Tag: politics

NASA sets tentative launch date for SLS

9:46 am

NASA yesterday announced that it is targeting August 29, 2022 for the first unmanned launch of its SLS rocket.

NASA is tentatively targeting Aug. 29 for the long-awaited maiden flight of the agency’s huge Space Launch System moon rocket, officials said Wednesday. But they cautioned major challenges remain for the oft-delayed rocket and an official date will not be set until later.

As it stands, the launch processing schedule is extremely tight and depends on successful checkout of a repaired hydrogen line fitting, good results from end-to-end pre-flight checks of the rocket’s myriad other systems and getting everything done in time to haul it back out to the launch pad by around Aug. 18.

If any delays occur, this launch window extends until September 6th. If they can’t make that date, the next launch window opens on September 19th.

The mission, to send the Orion capsule around the Moon and back, would last 42 days and if launched as planned would return October 10th.

The announcement also slipped in this tidbit:

If the initial test flight goes well, NASA plans to launch four astronauts atop the second SLS rocket for an around-the-moon shakedown flight in 2024 — Artemis 2 — before sending the first woman and the first person of color to a landing near the moon’s south pole in 2025 or 2026 as part of the Artemis 3 mission. [emphasis mine]

This I think is the first time NASA officials have hinted that the launch might be delayed to ’26. It is no surprise, but as they have always done with SLS, they give these hints softly, prepping the press so that it doesn’t make news.

As for the disgraceful unseemly focus on race and sex, it appears that NASA is now an apartheid state. The make-up of missions will no longer be determined by skill and experience, but by ethnic considerations, with favoritism always given to minorities or women.

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Rogozin’s order banning Russian astronauts from using European robot arm cancelled

1:12 pm

A planned spacewalk tomorrow to configure the new European robot arm on the Russian section of ISS essentally proves that the order by the recently fired head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, forbidding the station’s Russian astronauts from doing any work with that European robot arm has now been cancelled.

A Russian cosmonaut and an Italian astronaut are finalizing preparations for a spacewalk on Thursday to configure the International Space Station’s third and newest robotic arm. As the pair was being assisted by two cosmonauts the rest of the Expedition 67 crew ensured ongoing advanced space research was proceeding full speed ahead aboard the orbiting lab.

Station Commander Oleg Artemyev of Roscosmos and Flight Engineer Samantha Cristoforetti of ESA (European Space Agency) are scheduled to exit the space station into the vacuum of space at 10 a.m. EDT on Thursday. The spacewalkers will spend about seven hours readying the European robotic arm for operations on the station’s Russian segment. The duo will also deploy 10 nanosatellites to collect radio electronics data. [emphasis mine]

Though I suspect no official announcement will be made, it is likely that the new head of Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, had quietly made it clear to all involved to proceed with the necessary work, as if Rogozin’s order had never been made.

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Pushback: Flight attendant fired for having opinions wins big against airline and union

11:16 am

Southwest: Enemy to free speech

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Charlene Carter, a flight attendant who had worked at Southwest Airlines for 20 years but was fired in 2017 because she had publicly opposed the use of her union dues to fund pro-abortion protests, has now won a $5.1 million lawsuit against both Southwest and her union.

A jury in a Dallas federal district court handed down the verdict, ruling Charlene Carter had been fired for her religious stance on abortion, which she shared to social media, and that her termination was in violation of her right to advocate against her union.

If it stands, Carter could collect $4.15 million from Southwest and $950,000 from Local 556 of the Transport Workers Union, mostly in punitive damages.

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Ispace now aiming for a November ’22 launch of its lunar lander

9:14 am

Capitalism in space: The private Japanese company Ispace today announced that it is targeting November 2022 for the launch of its Hakuto-R lunar lander, carrying commercial as well as governmental payloads.

The launch will be on a Falcon 9 rocket. The payload includes two small rovers, one built by Ispace and a second, Rashid, built by the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Rashid has already been delivered to SpaceX. This announcement indicates that Hakuto-R is on schedule for delivery in time for that November launch.

Both rovers are engineering tests, and will are expected to only function on the Moon for one lunar day.

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NASA awards SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy launch contract for Roman Space Telescope

8:57 am

Capitalism in space: NASA yesterday awarded a contract to SpaceX to use its Falcon Heavy rocket to launch the Roman Space Telescope in October 2026.

. The total cost for NASA to launch the Roman telescope is approximately $255 million, which includes the launch service and other mission related costs. The telescope’s mission currently is targeted to launch in October 2026, as specified in the contract, on a Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

SpaceX’s normal launch price for the Falcon Heavy is $100 million. This higher price in probably because NASA has imposed additional requirements. It is also likely because SpaceX has no comparable competitor, and can raise its price in certain situations — such as when the government is buying — because no one can undercut it.

That launch by the way will not happen in ’26. Roman is certain to be delayed further. It was proposed in 2011 as a major astronomy project for that decade. Instead, as expected it has become a two-decade long jobs program like Webb.

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NSF to do environmental impact statement on TMT

8:48 am

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has suddenly announced that it plans to complete a full environmental impact statement on the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

The National Science Foundation plans to host four meetings on the Big Island of Hawaii in August. It said it won’t decide on whether to fund the telescope until after it considers public input, the environmental review, the project’s technical readiness and other factors.

…The National Science Foundation must conduct a new study under U.S. law to invest in the project because it is part of the federal government. A report from the U.S. astronomy community last year said TMT planned to obtain 30% of the project’s estimated construction costs, or $800 million, from the U.S. government.

The timing of this announcement is most interesting, coming more than a year after NSF had decided to partly fund TMT and just shortly after the passage of a new law in Hawaii taking control of telescopes on Mauna Kea away from the University of Hawaii and giving that control to some of the activists protesting TMT. Why is this study suddenly necessary when it hadn’t seem necessary before?

I think this decision is another example of the Biden administration allowing the bureaucrats in the federal government to exercise their power. I also think it is linked with the new bigoted effort in government to always put racial concerns first — in this case tribal Hawaiians. It signals a decision by these federal bureaucrats to team up with those tribal Hawaiians that oppose TMT because it is “white” and “a symbol of colonialism” to kill it.

As I have been predicting for years, TMT will never be built.

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Picking the Republican candidates to vote for in the Arizona August 2nd primary

2:04 pm

Liberty enlightening the world

As the August 2nd primary approaches here in Arizona, it is now the time to make some preliminary decisions on who to vote for. Below are my recommendations for statewide office as well as my congressional district, followed by my reasoning behind each choice.

First, however, I must note that I consider the August primary for the Republican candidates to be the real election. No matter who is chosen in the Democratic Party primaries, I would consider that candidate to be captured by the communists and anti-American bigots who now run that party. Thus, I couldn’t vote for any, not without seeing some major house-cleaning and change. Since there is no evidence of any Democrats making any effort to do this, the only important decision I see for voters is to decide who is the least likely Republican to lie to us and actually do what they say.

Now for my personal candidate choices. To make these decisions, I did some research, using the links provided by Ballotpedia. With each candidate, I reviewed supplementing my knowledge of them from other reading by reviewing their websites. At a minimum I urge my readers to do the same, in whatever state they live in. Ballotpedia is a magnificent non-partisan resource. It doesn’t take long to do this work, and it gives you a better educated basis for making your decisions.

I also fully recognize that there are no guarantees, and that my choices here may change before August 2nd. Right now however, with the knowledge at hand, these picks are the best I can do. And as always I welcome further intelligent and informative comments from my readers below.
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Long March 5B rolls to launchpad, carrying China’s next large space station module

9:59 am

Long March 5B being rolled to launch site
Long March 5B being rolled to launch site

China’s big Long March 5B rocket was successfully rolled to its launch site yesterday in preparation for a July 24, 2022 launch that will put China’s next large space station module, Wentian, into orbit.

The Wentian module, with a launch weight near 44,000 pounds (20 metric tons), will dock with the Tianhe core module on China’s Tiangong station in low Earth orbit. Chinese astronauts Chen Dong, Liu Yang, and Cai Xuzhe living on the Tiangong complex will monitor Wentian’s arrival, then become the first crew members to float into the station’s new module.

The launch this weekend will add the second of three large pressurized modules needed to complete the initial construction of the Tiangong space station. The Tianhe core module launched on a Long March 5B rocket in April 2021, and Chinese ground teams are preparing the Mengtian module for launch on a Long March 5B rocket in October.

The big question mark however concerning this upcoming launch is the central core stage of the Long March 5B, seen in the picture above surrounded by four strap-on boosters with Wentian stacked on top. In all previous Long March 5B launches, that core stage reached orbit, deployed its payload, and then crashed to Earth uncontrolled because its main engines could not be restarted. Will this core stage do the same?

The name of this particular Long March 5B also carries with it a new suffix, “Y3”. In the past when the Chinese added letters to a name it was because the rocket had been changed or upgraded in some manner. Furthermore, in March China did some static fire engine tests of what were suggested to be new engines for the core stage.

Developed by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, the engine is designed for the core stage of the Long March-5 carrier rocket series, which will be used to launch two lab modules of China’s orbiting Tiangong space station this year.

The long-range test, lasting 520 seconds, has verified the reliability of the engine, and there will be more than 20 experimental tasks that the rocket engine will undergo to further test its performance, the company disclosed.

Based on this meager information, it appears that China might have upgraded the core stage’s engines so they can be restarted and the stage’s de-orbit can be controlled so it crashes over the ocean, not over some random point of inhabited land. We shall have to wait until after the launch on July 24th to find out.

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The May micrometeoroid impact on Webb’s mirror

9:37 am

Figure 3 from report

In a detailed report [pdf] of Webb’s overall excellent operational status following its in-space commissioning, the science team also included an analysis of the May 2022 micrometeoriod impact on one segment of Webb’s mirror.

The image to the right, taken from figure 3 of the report, shows the remaining alignment error of Webb’s entire mirror, after alignment. Except for that one bright spot in the segment to the lower right, all of the segments show excellent alignment, well within the range predicted before launch. The bright spot however is from the impact, and suggests that one mirror segment is significantly damaged. From the report:

The micrometeoroid which hit segment C3 in the period 22—24 May 2022 UT caused significant uncorrectable change in the overall figure of that segment. However, the effect was small at the full telescope level because only a small portion of the telescope area was affected. After two subsequent realignment steps, the telescope was aligned to a minimum of 59 nm rms, which is about 5-10 nm rms above the previous best wavefront error rms values 7 . It should be noted that the drifts and stability levels of the telescope mean that science observations will typically see telescope contribution between 60 nm rms (minimum) and 80 nm rms (where WF control will typically be performed). Further, the telescope WFE combines with the science instrument WFE to yield total observatory levels in the range 70-130 nm (see Table 2), so the slight increase to telescope WFE from this strike has a relatively smaller effect on total observatory WFE.

In plain English, the impact while damaging has not seriously reduced the telescope’s predicted capabilities.

However, to be hit with this size impact so soon after launch is very worrisome, especially because Webb’s mirror is not housed in any protective tube like Hubble or most telescopes. From the report:

It is not yet clear whether the May 2022 hit to segment C3 was a rare event (i.e. an unlucky early strike by a high kinetic energy micrometeoroid that statistically might occur only once in several years), or whether the telescope may be more susceptible to damage by micrometeoroids than pre-launch modeling predicted.

The science team is presently trying to anticipate what might happen if the impact rate turns out to be much higher than expected, and what can be done to mitigate the degradation of the mirror should more impacts occur.

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Russia may delay its Luna-25 lander again

9:10 am

The landing area for Luna-25
The landing zone for Luna-25 at Boguslawsky Crater

According to Russia’s state run media, Roscosmos is considering delaying its Luna-25 lander again from September ’22 to sometime next year because of recently discovered issues with its landing system.

The launch of Russia’s lunar mission Luna 25 will most likely be pushed back to 2023 at the earliest because recent tests of its soft-landing device showed it failed to meet requirements, two sources in the space industry told TASS.

The Doppler speed and distance sensor made by the Vega Concern, part of the Rostech State Corporation, was tested in May and June and underperformed in terms of measurement precision, the sources said. The current precision would give 80% probability of a successful landing while the desired specifications call for a higher probability, which means either the device or the landing plan will have to be reworked.

The launch of this lunar lander has been delayed repeatedly, though the recently deposed head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, had said as recently as late May that the September launch date was firm. It could very well be that with his removal the new head, Yuri Borisov, took another look and decided this new delay was necessary.

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NASA delays launch of its VIPER lunar rover to over concerns about commercial lander

8:58 am

VIPER's planned route on the Moon
VIPER’s planned route at the Moon’s south pole

In order to do more engineering tests of Astrobotic’s Griffin lunar lander, NASA has now delayed the launch of its VIPER lunar rover from November 2023 to November 2024.

NASA’s decision to pursue a 2024 delivery date results from the agency’s request to Astrobotic for additional ground testing of the company’s Griffin lunar lander, which will deliver VIPER to the lunar surface through CLPS. The additional tests aim to reduce the overall risk to VIPER’s delivery to the Moon. To complete the additional NASA-mandated tests of the Griffin lunar lander, an additional $67.8 million has been added to Astrobotic’s CLPS contract, which now totals $320.4 million.

Though the press release makes no mention of it, the launch of Astrobotic’s Griffin lander is partly dependent on the launch of Astrobotic’s first and smaller lunar lander, Peregrine, which was originally supposed to fly on the inaugural flight of ULA’s new Vulcan rocket, in 2021. That rocket’s first flight however has been delayed repeatedly because of delays by Blue Origin in completing development of the BE-4 rocket engine, to be used in Vulcan’s first stage. It is presently scheduled for early 2023, but that date remains tentative. This new delay of Griffin could be to make sure Peregrine flies first.

Regardless, this new budget increase means that the budget for Griffin has experienced a 62% cost overrun from its original $199 million number. This large increase in what is supposed to be a fixed price contract suggests that Astrobotic has been having some problems unstated by NASA, despite an inspector general report [pdf] that said all was going reasonably well.

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Pushback: PA school board settles lawsuit and will pay $300K for censoring critics

12:15 pm

Reaffirmed at Pennsbury
Reaffirmed at Pennsbury, despite its school board’s hostility

Bring a gun to a knife fight: The Pennsbury school board in Pennsylvania has now been forced to pay $300K and fire its attorney, Peter Amuso, because that attorney silenced three different individuals during the open comments period at a school board meeting, simply because they were criticizing the board’s policies.

More details here. This quote describes how Amuso shouted down one of those speakers, Doug Marshall:

Marshall was interrupted by solicitor Peter Amuso for referring to the equity policy as the “equity and critical race theory policy,” which, Marshall is told, isn’t what it is officially called. … Marshall is later asked to stop speaking for sharing “irrelevant” information and violating Pennsbury School Board Policy 903, which states that members of the public can be asked to stop speaking for “lengthy, personally directed, abusive, obscene or irrelevant” comments.

“You’re now being disruptive and disorderly, you’re done,” Amuso can be heard telling Marshall as he objects to being cut off.

The board’s defeat in court was certain because a federal court has already ruled [pdf] that the board’s actions were unconstitutional.
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