Tag: politics

SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy wins Air Force launch contract

8:45 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX has won a $130 million Air Force contract to use its Falcon Heavy rocket to launch a military satellite.

The Falcon Heavy beat out a bid from United Launch Alliance for the mission labeled Air Force Space Command-52, or AFSPC-52, which is targeting liftoff from KSC’s pad 39A in 2020.

United Launch Alliance’s most powerful launcher, the Delta IV Heavy, has a price tag approaching $400 million.

The price comparison bears repeating: ULA: $400 million, SpaceX: $130. It is not surprising that SpaceX got the contract, though it does illustrate the difference between the Air Force’s space effort and NASA’s. The Air Force is making a concrete and real effort to lower its launch costs, using competition as a tool to do so. NASA, which faces the same kind of price comparison when comparing SLS to SpaceX, continues however to ignore that price difference and insist its future interplanetary manned programs must go with SLS, and SLS only.

In this context, I think this graph from Capitalism in Space is worth another look:

SLS vs commercial space

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Hawaii’s Supreme Court to review TMT’s permit, again

8:36 am

Hawaii’s Supreme Court is set to review, for the second time, the construction permit for the Thirty Meter Telescope.

Much of the arguments centered around whether it was a conflict of interest for a hearings officer who made a key recommendation in favor of the project to be a member of a Hawaii astronomy center. The state allowed retired judge Riki May Amano to preside over contested-case hearings for the contentious project despite complaints from telescope opponents who decried her paid membership to the Imiloa Astronomy Center.

The Big Island center is connected to the University of Hawaii, which is the permit applicant.

Opponents appealed to the Supreme Court after Amano recommended granting the permit and the state land board approved it. “She should have never presided over the case,” Richard Wurdeman, an attorney representing telescope opponents, told the justices. He noted the center included exhibits about the project planned for the Big Island’s Mauna Kea, Hawaii’s tallest mountain.

The details don’t really matter. Nor will the decision. The protesters will simply find another petty issue if they lose, and will appeal again. Their goal, apparently supported covertly by Hawaii’s Democratic government, is to delay, delay, and delay, until the consortium building TMT is forced to abandon Hawaii.

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McCain’s office joined Democrats in encouraging IRS to harass conservatives

7:54 pm

Working for the Democratic Party: Newly released documents show that an official working for Senator John McCain’s (R-Arizona) joined the Democrats in encouraging the IRS to harass conservative groups.

Judicial Watch today released newly obtained internal IRS documents, including material revealing that Sen. John McCain’s former staff director and chief counsel on the Senate Homeland Security Permanent Subcommittee, Henry Kerner, urged top IRS officials, including then-director of exempt organizations Lois Lerner, to “audit so many that it becomes financially ruinous.” [emphasis mine]

Want to what really stinks about this? The meeting where McCain’s staffer suggested this came only ten days before Lois Lerner “admitted that the IRS had a policy of improperly and deliberately delaying applications for tax-exempt status from conservative non-profit groups.” In other words, McCain was all-in with the idea of weaponizing the IRS for political purposes.

Want to know what stinks even more? Henry Kerner was appointed by President Trump in 2017 to take over the Office of Special Council, a federal office focused on protecting whistleblowers while acting as a watchdog to prevent partisan political action by government agencies, in violation of the Hatch Act.

Boy, that sure is draining the swamp, President Trump. Keep at it!

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Too much hate

12:54 pm

I will admit that my posting right now is somewhat lax, mostly because I am depressed and appalled at the level of hate and vitriol coming from the left, against Trump, against his family and children, against Republicans, against anyone who dares express an opinion or take an action that the left disagrees with.

The stories below are only a very very very small sample of similar stories in the past two weeks.

The last story has one further important detail: One of the thugs who harassed Nielsen in the restaurant also works at the Department of Justice.

Civilized people do not act this way. It is beyond the pale, and if it doesn’t stop some very bad things are going to happen, and happen very soon.

Much of this recent hate is centered on Trump’s tough immigration policy, and is generally based on ignorance and emotion, or downright disinformation. Somehow, all the problems we face are Trump’s fault, even though Trump’s arrest policy for illegal immigrants is merely the same policy followed by the Obama administration, but enforced in a more aggressive manner. (Unlike under Obama, no one is being released under their own recognizance.) It is also a policy that is following laws written and passed back in 2008, and signed by Republican president George Bush.

It is perfectly reasonable to disagree with Trump’s approach on immigration and to try to get it changed. Readers of this website know that I myself disagree strongly with Trump on many issues, and have had decidedly mixed opinions so far about the success or failure of his presidency.

To threaten, harass, shout curses, and menace the children of lawmakers over these issues however is unacceptable. It does not solve anything, and can only lead to worse injustices.

I find this situation even more depressing because I do not see anything changing for the better. Instead, I see it getting worse, day by day. The left will simply not accept the results of the 2016 election, and appears willing to do anything to overturn it. Nor do I see the type of voter groundswell necessary that will tell the leaders on the left that this behavior must stop. Their voters remain firmly on their side, and if anything, quite willing to endorse the hate and invective being spouted by their leaders.

So, forgive me if I am “going Galt” over this. I am an optimist at heart, and like to write about positive human endeavors. Unfortunately, it is harder to spot these positive endeavors when the culture is overwhelmed by a dust storm of hate.

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Obama administration ordered a “stand down” of work to stop Russian election interference

10:02 am

The real Russian collusion: When it was evident that the Russians were trying to use the internet to interfere with the election in August 2016, the Obama administration instead ordered a “stand down” of any work that might have stopped that interference.

Former President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity czar confirmed Wednesday that former national security adviser Susan Rice told him to “stand down” in response to Russian cyber attacks during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Michael Daniel, whose official title was “cybersecurity coordinator,” confirmed the stand-down order during a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing held to review the Obama and President Donald Trump’s administrations’ policy response to Russian election interference.

…“Don’t get ahead of us,” [Rice] told Daniel in a meeting in August 2016, according to the book.

Daniel informed his staff of the order, much to their frustration. “I was incredulous and in disbelief,” Daniel Prieto, who worked under Daniel, is quoted saying in “Russian Roulette.”

“Why the hell are we standing down? Michael, can you help us understand?” Prieto asked.

It appears that the Obama administration wanted the Russians to interfere with the election, and this desire was part of their effort at the FBI to frame the Russian collusion story on Trump. They needed the interference to justify the FBI Russian investigation, which had just been instigated in late July 2016. Stopping the Russians (and defending the American electoral process) was therefore not in their interest.

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UAE signs deal with Russia for UAE astronaut flight

9:50 am

The new colonial movement: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Russia signed an agreement this week to fly an UAE astronaut on a Russian Soyuz capsule to ISS in April 2019.

The mission will be a standard 10-day tourist mission, though of course they are not describing it like that. The announcement also does not state if the UAE paid Russia for this flight, but I expect so, just like any tourist flight. The price however was likely a lot less than Russia has been squeezing from the U.S. for its astronaut flights. UAE had also been discussing this with China, and the competition probably forced Russia to lower its price.

I had been hoping that one of the U.S.’s commercial capsules could have gotten this business, but because of the delays NASA has imposed on their initial launches, they haven’t yet flown, so they lost the chance to compete for this.

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European satellite designed to test space junk removal released from ISS

9:40 am

Europe’s RemoveDEBRIS satellite was released from ISS yesterday in preparation for its testing a variety of technologies for removing and deorbiting space junk.

The article at the link does a terrible job trying to describe this mission. Better to return to a news story from 2016, when Europe first announced this project. The video from that story, embedded below the fold, does an excellent job detailing the four experiments, which are mostly aimed at testing technologies that could be added to satellites that would make either their capture or deorbit easier.

Maybe the most interesting aspect of this mission however is how it got into space. It was launched as part of a SpaceX Dragon cargo mission. It was deployed by NanoRacks, using its privately developed deployment system attached to Japan’s Kibo module.

Launch from ISS means that the satellite’s deployment and orbit were far more controllable than if it had been launched directly into space as a secondary payload during a rocket launch. NanoRacks is selling this approach commercially, and this satellite is the largest deployed by them to date.
» Read more

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Senate kills House bill to cut $15 billion from passed $300 billion spending deal

11:29 am

Failure theater: The Senate today killed a House bill that would have cut $15 billion from the $300 billion spending deal passed in March.

In a 48-50 vote, senators failed to discharge the measure from committee. A majority vote was needed.

GOP Sens. Richard Burr (N.C.) and Susan Collins (Maine) joined 48 members of the Democratic caucus in voting against bringing up the bill. “My belief … is that it’s the job of Congress to comb through these accounts and that’s what we do on the appropriations committee,” Collins said.

The vote is a blow to conservatives and the White House, who pushed the package in response to backlash from the GOP base over a mammoth rescissions package passed in March.

I wish Burr and Collins would simply switch parties. At least that way there would be no way for them to fool anyone into thinking they believe in smaller government or controlling spending.

The bill was garbage anyway, as it really did little to really promote smaller government or controlled spending. All it did was give House Republicans a fake talking point when they campaign for re-election in the fall. “I fought to cut the budget!” they will scream, citing the House vote that passed the bill, even though they all knew the bill did little, and that it was almost certain the Senate would kill it.

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Congressman unmasks two unnamed anti-Trump FBI agents in IG report

9:31 am

Congressman Mark Meadows (R-North Carolina) yesterday identified two of the FBI agents described in the inspector general’s report as having expressed anti-Trump and pro-Clinton biases in many texts.

The previously unnamed FBI officials — “FBI Attorney 2” and “Agent 5” — are Kevin Clinesmith and Sally Moyer, respectively, according to House Judiciary Committee member Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), who revealed their identities over the objection of the FBI during a hearing on the IG’s findings.

The two were assigned to the bureau’s Hillary Clinton email investigation, according to the IG’s report, while Clinesmith also later worked as a top lawyer on the Trump-Russia investigation and the special-counsel probe.

Clinesmith sent a number of pro-Clinton, anti-Trump political messages over the FBI’s computer system, which the report said “raised concerns about potential bias” that may have impacted the investigation. Likewise, the report cited Moyer rooting for Clinton and bashing Trump during the 2016 campaign.

Meadows noted that the reasons given by the FBI to inspector general Horowitz for hiding their identities were completely bogus.

Horowitz testified that the FBI was withholding the names of the other rogue agents from Congress and the public because “they work on counterintelligence” and can’t be exposed.

But Meadows argued that both Clinesmith and Moyer work for the FBI’s office of legal counsel, and are no longer in “counterintelligence,” as the FBI claimed. “They don’t work in counterintelligence,” Meadows said in an exchange with Horowitz. “If that’s the reason the FBI is giving, they’re giving you false information, because they work for the general counsel.”

Where is Trump? As far as I can tell, these agents are still employed at the FBI (as is Peter Strzok), despite the fact that their documented conduct violated numerous FBI regulations related to employee conduct. Strzok might have been escorted from the FBI yesterday, but he is still on the payroll.

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Trump replaces Obama’s oceans policy

9:09 am

President Trump yesterday issued an executive order replacing the oceans policy Obama had established with a policy that emphasizes “…the economy, security, global competitiveness, and well-being of the United States.”

The full executive order is here. The Science article at the link above not surprisingly provides quotes from a number of Trump opponents, including the head of NOAA during Obama’s administration, to express their opposition to this change.

One author of the Obama oceans policy is disappointed. The Trump policy “represents a significant step backward, a throwback to the 1960s when the primary focus was on aggressively expanding the use of the ocean with the assumption that it is so immense, so bountiful that it must be inexhaustible,” marine ecologist Jane Lubchenco, who led the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under Obama, tells ScienceInsider. “We learned through painful experience that the ocean is indeed exhaustible, but we also learned that if we are smart about how we use the ocean, it can provide a wealth of benefits for decades and decades.”

Obama’s policy had emphasized “stewardship,” she notes—a word not used in the new order. Trump “blatantly rejects this all-important focus on stewardship,” Lubchenco says. “Put another way, the policy reflects a shift from ‘use it without using it up’ to a very short-sighted and cavalier ‘use it aggressively and irresponsibly.’”

Lubchenco is significantly overstating the negatives of Trump’s new policy. Its language is hardly “aggressive” or “irresponsible.” It does shift the focus from restricting the use of the oceans by regulation to encouraging their use for the “economic, security, and environmental benefits for present and future generations of Americans.” It that context the policy recognizes that “clean, healthy waters” are essential to provide those benefits.

I suspect that little will really change with this order. It will take years, if ever, to get the federal bureaucracy to shift its culture from controlling what Americans do to working with them. Nonetheless, this order demonstrates that Trump, unlike the past two Republican presidents, is serious about shifting federal policy in a conservative and less intrusive direction. The Bushes mouthed conservative ideas, but did little to stop the over-regulation imposed by the federal government. Bush Jr was especially worthless, as he did practically nothing to overturn the regulations that Clinton imposed, and in many ways supplemented or encouraged more regulation.

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A guide to spygate, from a retired FBI agent

10:45 pm

Link here. He gives us the educated perspective of someone who worked at the bureau and understands the bureaucratic requirements that are involved with any investigation. What he finds clarifies much of what has happened, and does so in a way that strengthens the case that the upper management of the FBI was involved in an effort to prevent Trump’s election, and if that failed, create a situation where he could be forced out thereafter.

The article is also helpful in that it helps place many of the Strzok-Page texts in context, something that also strengthens the case against them and the agency.

More and more, it appears that the FBI and the Obama Justice Department were working to nullify the 2016 Presidential election, to fix it in order to guarantee a Democratic Party victory. Many people should go to jail for this.

And if they don’t, we will no longer have a constitutional government, of, for, and by the people.

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U.S. withdraws from UN Human Rights Council

3:34 pm

As long promised if it didn’t reform its anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli biases, the U.S. today officially withdrew from UN Human Rights Council.

I especially like the blunt statement by U.S. UN ambassador Nikki Haley in announcing the withdrawal:

“For too long, [the U.N. Human Rights Council] has been a protector of human rights abusers and a cesspool of political bias,” Ms. Haley said in announcing the move during a joint appearance at the State Department with Mr. Pompeo.

“Regrettably,” she added, “it is now clear that our call for reform was not heeded.”

It appears that this withdrawal means that the council will no longer be getting any U.S. funds.

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Why is Peter Strzok still employed by the FBI?

11:03 am

The headline is essentially taken from this article, that asks this pertinent question in the context of the claim by FBI director Christopher Wray that “We will not hesitate to hold people accountable.”

Yet, the only thing Wray has so far done is to organize “in-depth focused training” sessions for FBI employees. No agent specifically described in the inspector general report has been fired, despite this fact:

[Strzok’s] expressed animus for Donald Trump and advocacy for Hillary Clinton in official and unofficial forums while participating in investigations of both were enough for Robert Mueller to remove him from the special counsel team. The text message, “we’ll stop it,” was known to the FBI well ahead of the release of this IG report.

If Wray isn’t hesitating to hold people accountable, why is Strzok still employed by the FBI? As Michael Horowitz told the House Oversight Committee today, even the suggestion that a high-ranking FBI agent would consider using his authority to impact an election is “antithetical” to an apolitical enforcement of the law. Horowitz also acknowledged that Strzok’s communications, and those of Lisa Page and three others involved in these conversations, created a “cloud” over both investigations that cannot easily be dismissed.

It has been more than a year since Strzok was removed by Mueller. The FBI has known of his misconduct (as well as Lisa Page’s) earlier than that. Yet Strzok remains employed by the FBI.

The problem here is not simply FBI Director Wray. He works for Donald Trump, who has the authority and power to fire everyone at the FBI. Yet, nothing happens.

As I said earlier, if sensitivity training is the only punishment that the Trump administration imposes on the FBI and Justice Department after these revelations then we are very very doomed. The corruption in both these very powerful agencies will only blossom, with everyone there now aware that nothing will happen to them if they act to interfere with the nation’s electoral process.

Update: One news story today says that Peter Strzok was escorted from FBI building. Whether he has been officially fired remains unclear.

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What yesterday’s National Space Council meeting really reveals

9:39 am

Link here. While most news articles about yesterday’s third public meeting of the National Space Council are focused on Trump’s apparently off-the-cuff announcement that he wants a new military branch dubbed the “Space Force,” the story at the link provides a nice summary of the entire meeting, including a look at the presentations by four astronauts, two scientists, and one businessman.

The panel of former astronauts also offered some more general advice, including the importance of international and commercial partnerships, seeking bipartisan support to ensure the long-term viability of NASA’s exploration plan, and more outreach to the public. “We have got to get the support of the American people by getting the message out to people,” Collins said.

That panel came after another panel of two space scientists and one businessman who has flown payloads on the ISS. They argued for the importance of both human and robotic exploration, rather than one taking precedence over the other.

One of the astronauts came out against LOP-G, but his alternative suggestion was not really very different from that proposed by the other astronauts, calling for a massive NASA-run Apollo-style government space project:

Appearing on a panel during the meeting at the White House, Terry Virts said that the proposed Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway, a human-tended facility in orbit around the moon, wasn’t an effective next step in human spaceflight beyond Earth orbit after the International Space Station. “It essentially calls for building another orbital space station, a skill my colleagues and I have already demonstrated on the ISS,” he said. “Gateway will only slow us down, taking time and precious dollars away from the goal of returning to the lunar surface and eventually flying to Mars.”

Virts wasn’t specific on what should replace the Gateway as that next step but called for an Apollo-like model of stepping-stone missions to return to the moon, with ISS, he said, serving well as the Mercury role.

Meanwhile, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine gave his full endorsement of LOP-G.

Virts’ comments came after NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said the Gateway played an essential role in developing a long-term, sustainable human presence at the moon. “This is our opportunity to have more access to more parts of the moon than ever before,” he said of the Gateway, a reference to its ability to shift orbits using its electric propulsion system. He also played up the role of the Gateway in bringing in international and commercial partners while taking a leadership role in space exploration.

“The goal is sustainability,” he said. “When we’re going to the moon, as the president said in his speech, this time we’re going to stay, and the Gateway gives us that great opportunity.”

What we can glean from these presentations, all very carefully staged by the council to support what it wants the government to do in space, is that the Trump administration is going full gang-busters for another big Kennedy-like government space program, launched by SLS. They haven’t announced it yet, but they are definitely moving to propose such a program.

And such a program will cost billions, take forever to do anything (if it does anything at all), and accomplish nothing but spread pork to congressional districts while sustaining the big space companies like Lockheed Martin and Boeing and possibly reshaping the new space companies — tempted by the big cash being offered by the government — into becoming as bloated and as uncreative.

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Dubai to fund 36 science space projects

9:20 am

The new colonial movement: Dubai has chosen 36 science space projects to fund out of 260 proposals from across the world.

The 36 funded projects include some from universities in the United States, Poland, the UK, and Italy and deal with a variety of topics, ranging from mushrooms on Mars to the study of possible landing sites on the planet.

The article at the link provides very few details. It appears that Dubai’s program is designed to bring in international talent to help train its own people in the science and engineering of space.

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S7 Space wants to build Soviet era rocket engines

9:14 am

The private Russian company S7 Space, which recently took over Sea Launch, wants to buy the blueprints and resume building the Soviet era rocket engines developed for the N1 heavy-lift rocket.

Russia’s S7 Space, part of the S7 Group, plans to build a plant in Samara to produce Soviet-designed NK-33 and NK-43 rocket engines for super heavy-lift launch vehicles and intends to purchase production capacities from the state-owned United Engine Corporation (UEC) for this purpose, S7 Space General Director Sergey Sopov said in an interview.

“We would like to buy from the state the well-known engines NK-33 and NK-43, produced earlier by the Samara-based Kuznetsov plant, as well as the documentation, equipment, technical backlog. In general, everything that has survived on this theme from the Soviet program. We intend to restore production and build our own rocket engine plant in Samara,” Sopov said in an interview to be published in the Vedomosti newspaper.

As with everything now in Russia, this company not only needs to buy the rights to these engines, it needs to get government permission to do this. Also, because it will take five to six years to get the new engine plant up and running, they plan in the interim to use the available engines left over from the 1960s. Considering the launch failure caused by one of these engines in an Orbital ATK Antares launch, I am not sure this is wise.

Overall, S7 Space has the right idea. The company wants to compete, and it wants to innovate. Whether it can do so in the top-down culture of Russia remains the unanswered question.

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Some victories against modern leftist oppression

2:15 pm

Increasingly, the overbearing and sometimes violent effort by the left to squelch dissenting views is being met by legal action, and increasingly it appears that legal action is producing positive results. In just the last few days, we have just a few examples:

The last story is especially interesting. The city councillors of Charlottesville are being sued for their decision to remove two Confederate statues. The judge ruled that these councillors could be personally liable should they lose the case, especially because their action appears to directly violate a state law.

In the nine-page letter, Moore says that he thinks the council “was acting beyond its authority” and that it was not a “legitimate” legislative activity when the council voted to remove the statues, in contravention with a state law that prohibits the disturbance or removal of war memorials.

The left has for decades been able to violate laws like this with impunity. All of the cases above are examples of that kind of nonchalance to the law and to the truth. In the past no one would challenge them on their acts, and they would get away with it. It appears now that the right is beginning to finally push back, and with some success.

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Trump orders Defense Dept to create “Space Force”

12:42 pm

The swamp wins! President Trump today issued an order that the Defense Department create a separate branch of the military to be called the Space Force.

The president then ordered the secretary of defense to “establish a space force of the sixth branch of the armed forces.” He called on General Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, to help create the new arm of American military might.

Trump also blathered that he will “establish a long-term presence on the Moon,” followed by a mission to Mars.

In other words, he is all-in on LOP-G, the next big boondoggle following SLS.

For me, this is very depressing. It indicates that government space policy will continue to be bankrupt, spending money on big projects that never get finished and on a worthless military department that will be entirely useless.

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The modern non-debate over climate, or anything

11:28 am

Last week there was a much bally-hooed public event where several very well known scientists from both sides of the global-warming debate were given an opportunity to make their case before the public. Though they were not the only speakers, the two names that were of the most interest were Michael Mann (global warming advocate) and Judith Curry (global warming skeptic).

Mann’s appearance was especially intriguing, because he has very carefully insulated himself from any unpredictable public questioning in the decade since the climategate emails were released (revealing that his objectivity and rigor as a scientist could be considered very questionable). With Curry as an opposing panelist it seemed to me that this event could produce some interesting fireworks.

The event was in West Virginia, too far away for me to attend. However, one of my caving buddies from back when I lived in DC and caved monthly in West Virginia, John Harman, lives in West Virginia and as the owner of a company that builds space-related equipment I knew he’d be interested. I let him know about the event, and he decided to make the two and a half hour drive to watch.

Below is John’s detailed report on the event. You can see Judith Curry’s full presentation and script here.

I only have one comment, indicated by my headline above. The way this event was staged was specifically designed to prevent a real debate. There was no vibrant give and take between participants. Instead, the speakers were each given time to make their presentation, and then were faced with what appeared to be preplanned questions. Very staged. When Curry was given a question she didn’t expect, she said so, and was surprised.

This is not how real science is done. Michael Mann strongly pushes the theory that the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, caused by human-activity, is warming the climate. His work has been strongly challenged by qualified scientists like Judith Curry. For science, and the truth, to prosper, Mann has to be willing to face those challenges directly, and address them. Instead, this event as well as every other public forum that Mann has participated in for the past decade have all been designed to protect him from those challenges. Nor has Mann been the only global warming enthusiast protected in this way.

The result is a decline in intellectual rigor and the rise of politics and propaganda within the climate science community, as noted by Curry in her last slide. She calls this “The Madhouse effect”:

The madhouse is characterized by

  • Rampant overconfidence in an overly simplistic theory of climate change
  • Enforcement of a politically-motivated, manufactured ‘consensus’
  • Attempts to stifle scientific and policy debates
  • Activism and advocacy for their preferred politics and policy
  • Self-promotion and ‘cashing in’
  • Public attacks on other scientists that do not support the ‘consensus’

Curry notes that she was forced out of academia expressly because of these factors, merely because she expressed skepticism concerning the hypothesis of human-caused global warming.

The worst part of this lack of debate is that it now permeates our society. In every area of importance to our nation’s future, debate is now impossible. The left, to which global warming activists like Michael Mann routinely belong, will not tolerate it, and will do anything to avoid it, even so far as to destroy the careers of anyone who dares challenge them. This is what Mann advocated in the climategate emails, and this is exactly what happened to Judith Curry.

Anyway, take a look at John’s very fair-minded report of the event. You will find it quite edifying.
» Read more

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Questions raised about NEOWISE asteroid data analysis

10:05 am

A computer entrepreneur has raised questions about the data analysis used by the scientists in charge of NASA’s NEOWISE space telescope (formerly called the Wide-field Infrared Space Telescope, or WISE).

Myhrvold, a former chief technologist for Microsoft, founded the patent-buying firm Intellectual Ventures in Bellevue, Washington, in 2000; on the side, he pursues interests ranging from modernist cuisine to palaeontology. A few years ago, he began exploring ways to detect dangerous space rocks. He soon argued3 that the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, a ground-based telescope being built in Chile, would have the capacity to find nearly all the same asteroids as NASA’s proposed successor to NEOWISE, called NEOCam.

That turned his attention to how asteroids could be studied in space, and to the NEOWISE data. “I thought, this will be great, maybe we’ll be able to find some new and interesting things in here,” he says. But Myhrvold soon became frustrated with the quality and analysis of the data. He posted a critical preprint on arXiv in May 2016, and the peer-review game was on.

His first peer-reviewed critique was published in Icarus in March4. In it, he explored the mathematics of how asteroids radiate heat, and said that the NEOWISE team should have accounted for such effects more thoroughly in its work.

The latest paper1 holds the bulk of the NEOWISE critique. Among other things, Myhrvold argues that the NEOWISE team applied many different modelling techniques to many different combinations of data to achieve its final results. He also criticizes the choice to include previously published data on the diameter of certain asteroids in the data set, rather than using NEOWISE measurements — which, though less precise, are at least consistent with the rest of the database. Such choices undermine the statistical rigour of the database, he says.

Alan Harris, a planetary scientist with the consulting firm MoreData! in La Cañada Flintridge, California, was one of the paper’s reviewers. “In my opinion, it has important things to say,” he says. “It is my hope that the scientific community will read the paper and pay attention to the analysis Myhrvold has presented, as he has raised a number of significant issues.”

The disagreement involves the NEOWISE team’s estimate of asteroid sizes, based on the infrared data. Myhrvoid questions their estimates.

More details about the clashes between Myhrvoid and the NEOWISE science team over the past two years can be found here. The NASA scientists do not come off well. They appear to be very defensive, acting to stonewall any review of their work. Repeatedly they attempted to defy Myhrvoid’s FOIA requests (only made when they refused to release their raw data), including redacting significant information for no justifiable reason.

I have really only one question: Does the behavior of these NASA planetary scientists sound familiar? To me it does, and what it reminds me of speaks very badly for the science being done in the NEOWISE mission at NASA.

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The Justice Dept Inspector General report on FBI corruption

11:59 am

The Justice Dept Inspector General report on FBI corruption is now available [pdf].

The report is 568 pages long. I guarantee that almost every news report you read about it today will be based not on a careful reading of the entire report, but on a reading of its executive summary plus some quick dives into relevant but juicy segments within.

Nonetheless, this paragraph in the executive report I think is significant:

During the course of the review, the OIG [Office of the Inspector General] discovered text messages and instant messages between some FBI employees on the [FBI] investigation team, conducted using FBI mobile devices and computers, that expressed statements of hostility toward then candidate Donald Trump and statements of support for then candidate Clinton.

The quote that is making the biggest headlines so far is Peter Strzok’s statement, in response to Lisa Page’s text that Trump might win, that “No, no he’s not, we’ll stop it.”

However, I did a quick scan of chapter twelve of the report, which is focused on all the texts by FBI officials, and find that this is merely one very minor example of a deeply partisan FBI that was closely aligned with the Democratic Party. Not only were Strzok and Page passionately willing to use the FBI’s powers overturn a legal election because they didn’t like the winning candidate, a Republican, there were other agents that felt the same way.

My own read of the executive summary shows that most of the report covers ground that has already been revealed in past news reports. The report does reveal that former FBI director James Comey was generally incompetent, not partisan. He had a very hot potato in his hands (clearly illegal acts by presidential candidate Hillary Clinton), and didn’t know how to handle the situation. He tried to abstain, then found this was a bad idea. In the end, he only made things worse for everyone, including himself. Moreover, his waffling and inability to demand a straightforward and honest investigation allowed partisan subordinates like Strzok, Page, and others to misuse the FBI and its powers to play politics and corrupt the agency’s investigations.

And without doubt the FBI did misuse its powers and investigative position. This report puts a stain on everything it does, now and into the future. And the bottom line remains the same: The culture in the Washington bureaucracy, and in the FBI, is blindly partisan, and willing to do illegal acts to help the Democratic Party. Trump had better start cleaning house soon, or else this modern praetorian guard will overthrown our democracy.

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UCLA students file criminal complaints against violent meeting disruptors

11:20 am

After seeing no action by UCLA for weeks after protesters disrupted and shutdown a pro-Israel meeting at the university, the students have now begun filing criminal complaints directly with the police.

After the media disclosure [that UCLA had done nothing], numerous students stepped forward to file complaints. The first was Justin Feldman, president of the SSI chapter at Santa Monica College, enrolled at UCLA for the fall semester. Feldman stated he feared for his personal safety during the incident. On June 11, Feldman, who had previously completed a StandWithUs [SWU] high school training program, appeared at the UCLA police department accompanied by Yael Lerman, SWU legal director, to formally file his complaint.

More than a few of the students harassed during the May 17 event were trepidatious about filing a police report. But, according to Lerman, the police made the whole process “comfortable,” acting “helpful and respectful.” After a short wait at the station, officers Robert Chavez and Lowell Rose escorted Feldman into a small room where his report was taken during an hour-long interview in what Lerman described as an “unrushed” session.

Lerman credited Feldman for his actions. “What Justin did in filing was critical in moving the process forward. The [UCLA] administration has known about this for weeks and has chosen not to move this forward. So now the students have to.”

There is video of the protest at the link. It shows a man tearing down one flag and appearing to physically threaten one of the speakers. A mob, following him into the room, then begins chanting (using bullhorns) and blowing whistles. (The main chant, “Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea,” invokes for me many previous bigoted and hateful proclamations by the Arabs that they intent to drive all the Jews “into the sea” to get rid of them.) The police finally arrive, but appear somewhat uninterested in stopping the disruption or allowing the event to continue. Eventually the brownshirts move out into the hall, but continue to chant and make noises, including banging on the door of the classroom where the event was being held. The police continue to do nothing.

This might be a significant development. The article cites several specific California laws that were violated by these protesters. If conservative event organizers and participants begin filing formal criminal complaints every time their event gets shut down by these violent thugs, they might finally force some action by the government and university to stop this misbehavior.

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Private company to offer tourist trips to its own facility on ISS

9:00 am

Capitalism in space: The private company Axiom has announced that it will offer tourist trips to its own facility it will add to ISS, and then eventually detach when the station is retired.

Axiom’s timeline has some flex, because it’s not yet clear how long the larger station will keep going, or what the assembly schedule will be for the company’s custom-built habitation module. But a weekend feature about the project in The New York Times cited 2022 as the supposed opening date.

In addition to the 10-day orbital stay, the $55 million would cover a 15-week training experience on Earth. Axiom is targeting space tourists as well as researchers and entrepreneurs who want to develop in-space manufacturing facilities.

Is this doable? Axiom isn’t yet laying out the complete logistical details, but the company will almost certainly rely on the likes of SpaceX and Boeing, which are developing space taxis for NASA’s use. Once those spaceships go into operation, sometime in the 2018-2019 period, there’s likely to be excess transportation capacity that Axiom could buy into.

This is the future of ISS, a privately run hotel. The Russians have announced a similar plan, attaching a module to ISS that will be designed as a hotel room for tourists. I expect others will eventually do the same. Once these profitable operations take hold, I guarantee that ISS will not be retired. There will be vested interests who will apply the right political pressure to keep it in orbit.

Will that be a good thing? It depends. From a taxpayer perspective, it might not be. ISS is very expensive to operate. Privately built and independent stations would be much cheaper, and would not involve any federal subsidy. At the same time, these private stations might not be doable at affordable prices in the near term. Maintaining ISS for these private companies might in this case be a very reasonably use of federal funds. As the profits rise, the companies will eventually be able to afford building their own stations that will serve their needs better than ISS. That will then be the time to retire ISS, when other private and profitable stations are there, ready to replace it.

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Proposal to split California into three states makes ballot

9:28 pm

A proposal to split California into three states has obtained sufficient signatures to be placed on the ballot in November.

Adding the proposal to the ballot is the first in a long number of steps that would be required to actually split the country’s largest state. Even if California voters supported the proposal in November, the California legislature would still have to vote in favor of it. The breakup would also likely be challenged in court and would need congressional approval, a tough get in today’s hyperpartisan Washington.

The initiative proposes the state to be split into three new states: California, Northern California and Southern California. Each state, though different in size, would have roughly the same population, according to the proposal.

I would not be surprised if the voters approve this proposal, as the state’s fascist and leftist urban areas along the coast have been making life miserable for the rest of the state. And when you treat people badly, they tend to vote against you.

Whether it can make it through the state legislature, dominated by the left, is more doubtful. It is likely the split would reduce the left’s power, and since the legislature is controlled by the left, I suspect they will not go along.

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Connecticut locks all train bathrooms because half are not ADA compliant

4:18 pm

The coming dark age: Because of a complaint, Hartford officials have locked all bathrooms on a new train line because half are not ADA compliant.

Restrooms on half of the Hartford Line trains — those operated by the state as opposed to Amtrak — will remain closed until they are made accessible to individuals with disabilities in early 2019, the state Department of Transportation announced Tuesday. The closure comes in response to a reversed decision from the Federal Railroad Administration, which had previously granted the state a temporary exemption from the Americans for Disabilities Act, according to the DOT.

Disability Rights Connecticut, a nonprofit advocacy group for state residents with disabilities, said it filed an ADA complaint with the FRA on June 8 regarding the new commuter line, which is scheduled to open June 16.

In other words, because a small number of people are unhappy, no one can be happy. They rule, and if they don’t get what they want then no one will get anything.

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Trump-Kim summit ends

8:57 am

The summit meeting between President Trump and North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un took place yesterday with much fanfare, ending with a signed agreement that did little but outline some future negotiating goals.

1. The United States and the DPRK commit to establish new U.S.–DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity.
2. The United States and the DPRK will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.
3. Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
4. The United States and the DPRK commit to recovering POW/MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.

While Trump’s hard-nosed policies toward North Korea has clearly forced that nation to back away from its former bellicose positions, threatening war with everyone, we will have to wait and see if this summit really forces them to abandon their nuclear weapons and missile programs.

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California police raid home, confiscate guns, from man who tried to register AR-15

8:48 am

Fascist California: Police raided the home and confiscated the guns of a man who had made a sincere effort to follow new California laws requiring the registration of his AR-15.

The man also now faces a dozen felony charges.

Jeffrey Scott Kirschenmann attempted to register an AR-15 with the California Department of Justice last month but instead found himself in significant legal trouble. The California DOJ accused Kirschenmann of illegally modifying the rifle he attempted to register. Law enforcement officials raided his home in Bakersfield before ultimately confiscating a dozen firearms and a few hundred rounds of ammunition, then charging him with a dozen felonies, KGET reports. Kirschenmann was accused of possession of assault weapons, two silencers, and something referred to as a “multi-burst trigger activator.” He does not appear to have been charged with any violent crimes.

All this does is drive decent ordinary gun-owners underground. It makes them criminals for doing nothing morally wrong, and thus a target that the state can now oppress.

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Hayabusa-2 takes first photos of target asteroid Ryugu

8:34 am

On June 10 Hayabusa-2 took its first photos of Ryugu, the asteroid it will reach later this month.

The Sunday photos were taken when Hayabusa2 was about 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) from Ryugu. Last week, JAXA released a few ONC-T images taken on June 6, when the probe was 1,615 miles (2,600 km) from the space rock.

Hayabusa2, which launched in December 2014, is scheduled to arrive at Ryugu on or around June 27. At that time, the probe will begin orbiting the asteroid at an altitude of about 12 miles (20 km), JAXA officials have said.

Hayabusa2 will then start prepping for a series of complex, up-close studies of the space rock. If all goes according to plan, over the ensuing 12 months, the spacecraft will deploy three rovers and a lander on Ryugu’s surface, gouge out a small crater using an explosives-bearing impactor, and collect samples from the newly created crater.

The spacecraft will depart Ryugu in November or December 2019, and its collected samples will come back to Earth in a special return capsule in late 2020.

The image suggests that the asteroid is “not significantly elongated.”

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