China today used its Long March 4C rocket to launch a new Earth observation satellite into orbit.
No word on whether the first stage had parachutes or grid fins to control is crash landing in the Chinese interior.
The 2022 launch race:
3 SpaceX
2 China
1 Virgin Orbit
1 ULA
A group of eminent and active planetary scientists have just published a new peer-reviewed paper documenting how moons and asteroids were routinely referred to as planets from Galileo until 2006 when a very small number of scientists at an International Astronomical Union (IAU) meeting decided arbitrarily that the definition must be changed.
That IAU definition, which required an object to have a solar orbit and the vague ability of the object to clear that orbit, somehow made Pluto a non-planet. It has also never been accepted by planetary scientists, who consider it inconsistent, vague, and useless in their research as well as in teaching students about planetary science. I know this attitude is real because of what planetary scientists have told me consistently in many interviews since 2006.
The new paper appears to be part of a new aggressive campaign by planetary scientists to get that IAU definition dumped, and replace it with the definition planetary scientists have been using forever, which is that if the object is large enough for gravity to shape it into a spherical shape, it is a planet. This is still the definition they routinely use when discussing large moons like the Moon or the large Galilean moons of Jupiter or the larger moons of Saturn or Pluto itself.
It also appears, based on information at the link, that this campaign is beginning to make headway. To that I say, Hallelajuh!
An evening pause: A nice sequence from the British series that brutally but with great humor described the reality of what goes on in high political circles. This clip comes from the follow-up to the original series, Yes, Minister.
Hat tip Phill Oltmann.
Sorry for the late arrival of this evening’s pause. It didn’t post when it should, and I only just realized it.
New York voids the Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Democratic Party: “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!”
William Jacobson, the founder of the website Legal Insurrection, has filed a class action lawsuit against New York State’s policy of providing COVID medical treatment not based on health factors but on race.
The suit is specifically against Mary T. Bassett, the Acting Commissioner of the New York Department of Health.
Essentially, Bassett and New York have established the same bigoted policies that have been instituted in states like Texas and Vermont that favor blacks and minorities over whites in determining who should get certain COVID treatments first. Based on the state’s racial criteria, a completely healthy 25-year-old black man would be favored over a 45-year-old white man, even though the latter is at much greater risk of death from COVID.
As stated in the complaint [pdf]:
» Read more
Capitalism in space: Ukrainian startup rocket company Promin Aerospace has signed an agreement with the Atlantic Spaceport Consortium (ASC), a Portugal organization that is aimed at building launch facilities on Portuguese-controlled islands in the Atlantic.
Promin has raised $500K for what it claims will be “the smallest solid rocket capable of launching a payload into orbit.” ASC meanwhile is presently building a suborbital launch site in the Azores.
How much of this is real is entirely unknown. The reality of both appear to me to be somewhat nebulous. Nonetheless, if successful the partnership will put another new cheap orbital rocket as well as another spaceport on the map.
Capitalism in space: Axiom has awarded its first construction contract for building its space station factory at a Houston industrial park dubbed Spaceport Houston.
Phase I of the Houston Spaceport architecture and engineering design contract was awarded to Jacobs by Axiom Space. This 100,000 sq ft facility will be developed on a 400 acre-site, located within Ellington Airport, at the heart of Space City. Axiom Space, the privately funded space infrastructure developer intends to use this new spaceport to achieve its goal of assembling the first commercial international space station and providing access to low Earth orbit.
The choice by Axiom of Houston for this facility is, at first glance, somewhat puzzling. Once built here Axiom’s large station modules and equipment will then have to be transported to some launch facility, likely Kennedy in Florida. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to build them in Florida, close to where they will be launched?
The explanation lies in politics. Axiom’s management has many close ties to NASA and the Johnson Space Center. Furthermore, Axiom’s first modules will be docked to ISS, run by Johnson. Building in Houston will give Axiom brownie points with these government entities, which will in turn grease the wheels for anything Axiom needs to do at ISS.
We’re here to help you! Both the FAA and the rocket industry, led by SpaceX and Blue Origin, have issued detailed written opposition to a proposal by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) that it be placed in charge of all future space accident investigations.
The regulations would require companies conducting a launch or reentry under an FAA license or experimental permit to immediately notify the NTSB in the event of a mishap. The NTSB would conduct an investigation to determine the probable cause and provide recommendations to avoid similar events in the future.
The opposition notes that this will merely duplicate what the industry and the FAA already do. The rocket industry also noted that the NTSB’s present investigation responsibilities are aimed at helping the mature airline industry, not “a nascent industrial sector that is still in development, and is appropriately regulated as such.”
It appears that there is also opposition in the halls of Congress, as two congressmen have expressed their own opposition.
Without doubt the NTSB’s action here has been encouraged by the Biden administration. Democrats always want more regulation to enhance the power of government. Since Biden and his Democratic Party handlers took over, the federal bureaucracy’s effort to regulate and hinder space activities has definitely increased, such as its efforts to block SpaceX’s Starship development at Boca Chica.
Had the NTSB tried to propose this during the Trump administration it would have been quickly quashed. For example, when NOAA tried to claim it had the right to regulate all orbital photography and the Trump administration told them no, in no uncertain terms.
We’re here to help you: A bi-partisan proposal by two New Mexico legislators would create a 6% to 9% sales tax on any Virgin Galactic space tourist flights that take off from Spaceport America.
“If the flights really became regular, that could be a nice source of income, not only for the state but also from the GRT shared with the local communities,” [one of] the bill’s … sponsors, Democratic Rep. Matthew McQueen, said.
…”I can’t think of a particularly good reason why we wouldn’t tax this activity,” McQueen said.
McQueen might be too stupid to think of a reason, but I can think of dozens, and they are called the many other airport runways across the globe where Virgin Galactic can launch tourists and bypass this tax. The company already has agreements with several.
The stupidity of this legislative proposal at this time is compounded in that Virgin Galactic, the only customer Spaceport America presently has, is struggling badly. It has yet to fly any commercial flights, and is facing investor lawsuits and an aging fleet. Adding a tax on top of these problems could kill it, thus making this bill a perfect example of killing the goose that laid the golden egg, before the goose is even born. Moreover, it will certainly discourage anyone else from launching from New Mexico, especially as there are so many other spaceport options popping up worldwide with no such sales tax.
What California’s petty dictators really want to do with those teachers
and children who don’t do what they order.
Now they’re coming for the children: California health officials, outraged that teachers at Foothills Christian Church Preschool could not keep masks on two- and three-year-olds continuously for nine hours a day, have shut the school down and banned its director, Tiffany McHugh, from ever working with children again.
This bears repeating: These insane health officials demanded that school officials keep the masks on little toddlers at all times, a demand that any normal human knows is impossible. Furthermore, even the slightest amount of research will tell you that there is no reason for the kids to wear masks in the first place, as young kids generally don’t get COVID — just like they don’t get the flu — and if they do it has been shown to be harmless in healthy children.
A closer look at the actions of the health officials reveals what was really going on:
» Read more
The Chinese pseudo-private rocket company Galactic Energy has successfully raised $200 million from a number of Chinese investors, money that the company will use to develop a mid-size rocket with a reusable first stage.
Though the company is not directly funded by the Chinese government, it is not an independent private company, which is why I label it “pseudo.” Everything it does is closely supervised and approved by the communist government. Also, some of this investment money apparently came from “state-backed investment vehicles,” which in plain language are fronts used by the government to funnel funding to these companies while maintaining the false appearance the companies are entirely private.
The fake nature of this charade has apparently influenced the decisions of real investors:
Incomplete information on funding in China’s emerging commercial space sector suggested that overall investment was lagging just over halfway through 2021, concentrating in fewer players.
It appears that no one outside China is willing to put money behind these companies, and even within China there is hesitancy.
Nonetheless, by letting many such competing operations that can also make profits for investors, China is successfully encouraging some innovation. That Galactic Energy — as well as several others — are planning on building reusable rockets is evidence of that.
Using its Atlas-5 rocket, ULA today successfully launched two Space Force Earth observation satellites.
The 2022 launch race:
3 SpaceX
1 Virgin Orbit
1 China
1 ULA
How governments today determine policy
When looked at dispassionately, the news about COVID in the past few months has consistently proven two very basic points. First, the reasons to fear COVID are now definitely gone, assuming they ever existed at all. Second, the oppressive lockdown and mask policies imposed by most governments were an epic failure.
Rather than write a lot of text, I am going to provide my readers instead a nice linkfest, divided up into a variety of subcategories. Not only do the recent facts prove the failure of the government reaction to COVID, all these stories should be cause for celebration, as they show that not only has the Wuhan flu never been as dangerous as the fear-mongers have claimed, its limited but serious threat to the aged and sickly is now also fading.
The real question is whether the public and governments will actually celebrate, or stick their heads in the sand because they have fallen in love with their fear of COVID.
So, let’s take a look at the recent facts:
» Read more
