Tag: politics

Progress on Dragon parachute tests

8:52 am

It appears that SpaceX’s parachute testing for its Dragon manned capsule is finally satisfying the concerns of NASA and its safety panel, based on a Sept 17 NASA blog post.

In fact, SpaceX’s success has even forced NASA “to reevaluate its own [parachute] standards and certification processes.”

The article at the link also notes quite correctly NASA’s tendency to miss the forest for the trees, which is why it has forced SpaceX to do so much additional parachute testing, even though the company apparently had a solid understanding of its parachutes a long time ago.

[T]he space agency has been focused on parachutes and COPVs [the tank issues that caused the 2016 launchpad explosion] for years. This is primarily a result of NASA’s notoriously reactive approach to safety: SpaceX suffered two COPV-related Falcon 9 failures in 2015 and 2016 and has experienced an unknown number (likely 1-3) of anomalies during Crew Dragon parachute testing.

As a result, NASA has focused extensively on these two stand-out concerns. To an extent, this is reasonable – if you know things have a tendency to fail, you’re going to want to make sure that they don’t. However, prioritizing reactive safety measures at the cost of proactive safety would be a major risk, akin to getting in a car crash because you didn’t use a turn signal and then prioritizing turn signal use so much that you forget to look both ways before making turns. Sure, you will probably never get in the same crash, but you are raising the risk of new kinds of accidents if you overcorrect your attention distribution.

Either way, it increasingly appears that a manned Dragon mission might finally be getting close to launch.

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Yang: Private car ownership must end

3:28 pm

They’re coming for you next: In a climate forum at Georgetown University today, Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang proposed the government eliminate the private ownership of cars, and replace it with a “constant roving fleet of electric cars that you would just order up.”

Of course, this fascist Democrat doesn’t mention that, according to his own climate plan it would be the government creating and operating that fleet of cars.

Just imagine having to depend on the DMV for your actual transportation. Right now it is generally bad enough, especially in the Democratic-controlled big urban cities, to just get your driver’s license renewed. Won’t it be just wonderful when you have to call them to provide you your car?

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Problems fixed with next Russian ISS module

9:58 am

According to a report from Russia today, the problems with contamination in the fuel tanks for Russia’s next module to ISS, originally scheduled for launch in 2013, have finally been dealt with, and the launch can go forward.

“Original tanks will be used. They had successfully undergone all trials, all problems with them have been fixed. We are now receiving relevant documents,” one of the sources told TASS. He said the module is currently at the Khrunichev center, and the timeframe of finishing touches to it is now being coordinated.

Another source in the industry told TASS that although Nauka tanks were initially designed for multiple use, “they will be used only once – for the module’s docking with the space station.”

In other words, they weighed their options, and decided that limiting the tanks to only one use was better than trying to replace them. I suspect this is because the replacement was both very difficult and would have also delayed the launch so much that ISS might not have been orbit any longer.

A new launch date has not been announced. Previously Roscosmos had indicated 2020 as the date.

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House hearing, and budget, raises doubts about 2024 Moon landing

9:27 am

Two events yesterday increased the likelihood that the Trump administration’s effort to complete a manned Moon landing by 2024 will not happen.

First, at hearings yesterday before the House Science, Space, and Technology (SS&T) Committee, not only did a top NASA official express skepticism about the 2024 date, several key Democratic lawmakers added their own skepticism about the entire project.

Then, the Democratically-controlled House released a draft continuing resolution which included none of the extra $1.6 billion requested by the Trump administration for the 2024 Moon mission.

At the first link there is much discussion about the issues of Gateway, of using commercial launchers instead of SLS, of funding, and of the endless delays for SLS, of the management problems at SLS/Orion/Gateway. All these issues illustrate the hodgepodge and very disorganized project design that has represented SLS/Orion/Gateway from the beginning. SLS/Orion was mandated by Congress, with no clear mission. Gateway was tacked on later by NASA and the big space contractors building SLS (Boeing) and Orion (Lockheed Martin), with lobbying help from other international space agencies who want a piece of the Gateway action. None of it ever had a clear over-arching goal or concept related to the actual exploration of space. All of it was really only designed to justify pork spending in congressional districts.

As much as the Trump administration wants it, I do not see a path for its 2024 Moon landing. Congress, as presently structured, will not fund it, and SLS and Gateway are simply not the projects designed to make it happen.

The confusion at the hearings over Gateway also suggests that if this project gets going, it will only serve to drive a nail into the coffin of all American manned exploration, as run by our federal government. Too many vested interests are fighting over this boondoggle. In the end I think they will rip it apart and then reshape it into a Frankenstein monster.

The only hope for a real American vibrant manned space effort in the near future still appears to me to reside in the private sector’s own manned projects, which right now means SpaceX and its Starship.

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Israel election produces uncertainty again

7:05 pm

Yesterday’s election in Israel, called because the leading block led by Benjamin Natanyahu could not form a majority coalition after the last election in May, has apparently resulted in a similar result.

I am still researching what I think might be the causes behind this on-going situation in Israeli politics. The article at the link describes some of the negotiations between the various factions that might produce a new Natanyahu government, or not.

My sense is that this situation all begins with the special exemptions to military service that still remain for the orthodox, or haredi community. The reason Natanyahu could not form a coalition in May was that one of his expected partners, a generally conservative but secular party dubbed Yisrael Beytenu, wanted a commitment to remove those remaining exemptions, and Natanyahu couldn’t get the various religious parties to go along.

As result, it appears that the religious parties lost some support in yesterday’s election, making it even harder for Natanyahu to make a deal.

I have asked some of my relatives in Israel if my analysis here makes sense, and am waiting a response.

Either way, it appears that no one is going to have an easy time putting together a government in Israel.

Update: This story from Israel tonight provides some clarity about the position of Yisrael Beytenu, stated by its chairman, Avigdor Liberman. In it he outlines his party’s demands, which do not just involve the special military exemptions for the haredi but also the power the orthodox have held in Israel over other issues.

“We will not concede on the passing of the Draft Law, as it was originally written, we will not concede on repealing the Supermarket Law, we will not concede on public transportation on Shabbat, we will not concede on civil marriages, and the introduction of core studies into haredi education. These are the conditions, and until we hear things in that spirit – there’s nothing to talk about.”

All of these cited issues involve the effort by the religious parties to exert more control. For example, the Supermarket Law, passed in 2018, gave the national government power to determine whether local businesses could be open on Shabbat (Saturday, the day of rest), instead of local bylaws. Similarly, issues of marriage and education all involved a conflict between the secular and orthodox communities.

Either way, Liberman will only join a coalition of all the secular parties, excluding both the Jewish religious parties and the Arab parties (dubbed the Joint List). To do this would require the two largest parties, the conservative Likud, led by Natanyahu, and the more liberal Blue and White, led by Benny Gantz to partner. Everything I have read suggests this will not be possible, as long as Natanyahu leads Likud.

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IG had recommended criminal prosecution of Comey

12:22 pm

The law is only for little people: In testimony today before Congress, Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitz revealed that he had recommended criminal prosecution earlier this year against former FBI director James Comey.

The Justice Department however declined to follow through, essentially letting Comey off the hook.

In the past few weeks there have been many rumors about more criminal referrals by Horowitz in connection with his investigation into the illegal use of the FISA court by the FBI and Obama Justice Department to initiate spying operations on Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. The conservative press has made much of those rumors.

To my mind, the rumors mean squat, just as Horowitz’s recommendation here against Comey. Until these corrupt officials are actually indicted, the IG can say whatever he wants, but nothing has been accomplished, and future federal employees will know that they can attempt a coup against legally elected lawmakers and face no consequences.

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Roscosmos knows but will not disclose cause of Soyuz drilled hole

9:53 am

According to a statement by Dmitri Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos, the Russians now know what or who caused the drillhole in a Soyuz capsule, found when air began to leak from ISS in August 2018, but they will not reveal that information.

What happened is clear to us, but we won’t tell you anything”, Rogozin said at a meeting with the participants of a scientific youth conference. … We may have some secrets”, he said.

I wonder if NASA will accept this decision. I also wonder why this doesn’t raise the hackles of NASA’s safety panel, which seems so willing to stall the launch of American manned capsules for far less worrisome safety reasons, thus forcing us to use Russia’s Soyuz capsule instead.

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Has the leftist smear machine begun to crack?

2:11 pm

Several stories in the past week suggest that cracks might finally be appearing in the leftist/Democratic/media smear machine that since 2008 has used lies and slanders to destroy the reputations of its opponents.

What makes the first five stories above different from everything I have seen in the past two decades, since Bill Clinton’s perjury and impeachment in the late 1990s, is the willingness of people on both the right and left, within the entertainment community, to come out publicly and condemn the leftwing blacklisting efforts that have normally been supported blindly and in mass by those same communities.

In the past the support for such blacklisting threats against conservative entertainers would have been monolithic, and any conservatives in Hollywood would have been silent, out of fear they own careers would have been destroyed.

Now we not only have a number of conservative entertainers fearlessly blasting this fascist blacklisting, they are being joined by many liberal entertainer icons.

The last story is similar, but instead of the entertainment community the story involves a rebellion by a Democratic politician. Since Bill Clinton’s presidency I have practically never seen a Democratic politician resist this blacklist culture. Yang might be the very first. And I say that despite the fact that I definitely oppose his politics.

We are also seeing some of the same thing with this week’s New York Times slander of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. While the right has justly blasted the newspaper for its partisan lying and incompetence, so have some liberal outlets.

It could be that the leftist smear machine has finally gone too far, and has become so vile and despicable that even many ardent leftists can no longer tolerate it.

Then again, I am a forever optimistic person, and sometimes see hope where none exists. These might merely be the exceptions that prove the rule. Only time will tell us whether this is a new positive trend, or a minor blip in left’s never-ending quest to persecute its opponents.

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The Democratic/Media smear machine

9:42 am

This past weekend we got to once again see the workings of the Democratic/Media smear machine, designed to not only destroy the reputation of anyone who opposes them, but to give that machine justification for removing all such individuals from any position of power.

All without any evidence. None.

First the New York Times published a new unsubstantiated smear against Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh. The allegations were made by a Democratic Party operative who had acted as one of Bill Clinton’s lawyers, and who claimed to have seen the incident.

Then Democratic politicians pile on, demanding the impeachment of Kavanaugh. They do this despite the fact that there are absolutely no other confirmed witnesses to that Democratic operative’s accusations. Nor is there any record anywhere or evidence that the vile incident ever happened.

Then, when the damage has already been done, and this new Big Lie has been properly spread throughout the world, the New York Times finally corrects its initial report, adding two significant details that discredits the report entirely. First, the so-called victim had refused to be interviewed for the report, and second, according to her friends, has no recollection of the incident itself.

None of these corrections will matter. From now on Democrats, and their willing allies in the press, will repeatedly use this new smear as evidence that Kavanaugh is a bad person who must be removed from office.

This is the same pattern we have seen them use repeatedly for the past decade. First they make unsubstantiated accusations of racism (the Tea Party, some children from Kentucky), of murder (Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown), of encouraging violence (Sarah Palin), of treason (Trump), of sexual deviancy (Kavanaugh and Roy Moore), and then when those accusations are unequivocally proven to be lies and smears, ignore this fundamental evidence to continue spreading the lies and the slanders.

Yet, when it came time to vote in 2018, the American public shrugged its shoulders, ignored this vile behavior, and rewarded these Democrats with more power in Congress. It seems that a very large percentage of the American public — maybe even a majority — approves of this smear machine, likes what it is doing, and wants to use it to make sure all opposition to the Democratic Party is destroyed, by any means necessary.

Bad times are coming, unless something changes in the 2020 election.

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Hayabusa-2 dropping orbiting target marker

8:54 am

In preparation for the release and landing of Hayabusa-2’s second MINERVA-II2 tiny rover/bouncer, the spacecraft today began a close-approach to the asteroid Ryugu, where it will release two target markers.

Once released, Hayabusa-2 will back off to observe these markers as they spiral down into Ryugu, landing sometime around September 23.

This operation is a rehearsal for the release and landing of MINERVA-II2, which like the first two bouncers back in September 2018 will bounce along the asteroid’s surface, taking pictures and gathering data.

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Buy dumb!

11:33 am

The dumb washing machine we hunted for and got
The used “dumb” machine we
paid $285 for that actually
cleans our clothes.

The smart washing machine we threw out
The “smart” machine that we
paid $923 for and sold for $40.

Two years ago our old Kenmore Series 80 washing machine broke down. The repair guy said it would be so expensive to fix that he recommended it was time to buy something new.

So off we went to Sears, where we ended up buying one of today’s modern “smart” machines for a mere $923. As the LG website proudly exclaims,

A Smarter Way to Wash: 6Motion™ Technology uses up to 6 different wash motions to provide a smart cleaning experience that is gentle on clothes and maximizes washing performance.

The problem was the machine never got any of our clothes clean. It also refused to provide enough water. The way it worked was to sense the weight of the clothes you put inside, and determine the needed amount based on this. Routinely, it wasn’t enough, so Diane did web searches to discover numerous owners faking out the machine’s brains by pouring several buckets of water on top of the clothes before turning on the machine, making them weigh more.

The machine also did not have an agitator, the new in-thing among washing machine manufacturers two years ago, probably forced on them by new federal regulations. And though the tub itself did shake, it did it so gently that the clothes hardly moved.

There were also other issues with the machine’s smart technology that frustrated Diane. The machine was boss, and would not allow for any flexibility to its predetermined wash and rinse cycles, even when they made no sense.

Last week Diane had had enough. » Read more

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UAE’s first manned flight launches this week on Soyuz

8:51 am

This article provides a nice detailed Arab perspective on the upcoming September 25 launch of the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) first manned mission, sending one of their jet fighter pilots on a Soyuz to ISS for about a week.

The article not only also reviews the entire history of past Arab astronaut missions in space, the first on an American shuttle in 1985 and the second on a Soyuz in 1987, it summarizes the present-day space-related efforts throughout the Arab world, not just in the UAE. Good information in advance of this week’s upcoming launch.

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Test cubesat to launch to Gateway lunar orbit

2:10 pm

NASA has awarded a $13.7 million contract to Advanced Systems to build a cubesat to test placement and operation in the orbit the agency wishes to place its Lunar Gateway space station.

The Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE) is expected to be the first spacecraft to operate in a near rectilinear halo orbit around the Moon. In this unique orbit, the CubeSat will rotate together with the Moon as it orbits Earth and will pass as close as 1,000 miles and as far as 43,500 miles from the lunar surface.

The pathfinder mission represents a rapid lunar flight demonstration and could launch as early as December 2020. CAPSTONE will demonstrate how to enter into and operate in this orbit as well as test a new navigation capability. This information will help reduce logistical uncertainty for Gateway, as NASA and international partners work to ensure astronauts have safe access to the Moon’s surface. It will also provide a platform for science and technology demonstrations.

While proving the capability of cubesats for these unmanned planetary probes is all to the good, I must once again point out that making this orbit a way station on the way to the Moon actually makes it more difficult to get there. More fuel and equipment is required to transfer to the Moon once you are in Gateway’s planned orbit.

Based on our past experience with NASA boondoggles like this, Gateway will therefore act as a drag on future American lunar exploration. While other nations (China, India) will be landing on the surface, we will repeatedly find that our surface missions are delayed because of the added complexity of going from Earth to Gateway and then to the surface.

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LRO to image Vikram landing site next week

10:16 am

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) science team plans to take high resolution images of the Vikram landing site when the orbiter flies over that site on September 17, thus allowing them to release before and after images.

Noah Petro, LRO’s project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said that the orbiter is due to fly over the Vikram landing site Tuesday, Sept. 17. “Per NASA policy, all LRO data are publicly available,” Petro wrote in an email. “NASA will share any before and after flyover imagery of the area around the targeted Chandrayaan 2 Vikram lander landing site to support analysis by the Indian Space Research Organization.”

Officials with India’s space agency ISRO have said they have photographed Vikram with their orbiter, Chandrayaan-2, but they have not released these images as yet. Their have also been reports from India stating that their images suggest the lander is still in one piece, but these reports are not confirmed.

LRO’s images should clarify the situation. The images should also help tell us what exactly happened after Indian engineers lost contact with Vikram shortly before landing.

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More delays for China’s Long March 5

10:07 am

Chinese officials have now admitted that the next launch of China’s biggest but troubled rocket, the Long March 5, will not occur until December 2019 at the earliest.

Moreover, the first launch of Long March 5B, the new version of the rocket developed following the Long March 5 failure on its second launch in 2017, won’t happen until 2020. This is the version they plan to use to launch their space station modules, and these delays probably thus delay start of the in-orbit assembly of their space station by two years, to 2022.

These rocket delays also threaten the launch of China’s Chang’e-5 lunar sample return mission and their first Mars orbiting mission, which has a firm summer 2020 launch window which if missed will delay the mission’s launch for two years.

These reports also for the first time officially explain the engine trouble that caused the Long March failure on its second launch in July 2017.

Addressing the causes of the failure has required a lengthy process of redesign and testing of the YF-77 liquid hydrogen-liquid oxygen propellant engines. Two YF-77 engines power the rocket’s first stage, with an oxidizer turbopump isolated as the fault behind the 2017 launch failure.

The Space News article very strangely headlines the completion of the core module for China’s space station, when the real story here is the continuing delays in getting Long March 5 off the ground. Without that rocket none of China’s big space plans can proceed. Yet the article buries this scoop many paragraphs down. I wonder why.

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China’s Long March 4B launches three satellites

9:39 am

China yesterday used its Long March 4B rocket to launch three satellites into orbit.

This was the first Long March 4 launch since May, when the third stage of a Long March 4C rocket failed. The main payload was a remote sensing satellite with both civilian and military applications. The second satellite was to provide ocean data and weather, with the third a cubesat testing new space communications and the use of a drag sail for de-orbiting.

The leaders in the 2019 launch race:

15 China
14 Russia
10 SpaceX
6 Europe (Arianespace)

The U.S. continues to lead China 19 to 15 in the national rankings.

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Swamp attacks Trump over hurricane forecasts

9:44 am

Last week, as Hurricane Dorian approached the Florida coast, President Trump held a press briefing where he showed a graph with extra markings that suggested that Alabama might be impacted by the hurricane.

Unfortunately for Trump, this path for Dorian — though initially considered a possibility in the National Weather Service models — was also considered very unlikely, and had been quickly dismissed from those models, making Trump’s graph out-of-date when he showed it.

Since then the Democratic mainstream media has put out hundreds of stories claiming some sort of corruption on Trump’s part for adding those extra markings. Trump has himself responded aggressively, defending his action and saying it was justified. The New York Times even reported — based on anonymous sources — that Commerce secretary Wilbur Ross had threatened to fire three people at the National Weather Service if they didn’t issue a statement defending Trump.

Now, three former Democratic NOAA heads, D. James Baker (appointed by Bill Clinton), Jane Lubchenco (appointed by Barack Obama), and Kathryn D. Sullivan (appointed by Barack Obama), have issued a statement condemning Trump, claiming his actions are threatening the scientific integrity of these agencies.

The National Weather Service (NWS) has always been a model of scientific integrity, ensuring that weather science is not politically driven, regardless of the administration. But the recent misleading statements by President Donald Trump about a NWS hurricane forecast and cover-up actions by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), its parent agency, have violated those norms.

Forgive me if I don’t take very seriously this smug, self-righteous posturing by these former NOAA officials, all partisan Democratic Party political appointees. Scientific integrity suddenly means a lot to them when they can use it to attack Trump. However, when NOAA repeatedly tampered with its climate data for the past dozen years, and has provided no good explanation for that tampering, I don’t remember these high and mighty officials, all in charge of NOAA at the time, commenting then about the importance of scientific integrity.

Trump is no saint here. He as a politician wanted to cover all bets, so he added Alabama in discussing Dorian’s threat, even though his weather scientists considered that threat slim if nonexistent. He should have relied more on those scientists and not improvised.

For him however to be attacked relentless for this minor addition is absurd, since it is perfectly reasonable for weather scientists to get their predictions wrong, and as president Trump has a responsibility to try to prepare for all eventualities.

These NOAA critics are far less credible however. There are questionable things going on at NOAA in connection with its global climate dataset that requires either an explanation or a correction. This is a far more serious issue than whether a politician expanded the threat of a hurricane in one press briefing in order to cover his ass. The tampering threatens to discredit the entire NOAA climate dataset, making all research based on it untrustworthy. If these former NOAA officials really cared about scientific integrity, they would have taken action at NOAA to deal with this tampering, when they ran those agencies. They would have either gotten it stopped, or provided the public and the rest of the scientific community a reasonable explanation for it.

They did neither, proving that their sanctimonious statement today is nothing more than partisan politics. They don’t care about scientific integrity. What they care about is defeating Trump, helping the Democratic Party, and enhancing the power of the Washington swamp.

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More parachute problems for ExoMars 2020?

9:00 am

Space is hard: Eric Berger at Ars Technica reported yesterday that the parachute issues for Europe’s ExoMars 2020 mission are far more serious that publicly announced.

The project has had two parachute failures during test flights in May and then August. However,

The problems with the parachutes may be worse than has publicly been reported, however. Ars has learned of at least one other parachute failure during testing of the ExoMars lander. Moreover, the agency has yet to conduct even a single successful test of the parachute canopy that is supposed to deploy at supersonic speeds, higher in the Martian atmosphere.

Repeated efforts to get comments from the project about this issue have gone unanswered.

Their launch window opens in July 2020, only about ten months from now. This is very little time to redesign and test a parachute design. Furthermore, they will only begin the assembly of the spacecraft at the end of this year, which is very very late in the game.

When the August test failure was confirmed, I predicted that there is a 50-50 chance they will launch in 2020. The lack of response from the project above makes me now think that their chances have further dropped, to less than 25%.

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Japan scrubs launch due to launchpad fire

12:54 pm

Japan today scrubbed the launch of its unmanned HTV cargo freighter to ISS due to a launchpad fire that broke out only three and half hours before liftoff.

There is as yet no word on the cause of the fire, or how much damage it caused. Nor have they said anything about rescheduling the launch.

This would have been Japan’s second launch in 2019, a drop from the average of 4 to 6 in the last five years.

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SpaceX wins launch contract for seven SES satellites

9:13 am

Capitalism in space: SES yesterday announced that it has awarded SpaceX’s Falcon 9 the launch contract for the next seven satellites in its next generation communications constellation.

This is a big win for SpaceX, made even more clear by a briefing held yesterday with reporters by Arianespace CEO Stéphane Israel. In that briefing Israel outlined that company’s upcoming launch contracts, where he also claimed that this launch manifest is so full he had to turn down SES’s launch offer.

Because of its full manifest, Arianespace was unable to offer SES launch capacity in 2021 for its next generation of medium Earth orbit satellites, mPOWER. SES announced plans Sept. 9 to fly mPOWER satellites on SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets from Florida’s Cape Canaveral. Arianespace launched the 20 satellites in the SES O3B constellation.

It was important to SES to launch in 2021, Israel said. Given Arianespace’s full manifest, it was difficult “to offer the guarantee they were asking for,” he added.

If you believe that I have a bridge I want to sell you. Arianespace has been struggling to get launch contracts for its new Ariane 6 rocket. They have begun production on the first fourteen, but according Israel’s press briefing yesterday, Ariane 6 presently only has eight missions on its manifest. That means that six of the rockets they are building have no launch customers. I am sure they wanted to put those SES satellites on at least some of those rockets, and couldn’t strike a deal because the expendable Ariane 6 simply costs more than the reusable Falcon 9.

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Yutu-2 travels almost 300 meters on ninth lunar day

8:54 am

According to a story today in official Chinese state-run media, Yutu-2 traveled another 284.99 meters during its ninth lunar day on the surface of the Moon, and has now been placed in hibernation in order to survive the long lunar night.

The story provides no further information, including saying nothing about the strange and unusual material the rover supposedly spotted during this time period.

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Chandrayaan-2 locates Vikram

8:28 am

According to K. Sivan, the head of ISRO, India’s space agency, their Chandrayaan-2 orbiter has captured a thermal image of Vikram on the lunar surface, pinpointing the lander’s location.

They have not released the image. According to reports today, they do not yet know the lander’s condition, and have not regained communications. Reports late yesterday had quoted K.Sivan as saying “It must have been a hard-landing.” That quote is not in today’s reports.

In watching the landing and the subsequent reports out of India, it appears that India is having trouble dealing with this failure. To give the worst example, I watched a television anchor fantasize, twenty minutes after contact had been lost, that the lander must merely be hovering above the surface looking for a nice place to land. Most of the reports are not as bad, but all seem to want to minimize the failure, to an extreme extent.

Their grief is understandable, because their hopes were so high. At the same time, you can’t succeed in this kind of challenging endeavor without an uncompromising intellectual honesty, which means you admit failure as quickly as possible, look hard at the failure to figure out why it happened, and then fix the problem. If India can get to that place it will be a sign that they are maturing as a nation. At the moment it appears they are not quite there.

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Vikram fails to land on Moon

1:26 pm

Vikram, India’s first attempt to soft land on the Moon, apparently has failed, with something apparently going wrong in the very last seconds before landing.

As I write this they have not officially announced anything, but the live feed shows a room of very unhappy people.

It is possible the lander made it and has not yet sent back word, but such a confirmation should not take this long.

India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, was given a very short briefing by K. Sivan, head of ISRO, and then apparently left without comment. This I found an interesting contrast to the actions of Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu when its lunar lander Beresheet failed in landing earlier this year. Netanyahu came out to comfort the workers in mission control, congratulating them for getting as far as they had. Modi apparently simply left. UPDATE: Modi has reappeared to talk to the children who had won a contest to see the landing as well as people in mission control. After making a public statement he has now left.

They are now confirming that communications was lost at 2.1 kilometers altitude, which was just before landing. They are analyzing the data right now to figure out what went wrong.

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Results released of July Vega launch failure investigation

9:15 am

The European Space Agency (ESA) this week released the results of its investigation into the July 10, 2019 launch failure of Arianespace’s Vega rocket, the first such failure after 14 successful launches.

The failure had occurred about the time the first stage had separated and the second stage Z23 rocket motor was to ignite. The investigation has found that the separation and second stage ignition both took place as planned, followed by “a sudden and violent event” fourteen seconds later, which caused the rocket to break up.

They now have pinned that event to “a thermo-structural failure in the forward dome area of the Z23 motor.”

The report says they plan to complete corrective actions and resume launches by the first quarter of 2020.

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Township shuts fire company because one member spoke to Proud Boys

1:42 pm

They’re coming for you next: A local Pennsylvania township has shut down an entire voluntary fire company because it refused to blacklist a member who also happened to have expressed interest in joining the Proud Boys organization.

Officials in Haverford Township, in Delaware County, were informed on Aug. 12 that a volunteer with the Bon Air Fire Company was affiliated with “an organization described as an extremist group,” the township’s manager David Burman wrote in a statement released Thursday.

The township immediately launched an investigation, which included interviewing the volunteer, who admitted he was involved with the Proud Boys, Burman said. The volunteer revealed he had attended social gatherings hosted by the group and had passed two of the group’s four initiation steps, “which includes hazing.”

Burman’s statement quoted the group’s “self-proclaimed basic tenet,” posted on their website, that they are “Western chauvinists who refuse to apologize for creating the modern world.” The proclamation belongs to the Proud Boys, who “are known for anti-Muslim and misogynistic rhetoric,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which designates them as a hate group. Women and transgender men are not allowed in the group.

While the volunteer “indicated that he had attempted to distance himself from the group in recent months” Burman and a police official met with Bon Air Fire Company officials on Aug. 14 to address “the seriousness of this matter and urged the fire company to address it.”

Burman said he was informed the next day that the volunteer had offered his resignation, but the Bon Air Fire Company chief had refused to accept it. A week later, Burman said he received an email that said the fire company’s board had “found no basis for terminating the volunteer’s membership.”

First, the accusations of bigotry by the Southern Poverty Law Center are pure slander and libel. There is no evidence of this. The Proud Boys are admittedly a male-only organization, but so what? This isn’t proof of bigotry, no matter what the modern idiotic political correct leftist interpretation claims. And the organization’s proud favoring of western civilization over other cultures, such as Islam, actually has strong empirical proof, for anyone who has read any history at all. These slanders are part of Obama’s legacy of hate, whereby liberals now have the freedom to label anyone who disagrees with them bigots and hate-mongers, without any evidence.

I applaud the fire company for standing up for the freedom of speech of one of its members. I wish that there would be an outpouring of support for them in this locality in Pennsylvania. They should be honored for defending freedom, and telling the local petty dictators on the township’s government to go to hell.

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Democrats at climate forum: Ban everything!

9:24 am

Fascists: When asked by CNN interviewers during that network’s seven hour pro-Democratic climate forum yesterday what they would do to prevent global warming, it appears that the primary solution by every Democratic presidential candidate was to ban things.

Democrats appearing at CNN’s marathon 7-hour global warming forum have a plan to solve a changing climate: Ban everything!

Over the course of the television extravaganza, Democrats’ leading 2020 presidential candidates floated a variety of proposals to cut Americans’ energy use and, ostensibly, to stop the climate from changing. Among them: Bans on plastic straws, red meat, incandescent lightbulbs, gas-powered cars, nuclear energy, off-shore drilling, fracking, natural gas exports, coal plants, and even “carbon” itself.

The article goes on to detail each candidate’s banning proposals, all of which were similar, mindless, and based on an incredible level of ignorance about the climate and science. Bernie Sanders however probably gave us the most revealing and honest glimpse into all their mindsets with his suggestion that human life itself was the problem.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) went the furthest, saying we should try to minimize human life itself to help the environment. Sanders said he’d use taxpayer money to help fund 3rd world population control programs: “The answer has everything to do with the fact that women in the United States of America, by the way, have a right to control their own bodies and make reproductive decisions. And the Mexico City agreement, which denies American aid to those organizations around the world that allow women to have abortions or even get involved in birth control to me is totally absurd.” [emphasis mine]

No one should be surprised by this. Every socialist/communist/totalitarian movement in the past has always led inevitably to the killing of millions. For them, their ideas are much more important than people, and should those people get in the way, well then, they must be removed, by force and by gas chambers if necessary.

Be prepared. Should one of these power-hungry leftists win the White House they will be coming for you next.

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San Fran government declares NRA (and its members) terrorists

2:12 pm

They’re coming for you next: The San Francisco Board of Supervisors, all Democrats, yesterday voted unanimously to declare the National Rifle Association a domestic terrorist organization.

[The resolution blames the] NRA … for causing gun violence. “The National Rifle Association musters its considerable wealth and organizational strength to promote gun ownership and incite gun owners to acts of violence,” the resolution reads. The resolution also claims that the NRA “spreads propaganda,” “promotes extremist positions,” and has “through its advocacy has armed those individuals who would and have committed acts of terrorism.”

In addition to calling the NRA a domestic terrorist organization, the Board of Supervisors called on the city and county of San Francisco to “take every reasonable step to limit … entities who do business with the City and County of San Francisco from doing business” with the NRA.

You can read the resolution here [pdf]. Its aim is to blacklist this legal organization made of about five million Americans. It also aims to forbid any legal agreements between any businesses in San Francisco and the NRA, as well as encourage all other city, state, and federal governments to do the same.

Ah, blacklists! I remember them well. There was once a time that Democrats considered blacklists to be the font of all evil, and proof that anyone who suggested them was a fascist. Now that the left proposes such things they stand for justice and righteousness.

Nor is this the only example. Recently several Hollywood television actors called for the publication of all attendees to a Trump fundraiser in Beverly Hills, so that they could make a list of people to blacklist. Fortunately, a lot of other Hollywood stars balked, criticizing the idea.

Nonetheless, this is where the leftist Democratic Party is headed. Either you agree with them, or you must be squelched, in every way possible.

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China withdraws extradition bill that sparked Hong Kong protests

10:36 am

The Hong Kong government today announced that it is withdrawing the extradition bill demanded by China that sparked Hong Kong protests.

Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, said Wednesday that the government would withdraw a contentious extradition bill that ignited months of protests in the city, moving to quell the worst political crisis since the former British colony returned to Chinese control 22 years ago.

The move eliminates a major objection among protesters, but it was unclear if it would be enough to bring an end to intensifying demonstrations, which are now driven by multiple grievances with the government.

“Incidents over these past two months have shocked and saddened Hong Kong people,” she said in an eight-minute televised statement broadcast shortly before 6 p.m. “We are all very anxious about Hong Kong, our home. We all hope to find a way out of the current impasse and unsettling times.”

Her decision comes as the protests near their three-month mark and show little sign of abating, roiling a city known for its orderliness and hurting its economy.

The article suggests that the protests will still go on, that the “genie is out of the bottle.” I am not so sure.

Regardless, what this means is that, as of now, China is admitting that its effort to eliminate Hong Kong’s democratic systems and fold it completely into the communist power structure of the mainland has failed. This does not mean that China will stop trying, merely that they will now pause in this effort.

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The end of the Thirty Meter Telescope?

9:54 am

The arriving dark age: It appears that the protests in Hawaii that are preventing the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope might end up killing the telescope completely.

The problem is twofold. First, the Democratic-controlled government in Hawaii is willing to let the protesters run the show, essentially allowing a mob to defy the legal rulings of the courts:

The Native Hawaiian protesters blocking the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on the summit of Mauna Kea appear to have settled in for the long haul. After 2 months of protests, their encampment on the Mauna Kea access road has shops, a cafeteria, and meeting spaces. “It’s like a small village,” says Sarah Bosman, an astronomer from University College London who visited in July. “There are signs up all over the island. It was a bit overwhelming really.”

Second, there is opposition to the alternate backup site in the Grand Canary Islands, both from local environmental groups and from within the consortium that is financing the telescope’s construction.

Astronomers say that the 2250-meter-high site, about half as high as Mauna Kea, is inferior for observations. Canada, one of six TMT partners—which also include Japan, China, India, the California Institute of Technology, and the University of California—is especially reluctant to make the move and could withdraw from the $1.4 billion project, which can ill afford to lose funding. Finally, an environmental group on La Palma called Ben Magec is determined to fight the TMT in court and has succeeded in delaying its building permit. It says the conservation area that the TMT wants to build on contains archaeological artifacts. “They’re willing to fight tooth and nail to stop TMT,” says Thayne Currie, an astronomer at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California.

We now live in a culture that is opposed to new knowledge. It is also a culture that prefers mob rule, giving power to the loudest and possibly most violent protesters, while treating the law as a mere inconvenience to be abandoned at the slightest whim of those mobs.

If this doesn’t define a dark age, I’m not sure what does.

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Vikram makes second and last lunar orbital change

9:40 am

The new colonial movement: India’s Vikram lunar lander today made its second and last orbital change, preparing itself for landing on the Moon on September 7.

The orbit of Vikram Lander is 35 km x 101 km. Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter continues to orbit the Moon in an orbit of 96 km x 125 km and both the Orbiter and Lander are healthy.

With this maneuver the required orbit for the Vikram Lander to commence it descent towards the surface of the Moon is achieved. The Lander is scheduled to powered descent between 0100 – 0200 hrs IST on September 07, 2019, which is then followed by touch down of Lander between 0130 – 0230 hrs IST

They plan to roll the rover Pragyan off of Vikram about two hours after landing.

This article provides a nice overview of the mission.

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