Tag: policy

Japan delays launch of new rocket one year

8:58 am

Capitalism in space: Because of a problem discovered in the development of its new first stage engine, Japan has now delayed the first launch of its new H3 rocket one year, to ’21.

Mitsubishi is building the rocket for Japan’s space agency JAXA, Since you design and build your rocket around your rocket engines, having a problem with that rocket engine puts a serious crimp on construction. Thus, identifying and dealing with such engine issues early in development is wise.

Still, Japan continues to lag behind the other space-faring nations in the development of its space industry.

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NASA to buy lunar mined material from private companies

8:43 am

Capitalism in space: NASA yesterday announced that, rather than develop its own lunar sample missions, it wants to buy such lunar mined material obtained from private companies.

NASA on Thursday launched an effort to pay companies to mine resources on the moon, announcing it would buy from them rocks, dirt and other lunar materials as the U.S. space agency seeks to spur private extraction of coveted off-world resources for its use.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine wrote in a blog post accompanying the announcement that the plans would not violate a 1967 treaty that holds that celestial bodies and space are exempt from national claims of ownership.

The initiative, targeting companies that plan to send robots to mine lunar resources, is part of NASA’s goal of setting what Bridenstine called “norms of behavior” in space and allowing private mining on the moon in ways that could help sustain future astronaut missions. NASA said it views the mined resources as the property of the company, and the materials would become “the sole property of NASA” after purchase.

This announcement continues NASA’s transition under the Trump administration from trying to run everything to simply being a customer buying what it needs and wants from the private sector. The idea is smart, as it will guarantee that these samples will be obtained in the cheapest and fastest way possible, while simultaneously sparking the development of a competitive and thriving private industry capable of flying all kinds of planetary missions. The lower costs of these private planetary probes will in turn will spark the creation of a new private sector of customers buying those probes for their own profit-centered needs.

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Boeing strikes deal to avoid harsher ethics probe in NASA’s lunar lander scandal

3:07 pm

Boeing has struck a deal with both NASA and the Air Force in order to avoid a harsher and more extensive ethics probe into its part in the NASA lunar lander contract bidding scandal.

The agreement, signed in August, comes as federal prosecutors continue a criminal investigation into whether NASA’s former human exploration chief, Doug Loverro, improperly guided Boeing space executive Jim Chilton during the contract bidding process.

By agreeing to the “Compliance Program Enhancements”, the aerospace heavyweight staves off harsher consequences from NASA and the Air Force – its space division’s top customers – such as being suspended or debarred from bidding on future space contracts. The agreement calls for Boeing to pay a “third party expert” to assess its ethics and compliance programs and review training procedures for executives who liaise with government officials, citing “concerns related to procurement integrity” during NASA’s Human Landing System competition.

Since Loverro resigned in May, Boeing has fired one company attorney and a group of mid-level employees, three people familiar with the actions told Reuters.

The deal seems like a bureaucratic whitewash, designed to take the heat off the company. And since Boeing as a company has many problems, I remain skeptical that any of this will make a difference in getting things fixed.

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Northrop Grumman shuts down Omega rocket program

2:49 pm

Having lost any chance of getting launch contracts or development money from the military for the next five-plus years, Northrop Grumman has chosen to shut down its Omega rocket program.

“We have chosen not to continue development of the OmegA launch system at this time,” Northrop Grumman spokeswoman Jennifer Bowman said in a statement. “We look forward to continuing to play a key role in National Security Space Launch missions and leveraging our OmegA investments in other activities across our business.”

Bowman said the company will not be protesting the U.S. Space Force’s decision to select United Launch Alliance and SpaceX for the NSSL contracts.

This was a typical big space Washington project, aimed solely at getting government contracts, as well as government cash to develop it. The company had no interest in trying to develop it with its own R&D funds in order to garner market share in the general launch market, or even to make it cheaper and more useful to the military than SpaceX’s rocket.

In this sense this is no great loss. What we need is real competition, aimed at coming up with better ideas that will lower cost and increase capabilities. What Northrop Grumman was offering was none of those things. It was fake competition, and of no real value.

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Texas sees 400% increase in homeschooling

11:42 am

The silver lining? Faced with odious rules and remote zoom classes in the public education system due to fear and terror over the corona virus, Texas parents are choosing to homeschool their children this year, with the numbers rising by 400%.

The spike, the group reported, stems directly from the Texas Education Agency’s (TEA) pandemic schooling guidelines sparking a mass exodus from the public school system as parents opt to teach their children at home over enrolling them in a digitized, remote state-run classroom.

Our government public schools have been corrupted by leftist indoctrination for years, while they have steadily done a worsening job at educating children in the basics. (Witness for example the ignorance exhibited by the Antifa protesters about American history.) Maybe this disaster created by the Wuhan flu panic might have some benefits, such as getting parents more involved once again in their kid’s education, and thus improve it.

Because, based on everything I’ve seen and read about modern public school education and culture, parents really can’t do worse.

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No coronavirus illnesses after 1,000 HS football games

6:49 pm

Why am I not surprised? Despite more than a thousand high school football games across several states in the past month, there have been no COVID-19 outbreaks related to those games, with cases continuing to drop in each state.

Utah, for example, launched youth sports more than five weeks ago. Alabama, Indiana and Tennessee commenced with high school football roughly four weeks ago. Alaska has been allowing games for more than two weeks.

Many have been wondering whether these events would ultimately lead to an increase in COVID-19 cases being spread within communities.

Despite more than a thousand individual games having taken place, no significant recorded outbreaks of COVID-19 have occurred as a result.

Since the very start of the epidemic the evidence strongly told us that young people did not get sick from this virus. Nothing, absolutely nothing, as occurred since to change that initial assessment.

And yet American politicians tremble in terror at the idea of having children return to classrooms, and mandate that little kids wear masks. It is beyond stupid.

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The lockdowns were a bad idea and did not work

9:44 am

Link here. The key quote compares this epidemic with the last two large similar epidemics, and finds this one hardly an issue:

As novelist Lionel Shriver writes, “We’ve never before responded to a contagion by closing down whole countries.” As I’ve noted, the 1957-58 Asian flu killed between 70,000 and 116,000 Americans, between 0.04 percent and 0.07 percent of the nation’s population. The 1968-70 Hong Kong flu killed about 100,000, 0.05 percent of the population.

The US coronavirus death toll of 186,000 is 0.055 percent of the current population. It will go higher, but it’s about the same magnitude as those two flus, and it has been less deadly to those under 65 than the flus were. Yet there were no statewide lockdowns; no massive school closings; no closings of office buildings and factories, restaurants and museums. No one considered shutting down Woodstock.

He then notes the failures of the lockdowns this time, and its apparently inability to really make much difference in the path of the epidemic, while causing enormous harm to the economy, to the lives of millions, and to many who were denied healthcare for other reasons due to the panic and shut downs.

If only someone had pointed this out back in March.

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NASA solicits lunar landers to bid on bringing science instruments to Moon

8:56 am

UPDATE: It appears I misunderstood the nature of this NASA solicitation in my initial post. I have rewritten it to correct it. Hat tip reader Rex Ridenoure.

Capitalism in space: NASA has issued a request from the private companies building unmanned lunar landers to bid on carrying a variety of science instruments to the Moon by ’23.

Initially NASA had indicated it was farming out the design and construction of the lunar landers to private companies, but would have the science instruments designed and built in-house. Since ’19 however NASA has had private companies designing and building these fourteen small science payloads, and is now in the process of determining which private landers will bring them to the Moon.

Though this approach is not very different than past NASA arrangements, what is different is NASA’s public approach. Instead of touting NASA’s part in this work, the agency is touting the work of the private companies.

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The Democratic Party: The party of riots, looting, and stolen elections

1:26 pm

Last week CNN anchor Don Lemon, who like everyone else at CNN for years has repeatedly signaled his blind partisan support for the Democratic Party, revealed something even more fundamental about Democrats and their supporters in the political world. The clip below shows Lemon discussing the rioting going on in cities across the U.S., and what Joe Biden should do to address this violence. Lemon is clearly acting as a Democratic Party front man, not a news reporter, as he thinks of ways to help that party win elections.

After proposing Biden give a speech on the subject, Lemon says this, “The rioting has got to stop. … It’s showing up in the polls. It’s showing up in the focus groups. It is the only thing right now that is sticking.”

In other words, the riots and looting were great, as long as they helped the Democrats in the polls. According to Lemon, who is a very typical Democratic apparatchik, only if rioting should hurt Democrats in the polls should Democrats oppose them.

This fact is far more important than Lemon’s obvious partisan bias. In this one clip he demonstrates, with the nodding approval of his fellow CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, that the political leadership of the Democratic Party and their lapdogs in the press care only about polls and winning, and will tolerate anything — riots, lynchings, looting, murder, oppression — if it will get them re-elected and in power.
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State Dept employee destroyed evidence in Russian collusion hoax

10:52 am

Not only does it appear that almost all the sources for the Steele dossier — used by the Obama FBI and Justice Department to instigate spying operations on the Trump administration — were Russian, it now appears that, at the request of the dossier’s author a former State Department employee destroyed State Dept evidence relating to that dossier.

Earlier this year, the infamous dossier author Christopher Steele revealed he had destroyed nearly all the records detailing his dirt-digging on Donald Trump and Russia. “They no longer exist,” Steele told a British court.

Now comes word that Steele’s primary and longtime contact inside the Obama State Department, Jonathan Winer, also destroyed records of the former British MI6 agent’s contacts inside that federal agency, including many of the 100-plus unsolicited intelligence reports Steele provided the Obama administration. “I destroyed them, and I basically destroyed all the correspondence I had with him,” Winer is quoted as saying in a little noticed passage of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s final report on the Russia collusion scandal.

Winer apparently destroyed the records at Steele’s request, the report said. “After Steele’s memos were published in the press in January 2017, Steele asked Winer to make note of having them, then either destroy all the earlier reports Steele had sent the Department of State or return them to Steele, out of concern that someone would be able to reconstruct his source network,” the committee’s report released last month stated. [emphasis mine]

And why was Steele worried that his sources might be uncovered? Apparently they were all foreign, Russian or Ukrainian in nature, meaning that his dossier was actually an operation of enemies to the United States, which was then used by the Obama administration to foist the hoax that Trump was in collusion with Russia. Thus, it was Obama and his administration who were colluding with foreign powers, for their own political gain, not Trump. That collusion by Obama and his cronies even went so far as to destroy evidence.

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Sweden declares victory over COVID-19

9:45 am

Sweden appears to have successfully weathered the Wuhan virus epidemic, with a current infection rate one of the lowest in the world, and that country did so with no lockdown, no mask mandates, and few restrictions on the lives of its citizens.

The country now has one of the lowest infection rates on the planet, and it’s difficult not to admire how it has handled the past year, with no strict lockdown or compulsory face mask rules. All businesses, schools and public places remained open in Sweden for the duration.

“Sweden has gone from being the country with the most infections in Europe to the safest one,” Sweden’s senior epidemiologist Dr. Anders Tegnell commented to Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera. “What we see now is that the sustainable policy might be slower in getting results, but it will get results eventually,” Tegnell clarified.

“And then we also hope that the result will be more stable,” he added.

Tegnell previously warned that encouraging people to wear face masks is “very dangerous” because it gives a false sense of security but does not effectively stem the spread of the virus.

To put it more bluntly, Sweden did not panic, looked at the early data, not the junk models, and correctly decided to treat COVID-19 as a variation of the flu. As a result the country’s population has now mostly acquired immunity, killing the epidemic, even as its economy avoided an unnecessary crash and an absurd loss of freedom for its citizens.

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Russia wins spacesuit contract for India’s Gaganyaan manned mission

9:29 am

The new colonial movement: The Russian Zvezda design center in Roscosmos has won the spacesuit contract to build the spacesuits and capsule seats for India’s Gaganyaan manned mission, targeted for a ’22 launch.

It is not surprising that the Russians won this contract. India does not have a lot of time to get the mission off the ground, and needs help. The Russian spacesuits are practical and proven, and are far superior to anything available from NASA. The only other option available at this moment would be the flight suits SpaceX designed for its Dragon missions and flown once. I suspect the Indians want something that has been used and tested more.

Moreover, their astronauts are being trained by the Russians. Better and simpler to have them use the suits the Russians use.

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India sets early 2021 for launch of lunar lander/rover

9:14 am

The new colonial movement: Chandrayaan-3, India’s second attempt to put a lander/rover near the south pole of the Moon, has been rescheduled for launch in early 2021, delayed approximately six months due to the Wuhan flu panic.

The mission has been delayed by the coronavirus pandemic and the follow-up lockdowns. The launch which was planned for 2020 will now take off for the Lunar surface sometime in early 2021.

Chandrayaan-3 will be a mission repeat of Chandrayaan-2 and will include a Lander and Rover similar to that of Chandrayaan-2, but will not have an orbiter, a statement quoting Singh said. Planned to land on the South Pole of the Moon, Chandrayaan-2 was launched on July 22 last year. However, the lander Vikram hard-landed on September 7, crashing India’s dream to become the first nation to successfully touch down on the lunar surface in its maiden attempt.

The orbiter of the mission is working fine and has been sending data, ISRO had indicated that the third moon mission will utilise the orbiter already in the lunar orbit.

India has literally ceased all launches in 2020, since the arrival of the coronavirus. Moreover, though four launches are listed as targeting September launches, none yet have launch dates. It seems that the fear and terror of COVID-19 has caused India’s large space bureaucracy to shut down, even as I am sure they continue to receive their paychecks.

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China launches another remote sensing satellite; crashes 1st stage near homes

8:54 am

The new colonial movement: China today used its Long March 4D rocket to launch another remote sensing satellite.

UPDATE: It appears the first stage booster crashed near a populated area. Footage of the crash can be seen here. Note that the red smoke indicates very toxic materials. Anyone who goes close risks serious health problems.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

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

In the national rankings the U.S. still leads China 24 to 22.

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China successfully lands its reusable version of the X-37B

10:33 am

The new colonial movement: After only two days in space, China today successfully landed what appears to be its reusable version of the X-37B.

No photos of this spacecraft have been released, nor has China provided any specific information about its shape or design. What we know however suggests it is similar in concept to the unmanned, pick-up-truck-sized X-37B.

Apparently this short flight was to test its ability to reach orbit and then return autonomously. According to the state-controlled Chinese press, it did so.

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China launches its version of X-37B

9:05 am

The new colonial movement: It appears that China has launched its version of a reusable X-37B mini-shuttle, or at least, that is most likely first guess, based on the meager data available.

China launched a new experimental reusable space vehicle on Thursday from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center using a Long March-2F/T – Chang Zheng-2F/T – launch vehicle. Launch from the LC43/91 launch complex, under a veil of secrecy with no official launch photos or even a launch time disclosed.

Chinese media emitted a laconic report referring, that “the test spacecraft will be in orbit for a period of time before returning to the domestic scheduled landing site. During this period, it will carry out reusable technology verification as planned to provide technical support for the peaceful use of space.”

More at the link, though the lack of information, especially the refusal to even give a launch time, strongly indicates China wants to limit knowledge of this spacecraft’s position in space, thus limiting the ability of others to photograph it. What is known however does point to this being a variation of a small reusable unmanned shuttle, like the X-37B.

While once again China has not come up with something new, copying (or stealing) the idea from someone else, having such a vehicle gives them a significant capability. They can now test many different technologies in orbit for long periods, and get them back to Earth for study afterward.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

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

The U.S. continues to lead China 24 to 21 in the national rankings.

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FAA issues Wallops Island launch license to Rocket Lab

9:21 am

Capitalism in space: The FAA has now issued a five year launch license to the smallsat rocket company Rocket Lab, allowing them to launch their Electron rocket from the company’s launch site on Wallops Island, Virginia.

The Launch Operator License allows for multiple launches of the Electron launch vehicle from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 2, eliminating the need to obtain individual, launch-specific licenses for every mission and helping to streamline the path to orbit and enable responsive space access from U.S. soil.

The company hopes to do its first launch from the U.S. before the year is out. It will then have two spaceports, allowing it to double its launch rate.

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Northrop Grumman successfully tests SLS solid rocket booster

9:03 am

Northrop Grumman yesterday successfully test fired a solid rocket booster to confirm its design for use on NASA’s long-delayed and overbudget SLS rocket.

The test, completed at the T97 test area at Northrop Grumman‘s facility in Promontory, Utah, took place on Wednesday, September 2, 2020, at 1:05 PM Mountain Daylight Time (19:05 UTC). A single five-segment SLS solid rocket motor with a thrust of up to 3.6 million pounds was ignited, and burned for approximately two minutes.

The booster is an expanded version of the solid rocket boosters used on the space shuttle, with five segments instead of four, and in fact will use previously flown segments from past shuttle launches. Since this booster will not be recovered, these launches will be the last time those segments fly.

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Arianespace’s Vega rocket successfully launches 53 satellites

9:02 pm

Capitalism in space: Arianespace’s Vega rocket tonight finally resumed commercial operations more than a year after a July 2019 launch failure, successfully placing 53 small commercial satellites into orbit.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

20 China
14 SpaceX
9 Russia
4 ULA
4 Europe (Arianespace)

The U.S.’s lead over China in the national rankings remains at 23 to 20.

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COVID-19 numbers surge after mask mandate in Hawaii

5:45 pm

More evidence masks are a very bad idea: Soon after Hawaii imposed new rules requiring masks both indoor and outdoor, the number of Wuhan virus cases and hospitalizations zoomed upwards.

Just like in the Philippines and Peru, Hawaii’s government has imposed a long, strict lockdown and has never emerged from it beyond a modified phase one reopening. Additionally, the state has had an indoor mask mandate in place since April 20 and an outdoor mandate (even while jogging!) since July 7. It is the model for what the political elites believe to be the key to stopping the spread. Yet the results are the same as they have been in every place that tried to put up a cloth in front of the inexorable spread of viral particles that can only be seen with an electron microscope.

As [indicated by the graph], Hawaii’s daily case count grew more than tenfold in July and August. All along, state officials thought they were steering this ship cleanly throughout the spring and that their draconian efforts avoided the spread of the virus. Instead, it has become clear that the virus simply arrives at southern latitudes several months later and spreads for six to eight weeks, as it does everywhere else. [emphasis mine]

I must emphasize what the author notes, that Hawaii is the most isolated U.S. state with one of the most stringent lock down and quarantine rules for visitors. Basically entering Hawaii has become difficult if not impossible, and if you do go you are required to quarantine for weeks.

Yet, as soon as they required masks, the disease’s spread accelerated.

Masks are fake science. Not only is there no solid science proving they are a benefit, the data clearly shows that if used improperly (which the general public is doing routinely) they are unsanitary and will easily promote infection and the spread of pathogens.

This data from Hawaii also proves the utter pointlessness of the lock downs. Even on this remote island the disease has arrived, and is spreading. This is what these respiratory viruses do. The best way to fight them is let them spread as fast as possible among the young and healthy population, which will easily fight them off and become immune and thus act to choke off any further spread to more vulnerable populations.

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