Tag: politics

Repost: Freedom is under siege, and the besiegers have now told us they have no mercy

4:53 pm

Earlier today I posted a news item about the failure theater of Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz making a motion to “favorably” report the Biden administration’s FCC nominations for a full vote in the Senate, even as Cruz at the same time stated he was against their nomination. This absurd lack of real fight now prompts me to add this quick comment, and a repost of a January 2022 essay.

In that essay I quoted the words that open each volume of Winston Churchill’s memoirs of World War II:

In War: Resolution
In Defeat: Defiance
In Victory: Magnanimity
In Peace: Good Will

Cruz’s actions are typical of our conservative leadership for decades. They are good at magnanimity and good will, but know nothing of resolution or defiance. To them, there is no war, and defeat is really just another word for victory.

We are in a war however, and we have been losing that war now for more than a century. We have reached a point where a sizeable part of the American population thinks it is okay to imprison its opponents, even as it firmly supports censorship and blacklisting.

Fortunately, more and more Americans recognize this, and are no longer easily fooled by Republican failure theater. As a reminder to help strengthen that resolve and to remind the fence-sitters of the real war we are in, a war that now requires resolution and defiance by all who value freedom, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the rule of law, I give you my January 2022 essay, which outlined starkly what the other side wants:

————————-
Freedom is under siege, and the besiegers have now told us they have no mercy

Liberty under siege
Liberty under siege.

For many years I deeply and sincerely believed that many rank-and-file Democrat voters honestly did not know how corrupt and power-hungry the political leaders of their party had become. I thought that if I could simply get them to see the clear evidence of misbehavior and abuse of power that has been going on in the Democratic Party without check since Bill Clinton was president, they would reconsider their voting habits and abandon their support of that party.

I thought that the vast majority of Democrats were decent people who opposed oppression and intolerance and simply were unaware that they were voting for it when they supported the Democratic Party.

I now know unequivocally that I was wrong. Two stories in the past week illustrate bluntly that a large number of ordinary Democrats, maybe even a majority, are eager supporters of oppression and intolerance and dictatorship. They like the corruption and abuse-of-power coming from Democratic Party politicians. They even want more of it.
» Read more

13 comments

Enthusiastic censorship and blacklisting at St. Philip’s College in Texas

3:27 pm

St. Philip's College, home to blacklisting and censorship
St. Philip’s College, the poster child of academic
blacklisting and censorship

They’re coming for you next: The university was conceived as a place of where young minds would be exposed to new ideas in order to challenge their youthful assumptions and unbridled certainty, with the determined goal to teach critical thinking. (For those who no longer know what critical thinking is, it is the concept that you question everything rigorously, including most importantly your own assumptions.)

It seems most American colleges no longer practice this. In fact, many now teach the exact opposite. Faced with ideas you don’t like, students are encouraged to complain, and hide in “safe spaces” so they don’t have to question anything.

It also appears that St. Philip’s College in Texas is the poster child of this new “teaching” concept. This semester it fired two different teachers when several anonymous students complained because those professors expressed some basic facts in their classrooms that conflict with the modern queer agenda and the leftist hostility to open debate.

First, Dr. Johnson Varkey was fired in January 2023 because he had the audacity during a November 2022 human anatomy and physiology class to state that human sex is determined by the X and Y chromosomes, a basic fact of biology.

Four students walked out of that class in protest, and then complained to the administration. Within weeks it terminated Varkey, with no due process. In its termination letter [pdf] (part of the response by Varkey’s attorney’s at the non-profit legal firm First Liberty), it claimed
» Read more

3 comments

Australian industrial space park threatened with shut down

10:03 am

With the loss of government funds caused by decisions of the new Labor government in Australia, a space-centered industrial park proposed for Adelaide Airport is threatened with shut down.

The previous government was going to contribute about $20 million to build a shared facility, and this had encouraged a number of space manufacturers to add their own $26 million. With the loss of that $20 million from the government two of those companies have now backed out.

The article also notes a number of other space-related areas where government funding is being cut off. All this appears to be the result of the change in government, and the decision of the new Labor government to end such subsidies.

2 comments

Extremely Large Telescope in Chile marks halfway point in construction

9:51 am

The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) has now celebrated the halfway point in its construction, with completion targeting 2028 when its 39-meter mirror will make it by far the largest telescope in the world.

The 39-meter diameter, or 127 feet or 1,535 inches, is about four times larger than the largest telescope that presently exists, the 10-meter telescope in the Canary Islands. By the time ELT begins operations however the 21-meter Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) in Chile should also be in operation.

Sadly, the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) in Hawaii will likely not exist, even though it had intended to begin construction before ELT and GMT and be operational now. Leftist opponents in Hawaii have shut construction down now for almost eight years, with little signs of it ever proceeding.

Not that any of this really matters. In the near term, ground-based astronomy on Earth is going to become increasingly impractical and insufficient, first because of the difficulties of making good observations though the atmosphere and the tens of thousands of satellites expected in the coming decades, and second because new space-based astronomy is going to make it all obsolete. All it will take will be to launch one 8-meter telescope on Starship and ELT will become the equivalent of a buggy whip.

4 comments

Final close-out of all science research at Arecibo

9:38 am

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is proceeding with the final close-out of all science research at the now shuttered Arecibo radio telescope, ending all funding for the remaining science instruments that still function and letting go all scientists on staff as of August 14th.

In October 2022, NSF announced it would not rebuild the giant telescope, saying it was following community recommendations for the best use of scarce research dollars. It is now shutting down most of the smaller instruments as well. As scientists depart, “all the expertise associated with instruments is leaving,” Brisset says. Olga Figueroa-Miranda, director of the observatory, says people from UCF, Puerto Rico’s Metropolitan University, and Yang Enterprises, an engineering firm, will be let go, including herself. She has yet to find a new position.

The NSF has budgeted money to turn the telescope’s visitor center into a science education facility, but this is not likely to be very successful, as there will be no scientists at this somewhat remote location, which will in itself discourage any traffic.

5 comments

July 12, 2023 Quick space links

4:28 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

  • China unveils proposed plan for first manned lunar mission before 2030

    • The plan calls for separate rockets, one for the manned ascent/descent Earth capsule, and the second for the lunar lander/ascent spacecraft. The two will rendezvous and dock in lunar orbit. This is all engineering by powerpoint at this point, though based on China’s track record I’d give it more credence than most of NASA’s recent promises.

 

One comment

Real pushback: Montana’s library withdraws from ALA because it elected a Marxist/Queer leader

11:55 am

Emily Drabinski, now president of the ALA, proudly Marxist and queer
Emily Drabinski, president of the ALA and proudly
Marxist and queer

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Upon learning that the American Library Association (ALA) had voted as its new president, Emily Drabinski, a woman who is not only proudly queer (in her own words), she also is proudly Marxist, the commission for Montana’s state library yesterday voted to withdraw from ALA.

The Montana State Library Commission’s decision came in response to a 2022 tweet posted by current ALA President Emily Drabinski describing herself as a “Marxist Lesbian,” which quickly drew the attention of conservative media outlets nationwide. In his motion to “immediately withdraw” the state library from the association, commissioner Tom Burnett directed that a letter be sent to the ALA explaining that “our oath of office and resulting duty to the Constitution forbids association with an organization led by a Marxist.”

Burnett was joined by five other members of the commission in supporting the motion, among them state Superintendent Elsie Arntzen. Newly seated commissioner Brian Rossmann, who works as an associate professor at the Montana State University Library, cast the sole opposing vote. Commission Chair Peggy Taylor abstained.

» Read more

19 comments

Black Georgia Democrat switches to Republican Party

9:05 pm

Mesha Mainor, a black Democrat state legislator representing a largely black district in Georgia announced today that she is leaving the Democratic Party to become a Republican.

“When I decided to stand up on behalf of disadvantaged children in support of school choice, my Democrat colleagues didn’t stand by me,” Mainor told Fox News Digital, asserting that her Democrat colleagues “crucified” her for supporting school choice and standing against efforts to defund police. She said she has always stood as the type of politician who will “work across the aisle to deliver results for my community and the people I was elected to represent.” But her leftist colleagues did not support her.

“They abandoned me,” she said, explaining again that her decision to leave the Democrat Party is not a political decision but a moral one. “For far too long, the Democrat Party has gotten away with using and abusing the black community,” Mainor said. “For decades, the Democrat Party has received the support of more than 90 percent of the black community. And what do we have to show for it? I represent a solidly blue district in the city of Atlanta. This isn’t a political decision for me. It’s a moral one,” she continued.

Such party switches have been going on since 1994, most of which have gone from Democrat to Republican. What makes this switch significant is that it involves a black representative, in a largely black district. When she runs in the next election her presence might cause a lot of blacks to vote Republican for the first time. And all it takes is one such vote for a person to begin to look at Democrats with open eyes.

And if she is defeated by a Democrat, it will tell us that nothing has changed, and the local black population is still on the Democratic Party plantation, afraid to leave.

Thus, the next election in this district could be a significant bellwether on the future trends in politics.

6 comments

Citizens are fleeing cities run by Democrats in record numbers

3:40 pm

This story is simply another data point in a well known trend that became very clear during and after the panic over COVID: The populations of cities run by Democrats are dropping faster than ever before, as citizen flee these badly run crime-ridden hellholes where only honest citizens get punished for defending themselves.

The number of people who used to live in Los Angeles County and Cook County in Illinois continues to plummet.

Los Angeles County posted the largest population decline of all counties in the United States in 2022, falling by 90,704 and continuing a downward trend. It lost nearly twice that amount (180,394) in 2021, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Vintage 2022 estimates released Thursday. Cook County, home to Chicago, lost 68,314 people from July 2021 to July of last year.

…The biggest losers were Los Angeles County, California (-90,704); Cook County, Illinois (-68,314); Queens County, New York (-50,112); Kings County, New York (-46,970); and Bronx County, New York (-41,143).

Not surprisingly, the counties with the greatest influx of new residents were in traditionally conservative states, Texas, Florida, and Arizona, though Arizona will probably lose that status as its many refugees from California arrive and continue to vote for Democrats.

Can anyone explain this trend? It seems so puzzling that people would flee cities run by Democrats to go places where Republican rule has dominated.

3 comments

All UN climate models vastly over-estimate warming in the U.S.

2:28 pm

climate models vs observations

According to a direct comparison between actual data and the three-dozen climate models used by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the models all overestimate the warming that has happened, sometimes by ridiculous amounts.

The graph to the right shows “the 50-year area-averaged temperature trend during 1973-2022 for the 12-state corn belt as observed with the official NOAA homogenized surface temperature product (blue bar) versus the same metric from 36 CMIP6 climate models [red bars].”

This story isn’t new, and in fact to me has become somewhat boring because the results are always the same. The computer models that global warming climate scientists have pushed at us for decades have been consistently wrong. They routinely have over-predicted the amount of warming. Since such models are expressly designed to provide us reliable predictions, and these models are not reliable or correct, I find it absurd to pay any attention to them.

At the same time, this repeated and continuing failure needs to be mentioned periodically, because politicians and climate warming activists (I repeat myself) continue to ignore this failure as they wave these models around like red flags that must to be obeyed. Not only should these models be ignored, our governments and science community should stop funding these people. Their work is a failure. They don’t deserve further grants.

Let me add one more important note: The observations show an increase of about 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit per decade. This increase is almost a rounding number, considering the amount of random fluctuations that is routinely seen in the global climate temperature. Even if the trend was extended for a century (something that is not guaranteed at all), the increase would still be only two degrees, hardly a worry.

21 comments

Pushback: Parents in droves reject the queer agenda and bad education of the public schools in Iowa

2:10 pm

At the start of this year the Iowa legislature passed a law that made state funds available to parents who wished to use it to pay tuition at a private school, rather than have their kids attend public schools.

The legislature also budgeted $107 million for the program in its first year, assuming about 14,000 students would apply.

Hah! The state received 25,000 applications, almost twice what was expected. It appears parents don’t want their children learning about queers or watching transvestites performing sex acts in the classroom. More importantly, based on the failed and bankrupt reaction of the public schools to COVID, parents also realized that these public schools are failing to provide even a basic education, and want to pick alternatives.

Nor is this phenomenon unique to Iowa.

Many states responded by increasing their school choice options. At least 20 states have enacted new or expanded school choice policies since 2021.

Arizona saw a similar explosion of applications last year when the state massively expanded its school voucher program to every K-12 student. Republican Governor Doug Ducey signed a bill allowing every student to get a taxpayer-funded Empowerment Scholarship Account of about $6,500 per child. In just the first two weeks after Arizona began accepting applications, the state saw about 6,800 new students apply for the school vouchers.

The public schools are bankrupt and dying. The sooner we put them out of their misery and get all kids out of them, the sooner the quality of education in the United States will go up, while ending the left’s use of the schools to indoctrinate little children. It isn’t hard to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. Too bad the public schools decided in the past few decades to abandon that fundamental responsibility.

Sidebar note: I continue to be under the weather, so I will post more of these short pieces rather than the longer essay I had planned to write today. No energy for the harder work, even though this is a terrible time to have to reduce my output, during my fund-raising campaign.

2 comments

NASA awards new spacesuit contracts

9:50 am

NASA yesterday issued two relatively small spacesuit contracts to the two companies it already has hired to develop different spacesuits, one for the Moon (Axiom) and the other for orbital spacewalks (Collins).

The new contract awards provides each company $5 million to begin design work for adapting their suits for the other tasks, with the goal aimed at having two different suits for Moonwalks and spacewalks, from two different companies. For the companies, having suits that work both in orbit and the Moon will enhance their product. For Axiom, it will also allow it to develop its own suit it can use on its own space station.

The original contracts awarded Axiom $228.5 million for its Moonsuit, and Collins $97.2 million for a new orbital suit. NASA has previously spent about a billion dollars and fourteen years trying to build its own new orbital spacesuit, and had failed to create anything.

2 comments

New Australian government cancels $1.2 billion program to launch four government satellites

10:09 am

The new Australian Labor government has canceled a $1.2 billion program funded by the previous government to pay for four satellites to provide both civilian and military data from orbit.

The cut will primarily affect the NSMEO program, which was to have four satellites launched between 2028 and 2033 to give Australia a new stream of information from space. While the goal was primarily for civil use, maritime situational awareness data — crucial for keeping an eye on Australia’s sovereign waters — was also part of the project. Also, the weather and earth observation capabilities would have had clear military applications.

Instead the new government has decided to continue the previous policy of using the space capabilities of “its international partners.”

It is unclear whether this decision is good or bad. If the money was to be spent buying these satellites from new Australian satellite companies, it could have helped jump start that nation’s satellite industry. If the plan had instead been to have the government design and build the satellites, then it likely would have merely been a government jobs program that would have cost a lot and accomplished little. In the latter case the new government would thus be shutting down a wasteful program. In the former it prevents a new private industry from forming.

4 comments

Orbex to expand facilities in Scotland and Denmark

9:57 am

The British rocket startup Orbex today announced that it is expanding its factory and office space in its facilities in Scotland and Denmark, the former at its facility it leases at the new spaceport in Sutherland.

The company is adding an extra 1,500 square metres of factory and office space to its existing 4,750 square metre estate in Forres, Scotland and Copenhagen, Denmark. The additional space will increase the company’s launch vehicle production and propulsion system manufacturing capacity and add an extra software laboratory and an avionics clean room space with ISO 8 and ISO 9 sections. The additional capacity in Forres is just 3km from its test site at Kinloss, allowing for quick turnaround between the two sites, as Orbex ramps up its testing in the countdown to launch.

The press release doesn’t give any information about the expansion in Denmark. I wonder if it is occurring as a hedge against the kind of bureaucratic delays in the UK that destroyed Virgin Orbit. Orbex’s Prime rocket is presently under construction in Scotland, with its first launch planned for this year out of Sutherland. Whether it can get a launch permit promptly is doubtful, based on the fifteen months it took Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to approve Virgin Orbit. Orbex applied for the launch license in February 2022 (seventeen months ago) and so far there is no word from CAA about its approval.

Other Scandinavian spaceports are under construction in Sweden and Norway, which suggests establishing facilities in Denmark could strengthen Orbex’s ties to these new spaceports, especially in Sweden as both Sweden and Denmark are members of the European Union. Norway meanwhile as strong trades ties to the EU. Orbex has also signed a deal with Arianespace to launch ESA payloads, and it could be those launches could occur in French Guiana.

It seems wise if Orbex prepares for launch problems in the UK. Today’s announcement could be signalling that preparation.

2 comments

ISRO to transfer ownership of its smallsat SSLV rocket to a private company

9:38 am

India’s space agency ISRO has now announced that it is planning to transfer full ownership of its new smallsat SSLV rocket to a private company, with that transfer conducted through open bidding.

The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will soon transfer its Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) to the private sector, after conducting two development flights of the rocket that seeks to provide on-demand services to put satellites weighing up to 500 kg in a low-earth orbit. The space agency has decided to opt for the bidding route to transfer the mini-rocket to the industry, a senior official said. “We will be transferring the SSLV completely to the private sector. Not just the manufacturing, but full transfer,” the official said.

The article does not provide a source, so this story is at present unconfirmed. It does fit with the overall policy of the Modi government, but it also clashes with the power structure in India’s vast bureaucracy that is resisting that policy. It is very possible that the story has been leaked as part of that struggle, likely by bureaucracy to gin up opposition prior to the transfer being implemented.

Up to now under the Modi government’s efforts to force ISRO to give up power, the assets of ISRO that have been used to generate commercial profits — such as its rockets — have generally been transferred to a new separate bureaucracy created by ISRO dubbed NSIL. NSIL supposed to operate like a private company, but it is wholly owned by the government, and is thus structured to retain control within that government.

If this news story is correct, the Modi government is about to bypass NSIL and force ISRO to sell off SSLV. If so this is excellent news, though the devil will certainly be hidden in the final details of the sale.

Leave a comment

China launches classified technology test satellite

9:37 am

According to China’s state-run press, it used its Long March 2C rocket to launch a satellite to test “internet technologies” today, lifting off from its interior Jiuquan spaceport in the northwest of China.

This is all that press told us. Nor did it say where the rocket’s first stage crashed in China, whether it used parachutes to control its descent, or whether it came down uncontrolled near habitable territories.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

45 SpaceX (with a planned Starlink launch tonight)
25 China
9 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads China in launches 51 to 25, and the entire world combined 51 to 43, with SpaceX by itself leading the rest of the world, excluding American companies, 45 to 43.

One comment

The coming rise of an American royal class, as incompetent and as privileged as all past royalists

3:29 pm


A modern Ivy League education: “But Brawndo’s got what plants crave.
It’s got electrolytes!”

The move by the general public away from public schools and universities has become well documented. I have noted this movement in a number of essays, the most recent of which in February showed with ample evidence that these government schools have done such an excellent job of smearing their own reputations so thoroughly that parents and students are fleeing from them in record-breaking and unprecedented numbers.

Similarly, Glenn Reynolds in an essay last week about the recent Supreme Court decision outlawing the use of racial quotas in universities noted this trend as well, and how the Court’s ruling only reinforced the decision by many to avoid these institutions and their routine bigotry.

[W]ho trusts higher education anymore? At the turn of the millennium, when Grutter [a 2003 Supreme Court decision that narrowly allowed university racial quotas] was decided, American higher ed was at its zenith. Since then a series of scandals – just today a famous “ethicist” at Harvard was charged with fraudulent ethics research – has undermined its reputation for probity (and the Hollywood admissions scandal of a few years back certainly undermined the perceived integrity of its admissions process), even as everything else about universities came to seem less serious. With 57 genders, coloring books and crying rooms for election results, endless crusades against “whiteness” and “heterosexism,” and the like, the notion of deferring to the educational seriousness and expertise of those in charge of the asylums of higher ed seemed much less appealing. Whom the gods would destroy, they first make ridiculous. But higher education has supplied the ridiculousness itself.

Both Reynolds and I missed however a much more fundamental point that was then made by one of the commenters to his essay. It isn’t so much that ordinary people are fleeing established universities for other colleges, it is that ordinary people are deciding in increasing numbers to forego a college education entirely, concluding that it is a waste of time. As this commenter noted:
» Read more

19 comments

Taiwan wants and needs Starlink, but local law is blocking a deal

9:46 am

After three years of discussions, negotiations between Taiwan and SpaceX to provide Starlink to that nation broke off in 2022 because of a local Taiwanese law that requires local ownership of at least 51%.

SpaceX would not agree to these conditions, and ended the negotiations. In response, Taiwan has been struggling to get its own communications satellite into orbit, with limited success.

To address that vulnerability, the Taiwan Space Agency (TASA) intends to launch its first self-made low-Earth orbit communication satellite in 2026 and at least one more by 2028, Director General Wu Jong-shinn said. Taiwan also will have rockets capable of carrying payloads weighing over 100 kilograms, he added in an interview.

Since the country doesn’t yet have those rockets, this plan remains dependent on foreign launchers. Moreover, to be effective in low-orbit will require not two satellites but a constellation of 20 to 30. Taiwan is years from being to launch such a constellation.

It seems Taiwan is cutting off its nose to spite its face by not changing this ownership law. Its entire internet access is dependent on 14 undersea cables, and China has already demonstrated the ability to destroy these cables when it cut two in February. No foreign operation is going to give up its ownership to make a deal in Taiwan.

7 comments

Update on preparations at Boca Chica for next Starship/Superheavy test launch

9:03 am

Link here. The article provides an excellent review of the extensive work SpaceX is doing, especially in repairing and upgrading the Superheavy launch facility.

Overall, SpaceX is moving fast, suggesting that Elon Musk’s prediction that it will be ready technically to launch in August quite believable. I remain doubtful that launch will happen in August, however, as I fully expect the FAA and the Biden administration will not issue a launch license on time, but will delay it.

8 comments

Pushback: Non-profit legal firm warns 200 law schools they will be sued if they defy the Supreme Court’s decision ending all racial quotas

12:47 pm

AFL logo
Only one in an army of lawyers willing to
fight for freedom and the Bill of Rights

Bring a gun to a knife fight: One day after the Supreme Court ruled on June 29, 2023 [pdf] that affirmative action was nothing more than outright racial discrimination and that universities must stop using race as a criteria for admitting students or hiring faculty, the non-profit legal firm America’s First Legal (AFL) wasted no time and sent demand letters to the deans of every law school in the United States, numbering 200, warning them to stop these racist policies or it will sue them.

America First Legal’s letter demands that law schools immediately halt these discriminatory and unlawful practices. It further puts the deans of every law school on notice: if they do not stop, America First Legal will bring legal action against them.

The letter to the Harvard University Law School, found here [pdf], is a good sample. In it AFL makes very clear it will immediately take action if this or any other law school develops “an admissions scheme through pretext or proxy to achieve the same discriminatory outcome.”
» Read more

6 comments

Scientists claim discovery of most distant supermassive black hole yet

9:28 am

The overwhelming uncertainty of some science: Using data from the infrared Webb Space Telescope, scientists are now claiming they have discovered most distant supermassive black hole yet, sitting at the center of an active galaxy only about a half billion years after the Big Bang. From the press release:

The galaxy, CEERS 1019, existed just over 570 million years after the big bang, and its black hole is less massive than any other yet identified in the early universe. Not only that, they’ve easily “shaken out” two more black holes that are also on the smaller side, and existed 1 and 1.1 billion years after the big bang. Webb also identified eleven galaxies that existed when the universe was 470 to 675 million years old. The evidence was provided by Webb’s Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) Survey, led by Steven Finkelstein of the University of Texas at Austin. The program combines Webb’s highly detailed near- and mid-infrared images and data known as spectra, all of which were used to make these discoveries.

CEERS 1019 is not only notable for how long ago it existed, but also how relatively little its black hole weighs. This black hole clocks in at about 9 million solar masses, far less than other black holes that also existed in the early universe and were detected by other telescopes. Those behemoths typically contain more than 1 billion times the mass of the Sun – and they are easier to detect because they are much brighter. (They are actively “eating” matter, which lights up as it swirls toward the black hole.) The black hole within CEERS 1019 is more similar to the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, which is 4.6 million times the mass of the Sun. This black hole is also not as bright as the more massive behemoths previously detected. Though smaller, this black hole existed so much earlier that it is still difficult to explain how it formed so soon after the universe began.

I have great doubts about this research, especially because the press release makes no effort to explain how the black holes were identified. Black holes emit no light, and were only first confirmed by watching the orbits of stars or objects near them over long periods of time. More distant supermassive black holes in the center of galaxies were later guessed at by what appears to be the relationship between the size of a galaxy’s nucleus and the presence of a black hole. Astronomers also assume that a very active and energetic galaxy (such as a quasar) is a sign a supermassive black hole exists at the center.

These primitive galaxies have only been observed at most a handful of times. They are so distant that they only are at most a few pixels wide. Spectra from these objects can tell us roughly how far away they are, and thus how close to the Big Bang they are thought to be, but it is impossible to say with any certainty that there is a black hole there.

I am made even more skeptical by this press release claim: “Webb’s data are practically overflowing with precise information that makes these confirmations so easy to pull out of the data.” Such language makes me suspicious that there is an underlying effort to justify Webb’s expense with this release by overstating its capabilities.

The press release provides links to the research. Take a look. I’d be glad if someone could clearly show me why I’m wrong to be so doubtful.

5 comments

Europe’s Ariane-5 rocket completes its last launch

3:30 pm

The Ariane-5 rocket today successfully completed its final launch, lifting off from French Guiana and placing two communications satellites into orbit.

At the moment Europe has no capability of putting anything into orbit. Ariane-5 is retired. Ariane-6, its replacement, is far behind schedule will probably not make its first test flight until next year. The Vega-C rocket is grounded because of a launch failure in December 2022.

This was only the second launch for Europe in 2023, so the the leader board in the 2023 launch race remains the same:

44 SpaceX
24 China
9 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

In successful launches, American private enterprise still leads China 50 to 24 in the national rankings, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world combined, excluding American companies, 44 to 42.

6 comments

Pushback: Federal judge confirms and shuts down censorship campaign of Biden administration

12:50 pm

The Bill of Rights, cancelled
Cancelled by the Democratic Party led by Joe Biden

Blacklists are back and the Democrats have got “em: On July 4th (an appropriate date), Terry Doughty, chief U.S. district judge of the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, ruled that the evidence clearly showed that the Biden administration, in league with most big social media companies, had been running an aggressive censorship operation against conservatives for the past two-plus years, and issued an injunction banning “numerous top Biden administration officials and agencies from communicating and meeting with social media companies.”

You can read Doughty’s ruling here [pdf]. I strongly urge you to do so, as he is harshly blunt about the ugly actions of the Democrats running the federal government since 2021. His introduction sets the tone, beginning with this quote, “I may disapprove of what you say, but I would defend to the death your right to say it,” and then getting more blunt from there:

This case is about the Free Speech Clause in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The explosion of social-media platforms has resulted in unique free speech issues—this is especially true in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history. In their attempts to suppress alleged disinformation, the Federal Government, and particularly the Defendants named here, are alleged to have blatantly ignored the First Amendment’s right to free speech. [emphasis mine]

In his detailed review of the history, he begins by listing the number of examples of this attack against free speech by the Biden administration:
» Read more

6 comments

South Korea: North Korean spy satellite of “no military utility”

8:36 am

Having completed its salvage operations to recover rocket and satellite remains from North Korea’s failed launch on May 31st, the South Korean military today revealed that the satellite had “no military utility as a reconnaissance satellite.”

As expected, it also provided few details to back up that claim:

The JCS [South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff] did not detail the findings through the allies’ analysis of the wreckage nor did it disclose any photos of the retrieved part of the satellite. Last month, a Seoul official struck a cautious note, insinuating that disclosing all the information the military gleaned from the salvage operation would rather benefit the North Korean military.

It is likely true that the North Korea satellite was of limited value, but it is also true that secrecy and disinformation works to the advantage of South Korea’s military. We therefore would be wise to remain skeptical about any of its claims, one way or the other.

One comment

Why we really celebrate the Fourth of July

9:50 am

I posted this essay last year on July 4th. Time to repost it. I must add that my hopes for the November 2022 election were not realized, and we are now on the brink of losing our free country, forever, a fact that horrifies me beyond words.

—————-
Why we really celebrate the Fourth of July

The Declaration of Independence

If you really want to know why the Fourth of July has been the quintessential American holiday since the founding our this country, you need only return to the words of the document that became public to the world on that day.

Below the fold is the full text of the Declaration. Read it. It isn’t hard to understand, even if the style comes from the late 1700s. Its point however is clear. Governments that abuse the rights of the citizenry don’t deserve to be in power. The most important quote of course is right near the beginning:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed — that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. [emphasis mine]

What a radical concept — a nation founded on the principle of allowing its citizens to pursue happiness.

Right now, however, we have a federal government in America that more fits the description of King George III’s Great Britain in 1776 in the Declaration. The corrupt elitist uni-Party of federal elected officials and the federal bureaucracy in Washington has for too long run roughshod over the general population. If you take the time to read the full text of the Declaration, you will be astonished at the remarkable conceptual similarity between the abuses that Jefferson describes coming from Great Britain and the many abuses of power that are now legion and common by the uni-Party in Washington.

When November comes the American public will likely have its last chance to overthrow the political wing of the uni-Party, led by the Democratic Party. The Republicans are no saints, but at least that party contains within it many decent politicians who honor the Constitution, the rule of law, and the Bill of Rights. Many are right now campaigning on those ideals. Based on the past six years, we now know that no one in the Democratic Party honors those values. What they honor is blacklisting, racism, segregation, anti-American hate, and above all power. If they are not removed from office, they will ramp up that power, in league with quislings like Romney and Cornyn in the Republican Party, to further corrupt our Constitutional government.

These people do not like losing power. The longer they hold it, the more they will work to undermine the election system to make sure they do not lose. The corruption and election fraud in 2020 election was merely a dress rehearsal of what these goons will do if they have the chance next year.

In fact, November 2022 might very well be the last election that has any chance of producing legitimate results. Americans had better not waste this last chance.
» Read more

12 comments

SpaceX and FAA seek dismissal of lawsuit against Starship at Boca Chica

9:01 am

Both the FAA and SpaceX have now submitted their response to the lawsuit filed by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and other environmental and leftist political groups, requesting a dismissal of their lawsuit demanding no more launches at Boca Chica until the federal government completes a new environmental impact statement.

In a filing Friday, the FAA said the groups lack legal standing for their claims against the agency that granted a launch license to SpaceX’s Starship rocket program. Separately, a SpaceX filing said the first Starship launch on April 20 provided no cause for the FAA to conduct a new environmental assessment, a process that could halt further test launches for years. “For the foregoing reasons, defendants request that the court dismiss the complaint in its entirety,” Todd Kim, assistant attorney general for the environment and natural resources division of the U.S. Department of Justice, wrote in the filing in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

In a sane world, this lawsuit would have been thrown out of court almost instantly. There is no evidence the test launch of Starship/Superheavy caused any environmental damage. Furthermore, launches from Cape Canaveral for the past seven decades have proven this fact repeatedly.

We no longer live in a sane world. There is no guarantee the court will rule in favor of the FAA or SpaceX.

3 comments

Sunspot update: June saw the most sunspots in more than two decades

8:47 pm

Time for our monthly sunspot update, based on NOAA’s monthly graph that tracks the number of sunspots on the Sun’s Earth-facing hemisphere. I have posted that graph below, but have added some extra details to provide some context.

June saw the highest sunspot count in a month since September 2002, when the Sun was just beginning its ramp down after its solar maximum that reached its peak in late 2001. From that time until now, the Sun has been in a very prolonged quiet period, with two solar minimums that were overly long and a single solar maximum that was very weak with a extended double peak lasting almost four years.
» Read more

3 comments

ISRO aborts first static fire test of prototype of a new upper stage rocket engine

8:51 am

According to India’s space agency ISRO, on July 1st engineers were forced to abort the first static fire test of prototype of a new upper stage rocket engine, planned to last 4.5 seconds but stopped after 1.9 seconds.

The test proceeded as predicted till 1.9 s validating the ignition and subsequent performance of PHTA [Power Head Test Article]. At 2.0 s, an unanticipated spike in the turbine pressure and subsequent loss of turbine-speed was observed. As a precautionary step, the test was terminated. Analysis under progress would offer further understanding before proceeding with further hot-tests for longer duration.

This was not a test of a real rocket engine, but an engineering test prototype, designed “to validate the integrated performance of the critical subsystems such as the gas generator, turbo pumps, pre-burner and control components.” That the test showed issues without exploding is actually very good news. Engineers still have the prototype to quickly figure out what went wrong and fix it.

Leave a comment

A blacklisted American wins in court

3:52 pm

Gerald Groff, no longer blacklisted by the post office
Gerald Groff, no longer blacklisted by the post office

Let’s end the week on a positive note. This week the big news in connection with Americans who have been blacklisted by our leftist governments has mostly focused on the Supreme Court ruling that Colorado cannot force a Christian web designer to create websites advocating the queer agenda. That 6-3 ruling affirmed the religious rights of Americans to refuse to promote ideas they find abhorrent. It also told the fascists in the homosexual movement they are not gods who can force everyone to endorse their lifestyle.

This column is not about that victory however. Instead, I want to tout another Supreme Court victory this same week, a follow-up of a story I had posted as a blacklist column back in August 2022, describing how postal worker Gerald Groff had been forced from his job because, after years of accommodating his religious beliefs and allowing him to not work on Sunday, his new post officer supervisor suddenly decided that he no longer had the right to those religious beliefs, and instituted disciplinary actions against him that forced him to quit. As I wrote then:
» Read more

4 comments

Africa’s space agency wants to build an empire

9:13 am

Link here. The article is quite typical of the mainstream press, blindly in love with government-run bureaucracies. It outlines in excellent detail all the real advantages that a thriving space industry could bring to Africa, some of which are already being realized by some of the continent’s more prosperous nations. It then assumes without any justification that a large bureaucratic space agency funded by many African nations will make that possible.

In 2019, the African Union (AU) announced its space strategy. Last January the African Space Agency (AfSA) was launched, a flagship to coordinate efforts and generate synergies. It already has a physical headquarters in Cairo, but for the moment most of its rooms stand empty.

Tidiane Ouattara, an expert in space sciences at the AU, expects its 156 permanent posts to be filled next year. Outtara highlights the importance of progressing “step by step” toward the consolidation of an agency with highly qualified personnel. A solid institution capable of “defending Africa’s interests” in the international arena and of negotiating with other countries who, when exploring space, “set the rules that were best suited to them,” he says. Ouattara understands that this was the case simply because “they were first,” although he adds: “The world must understand that now Africa is also on board” and has a lot to say on controversial issues such as space debris and space traffic.

While it is certainly true that this agency, once fully staffed, could advocate for Africa’s interests on the world stage, don’t expect that from it. Instead, it is simply a place where African leaders — many of whom are very corrupt — can return favors to friends by giving them a cushy job.

For most African nations, a space program makes no sense. At best each nation should establish laws that would give its private industries as much freedom and latitude to enter this market.

As for the African Space Agency, if it really wished to promote an African space industry, it should convince a consortium of African nations to team up to finance a variety of smallsat weather, Earth resource, and surveillance satellites that nations routinely need. It should then use that money to do what the UAE has done, hire experienced universities in the west to build those satellites, under the proviso that those universities also train African engineering students and companies at the same time. These students and companies can then go back to their countries and eventually do the work themselves.

8 comments
1 … 43 44 45 46 47 … 364