Yesterday was the least productive writing day for me since October, after interrupted sleep Sunday night I managed just 500 words and an evening or mindless tube watching with a tv that has no tubes.

Via HBO Max I have been watching in bits and pieces Wonder Woman 84. It is quite the disappointment. It insults the audience’s intelligence by explaining the meaning of scenes, and not deep thematic meaning put plain here’s what happened meaning.

While the GOP engages in insane plots to subvert democratic rule in the United States my conservative friends rank rant about cancel culture apparently having forgotten the real reason the USSR was a threat was not their gun control laws.

On the brighter side January will bring Series two of Staged and the debut of WandaVision so 2021 doesn’t look entirely bleak.

SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket company, is busily transforming humanity’s access to space. The Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage booster is an achievement of engineering with its fly-back and landing capability that allows its reuse with only limited reservicing between flights.

However, the second stage of the Flacon 9, the bit that accelerates the payload, cargo or manner spacecraft as of 2020, is not recovered and still represents a significant investment in money and resources that is simply thrown away with every flight. The ‘ammunition model’ of spaceflight, a mindset carried over from the development of rockets as weapon systems is unsustainable for affordable, frequent access to orbital space and beyond. The Space Shuttle developed by NASA in the 1970s and utilizing that decade’s peak technology failed to deliver on its overly ambitious dream of weekly flights to orbit and in the end proved to be too expensive in money and lives to continue operation.

In order to advance humanity’s flights into space SpaceX is developing two new rocket systems, a super heavy booster, and a fully reusable vehicle that booster will put into space named Starship (Though it must be noted it is a spaceship and has non capabilities related to stellar travel.)

Starship is massive and its operational plan requires novel flight dynamics, using one entire side as a heatshield as it returns from orbit, and then translating from basically a ‘belly flop’ attitude to nose up engines down to land in the same manner as presented by countless 50s SF movies.

This week a full-scale test version of Starship, Serial Number 8 or SN8, was flown to 12.5 kilometers and then executed the ‘belly flop’ flight plan. Elon Musk, SpaceX’s CEO, gave an estimated of a 1 in 3 chance of success for the test. After all this had never been done before.

After flying and performing the complicated attitude changes nearly flawlessly SN8 just before touching down suffered a failure of some type in the engine systems, note the bright green in the rocket exhaust in the video, landed hard and exploded.

Some have called this a failure as though this was a terribly thing.

Failure is the lesson before success.

Failure is necessary.

Failure is not the end it is the beginning of wisdom, knowledge, and victory.

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First a Note: Posting has been sporadic this month because this is when the day job starts swinging into high gear as the Annual Open Enrollment Period of Medicare Advantage Plans opens up and that means I get to work overtime. I don’t have to work it, but I do like the extra cash and that means I will often miss regular updates to my blog.

I don’t need to tell you that 2020 has been a trying, taxing, and tumultuous year. No matter who you are or what you do your life has been impacted by this year’s seemingly endless calamities. I have lost a dear friend to the pandemic and another friend has lost his spouse and partner.

And yet setting aside the distinctively American historical roots and traditions I think I can be thankful for a least a few things this year.

I have my health. Neither my sweetie-wife nor I have contracted COVID-19 and we are both still fully employed. This year saw the publication of my debut novel and, despite the pandemic hammering books sales around the globe, my relations with the publisher and editor remain strong. Science has promised a brighter future with multiple effective vaccines seemingly just around the proverbial corner.

Our celebrations will be simply this year. Just my spouse and I maintaining social distancing for ourselves and our community. May your days be brighter and may the coming season bring you a bountiful harvest of things to be thankful for.

Election season concludes tomorrow with the US’s official election day, this year November 3rd. The consequences of this year’s election are incalculable but include, redistricting for control of congress, America’s standing in the world, to future of deep and binding relationships with out allies, corruption of our democratic institutions, the rule of law, but perhaps most pressing and certainly most immediate if the course of the pandemic in the United States.

The COVID-19 pandemic has, due to the bungling of this administration, killed more than nearly a quarter of a million people in America. Our winter of discontent is unlikely to become glorious summer with the narcissistic, intellectually challenged, corrupt crime family of the Trumps still occupying the administration.

To save the nation, Trump must be turned out.

To save our national soul, Trump must be turned out.

To save our lives, Trump must be turned out.

Here is a chart showing the course of the pandemic in the US and it’s plain that the projections of horrific and unsustainable.

8_US Cross Curves

People often say vote like your lives depend on it, this election is not hyperbole.

It’s not new or shocking to state that Trump cares for no one but Trump. Those who expect or hope that his brush with COVID-19 and his mortality will somehow implant the barest empathy for another human being are deluding themselves. A person in the mid-70s is set in who that are and in Trump’s case that is an immoral, narcissistic, sociopath interested only in his own well-being and wealth.

In addition to this the pressures of the election and his immunity towards state and federal crimes along with civil threats including $400 million dollars in personal debts coming due in the next four years provide incentive, beyond his inherent selfish needs, for Trump to do whatever it takes to retain the office of President of the United States.

Which of course means interfering in the process the approve the vital vaccine we need for COVID-19.

The FDA wants to publish guidelines that any vaccine before approval must first have its participant monitored for two months following their last does, waiting to see in adverse events develop or if the vaccine’s protections show signs of being only a short duration. This reasonable, if still highly rushed, guideline is quite acceptable unless your eye is on election day in which case this is terrible. No vaccine can meet this guideline and be approved before November 3rd 2020. Of course, interference from the White House undermines confidence in the vaccine and damages intake of this vital measure to protect our health, our lives, and our economy.

Trump doesn’t care if the vaccine works.

Trump doesn’t care if you die.

Trump only cares for Trump.

Trump only wants to win and your corpse is an acceptable price for that victory.

No, this is not about the Presidential Debate last night September 29th.

The New York Times has an interesting story about a tech start-up in Massachusetts that is raising funds and planning to construct a test reactor for nuclear fusion.

Working with MIT the start-up Commonwealth Fusion Systems hopes to have their reactor built in just 3-4 years and if all goes according to their plans producing net gain energy from fusion.

We have seen this road before and it has, to date, only led to washed-out bridge, collapsed tunnels, and chasms yet to be spanned, but things are impossible to achieve until they aren’t. This is not some fly-by-night operation working without the benefit of major scientific and technological might and several physicists have publisher papers agreeing that this approach looks sound.

It may still fail.

It may yet be another crushing disappointment.

It may also work.

We need something like this. While viable fusion power would attract attacks from both the lest and the right it would be a huge leap forward in de-carbonizing our energy systems.