Tag: politics

Pro-American UNC frat boys: Don’t hold a party, use the money more effectively!

2:37 pm

UNC Frat boys protecting American flag

Earlier this week a group of college students belonging to the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity at North Carolina University (UNC) put their bodies between a mob of pro-Hamas protesters and the American flag, as shown in the picture on the right. That mob had been attempting to remove Old Glory and replace it with the Palestinian flag. Video of the incident can be seen here, with the Hamas mob throwing bottles and garbage at the UNC students, while other American students circle about in-between, holding up the Israeli flag in defiance.

The story quickly went viral in the conservative press. Then someone set up a Gofundme fundraiser to thank the students: “Pi Kappa Phi Men Defended their Flag. Throw ’em a Rager”. As noted by John Noonan, the origanizer:

Commie losers across the country have invaded college campuses to make dumb demands of weak University Administrators.

But amidst the chaos, the screaming, the anti-semitism, the hatred of faith and flag, stood a platoon of American heroes. Armored in Vineyard Vines and Patagonia, fueled by Zyn and White Claws, these triumphant Brohemians protected Old Glory from the unwashed Marxist horde — laughing at their shrieks and wails and shielding the Stars & Stripes from Soviet missiles.

These boys… no, men, of the UNC Chapel Hill Pi Kappa Phi, gave the best to America and now they deserve the best. Help us raise funds to throw this frat the party they deserve, a party worth of the boat-shoed Broleteriat who did their country proud.

To the shock of everyone, the money poured in. Within days more than 13,000 people had donated over $450K, with some donations topping five and ten thousand each.

Noonan now says he has found “a world class event planner [Susan Ralston] and she is already hard at work. She worked in the White House and knows what she’s about.” Noonan and GoFundMe is also attempting to identify every student seen holding up or defending the flag. It appears the goal is to to put together a big event that will not only be a great party but a political campaign rally.

I say that’s a big mistake. » Read more

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Sunspot update: A minor uptick in sunspot activity in April

12:28 pm

It is that time of the month again. Yesterday NOAA posted its monthly update of its graph tracking the number of sunspots on the Sun’s Earth-facing hemisphere. As I have done now for every month since I began this website in 2010, I have posted this updated graph below, with several additional details to provide some larger context.

In April the number of sunspots on the Sun went up somewhat, the count rising to the highest level since the count hit its peak of activity last summer. The sunspot number in April, 136.5, was however still significantly less than the 2023 peak of 160. Thus it appears the Sun is likely still the middle saddle of a doubled-peaked relatively weak solar maximum, with the Sun doing what I predicted in February 2024:
» Read more

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NASA IG: Major technical problems with Orion remain unsolved

9:53 am

Orion's damage heat shield
Damage to Orion heat shield caused during re-entry,
including “cavities resulting from the loss of large chunks”

A just released report [pdf] by NASA’s inspector general has found the major technical problems discovered after the first unmanned Artemis mission of Orion around the Moon remain unsolved, and threaten the safety of the astronauts that NASA plans to send around the Moon on the second Artemis mission.

The problems with Orion are threefold and are quite serious, involving its heat shield, separation bolts, and power distribution.

Specifically, NASA identified more than 100 locations where ablative thermal protective material from Orion’s heat shield wore away differently than expected during reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. Engineers are concurrently investigating ways to mitigate the char loss by modifying the heat shield’s design or altering Orion’s reentry trajectory.

In addition, post-flight inspections of the Crew Module/Service Module separation bolts revealed unexpected melting and erosion that created a gap leading to increased heating inside the bolt. To mitigate the issue for Artemis II, the Orion Program made minor modifications to the separation bolt design and added additional thermal protective barrier material in the bolt gaps.

NASA also recorded 24 instances of power distribution anomalies in Orion’s Electrical PowerSystem. While NASA has determined that radiation was the root cause and is making software changes and developing operational workarounds for Artemis II, without a permanent hardware fix, there is increased risk that further power distribution anomalies could lead to a loss of redundancy, inadequate power, and potential loss of vehicle propulsion and pressurization.

Moreover, like with any engineering system, without understanding the residual effects of introducing design and operational changes, it will be difficult for the Agency to ensure that the mitigations or hardware changes adopted will effectively reduce the risks to astronaut safety.

This is not all.
» Read more

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The EU’s government-owned satellite constellation is faltering in its attempt to compete with Starlink and OneWeb

9:22 am

In a pattern that should surprise no one, the government-owned internet satellite constellation proposed by the European Union to compete with private constellations such as Starlink and OneWeb is now in trouble and faces significant delays, partly because its budget has already doubled, even before anything has been built, and partly because there is friction between the various European countries tasked with building it.

A new report in a German publication, Handelsblatt, provides information on some likely causes of the delay. The report indicates that the cost estimate for the Interconnectivity and Security by Satellite (IRIS²) constellation has doubled from an initial estimate of 6 billion euros to 12 billion. Additionally, the project is exposing long-running fault lines between Germany and France when it comes to European space policy.

…Germany, which alongside France is likely to be the main financial backer of IRIS², is not happy that most of the prime contractors are based in France or linked to the nation. … And finally, it appears the operations for the constellation will be based primarily in Italy.

In other words, this government project is not being run to make a profit, but to distribute contracts to various countries in the European Union. Under these conditions, it is guaranteed to fall behind scheduled, cost a fortune, ald lose gigantic amounts of money.

These European countries are already shifting away from this failed model, abandoning its government-run rocket company Arianespace to instead encourage competing private rocket companies. It is therefore no surprise that many member countries in the EU are now having second thoughts about building this government-run satellite constellation.

Nonetheless, EU officials want Europe to have its own internet satellite constellation. Getting it however is problematic. There presently are no continent-based companies capable of building and launching it. And a government built and owned constellation is guaranteed to fail in any attempt to compete on the open market.

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Astroscale to go public

8:51 am

abandoned upper stage, taken by ADRAS-J
Click for original image.

The Japanese orbital tug start-up Astroscale announced yesterday that it is becoming a publicly traded company on the Tokyo stock market, beginning June 5, 2024.

The company plans to offer 20.8 million shares in the initial public offering, but has not announced a share price. According to filings with the exchange, Astroscale will set that price May 27.

Astroscale has raised more than $375 million through a series of private rounds, most recently a $76 million Series G round in February 2023. That funding has primarily come from Japanese investors, including a strategic investment by Mitsubishi Electric in that Series G round.

The company has also won two major contracts with Japan’s space agency JAXA, building its two ADRAS-J missions to first rendezvous and survey an abandoned upper stage (as shown to the right) and then fly a grapple mission to de-orbit that stage sometime in the future.

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Southwest Airlines is deservedly in financial trouble

12:10 pm

In love with bigotry, blacklisting, and bad maintenance
In love with bigotry, blacklisting, and bad maintenance

Late last week Southwest Airlines revealed that it is going to cease operations in four airports while simultaneously cutting 2,000 jobs as a result of a $231 million loss in the first quarter of 2024.

The company’s CEO, Bob Jordan, attempted to lay the blame for these difficulties on Boeing’s quality control problems, which has not only caused it to delay delivery of 26 planes in Southwest’s most recent order of 46, but has likely driven away customers, since Southwest uses only Boeing planes to simplify the maintenance of its fleet. For example, the article cited this incident and attributed it to Boeing’s troubles:

Earlier this month, an engine cowling on a Southwest operated Boeing 737-800 fell off during take off from Denver airport. Flight 3695 reported the engine cowling “fell off during takeoff and struck the wing flap” an FAA spokesperson previously told Newsweek.

Neither the article or Jordan are being entirely truthful or accurate. That engine cowling incident has nothing to do with Boeing, as the plane had been owned by Southwest for a considerable time, which means its maintenance is Southwest’s responsibility, not Boeing’s.

And why might Southwest have maintenance issues? Maybe these maintenance problems exist because the airline has gone all-in for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, creating racial and sex quotas that make race and sex the most important qualifications for many jobs, not skill, knowledge, talent, or experience. Its 2022 DEI-report [pdf] cited these goals:
» Read more

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Shocker! Scientists tried and failed to infect people with COVID who had natural immunity

9:08 am

Modern scientists discover the obvious: In a experiment to see the impact of COVID on people who had previously gotten sick with the virus, scientists have discovered something called “natural immunity,” a phenomenon once known to doctors and ordinary people for centuries but purposely forgotten in 2020 when an election was coming up and the leftists who controlled most universities, health departments, and science organizations wanted a panic to prevent Donald Trump from getting reelected.

Researchers use challenge trials to understand infections and quickly test vaccines and therapies. In March 2021, after months of ethical debate, UK researchers launched the world’s first COVID-19 challenge trial. The study identified a minuscule dose of the SARS-CoV-2 strain that circulated in the early days of the pandemic that could infect about half of the participants, who had not previously been infected with the virus (at that time, vaccines weren’t yet widely available).

In parallel, a team led by Helen McShane, an infectious-disease researcher at Oxford, launched a second SARS-CoV-2 challenge study in people … who had recovered from naturally caught SARS-CoV-2 infections, caused by a range of variants. The trial later enrolled participants who had also been vaccinated.

…When nobody developed a sustained infection, the researchers increased the dose by more and more in subsequent groups of participants, until they reached a level 10,000 times the initial dose. A few volunteers developed short-lived infections, but these quickly vanished.

…“We were quite surprised,” says Susan Jackson, a study clinician at Oxford and co-author of the latest study. “Moving forward, if you want a COVID challenge study, you’re going to have to find a dose that infects people.”

This article in the science journal Nature is written in a very clunky manner, almost as if the writer and editors wanted to obscure these findings.

The bottom line however is no surprise to anyone who kept their heads during the 2020 COVID panic. This virus was not the plague, but merely comparable to a new strain of the flu, though apparently artificially created by a Chinese lab in Wuhan that was partly funded by American federal funds from the NIH. And like all such diseases, once you caught it your own immune system naturally figured out how to protect you from it in the future.

And like the flu, if you were young and healthy it was incapable of killing you. The quicker the general population had gotten infected and immune, the quicker the epidemic would have died out, making it impossible for the virus to harm many of the sick and old. That was the standard response to epidemics until 2020.

Instead, the health establishment went nuts, forgot basic science, and did exactly the opposite, thus killing many more of the old and sick than necessary.

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Voting by conservatives HAS made a difference, just not enough so far

1:24 pm

Voting does make a difference
Voting does make a difference.

In one of my essays last week I took to task the many Republican conservatives who repeatedly say there is no point voting for Republicans because the leadership of the Republican Party does not represent conservative or American interests, and is in many ways as corrupt as the Democrats, only in a slightly different way.

[T]his refusal to support Republicans because they aren’t perfect simply guarantees that the Marxist and very corrupt Democratic Party will gain more power. The result is even worse policies, and more corruption, and congresswomen like Sheila Jackson-Lee and NASA administrators like Bill Nelson.

It is all very self-defeating. If conservatives went out and always voted for the most conservative candidate available to them, the power in Congress and in local legislatures would quickly shift rightward. It would also encourage other individuals even more conservative to run for office.

Many commenters for that essay disputed my claim, and still insisted there was no reason to vote any longer because the whole system is rigged.

This claim however is wrong. Though there is certainly ample evidence of vote tampering and corruption in the whole system, these issues can be overcome by the voters, if they have the courage and determination to vote. Proof of this fact was given in this op-ed published on April 27, 2024 and entitled “GOP Establishment’s Days Are Numbered”. The writer, Kevin Roberts, is president of the Heritage Foundation, which while solidly conservative has itself too often allied itself with that establishment, and thus is not to be trusted blindly in all political matters. However, in describing how that think tank had fought the gigantic foreign aid bill for the Ukraine that the Republican establishment and the Democrats pushed through, Roberts also noted these very important facts:
» Read more

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NASA announces launch coverage for the first Starliner manned capsule launch on May 6, 2024

10:23 am

NASA today released the details for its public media coverage of the first manned launch at 10:34 pm (Eastern) on May 6, 2024 of Boeing’s Starliner capsule.

NASA will provide live coverage of prelaunch and launch activities for the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test, which will carry NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to and from the International Space Station.

Launch of the ULA (United Launch Alliance) Atlas V rocket and Boeing Starliner spacecraft is targeted for 10:34 p.m. EDT Monday, May 6, from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The flight test will carry Wilmore and Williams to the space station for about a week to test the Starliner spacecraft and its subsystems before NASA certifies the transportation system for rotational missions to the orbiting laboratory for the agency’s Commercial Crew Program.

Starliner will dock to the forward-facing port of the station’s Harmony module at 12:48 a.m., Wednesday, May 8.

Though that coverage includes several prelaunch and post launch press conferences, the key coverage of the launch itself will begin at 6:30 pm (Eastern) on May 6th, about four hours before the launch itself. It will also include the capsule’s docking with ISS on May 8th.

I will embed NASA’s Youtube live stream here on Behind the Black on both dates, though as always I sugggest waiting until just before launch and docking to tune in. The four hours of streaming prior to launch is mostly going to be NASA propaganda, touting the agency and often misconstruing the facts to overstate its importance. This launch will be just like SpaceX’s Dragon launches, in that almost everything will be run by the two private companies involved, Boeing and ULA, and not NASA. NASA’s real involvement will only begin at the docking to ISS.

This first manned flight of Starliner is long past due. It was supposed to occur about four years ago, but numerous technological and management problems at Boeing forced many delays. Getting that capsule operational will finally give NASA two American companies capable of putting humans in space. It will also offer some competition to SpaceX, though this competition will be weak until Boeing can demonstrate Starliner’s reliability.

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NASA wants to know the important technology the commercial space industry needs

10:10 am

Capitalism in space: NASA is now asking the commercial space industry to tell it which of 187 “technology shortfalls” it should give priority to for funding.

The agency has released a list of 187 “technology shortfalls,” or topics where current technology requires additional development to meet NASA’s future needs. The shortfalls are in 20 areas ranging from space transportation and life support to power and thermal management.

Through a website, the agency is inviting people to review the listed technologies and rate their importance through May 13. NASA will use that input to help prioritize those technologies for future investment to bridge the shortfalls.

This decision illustrates well NASA’s effort in the past decade to shift from being the boss which tells the space industry what to do to becoming a servant of that industry. In the past NASA would focus solely on what it considered its needs in deciding what new technology to fund. Often that would result in projects that NASA considered cool, but were dead-ends commercially, never used by anyone.

Now NASA wants to function more like it used to prior to 1957, when it was called the NACA. Then it worked to provide the engineering data that the aviation industry requested. This change is great news, because it means that NASA’s many small technology development contracts will better serve the needs of the industry and its need to make profits, rather the government’s wish list of projects, some of which serve no one’s real need.

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ESA is taking the Vega rockets away from Arianespace and giving it to the company that builds it

9:47 am

Capitalism in space: The European Space Agency (ESA) is in the process of taking control of the Vega family of rockets away from its commercial arm, Arianespace, and returning that ownership to the Italian company, Avio, that builds those rockets.

In late 2023, ESA member states agreed to allow Avio to market and manage the launch of Vega C flights independent of Arianespace. When the deal was initially struck, 17 flights were contracted through Arianespace to be launched aboard Vega vehicles. While these missions are still managed by Arianespace, Avio is working with the launch provider to strike a deal that would allow the Italian rocket builder to assume the management of all Vega flights.

The article’s focus is on a new contract that ESA has just awarded to Vega through Arianespace. noting that this contract will likely be shifted to Avio before launch in 2025.

This decision continues the process of slowly killing off Arianespace. Instead of relying on this government entity to build and market its launch operations, ESA is instead going to become a customer only, relying on competing commercial rocket companies for its launch services. When Avio completes its takeover of Vega, Arianespace will only be responsible for the Ariane-6 rocket, which is built by ArianeGroup and essentially owns it as well. Expect that rocket to be shifted completely to ArianeGroup. At that point Arianespace will no longer have any reason for existing, and will be shut down.

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Why the release of the EU’s own space law has been delayed

10:47 am

In the fall of 2023 officials of the European Union (EU) announced that they expected to release the Union’s own space law, that would regulate the individual space laws of all member nations. Since then the release of that law has been put back several times, and in early April its release was delayed until the summer, after the EU elections in June.

This article published today provides the likely reasons why it has been delayed. Apparently, individual members of the EU have objected to the law as interfering with their own space laws as well as imposing regulations they don’t want or need.

The EU Space Law will need to overcome several obstacles to become a functional and beneficial piece of legislation. Several EU Member States already have national space legislation and are actively engaged in space activities, while an increasing number are adopting domestic frameworks and expanding their presence in the space sector. In a heavily regulated environment, where countries have long established and enforced national laws, the practical implementation of a space law at the EU level may be contested.

The article then lists three reasons for these objections. First, the EU has no experience or stake in this matter. It launches nothing and thus can only pose an additional obstacle to the growing commercial space industries in member countries. Second, an EU space law is certainly going to conflict with the space laws of member countries. Third, this law’s implementation could significantly interfere with the legal timelines established by individual member countries.

The article also lists three reasons why the EU law might be good, but these reasons really can be summed up as attempting to justify the EU’s power grab over the space efforts of the member countries.

In the end, this analysis tells us that the EU’s power grab has been met by significant opposition behind the scenes, and could very well die because of that opposition. Germany, Italy, Spain, and more recently even France have begun to encourage the development of independent competing rocket companies, and all likely fear this EU space law will only get in the way.

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