DERELICTION OF DUTY  The nine members of the January 6 Committee sit for a group portrait

Donald Trump never said he’d abide by the outcome of the election. In May of 2020, fearing that Biden might win in November, he tweeted, “It will be the greatest Rigged Elec­tion in history!” He under­stood that he would likely lose but that, owing to an effect known as the Red Mirage, it would look, for a while, as if he had won: more Democrats than Republicans would vote by mail and since mail-in ballots are often the last to be counted, early counting would favor Republicans. “When that happens,” Roger Stone advised him, “the key thing to do is to claim victory. ... No, we won. Fuck you, Sorry. Over.” That was Plan A.
In September, The Atlantic published a bombshell article by Barton Gellman report­ing that the Trump campaign had a scheme “

to bypass election results and appoint loyal elec­tors in battle­ground states where Repub­li­cans hold the legis­la­tive majority.” That was Plan B.
Plan A (‘Fuck you’) was more Trump’s style. “He’s gon­na declare victory,” Steve Ban­non said. “But that doesn’t mean he’s the win­ner. He’s just gonna say he’s a win­ner.” On Election Night, Novem­ber 3rd, Trump wanted to do just that, but his campaign team persuaded him not to. His patience didn’t last long. “This is a fraud on the American public,” Trump said on November 4th. “We were getting ready to win this elec­tion. Frankly, we did win this election.” The next day he tweeted, “Stop The Count!” On November 7th, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, ABC, the Associated Press, and Fox News all declared that Joseph Biden had won. The election was not close. Counting the votes just took a while.
After Biden won, Trump continued to insist that widespread fraud had been com­mit­ted. Bill Stepien, Trump’s cam­paign man­ager, told the January 6 Committee that the cam­paign became a “truth telling squad,” chas­ing allega­tions, discovering them to be unfounded, and telling the President, “Yeah, that wasn’t true.” The Depart­ment of Home­land Security looked into allegations, most of which popped up online, and announced, “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.” The Justice Department, too, investigated charges of fraud, but, as Barr informed the committee, he was left telling the President, repeatedly, “They’re not panning out.”
For Plan C, the Presi­dent turned to Rudy Giuliani and a group of lawyers that included Sidney Powell. They filed 62 lawsuits challenging election results, and lost all but one of these suits (and that one involved neither allegations of fraud nor any significant number of votes).

Twenty-two of the judges who decided these cases had been appointed by Repub­li­cans, and ten had been appointed by Trump.
On December 11th, the Supreme Court reject­ed a suit that had challenged the results in Penn­syl­va­nia, Geor­gia, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Trump had had every right to challenge the results of state elections, but at this point he had exhausted his legal options. He decided to fall back on Plan B, the fake-electors plan, which required hundreds of legislators across the country to set aside the popular vote in states won by Biden, claiming that the results were fraudulent and appoint­ing their own slate of electors, who would cast their Elec­tor­al College votes for Trump on December 14th. Accord­ing to Cassidy Hutchi­son, an aide to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, the White House counsel deter­mined that, since none of the fraud alle­ga­tions had been upheld by any court, the fake-electors plan was illegal. But one deputy assistant to the President told Trump that it didn’t matter whether there had been fraud or not, because “state legis­la­tors ‘have the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to substitute their judg­ment for a certified majority of their con­sti­tu­ents’ if that prevents socaialism.”
Plan B required Trump to put pressure on a lot of people. The com­mit­tee counted at least 200 attempts he made to influence state or local officials by phone, text, posts, or public remarks. Instruct­ing Trump sup­port­ers to join in, Giuliani said, “Some­times it even requires being threat­ened.”

A Trump-campaign spread­sheet documents efforts to contact more than 190 Republican state legis­la­tors in Arizona, Georgia, and Michigan alone.
Barr resigned. “I didn’t want to be part of it,” he told the committee. Plenty of other people were happy to be part of it, though. Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chair, par­tic­i­pat­ed and provided Trump with the assis­tance of RNC staffers. On December 14th, certified electors met in every state. In seven states that Biden had won – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin – fake electors also met and produced counterfeit Electoral College cer­tif­i­cates for Trump. Five of these cer­tif­i­cates were sent to Washington but were rejected because they lacked the required state seal; two arrived after the deadline. None were accepted.
Trump then launched Plan D, which was not so much a plan as a pig’s breakfast of a con­spir­a­cy, a coup, and a putsch. Every­thing turned on January 6th, the day a joint ses­sion of Congress was to certify the results of the Elec­toral College vote. To stop that from hap­pen­ing, Trump recruit­ed members of Congress into a con­spir­a­cy to overturn the election by rejecting the certified votes and accepting the counter­feits; he asked the Vice-President to participate in a coup by simply declaring him the win­ner; and he incited his supporters to take over the Capitol by force, in a poorly planned putsch, which he intend­ed to lead. On December 17th, Kayleigh McEnany said on Fox News, “There has been an alter­nate slate of elec­tors voted upon that Congress will decide in January.” Two days later, Trump tweeted, “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild.” The legal architect of the Pence part of the pig’s break­fast – “a coup in search of a legal theory,” as one federal judge called it – was a lawyer named John East­man. The Trump lawyer Eric Hersch­mann recalled a conversation he had with Eastman: “You’re saying you believe the Vice President, acting as Pres­i­dent of the Senate, can be the sole decision­maker as to, under your theory, who becomes the next President of the United States? And he said, yes. And I said, are you out of your Fing mind?”
Trump pressed the act­ing Attor­ney Gen­eral, Jeffrey Rosen, and other mem­bers of the Depart­ment of Justice to aid the conspiracy by declaring some of the voting to have been fraudulent.

Rosen refused. “The DOJ can’t and won’t snap its fingers and change the outcome of the election,” he told Trump. Trump replied, “I don’t expect you to do that. Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican Con­gress­men.” Trump tried to replace Rosen with a lackey named Jeffrey Clark, but, in a tense meeting at the White House on January 3rd, Rosen and others made clear to him that, if he did so, much of the department would resign. Trump and East­man met repeatedly with Pence in the Oval Office and tried to recruit him into the conspiracy. Pence refused. At 11:20 am on January 6th, Trump called Pence and again asked him, and again Pence refused, after which, according to Ivanka, the President called the Vice-President a pussy.
Trump was slated to speak at his be-wild rally at the Ellipse at noon, but when he arrived he was un­happy about the size of the crowd. The Secret Service had set up magnetometers, known as mags, to screen for weapons. Twenty-eight thousand people went through the mags, from whom the Secret Service collected, among other banned items, “269 knives or bades, 242 cannisters of pepper spray, 18 brass knuc­kles, 18 tasers, 6 pieces of body armor, 3 gas masks, 30 batons or blunt instruments.” Some people had ditched their bags, and pre­sum­ably their weapons, in trees or cars. In a crowd that included members of white-supremacist and far-right, anti-gov­ern­ment extremist groups – including the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, America First, and QAnon – another 25,000 people simply refused to go through the mags. “I don’t fuck­ing care that they have weapons,” Trump shouted. “They’re not here to hurt me. Take the fucking mags away.” The mags stayed. Trump took to the podium and fired up his followers for the march to the Capitol until 1:10 pm, and then he walked to his motor­cade, climbed into the Presi­den­tial S.U.V., which is known as the Beast, and demanded to be driven to the Capitol. Secret Service agents persuaded him to return to the White House.
Just before the Joint Session was to begin, at one o’clock, Pence released a written statement: “I do not believe that the Founders of our country intended to invest the Vice Pres­i­dent with unilateral authority to decide which electoral votes should be counted during the Joint Session of Congress.” The voting began.

By 1:21, Trump had been informed that the Capitol was under attack. He spent the rest of the day watching it on tele­vision. For hours, his staff and his advisers begged him to order the mob to dis­perse or to call for mili­tary assis­tance; he refused. At 1:46 Representative Paul Gosar objected to the count from Arizona, after which Senator Ted Cruz endorsed that objection. Pence was evacuated at 2:12. Seconds later, Proud Boys achieved the first breach of the Capitol, smashing a window in the Senate wing. Eleven minutes later, the mob broke through the doors to the East Rotunda, and Trump tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done.” The mob chanted, “Hang Mike Pence.” Meadows told a colleague, “He thinks Mike deserves it.” Kevin McCarthy called the President. “They literally just came through my office windows,” he said. “You need to call them off.” Trump said, “Well, Kevin, I guess they’re just more upset about the election theft than you are.” At 4:17 pm, the President released a video message in which he asked the insur­rec­tion­ists to go home, and told them that he loved them.
And that, in brief, is the executive sum­ma­ry of the Jan­uary 6 Com­mis­sion Report, which concludes that “the central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump.”

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 CANNON FODDER 


 ATTACK ON HOSTOMEL 
Putin sits in front of wall-size map of Russia.

The seat of national pow­er, Kyiv was the main prize. Thus the thrust by elite air­borne forces in the war’s open­ing hours. ... When Presi­dent Vlad­imir Putin launched his war on Feb. 24 after months of build­up on Ukraine’s bor­ders, he sent hun­dreds of heli­cop­ter-borne com­man­dos – the best of the best of Rus­sia’s “spets­naz” (spe­cial forces soldiers) – to assault and seize a light­ly defend­ed air­field on Kyiv’s door­step.

On the first morn­ing of the war, Rus­sian Mi-8 as­sault heli­copters soared south to­ward Kyiv on a mis­sion to attack Hos­to­mel airfield on the north­west out­skirts of the capital. By captur­ing the air­field, also known as Anto­nov air­port, the Rus­sians planned to estab­lish a base from which to fly in more troops and light armored vehi­cles with­in strik­ing dis­tance of the heart of the nation’s larg­est city. It didn’t work that way. Sev­eral Rus­sian heli­copters were report­ed to be hit by mis­siles even be­fore they got to Hos­to­mel, and once set­tled in at the air­field they suf­fered heavy losses from artil­lery fire.

The fact that the Hos­to­mel as­sault by the Rus­sian 45th Guards Spe­cial Pur­pose Air­borne Brig­ade fal­tered might not stand out in retro­spect if the broad­er Rus­sian effort had im­proved from that point. But it did not. ... Last week the Rus­sians aban­doned Hos­to­mel air­field as part of a whole­sale retreat into Bela­rus and Russia.

An effort to take con­trol of a mili­tary air­base in Vasyl­kiv south of Kyiv al­so met stiff resis­tance and report­ed­ly saw sev­eral Rus­sian Il-76 heavy-lift trans­port planes carry­ing para­troop­ers downed by Ukrain­ian defenses.

A sidelight of the bat­tle for Kyiv was the wide­ly report­ed saga of a Rus­sian re­supply con­voy that stretched doz­ens of miles along a main road­way to­ward the capital. It initial­ly seemed to be a worri­some sign for the Ukrain­ians, but they man­aged to attack ele­ments of the con­voy, which had limit­ed off-road cap­ability and thus even­tual­ly dis­persed or other­wise be­came a non-factor in the fight. “They never real­ly pro­vided a re­supply of any value to Rus­sian forces that were assem­bling around Kyiv, never really came to their aid,” said Penta­gon spokes­man John Kirby. “The Ukrain­ians put a stop to that con­voy pretty quick­ly by be­ing very nim­ble, knock­ing out bridges, hit­ting lead vehi­cles and stop­ping their move­ment.” Us­ing a wide array of West­ern arms, includ­ing Jave­lin port­able anti-tank wea­pons, shoul­der-fired Sting­er anti-air­craft mis­siles and much more.

“That’s a real­ly bad com­bi­nation if you want to con­quer a coun­try,” said Peter Man­soor, a retired Army colo­nel and pro­fes­sor of mili­tary his­tory at Ohio State Uni­ver­sity. “[The Rus­sian Army]’s proven it­self to be wholly in­cap­able of conduct­ing mod­ern armored war­fare”. ... Some analysts did ques­tion wheth­er Putin appre­ci­ated how much Ukraine’s forces had gained from West­ern train­ing that inten­si­fied after Putin’s 2014 seiz­ure of Crimea and incur­sion in­to the Donbas.

“It’s stun­ning,” said mili­tary histor­ian Fred­er­ick Kagan of the Insti­tute for the Study of War, who says he knows of no paral­lel to a major mili­tary power like Rus­sia invad­ing a coun­try at the time of its choos­ing and fail­ing so utter­ly. The Rus­sians under­esti­mated the num­ber of troops they would need and showed “an aston­ish­ing in­abil­ity” to per­form basic mili­tary func­tions.

Putin failed to achieve his goal of quick­ly crush­ing Ukraine’s out­gunned and out­num­bered army. The Rus­sians were ill-pre­pared for Ukrain­ian resis­tance, proved in­cap­able of ad­just­ing to set­backs, failed to effec­tive­ly com­bine air and land oper­ations, mis­judged Ukraine’s ability to de­fend its skies, and bun­gled basic mili­tary func­tions like plan­ning and exe­cuting the move­ment of supplies.

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 TRACED CALLS 
The Associated Press pub­lished calls made in March 2022 by three Rus­sian sol­diers, Leonid, Maxim and Ivan, in a mili­tary divi­sion near Bucha, a town outside Kyiv that wit­nessed the first atroc­i­ties of the War on Ukraine. (The Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment had been inter­cept­ing Rus­sian calls when their phones ping Ukrain­ian cell towers, pro­vid­ing im­por­tant real-time intel­li­gence for the mili­tary. Now, the calls are al­so poten­tial evi­dence for war crimes.)
Mom, there was a battle.

Leonid #1: Leonid’s intro­duc­tion to war came on Feb. 24, as his unit crossed into Ukraine from Bela­rus and deci­mat­ed a detach­ment of Ukrain­ians at the bor­der. ... mother: “When did you get scared?” leonid: “When our com­mand­er warned us we would be shot, 100%. He warned us that al­though we’d be bombed and shot at, our aim was to get through.” mother: “Did they shoot you?” leonid: “Of course. We defeat­ed them.” mother: “Mm. Did you shoot from your tanks?” leonid: “Yeah, we did. We shot from the tanks, machine guns and rifles. We had no losses. We des­troyed their four tanks. There were dead bodies ly­ing around and burn­ing. So, we won.” mother: “Oh what a night­mare! Lyon­ka, you want­ed to live at that mo­ment, right honey?” leonid: “More than ever!” mother: “More than ever, right honey?” leonid: “Of course.” mother: “It’s total­ly hor­ri­ble.” leonid: “They were ly­ing there, just 18- or 19-years old. Am I dif­fer­ent from them? No, I’m not.”
Leonid: First, he was shot in his leg. Then his ears were cut off.

Leonid #2: Leonid tells his moth­er their plan was to seize Kyiv with­in a week, with­out fir­ing a single bul­let. ... “It was so con­fus­ing,” he says. “They were well pre­pared.” When Leo­nid tells his moth­er cas­ual­ly about loot­ing, at first she can’t be­lieve he’s steal­ing. But it’s be­come nor­mal for him. As he speaks, he watches a town burn on the hori­zon. “Such a beau­ty,” he says.
leonid: “Look, Mom, I’m look­ing at tons of houses – I don’t know, doz­ens, hun­dreds – and they’re all emp­ty. Every­one ran away.” mother: “So all the peo­ple left, right? You guys aren’t loot­ing them, are you? You’re not go­ing in­to oth­er people’s houses?” leonid: “Of course we are, Mom. Are you crazy?” mother: “Oh, you are. What do you take from there?” leonid: “We take food, bed lin­en, pil­lows. Blan­kets, forks, spoons, pans.” mother: (Laughing) “You got­ta be kid­ding me.” leonid: “Who­ever doesn’t have any – socks, clean under­wear, T-shirts, sweat­ers.”

Leonid #3: Leo­nid tells his moth­er about the ter­ror of go­ing on patrol and not know­ing what or who they will en­coun­ter. ... mother: “Oh Lyon­ka, you’ve seen so much stuff there!” leonid: “Well ... civil­ians are lying around right on the street with their brains com­ing out.” mother: “Oh God, you mean the locals?” leonid: “Yep. Well, like, yeah.” mother: “Are they the ones you guys shot or the ones ...” leonid: “The ones killed by our army.” mother: “Lyon­ya, they might just be peace­ful people.” leonid: “Mom, there was a bat­tle. And a guy would just pop up, you know? Maybe he would pull out a gre­nade launch­er ... Or we had a case, a young guy was stopped, they took his cell­phone. He had all this infor­ma­tion about us in his Tele­gram mes­sages – where to bomb, how many we were, how many tanks we have. And that’s it.” mother: “So they knew every­thing?” leonid: “He was shot right there on the spot.” mother: “Mm.” leonid: “He was 17-years old. And that’s it, right there.” mother: “Mm.” leonid: “There was a pris­on­er. It was an 18-year-old guy. First, he was shot in his leg. Then his ears were cut off. After that, he ad­mit­ted every­thing, and they killed him.” mother: “Did he ad­mit it?” leonid: “We don’t im­pris­on them. I mean, we kill them all.” mother: “Mm.”

Leonid #4: Leonid tells his moth­er he was near­ly killed five times. ... Things are so dis­or­gan­ized, he says, that it’s not un­com­mon for Rus­sians to fire on their own troops – it even hap­pened to him. Some sol­diers shoot them­selves just to get medi­cal leave, he says. mother: “Hel­lo, Lyon­ech­ka.” leonid: “I just want­ed to call you again. I am able to speak.” mother: “Oh, that’s good.” leonid: “There are peo­ple out here who shoot them­selves.” mother: “Mm.” leonid: “They do it for the insur­ance money. You know where they shoot them­selves?” mother: “That’s sil­ly, Lyon­ya.” leonid: “The bot­tom part of the left thigh.” mother: “It’s bull–, Lyon­ya. They’re crazy, you know that, right?” leonid: “Some people are so scared that they are ready to harm them­selves just to leave.” mother: “Yeah, it is fear, what can you say here, it’s human fear. Every­body wants to live. I don’t argue with that, but please don’t do that. We all pray for you. You should cross your­self any chance you get, just turn away from every­one and do it. We all pray for you. We’re all wor­ried.” leonid: “I’m stand­ing here, and you know what the sit­u­a­tion is? I am now 30 meters (100 feet) away from a huge ceme­tery.” (Giggling) mother: “Oh, that’s hor­ri­ble ... may it be over soon.” Leo­nid says he had to learn to emp­ty his mind. “Imagine, it’s night­time. You’re sit­ting in the dark and it’s quiet out there. Alone with your thoughts. And day after day, you sit there alone with those thoughts.” He tells his girl­friend: “I al­ready learned to think of noth­ing while sit­ting out­side.” He prom­ises to bring home a col­lec­tion of bul­lets for the kids. “Tro­phies from Ukraine,” he calls them. His moth­er says she’s wait­ing for him. “Of course I’ll come, why wouldn’t I?” Leo­nid says. “Of course, you’ll come,” his moth­er says. “No doubts. You’re my be­loved. Of course, you’ll come. You are my hap­pi­ness.” Leo­nid re­turned to Rus­sia in May, badly wound­ed, but alive. He told his moth­er Rus­sia would win this war.

Maxim #1: It’s not clear what mili­tary unit Max­im is in, but he makes calls from the same phone as Ivan, on the same days. ... The hunt for locals –men, wom­en and chil­dren – who might be in­form­ing on them to the Ukrain­ian mili­tary is con­stant. Max­im is drunk in some of the calls, slur­ring his words, be­cause life at the front line is more than he can take sober. The on­ly rea­son Max­im is able to speak with his fam­ily back in Rus­sia is be­cause they’ve been steal­ing phones from locals. He says they’re even shak­ing down kids. “We take every­thing from them,” he ex­plains to his wife. “Be­cause they can also be f– spot­ters.” On calls home, the high sweet voice of Max­im’s own young child bub­bles in the back­ground as he talks with his wife. maxim: “Do you know how much a gram of gold costs here?” wife: “No.” maxim: “Rough­ly? About two or three thou­sand rubles, right?” wife: “Well, yeah ...” maxim: “Well, I have 1½ kilo­grams (more than three pounds). With labels even.” wife: “Holy f–, are we loot­ers?!” maxim: “With labels, yeah. It’s just that we f– up this ... We were shoot­ing at this shop­ping mall from a tank. Then we go in, and there’s a f– jewel­ry store. Every­thing was taken. But there was a safe there. We cracked it open, and in­side ... f– me! So the seven of us load­ed up.” wife: “I see.” maxim: “They had these f– neck­laces, you know. In our money, they’re like 30-to-40,000 a piece, 60,000 a piece.” wife: “Holy crap.” maxim: “I scored about a kilo and a half of neck­laces, charms, brace­lets ... these ... ear­rings ... ear­rings with rings ...” wife: “That’s enough, don’t tell me.” maxim: “Any­way, I count­ed and if it’s 3,000 rubles a gram, then I have about 3.5 mil­lion. If you off­load it.” wife: “Got it. How’s the sit­u­a­tion there?” maxim: “It’s f– OK.” wife: “OK? Got it.” maxim: “We don’t have a f– thing to do, so we go around and loot the f– shop­ping mall.” wife: “Just be care­ful, in the name of Christ.” Maxim: Because they can also be fucking spotters.

Maxim #2: Maxim and his moth­er dis­cuss the op­pos­ing stor­ies about the war be­ing told on Ukrain­ian and Rus­sian tele­vision. ... They blame the United States and re­cite con­spi­racy theo­ries pushed by Rus­sian state media. But Max­im and his moth­er be­lieve it’s the Ukrain­ians who are delud­ed by fake news and prop­a­gan­da, not them. The best way to end the war, his moth­er says, is to kill the pres­i­dents of Ukraine and the United States. Later, Max­im tells his moth­er that thou­sands of Rus­sian troops died in the first weeks of war – so many that there’s no time to do any­thing ex­cept haul away the bodies. That’s not what they’re say­ing on Rus­sian TV, his moth­er says. maxim: “Here, it’s all Ameri­can. All the wea­pons.” mother: “It’s the Ameri­cans driv­ing this, of course! Look at their labo­ra­tories. They are devel­op­ing bio­log­i­cal wea­pons. Coro­na­virus lit­eral­ly start­ed there.” maxim: “Yeah, I al­so saw some­where that they used bats.” mother: “All of it. Bats, migrat­ing birds, and even coro­na­virus might be their bio­log­i­cal wea­pon. They even found all these papers with sig­na­tures from the U.S. all over Ukraine. Biden’s son is the master­mind be­hind all of this. ... When will it end? When they stop sup­ply­ing wea­pons.” maxim: “Mm.” mother: “Un­til they catch (Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volo­dy­myr) Zelen­skyy and exe­cute him, noth­ing will end. He’s a fool, a fool! He’s a pup­pet for the U.S. and they real­ly don’t need him, the fool. You watch TV and you feel bad for the peo­ple, the civil­ians, some trav­el­ling with young kids. ... If I was giv­en a gun, I’d go and shoot Biden.” (Laughs) maxim: (Laughs)

Maxim #3: One night last March, Max­im was hav­ing trou­ble keep­ing it to­geth­er on a call with his wife. ... He’d been drink­ing, as he did every night. He told her he’d killed civil­ians – so many he thinks he’s go­ing crazy. He said might not make it home alive. He was just sit­ting there, drunk in the dark, wait­ing for the Ukrain­ian artil­lery strikes to start. wife: “Why? Why are you drink­ing?” maxim: “Every­one is like that here. It’s im­pos­si­ble with­out it here.” wife: “How the f– will you pro­tect your­self if you are tipsy?” maxim: “Total­ly nor­mal. On the con­trary, it’s eas­ier to shoot ... civil­ians. Let’s not talk about this. I’ll come back and tell you how it is here and why we drink!” wife: “Please, just be care­ful!” maxim: “Every­thing will be fine. Hon­est­ly, I’m scared s–less my­self. I nev­er saw such hell as here. I am f– shocked.” wife: “Why the f– did you go there?” Minutes later, he’s on the phone with his child. ‘You’re com­ing back?” the child asks. “Of course,” Maxim says.

Maxim #4: In their last inter­cept­ed call, Maxim’s wife seems to have a prem­o­ni­tion. ... wife: “Is every­thing all right?” maxim: “Yeah. Why?” wife: “Be hon­est with me, is every­thing all right?” maxim: “Huh? Why do you ask?” wife: “It’s noth­ing, I just can’t sleep at night.” Max­im is a lit­tle breath­less. He and his unit are get­ting ready to go. His wife asks him where they’re go­ing. “For­ward, I won’t be able to call for a while.”

Ivan #1: Ivan was in Bela­rus on train­ing when they got a Tele­gram mes­sage: “Tomor­row you are leav­ing for Ukraine. There is a geno­cide of the Rus­sian pop­u­la­tion. And we have to stop it.” ... When his moth­er found out he was in Ukraine, she said she stopped speak­ing for days and took seda­tives. Her hair went gray. Still, she was proud of him. Ivan end­ed up in Bucha. ivan: “Mom, hi.” mother: “Hi, son! How–” ivan: “How are you?” mother: “Van­ya, I under­stand they might be lis­ten­ing so I’m afraid–” ivan: “Doesn’t mat­ter.” mother: “... to ask where you are, what’s hap­pen­ing. Where are you?” ivan: “In Bucha.” mother: “In Bucha?” ivan: “In Bucha.” mother: “Son, be as care­ful as you can, OK? Don’t go charg­ing around! Al­ways keep a cool head.” ivan: “Oh, come on, I’m not charg­ing around.” mother: “Yeah, right! And yes­ter­day you told me how you’re gon­na f– kill every­one out there.” (Laughs) ivan: “We will kill if we have to.” mother: “Huh?” ivan: “If we have to – we have to.” mother: “I under­stand you. I’m so proud of you, my son! I don’t even know how to put it. I love you so much. And I bless you for every­thing, every­thing! I wish you suc­cess in every­thing. And I’ll wait for you no mat­ter what.” Ivan: It is scary, Olya. It really is scary.

Ivan #2: Ivan calls his girl­friend, Olya, and tells her he had a dream about her. ... ivan: “F–, you know, it’s driv­ing me crazy here. It’s just that ... You were just ... I felt you, touched you with my hand. I don’t under­stand how it’s pos­si­ble, why, where ... But I real­ly felt you. I don’t know, I felt some­thing warm, someth­ing dear. It’s like someth­ing was on fire in my hands, so warm ... And that’s it. I don’t know. I was sleep­ing and then I woke up with all these thoughts. War ... You know, when you’re sleep­ing – and then you’re like ... War ... Where, where is it? It was just dark in the house, so dark. And I went out­side, walked around the streets, and thought: damn, f– it. And that’s it. I real­ly want to come see you.” girl­friend: “I am wait­ing for you.” ivan: “Wait­ing? OK. I’m wait­ing, too. Wait­ing for the time I can come see you ... Let’s make a deal. When we see each oth­er, let’s spend the en­tire day to­geth­er. Lay­ing around, sit­ting to­geth­er, eat­ing, look­ing at each oth­er – just us, to­geth­er.” girl­friend: (Laughs) “Agreed.” ivan: “To­geth­er all the time. Hug­ging, cud­dling, kiss­ing ... To­geth­er all the time, not let­ting each oth­er go.” girl­friend: “Well, yeah!” ivan: “You can go f– crazy here. It’s so f– up, the s– that’s hap­pen­ing. I really thought it would be easy here, to tell you the truth. That it’s just gon­na be easy to talk, think about it. But it turned out to be hard, you need to think with your head all the time. So that’s that. We are real­ly at the front line. As far out as you could be. Kyiv is 15 kilo­meters (about 10 miles) from us. It is scary, Olya. It real­ly is scary.” girl­friend: “Hello?” ivan: “Do you hear me?” The line drops.

Ivan #3: As things get worse for Ivan in Ukraine, his moth­er’s patriot­ism deep­ens and her rage grows. ... mother: “Do you have any pre­dic­tions about the end ...?” ivan: “We are here for the time be­ing. We’ll prob­ably stay until they clean up the whole of Ukraine. May­be they’ll pull us out. May­be not. We’re go­ing for Kyiv.” mother: “What are they go­ing to do?” ivan: “We’re not going any­where until they clean up all of these pests.” mother: “Are those bas­tards get­ting cleaned up?” ivan: “Yes, they are. But they’ve been wait­ing for us and pre­par­ing, you under­stand? Pre­par­ing prop­er­ly. Ameri­can moth­erf– have been help­ing them out.” mother: “F– f–. F– kill them all. You have my bless­ing.” ... Death came for Ivan. In July, a local paper pub­lished a notice of his funer­al with a pho­to of him, again in fatigues hold­ing a large rifle. Ivan died heroic­al­ly in Rus­sia’s “spe­cial mili­tary oper­ation,” the announce­ment said. “We will nev­er for­get you. All of Rus­sia shares this grief.” Reached by the AP in Jan­uary, Ivan’s moth­er at first denied she’d ever talked with her son from the front. But she agreed to lis­ten to some of the inter­cept­ed audio and con­firmed it was her speak­ing with Ivan. “He wasn’t in­volved in mur­ders, let alone in loot­ing,” she told the AP be­fore hang­ing up the phone. Ivan was her on­ly son.

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 'THIS MADNESS'  A Russian Soldier's Journal
Forced march to unknown location.
February 15 2022: I arrived to the train­ing ground [in Stary Krym, Cri­mea]. ... Our en­tire squa­dron, about 40 peo­ple, all lived in one tent with plank boards and one make­shift stove. Even in Chech­nya, where we only lived in tents or mud huts, our liv­ing con­di­tions were or­ganized bet­ter. Here we had no­where to wash up and the food was hor­ri­ble. For those who ar­rived later than the rest, me and about five other peo­ple, there was nei­ther a sleep­ing bag, nor camo, armor, or hel­mets left. I final­ly re­ceived my rifle. It turned out that it had a brok­en belt, was rusty and kept get­ting stuck, so I cleaned it in oil for a long time try­ing to put it in order. Around Feb­ruary 20, an order came for every­one to urgent­ly gather and move out, pack­ing light­ly. We were sup­posed to per­form a forced march to some un­known loca­tion. Some peo­ple joked that now we would at­tack Ukraine and cap­ture Kyiv in three days. But al­ready then I thought it is no time for laugh­ter. I said that if some­thing like this were to hap­pen, we would not cap­ture any­thing in three days.

Our salary per day $69.
February 23 2022: The division com­mander ar­rived and, con­gra­tu­lat­ing us on the [Defend­er of the Fatherland] holi­day, an­nounced that start­ing from to­mor­row, our salary per day would be $69. ... It was a clear sign that some­thing serious is about to hap­pen. Rumors be­gan spreading that we are about to go storm Kher­son, which seemed to be non­sense to me. Every­thing changed that day. I no­ticed how peo­ple be­gan to change, some were ner­vous and tried not to com­mu­ni­cate with any­one, some frank­ly seemed scared, some, on the con­trary, were un­usual­ly cheerful.

It's started.
February 24 2022: At about 4 a.m. I opened my eyes again and heard a roar, a rum­ble, a vibra­tion of the earth. ... I sensed an acrid smell of gun­powder in the air. I look out of the truck and see that the sky is lit bright from vol­leys. It was not clear what is hap­pen­ing, who was shoot­ing from where and at whom, but the weari­ness from lack of food, water and sleep dis­ap­peared. A min­ute later, I lit up a cigar­ette to wake up, and real­ized that the fire is com­ing 10-20 kilo­meters ahead of our con­voy. Every­one around me al­so be­gan to wake up and smoke and there was a quiet mur­mur: “It’s start­ed.” We must have a plan. The con­voy be­came ani­mated and start­ed to slow­ly move for­ward. I saw the lights switch on in the houses and peo­ple look­ing out the win­dows and bal­conies of five-story build­ings. It was al­ready dawn, per­haps 6 a.m., the sun went up and I saw a doz­en heli­copters, a doz­en planes, armored as­sault vehi­cles drive across the field. Then tanks ap­peared, hun­dreds of pieces of equip­ment under Rus­sian flags. By 1 p.m. we drove to a huge field where our trucks got bogged down in the mud. I got ner­vous. A huge col­umn stand­ing in the mid­dle of an open field for half an hour is just an ideal tar­get. If the enemy notices us and is near­by, we are f–ed. Many be­gan to climb out of the trucks and smoke, turn­ing to one from an­oth­er. The or­der is to go to Kher­son and capture the bridge across the Dnie­per. I under­stood that some­thing global was hap­pen­ing, but I did not know what exact­ly. Many thoughts were spin­ning in my head. I thought that we couldn’t just at­tack Ukraine, may­be NATO real­ly got in the way and we inter­vened. May­be there are al­so bat­tles go­ing on in Rus­sia, may­be the Ukrain­ians at­tacked to­gether with NATO. May­be there is some­thing go­ing on in the Far East – if Ameri­ca also start­ed a war against us. Then the scale will be huge, and nuclear wea­pons, then sure­ly some­one will use it, damn it. The com­mand­er tried to cheer every­one up. We are going ahead, leav­ing the stuck equip­ment be­hind, he said, and every­one should be ready for bat­tle. He said it with feigned courage, but in his eyes I saw that he was al­so freak­ing out. It was quite dark and we got word that we are stay­ing here un­til dawn. We climbed into sleep­ing bags with­out tak­ing off our shoes, lay­ing on boxes with mines, em­brac­ing our rifles.

We have communication problems.
February 25 2022: Somewhere around 5 in the morn­ing they wake every­one up, tell­ing us to get ready to move out. ... I lit a cigar­ette and walked around. Our prin­ci­pal medi­cal offi­cer was look­ing for a place to put a wound­ed sol­dier. He con­stant­ly said that he was cold, and we cov­ered him with our sleep­ing bags. I was told later that this guy had died. We drove on ter­ri­ble roads, through some dachas, green­houses, vil­lages. In settle­ments we met oc­casion­al civil­ians who saw us off with a sul­len look. Ukrain­ian flags were flut­ter­ing over some houses, evok­ing mixed feel­ings of re­spect for the brave patriot­ism of these peo­ple and a sense that these colors now some­how be­long to an enemy. We reached a high­way at around 8 a.m. and ... I noticed the trucks of the guys from my squa­dron. They look kind of crazy. I walk from car to car, ask­ing about how things are. Every­one answers me in­com­pre­hen­si­bly: “Damn, this is f–ed up,” “We got wrecked all night,” “I col­lect­ed corpses from the road, one had his brains all out on the pave­ment.” We are ap­proach­ing a fork and signs point to Kher­son and Odes­sa. I am think­ing about how we will storm Kher­son. I don’t think the mayor of the city will come out with bread and salt, raise the Rus­sian flag over the ad­min­is­tra­tion build­ing, and we’ll en­ter the city in a parade col­umn. At around 4 p.m. our con­voy takes a turn and set­tles in the forest. Com­mand­ers tell us the news that Ukrain­ian GRAD rocket launch­ers were seen ahead, so every­one must pre­pare for shell­ing, urgent­ly dig in as deep as pos­si­ble, and al­so that our cars al­most ran out of fuel and we have com­mu­ni­ca­tion prob­lems. I stand and talk with the guys, they tell me that they are from the 11th bri­gade, that there are 50 of them left. The rest are prob­a­bly dead.

Surrounded local airport.
February 26-28 2022: Filatyev’s con­voy made its way to Kher­son and sur­round­ed the local air­port, loot­ing stores in vil­lages along the way. ... On the third day, the con­voy re­ceived the or­der to en­ter Kher­son. Filat­yev was told to stay be­hind and cov­er the front-line units with mor­tar fire if neces­sary. He recount­ed hear­ing dis­tant fight­ing all day. The south­ern port city would be­come the first major Ukrain­ian city that Rus­sia cap­tured in its invasion.

Everyone ran wild.
March 1 2022: We marched to the city on foot ... [around 5:30 p.m.] we ar­rived at the Kher­son sea­port. ... It was al­ready dark, the units march­ing ahead of us had al­ready occu­pied it. Every­one looked ex­haust­ed and ran wild. We searched the build­ings for food, water, showers and a place to sleep, some­one be­gan to take out com­pu­ters and any­thing else of value. Walk­ing through the build­ing, I found an of­fice with a TV. Sev­eral peo­ple sat there and watch­ing the news, they found a bot­tle of cham­pagne in the of­fice. See­ing the cold cham­pagne, I took a few sips from the bot­tle, sat down with them and be­gan to watch the news intent­ly. The chan­nel was in Ukrain­ian, I didn’t under­stand half of it. All I under­stood there was that Rus­sian troops were ad­vanc­ing from all direc­tions, Odes­sa, Khar­kov, Kyiv were occu­pied, they be­gan to show foot­age of brok­en build­ings and in­jured wom­en and chil­dren. We ate every­thing like savages, all that was there was, cereal, oat­meal, jam, honey, cof­fee. ... No­body cared about any­thing, we were al­ready pushed to the limit.

No clue what to do.
March 2-6 2022: Filatyev’s ex­haust­ed con­voy was or­dered to push ahead to storm Myko­laiv and Odes­sa, though the Rus­sian cam­paign had al­ready be­gun to stall.... Filat­yev de­scribed how his unit wan­dered in the woods try­ing to reach Myko­laiv, about 40 miles away. He re­called ask­ing a senior offi­cer about their next move­ments. The com­mand­er said he had no clue what to do. The first re­in­force­ments ar­rived: sep­ar­a­tist forces from Donetsk, most­ly men over 45 in shab­by fatigues. Ac­cord­ing to Filat­yev, they were forced to go to the front lines when many reg­u­lar Rus­sian army sol­diers refused.

Some grandmother poisoned our pies.
Into mid-April 2022: From now on and for more than a month it was Ground­hog Day. ... We were dig­ging in, artil­lery was shell­ing us, our avia­tion was al­most no­where to be seen. We just held posi­tions in the trenches on the front line, we could not shower, eat, or sleep prop­er­ly. Every­one had over­grown beards and were cov­ered in dirt, uni­forms and shoes be­gan to fray. [Ukrain­ian forces] could clear­ly see us from the drones and kept shell­ing us so al­most all of the equip­ment soon went out of or­der. We got a cou­ple of boxes with the so-called human­i­tarian aid, con­tain­ing cheap socks, T-shirts, shorts and soap. Some sol­diers be­gan to shoot them­selves ... to get [the gover­nment mon­ey] and get out of this hell. Our prison­er had his fin­gers and geni­tals cut off. Dead Ukrain­ians at one of the posts were plopped on seats, given names and cigar­ettes. Due to artil­lery shell­ing, some vil­lages near­by prac­ti­cal­ly ceased to exist. Every­one was get­ting angrier and angrier. Some grand­mother poi­soned our pies. Al­most every­one got a fun­gus, some­one’s teeth fell out, the skin was peel­ing off. Many dis­cussed how, when they re­turn, they will hold the com­mand account­able for lack of pro­vi­sion and in­com­pe­tent leader­ship. Some be­gan to sleep on duty be­cause of fatigue. Some­times we man­aged to catch a wave of the Ukrain­ian radio, where they poured dirt on us and called us orcs, which only em­bit­tered us even more. My legs and back hurt ter­ribly, but an order came not to evac­u­ate any­one due to ill­ness. I kept say­ing, “God, I will do every­thing to change this if I sur­vive.” ... I de­cid­ed that I would de­scribe the last year of my life, so that as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble would know what our army is now. By mid-April, earth got in­to my eyes due to artil­lery shell­ing. After five days of tor­ment, with the threat of los­ing an eye loom­ing over me, they evac­u­at­ed me.

Main enemy is propaganda.
Post-April 2022: I survived, un­like many oth­ers. My con­science tells me that I must try to stop this mad­ness. ... We did not have the moral right to at­tack an­oth­er coun­try, es­pe­cial­ly the peo­ple clos­est to us. This is an army that bul­lies its own sol­diers, those who have al­ready been in the war, those who do not want to re­turn there and die for some­thing they don’t even under­stand. I will tell you a secret. The major­ity in the army, they are dis­satis­fied with what is hap­pen­ing there, they are dis­satis­fied with the govern­ment and their com­mand, they are dis­satis­fied with Putin and his poli­cies, they are dis­satis­fied with the Min­is­ter of De­fense who did not serve in the army. The main enemy of all Rus­sians and Ukrain­ians is prop­a­gan­da, which just fur­ther fuels hatred in peo­ple. I can no long­er watch all this hap­pen and re­main silent.


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  PIXELS 

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-¦  December 2023  ¦-













  GROUND  CONTROL 


e n v o y   █   Today’s astronomers worry about micro-meterorites and cosmic rays bombarding the Inter­nation­al Space Station, close calls among satellites and spacecrafts, and especially wardrobe malfunctions in outer space.    █    Yester­day’s astronomers had fewer worries, more wonderment. Taking notes, they devised almanacs and calendars. Some built structures to greet celestial returns, Karnak’s temple turns orange with the rising of the midwinter Sun, and the standing stones at Stone­henge ‘has some align­ment on astro­nom­ical phenomena.’    █    The Babylonians divided the sky into twelve equal wedges, to facilitate the tracking of positions as well as move­ments. Then a map was passed around, show­ing longitudes and latitudes. The Vatican became intrigued, wanting to learn more of this new science, which arrived in Europe from Spain, in translations of Indian and Islamic texts, and a mechanism known as an astrolabe, that can show a map of heaven.
   █    Caroline Herschel (b.1850) started out as an assistant to her astronomer brother William Herschel (b.1738), polishing mirrors and mounting telescopes. When he then discovered Uranus, she too took a peek, and soon enough discoverd a satellite to the Andromeda galaxy: an elliptical dwarf galaxy.    █    Then a Harvard computer, while cataloging stars over several photographic glass plates by using a spectroscope, which charts ‘stellar brightness in proportion to luminosity-oscillation periods’ (i.e., the twinkle), devised a ‘standard candle for determining cosmic distances.’ Henrietta Leavitt (b.1868) had just invented a space tape measure to judge distances.

e y e w i t n e s s   █   The ancients were intrigued by natural glass found in nature, able to let light through, to enhance eyesight by magnification. These qualities were refined, when glass-making was invented, to help address loss of eyesight in the aged, among many other benefits. Polished with a concave or sometimes convex surface, fitted into a holder, this became a magnifying glass. Then someone fitted several lenses into a tube and invented the telescope.
   █    When the tube became much much larger, a glass plate treated on one side with a photo­sensitive agent was placed inside, and after a period of time, up to two years, yielded a photo­graph of stars.    █    Author Agnes Giberne (b.1845) wrote the first astronomy books for young minds, bringing them face to face with the Moon, the Sun, comets. “Among the Stars,” which came out in 1885, is 360 pages.

e x a m i n e r   █   Mary Palmer (b.1839) married a doctor, and amateur astron­o­mer, Henry Draper (b.1837), and became an astute student of the sky. His sudden death age 45 left her with money, paperwork and photographic evidence of their galaxy quest.    █    Mary Draper then bequeathed an annual sum, beginning in 1886, to Harvard College Observatory, to procure sufficient staff to finish her husband’s catalog of stars.
   █    The photographic evi­dence were captured on hun­dreds of glass plates, either 17x14 or 8x10 inches in size. Each plate is overlaid with numbered grids and placed, on an inclined plane, under a microscope. A light under the glass-plate illu­mi­nates the photograph.    █    The first computer, looking through the microscope, calls out each star’s name and grid position, while another computer enters the information into a ledger.    █    The glass plates are also studied using a spectro­scope, and requires an ap­ti­tude for mathematics to take readings ‘based on the bright­ness of stars.’ Descrip­tions can include normal, hazy, sharp, and inter-deter­m­inants (several kinds). Be­cause of the long exposure time, the pho­to­sen­si­tive agent was able to register ‘long inte­gra­tion times’ yielding data on color, temperature, chemical com­po­si­tion.    █    Wil­lia­mina Fleming (b.1857) was one of the first Harvard com­puters, a team of women scientists. She had no such background and trained on the job, which was to ‘compute mathematical clas­si­fi­ca­tions.’ It turned out she had a flair for the work: “From day to day my duties at the Observatory are so nearly alike that there will be little to describe outside ordi­nary routine work of measurement, exam­i­na­tion of photographs, and of work involved in the reduction of these observations.”


e t y m o l o g i s t   █   NASA’s predecessor had hired female math­e­ma­ti­cians, as early as in 1935, as human com­puters in a segregated system. As­signed to dif­fer­ent de­part­ments, they would be tasked to take down notes, parse flight test scores, run cal­cu­la­tions, perform analytics.    █    Jeanette Scissum (b.1938) on her first day, in 1964, at NASA: “Math­e­ma­ti­cian, entry level. They didn’t have computers or a computer science pro­gram at A&M when I grad­u­at­ed, so I didn’t know how to do that. Once I did, everybody had me doing computer stuff for them.”    █    Math­e­ma­ti­cian Katherine Johnson (b.1918), work­ing in NASA’s flight mechanic division, was told that a space­craft would want to make a landing during prime-time television on a specific date. She then had to figure out when takeoff time must take place. Using analytic geom­etry, Johnson figured it out.    █    High-school whizkid Mary Winston (b.1921), with degrees in math­e­matics and physical science, worked in the com­puter pool, and was assigned to assist in wind tunnel tests at twice the speed of sound. Showing promise, she went back to school and got an engineer’s degree and became an aerospace engineer. Married to a sailor in the U.S. Navy, she became Mary W. Jackson. The National Aeronautics Space Administration’s D.C. headquarters is now named after her.    █   
Mathematician Dorothy Vaughan (b.1910), in a 28-year career at NASA’s Langley Research Center, became a specialist in calculating flight paths. Vaughan then had ac­cess to a new office machine, read the user’s manual, taught herself the machine’s lan­guage, Fortran (Formula Translating System), and learned how to program NASA’s first electronic com­puter.    █    Math­e­ma­ti­cian Grace Hop­per (b.1906) championed the use of English in com­pos­ing tasks fed into elec­tron­ic computers: “Man­ip­u­lat­ing symbols was fine for mathematicians but it was no good for data pro­ces­sors who were not symbol manip­u­la­tors. If they are they become pro­fes­sion­al math­e­ma­ti­cians, not data pro­ces­sors. It’s much easier for most people to write an Eng­lish statement than it is to use symbols. So I decided data processors ought to be able to write their programs in Eng­lish, and the com­puters would translate them into machine code. That was the beginning of COBOL (Com­mon Business Oriented Lan­guage), a computer language for data processors.”    █    Mathematician Evelyn Boyd (b.1924) joined IBM in 1956: “At a two-week training session I was introduced to the IBM 650 and the pro­gram­ing language SOAP. ... Creation of a computer program is an exercise in logical thinking. Afterwards I worked as a consultant in numeri­cal anal­ysis in an IBM subsidiary. When NASA awarded IBM a contract to plan, write, and maintain computer pro­grams I readily agreed ... to be a part of the team of IBM mathematicians and scientists who were re­spon­si­ble for the formulation of orbit computations and computer procedures, first for project Vanguard, and later for project Mercury.”    █    Mathematician Melba Roy Mouton (b.1929) worked for the Army Map Service before working as a human com­puter for NASA, and fig­ur­ing out trajectory and orbit­al solu­tions for a metal­ized bal­loon in proj­ect Echo.    █    Writ­ing prop­o­si­tions and coming up with solutions by hand was routine for math­e­ma­ti­cian Annie Easley (b.1933). Then electronic computers came along and, although Easley learned Fortran and be­came a more-valued asset, she still can re­mem­ber the micro-ag­gres­sions: “My head is not in the sand. If I can’t work with you, I will work around you. I was not about to be [so] dis­cou­raged that I’d walk away. ... I’m out here to do a job and I knew I had the ability, and that’s where my focus was.”    █    Work­ing in the computer pool, Chris­tine Darden (b.1947) was given the task to come up with a computer program for sonic boom. Darden, who grew up taking apart and putting back together bicycles and other manu­fac­tured contraptions, is today an aero­space engi­neer: “I was able to stand on the shoulders of those women who came before me, and women who came after me were able to stand on mine.”

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  ROCKETEER  


a n a l y s t   █   On April 15, 1726, while taking tea in the garden with his friend, Issac Newton (b.1642) pondered on an apple which had just fallen to the ground. William Stuckeley records how Newton mused:
   █    “Why should that apple always descend perpen­dic­ularly to the ground? Why should it not go sideways, or up­wards? but constantly to the earth’s centre? Assuredly, the reason is, that the earth draws it. There must be a drawing power in, and the sum of the draw­ing power in the matter of the earth must be in the earth’s centre, not in any side of the earth. There­fore does this apple fall perpen­dic­ularly, or toward the center. If matter thus draws, it must be in propor­tion of its quantity. There­fore the apple draws the earth, as well as the earth draws the apple.”


a n g e l   █   The ancients, unconcerned of this “drawing power” that Newton was to articulate, mocked the gravity throne and continued sending prayers to heaven. En­treaties written in temple script on paper were then folded into a pouch. A lit candle attached to the pouch sends smoke inside, causing its ascent.    █    Humankind then followed the lanterns, yet the earliest ones didn’t know to carry oxygen, and returned spouting the wildest tales of beings living in the upper air. The four winds, curious, would approach with whistles and roars and yells, asking questions, including that confounded new con­tri­vance, a wind tunnel.    █    Sensing fear in their visitors’ eyes, the thunderous voices abated. Zephros drew closer and whis­pered: “We are wind gods of the four cardinal points, heralds of seasons, sons to Typhöeus, fifth and final monster born to mother Earth. We too seek a rea­son for exis­tence, and wheth­er or not it be­comes us to be suit­ed up in turbines, pumps, and such fetters.”    █    Notos spread icicles while parting his lips: “Can these regulation systems really help with my rest­less­ness? and what’s up with welded insulation?” Euros brought up the sorest point: “Can gravity weigh me down and curb my mood.” Boreas’ grum­ble rumbled: “Magnetosphere con­strains our empire but why? And who are these rocket­men and their reckless aerial turns in guidance and control?”
   █    Sensing fear in the visitors’ eyes, their thun­derous voices abated. Then Zephros drew even closer and whis­pered: “We are wind gods of the four cardinal points, heralds of seasons, sons to Typhöeus, fifth and final monster born to mother Earth. We too seek a rea­son for exis­tence, and wheth­er or not it be­comes us to be suit­ed up in turbines, pumps, and such fetters.”    █    Notos spread icicles while parting his lips: “Can these regulation systems really help w/ my rest­less­ness? and what’s up w/ welded insulation?” Euros brought up the sorest point: “Can gravity weigh me down and curb my mood.” Boreas’ grum­ble rumbled: “Mag­ne­to­sphere con­strains our empire but why? And who are these rocket­men and their aerial ad­ven­tures in guidance and control?”

a i r m a n   █   The four winds invariably took their gasping guests on the grand tour. Earth’s atmosphere is spherical and contains a precise mixture of gases such that oxygen becomes its miraculous chemical product. It has the same shape as mother Earth due to her gravitational grit, which she bestows also to water and all living things. The sea and mountains are deemed to be sentient by the ancients, and so too is Aether considered a being, having undergone “bio­chem­i­cal mod­i­fi­ca­tions by living organisms” ever since its aboriginal form coa­lesced into a paleo-atmosphere. Material enough for Earth to lassoo the grandson to Chaos with a girdle tight enough to separate the deity into distinct layers, and is the main cause of clouds.    █    This primeval sky god can only be discerned when he digs into his bag of optical tricks and throws mirages, or scatters light. Aether is patron to Earth, whose existence depends on a narrow band of the bottom layer, beginning at sea level.

a v a t a r   █   Innovative proto-aviators watched how birds populate the air and go where they will. Wings got built and tied to men. Jumps happened. Leonardo da Vinci (b.1452) had his own solution; yet his own design, wings that can flap, never left the sketchbook.    █   

⁝   Bird wings are folding fans, able to expand and collapse. Each wing is a web of arm bones, having joints which, by evolutionary decree, have quills on the knuckles; each quill grasps one feather.

a e r i a l i s t   █   Divinities of the air were entranced to receive paper prayers heaven-bound using paper, glue and heated air. They also found out that hydrogen, when it is un­adulterated, possesses levitational abilities also. But being a gas, it would simply dissipate when in contact with one or more gasses.    █    Rare and difficult to distill, hydrogen requires a chamber, white-hot iron, run­ning water; and had to wait until a non-porous material to con­tain the new gas, was was dis­cov­ered around 1780, had not yet been de­vel­oped.    █    A ginormous pillow, with a small opening, tied to a large basket and fed a healthy gulp of heated air, took to rising into the atmosphere. Then, as the trapped air cools, this “hot-air balloon” will descend. The first companions chosen to carry out this maid­en flight were a french sheep, duck and rooster.

a c r o b a t   █   Smoke from large fires first showed the way during wartime: to send a signal, or initiate a maneuver. Kites were another way to harness wind behavior to send sturdier signals. It can also be used as a measure­ment of distance, or just to “test the wind.” Kites can also fight each other.    █    Dog-earred generals carried mint editions of “The Myth of Icarus” into battle and tasked military engineers to accessorize kites so as to become fit for carrying a passenger. Even­tual­ly squadrons of pas­seng­ers paid visits to the sky, and giving notice that the empire of the four winds was coming to an end.    █    Kites were invented for children when they first became aware how they might have, as playpals: the four winds.    █    Not for war’s sake, Benjamin Franklin (b.1706) is prob­ably the first to use wind power to send a laboratory into space: kite + key + lightning storm.

a l c h e m i s t   █   Through trial and error someone came up with gunpowder. That a right mixture of carbon, sulfur and saltpeter (an efflorescence mineral found on the surface of stones) will produce a flash accompanied by fire that burns off – an explosion. A wrong mixture produces instead just “smoke and flames.”
   █    Soldiers saw the promise and quickly adopt­ed the recipe. Dream­ers invented fireworks. Paper tubes filled with confetti and a spoonful of gun­powder then sealed with a fuse sticking out. The tube is tied to a long stick that will act as a tail, then aimed towards the sky. Flame is introduced to the fuse and the detonation produces a propulsive force inside the tube, which ascends before spilling out its contents.    █    Al­though it was John Bate (b.1600s) figured out how to make compound-rockets, which boosted the appeal of his brand of “fyer workes,” it took until Hermann Oberth (b.1894) to sheath it in metal, for the first time, to insure a sturdier flight.    █    Fireworks are propelled missiles guided during a brief initial phase of powered flight. Then a subsequent trajectory that obeys the laws of gravity, and codified as classical mechanics.

a r c h e t y p e    █   When World War 2 was over, pilots and other aero­nauticals returned to civilian roles.    █    Back to working for a paycheck, these airmen flexed their know-how and birthed an aerospace industry that now­adays has gone global. By 1960 the skies were al­ready beginning to get mighty crowded.
   █    Governments were wont to fund space ex­plor­a­tions, get bragging rights, so they practised by dividing up North Pole, a melting continent.    █    Long­i­tudes and latitudes led to pre­ci­sion map­ping of the world, and in the co-mingling of new dis­ci­plines rock­et science took off to map a hypothetical heaven.


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| BEGINNING |

  PIXELS 


 DERELICTION OF DUTY  The nine members of the January 6 Committee sit for a group portrait

Donald Trump never said he’d abide by the outcome of the election. In May of 2020, fearing that Biden might win in November, he tweeted, “It will be the greatest Rigged Elec­tion in history!” He under­stood that he would likely lose but that, owing to an effect known as the Red Mirage, it would look, for a while, as if he had won: more Democrats than Republicans would vote by mail and since mail-in ballots are often the last to be counted, early counting would favor Republicans. “When that happens,” Roger Stone advised him, “the key thing to do is to claim victory. ... No, we won. Fuck you, Sorry. Over.” That was Plan A.
In September, The Atlantic published a bombshell article by Barton Gellman report­ing that the Trump campaign had a scheme “

to bypass election results and appoint loyal elec­tors in battle­ground states where Repub­li­cans hold the legis­la­tive majority.” That was Plan B.
Plan A (‘Fuck you’) was more Trump’s style. “He’s gon­na declare victory,” Steve Ban­non said. “But that doesn’t mean he’s the win­ner. He’s just gonna say he’s a win­ner.” On Election Night, Novem­ber 3rd, Trump wanted to do just that, but his campaign team persuaded him not to. His patience didn’t last long. “This is a fraud on the American public,” Trump said on November 4th. “We were getting ready to win this elec­tion. Frankly, we did win this election.” The next day he tweeted, “Stop The Count!” On November 7th, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, ABC, the Associated Press, and Fox News all declared that Joseph Biden had won. The election was not close. Counting the votes just took a while.
After Biden won, Trump continued to insist that widespread fraud had been com­mit­ted. Bill Stepien, Trump’s cam­paign man­ager, told the January 6 Committee that the cam­paign became a “truth telling squad,” chas­ing allega­tions, discovering them to be unfounded, and telling the President, “Yeah, that wasn’t true.” The Depart­ment of Home­land Security looked into allegations, most of which popped up online, and announced, “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.” The Justice Department, too, investigated charges of fraud, but, as Barr informed the committee, he was left telling the President, repeatedly, “They’re not panning out.”
For Plan C, the Presi­dent turned to Rudy Giuliani and a group of lawyers that included Sidney Powell. They filed 62 lawsuits challenging election results, and lost all but one of these suits (and that one involved neither allegations of fraud nor any significant number of votes).

Twenty-two of the judges who decided these cases had been appointed by Repub­li­cans, and ten had been appointed by Trump.
On December 11th, the Supreme Court reject­ed a suit that had challenged the results in Penn­syl­va­nia, Geor­gia, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Trump had had every right to challenge the results of state elections, but at this point he had exhausted his legal options. He decided to fall back on Plan B, the fake-electors plan, which required hundreds of legislators across the country to set aside the popular vote in states won by Biden, claiming that the results were fraudulent and appoint­ing their own slate of electors, who would cast their Elec­tor­al College votes for Trump on December 14th. Accord­ing to Cassidy Hutchi­son, an aide to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, the White House counsel deter­mined that, since none of the fraud alle­ga­tions had been upheld by any court, the fake-electors plan was illegal. But one deputy assistant to the President told Trump that it didn’t matter whether there had been fraud or not, because “state legis­la­tors ‘have the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to substitute their judg­ment for a certified majority of their con­sti­tu­ents’ if that prevents socaialism.”
Plan B required Trump to put pressure on a lot of people. The com­mit­tee counted at least 200 attempts he made to influence state or local officials by phone, text, posts, or public remarks. Instruct­ing Trump sup­port­ers to join in, Giuliani said, “Some­times it even requires being threat­ened.”

A Trump-campaign spread­sheet documents efforts to contact more than 190 Republican state legis­la­tors in Arizona, Georgia, and Michigan alone.
Barr resigned. “I didn’t want to be part of it,” he told the committee. Plenty of other people were happy to be part of it, though. Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chair, par­tic­i­pat­ed and provided Trump with the assis­tance of RNC staffers. On December 14th, certified electors met in every state. In seven states that Biden had won – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin – fake electors also met and produced counterfeit Electoral College cer­tif­i­cates for Trump. Five of these cer­tif­i­cates were sent to Washington but were rejected because they lacked the required state seal; two arrived after the deadline. None were accepted.
Trump then launched Plan D, which was not so much a plan as a pig’s breakfast of a con­spir­a­cy, a coup, and a putsch. Every­thing turned on January 6th, the day a joint ses­sion of Congress was to certify the results of the Elec­toral College vote. To stop that from hap­pen­ing, Trump recruit­ed members of Congress into a con­spir­a­cy to overturn the election by rejecting the certified votes and accepting the counter­feits; he asked the Vice-President to participate in a coup by simply declaring him the win­ner; and he incited his supporters to take over the Capitol by force, in a poorly planned putsch, which he intend­ed to lead. On December 17th, Kayleigh McEnany said on Fox News, “There has been an alter­nate slate of elec­tors voted upon that Congress will decide in January.” Two days later, Trump tweeted, “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild.” The legal architect of the Pence part of the pig’s break­fast – “a coup in search of a legal theory,” as one federal judge called it – was a lawyer named John East­man. The Trump lawyer Eric Hersch­mann recalled a conversation he had with Eastman: “You’re saying you believe the Vice President, acting as Pres­i­dent of the Senate, can be the sole decision­maker as to, under your theory, who becomes the next President of the United States? And he said, yes. And I said, are you out of your Fing mind?”
Trump pressed the act­ing Attor­ney Gen­eral, Jeffrey Rosen, and other mem­bers of the Depart­ment of Justice to aid the conspiracy by declaring some of the voting to have been fraudulent.

Rosen refused. “The DOJ can’t and won’t snap its fingers and change the outcome of the election,” he told Trump. Trump replied, “I don’t expect you to do that. Just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican Con­gress­men.” Trump tried to replace Rosen with a lackey named Jeffrey Clark, but, in a tense meeting at the White House on January 3rd, Rosen and others made clear to him that, if he did so, much of the department would resign. Trump and East­man met repeatedly with Pence in the Oval Office and tried to recruit him into the conspiracy. Pence refused. At 11:20 am on January 6th, Trump called Pence and again asked him, and again Pence refused, after which, according to Ivanka, the President called the Vice-President a pussy.
Trump was slated to speak at his be-wild rally at the Ellipse at noon, but when he arrived he was un­happy about the size of the crowd. The Secret Service had set up magnetometers, known as mags, to screen for weapons. Twenty-eight thousand people went through the mags, from whom the Secret Service collected, among other banned items, “269 knives or bades, 242 cannisters of pepper spray, 18 brass knuc­kles, 18 tasers, 6 pieces of body armor, 3 gas masks, 30 batons or blunt instruments.” Some people had ditched their bags, and pre­sum­ably their weapons, in trees or cars. In a crowd that included members of white-supremacist and far-right, anti-gov­ern­ment extremist groups – including the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, America First, and QAnon – another 25,000 people simply refused to go through the mags. “I don’t fuck­ing care that they have weapons,” Trump shouted. “They’re not here to hurt me. Take the fucking mags away.” The mags stayed. Trump took to the podium and fired up his followers for the march to the Capitol until 1:10 pm, and then he walked to his motor­cade, climbed into the Presi­den­tial S.U.V., which is known as the Beast, and demanded to be driven to the Capitol. Secret Service agents persuaded him to return to the White House.
Just before the Joint Session was to begin, at one o’clock, Pence released a written statement: “I do not believe that the Founders of our country intended to invest the Vice Pres­i­dent with unilateral authority to decide which electoral votes should be counted during the Joint Session of Congress.” The voting began.

By 1:21, Trump had been informed that the Capitol was under attack. He spent the rest of the day watching it on tele­vision. For hours, his staff and his advisers begged him to order the mob to dis­perse or to call for mili­tary assis­tance; he refused. At 1:46 Representative Paul Gosar objected to the count from Arizona, after which Senator Ted Cruz endorsed that objection. Pence was evacuated at 2:12. Seconds later, Proud Boys achieved the first breach of the Capitol, smashing a window in the Senate wing. Eleven minutes later, the mob broke through the doors to the East Rotunda, and Trump tweeted, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done.” The mob chanted, “Hang Mike Pence.” Meadows told a colleague, “He thinks Mike deserves it.” Kevin McCarthy called the President. “They literally just came through my office windows,” he said. “You need to call them off.” Trump said, “Well, Kevin, I guess they’re just more upset about the election theft than you are.” At 4:17 pm, the President released a video message in which he asked the insur­rec­tion­ists to go home, and told them that he loved them.
And that, in brief, is the executive sum­ma­ry of the Jan­uary 6 Com­mis­sion Report, which concludes that “the central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump.”

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| BACK |

 CANNON FODDER 


 ATTACK ON HOSTOMEL 
Putin sits in front of wall-size map of Russia.

▶ The seat of national pow­er, Kyiv was the main prize. Thus the thrust by elite air­borne forces in the war’s open­ing hours. ... When Presi­dent Vlad­imir Putin launched his war on Feb. 24 after months of build­up on Ukraine’s bor­ders, he sent hun­dreds of heli­cop­ter-borne com­man­dos – the best of the best of Rus­sia’s “spets­naz” (spe­cial forces soldiers) – to assault and seize a light­ly defend­ed air­field on Kyiv’s door­step.

On the first morn­ing of the war, Rus­sian Mi-8 as­sault heli­copters soared south to­ward Kyiv on a mis­sion to attack Hos­to­mel airfield on the north­west out­skirts of the capital. By captur­ing the air­field, also known as Anto­nov air­port, the Rus­sians planned to estab­lish a base from which to fly in more troops and light armored vehi­cles with­in strik­ing dis­tance of the heart of the nation’s larg­est city. It didn’t work that way. Sev­eral Rus­sian heli­copters were report­ed to be hit by mis­siles even be­fore they got to Hos­to­mel, and once set­tled in at the air­field they suf­fered heavy losses from artil­lery fire.

The fact that the Hos­to­mel as­sault by the Rus­sian 45th Guards Spe­cial Pur­pose Air­borne Brig­ade fal­tered might not stand out in retro­spect if the broad­er Rus­sian effort had im­proved from that point. But it did not. ... Last week the Rus­sians aban­doned Hos­to­mel air­field as part of a whole­sale retreat into Bela­rus and Russia.

An effort to take con­trol of a mili­tary air­base in Vasyl­kiv south of Kyiv al­so met stiff resis­tance and report­ed­ly saw sev­eral Rus­sian Il-76 heavy-lift trans­port planes carry­ing para­troop­ers downed by Ukrain­ian defenses.

A sidelight of the bat­tle for Kyiv was the wide­ly report­ed saga of a Rus­sian re­supply con­voy that stretched doz­ens of miles along a main road­way to­ward the capital. It initial­ly seemed to be a worri­some sign for the Ukrain­ians, but they man­aged to attack ele­ments of the con­voy, which had limit­ed off-road cap­ability and thus even­tual­ly dis­persed or other­wise be­came a non-factor in the fight. “They never real­ly pro­vided a re­supply of any value to Rus­sian forces that were assem­bling around Kyiv, never really came to their aid,” said Penta­gon spokes­man John Kirby. “The Ukrain­ians put a stop to that con­voy pretty quick­ly by be­ing very nim­ble, knock­ing out bridges, hit­ting lead vehi­cles and stop­ping their move­ment.” Us­ing a wide array of West­ern arms, includ­ing Jave­lin port­able anti-tank wea­pons, shoul­der-fired Sting­er anti-air­craft mis­siles and much more.

“That’s a real­ly bad com­bi­nation if you want to con­quer a coun­try,” said Peter Man­soor, a retired Army colo­nel and pro­fes­sor of mili­tary his­tory at Ohio State Uni­ver­sity. “[The Rus­sian Army]’s proven it­self to be wholly in­cap­able of conduct­ing mod­ern armored war­fare”. ... Some analysts did ques­tion wheth­er Putin appre­ci­ated how much Ukraine’s forces had gained from West­ern train­ing that inten­si­fied after Putin’s 2014 seiz­ure of Crimea and incur­sion in­to the Donbas.

“It’s stun­ning,” said mili­tary histor­ian Fred­er­ick Kagan of the Insti­tute for the Study of War, who says he knows of no paral­lel to a major mili­tary power like Rus­sia invad­ing a coun­try at the time of its choos­ing and fail­ing so utter­ly. The Rus­sians under­esti­mated the num­ber of troops they would need and showed “an aston­ish­ing in­abil­ity” to per­form basic mili­tary func­tions.

Putin failed to achieve his goal of quick­ly crush­ing Ukraine’s out­gunned and out­num­bered army. The Rus­sians were ill-pre­pared for Ukrain­ian resis­tance, proved in­cap­able of ad­just­ing to set­backs, failed to effec­tive­ly com­bine air and land oper­ations, mis­judged Ukraine’s ability to de­fend its skies, and bun­gled basic mili­tary func­tions like plan­ning and exe­cuting the move­ment of supplies.

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| BACK |

 TRACED CALLS 
The Associated Press pub­lished calls made in March 2022 by three Rus­sian sol­diers, Leonid, Maxim and Ivan, in a mili­tary divi­sion near Bucha, a town outside Kyiv that wit­nessed the first atroc­i­ties of the War on Ukraine. (The Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment had been inter­cept­ing Rus­sian calls when their phones ping Ukrain­ian cell towers, pro­vid­ing im­por­tant real-time intel­li­gence for the mili­tary. Now, the calls are al­so poten­tial evi­dence for war crimes.)
Mom, there was a battle.

▶ Leonid #1: Leonid’s intro­duc­tion to war came on Feb. 24, as his unit crossed into Ukraine from Bela­rus and deci­mat­ed a detach­ment of Ukrain­ians at the bor­der. ... mother: “When did you get scared?” leonid: “When our com­mand­er warned us we would be shot, 100%. He warned us that al­though we’d be bombed and shot at, our aim was to get through.” mother: “Did they shoot you?” leonid: “Of course. We defeat­ed them.” mother: “Mm. Did you shoot from your tanks?” leonid: “Yeah, we did. We shot from the tanks, machine guns and rifles. We had no losses. We des­troyed their four tanks. There were dead bodies ly­ing around and burn­ing. So, we won.” mother: “Oh what a night­mare! Lyon­ka, you want­ed to live at that mo­ment, right honey?” leonid: “More than ever!” mother: “More than ever, right honey?” leonid: “Of course.” mother: “It’s total­ly hor­ri­ble.” leonid: “They were ly­ing there, just 18- or 19-years old. Am I dif­fer­ent from them? No, I’m not.”
Leonid: First, he was shot in his leg. Then his ears were cut off.

▶ Leonid #2: Leonid tells his moth­er their plan was to seize Kyiv with­in a week, with­out fir­ing a single bul­let. ... “It was so con­fus­ing,” he says. “They were well pre­pared.” When Leo­nid tells his moth­er cas­ual­ly about loot­ing, at first she can’t be­lieve he’s steal­ing. But it’s be­come nor­mal for him. As he speaks, he watches a town burn on the hori­zon. “Such a beau­ty,” he says.
leonid: “Look, Mom, I’m look­ing at tons of houses – I don’t know, doz­ens, hun­dreds – and they’re all emp­ty. Every­one ran away.” mother: “So all the peo­ple left, right? You guys aren’t loot­ing them, are you? You’re not go­ing in­to oth­er people’s houses?” leonid: “Of course we are, Mom. Are you crazy?” mother: “Oh, you are. What do you take from there?” leonid: “We take food, bed lin­en, pil­lows. Blan­kets, forks, spoons, pans.” mother: (Laughing) “You got­ta be kid­ding me.” leonid: “Who­ever doesn’t have any – socks, clean under­wear, T-shirts, sweat­ers.”

▶ Leonid #3: Leo­nid tells his moth­er about the ter­ror of go­ing on patrol and not know­ing what or who they will en­coun­ter. ... mother: “Oh Lyon­ka, you’ve seen so much stuff there!” leonid: “Well ... civil­ians are lying around right on the street with their brains com­ing out.” mother: “Oh God, you mean the locals?” leonid: “Yep. Well, like, yeah.” mother: “Are they the ones you guys shot or the ones ...” leonid: “The ones killed by our army.” mother: “Lyon­ya, they might just be peace­ful people.” leonid: “Mom, there was a bat­tle. And a guy would just pop up, you know? Maybe he would pull out a gre­nade launch­er ... Or we had a case, a young guy was stopped, they took his cell­phone. He had all this infor­ma­tion about us in his Tele­gram mes­sages – where to bomb, how many we were, how many tanks we have. And that’s it.” mother: “So they knew every­thing?” leonid: “He was shot right there on the spot.” mother: “Mm.” leonid: “He was 17-years old. And that’s it, right there.” mother: “Mm.” leonid: “There was a pris­on­er. It was an 18-year-old guy. First, he was shot in his leg. Then his ears were cut off. After that, he ad­mit­ted every­thing, and they killed him.” mother: “Did he ad­mit it?” leonid: “We don’t im­pris­on them. I mean, we kill them all.” mother: “Mm.”

▶ Leonid #4: Leonid tells his moth­er he was near­ly killed five times. ... Things are so dis­or­gan­ized, he says, that it’s not un­com­mon for Rus­sians to fire on their own troops – it even hap­pened to him. Some sol­diers shoot them­selves just to get medi­cal leave, he says. mother: “Hel­lo, Lyon­ech­ka.” leonid: “I just want­ed to call you again. I am able to speak.” mother: “Oh, that’s good.” leonid: “There are peo­ple out here who shoot them­selves.” mother: “Mm.” leonid: “They do it for the insur­ance money. You know where they shoot them­selves?” mother: “That’s sil­ly, Lyon­ya.” leonid: “The bot­tom part of the left thigh.” mother: “It’s bull–, Lyon­ya. They’re crazy, you know that, right?” leonid: “Some people are so scared that they are ready to harm them­selves just to leave.” mother: “Yeah, it is fear, what can you say here, it’s human fear. Every­body wants to live. I don’t argue with that, but please don’t do that. We all pray for you. You should cross your­self any chance you get, just turn away from every­one and do it. We all pray for you. We’re all wor­ried.” leonid: “I’m stand­ing here, and you know what the sit­u­a­tion is? I am now 30 meters (100 feet) away from a huge ceme­tery.” (Giggling) mother: “Oh, that’s hor­ri­ble ... may it be over soon.” Leo­nid says he had to learn to emp­ty his mind. “Imagine, it’s night­time. You’re sit­ting in the dark and it’s quiet out there. Alone with your thoughts. And day after day, you sit there alone with those thoughts.” He tells his girl­friend: “I al­ready learned to think of noth­ing while sit­ting out­side.” He prom­ises to bring home a col­lec­tion of bul­lets for the kids. “Tro­phies from Ukraine,” he calls them. His moth­er says she’s wait­ing for him. “Of course I’ll come, why wouldn’t I?” Leo­nid says. “Of course, you’ll come,” his moth­er says. “No doubts. You’re my be­loved. Of course, you’ll come. You are my hap­pi­ness.” Leo­nid re­turned to Rus­sia in May, badly wound­ed, but alive. He told his moth­er Rus­sia would win this war.

▶ Maxim #1: It’s not clear what mili­tary unit Max­im is in, but he makes calls from the same phone as Ivan, on the same days. ... The hunt for locals –men, wom­en and chil­dren – who might be in­form­ing on them to the Ukrain­ian mili­tary is con­stant. Max­im is drunk in some of the calls, slur­ring his words, be­cause life at the front line is more than he can take sober. The on­ly rea­son Max­im is able to speak with his fam­ily back in Rus­sia is be­cause they’ve been steal­ing phones from locals. He says they’re even shak­ing down kids. “We take every­thing from them,” he ex­plains to his wife. “Be­cause they can also be f– spot­ters.” On calls home, the high sweet voice of Max­im’s own young child bub­bles in the back­ground as he talks with his wife. maxim: “Do you know how much a gram of gold costs here?” wife: “No.” maxim: “Rough­ly? About two or three thou­sand rubles, right?” wife: “Well, yeah ...” maxim: “Well, I have 1½ kilo­grams (more than three pounds). With labels even.” wife: “Holy f–, are we loot­ers?!” maxim: “With labels, yeah. It’s just that we f– up this ... We were shoot­ing at this shop­ping mall from a tank. Then we go in, and there’s a f– jewel­ry store. Every­thing was taken. But there was a safe there. We cracked it open, and in­side ... f– me! So the seven of us load­ed up.” wife: “I see.” maxim: “They had these f– neck­laces, you know. In our money, they’re like 30-to-40,000 a piece, 60,000 a piece.” wife: “Holy crap.” maxim: “I scored about a kilo and a half of neck­laces, charms, brace­lets ... these ... ear­rings ... ear­rings with rings ...” wife: “That’s enough, don’t tell me.” maxim: “Any­way, I count­ed and if it’s 3,000 rubles a gram, then I have about 3.5 mil­lion. If you off­load it.” wife: “Got it. How’s the sit­u­a­tion there?” maxim: “It’s f– OK.” wife: “OK? Got it.” maxim: “We don’t have a f– thing to do, so we go around and loot the f– shop­ping mall.” wife: “Just be care­ful, in the name of Christ.” Maxim: Because they can also be fucking spotters.

▶ Maxim #2: Maxim and his moth­er dis­cuss the op­pos­ing stor­ies about the war be­ing told on Ukrain­ian and Rus­sian tele­vision. ... They blame the United States and re­cite con­spi­racy theo­ries pushed by Rus­sian state media. But Max­im and his moth­er be­lieve it’s the Ukrain­ians who are delud­ed by fake news and prop­a­gan­da, not them. The best way to end the war, his moth­er says, is to kill the pres­i­dents of Ukraine and the United States. Later, Max­im tells his moth­er that thou­sands of Rus­sian troops died in the first weeks of war – so many that there’s no time to do any­thing ex­cept haul away the bodies. That’s not what they’re say­ing on Rus­sian TV, his moth­er says. maxim: “Here, it’s all Ameri­can. All the wea­pons.” mother: “It’s the Ameri­cans driv­ing this, of course! Look at their labo­ra­tories. They are devel­op­ing bio­log­i­cal wea­pons. Coro­na­virus lit­eral­ly start­ed there.” maxim: “Yeah, I al­so saw some­where that they used bats.” mother: “All of it. Bats, migrat­ing birds, and even coro­na­virus might be their bio­log­i­cal wea­pon. They even found all these papers with sig­na­tures from the U.S. all over Ukraine. Biden’s son is the master­mind be­hind all of this. ... When will it end? When they stop sup­ply­ing wea­pons.” maxim: “Mm.” mother: “Un­til they catch (Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volo­dy­myr) Zelen­skyy and exe­cute him, noth­ing will end. He’s a fool, a fool! He’s a pup­pet for the U.S. and they real­ly don’t need him, the fool. You watch TV and you feel bad for the peo­ple, the civil­ians, some trav­el­ling with young kids. ... If I was giv­en a gun, I’d go and shoot Biden.” (Laughs) maxim: (Laughs)

▶ Maxim #3: One night last March, Max­im was hav­ing trou­ble keep­ing it to­geth­er on a call with his wife. ... He’d been drink­ing, as he did every night. He told her he’d killed civil­ians – so many he thinks he’s go­ing crazy. He said might not make it home alive. He was just sit­ting there, drunk in the dark, wait­ing for the Ukrain­ian artil­lery strikes to start. wife: “Why? Why are you drink­ing?” maxim: “Every­one is like that here. It’s im­pos­si­ble with­out it here.” wife: “How the f– will you pro­tect your­self if you are tipsy?” maxim: “Total­ly nor­mal. On the con­trary, it’s eas­ier to shoot ... civil­ians. Let’s not talk about this. I’ll come back and tell you how it is here and why we drink!” wife: “Please, just be care­ful!” maxim: “Every­thing will be fine. Hon­est­ly, I’m scared s–less my­self. I nev­er saw such hell as here. I am f– shocked.” wife: “Why the f– did you go there?” Minutes later, he’s on the phone with his child. ‘You’re com­ing back?” the child asks. “Of course,” Maxim says.

▶ Maxim #4: In their last inter­cept­ed call, Maxim’s wife seems to have a prem­o­ni­tion. ... wife: “Is every­thing all right?” maxim: “Yeah. Why?” wife: “Be hon­est with me, is every­thing all right?” maxim: “Huh? Why do you ask?” wife: “It’s noth­ing, I just can’t sleep at night.” Max­im is a lit­tle breath­less. He and his unit are get­ting ready to go. His wife asks him where they’re go­ing. “For­ward, I won’t be able to call for a while.”

▶ Ivan #1: Ivan was in Bela­rus on train­ing when they got a Tele­gram mes­sage: “Tomor­row you are leav­ing for Ukraine. There is a geno­cide of the Rus­sian pop­u­la­tion. And we have to stop it.” ... When his moth­er found out he was in Ukraine, she said she stopped speak­ing for days and took seda­tives. Her hair went gray. Still, she was proud of him. Ivan end­ed up in Bucha. ivan: “Mom, hi.” mother: “Hi, son! How–” ivan: “How are you?” mother: “Van­ya, I under­stand they might be lis­ten­ing so I’m afraid–” ivan: “Doesn’t mat­ter.” mother: “... to ask where you are, what’s hap­pen­ing. Where are you?” ivan: “In Bucha.” mother: “In Bucha?” ivan: “In Bucha.” mother: “Son, be as care­ful as you can, OK? Don’t go charg­ing around! Al­ways keep a cool head.” ivan: “Oh, come on, I’m not charg­ing around.” mother: “Yeah, right! And yes­ter­day you told me how you’re gon­na f– kill every­one out there.” (Laughs) ivan: “We will kill if we have to.” mother: “Huh?” ivan: “If we have to – we have to.” mother: “I under­stand you. I’m so proud of you, my son! I don’t even know how to put it. I love you so much. And I bless you for every­thing, every­thing! I wish you suc­cess in every­thing. And I’ll wait for you no mat­ter what.” Ivan: It is scary, Olya. It really is scary.

▶ Ivan #2: Ivan calls his girl­friend, Olya, and tells her he had a dream about her. ... ivan: “F–, you know, it’s driv­ing me crazy here. It’s just that ... You were just ... I felt you, touched you with my hand. I don’t under­stand how it’s pos­si­ble, why, where ... But I real­ly felt you. I don’t know, I felt some­thing warm, someth­ing dear. It’s like someth­ing was on fire in my hands, so warm ... And that’s it. I don’t know. I was sleep­ing and then I woke up with all these thoughts. War ... You know, when you’re sleep­ing – and then you’re like ... War ... Where, where is it? It was just dark in the house, so dark. And I went out­side, walked around the streets, and thought: damn, f– it. And that’s it. I real­ly want to come see you.” girl­friend: “I am wait­ing for you.” ivan: “Wait­ing? OK. I’m wait­ing, too. Wait­ing for the time I can come see you ... Let’s make a deal. When we see each oth­er, let’s spend the en­tire day to­geth­er. Lay­ing around, sit­ting to­geth­er, eat­ing, look­ing at each oth­er – just us, to­geth­er.” girl­friend: (Laughs) “Agreed.” ivan: “To­geth­er all the time. Hug­ging, cud­dling, kiss­ing ... To­geth­er all the time, not let­ting each oth­er go.” girl­friend: “Well, yeah!” ivan: “You can go f– crazy here. It’s so f– up, the s– that’s hap­pen­ing. I really thought it would be easy here, to tell you the truth. That it’s just gon­na be easy to talk, think about it. But it turned out to be hard, you need to think with your head all the time. So that’s that. We are real­ly at the front line. As far out as you could be. Kyiv is 15 kilo­meters (about 10 miles) from us. It is scary, Olya. It real­ly is scary.” girl­friend: “Hello?” ivan: “Do you hear me?” The line drops.

▶ Ivan #3: As things get worse for Ivan in Ukraine, his moth­er’s patriot­ism deep­ens and her rage grows. ... mother: “Do you have any pre­dic­tions about the end ...?” ivan: “We are here for the time be­ing. We’ll prob­ably stay until they clean up the whole of Ukraine. May­be they’ll pull us out. May­be not. We’re go­ing for Kyiv.” mother: “What are they go­ing to do?” ivan: “We’re not going any­where until they clean up all of these pests.” mother: “Are those bas­tards get­ting cleaned up?” ivan: “Yes, they are. But they’ve been wait­ing for us and pre­par­ing, you under­stand? Pre­par­ing prop­er­ly. Ameri­can moth­erf– have been help­ing them out.” mother: “F– f–. F– kill them all. You have my bless­ing.” ... Death came for Ivan. In July, a local paper pub­lished a notice of his funer­al with a pho­to of him, again in fatigues hold­ing a large rifle. Ivan died heroic­al­ly in Rus­sia’s “spe­cial mili­tary oper­ation,” the announce­ment said. “We will nev­er for­get you. All of Rus­sia shares this grief.” Reached by the AP in Jan­uary, Ivan’s moth­er at first denied she’d ever talked with her son from the front. But she agreed to lis­ten to some of the inter­cept­ed audio and con­firmed it was her speak­ing with Ivan. “He wasn’t in­volved in mur­ders, let alone in loot­ing,” she told the AP be­fore hang­ing up the phone. Ivan was her on­ly son.

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| BACK |

 'THIS MADNESS'  A Russian Soldier's Journal
Forced march to unknown location.
▶ February 15 2022: I arrived to the train­ing ground [in Stary Krym, Cri­mea]. ... Our en­tire squa­dron, about 40 peo­ple, all lived in one tent with plank boards and one make­shift stove. Even in Chech­nya, where we only lived in tents or mud huts, our liv­ing con­di­tions were or­ganized bet­ter. Here we had no­where to wash up and the food was hor­ri­ble. For those who ar­rived later than the rest, me and about five other peo­ple, there was nei­ther a sleep­ing bag, nor camo, armor, or hel­mets left. I final­ly re­ceived my rifle. It turned out that it had a brok­en belt, was rusty and kept get­ting stuck, so I cleaned it in oil for a long time try­ing to put it in order. Around Feb­ruary 20, an order came for every­one to urgent­ly gather and move out, pack­ing light­ly. We were sup­posed to per­form a forced march to some un­known loca­tion. Some peo­ple joked that now we would at­tack Ukraine and cap­ture Kyiv in three days. But al­ready then I thought it is no time for laugh­ter. I said that if some­thing like this were to hap­pen, we would not cap­ture any­thing in three days.

Our salary per day $69.
▶ February 23 2022: The division com­mander ar­rived and, con­gra­tu­lat­ing us on the [Defend­er of the Fatherland] holi­day, an­nounced that start­ing from to­mor­row, our salary per day would be $69. ... It was a clear sign that some­thing serious is about to hap­pen. Rumors be­gan spreading that we are about to go storm Kher­son, which seemed to be non­sense to me. Every­thing changed that day. I no­ticed how peo­ple be­gan to change, some were ner­vous and tried not to com­mu­ni­cate with any­one, some frank­ly seemed scared, some, on the con­trary, were un­usual­ly cheerful.

It's started.
▶ February 24 2022: At about 4 a.m. I opened my eyes again and heard a roar, a rum­ble, a vibra­tion of the earth. ... I sensed an acrid smell of gun­powder in the air. I look out of the truck and see that the sky is lit bright from vol­leys. It was not clear what is hap­pen­ing, who was shoot­ing from where and at whom, but the weari­ness from lack of food, water and sleep dis­ap­peared. A min­ute later, I lit up a cigar­ette to wake up, and real­ized that the fire is com­ing 10-20 kilo­meters ahead of our con­voy. Every­one around me al­so be­gan to wake up and smoke and there was a quiet mur­mur: “It’s start­ed.” We must have a plan. The con­voy be­came ani­mated and start­ed to slow­ly move for­ward. I saw the lights switch on in the houses and peo­ple look­ing out the win­dows and bal­conies of five-story build­ings. It was al­ready dawn, per­haps 6 a.m., the sun went up and I saw a doz­en heli­copters, a doz­en planes, armored as­sault vehi­cles drive across the field. Then tanks ap­peared, hun­dreds of pieces of equip­ment under Rus­sian flags. By 1 p.m. we drove to a huge field where our trucks got bogged down in the mud. I got ner­vous. A huge col­umn stand­ing in the mid­dle of an open field for half an hour is just an ideal tar­get. If the enemy notices us and is near­by, we are f–ed. Many be­gan to climb out of the trucks and smoke, turn­ing to one from an­oth­er. The or­der is to go to Kher­son and capture the bridge across the Dnie­per. I under­stood that some­thing global was hap­pen­ing, but I did not know what exact­ly. Many thoughts were spin­ning in my head. I thought that we couldn’t just at­tack Ukraine, may­be NATO real­ly got in the way and we inter­vened. May­be there are al­so bat­tles go­ing on in Rus­sia, may­be the Ukrain­ians at­tacked to­gether with NATO. May­be there is some­thing go­ing on in the Far East – if Ameri­ca also start­ed a war against us. Then the scale will be huge, and nuclear wea­pons, then sure­ly some­one will use it, damn it. The com­mand­er tried to cheer every­one up. We are going ahead, leav­ing the stuck equip­ment be­hind, he said, and every­one should be ready for bat­tle. He said it with feigned courage, but in his eyes I saw that he was al­so freak­ing out. It was quite dark and we got word that we are stay­ing here un­til dawn. We climbed into sleep­ing bags with­out tak­ing off our shoes, lay­ing on boxes with mines, em­brac­ing our rifles.

We have communication problems.
▶ February 25 2022: Somewhere around 5 in the morn­ing they wake every­one up, tell­ing us to get ready to move out. ... I lit a cigar­ette and walked around. Our prin­ci­pal medi­cal offi­cer was look­ing for a place to put a wound­ed sol­dier. He con­stant­ly said that he was cold, and we cov­ered him with our sleep­ing bags. I was told later that this guy had died. We drove on ter­ri­ble roads, through some dachas, green­houses, vil­lages. In settle­ments we met oc­casion­al civil­ians who saw us off with a sul­len look. Ukrain­ian flags were flut­ter­ing over some houses, evok­ing mixed feel­ings of re­spect for the brave patriot­ism of these peo­ple and a sense that these colors now some­how be­long to an enemy. We reached a high­way at around 8 a.m. and ... I noticed the trucks of the guys from my squa­dron. They look kind of crazy. I walk from car to car, ask­ing about how things are. Every­one answers me in­com­pre­hen­si­bly: “Damn, this is f–ed up,” “We got wrecked all night,” “I col­lect­ed corpses from the road, one had his brains all out on the pave­ment.” We are ap­proach­ing a fork and signs point to Kher­son and Odes­sa. I am think­ing about how we will storm Kher­son. I don’t think the mayor of the city will come out with bread and salt, raise the Rus­sian flag over the ad­min­is­tra­tion build­ing, and we’ll en­ter the city in a parade col­umn. At around 4 p.m. our con­voy takes a turn and set­tles in the forest. Com­mand­ers tell us the news that Ukrain­ian GRAD rocket launch­ers were seen ahead, so every­one must pre­pare for shell­ing, urgent­ly dig in as deep as pos­si­ble, and al­so that our cars al­most ran out of fuel and we have com­mu­ni­ca­tion prob­lems. I stand and talk with the guys, they tell me that they are from the 11th bri­gade, that there are 50 of them left. The rest are prob­a­bly dead.

Surrounded local airport.
▶ February 26-28 2022: Filatyev’s con­voy made its way to Kher­son and sur­round­ed the local air­port, loot­ing stores in vil­lages along the way. ... On the third day, the con­voy re­ceived the or­der to en­ter Kher­son. Filat­yev was told to stay be­hind and cov­er the front-line units with mor­tar fire if neces­sary. He recount­ed hear­ing dis­tant fight­ing all day. The south­ern port city would be­come the first major Ukrain­ian city that Rus­sia cap­tured in its invasion.

Everyone ran wild.
▶ March 1 2022: We marched to the city on foot ... [around 5:30 p.m.] we ar­rived at the Kher­son sea­port. ... It was al­ready dark, the units march­ing ahead of us had al­ready occu­pied it. Every­one looked ex­haust­ed and ran wild. We searched the build­ings for food, water, showers and a place to sleep, some­one be­gan to take out com­pu­ters and any­thing else of value. Walk­ing through the build­ing, I found an of­fice with a TV. Sev­eral peo­ple sat there and watch­ing the news, they found a bot­tle of cham­pagne in the of­fice. See­ing the cold cham­pagne, I took a few sips from the bot­tle, sat down with them and be­gan to watch the news intent­ly. The chan­nel was in Ukrain­ian, I didn’t under­stand half of it. All I under­stood there was that Rus­sian troops were ad­vanc­ing from all direc­tions, Odes­sa, Khar­kov, Kyiv were occu­pied, they be­gan to show foot­age of brok­en build­ings and in­jured wom­en and chil­dren. We ate every­thing like savages, all that was there was, cereal, oat­meal, jam, honey, cof­fee. ... No­body cared about any­thing, we were al­ready pushed to the limit.

No clue what to do.
▶ March 2-6 2022: Filatyev’s ex­haust­ed con­voy was or­dered to push ahead to storm Myko­laiv and Odes­sa, though the Rus­sian cam­paign had al­ready be­gun to stall.... Filat­yev de­scribed how his unit wan­dered in the woods try­ing to reach Myko­laiv, about 40 miles away. He re­called ask­ing a senior offi­cer about their next move­ments. The com­mand­er said he had no clue what to do. The first re­in­force­ments ar­rived: sep­ar­a­tist forces from Donetsk, most­ly men over 45 in shab­by fatigues. Ac­cord­ing to Filat­yev, they were forced to go to the front lines when many reg­u­lar Rus­sian army sol­diers refused.

Some grandmother poisoned our pies.
▶ Into mid-April 2022: From now on and for more than a month it was Ground­hog Day. ... We were dig­ging in, artil­lery was shell­ing us, our avia­tion was al­most no­where to be seen. We just held posi­tions in the trenches on the front line, we could not shower, eat, or sleep prop­er­ly. Every­one had over­grown beards and were cov­ered in dirt, uni­forms and shoes be­gan to fray. [Ukrain­ian forces] could clear­ly see us from the drones and kept shell­ing us so al­most all of the equip­ment soon went out of or­der. We got a cou­ple of boxes with the so-called human­i­tarian aid, con­tain­ing cheap socks, T-shirts, shorts and soap. Some sol­diers be­gan to shoot them­selves ... to get [the gover­nment mon­ey] and get out of this hell. Our prison­er had his fin­gers and geni­tals cut off. Dead Ukrain­ians at one of the posts were plopped on seats, given names and cigar­ettes. Due to artil­lery shell­ing, some vil­lages near­by prac­ti­cal­ly ceased to exist. Every­one was get­ting angrier and angrier. Some grand­mother poi­soned our pies. Al­most every­one got a fun­gus, some­one’s teeth fell out, the skin was peel­ing off. Many dis­cussed how, when they re­turn, they will hold the com­mand account­able for lack of pro­vi­sion and in­com­pe­tent leader­ship. Some be­gan to sleep on duty be­cause of fatigue. Some­times we man­aged to catch a wave of the Ukrain­ian radio, where they poured dirt on us and called us orcs, which only em­bit­tered us even more. My legs and back hurt ter­ribly, but an order came not to evac­u­ate any­one due to ill­ness. I kept say­ing, “God, I will do every­thing to change this if I sur­vive.” ... I de­cid­ed that I would de­scribe the last year of my life, so that as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble would know what our army is now. By mid-April, earth got in­to my eyes due to artil­lery shell­ing. After five days of tor­ment, with the threat of los­ing an eye loom­ing over me, they evac­u­at­ed me.

Main enemy is propaganda.
▶ Post-April 2022: I survived, un­like many oth­ers. My con­science tells me that I must try to stop this mad­ness. ... We did not have the moral right to at­tack an­oth­er coun­try, es­pe­cial­ly the peo­ple clos­est to us. This is an army that bul­lies its own sol­diers, those who have al­ready been in the war, those who do not want to re­turn there and die for some­thing they don’t even under­stand. I will tell you a secret. The major­ity in the army, they are dis­satis­fied with what is hap­pen­ing there, they are dis­satis­fied with the govern­ment and their com­mand, they are dis­satis­fied with Putin and his poli­cies, they are dis­satis­fied with the Min­is­ter of De­fense who did not serve in the army. The main enemy of all Rus­sians and Ukrain­ians is prop­a­gan­da, which just fur­ther fuels hatred in peo­ple. I can no long­er watch all this hap­pen and re­main silent.


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-|  December 2023  |-








  SPACE RACE 2.1


   =⊚=    Rocket science is a skilled craft as ancient as throw­ing a club, sling­ing a rock, or hit­ting a tar­get with the bow and arrow. For the last hun­dred years or so, self-taught rock­et­eers have been aim­ing for outer space while shoot­ing for the Moon. Space agen­cies reg­u­lar­ly launch humans, space­probes, orbit­ers, land­ers, robots, tele­scopes, etc., to study the solar sys­tem and be­yond. Take Saturn for in­stance. The num­ber of moons found by 2015 was 62, four years later 20 more were add­ed. In 2017, dur­ing NASA’s fly­by of the rings of Saturn, rem­nants of nu­mer­ous shat­tered sat­el­lites, what Cas­si­ni ob­served in­stead was un­told thou­sands, mil­lions, of dwarf moons, shep­herd moons, moon­lets, and moon­moons.



International
Space
Station

   █+    The Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion is a 1998 part­ner­ship of fif­teen nations, cover­ing legal, finan­cial and polit­i­cal imp­li­ca­tions in how the sta­tion is util­ized. Five nations co­or­di­nate day-to-day, direct traf­fic routes, as­sign crew time.    ❙+❙    The era of sur­ren­der­ing to com­fort while in zero grav­i­ty took place un­ob­tru­sive­ly in 1988, as the first piece of the future ISS ar­rived at its orbit­al des­ti­na­tion, 250-260 mi (400-420 m) above Earth.    ❙+❙    The Rus­sian-built mod­ule Zar­ya was de­signed to be self-con­tained and “an auton­o­mous space hab­i­tat for eight months,” be­cause the sec­ond mod­ule wouldn’t show up un­til then.    ❙+❙    This mini space sta­tion was pow­ered by six nickel-cadium bat­ter­ies and two solar ar­rays, had three dock­ing ports. Oxy­gen cir­cu­lat­ed from a pres­sur­ized valve unit with air ducts, fun­nel con­tain­ment fil­ters, dust col­lec­tors, port­able fans. There is a gas anal­yz­er, a smoke detect­or, gas masks. The cabin comes with a pole, hand­rails, hooks, instru­ment con­tain­ers. Waste went to con­tain­er con­nec­tions for con­tin­gen­cy trans­fer of water; with wipes, con­tain­er bags, and “fil­ters.”    ❙+❙    Ful­ly as­sem­bled, the ISS has be­come a maze of 16 inter­connect­ed mod­ules. There is a basic gym, and the bath­rooms are in cham­bers hous­ing the waste man­age­ment sys­tem. The sta­tion is ser­viced by three robots, cap­able of in­de­pen­dent or con­joined assign­ments on the out­side.    ❙+❙    Twen­ty-five years plus of fly­ing has led to wear and tear, caus­ing “tor­sion­al strains, temp­er­ature im­pacts, micro­meteor­oid im­pacts.”    ❙+❙    The next space sta­tion is in devel­op­ment, with bet­ter space­suits, bet­ter bath­rooms. Every­thing will get an up­grade; de­sign for the cur­rent sta­tion was based on 1990s know-how. Even the mod­ules come in sev­eral vari­eties: ones cap­able of un­coup­ling and be­come auton­o­mous, and ones “for pri­vate visits.”    ❙+❙    When the time comes, NASA will guide the re­tired space sta­tion back in­to the atmo­sphere, where it will burn up and dis­in­te­grate, etc. This is a scen­ario that will take three years to achieve, aim­ing for Point Nemo in the South Pacif­ic. When around 155 mi (250km) above Earth, where grav­i­ty re­as­serts, there will be a final mis­sion to pick up remain­ing crew and re­search. An­oth­er space­craft will take over and steer the space sta­tion to its watery grave.    +█   



SANSA

   ❚❙❘❙     On the tip of South Afri­ca, the Her­ma­nus Mag­net­ic Ob­ser­va­to­ry (est.1841) be­gan to col­lect data on Earth’s mag­net­ic field. Ear­ly evi­dence had giv­en cre­dence that the mag­net­ic field plays an “im­por­tant role in mak­ing the plan­et hab­it­able.” It per­pet­ual­ly starts in the Earth’s core, where mol­ten iron churns and bits break off, then cool, and emit “rule-driv­en elec­tro-mag­net­ic arcs,” be­fore fall­ing back into the heat. These arcs rip­ple and wrap the plan­et, af­fect­ing the ion­o­sphere, the tides, and oth­er glob­al phe­nom­e­na. To­day, the ob­ser­va­to­ry is over­seen by the Depart­ment of Phy­sics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cape­town, and par­tic­i­pates in the coun­try’s space sci­ences. The South Afri­can Space Pro­gram is the sole weath­er-ac­tiv­i­ty cen­ter for all of Afri­ca, em­ploy­ing a fleet of sat­el­lites giv­ing feed­back for fires, flood­ing, etc.



وكالة الإمارات للفضاء

   ❚❚❚    The United Arab Emir­ates, by a decree from the pres­i­dent, joined the space age in 2014. Sev­en years later they would have a space­craft orbit­ing Mars, on a years-long mis­sion to map the plan­et. The Unit­ed Arab Emir­ates Space Agen­cy also plans to go to the Aster­oid Belt and probe sev­en rocks be­fore land­ing on the eighth, in 2033.



中 国 航 天 科 工 集 团 有 限 公 司

   ❚★❚     China Nation­al Space Ad­min­is­tra­tion is the sec­ond name for a space pro­gram which was hatched by the mili­tary in the late 1950s, orbit­ing around the Amer­i­can-trained rock­et­eer Tsien Hsue-Shen. In 2003 China would be­come the third nation, af­ter Rus­sia and the US, to send a man to space. China’s in­au­gu­ral mis­sion to the Moon had land­ed in 2013 and then stopped com­mu­ni­cat­ing. A sec­ond mission in 2019 land­ed and grew a leaf. The third plant­ed a flag, then flew home. China’s first space sta­tion launched in 2011, and ex­pired six years later, be­gin­ning with a death dive that last­ed four months, tum­bling head over heel be­fore crash­ing in­to the South Pacif­ic, in 2018. By then, work on the sec­ond space sta­tion had al­ready be­gun. Con­struc­tion crews had ro­tat­ed on months-long as­sign­ments to as­sem­ble Tian­gong-2, which be­came par­tial­ly oper­a­tion­al in 2021, orbit­ing 280-210 mi (450-340 km) above the Earth.



European Space Agency

    •e•     On Feb­ru­ary 24 2022, when Rus­sia in­vad­ed Ukraine, the Euro­pean Space Agen­cy im­me­diate­ly aban­doned plans with Rus­sia on a mis­sion to Mars. ESA direc­tor gen­eral Joseph Asch­bacher said: “I think the war in Ukraine has made poli­ti­cians real­ize that we are a bit vul­ner­able and we have to make sure that we have our own secured ac­cess to space and our space infra­struc­ture.” Eight days be­fore war broke out, French pres­i­dent Em­man­uel Macron had said: “There is no full pow­er or auton­o­my with­out man­ag­ing space. With­out (it) you can’t con­quer new fron­tiers or even con­trol your own.”     •e•     Af­ter the Sec­ond World War, dis­persed rem­nants of Euro­pean aero­nau­ti­cal socie­ties kept in con­tact, and found enough momen­tum that in 1975 they part­nered for a “co­he­sive ap­proach to space,” as a multi-nation space agen­cy. ESA is plan­ning on a foren­sic mis­sion to the Aster­oid Belt in 2024, as a fol­low-up to NASA’s 2022 dem­on­stra­tion of a dou­ble-aster­oid de­fense test. Hera will trav­el to and hov­er near Didy­mos-Dimor­phos (aster­oid and moon­let), a binary sys­tem cir­cling each oth­er while or­bit­ing the Sun.



Hubble Space Telescope

   ❘⊡❘    Launch­ing in­to orbit­al po­si­tion in 1990, some 340 mi (540 km) above Earth, the Hub­ble Space Tele­scope had in­au­gu­rat­ed a new era in far-out as­tron­o­my. It has al­ready re­port­ed back on the many moons Jupi­ter and of Saturn; the Small Magel­lan­ic Cloud; the Large Magel­lan­ic Cloud; and took an image of 3 mil­lion bil­lion suns. NASA has plans to keep Hub­ble op­er­ation­al un­til 2037, but there is al­so a de­orbit­ing safe­ty plan in place. Dur­ing a re­cent mis­sion, crew ar­rived and ins­talled a hook on the hull of the tele­scope. When the time comes, a space­craft will ar­rive and at­tach it­self to the hook, com­man­deer­ing Hub­ble and guid­ing it on its de­scent.



James
Webb
Space
Telescope

   ❘⊡❘    The James Webb Space Tele­scope waved bye bye to Earth on Christ­mas morn­ing in 2021, tak­ing off to its lone­ly posi­tion, far far bey­ond the Moon. Hav­ing ar­rived at its orbit­al des­ti­na­tion, JWST’s sun­shield then un­furled as ex­pect­ed, when all 107 pins popped “open in the prop­er se­quence.” Next day, as the last mir­ror pan­el rotat­ed into posi­tion, the pri­mary mir­ror opened its eye to be­gin the new era of infrared as­tron­o­my. The first year is booked sol­id with re­quests. Among the suc­cess­ful pro­pos­als sub­mit­ted, JWST will get to track 100 aster­oids so as to “de­rive the amount of water pres­ent” in the Aster­oid Belt; to study all 27 moons of Uranus; to mea­sure the weath­er of Pluto and its giant moon Charon, the orig­i­nal binary sys­tem; etc. Pao­la San­ti­ni, co-author of “Grism Lens-Amp­li­fied Sur­vey from Space (GLASS),” told a re­port­er: “This is a whole new chap­ter in as­tron­o­my. It’s like an archeo­log­i­cal dig, and sud­den­ly you find a lost city or some­thing you didn’t know about.” She might be re­fer­ring to the Phan­tom Galaxy, and the sup­posed black hole at the cen­ter. In­stead, what JWST found was a spin­ning worm­hole.



Indian
Space
Research
Organisation

   ❚❚❚    India’s first Moon mis­sion end­ed on August 28 2009, when the space­craft, hav­ing achieved lunar orbit, stopped com­mu­ni­cat­ing. The sec­ond at­tempt, with 56 min­utes left to touch down, was hit by a cyber­attack. This was the Chan­dra­yaan-2 mis­sion, which left on July 22 2019 and spent two months in orbit, us­ing Earth to then sling­shot out and to ap­proach the Moon. Ar­riv­ing at an in­cli­na­tion of 88°, “a lunar-orbit in­ser­tion maneuver” went off suc­cess­ful­ly. Twen­ty-eight min­utes later, the land­er sep­a­rat­ed to be­gin a series of brak­ing se­quences which would take five days be­fore touch­ing down. With 1.3 mi (2.1 km) more to go, ground sup­port lost com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the land­er, which then crashed. This sec­ond mis­sion would have drilled in­to the lunar man­tle, and re­turn with sam­ples. The rov­er was nev­er de­ployed, it had six wheels, was pow­ered by AI, and was named Prag­yan, san­skrit for wis­dom.



宇 宙 航 空 研 究 開 発 機 構

   ❚•❚     Real­iz­ing that their space re­search in the 1960s were in fact com­ple­men­tary, three Japa­nese groups came to­geth­er in 2013 un­der one roof as the Japan Aero­space Ex­plor­a­tion Agen­cy. JAXA con­ducts some in­no­va­tive meth­ods for space ex­plor­a­tion. Like send­ing the Japa­nese Ex­per­i­ment Mod­ule (JEM) in 2007 to the Inter­nation­al Space Sta­tion, ded­i­cat­ed to con­duct­ing ex­per­i­ments in zero-grav­ity. Like send­ing a robot pro­grammed to flop around in lunar dust or fly to and take a pot­shot at a poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous aster­oid in 2014, trav­el­ing very close to Earth. Ap­proach­ing aster­oid Ryu­gu Haya­busa-2 took aim and fired, cre­at­ing a new cra­ter and ex­pos­ing under­ly­ing stuff. After land­ing, the robo-crew placed 0.19 oz (5 gr) of soil in­to an en­vel­ope, and flung the mail back to Earth. In 2010 JAXA had sent a sev­en-year un­crewed mis­sion to the Aster­oid Belt to re­turn with sam­ples. The aster­oid was giv­en the name Ito­kawa, a salute to Hideo Ito­kawa (b.1935), a grad­uate in aero­nautics who launched a small rock­et over Koku­bun­ji, a sub­urb of Tok­yo, in 1955.



Agenţia Spaţialǎ Românǎ

   ❚❚❚    Romania has a sto­ried past of vis­it­ing the sky. Traian Vuia (b.1872) star­tled the Moon with a fly­by in 1906, in his “auton­o­mous take-off aero­plane.” Hen­ri Co­an­da (b.1886) wooed her four years later in his “jet aero­plane.” When direc­tor Fritz Lang (b.1890) was mak­ing Wom­an on the Moon (1929), he brought in rock­et­eer Her­mann Oberth (b.1904), to make sure that the look and feel of se­quences in­volv­ing space­flight in the silent b-&-w sci­fi space ad­ven­ture was “authen­tic.” To­day, the Roman­ian Space Agen­cy is a mem­ber of the Arte­mis Ac­cords, and hosts the an­nual world-wide 'Yuri’s Night'.



Державне космічне агентство України

   ❚❚    In the 1960s, the Soviet Union re­tooled an auto­mobile plant in Ukraine, at the time a part of the USSR, and be­gan to manu­fac­ture rock­ets. When the union end­ed, this fac­tory grew to be­come a com­pany town. Rock­et City is its nick­name, and where the State Space Agen­cy of Ukraine is head­quar­tered.



Roscosmos

   ❚❚❚    As the Soviet Union fell apart the rock­et divi­sion of its space pro­gram be­came marooned in Ukraine. When Rus­sia in­vad­ed Ukraine on Feb­ru­ary 27 2022, its head of space pro­gram bar­gained with the Inter­nation­al Space Station, and said: “If you block co­oper­a­tion with us, who will save the ISS from an un­con­trolled de­orbit and fall in­to the Unit­ed States or Europe? There is al­so the op­tion of drop­ping a 500-ton struc­ture on In­dia or China. Do you want to threat­en them with such a pros­pect? The ISS does not fly over Rus­sia, so all the risks are yours. Are you ready for them?” Be­fore the year was over, there was a new head at the Rus­sian Fed­er­al Space Agen­cy, Yury Bori­sov, who re­leased a time­line for relin­quish­ing their part­ner­ship with the ISS. Then, on April 28, 2023, NASA announced that Russia will in fact stay on ISS through 2028.    ❚❚❚    Cosmo­naut Yuri Gaga­rin was the first to or­bit in space, April 12 1961. Cosmo­naut Valen­tina “Sea­gull” Teresh­kova was the first wom­an, flying 48 times around Earth on June 16 1963. Be­fore humans Rus­sia sent ani­mals to space: fruit flies, a rhe­sus mon­key, dogs, a grey rab­bit, 42 mice; in 1968 it was a turtle.



Interkosmos
   ⋮ ★ ⋮    In 1967, Rus­sia be­gan shar­ing sat­el­lite tech­nol­ogy with other nations, and even­tual­ly took some of them to space.
The first of these crewed mis­sions, which took off in 1978, was cosmo­naut Vlad­i­mir Rem­ek paired with Old­rich Pel­cak from Czech­o­slo­va­kia. Pel­cak had be­come elig­i­ble by go­ing to cosmo­naut school, in a city-sized cam­pus of space sci­ence lab­o­ra­tories, air­craft hang­ars, train­ing cen­ters. There were liv­ing quar­ters for cosmo­nauts, train­ees and sup­port crew, with shop­ping and enter­tain­ment dis­tricts for their fam­i­lies. Opened in 1960, Star City was at the time an hour’s drive from the Krem­lin.



NASA

   ❚❚❚    When the Sec­ond World War end­ed in 1945, the US set in mo­tion a plan to re­trieve rock­et tech­nol­ogy in Europe. Por­ing over prom­is­ing plans with red, white & blue eyes, these new­ly mint­ed rock­et­eers went on to cre­ate the Nation­al Aero­nau­tics and Space Ad­min­is­tra­tion, but no­body calls them by that name. NASA had gone to the Moon in 1969, then set its sights on Mars. In 1976, two rock­ets took one-way trips, then a land­er touched down in 1997 and rov­er So­journ­er scout­ed around. Op­por­tu­nity ar­rived in 2004, per­formed for 14 years and, dur­ing a fierce gale, choked to death on Mar­tian dust, which had ac­cu­mu­lat­ed over time. In 2011, Curi­os­ity found rare quartz. The 2018 mis­sion, to study trem­ors and quakes, had a rock’n’roll theme: etched on the land­er: green day since 1986. Its rov­er InSight came across a rock slide, and named the spot af­ter a song by the Roll­ing Stones.    ❚❚❚    NASA show­cased a vi­able ap­proach for an aster­oid-defense sys­tem in 2021 by send­ing a mis­sile to con­duct a “dou­ble-aster­oid re­direc­tion test” in the Aster­oid Belt. The re­sult­ing im­pact on the moon­let (sat­el­lite to Didy­mos) had enough force to al­ter Di­mor­phos’s tra­jec­tory “a bit.”    ❚❚❚    Fif­ty-six min­utes into a 1970 crewed lunar mis­sion, the Apol­lo 13 space­craft ex­pe­ri­enced a hard­ware mal­func­tion, and crit­i­cal dam­age en­sued. The mis­sion then be­came one of res­cue, as astro­nauts Jim Lov­ell, Fred Haise and Jack Swi­gert raced to bring what was left of their space­craft safe­ly back to Earth.



The Artemis Accords

   ☾⋯☽    View­ing the sky with rain­bow eyes, NASA an­nounced in 2017 “prin­ci­ples for a safe, peace­ful and pros­per­ous future” in space, begin­ning with the Moon, where a manu­fac­tured world for humans in a dead­ly land­scape is to fea­ture, among many oth­er con­sid­er­ations, the inter­oper­abil­i­ty of all equip­ment. Sign­ing on to the Ar­te­mis Ac­cords, as of June 2023, were Aus­tra­lia, Bah­rain, Bra­zil, Cana­da, Colom­bia, Ecuador, France, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lux­em­bourg, Mex­i­co, New Zea­land, Niger­ia, Po­land, Re­pub­lic of Korea, Roma­nia, Rwan­da, Sau­di Ara­bia, Sing­a­pore, Spain, Ukraine, Unit­ed Arab Emir­ates, Unit­ed King­dom, and the US. China and Rus­sia, though, have their own under­stand­ing, al­so lunar in out­look: an as-yet un­named pro­gram which is “open to all in­ter­est­ed coun­tries and inter­nation­al part­ners.”



Canadian Space Agency

   ❚•❚    Cana­da al­ready had an air force by 1924, and would join the Allies in the Sec­ond World War, where 17,000 gave their lives fight­ing on the ground and fly­ing bomb­ers, fight­ers, recon­nais­sances and trans­port around the world. In 1942, Geral­dine M. Las­cotte heed­ed the call to duty and was is­sued an ID Card in order to at­tend the Ot­ta­wa Air Train­ing Con­fer­ence, learn about air­planes and be­come a part of the Royal Cana­dian Air Force. After­wards, Cana­dians came home to real­ize that they now had the fourth-larg­est air pres­ence in the world, re­doubled their ef­forts and in 1962 launched a sat­el­lite in­to space. To­day, CSA shares its knowl­edge for the “bene­fit of Cana­dians and human­ity,” con­ducts a camp for astro­naut train­ees, and has re­leased a video of Chris Had­field sing­ing Space Od­dity on­board the Inter­nation­al Space Sta­tion.



Astronaut 3.0

   ▜ ▙    Astro­nauts on the Inter­national Space Sta­tion have be­come con­di­tioned to life in zero grav­i­ty, while trav­el­ing at five miles per sec­ond, 250 mi (400 km) above the Earth. Future forays into deep space will re­quire more stam­ina, skill sets, dif­fer­ent dis­ci­plines. To cite just two: an abil­i­ty to oper­ate dif­fer­ent kinds of space vehi­cles, and a back­ground in geol­ogy.    ▜ ▙   
Life with­out famil­iar grav­i­ty in an oxy­gen-free en­viron­ment has fraught con­se­quences. Bone loss, motion sick­ness, vit­a­min de­fi­cien­cy (A,E,C, folic acid, thi­a­mine); reg­u­lar ex­po­sure to queer cos­mic rays and un­fil­tered solar radi­a­tion.    ▜ ▙    Com­fort cham­bers of the future, though, of­fer a ray of hope. Go­ing for­ward, waste man­age­ment sys­tems will fea­ture a com­mon plat­form for all con­di­tions of out­er space, aim­ing “to re­duce crew time, im­prove clean­li­ness, ar­rive at a re­duc­tion in vol­ume and weight of waste.”    ▜ ▙    Astro­naut 2.0 Jack D. Fisch­er re­calls what it was like be­ing on the ISS in 2017: “Un­like most things, you just can’t train for that on the ground. So I ap­proach my space-toi­let ac­tiv­i­ties with re­spect, prep­a­ra­tion and a healthy dose of sheer ter­ror.” (Suc­cumb­ing to temp­ta­tion none­the­less, a piz­za kit for sev­en was deliv­ered to the space sta­tion on Aug­ust 10 2021.)    ▜ ▙    First­gen astro­nauts debut­ed in 1959. There was aero­batic pilot Bet­ty Skel­ton (b.1926), who test­ed ex­per­i­men­tal craft, and the men chos­en to fly the Mer­cury 7 mis­sions: Scott Car­pen­ter, Gor­don “Gordo” Coo­per, John Glenn, Gus Gris­som, Wal­ly Schir­ra, Alan Shep­ard, and Deke Slay­ton.    ▜ ▙    Next­gen space­suits will come with a lay­er of pro­tec­tion from “ele­vated radi­a­tion ex­po­sure,” and de­signed “to fit every body type.”
They will be light­er and less bulky, more hi-tech: in-suit cam­eras, a digi­tal check­list. Ones for out­side work will fea­ture digi­tal nav­i­ga­tion aids, and have red and blue arms. Body­wear, too, will be more com­fort­able: Cool­er under­wear and made with breath­able fab­rics for a tight­er fit, “to coun­ter­act the lack of grav­i­ty by squeez­ing the body from the shoul­ders to the feet with a sim­i­lar force to that felt on Earth.”

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