The only thing that makes this a happy New Year’s Eve is that here in the Bandera area of Texas we have been getting rain all day long. It started late last night with a light show and some claps of thunder. I really enjoyed just sitting here in the house, watching and listening to that show. We got some rain in the last few days. Looking at the precipitation map at the National Weather Service Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service Precipitation Analysis, we have received between 0.5 and 1 inch of rain in the last seven days.

This rain has been a blessing and relief as we have been in Extreme Drought for a while. Here is the Texas drought map from the National Integrated Drought Information System (if you want to see your state select Regions => States):

I outlined Bandera County in black. It is just northwest of San Antonio. Looking at some of the other maps for states, it appears that LL over at Virtual Mirage is in Exceptional Drought (Arizona, so what — I lived there a year for pilot training and know), drjim and WSF are in Severe Drought there near Boulder, Colorado, the OldNFO is fortunate to be in Abnormally Dry to Moderate Drought as I know he lives in North Central Texas and CW of Daily Time Waster is in Extreme Drought along with me. The following chart shows the drought levels along with drought information current as of December 29th, 2020 for Texas. Each state has a comparable chart along with the map.

While I was preparing the above images and getting some of that other good information around 16:40 local, lo and behold, there was snow falling. It wasn’t heavy, but hey, that is an abnormal occurrence down in these parts. It won’t be a white New Year’s Day. The lead photograph is our fireplace burning on this cold day.

Speaking of New Year’s Day and the new year, I am not much up for wishing “Happy New Year” this year. As I posted over at OldNFO’s blog, I am not very optimistic about the coming year. I think in hindsight (yeah, 2020 – snicker), that this past year will just be prelude to 2021. I fear that no matter what, there will be bad times ahead. We have become multiple, extremely divergent factions living within the same borders with divisions so deep that we cannot live together. Even the political Left has some factions that are so extreme that they may fight among each other. For instance in Colorado, people claiming to be Earth First terrorists, sabotaged the natural gas lines around Aspen. I don’t consider that to be a bastion of Conservatism though I may be wrong. Up in Washington state, trains have been derailed by an unknown group. Then we have Portland, Seattle and some other areas with Democrat Governments suffering from continued rioting by BLM/Antifa.

I, as a Christian, view the current events as a major outbreak of Evil in the greater Cosmological War between Good and Evil. Pray that this great Evil will be taken away.

BillB

Merry Christmas to any who stop by. For me this is the first day of the Season of Christmas, so I will also wish to any and all 11 more days of Merry Christmas till we reach the day of Epiphany when we celebrate the recognition by the Three Wise Men from the East of the Messiah. For some in the Anglican way that I was raised in the figures of the Three Wise Men move gradually to the the Creche over these 11 days. I think it is a wonderful way to extend the Joy of the Season beyond just the 25th of December by having the Christian Season of Christmas.

BillB

As I said on Monday, I was awaiting SpaceX’s Starlink-15 mission launch before posting about SpaceX. Well it happened last night, Tuesday 24 November. Another 66 Starlink satellites were placed into their initial orbit (the satellites start at about 225 Km (~140 miles)). They will move up to a final 550 Km (~340 miles) orbit for operation. The Falcon 9 booster, B1049, used for this flight had flow 6 times before. They stuck the landing of the first stage on the recovery drone ship “Of Course I Still Love You (OCISLY)”. They now have a 7 times used booster setting a new record that only SpaceX owns. For me this kind of reuse was Science Fiction for most of my life.

The above follows SpaceX’s successful launch of the Sentinel-6A this past Saturday, 21 November from the West Coast Launch Facilities at Vandenburg AFB. That launch used Falcon 9 booster B1063, which I believe was a first use. I was late to the computer that day but did re-watch the live stream. The booster was successfully recovered on a Return to Launch Site landing right next to the actual launch pad.

The other SpaceX milestone this week was the successful static fire of the repaired Starship SN8 test article on this past Tuesday. I am adding the test article classification from what we used in aerospace that I worked in as these vehicles are still highly experimental. The repairs resulted from shards of Martyte blown up from the area underneath the test/launch stand that SN8 sits on. Those shards damaged equipment and wiring in the engine area causing damage to one of the 3 Raptor engines that was installed. Per Elon Musk, they are expecting to do the first 15 Km (49,213 ft) flight sometime from next Monday, 30 November, through next Wednesday, 2 December.

Elon still has some doubts about the success of the flight. Hopefully he is proven wrong. He was wrong with the first launch of the Falcon Heavy which he only gave a 50% chance of success to. That launch was mostly successful with just the core booster missing the drone ship.

Lot of things need to go right, so maybe 1/3 chance

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 25, 2020

This stuff is exciting! As I said above this reality used to be the stuff of Science Fiction. There really is the potential for private industry to take the lead in space flight and planetary exploration. Though there are some issues on the horizon. They rotate around the “wokeness” if Senator Biden becomes President. If the NASA Office of Planetary Protection and or the NASA Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Working Group (EDIWG)can get their nose into SpaceX’s business because of a big-government, socialist leaning government all of this could be for naught. The Silicon Graybeard has an article “NASA Has an Anti-Exploration Group Fighting to Keep the US Earthbound” on the EDIWG.

“Hello World!” has become the universally used “first program” in many programming languages. Though WordPress is not as such a programming language, “Hello, World” has more significance here as I am just opening the door into the world of blogging.

This is my own blog, on my own site, on my own computer and at my place. The name references where we live. The header image above was taken by my beautiful bride and it shows the road we live on. This place is probably the last place I will live at. It is a new frontier that I enter since I retired from my many careers.

I hope to expound on life, living, Amateur Radio, cooking to include Texas Hill Country BBQ and many of my other interests. This blog will grow and change as I learn more of the ins and outs of WordPress (or whatever powers it) and can improve this blog’s and website’s performance.

BillB