Tag: politics

SLS core stage arrives in Florida

9:34 am

The core stage of NASA’s SLS rocket has arrived in Florida and has now begun the processing to get it ready for launch anywhere from six to ten months from now.

Approximately six months of work is anticipated to finish assembly and complete a long series of tests and checkouts of SLS and the Orion spacecraft it will send to the Moon, but current forecasts of this first-time integration work estimate closer to ten months to complete the necessary operations. After the vehicle is put together, weeks and weeks of testing to make sure SLS and Orion are properly talking to each other, as well as the EGS ground infrastructure, will follow.

…Recent schedules showed the remainder of work to reach launch readiness extending for ten months once the core stage arrived. That time includes six months of operations to the “work to” launch readiness and four months of “risk factor”. The “work to” launch readiness date, which would still have to synchronize to a lunar launch window, is currently early-November 2021. With risk factored in, a date of early-March 2022 is derived.

NASA has not yet changed that November ’21 target for launch, though all reports strongly suggest it cannot be met.

Regardless, even if they can get this thing launched by November, the long prep time shows once again how cumbersome and inefficient this rocket would be if anyone tried to use it to explore space. NASA says that after this first launch the prep time will be shorter, but even if it is trimmed to three months (the best estimate I’ve seen) it simply isn’t good enough. SpaceX has already demonstrated that is can fly two different Starship prototypes in less than thirty days (with #10 flying March 3rd and #11 flying March 30th). The company’s goal is many flights frequently, and it so far is proving that this goal will be achievable. And it will do it placing more payload in orbit for pennies (compared to the cost of SLS).

I still predict that there is a better than 50% chance that the first orbital launch of Starship/Superheavy will occur before SLS, even though the former began actual hardware development only two years ago.

I also think that we are now in the final stages of the entire SLS program. As with all similar big NASA-led rocket projects started since the mid-1980s, it will die stillborn. The previous projects never even got built after spending billions on blueprints and powerpoint presentations. SLS will likely get at least two flights (assuming nothing goes wrong with the first). After that NASA and the federal government will shut it down because by that time there will be far better and cheaper options available.

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Today’s blacklisted American: controversial Nick Fuentes

11:24 am

Banned by the Biden administration
Banned by the Biden administration

Blacklists are back and the Dems’ have got ’em: Routinely called a racist, bigot, white supremacist, and (of course) an alt-right conservative by the mainstream press, controversial Nick Fuentes’ track record is far from that straight-forward. Though it appears he has often taken some ugly positions and made some even more ugly statements, he apparently has never done anything illegal or outright bigoted.

No matter to the Biden administration and the TSA. They have blacklisted him, banning him from flying on any American airline.

Moreover, the federal government is not the only one blacklisting Fuentes because they don’t like his opinions. As Fuentes himself noted in a April 27th tweet:

Since attending President Trump’s rally on the Ellipse on January 6th I’ve been:

-Banned from AirBnB, Facebook, Instagram, DLive, and Coinbase
-Banned from every payment processor
-Had a bank account frozen
-Put on the no-fly list

And I haven’t even done anything wrong!

The most important line in his tweet is the last one. What he has said might be wrong-headed, bigoted, or stupid, but in a free country that defends its first amendment, he would be within his rights to say it, and would have broken no laws by doing so.

We no longer live in that long gone free nation. Now we live in a place that routinely uses power to squash radical positions, except when those opinions happen to be leftist radical positions. Those Marxist opinions are always blessed with immunity, no matter how bigoted or vile. In fact, if you dare to criticize the dominant Marxist and bigoted culture in any way at all, you are guaranteed to be called a bigot and are likely to be blacklisted, like Fuentes, for doing so.

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Long March 5B crash estimate as of today

9:02 am

May 3rd prediction of Long March 5B crash
Click for full image.

According to estimates this morning by the Aerospace Corporation, the 21-ton core stage of China’s Long March 5B rocket will come crashing down to Earth sometime on May 10th, plus or minus 41 hours.

Their map to the right illustrates all the orbits that will take place during that time period, which in turn shows all the possible places that core stage might land. For example, though the center point in that time period puts the stage down in the Pacific west of South America, should it go down just a little more than two orbits later it will then be crossing over the entire continental United States, with even a very slim chance it could land on my own house in Arizona! If it should come down a little early instead it could land on Europe, the Middle East, India, or Australia.

This estimate is very very uncertain, and will be refined in the days ahead, though because of the chaotic nature of decaying orbits it will be impossible to refine it to less than half an orbit, even on the day of its return.

Nor can anyone do anything about it. Large sections of this big piece of hardware is going to hit the ground in an uncontrolled manner. And China, a signatory to the Outer Space Treaty which forbids exactly this sort of uncontrolled reentry, launched it anyway.

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Sunspot update: Sunspot activity continues to exceed predictions

1:29 am

The uncertainty of science: On May 1st NOAA updated its monthly graph to show the Sun’s sunspot activity through the end of April 2021. As I do every month, I have annotated it to show the previous solar cycle predictions and posted it below.

In my sunspot update last month I reviewed in detail the range of predictions by solar scientist for the upcoming solar maximum, noting that based on the higher than expected sunspot activity that has been occurring since the ramp up to solar maximum began in 2020, it appeared that all of their predictions might be wrong. The continuing high activity that occurred in April continued that trend.

» Read more

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China’s Long March 4C rocket successfully launches Earth observation satellite

9:15 am

China yesterday successfully launched an Earth observation satellite using its Long March 4C rocket from its interior Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in inner Mongolia. Its first stage, using toxic fuels, will fall on land somewhere in China.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

12 SpaceX
11 China
7 Russia
2 Rocket Lab

The U.S. still leads China 17 to 11 in the national rankings.

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China’s 21-ton Long March 5B core stage to make uncontrolled re-entry

9:33 pm

For the second time in two launches, the 21-ton core stage of China’s Long March 5B rocket is about to make uncontrolled re-entry, with a mass large enough that some part of it is certain to hit the ground.

Where and when the new Long March 5B stage will land is impossible to predict. The decay of its orbit will increase as atmospheric drag brings it down into more denser. The speed of this process depends on the size and density of the object and variables include atmospheric variations and fluctuations, which are themselves influenced by solar activity and other factors.

The high speed of the rocket body means it orbits the Earth roughly every 90 minutes and so a change of just a few minutes in reentry time results in reentry point thousands of kilometers away.

The Long March 5B core stage’s orbital inclination of 41.5 degrees means the rocket body passes a little farther north than New York, Madrid and Beijing and as far south as southern Chile and Wellington, New Zealand, and could make its reentry at any point within this area.

The previous core stage hit the Atlantic Ocean six days after launch in May 2020. Had it come down fifteen to thirty minutes earlier it would have come down on U.S. soil, possibly even on top of the New York metropolitan area.

China’s design for this rocket means that every single launch will result in similar potential disasters. They cannot restart the core stage’s engines after cut-off, so that once it has delivered its payload it is nothing more than a very big and uncontrolled brick that has to hit the ground somewhere.

This is a direct violation of the Outer Space Treaty, which China is a signatory. The treaty makes signatories liable for any damage from an uncontrolled re-entry, and requires them to take action to prevent such events from occurring.

China it appears doesn’t care much about the treaties it signs. The first time could be rung up to a mistake. The second time is intentional and tells us that this country will not honor any of its obligations anywhere else, if it decides it can get away with it.

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NASA suspends Starship lunar lander contract award due to protests

5:16 pm

Because of the protests filed by both Blue Origin and Dynetics, NASA has temporarily suspended the contract with SpaceX for using its Starship spaceship for manned lunar landings.

NASA now has told SpaceX to stop work until GAO determines the outcome. A NASA spokesperson provided this statement to SpacePolicyOnline.com this afternoon. “Pursuant to the GAO protests, NASA instructed SpaceX that progress on the HLS contract has been suspended until GAO resolves all outstanding litigation related to this procurement.” The issuance of the stop work order was first reported by Space News.

GAO has 100 days — until August 4, 2021 — to make a decision.

The odds are very likely that the GAO will reject both protests, but not certain. Meanwhile expect SpaceX to continue development of Starship regardless, as they already have about $6 billion in private investment capital in the bank for this project.

I also will predict that should GAO accept the protests and force NASA to reopen the bids, neither Blue Origin nor Dynetics will be able to make an offer that matches SpaceX anyway. And if they do win a contract, I predict that SpaceX will still launch and land on the Moon before them, based on their track records versus SpaceX’s.

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Today’s blacklisted Americans: Any conservative trying to get published by Simon & Schuster

11:44 am

Cancelled Bill of Rights
No longer valid for too many employees
at Simon & Schuster.

Blacklists are back and book publishers want ’em: A petition of about 14% of the workforce at the book publisher Simon & Schuster is demanding that all former Trump administration officials be blacklisted from publication.

The petition demanding the New York publishing conglomerate to stop treating “the Trump administration as a ‘normal’ chapter in American history” collected 216 internal signatures, representing approximately 14% of the company’s workforce, and support from several thousand nonemployees, according to the Wall Street Journal. The petition singled out a planned two-part autobiography to be authored by former Vice President Mike Pence, which the publisher’s employees alleged amounted to support for “racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, anti-Blackness, xenophobia, misogyny, ableism, islamophobia, antisemitism, and violence” in the online petition.

While the publisher has rejected the call to cancel Pence’s autobiography, it still has a track record of blacklisting conservatives. » Read more

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Nelson confirmed as NASA administrator

8:26 am

The Senate unanimously confirmed former senator Bill Nelson as NASA administrator yesterday.

Not much to say that hasn’t been said previously. Nelson, a Democrat, is 78 years old, and has shown signs of his age. His testimony during confirmation hearings suggested that he, like his boss Biden, is essentially going to rubberstamp the policies told to him by his bureaucracy, which in the case of NASA means a continuation of Artemis under a pro-capitalism framework.

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FAA approves next three Starship test flights with prototype #15

6:21 pm

Capitalism in space: In a statement today the FAA announced that it has approved next three test flights of SpaceX’s Starship prototype #15.

From the statement:

The FAA has authorized the next three launches or the SpaceX Starship prototype. The agency approved multiple launches because SpaceX is making few changes on the launch vehicle and relied on the FAA’s approved methodology to calculate the risk to the public. The FAA authorized the launches on Wednesday, April 28.

This likely means that SpaceX will try a flight tomorrow.

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Stratolaunch’s Roc, biggest plane ever, makes 2nd flight

6:07 pm

Stratolaunch today successfully completed the second test flight of its gigantic airplane Roc, biggest plane ever flown, and the first flight in two years.

Today’s takeoff from California’s Mojave Air and Space Port at 7:28 a.m. PT marked the first time the plane, nicknamed Roc after the giant bird of Arabian and Persian mythology, got off the ground since Stratolaunch’s acquisition by Cerberus Capital Management in October 2019.

Roc rose as high as 14,000 feet and traveled at a top speed of 199 mph during a flight that lasted three hours and 14 minutes — which is close to an hour longer than the first flight on April 13, 2019. During that earlier flight, the airplane reached a maximum speed of 189 mph and maximum altitude of 17,000 feet.

Since the death of Paul Allen, the original owner, Cererus has re-purposed Roc from a platform for orbital rockets to a testbed platform for launching the three hypersonic test planes that the company is building. These planes will allow for regular and frequent flight tests of this technology, something that has been lacking since the days of the X-15 in the 1950s.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Law professor under investigation for criticizing China

12:20 pm

Cancelled Bill of Rights
Doesn’t exist at the University of San Diego.

They’re coming for you next: A law professor at the University of San Diego, Tom Smith, is now under formal investigation and could possibly be fired for a blog post on his own webpage where he strongly criticized China and its role in the start of COVID-19.

When he first published the March 10 post, the USD Law School placed him under investigation, citing complaints of bias. Now, the law school has sent his case to administration for a formal review.

The review comes as a petition circulates demanding Smith resign or be fired, alleging he has a history of saying and writing things some find offensive.

Signed by the USD Law Student Bar Association presidents for this school year and the next, they claim in the petition Smith’s alleged comments have left some in the USD law community feeling vulnerable and helpless so that students cannot balance their studies or “prepare for our futures in the legal profession.” [emphasis mine]

Beside the fact that it is utterly wrong for the university to investigate this man for simply expressing his opinion on line, the highlighted words — “feeling vulnerable and helpless” — illustrate starkly the total close-mindedness of the left’s modern blacklisting effort to any opinions outside its frame of reference.
» Read more

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