Monday, July 21, 2025

Building habitats on Mars without bringing every little thing

If mankind is truly going to become a multiplanetary species as a lot of us aspire to, conventional ideas involve hauling tons of supplies from Earth to the Red Planet to establish civilization there.  It is, without a doubt, a rough mission that requires exceptional people to go with all the risks that come with the mission.  Comparatively, migrating between places on Earth is nothing.  The air is safe to breathe, or more correctly, if you know how to treat the air in one hemisphere, you know how to treat it everywhere else on Earth.   On Mars you don't even have air.  Then there's building shelter.  There are no trees on Mars so something like a log cabin isn't possible.  Can something like concrete be made there, and buildings made from that?  Bricks of some sort?

So what if early astronauts, early settlers, could bring something that's light but could create materials that can be built into useful things?  

In a potential milestone for space exploration, scientists have successfully grown algae under simulated Martian conditions using equipment made from biodegradable bioplastics — a step that could bring long-term space colonization closer to reality.

As interest in human missions to Mars grows, scientists are focusing on how to sustain life in space without constant resupply from Earth. A team of researchers led by Robin Wordsworth of Harvard University demonstrated that green algae can not only survive but thrive inside bioplastic chambers designed to mimic the extreme environment of the Red Planet. 

The idea is using bioplastics to grow more bioplastics that can be used to make useful things.  Wordsworth puts it like this: "If you have a habitat that is composed of bioplastic, and it grows algae within it, that algae could produce more bioplastic.  So you start to have a closed-loop system that can sustain itself and even grow through time."  Mars missions don't need to transport supplies, the algae grows from CO2 in the Martian atmosphere.  

In laboratory tests, Wordsworth and his team cultivated a common type of green algae called Dunaliella tertiolecta inside a 3D-printed chamber made from polylactic acid, which is a biodegradable plastic derived from natural sources. The chamber was engineered to replicate the thin, carbon dioxide–rich atmosphere of Mars, which has a surface pressure less than 1% that of Earth.

Despite these extreme conditions, the algae were able to perform photosynthesis, according to the statement.

Close-up of bioplastic habitat with algae growth. (Image credit: Harvard University)

The latest proof of concept experiment builds on earlier work by Wordsworth’s team, which showed that silica aerogels could replicate Earth’s greenhouse effect to support life in cold, low-pressure environments. By combining algae chambers for bioplastic production with aerogels for heat and pressure regulation, the researchers say they are making real progress toward self-sustaining space habitats.

The answer to not having forests to harvest wood from is to make your own wood from cellulose harvested from little Erlenmeyer flasks like this one.



Sunday, July 20, 2025

56 Years Ago Today - "The Eagle Has Landed"

This morning at 9:27 EDT, Buzz Aldrin crawled into the Lunar Module Eagle and began the lengthy process of powering things up for the short mission life of the module.  An hour later, Neil Armstrong joined Buzz in the LM.  

A little over three hours after that, 1:47 PM, they released the latches and separated from the Command Module. At 2:12, Michael Collins fired thrusters on the CM moving it two miles away from the LM. Except for that small altitude difference, both vehicles remained in their initial orbit from yesterday's lunar orbit insertion until 3:08 PM when Armstrong fired the descent engine to lower the Eagle's orbit.

What follows is a 20 minute video depicting the landing which is easily the best modern reconstruction of the landing that I've seen. It combines video from the window as Armstrong would have seen it with the audio traffic from Mission Control. The first three minutes gives a modern simulation and animation of how it all worked; after that, it goes to the view recorded on the LM with spacecraft communication on the left speaker and mission control intercom on the right. Yes, I think it's worth the time.

The LM touches down at 4:18PM EDT.

At 6:00 PM, Armstrong radios down to mission control that he recommends they start the EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity) sooner than planned; at 9 PM.  Although they don't make the 9PM goal, the 10:39 beginning of the EVA is still five hours earlier than the mission plans.

As I've mentioned before, this was the last vacation I would ever take with my parents. July of 1969 was the summer between my 9th and 10th grade years of school, and I was 15 years old.  My older brother, 18, had graduated high school in June and couldn't vacation with us.  Like millions of people around the world, I hung by the front of the black and white TV; this one in my uncle's house in New York City (The Bronx, for those who know).  We watched intently but I don't recall exactly how much we saw or if we watched until 1:11 tomorrow morning when the EVA officially concluded. It's a sobering thought how many of the family members there on that historic day and night have passed away. Both of my parents, my uncle and aunt, and I'm simply not sure how many else.  Of the people I've mentioned, only my older brother survives to this anniversary. 



Saturday, July 19, 2025

Is Europe moving to manned spaceflight?

That's what Eric Berger at Ars Technica is thinking, based on a mission we talked about in June when the Exploration Company's first test flight of their Mission Possible capsule was lost during reentry.  

You might recall having read about Mission Possible and founder Hélène Huby because they were featured in a story back in last November.  In an interview then, Huby said Mission Possible was developed at a cost of about $20 million in 2.5 years, in addition to $10 million for the rideshare launch on the Falcon 9 rocket.  The test craft was lost at 26 km above the planet, as the spacecraft slowed to Mach one.  Huby was unsure how this loss would be received back in Europe.  It turned out to not be worth worrying about.

"What was interesting is the feedback I got in Europe," Huby said in an interview this week at the company's offices in Houston. "The German Space Agency, the French space agency, the European Space Agency said, OK, that's a great achievement. For the time and money we spent, performing 80 percent of that mission was a good investment." 

The Mission Possible vehicle is seen during assembly. Image credit: The Exploration Company

While the spacecraft was lost so they couldn't do a postmortem on it, the downlinked data from the flight leaves Huby and staff "99%" sure it was a parachute system problem.  You see, they never did any drop tests of any kind with the parachute system they purchased for Mission Possible.  That would have been a complication adding both mission delay and cost and Hélène Huby's background is in economics.  

"We made a mistake, basically, to underestimate the risks," she said. In retrospect, Huby added, the company could have done more testing on the ground.  

This puts them in a bit of mess figuring out where they go from here.  Do they go with a duplicate of Mission Possible, adding more testing, or do they say that phase of getting started is over and work on their next goal, a considerably bigger spacecraft called Nyx.  

This larger spacecraft is quite ambitious. It is similar in size to SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft, perhaps even a bit bigger. The initial version is intended to fly cargo into low-Earth orbit. Huby said the vehicle is being designed with crew in mind, however. For example, the initial version will use four parachutes, which is overkill for cargo but necessary for astronauts.

One reason Huby was in the United States this week was to work with NASA on requirements. That's because the company aspires to fly Nyx to the International Space Station as early as 2028, two years before the orbiting laboratory is due to be retired. At this point, in talking to Huby, the company seems likely to move directly into Nyx development and flying to the space station on its first mission. 

This leads one to wonder if the Space Station isn't even going to be there much longer than their 2028 goal, what are the chances they make that goal and are able to fly a test mission with a couple of test pilots/astronauts?

One thing that has changed in recent months, Huby said, is that there is increasing support in Europe for the development of a crew spacecraft.

"In Europe, there is additional support to go fast to crew," she said. "One year ago, this was out of the discussion. I think this is clearly a consequence of geopolitics."

Those geopolitics, of course, include the election of Donald Trump to a second term as US President and his attitude toward allies in Europe, proposed budget cuts that would end NASA participation in space programs important to Europe, and the fact that the only way European astronauts can get to space today is on board Dragon vehicles built by SpaceX.

So there is a clear lane for a European company to build both cargo and crew spacecraft. Clear though it may be, however, it is a long and difficult technical lane to traverse. Huby and The Exploration Company have their work cut out for them.

The Exploration Company's bigger idea, their Nyx spacecraft, comparable to SpaceX's Dragon capsule with a cargo and crewed version. Image credit: the Exploration Company

Eric Berger's conclusion that "... it is a long and difficult technical lane to traverse. Huby and The Exploration Company have their work cut out for them" is certainly true.  Given their performance in getting this far, I don't think it's a good idea to count them out. 



Friday, July 18, 2025

Johnson Atoll becomes a "do not use" land preserve

Johnson Atoll is an unincorporated US territory and Pacific island wildlife refuge located about 860 miles southwest of Hawaii, which has been used for many military projects of different types over the last 90 years.  

[T]he island hosted an airfield during World War II before operating as a launch site for atmospheric nuclear tests during the 1950s and 1960s, some of which resulted in plutonium contamination at the atoll. The US government then requisitioned the area for chemical weapons experiments with similar consequences before ultimately cordoning it as a remote storage depot for the same deadly biological agents.

This year, the Atoll was announced as being under consideration for testing the elements of a new military cargo system based around the idea of shipping tons of cargo anywhere quickly.  

Those decades of progress appeared in jeopardy earlier this year. In March, the Air Force first announced intentions to once again requisition the unincorporated US territory, this time for its Research Laboratory’s Rocket Cargo Vanguard Program. The US Space Force-affiliated endeavor aims to establish a system to deliver as much as 100 tons of cargo to anywhere on Earth in less than 90 minutes.

“In the event of conflict or humanitarian crisis, the Space Force will be able to provide our national leadership with an independent option to achieve strategic objectives from space,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. John W. “Jay ” Raymond said during the program’s announcement

SpaceX is the only launch provider mentioned, presumably for Starship and SuperHeavy which SpaceX has talked about as launching suborbital flights like this: that is, trips between any two points on Earth in 90 minutes.  Another possibility is that linked story is published in Popular Science and it must be considered that SpaceX is mentioned because they don't expect their readers to know Blue Origin's New Glenn, or ULA's Vulcan by name and they're using SpaceX to get more clicks.  

The Department of the Air Force’s confirmation, first provided to Stars and Stripes, came ahead of a planned environment assessment and amid mounting pressure from conservationists.

“The Department of the Air Force has elected to hold the preparation of the Johnston Atoll Environmental Assessment for a proposed rocket cargo landing demonstration on Johnston Atoll in abeyance while the service explores alternative options for implementation,” Air Force spokesperson Laurel Falls said in the email.

The article explains the situation in language you see regularly when conservation groups don't want a particular place to become environmentally spoiled - that is, made less pretty to them.  The big story is the place being ruined by the new controllers of the now-spoiled island, and a "noble savage" hurt by the new users.  

Johnson Atoll is home to 14 different species of tropical birds.  Image credit: Credit: USFWS / Tor Johnson



Thursday, July 17, 2025

Small Space News Roundup 62

A couple of big guys confirm stories being told about them.  "Big guys" in the space company sense.  

Blue Origin confirms ESCAPADE is the next New Glenn Mission

This afternoon, Blue Origin confirmed on X that the second mission of their New Glenn (NG-2) will be the ESCAPADE mission to Mars, as we talked about on June 30th.  

In addition to the two satellites headed for Mars, the New Glenn will carry  a technology demonstration from @Viasat in support of @NASASpaceOps' Communications Services Project.  I can't tell if that's also going to Mars or staying closer to home.

There was no mention of when that launch might be.  To borrow a comment from email edition of the Rocket Report:

Previously, the company has said this second launch will take place no earlier than August 15. However, that is less than one month away. Late September is probably the earliest realistic launch date, with October or November more likely for the second flight of the company's large rocket.

Boeing and NASA agree the next Starliner flight probably won't be manned 

Most everyone knows about the big story of Starliner's Crewed Flight Test 1 (CFT-1) that was going on a year ago - and the fact that it was still going on in mid-July instead of being over in mid-June is just one overall sign of what a dismal failure that mission was.  One of the posts about how bad it was is currently among my most read posts in the last year - and that was posted four months ago. 

One of the major problems in the mission was failure of thrusters.  It was worse than I knew and I'm guessing worse than anyone not actively involved in the mission knew.  That is, only Butch Wilmore, Suni Williams and a handful of other astronauts and engineers.

The story gets worse from there.  Wilmore adds: "And this is the part I'm sure you haven't heard. We lost the fourth thruster. Now we've lost 6DOF (6 Degrees of Freedom) control. We can't maneuver forward. I still have control, supposedly, on all the other axes."  

Now they simply could not control the Starliner to the degree they needed to.  The two of them realized they were in a very precarious situation, and it literally was just barely good enough to only probably not get them both killed. There was no need to talk about that with each other; they're both experienced enough as astronauts to know what the situation meant.  That's when the mission control in Houston came up with the scariest solution.  

Turn the entire system of thrusters off and back on again.  Really.  And some of them started working again.

As you know, the decision was made after two months of delays to return the Starliner unmanned, they bent several unstated rules (the "we always do it this way" kind of rules) and Butch and Suni's mission stretched until March 18th.  

The problematic thrusters are contained in boxes called doghouses and the efforts so far have concentrated on understanding why the problems happened.  It hasn't been spectacularly good or fast progress.  And it needs to be tested in the real environment. 

NASA crew rotations aboard the ISS typically last six to eight months, lining up two launches per year to ferry astronauts to and from the orbital laboratory. Slating the first crewed, operational Starliner mission for the end of 2026 likely means the spacecraft's next launch won't include any astronauts aboard. "There's a strong chance we'll fly a cargo flight first," Stich said.

"What we're really looking at is, can we test all the changes that we are making, to the doghouses in particular, and would we want to validate those in flight first?" he explained.

The CFT-1 Starliner Capsule on top of its Atlas V ride at the SLC-41 launch pad before the mission, May of '24.  Image Credit: ULA on Flickr


Wednesday, July 16, 2025

When it absolutely, positively has to be in orbit...

I'll go out a limb and say I bet most of you remember the old Federal Express commercials with the line, "when it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight."  I've always mixed that in mind with the Ghostbusters line, "who ya gonna call?" 

Nowadays that has turned into you've got to get a satellite - or 20 or 30 - into orbit.  They absolutely, positively have to be there ASAP.  Yesterday would have been late, don't ask about tomorrow.  Do you call the guys who launch roughly three times a week, or the guys who launch maybe three times a year, or three times a quarter?  Goes without saying doesn't it?  Not exactly a really tough decision.  

This morning at 2:30 AM EDT, SpaceX launched their second load of Amazon's Kuiper satellites, 24, into orbit from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.  

With this launch, Amazon now has 78 Kuiper satellites in orbit. The full Kuiper constellation will consist of 3,232 satellites to provide broadband Internet service to most of the populated world, bringing Amazon in competition with SpaceX's Starlink network. 
...
Amazon has booked more than 80 launches to deploy the Kuiper constellation, but the company didn't turn to SpaceX until it had to. Amazon purchased 68 rocket flights from United Launch Alliance, Arianespace, and Blue Origin in 2022 to launch thousands of Kuiper satellites. At the time, ULA's Vulcan rocket, Arianespace's Ariane 6, and Blue Origin's New Glenn hadn't completed any launches, so Amazon reserved nine flights on ULA's Atlas V to support the initial series of Kuiper missions.

In the rest of the industrial world, I think hiring your competitor (in Amazon's case) or helping allow your competitor stay in business to compete against you in SpaceX's case is an odd situation.  In this case, SpaceX has helped not just Amazon but has launched for other competitors - at least in the "competitors on paper" sense.  Northrop Grumman comes immediately to mind: SpaceX has been launching their Cygnus cargo capsule to the ISS since they ran into issues related to their Antares rocket back in 2022.  It's reasonable to say this isn't as much helping their competitor as it is ensuring the cargo needed to keep the ISS functional will get there.  Practically, that's a public service mission. 

An interesting footnote to this discussion is that originally, Amazon didn't offer any contracts to SpaceX.   

A shareholder lawsuit filed in 2023 accused Amazon's founder Jeff Bezos and its board of directors of breaching their "fiduciary duty" by not considering SpaceX as an option for launching Kuiper satellites. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit alleged Amazon didn't consider the Falcon 9 due to an intense and personal rivalry between Bezos and SpaceX founder Elon Musk.

Amazon bowed to the allegations and announced a contract with SpaceX for three Falcon 9 launches in December 2023 to provide "additional capacity" for deploying the Kuiper network. 

With this launch, Amazon has 78 Kuiper satellites in orbit.  The full Kuiper constellation will consist of 3,232 satellites.  So far, SpaceX has launched more than 9,100 Starlink satellites, including satellites that had to be forced out of the the constellation due to various problems that made them not meet requirements.  The actual number of Starlink satellites in the constellation is (very roughly) around 8000.  About four hours before last night's Kuiper launch, another load of 28 Starlink satellites were launched from Vandenberg. 

Kuiper is an expensive undertaking, estimated at between $16.5 billion and $20 billion by the industry analytics firm Quilty Space. Quilty has concluded Amazon is spending $10 billion on launch alone, exceeding the company's original cost estimate for the entire program. 

A Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, with 24 Kuiper satellites.  It was the first mission for this booster, landing successfully about eight minutes after liftoff. Credit: SpaceX



Tuesday, July 15, 2025

Sometimes it strikes me how lucky we are

That is, how lucky those of us who lived through, say, 1960 to now, are compared to just about any people born before or since.  

We saw Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, including all the first satellites to visit the moon, every planet and everything else we've visited in the solar system.  We watched the Voyagers cruise the solar system and into interstellar space.  We saw the first probes to EVERY planet, from Mercury to Pluto.  Recently, while working on the anniversary post of Voyager 2's first fly by of Jupiter, it really sunk in that we still haven't flown any probe past Uranus and Neptune except Voyager 2.  I remember comparing the early satellite pictures of Jupiter to the photos from the world's best observatories and seeing how much better the pictures from the probes were, and somewhere in the years realizing that if I compared the best photos of "the Ice Giants" that existed before Voyager's photos to them, it would be even more extreme. 

Part of what started this line of thought was a catchy headline about the first satellite to Pluto, New Horizons, at Ars Technica.   "We saw the heart of Pluto 10 years ago—it’ll be a long wait to see the rest"  In case it's not obvious, the reference to "the heart of Pluto" is a pun based on the light colored feature obvious on the bottom right in this very commonly used photo from New Horizons.  Some folks might have to squint a bit to really see the heart-shape. 

Four images from New Horizons' Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) were combined with color data from the spacecraft's Ralph instrument to create this enhanced color global view of Pluto. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University/SWRI (wait... LORRI and Ralph?)

As I know I've mentioned before, I watched New Horizons launch into its journey on January 19, 2006, pulling off the road during a bike ride down to what we call the south beaches.  The Pluto flyby was on July 15, 2015, ten years ago today, and I wrote a short overview two days later talking about visiting Pluto as symbolically childhood's end.  In other words, it took New Horizons over nine years to get to Pluto.  It took several years to design the spacecraft and the mission.  Ars Technica points out that a 50-year wait for a second mission wouldn't be surprising.  Just ask Uranus and Neptune which haven't been revisited since Voyager 2's flybys in January '86 (Uranus) and August of '89.  If Pluto proved to be made of gold, diamonds, or something else that could bring wealth, there might be more interest in going back, but ten years after the flyby of Pluto there are no missions planned or even starting to be planned to go back to Pluto and no real prospects for one.  Without some serious improvements to some aspects of spaceflight, it still takes unreasonably long to get there and going faster just reduces the amount of information that can be gathered in a flyby and sent back.  Flying there and staying there in orbit allows much more investigation.

As approach the middle of July and the anniversary of Apollo 11, I generally just rerun my usual "Peak of Western Civilization Day" graphic, but I started looking for something better or just different.  Zendo Deb has some neat videos of Apollo 11's launch on July 16.

I suspect a lot of us who have been among the lucky to watch all these missions and programs unfold before us are all about sick of the "OK Boomer" stuff.  Complaints about things you might have fought your entire life to stop but couldn't.  Like that, none of us ever choose our birthdays, but many of us just happened to have been lucky enough to remember the first Mercury mission all the way to the last Space Shuttle, the landers, then rovers on Mars, Voyagers, Hubble Space Telescope and today's launches almost getting so routine that few people even watch. 



Monday, July 14, 2025

Ax 4 Mission to splashdown early Tuesday morning

The four astronauts of Axiom Space's Ax 4 mission undocked from the International Space Station this morning, July 14, at 7:15 AM EDT (1115 UTC) and began its nearly 24 hours of maneuvers to splash down off California early Tuesday morning, 5:31 AM EDT, or 0931 UTC.  

This was the first flight of this Crew Dragon capsule and the tradition is the first crew to fly it gives the capsule a name; they chose Grace.  

Ax-4's commander is former NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, who is now Axiom's director of human spaceflight. "Space Station, Grace," Whitson said over the communication system as the Crew Dragon crossed out of the ISS's safety "keep-out sphere," "The Ax-4 crew wants to thank you very much for your support. You guys are amazing."

Her crewmates are pilot Shubhanshu "Shux" Shukla and mission specialists Sławosz "Suave" Uznański-Wiśniewski and Tibor Kapu. This was the first spaceflight for each of those three. But Ax-4 is Whitson's fifth mission to orbit and raises her current record for most cumulative days in space by an American to 695. 

I've been trying to track down information on exactly where "off California" the splash down will be.  It's easy to assume it will be somewhere near Vandenberg because of the existing infrastructure there - but that's purely speculation.  For example they won't use the drone ship that Falcon 9s land on to handle the Crew Dragon, but any port facility big enough to handle their drone ship Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY) can handle the smaller ship used to recover the capsule.  The source article I used here says, "This will only be SpaceX's second West Coast crew recovery. The first was that of the Crew-9 ISS mission in March."  The problem is that's wrong.  Crew-9 splashed down in the Gulf of America close to Tallahassee, Florida.  That was the mission that launched with two empty seats to make room for "Butch and Suni" to come back after the Boeing Starliner fiasco.  

So I've got to say I don't know where it's landing, I only know why it's not landing off Florida or in the Gulf.  SpaceX has shifted permanently to the Pacific Ocean rather than Atlantic or Gulf recoveries, after a couple of instances of debris from Dragon's trunk surviving reentry and crashing back to Earth.  

Ax 4's Grace capsule just before undocking from the International Space Station July 14, 2025. (Image credit: NASA)

And speaking of that whole Starliner/Crew-9 mess, in March NASA announced that Zena Cardman, who had been bumped from her position as commander for Crew-9 will command Crew-11, now scheduled to launch Thursday, July 31 at 12:09 PM EDT, from pad 39A.  She and Stephanie Wilson were bumped off Crew-9 to make the two empty seats for Butch and Suni to use for their ride home.  Stephanie Wilson is not on this mission and the sources I have didn't mention a next flight for her.



Sunday, July 13, 2025

A little more involved catching up

In which I need to ask for help if you can.  

At top of the "home page" of the blog, right above the blue box that has the blog's name in it, there's a thin gray bar.  There's a little box on the left of that bar just next to an Orange block with a white B in it - the logo for Google's Blogger home page.  If you enter the phrase "cardio is killing you" in the search box it will open four posts.  In the default order they're Cardio May Be Killing You from September 8, 2011, Cardio May Be Killing You - Part 2 from August 1, 2016. Those are the better references, but there's also a third post about corporate wellness programs, Wait... I'm Not the Only One Questioning Wellness Programs? (The last one isn't really related and I have no idea why Blogger returned it in the search).

What I'm calling attention to here is that both of those first two focus on the idea that while the popular idea since the 1970s or earlier was that running or cycling "cardio exercise" in general was the ticket to better health and longer life.  In fact, there was a hidden untruth in there based on the very common attitude that more is better.  Blindly increasing your mileage running or riding or even just walking is not a ticket to long health and better life.  To borrow a passage from myself, ever since Dr. Kenneth Cooper's work on aerobics in the 1960s, cardio has been the standard recommendation.  In the 1970s, when I first started running, there was a highly publicized study that said no marathon runner had ever had a heart attack. They concluded that marathon running made you immune to heart attacks. This was bullcrap - it was pure selection bias.  When this study was done, marathon running was an obscure sport, and only a few really dedicated people ran marathons, so they were a self-selected group of very unusual people.  As the running fad spread, more and more people, with their checkered pasts, started running, and it wasn't too long before marathon runners started having heart attacks, too.  

Where I'm going with this is a major portion of the second post, about atrial fibrillation or Afib.  Like I said, I started running in the late '70s when the fad was soaking in quite well across the country.  I'm not sure exactly when but let's say around '77-'78, so I was 23-24 and not in particularly good shape.  In school I ran when they told me - aside from the sandlot football we'd play - and almost laughed at running deliberately.  Someone likes running?  "Pull the other one, it's got bells on it."  Somewhere around 1994 I saw an orthopedic surgeon about knee pain - it wasn't the first time - that ended with a  fatherly, hand on my shoulder and him saying "you know,  you're not built like a runner."  I had bought a nice bike but we never really rode much.  Suddenly it seemed like a good idea and we started riding.   

I was wholeheartedly “more is better” in cycling for years.  Be able to ride a century (100 miles) any day of the year, “you can ride in one day whatever you ride in a typical week.” My wife and I used to ride together maybe 6 days/week - skipping Friday evenings. Yeah, we'd get rained out or blown out by extreme winds, but the normal thing was to ride every day after work and dinner. This started in the early 90s because I had been the same way about jogging and by the time I was getting close to 40, my knees were giving out. By about 2010 or 12, we just started riding less and eventually dropped it. 

In 2013, the year I turned 59, I had a sudden bunch of awful feelings in my chest - and I was sure I must have talked about it here but it wasn't one big post I couldn't find about it.  After some preliminary things, I was referred to cardiologist and wore one of those 24 hour monitors you'll hear about (a Holter monitor).  Among other things I was told I had Atrial fibrillation - Afib.  I've been through lots of experiences with the cardiologist, who retired a few years ago, and I was assigned to his replacement in that practice group.  Last year, when I turned 70, he told me my chances of having a stroke due to the Afib double when you cross 70, (yeah, from 1% to 2% absolute risk) and started me on a blood thinner

Which leads me to this year.  At my annual check in visit with the cardiologist they told me that during a couple of previous echocardiograms, the results had said my Afib was causing the valve to leak and they set me up for a TEE, - Trans Esophageal Echocardiogram - to get a closer look at my atrial valves.  That was my June 2nd hospital visit.  The TEE is supposed to be able to give a more precise measure of "how leaky is leaky."  So how leaky was it? 

The answer is that it's not a bad leak but it's time to face some harsh realities.  The whole time I was being monitored there (so every time he's seen me since April) I was in Afib constantly.  I don't really notice it, but that doesn't mean anything.

Harsh reality #1: much like my hernia, Afib and these valves don't get better on their own. 

Harsh reality #2: there are pretty much just two ways to fix it. The first is called cardioversion, which uses medication and once you've got the drug in your system, they shock your heart back into a proper rhythm. With the exception of I think that puts me on that medication for life, I think it’s the relatively low pain option. The other fix is more invasive, called ablation. That one shoves an electric probe with an imager and more up your femoral artery into your heart and literally burns away some heart tissue that is causing the Afib. As I understand it, we’re unconscious through that.  There's a cryoablation version of that kills parts of the atrium by freezing instead of burning.  I don't see much difference.  

As it turns out I have two friends that have been down this decision path: one had ablation, and the other had cardioversion.  The doc asked me to do some research and let him know which one I'm more interested in getting done.  The guy with ablation is off his prescriptions and completely over it.  The bad  part is he had to have the ablation done twice and they were six years apart.  I'd really like to not have to do that.  The guy who had cardioversion was "one and done" but he's still on his prescriptions, (in fact the same two drugs I'm on - blood thinner and beta blocker).  

I was hoping to find people who have “Been There, Done That” with either of the Afib fixes. Lacking that, maybe a link to someplace else online where I could go.  At the moment, I'm leaning toward the ablation but that's not as strong as I was leaning before I found my friend had to wait six years to finally get it fixed. 

Thoughts appreciated, stories, results - that sort of thing.  I don't expect doctors to answer, just folks who have BTDT. 




Saturday, July 12, 2025

A little catching up

Since I can't really find anything on the space news sites I visit regularly, I'm going to bore you with some stuff about ME.  It might border on TMI, not really related to anything space-related - just stuff I've been going through.  As I usually say, if that doesn't sound interesting, check back tomorrow or Monday.

About a month ago, I did a story about an upcoming surgery that was going to be the next day.  The surgery was to repair an umbilical hernia - belly button area, not the "crotch busters" people associate with hernias that guys get.  I see my next post was the 13th, so I only missed the day of surgery.  A week later I thought I was completely done, although my post-surgical visit was set for the 25th.  I had switched from prescription pain pills to over-the-counter Extra Strength Tylenol because it worked better and was taking less of it after that.  By the end of the 8th day I was doubled over with a different thing: an insanely itchy area not pain.   

I did a followup post full of the TMI about that on Sunday, June 22nd.  

Thankfully that's almost completely gone.  On my followup with one of the Surgeon's PAs, he recommended a couple of old, low-tech fixes: benadryl antihistamine pills every four hours, calamine/benadryl lotion topically.  The important part was that he also told me I was discharged, go return to life as usual - carefully.  Just start out with less than you used to do and build back to it.  I've noticed the absence of pain I used to get if I accidentally tensed my stomach muscles too much, even yawning and stretching in the middle of the night.  That used to hurt until almost noon on most days but sometimes would go hours longer.

The rash has been gone at least a full week, if not more.  The surgery had microrobotic aspects, so they cut three holes in my abdomen to put those tools in, and the way they close those is stitches under the skin, but close the skin with glue.  I still have one or two of those suddenly get itchy for a while, but it's also getting less intense when it happens and today has been an easy day. 

It's hard to say what percent of "back to normal" I've made it to.  Certain things are getting back to normal, others aren't.  I haven't ridden my bike yet, but it's on the workstand so I can tweak the shifter because the rear derailleur feels "off center."   At 60 to 90 minutes a few times a week, it's not a big time percentage, it just feels more important.  

And for no particular reason:

For those who aren't familiar, Dr. Shawn Baker is an MD who has adopted and advocated for the carnivore diet.  Very good videos on YouTube, usually under 10 minutes - or at least the ones I've watched.  One of the things I couldn't help but notice in the inescapable long waiting periods in the hospital is how the vast majority of the staff are built more like this make believe toy than someone like Dr. Baker. 



Friday, July 11, 2025

SpaceX wins OK to extract LOX and LN2 at Starbase

Thanks to a lead from Ars Technica's Rocket Report this week, we learn that SpaceX has won approval to build a plant to extract and liquefy both Oxygen and Nitrogen from air.  

Cameron County has given SpaceX the green light to build an air separator facility, which will be located less than 300 feet from the region’s sand dunes, frustrating locals concerned about the impact on vegetation and wildlife.

The commissioners voted, 3-1, to give Elon Musk’s rocket company a beachfront construction certificate and dune protection permit, allowing the company to build a modern-day factory akin to an oil refinery to produce gases needed for space flight launches.

The plant will consist of 20 structures on 1.66 acres. The enclosed site will include a tower that will reach 159 feet, or about 15 stories high, much shorter than the nearby launch tower, which stretches 480 feet high. It is set to be built about 280 feet inland from the line of vegetation, which is where the dunes begin. The factory will separate air into nitrogen and oxygen. SpaceX utilizes liquid oxygen as a propellant and liquid nitrogen for testing and operations.

Saying the facility is "akin to an oil refinery" is a rather wrong picture as I understand the process.  It's an air compressor that compresses air sucked into a cylinder which is then cooled to remove the heat added in compressing the gasses, causing the air to liquefy.  The resultant liquid air is separated into O2 and N2 by controlling the temperature carefully around the boiling points, letting one boil off as the other remains liquid.  

If you've watched operations around Starship test flights you might have a feel for how much LOX and LN2 they need for launches; I thought I had a feel for it but I was surprised.  SpaceX says they need more than 200 trucks of liquid nitrogen and oxygen delivered for each launch.  I know I've seen several trucks at a time going through the side gates into the area around the launch mount but saying 200 trucks worth surprised me.  Think of the fuel that gets consumed just getting those trucks to SpaceX's area on the island from where the current provider liquefies the gasses. 

With their application, SpaceX submitted a plan to mitigate expected negative effects on 865 square feet of dune vegetation and 20 cubic yards of dunes, as well as compensate for expected permanent impacts to 7,735 square feet of dune vegetation and 465 cubic yards of dunes. While the project will be built on property owned by SpaceX, the county holds the authority to manage the construction that affects Boca Chica's dunes. 

Of course, the liquid oxygen is used as the oxidizer in SpaceX's methane/oxygen (methalox) system - both Starship and Super Heavy.  They also use liquid nitrogen in many places around the operation; testing and other operations. 

April 5th, 2024 Super Heavy static firing.  LOX and Methane burning, with LN2 in many places.  Image credit: SpaceX



Thursday, July 10, 2025

Trump appoints Secretary of Transportation to run NASA

I'm surprised at this news, time tagged Wednesday, July 9 at 9:32 PM.  Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy has been installed as the temporary, new administrator of NASA.  Secretary Duffy, a cabinet-level position, currently (without NASA) oversees 55,000 employees across 13 agencies, including the Federal Aviation Administration.

"Sean is doing a TREMENDOUS job in handling our Country's Transportation Affairs, including creating a state-of-the-art Air Traffic Control systems, while at the same time rebuilding our roads and bridges, making them efficient, and beautiful, again," Trump wrote on his social media network Wednesday evening. "He will be a fantastic leader of the ever more important Space Agency, even if only for a short period of time."

In response to this post, Duffy wrote on X, "Honored to accept this mission. Time to take over space. Let’s launch."

The idea of the head of NASA being the secretary of transportation is a little odd, especially if, like me, you think NASA should get out of the transportation or "getting there" side of their business - how to get there when "there" is beyond the surface of our planet.  On the other hand, his experience in the air transportation regulatory world might help guide NASA to concentrating on the mission once they're at their destination and not on renting rockets.  Given that "getting there safely" is critical for a mission like going to Mars, it still pales in comparison to all the other planning required. 

Although he does not have a space background, Duffy has shown an interest in spaceflight since becoming FAA administrator. He watched from NASA Headquarters the Crew 9 mission's splashdown on March 18, which brought Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams back to Earth after a prolonged stay in space. He also had expressed an interest in attending the forthcoming Crew 11 launch at the end of this month.

Officials at NASA were caught unaware by the announcement on Wednesday evening. They had been expecting the existing acting administrator, Janet Petro, to remain in place at least through the end of the year while a new nominee was put forth to lead NASA and confirmed by Congress.

Eric Berger at Ars Technica quotes his sources as saying Petro wasn't highly regarded in the Trump administration.  Another way of saying that is that she did nothing to be removed from her position.  It simply seems that Trump wanted someone he liked and trusted running NASA. This is probably a benefit for the agency, as it will give NASA a direct line to the president.  He and Trump are thought to have each other's phone numbers and can text each other 24/7.

Sean Duffy, US secretary of transportation, during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, July 8, 2025. Credit: Aaron Schwartz/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images

As always, speculating to any depth on every imaginable subject is going to be rampant for a while.  He's going to rubber stamp Trump's budget cuts versus he's going to back someone else's ideas for NASA's budget.  As with all of other appointees, we can message our senators and representatives to approve or disapprove of Sean Duffy or for whatever level of NASA's spending you think is proper. 



Wednesday, July 9, 2025

It's Another Big Anniversary Day

Not the same kind of anniversary, but bigger than yesterday's - at least to me, because it's a mission that I think is one of the greatest accomplishments in human history.  

On July 9, 1979, Voyager 2 made its closest approach to Jupiter.  Forty-six years ago today, it came within 354,000 miles of the giant planet's cloud tops. 

Voyager 2 launched August 20, 1977 weeks before its partner in interstellar space Voyager 1 launched on September 5, 1977, and beat Voyager 2 to Jupiter, arriving in March of '79.  Voyager 2 discovered rings around Jupiter.  Both Voyager probes spotted volcanoes erupting on Jupiter's moon, Io.

Voyager 2 took longer to reach Jupiter than its sister spacecraft, Voyager 1, but also got to visit Uranus and Neptune. This made it the only spacecraft to visit either of the ice giants.

Over the years, I've written many pieces on the Voyagers, pretty much whenever a news article shows up.  As we're approaching the 48th anniversary of their launches, it's almost always about a new problem that has surfaced or how the previous new problem was resolved (latest post like this).  Among the ones I return to regularly is 2017's “Meet The Crew Retiring Along with Voyagers 1 and 2.”  I could almost quote large chunks of that post - one that's longer than most of what I post, I like it that much.  So let me conclude with a photo taken by Voyager 2 10 days before its closest approach to Jupiter, from the JPL site that updates on both Voyagers regularly

This color composite from Voyager 2 shows the Great Red Spot, Jupiter's iconic, long-lived storm, during the late Jovian afternoon. North of the Red Spot lies a curious darker section of the South Equatorial Belt (SEB), the belt in which the Red Spot is located. A bright eruption of material passing from the SEB northward into the diffuse equatorial clouds has been observed on all occasions when this feature passes north of the Red Spot. The remnants of one such eruption are apparent in this photograph. To the lower left of the Red Spot lies one of the three long-lived White Ovals. This photograph was taken on June 29, 1979, when Voyager 2 was nearly 6 million miles (9 million kilometers) from Jupiter. The smallest features visible are more than 106 miles (170 kilometers) across.
Image credit: NASA/JPL  [Bold added: SiG]



Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Only Small Stories

To be honest, it's getting hard to find interesting stories these days.  

The AX 4 mission is still on the ISS but I think it's in its last couple of days.  Things I can trace say they'll stay on the station 14 days, but they docked to the station on June 26, and 14 days is June 40th, uh, July 10th.  I don't know if those missions ever get extended and I don't see any word about "our mission ends on July x-didy x-th."  

On This Day in 2011, the last Space Shuttle mission launched.   I remember writing about it in my early days of blogging.  It was really a day of mixed emotions; sorry to see the program ending but knowing it simply had to end - and probably should have ended years earlier.  It was a spacecraft designed in the 1970s and flying for 31 years by then.  I knew the program was over-hyped and never achieved the costs to orbit, the launch frequency, or the operational safety it was sold with.

I ended the piece with this:

It's no secret - chances are everyone who visits here knows the Endarkenment approaches.  I know as well as anyone that the economy is on the verge of collapse, and the social order on the verge of disintegration.  Knowing it's coming doesn't make seeing it any easier, and like some of the other folks I read, it pains me.  The end of American manned space flight just seems like another sign of the approaching darkness.   


 Image credit

I imagine that this anniversary isn't getting spoken about much is partly these mixed emotions along with the fact that this is a 14 years anniversary not a 15, 20 or 25 year anniversary.  It's a "tweeny" milestone. 

And remember, in 2011, the Falcon 1 had only done a couple of test flights.  The Block 5 Falcon 9 was years in the future, along with the first manned flight (Bob and Doug) from the USA in May of 2020, and dozens of other everyday things we're completely used to. 



Monday, July 7, 2025

ULA Begins stacking 1st Vulcan for a National Security Mission

On Thursday July 3 Spaceflight Now reported that United Launch Alliance began the stacking process for their first Vulcan for a National Security mission, since the approval was recently granted.  ULA refers to this as Launch Vehicle on Stand or LVOS, and it's actually not the first time this third Vulcan was brought to SLC-41, ULA's launch complex on Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. 

It was previously readied in late October in support of the USSF-106 mission, the planned, first national security flight of a Vulcan rocket.

However, plans changed as the process of certifying Vulcan to fly these government payloads took longer than expected.

ULA President and CEO Tory Bruno announced the move Wednesday morning, July 2nd, on social media.

During the second of two certification flights for Vulcan, an issue with an insulator component on one of the Northrop Grumman-built GEM 63XL solid rocket motors caused a burn through less than a minute into the early October launch. The rocket was able to compensate for the anomaly, but it resulted in several more months of investigative work before the U.S. Space Force was able to close out its certification work.

In February, faced with delays from the Space Force certifying this vehicle, they pivoted to June 23rd's launch of ULA's Atlas V carrying Amazon's next 27 Kuiper satellites

“We stay integrated with the spacecraft teams and we were monitoring where [Amazon’s Project] Kuiper was and where the SF-106 partner was and so we made the decision that we had a little time there,” said Gary Wentz, the vice president of Government and Commercial Programs, during an interview with Spaceflight Now in early February.

“We knew we had some out-of-position work that we needed to do on the SF-106 booster. We had to replace some components and then subsequently we would retest those,” Wentz said. “And so, we elected to go ahead and LVOS that booster to get that work off the critical path so that we’re prepared to launch, whether it was 106 or Kuiper.”

Bruno had said the next two launches will be Vulcan NSSL Phase 2 missions: USSF-106 and USSF-87.  After those, they're planning is based on around two launches per month for the rest of the year, and at least tentatively alternating between Atlas V and Vulcan. 

Unlike most National Security launches, there's actually some word about at least one thing that will be flying on USSF-106:  a test of some concepts for a successor to the current GPS navigation satellites. 

The USSF-106 mission will carry multiple payloads, but to date, the only one that has been publicly identified is the Department of the Air Force’s Navigation Technology Satellite-3 (NTS-3). The prime contractor is L3Harris Technologies, which integrated an agile positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) payload onto an ESPAStar satellite bus from Northrop Grumman.

The mission is designed and coordinated by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). It follows in the footsteps of the Navy Research Laboratory’s NTS-1 and NTS-2 satellites that were precursors to the Global Positioning System (GPS) constellation that began deploying in the 1970s.

Spaceflight Now dedicates at least a page the size of one my screens to discussing this NTS-3 payload (along with a photo of an interesting 1/3 scale model of it).  Considering the length I'd have to add and a guess at the amount of readers who would find it worth reading, I decided not to include it here, but just leave a link to the source article.



Sunday, July 6, 2025

Small Space News Roundup 61

Because long holiday weekends can make it hard to find stories. 

Rocket Lab launches twice in two days

Rocket Lab is approaching the SpaceX cadence, not being three times a week, but that could well be because they don't have as many launch pad options. 

Rocket Lab's "Symphony in the Stars" mission lifted off on Saturday, June 28, from Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand. The mission was the second of two launches from the same launch site in less than 48 hours, a new record for turnaround time, the company said. It's a sign of a maturing company that Rocket Lab can turn between launches so quickly.

The ‘Symphony In The Stars’ mission lifted-off from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in Mahia, New Zealand on June 28th (7:08 p.m./07:08 UTC) to deploy a single spacecraft to a 650km circular Earth orbit. The mission was the first of two dedicated launches for the new customer on Electron booked less than four months ago, with a second mission scheduled before the end of 2025.  

Rocket Lab has now completed four launches in June for commercial satellite constellation operators, underscoring Electron's consistent performance and rapid deployment capabilities as the world’s leading small launcher: the “Full Stream Ahead” mission on June 3rd; “The Mountain God Guards” mission on June 11th; “Get The Hawk Outta Here” launched on June 26th UTC, and today’s “Symphony In The Stars” mission. 

Rocket Lab Founder and CEO, Sir Peter Beck, went a little far in his remarks (IMO) about the successful missions, saying, “Electron has demonstrated once again that it is the gold standard for responsive and reliable space access for small satellites. The future of space is built on proven performance, and Electron continues to deliver against a stacked launch manifest this year. Congratulations to the team on achieving its fastest launch turnaround yet between two missions from Launch Complex 1. This launch was also a quick-turn mission to meet our customer’s mission requirements, and we’re looking forward to doing it again later this year.” 

‘Symphony In The Stars’ was Rocket Lab’s tenth Electron mission of 2025.  They may well be the gold standard in the niche market of small satellites in orbits that the bigger rockets don't serve in ridesharing missions, but 10 missions in half the year is a small market.

ArianeGroup's Themis reusable demonstrator rocket arrives in Sweden

At the end of 2024, it was news that Ariane was looking to start testing the conceptual design of the Themis rocket this year - roughly three years after the first test dates they talked about which were in 2022.  Themis is patterned after the Falcon 9.  The prototype arrived in Sweden on Wednesday, July 2nd. 

The initial phase of the test campaign will include wet-dress rehearsals and hot-fire tests, to be followed by a "hop test" that will occur no earlier than the end of this year.

Hopping higher and higher ... Based on experience from these initial tests, the program aims to fly the Themis demonstrator on higher and progressively more advanced tests, not dissimilar to what SpaceX did with its Grasshopper vehicle a little more than a decade ago in Texas. Eventually, Europe aims to use lessons learned from Themis to develop a reusable rocket similar to the Falcon 9 vehicle. 

Europe’s first reusable rocket main stage demonstrator, Themis, is being transported to its launch pad at Esrange Space Centre, Sweden. Credit: ESA/ArianeGroup

Pretty much all the big names have been talking about developing reusable rockets because Reusability Changes Everything.  The ESA is lagging behind China.



Saturday, July 5, 2025

We have an extrasolar interloper

I almost said, "don't look now, but we have an extrasolar interloper," but the whole idea is to look.  Just not now.  

Ok, let's start over.  

The buzz in the astronomy community is that astronomers have found the third object passing through our solar system that is not from, or part of, our solar system.  The interloper was first discovered on July 1st, as the intro text in this NASA JPL video says

The NASA-funded ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) survey telescope in Rio Hurtado, Chile, first reported observations of comet 3I/ATLAS on July 1, 2025. Since the first report, additional observations from before the discovery were gathered from the archives of three ATLAS telescopes around the world and Caltech’s Zwicky Transient Facility at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California. These “pre-discovery” observations extend back to June 14. The fast-moving comet, which originated outside our solar system around a different star, was discovered as a tiny speck moving across the vastness of space. When discovered it was about 410 million miles (670 million kilometers) away from the Sun, within the orbit of Jupiter.  

This is the third object determined to be from beyond our solar system that has been observed passing through our "neighborhood."  Astronomers expect to find more with new tools designed to identify near-Earth objects. 

The first of these was ʻOumuamuaʻ, discovered in 2017, when it was already moving away from the Sun. It was likely cigar-shaped, and astronomers could only speculate about its nature and age. A couple of years later, astronomers found another object, 2I/Borisov, that was determined to be a rogue comet passing through the Solar System. 

Early on Wednesday, the European Space Agency confirmed that the object, tentatively known as A11pl3Z when it was first cataloged, did indeed have interstellar origins. 

An engineer at the University of Arizona's Catalina Sky Survey, David Rankin, said recent estimates of the object's eccentricity are about 6. A purely circular orbit has an eccentricity value of 0, and anything above 1 is hyperbolic. Essentially, this is a very, very strong indication that A11pl3Z originated outside of the Solar System.

This visualization of the path of 3I-ATLAS shows it's on an essentially straight line path through the solar system; the bend is caused by the mass of the sun deflecting the path.  It shows that at its closest to the sun, the comet is just inside Mars' orbit.  Unfortunately, it appears that our planet will be on the opposite side of the Sun when the object makes its closest approach.

Projected path of the new interstellar object. Credit: Catalina Sky Survey

Getting back to the idea of looking but not right now, I'm going to keep an ear open for stories about this interloper.  See if it develops a tail as it approaches the sun.  I'm hopeful that it'll be worth watching with binoculars or a telescope, although that's not based on anything I've read so far.



Friday, July 4, 2025

Happy Independence Day - 2025

I've run this post almost every July 4th in the 15 years I've been blogging.  There were only two years I didn't and both of those posts were about problems that must have seemed really big. They not only were really big but still are (20122014).  My lesson is that while they were important, the big picture is to remind ourselves of the history, and enjoy the day with family and friends.  The problems will still be here on the fifth. This year threw me a curve.  I ordinarily post this in the evening of the 3rd; yesterday our ISP was down for hours and we were completely isolated from the outside world.  I don't know when it first went down because we were out, but we had no connection from around 4:45 PM until after 10PM.  The recording on the tech support line said it was a large area outage. 

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.  

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. 

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. 

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. 

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. 

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. 

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands. 

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. 

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. 

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance. 

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature. 

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation: 

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: 

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states: 

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world: 

For imposing taxes on us without our consent: 

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury: 

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses: 

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies: 

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments: 

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. 

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us. 

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. 

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation. 

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands. 

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. 

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.  

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends. 

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

 It has been shown mathematically that in a system with multiple parties, they either converge to two declared parties or through something like a coalition system they functionally become a two party system. In our society, we are too broken apart along party lines, despite the idea of one big “uniparty” now being the subject of millions of jokes and other comments.  In reality, the important choice is a question of whether or not the politico you're referring to is a follower of our founding documents or someone else's. Right now, it appears the biggest competing idea is a tyrannical minority in the name of some form equality, equity or some such nonsense. The biggest competitor is Karl Marx. People are not, and cannot be both free and equal. We are either free or forced into subjugation to create equal outcomes. Opportunities can be equal, like that word that used to be a goal but is now punishable: colorblind. Outcomes can't be. 

Enjoy your day no matter what you do. To those who serve - and have served - to provide this gift of liberty for us:  Thank You from the bottom of my heart.