August 18, 1988, Louisiana Superdome, New Orleans | George H.W. Bush acceptance speech as the Republican presidential candidate at the 1988 Republican National Convention.
Made by the U.S. Air Force’s Eastern Test Range, this rarely seen film shows the launch of the special Vela satellite designed to detect radiation from nuclear tests. The film shows the Titan IIIC launch vehicle used in the program with a specific focus on the C-18 / Vela – VB mission. This was the last of the Vela satellites, launched on April 8, 1970. The Titan IIIC shown was the 100th launched at the Eastern Test Range. The Titan IIIC consisted of a two-stage Titan core and upper stage called the Titan Transtage, both burning hypergolic liquid fuel, and two large UA1205 solid rocket boosters. Vela was the name of a group of satellites developed as the Vela Hotel element of Project Vela by the United States to monitor compliance with the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty by the Soviet Union. Vela started out as a small budget research program in 1959. It ended 26 years later as a successful, cost-effective military space system, which also provided scientific data on natural sources of space radiation. In the 1970s, the nuclear detection mission was taken over by the Defense Support Program (DSP) satellites. In the late 1980s, it was augmented by the Navstar Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites. The program is now called the Integrated Operational Nuclear Detection System (IONDS). The total number of satellites built was 12, six of the Vela Hotel design and six of the Advanced Vela design. The Vela Hotel series was to detect nuclear initiations in space, while the Advanced Vela series was to detect not only nuclear explosions in space but also in the atmosphere. All spacecraft were manufactured by TRW and launched in pairs, either on an Atlas-Agena or Titan III-C boosters. They were placed in orbits of 118,000 km (73,000 miles),[1] well above the Van Allen radiation belts. Their apogee was about one-third of the distance to the Moon. The first Vela Hotel pair was launched on October 17, 1963,[2] one week after the Partial Test Ban Treaty went into effect, and the last in 1965. They had a design life of six months, but were actually shut down after five years. Advanced Vela pairs were launched in 1967, 1969 and 1970. They had a nominal design life of 18 months, later changed to 7 years. However, the last satellite to be shut down was Vehicle 9 in 1984, which had been launched in 1969 and had lasted nearly 15 years. The Titan IIIC was an expendable launch system used by the United States Air Force from 1965 until 1982. It was the first Titan booster to feature large solid rocket motors and was planned to be used as a launcher for the Dyna-Soar and Manned Orbiting Laboratory, though both programs were cancelled before any astronauts flew. The majority of the launcher’s payloads were DoD satellites, namely for military communications and early warning, though one flight (ATS-6) was performed by NASA. The Titan IIIC was launched exclusively from Cape Canaveral while its sibling, the Titan IIID, was launched only from Vandenberg AFB.
The Vela incident, also known as the South Atlantic Flash, was an unidentified double flash of light detected by an American Vela Hotel satellite on 22 September 1979 near the Prince Edward Islands in the Indian Ocean. The cause of the flash remains officially unknown, and some information about the event remains classified.[1] While it has been suggested that the signal could have been caused by a meteoroid hitting the satellite, the previous 41 double flashes detected by the Vela satellites were caused by nuclear weapons tests.[2][3][4] Today, most independent researchers believe that the 1979 flash was caused by a nuclear explosion[1][5][6][7] — perhaps an undeclared nuclear test carried out by South Africa and Israel.[8]The “double flash” was detected on 22 September 1979, at 00:53 UTC, by the American Vela satellite OPS 6911 (also known as Vela 10 and Vela 5B[9]), which carried various sensors designed to detect nuclear explosions that contravened the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. In addition to being able to detect gamma rays, X-rays, and neutrons, the satellite also contained two silicon solid-state bhangmeter sensors that could detect the dual light flashes associated with an atmospheric nuclear explosion: the initial brief, intense flash, followed by a second, longer flash.[4 The satellite reported a double flash, which could be characteristic of an atmospheric nuclear explosion of two to three kilotons, in the Indian Ocean between the Crozet Islands (a sparsely inhabited French possession) and the Prince Edward Islands (which belong to South Africa) at 47°S 40°E. Other systems data, such as Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) and Missile Impact Location System (MILS) that were established by the United States and NATO to detect Soviet submarines and the locations where used missile test warheads splashed down, respectively, were searched in an effort to gain more knowledge on the possibility of a nuclear detonation in the region. These data were found not to have enough substantial evidence of a detonation of a nuclear weapon.[11] United States Air Force surveillance aircraft flew 25 sorties over that area of the Indian Ocean from 22 September to 29 October 1979 to carry out atmospheric sampling.[12] Studies of wind patterns confirmed that fall-out from an explosion in the southern Indian Ocean could have been carried from there to southwestern Australia.[13] It was reported that low levels of iodine-131 (a short-half-life product of nuclear fission) were detected in sheep in the southeastern Australian States of Victoria and Tasmania soon after the event. Sheep in New Zealand showed no such trace.[13][14] The Arecibo ionospheric observatory and radio telescope in Puerto Rico detected an anomalous ionospheric wave during the morning of 22 September 1979, which moved from the southeast to the northwest, an event that had not been observed previously.[15]
The explosion was picked up by a pair of sensors on only one of the several Vela satellites; other similar satellites were looking at different parts of the Earth, or weather conditions precluded them seeing the same event.[22] The Vela satellites had previously detected 41 atmospheric tests—by countries such as France and the People’s Republic of China—each of which was subsequently confirmed by other means, including testing for radioactive fallout. The absence of any such corroboration of a nuclear origin for the Vela incident also suggested that the “double flash” signal was a spurious “zoo” signal of unknown origin, possibly caused by the impact of a micrometeoroid. Such “zoo” signals which mimicked nuclear explosions had been received several times earlier.[23] Their report noted that the flash data contained “many of the features of signals from previously observed nuclear explosions”,[24] but that “careful examination reveals a significant deviation in the light signature of the 22 September event that throws doubt on the interpretation as a nuclear event”. The best analysis that they could offer of the data suggested that, if the sensors were properly calibrated, any source of the “light flashes” were spurious “zoo events”. Thus their final determination was that while they could not rule out that this signal was of nuclear origin, “based on our experience in related scientific assessments, it is our collective judgment that the September 22 signal was probably not from a nuclear explosion”.[25] Victor Gilinsky (former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) argued that the science panel’s findings were politically motivated.[15] Some data seemed to confirm that a nuclear explosion was the source for the “double flash” signal. An “anomalous” traveling ionospheric disturbance was measured at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico at the same time,[15] but many thousands of miles away in a different hemisphere of the Earth. A test in Western Australia conducted a few months later found some increased nuclear radiation levels.[26][page needed] A detailed study done by New Zealand’s National Radiation Laboratory found no evidence of excess radioactivity, and neither did a U.S. Government-funded nuclear laboratory.[27] Los Alamos National Laboratory scientists who worked on the Vela Hotel program have professed their conviction that the Vela Hotel satellite’s detectors worked properly.[15][28] Leonard Weiss, at the time Staff Director of the Senate Subcommittee on Energy and Nuclear Proliferation, has also raised concerns about the findings of the Ad-Hoc Panel, arguing that it was set up by the Carter administration to counter embarrassing and growing opinion that it was an Israeli nuclear test.[29] Specific intelligence about the Israeli nuclear program was not shared with the panel whose report therefore produced the plausible deniability that the administration sought.[29]
In 2003, Stansfield Turner, the Director of the CIA during the Carter administration, stated that the Vela detection was of a “man-made phenomenon”.[60] In his 2006 book On the Brink, the retired CIA clandestine service officer Tyler Drumheller wrote of his 1983–1988 tour-of-duty in South Africa: “We had operational successes, most importantly regarding Pretoria’s nuclear capability. My sources collectively provided incontrovertible evidence that the apartheid government had in fact tested a nuclear bomb in the South Atlantic in 1979, and that they had developed a delivery system with assistance from the Israelis.” In 2010, Jimmy Carter published his White House Diaries. In the entry for 22 September 1979, he wrote “There was indication of a nuclear explosion in the region of South Africa—either South Africa, Israel using a ship at sea, or nothing.”[21] For 27 February 1980, he wrote “We have a growing belief among our scientists that the Israelis did indeed conduct a nuclear test explosion in the ocean near the southern end of Africa.”[38] Several diplomatic cables released as part of the 2010 WikiLeaks cable leaks revealed some of the US state department’s initial assessment of the data obtained from the Vela satellite; a cable dated 26 October 1979 states: We have subjected this data to an intensive technical review and this review supports the conclusion that a nuclear explosion probably did occur. — [61] Some American information related to this incident has been declassified in the form of heavily redacted reports and memoranda following requests for records made under the US Freedom of Information Act; on 5 May 2006, many of these declassified documents were made available through the National Security Archive.[4] A December 2016 report by William Burr and Avner Cohen of George Washington University‘s National Security Archive and Nuclear Proliferation International History Project noted that the debate over the South Atlantic flash has shifted over the last few years, on the side of a man-made weapon test.[1] The National Security Archive briefing concluded: A Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored panel of well-respected scientists concluded that a mysterious flash detected by a U.S. Vela satellite over the South Atlantic on the night of 22 September 1979 was likely a nuclear test. The newly released research and subsequent report was largely based upon recently declassified documents in files at the National Archives of Gerard C. Smith, a former Ambassador and special envoy on nuclear nonproliferation during Jimmy Carter’s presidency.[1][62][5] Smith had once said: “I was never able to break free from the thought that the event was a joint operation between Israel and South Africa.” The documents cited a June 1980 U.S. State Department report where Defense Intelligence Agency Vice Director Jack Varona had said the ensuing U.S. investigation was a “white wash, due to political considerations” based on “flimsy evidence”. He added that the “weight of the evidence pointed towards a nuclear event” and cited hydroacoustic data analyzed by the Naval Research Laboratory. The data, he suggested, involved “signals … unique to nuclear shots in a maritime environment” and emanating from the area of “shallow waters between Prince Edward and Marion Islands, south-east of South Africa”.[1][5][62] Avner Cohen stated that “Now, 40 years later, there is a scientific and historical consensus that it was a nuclear test and that it had to be Israeli.”[63] In 2018, a new study made the case for the double flash being a nuclear test.[6][7][64][65]
Evaluation of Some Geophysical Events on 22 September 1979 – https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/6419744; The Last War by Abe Ariel – https://biblio.co.uk/book/last-war-ariel-abe/d/688894313; The 22 September 1979 Vela Incident: The Detected Double Flash (Christopher M. Wright and Lars-Erik De Geer, 2017) – http://scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs25wright.pdf; https://www.universetoday.com/122379/remembering-the-vela-incident/; Flash From the Past: Why an apparent Israeli nuclear test in 1979 matters today (Leonard Weiss, The Atomic Bulletin, September 8 2015) – https://thebulletin.org/2015/09/flash-from-the-past-why-an-apparent-israeli-nuclear-test-in-1979-matters-today/
An autonomous spaceport drone ship (ASDS) is an ocean-going vessel derived from a deck barge, outfitted with station-keeping engines and a large landing platform and is controlled by an autonomous robot. Construction of such ships was commissioned by aerospace company SpaceX to allow for recovery of rocket first-stages at sea for missions which do not carry enough fuel to return to the launch site after boosting spacecraft onto an orbital or transplanetary trajectory.[1][2] SpaceX has two operational drone ships and has a third under construction as of early 2018. Just Read the Instructions operated in the Pacific for launches from Vandenberg; Of Course I Still Love You operates in the Atlantic for launches from Cape Canaveral. A Shortfall of Gravitas is under construction. As of 17 February 2020, 38 Falcon 9 flights have attempted to land on a drone ship, with 30 of them succeeding (81%). The ASDS ships are a key early operational component in the SpaceX objective to significantly lower the price of space launch services through “full and rapid reusability,”[3] and were developed as part of the multi-year reusable rocket development program SpaceX undertook to engineer the technology. Any Falcon flights going to geostationary orbit or exceeding escape velocity require landing at sea, encompassing about half of SpaceX missions.
April 08 2016 – The Falcon 9 first-stage performed a succesful landing on OCISLY in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida at T+9 minutes and 10 seconds after liftoff of SpaceX CRS-8, the first ever successful landing of a first stage on an Autonomous Spaceport Drone Ship. The rocket was succesfully affixed to the barge for the maritime transport portion of the journey back to port, and succesfully completed its journey, entering Port Canaveral early in the morning of 12 April 2016. Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY), had been under construction in a Louisiana shipyard since early 2015 using a different hull—Marmac 304—in order to service launches on the east coast. It was built as a replacement for the first Just Read the Instructions and entered operational service for Falcon 9 Flight 19 in late June 2015. As of June 2015, its home port was Jacksonville, Florida,[12][15] but after December 2015, it was transferred 160 miles (260 km) further south, at Port Canaveral. The droneship is fitted with cameras, sensors and other measuring equipment to allow SpaceX to record and gather data on the landings. On a number of occasions, it has been shown that the cameras can be remotely adjusted and moved during landings to provide a better perspective. Of Course I Still Love You is fitted with 2 antennas allowing for the up-link of data to a satellite and for communication with the incoming booster. A common problem experienced during SpaceX webcasts is the video connection to the droneship cutting out during the landing. This occurs because vibrations created by the landing booster violently shake the droneship, temporarily breaking the connection and up-link to the satellite.
Exascale supercomputers are capable of executing a quintillion (1018) calculations each second. This is much faster than the fastest supercomputers in the world today which solve problems at the petascale, or a quadrillion (1015) calculations per second. According to the Exascale Computing Project – a collaborative effort of the DOE’s Office of Science and the NNSA – exascale computers represent the next milestone in computing achievement. Their ability to simulate more realistically the processes involved in a range of areas including precision medicine, climate modelling, materials science and nuclear physics will have profound impacts on everyday life, it says. “The Department of Energy is the world leader in supercomputing and El Capitan is a critical addition to our next generation systems,” US Energy Secretary Rick Perry said. “El Capitan’s advanced capabilities for modelling, simulation, and Artificial Intelligence will help push America’s competitive edge in energy and national security, allow us to ask tougher questions, solve greater challenges, and develop better solutions for generations to come.” El Capitan will be used to perform “mission critical” research to maintain the US nuclear weapons stockpile, NNSA said. “It will be used by researchers … to run 3D simulations and calculations at resolutions that are difficult, time-consuming, or even impossible using today’s state-of-the art supercomputers,” the administration added. The computer, which is scheduled for delivery in late 2022, will be the DOE’s third exascale supercomputer after Aurora at Argonne National Laboratory and Frontier at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), both of which are scheduled for delivery in 2021. All three are to be built by Cray using their Shasta architecture, Slingshot interconnect, and new system software platform.
Sept 27 2019. An employee at a nuclear research center in the closed town of Sarov in Russia was fined for illegally mining Bitcoin (BTC). A man was fined 450,000 rubles ($7,000) for trying to mine Bitcoin by using a petaflop-capable supercomputer at his workplace, the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute in Sarov, Russia. Sarov, about 230 miles east of Moscow is a closed town as it is the Russian center for nuclear weapons research. The court delivered the verdict on Sept. 17. The nuclear research employee was convicted of unlawful access to computer information and a violation of the rules for storing information. An Armenian IT company was accused of illegally accessing electricity and using it to mine cryptocurrencies. The Armenian National Security Service claimed that the IT company installed cryptocurrency mining equipment inside one of its hydropower plants and as a result illegally consumed 1.5 million kilowatt-hours of electricity — worth more than $150,000, locally — over the course of 1.5 years. In May, Cointelegrap reported that the state authorities of China’s Sichuan province were investigating local Bitcoin mining farms that allegedly been built illegally. More than 30,000 Bitcoin mining machines were reportedly constructed without official approval from the local government and were subject to further examination.
The missile in times of V
Trade dispute quarantines in wake of nuclear Fukushima | the nuclear accident, V and I.