Tag: politics

French rocket startup wins $16 million grant from French government

9:01 am

The French rocket startup Latitude has been awarded a $16 million grant from French government for development work on its proposed two-stage Zephyr orbital rocket, which is targeting 2025 for its first test launch.

Nor is this grant the only money the company has raised.

In January, Latitude announced that it had closed its Series B funding round, raising $30 million. In March, the company was one of four companies selected to receive a share of €400 million [$427 million] in subsidies from the French government. This funding is, however, only fully unlocked when the company completes its inaugural flight of Zephyr.

Though Latitude has obtained some private investment capital, it appears it is mostly relying on government funds. Under these conditions, it is unclear whether the rocket startup will be able to compete not only with the other new European rocket startups but with the rest of the world. Government funding is usually not well tied with profit or cost efficiency, and thus the company will have less incentive to develop a competitive rocket.

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More garbage science about wildfires and global warming from Nature

12:31 pm

Nature: the science journal that no longer does real science
The science journal which no longer
understands how real science is done

The once highly respected science journal Nature continues its descent into propaganda and bad science, all because it bows unskeptically before the altar of global warming and leftist science fantasies.

Today’s example is an article this week entitled “You’re not imagining it: extreme wildfires are now more common,” describing a new Nature paper that attempted to use satellite data to prove that the intensity of wildfires has increased in the past two decades.

For the current study, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution on 24 June, Cunningham and his colleagues scoured global satellite data for fire activity. They used infrared records to measure the energy intensity of nearly 31 million daily fire events over two decades, focusing on the most extreme ones — roughly 2,900 events. The researchers calculated that there was a 2.2-fold increase in the frequency of extreme events globally in 2003–23, and a 2.3-fold boost in the average intensity of the top 20 most intense fires each year.

We’re all gonna die! As is usual for these crap climate-related studies, the entire goal is to drum up some manufactured new crisis that justifies the claim that the climate is warming. This study is no different, as the article eagerly notes:

Although the study doesn’t directly connect the fire trend to global warming, Cunningham [the study’s lead author] says “there’s almost certainly a significant signal of climate change”. Research has shown that rising temperatures are drying out ecosystems — such as coniferous forests — that are naturally prone to fire. This provides fuel that can boost the fires’ size and longevity. The latest study also found that the energy intensity of the fires increased faster during the night-time over the past two decades than during the daytime, which aligns with evidence4 that rising night-time temperatures are contributing to fire risk.

Not surprisingly, the New York Times immediately jumped on the bandwagon with its own article that accepts the conclusions of this research with utter naivety.

What junk. First, Cunningham fails to note this minor fact mentioned in the abstract of his own paper:
» Read more

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Reparations: Taking money from people who never owned slaves and giving it to people who never were slaves

12:48 pm

Harvard: where you get can get a shoddy education centered on hate and bigotry
Harvard: where you can spend a lot of money
getting a shoddy education teaching hate and bigotry

The effort to justify the new fad of forcing all Americans today to pay blacks reparations for the evil of slavery that was eliminated a century and a half ago at the cost of more than 600K lives continues. A recent published study by two “Didn’t Earn It” (DEI) academic elites at the Harvard Kennedy School attempts to justify the distribution of reparations now by claiming that the U.S. has a long history of paying out money to harmed individuals. From the paper’s abstract:

[T]he United States has a long-standing social norm that if an individual or community has suffered a harm, it is considered right for the federal government to provide some measure of what we term “reparatory compensation.” In discussing this norm and its implications for Black American reparations, we first describe the scale, categories, and interlocking and compounding effects of discriminatory harms by introducing a taxonomy of illustrative racial harms from slavery to the present. We then reveal how the social norm, precedent, and federal programs operate to provide victims with reparatory compensation, reviewing federal programs that offer compensation, such as environmental disasters, market failures, and vaccine injuries. We conclude that the government already has the norm, precedent, expertise, and resources to provide reparations to Black Americans. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted word is key to understanding the fundamental intellectual dishonesty of these incompetent Harvard academics. In their paper they use numerous examples of cases where the government has provided compensation to actual individuals — such as veterans, individuals harmed by radiation from nuclear tests, and those who lost their pensions due to bankruptcy or mismanagement of their pension funds — and then claim this proves paying reparations to the community of blacks, based merely on their race and the past existence of slavery, is within traditional American jurisprudence.

This is all a lie. » Read more

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Are Chang’e-6’s lunar samples on the way back to Earth?

9:30 am

In Friday’s June 21, 2024 quick links, changes to lunar orbit of China’s Chang’e-6 sample return spacecraft were detected by ham operators. As I noted, “It isn’t clear whether this was the previous orbit adjustment, a new one, or the burn that would send the sample return capsule back to Earth.”

According to Space News today, the spacecraft with the samples is on its way back to Earth, based on additional information detected by amateurs. China however has released no information on the status of the spacecraft.

Upon return to Earth, the reentry capsule is expected to touch down at Siziwang Banner, Inner Mongolia during an half-an-hour long window opening at 1:41 a.m. Eastern (0541 UTC) June 25. The information is according to airspace closure notices. CNSA has not openly published timings of mission events in advance.

Earlier reports (which I can’t find now) had said the return was tentatively scheduled for June 25, 2024, so this Space News report makes sense. The lack of information from China is par for the course.

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France’s CNES space agency begins work adapting commercial launchpad at French Guiana for specific startup rocket companies

9:15 am

Capitalism in space: France’s CNES space agency, which has taken back ownership of its French Guiana spaceport from Arianespace, has now begun adapting its new commercial launchpad there for a number of specific startup rocket companies.

In early 2021, the French space agency CNES announced plans to open up the Guiana Space Centre to commercial micro and mini-launch operators. The agency explained that it would be developing a multi-user launch pad on the grounds of the old Diamant launch complex. In July 2022, CNES announced that it had pre-selected Avio, HyImpulse, Isar Aerospace, MaiaSpace, PLD Space, Rocket Factory Augsburg, and Latitude to utilize the new launch complex.

During a media briefing following ESA’s 327th council meeting, Tolker-Nielsen explained that “general work” on the complex had already started and that work on “specific adaptations” was about to begin. These specific adaptations will be completed by the companies that will utilize the launch complex to ensure it fulfills the specific needs of their launch systems.

Of the seven rocket startups listed above, Tolker-Nielson said PLD was the ahead of the others in adapting the pad for its use, though no launch date is set. Avio meanwhile will likely not have to use this pad, as it owns the Vega family of rockets, which have already launched from French Guiana using another launchpad.
» Read more

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China’s successfully completes full 10K hop of 3-engine launch test rocket

8:57 am

China’s yesterday successfully completed a 10K hop lasting six minutes of 3-engine launch test small-scale rocket, lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

Developed by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology, the carrier rocket features a 3.8-meter diameter rocket body, powered by three 70-tonne LOX/Methane engines and equipped with a full-size landing buffer system.

The rocket achieved vertical soft landing at a fixed point through take-off, ascent and variable-thrust descent. The test fully verified the rocket’s VTOL configuration, heavy-load landing buffer technology, reusable propulsion technology with high and strong variable thrust, and high-precision landing navigation and control technology.

I have embedded below a video that shows the take-off, parts of the flight, and landing. China hopes to fly a full scale orbital version, with a 4-meter diameter, in 2025.
» Read more

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Spacewalk on ISS canceled due to spacesuit issue

8:48 am

Two astronauts on ISS were forced today to abort their spacewalk soon after opening the hatch to go outside because a water issue in one suit.

This is the second time this spacewalk has been aborted. The first time, on June 13, 2024, was canceled due to an unspecified “spacesuit discomfort issue.”

This cancellation might cause a problem with the presently unscheduled return of Starliner, as its June 26, 2024 return was postponed to allow this spacewalk to take place without any schedule conflicts. Or it might simplify Starliner’s return, as the spacewalk will not happen due to spacesuit issues.

Note also that the American suits are old, and prone to these kinds of water leak issues. NASA started a project to replace them fifteen years ago, spent more than a billion on designs, getting nothing built, before abandoning its effort and awarding the project to two private companies.

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India’s prototype X-37B, dubbed Pushpak, completes third successfully drop test runway landing

10:43 pm

India’s space agency ISRO today successfully completed the third drop test from a helicopter to a runway landing of an X-37B engineering test vehicle, dubbed Pushpak.

The winged vehicle, named ‘Pushpak’, was released from an Indian Air Force Chinook Helicopter at an altitude of 4.5 km. Pushpak autonomously executed cross-range correction manoeuvres, approached the runway, and performed a precise horizontal landing at the runway centerline.

The vehicle also used the same body and flight systems from the previous flight without modifications. Though this is hardly a return from space, the landing profile attempted to duplicate much of that flight path, and thus demonstrated ISRO engineers are on the right track for creating a reusable mini-shuttle.

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China launches gamma-ray space telescope

9:50 am

China today successfully launched the Space-based Multi-band Variable Object Monitor (SVOM) gamma-ray space telescope, a 20-year-long joint Chinese-French project to monitor astronomical gamma ray bursts.

SVOM was placed in orbit by a Long March 2C rocket lifting off from China’s Xichang spaceport in the southwest of China. No word on where the rocket’s lower stages — which use very toxic hypergolic fuels — crashed inside China. UPDATE: See this video from China. Apparently one stage landed close to homes, spewing that orange hypergolic fuel.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

64 SpaceX
28 China
8 Russia
8 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the world combined in successful launches, 75 to 42, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world, including other American companies, 64 to 53.

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Family whose home was damaged by NASA battery ejected from ISS files claim

3:29 pm

The Florida family whose home was damaged when a battery that NASA had ejected from ISS smashed through the roof of its house has now filed an $80,000 claim with the space agency.

Alejandro Otero, owner of the Naples, Florida, home struck by the debris, was not home when part of a battery pack from the International Space Station crashed through his home on March 8. His son Daniel, 19, was home but escaped injury. NASA has confirmed the 1.6-pound object, made of the metal alloy Inconel, was part of a battery pack jettisoned from the space station in 2021.

An attorney for the Otero family, Mica Nguyen Worthy, told Ars that she has asked NASA for “in excess of $80,000” for non-insured property damage loss, business interruption damages, emotional and mental anguish damages, and the costs for assistance from third parties. “We intentionally kept it very reasonable because we did not want it to appear to NASA that my clients are seeking a windfall,” Worthy said.

No lawsuit has been filed so far, as the family is trying to work this out with NASA amicably, and also help set a precedent for future such incidents. NASA in turn gave the family a claim form and is now reviewing the form they submitted.

The article I think is incorrect when it states that this incident “falls outside the Space Liability Convention” (which was written under the Outer Space Treaty) because the debris didn’t come from a foreign country but was launched and de-orbited by an American government agency. The Outer Space Treaty makes whoever launches anything in space liable for any damages. If NASA attempts to fight this it will be violating not only the language but the spirit of the treaty.

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Emerson College in Boston leads the way in supporting Hamas and losing enrollment

12:52 pm

Emerson College: Where only leftist pro-Hamas speech allowed
Emerson College: Where only
leftist pro-Hamas speech is allowed

This week Emerson College in Boston announced that, because of a significant and unexpected drop in enrollment for the coming year, it is going to have to lay off staff as well as not fill a number of vacant positions.

In an email to college’s faculty and staff, the college’s president Jay Bernhardt obliquely mentioned what could be the main cause of this lack of new students:

We attribute this reduction to multiple factors, including national enrollment trends away from smaller private institutions, an enrollment deposit delay in response to the new FAFSA rollout, student protests targeting our yield events and campus tours, and negative press and social media generated from the demonstrations and arrests, [emphasis mine]

To put Bernhardt’s oblique comments into clarity, Emerson was hit in April with a gigantic pro-Hamas occupation that took over a local public right-of-way. The university’s response to this take-over was, to put it mildly, very supportive of the mob, even after the police moved in to clear the road and arrested 118. Here is what Bernhardt wrote to the Emerson community after those arrests:
» Read more

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Spanish high altitude balloon company releases artwork of its proposed passenger capsule

9:59 am

EOS-X's balloon capsule
Artist rendering of EOS-X’s balloon capsule

The Spanish high altitude balloon company EOS-X has now released several artist renderings of the proposed capsule that will take passengers on a high altitude balloon flight.

According to the company, the first flights will occur sometime late next year, lifting off from either Seville in Spain or Abu Dabi in the Middle East. The proposed ticket prices range from $160K to $214K, with flights lasting about five hours.

All of this sounds highly speculative, especially because EOS-X in November 2023 was one of two balloon companies indicted by a Spanish court for stealing its balloon concepts from a third company. I have not seen the final decision in that court case, so it is unclear what the long term ramifications might be. It could be that the company which sued, Zero-2, has taken over EOS-X.

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