Tag: politics

Soyuz capsule was drilled after it was fully assembled

1:48 pm

The investigation into the drillhole leak in the Soyuz capsule docked to ISS has revealed that it had to have been done after the capsule was fully assembled.

“During the analysis of those images, traces of drilling were found on the anti-meteorite shield,” the source said, adding that “the top of the drill came through the pressure hull and hit the non-gastight outer shell.”

According to another industry source, the non-gastight anti-meteorite protection is installed right before the spacecraft is taken to the final assembly workshop. “When Soyuz MS-09 has just arrived to the final assembly workshop, it was photographed in details. No hole and no signs of drilling… were found. The spacecraft was drilled later, when it was fully assembled,” the source said. He added that the anti-meteorite shield was also photographed before being installed, and no traces on it were found as well.

The source suggested that the spacecraft could be damaged either during the very last stage of works or during its 90-day stay in the checkout stand, adding that it was highly unlikely that the damage occurred during the transportation to the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan or at the launch facility.

This narrowing of the time frame for the drilling will increase the chances that the Russians will be able to identify who did.

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Republican Congress boosts NIH spending, rejecting Trump proposed cuts

8:49 am

Failure theater: The Republicans in Congress have given the NIH a significant boost in spending, rejecting both Trump’s proposed cuts and reorganization proposals.

Congress has approved a $2 billion raise, to $39.1 billion, for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in a 2019 spending bill approved by House of Representatives and Senate negotiators last night.

As expected, the 5% boost matches the Senate’s proposed spending level and surpasses a $1.25 billion increase in a draft bill passed by the House. President Donald Trump’s administration had requested $34.8 billion for the fiscal year that begins 1 October. This is the fourth year in a row that NIH has received a substantial increase, after more than a decade of flat budgets.

Trump had also proposed shifting three Health & Human Service agencies into NIH. Congress ignored this.

This illustrates the bankrupt nature of the Republicans in Congress. Don’t believe them when they argue they want to limit government. They are lying. They pass tax cuts to make you happy and vote for them, then turn around and pour money we don’t have at their Washington friends.

This also illustrates the bankrupt nature of the American voter. We gobble up tax cuts, either ignore or celebrate Congress’s out-of-control spending, and then vote for the elected officials who do this.

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Luxembourg formally establishes space agency

11:08 pm

The new colonial movement: Luxembourg this week formally established its space agency, along with a fund to back new commercial space companies.

Unlike traditional national space agencies, which support spacecraft missions and scientific research, the Luxembourg Space Agency will focus primarily on building up the country’s space industry as well as supporting education and workforce development.

Schneider noted that Luxembourg’s recent efforts, most notably the SpaceResources.lu project to attract companies working in the nascent space resources field, had led to 20 countries establishing a presence in the country. “All this is why it’s so important to me to launch today this Luxembourg Space Agency in order to professionalize our approach to this new community,” he said.

Serres said that the agency will work with a wide range of other organizations, both within the government and the private sector, to meet the agency’s goals. “The agency will be well-equipped to support industry in their daily challenges, and it leads to the most favorable environment for this sector to continue to grow,” he said, describing its four “strategic lines” as expertise, innovation, skills and funding.

That last item will include a new fund for supporting space companies. Schneider announced that the space agency will work with other government agencies and the private sector to establish the Luxembourg Space Fund, valued at 100 million euros ($116 million). The fund, according to a government statement, will “provide equity funding for new space companies with ground-breaking ideas and technology.”

Only part of the new fund will involve government money. “It will be a public-private partnership, where the government will take a share of 30 to 40 percent,” Schneider said.

The agency’s entire work force will be about 12 people, since its focus will be attracting private space companies to come to Luxembourg.

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NASA & Roscosmos heads to meet

11:02 pm

After their teleconference to discuss the status of Russia’s investigation into the airleak on ISS, the heads of NASA and Roscosmos agreed to their first face-to-face meeting on October 10 at the Baikonur spaceport in Kazakhstan.

Part of the reason for the teleconference and this announcement to try to stem the wild rumors about the leak, including the accusation that it was done by an American astronaut.

I also expect them to discuss how they can jointly lobby the American Congress to fund the Gateway boondoggle, formerly (F)LOP-G.

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More suborbital private rockets in the news

9:36 am

Two news stories today about two different suborbital rockets built by private companies:

The first story outlines the results from the August 25 test flight of SARGE.

The rocket reached an altitude of approximately 28 km. Launch and recovery took place at Spaceport America on August 25th, 2018. The rocket carried nine payloads. The flight demonstrated the SARGE system’s reusability when the vehicle was recovered with damage only to sacrificial components. The test also demonstrated the capability of the autonomous control system and validated the preflight vehicle integration process.

They have designed SARGE to fly up to 200 times, and then plan to sell it to the military which will use it as a target in its own tests.

The second story describes a suborbital launch yesterday at Spaceport America. This suborbital rocket carried three NASA experiments, the most interesting of which was the first test of a heat shield designed to open like an umbrella.

Made out of thickly woven and highly heat-resistant carbon fibers, supported by semi-rigid ribs, the ADEPT system fits into existing vehicle launch systems, but expands when separated from the rocket into a configuration that allows it to perform its mission.

The ADEPT model tested Wednesday spread to 30 inches in diameter after separation. Venkatapathy said a diameter of 75 to 80 feet would be required to deliver a crew of seven or so human explorers safely onto the surface of Mars, which has a lower gravity pull than Earth.

He said a thicker carbon weave and different dimensions would be needed to deliver scientific equipment to the surface of Venus, a planet with a gravity pull nearly as great as Earth’s, making approaches hotter and faster.

Even if neither of these companies ever scale up to orbital rockets, they signal the change in how NASA does things. In the past NASA built its own suborbital rockets. Now, they are using privately-built rockets, which allows for competition and more innovation.

This is basically the same transition NASA is undergoing in its commercial manned program, going from being the sole builder and designer of spacecraft, enforced by a government-imposed monopoly, to merely a customer buying spacecraft from many private builders. It is a transition that can only generate good results in the future.

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Orion test vehicle completes last parachute test

11:31 pm

NASA today successfully completed the last parachute test using an Orion test vehicle.

Two quotes tell us all we need to know:

“Orion is our new human exploration spacecraft, and this is a spacecraft that will take people farther in space than we’ve ever gone before,” said [Orion project manager Mark Kirasich].

…This parachute test is the last one for Orion after a decade of development, Kirasich said.

NASA is once again lying about Orion’s capabilities. It will not “take people farther in space than we’ve ever gone before.” It will be able to take humans to the Moon, which is somewhere Americans have been (just in case Kirasich has forgotten.) Beyond that it is totally insufficient for interplanetary flight. It will, on its own, never take anyone anywhere beyond that, and even if it does go beyond lunar orbit, it will do so merely as the return capsule that is part of a much larger vessel.

Secondly, that it took ten years to complete the parachute system for this capsule is truly a joke. The Dragon cargo capsule was built by SpaceX in less than four years. Its manned version could have launched after only two years of work had NASA bureaucrats and Congressional cheapness not gotten in the way. Boeing’s Starliner parachute system was also built in about half that time, and would have been finished sooner had not NASA bureaucrats demanded extra tests, for reasons that have never been made clear.

NASA says it will be launching the first Orion mission to the Moon in 2022, followed by the first Gateway mission in 2024. I am predicting that while the first date might be met (only seven years behind schedule), the second will not. Do not expect the first module to head for the Moon for at least a decade.

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Leftist election terrorism

11:03 am

They’re coming for you next: The level of hatred and insanity coming from the partisan left has in the past two years steadily moved from mere vicious hyperbole to increasing violence. The upcoming midterm elections is now fueling this increase in violence, as seen by these stories from yesterday:

The first two stories were generated mostly by Twitter threats, a sewer of such vicious evil. They might not result in violence, but such leftist threats on Twitter are definitely becoming more common. And interestingly, even as Twitter is shutting down conservative speech it seems to have little problem with death threats against conservatives.

The third story however is more worrisome. It is part of a pattern where the insane over-the-top statements by Democratic Party elected officials is fueling a hatred among those who are less than stable themselves, resulting in acts of violence. Nor is this the only story recently where an unstable person attacked something or someone because they were perceived as conservative.

And the craziness on the left shows no signs of letting up, as indicated by the decision of leftist Las Vegas professor to shoot himself in the arm “in protest of President Donald Trump.” Though I have no evidence to support this theory, it appears to me from the story that he might have planned on suicide, but chickened out.

I am very worried that in the next two months we will see at least one attack against Republicans similar to the attempted mass murder last year of Republican congressmen at a charity baseball practice. In fact, I fear that such violence is almost certain.

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Gateway fantasies from NASA

9:04 am

NASA has released an updated plan for building FLOP-G, now officially dubbed “The Gateway.”

The article provides a bunch of NASA’s typical powerpoint slides, detailing when they want to do what, with the first Gateway module launched in 2022 and the first manned mission to it in 2024.

None of this will happen as they wish, however, because NASA can’t build anything on schedule or on time. Also, there is this key detail, mentioned merely as an aside in the article: “A commitment of funding for the gateway project is still forthcoming.”

Congress has not yet funded this. Unfortunately, I expect them to do so, but I also expect that none of the funds will ever be sufficient, and that the project will drag on and on, for years on end, with little accomplished, at least by NASA.

The plan as outlined does incorporate the use of commercial vendors to supply cargo. In the end, I expect this component to be the only thing ready and able to fly, when needed.

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New research confirms leftward domination in academia

8:44 am

The blacklist lives! New research has confirmed that the bulk of American universities are dominated by liberal and Democratic professors, with many having zero conservatives or Republicans in their facility.

The political registration of full-time, Ph.D.-holding professors in top-tier liberal arts colleges is overwhelmingly Democratic. Indeed, faculty political affiliations at 39 percent of the colleges in my sample are Republican free—having zero Republicans. The political registration in most of the remaining 61 percent, with a few important exceptions, is slightly more than zero percent but nevertheless absurdly skewed against Republican affiliation and in favor of Democratic affiliation. Thus, 78.2 percent of the academic departments in my sample have either zero Republicans, or so few as to make no difference.

My sample of 8,688 tenure track, Ph.D.–holding professors from fifty-one of the sixty-six top ranked liberal arts colleges in the U.S. News 2017 report consists of 5,197, or 59.8 percent, who are registered either Republican or Democrat. The mean Democratic-to-Republican ratio (D:R) across the sample is 10.4:1, but because of an anomaly in the definition of what constitutes a liberal arts college in the U.S. News survey, I include two military colleges, West Point and Annapolis.1 If these are excluded, the D:R ratio is a whopping 12.7:1.

Political homogeneity is problematic because it biases research and teaching and reduces academic credibility.

Just to make it clear, the ratio of Democrat to Republican averages 13 to 1, if you exclude the two military colleges. This can only be occurring if the facility at American colleges is making a conscious effort to exclude conservatives or Republicans. Or to put it more bluntly, to blacklist anyone who dares express a dissenting view.

The article has some good information however about the handful of universities that do have diversity of thought in the facility.

The two military colleges in my sample, West Point and Annapolis, have D:R ratios of 1.3:1 and 2.3:1. Although it is debatable whether military colleges are liberal arts colleges, U.S. News’s inclusion of them in the liberal arts category is fortuitous because they offer evidence that when colleges provide supportive environments, intellectual diversity is achievable. There are other exceptions, such as Claremont McKenna, which adopted a viewpoint diversity strategy early in its history, and Kenyon, which is one of a few of the top-ranked liberal arts colleges located in a predominantly Republican state and which did not become coed until 1969.

Thomas Aquinas and St. John’s, another college with above average Republican representation, have emphasized interdisciplinary teaching and downplayed the publish or perish imperative, which [other researchers] have argued contributes to left-oriented groupthink.

These are the colleges every parent and teenager should consider as the place to go. Everywhere else is crap, and should be avoided like the plague.

It is definitely worth reading the entire article, which also includes breakdowns by disciplines, and finds the blacklisting to be especially egregious in the humanities.

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New enrollment at Evergreen drops 50%

8:56 am

Couldn’t happen to a nicer college: The enrollment in the freshman class at Evergreen State College is down 50% since to the college’s takeover by leftist thugs two years ago.

This fall, we expect less than 300 freshmen to attend Evergreen, a fifty percent drop from two years ago. It is the only four year institution in the state of Washington that has seen a decrease in applications, and is currently publicly funded for 4200 students, far greater than this year’s anticipated total attending class of 2800.

This decline at Evergreen is in contrast to an increase in enrollment at competing Washington state colleges. And expect things to become worse for Evergreen, since it has taken no actions to change its leftist indoctrination bent, as noted by one professor at the college:

Advocacy and activism rather than the pursuit of truth and knowledge is being promoted as a way of recruiting desperately needed new students (In 2011 Evergreen changed its official mission statement to read: “Evergreen supports and benefits from a local and global commitment to social justice”). Bringing in new faculty or guest speakers with conservative or centrist political perspectives is considered risky and out of the question at the moment. Fear and self-censorship is pervasive among Evergreen faculty, especially under the existing budget crisis. An “independent” External Review Panel exonerated the president and administrators while blaming Evergreen’s woes on Bret Weinstein and ‘alt-right’ agitators prompted one journalist to ask, “Who Will the Evergreen Mob Target Next?”

The best thing that could happen would be for this college, as well as many others, to shut down. They no longer teach, but act instead as leftist and Democratic Party propaganda machines.

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Faulty concrete at Vostochny launchpad caused by contractor

8:30 am

The faulty and spongy concrete that the Russians have discovered at the Vostochny Soyuz launchpad was caused when the contractor hurried the job as well as improperly laid the concrete.

“It was a mistake by the contractor Spetsstroi. The process of concrete laying was violated due to rush work,” the source said. “Spetsstroi laid the concrete in winter time in utterly unsuitable conditions and used drying fans.” The source said the cavities in concrete were identified more than a year and “continued to be eliminated by the public corporation itself until the contract with Adonis was concluded.

Part of the blame here falls not to the contractor but to Putin. He demanded that Roscosmos complete a launch at Vostochny in 2016, and to do so all the contractors at Vostochny had to scramble to get the job done. Apparently, this particular contractor was forced to cut corners improperly.

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India unveils spacesuit for Gaganyaam manned mission

8:24 am

The new colonial movement: India’s space agency ISRO this week unveiled the spacesuit it is designing for the Gaganyaam manned mission scheduled for 2022.

The new space-suit mentioned above has been developed by ISRO at its Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre over the last two years. ISRO showcased the space suit for the Gaganyaan crew at the Bengaluru Space Expo for the first time ever. As per reports, ISRO has developed two of such space suits to date and will also develop a third one prior to the testing of the manned mission in 2022. The space suit comes with a capacity of one oxygen cylinder that claims to hold enough oxygen for 60 minutes.

This suit is not being built for spacewalks, but as a backup should the spacecraft itself develop a leak.

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Science paper slams IAU planet definition

10:26 am

Worlds without end! A paper published August 29 in the science journal Icarus has hurled serious criticisms of the definition of planets imposed on the world by International Astronomical Union in 2006 that also robbed Pluto of planetary status.

“The IAU’s definition was erroneous since the literature review showed that clearing orbit is not a standard that is used for distinguishing asteroids from planets, as the IAU claimed when crafting the 2006 definition of planets,” said Dr. Kirby Runyon, from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. “We showed that this is a false historical claim. It is therefore fallacious to apply the same reasoning to Pluto.”

According to the team, the definition of a planet should be based on its intrinsic properties, rather than ones that can change, such as the dynamics of a planet’s orbit. “Dynamics are not constant, they are constantly changing. So, they are not the fundamental description of a body, they are just the occupation of a body at a current era,” Dr. Metzger said. “We recommend classifying a planet based on if it is large enough that its gravity allows it to become spherical in shape.”

I must also note that the IAU’s definition had ignored the recommendations of its own committee on coming up with a new planetary definition and was voted on at the very end of a conference when almost everyone had left.

In other words, the IAU’s actions in 2006 were purely political, were bad science, and should be dumped as quickly as possible. And now the scientists are saying this, in peer-reviewed papers.

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Trump administration to shutter PLO office in DC

10:13 am

As part of its hard-nosed approach to PLO intransigence, the Trump administration has decided to shut down the Palestinian offices in DC.

National security adviser John Bolton is expected to announced Monday that the U.S. will shutter the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) office in Washington, D.C., The Wall Street Journal reported. “The Trump administration will not keep the office open when the Palestinians refuse to start direct and meaningful negotiations with Israel,” Bolton is expected to say, according to a draft of his speech reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

This is on top of cutting off all U.S. funding to the PLO.

Though I like this decision, as it ends U.S. support for these terrorist organizations, I doubt it will do anything to change PLO policy. The petty dictators who are in charge of Palestinian affairs, the PLO and Hamas, require the selling of hatred of Jews and Israel to survive. Everything else they have done has bankrupted the lives of the people living in the West Bank and Gaza. The second they change their tune, the people there might suddenly realize how bad their leadership is, and could very well string them up, much as the Italians did to Mussolini at the end of World War II.

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More aerospace problems in Russia

9:31 am

Two stories out of Russia today suggest that the serious quality control problems plaguing its aerospace industry have not been brought under control.

According to the second article the launch delay is because a Russian satellite manufacturer is behind schedule and might not deliver needed parts for the satellite’s assembly in time. I suspect the delay might also be related to the first article, as this satellite will launch on the brand new launchpad where they have discovered the cavities below ground.

That these cavities were not pinpointed during construction is very troublesome. One of the reasons SpaceX’s Boca Chica launchsite in Texas is taking as long as it is getting built is that the company had to make sure the soft beach property was structurally sound for rocket launches. That the Russians missed this speaks poorly again of their quality control.

Delays are common in the rocket industry, but in the context of Russia’s other space-related problems, the delay suggests a wider problem.

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Second Chinese company completes suborbital rocket test

5:48 pm

For the second time this week, a Chinese “private” company successfully completed a suborbital rocket test.

This time the launch was by OneSpace, which should not be confused with the other company, iSpace. As with iSpace, the rocket used was a solid rocket, which once again makes me think it is doing work for the Chinese military, and is therefore not as independent or as private as Americans normally consider private companies.

Moreover, the launch was filmed by one of China’s spy satellites, also suggesting the military’s interest in this rocket company’s development. You can see both a ground-based and that satellite’s view of the launch at the link.

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Armstrong filmmakers purposely obscured American flag

1:19 pm

The filmmakers for the Neil Armstrong biography film, First Man, made a conscious decision to hide or obscure the American flag in certain situations.

This new information has been provided to me by a Washington consultant who, because of his own outrage over their decision to not show the planting of the American flag during the lunar landing, had been given the opportunity to see selected clips from the movie as well as ask questions to the production team.

First Man movie flightsuits, without American flag

According to that meeting, he learned that they had consciously made the decision to either reposition or remove American flags from the blue flight suits that the astronauts wore from day to day so that it would not be visible. The image on the right, from the movie, illustrates this, as the American flag was almost always sewn into the upper left shoulder of these suits.

The filmmakers also purposely repositioned the flag or filmed angles for many scenes that acted to obscure the flag on the astronauts’ white pressure suits.

The reasons the filmmakers gave for doing this was to enhance their foreign ticket sales.

To this I say, baloney. They might have had this financial excuse, but I think this holds little or no weight. By willingly admitting that they hid the flag in this petty way they have confirmed their political agenda, their desire to convince the world that this mission was not an American achievement but a “human achievement.” Both the film’s Canadian star as well as its director have made it clear they have a globalist vision of the Apollo program, and wanted to spread the credit of its achievement to all humanity. Consciously hiding the flag in this small-minded manner demonstrates their political motives.

Moreover, even though the director, Damien Chazelle, might have wanted to focus on “Neil Armstrong’s personal saga and what he may have been thinking and feeling during those famous few hours,” removing or obscuring icons of the United States serves no purpose other than to remove the United States from this decidedly American moment. Showing the flag on the flightsuits and pressure suits does not make this a jingoistic pro-American propaganda film. Nor does it do anything to prevent Chazelle from telling Neil Armstrong’s personal story. In fact, if anything, hiding the flag detracts from that goal, as Armstrong was very much doing this for his country (as numerous people who knew him have said), and to de-emphasize that reality is to rewrite history in a very dishonest way.

The pettiness of this entire action further outrages me. There is no doubt that sales would not have suffered in foreign countries, in the slightest, had the American flag been left where it belonged on these suits, and had been shown appropriately in other scenes. It accomplishes nothing positive for the film. What it does do is tell us what these Hollywood “artists” think of America.

So that there is no misunderstanding, I must add that neither my source nor I have as yet seen the entire film. It is still possible that these criticisms are unfair, and that the filmmakers might have shown the American flag appropriately in other scenes, and might even have shown it prominently.

Nonetheless, what we now know is that these filmmakers did made a conscious effort to rewrite history so that the United States no longer appeared as prominent in these events as it should have. Once again, it appears to me that these Hollywood filmmakers did this to express their disdain, almost hatred, of the United States and all that it stands for.

For this fact alone I think Americans should reconsider spending any of their hard-earned money on seeing this propaganda piece.

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India teams up with France to prep for its first manned mission

10:25 am

The new colonial movement: India has signed a cooperative deal with France to provide them help in preparing for its first manned mission in 2022, now dubbed Gaganyaan by India’s press.

Following the signing of agreements between the two parties on Thursday, the agencies “will be combining their expertise in the fields of space medicine, astronaut health monitoring, life support, radiation protection, space debris protection and personal hygiene systems.”

The announcement was made by CNES [France’s space agency] president Jean-Yves Le Gall during the inaugural of Bengaluru Space Expo-2018 where he was the chief guest. It is being organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry along with ISRO and Antrix, the agency’s commercial arm, from September 6 to 8.

The two countries will also work together on other space research.

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Russia begins construction of Angara launchpad at Vostochny

9:52 am

Russia has begun the construction of the first Angara launchpad at their new Vostochny spaceport.

According to earlier reports, the Angara launch pad is to be completed by December 31, 2022. Construction costs are estimated at nearly 39 billion rubles ($565 million).

Somehow it seems to me that this construction is too expensive and is taking too long. A launchpad is essentially a specialized building on the surface. I don’t see why it should be so difficult or expensive to do.

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China launches ocean survey satellite

9:42 am

Locations of two of China's launchsites

China today launched the third satellite in a constellation of ocean-observing satellites, using its Long March 2C rocket.

Though this is the same rocket that dropped its upper stage near a Chinese town in June, the launch came from the Taiyuan launch site, not the Xichang launchsite used in June, so it is unclear if the upper stages fell near populated areas. I would expect so, however, since Taiyuan is located in the middle of China even closer to populated areas than Xichang, as shown on the map to the right.

If the launch went north from Taiyuan, then those upper stages probably landed in Mongolia. I wonder if China has worked out an agreement with that country about dropping toxic first stages onto its territory.

Regardless, in the 2018 launch standings, China now leads the U.S. 24-22. The leaders in the race, with the leading U.S. companies broken out, are as follows:

24 China
15 SpaceX
8 Russia
6 ULA
5 Europe

As mentioned previously, with every launch for the rest of the year China will set a new annual record for itself.

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More details about Chinese suborbital launch earlier this week

9:56 am

Link here. The article really only provides one new detail about the flight itself, that the rocket used solid rocket motors. This fact, plus the overall secrecy, suggest to me that the company, iSpace, is doing its work for the Chinese military.

The article at the link also provides a good overview of the entire Chinese “private” smallsat rocket industry.

China is still run from the top, so any “private” rocket company must have the approval and support of the government. What makes China different from Russia, also ruled from the top, is the Chinese government’s willingness to encourage competitive independent operations, something the Russians has not done. The result is that China’s rocket industry is not stagnating, but growing.

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“Unsteady hand” drilled hole in Soyuz

9:34 am

According to reports in Russia today, Roscosmos head Dmitri Rogozin suggested earlier this week that an “unsteady hand” had made several attempts to drill a hole in the Soyuz capsule.

“There is another version that we are not ruling out; that this was done deliberately in space,” Russian news agency RIA Novosti quoted Rogozin saying.

He indicated there were “several attempts to use a drill” by an “unsteady hand,” scraping the metal areas surrounding the hole, according to RIA Novosti. “We can cut short the idea that this was a technological mistake made by some specialist or other,” he added.

The vision that immediately came to my mind was that of a drunk technician, unhappy about pay, bad living conditions, and corruption, stumbling into the capsule, drilling the hole. Later, after he sobered up he realized the disaster he had created for himself and tried to fix it secretly.

Then again, it is dangerous to take seriously anything Dmitri Rogozin says. He could be trying to spin the situation to his advantage.

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University censors student handing out “Jesus loves you” valentines

9:29 pm

Fascist academia: Northeast Wisconsin Technical College has blocked a student from handing out “Jesus loves you” valentines, calling her actions “disruptive.”

A Wisconsin student sued her school on Tuesday after the administration labeled her a “disruptive student” for handing out Valentine’s Day cards reading “Jesus loves you.” Northeast Wisconsin Technical College (NWTC) student Polly Olsen sued her school for what she termed an “unconstitutional” Public Assembly Policy, according to a lawsuit obtained by Campus Reform. “Ms. Olsen was not selling the Valentines, soliciting donations, or asking the recipients for anything. Everyone was free to decline them.”

NWTC restricts what it deems as “disruptive” free expression and free speech, as protected by the First Amendment, to a tiny box on campus that makes up less than one percent of the campus. Olsen described the school’s “free speech zone” as “about the size of two buses next to each other,” highlighting the fact that no one “congregates there, they just walk through,” something she suggested prohibited her from having meaningful conversations with others.

The school’s restrictive speech policy appears blatantly unconstitutional. At the minimum it is oppressive and unreasonable, preventing individuals from exercising their first amendment rights. I hope she wins, costing the school both money and reputation. It is not a place I’d send my kids.

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New study: Forest cover has blossomed since 1980s

4:43 pm

The uncertainty of science: According to new research the world’s tree canopy has grown by almost a million square miles since 1982.

While the area of bare ground and short vegetation is diminishing, forest area is growing. As Ronald Bailey notes in Reason, “Forests in montane regions are expanding as climate warming enables trees to grow higher up on mountains.”

The greatest increase in tree canopy occurred in Europe, including European Russia, where it exploded by 35%. A close second was found in China, where tree canopy gained 34%. In the U.S., tree canopy increased by 15%.

This study confirms numerous other forest and agricultural research that has shown that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere encourages plant growth. Numerous other studies have also found that the Earth has been greening in the past century.

My review of the scientific literature on this subject also matches this finding, having found that if global warming is happening, research looking at what has actually happened generally show that increased CO2 and warming have tended to have beneficial effects, despite the endless doomsday predictions by global warming scientists of what might happen.

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Roscosmos re-inspecting all Progress/Soyuz capsules

9:48 am

The Russians are going to give all Progress and Soyuz capsules being prepared for launch a new inspection following the discovery that the airleak on the Soyuz docked with ISS had been caused by a technician on the ground prior to launch and covered up.

The consequences to Russia’s space industry because of this incident are going to be difficult to measure. It surely signals that they have still not got a handle on their quality control problems. In fact, it provides further proof that the technical work coming out of Russia is shoddy, sloppy, and filled with many forms of corruption, all circumstances that should give pause to anyone thinking of flying a product or themselves on a Russian-made product.

Worse, the centralized government-run space industry created by Putin is exactly the wrong thing for fixing these problems. Russia does not have a competitive and free aerospace industry. Everything is run by the government and based on the ability to wield political power rather the ability to demonstrate skill and quality in how you do your job.

With only five launches expected in 2019, Russia’s space program is sinking to the level of a third world country. This airleak disaster will only help it sink further.

One last note: I predicted this kind of disaster back in 2013, when the consolidation of Russia’s aerospace industry was announced by the Putin government. My prediction was not very difficult, nor especially brilliant, since disasters like this always occur from government-run top-down socialist/communist systems. One only has to be patient. It is only a matter of time before the system fails, and fails badly.

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ISS airleak an accidental drill hole on ground

5:21 pm

The airleak last week on ISS in the orbital module of a Soyuz capsule was not caused by a micrometeorite but by an accidental drill hole made by a technician on the ground who then, rather than reporting it, sealed it and covered it up..

“The hole was made on the ground. The person responsible for the act of negligence has been identified,” the source told the news agency.

Another source said a worker apparently accidentally drilled the hole, but instead of reporting it, simply sealed it. The sealant held for at least the two months the Soyuz spacecraft spent in orbit, before finally drying up and being pushed out of the hole by air pressure.

According to a Moskovsky Komsomolets report, the hole was located near the toilet and covered by decorative fabric. The Russian crew members used an epoxy-based sealant with metallic additives to plug both the hole and a fracture in the outer hull of the Soyuz located behind it, the newspaper said.

Well, if anything is going to put an end to the resistance to using privately built American manned capsule, this should do it. This is also going to do a great deal of harm to the Russian desire to sell tourist seats on their Soyuz.

Posted from Heber, Arizona.

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UAE names the two finalists for its first manned flight on Soyuz

9:15 am

The new colonial movement: The leader of Dubai yesterday named the UAE’s the two astronaut finalists, one of which will fly on a Soyuz to ISS sometime next year.

The ruler of Dubai has announced the names of two astronauts from the United Arab Emirates who will be heading to the International Space Station, a first for the Gulf nation. Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who also serves as the UAE’s vice president and prime minister, made the announcement on Monday on Twitter.

Sheikh Mohammed named the astronauts as Hazza al-Mansouri and Sultan al-Nayadi. Their missions are scheduled for next year.

No biographical information about these two men has yet been released, but I am willing to bet that some UAE politics played a part in their selection. This is not to say that they are unqualified (because both men were cleared to fly by the Russians) but to note the realities that always lurk within any government run space program.

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Russian official predicts only 10 launches for 2019-2020

9:24 am

How the mighty have fallen: A Russian official yesterday predicted that they will only do a total of 10 launches for the two year period from 2019 to 2020.

“Five launches are envisaged for 2019. Five launches of manned and resupply ships, and also of a nodal module are planned for 2020,” the vice-premier said at a meeting held at the Energia Rocket and Space Corporation on the problems of piloted cosmonautics in the process of fulfilling long-term space exploration programs. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words reveal a second tidbit, namely that they apparently will not be launching the Nauka module to ISS in 2019, as previously announced.

In a related story, a Russian space official also confirmed that they will definitely cease flying American astronauts on Soyuz in April 2019, as per the NASA-Russian contract.

The second story does not mention the Soyuz flight seats that Boeing owns, obtained as part of the settlement of the Sea Launch partnership. I wonder about their status. Are the Russians going to block them? I also suspect that this second story might be a negotiating effort by the Russian government to press NASA into buying more flights, something NASA has so far not done.

Either way, the first story essentially places Russian in the bottom echelon of space-launch nations, ranking comparable to what India and Japan have been doing in recent years. Both these countries however expect to up their numbers, which makes Russia’s space future look even more dismal.

For the entire history of space, beginning with Sputnik, the Soviet Union/Russia had consistently dominated the world in annual launches. For them to have fallen so far tells us much about the failed socialist and centralized policies of the Putin government. They do not work. They never work. In fact, they cannot work.

Will someone please tell this fact to both the American Democratic Party, and the many people who continue to vote for its new socialist agenda?

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Democratic Congressman to immigration officials: “When the worm turns you will not be safe.”

3:08 pm

They’re coming for you next: An Arizona Democratic congressman yesterday threatened immigration officials for any work they might do to enforce the immigration laws passed by Congress.

“If you are a US government official and you are deporting Americans be warned,” the tweet read. “When the worm turns you will not be safe because you were just following orders. You do not have to take part in illegal acts ordered by this President’s administration.”

Not surprising, this was done on that sewer of brainlessness called Twitter.

First of all, no Americans have been deported. The Trump administration has simply been doing exactly the same thing that both the previous Bush and Obama administration had done, demand a verification that certain individuals near the Mexican border are really American citizens before issuing a passport, as per the law.

I repeat, they’re coming for you next. Comments like this only reveal what these fascists really want to do, destroy whoever might stand in the way of their obtaining of power.

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