Today's Star Links: Red Hotlinks, OPM, and Thomas Hartmann, Thomas Hartmann.

 

Happy Valentine's Day.

SpaceX launched its latest batch of Starlink satellites to a low-earth orbit on Thursday, February 3. 

Then, as the NOAA predicted:  An eruption of plasma from the sun sent charged particles streaming into Earth’s atmosphere, sending the planet’s magnetic field haywire and increasing the density of its atmosphere. That increase in density meant there were more particles to push against satellites in Earth’s orbit. This phenomenon, known as atmospheric drag, can, and did, pull them out of their orbital paths.  

Thus are we treated to a firsthand example of irony (one that's not the Alanis Morissette version) as "SpaceX" demonstrates the peril of naming both your company and its most ballyhooed project with names from Fantasyland. 

First, the SpaceX name: low earth orbit is not "space".  The fact that the satellites crashed and burned, specifically by ignoring the warnings from an atmospheric agency (had NASA, the space agency, issued the warning, would they have listened? NOPE ... they're scheduled to launch another load of satellites to burn up tomorrow, 2/15/2022. Hubris such as this listens to no one). It is precisely because these satellites are not in space that they burned their precious metals and all the hi-tech, high-carbon- footprint materiel not a week after launch: atmospheric drag. The atmosphere, lest you are unaware, is part of the earth; it is basically an ocean of gas held tightly bound to our planet because gas, despite denial from the supernaturalists, who only believe in invisible things that don't exist, is matter, and like satellites launched into a solar storm, subject to the laws of gravity. Hence, creative destruction ensued by ignoring those laws. The financial cost of the botched launch is estimated to be as much as $100 million. But SpaceX literally has piles of investors' and taxpayers' money to burn (alright, alright, it should say "figuratively," but no one seems to know what that means anymore), so "Let 'er Rip!"

Secondly, note that they are called "Starlink satellites". But they have nothing whatsoever to do with any of the infinitesimal number of stars in the universe ... well, except one star. The star we refer to as the Sun. Yet this star, the only star we are actually linked to, knocks those "Starlink" satellites out of orbit in a trice, this despite the full knowledge of the entity that launched them that they were being launched into the full force of a geomagnetic storm barreling through what actually is space, toward earth. What kind of a hot link is that? Their performance fell somewhat short of what anybody would refer to as Stellar. In one stroke they have demonstrated their colossal ignorance of not only Space, but of the only Star in all of Space that actually matters, the only star they really need to concern themselves with, and about which we have enough detailed knowledge to make accurate predictions:  The freakin' SUN.

A more apt name for this boondoggle of a project would be Gamedboy, as these satellites, planned to number in the tens of thousands, are for nothing more grandiose than to give faster broadband speed to rural internet users, an endeavor which, during the 90's, you could have gotten away with using such a second-grade-mentality name, it fit in well with all the "connecting the world" paradisiacal bluster. But here in the second fifth of the 21'st century, when we know the main import of the internet is to guide armed drones to destinations around the globe for the sole purpose of assassinating people, plan terrorist attacks using airplanes as guided missiles, goggle at cute kitties, play on-line games with strangers, have your most intimate and important data hacked, propagate the maniacal ravings of demented ex-presidents and their ilk, and binge-watch second-rate TV series, it needs a more futuristic, as in meaningless, yet "sciency", moniker. So Starlink, although having nothing to do with anything that SpaceX has, or will ever, launch, was decided on. And we've seen the results:

Easily avoided, Catastrophic failure.

Next link:

Coronavirus can destroy the placenta and lead to stillbirths Associated Press

In other words, the policies supported and advocated by an Evangelical chorus of parasitical pastors has set their bleating sheep vehemently against vaccines and/or a strip of cloth in front of the face, and that has resulted in more fetal deaths than have occurred in any of the states that allow abortions. But as with AIPAC, that never saw a foreign US War that they didn't like and abjectly support, leaving the rest of the Nation to bear both the cost and the opprobrium for their militaristic arrogance, Evangelicals will never need accept responsibility for the deaths of the unborn their actions have resulted in. Only governments need face the music for the damage they inflict. Religions' bailiwick is pain and suffering, so it is in their interest to inflict as much of it as possible on the masses, take cover behind absurd dogma, and then beat their breasts in mock sorrow during their Masses. 

US nuclear power plants contain dangerous counterfeit parts, report finds. The Verge 

Considering that nuclear reactors produce tons of fissile material that no one has any idea, after more than a half a century of operating them, what to do with, it hardly seems that counterfeit parts will have time to do their mischief. The entire industry is a clear and present, as well as future, danger. Keep  your radio active for future updates.

Finally: pundits are going Postal over a 16-year bet Republicans laid down in 2006 to block Postal EVs, as DeJoy announces he’s going to buy fossil-fuel vehicles for 90% of the fleet instead of electric.

There seems to be a misunderstanding being propagated by our own little selves. Like it or not, ALL vehicles, EV or ICE machines, are fossil-fuel vehicles. Without the combustion of mass quantities of fossil fuels, there would BE no EV's any more than there would be ICE machines. Nor would there be any roads for those vehicles to travel over, well, except ATV's which are all internally-burning their fossil fuels, and cause rampant environmental destruction wherever their owners' wheels can carry them. In Colorado, such bone-head mayhem is considered a sport! ATV'ng is actually a verb.

"A great way to explore Colorado's wilderness areas is to rent an ATV and head off paved roads". 

"Wilderness areas!?" Well, not anymore, they're not. The ad should read, 

"A great way to destroy Colorado's wilderness areas is to rent an ATV and head off paved roads."

Let's change them all to E-ATV's and pretend the damage they do is Green. 

But they are all fossil-fuel vehicles. There needs to be another dash: fossil-fuel-burning vehicles, of which there are now two types: internal fossil-fuel-burning vehicles and external fossil-fuel-burning vehicles. As stated already, but ignored by the greenies, both types of vehicles are fossil-fuel vehicles, and both burn fossil fuels: the difference being that EV's do it off-site, which is good for urbanites' air quality (the  major reason most urbanites fall in line with the industry's propaganda ... but moving the unpalatable pollution far from the source of where it's being used has never caused the deleterious effects of your activities to decline. On the contrary, it, completely predictably, allows them to grow worse, as those bearing the brunt of the impact of the activity are often clueless as to why they are suffering. Which doesn't even address the fact that the non-driving public is now burdened with paying a sizeable chunk of the purchase price, as it already does to the already-rich owners of Tesla's EV's. Tesla, a company recalling 340,000 of its vehicles for yet another bug associated with accelerated production that cared more about number of units rolling off its assembly lines (and the revenue flow they were desperate to generate therefrom) than the quality of said product. 

This is a problem inherent in the computer industry's mindset. Having used "crash and burn" as their favorite phrase when a program functions incorrectly, they have forgotten that in the real world, things actually DO crash and burn, and the mess is a lot harder to clean up than a program gone awry in a test environment. Instead WE are the test environment. WE have all the risk shoved down our throat. WE pay for the damages. But it is the Owners, that is the shareholders, who assume none of the risk yet reap all the rewards. Tesla, unlike Ford or GM, is allowed to let the public bear the brunt of the disasters built in to their products, after which it will then "iron them out". Thus, Tesla is allowed to prematurely release hazardous products of automobile robofactory onto the same streets with other drivers who have no hand nor voice in allowing dangerous vehicles to share the roads with them, as though doing so were no less perilous than pressing a dress shirt. Then, to add insult to injury, a sizeable subsidy is paid to purchasers of electric fossil-fuel vehicles. This translates into a tax: Taxation without Representation is levied on people who will never be able to afford the very item they are being taxed to allow other people to purchase. And the reason they will never be ale to afford one? They have had their pockets picked to pay for OPM (Other People's Machines). 

At the end of the article, the author opined:

"Like so many other weirdnesses in American politics, when you pull back the veil you find the hands of a fossil fuel industry that values profits and right wing ideology over the future of our children, our nation and the planet."

But Thomas Hartmann, Thomas Hartmann, You could say the exact same thing about any robofactured motorized personal transport module. 

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman

Whether ATV's, SUV's, EV's, ICE machines, Pick-ups, you name it ... the whole raft of heavily government-subsidized, climate-changing technology that is eviscerating the web of life, when you pull back the veil from their high-minded rhetoric, you find the oil-stained hands of petroleurs who value motorized high-speed, techno-cocoons of metal, plastic, and glass to carry their useless carcarses (sic) over assphalt roads of poisonous bitumen to the future of their children, our nation and the the ability of the planet to sustain complex organic life" (the PLANET, my sentimental friend, exists whether or not life exists on its surface. It is LIFE itself, not the Planet, that is being jeopardized by the self-described machine of destruction called capitalism engineered by the Marauding Ape called Man).

This entire "rift" between EV's and ICE machines, like that over Covid, uses science as though it were just another mindless religion. Never will you hear them admit that it was science that gave us the ability to create this completely man-made state of affairs, wherein our pitiful existence imperils all the other creatures who share this planet with us, in the first place. And it is precisely because science gives us the ability to ignore the rights of all the other creatures who share this planet with us that we could  simply care less (anyone wanna go ATVing?).  After all ... we're Having FUN!