https://xcancel.com/DurrutiRiot/status/1852088701049872713

video showing clashes of striking greek firefighters and piggies.

Algerian Presidency: The Head of State of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Mr. Kim Jong-un, sent his congratulations to the President of the Republic, Mr. Abdelmadjid Tebboune, on the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of the outbreak of the liberation revolution, expressing on the same occasion his full conviction of further growth and development of the friendly and cooperative relations between the two countries.

Electoral politics meets rocket test flights!

Two years ago, NASA launched it’s Lockheed-Martin built Orion spacecraft in an uncrewed test flight around the Moon and back to Earth on the mission named Artemis I launched on the first SLS rocket flight. SLS’s prime contractor is Boeing. SLS was designed to re-use as much Space Shuttle technology as possible so that the defence contractors involved could pad their profit margins and not have to spend much on R&D of new technology.

The Orion heat shield uses an Apollo-era technology called AVCOAT. NASA thought it was a safe choice because it worked fine for all the Apollo missions despite a newer, better material called PICA being available. PICA has been used for almost 20 years on some of the most demanding missions with the highest re-entry speeds. Basically if you want to get back to Earth safely and you have your choice of heat shield material, you want a variant of PICA. It’s as safe and proven as space technology can get.

Well, it turns out that the AVCOAT heat shield didn’t burn away evenly and cleanly like on Apollo, because while the chemistry is the same, they applied it in a different way. The first test flight’s capsule had great big chunks missing from the heat shield. That Orion capsule did splash down intact out of pure dumb luck, but those missing chunks sparked an independent review because they are a potential crew-killer. Missing chunks out of a heat shield killed the space shuttle Columbia’s crew.

So here’s where the politics comes in!

NASA has announced that they know what the problem is, but they’re not going to announce what the problem is before the end of the year. And the person who made that decision is Administrator Bill Nelson, a career politician and loyal lifelong ally to Joe Biden.

Orion is an overweight pig of a ship, deliberately so. Right now the only production rocket can that lift it around the moon is Boeing’s massively expensive SLS. SLS works but it’s ridiculously expensive at an estimated $4 billion per flight. NASA claims less, but independent government audits put it at about $4 billion factoring in all ground support costs and averaging the R&D costs on top of direct hardware costs. There’s about an 18-month production time per rocket minimum. And SLS only exists to lift Orion. Cancel one and you cancel the other. They were designed in lockstep with each other so that the US senate could spend as much as possible on local subcontractors for personal political gain.

Artemis II is to be the first crewed Artemis flight, doing orbits around the Moon and testing systems and procedures before coming back, like Apollo 8. Artemis III is to be the first crewed landing using a variant of SpaceX’s Starship called HLS. Artemis III’s HLS landing vehicle is to launch uncrewed, with an Orion capsule acting as the taxi to get astronauts to it and as their return vehicle to come back to Earth. Artemis II’s hardware is nearly ready to fly, including that AVCOAT heat shield. But the heat shield debacle has put it all on hold.

Even though NASA knows the fix, they’ll have to test that fix. Which means another test flight of SLS. Which means building another SLS rocket, and building another Orion capsule. That could put the additional test flight cost over $5 billion minimum. Plus years of delays for the first crewed mission as they need to build another rocket and capsule. So the scuttlebutt is that Bill Nelson, as a personal favour to Biden, is deliberately withholding the expensive bad news from public release until after the election.

More fun facts! The Orion program has cost, in 2024 inflation-adjusted dollars, about $30 billion without a single successful test flight, let alone any crew flights. And SLS has cost about $26 billion with a single successful test flight. And this is all because the US senate, who keep an iron grip on NASA pursestrings, wanted both programs to be as expensive as possible so that they’re as profitable as possible for their defence contractor friends.

The National Archives museum has removed references to Martin Luther King, sharecropping, Japanese internment, Native Americans, union organizers, and birth control.

depersonalizing while staring at the “KAMALA HARRIS FOR THE PEOPLE” bumper sticker on the Tesla in front of me

more like KAMALA HARRIS FOR KEEPING INNOCENT PEOPLE IN PRISON TO EXPLOIT THEIR LABOR LEFTIST MEME DOT JPEG

footnote situation in “Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese - Genocide as colonial erasure”

purple is footnotes in the image

307 footnotes in a 32 page document

from: Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, meets the press

Is there something going on in Georgia the country?

The day the U.S. sends a black transman into the UNSC is the day they’ll crack the earth

I really wanted to live in the universe where trump assassination was successful. I wonder how the fuckers there doing. Fuck you amerikkkans. Now I will never now

Ansarallah says do not vote for Trump or Harris:
https://xcancel.com/Seamus_Malek/status/1851871758200246345

“Trump’s danger is not limited to the outside world, but also to America itself, and he may be the cause of its destruction, but it is not appropriate for the Muslims of America to embrace his election so that they are not the deciding vote for his victory. It is preferable for them to abstain from voting for either candidate because both of them are linked to destructive projects for humanity, whether they are bloody or contrary to nature.”

Twotter to the rescue of liberal zionist swine

Back online after two weeks of taking care of irl stuff. Random disconnected thoughts incoming:

• Aunt and her kids have successfully left Lebanon into Syria and then into Iraq, very happy with that. Thank God for the Iraqis, we’re forever indebted to them for just how extraordinarily generous they’ve been with the refugees. Fuck the Egyptians for not even doing 0.1% of that for the people of Gaza.

• Son is already nearly four months old. Very nice kid tbh, not too many sleepless nights so far.

• Damn the Ukraine war is progressing very fast now, I don’t even have time to learn the names of the villages anymore. Cursed town Ugledar might have been the glue that held together Ukraine’s defence in the south-east. Nonstop collapse since Ugledar fell and now we are looking at the first big Russian arrow since the first weeks of the war. South Donetsk is done if Russia reach Andriivka, that entire Kurakhove corner will fall in matter of weeks. Very interesting developments on the Oskol sector as well, don’t understand why Ukraine is letting their east Kupyansk grouping get pinned towards the river and not withdrawing behind a very defensible river line.

• I don’t believe the reports about any ceasefire whether in Lebanon or Gaza. The Doha talks about Gaza are just a last ditch effort to provide a “peace in the Middle East” boost for Kamala, there’s little real substance there. Same with the Lebanon negotiations, there’s no incentive for any side here. Israel continue their forever war, Americans sell guns, Iranians have an excuse to lob missiles at Israel whenever they want now and Hezbollah are inflicting record damage on IDF losers.

• Help me out Hexxies, who will win the election? My instincts say it’s big wet Donnie, but idk these days. How are the polls looking? I read reddit and in their world Kamala will win every single state, while right wings dumbasses on Twitter say that NY is a swing state.

UN report accuses Israel of ‘deliberate war crimes’ against Gaza’s healthcare system

Navi Pillay, a member of the UN Commission of Inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory, says an independent investigation found Israel is carrying out a “concerted policy” to destroy Gaza’s health system.

“This is just not reporting what we see on social media, but a very carefully fact-checked account of the destruction of hospitals, the deliberate targeting of doctors,” Pillay told Al Jazeera.

“It’s also the first United Nations report that … drew the conclusion there is the deliberate targeting of healthcare workers, the healthcare system in itself – which is a crime, a war crime.”

Israel makes it difficult to probe its deadly attacks by denying entry to independent investigators, Pillay added.

The report, delivered on Wednesday, concluded: “Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on the Strip, committing war crimes and a crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.”

Just more undeniable evidence of war crimes and genocide that the US will do their “it doesn’t look like anything to me” bit.

Fed accounts are bubbling. Rumours of an iranian counter strike.

Earlier today, rumours that ballistic missiles were being transported in Iran.

This evening, rumours that a large scale UAV attack with “hundreds” of UAVs is to be launched from Iraq.

Take with pinch of salt but something might happen.

In other rumour mill news, Ukraine claims they’ve killed 7 DPRK troops and captured one in the Kursk region.