Watching earth from space

My Sunday movie was The Wonderful: Stories From the Space Station. It’s a documentary about some of the astronauts who spent time on the International Space Station. We heard from Bill Shepard and one of his Russian colleagues from the first mission; a few other Americans, male and female; one from Japan; one from Italy; one from England; and another from Russia. They each told how they became interested in space, what they had to do to get in to the astronaut corps, and then some of their experiences once an astronaut and on the ISS. We also heard from the husband and son of one of the female astronauts and from a woman who was barred from being an astronaut, so became an astronaut trainer. There was, of course, a lot of cool images of the station and of the earth as seen from the station. Some of the stories: Frank Culbertson was on the station during then 9/11 attacks. He and his colleagues were able to take photos of the smoke plume rising from lower Manhattan. Ken Bowersox was on the station when the Columbia shuttle broke up on reentry in 2003. So how were they to come home at the end of their mission? The second Russian we heard from was the son of the Star City commander. His parents didn’t know he applied until his father saw his name in the interview schedule. The ISS story began in 1963 when President John Kennedy went before the United Nations and proposed the US and USSR cooperate in space. He was assassinated a couple weeks later, so this effort didn’t happen until the 1990s. The ISS is pretty cool in that components were developed by 15 countries and these pieces didn’t touch each other until they were assembled in space – and they fit and worked together! International cooperation is possible. While I enjoyed the movie and would recommend it to space geeks, there were some aspects I didn’t like: There were a lot of images that had nothing to do with space or the story of a particular astronaut, which I thought padded the movie. It was over two hours. I would have much preferred more images of actual life on the ISS (see the title). For nearly every astronaut we watched their takeoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. After the first two I wanted to see the station, not another launch. Only one or two astronauts in this film took off from Cape Canaveral. Several of the images of earth from space were shown two and three times. With the ISS now up there over 20 years I thought they wouldn’t need to repeat any images. Aldous Pennyfarthing of Daily Kos reported that when Glenn Youngkin campaigned for governor of Virginia he carefully walked a fine line between thinly veiled racism and keeping the nasty guy an arm’s length away. He appealed to the racists while keeping the suburban voters who grew to dislike the nasty guy. And it worked. He’s not yet in office and already there is trouble. Youngkin said he would not attempt to block local vaccine and mask mandates. He also hired a staffer “with pronouns” – someone connected enough to the LGBTQ community to know to make transgender people comfortable by declaring which pronouns they prefer. That means the MAGA crowd is declaring him to be RINO – Republican in name only – and insufficiently loyal to their cause. And they have buyer’s remorse. Dartagnan of the Kos community reported there are several lawsuits against the rules requiring all companies with 100 or more employees have all workers fully vaccinated or have regular testing. The Fifth Circuit put a stay on those rules. The various state lawsuits were combined. But so many states sued, the question is which circuit will hear the case? So they held a lottery and the Sixth Circuit will hear the case. Not that it matters because the case will go to the Supremes. What is of interest is the stakes involved. It involves the “non-delegation” doctrine, something I’ve mentioned a couple years back. For decades the precedent has been Congress can delegate rule making authority to federal agencies. Congress defines broad outlines, the agencies fill in the details. This is good because Congress does not have the time, interest, or expertise to write rules for workplace safety or environmental cleanliness. The non-delegation doctrine would prevent agencies from creating rules. Congress would have to specify every detail of every rule. At least Neil Gorsuch of the Supremes has said he’s in favor of the non-delegation doctrine and may be looking for a test case to put it into effect. Conservatives (and their corporate backers) don’t like the “regulatory state.” And this would be a way to get rid of it. But it is that “regulatory state” that protects the environment, the consumer, and the worker from predatory practices of corporations.