Tag: politics

Today’s blacklisted American: Students demand blacklisting of university trustee because he donated to Trump’s campaign

1:00 pm

The Bill of Rights cancelled by students at Northwestern University
No first amendment permitted at Northwestern
University, if the students have their say.

Blacklists are back and the students at Northwestern U have got ’em! The student government at Northwestern University in Illinois recently passed a resolution demanding that the school’s board of trustees remove trustee J. Landis Martin from the presidential search committee because he had the gall to donate to Trump’s presidential campaign.

On June 2, student government members approved a resolution to remove J. Landis Martin, Chairman for the Northwestern University’s Board of Trustees, from the Presidential Search Committee, which is reported to be choosing the next Northwestern University President within the next year, according to the Daily Northwestern.

Outlined in the “Resolution for the Recusal of J. Landis Martin from the Presidential Search Committee” are the reasons the student government voted 17-1 to dismiss Martin on June 2nd.

The resolution lists that that “Northwestern University students are a diverse population that identify with many of the groups that Donald Trump harmed during his campaign and presidency,” and also “the conservative political ideology of Donald Trump, including those that support him, do not align with the views of the average Northwestern undergraduate.” [emphasis mine]

In other words, these students will not tolerate on their campus anyone who expresses an opinion they disagree with. There will be no free speech, no open discourse, and no debate. Agree with them, or you will be silenced, blackballed, and removed.
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NOAA struggles with concept of letting private commercial space build its satellites

9:49 am

Capitalism in space? An article today in Space News, “NOAA to take first step toward a small satellite constellation”, describes at great length NOAA’s recent effort to rethink how it builds its weather satellites, shifting from large and expensive single satellites launched years apart to constellations of smallsats that provide more redundancy and are cheaper and easier to replace.

What the article misses, as does NOAA apparently, is that this shift should not be designed by NOAA at all. During the Trump administration there was pressure on this agency to do what NASA had, stop designing and building its satellites but instead become a customer that hires private satellite companies to do it instead.

Not much came of that pressure. NOAA hired one private company to study the idea of building a private satellite to observe the Sun. It also awarded three companies experimental contracts to provide NOAA weather data from already orbiting smallsats.

That was it. NOAA made no other attempts to encourage private companies to design and build weather satellites for it, even as it struggled to get its own satellites off the ground. The second new GOES satellite in a constellation of four for providing global weather coverage failed almost immediately after launch in 2018. Overall, that constellation is expected to cost $11 billion, $4 billion more than initially budgeted. And it is years behind schedule.

What the article above suggests is that, with the Trump administration gone, NOAA has now abandoned the effort to transition to privately-built weather satellites. Instead the article describes at great length the effort by NOAA to redesign its satellites from big, rare, and costly to small, frequent, and cheap.

This effort will fail. Government agencies like NOAA are incapable of accomplishing such a task. They do not think in terms of profit, and keeping costs down to maximize those profits. Instead, such government institutions see high costs as beneficial, as they pump more money into their operations.

Until elected officials force NOAA to change, it will not, and its weather satellites will continue to be late, expensive, and untrustworthy. Sadly, the elected officials we have today, especially in the Biden administration, are not going to do that. They are as satisfied with the present situation as NOAA is.

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China launches communications satellite for space effort

8:15 pm

Using a Long March 3C rocket China today successfully launched a communications satellite for use by its manned space missions and its space station, similar to the TDRS satellites used by NASA for similar purposes.

This satellite is the fifth such satellite launched, and is likely intended to enhance communications between the ground and China’s new space station.

No word on where the first stage crashed, or whether it landed near habitable areas.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

21 China
20 SpaceX
11 Russia
3 Northrop Grumman

The U.S. still leads China 29 to 21 in the national rankings.

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Today’s blacklisted American: What the last six months has revealed

12:42 pm

Today's modern witch hunt
Reporting daily the modern witch hunt against freedom and
independent thought.

It is just about six months since I decided to do a daily column entitled “Today’s Blacklisted American.” In that time I have documented more than 120 examples where one group of Americans thought it okay and proper to destroy the livelihood and freedom of other Americans, all because the latter said something the former did not like.

The link will take you to the full list of columns since mid-January. After six months I think it is time to assess what these columns have revealed. And that revelation is quite ugly.
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Baseball bans man for expressing his opinion at baseball games with banner

11:56 am

The Bill of Rights cancelled by Major League Baseball
Doesn’t exist at the professional baseball games.

This seems especially appropriate during the July 4th weekend: Major League Baseball (MLB) — joining Disney, Sea World, and Sesame Street — has officially banned Dion Cini from all baseball stadiums, simply because he routinely came to games and displayed a “Trump Won Save America” banner.

Cini’s Twitter profile describes him as “Guerilla Marketeer, Political Consultant, Founder of OperationFlagDrop & ‘Professional Provocateur.’”

He has skated with his flag on Wollman Ice Rink, where he was physically assaulted, even though the Trump organization operated Wollman Rink. Cini also unfurled what is rumored to be the world’s largest Trump flag on the front of Trump Tower in Manhattan in March of this year. Cini even dropped a “Trump Pride” flag one day after the end of Pride Month.

Cini has now been banned by MLB stadiums and Disney parks, Sea World, and Sesame Street. As per his Twitter account, he has no plans of stopping the flag drops.

» Read more

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More parachute problems for Europe’s Franklin Mars rover

10:11 am

During a parachute drop test in late June, following a redesign of the parachute with U.S. help, engineers for the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin Mars rover found the chute still experienced problems that tore it during deployment.

They actually performed two drop tests, a day apart, using two different parachutes, with the first test apparently going off without a hitch. However, according to the press release:

“The performance of the second main parachute was not perfect but much improved thanks to the adjustments made to the bag and canopy. After a smooth extraction from the bag, we experienced an unexpected detachment of the pilot chute during final inflation. This likely means that the main parachute canopy suffered extra pressure in certain parts. This created a tear that was contained by a Kevlar reinforcement ring. Despite that, it fulfilled its expected deceleration and the descent module was recovered in good state.”

I have embedded below the fold the only video released by the European Space Agency. It is not clear whether this is from the first or second test. Near the end it appears that the pilot chute above the main chute might be separated, but the video ends before that can be confirmed.

Though ESA has apparently improved the chute’s performance significantly since its earlier failures that contributed to the delay of ExoMars from last year to 2022, they still haven’t gotten the chute completely right. Fortunately they still have time to get it fixed before that ’22 launch.
» Read more

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Progress docks with ISS

12:36 pm

As expected a Russian Progress freighter docked with ISS yesterday, on schedule and with no mishaps.

I report this non-news story simply because of the Russian claim yesterday that a SpaceX Starlink satellite and Falcon 9 upper stage threatened a collision with that freighter as it maneuvered in orbit prior to docking.

Not surprisingly, there was no collision. The Russians knew this, or they would never have launched as they did. They made a stink about it as a ploy to stain SpaceX, a company that has taken almost all their commercial launch business by offering cheaper and more reliable rockets.

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Today’s blacklisted American: YouTube blacklists group exposing Chinese genocide in its Xinjiang region

12:12 pm

The Bill of Rights cancelled on YouTube
No free speech allowed on YouTube.

Today’s blacklisting victim is not really an American, but since it is an American company doing the blacklisting I think the story is applicable. It appears Google-owned YouTube has decided to remove videos on the Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights’ channel that expose the genocide and ethnic cleansing that China is doing to as many as a million people in its Xinjiang region.

Atajurt Kazakh Human Rights’ channel has published nearly 11,000 videos on YouTube totaling over 120 million views since 2017, thousands of which feature people speaking to camera about relatives they say have disappeared without a trace in China’s Xinjiang region, where UN experts and rights groups estimate over a million people have been detained in recent years.

On June 15, the channel was blocked for violating YouTube’s guidelines, according to a screenshot seen by Reuters, after twelve of its videos had been reported for breaching its ‘cyberbullying and harassment’ policy.

The channel’s administrators had appealed the blocking of all twelve videos between April and June, with some reinstated – but YouTube did not provide an explanation as to why others were kept out of public view, the administrators told Reuters.

Following inquiries from Reuters as to why the channel was removed, YouTube restored it, explaining that it had received multiple so-called ‘strikes’ for videos which contained people holding up ID cards to prove they were related to the missing, violating a YouTube policy which prohibits personally identifiable information from appearing in its content. They reinstated the channel on June 18 but asked Atajurt to blur the IDs.

» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Rappers have song banned by Spotify & SoundCloud for criticizing BLM, government lockdowns, and the modern perverse sexual movement

11:22 am

The Bill of Rights cancelled at SoundCloud and Spotify
No free speech allowed at SoundCloud or Spotify.

Persecution is now cool! Rappers Bryson Grey and Patriot J have had a song with the opening line “They might ban me for this song” banned by Spotify & SoundCloud.

The song strongly criticized BLM, the government lockdowns, and the modern perverse sexual movement. Bryson noted in announcing the Spotify ban that though these same outlets claimed the song was banned for hateful speech, they do not ban much more violent rapper songs that glorify murder, crime, and drug use.

Patriot J responded by pointing out that other black rappers can glorify death, crime and all kinds of immoral and disgusting lifestyles, “but if you mess around and rap about traditional values and expose truths they will BAN YOU!”

“Remember y’all, you can rap about anything you want except going against the LGBT. You can rap about your vagina to children all day, you can rap about popping pills, you can rap about doing crime… but not the forbidden topic,” tweeted Bryson Gray.

This second link also included this tidbit about the intolerant employees at Spotify:
» Read more

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Judge rules SpaceX must comply with Justice subpoena

9:22 am

A federal Judge has ruled that SpaceX must comply with Justice Department subpoena demanding its full hiring records in connection with an investigation by the agency’s Immigrant and Employee Rights Section about SpaceX’s decision to not to hire a non-citizen.

However, the DOJ unit is not only investigating the complaint, but also has said it “may explore whether [SpaceX] engages in any pattern or practice of discrimination” barred by federal law. Investigators in October issued a subpoena demanding that SpaceX provide information and documents related to its hiring and employment eligibility verification processes, to which SpaceX has not fully complied.
Hiring policies in place

SpaceX’s lawyers argued in court that the DOJ’s probe is overbearing given the original complaint. “No matter how generously ‘relevance’ is construed in the context of administrative subpoenas, neither the statutory and regulatory authority IER relies on, nor the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, permits IER to rifle through SpaceX’s papers on a whim and absent reasonable justification,” SpaceX said. “And even if IER could somehow belatedly justify its current investigations, IER’s subpoena is excessively overbroad. IER’s application for an order to comply with the subpoena should be denied,” the company added.

There is another component that suggests this investigation is bogus and is intended as an attack by the government against SpaceX. The company makes rockets, and it must be extra careful about its hiring of any foreign national. So, on one hand the government forbids SpaceX from hiring foreigners, and on the other hand the government is condemning SpaceX for not doing so.

Moreover, it does appear that Justice is going on a fishing expedition in SpaceX’s files, something it is forbidden to do according the fourth amendment of the Constitution. A search such has this can only occur when there is evidence a specific crime has occurred. The search Justice wishes to do is broad and unreasonable, not based on any specific allegations but merely to “explore” SpaceX records to find a crime.

We have only just begun. The law and the Constitution means little to many in the Biden administration, in Washington, and in our government in general. What matters is power and the ability of these thugs to tell everyone else what to do. It looks like they increasingly have SpaceX in their sights.

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Russia: Progress freighter and SpaceX rocket/satellite to have near miss

9:00 am

According to a Russia news outlet, their just launched Progress freighter will have a near miss today prior to its docking with ISS with two SpaceX objects, a Falcon 9 upper stage and a decommissioned Starlink satellite.

The Progress spacecraft, which carries about 3,600 lbs. (1,633 kilograms) of cargo including food, fuel and other supplies to the orbital outpost, launched from Roscomos’ Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 7:27 p.m. EDT (2327 GMT) on Tuesday (June 29). Progress 78 will approach the two objects about three and a half hours before its docking at the International Space Station, which is scheduled for 9:02 p.m. EDT on July 1 (0102 July 2 GMT).

The close approach, which triggered a potential collision alert, was detected by the Roscosmos TsNIIMash Main Information and Analytical Center of the Automated System for Warning of Hazardous Situations in Near-Earth Space (ASPOS OKP), Roscosmos said in the statement issued on the space agency’s website Wednesday (June 30) at 7:47 a.m. EDT (1147 GMT).

Based on preliminary calculations, the Starlink 1691 satellite will be just 0.9 miles (1.5 kilometers) away from Progress 78 on Thursday (July 1) at 5:32 p.m. EDT (2132 GMT). Three minutes later, a fragment of a Falcon 9 rocket booster left in orbit in 2020 is expected to approach the spaceship within 0.3 miles (500 meters).

Based on that timetable, the near miss has already occurred. No word yet on whether there were any issues.

What is interesting is that Russia should have known this prior to launch. It is routine procedure to consider known orbital objects in scheduling liftoffs. Either they knew and decided to purposely fly this close for political reasons (it allows them to slam SpaceX while also touting the dangers of space junk) or had not done their due diligence before launch.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Journalist Andy Ngo blackballed again, this time by SoundCloud

12:31 pm

Journalist Andy Ngo, blacklisted
Journalist Andy Ngo: blacklisted and banned by Soundcloud

Persecution is now cool! Journalist Andy Ngo has been blackballed again, this time by the podcast and music website SoundCloud.

[Ngo’s] podcast, ‘Things You Should Ngo’ was banned “on grounds of being dedicated to violating” Soundcloud’s rules. Unsurprisingly, as Ngo’s publication The Post Millennial reports, there’s a problem with the explanation.

The latest episode of the podcast was uploaded more than one year ago and there was no option in the notification email for Ngo to appeal or even seek further information. Over the weekend, SoundCloud’s Trust & Safety Team informed Ngo via email of the permanent ban for “violating” the site’s Terms of Use and Community Guidelines, which state that users must not use the platform to create content “that is abusive, libellous, defamatory, pornographic or obscene, that promotes or incites violence, terrorism, illegal acts, or hatred on the grounds of race, ethnicity, cultural identity, religious belief, disability, gender, identity or sexual orientation, or is otherwise objectionable in SoundCloud’s reasonable discretion.”

Of course, Ngo’s podcast did none of those things. His podcast simply interviewed politicians and public figures, a perfectly legitimate thing for a reporter to do in a free society. That such reporting according to SoundCloud must now be censored because some of those interviewed expressed conservative values just shows us the close-minded and oppressive attitude of that company’s management.

I say “again” in the headline because this censorship by SoundCloud follows a long string of blackballing of Ngo by many different outlets and totalitarian organizations.
» Read more

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Paypal lowering fees charged to sellers

11:21 am

Isn’t competition great? Paypal announced today that as of August 2, 2021 it is lowering the fees it deducts from the payments made by buyers to sellers.

The fee reduction is about 15% to 20%, depending on the fee, which means I have just gotten a pay raise from those who donate or subscribe to Behind the Black using PayPal. This does not mean I want everyone to use PayPay. Right now I actually prefer new subscribers use Patreon, simply because it makes me less dependent on PayPay should it decide my commentary is “evil” and must be blacklisted.

The reductions make these fees lower than Paypal’s new competitors, such as Patreon, or from the conservative right, such as David Rubin’s Locals.com and Dan Bongino’s AlignPay. However, I expect them all to quickly drop their fees as well to match PayPal. And as long as PayPal continues to treat its conservative customers like dirt, expect this competition to continue to heat up.

Lowering its price won’t help if PayPal doesn’t stop playing partisan politics. It really has only two options for maintaining its market dominance. Either it can stop acting like a petty authoritarian dictator and canceling conservative vendors, or it can team up with the government to get its competitors banned or shut down. Which do you think it will eventually choose?

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SpaceX launch scrubbed because airplane strayed into what Musk calls “an unreasonably gigantic” launch zone.

9:33 am

Capitalism in space: Yesterday a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch was scrubbed mere seconds before launch because an airplane had been detected inside the government’s keep-out zone.

The scrub was called by the range officer at T-11 seconds. SpaceX will attempt the launch again today.

Musk immediately blasted the size of that keep-out zone, which was established decades ago at the very beginnings of the space race and has not been adjusted as launch technology has improved.

“Unfortunately, launch is called off for today, as an aircraft entered the ‘keep out zone,’ which is unreasonably gigantic,” Musk tweeted Tuesday afternoon. “There is simply no way that humanity can become a spacefaring civilization without major regulatory reform. The current regulatory system is broken.”

Musk has successfully forced the range to accept new technology that simplifies launches, makes it possible for them to occur faster with less time in-between, and requires fewer range officials monitoring the launch. He is now pushing them to rethink the size of the range, which is likely much larger than now necessary, as Musk claims, because not only are rockets more reliable, their programming is more precise.

The article at the link also notes as an aside at the end another Musk tweet, that SpaceX’s Starlink network now has 70,000 customers and hopes to have 500,000 within a year. More on that story here.

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Russians launch Progress freighter; Virgin Orbit launches seven commercial satellites

9:04 am

This morning two launches occurred. First the Russians successfully launched a Progress freighter to ISS, using their Soyuz-2 rocket.

Second, Virgin Orbit successfully completed its second orbital launch with its air-launched LauncherOne rocket, which was its first operational commercial launch, placing seven smallsats into orbit for three customers. This was also its second launch in 2021.

If all goes as planned, SpaceX will complete a third launch today also, placing more than 80 smallsats in orbit with its Falcon 9 rocket. Until then, however, the leaders in the 2021 launch race are as follows:

19 SpaceX
18 China
10 Russia
3 Northrop Grumman

The U.S. now leads China 28-18 in the national rankings.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Mayor in Colorado bans pledge of allegiance and anyone who dares recite it during public comments

12:37 pm

The Bill of Rights cancelled in Colorado
Doesn’t exist in Silverton, Colorado.

The mayor of Silverton, Colorado, Shane Fuhrman, unilaterally decided during a public trustee meeting that the pledge of allegiance was now banned, saying he did so because of some “direct and indirect threats, inappropriate comments in and out of public meetings and general divisiveness and issues created in our community.”

One trustee immediately challenged Fuhrman’s ruling, noting that the trustees had voted in favor of reciting the pledge at an earlier meeting, and that the mayor had no right to rescind that vote unilaterally. Fuhrman shrugged and demanded a citation of some law saying he couldn’t do it.

When someone insisted on using their comment period to recite the pledge anyway (with the rest of the audience and some officials joining in), Fuhrman, who wa elected by a margin of only 10 votes, threatened to have them removed for daring to exercise their first amendment rights by doing so.

A video of these events is embedded below.
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Rudy Giuliani loses law license for daring to represent Donald Trump

12:11 pm

Rudy Giuliani-Blacklisted from practicing law in New York
Rudy Giuliani-Blacklisted from practicing law in New York because
he worked to defend his client, Donald Trump.

Today’s blacklisted American: Last week a panel of New York state judges, all Democrats, suspended the law license of Rudy Giuliani, claiming that he had “communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large in his capacity as lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump and the Trump campaign.”

A review of the judges’ actual ruling [pdf] reveals the real truth. Giuliani was representing his client by citing actual affidavits (made under penalty of imprisonment if proven false) and other disturbing facts that raised questions about the security and legitimacy of the election results in November 2020.

The judges, being partisan Democrats and supporters of Joe Biden, dispute those facts. In their ruling they itemized many of Giuliani’s claims and then listed why they think they are false. Based on their interpretation of the facts they then decided that Giuliani must lose his law license, essentially because he took a position they disagreed with.

The problem however is that these facts remain disputed.
» Read more

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China releases more images & videos from Zhurong

10:33 am

Zhurong panorama looking north, June 27, 2021
Click for full image.

Overview map
Click for full image.

China today released a new panorama as well as several videos taken by its Mars rover Zhurong.

The videos show the rover’s landing as well as two short videos taken from the remote camera it had dropped off shortly after deployment from its lander, the first showing the rover moving away and the second showing it turning in place.. China also released sound recorded during that deployment, as the rover rolled down the ramps. The sound was of course enhanced, but it does allow scientists to learn something about the atmosphere of Mars.

The image above is a cropped section from the panorama. The map to the right, taken on June 11th by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), has been annotated by me to show the area I think is seen by this section of that panorama, looking due north. (For a higher resolution version that clearly shows the rover’s tracks since leaving the lander, go here.)

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Today’s blacklisted American: Attendees at conservative event attacked by Antifa thugs

11:43 am

Antifa leaflet in Denver, June 2021
Click for original.

They’re coming for you next: Attendees attempting to go to the Western Conservatives Conference in Denver, Colorado last week were routinely harassed and attacked by leftist thugs.

The streets of Denver saw violence Friday as Antifa and Denver Communists attempted to shut down traffic and proceeded to assault individuals outside of the Western Conservative Conference. One woman was seen getting out of her car to confront Antifa who threw projectiles at her vehicle and was subsequently threatened with a mob-style beatdown if she proceeded.

Another onlooker offered to help the one woman find the culprit who damaged her car, to which someone in the crowd yells: “If you touch one, you’re gonna get touched by every last one of these mother-—s!” The crowd implied that she was at risk for a brutal beating if she proceeded.

More details here.
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Christian nonprofit denied tax exempt status by IRS because such teachings are “partisan Republican”

12:35 pm

Moses: A Republican Party lobbyist, according to the IRS
Moses: A Republican Party lobbyist, according to the IRS.

Blacklists are back and the IRS has got ’em! The IRS has denied a Christian nonprofit tax exempt status because it has deemed such “Bible teachings are typically affiliated with the [Republican Party]” and are therefore partisan.

From the IRS denial letter:

“Specifically, you educate Christians on what the Bible says in areas where they can be instrumental including the areas of sanctity of life, the definition of marriage, biblical justice, freedom of speech, defense, and borders and immigration, U.S. and Israel relations,” read a letter from IRS Exempt Organizations Director Stephen Martin to Christians Engaged, a nonprofit group seeking tax-exempt status. “The Bible teachings are typically affiliated with the [Republican Party] and candidates. This disqualifies you from exemption under IRC Section 501(c)(3).”

Heh. Well, at least the IRS has now admitted the satanic nature of the Democratic Party. According to this IRS official, only the Republican Party supports such biblical teachings as the ten commandments. The Democratic Party is opposed to this, which makes being Christian or Jewish a partisan political position.

Of course, the IRS itself is very partisan, as the article at the link notes:
» Read more

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Chinese official outlines that country’s Mars exploration plan

10:02 am

The new colonial movement: According to an official from China’s prime rocket manufacturer, China is now beginning to plan for the manned exploration of Mars.

Wang Xiaojun, head of the state-owned China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), outlined the plans in his speech themed “The Space Transportation System of Human Mars Exploration” at the Global Space Exploration Conference (GLEX 2021) via a virtual link, the academy told the Global Times on Wednesday.

After reviewing the successful mission of the Tianwen-1 probe mission, the country’s first interplanetary exploration that achieved a successful orbiting, landing and roving the Red Planet all in one go, Wang introduced the three-step plan for future Mars expedition.

At the primary stage, or the technology preparation phase, androids will be launched whose mission include a Mars sample return mission and the exploration of a Mars base site. Next will be a manned Mars mission, and the building of a Mars base will be carried out. The third stage will be attempting shuttling large scale Earth-Mars cargo fleet and large scale development of the Red Planet.

The timetable for such mission launches will be 2033, 2035, 2037, 2041 and 2043, among others, the academy said.

While this is very far in the future, you can’t make it happen if you don’t get started early. China’s government is clearly looking at getting started, and appears to be following the same timetable approach it did for its space station. They began planning it about a decade ago, and are now launching and assembling it.

China’s decision to aim for Mars proves that the competition to get there is heating up considerably, and is likely their response to Elon Musk’s determined effort to make it possible.

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ULA to temporarily stop using new engine nozzle because of vibration issue

9:31 am

Capitalism in space: Because of an unexpected vibration issue seen during its first launches, ULA engineers have decided to temporarily stop using a new engine nozzle developed for the upper stage of both its Atlas 5 and new Vulcan rocket.

ULA’s CEO Tory Bruno said June 23 that the company is studying the data from the flight and has not yet decided what corrective action, if any, it might take. In the meantime, the new version of the RL10 [engine] with the carbon nozzle extension will not be used in upcoming Atlas 5 missions, Bruno said during a talk at the Secure World Foundation’s Summit for Space Sustainability.

Concerns about vibrations in the engine led ULA to delay the launch of the Space Force STP-3 mission that had been scheduled for June 23 and was planned to fly with the enhanced RL10. The company has not announced a new launch date for STP-3. ULA first plans to launch Boeing’s Starliner Orbital Flight Test 2 mission to the International Space Station scheduled for July 30. “It’ll be several missions, probably next year” before ULA decides whether to fly the RL10 configuration with the nozzle extension, said Bruno. The company wants to be “fully satisfied that we understand it.”

Below the fold is the live stream from that May launch, cued to show that vibration. It is their intention to go back to the older nozzle configuration for the next few launches.
» Read more

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Study proposes new radiation standards in space

9:14 am

Health limits of radiation for space missions

A new report issued today from the National Academies of Science is recommending that NASA adopt a new health standard for limiting the exposure of astronauts to radiation during long space missions. The new standard, based on a maximum accumulative dosage of 600, is indicated by the figure to the right, taken from the report [pdf] and annotated to show both the new recommendation as well as the standards used by other space-faring nations.

The key result of this change is expressed in the report in this one sentence:
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and Blue Origin

12:04 pm

Jeff Bezos, sentenced to death!
Jeff Bezos: The next target in America’s daily two-minute hate.

They’re coming for you next: As a clear indication of the ugliness of modern society and the eager willingness of far too many Americans to hurt or even kill those they disagree with or do not like, two different petitions have now garnered more than 175,000 signatures demanding that Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, be forced to die in space rather than safely return home during his planned July 20th suborbital commercial flight on his New Shepard spacecraft.

The two petitions can be seen here and here. Both have received a lot of media attention, such as these articles in the Guardiane, MSN, and the New York Post, all of which immediately caused the numbers of people signing the petitions to skyrocket. Both petitions are now “one of the top signed on Change.org!”
» Read more

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A detailed look at Russia’s suffering and shrinking space program

9:46 am

Link here. The article starts off outlining Russia’s deepening inability to produce the computer chips it needs for its space effort, acerbated by sanctions imposed against that country because of its invasion of the Ukraine. It then goes on to describe the program’s overall financial problems, including its shrinking commercial market share resulting in a significant drop in income.

The article’s conclusion is stark:

If Moscow is unable to reach a new space deal with Washington, it will need to reconsider its space policy. But Russia has little wiggle room to increase federal spending on space activities to boost the industry. For instance, the government’s space program for 2016–2025 received $11.1 billion in 2016–2020 and will obtain another $10.2 billion in 2021–2025. The federal program for launch sites (2017–2025) secured $1.4 billion in 2017–2020 and will take in a further $2.83 billion in 2021–2025 (Economy.gov.ru, 2016–2021). The 2012–2020 GLONASS program received almost $5.1 billion, and $6.45 billion more is planned for the GLONASS program in 2021–2030 (RBC, December 21, 2020). Thus, without an international cooperation deal, and as long as Western sanctions are maintained, prospects for Russia’s space industry look bleak.

Russia has recently been working to establish a partnership with China and its effort to build a space station and a lunar base. That partnership however is not likely to provide Russia with any cash, which means the deal is an empty one. While China will continue to proceed to the Moon, I doubt Russia will follow with much.

It has also been trying to rework its American partnership, with Rogozin acting alternatively as a good guy/bad guy in public declarations. Since Russia opposes the Artemis Accords, and the Biden administration is continuing the Trump administration’s demand that all partners in the Artemis program agree to these accords, those negotiations are not likely to get Russia much. Moreover, NASA policy today is to feed money to American private companies so that they can grow, not feed money to Russia so that it can prosper.

Until Russia starts allowing free competition and private enterprise, outside the control of Roscosmos and the government, do not expect much of this Russian bad news to change. While China might strictly supervise the goals of its private space companies, it still encourages them to compete and innovate, and even fail. Russia not only strictly supervises, it also forbids any new startups from forming, as they might do harm to already established players. The result is no new innovation, and no new products of any real value.

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Zhurong’s travels during first three weeks on Mars

9:31 am

Zhurong's travels through June 11th
Click for full image.

The science team for the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) today released a new image showing the path that China’s rover , Zhurong, has taken from its landing on May 14th through June 11th.

The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, is that photo. If you look close you can see the rover’s track skirting the edge of the bright blast mark put on the surface by the lander’s engines during touchdown. Though my scale bar is approximate, it does show that in those four weeks the rover traveled about 150 to 200 feet. However, half of that distance was crossed in the five days from June 6th to June 11th (as shown by the two different MRO images at these links), which means the pace is picking up.

The rover’s nominal three-month mission ends in mid-August, only two months from now. However, none of us should be surprised if the mission gets extended for as long as the rover continues to function.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Eric Clapton, for daring to express his own opinions

11:47 am

1966 in communist China
Mao’s cultural revolution in 1966,
what today’s leftists want for America and the world.

They’re coming for you next: Long time rock-n-roll star Eric Clapton has revealed that he has become ostracized from his liberal, leftist, music culture because he dared to publicly express opposition to last year’s lockdowns as well as publicly expressed reservations about the COVID-19 vaccines.

Legendary guitarist Eric Clapton said his musician friends stopped communicating with him after he recently spoke out about his “disastrous” COVID-19 side effects. “I’ve tried to reach out to fellow musicians,” Clapton said during a video Q&A mostly about his COVID-19 vaccine experience and his reaction to the powers-that-be afterward. “I just don’t hear from them anymore. My phone doesn’t ring very often. I don’t get that many texts and emails any more. It’s quite noticeable.”

Clapton’s aforementioned statements come at the very end of the below video, just before the 24-minute mark — but the whole interview is pretty eye-opening:

According to Vulture.com, Clapton also said, “I was ostracized. And I could feel that everywhere.”

I agree, the whole interview is worth listening to, and so I have embedded it at the bottom of this essay.
» Read more

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