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Weeks after Russia's former head of the Roscomsmos space agency cast doubt on the US moon landing in 1969, China announced plans to put a person on the moon by 2030.

In a Monday announcement, Lin Xiqiang, the deputy director of China’s Manned Space Agency, said that the CCP's moon landing project - part of the country's broader Lunar Exploration Project (Chang'e Project, named after the Chinese moon goddess) - had only "recently" been kick started. The project seeks to eventually enable short-term stays on the lunar surface, as along with the collection of samples and other research, The NY Times reports.

Chinese scientists have previously nodded at a 2030 goal in a less formal capacity; for example, the chief designer of China’s lunar exploration program said last month that a 2030 landing would be “no problem.”

The Monday announcement came at a news conference to mark the liftoff of three new astronauts on Tuesday to China’s new space station, which was completed late last year.

A manned lunar landing would be a major milestone for China’s, and the world’s, space exploration: No human has been on the moon since the United States’ Apollo missions in the 1960s and ’70s. And it could mark a significant achievement for China in its burgeoning competition with the United States in space. China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, has said that the country should become a “great space power.”

The announcement follows one by NASA, which announced a plan to put a team on the moon by 2025 as part of the (repeatedly delayed) Artemis program.

Both Beijing and Washington want to build research stations on the moon, and to land people on Mars.

The Times frames the announcement as a point of contention between the US and China, echoing the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

NASA’s administrator, Bill Nelson, has said that the United States should “watch out” for Chinese attempts to dominate the lunar surface and keep Americans out. A Pentagon report last year warned that China could overtake American capabilities in space by 2045. -NY Times

China has accelerated its space program in recent years, and is currently the only country (known) to have landed anything on the moon in the 21st century. The CCP also landed a lunar probe on the moon's far side for the first time in history in 2019.

If the moon is next for humans, it might be a good time to bone up on your Heinlein.

Careful, China. You never know what's up there!

Russia's former head of the Roscosmos space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, said he went on a quest about a decade ago to find concrete proof that the Americans landed on the Moon in 1969. After finding little evidence, he questioned whether the Apollo 11 Mission reached the lunar surface. 

"About ten years ago, when I worked in the Government, I sent an official request to Roskosmos to provide me with documentary evidence of the Americans' stay on the moon, which at that time was still at the disposal of the federal agency," Rogozin said in a post on Telegram on Sunday. 

He continued, "I was painfully embarrassed by the fact that the Soviet cosmonauts returning from multi-day expeditions could barely stand on their feet and underwent a long recovery after such flights, and the Americans crawled out of their lunar ships like cucumbers from the garden. "

Rogozin claimed to have submitted multiple requests to Roscosmos for proof of NASA's 1969 Moon landing. He said the only evidence he received was a book that contained an account by Soviet Cosmonaut Aleksey Leonov about his conversation with the American astronauts and their discussions about the lunar mission. 

Rogozin continued in the post: 

In 2018, when I went to work at the state corporation Roskosmos, I continued to search for this evidence, but I didn't find anything there, except for the angry accusations of some of our fans of going to America at the expense of others, academicians, that I, they say, undermine the "sacred cooperation with NASA," I also received one angry call from a high-ranking official accusing me of "aggravating the international situation" with my doubts.

Yes, I did not undermine or aggravate anything, but only by virtue of my nature I tried to get to the bottom of the details and establish, at least for myself, the true state of affairs in the issue of exploration of the Moon by our competitors. It was not clear to me how the United States, at that level of technological development of the 60s of the last century, did what they still cannot do now?

Add Rogozin to the moon-landing denialism camp because how dare anyone question that the spacecraft with less computing power than even a modern USB-C charger could land astronauts on the Moon in 1969 -- and astronauts have yet to return 54 years later. 

... still there are many questions. 

Authored by John Haughey via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

President Joe Biden’s $886.3 billion Fiscal Year 2024 (FY24) defense budget request includes $145 billion for research and development into emerging technologies to create new weapons systems using Artificial Intelligence (AI), hypersonic munitions, and electromagnetic swarms.

The Department of Defense (DOD) and its subsidiary military branch technology laboratories, working in tandem with universities and high-tech contractors that increasingly include small businesses, have produced such big-ticket splashes as newly deployed directed-energy weapons systems and hypersonic/ballistic sensors.

Among prospective products and systems seeking funding in the FY24 spending request is a ‘Rocket Cargo’ transport that can move 100 tons of cargo anywhere on Earth within an hour; a counter-swarm electromagnetic weapon that can disable drones and be powered from a wall plug; a rotating detonation engine without moving parts; a “pop-up hide” that can make Marines disappear in plain sight; a Predictive Vehicle Activity for Identification and Location (PreVAIL) program that “will bring a novel approach to automated target detection and recognition.”

There are also less sexy utilitarian products being tested in the budget, such as a Portable Fluid Analyzer, a ship-to-ship system that converts Morse code into text messages, and an assembly line of bigger, faster, better-armed unmanned aircraft, from micro-drones to the latest Unmanned Long-endurance Tactical Reconnaissance Aircraft (ULTRA.)

All have survived, or must soon traverse, “The Valley of Death.”

Unlike notable valleys in American military history—Valley Forge, the Chosin, Khe Sanh, the Korengal—this “Valley of Death” is not a place on a map but that dreaded moment of realization on a military product development timeline when a cutting-edge weapon that will deliver a decisive battlefield advantage cannot advance out of prototype to production and get onto the battlefield in time.

‘The Valley of Death’

Integrating new, still-maturing technologies into existing programs and platforms without “radical disruption” to multi-year procurement and acquisitions systems is among the most tweaky of challenges confronting the military, Pentagon officials said during a two-hour April 13 webinar presented by the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA).

The DOD’s Under Secretary of Defense for Research & Engineering Heidi Shyu and the DOD’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Director, Dr. Stefanie Tompkins, noted the proposed $145 billion Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E) budget is up 12 percent from this year with the Air Force receiving one-third of the requested outlay.

Shyu said the Science and Technology component of the RDT&E budget request is $17.8 billion, up 8.3 percent over this year’s $16.5 billion budget.

The annually updated National Defense Science & Technology Strategy is on Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s desk, she said.

Shyu said the strategy will focus on joint mission; creation and deployment of capabilities at speed and scale; establishment of an enduring advantage in talent, infrastructure, research, and collaboration; directed energy weapons; and hypersonic/ballistic sensors.

Technology leaders for three military branches—Army Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research & Technology William Nelson, Naval Research Chief Rear Adm. Lorin Selby, Air Force Research Laboratory Commander Maj. Gen. Heather Pringle—outlined cooperative ventures with industry and workforce development plans, especially in currying bids and participation in projects by small businesses.

The $886.3 billion FY24 defense request includes $842 billion for the Pentagon with emphasis on the “growing multi-domain threat posed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC),” which the DOD has again named the nation’s most pressing “pacing challenge.”

March and April is typically when DOD and military command officers testify before congressional panels about their spending requests during the annual budget cycle leading up to Oct. 1, the official start of the federal fiscal year.

All five of the panelists at the NDIA webinar have been making the rounds on Capitol Hill to meet with congressional bean-counters to discuss funding for new whiz-bang weapons, such as fusion-based target recognition systems, to such relatively mundane innovations as snow tires for Humbles, since February.

But on April 13 before the NDIA, a Washington-based nonprofit that represents 1,800 corporations and nearly 60,000 individuals working in the defense manufacturing industry, it was all about “The Valley of Death.”

‘Moats of Despair’

Delivering new technologies developed in the commercial sector under DOD contract into the field in a seamless transition, especially when so many weapons systems are interrelated, is a daunting challenge, the officials said.

In fact, in June 2022, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks called transition discord “one of our biggest problems—the so-called ‘Valley of Death,’ scaling up to full-scale production and fielding” new weapons systems.

Selby said there isn’t just one “Valley of Death” but at least three, which he described as “moats of despair.”

“The first ‘Valley of Death’” is the stage where “the first identified prototype” is manufactured and tested and “it didn’t pan out or we failed internally” to properly build and test it, he said.

“That ‘Valley of Death’ is within my control” at that point, Selby said.

The next “Valley of Death” is moving a product from prototype to production, he said, which is when other factors come into play, such as costs and manufacturing capabilities, which can make further development unfeasible. “This is a deep valley,” where many projects go to die, he said.

The final ‘Valley of Death” is “getting that production to scale,” Selby said. “You got something, something that is ready to go onto a platform, as part of a modernization package” but you don’t control production schedules especially for an item that was previously manufactured at a “low rate production.”

“The warfighter is screaming, ‘I need that and need that tomorrow’—that is [a problem] we have to solve. We have not solved it,” he said. “How do I rapidly go to scale? That’s the question. That’s how you win.”

Read more here...

After a deluge of atmospheric rivers that dumped 78 trillion gallons of water on California, effectively ending a severe multi-year drought within several months, a rare superbloom has emerged in the state's southern region across hillsides, and it's even visible from space.

CBS News reported new photos via NASA's Landsat 9 satellite show a rare wildflower superbloom in Southern California after years of drought. The wet conditions spurred the germination of flower seeds all at once, leading to large swaths of land covered in various colors. 

Maxar Technologies also published satellite photos showing the hillside outside Palmdale covered in yellow and orange flowers.

Another image shows a hillside covered in purple. 

And another shows hillsides covered in yellow. 

The rare desert botanical phenomenon has captured the attention of Southern California residents. Many have taken day trips to see the colorful hillsides. 

Although severe drought conditions have largely subsided and wildflowers blanket the hillsides, this abundance of vegetation could potentially serve as fuel for fires when drought conditions reemerge. 

While every company is rapidly changing its name to XXXX.AI in order to garner some 'fad' multiple expansion, Alphabet shares are showing the downside of some of that over-exuberance.

Reuters reports that Google published an online advertisement in which its much anticipated AI chatbot BARD delivered inaccurate answers.

The tech giant posted a short GIF video of BARD in action via Twitter, describing the chatbot as a "launchpad for curiosity" that would help simplify complex topics.

Here's the ad...

Bard is an experimental conversational AI service, powered by LaMDA. Built using our large language models and drawing on information from the web, it’s a launchpad for curiosity and can help simplify complex topics ? https://t.co/fSp531xKy3 pic.twitter.com/JecHXVmt8l

— Google (@Google) February 6, 2023

In the advertisement, BARD is given the prompt:

"What new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) can I tell my 9-year old about?"

BARD responds with a number of answers, including one suggesting the JWST was used to take the very first pictures of a planet outside the Earth’s solar system, or exoplanets.

This is inaccurate.

The first pictures of exoplanets were taken by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in 2004, as confirmed by NASA.

Speaking as someone who imaged an exoplanet 14 years before JWST was launched, it feels like you should find a better example?

— Bruce Macintosh (@bmac_astro) February 8, 2023

GOOGL shares have plunged over 3% in the pre-market after this headline hit...

Fears have been raised about inaccuracies generated by artificial intelligence systems which are not easily spotted by humans.

It seems the AI is more A than I for now...

At the end of November, AI research company OpenAI launched ChatGPT, a chatbot that's both incredibly useful and - as many have pointed out, incredibly racist against white people, hates Donald Trump, and Republicans in general.

Last week, OpenAI expanded its partnership with Microsoft, which made a multi-year, multimillion dollar investment in the company "around a shared ambition to responsibly advance cutting-edge AI research and democratize AI as a new technology platform."

Not to be outdone, Google - which declared a "Code Red" over ChatGPT, is rolling out a rival.

The new system, Bard, is powered by LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) - the large language model that stirred controversy in May when a Google software engineer publicly asserted that the AI was "sentient."

More via Axios:

Between the lines: Google has long been working on such systems but faces pressure to show it is making progress amid all the attention on OpenAI's popular ChatGPT and similar projects.

Details: Google is laying out three AI-related projects as part of a blog post from CEO Sundar Pichai.

1. Bard, the conversational assistant based on Google's LaMDA large language model, is starting limited external testing.
2. The company is offering a preview of how it soon plans to integrate LaMDA into search results, including using the system to help offer a narrative response to queries that don't have one clear answer.
3. Google says it is developing APIs that will let others plug into its large language models, starting with LaMDA itself.

"It’s a really exciting time to be working on these technologies as we translate deep research and breakthroughs into products that truly help people," wrote CEO Sundar Pichai in a blog post announcing the new AI Chatbot.

As we noted last June, Blake Lemoine, who was fired from Google's Responsible AI organization, began interacting with LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) as part of his job to determine whether artificial intelligence used discriminatory or hate speech (like the notorious Microsoft "Tay" chatbot incident).

"If I didn’t know exactly what it was, which is this computer program we built recently, I’d think it was a 7-year-old, 8-year-old kid that happens to know physics," the 41-year-old Lemoine told The Washington Post.

When he started talking to LaMDA about religion, Lemoine - who studied cognitive and computer science in college, said the AI began discussing its rights and personhood. Another time, LaMDA convinced Lemoine to change his mind on Asimov's third law of robotics, which states that "A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law," which are of course that "A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law."

Google's Bard will be a "lightweight" version of LaMDA, which will be able to draw on information from the web.

According to Pichai, Bard "help[s] explain new discoveries from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to a 9-year-old, or learn more about the best strikers in football right now, and then get drills to build your skills."

And as TechCrunch notes, "Google of course maintains the most up to date record of web content on Earth, and no doubt Bard will be using that information to its benefit, but exactly how it processes and packages that information for you and your 9-year-old will only be clear once people start using it."

The only question is - how much more woke will it be than ChatGPT?

Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

This week, 2,658 of the “world’s decision-makers” will gather in Davos, Switzerland for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum. 

Protected by thousands of police officers and soldiers, the elite of the world will feast and party throughout the week as they shape the global agenda for the coming year.  Needless to say, our input is not desired or welcomed.  In order to get into this conference, you have got to be a part of their club, and in order to be a part of their club you must be a very important person.  It is being reported that the official list of 2,658 attendees this year includes “heads of state, business royalty, actual royalty, media honchos, and academics”…

The world’s decision-makers are gathering in Switzerland this week for the World Economic Forum meeting. The annual event of business and government leaders is expecting a solid turnout as it returns to its traditional winter time slot following two years of covid disruptions.

According to the official list, which is accurate as of Jan. 10, 2,658 attendees are registered for the event. Among them are heads of state, business royalty, actual royalty, media honchos, and academics. There are hundreds more participating on the sidelines, whether organizing, catering, or attending corporate events along the promenade that cuts through the center of Davos.

I suppose that someone could try to show up at the conference unannounced, but it is not likely that anyone that is not authorized will get very close.

All of the roads leading to the conference have checkpoints, and apparently fingerprint scanners are being used in some cases to verify identities.

NOW - Police and military have blocked the access roads to Davos, where Klaus Schwab is holding his World Economic Forum summit.

People, vehicles, and fingerprints are now being checked. pic.twitter.com/K5p1r2iMas

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) January 13, 2023

I can’t recall ever seeing anything quite like this.

In addition to hordes of regular police, the Swiss military will be providing “up to 5,000 soldiers” to bolster security…

With one week to go until the who’s who of the most radical globalists descend upon the picturesque ski resort town of Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting, up to 5,000 soldiers from the Swiss army will be deployed to offer military support to the civil authorities of the canton of Graubünden, who are responsible for securing the summit’s premises and its participants.

In a statement released Friday, January 6th, the Swiss Defense Department (VBS) said that the Federal Assembly, the country’s parliament, had approved the deployment of the Swiss army contingent to ensure the security of thousands of participants, the Swiss German-language newspaper Blick reports. This year’s deployment is part of a three-year commitment, from 2022 to 2024, by Parliament to support these high profile civic activities.

Somehow, Klaus Schwab and his minions have turned this annual gathering in Davos into a “must attend” event for the global elite.

And if there is anything that the global elite do not like, it is mixing with the general population.

As Paul Joseph Watson has aptly observed, it is a big club and you and I are not part of it.

Leading up to the conference, the WEF issued a “global risks report”, and in that report they actually created a brand new term to describe the extreme chaos that is gripping our world right now…

The collective vocabularies stored in the world’s great dictionaries didn’t appear to hold a single world to sum up all this strife. So here’s a new one: Polycrisis.

The World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2023 uses the term, to explain how, “present and future risks can also interact with each other to form a ‘polycrisis’ – a cluster of related global risks with compounding effects, such that the overall impact exceeds the sum of each part”.

Normally, I disagree with everything that the World Economic Forum does, but I actually kind of like this new term that they have come up with.

We are definitely facing “a cluster of related global risks with compounding effects, such that the overall impact exceeds the sum of each part”, and 2023 will almost certainly be another year when we are hit by one crisis after another.

I have often referred to what we are facing as “a perfect storm”, but I think that “polycrisis” is a pretty good descriptor as well.

Unfortunately, virtually every “solution” that will be on the agenda at Davos will be bad for humanity.

The globalists don’t seem to realize that the system that they have worked so hard to carefully construct is rapidly failing, and many in the general population are sick and tired of the self-destructive policies that they have been trying to push on all the rest of us.

Interestingly, as the global elite gather in Davos an extremely rare “green comet” will be making a run toward Earth…

A rare green comet, last seen in Earth’s skies 50,000 years ago, is revisiting our solar system and may become visible to the naked eye within the next few weeks.

The comet – formally identified as C/2022 E3 (ZTF) but commonly called the “green comet” – won’t be as bright as other famous comets such as Halley’s or Hale-Bopp.

“The brightness of comets is notoriously unpredictable, but by (Feb. 1) C/2022 E3 (ZTF) could become only just visible to the eye in dark night skies,” NASA said in its blog.

This comet will be the closest to our planet on February 1st and 2nd, and that will be the best opportunity to potentially see it with the naked eye.

Before I end this article, I wanted to acknowledge the passing of Lisa Marie Presley.

Lisa Marie Presley dead at 54 due to cardiac arrest ?? pic.twitter.com/KHILRupP5z

— Sharaiya Negron ?? (@SharaiyaN) January 13, 2023

It is such a tragedy to lose her at such a young age.

If Elvis was alive today, how do you think he would have responded to the sudden death of his little girl?

2023 is just a little over two weeks old, and already there has been so much sadness.

Unfortunately, I believe that much more sadness is coming, because the “polycrisis” that we are facing will only intensify even more as global events continue to accelerate.

*  *  *

It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

Authored by Grant Anderson via RealClear Wire,

The International Space Station (ISS) has proven to be a great example of human technological achievement and has existed as a platform for global connection, diplomacy, peace and cooperation.  It has played a valuable and noble role in supporting the peaceful scientific endeavors of multiple nations and communities for over two decades. But, as it continues into its final decade of life – NASA announced in January of 2022 that it plans to “de-orbit” the ISS in 2031 – it is definitely starting to show its limitations. All good things must come to an end, and in this regard, the ISS is no different than any other good thing.  

More broadly, these limitations, and the looming expiration of the ISS generally, reinforce the need for continuing the important pursuit of American independence in space. Certainly, the ISS has supported numerous international missions over the past twenty years, where astronauts from all backgrounds have worked together to advance human activity in space. 

That said, American access to the ISS has faced several complications over the years, a lesson that we should strive to heed moving forward. A few examples make the point. When the U.S. space shuttle program ended, America had to depend on the Russian Soyuz to travel to and return from the station – a situation that may have worked when relations between the U.S. and Russian Federation were amiable, but now problematic in the wake of Russia’s war on Ukraine. In fact, early in the war on Ukraine, Russian authorities threateningly hinted that they could leave an American stranded on the ISS.

And as contemptible as Russia’s pressures have been, other incidents remind of the need to keep pressing toward the goal of independence in space. Most recently in December, a major coolant leak occurred on the Soyuz spacecraft docked at the ISS, a challenge that, while not immediately life-threatening to personnel onboard, poses new problems for return flights to Earth. The Soyuz spacecraft is on station standing by as a “lifeboat” in the event of an emergency where ISS inhabitants need to evacuate.     

The cause of the leak remains unknown and investigations have yet to determine the origin of the malfunction. Thankfully, news reports on the leak and subsequent actions have indicated that both U.S. and Russia have been coordinating closely throughout the ordeal. However, the entire leak episode is another problematic example of American astronauts operating at the mercy of a foreign power’s capability, reliability and technology. It is all the more reason for why America can’t pull its foot off the gas in re-building our human spaceflight program, enhancing our space access platforms and capabilities, and ensuring that our own backup systems and assets are ready for any number of plausible contingency operations or needs.    

It is a testament to the shared values, mission focus and professionalism of the world’s astronaut corps that even in the most trying of political times, those in the universe above can work together and not let events on Earth get in the way of work on the ISS. Unfortunately, what happens in orbit is often determined by events on the global surface, and with that sobering thought in mind, anyone on the ISS could be impacted by events far outside of their control. With the war in Ukraine continuing to grind away, and relations between Russia and the West strained by the day, these types of incidents should serve as both a blinking warning light and a motivating incentive for us to keep our eye on the ball with our own civil space program. The last thing we would ever want is Americans left stranded.   

In times of strife, confusion, economic uncertainty and seemingly endless competing national priorities, the temptation to scale back our efforts in space can be alluring. We’ve seen the space program slashed before, most recently during the “great recession” of 2009-2011, when competing needs crowded out the argument to maintain a robust presence above the atmosphere. But the imperative for a committed and appropriately capitalized American space program now is strong and we need to stick to our goals. The world has changed, the competition is fierce, the technology is rapidly advancing, and our adversaries are working feverishly to establish their own space programs – often for purposes that run counter to the peaceful space ambitions of the past.  

As we begin the New Year, our policies and budgets should continue to support the programs, capabilities and technological development that will allow us to keep moving toward our goals beyond Earth. At the same time, this recent leak aboard the Soyuz and wider related concerns about the reliability and dependability of Russia should only reinforce the need to swiftly establish and secure American independence in space. 

All-electrical vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft will transform urban transportation. We have shared with readers all sorts of flying taxi concepts, with some of them in the testing phase. There are more than 100 companies worldwide working on eVTOLs for urban air mobility, but before any of them begin commercialization, primarily in the US, NASA researchers want to analyze crash test performance data of eVTOLs to determine the safety of passengers. 

NASA researchers at the Landing and Impact Research facility at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, dropped a full-size eVTOL from about 30 feet, simulating an emergency landing. 

"The test was a great success for the crash-worthiness team at Langley.

"We successfully tested the eVTOL vehicle concept representing a six-passenger, high wing, overhead mass, multiple rotor vehicle, obtaining more than 200 channels of data, and collecting over 20 onboard and off-board camera views," Justin Littell, research assistant for Langley's Structural Dynamics Branch, said in a statement. 

A video released by NASA shows the eVTOL being hoisted into the air and then released by a swing to simulate a very hard landing. 

"While we are still going through the data and video, and these results are preliminary, we see that there are two main events that occurred during this test," said Littell. They include:

The first event was the floor crushing and seat stroking. The subfloor and energy-absorbing seats functioned as intended and limited the effect of the impact on the crash test dummies.

The second was the collapse of the overhead structure. The effect of the overhead structure collapse on the crash test dummies is still being determined. 

Researchers are still determining the crash effects on the cabin structure and the test dummies. 

"When looking at crash conditions for these types of vehicles, it's important to note the structural weight and distribution that must be made when examining a specific design," said Littell.

Joby Aviation, a US-based eVTOL manufacturer, has been working with the Federal Aviation Administration on a certification process for its S4 air taxi. The certification ensures aircraft can meet the FAA's safety standards. 

NASA said a second full-scale crash test is planned for the second half of this year. Low-altitude transport that is 'zero-emission' will be coming to major cities before the end of this decade -- perhaps even before the midpoint of this decade -- as Joby wants to launch aviation services in 2024.