DayVectors

* 22 entries including: capitalism & socialism (series); my Ohio road trip (series); liberal agenda (series); Japan increases defense budget | Japanese cruise missile; Artemis I to the Moon; Zelenskyy in DC | omnibus bill passed | new PC adventures; new US Army small arms & 6.8 mm conversion kits | Vietnam arms expo; controversy over hybrid COVID experiment; Japan arms buildup | Mark Hamill for Ukr | Schumer & Pelosi speak; population 8 billion; Kherson slaughter | Britney Griner | Elon Musk lawsuits; elevator energy storage | bistable structures | SwuRo robo-rat; Germany adjusts to Russian gas cutoff; Ukraine cyberwar | my new desktop PC; & zircons trace earthquakes | dead star collision | volcanic lake.

[FRI 30 DEC 22] CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (27)

* CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (27): Along with Britain, governments across Europe moved towards a welfare state in varying degrees after World War II, with systems of national public education, health care, and pensions. They varied considerably in detail; Britain was somewhat unusual in having a national health service, other countries instead offering a national health insurance system, or a mandated and regulated private health insurance system. Some had mixed systems.

It was the Nordic countries that moved most decisively towards welfare states, rooted in a set of arrangements devised in the 1930s, the end result being a cradle-to-grave system with public education, universal healthcare, and pension plans. The "Nordic model" would become widely recognized as "socialism" at work, but it was not truly socialist in the proper meaning of the word -- being much more similar to Bismarck's "state socialism" and owing little to Karl Marx. The Nordic societies remained capitalistic, with business, labor, and government coming to a different balance in each of the countries.

In principle, countries to the east of the Iron Curtain also had a cradle-to-grave system, but it was badly hobbled by the impoverishment of the lands there during the war, and the authoritarian nature of the governments there -- which, in the immediate postwar period, were all subject to Josef Stalin's whims, and under the control of hidebound and arrogant bureaucracies. Dissent was not allowed, with an intrusive police system to keep the people under control. The only exception was Yugoslavia, under strongman Josip Broz Tito (1892:1980), which was still an authoritarian Communist state -- but outside of Stalin's control, much to his anger, and much less closed to the West. Yugoslavia's system also featured a looser degree of state control of the economy, with businesses being "socially owned" and directed by workers.

In any case, Stalin's concern over internal security was at least equaled by his concern over external security; the German invasion of the USSR had been devastating, and he was determined it would not happen again. The Soviet economy was dominated by military production, while the defensive political focus was necessarily Germany -- with Stalin seeing the division of the country as useful to Soviet interests. One major frustration was that the city of Berlin, like Germany itself, was divided into a Western-controlled "West Berlin" and a Soviet-controlled "East Berlin", even though Berlin was in the middle of East Germany.

In 1948, in an attempt to throttle West Berlin, Stalin cut off access to it. Instead of attempting to break the blockade by military means, the Western powers began a massive and successful airlift to supply the city that lasted into 1949. Stalin, confronted with a display of economic and logistical power that the USSR couldn't match, backed down. The Western powers, alarmed by Stalin's aggressive intent, ramped up re-armament, and in 1949 established a defensive alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

That same year, 1949, the Soviet Union detonated an atomic bomb, developed by a huge technical-industrial complex that included a purpose-built secret city named "Arzamas-16". The Soviet Bomb was a copy of an American weapon, the plans having been stolen by Red spies in the US nuclear establishment. The blast was supposed to be secret, but the Americans had implemented an intelligence system to monitor for nuclear tests, with aircraft carrying sampling pods picking up traces of radioactive "fallout" from the test. The end result was an acceleration of the "Cold War" between East and West, as well as another "Red Scare" in the USA, with Communists and the Left-leaning being investigated and persecuted.

To add to the tension, also in 1949 Mao's Communists triumphed over Jiang's Nationalists in China, with the Nationalists retreating to the island of Taiwan, then popularly known as Formosa. Western leadership felt confronted with an aggressive authoritarian Communist ideology bent on world domination. What was not so obvious at the time was that Stalin had never been very enthusiastic about backing Mao's Communists, and treated Mao with little respect -- much to Mao's resentment. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 29 DEC 22] JAPAN GEARS UP

* JAPAN GEARS UP: As discussed in an article from REUTERS.com ("Japan to Build a More Powerful Military, Citing China as Its #1 Menace", Alastair Gale & Tsuneoka Chieko, 16 December 2022), the government of famously pacifistic Japan has now announced a dramatic increase in defense spending. By fiscal 2027, it will spend about 2% of its gross domestic product on defense, twice of what it spends now. That would bring Japanese defense spending to the equivalent of about $80 billion USD, placing Japan third in the world behind the USA and China.

Around $3.7 billion USD is earmarked over the next five years for missile systems, including American Tomahawk missiles, which would give Japan the ability to strike deep into adversary territory if the need arose. Japan is also enhancing its own missile arsenal. In addition, Japan is enhancing its cyber defenses -- in part because the US has been reluctant to share intelligence with Japan, on the basis that it could be too easily compromised.

Prime Minister Kishida Fumio said at a news conference that the new strategy "marks a major transformation of our postwar security policy." US Secretary of State Antony Blinken welcomed Japan's move and said it would "reshape the ability of our alliance to promote peace and protect the rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific region and around the world."

Polls show that a majority of Japanese, traditionally inclined towards pacifism, now support increased military spending. Rahm Emanuel, America's ambassador to Japan, says: "The public is already there, and now they are pulling the politicians into that zone." Before Russia's invasion and China's firing of missiles near Japan this year, he added, "this was going to take 10 years to get one of these things done." Instead, "it all happened in one year."

The central flashpoint in East Asia is Taiwan, and Japan -- like the USA -- is committed to the defense of the country's neighbor to the south. Russia's misadventure in Ukraine has, perversely, only seemed to intensify Beijing's determination to seize the island. Kishida has said that "today's Ukraine could be tomorrow's Asia."

Although the Japanese government tends to avoid directly criticizing China, the strategy announcement featured a long list of complaints against Beijing. The Chinese foreign ministry shot back:

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The Japanese were not impressed. Prime Minister Kishida is faced with the issue of paying for the new weapons; he intends to impose a corporate surtax that would effectively raise the tax rate for big companies by one percentage point. That's not extreme, but there has of course been political resistance to the idea.

[ED: We are now seeing the emergence of an American-backed alliance against China, running on an arc from South Korea down to Vietnam. The Ukraine war has persuaded the leadership in those countries that they can beat China, and they don't need to take Chinese bullying any more.]

* As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Japan Wants To Arm Its Submarines With Long-Range Cruise Missiles" by Thomas Newdick, 30 December 2021), the Japanese are notoriously quiet about the weapons they development -- not just for security reasons, but apparently because they find it embarrassing.

However, some data leaks out, one item being that Japan is considering a new long-range cruise missile for submarines of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF). These weapons would have a range of over 1,000 kilometers (620 miles). They would be able to attack both ships and land targets, with the obvious potential adversaries being China and North Korea. The JMSDF currently has 22 non-nuclear submarines, with two more projected to be added to the fleet.

The new weapon will be a derivative of, or possibly a follow-on, to the current Type 12 antiship missile, already in service with the Japan Ground SDF; the truck-launched Type 12 is subsonic, and has a range of about 200 kilometers (125 miles). There is already work on extending the range of the Type 12 -- by a factor of 4.5 and later 9 -- as well as adapting it for air launch, adding a datalink, and making it stealthier. It is not decided yet if the new missile will be fired from a torpedo tube, or from a vertical launch system (VLS), or both; no Japanese submarines currently have VLS, but it is a possible future, and it could allow the missile to be fired from JMSDF surface ships.

The JMSDF's submarines already carry US-made Harpoon anti-ship missiles that are launched from standard torpedo tubes, but they have a much shorter range There is no schedule yet for introduction of the new weapon, with the end of the decade being floated as a preliminary date. Japan is also doing preliminary research on a scramjet-powered hypersonic antiship / cruise missile.

[WED 28 DEC 22] THERE & BACK (2)

* THERE & BACK (2): I hit the road very early on Monday, 2 October. The trip didn't get off to a great start. First problem was that I had decided to use a tablet computer for navigation, but from the outset it proved unwieldy and impractical. That led to taking Interstate 76 east while going through the Denver bypass instead of Interstate 70, which was what I was after.

That wasn't too much of a problem: the two freeways paralleled each other for a distance, so I just took the first exit that looked useful and headed due south. I was worried I would end up on a rural road, in which case I would have had to turn around and backtrack west on I-76 -- rural roads are mazes and a good way to get lost. However, what got onto was a boulevard, probably the most eastern one in the Denver area, and it was a straight shot to I-70.

Compounding this was a headache, backache, and drowsiness. That persisted until just before dawn, when I got off at a rest area, took a painkiller, put on my back brace, and took a half-hour nap. After I woke up, I hit the road again, feeling much better -- though the Sun rising in my face was blinding, forcing me to wear double sunglasses. I keep oversized sunglasses in my car for that purpose.

Using the tablet for navigation became more clearly unworkable as I drove along, since it wasn't always easy to read it well in daylight, and it wasn't sensible to fumble with it while driving. I doubt that using a smartphone for navigation would work much better. I should have gone my traditional route and printed out maps, the print-outs being easier to handle while driving than a gadget. Lack of the print-outs would lead to problems.

It was an uneventful trip through the Kansas flatlands, the most interesting thing being the big wind turbine farms that were sited at intervals along the freeway, mostly in western Kansas. It wasn't as flat in the eastern part of the state, and there were more forests. I got to Topeka in the early afternoon; I had some difficulties finding the zoo, but it wasn't too much bother.

The Topeka Zoo is a nice small zoo, particularly enhanced by its Japanese garden, framing a tidy conference center. It was warm and the animals were generally snoozing, but the zoo was nicely laid out and worth the visit. The air museum was nothing much, but I wasn't expecting much, so no problem. Being in Kansas, I wanted to get barbecue for dinner, but the restaurant I picked -- Hog Wild Pit Bar-B-Q -- was a chain and its food not particularly satisfactory.

I went back to the Hampton Inn and ended up being busier than I thought I would be. I had run short of time before leaving Loveland and more or less thrown all my kit into the car. I took all the jumble up to my hotel room and sorted it out, then repacked them in a much more orderly fashion. Turned out I didn't even need one of the pieces of luggage, so I stowed it in the car. Now all the camera kit was in a camera bag, all the digital kit was in a carry bag, miscellaneous kit for the hotel room was in an athletic bag, and bathroom kit was in a kitty litter bucket -- my late neighbor had a cat and I got a set of buckets from her. For the first time, I would come back from a trip more organized than when I left. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[TUE 27 DEC 22] ARTEMIS I TO THE MOON

* ARTEMIS I TO THE MOON: On Wednesday, 16 November 2022, the US National Aeronautics & Space Administration launched their Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift booster, with an uncrewed Orion space capsule, on the "Artemis I" mission beyond the Moon.

The Artemis 1 mission sent an Orion, without astronauts on board, to the Moon, where it entered a distant retrograde orbit. Orion remained in that orbit for five days, reaching a maximum distance from Earth of 480,500 kilometers (300,000 miles). It departed that orbit and returned to Earth, splashing down off the coast of San Diego, California, on 11 December.

The SLS features a core stage and solid-rocket boosters derived from the space shuttle, along with an upper stage -- more precisely the "Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS)". It can carry up to 27 tonnes (30 tons) to the Moon. The Orion capsule can carry up to four astronauts on missions up to 21 days in length. Unlike earlier US crewed space capsules, it flies inside a payload shroud. For this mission, it carried three mannequins.

The mission also included ten 6-unit (6U) CubeSats, including a Moon lander. They included:

• Lunar IceCube: A collaborative effort between Morehead State University in Kentucky, the Busek Company, and the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Lunar IceCube was put into a high-inclination elliptical orbit around the Moon to map volatiles on the lunar surface. It carried a single instrument, the "Broadband InfraRed Compact High-Resolution Explorer Spectrometer (BIRCHES)".
  
  
• Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) Scout: Developed by the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, to conduct a flyby of an asteroid. It featured a propulsive solar sail, and used lunar flybys to adjust its course. It carried a high-resolution camera. It will fly by Asteroid 2020 GE, which is 18 meters (60 feet) in diameter.
  
  
• BioSentinel: Developed by the NASA Ames Research Center, it was the first NASA mission to send living things to cislunar space since 1972. Along with its bioscience payload, it also carried radiation monitors.
  
  
• LunIR CubeSat: Developed by Lockheed Martin for NASA, LunIR CubeSat conducted infrared spectroscopy and thermography on the lunar surface. The IR system was kept at low temperature using a mini-cryocooler, being evaluated for later missions. It performed a flyby of the Moon, not going into lunar orbit, orienting itself with reaction wheels.
  
  
• CubeSat for Solar Particles (CuSP): Developed by the Southwest Research Institute, the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and NASA JPL, it went into solar orbit to use three instruments to measure radiation and magnetic fields from the Sun.
  
  
• Luna H Map: Developed by Arizona State University in Tempe for NASA, its mission being to image the southern polar region of the Moon's surface, mapping hydrogen-rich compounds like water.
  
  
• ArgoMoon: Built by Argotec for the Italian Space Agency, ArgoMoon took images of the SLS ICPS upper stage, since the ICPS couldn't send telemetry after it departed Earth orbit. ArgoMoon was equipped with two cameras and an optical communications system, along with autonomous navigation and nanotechnology subsystems. The CubeSat flew by the Moon and went into a heliocentric orbit.
  
  
• Team Miles CubeSat: Demonstrated hybrid plasma and laser thrusters invented by Wesley Faler, the head of the nonprofit group Fluid and Reason, LLC. It also carried an S-band software-defined radio as well as a deep space navigation subsystem. The team won the CubeQuest Challenge competition, with their concept was selected for flight.
  
  
• EQUULEUS: Developed by the University of Tokyo and the Japanese space agency JAXA, this CubeSat was designed to measure the plasmasphere around Earth as well as to demonstrate water steam propellant. It performed several lunar flybys, to finally end up in the L2 Earth-Moon libration point, beyond the Moon.
  
  
• Ometenashi (Welcome): Another JAXA payload, a CubeSat with a small airbag-braked lander. The orbiter CubeSat carried a radiation meter, with both orbiter and lander carrying a UHF radio payload that could be detected by amateur radio enthusiasts.

[MON 26 DEC 22] THE WEEK THAT WAS 52

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: On 21 December 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed a joint session of the US Congress, being greeted as he came to the podium by Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. After thanking his hosts in detail, Zelenskyy said:

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He described his visit to the besieged city of Bakhmut, speaking of the intense battle there, the superiority of Russians in numbers, and the resilience of the defense:

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To finally defeat the invaders will, he continued, mean more support from the USA -- more and new weapons, more sanctions on Russia, more funding:

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As far as peace proposals went, Ukraine and the USA are on the same page:

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He presented a Ukrainian battle flag to Harris and Pelosi, concluding:

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Zelenskyy got a standing ovation -- with a few of the MAGA Members of the House refusing to stand. MAGA critics made much of the fact that he showed up at the White House and Congress wearing field fatigues, but he did so as a sign of solidarity with the troops in the field. Winston Churchill did the same at least once during World War II; it certainly wouldn't have flown well if he showed up in a military dress uniform. It is a good bet that he cleared it with the White House before he came.

* After intensive legislative activity, the US Congress passed a $1.65 trillion USD spending bill just before going on Christmas break. The bill included $772.5 billion USD in nondefense discretionary spending, up about 6% from last year; and defense spending of $858 billion USD, an increase of $76 billion. Other items included $45 billion USD for Ukraine -- the Biden Administration had only asked for $37 billion USD -- and $40 billion USD for disaster relief. Other items included:

• Changes to individual retirement accounts: now retirees don't have to start withdrawing from them until age 73.
  
  
• Expansion of the Special Immigrant Visa program to add 4,000 visas for Afghans seeking to come to the USA.
  
  
• A permanent program to help low-income families buy extra food, and to support alternative meal delivery for rural areas such as grab and go, mobile delivery, backpack programs, or shipping meals.
  
  
• A ban on the popular video app TikTok on all government-issued smartphones and other devices; a partial ban for defense and intelligence people was already in place. TikTok is owned by China, and there are concerns about its security.
  
  
• An extension to give more time for Federal safety approval of two new versions of the 737 MAX airliner.
  
  
• A delay until 2029 for implementation of regulations on the Maine lobster industry intended to help protect North Atlantic right whales. It seems the whales get caught in lobster trap lines, with the industry modifying the lines so they break more easily.

Arguably most significantly, the omnibus bill included the Electoral Count Reform Act, which would overhaul an 1887 law governing how Congress counts and ratifies presidential elector votes. Donald Trump and his minions attempted to overturn the 2020 election by former Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to certify the election on 6 January 2021. That wouldn't have worked out in any case, but it could have greatly complicated the transition of power. The reform bill now makes it clear that Congress's role in ratifying states' Electoral College votes is ministerial, and that the vice president's role is merely to count the votes publicly. It also raises the threshold to sustain an objection to a state's electors from one House member and one senator to one-fifth of both chambers. That would prevent a handful of extremists from trying to derail an election, while permitting Congress to object to obvious fraud at the state level.

Some things didn't make the cut, an interesting one being protections for financial institutions handling legal marijuana businesses -- the fact that the Federal government still considers marijuana illegal clashes with states where it is legal and makes finances troublesome. This has been going around for some time, and will continue to be an issue.

In any case, the US government is funded to September. Some of the MAGA extremists in the House complained, saying it didn't give them room to perform a government shutdown in the near term -- which is likely why more than a few Republicans voted for it.

* A TikTok video of a rather unpleasant Russian woman spouting what appeared to be lunatic anti-Ukraine propaganda in Russian made the rounds on Twitter, with most replies in Ukrainian or possibly Russian. One was by a German fellow named Thomas Kapitel (@thomaskapitelh1) and read: "Was fuer ein grusliges Weib!" -- which translated as: "What a creepy woman!"

I replied to him: "Gruseliges ... that has the right sound for what it means." He replied in turn: "In Deutsch, that's spooky, weird, and yucky in one word." German is a very expressive language for certain sorts of things.

* I mentioned getting a new desktop PC a few weeks back. I got up to speed on it quickly, but I knew I'd run into a few more things to patch up, and did. The first was that the VIM text editor wasn't handling non-English characters in text I pasted into it the way it had on my old PC, which was causing me annoying difficulties. I finally figured out that I needed to specify the UTF-8 character set in the VIM configuration file, and it all worked as before.

That did leave me with the strange problem that some text files would give me a "readonly" error when I tried to save them -- but all I had to do was run an override save on them, and then they worked normally. Another little thing I had to deal with was the fact that I had various programs I don't use regularly or at all in the Windows startup list by default, and finally got around to disabling them.

Yet another thing I had to patch up was to get a free conversion utility to turn Youtube music videos I download into MP3 audio files. I had been using the Lexis audio editor on the old desktop, but I ran into complications trying to download it: it was a for-pay app now, and the downloads I could find didn't look safe. Some more poking around led me to the "OcenAudio" free audio editor, which is actually cleaner and better than the Lexis audio editor. I'll have to give OcenAudio a donation, it's very nice.

Along similar lines, I needed a tool to perform mass format conversions of image files. I had been using the CoffeeCup Software converter, which was an old if useful piece of junk, but ran into the same problem: it wasn't free any more, and it was hosted on dubious websites. After some confused searching around, I found the IMG Candy online converter, which is easy to use and works well. For now, licensing is only required for commercial use, but that could change -- but the website doesn't even ask for donations, so they don't seem greedy. I'd give them a donation if they let me.

[FRI 23 DEC 22] CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (26)

* CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (26): With the end of World War II, Harry Truman was faced with the challenge of shifting America's economy. The US Federal government abandoned wage and price controls, while military production was all but halted, with manufacturers trying to shift back to civilian production. Huge numbers of troops were demobilized and presented with the challenge of getting back to work. The result was an economic slump with inflation, fears arising that there would be a return to the low-growth era of the Depression years.

One of the keys to the national adjustment was the "GI Bill", which FDR had signed into law into 1944. It provided funds for veterans to go to school, with nine million of them taking advantage of the program. It served a dual function: it eliminated the pressure on the jobs market, and it helped bolster an educated labor class that would do much to help America prosper. It cost billions, but it proved an excellent investment.

More abstractly, in 1946 Truman established the "Council of Economic Advisers (CEA)", which was made up of economists who provided the president with counsel. The objective was to move from an "ad hoc style of economic policy-making to a more institutionalized and focused process". It was similar to the advisory "National Security Council", also set up by Truman, which provided counsel on national security issues to the president. By that time, however, the postwar recession was over, with Americans engaged in a wild spending boom. The boom tapered off in 1948 as consumer spending slowed and veterans got out of school, trying to find work, resulting in economic instability -- but the economy stabilized in less than a year.

Truman wanted to extend FDR's New Deal with a "Fair Deal", with major components including a national health insurance program. However, the boom times led to a revival of Republican fortunes, and only components were passed -- most notably the 1949 National Housing Act, intended to address a housing shortage that had emerged after the war. Indeed, there was a growing backlash against the New Deal, with the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act passed, over Truman's veto, to impose restrictions on labor actions.

Western Europe, in contrast, tilted more towards liberalism, Britain being an instructive example. In late 1942, a British civil servant named William Beveridge (1879:1963) released what was, considering the grim circumstances of the war against the Axis at the time, a plan for a reformed society that seemed wildly in contrast to circumstances. In response to the "Five Giants" that afflicted society -- disease, idleness, ignorance, squalor, and want -- he proposed new benefits for the retired, disabled, and unemployed; a universal allowance for children; and a nationwide health service. What he was calling for was a cradle-to-grave "welfare state". The plan was enthusiastically received by the public.

Once the war was over the British people, tired of austerity, voted in the Labour Party, which declared in its manifesto: "The Labour Party is a Socialist Party, and proud of it." With an overwhelming electoral victory Labour, under Prime Minister Clement Atlee (1883:1967), implemented a radical reform plan -- most notably the nationalization of major sectors of Britain's economy, along with extensive state planning.

Following the work of Beveridge and John Maynard Keynes, Labour constructed a welfare state to ensure that all Britons would be cared for, with the state supporting education, unemployment compensation, housing, and medical care -- with this last item manifested in the foundation of the National Health System (NHS) in 1948. NHS was not just a health insurance system, it was also a health provider.

The nationalization of much of Britain's economy soon led to doubts. State direction made industries more bureaucratic and less effective; the fact that the war had left Britain almost bankrupt made matters much worse. Similarly, the welfare state proved harder to achieve than anticipated. NHS notably found it had to institute a degree of user fees to help pay its own way, and to put brakes on the frivolous use of the system.

It was inevitable, of course, that the welfare state would evolve, and there was no way at the outset to know in what directions. Governments had long been generally focused on serving the will of the "haves", with the interests of the "have-nots" being a secondary, sometimes nonexistent, consideration. Trying to adjust the balance was inevitably going to be troublesome. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 22 DEC 22] WINGS & WEAPONS

* WINGS & WEAPONS: As discussed in an article from THEDRIVE.com ("Here's Everything We Now Know About The Army's New Squad Rifles" by Dan Parsons, 20 April 2022), the US military has been working towards updating their standard troop firearms.

Following an evaluation over the past two years of three weapon systems, the Army announced in April that Sig's XM5 rifle was chosen to replace the AR-15-derived M4/M4A1 carbine, and the belt-fed XM250 light machine gun to replace the M249 / FN MAG squad automatic weapon within the close combat forces. They are together labeled the "Next Generation Squad Weapons (NGSW)" system.

Both of the new firearms are based on Sig's popular MCX line, a piston-operated derivative of the classic Stoner AR-15 family. They're chambered in 6.8x51 mm, a departure from the NATO-standard 5.56x45 mm cartridge fired by the M4 and the larger, more powerful 7.62x51 mm round fired by the service's new Squad Designated Marksman Rifle and other weapons. The rounds use a hybrid-metallic casing that reduces its overall weight. There's long been dissatisfaction with the hitting power of the 5.56 mm round, with the 6.8 mm round being seen as a good compromise against the heftier 7.62 mm round.

The first contract was modest in scope, only ordering a handful of weapons plus ammunition, just to get the production line going. The Army plans to buy a mix of about 107,000 M5s about 13,000 M250s. The production M5 and M250 weapons will go into introductory service in 2024, but only to "close combat" forces. Other units will retain the M4 carbine, the 5.56 mm M249 SAW machine gun, and the 7.62 mm M240 MAG machine gun.

The M5 is somewhat shorter and heftier than the M4, while the M250 weighs slightly less than the M240 MAG. Both weapons will be used with the M157 Fire Control Optic unit, a ruggedized high-tech sight, featuring a variable magnification optic with 8x magnification, backup etched reticle, laser rangefinder, ballistic calculator, atmospheric sensor suite, and compass. The 6.8 mm ammunition used by the NGSW is unique to them among US military firearms; it is unclear if it will become a NATO standard.

* In related news, as discussed in a related article from JANES.com ("US Army Seeks 6.8 mm Conversion Kits for the M240" by Amael Kotlarski, 22 March 2022), as further signs of a push towards 6.8-millimeter ammunition, the US Army has invited proposals for 6.8 mm conversion kits for its 5.56 mm M240 Minimi machine guns.

The conversion kits are to include a new barrel assembly, and possibly other mechanical changes to the weapon including the gas regulator and drive spring. The barrels provided are to be for the standard length M240B barrel (55 centimeters / 21.6 inches), or the shorter M240L profile (45 centimeters / 17.7 inches). The Army is thinking in terms of obtaining 10 kits and up to 15,000 rounds of ammunition from each vendor for evaluation, though a formal request for proposals has not been issued.

* JANES.com had a set of articles covering the Vietnam International Defense Exhibition (VIDEX) in Hanoi in early December, which revealed a number of interesting weapons produced by Vietnamese industry, including:

• Hera, an infantry-portable quadcopter drone that can carry up to nine grenades that look like miniature mortar rounds.
  
  
• An unlabeled fixed-wing drone with "quadcopter" wing booms for vertical take-off.
  
  
• The VUA-3C-3G, a fixed-wing drone for surveillance that takes off horizontally on wheeled landing gear.
  
  
• A modernized Soviet ZSU-23-4 "Shilka" self-propelled anti-aircraft gun (SPAAG) with quadruple 23-millimeter cannons, enhanced with an electro-optic sighting system and quadruple Igla infantry-portable anti-aircraft missiles.

There was little unfamiliar about the design of the drones, but that they hint at an anti-China military cooperation arrangement in an arc from Vietnam through Taiwan and Japan to South Korea -- each country focusing on a somewhat complementary set of weapons. Incidentally, there has been much praise for the service of the German Gepard SPAAG in Ukraine in defeating drone attacks. That raised the puzzled question of what Ukraine is doing with its own inventory of Shilkas.

[WED 21 DEC 22] THERE & BACK (1)

* THERE & BACK (1): I used to like to take long road trips, mostly to take photos, particularly at air museums, but the last time I took one was in 2016, when I drove from Loveland, Colorado, to Washington DC. It wasn't an entirely satisfactory trip, so I was not eager to go on one again. It also led to a rethinking of my photography hobby; I ultimately realized that I provided more value with my aircraft drawings and retouches of historical photos than I could possibly provide with my own shots.

In addition, the four years Donald Trump was in the White House were nationally acrimonious, and I became more paranoid about getting out. I did plan in early 2020 to go to my nephew Graham's graduation from Baylor University in Texas, but the COVID-19 pandemic rendered that plan impractical.

By the beginning of 2022, COVID-19 was about as much under control as it was going to get, and so I started thinking about a trip again. At the end of February, of course, Russia invaded Ukraine, Russia got slapped with sanctions, and fuel prices skyrocketed. The trip went on ice, but I didn't forget about it, going back and forth on the idea for months. Did I really want to bother? I'll be 70 years old before too long, and I won't be able to do it much longer. I'd long budgeted $250 USD a month for travel; my travel budget was flush, so I had the money.

I finally decided in the summer of 2022 to take a road trip to the WINGS OF DAWN airshow, with World War I aircraft, at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, in Dayton OH, on 7 November 2022. That was not a major event in itself, but I started scouting out other stops along the way, and gradually fleshed out the trip.

Having decided to go, come the fall I had to make sure I got flu and COVID vaccination shots, got my car serviced, and run other errands. In the meantime, I nailed down hotel reservations, and hours and prices of attractions. I came up with a trip schedule:

• MON 2 OCT: Drive from Loveland CO to Topeka KS, visit the zoo and air museum there.
  
  
• TUE 3 OCT: Visit the Kansas City Zoo, spend the night in Terre Haute IN.
  
  
• WED 4 OCT: Visit the Cincinnati Zoo, spend the night in Columbus OH.
  
  
• THU 5 OCT: Visit the Columbus Zoo.
  
  
• FRI 6 OCT: See the airshow at Dayton OH, then spend the night in Richmond IN.
  
  
• SAT 7 OCT: Drive back to Topeka.
  
  
• SUN 8 OCT: Drive back to Loveland.

I had been thinking of going to a theme park, but figured I was too old for such a thing. Really, as long as I have video games to play, why do I need a theme park? My video game system is like having a theme park in my living room.

Anyway, one issue for the trip was that I had been working on a clover lawn for my house, and wanted to keep watering it since it was growing well. However, if there was a snap freeze some night, it might burst the vacuum breaker for my sprinkler system. Just to be safe, I wrapped up the vacuum breaker in an old comforter and tied a plastic lawn bag over it. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[TUE 20 DEC 22] HYBRID VIRUS

* HYBRID VIRUS: The controversial notion of modifying pathogens under "gain of function (GOF)" research has been discussed here -- in the past. As discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Was A Study That Created A Hybrid COVID-19 Virus Too Risky?" by Jocelyn Kaiser, 18 October 2022), the issue hasn't gone away, with experiments conducted at Boston University's National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) drawing fire.

The controversy began with a study from NEIDL supposedly involving a modified version of the SARS-Cov-2 virus that causes COVID-19, which killed 80% of mice infected with it -- contrasted with no deaths with the unmodified SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant. Critics called it "irresponsible" and "madness", saying the hybrid or "chimeric" virus might escape the lab and cause a deadly outbreak.

An official from NIH's National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases (NIAID) said that her division was unaware of the specific experiments, and that they should have gone through a special review for NIH-funded GOF studies that create "enhanced potential pandemic pathogens". BU officials counter that NIH funds weren't used directly for the study, and they have been and are continuing to discuss their work with NIAID.

A number of virologists also came to the defense of NEIDL, saying the study was not as alarming as it was made out to me. For one thing, the hybrid virus was less lethal than the early viral variant modified in the study. They also noted that other researchers have performed similar experiments that did not draw so much fire, and that the NEIDL experiment wasn't so different from others that NIAID exempted from review.

In the experiment, the NEIDL researchers took the gene for Omicron's surface protein, known as "spike", which SARS-CoV-2 uses to enter cells, and added it to the genome of a "backbone" virus -- a variant of SARS-CoV-2 from Washington state that was identified soon after the pandemic arrived in the USA. The objective was to determine if Omicron's spike protein explains why it causes less severe disease. To the surprise of the researchers, the hybrid virus killed eight of 10 infected mice, while mice infected with Omicron got sick but did not die. This suggests the mutations that make Omicron less pathogenic involve changes in proteins other than the spike protein.

The critics question the usefulness of the study, and say that its potential risks and benefits were not adequately evaluated. Under current US government policy, any proposal to conduct a Federally funded experiment that is "reasonably anticipated" to make an already highly virulent and transmissible virus more dangerous is supposed to get a special review. BU researchers say their experiment didn't meet that criterion.

The critics maintain that it did -- that though the new hybrid was less lethal to mice than the original Washington variant, it is likely more transmissible. Some also question the value of mouse studies, since they may not say much about how a pathogen interacts with humans. Still others say there should have been more public input on the experiments.

NEIDL's defenders emphasize again that there was no reason to believe the hybrid virus was more dangerous than its precursor. In addition, the mice used in the experiment are extremely sensitive to SARS-CoV-2 because they have been engineered so their lung cells are packed with the receptor that SARS-CoV-2 uses to break into human cells. They were also exposed to very heavy viral loads. As a result, the mouse mortality rate of 80% was far higher than the human mortality from the original SARS-CoV-2 variant, which is about 1%. Finally, the experiment was conducted in a biosafety level-3 (BSL-3) lab, which has a series of sealed doors, negative air pressure cabinets, and workers in protective suits. The only higher spec is BSL-4, reserved for the most deadly pathogens, such as Ebolavirus.

Florian Krammer -- a virologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City -- believes the experiment is not so worrying because similar hybrid SARS-CoV-2 variants have already emerged naturally and then faded into the background. He says: "Mother Nature did it already a while ago IN HUMANS and nobody cared. Should the experiment have undergone stricter review?"

BU has said it did not think the study met the Federal review criteria because "It did not amplify the [backbone] SARS-CoV-2 virus strain or make it more dangerous. In fact, this research made the virus replicate less dangerous," BU said in a statement. BU later added that NIAID funds were only used for "tools and platforms" and that BU was not required to report the study. In the past, NIAID has judged similar research exempt from review.

Other groups have done experiments that were similar to the BU study but did not get reviewed, and made no problem for GOF critics. The reaction to the BU experiment was different, some say, because the researchers highlighted the high mouse mortality rate in their preprint abstract, without placing it in context.

The controversy is likely to generate pressure on an ongoing review of the Federal oversight policy for risky GOF research, being performed by a panel named the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB). A draft report already issued by the NSABB recommended expansion of the review policy. New guidelines should be available in 2023 or 2024.

[MON 19 DEC 22] THE WEEK THAT WAS 51

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: In the last week, senior Ukrainian military officers indicated that the Russians were preparing a new offensive, featuring a drive on Kyiv, in February or thereabouts. Informed observers were very skeptical -- admitting that the Russians might be planning such an operation, but they were so depleted that they would not be able to carry it out. Retired US Army General Barry McCaffrey told MSNBC's Nicole Wallace:

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* In the meantime, the winter in Ukraine is getting colder, with the expectation that the Ukrainian Army could go on the offensive once the ground freezes. Might we expect Melitopol to be recaptured in the not-too-distant future? In any case, it's important to keep the Russians on the defensive, lest they recover their balance.

The Russians are continuing their missile and drone bombardments of Ukraine's cities. Many of the attackers are intercepted, but some still get through. Ukrainian citizens do not seem to be deterred. One Olga Rudenko (@olya_rudenko) wrote on Twitter:

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The Ukrainians have started to hit back against bases in Russia used to launch the attacks, with the weapon of choice being the antiquated Russian Tupolev Tu-141 reconnaissance drone, converted to cruise missile. The Ukrainians have also armed the similar but substantially smaller Tu-143, and apparently obtaining new-build long-range drones for the attack role.

* The Ukrainian government operates a "crowdfunding" website named UNITED24 to obtain funds from donors all over the world. The Ukrainians have proven highly adept in public promotions of their cause -- and decided that one of the best spokespersons they could get would be Mark Hamill -- Luke Skywalker of the STAR WARS franchise -- and gave him a call at his home in Malibu, California.

Hamill, now 71, had been supportive of Ukraine on his popular Twitter feed, but he still wondered if he was being pranked. He ended up talking on Zoom to Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelenskyy, who told him:

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At present, Hamill's focus is on an "Army of Drones" initiative, to fund purchase of RQ-35 Heidrun fixed-wing drones from Sky-Watch of Denmark. Hamill calls them "benign" and "non-lethal" -- but that's not exactly the case. They don't carry munitions themselves, but they can spot targets for strikes by artillery or other lethal assets.

Hamill has been active for the Democrat cause during elections. President Joe Biden even wrote him a letter, which he read for the first time during the Zoom call: "Oh. This is the first time I've seen it, my wife has told me about it."

* CNN's Jamie Gangel conducted an interview of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, over lunch at Hunan Dynasty, a popular Washington DC Chinese restaurant. Excerpts of the conversation are interesting:

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[FRI 16 DEC 22] CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (25)

* CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (25): Franklin Roosevelt had abruptly died only a few days before Hitler did, with his vice president, Harry Truman (1884:1972), taking his place. However, FDR had worked through the conflict on an architecture for a new world order from the entry of the USA in the conflict, having helped identify label the Allies as the "United Nations (UN)". He wanted to formalize the UN, as an improved replacement for the League of Nations, with the other Allies being agreeable to the idea.

One component of the new order envisioned by FDR was international economic cooperation -- the economic disorder of the Great Depression having done much to enable the Axis regimes. In 1942, British and American Treasury officials began talks on a postwar economic order, culminating at a conference at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in 1944. The Bretton Woods conference led to the creation of two organizations that would play major roles in the postwar era:

• The International Monetary Fund (IMF), which was to control international monetary exchange rates based on the US dollar and, at the time, gold. It would provide a forum for nations to discuss monetary issues. The IMF would also provide short-term financial assistance to countries with tottering economies.
  
  
• The World Bank, originally the International Bank for Reconstruction & Development (IBRD), with the initial mission of helping countries recover from the war, and over the long run provide help for developing countries.

The UN was, in turn, established as a formal organization in San Francisco in 1945, to eventually settle in its modernistic headquarters in New York City in 1952. FDR had envisioned that the UN would enforce collective security, but in that respect it proved little more effective than the League of Nations. The reality in both cases was that no international organization would ever have any more coercive power than the major powers would allow it to have. Early on, the over-enthusiastic talked about the UN as an emergent "world government", much to the outrage of the UN's critics on the Right, that was a fantasy.

The UN, however, did provide an invaluable service as a forum for international discussion, and as an umbrella organization for cultural, aid, scientific, industrial, and regulatory agencies -- the last including, for example, the Universal Postal Union (UPU), the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the International Maritime Organization (IMO), and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The UPU and the ITU well predated the UN, while the IMO and the ICAO were more or less created along with the UN.

Not all international organizations created in the postwar period would be part of the UN, but those that weren't would still have an affiliation with it. The UN did not meet all of FDR's expectations, particularly when it came to collective security, but it was still a great accomplishment. While the UN has been bitterly criticized from the start, the reality is that if it ceased to exist, it would be immediately re-invented, with much the same inevitable limitations as before.

* At the end of World War II, most of the major powers had been devastated; Britain, in principle one of the victors, was almost as badly off as defeated Germany, while the Soviet Union had suffered tens of millions of casualties, with a substantial component of the country laid waste. The USA was the only major combatant to come out of the war stronger than when it went in.

It therefore fell on the United States to take a lead in postwar restoration. The most visible effort to that end was the "Marshall Plan", devised by George C. Marshall (1880:1959), Harry Truman's secretary of state, previously US Army chief of staff. From 1948 to 1952, the Marshall Plan provided $13 billion USD in contemporary dollars as aid to Western Europe -- the USA had offered the program to Stalin, but he refused, and blocked the Eastern European countries under Soviet control from taking part.

That was what the Americans had expected, since the program was, in large part, intended to counter Soviet influence in Europe. Exactly how much effect the Marshall Plan had on European recovery is debated; the money covered only a small fraction of the total costs of reconstruction. However, it was a bargain in the influence it obtained for the USA. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 15 DEC 22] SPACE NEWS

* Space launches for November included:

[01 NOV 22] US-C CC / FALCON HEAVY / USSF 44 & -- A SpaceX Falcon Heavy booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0941 UTC (local time + 4) to put a secret payload, believed to be a military comsat, into geostationary orbit for the US Space Force. The mission was designated "USSF 44".

The launch also included a set of smallsats, including the "Tetra 1" technology demonstrator satellite, and six CubeSats on the "Long Duration Propulsive EELV (LDPE) Secondary Payload Adapter" -- a payload adapter / space tug made by Northrop Grumman. Names given for the six CubeSats include "LINUSS-A 1", "LINUSS-A 2", "USUVL", and "WL2XOU", with few details given. The two side boosters were recovered, the core stage was not.

[02 NOV 21] RU PL / SOYUZ 2-1B / EKS 6 -- A Soyuz 2.1b booster was launched from Plesetsk at 0647 UTC (local time - 4) to put the "EKS 6" AKA "Tundra 16L" missile-launch early warning satellite into orbit. It was designated "Cosmos 2563".

[03 NOV 22] USA-C CC / FALCON 9 / HOTBIRD 13G -- A SpaceX Falcon booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0522 UTC (local time + 4), to put the "Hotbird 13G" geostationary communications satellite for Eutelsat. Hotbird 13G had a launch mass of 4,500 kilograms (9,920 pounds), a payload of 80 Ku-band transponders, an all-electric propulsion system, and a design life of 15 years. It was built by Airbus Defense & Space and was based on the company's Eurostar NEO bus.

[04 NOV 22] NZ / ELECTRON / MATS -- A Rocket Labs Electron light booster was launched from New Zealand at 1727 UTC (next day local time - 13) to put the "Mesospheric Airglow-Aerosol Tomography & Spectroscopy (MATS)" satellite into orbit for the Swedish National Space Agency (SNSA) and OHB Sweden.

MATS was designed to observe the upper layer of Earth's atmosphere and its weather interactions. The satellite had a launch mass of about 50 kilograms (110 pounds) and featured two science instruments: a limb imager and a nadir imager to inspect the Earth's atmosphere. The booster first stage was planned to be recovered by helicopter, but it didn't happen due to a communications glitch. The flight was nicknamed "Catch Me If You Can".

[05 NOV 22] CN XC / LONG MARCH 3B / CHINASAT 19 -- A Long March 3B booster was launched from Xichang at 1105 UTC (next day local time - 8) to put the "Chinasat 19" geostationary comsat into space for China Satcom. The satellite was built by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) and based on the DFH 4 bus. It had a payload of Ku / Ka / C-band transponders and a design lifetime of 15 years.

[07 NOV 22] USA WP / ANTARES / CYGNUS 18 (NG 18) -- An Orbital Sciences Antares booster was launched from Wallops Island off the coast of Virginia at 1032 UTC (local time + 4) to put the 18th operational "Cygnus" supply capsule, designated "NG 18", into space on an International Space Station support mission, carrying 3,810 kilograms (8,400 pounds) of cargo. It docked with the ISS two days later. It carried four CubeSats that were deployed from the ISS later, including:

• Pearlsat 1: Uganda's first satellite.
  
  
• ZIMSAT 1: Zimbabwe's first satellite.
  
  
• SpaceTuna1, TAKA: StudentSats from Japan.

The booster was in the "Antares 230+" configuration, with two RD-181 first stage engines and a Castor 30XL second stage.

[10 NOV 22] USA VB / DELTA 2 / JPSS 2 (NOAA 20), LOFTID -- A Delta 2 booster was launched from Vandenberg AFB at 0949 UTC (local time + 8) to put the second "Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS)" AKA "NOAA 21" satellite into near-polar orbit.

Unlike its predecessor, JPSS 1, which was built by Ball Aerospace, the second JPSS satellite was manufactured by Northrop Grumman and was based on its LEOStar 3 satellite bus. JPSS 2 had a launch mass of 2,930 kilograms (6460 pounds), had a design life of seven years, and carried a payload of four instruments:

• Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS): Monitored atmospheric moisture and temperature profiles for real-time weather forecasting, as well as providing continuity of measurements for climate monitoring.
  
  
• Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS): Provided high-resolution 3D moisture, pressure, and temperature profiles.
  
  
• Ozone Mapping and Profilers Suite (OPMS): Continued a three-decade effort in monitoring the ozone layer's chemistry, and its destruction around the troposphere.
  
  
• Variable Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS): Provided global maps in the visible and infrared spectrums of land, ocean, and atmospheric conditions at high temporal resolution. VIIRS replaced the Advanced Very-High-Resolution Radiometer that flew on previous NOAA satellites.

The launch also included the NASA "Low Earth-Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator (LOFTID)", which deployed a large aerobrake to demonstrate its usefulness for spacecraft re-entry. This was the last launch of an Atlas from the West Coast.

[11 NOV 22] CN TY / LONG MARCH 6 / YUNHAI 3 -- A Chinese Chang Zheng (Long March) 6 booster was launched from Taiyuan at 2252 UTC (next day local time - 8) to put the "Yunhai 3" satellite into near-polar Sun-synchronous orbit. It was described as an atmospheric & environmental studies platform.

[12 NOV 22] CN WC / LONG MARCH 7 / TIANZHOU 5 -- A Long March 7 booster was launched at 1255 UTC (local time - 8) from the Chinese Wenchang launch center on Hainan Island to put the "Tianzhou 2" freighter capsule into orbit, on a supply mission to the Tiangong space station. It docked with the station 8 hours later. It also carried a set of CubeSats for later deployment, including CAS-10 (XW-4) Gaoxin 1, China Lianli, Macao Student Science 1, and Shengxi Jishu Yanzheng

[12 NOV 22] USA-C CC / FALCON 9 / GALAXY 31 & 32 -- A SpaceX Falcon booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 1606 UTC (local time + 5), to put the "Galaxy 31" and "Galaxy 32" geostationary comsats into space. They were built by Orbital / Northrop Grumman. The near-identical satellites were Intelsat's third and fourth satellites to operate in the C-band 300:400 MHz range for the FCC's 5G Rollout. Galaxy 31 was placed in the geostationary slot at 121 degrees west, replacing Galaxy 23; and Galaxy 32 placed at 91 degrees west, replacing Galaxy 17.

Intelsat was founded in 1964 as the "International Telecommunications Satellite Organization" to own and manage international broadcasting services with multiple participating countries. Intelsat launched its first satellite in 1965, "Intelsat I / Early Bird", as the world's first commercial communication satellite.

In the following decades, Intelsat began launching satellites using primarily Atlas and Delta rockets to provide global commercial telecommunication services. As Intelsat's satellites grew larger, Intelsat started to launch its satellites on Ariane, Titan, Proton, Chang Zheng, Zenit, and Falcon launch vehicles.

In the 1980s, the Hughes Space and Communications Company, later merging with PanAmSat, started the Galaxy communications satellite fleet. The Galaxy communications satellites provided telecommunication services to the United States. Intelsat became privatized in 2001 and merged with PanAmSat five years later. Since then, Intelsat has continued to launch satellites to expand its global coverage.

[15 NOV 22] CN JQ / LONG MARCH 4C / YAOGAN 34-03 -- A Long March 2C booster was launched from Jiuquan at 0108 UTC (local time - 8) to put a secret "Yaogan 34-03" payload into orbit. It was apparently a military surveillance satellite.

[16 NOV 22] CN JQ / CERES 1 / JILIN 1 GAOFEN 03D x 5 -- A Chinese Kuaizhou 1A booster was launched from Jiuquan at 0620 UTC (local time - 8) to put the "Jilin 1 Gaofen (High-Resolution) 03D" satellite into orbit. It was an element of a commercial remote sensing satellite network under development by the Chang Guang Satellite Technology Corporation.

The Jilin 1 constellation, which is expected to consist of up to 138 satellites by the end of the decade, contains different types of satellites to perform different roles. In addition to the Gaofen satellites' high-resolution imaging mission, other satellites in the constellation provide video capture, wider-area, and multi-spectral imaging. The Gaofen part of the constellation consists of two series of spacecraft, Gaofen 02 and Gaofen 03.

The Jilin 1 satellite constellation was developed on China's Jilin Province and is the country's first self-developed remote sensing satellite for commercial use, providing data for disaster relief and resource exploitation. The satellites were developed by the Chang Guang Satellite Technology CO LTD under the Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. This was the 4th flight of the CERES 1 booster.

[16 NOV 22] USA CC / SLS / ARTEMIS I -- A NASA Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0647 UTC (local time + 5) with an uncrewed Orion space capsule, on the "Artemis I" mission beyond the Moon.

The SLS features core stage and solid-rocket boosters derived from the space shuttle, along with an upper stage -- more precisely the "Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage (ICPS)". It can carry up to 27 tonnes (30 tons) to the Moon. The Orion capsule can carry up to four astronauts on missions up to 21 days in length. Unlike earlier US crewed space capsules, it flies inside a payload shroud. For this mission, it carried three mannequins. The mission also included ten 6-unit (6U) CubeSats, including: Lunar IceCube, Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) Scout, BioSentinel, LunIR CubeSat, CubeSat for Solar Particles (CuSP), Luna H Map, ArgoMoon, Team Miles CubeSat, EQUULEUS, & Ometenashi -- the last being a Japanese Moon orbiter with a miniature airbag lander.

[23 NOV 22] USA-C CC / FALCON 9 / EUTELSAT 10B -- A SpaceX Falcon booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0257 UTC (previous day local time + 5), to put the "Eutelsat 10B" geostationary comsat into space for Eutelasat Communications, to provide maritime and in-flight communications. It was placed in a geostationary slot at 10 degrees east, replacing Eutelsat 10A satellite, which was at the end of its design life.

The satellite carried two multi-beam high-throughput satellite (HTS) Ku-band payloads. The first provided high-throughput communications with the North Atlantic corridor, Europe, the Mediterranean basin, and the Middle East. The second payload extended coverage across the Atlantic Ocean, Africa, and the Indian Ocean. Each of these HTS payloads had about 35 gigabits per second of throughput. The satellite also featured 36 Ku-band transponders and 20 C-band transponders. It was equipped with plasma thrusters for control and two large solar arrays to generate power. It was based on the Thales Alenia Space Spacebus Neo 200 satellite platform, and had a launch mass of about 4,500 kilograms (9,920 pounds). The booster was not recovered because the planned orbit wouldn't leave enough fuel for a soft landing.

[26 NOV 22] IN SR / PSLV MK2 / EOS 6 -- An ISRO Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) booster was launched from Sriharikota at 0626 UTC (local time - 5:30) to put the sixth "Earth Observing Satellite (EOS 6)" AKA "Oceansat 3" into Sun-synchronous orbit.

EOS 6 was the latest in a series of satellites operated by the ISRO since 2009 to study and monitor Earth's oceans. It replaced Oceansat 2, launched in 2009. The satellite's primary mission was to monitor the color of the ocean surface and to collect data on wind speed and direction over the surface. EOS 6 had a launch mass of 1,117 kilograms (2,462 pounds) and carried four payloads:

• Ocean Color Monitor 3 (OCM 3): The primary sensor, a successor to the OCM 2 instrument on Oceansat 2. OCM 3 was a 13-band multispectral imaging system capable of recording images of the Earth at a resolution of 360 meters (1,180 feet) across ten visible-light bands, with a lower resolution of around 1.4 kilometers (0.9 miles) available across the three additional bands in the near-infrared.
  
  
• Sea Surface Temperature Monitor (SSTM): An infrared imaging instrument to study the temperature of the ocean surface.
  
  
• Scatterometer for Oceansat (OSCAT) 3: Radar scatterometer used to determine wind speed and direction from oceanic waves.
  
  
• Advanced Data Collection System 4 (ARGOS-4): A payload from the French CNES space agency, being a relay system for research stations and data collection platforms around the world.

The launch also included eight secondary payloads:

• Nanosat 2B (INS 3B / Bhutansat): The biggest in the launch, with a mass of 18.3 kilograms (40 pounds), carrying a multispectral imager and a data repeater.
  
  
• Anand (Pixxel-TD 1): An Earth observation satellite developed by commercial operator Pixxel, with a launch mass of 16.5 kilograms (36.4 pounds) and carrying a hyperspectral imager. Anand was a pathfinder for a large constellation.
  
  
• Thybolt 1 and 2: Two half-unit CubeSats from Dhruva Space, providing store-&-forward messaging for amateur radio.
  
  
• Astrocast 0.3 x 4: Three-unit CubeSats from Astrocast of Switzerland, pathfinders for an Internet of Things constellation.

For this launch, ISRO used the PSLV-XL configuration with its six solid rocket motors. Introduced in 2008, the PSLV-XL is the most-used version of the booster and offers the greatest payload capacity.

[26 NOV 22] USA-C CC / FALCON 9 / SPACEX DRAGON CRS 26 -- A SpaceX Falcon booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 1920 UTC (local time + 4), carrying the 26th operational "Dragon" cargo capsule to the International Space Station (ISS) to provide supplies to the ISS Expedition 68 crew. It docked with the ISS Harmony module the next day.

The freighter's payload included the second pair of "ISS Roll Out Solar Arrays (iROSA)" inside the unpressurized trunk of the spacecraft.

• TJREVERB: A 2-unit (2U) CubeSat studentsat from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Denver, Colorado.
  
  
• ORCASat: A 2U CubeSat for the precision photometric calibration of major astronomical observatories worldwide -- notably the Rubin Observatory in Chile, and Pan-STARRS in Hawaii.
  
  
• Measurement of Actuator Response and Impedance on Orbit (MARIO): A 3U technology demonstrator CubeSat, built in collaboration between the University of Michigan's Michigan eXploration Laboratory (MXL), Extreme Diagnostics, Michigan's Active Intelligent and Multifunctional Structure (AIMS) Lab, and NASA.
  
  
• NUTSat: A 2U CubeSat studentsat from the National Formosa University and the National Space Organization of Taiwan.
  
  
• Low Orbit Reconnaissance Imagery Satellite (LORIS): A 2U CubeSat from Dalhousie University in Canada to image shorelines and ocean life activity.
  
  
• Plasma Enhancements in The Ionosphere-Thermosphere Satellite (PetitSat): A 6U CubeSat from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center to perform space plasma studies.
  
  
• Scintillation Prediction Observations Research Task (SPORT): A 6U CubeSat, developed as a collaboration between the Brazilian Space Agency (AEB), the Aeronautics Institute of Technology (ITA) in Brazil, the National Institute for Space Research (INPE), and NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. It performed studies of ionospheric structures at sunset.
  
  
• DanteSat: 3U CubeSat from NPC SpaceMind of Italy, to demonstrate a dragsail re-entry device.

The Falcon 9 first stage landed on the SpaceX drone ship.

[27 NOV 22] CN XC / LONG MARCH 2D / YAOGAN 36-03 -- A Long March 2D booster was launched from Xichang at 1223 UTC (local time - 8) to put the secret "Yaogan 36-03" payloads into orbit. It was a triplet of satellites and may have been a "flying triangle" naval signals intelligence payload.

[28 NOV 22] RU PL / SOYUZ 2-1B / GLONASS M (COSMOS 2564) -- A Soyuz 2.1b booster was launched from Plesetsk at 1517 UTC (local time - 4) to put a GLONASS M navigation satellite into orbit. It was assigned the series designation of "Cosmos 2564", and was the last launch of the older GLONASS M series.

[29 NOV 22] CN JQ / LONG MARCH 2F / SHENZHOU 15 -- A Chinese Long March 2F booster was launched from Jiuquan at 1223 GMT (local time - 8) to put the "Shenzhou 15" crewed space capsule into space on a Tiangong Space Station support mission.

The Commander of the mission was Dong Chen, a veteran of the Shenzhou 11 mission in 2016. Joining Dong on Shenzhou 14 was Yang Liu, mission Operator -- she was China's first woman taikonaut, flying on Shenzhou 9 mission in 2012 -- and Cai Xuzhe, System Operator, making his first space flight.

Shenzhou is a Soyuz-inspired capsule that first launched in 1999 and has since performed as designed. It has a launch mass of 7,840 kilograms (17,285 pounds), a length of 9.25 meters, and a width of 2.8 meters. It has an internal volume of 14 cubic meters (18.3 cubic yards). Its first crewed launch was performed on the Shenzhou 5 mission in October 2003.

Shenzhou, like Soyuz, has three separate modules: orbital, re-entry, and service. The orbital module is used primarily for habitation and crew service when in free flight. It also carries scientific instruments and payload for the Chinese station. The re-entry module is the middle component. It has a heat shield, and is used to take the crew back to Earth. The top part is the service module, which features solar panels, life support, and propulsion for steering during the free-flight phase of the mission to and from the station.

[30 NOV 21] RU PL / SOYUZ 2-1B / LOTOS S1 #6 (COSMOS 2565) -- A Soyuz 2-1b booster was launched from Plesetsk at 2110 UTC (next day local time - 3) to put the "Cosmos 2549) satellite into orbit. It was believed to be the sixth "Lotos S1" electronic intelligence satellite. The Lotos S1 satellites are built by KB Arsenal, a Russian military contractor in Saint Petersburg, in partnership with TsSKB Progress.

According to the manufacturer, the Lotos S1 satellites have a launch mass of about 6,000 kilograms (13,000 pounds). The Lotos series were developed as a replacement for Soviet-era Tselina and US-PM surveillance satellites. Since the 1990s, the Liana program, composed of the Lotos and Pion satellites, has aimed to bring upgraded and more-capable reconnaissance and intelligence satellites into the Russian arsenal.

Lotos satellites have replaced the Tselina 2 series of ELINT satellites. They were first launched beginning in the 1980s and sent up for the next two decades. The first in the series, a developmental satellite designated "Lotos S", was launched in 2009, with the first all-up Lotos S1 satellite launched in 2012, and five more following to date.

[WED 14 DEC 22] THE LIBERAL AGENDA (14)

* THE LIBERAL AGENDA (14): Karl Marx (1818:1883) took an even more severe look at society than Rousseau, not merely seeing it as a source of oppression, driven by economic considerations, but only corrected through class struggle. In 1847, the year before a wave of unrest swept Europe, he wrote:

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The surplus created by labor is seized by capitalists, who own the factories and machinery. Capitalism then makes workers into commodities and denies their humanity. While the bourgeois live comfortable lives, workers must endure poverty and hunger. Capitalism, in its greed and acquisitiveness, gradually spreads everywhere, and in doing so creates an ever-larger oppressed worker class. Eventually, the workers rise up as a class to sweep away the old order and create a new one. In 1848, Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels wrote THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO, to proclaim: "A spectre is haunting Europe -- the spectre of communism."

Marx had nothing but contempt for the idea that reason and compassion could work towards a more equitable order -- seeing the idea as deluded at best, a trick to keep the workers silent at worst. Ideologies like religion and nationalism are nothing more than self-deception. Attempts to bring about gradual change are traps set by the ruling class. The philosopher Isaiah Berlin said it neatly in his book on Marx: "Socialism does not appeal, it demands."

Marx failed to understand that his uncompromising view of the class struggle to reform society would lead to authoritarian bureaucracy and often violent repression of society. He failed to see that there could be a give-&-take between the haves and the have-nots that could lead to a degree of mutual accommodation, and that capitalism would become a widespread deliverer of wealth. In his later years, as Gareth Stedman Jones, a recent biographer, explained, Marx was defeated by the effort to show why the economic relations between capitalist and worker necessarily had to end in violence.

Nonetheless, Marx understood that capitalism was driven by the ambitions of capitalists. Today, capitalists all over the world have been working to revoke the process of give-&-take, being under the illusion that a lopsided social order is to their personal benefit. Marx would suggest to them that they are dangerously wrong.

* Nietzsche (1844:1900) is harder to nail down than Marx, since his vision was so darkly subjective. Nietzsche sets out his view of progress in ON THE GENEALOGY OF MORALITY, written in 1887, two years before he was struck down by insanity. In writing of extraordinary vitality, he proclaimed that there was a time in human history when noble and great values, such as courage, pride, and honor, had prevailed. However, those values had been overturned by "slave revolt in morality", begun by the Jews and inherited by the Christians, The slaves elevated everything low in themselves that contrasted with their masters' nobility: "The miserable alone are the good ... the suffering, deprived, sick, ugly are also the only pious, the only blessed ..."

In the end, that would lead to atheism, but that was a dead end, leading only to nihilism, a bleak and meaningless existence. What was the real solution? As discussed in THUS SPAKE ZARATHUSTRA, Nietzsche's most famous work, it was for individuals to recover the noble morality of the ancients within themselves, becoming "uebermensch", heroic souls that embrace life. It was not a philosophy that could be analyzed, being more inspirational, but never an inspiration that accomplished much in the way of good.

Nietzsche descended into madness in his last years; some believe he simply got worse, that his work was a "tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, and signifying nothing." In any case, modern liberalism would be unchanged had he never existed. Liberalism continues on its often uncertain trajectory, faced with a grand challenge at present in the face of the moral collapse of conservatism. Nobody knows how the struggle will end. [END OF SERIES]

[TUE 13 DEC 22] POPULATION 8 BILLION

* POPULATION 8 BILLION: As discussed in an article from NATURE.com ("World Population Hits Eight Billion" by Flora Graham, 15 November 2022), on 15 November 2022 world population hit eight billion people, according to a United Nations population model. That's only 12 years after it reached 7 billion, and less than a century after it reached 2 billion. The latest UN population update, released in July 2022, also cuts its long-term projection down from 11 billion people to 10.4 billion by 2100.

Although saying that 15 November was the exact "Day of Eight Billion", as the UN called it, is something of a fiction, there's no argument about the size of the Earth's population at present to at least three digits of precision. Patrick Gerland, who leads demographic work at the UN Population Division in New York City, says: "It is a crude approximation that is more of a symbolic finding. We may have passed it, or it may be a little later, but it's around this time that humanity is reaching 8 billion."

The UN model has been refined. The organization recently changed how it analyses data, switching from five-yearly to annual intervals. There has also been a steady improvement in recent decades in the ability and capacity of many countries to collect population statistics. Things are not perfect, however, with data particularly lacking from countries that are experiencing humanitarian crises and conflicts, such as Somalia, Yemen and Syria. Gerland says: "The accuracy of the underlying, empirical information varies tremendously around the world."

The rapid rise in population throughout the twentieth century was driven by advances in public health and medicine, which allowed more children to survive to adulthood. At the same time, fertility rates, meaning the average number of children per woman, stayed high in lower-income countries. Demographers do agree that, although human population has grown rapidly, that growth is slowing -- and, within a few decades, Earth's population will begin to fall.

The projections are heavily dependent on fertility rates; differences in assumed fertility rates have been an important reason behind the wide variation in earlier projections, which had suggested a range from 8.8 billion to almost 11 billion by the end of the century. Toma Sobotka, a population researcher at the Vienna Institute of Demography, says: "If you make even relatively small adjustments in these fertility-rate trajectories it accumulates, and suddenly a big country can have 100 million people more 80 years from now."

In 2018, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Vienna forecast that global population would be about 9.5 billion in 2100. The IIASA is now working on preparing an update, which will raise that estimate to between 10 billion and 10.1 billion. The change was due to higher observed and expected survival rates among children in lower-income countries. Another factor is higher estimates of fertility rates in some large countries, such as Pakistan.

However, the most significant factor in the model is that data from China became more consistent since the country ended its one-child policy in 2015. Gerland says: "There was always a mismatch in the different sources of data coming from China during that policy." Parents would not always register an initial birth, particularly if they had a girl -- so many children did not appear in official statistics until they started to attend school. The UN model suggests that China's population has already peaked and is now shrinking steadily for the foreseeable future.

[MON 12 DEC 22] THE WEEK THAT WAS 50

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The Ukrainian city of Kherson was formally liberated from Russian forces on 11 November 2022. A recent posting in Ukrainian, from the handle "@den_kazansky", described the assault on Nova Kakhovka, up the Dnipro River from Kherson, with the brutal effect of US-made HIMARS/GMLRS vividly described. A highly-edited version follows:

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Late breaking news indicates a set of long-range strikes against Russian forces across the southern front. Details are not available yet, but they appear to have been devastating. Phone intercepts suggest that Russian desertions are increasing as winter sets in. A Georgian soldier in Ukrainian service caught a video of a spectral wolf crossing the road, its eyes gleaming in the headlights of his vehicle. One suspects wolves in Russian-controlled territory are eating well these days.

* This last week, the US managed to secure the release of Britney Griner, an American basketball player, from Russian custody. She had been arrested in February 2022 after a few cartridges of hashish oil had been found in her luggage. She was exchanged for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who was serving a 25-year sentence in a US prison.

This was a real coup for the Biden Administration -- but MAGA trolls were determined to use it against Biden. First, they complained that Paul Whelan, an ex-Marine who had been arrested in Russia in 2018 on spy charges, hadn't been released as well. That didn't fly because the Biden Administration had been trying to spring Whelan, but the Russians weren't agreeable. Members of Whelan's family publicly backed up the administration. The fact that the Trump Administration made no visible effort to obtain his release was also significant.

The trolls then, without missing a beat, criticized the Biden Administration for having the nerve to make a trade for a female lesbian black athlete in the first place. They're not even really trying to hide the bigotry any more. There were, it was said, even efforts to link the Griner exchange to Hunter Biden's laptop computer. The only good thing that can be said about this is that the audience for the crazy is diminishing. Incidentally, Griner is 206 centimeters (6'9") tall and weighs over 90 kilograms (200 pounds). I doubt many of the other inmates tried to push her around.

Anyway, Jack E. Smith (@7Veritas4) -- mentioned here two weeks ago -- explained on Twitter what the hangup on Whelan was: "We offered the entire Trump family in exchange. Eric was the deal-breaker."

* In another Twitter commentary, one Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom), a defense intellectual and a curmudgeonly old-style Republican who has no liking for MAGA, was told that: "80% of conservative outrage is just someone finding out how stuff works for the first time." Nichols replied:

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* Mega-billionaire Elon Musk is persistently in the news these days, having taken over Twitter, the social-media firm, and now converting it into a playpen for Right-wing trolls. One of the first things Musk did was fire much of the workforce, without bothering to give them severance pay they were entitled to. In consequence, Musk was sent a letter dated 1 December 2022 by one Akiva Cohen, which began as follows:

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Cohen continued: "And to be clear, Elon, you will lose, and you know it." Cohen detailed the terms of Twitter's agreement with its employees in terms of severance, then said: "And I know, I know, you're going to argue that my clients aren't entitled to what you promised them, for reasons that don't bear scrutiny." Cohen went on to scrutinize Musk's flimsy arguments and demolish them. He concluded:

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Cohen added in a tweet:

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Current status of the issue is unclear; there's no sign Musk met the deadline. It is impossible to say how Musk will react, because his behavior has become ever more erratic. He appears to be suffering from a progressive schizophrenia, being worse than he used to be, and it seems steadily becoming more incoherent. Case in point, Musk is now calling for the prosecution of Dr. Anthony Fauci. Dr. Fauci is now a private citizen and doesn't need to tolerate being targeted for more attacks -- another big lawsuit for Musk? This will not end well for him.

Incidentally, with regards to deadlines, a video made the rounds on Twitter, going back to 1999 in Kosovo -- with German commander Helmut Harff telling a Serbian officer, in English: "You have to leave in 30 minutes." The Serbian officer protested, with Harff replying in a steely deadpan: "That's the end of the discussion. You now have 28 minutes."

[FRI 09 DEC 22] CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (24)

* CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (24): Along with funding massive war production, the US government drove technology research and development, primarily through the Office of Scientific Research & Development (OSRD), whose accomplishments particularly focused on development of radar systems. It also had an ultra-secret "S-1 Section" that was focused on development of atomic weapons and, as a secondary objective, nuclear power generation. A huge industrial system was rapidly set up to build an atomic bomb.

By the summer of 1944, the Axis was being pushed back on all fronts, with the Anglo-American invasion of France pressing Germany from the west and the Red Army moving forward from the east. The Reich attempted to reduce the pressure by employing "wonder weapons", notably the long-range V-2 missile, to bombard Britain, but it was too little and too late. In the Pacific, the Americans engaged in "island-hopping", capturing Japanese bases and slowly disintegrating Japan's defensive barrier. The Japanese increasingly began to use suicide attacks, particularly "kamikaze" airstrikes, to slow the American advance, but only succeeded in making the Americans more ruthless.

There was a lull in the fighting during the winter, but it ramped up again in the spring of 1945, with the Allies overrunning Germany. Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker on 30 April, with Germany surrendering on 8 May. That left Japan still in the war, but American bombers dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Japan surrendered on 8 September.

* The aftermath left a good portion of Europe and much of Japan in ruins, plus Stalin occupying much of Eastern Europe and northern China. In Germany, the victorious Allied powers divided the country into "occupation zones". The initial plan was to establish a democratic government, clean out the Naziism, and turn the country into an agrarian state, without the industrial resources to be a threat to its neighbors again. The problem was that the eviction of German-speaking communities from Eastern Europe into Germany led to an overwhelming refugee crisis, and an economically weak Germany was not in the cards: the Western Allies would have to prop it up, and so it was better to have a self-sufficient Germany.

Stalin gradually consolidated his control over Eastern Europe, installing Communist regimes, while taking an increasingly anti-Western line -- with the border between Western Europe and Eastern Europe becoming the "Iron Curtain". The Iron Curtain divided Germany into democratic West Germany and Communist East Germany, the Soviets having an interest in keeping Germany weak. Stalin also insisted on reparations to compensate for the massive destruction inflicted on the USSR and looted East Germany; however, that land had been wrecked as well, and there wasn't that much to loot, nor was the looting done very effectively.

The occupation of Japan, in contrast to that of Germany, was effectively an entirely American affair, with only token involvement of the other Allied powers. Although the Americans retained the Japanese Emperor, they turned the country into a constitutional monarchy, though it would long tend towards one-party rule. The Americans also drew the line at tolerance of Communists in government.

In China, the collapse of the Japanese occupation left a vacuum, with Jiang's Nationalists and Mao's Communists at odds with each other. The war had also done much to undermine the old colonial order in Asia and Africa. Attempts by European nations to restore authority in their colonies were doomed, with revolutionary movements leading resistance struggles. The USA had no great enthusiasm for the resurrection of the old colonial regimes. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 08 DEC 22] GIMMICKS & GADGETS

* GIMMICKS & GADGETS: The concept of "gravitricity" -- raising masses to store energy -- has been mentioned here in the past. As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Lift Energy Storage System: Turning Skyscrapers Into Gravity Batteries" by Loz Blain, 31 May 2022), researchers at the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Vienna, Austria, have come up with a scheme to use elevators in skyscrapers to store energy.

The "Lift Energy Storage System (LEST)" would make use of the existing elevator systems in tall buildings. Many of such are already designed with regenerative braking systems that can harvest energy as a lift descends. The LEST would also make use of vacant spaces throughout the building, ideally close to the bottom and top. The idea is that elevators not otherwise in use could haul weights from the bottom to the top at times when excess renewable energy is available, and then drop the weights back down to the bottom to generate electrical power -- which could be used locally, or sold back to the power grid.

The IIASA team suggests that the weights could be carried by rotor crawlers that would pick the weights up from unused spaces, put them on elevators, and then take them off again. The weights would still allow passengers to be carried. Under optimum conditions, storage efficiency could be over 90%. The LEST's installed capacity energy storage cost is estimated at about a third of battery storage. Of course, there are practical issues to be considered -- a big one being figuring out how much additional weight could be carried on the top floors of a skyscraper -- but the idea remains intriguing.

* As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Inspired By Origami" 21 April 2021), there is nothing particularly new or unfamiliar about inflatable structures. They suffer from obvious problems: if they spring a leak or otherwise lose pressure, they collapse. Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering & Applied Sciences (SEAS) decided to see if there was a way to get around this problem, and so have come up with "bistable" inflatable structures inspired by origami.

The term "bistable" in this context means the structure is just as stable inflated as it is when deflated: essentially, blow it up and it snaps into place. The research team -- led by Katia Bertoldi, a professor of applied mechanics at SEAS -- took cues from origami and geometry to come up with a kit of triangular building blocks. Combinations of the building blocks can be crafted to result in a closed, 3D, stable structure after inflation. The structure then can be "deflated" by snapping it apart.

To demonstrate their bistable structures, the researchers built a 2.4 x 1.2 meter (8 x 4 foot) inflatable shelter out of thick plastic sheets. They envision that particular structure as useful for disaster relief, with a pallet delivered by truck or helicopter, and the shelters inflated with a portable pump. The researchers built a number of other structures, including an archway, an extendable boom, and a pagoda-style structure. The researchers also designed shapes with more than two stable forms. Modular structures with a number of inflatable sub-structures are another possibility. Chuck Hoberman, one of the research leads, said:

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* Robots based on animal forms, discussed here in the past, are nothing new. As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Robotic Rat May One Day Search for Survivors at Disaster Sites" by Ben Coxworth, 19 April 2022), a team of researchers at the Beijing Institute of Technology under Professor Quing Shi have come up with a new take on the concept: a robot rat.

The research team calls it the "Small-sized Quadruped Robotic rat (SQuRo)". It's modeled on the common Norway rat (rattus norvegicus) and is about the same size, weighing about 220 grams without payload -- though it can carry a payload almost the size of its body weight. It has two degrees of freedom in each of its four legs -- meaning the legs can move forward and back, as well as side to side -- along with two in its waist, and two in its head.

This arrangement gives the robo-rat a flexibility like that of a real rat, for example allowing it to turn within half its body length, It can squeeze through narrow passages, climb slopes, get over obstacles, and right itself after falling. Its onboard processor automatically shifts between four motion modes, as sensed by the load on the limbs. SQuRo only weighs 220 grams, while being able to carry 200 grams of payload, including cameras and other sensors. Applications of a production version would include searching a disaster area for survivors.

[WED 07 DEC 22] THE LIBERAL AGENDA (13)

* THE LIBERAL AGENDA (13): In this series, the name "liberal" has been applied to a range of thinkers -- libertarians like Robert Nozick to interventionists such as John Maynard Keynes. Small-government fundamentalists like Friedrich Hayek have joined in the ranks with pragmatists such as John Stuart Mill. That leads to a problem of definition for "liberalism" -- which can in part be addressed by consideration of three great "anti-liberals":

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a star of the French Enlightenment.
  
  
• Karl Marx, a 19th-century German revolutionary who inspired modern communist ideology.
  
  
• Friedrich Nietzsche, 30 years Marx's junior and one of philosophy's great bomb-throwers.

They didn't have much in common, except for one big thing: they all dismissed the liberal view of progress. Liberals believe that things get better in time: wealth grows, science expands our view of the Universe, wisdom is disseminated, and overall society rises. Of course, they realized that progress wasn't easy, in particular noting how the Enlightenment led to the French Revolution, the Terror, and then the dictatorship of Napoleon.

Liberals accordingly set out to define how progress could come about. They believe that argument and free speech establish good ideas and propagate them. They reject concentrations of power, since dominant groups tend to abuse their privileges, oppressing others and subverting the common good. And they affirm the dignity of individuals, that people cannot be forced to give up their beliefs.

In different ways Rousseau, Marx, and Nietzsche rejected these ideas. Rousseau doubted that there was such a thing as progress; Marx thought there was such a thing as progress, but that it was generated by class struggle and revolution. Nietzsche feared that society was descending into nihilism, but appealed to the heroic uebermensch in each person as its savior. Destruction would follow them.

Rousseau (1712:78) was the most pessimistic. Voltaire, Denis Diderot and Rousseau's other contemporaries believed the Enlightenment could begin to put right society's many wrongs. Rousseau, who was fond of dispute, set himself against them, arguing that the source of those wrongs was society itself.

In "A Discourse on Inequality", Rousseau explained that humanity is truly free only in the state of nature. Without society, there is no social class. The trouble began when a person first fenced off some land and declared: "This is mine". "Equality disappeared, property was introduced, labour became necessary, and the vast forests changed to smiling fields that had to be watered with the sweat of men, where slavery and poverty were soon seen to germinate and grow along with the crops."

He began "The Social Contract" with a declaration: "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." Humanity is naturally good, but political society makes people evil. Social order does not come from nature, it is founded on conventions. Rousseau was not really an anarchist, however, believing that there was a "social contract" that would limit the harm.

Sovereignty, Rousseau said, wells up from the people, as individuals. Government is the servant of the sovereign people and its mandate needs to be renewed periodically. If the government fails the people, it can be replaced. Today, that isn't a radical idea, but it was in the 18th century, when societies were generally based on monarchy and aristocracy. In such a social order: "The laws are always useful to those with possessions and harmful to those who have nothing." Religion makes things worse. "True Christians are made to be slaves."

Rousseau believed that society needed to establish and enforce equality. He was not clear on how that would work; Rousseau did not advocate revolution, but he was promoting revolutionary ideas, and to no surprise revolutionaries believed they could achieve that equality through coercion and violence. There remains the seed of Rousseau's thought in modern Libertarianism, in the "non-coercive principle", that society cannot force individuals to act against their own interests. Unfortunately, taken to its extreme, the non-coercive principle becomes a license for anti-social behavior, an indifference to the common good, to the ultimate detriment of all. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[TUE 06 DEC 22] GERMAN GAS INDEPENDENCE

* GERMAN GAS INDEPENDENCE: The war in Ukraine demonstrated to the developed world the dangers of becoming economically dependent on authoritarian states. As discussed in an article from BBC.com ("Ukraine War: How Germany Ended Reliance On Russian Gas" by Jenny Hill, 22 November 2022), nowhere was this lesson felt more painfully than in Germany, long dependent on Russian gas supplies.

Of course, when NATO responded energetically to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin stopped piping gas to states he judged as hostile to Russia. Germans feared a winter of blackouts, with government ministers scrambling to secure alternative supplies. It seemed to have worked, with no sense of hardship among Germans flocking to Christmas markets. Chancellor Olaf Scholz told the Bundestag, the German parliament: "Energy security for this winter is guaranteed."

Germany's gas reserves are full, the result of a frantic and expensive buying spree on the world's markets. There was also a quick push for new infrastructure, with the country's first import terminal for liquified natural gas (LNG) having been recently completed at the North Sea port of Wilhelmshaven. The German government is notorious for its sluggishness, but the authorities managed to streamline the construction effort, which was completed in seven months. The core element of the terminal, a "floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU)" -- a specialized ship moored in the terminal complex -- did not have to be built, instead being leased on the international market.

LNG deliveries are expected to ramp up through 2023. The terminal's operator, Uniper -- almost entirely controlled by the German government -- is coy about its suppliers, but says that contracts are in place. The most obvious sources are Norway, the USA, and the UAE. Five more LNG terminals are planned, with the intent to complete them in 2023. They won't come cheap, the six terminals to cost more than six billion euros ($6.25 billion USD).

In 2021, Russia was providing Germany with 60% of its gas, much of it via the Nordstream pipeline from Russia. The German government was still working towards the opening of the Nordstream 2 pipeline, which would have doubled the amount of Russian gas coming into Europe via Germany. Nordstream was controversial, with doubts about the wisdom of becoming even more dependent on Russian gas then being validated by reality.

The Germans are not out of the woods on gas supplies yet. Anything that goes wrong with the LNG import plan will inevitably result in shortages. Even with the LNG, the German government is still pushing to reduce national gas consumption by 20%. In addition, competition for LNG has pushed up global prices, squeezing poorer countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan. That may result in more use of coal in such countries, working against efforts to restrain climate change.

The Germans have been leaders in the fight against climate change, and continued reliance on gas isn't consistent with fighting global warming. Those working on Germany's LNG port facilities are quick to insist that LNG is really just a "transitional fuel" -- with the ultimate goal being to switch to "green hydrogen", produced with renewable energy sources. Wilhelmshaven's mayor, Carsten Feist, doesn't think that the LNG terminal will bring jobs to the city, but a green energy hub will, and he's optimistic: "So much of the energy transformation that we need to achieve so that our planet has a habitable climate in fifty or a hundred years' time, so much of what's necessary here in Germany, will happen in and through Wilhelmshaven."

Too optimistic? Possibly so, but the effectiveness of the German jump from Russian gas sources lends credibility to the vision. In addition, while the Germans have been criticized for being too lukewarm in assistance to Ukraine, they handed Putin a demoralizing defeat by showing his plans to use the Russian gas weapon against Europe came to nothing.

[MON 05 DEC 22] THE WEEK THAT WAS 49

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: As discussed in an article from ECONOMIST.com, ("Lessons From Russia's Cyber-War In Ukraine", 30 November 2022), on 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. At the same time, Russian computer hackers attacked a satellite communications system run by Viasat, a US firm, used by Ukraine. Victor Zhora -- head of Ukraine's defensive cyber-security agency -- says that the result was "a really huge loss in communications in the very beginning of war." Simultaneously, "wiper" programs that delete data appeared on hundreds of Ukrainian computer systems. Later, in April, hackers working for Sandworm -- suspected to be a front for GRU, Russia's military-intelligence service -- used malware named "Industroyer2" to attack Ukraine's electricity grid.

There is, however, no strong evidence that the attacks had much effect. The lights stayed on as the battle for Kyiv raged. The banks were open. Unlike 2015 and 2016, when cyber-attacks caused blackouts, electrical networks were not disrupted, nor were information systems. Lindy Cameron -- head of Britain's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) -- says that the Russian assault was "probably the most sustained and intensive cyber-campaign on record." The threat was big, but as Sir Jeremy Fleming -- her boss at GCHQ, Britain's signals-intelligence agency, of which the NCSC is a component -- comments that Ukraine's response was "arguably the most effective defensive cyber-activity in history."

The Russians had been performing cyber-attacks on Ukraine for years, and by 2022 the Ukrainians were ready for them. Crucial services were shifted to data centers elsewhere in Europe. Ukraine's armed forces, aware that satellites might be disrupted, had prepared alternative means of communication, and so the attack on Viasat had little effect on the military.

Not surprisingly, the Ukrainians also got a lot of help in their cyber-war. NATO enhanced its co-operation with Ukraine was by granting access to its cyberthreat library, a repository of known malware, while the US and Britain provided direct assistance. They were actually not far ahead of the Ukrainians. Marcus Willett -- a former head of cyber issues for GCHQ -- said: "It is likely that the Ukrainians taught the US and the UK more about Russian cyber-tactics than they learned from them."

Zhora says that private cyber-security companies have also played a big role -- noting in particular ESET, a Slovakian firm, and Microsoft. ESET helped track Industroyer2, while Microsoft officials say they deployed artificial intelligence (AI) systems that helped detect attacks on networks. Microsoft has been providing assistance free of charge, likely in part recognizing that the war is an advanced research lab in cyber-security that will teach the company a great deal. Another reason for the lack of Russian success was that many of Ukraine's industrial systems are antiquated, not network-enabled, and so resistant to hacking.

There has been some commentary suggesting that Russian hackers are greatly over-rated, that their work has been, on occasions, clumsy and disjointed. The skeptics paint Russia as a sloppy cyber-power, good at breaking things, but noisy and imprecise. Daniel Moore -- author of OFFENSIVE CYBER OPERATIONS, a recent book on the subject -- says that every one of Russia's known attacks on critical infrastructure, in Ukraine and beyond, has been prematurely exposed, been riddled with errors, or has spilled over beyond the intended target. He says: "There were significant operational failings in almost every single attack that they have ever carried out in cyberspace." In contrast, he points to Stuxnet, an Israeli-American cyber-attack on an Iranian nuclear facility over a decade ago, as far more sophisticated than what the Russians have been doing.

Others reply that the Russians may be more capable than they have shown themselves to be, that they were expecting an easy win in Ukraine, and saw no reason to take down infrastructure that would quickly fall into their hands anyway. The easy win didn't happen, and the war dragged on; Russia's hackers had to adapt to new challenges. However, sophisticated attacks like that on Viasat demand long preparation, prominently deep reconnaissance of target networks. A recent research paper showed that GRU's attack on Ukraine's power grid in 2015 had taken 19 months of planning, while that in 2016 had required two and a half years. In the absence of long-term planning, Russian cyber-attacks on Ukraine became more haphazard and easy to defeat. It is possible the Russians are working on more sophisticated attacks that take time to prepare, but the Ukrainians aren't being idle in the meantime.

There is, finally, the question of the value of offensive cyberwarfare in the first place. Ciaran Martin -- Cameron's predecessor at the NCSC -- says that cyber warfare is important, but that the Ukraine conflict has illustrated "the severe limitations of cyber as a wartime capability." The Stuxnet attack on Iranian nuclear facilities was impressive, but he calls it an exception, a "Moon landing" of offensive cyberwar, demanding a serious superpower investment. Martin says that cyber is not "some magic invisible battlefield where you can do stuff you can't get away with normally." It's easy to be a nuisance on computer networks, but not so easy to seriously cripple them. In addition, such attacks are "easily attributed" and invite retaliation. Martin says: "Despite all the hype, Putin has not seriously troubled the West at all in cyberspace since the invasion."

It is also the case that trying to cripple computer networks with malware is a feeble exercise when Russia has the option of attacking them with missiles. It is likely that offensive cyber warfare is much less important in wartime than information warfare -- where the Ukrainians have been flying rings around the Russians, who have been reduced to unbalanced propaganda -- and particularly intelligence gathering. A Ukrainian former politician in the know confirms that the most valuable contribution of the country's cyber-forces is extracting secrets, such as details of European companies that are violating American sanctions on Russia. He says: "There are some other things I can't talk about, but it's pretty impressive work." The full story may not be known for a generation.

* I bought an Acer desktop PC in 2016, and recently it started misbehaving every now and then -- mysteriously locking up and so on. I wasn't sure that there was anything fundamentally wrong with the PC, but I had been using it all day since I bought it and it was getting old. I figured that it would be wisest just to buy a new PC and be done with it.

I accordingly ordered a renewed Dell desktop PC, dating from 2021, from Amazon. The new PC had a quad-core 3.7GHz CPU, compared to a 2.7GHz quad-core CPU in the old machine; the Dell also had a terabyte solid-state drive (SSD), compared to the terabyte hard disk in my old machine. In addition, the new PC had some high-speed USB ports, plus built-in wifi and bluetooth, which the old PC lacked. I was a bit surprised it still had a CD-ROM drive, but clearly there are still a lot of CD-ROMs sitting on shelves that need to be accessed. The Dell cost me about $525.

I had been tinkering with ideas for making my system more portable, organizing my personal files into two modules of files that could be "plugged in" to a new computer, possibly on a USB flash drive if the computer didn't have a lot of flash itself. That helped me a lot in porting to the new PC, though there were glitches that needed to be fixed. No worries, I cleaned up the system while re-installing it and learned new tricks. When I got done setting it up, I found out that the PC actually had two SSDs, one 250GB and the other 1TB, and that I had installed my files on the 250GB SSD. Not a problem, I just moved the two modules over to the 1TB SSD with little difficulty.

It took me a day's work to get things going properly, with more difficulties over the following days: "Oh right, I have to download a driver for my laserjet printer." I'm generally running well now. The new PC is impressively fast -- I don't think it's just the faster CPU, it's also the clean operating system, and in particular the SSD. The SSD should also last well longer than a hard disk drive.

In getting the new PC, I moved up from Windows 10 to Windows 11, which wasn't much of a change, except for cleaning up the right-click menus to make them more resistant to being polluted by software endlessly adding menu selections to them. One noteworthy change was that Microsoft has deprecated the 3D Paint program they were pushing for Windows 10, and restored the older Paint program with cosmetic changes. Turned out few users really wanted 3D, and they were unhappy at losing some of the functionality from the old Paint.

I'm not sure what will happen with the old Acer desktop. I'll re-install Windows and try it as a game machine, but if problems persist, I'll have to junk it. By coincidence, one of my old notebook PCs, which I had been using in the kitchen, completely died at about the same time I was converting to the new desktop. I had a cheap Windows tablet PC available, so I just swapped them out. I just ordered a cheap refurbished Microsoft Surface tablet, on the assumption that my other old notebook is unlikely to last much longer. It should arrive soon.

[FRI 02 DEC 22] CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (23)

* CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (23): While the USA ramped up preparations for war and support to Britain, Hitler was preparing to invade the USSR. The partnership between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union was temporary, and both sides knew it -- but Stalin didn't expect that Hitler would turn on him for at least another year, and refused to believe accurate intelligence reports indicating that trouble was imminent. Nobody dared contradict him, so the Soviets were caught by surprise when the Reich invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. Stalin's Red Army suffered shocking defeats as the Germans rolled east.

Both Britain and the USA threw in their lot with the USSR, with FDR extending Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union. It was a pragmatic calculation on Roosevelt's part: he judged Hitler a greater threat to world peace than Stalin, and realized that every German soldier that the Russians killed was one less soldier that the British and the Americans would have to fight.

FDR, always inclined to the optimistic, also believed that the war provided an opportunity to open up the USSR to better relations with the West. That was naive; the Soviets saw the Western powers as capitalist enemies, and would from first to last be surly and suspicious allies, always demanding more assistance and protesting bitterly when it couldn't be provided.

While the USA was distracted by events across the Atlantic, the USA worked to contain Japanese aggression in China and Southeast Asia, slamming the Japanese with a series of escalating sanctions, cutting off supplies of scrap metal and, ultimately, cutting off Japan's supply of oil. The Japanese decided that they needed to deal with the USA, and so used carrier-based aircraft to attack the US Navy base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on 7 December 1941.

The Japanese, having noted strong American isolationism and pacifism, believed they could inflict such a blow on the Americans that they would be knocked out of the war. In reality, although the damage at Pearl Harbor was severe, it was not at all a knockout blow, and the Americans were collectively enraged, quickly declaring war on Japan. There was no mandate for declaring war on Germany, but Hitler declared war on the USA first.

The war went badly for the Allies well into 1942, but by the middle of the year the Axis drive was grinding to halt, and with a series of defeats started to go into reverse. Through 1943, the Allies gained the upper hand, pressing their advantage in 1944.

The economies of all the combatants were on a war footing, with production in most of them completely focused on supporting the war. The Japanese and the Germans were unable to gain an economic advantage by exploiting the territories they conquered; such benefits as they obtained did not compensate for the massive expense of carrying on the conflict. The Germans used massive numbers of kidnapped civilians from the conquered territories as slave labor, but the slaves were an inadequate replacement for the German men fighting in the ranks.

The war footing in the USA, however, had a form of its own. America's factories were running at full capacity, turning out floods of weapons and materiel for carrying on the war, but also continued production of civilian goods at a level not seen elsewhere. Commercial car production was halted for the duration, with car factories instead turning out aircraft and military vehicles, and there was also rationing -- but visitors from Britain, where austerity had been severe and normal from early in the conflict, were astounded at the availability of luxuries in the USA.

The US government was able to fund the struggle though war bonds. Labor unrest was suppressed, to the extent there was much of it; the economy was booming, workers were in short supply, with the Federal government loading up the draft laws with exemptions to keep the "arsenal of democracy" running. Poor black folk migrated from the South, following jobs, creating a great demographic shift in American society. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 01 DEC 22] SCIENCE NOTES

* SCIENCE NOTES: As discussed in an article from SCIENCENEWS.org ("Ancient Zircons Offer Insights into Earthquakes of the Past" by Nick Ogasa, 7 June 2022), investigating the past history of earthquakes is difficult. One useful tool, it turns out, are the minerals known as "zircons" -- which researchers have now used to determine the temperatures reached within a fault during earthquakes millions of years ago.

A research team under Emma Armstrong, a thermochronologist at Utah State University in Logan, investigated California's Punchbowl Fault -- a currently quiet part of the larger San Andreas Fault was likely active between 1 million to 10 million years ago.

Heat due to friction is generated in a fault when it slips, setting off an earthquake. Earlier studies of preserved organic material suggested that temperatures within the Punchbowl Fault peaked between 465 and 1065 degrees Celsius. The researchers believed zircons could get a better estimate.

Zircons often contain the radioactive chemical elements uranium and thorium, which have known radioactive half-lives, emitting helium nuclei as they decay. That helium builds up in the crystals -- until the zircon is heated past a temperature threshold, the exact value depending on the zircon's composition, with the helium escaping. Measuring the ratios of those three elements in zircons from the fault suggests that the most intense quake temperatures lower than 800C. The zircons then can be used to determine the heat and energy released by the quake.

* As discussed in an article from SCIENCENEWS.org ("A Rare Collision of Dead Stars Can Bring a New One to Life" by Nikk Ogasa, 22 February 2022), two stars have been discovered that are hundreds of times as bright as our Sun turn out to have peculiar chemistries, being are covered in carbon and oxygen. Other stars have been found with similar characteristics, but these two are unusual in that they seem to have active helium fusion in their cores. Study coauthor Nicole Reindl, an astrophysicist from the University of Potsdam in Germany, says: "That has never been seen before," says

Tiara Battich, an astrophysicist from the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany, and her colleagues, suspected that the usual stars were formed from the merger of two white dwarf stars -- dense, white-hot fossil stars at the end of their line of evolution. The scenario envisioned is that one of the two was rich in helium, while the other contained lots of carbon and oxygen. These two white dwarfs were in a mutual orbit, drawing closer as tidal stresses sapped the energy of their motion. Eventually the helium-rich white dwarf devoured its partner, spewing carbon and oxygen over its surface -- and increasing the mass of the sum star enough to re-ignite nuclear fusion in its core.

To investigate, Battich and her team simulated the evolution, death, and eventual merging of two stars. The results of the simulation suggested that the researchers were on the right track. However, it's more likely the carbon-oxygen white dwarf will devour the helium white dwarf, since carbon-oxygen white dwarfs are usually the more massive ones. Battich says that it "should happen very rarely." -- and the rarity of these peculiar stars says that it is indeed infrequent.

* As discussed in an article from CNN.com ("Toxic Volcanic Lake Reveals How Life May Have Been Possible On Ancient Mars" by Ashley Strickland, 4 February 2022), near the summit of Costa Rica's Poas volcano, there is a lake named "Laguna Caliente", bright blue and full of toxic metals, where the temperature ranges from about 40 to 90 degrees Celsius (100 to 200 degrees Fahrenheit). Despite the hostile nature of the lake, a number of microbes still survive in it. Justin Wang -- graduate student and research assistant at the University of Colorado Boulder, who helped study the lake -- says:

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There are actually two crater lakes near the volcano's summit, craters that filled up with rainwater. One, Botos Lake, sits in an inactive crater, and is nothing unusual, just another a high-altitude lake. Laguna Caliente is in an active crater, being high in sulfurous compounds and iron. Gases from the lake create acid rain and acid fog, damaging nearby ecosystems and irritating the eyes and lungs of visitors.

Researchers conducted field studies at the lake in 2013, 2017 and 2019. Poas volcano, located in the middle of the Costa Rican rainforest, erupted most recently in 2017 and 2019, making the site inhospitable to the researchers, who were faced with toxic emissions and treacherous terrain.

The researchers determined that Acidiphilium bacteria lives in the lake. These microbes are often found in acid mine drainage as well as hydrothermal systems like Laguna Caliente, and have a set of genes to allow them to survive in the hostile environment, allowing them to exploit elements such as sulfur, iron, and arsenic. The research suggests how organisms could have survived on other worlds such as Mars, which was geologically active in its early history.