Sic Semper Tyrannis

" ... major advancements in aerospace propulsion and generating power ..."

"Among Dr. Pais's patents are designs, approved in 2018, for an aerospace-underwater craft of incredible speed and maneuverability. This cone-shaped vehicle can potentially fly just as well anywhere it may be, whether air, water or space, without leaving any heat signatures. It can achieve this by being able to create a quantum vacuum around itself with a very dense polarized energy field. This vacuum would allow it to repel any molecule the craft comes in contact with, no matter the medium. Manipulating "quantum field fluctuations in the local vacuum energy state," would help reduce the craft's inertia. The polarized vacuum would dramatically reduce any elemental resistance and lead to "extreme speeds," claims the paper.

Not only that, if the vacuum-creating technology can be engineered, we'd also be able to "engineer the fabric of our reality at the most fundamental level," states the patent. This would lead to major advancements in aerospace propulsion and generating power. Not to mention other reality-changing outcomes that come to mind.

Among Pais's other patents are inventions that stem from similar thinking, outlining pieces of technology necessary to make his creations come to fruition. His paper presented in 2019, titled "Room Temperature Superconducting System for Use on a Hybrid Aerospace Undersea Craft," presents a system that can achieve superconductivity at room temperatures. This would become "a highly disruptive technology, capable of a total paradigm change in Science and Technology," conveys Pais." bigthink

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Something to ponder.  pl

https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/us-navy-inventions-change-reality?rebelltitem=2#rebelltitem2

Starlink Launch Alert

 

https://spacelaunchnow.me/launch/falcon-9-block-5-starlink-16

How to make rocket fuel on Mars

"How will future astronauts get back home to Earth from Mars? According to a new study, they could make rocket fuel from the methane that's already on the Red Planet. 

Researchers have devised a new way to create methane-based rocket fuel that they hope could make return trips from Mars far more feasible. This method was previously theorized by Elon Musk and engineers at SpaceX who considered ways to use carbon dioxide and water from ice on Mars to have the necessary carbon and hydrogen necessary to create methane. 

So, in theory, future astronauts could use this technique to turn local Martian materials like ice and carbon dioxide to make rocket fuel for a return trip home. This new method is only a "proof of concept" right now, meaning it has only been tested in labs but not in real-world conditions. 

Still, while "lots of engineering and research is needed before this can be fully implemented," Huolin Xin, a physicist at the University of California, Irvine who led this research, said in a statement. "But the results are very promising.""  Space.com

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Or as they say in New Zealand - "meethane."   Who knew that the stuff of cow flatus would be so useful?  There supposedly is a lot of this material lying around on the bottom of the ocean and when the ocean burps methane in large amounts ships above the burp sink because of the decrease in what- floatability?

The idea of making oxygen and methane on THE RED PLANET is quite inspiring.  It is further evidence of the world beating quality of Musk's leadership.  Take care of yourself man!  C'mon man!   We need you.  pl

https://www.space.com/future-astronauts-methane-rocket-fuel-mars

Starlink will span the globe.

"SpaceX aims to connect rural communities around the globe to reliable satellite internet. The aerospace company is in the process of deploying thousands of Starlink satellites to orbit where each will beam broadband internet connection down to Earth. "With performance that far surpasses that of traditional satellite internet, and a global network unbounded by ground infrastructure limitations, Starlink will deliver high speed broadband internet to locations where access has been unreliable, expensive, or completely unavailable," the company states. 

SpaceX currently operates approximately 960 Starlink satellites and plans to launch at least 120 satellites per month this year. The company is offering service to select customers living in high-latitudes by invitation only via Starlink.com, however, as more satellites are deployed to orbit SpaceX will increase its capability to provide Starlink internet to more customers worldwide. As of today, SpaceX has customers living in rural communities located in Canada, northern United States, and even the United Kingdom, according to social media users who have purchased the service. The company is also working alongside the U.S. government to provide free Starlink service to school districts and households in rural areas that cannot afford the service. Read more: SpaceX will provide Starlink Internet to Virginia’s Wise County School District and Rural Community.

To receive internet from the satellites in space customers purchase a Starlink Kit that includes a phased-array antenna dish, mounting tripod, and Wi-Fi router device. SpaceX says the technology these devices feature is more advanced than what is currently on fighter jets. SpaceX priced the equipment at $499 USD, with a monthly service fee of $99 USD. Long-term, Starlink customers will be supporting SpaceX’s ultimate mission to develop the Starship fleet that will enable humanity to colonize Mars."  tasmanian

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And now pilgrims, I see that Starlink has applied for licensing to operate in Greece where they would offer universal access at prices more expensive than at present from a patchwork of little internet providers, but at speeds up to 150 MPS.  This is far, far higher than in Greece today where speeds are often down around 10 MPS.

Pilgrims!  If this works on a business basis, you can expect that Starlink will spread across Europe and then the world transforming the internet providers market wherever it goes.  pl

https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/starlink-hiring

Elon Musk’s SpaceX Set to Bring Starlink Internet to Greece | GreekReporter.com

"SpaceX performs incredible Starship SN8 test flight in South Texas!" tasmanian

"Today SpaceX is one step closer to Mars! The aerospace company performed an incredible test flight with a prototype of the Starship spacecraft that could one day transform humans into a multiplanet species. This afternoon SpaceX conducted the first high-altitude test flight and achieved many milestones during the launch! The Starship SN8 prototype soared approximately 50,000 feet (15-kilometers) into the sky powered by a trio of Raptor engines."

"During the epic flight test SpaceX tested the vehicles aerodynamic flaps during a ‘belly dive’ maneuver that left everyone in awe. The maneuver is important towards Starship’s development, it is how the spacecraft will move to enter a planet’s rough atmosphere before landing. The test flight lasted around seven minutes in which Starship used its aerodynamic flaps to glide itself down Boca Chica’s sky. SN8 was capable of reorienting itself to a vertical position to prepare for a landing, but upon landing the vehicle exploded."

"However, Starship SN8 performed an excellent flight. SpaceX said SN8 is "designed to test a number of objectives, from how the vehicle’s three Raptor engines perform to the overall aerodynamic entry capabilities of the vehicle (including its body flaps) to how the vehicle manages propellant transition [...]," the company wrote on its website, “With a test such as this, success is not measured by completion of specific objectives but rather how much we can learn, which will inform and improve the probability of success in the future as SpaceX rapidly advances development of Starship.” Musk shared the vehicle achieved going through all the testing objectives -“Successful ascent, switchover to header tanks & precise flap control to landing point!” he wrote via Twitter. He also shared that the reason why Starship SN8 exploded upon landing was because the –“Fuel header tank pressure was low during landing burn, causing touchdown velocity to be high & RUD [Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly], but we got all the data we needed! Congrats SpaceX team hell yeah!!” Musk stated via Twitter after the successful test flight today. “SN8 did great! Even reaching apogee would’ve been great, so controlling all way to putting the crater in the right spot was epic!!” he said."  tasmanian

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I waited all day to watch this bird fly.  It was absolutely grand.  The nose dive and glide followed by self righting was all that one could hope for in an early test.  This machine is the gateway to the solar system.  pl 

https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/sn8-1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship

"Laser fusion reactor approaches ‘burning plasma’ milestone" Science

" ... with new target designs and laser pulse shapes, along with better tools to monitor the miniature explosions, NIF researchers believe they are close to an important intermediate milestone known as “burning plasma”: a fusion burn sustained by the heat of the reaction itself rather than the input of laser energy.

Self-heating is key to burning up all the fuel and getting runaway energy gain. Once NIF reaches the threshold, simulations suggest it will have an easier path to ignition, says Mark Herrmann, who oversees Livermore’s fusion program. “We’re pushing as hard as we can,” he says. “You can feel the acceleration in our understanding.” Outsiders are impressed, too. “You kind of feel there’s steady progress and less guesswork,” says Steven Rose, co-director of the Centre for Inertial Fusion Studies at Imperial College London. “They’re moving away from designs traditionally held and trying new things."  Science

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The usual kibitzers will now say, "Ho! hum!  I have heard that all my life."  OK.  I hear yah!  pl

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/laser-fusion-reactor-approaches-burning-plasma-milestone

The Geopolitics of Herring Farts - TTG

Some of may remember when that Soviet Whiskey class submarine ran aground off the coast of Sweden in 1981. It caused quite the stir, but it was resolved without too much huffing and puffing… and that was at the height of the cold war. It reminded me of that delightful Carl Reiner - Alan Arkin movie from 1966, "The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!" NATO and Sweden complained of apparent Soviet and later Russian incursions into Swedish waters well into the 1990s. However, it wasn’t the Russkies, it was the herring. Here’s the story as told by the Swedish biologist who discovered the flatulent fish and possibly saved the world from a nuclear war.

For his trouble, Wahlberg was awarded the 2004 Ig Nobel Prize in biology. Did he take offense. Not a bit. He runs the Improbable Research website, a site highlighting “research that makes people laugh and then think.”

I get a chuckle when I think of the reaction of those Soviet and Russian admirals who endured years of accusations from Sweden and NATO about how they were supposedly risking World War III just to have a looksie at Swedish ports. I imagine more than one of those admirals thought about pushing the button just to shut up those lying Swedish bastards. I wonder if they ever got an apology.

TTG 

https://www.improbable.com/2012/02/29/fish-farts-russian-submarines-the-swedish-foreign-minister/

https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/for-15-years-sweden-thought-enemy-submarines-were-invading-its-territory-it-turned-out-to-be-herring-farts/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBHYbeg2nao

"Streaming 4K with zero buffering" tasmanian.com

 

"SpaceX priced the Starlink Kit at $499 USD. The company states the phased-array dish "is more advanced than what's in fighter jets." The monthly broadband service fee is priced at $99 USD. SpaceX told early customers that they are part of a beta testing phase of the network called "Better Than Nothing Beta" test program. The company sent out an e-mail to potential customers which details what early Starlink users can expect from being part of the program --"As you can see from the title, we are trying to lower your initial expectations," SpaceX wrote, "Expect to see data speeds vary from 50Mb/s to 150Mb/s [megabits per second] and latency from 20ms to 40ms [milliseconds] over the next several months as we enhance the Starlink system. There will also be brief periods of no connectivity at all," the email reads. SpaceX states that as more satellites are deployed to orbit the network's speed and reliability will increase --"As we launch more satellites, install more ground stations and improve our networking software, data speed, latency and uptime will improve dramatically," the company wrote. "For latency, we expect to achieve 16ms to 19ms by summer 2021.""  tasmanian.com

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It is interesting that this report appears on a Tasmanian web news site.  Tasmania is just the sort of place where Starlink will bring high quality internet.  Australia generally in its wilder parts will benefit as well as those far flung islands in the Pacific.

IMO the revenues at Starlink will be prodigious.   The parent SpaceX group needs these to fund their progress toward their stated goal of an autonomous Martian colony.  pl

https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/starlink-speed

"Nuclear fusion reactor could be here as soon as 2025" Livescience

"A viable nuclear fusion reactor — one that spits out more energy than it consumes — could be here as soon as 2025.

That's the takeaway of seven new studies, published Sept. 29 in the Journal of Plasma Physics.

If a fusion reactor reaches that milestone, it could pave the way for massive generation of clean energy. 

During fusion, atomic nuclei are forced together to form heavier atoms. When the mass of the resulting atoms is less than the mass of the atoms that went into their creation, the excess mass is converted to energy, liberating an extraordinary amount of light and heat. Fusion powers the sun and stars, as the mighty gravity at their hearts fuse hydrogen to create helium."

"The heat from a fusion reactor would generate steam. This steam would then drive a turbine and electrical generator, the same way most electricity is produced nowadays. 

"Fusion power plants could be one-to-one replacements for fossil fuel plants, and you wouldn't have to restructure electrical grids for them," Greenwald said. In contrast, renewable energy sources such as solar and wind "are not accommodated well by the current design of electric grids."

"The researchers ultimately hope SPARC-inspired fusion power plants would generate between 250 to 1,000 megawatts of electricity. "In the current power market of the United States, power plants typically generate between 100 to 500 megawatts," Greenwald said.

SPARC would only produce heat, not electricity. Once researchers have built and tested SPARC, they plan to construct the ARC (Affordable Robust Compact) reactor, which would generate electricity from that heat by 2035.

"That's very ambitious, but that's the target we're working toward," Greenwald said. "I think it's really plausible.""  Livescience

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Great!  This will come along just at the right time for the Biden regime of Demopols and Marxists to take full credit for it.  pl 

https://www.livescience.com/nuclear-fusion-reactor-sparc-2025.html

Mars has a lot of water. Who knew?

Two years ago, planetary scientists reported the discovery of a large saltwater lake under the ice at Mars’s south pole, a finding that was met with excitement and some scepticism. Now, researchers have confirmed the presence of that lake — and found three more.

The discovery, reported on 28 September in Nature Astronomy¹, was made using radar data from the European Space Agency’s Mars-orbiting spacecraft, called Mars Express. It follows the detection of a single subsurface lake in the same region in 2018 — which, if confirmed, would be the first body of liquid water ever detected on the red planet and a possible habitat for life. But that finding was based on just 29 observations made from 2012 to 2015, and many researchers said they needed more evidence to support the claim. The latest study used a broader data set comprising 134 observations from 2012 to 2019.

“We identified the same body of water, but we also found three other bodies of water around the main one,” says planetary scientist Elena Pettinelli at the University of Rome, who is one of the paper’s co-authors. “It’s a complex system.”

The team used a radar instrument on Mars Express called the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS) to probe the planet’s southern polar region. MARSIS sends out radio waves that bounce off layers of material in the planet’s surface and subsurface. The way the signal is reflected back indicates the kind of material that is present at a particular location — rock, ice or water, for example. A similar method is used to identify subsurface glacial lakes on Earth. The team detected some areas of high reflectivity that they say indicate bodies of liquid water trapped under more than one kilometre of Martian ice.

The lakes are spread over about 75,000 square kilometres — an area roughly one-fifth the size of Germany. The largest, central lake measures 30 kilometres across, and is surrounded by 3 smaller lakes, each a few kilometres wide.

Salty lakes

On the surface of Mars, the low pressure that results from the planet’s lack of a substantial atmosphere makes liquid water impossible. But scientists have long thought that there could be water trapped under Mars’s surface, perhaps a remnant of when the planet once had seas and lakes billions of years ago. If such reservoirs exist, they could be potential habitats for Martian life. On Earth, life is able to survive in subglacial lakes in places such as Antarctica.

But the amount of salt present could pose problems. It’s thought that any underground lakes on Mars must have a reasonably high salt content for the water to remain liquid. Although this far beneath the surface there might be a small amount of heat from the interior of Mars, this alone would not be enough to melt the ice into water. “From a thermal point of view, it has to be salty,” says Pettinelli.

Lakes with a salt content that is about 5 times that of sea-water can support life, but as the concentration approaches 20 times that of sea-water, life is no longer present, says John Priscu, an environmental scientist at Montana State University in Bozeman.

“There’s not much active life in these briny pools in Antarctica,” says Priscu, whose group studies microbiology in icy environments. “They’re just pickled. And that might be the case [on Mars].”

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Too salty?  Maybe.  The Great Salt Lake is very salty as is the Dead Sea and they both have life in them.   In any event, de-salination for human purposes is possible .  pl

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02751-1

"... 120 satellites per month..."

"SpaceX already initiated a private beta testing phase of the Starlink network that has offered ‘good’ results. – “They show super-low latency and download speeds greater than 100 [megabits] per second [Mbps],” SpaceX Senior Engineer Kate Tice shared during the latest deployment broadcast, “That means our latency is low enough to play the fastest online video games and our download speeds are fast enough to stream multiple HD movies at once.” The network is “very much a work in progress,” she added, stating that as more satellites are deployed it will “unlock the full capability.” The company plans to launch 120 satellites per month in order to speed up service initiation."  tasmanian

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I watch all the launches of the Falcon 9 Starlink missions.  SpaceX does a great job of producing the on-line show.

The astronomers will just have to learn to live with whatever problems he is causing them.  They are working on taking the luster off the satellites.  That will continue.

My  questions have to do with the business model for this.  Are they going to do central billing for the service?  IOW will a customer in northern Ontario pay the company directly for the system and service?  Can you install it yourself or will you need a paid installer?  IMO the money will really, really roll in. 

On to Mars!  pl

https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/spacex-fcc-speed

"... brain-machine interface technology." The Verge

"Elon Musk has said that his secretive neurotech firm Neuralink will demonstrate a working “device,” presumably a brain-machine interface, at 6PM ET on Friday. Musk has spoken repeatedly about his belief that BMI devices are needed to help humans keep up with AI by supplementing our brainpower, but right now, his goal is much simpler: to create an implantable device that lets people control phones or computers with their mind.

Musk initially announced the August 28th “progress update” back in July, and has now offered more details on what will be shown. He says the update will include the unveiling of a second-generation robot designed to attach the company’s technology to the brain, and a demo of neurons “firing in real-time,” though it’s not clear exactly what is meant by this."  The Verge

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In Musk's vision man and machine will someday speak to each other directly.  This would truly be  a "brave, new world."  pl

https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/26/21402240/neuralink-august-2020-event-brain-machine-interface-working-demonstration

"Next step: 1 gigabit internet speeds." Starlink rising. by Motley Fool

So far, results show that Starlink users can expect internet download speeds of anywhere from 11 megabits per second (Mbps) to 60 Mbps, and upload speeds of 5 Mbps to 18 Mbps. At best, those numbers are just 6% of the 1 gig (1 Gbps) speeds the FCC wants to be able to promise under RDOF. But considering that Starlink is still only 80% of the way to having enough sats for "moderate" capability, it's still impressive. (And as Ars notes, even 60 Mbps is much faster internet than many rural customers are able to access today.)

Perhaps more importantly, SpaceX and Starlink seem to have cleared the FCC's bar for competing in the RDOF contest. If you recall, the FCC was skeptical of SpaceX's ability to provide sub-100 lag speeds from space, and promised to apply "very close scrutiny" to SpaceX's performance. Ars, however, says Starlink is delivering ping rates of anywhere from 94 ms (already below 100) all the way down to just 31 ms.

What comes next

As far as qualifying to compete for RDOF and the FCC's $16 billion, this looks very much like "mission accomplished" for SpaceX. Going forward, the company will be aiming to drive its lag rate down below 20 ms, while boosting its internet download speed toward 1 Gbps. And over time, SpaceX hopes that these levels of performance will win it as many as 5 million broadband satellite internet customers in the U.S. At a rumored monthly service cost of $80, times 12 months in a year, Starlink therefore looks to be building toward a $4.8 billion annual revenue stream for SpaceX. 

What does it all mean for SpaceX?

When you consider that it would take SpaceX launching nearly 80 rockets a year at a launch cost of $62 million apiece to generate similar revenue from space launch, it's easy to see how Starlink could soon become SpaceX's primary revenue driver -- and a great candidate for an IPO. 

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RDOF is the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund.  It is a 16 billion dollar slush fund that the FCC has for development of high quality rural internet service.  It looks like Musk is going to make all the check points wanted by the FCC for access to a lot of that money.  

 

4.8 billion annually.  That is the engine with which Musk intends to fund his voyages to Mars.

 

https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/08/23/fast-broadband-from-orbit-new-data-says-spacex-can/

 

 

On the one hand ...

1. I watched the launch of the Mars mission this AM.  Flawless, simply flawless.  The big Atlas 5/Centaur blasted into the sky exactly on time from Canaveral.  First Stage burnout and jettison was flawless, Centaur performed its two burns perfectly.  The first to take the bird into an earth orbit and the second to take the payload out of Earth's gravity well and send it on its way to Mars.  As one engineer said on TeeVee, "we have left the building."  Having done its thing, Centaur disconnected from the Perseverance payload and went into a parking orbit out beyond the moon where it will stay until someone may retrieve it, someday. The Mars bound spacecraft will make a few course corrections during the transit to Mars in order to land (or crash) it in Jezro Crater.   A word about the nuclear battery on the rover.  During the trip it will be supplying power to the spacecraft and its functioning life will be at least 15 years.

2.  The GDP of the US contracted (shrank) by a third in the 2nd Quarter.  This hit the markets like a ton of bricks.  Ugly.

3.  Just to make things worse Trumpy tweeted that the November election should be postponed because there is a serious chance that the mail in voting proposed in a number of states will be riddled with fraud.  firstly, the US Constitution makes federal elections the responsibility of the states.  Trump has no authority that I know of with which to postpone an election.  His desire to do so demonstrates the wisdom of the Framers.  This may be the final fatal misstep for him.

4.  Pompous the Great claims that DoJ can postpone an election?  Well, he was "first in his class" at WhooPoo.  pl

 

Doctors go to Washington about hydroxychloroqine and COVID-19. Censorship follows.

By Robert Willmann

Today, 28 July, a story popped up that some doctors had a little press event about the SARS-CoV-2 virus in front of the Supreme Court building yesterday in Washington D.C., introduced by Congressman Ralph Norman (Repub., South Carolina), but now the Internet websites called Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have removed the video.  The "main stream media" did not seem to be there.  By the time Facebook censored the video, it had received over 17 million views.  A group of medical doctors called America's Frontline Doctors participated in the event, and had a conference scheduled for yesterday that would end today.  The Tea Party Patriots organization helped to sponsor the events.

Dr. Simone Gold organized the doctors.  She received a medical degree in 1989 from Rosalind Franklin University, the Chicago Medical School, and has a law degree, but she does not appear to have a law license in California.  She practices emergency medicine in Los Angeles, California.  The little event had been on the vimeo.com video website earlier today, but then was removed [1].  The America's Frontline Doctors website was available this morning, but after a while today it said:  "Website Expired.  This account has expired. If you are the site owner, click below to login" [2].  

Dr. Gold said that hydroxychloroquine can be purchased over the counter in Indonesia and Iran!

The breitbart.com website has its its own video, which is still available, and it is about 44 minutes long.  During the event, a study from 2005 on chloroquine was mentioned, which is entited, "Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread".  SARS is said to be a worse virus than SARS-CoV-2.  The study is on the National Insitututes of Health website--

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1232869/

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/07/27/facebook-censors-viral-video-of-doctors-capitol-hill-coronavirus-press-conference/

The program the group had scheduled for yesterday and today included presentations indoors.  Two of them as videos were on the YouTube section for the Tea Party Patriots earlier this afternoon, but one is now gone:  "This video has been removed for violating YouTube's community guidelines" [3].  The remaining one is about 3 hours, 11 minutes, and the audio is out until 4 minutes, 53 seconds into the video. It was still available as of 5:52 p.m., central time--

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKbQbcInHnA

This morning, the CNN network followed the censorship with its own misdirection, starting out by saying: "A video featuring a group of doctors making false and dubious claims related to the coronavirus was removed by Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube after going viral online Monday" [4].

"Pentagon Has ‘Off-World Vehicles Not Made on This Earth’" PM

"Now, a new report in the New York Times confirms those accounts. The government’s UFO unit currently resides in the Office of Naval Intelligence, where it “deals with classified matters,” per the report, even though the unit itself isn’t classified. The Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force is meant to “standardize collection and reporting” on sightings of UAVs and publicly divulge “at least some of its findings” twice a year, according to the Times."  PM

"Harry Reid, the former Nevada senator who was instrumental in funding the original UFO program, told the Times he believes that “crashes from other worlds had occurred, and that retrieved materials had been studied secretly for decades, often by aerospace companies under government contracts.” From the article."  PM

"The astrophysicist Eric Davis, who consulted with the Pentagon’s original UFO program, told the Times that after he examined certain materials, he came to the conclusion that “we couldn’t make [them] ourselves.” In fact, Davis briefed a Department of Defense (DOD) agency as recently as March about retrieving materials from “off-world vehicles not made on this earth.”"  PM

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So, ONI is now running this.  Interesting.

I find the statement by Eric Davis to be intriguing.  "retrieving materials from “off-world vehicles not made on this earth."  He works for a technical research center in Austin, Texas where the focus is on black holes, their generation and what use might be made of them.  A nutter?  Maybe, but Harry Reid is not a nutter and neither is Senator Rubio.

I have suspected for a long time that the US has been "back engineering" UFO crash wreckage and deriving great advantage from that process.  Lt Col Philip Corso claimed before his death in 1998, that as head of the US Army General Staff's Foreign Technology Division he had been involved in the process of transferring the technical fruits of reverse engineering to various US companies for their use in developing new products.  pl

https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a33413777/pentagon-ufo-program-materials-vehicles/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_J._Corso

"China launches ambitious Mars mission" CBS News

"A powerful Long March 5 rocket blasted off Thursday carrying a Chinese orbiter, lander and rover on a seven-month voyage to Mars, the second of three high-stakes missions to the red planet and one that, if successful, will put China on the front lines of interplanetary exploration.

China did not announce the launch date or time in advance, but a notice to mariners warned of an impending flight and sure enough, the Long March 5 roared to life and streaked away from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on Hainan Island southwest of Hong Kong at 12:41 a.m. EDT (12:41 p.m. local time)."  CBS News

"The orbiter is equipped with seven instruments, including high- and medium-resolution cameras; a ground-penetrating radar; a mineralogy spectrometer; a magnetometer; and two charged particle detectors. Its planned orbit around the Martian poles will carry it within about 165 miles of the surface and as far away as 7,450 miles.

After mapping the world below for several months, the orbiter will release a landing craft that will descend to a rocket-powered touchdown on a broad, 2,000-mile-wide plain known as Utopia Planitia, the same general region where NASA's Viking 1 lander touched down in 1976."  CBS News

"The 530-pound six-wheel rover will ride down atop the lander and then roll off extendable ramps to the surface. The rover is equipped with six instruments, including a multi-spectral camera, a terrain camera, a ground-penetrating radar, magnetic field detector, meteorology sensors and others.

The rover is designed to receive commands and beam back data to Earth using the Tianwen-1 orbiter as a relay station.

"A successful landing would put China among elite company," Mason Peck, an aerospace engineer at Cornell University, told the journal Science."  CBS News

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The scale of this mission and its complexity really are a "Long March."  If the Chinese can make all these functions work they will deserve to be thought of as a serious competitor for the US in space exploration.  I wish them luck.   pl

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-tianwen-1-orbiter-unmanned-launch-mars/

" ... Fauci has been wrong about everything..." Navarro

"And when Fauci was telling the White House Coronavirus Task Force that there was only anecdotal evidence in support of hydroxychloroquine to fight the virus, I confronted him with scientific studies providing evidence of safety and efficacy. A recent Detroit hospital study showed a 50% reduction in the mortality rate when the medicine is used in early treatment.

Now Fauci says a falling mortality rate doesn’t matter when it is the single most important statistic to help guide the pace of our economic reopening. The lower the mortality rate, the faster and more we can open."  Navarro in USA Today

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"Laputa's population consists mainly of an educated elite, who are fond of mathematics, astronomy, music and technology, but fail to make practical use of their knowledge. Servants make up the rest of the population.

The Laputans have mastered magnetic levitation. They also are very fond of astronomy, and discovered two moons of Mars. (This is 151 years earlier than the recognized discovery of the two moons of Mars by Asaph Hall in 1877.) However, they are unable to construct well-designed clothing or buildings, as they despise practical geometry as "vulgar and mechanick". The houses are ill-built, lacking any right angles,^[6] and the clothes of Laputans, which are decorated with astrological symbols and musical figures, do not fit, as they take measurements with instruments such as quadrants and a compass rather than with tape measures.^[7] They spend their time listening to the music of the spheres. They believe in astrology and worry constantly that the sun will go out."  wiki on Gullivers Travels.

--------------

Ah, I see it now!  Dr. Fauci is a Laputan seer!  He is devoid of any real comprehension or respect for the ordinary humans trying to deal with actual pandemic problems rather than "the music of the spheres."

Is he a Democratic Party operative?  I doubt it.  He is simply "out of it."  pl

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/todaysdebate/2020/07/14/anthony-fauci-wrong-with-me-peter-navarro-editorials-debates/5439374002/

"... Covid-19 may not have originated in China, Oxford University expert believes."

"Dr Jefferson believes many viruses lie dormant throughout the globe and emerge when conditions are favourable, which also means they can vanish as quickly as they arrive.

"Where did Sars 1 go? It's just disappeared," he said. "So we have to think about these things. We need to start researching the ecology of the virus, understanding how it originates and mutates.

"I think the virus was already here – here meaning everywhere. We may be seeing a dormant virus that has been activated by environmental conditions. 

"There was a case in the Falkland Islands in early February. Now where did that come from? There was a cruise ship that went from South Georgia to Buenos Aires, and the passengers were screened and then on day eight, when they started sailing towards the Weddell Sea, they got the first case. Was it in prepared food that was defrosted and activated? 

"Strange things like this happened with Spanish Flu. In 1918, around 30 per cent of the population of Western Samoa died of Spanish Flu, and they hadn't had any communication with the outside world.

"The explanation for this could only be that these agents don't come or go anywhere. They are always here and something ignites them, maybe human density or environmental conditions, and this is what we should be looking for.""  The Telegraph.

---------------

This article is behind a paywall but may have been re-published elsewhere.

I find this to be an appealing theory.  It supports my suspicion that, as Trump says, the more you test the more of this virus you will find.   Why?  Perhaps that is true because the virus has been widely present in populations and dormant for a long time only to be activated by some environmental change in the recent past.  

Dr. Jefferson asks rhetorically where the Spanish flu disappeared to.  No cure or vaccine was ever found.  He asks the same question about SARS.  Where did it go?

If the Jeffersonian theory is correct, the implications are enormous.  pl

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/05/covid-19-may-not-have-originated-china-elsewhere-emerged-asia/?WT.mc_id=tmgliveapp_iosshare_AvlLDXGB2PqF

"One-time treatment generates new neurons, eliminates Parkinson's disease in mice" Science Daily

"Several years ago, a postdoctoral researcher working in Fu's lab was taking that approach, using a technique called siRNA to silence the PTB gene in connective tissue cells known as fibroblasts. But it's a tedious process that needs to be performed over and over. He got tired of it and convinced Fu they should use a different technique to create a stable cell line that's permanently lacking PTB. At first, the postdoc complained about that too, because it made the cells grow so slowly.

But then he noticed something odd after a couple of weeks -- there were very few fibroblasts left. Almost the whole dish was instead filled with neurons.

In this serendipitous way, the team discovered that inhibiting or deleting just a single gene, the gene that encodes PTB, transforms several types of mouse cells directly into neurons."  Science Daily

-----------------

Does this have some relevance to approaches to treatment of senile dementia and Alzheimer's?  pl

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200625102540.htm

" ... IT MAY DEPLOY 240 STARLINK CRAFT."

 

 ""If the cost to launch is 1/4 the price of the [Falcon 9] and can carry 4 times the satellites... how is that anything but the right tool for the job?"

Indeed, the Starship is designed to reduce the price of rocket flights by a large amount. In November 2019, CEO Elon Musk said that the operational costs of flying Starship would be around $2 million per flight.

But one of the main issues could be deploying the satellites in space. SpaceX's website shows how the cargo bay could open up to release satellites."  inverse.com

----------------

Well, pilgrims, they haven't managed to get the thing more than a few feet off the ground yet.  Let's see that happen before we celebrate.  pl 

https://www.inverse.com/innovation/spacex-starship-stunning-image-shows-how-it-may-deploy-240-starlink-craft

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Starship

From Frankenfish to Good Eatin’ Game Fish - TTG

A few years after I settled in Virginia, I began reading frightful stories about the arrival of a dangerous “frankenfish” in the Potomac River and its tributaries. This hideous invader called the northern snakehead was feared to be about to both outbreed all other native Potomac fish and eat every single one of them. Doomsday and Armageddon were upon us. We were advised to kill every one we saw without mercy. To do otherwise would mark one as a scofflaw. 

I recently found these videos which painted a far different picture. The northern snakehead is an invader and is definitely here to stay. But it is not replacing the existing species in the Potomac. Instead it has proven to be an exciting gamefish and good eating to boot. The videos chronicle kayak fishing for snakeheads in Aquia and Accokeek Creeks, two waterways I am very familiar with. The video featuring John Odenkirk, a local wildlife biologist with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries is very informative. He’s been studying the snakeheads up close since their arrival in the area. I might have to take up fishing again, but I’ll need something a little more substantial than my Fenwick ferruleless pack fly rod.

TTG

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HdWNN3HVGQ  (fishing Aquia Creek)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrqvEw9BVpo  (cooking and eating the beast)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R23-ThVeZ8o  (the snakehead “professor”)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYdZ3YjEafM  (fishing Accokeek Creek)

"Watch a Boston Dynamics robot herd sheep in New Zealand" engadget

"In addition to herding sheep, Spot robots might also harvest crops, inspect yields or create real-time maps, Rocos says. These capabilities are all possible now that Spot is more nimble, can handle rugged terrain and can carry infrared and LiDAR cameras. Rocos hopes to use its tech to remotely design and edit missions and collect sensor data. In other words, users might be able to herd sheep in New Zealand from anywhere in the world.

Spot is constantly learning new tricks. Mostly recently, Boston Dynamics trained the four-legged robot to help triage COVID-19 patients. We’ve also seen Spot navigate an office, hold the door for a friend, pull a rickshaw and haul a box truck. While we haven’t seen it ourselves, police in Massachusetts are reportedly testing Spot as a "mobile remote observation device.”"  engadget

----------------

Woof!  pl

https://www.engadget.com/boston-dynamics-spot-robots-herd-sheep-135533533.html

"... Single-Atom Transistors May Enable Quantum Computers ..." scitechdaily

"Linking multiple copies of these devices may lay the foundation for quantum computing.

Once unimaginable, transistors consisting only of several-atom clusters or even single atoms promise to become the building blocks of a new generation of computers with unparalleled memory and processing power. But to realize the full potential of these tiny transistors — miniature electrical on-off switches — researchers must find a way to make many copies of these notoriously difficult-to-fabricate components.

Now, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and their colleagues at the University of Maryland have developed a step-by-step recipe to produce the atomic-scale devices. Using these instructions, the NIST-led team has become only the second in the world to construct a single-atom transistor and the first to fabricate a series of single electron transistors with atom-scale control over the devices’ geometry.

The scientists demonstrated that they could precisely adjust the rate at which individual electrons flow through a physical gap or electrical barrier in their transistor — even though classical physics would forbid the electrons from doing so because they lack enough energy. That strictly quantum phenomenon, known as quantum tunneling, only becomes important when gaps are extremely tiny, such as in the miniature transistors. Precise control over quantum tunneling is key because it enables the transistors to become “entangled” or interlinked in a way only possible through quantum mechanics and opens new possibilities for creating quantum bits (qubits) that could be used in quantum computing."  scitechdaily

--------------

Pilgrims, I don't claim to be Nicola Tesla or anyone approximating that but this seems like a big thing to me.  Tell me what you think about it.  pl 

https://scitechdaily.com/new-recipe-for-single-atom-transistors-may-enable-quantum-computers-with-unparalleled-memory-and-processing-power/

HARPER: TIMELY ENERGY BREAKTHROUGH?

The April 19 issue of the online publication Asia Times reports that a potential breakthrough has been achieved in fusion energy that could greatly accelerate the realization of a long-sought source for unlimited future energy.  Coming in the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the temporary shutdown of the U.S. economy and the uncertain state of global oil pricing (as Col. Lang pointed out, no peak oil crisis but a severe glut and price collapse), this potential breakthrough comes at a welcome moment.

If there is one lesson coming out of this crisis, it is the need to restore the proper role of science and research as well as critical supply chain production at home or in close locations.

The author, Jonathan Tennenbaum wrote:

"The various fields of science and technology are so closely connected that a breakthrough in one area can rapidly trigger a chain reaction of breakthroughs in other areas. The `impossible' becomes possible, the difficult becomes easy. Ideas, long since abandoned as hopelessly difficult to realize, suddenly take on new lives.

"Hydrogen-boron fusion is one example. In principle, the fusion reaction between nuclei of hydrogen and boron could provide a highly efficient, radioactivity-free form of nuclear energy with practically unlimited fuel reserves. The reaction produces no dangerous penetrating radiation and no radioactive waste, but only stable alpha particles, whose electrical charge even permits a direct conversion of fusion energy into electricity.

"These advantages have long been known, but until recently the physical conditions thought necessary for a hydrogen-boron reactor – including temperatures of billions of degrees Celsius – seemed far beyond anything one might expect to achieve in the foreseeable future."

Recent breakthroughs by Nobel Prize winners Gerard Mourou and Donna Strickland in the field of chirped pulse amplification now make such a ignition possible.

I leave the technical details to the author, who provides an intelligible but detailed description of the process.  The consequences of a mastery of fusion energy, which may still take years to realize, is a total revolution in future energy.  This goes way beyond the issue of electricity to power a growing global economy.  At the temperatures achieved uniquely by fusion, different chemical processes occur.  They further open prospects for deep space travel through fusion propulsion.  In other words, decades of work may realize the potential of nuclear power without the proliferation spill-over.  At a time of great angst and uncertainty, this is good news for the future.

https://asiatimes.com/2020/04/hydrogen-boron-fusion-could-be-a-dream-come-true/?utm_source=The+Daily+Report&utm_campaign=362a562dc1-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_04_16_10_40_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1f8bca137f-362a562dc1-31533201&mc_cid=362a562dc1&mc_eid=dfaa9bd611

 

Finally: a study on the SARS-CoV-2 virus in a specific county whether people had symptoms or not

By Robert Willmann

Posted on the Internet yesterday is a study dated 11 April 2020 that finally addresses a type of investigation avoided by the energetic creators of hype and fear on television and elsewhere about an illness resulting from a virus called SARS-CoV-2.  Using a sample from Santa Clara County, California, home of Stanford University, the study tested the blood of 3,330 people, using a new testing technique to look for antibodies that are expected to exist if the virus has been inside a person, whether they had any symptoms or not. 

In this case, by using the math of statistics, the attempt is made to extend the observed results to the population of a specific area, to try to figure out how many people in the area had the virus in them at some point, even if they have shown no symptoms.  Then -- using the population of the area, the statistical number of persons who had been exposed, the number who are thought to have the virus by other testing and clinical observation, and the number whose death was caused by the virus (a difficult determination) -- better opinions can be developed.  This use of statistical sampling can try to describe reality in a more correct way than the so-called "mathematical models" promoted in the media that whipped up hysteria about the virus, and those models could politely be called wild speculation.  The models were used to justify draconian and illegal orders by governors and mayors that destroyed incomes, closed businesses, and did not accurately and constructively address the problems that may be caused by the virus.

When you have an idea about how many people have developed antibodies and are still alive, whether having had symptoms or not, you can begin to see the status and effect of the virus.  Furthermore, people who have naturally developed antibodies have usually become immune.  You can also calculate the fatality rate of the virus in a better way. 

One of the authors of the study is John P.A. Ioannidis, who is a professor at the Stanford University Medical School [1].  He kicked up some controversy in an article in March when the hype about the virus was escalating by saying, "The data collected so far on how many people are infected and how the epidemic is evolving are utterly unreliable" [2]. 

3 criminal cases: Harvard professor Charles Lieber for lies to DoD and NIH, plus two Chinese in science

By Robert Willmann

With television networks and other media saturated by constant stories about the SARS-CoV-2 virus, an intriguing criminal case has remained beneath the radar.  And two others illustrate the lack of vetting and lack of limitations on access by non-citizens to advanced science and laboratories in the U.S., and the failure to emphasize domestic students.

At the time of his arrest on 28 January 2020 for two federal felony crimes, Charles Lieber was the chairman of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  He has been removed as chairman and was placed on indefinite paid administrative leave; he is not allowed on campus and will not continue his teaching and research duties, according to the student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson.  His release from custody required a $1 million dollar cash deposit for bail, travel restrictions, and a few other conditions.

A criminal complaint was filed supported by an affidavit.  Lieber had an arrangement with the Wuhan University of Technology in Wuhan, China.  The large city of around 10 million people or more is in current news stories about the SARS-CoV-2 virus.  The affidavit contains considerable detail about alleged false statements Lieber made to the Department of Defense (DoD) on 24 April 2018, and to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) through Harvard on 10 January 2019--

https://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/charleslieber_crim_complaint-1.pdf

https://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/charleslieber_affidavit_for_crim_complaint.pdf

Zaosong Zheng came into the U.S. through the  "J" nonimmigrant visa category, often called a J-1 visa.  He had a medical degree from China, and was working in cancer research in a lab at the Harvard Medical School teaching hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.  One of its labs is the Wenyi Wei Laboratory, where Zheng was working.  As he was preparing to leave the U.S. at Boston Logan airport, 21 vials were discovered hidden in a sock in his checked bags.  He admitted that he had stolen 8 of them from the teaching hospital lab. He was first charged by a complaint supported by an affidavit, and later was formally charged by an indictment with making a false statement and trying to send material out of the country that was not properly declared and packaged [1]--

https://turcopolier.typepad.com/files/zheng_indictment.pdf

Zheng's wife is also a Chinese doctor and is working at an NIH laboratory in Maryland.  Zheng was released from jail pending trial by a percentage cash bond, home detention, and location monitoring when he leaves his apartment.   His home detention order sounds just like the bizarre and illegal orders issued  by governors and mayors across the country:  "Home detention.  You are restricted to your residence at all times except for employment; education; religious services; medical, substance abuse, or mental health treatment; attorney visits; court appearances; court-ordered obligations; or other activities approved in advance by the pretrial services office or supervising officer" [2].

Hydrochloroquin and Z-Pak cure CODIV-19.

"Dr Jeff Colyer, the former governor of Kansas who is a practicing physician, reported Sunday in the Wall Street Journal that the combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin is continuing to show "promising" results in coronavirus patients.

From The Wall Street Journal:

In the fight against Covid-19 though we might look forward in doom, one day we will look backward in awe. In an article last week, I discussed a promising drug combination to treat the disease. There is now new data supporting this treatment. Since then, Kansas City area physicians, including Joe Brewer, Dan Hinthorn and me, continue to treat many patients, and some have shown improvement. Major medical centers including the University of Washington and Mass General have added hydroxychloroquine to treatment options. [...]

Physicians are using two drugs in combination—hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, which I’ll abbreviate HC and AZ—to treat patients with advanced Covid-19 symptoms. We use a regimen reported in a recent open-label trial in Marseille, France, which was updated March 26, and which doctors may modify in any given case.

[...] Clinical information has also emerged from Covid treatment. During the initial Chinese outbreak, Wuhan doctors observed that patients with lupus—a disease for which HC is a common treatment—did not seem to develop Covid-19. Of 178 hospital patients who tested positive, none had lupus and none were on HC. None of this Wuhan hospital’s dermatology department’s 80 lupus patients were infected with the novel coronavirus. The Wuhan doctors hypothesized that this may be due to long-term use of HC. They treated 20 Covid-19 patients with HC. Their result: “Clinical symptoms improve significantly in 1 to 2 days. After five days of chest CT examination, 19 cases showed significant absorption improvement.”

Second, consider AZ—the antibiotic marketed as Z-Pak—combined with HC. The French study showed that 57% of 14 Covid-19 patients receiving HC without AZ tested negative for the virus on a nasal swab on day six. But 100% of the six patients who received both HC and AZ tested negative on day six. Compare that with 16 infected patients at another hospital who didn’t receive either treatment: only 12% tested negative on day six. These are small samples, but significant.

The authors of the French study last week published the results of an additional 80 hospitalized patients receiving a combination of HC and AZ. By day eight of treatment, 93% showed a negative nasopharyngeal swab for the virus. “This allowed patients to rapidly be discharged from highly contagious wards with a mean length of stay of five days,” the authors write. “Other teams should urgently evaluate this cost-effective therapeutic strategy, to both avoid the spread of the disease and treat patients as soon as possible before severe respiratory irreversible complications take hold.” I agree."  informationliberation

------------------

Well, pilgrims?  pl

http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=61333

Panic Sells and This Price is Waaaaay to Low! .... by Fred

How does a ventilator cost $35,000? Inquiring minds at SST want to know and your favorite correspondent is gonna tell ya the long and short of it. Short: They don't, that's just what they sell'm for. The long? Well, read away, it's not like you have to go to work today, right? 

What can I get for $35,000 of your tax money? Well, your favorite president, who is busy screwing you and the New Yorkers you love,  put it:

"“As usual with ‘this’ General Motors, things just never seem to work out,” Trump tweeted. “They said they were going to give us 40,000 much needed Ventilators, ‘very quickly’. Now they are saying it will only be 6000, in late April, and they want top dollar."

I gues that means he isn't buying ventilators at $35,000 each from GM and their partner Ventec..."they were preparing to roll out as many as 10,000 ventilators a month, many of which would be produced on a new assembly line at a GM facility in Indiana."

Oh, just $1.4 Billion dollars.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ceo-ventilator-maker-speaks-out-trump-invokes-defense-production-act-n1170881

What can you get for $35,000 of your own money?

Neanderthals liked seafood. Who knew? NY Times

"Neanderthals are often portrayed chowing down on mammoth meals and woolly rhino ribs. But an analysis of their leftovers from a coastal cave in Portugal suggests fish and mollusks claimed a special place on their Paleolithic palates.

“We all have that image of the primitive Neanderthal that eats lots of meat,” said Filipa Rodrigues, an archaeologist at the University of Lisbon and author of a paper published Thursday in Science. “Now, we have this new perspective that they explored the marine resources like Homo sapiens did.”

Archaeologists have previously found evidence that Neanderthals ate, collected and wore jewelry fashioned from shellfish. But evidence they consumed large amounts of fish has been lacking. Some scientists have argued Neanderthals did not have the skill or wit to catch fish as their Homo sapiens contemporaries did in Africa, and may have lost out on consuming aquatic animals rich in fatty acids that could have aided with brain development.

But deep in Cueva de Figueira Brava, which housed Neanderthals about 100,000 years ago, Dr. Rodrigues and her colleagues have uncovered more than 560 fish bones, as well as remains from clams, mussels, crabs, waterfowl, seabirds, seals and dolphins. The findings suggest Neanderthals cast a wide net to add sea creatures to their dinner menus, and the researchers say it shows the behavior of the archaic species was comparable to modern humans that lived at the time."  NY Times

---------------

In a time of plague - an interesting tidbit.

The DNA people say that I and SWMBO have traces of Neanderthal blood.  That gives me a warm and cuddly feeling.  I wonder if they liked frog legs.  I could use a few of those right now.

On a sad note my favorite restaurant has shuttered its windows and closed down, hopefully just for the duration.  R.T.s Restaurant in Alexandria, Virginia.  They do Chesapeake Bay Seafood and Louisiana cooking.   The place is rated as one of the fifty best restos in the South.  That means from the Potomac to New Orleans.  The She Crab Soup is to die for.

IMO both Andrew Cuomo and Trumpy are doing creditable jobs although the big threat is to the economy.  My SWAG is that some combination of existing drugs is going to put down CODIV-19.  pl

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/science/neanderthals-fishing-ocean.html

"... Top Secret US Air Force Craft Used For ‘Testing Hardware’ In Space"

"“As far as I know the actual engine has not been revealed, but it’s probably a pressure fed system that gets 700 to 900 Newtons of thrust,” he continued. “There is no cockpit, or windows, or anything like that for people inside, but there is a payload bay door that is a couple of meters long.”

Manley states that “so far, there have been five flights with this vehicle, and we know that there are two separate vehicles that have been identified due to subtle differences in their hardware.”

He also says in the video that he believes “what they are doing is testing hardware for future satellites.”"  brobible

---------------

A mysterious object to be sure.  I would expect USSF to take this project from USAF as it "stands up."  pl

https://brobible.com/culture/article/astrophysicist-top-secret-air-force-spacecraft-x-37b/

Old Drug Cocktail for a Novel (covid-19) Pandemic

By will.2718

You won’t get enough quinine from your gin and tonic to kill the corona virus, but a quinine analogue may disrupt the novel (novel to humans) covid-19 virus while a z-pack used to fight bacterial chest infections may tamp down the unleashed opportunistic bacteria. There are longterm dangers of atrial fibrillation (QT interval related) but the treatment protocol is short term.  The topic was thrust into the public venue at a recent presser by President D.J. Trump when he said “what have we got to lose, this may or may not work, let’s try it?”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"On March 9 a team of researchers in China published results showing hydroxychloroquine was effective against the 2019 coronavirus in a test tube. The authors suggested a five-day, 12-pill treatment for Covid-19: two 200-milligram tablets twice a day on the first day followed by one tablet twice a day for four more days.

A more recent French study used the drug in combination with azithromycin. Most Americans know azithromycin as the brand name Zithromax Z-Pak, prescribed for upper respiratory infections. The Z-Pak alone doesn’t appear to help fight Covid-19, and the findings of combination treatment are preliminary.

But researchers in France treated a small number of patients with both hydroxychloroquine and a Z-Pak, and 100% of them were cured by day six of treatment. Compare that with 57.1% of patients treated with hydroxychloroquine alone, and 12.5% of patients who received neither.

What’s more, most patients cleared the virus in three to six days rather than the 20 days observed in China. That reduces the time a patient can spread the virus to others. One lesson that should inform the U.S. approach: Use this treatment cocktail early, and don’t wait until a patient is on a ventilator in the intensive-care unit."

https://www.wsj.com/articles/these-drugs-are-helping-our-coronavirus-patients-11584899438?mod=hp_opin_pos_3
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The usual regimen for Z-Pak or azithromycin is 500 mg PO once, then 250 mg once daily for 4 days. (from medscape). These drugs are prescription drugs to be monitored under medical supervision.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azithromycin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroxychloroquine#COVID-19

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisettevoytko/2020/03/22/new-york-to-begin-clinical-trials-for-coronavirus-treatment-tuesday-cuomo-says/
https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/19/french-study-finds-anti-malarial-and-antibiotic-combo-could-reduce-covid-19-duration/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrial_fibrillation

(I’m not a physician nor do I portray one on radio, tv, nor the silver screen. I was awarded a JD, but was told in law school not to use the “Doctor” title because it would confuse the public. Dr. Pat Roberson didn’t get the message.)

US $45 billion is more than US $8.5 billion.

"Every aspect of modern life is being hit as sweeping measures are rolled out in an effort to stem the coronavirus pandemic. President Trump declared a national emergency Friday "to unleash the full power of the federal government."
"No resource will be spared, nothing whatsoever," the president said as stocks rose sharply, regaining some of their recent losses.

Hours later, the House overwhelmingly approved legislation to give direct relief to Americans impacted by the spreading virus. Central to the aid package are free testing and sick pay guarantee for Americans affected.

People who are sick with the virus and have to be treated or quarantined would qualify for the sick pay benefit, which requires employers to offer 14 days of sick leave at "not less" than two-thirds of an employee's normal pay. Others who would qualify for paid sick leave are those who need to be home to care for a child whose school or childcare center has closed, and those who need to leave their jobs to take care of a family member infected with the virus.

The legislation offers three months of paid family and medical leave. And small and mid-sized employers would be reimbursed through tax credits."   CBSNEWS

---------------

What is being missed in this CBS piece is that the Declaration of National Emergency and the application of the Stafford Act make available to Trump's virus task force around $45 billion US in existing funding tucked away here and there and everywhere.  The amount probably dwarfs the virus bill being bickered over in congress. and the $8.5 billion signed into law last week.  pl

https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/coronavirus-updates-cases-fears-deaths-us-latest-2020-03-14/

South Korea death rate is .6%

"Looking at data from countries with robust testing systems does support the idea that the disease’s mortality rate may be lower than 3.4%. Countries that have tested significant numbers of people are generally reporting lower mortality rates than those, like the U.S., that have tested in far lower numbers and with a stronger focus on severe cases. This suggests that when testing networks are broadened to catch people with less serious illnesses, and case counts then reflect this range of severity, mortality rates go down.
The mortality rate in South Korea, where more than 1,100 tests have been administered per million residents, comes out to just 0.6%, for example. In the U.S., where only seven tests have been administered per million residents, the mortality rate is above 5%."  Time magazine

-----------------

"Just less than .6%"

IOW you have to include; mild cases, asymptomatic cases, and moderate cases in your calculation and not just figure a death rate among the severely afflicted in order to get a valid result.

GET A GRIP!  pl

https://time.com/5798168/coronavirus-mortality-rate/

" ... first SpaceX launch with NASA astronauts likely between April and June"

"Elon Musk expects his space company’s inaugural launch of dNASA astronauts is only a few months away."The SpaceX CEO said on Sunday that the company’s first crewed mission will probably be in the second quarter of this year, between the months of April and June. Known as Demo-2, this mission would see two NASA astronauts visit the International Space Station for at least a few days. Musk noted that the rocket and spacecraft needed for the mission are already coming together in Florida.

“We’re highly confident the hardware will be ready in Q1, most likely in February but no later than March,” Musk said.

Musk made the comments at a press conference after the company completed the in-flight abort test of its Crew Dragon capsule. Musk spoke alongside NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, who added that the agency and SpaceX are considering making Demo-2 a longer mission than previously expected."  cnbc

----------------

I watched the Space X recovery launch this AM.  It was truly flawless.  They used a several times fired Falcon 9 first stage and turned the engines off up high so that the onboard computers would initiate a Dragon escape routine.  At that point the Falcon 9 first stage dropped off and then blew up due to turbulence as it fell away.  The freed Dragon space taxi then dumped its unpressurized cargo section and descended to the Atlantic Ocean and waiting boats using onboard rocket engine thrust, drogue parachutes and then four big cargo parachutes pulled out of storage by the drogues.  Splash at 20 MPH.  An individual parachutist lands at more than 30 MPH.  They recovered the Dragon AND the parachutes. 

Why go to Disney World?  I would ride this this thing  to glory.  Hell.  When I was a kid Lt. in the SF Course I volunteered to be the guest of honor for a demonstration of the Fulton surface to air recovery system.  This was at Ft. Bragg in 1964.  I didn't tell SWMBO about this until it was done.  pl

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/19/elon-musk-spacex-first-launch-with-nasa-astronauts-in-second-quarter.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_surface-to-air_recovery_system

 

In re Starlink

"Dear colonel,

 

1. Will Starlink handle traffic other than e-mail?
   2.  Will Starlink have a giant business office to deal directly with customers?
   3.  If Starlink handles all the kinds of traffic that the present internet transmits, who will be the content providers for TeeVee transmitted via Starlink?
   4.  Am I correct in thinking that Starlink will drive present ISPs from the market?  pl
   
   
   I'll try to answer without becoming too technical & I'll skip some parts. Internet can best be viewed as different layers that interact to move content from point A to point B.
   
   The foundation-layer is the physical layer which is hardware. Starlink offers a mesh of satellites that are users can connect to using the 'UFO on a stick". They can (should!) also connect to other appliances on the Internet. The physical layer is the road-network.
   
   The layer above that physical layer is the IP (Internet Protocol) layer that provides the adress of sender and receiver. IP doesn't care about the the routing used (IP was designed by RAND to survive a nuclear war and uses the Shortest Path First / Dijkstra algoritm to decide that path) and doesn't care about the data it carries.
   
   The top layer interacts with the user and puts the different datapackets together (the required data is cut in parts with sender/receiver adress attached). There a number of standard services (such as e-mail) but sender/receiver can decide what to do. Another commonly used service is building an encrypted tunnel through which to send not-encrypted data between connecting computers at different locations. This top-layer is what the end-users usually use as 'Internet'
   
   1. Yes. The Starlink physical layer doesn't care about the contents of the datapacket. It just provides the road from sender to receiver
   2. Probably, but I quess this is limited to connection- and throughput-issues (connecting to Starlink and sending data). There will probably also be limits to the amount of data that can be transferred. Customers can decide what content/services the
   3. I presume TV content will not change. IMO it would be a mistake to create content (unless in a joint-venture with a partner such as Amazon)
   4. Unlikely. The amount of data on the Internet is huge, so fiber-optic cables will remain an important part of the Internet. The throughput capacity is not big enough. When the prices are not that high I would guess that rural users will get a piece of the pie.
   
   Starlink is not the only one that is working on Worldwide coverage using satellites. Airbus/OneWeb will start providing services next year and are working on this since 2015"

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijkstra's_algorithm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Protocol
https://www.oneweb.world/  

 

It doesn't seem to me that this answered my question about customer accounts and billing.  pl

The Space News We're Excited About in 2020 - Gizmodo

(Artemis return booster)

"It’s time to look ahead to the coming year and all things that will be happening in space exploration. With new missions to Mars, a probe returning to Earth with samples taken from an asteroid, and even more batches of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites going into orbit, it’s going to be another fascinating year.

We’ll learn if NASA is returning to the Moon in 2024

Earlier this year, the Trump Administration accelerated the timeline for returning Americans to the Moon. The space agency was told, in rather blunt terms, that the Artemis lunar mission has to be done by 2024, but Congress raised serious concerns about this rather aggressive deadline."  Gizmodo

--------------

Looks like a great year in space.  This compendium of the year's prospective activities should be helpful.  What role the new Space Force will play in all this is yet to be known.  Trump is not a visionary.  I suspect that his willingness to create a new US armed service implies the possession by the US of a lot of hardware and capability that has not yet been revealed to the public.  pl

https://gizmodo.com/the-space-news-were-excited-about-in-2020-1840538237

Going nuclear… power that is - TTG

For the last 20 years, the future of nuclear power has stood in a high bay laboratory tucked away on the Oregon State University campus in the western part of the state. Operated by NuScale Power, an Oregon-based energy startup, this prototype reactor represents a new chapter in the conflict-ridden, politically bedeviled saga of nuclear power plants.

NuScale’s reactor won’t need massive cooling towers or sprawling emergency zones. It can be built in a factory and shipped to any location, no matter how remote. Extensive simulations suggest it can handle almost any emergency without a meltdown. One reason is that it barely uses any nuclear fuel, at least compared with existing reactors. It’s also a fraction of the size of its predecessors. (Wired)

————

This sounds promising. The complete NuScale reactor is the size of two school buses can can be transported in three pieces by barge, rail or highway. It reminds me of the Russian nuclear power barge Akademik Lomonosov now on station in the Russian Arctic… only better. That barge uses two nuclear ice breaker reactors to produce 70 MW of electricity. The NuScale reactor produces 60 MW. Ten NuScale reactors can be put in the footprint of a containment vessel of a standard current reactor, but what’s the point of that? They should be deployed to communities as decentralized power sources mitigating the need for long distance transmission lines.

Obviously even these small reactors are too much for the hard core global warming crowd. I don’t see why. I count myself as part of the “Laudato Si” crowd and I’m all for these reactors and their decentralized deployment. It beats coal and even natural gas. They are proven and more reliable than current renewables. Besides, the manufacture of photovoltaic cells and batteries is not all that green. Even so, I’m looking forward to VW’s new electric microbus.  

TTG

https://www.wired.com/story/the-next-nuclear-plants-will-be-small-svelte-and-safer/

https://www.nuscalepower.com/technology/technology-overview

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_floating_nuclear_power_station

"SpaceX to cap transitional year with launch, poised for big things in 2020"

"Monday's launch

Weather conditions appear to be favorable for Monday's launch attempt of the JCSAT-18/Kacific1 commercial satellite from Space Launch Complex 40 in Florida. The launch window opens at 7:10pm ET (00:10 UTC Tuesday), and closes at 8:38pm ET (01:38 UTC). A backup launch window is available on Tuesday, opening at the same time.

This particular first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket has flown twice, in May 2019 and July 2019, on supply missions for the International Space Station. SpaceX will attempt to recover the stage after the launch of the heavy, geostationary-orbit-bound satellite on the Of Course I Still Love You droneship in the Atlantic Ocean. The company will also attempt to catch both fairing halves in separate recovery ships."  arstechnica

---------------

Up! Up! and Away!  Looks like a banner year coming for SpaceX.  IMO Musk's competitors in the space business are going to have a tough time catching up to him.  pl

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/12/spacex-to-cap-transitional-year-with-launch-poised-for-big-things-in-2020/

"How to deal with a "woke" teenager"

From Walrus

"After our daughter of fifteen years of age was moved to tears by the speech of Greta Thunberg at the UN the other day, she became angry with our generation “who had been doing nothing for thirty years.”

So, we decided to help her prevent what the girl on TV announced of “massive eradication and the disappearance of entire ecosystems.”

We are now committed to give our daughter a future again, by doing our part to help cool the planet four degrees.

From now on she will go to school on a bicycle, because driving her by car costs fuel, and fuel puts emissions into the atmosphere. Of course it will be winter soon and then she will want to go by bus, but cycling through the freezing builds resilience.

Of course, she is now asking for an electric bicycle, but we have shown her the devastation caused to the areas of the planet as a result of mining for the extraction of Lithium and other minerals used to make batteries for electric bicycles, so she will be pedaling, or walking.

Which will not harm her, or the planet. We used to cycle and walk to school too.

Since the girl on TV demanded “we need to get rid of our dependency on fossil fuels” and our daughter agreed with her, we have disconnected the heat vent in her room. The temperature is now dropping to twelve degrees in the evening, and will drop below freezing in the winter, we have promised to buy her an extra sweater, hat, tights, gloves and a blanket.

For the same reason we have decided that from now on she only takes a cold shower. She will wash her clothes by hand, with a wooden washboard, because the washing machine is simply a power consumer and since the dryer uses natural gas, she will hang her clothes on the clothes line to dry, just like my parents and grandparents used to do.

Speaking of clothes, the ones that she currently has are all synthetic, so made from petroleum. Therefore on Monday, we will bring all her designer clothing to the secondhand shop.

We have found an eco store where the only clothing they sell is made from undyed and unbleached linen and jute. Also can’t have clothes made on wool, because the emissions from farting sheep are supposedly causing bad weather.

It shouldn’t matter that it looks good on her, or that she is going to be laughed at, dressing in colorless, bland clothes and without a wireless bra, but that is the price she has to pay for the benefit of The Climate.

Cotton is out of the question, as it comes from distant lands and pesticides are used for it. Very bad for the environment.
We just saw on her Instagram that she’s pretty angry with us. This was not our intention.

From now on, at 7 p.m. we will turn off the WiFi and we will only switch it on again the next day after dinner for two hours. In this way we will save on electricity, so she is not bothered by electro-stress and will be totally isolated from the outside world. This way, she can concentrate solely on her homework. At eleven o’clock in the evening we will pull the breaker to shut the power off to her room, so she knows that dark is really dark. That will save a lot of CO2.

She will no longer be participating in winter sports to ski lodges and resorts, nor will she be going on anymore vacations with us, because our vacation destinations are practically inaccessible by bicycle.

Since our daughter fully agrees with the girl on TV that the CO2 emissions and footprints of her great-grandparents are to blame for ‘killing our planet’, what all this simply means, is that she also has to live like her great-grandparents and they never had a holiday, a car or even a bicycle.

We haven’t talked about the carbon footprint of food yet.

Zero CO2 footprint means no meat, no fish and no poultry, but also no meat substitutes that are based on soy (after all, that grows in farmers fields, that use machinery to harvest the beans, trucks to transport to the processing plants, where more energy is used, then trucked to the packaging/canning plants, and trucked once again to the stores) and also no imported food, because that has a negative ecological effect. And absolutely no chocolate from Africa, no coffee from South America and no tea from Asia.

Only homegrown potatoes, vegetables and fruit that have been grown in local cold soil, because greenhouses run on boilers, piped in CO2 and artificial light. Apparently, these things are also bad for The Climate. We will teach her how to grow her own food.

Bread is still possible, but butter, milk, cheese and yogurt, cottage cheese and cream come from cows and they emit CO2. No more margarine and no oils will be used for the frying pan, because that fat is palm oil from plantations in Borneo where rain forests first grew.

No ice cream in the summer. No soft drinks and no energy drinks, as the bubbles are CO2.

We will also ban all plastic, because it comes from chemical factories. Everything made of steel and aluminum must also be removed. Have you ever seen the amount of energy a blast furnace consumes or an aluminum smelter? All bad for the climate!

We will replace her memory foam pillow top mattress, with a jute bag filled with straw, with a horse hair pillow.

And finally, she will no longer be using makeup, soap, shampoo, cream, lotion, conditioner, toothpaste and medication. Facewashers will all be linen, that she can wash by hand, with her wooden washboard, just like her female ancestors did before climate change made her angry at us for destroying her future.

In this way we will help her to do her part to prevent mass extinction, water levels rising and the disappearance of entire ecosystems.

If she truly believes she wants to walk the talk of the girl on TV, she will gladly accept and happily embrace her new way of life."

"Eco-Holocaust Denial" - Crime or Illness?

In the aftermath of the struggle to compose yesterday's post on Climate Change, I sat up late watching TeeVee and fell into a fitful sleep around midnight.  I often dream of a dystopian  universe in which I wander aimlessly through settings large and small in search of anyone who is not too busy to talk to me or point to a path out of the endless succession of mazes that my brain creates.

Last night was different.  The world of last night's dream was one of a purpose driven quest for purity of purpose and rejection of Human Supremacy as the heritage of humanity.  In that world hunting for sport had been outlawed as well eating the meat of murdered animals.  President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes had led the way in a national movement for choosing sterilization as a way of life for both sexes as a road to redemption for past human crimes.  The population was shrinking steadily especially among Whites who generally acknowledged that they and their kind had nearly destroyed the planet's inner being and soul.  The Electoral College was but a bitter memory for a country now ruled by the Ecological Salvation Party.

Far from being ignored I found in the dream that I had been convicted of Eco-Holocaust Denial, a statutory crime that protected the clarity of thought of the masses.  The archives of the recidivist blog I had once shamelessly edited, were sufficient evidence of the evil views I had once spread across the land and I was easily convicted by the judge ruling alone in camera.  Even in my dream I remembered the reality of having those archives read to me in court by prosecutors seeking to impeach my testimony.

At my trial the judge, (someone I knew) explained that I would be evaluated to determine the degree of my culpability. She said that she remembered me from the times I had testified  before her and that she had some doubt as to my sanity.

In the end I was judged sane and sentenced to prison in a Club Fed place that looked a lot like Lompoc in California.  My parents once lived in the town nearby and the prison looked familiar,

The Assistant Warden interviewed me on arrival .  I had my stack of prison garments, bedding  and issued sundries in my lap as I sat listening to her lecture.  I asked when she thought I might be released.  She changed the subject.

I awoke while listening to her description of the work I would be assigned in the prison garden,  pl

Starlink phase 2

"With SpaceX’s Starlink-1 launch, the second 60-satellite mission, the company debuted Starlink ‘v1.0’ satellites with a range of changes and upgrades that fall under two main categories: structures and communications.

Prior to the November 11th webcast, SpaceX’s official pre-launch press kit was far less revealing than Starlink v0.9’s but did note that v1.0 satellites have been upgraded to be “100% demisable”. This means that when each spacecraft reenters Earth’s atmosphere, everything down to the last shred of mylar is now expected to burn up before reaching the ground, reducing the (already miniscule) risk of debris harming people or property. Similarly, SpaceX implied several months before launch that v1.0 spacecraft would include tweaks to limit their reflectiveness after the astronomy community stoked fears about potential impacts."  teslerati

---------

"100% demisable"  IOW the whole thing burns up on re-entry.

" tweaks to limit their reflectiveness"  IOW  these satellites have been modified  so that they will reflect much light.  pl

https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-starlink-satellite-upgrade-more-bandwidth-more-beams/

" ... we are close to finding life on Mars."

" Green argues that finding the faint traces of Martian life, past or present, will unleash countless new questions that we’re not prepared to answer.

There is, of course, a religious angle to all of this. The origins of life on Earth are still the subject of debate today and science has always had to compete with stories for mindshare.

I mean, we live in a time where a not-insignificant chunk of people still claim to believe that the Earth is flat, so finding alien life on another world is sure to come with its own host of conspiracy theories and true believers spouting… whatever it is they truly believe.

Green may be right and mankind may not be ready to deal with the implications of finding life outside of Earth. But science waits for no one and if there’s life to be found on Mars, those discoveries aren’t going to wait until we’re ready to deal with them. Brace yourselves."  NY Post

------------

One of the old timers on SST wrote me recently to admonish me to abandon my "frivolous" interest in humanity's coming migration from Terra.  He suggested that I should embrace climate change as the focus of SST.  I declined to do so since I think the leftist theme song of impending doom is yet another manifestation of the result of allowing teachers  who are the spiritual offspring of the nutty sixties and seventies to indoctrinate our children for decades.

People are causing climate change?  What an amusing thought!  I will try to live long enough to dance on the grave of this stupidity.  pl

https://nypost.com/2019/10/02/nasa-chief-says-we-are-close-to-finding-life-on-mars-but-the-world-wont-be-ready-for-it/

A dog for the Donald

I watched DJT perform today at the UN.  Impressive.  Stayed on script.  I suppose PomPom's Borgist boys and girls wrote it.  It hit all the commandments in the neocon creed but Trump managed not to issue any ultimata leading to war .  That was good, very good.  And now, pilgrims, Nancy the Pelosi is collapsing in her resistance to the Passion Play that is, in the minds, of some of her children the Auto da Impeachment in which Trump MUST be led to the faggots wearing his dunce cap.   This is something they are likely to regret because it just pisses a lot of people off, people who might not have voted for the Orange One.

Trumpie is, nevertheless, IMO, a perfect example of a Triple Type A personality type.  His kind of folk have no time for people, plants or pets.  Spot is perfect.  You don't have to pet it.  It cares no more for you than you do for it.  IOW, not at all.  And you can have it patrol the WH at night looking for intruders.

I suppose you have to plug it in like a Tesla to recharge once in a while. 

You could equip it to come when called.  "Here, Spot. Here!"  pl

https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/24/20880511/boston-dynamics-spot-robot-mini-hands-on-lease-buy

"... could save Americans $30B a year." Podium

 

"Our projections show that that low-latency, LEO satellite internet is likely to have a similar impact on average regional prices as wired, low-latency wired providers. Extrapolating this additional competitor across all US households, the introduction of LEO satellite internet could save Americans over $30 billion.

If we assume that just Elon Musk’s Starlink launches, then the 263 million Americans with three or fewer wired broadband providers in their area could collectively save over $14 billion through reduced monthly prices. The remainder of Americans with four or more providers could save an additional $4 billion, pushing the savings to $18 billion.

If both Starlink and Project Kuiper launch, the savings is likely to be even more dramatic, which we estimate to be more than $30 billion as Americans have two additional choices."  Podium

--------------

It appears to me that Starlink and Kuiper would bill customers directly, not through middlemen.  Is that correct?  If so, vast swathes of present business entities would simply disappear as unnecessary. pl

 

https://thenextweb.com/podium/2019/08/24/bezos-and-musks-satellite-internet-could-save-americans-30b-a-year/

"much more water on the moon than thought " phys.org

"Back in 2009, as part of the LCROSS mission, researchers allowed an empty stage of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) launch vehicle to crash into the floor of a crater close to the moon's south pole. Testing of the debris cloud by sensors aboard the Shepherding Spacecraft, showed evidence of water and ice, along with other material.

The researchers with this new effort believed it was likely that there was more ice on the moon than was shown during the LCROSS impact study—likely existing in shadowed craters similar to those that had been seen on Mercury. To find out, they carried out a parallel crater study, similar to the one they had conducted for Mercury. In this case, they studied 12,000 craters on the moon using data from the LRO. They report that they found "a similar morphological trend" in craters on the south side of the Moon, near the pole. They suggest this indicates that such craters likely harbor thick ice deposits along with other materials similar to those that are believed to exist on Mercury. The researchers suggest that if this is indeed the case, then there could be up to 100 million metric tons of ice in such craters, which they note is double the amount of previous estimates based on data from the LCROSS impact study. The researchers conclude by suggesting that future Moon missions include the use of probes that can be used to study the shaded craters to confirm their suspicions."  phys.org

-----------------

This is a biggy.  Water is the stuff of life and the presence of this much water on the surface of the moon along with the presence of natural tunnels and caves will make it much easier to establish outposts on the moon.

Why do it?  Think mining of rare earths and other precious materials.  pl

https://phys.org/news/2019-07-moon-thought.html

40% of French electricity is from nuke plants.

f

"Nuclear power is a major source of energy in France, with a 40% share of energy consumption in 2015.^[1] Nuclear power is the largest source of electricity in the country, with a generation of 379.1 TWh, or 71.6%^[2] of the country's total production of 519.4 TWh, the highest percentage in the world.^[3]

Électricité de France (EDF) – the country's main electricity generation and distribution company – manages the country's 58 power reactors.^[4] EDF is substantially owned by the French Government, with around 85% shares in government hands.^[5]

France exported 38 TWh of electricity to its neighbours in 2017.^[6] France becomes a net-importer of electricity when demand exceeds supply, in rare cases of very inclement weather, because of the lack of more flexible generating plants."  wiki

----------------

Chernobyl! Fukushima! Three Mile Island!   I can hear the outcry from right here.  Oh, scuse me!  Raht heah!.  (language notation for you all.  Well , some of you all)  This reminds me of the blonde TV dummy recently reporting from Rheims on the women's soccer championship who batted her blue eyes at the camera and said that she just couldn't understand why the locals didn't say Reems when mentioning the city.  She said that they unaccountably pronounced the name as "Hann."  Sweet Jaysus,  Are they actually paying this creature?

Seriously, the French electricity company is tightly controlled and largely owned by the government.  Security is tight and lethal.  There is continuous ongoing reactor safety research and installation of product improvements and guess what?  There is NO pollution.

Well, duh!  If we went down that road maybe we could start exporting electricity as well as oil/gas.  pl

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France

Pfizer was afraid to announce an Alzheimer's cure?

"A team of researchers inside Pfizer made a startling find in 2015: The company’s blockbuster rheumatoid arthritis therapy Enbrel, a powerful anti-inflammatory drug, appeared to reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by 64 percent.

The results were from an analysis of hundreds of thousands of insurance claims. Verifying that the drug would actually have that effect in people would require a costly clinical trial — and after several years of internal discussion, Pfizer opted against further investigation and chose not to make the data public, the company confirmed.

Researchers in the company’s division of inflammation and immunology urged Pfizer to conduct a clinical trial on thousands of patients, which they estimated would cost $80 million, to see if the signal contained in the data was real, according to an internal company document obtained by The Washington  Post."  WP

-------------

Hey folks at Pfizer, we old people don't want to read this kind of stuff.   Corporate cowardice is NOT an excuse.  I have a Pfizer lobbyist living two doors away.  I may go tell her what I think of this nonsense.  pl

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/pfizer-had-clues-its-blockbuster-drug-could-prevent-alzheimers-why-didnt-it-tell-the-world/2019/06/04/9092e08a-7a61-11e9-8bb7-0fc796cf2ec0_story.html?utm_term=.d6fe06a53a60

Octopus are Great!

"At the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., there's a room filled with burbling aquariums. A lot of them have lids weighed down with big rocks.

"Octopuses are notorious for being able to, kind of, escape out of their enclosures," says Bret Grasse, whose official title at MBL is "manager of cephalopod operations" — cephalopods being squid, cuttlefish and octopuses.

He's part of a team that's trying to figure out the best ways to raise these sea creatures in captivity, so that scientists can investigate their genes and learn the secrets of their strange, almost alien ways.

For decades, much of the basic research in biology has focused on just a few, well-studied model organisms like mice, fruit flies, worms and zebrafish.

That's because these critters are easy to keep in the laboratory, and scientists have worked out how to routinely alter their genes, leading to all kinds of insights into behavior, diseases and possible treatments."  NPR

------------

As  a baldy oldy, I watch a lot of documentary TeeVee.  "Curiosity Stream" is a hell of a learning instrument.   I have learned a lot about my Norman ancestors there.  My mother in law (who lived with us for ten years) was confident that I was a member of the oppressor class.  If ancestry tells you anything she was right.

Cephalopods have become an interest.   I started out with the red Humboldt squid in the Gulf of California.  These were well documented for a while (to include their rapacious hunger).  They are called "El Diablo Rojo" by the local fishermen.  They now seem to have disappeared from that body of water.  Where they have gone is a mystery.

I then moved on to the Giant Squid (archeteuthis).  They were until recently invisible as living specimens, lots of dead, rotting Giant Squid but not live ones.  But a few years ago a Japanese scientist had the dream of his life fulfilled when a living one approached the submersible he rode and just hung about for a while posing for snaps.

There is supposedly something something called the Colossal Squid (the Kraken?) but we don't have pics of those as yet.

Octopus are very special creatures.  They are incredibly smart.  I was in a lab once looking at a two footer in a clear sided tank.  It sat there on the bottom in the sand inspecting me in return.  I slowly waved one hand back and forth in a foot long arc.  It blinked and then repeated the gesture.

I do not eat octopus.  pl

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/06/03/727653152/why-octopuses-might-be-the-next-lab-rats

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Octopus#Intelligence

Starlink, Magic Wrought Useful, by Babelfish

Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Like some SST correspondents, I grew up in the frenzy of the 50s cold war. Missile Gaps. Sergei Korolev dueling with Werner Von Braun. Secret Russian super-rockets were hurling dogs, sputniks, Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova into orbit. US rockets were failing in many interesting and explosive ways. 

I think we all eventually learned that failures were to be expected and are now understood to be part of the price to pay for cutting edge technological advance. My dad taught me a valuable lesson in the evolutionary process of engineering when I gave him a VIP tour of the External Fuel Tank assembly facility, through the mighty machines we used. He commented that they were like the machines he had worked on while making missiles in the mid -fifties but grown very much larger. When I mentioned that to my engineer friends they all smiled and proceeded to tell takes of how that was true in so many ways. 

I read a lot of science fiction when younger. I remember being impressed that private industry was expected by many authors to make use of space and be the routine way to get into space. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, you took Pan Am to orbit. When I worked on the Shuttle program that all looked like science fiction. The Air Force and Navy were much larger drivers of space usage than many remember and, while Ariane Space was getting stood up in 1980, there was a time that any US civilian satellites were launched by NASA. NASA even got Congress to mandate that military satellites would be launched on the Shuttle. 

The USAF was wroth with space anger about that. I mean seriously wrothed off. Trying to manage their wroth, they concocted a security program for we Shuttle contractors. I attended a meeting where they proposed to take our location, the legendary Michoud Assembly Facility, and ring it with armed guards. People on the NASA and Martin Marietta side of the table were speechless and just about cross-eyed. Regrettably, in 1986, losing Challenger and two other consecutive failures (Delta II and a big Titan 34D) brought that to an end.

Disruption and disruptive technology. 

All these years forward, after investments to stand up commercial supply flights to the ISS and much other history, Space X launches 60 coffee table sized satellites using a newly fabricated second stage and a reusable first stage booster making its third trip. They have become a completely disruptive force in the space launch industry. I am in awe of their engineering and program management prowess. The images of the first Falcon Heavy side boosters landing back at the Cape was one of the greatest moments in our country’s history. It was pure magic.

Space X is riding on the creative frenzy of an entrepreneur like perhaps no other, the inimitable Elon Musk. Who else could launch a personal EV roadster into solar orbit? And, in the background, tick off a bunch of NASA and Air Force requirements for second stage maneuverability and space suit qualifications while entertaining us in a grand way. Who else could help invent PayPal, seriously disrupt the automotive industry, get in trouble with the SEC, smoke weed in public, make flamethrowers, create a tunnel boring company, sue the government over a contract award (and win) and the list is still growing larger. He appears to be unquenchable! Yes he is maddening  with his drama and overpromises. He is wildly optimistic about things like launch dates. His companies and products are not perfect. And yet he convinces people to invest in his dreams, over and over again. And convinces hordes of talented folks to work with him as well. He is the master disruptor and a modern day Merlin.

As proposed, Starlink is breathtaking and fully disruptive. 

From Wikipedia: SpaceX has plans to deploy nearly 12,000 satellites in three orbital shells by the mid-2020s: initially placing approximately 1600 in a 550-kilometer (340 mi)-altitude shell, subsequently placing ~2800 Ku-and Ka-band spectrum satellites at 1,150 km (710 mi) and ~7500 V-band sats at 340 km (210 mi). The total cost of the decade-long project to design, build and deploy such a network is estimated at nearly US$10 billion. It is intended to be a low latency internet service provider. That would be a game changer for internet service. Again, just fully disruptive. I have linked to a YouTube video that catches all of that.

In the attached Wikipedia entries, the future projected annual income from SpaceX is approximately $10 Billion USD from launch services and $30 Billion USD from Starlink. Starlink will fund Musk's ambitions for Mars exploration and settlement.

Suddenly the effort to make the Block 5 Falcon first stages reusable up to 100 times makes a lot of sense. It will take some 200 launches to complete this constellation. And they still have to make the business model work. It would seem Musk has bet the company that he will succeed where the initial Iridium failed. I wish Merlin and his friends all the luck there is in their quest! 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_(satellite_constellation)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_in_spaceflight

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX

https://youtu.be/f0v4D8t15CE