Today (June 30, 2020) is 112 years ago that a 100 mtr asteroid exploded in the atmosphere over the desolated Tunguska area in Russia. A forest area of 2000 km2 was instantly flattened.  Just 7 years ago, in the morning of  february 15, 2013, we were reminded again. An airburst of the Chelyabinsk meteor created an explosion of about 30 times the Hiroshime atomic bomb at an altitude of 30 km. This time, the casualties were not trees but windows, that shattered all over the place.

These events should explain humanity why the dinosaurs never celebrated Asteroid day. They were violently wiped out 65 million years ago by an asteroid, with a diameter of at least 10 km. The remaining Chicxulub crater in Mexico is still the remaining witness of this event.

Hello everyone!

I thought I should write a quick post since I haven't done so in a while.  I'm still alive ;)  

In the past few weeks, I've been busy working on a project related to COVID risk.  I've learned quite a bit recently about virology and how to model epidemics.  One of the most notable things was the bimodal nature of the disease (where many cases are asymptomatic) means it is challenging to contain or know the prevalence.

Now that there are a few serology studies released, we are beginning to see that the disease has affected more people than previously reported.  The good news there is that the infection fatality rate (IFR) is likely not as high as the worst-case estimates, but it's still very significant for the older population.  If someone told you that 1 out of every 5-10 older adults who get the disease would die, then maybe we can begin to appreciate it's severity.  Not that younger people are free of risk either.  The latest estimates have reported that 1 out of every 100 people who get the disease will die from it.

That brings me to much of what I observe and read about in terms of younger people unafraid of the disease, not taking precautions, or engaging in risky behaviour.  Just because younger people are less likely to die, they still spread the virus and kill others.

Hopefully, everyone is safe.  I am curious to hear about your personal experiences where you are.

~ Z

Today (June 16, 2020) is 57 years ago that Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman to fly in space. She orbited the Earth 48 times, spent almost three days in space on board the Vostok 6. She still holds the record for youngest female, at age 26, in Space and remains the only woman to have been on a solo space mission.

As a symbolic tribute to the power of women, the second name of my daughter is also Valentina. I hope one day they could meet for a photo opp! 

Below some nice Russian propaganda about her fairy tale life ;-)

My latest Space Podcast is now available. Listen to the latest news (in Dutch) on Oneweb, Crew Dragon and the upcoming flotilla to Mars! 

All episodes from all seasons of the Eye On Orbit Space podcast can be listened back here.

The launch of the Crew Dragon DM2 is often worded in a confusing way to the general public as the first commercial space launch. This Zapread post aims at putting this claim into some context.

The actual correct wording should be: the first commercially operated human orbital spaceflight launch. First of all, there is suborbital vs orbital space. Space kind of officially begins beyond 100 km altitude. Companies like Virgin Galactic are developing a Space Tourism service that would bring astronauts just over this treshold. Getting astronauts to actually orbit the Earth is a whole different ball game requiring much more potent rockets to reach an ISS altitude of 400 km and orbital velocity of 7.5 km/s. Secondly, commercial launches have been going on for many decades to put for example Telecom and Earth Observation satellites into orbit. 

The table below shows the evolution of Human orbital spaceflight together with some characteristics to demonstrate, that the DM2 mission is 'just' a little step towards a more economically sound way of bringing astronauts to Space. The next step, with a private citizen astronaut that is paying for him/herself, on-board a rocket operated by a commercial entity, would be the next step in the evolution. At this moment, Yusaku Maezawa is the most likely person to bring this evolution further.

Greetings everyone,

I thought I would write a quick progress update on the status of getting LN transactions up again.

I've implemented all of the fixes for the deposits and withdrawals.  Theoretically, I could re-enable now.  However, I am going to fix up some other aspects as well, which will further improve the safety of funds. 

Here is what I am doing:

• I am making user tips more robust.  Anonymous tips (via LN) now have the same funds safety checks to ensure that the intended user gets the funds.
• I am making voting more robust.  Again - I am going to ensure proper funds synchronization when a user spends funds on votes as when a user makes a withdraw.  Although this part doesn't touch the Lightning Network, I'm going to improve it anyway.  In the process, you will notice that voting will be much more ... zippy.  This improvement is both a safety and performance improvement.

Once I have these two other improvements complete and tested, I will be turning LN transactions back on.

Update (May 29, 2020): Slated for launch on saturday May 30, 21:22 CET (wednesday May 27, 22:23 CET), the US will again be capable to bring humans into orbital Space. The US had grounded itself for nearly a decade, when on July 8 2011, the Space Shuttle Atlantis made a full stop on the massive Kennedy Space Center landing strip. Now, the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule is ready to go with 2 astronauts to bring a visit to the International Space Station. An historic step in the heritage line that started with the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programmes in the 60s, and continued from there onwards with the Space Shuttle programme. Now the US has embarked on a new, more commercially oriented, model for bringing astronauts into orbital Space. Where previous Human Spaceflight endeavours were fully executed by NASA staff and contractors, now the Human access to orbital space is bought by NASA as a service from SpaceX. I just wished they did the same thing for Deep Space Exploration and had motballed SLS by now.

Human access to Space is a highly prolific achievement in the geopolitical context. I believe, if everything goes well with the Crew Dragon, Soyuz is doomed and tensions between US and Russia will rise further. Europe traditionally has declined to play a role in Human access to Space. From a practical point of view, the economic investment is too big and the economic and scientific returns are too marginal. Yet, from an inspirational and geopolitical dimension, it might just need to step into the game. Let's get Hermes to fly again!

Watch the launch live via YouTube!

Hello everyone,

I noticed strange activity on the ZapRead LN node.  I have stopped it for the time being.  Apologies for the inconvenience.  I will investigate but hopefully there is no issue.  

It looks like some kind of bot activity making withdraws.  

I'll follow up with an update once I sort it out.

Since last year, I started a fundraiser on Tallycoin, the Bitcoin Patreon challenger, to support my activities for Space Education & Outreach. It was a bit to try out new Lightning Network services, like ZapRead, and was actually dormant, untill I shared my Blockstream Satellite 2.0 set-up on twitter, and bitcoin twitter got crazy! In addition to new donations, I have gained tens of new followers within a day or so!

After sharing a video, Bitcoin twitter got even more crazy, and I even had the pleasure to interact with a BSV follower, who thought this was all just hobby for fun (I mean, in no way will we get gigameg blocks down every 10 minutes from Space). Well, partly he is right, it is a lot of fun to bring Blockstream Satellite 2.0 up- and running, and doing all kind of experiments.

It is this kind of fun that I also want to bring about in my Space Education & Outreach activities. Whenever this Corona lockdown is over and schools and events are up and running again, I want to go out and tell the public about the wonders of space and the universe. At the same time, I want them to interact with my mobile Blockstream Satellite 2.0 set-up, and my Lacuna Space IOT terminal. I even want to donate such set-ups so they can experiment themselves.

For these things, I look for donations as schools often don't have the means to finance my Space Education & Outreach workshops. So chip in for the crowdfunding at Tallycoin, also with LN microdonations, and make it happen for kids at schools and events!

My bitcoin node, on an old and grumpy Linux laptop, has been getting the latest bitcoin ledger blocks through Blockstream Satellite since 2018. Blockstream Satellite is a service that is enabled by 4 geostationairy satellites, to cover the largest part of the globe. These 4 satellites broadcast the bitcoin ledger on a continuous basis. As an add-on, there is a Lightning Network powered Blockstream Satellite API which can be used to broadcast data globally, for only a few satoshis.

Last week, Blockstream announced an upgrade to the service, that included new S/W that should provide higher datarates and higher datalimits for files to share with the Blockstream Satellite API. In addition, there are a number of new Blockstream products in store, amongst which the flat panel receiver is most interesting for me. One recurring challenge is always to point my dish exactly to the Telstar 11N satellite. Just mispointing 0.5 degree means totally missing that satellite's signal from an altitude 36.000 km above the equator. In addition, the LNB, in the focal point of my dish, has an offset that is sometimes bigger than the bandwidth of the signal. As such, the S/W doesn't recognise the signal, and you think the dish is not pointed well, while actually, it is pointing where it needs to be pointed. With a flat panel, this will be so much easier. Just place it roughly in a clear direction, and you should be done. 2nd on my list is one of those TBS 5927 DVB-S2 tuners. What happens now is that such a tuner is being simulated in my SDR USB dongle, and it becomes steaming hot.

I have been testing the new S/W now for a few days, and got it to work! An update of bitcoind from version 0.15 to 0.19 is needed, as there exists now a special Bitcoind Satellite edition!

One thing I noticed is that cable length between my dish and computer has a big impact on the performance. As this is not noticable with the good old Blockstream Satellite 1.0, this took some time to find out. Of course the higher datarates become, the higher the losses in the COAX cable become. There is a number of S/W and H/W updates that I still want to make before I have it exactly as I want, but I can recommend anyone running a bitcoin node to try this out! For little less than 100 euro you can get the equipment to make it work the DIY way, or you go immediately for one of the Blockstream Satellite kits of course.

My Blockstream Satellite set-up is also an integral part of my new company Bitlinq. Together with the Lacuna Space IOT terminal, I have created an off-grid internet access capability.

I wish you a happy 3rd halving! This morning, my node predicted it to be at 22:00 CET tonight (May 11, 2020).