rockets in 2020, delaying all until 2021.

ISRO’s launch calendar has been heavily impacted by the pandemic, and there has been no launch from its spaceport, Sriharikota, this year. In fact, the only ISRO launch this year was G-SAT 30, but it was carried by a French rocket, Ariane, which took off from French Guiana on January 17. Although officials confirm that there may be around three to four launches before the year is over, they admit that the deadlines of several launches planned for the latter half of this year may slip into the next calendar year. This could have a cascading effect on the next year’s plans, too.

The article outlines in detail the status of many of India’s space projects, all of which seem stymied by the lock down restrictions that have been imposed. It also notes how other countries, such as China and the U.S., have not allowed the epidemic to shut them down as drastically.

India had hoped to complete a record twelve launches in 2020.

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NASA reorganizes its manned space bureaucracy

10:10 am

Gotta rearrange those deck chairs! NASA has finally completed a long-planned reorganization of its manned space bureaucracy, first begun several years ago.

At a Sept. 16 Washington Space Business Roundtable webinar, Kathy Lueders, who took over as NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations three months ago, said that NASA Associate Administrator Steve Jurczyk formally approved a reorganization of her mission directorate the previous day. “It addressed some of the concerns that folks have had and is really getting us set up for our future missions going forward,” she said of the reorganization.

Those concerns include findings from a review called a Program Status Assessment carried out earlier this year. That review cited issues with system engineering oversight for the Artemis program and a lack of a formal Artemis program organization. “We are also using these adjustments to solidify and better define division roles,” the agency said in a statement to SpaceNews.

NASA does this Potemkin-type reorganization about once every decade or so, with little major effect other than to allow the upper management preen itself as it makes believe it has accomplished something. This particular rearrangement however might be a bit more beneficial that past ones, in that it appears aimed at aligning the agency’s bureaucracy with its new status of being a customer of the private sector, rather than its boss and overseer.

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Practically no COVID-19 illnesses among professional athletes

3:24 pm

In another example of data that shows the coronavirus is essentially harmless to the young and healthy, there have been practically no deaths or even serious illnesses among professional athletes, even though these athletes have been aggressively tested for COVID-19, resulting in a lot of positive tests.

Despite hundreds of thousands of tests, vanishingly few serious cases have been reported among professional athletes. Most players testing positive had apparently few or no symptoms.

…What’s clear from the statistics that are made available, though, is that the infection rate for those athletes involved in return to play is vanishingly small, and that they may have been more protected by resuming work with their teams, especially as societies gradually reopened. The Premier League, for instance, ran some 20,500 tests in its 14 rounds between the middle of May and mid-July. According to the league’s own website, only 20 players tested positive, a rate of just 0.1 percent, or about one in 1,000 tests—lower than most estimates for the virus’s spread throughout the general population.

In the rare cases where more detailed reporting is available, it’s notable that even among the small number of positive cases, few players developed symptoms. Though news of the first ten German players to test positive prompted speculation that the league would call off the restart, none of those ten displayed symptoms. Shortly before the European women’s Champions League was to resume in mid-August, officials announced five positive tests among players at Spain’s Athletico Madrid, but subsequent reporting showed that all five were asymptomatic. When 16 NBA players tested positive in late June heading to the league’s “bubble” in Orlando, league commissioner Adam Silver noted all were either asymptomatic or displayed mild symptoms.

We have become insanely afraid of a relatively normal respiratory virus, that poses no threat to the general population at all, and requires no extreme measures. If anything, the best thing we could do is go about our lives normally, allowing the virus’s harmless spread through that general population to eventually kill it off.

This common sense approach, which the human race has followed throughout history, is no longer acceptable. Instead, we must do stupid things, such as this: Soccer team loses 37-0 in socially distanced match:

A German football team lost 37-0 to their local rivals after fielding only seven players who socially distanced throughout the match. Ripdorf fielded the minimum number of players on Sunday because their opponents SV Holdenstedt II came into contact in a previous game with someone who tested positive for Covid-19. Their team tested negative but Ripdorf said the conditions were not safe. If Ripdorf had not played, they would have faced a €200 (£182) fine.

During the game Ripdorf players were ordered to never get closer than six feet to anyone. Holdenstedt took full advantage, scoring every time they got the ball. As the Holdenstedt coach said quite logically, “There was no reason not to play this game.”

Logic and ordinary courage however no longer applies in the dark age that has now arrived. Instead, we must fear everything. like stone age savages huddled in their caves at the sound of thunder.

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Modern fascist America: No mask, no healthcare

12:36 pm

Right now my inclination to post or write or do anything is low. In fact, emotionally I am beginning to think there is no point living, as I do not wish to live in a nation as oppressive as America is becoming.

Today I learned unequivocally that in today’s America, you will be denied healthcare if you do not wear a mask, even if you have legitimate medical issues for not doing so. I have both asthma and heart issues, and according to numerous long-standing advisories by both doctors and government health agencies (until May of this year), wearing a mask when you have such conditions is a mistake. To quote just one such advisory from the California Department of Health,:

“Mask use may give the wearer a false sense of security, which might encourage too much physical activity and time spent outdoors. Also, wearing a mask may actually be harmful to some people with heart or lung disease because it can make the lungs work harder to breathe.” [emphasis mine]

Yet now doctors are demanding all patients, no matter their health, wear these feel-good useless muzzles, or they will deny you all treatment.

In late May I simply raised this issue with my long-standing GP, only to receive a letter from him the next day telling me he had cancelled me as a patient. Just raising the issue with him was verboten. Since then I have been trying desperately to find another GP, without success. None will see me without demanding I wear a mask. None will even consider my own health issues in the mix, at all.

Today I arrived at what I thought would be my new GP. I had called his office twice beforehand to explain my health issues and to make sure I would not have an issue when I arrived. All a waste of time. As I was signing in the office manager marched up to demand I put on the mask that she was nonchalantly fingering with her hands. When I pointed out how unsanitary that was, irrelevant of my own issues, she seemed shocked and surprised, as if she had no idea what I was talking about.

Nor was she interested in considering my own situation, or the actual law in Tucson. When I noted that the local ordinances also permit no masks if you can either socially distance (which would be easy to do in her office) or have medical issues, she said that doesn’t matter. Their office requires masks at all times, regardless. Common sense and basic medical science were irrelevant to them.

I was forced to walk out. I presently do not have a doctor to handle my medical issues. Nor do I expect to find one, unless by some miracle there is some local doctor in southern Arizona who understands the absurdity of this mask obsession, reads this post, and offers their help. Personally I have zero expectation of that.

Welcome to the new America. Obey, or you will be denied your most basic human rights of existence.

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Dynetics’ manned lunar lander requires multiple launches and in-space refueling

9:49 am

According to company officials, the manned lunar lander being developed by Dynetics — one of three under NASA contract — will require three quick ULA Vulcan launches and in-space refueling before it will be capable of landing humans on the Moon.

Dynetics’ proposed Human Landing System (HLS) depends upon fuel depots and multiple rocket launches to achieve NASA’s goal of landing two astronauts on the moon in 2024, officials said during a webinar earlier this week. “Our lander is unique in that we need lunar fueling to accomplish our mission. In the next couple years, we will take in-space cryogenic propellant refueling technologies from the lab to [technology readiness level] 10 and operational,” said Kathy Laurini, payloads and commercialization lead for Dynetics’ HLS program.

The lander would launch on one Vulcan rocket, with the next two launches bringing the additional fuel.

More details here.

While it is good that this design does not require the long delayed and likely not-ready SLS rocket, it appears to require in-space capabilities that will not be ready by 2024, the Trump administration’s target date for its manned lunar landing. Instead, this design seems more aimed at subsequent operations in later years.

Since Congress has not yet funded the 2024 mission, though both parties seem interested in later manned lunar operations, this design seems cleverly aimed at that reality, designed to encourage long term government funding.

Regardless, everything hangs on the November elections, and who ends up in charge, both in the White House and in Congress. We presently have really have no way of predicting what will happen, until we know those election results.

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Anti-maskers invade Target, demanding everyone “Take off that mask!”

9:54 pm

We need more of this: Anti-maskers this week marched through a Florida Target shouting “This is the United States of America, take off that mask!”

They didn’t harass anyone, they simply went down the aisles cheerfully calling for people to get rid of the mask. Watch the video below the fold.

The sad part is how few people in the store remove their masks. Many clearly agreed with the protesters, but still kept the mask on.
» Read more

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Nashville authorities cover up proof bars & restaurants do not spread COVID-19

9:44 pm

Local authorities in the mayor’s office and health department in Nashville, rather than release the data and open things up, kept secret evidence that showed there was no reason to close bars or restaurants. [The quote below comes from a local Fox TV news story that has since been taken down.]

Emails between the mayor’s senior advisor and the health department reveal only a partial picture. But what they reveal is disturbing. The discussion involves the low number of coronavirus cases emerging from bars and restaurants and how to handle that and most disturbingly, how to keep it from the public.

On June 30th, contact tracing was giving a small view of coronavirus clusters. Construction and nursing homes causing problems more than a thousand cases traced to each category, but bars and restaurants reported just 22 cases.

Leslie Waller from the health department asks “This isn’t going to be publicly released, right? Just info for Mayor’s Office?”

“Correct, not for public consumption.” Writes senior advisor Benjamin Eagles. [emphasis mine]

In other words, these corrupt officials, who appear quite typical of today’s government rank and file, had found in June that closing bars and restaurants was pointless, that their focus should be nursing homes and construction (though I suspect a deeper dive in the data would discount construction as well). Instead, they kept this data secret so that the lockdown of bars and restaurants could continue, putting thousands out of work.

The fact that they should have been focusing on nursing homes once again confirms the nature of this virus. Like the flu, it attacks the sick elderly, with everyone else barely noticing their symptoms, or if they do, recovering without serious harm.

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ULA reveals Chinese-owned company attempted to steal rocket data

3:42 pm

In an interview yesterday ULA’s CEO Tory Bruno revealed that a Chinese-owned software company tried to infiltrate the supply chain being set up to build their next generation Vulcan rocket.

Bruno said the Chinese-owned vendor identified in ULA’s supply chain was a provider of software for tools used to manufacture the company’s next-generation rocket Vulcan Centaur. Because the issue was detected quickly, no sensitive information was extracted by that supplier, Bruno said.

The company flagged as a risk was a tool supplier working with KUKA Robotics. According to ULA, KUKA had no access to ULA’s intellectual property. “ULA envisions no further future work involving KUKA or KUKA products,” the spokesperson said. “There was no evidence they attempted to obtain data, however, we have an obligation to our customers as well as our company to ensure we have taken all necessary steps to protect our IP as well as information the government has entrusted us with.”

The Pentagon has shown growing concern about Chinese ownership of U.S. suppliers and continues to impose cybersecurity requirements on contractors. “But I have to tell you this is just shocking in terms of the scale and ubiquity of this threat and this effort on the part of China to not only gain access to intellectual property through traditional means — hacking or espionage — but through infiltration of the supply chain,” Bruno said.

The article also notes that while the top tier subcontractors ULA might hire are almost all American owned, foreign companies own 70% of the smaller subvendors, and the number of Chinese-owned subvendors has grown 420% since 2010.

China’s effort to steal American technology has been a serious problem that has been ignored for too long.

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Seven weeks after mask mandate, 40% of Ohio counties show an INCREASE in COVID-19

8:28 am

Seven weeks after the governor of Ohio imposed a mask mandate, it now appears that 40% of the state’s counties show an increase in coronavirus cases.

35 of 88 counties (40 percent) experienced a net increase in cases. … A total of 47 of 88 counties, or 53 percent, saw either a net increase or no more than a 20 percent reduction in cases. Fourteen of 88 counties saw a 50 percent to 70 percent reduction. Only five of 88 counties saw a 70 percent or more reduction.

This data confirms what has been seen in other states as well. Mask mandates have completely failed to stop the spread of COVID-19. While some places saw a reduction in cases, most did not. Worse, the data above as well as elsewhere suggests that the mask mandates might actually be contributing to the disease’s spread, mainly because almost no one in the general public uses them properly. Instead, everyone uses them over and over without washing, while touching them with unwashed hands continually. They thus act to collect pathogens, at exactly the place you breathe.

Masks are useless. They don’t do what too many foolish and ignorant politicians claim. Take them off. Throw them out. Claim you have legitimate medical reasons for not wearing them and stand firm. You will find that almost everyone will agree, and let you be. And the few control freaks that try to harass you can and should be ignored.

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Trump: He kept his promises

10:09 am

Trump at a recent rally
He does what he says.

In my long life, I have seen many politicians come and go. The one abiding constant for them all was that you could expect them to break their promises once elected.

Until 2000 Democrats routinely spouted moderate and even conservative ideas during campaigns, only to quickly move left once elected. Some, like Bill Clinton, lied routinely on all matters, simply to please whoever he was talking to. After he left office Democrats have since been more public about their socialist and even communist ideologies, but still they have often lied whenever they found it convenient, such as Barack Obama’s support for normal marriage, until he found he could support perversion and get away with it.

Republicans have been even more dishonest. For decades they would paint themselves as the defenders of small and limited government, of freedom, of balanced budgets, only to throw all those ideas out the window once they gained control. Until 1994 they could make these claims without fear of revealing their untruthfulness, since they had not run both houses of Congress since just after World War II. They were the loyal opposition, whining from the sidelines about Democratic overreach.

After 1994 that excuse disappeared, and the result was blatant lying. Even though the Republican Congress during the latter half of Bill Clinton’s administration managed to balance the federal budget for several years, they did not do this by reducing government. No, all they did was allow inflation to catch up so that a thriving economy would cover their big budgets. No agency got trimmed. No agency got eliminated. Power and money continued to flow into Washington and into the pockets of politicians of both parties.

Under George Bush Jr. this dishonesty became even more obvious. » Read more

27 comments

Japan chooses Hayabusa-2’s next asteroid target

8:47 am

The new colonial movement: It appears that Japan has chosen the next asteroid that its probe Hayabusa-2 will visit in 2031, after it releases its samples to Earth in December from Ryugu.

Japan’s Hayabusa2 space explorer will aim to probe the asteroid “1998KY26” located between the orbits of Earth and Mars in 2031 after completing its current mission of collecting samples from another asteroid, the country’s science minister said Tuesday.

It is hoped Hayabusa2 will approach the ball-shaped asteroid, which has a diameter of around 30 meters and rotates about every 10 minutes, in July 2031, Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Minister Koichi Hagiuda said.

It will not obtain samples from this second asteroid, only observe it close up by camera.

One comment

China launches rocket from ocean launch platform

8:41 am

The new colonial movement: China today successfully put nine Earth observation smallsats into orbit using its Long March 11 rocket, and it did it by launching from a floating launch platform.

I have embedded video of the launch below the fold. Notice that the rocket appears to ignite its first stage engines after it is flung upward from the platform, similar to the launch of an ICBM from a submarine. This is not surprising, as the Long March 11 solid fueled rocket is based on ICBM technology.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

23 China
15 SpaceX
9 Russia
4 ULA
4 Europe (Arianespace)

The U.S. still leads China 24 to 23 in the national rankings.

» Read more

One comment

China’s Kuaizhou-1A rocket fails at launch

9:25 am

China’s Kuaizhou-1A rocket yesterday failed during launch, though no details have been released.

Kuaizhou 1A and Kuauzhou 11 are rapid response rockets derived from intercontinental ballistic missiles that are capable of placing satellites into orbit on short notice. Launches are managed by ExPace, a commercial subsidiary of the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation.

The Kuaizhou-1A is the smaller of the two rockets. This was its first failure after ten successful launches.

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