Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Starship
2. NC
3. Chagos
4. Phelps
5. Christians
6. Hospitals
7. Welds
8. Kiwi
1. Starship. SpaceX flew Starship test flight 5 early Sunday morning out of South Texas. The flight was an overall success with the first attempt to catch Booster by the launch tower chopsticks a success. Make no mistake, Booster is a very large piece of hardware, 232 feet long, 30 feet in diameter, with three Raptors lit. Dry weight of Booster is 303 tons, nearly that of 7 Boeing 737-800 airliners. SpaceX plans on being able to capture the booster and turn it to the next flight within hours. Video of the flight follows. All times listed below are actual video times rather than flight times:
- Launch 47:20
- Capture 54:00
- Starship reentry 1:32:00
- Landing burn 1:52:45
- Splashdown 1:53:05
Test flight 6 is already stacked and tested. Expect the next flight to repeat capture of Booster and put Starship into orbit. Previous flights have all been suborbital requiring no relight of Starship engines for reentry. The next one will be for a full orbit, reentry, and targeted landing, likely somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico near Boca Chica. They might even attempt an actual landing. There was some apparent burn through of at least one flap, though the vehicle was stable throughout reentry and landing. And it hit the landing location precisely next to a repositioned buoy which transmitted the post landing explosion and burn. There are several stories associated with the FAA jerking around SpaceX via launch licenses that I will discuss in more detail next week.
2. NC. Of all the states blasted by hurricane Helene, North Carolina seems to be the hardest hit. After a couple weeks of very well deserved and earned public displeasure with FEMA and their failure to properly respond, it appears that men in NC and the other Appalachian states flooded (TN, KY, SC, GA, FL) have taken matters into their own hands and self-organized to solve the problem themselves. This is similar to what they did in NY following the 9-11 impacts with the boatlift off Manhattan, and with the Cajun Navy (among other groups) working other hurricane relief efforts in the south. As much as the feds have enjoyed obstruction, those stories have mostly stopped. While there is still massive devastation, the problem is being worked. The worst videos last week were of a couple military helos blasting some staging areas with rotor wash. After the appropriate finger pointing, it appears that both crews wanted to land and couldn’t find enough room. One crew has reportedly been disciplined, though I cannot confirm that. Steven McIntyre writing in Watts Up With That took a look at why the Carolinas flooded so badly, and pointed the blame directly at the Tennessee Valley Authority. TVA was originally set up in 1933 to control flooding in the valley of the Tennessee River and its tributaries. For the first 40 years of its existence, it built 49 flood control dams. Since 1980 or so, they have built zero, mostly due to local opposition. Many of the original dams generated a bit of electricity. Once again, since 1980 or so, that mission also crept a bit, with the TVA now being interested in atmospheric levels of CO2 and climate research. Once again, no new flood control and no new generation now for half a century. When you concentrate on the wrong stuff, your basic mission tends to be ignored, which is something Helene reminded everybody about.
3. Chagos. The newly ensconced liberal UK government announced it was handing over sovereignty of the long-contested Chagos Islands, an archipelago of more than 60 islands in the Indian Ocean to Mauritius. The deal was supposed to secure the strategically important UK – US military base at Diego Garcia. The UK will retain its use of Diego Garcia on a 99-year lease, similar to their former ownership of Hong Kong, will pay an undisclosed rent, and create a resettlement fund for displaced Chagos islanders allowing them to move to islands other than Diego. The agreement will need to be signed off as a treaty. The islands were formerly known as the British Indian Ocean Territory. Expect the CCP to come calling with a dumptruck full of free money to purchase footholds that will allow them to monitor what is going on at Diego for the foreseeable future. They have been doing this in Micronesia for a couple decades.
4. Phelps. Trans activist lawyer Autumn Scardina’s most recent anti-Christian case against Masterpiece Cake Shop’s Jack Phelps was dismissed by the Colorado Supreme Court last week by a 6-3 vote. The wokesters first came after Phelps in 2012 for refusing to create a cake celebrating a gay wedding. This made it to SCOTUS twice, with SCOTUS finding in favor of Phelps both times. Scardina filed his case in 2018 on the very afternoon Phelps was vindicated the second time. Scardina demanded a custom cake celebrating his transition, something Phelps refuses to do. OTOH, he is perfectly happy to sell any other cake available in the shop. As usual, official Colorado, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission and state courts went along with the scam, allowing (encouraging?) all cases against Phelps to proceed. I find this opinion to be a bit of a surprise, as I expected the Colorado Supremes to continue the scam and force it once again to the SCOTUS. Perhaps they were tired of being slapped down for lunatic opinions like they were earlier this year when they tried to remove Trump from the Colorado ballot in November.
5. Christians. From the Land of There’s Always Something Else to Worry About, comes a piece in the Jerusalem Post about an Arizona Christian University study that suggests a significant decline in voter turnout enthusiasm among religious voters in 2024. For the record, there is a similar concern about gun owners floating around the tubes of the internet. The report finds that only 51% of all self-described people of faith (Christians, Muslims, Jews, Mormons and other religious traditions) are planning to vote. The piece goes to great length describing the abject disaster of 32 million Christian regular church attendees unlikely to vote. Try as I can, I was unable to find any comparison with religious turnout in previous presidential elections. Baker Institute did a piece a few weeks ago that does run some suggestive numbers that will help put this into perspective. Typical academic approach: Find something; determine it is a disaster; light hair on fire; predict The End of The World as We Know It; and go on to the next event. If you are going to do a job, guys, please do a complete one and put the new data into perspective.
6. Hospitals. This week’s reminder that the public health apparat and all the businesses that operate under it look at health care as a simple money grab comes courtesy of a group called Do No Harm. These guys published a report last week documenting that hospitals in the US earned nearly $120 million in gender transition treatments on nearly 14,000 children under the age of 18 2019 – 2023. Over 5,700 got gender reassignment surgeries (surgical mutilation). Nearly 8,600 used puberty blockers or hormones. There were nearly 63,000 prescriptions for hormone and puberty blockers written for the previously mentioned 8,600 patients. Actual data may be larger than what has been reported. Note that all these interventions are irreversible. Once you start down that road, for whatever reason, you cannot get off the newly selected exercise wheel, as you will be under medical care forever, which is why the hospitals and clinics love it. The worse the intervention, the more dependent you will be on the medical establishment. From here, it appears that the medical apparat has replaced its COVID free money with transitioning free money. Of course, the real pushback will not be political on this. Rather, it will be the entry of the legal establishment into the festivities. The lawyers are normally quick on the draw when there is free money available. In the trans world, this is taking a while to begin because the trans scam is a lefty worldview and the legal world is heavily lefty. But with 14,000 underage kids targeted since 2019, those numbers will swell in a hurry. If it weren’t for the sheer human damage to these kids, it would almost be worth making popcorn to eat while watching this unfold. I predict this will go down a lot like the tobacco assault did, and a lot of hospitals and clinics will end up under new ownership sooner rather than later.
7. Welds. We have a number for the faulty weld story mentioned last week. The Navy identified 26 ships with suspect welds. 3 of these are in service, two submarines and a single aircraft carrier. Another 23 ships are still under construction or major maintenance at Newport News. The Navy and Do(In)J are promising an investigation. Initial assessment by the Naval Sea Systems Command determined the welds were not components or systems that impact ship safety or operations, meaning the Navy has determined the ships are safe to operate. Tell that to the crews. Sounds like some of the welders were making it up as they went, with the proposed solution being better training. This sort of thing happens more than you think. I know of an A-10 accident out of Davis Monthan nearly 40 years ago when a student departed the jet doing air to air training. Turns out that the A-10 has a fairly violent departure and slammed his head against the canopy. By the time he woke up, the aircraft was out of control and he ejected. He never got a chute and clawed at the seat all the way down. Accident investigation found several more jets on the ramp with the same problem. Turns out that a maintenance crew created their own procedure which ensured that an ejection seat would never get a chute.
8. Kiwi. When you concentrate on DEI, you are guaranteed to get incompetence. New Zealand lost its first ship since WWII in waters off Upolu in the Solomon Islands. The specialist dive and hydrographic vessel lost power, ran aground a week ago while conducting a reef survey. By the next morning, the ship was listing heavily. Smoke was spotted and the ship sunk a couple hours later. Locals are concerned about the impact of oil and fuel on local turtle populations. All 75 passengers and crew were saved, though some got wet. The ship cost $61 million (US). This is where things get ugly, as the captain is a lesbian with 30 years’ service in the Kiwi Navy. Online comments were particularly harsh, as would be expected. They were so bad that the Kiwi Defense Minister, (also female) publicly pushed back hard, joining the name calling with gusto. One of the reasons you survey reefs is because they change over time, as does the equipment you use to do the surveys. Over time, the maps get better, though there is always the possibility of a bad outcome, generally being at the wrong place at the wrong time. I will be interested in seeing who gets fired on this one, as it will tell us everything we would ever want to know about this Captain, her chain of command, and her Minister of Defense. Diversity hires, or not? Fire some finite number of people up the food chain, and we will find out she is not. Continue the name calling push back, and nobody gets fired or resigns, and we will find DEI is actually in charge in New Zealand. If it is the latter, this won’t be the last sinking. My money is on DEI being in charge. Sadly so, as it puts the brave crewmembers needlessly at rick.
More later –
- AG