Tag: policy

Webb: Course correction burn and main antenna deployment both a success

2:11 pm

Over the weekend engineers for the James Webb Space Telescope successfully completed a course correction burn that put the telescope on route to is planned location a million miles from Earth.

They also successfully deployed the telescope’s main antenna.

Other steps completed on Webb’s first full day in space included the switch-on of temperature sensors and strain gauges on the telescope, used for monitoring Webb’s thermal and structural parameters, NASA said. The antenna release and first mid-course correction burn set the stage for the next step of Webb’s post-launch commissioning — the deployment and tensioning of the observatory’s tennis court-sized sunshield.

These next steps are likely the most risky part of the telescope’s deployment, as it involves the most moving parts and is the most complex. While similar such unfoldings have been done successfully many times before, they have also been the very prone to failure.

The sunshield must work however for Webb to operate. As an infrared telescope, it essentially detects heat, and if it is not well shielded from sunlight its images will be fogged.

The deployment is presently set to begin tomorrow.

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Today’s blacklisted Americans: School board votes to pay whites less than non-whites

11:46 am

Whites to the back of the bus in Minnesota
Whites go to the back of the bus in Minnesota

“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” The Mankato School Board in Minnesota voted unanimously last week to pay its white teachers less than its non-white teachers, while also voting to place them in “work environments based on their race.”

Board members hotly defended the policy vote earlier this month claiming it wasn’t “segregation,” according to AlphaNews on Tuesday.

“When you’re one [minority] of a [white] majority it can be very isolating and lonely,” declared board member Erin Roberts. “To have a support system in place for them is not to segregate them, it is absolutely to support them … It’s not about trying to throw the few [BIPOC] individuals we have into one building. It’s about showing them they aren’t alone.”

“It creates global citizens at the end of the day,” Vice Chair Kenneth Reid ridiculously stated.

Yeah, and I say the sky is orange, and thus it must be so.

This is the same school board that demanded that any person wishing to make a statement to them during comment period must dox themselves, identify themselves and state their address. The result of course is that people stopped speaking up, out of fear that antifa mobs — the modern Democratic Party’s KKK division — might attack them or their homes.

The school board passed this law now because the Minnesota state legislature recently voted an amendment to state law that allows for such discrimination. Since federal law supersedes state law and the federal civil rights acts forbid such discrimination, any white teacher who sued in the federal courts should easily win, while also getting this law ruled illegal.

Of course, we no longer live in “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” but in a land ruled by people who are aggressively working to make it a bankrupt and starving Venezuela. Laws no longer matter and can be ignored. And to treat people equally is now considered evil. If you say “All lives matter” you must be destroyed.

And if you were born white, you are now a second class citizen in Minnesota. Get to the back the bus, boy!

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Russian Soyuz-2 rocket launches 36 OneWeb satellites

9:42 am

Capitalism in space: A Russian Soyuz-2 rocket today launched another 36 OneWeb satellites into orbit, lifting off from Russia’s Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan.

This year, a total of five OneWeb missions were launched from the Vostochny Cosmodrome in eastern Russia, and another two launched from Baikonur. Vostochny is the newest cosmodrome for Russia, while Baikonur is the oldest and originated from the Soviet era.

There was also one launch from French Guiana.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

50 China
31 SpaceX
23 Russia
7 Europe (Arianespace)

This was the 132nd successful launch this year, which now ties 2021 with 1975 as the most active year in rocketry since Sputnik. With a possible launches from China (Long March 3B) and Russia (a tentatively scheduled test launch of its Angara rocket today), there is a good chance 2021 will become the most active year ever.

Most important, this activity is only a precursor. Next year should see even more activity.

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China’s Long March 4C rocket launches Earth observation satellite

8:16 am

China today completed its 50th launch in 2021, successfully launching an Earth observation satellite into orbit using its Long March 4C rocket.

It also launched a cubesat built by students.

Not only does 50 launches smash its previous yearly launch record, set last year at 35, but it exceeds by 20% the 40 launches China had predicted at the start of the year it would complete in 2021.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

50 China
31 SpaceX
22 Russia
7 Europe (Arianespace)

China leads the U.S. 50 to 48 in the national rankings. This was the 131st launch in 2021, the second highest total in a single year since the launch of Sputnik in 1957.

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Webb successfully launched

8:13 am

Early this morning an Ariane 5 rocket successfully launched the James Webb Space Telescope from French Guiana.

The key moment that indicated the launch was success was, after Webb was deployed from the rocket’s upper stage, its solar panels deployed and the telescope began receiving power from them.

The launch itself was something that has been done by the Ariane 5 rocket many many times, without failure. Now comes the part of this operation that has never been done before.

Now “30 days of terror” begin, as JWST starts its career in space. First, it will take the space telescope 30 days to reach the start of its halo orbit at L2. On its way, the telescope must unfurl its 18 gold-plated beryllium mirror segments using 132 actuators. It will also have to deploy its five-layer, origami sunshield and cool down to below 50K (-223°C or -370°F) to begin the start of science operations in 2022.

NASA has a webpage that shows the step-by-step deployment, and allows you to see the status at any time during the next 30 days.

After almost twenty years of development and a budget that went 20x over its original estimate, let’s us all hope that Webb deploys properly and begins collecting data as intended. If it does, it will allow astronomers to make ground-breaking discoveries, and we shall gain a better idea of what lies hidden behind that black sky that surrounds us.

As for the 2021 launch race, this is the updated leader board:

49 China
31 SpaceX
22 Russia
7 Europe (Arianespace)

China will likely be the winner in the national rankings, 49 to 48 over the U.S. This was the 130th successful launch in 2021, only the second time in the history of space exploration that the world reached that number of launches in a single year.

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Webb telescope reaches launchpad on Ariane 5 + how to watch launch

9:14 am

The James Webb Space Telescope, stacked on top of Arianespace’s Ariane 5 rocket, has finally reached its launchpad in French Guiana after twenty years of development costing 20 times its original budget.

The launch itself is now scheduled for December 25, 2021 at 7:20 am (Eastern). It will be live streamed by both NASA (in English) and Arianespace (with options in English, French, or Spanish).

I have embedded below NASA’s feed. As always, expect NASA to pump you with lots of propaganda during its live stream.

When all is said and done, Webb has the chance to show us things about the universe we’ve never seen before. Optimized for deep space cosmology, it will provide us a window into the earliest moments of the universe’s existence. And is infrared capabilities will allow it to peer into many nearer places obscured by dust with a resolution unmatched by previous telescopes.

Keep your fingers crossed all goes as planned.
» Read more

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China launches two military satellites with its Long March 7A

8:56 am

China today successfully launched two military satellites from its coastal Wenchang spaceport, using its new Long March 7A rocket.

The Long March 7 family of rockets will eventually replace the Long March 2 and 3 families. It can launch from the coast, thus eliminating the need to drop boosters in China’s interior. It has greater capacity. It also uses kerosene and oxygen, not hypergolic fuels that ignite on contact and are very toxic.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

49 China
31 SpaceX
22 Russia
6 Europe (Arianespace)
5 ULA
5 Rocket Lab

As there no more American launches planned this year, with this launch China wins the 2021 launch race, moving ahead of the U.S. 49 to 48.

This was the 129th launch in 2021. As there are three launches still scheduled — a Russian Angara test launch, a Ariane 5 launch placing Webb in orbit, and a Russian OneWeb launch — the year is likely end up tying or beating 1975 as the most active year in rocketry ever. The Chinese could also launch, as it has in the past done a lot of launches in December.

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Pushback against blacklists: Employee resistance force hospitals nationwide to abandon COVID shot mandates

12:09 pm

Patrick Henry
We should all emulate Patrick Henry, putting liberty and our freedom
above false security, even at the cost of our jobs or even our lives

Don’t comply: Numerous major hospital systems across the nation are abandoning the mandates that require employees to get the COVID shots or be fired because they have discovered that almost one third of their workforce are willing to walk away rather than get the shot.

The resulting staff shortages would then make operations in these hospitals impossible.

Facing serious staffing shortages, some of the largest and most prominent hospital systems in the United States, including HCA Healthcare Inc., Tenet Healthcare Corp., AdventHealth, and Cleveland Clinic have been forced to backpedal on their COVID-19 jab mandates in hopes of retaining crucial employees, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday

Townhall reported that University Hospitals in the Cleveland, Ohio area also recently announced the reversal of its jab mandate for hospital workers.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the major hospital systems have been forced to reevaluate their coercive COVID-19 jab policies after needed healthcare industry employees, especially nurses, chose to quit rather than get the experimental injections.

» Read more

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A detailed review of SLS’s present launch status

10:28 am

Link here. The article provides a detailed look at the engine controllers in the former shuttle engines that SLS is using on its core first stage, including some details about the failed unit and the issues involved in replacing it.

I found this historical data in the article most interesting:

The first attempt to launch Orbiter Atlantis and the STS-43 Shuttle vehicle was scrubbed before dawn on July 24, 1991, when the primary computer, DCU A, failed while propellants were being used loaded into the External Tank. … As a result, the launch was scrubbed to allow replacement of the controller, and the launch was rescheduled for August 1, 1991. The failure analysis of the controller revealed a broken blind lap solder joint connection of the bit jumper to the half stack, which is not a generic design problem.”

According to contemporaneous Shuttle Status Reports issued by NASA Public Affairs at KSC in late July, 1991, after the launch was scrubbed and the External Tank was drained and inerted, access to the engine area for maintenance was established on July 26. The broken engine controller was removed, and a new one was installed on July 27, followed by testing to verify the new controller on July 28; the three-day countdown was started over from the top on July 29 for the next launch attempt on the morning of August 1.

It took NASA less than a week to replace an engine controller in 1991. Now, it appears it might take NASA several months, including testing, to do the same thing on SLS. Moreover, the article suggests that there are other subcontractors and organizations (such as the range safety) that are also having trouble being ready for the presently scheduled mid-February launch.

All in all, this report suggests that SLS will not launch in February, will be delayed until April, with a strong chance that even that April date might not be met.

The report also illustrates the sluggish manner in which NASA operates today. Nothing is done with any speed. No task is done in one day if it can take a week. This is bad management, and also a very dangerous way to operate, as it actually encourages sloppiness because no one is under any pressure to work hard. The result has been endless niggling failures, each of which delays things interminably.

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Local judge blocks Camden spacesport

10:11 am

Capitalism in space? Almost immediately after the FAA last week issued a launch license for the proposed commercial spaceport in Camden, Georgia, a judge in the state courts issued an injunction blocking it.

The order and request for an interlocutory injunction was filed last week by Camden residents James Goodman and Paul Harris. Camden County Superior Court Judge Stephen G. Scarlett granted the restraining order on Tuesday and scheduled a hearing on the injunction for Jan. 5.

This order prevents the spaceport, being developed by the county itself, from purchasing any additional land for the project.

Meanwhile, a petition to force a referendum for or against the land purchase has obtained enough signatures. They needed 3,400 signatures — 10% of the registered voters of Camden county — and obtained 3,800. Those signatures are presently being verified by the county probate court, which has until mid-February to complete its work. If a special election is then called, it likely won’t occur before the middle of 2022.

It is perfectly legitimate for the citizens of the county to express their opposition to such a project. And if in a special election a majority disapprove, then it is perfectly correct for the county’s effort to be shut down.

This opposition however gives us a peek into the modern culture of America, hostile to innovation and new businesses, and willing to use the government aggressively to prevent it. Whether that hostility is felt by the majority in Camden County is at present unknown, though the success of the petition suggests it is. The special election will tell us.

I predict however that if the special election comes down in favor of the spaceport, the opposition will not accept that result, and will then move to find other legalities that they can enlist the government to use to block the project.

This project is beginning to remind me of Hawaii and the Thirty Meter Telescope, which has been effectively blocked from construction by what appears to be a very small number of radical protesters.

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FAA’s approval of SpaceX’s Starship operations delayed at least a month

9:45 am

The FAA has now had to delay the final approval of its environmental reassessment of SpaceX’s Starship facility and operations at Boca Chica for at least one month because NOAA has refused to approve the plan.

That puts NOAA’s generic review of Rocket Landing and Launches back to at least the end of January, with the much more complex and contentious USFWS [Fish and Wildlife] review also pending (this one is habitat and species review of impacts to bird and wildlife populations specific to Boca Chica).

The earliest approval by the FAA (which again, is far from a sure thing) should be projected into February. And the actual launch license process can’t be started until then. March is absolutely the earliest even the giddiest optimist could expect for Starship’s Maiden Orbital Flight.

It appears that the bureaucrats in NOAA are hostile to the launch site, and are looking for reasons, mostly environmental, to either block it or slow it down.

It also appears that a second Department of the Interior agency must sign off, and it is also hostile.

Based on this story, it looks like Starship’s first orbital flight will not happen until the latter half of ’22, if then. Nor can we expect any help from the Biden administration. Unlike Trump, the Democrats now running the executive branch of government do not like private enterprise and business, and generally look for excuses to regulate and even block it, especially if they think there is the slightest chance it might harm some formerly unknown species somewhere.

This is America today, no longer free. Rather than you making the decision freely, as an American citizen, un-elected federal government officials now decide whether you can do anything, or not.

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Japan’s H-2A rocket launches communications satellite

3:52 pm

Japan today successfully launched a commercial communications satellite using its Mitsubishi-built H-2A rocket.

This was Japan’s third and likely last launch in 2021. Since 2018 its numbers have been low, ranging from 2 to 4, so this total matches that pace. It is an embarrassment for Japan, however, when compared to China and SpaceX.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race remain unchanged:

48 China
31 SpaceX
22 Russia
6 Europe (Arianespace)
5 ULA
5 Rocket Lab

The U.S. and China remain tied at 48 in the national rankings. This was the 128th successful launch in 2021, making it the second most active year in the history of rocketry, exceeded only by 1975, when there were 132 successful launches, 98 of which were by the Soviet Union, with the bulk of these being short term low orbit spy satellites.

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