Tag: policy

Pushback: Blacklisting Virginia Tech soccer coach loses effort to get lawsuit dismissed

2:10 pm

Kiersten Hening, blacklisted by Virginia Tech
Kiersten Hening

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Charles Adair, the soccer coach for the woman’s team at Virginia Tech, has lost in his effort to dismiss a lawsuit against him by former player, Kiersten Hening, who he blacklisted from playing because she refused to kneel in support of Black Lives Matter during the National Anthem before a game.

Hening filed a lawsuit against Virginia Tech and Coach Adair in 2021 but Virginia Tech immediately attempted to file a motion to have the suit tossed. The athlete stated that when she refused to take part in the kneeling, which at the time was a virtue signal statement indicating public support for the Black Lives Matter movement, Adair began to insult and demean her as well as limiting her time to play during matches.

According to [U.S. District Judge Thomas T. Cullen], “Hening, who had been a major on-field contributor for two years prior to the 2020 season, also asserts that Adair removed her from the starting lineup or the next two games and drastically reduced her playing time in those games because she had engaged in this protected First Amendment activity. As a result, Hening resigned from the team after the third game of the season.” [emphasis mine]

You can read Cullen’s full decision here [pdf].

Cullen’s decision is intriguing not only because he not only threw out Adair’s effort to get the lawsuit dismissed, he also threw out Adair’s claim that he deserves “qualified immunity” as a public official. » Read more

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Rocket Lab reschedules first Wallops launch to January

9:28 am

Having had to scrub the launch on December 18th and December 19th due of weather, Rocket Lab has now officially rescheduled its first Wallops launch to January.

The move of the planned launch window from December 2022 to early 2023 was driven by weather and the additional time that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) at Wallops and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) required to complete essential regulatory documentation for launch. The delay in documentation left only two days in the originally scheduled 14-day launch window and both of those final remaining days were unsuitable for launch due to bad weather. The Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport within NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility is now closed for launch activity for the remainder of the December due to holiday airspace restrictions, preventing further launch attempts in 2022.

Rocket Lab originally wanted to launch from Wallops two years ago, but has been repeatedly stymied by government red tape. At that time the company wanted to use the software of its own flight termination system, a system that it has successfully used in New Zealand more than two dozen times, including several times where launch failures actually required the system to destroy the rocket. NASA said no, and instead insisted on spending two years apparently creating its own software which also requires the added presence of NASA officials during launch.

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Russians preparing replacement Soyuz for launch to ISS

8:57 am

ISS as of November 28, 2022
ISS after November 28, 2022 docking of unmanned Dragon freighter.
MS-22 is the Soyuz capsule that is leaking.

Though a final decision will not be made until the completion on December 27, 2022 of their investigation into the leak in the coolant system of the Soyuz capsule docked to ISS, the Russians have begun preparing a replacement Soyuz for launch.

A backup spacecraft to bring cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) back to Earth will be prepared by February 19 and the spaceship is currently undergoing tests at the Baikonur spaceport, Roscosmos Chief Yury Borisov said on Monday.

That replacement Soyuz was supposed to launch in March, which means they can only accelerate its preparation by about a month. Assuming it is determined that the leaking capsule cannot be used safely as a lifeboat, this means that until February the station does not have its standard complement of lifeboats.

Should something happen that requires an immediate evacuation before February, it might be possible to get an extra three people into the two Dragon capsules presently docked to ISS, since each was designed to carry a maximum of six passengers, though generally four is considered their maximum capacity.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Law firm fires lawyer of 44 years for expressing the wrong opinion

1:23 pm

Hogan Lovells: blacklister

They’re coming for you next: The law firm Hogan Lovells recently fired a partner lawyer with 44 years of experience, Robin Keller, simply because she dared at a company meeting to express some rational reasons why Roe v Wade should have been overturned.

As Keller wrote, “I was invited to participate in what was billed as a ‘safe space’ for women at the firm to discuss the decision. It might have been a safe space for some, but it wasn’t safe for me.”

She recounts how “Three weeks later I received a letter stating that the firm had concluded that my reference to comments labeling black abortion rates genocide was a violation of the antiharassment policy.”

Apparently, “a participant complained that she could not breathe and others called her a racist.” These crybabies then demanded she be fired, and the company quickly acquiesced.

The company’s blackballing of Keller should surprise no one. A quick review of Hogan Lovells’ website shows us that this is a very politically correct leftist law firm. On its Diversity, Equity & Inclusion website, the company proudly tells us that:
» Read more

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Weather forces Rocket Lab to scrub first launch from Wallops

10:14 am

High altitude winds yesterday forced Rocket Lab to scrub its first Electron launch attempt from Wallops Island in Virginia yesterday.

The weather also forced the company to cancel a launch attempt today.

Teams are now evaluating the next possible launch window while coordinating with holiday travel airspace restrictions. The flight will lift off from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex-2 (LC-2) at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

This could mean that Rocket Lab will not be able to launch before the end of the year. The company very much wishes to do this, however, as it would give it ten launches in 2022, as well as a launch pace of one per month for most of the year.

This first launch from Wallops is also important, as it would give Rocket Lab three launchpads, including one in the U.S. for launching classified military payloads. It had hoped to launch from Wallops two years ago, but red tape at NASA delayed the launch.

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L3Harris to buy Aerojet Rocketdyne for $4.7 billion.

10:02 am

The space and defense contractor L3Harris Technologies has announced a deal to buy Aerojet Rocketdyne for $4.7 billion.

L3Harris is buying Aerojet at $58 per share in an all-cash transaction. Aerojet shares traded at $54.89 on Dec. 16. The deal is expected to close in 2023, pending regulatory approvals.

Aerojet Rocketdyne, based in Sacramento, California, manufactures rocket engines and propulsion systems for space vehicles, ballistic missiles and military tactical weapons. The company generates approximately $2.3 billion in annual revenue. L3Harris, headquartered in Melbourne, Florida, is a global defense and aerospace firm with $17 billion in annual revenue.

This deal could in the end save Aerojet, which in recent years has had problems both making and selling its rocket engines, while facing increasing competition from many new rocket engine startups. As an old space company, its engines have tended to be too expensive, and often produced behind schedule. L3Harris now has the opportunity to clean house and streamline operations there, thus making the engines it produces more competitive in the emerging new space market.

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Temperature in leaking Soyuz capsule drops

9:45 am

According to Russia’s state-run press TASS, the temperature in its leaking Soyuz capsule on ISS has now dropped to between 50 to 54 degrees Fahrenheit.

The language of the report suggests this temperature drop was the result of actions by Russia’s mission control, but that is decidedly unclear. With the thermal control system now depressurized, the capsule’s temperature could fluctuate a lot, depending on whether it is in shadow or sunlight, a condition dependent on the overall orientation of ISS itself.

A second TASS report today said that two Russian working groups are reviewing the data, and will decide around December 27th what the next step will be, including the possibility of launching a Soyuz capsule unmanned to replace this capsule.

“I believe that at the end of December, somewhere on the 27th [of December], specialists – and now two working groups have been set up – will decide on how we will resolve this situation,” [Yuri Borisov] the Roscosmos head, said in an interview with the daily Izvestia.

There is plenty of time for making decisions and “there is no hurry,” Borisov stressed.

What Borisov was really saying is that there is no reason to panic, but action must be taken without unnecessary delay.

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North Korea releases two images taken during suborbital missile test

9:36 am

North Korea images of South Korea

North Korea today released two images of two South Korean cities that it claims were taken from space during a suborbital satellite test flight this past weekend.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency also released low-resolution, black-and-white photos showing a space view of the South Korean capital [Seoul] and Incheon, a city just west of Seoul, in an apparent attempt to show the North is pushing to acquire a surveillance tool to monitor its rival.

The rocket carrying the test satellite was launched Sunday to assess the satellite’s photography and data transmission systems, KCNA said.

Those pictures are at the right, at the resolution released. Though poor compared to most satellite reconnaissance, the photos suggest that the control systems of the rocket and camera worked, pointing it properly.

North Korea continues to push its missile and rocket program hard, this year launching a record number of missiles. According to the article, analysis of the image showing the launch suggests yesterday’s test was a liquid-fueled rocket, meaning North Korea is truly working towards an orbital rocket.

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South Korea’s Danuri orbiter enters lunar orbit

2:35 pm

South Korea’s first lunar orbiter, dubbed Danuri, has successfully entered lunar orbit after a four-month journey designed to save fuel and weight.

The Danuri spacecraft was expected to begin entering lunar orbit at on Friday (Dec. 17) at 2:45 p.m. EST (1945 GMT, 2:45 a.m. Dec. 17 in South Korea), according to a statement (opens in new tab) from the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI). The maneuver, the first of five planned engine burns through Dec. 28 to refine Danuri’s orbit around the moon, will clear the way for the probe to get started on its lunar science objectives.

Danuri, also known as the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO), began its long and circuitous journey to the moon on Aug. 4, launching on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The moon probe has traveled over 3.3 million miles (5.4 million kilometers) on its journey so far, KARI officials have said.

Its six instruments, including one American camera designed to look into the permanently shadowed craters on the Moon, will study the Moon from a polar orbit.

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More results from DART impact of Dimorphos

9:44 am

Didymos and Dimorphos as seen from Earth
Click for movie.

At a science conference this week scientists provided an update on the changes that occurred to the asteroid Dimorphos after it was impacted by the DART spacecraft in September, shortening its orbit around the larger asteroid Didymos by 33 minutes.

The image to the right is a screen capture from a short movie made from 30 images taken by the Magdalena Ridge Observatory in New Mexico, and part of a new image release of the asteroid pair.

It shows the motion of the Didymos system across the sky over the course of roughly 80 minutes, and features a long, linear tail stretching to the right from the asteroid system to the edge of the frame. The animation is roughly 32,000 kilometers across the field of view at the distance of Didymos.

According to the scientists, the impact displaced more than two million pounds of material from Dimorphos.

Observations before and after impact, reveal that Dimorphos and its larger parent asteroid, Didymos, have similar makeup and are composed of the same material – material that has been linked to ordinary chondrites, similar to the most common type of meteorite to impact the Earth. These measurements also took advantage of the ejecta from Dimorphos, which dominated the reflected light from the system in the days after impact. Even now, telescope images of the Didymos system show how solar radiation pressure has stretched the ejecta stream into a comet-like tail tens of thousands of miles in length.

Putting those pieces together, and assuming that Didymos and Dimorphos have the same densities, the team calculates that the momentum transferred when DART hit Dimorphos was roughly 3.6 times greater than if the asteroid had simply absorbed the spacecraft and produced no ejecta at all – indicating the ejecta contributed to moving the asteroid more than the spacecraft did.

This information is teaching us a great deal about these two particular asteroids, which could be used if for some reason their totally safe orbit got changed and they were going to impact Earth. However, NASA’s repeated effort to make believe this info would be useful for deflecting other asteroids is somewhat absurd. It is helpful, but each asteroid is unique. The data from DART is mostly helping astronomers get a better understanding of the geology of these specific asteroids, which will widen their understanding of asteroids in general. Planetary defense is really a very minor aspect of this work.

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Russian official: Soyuz leak possibly caused by micrometeorite hit

9:17 am

According to Sergei Krikalev, who heads Roscosmos’ manned program, the leak of coolant from the Soyuz capsule docked at ISS could have been caused by a micrometeorite hit.

Sergei Krikalev, a veteran cosmonaut who serves as the director of crewed space flight programs at Roscosmos, said a meteorite striking one of external radiators of the Soyuz MS-22 capsule could have caused the coolant to escape.

The malfunction could affect the performance of the capsule’s coolant system and the temperature in the equipment section of the capsule but doesn’t endanger the crew, Krikalev said in a statement.

Krikalev said Russian flight controllers were assessing the situation and following temperature indicators on the Soyuz. “There have been no other changes in parameters on the Soyuz spacecraft and the station, so there is no threat for the crew,” he said.

The “equipment section of the capsule” is its service module, not its habitable orbital module or descent module.

Krikalev, the first Russian to fly on the space shuttle and occupy ISS, is a generally very reliable source. He is speculating, but not wildly but based on what is so far known. The upcoming inspection of the Soyuz using an ISS robot arm will soon tell us whether he is right or not. Krikalev also said that the inspection will tell them whether this capsule can be used to return its astronauts to Earth.

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SpaceX launches oceanography satellite

8:57 am

SpaceX early this morning used its Falcon 9 rocket to successfully launch an oceanography satellite, dubbed SWOT, for both NASA and France’s space agency CNES.

The satellite it designed to measure the height of water on 90% of the Earth’s surface.

The first stage was making its sixth flight, and successfully returned to Earth, touching down on its landing pad at Vandenberg Space Force Base.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

59 China
57 SpaceX
21 Russia
9 Rocket Lab
8 ULA

The U.S. now leads China 81 to 59 in the national rankings, but trails the entire world combined 91 to 81.

These numbers however should change again later today, as SpaceX has another launch scheduled.

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