PIXELS  Still from The Migrants (1974)

  WORLD WIDE WAR 

 RED MIRAGE  Insurrectionists at the US Capitol

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 rejectving 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.


 DISPATCH 
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.


 TIMELINE 
The Last Day of World War One by Lenny Flank

BY THE FIRST WEEK of No­vem­ber 1918, the first world war was draw­ing to a close.
When it be­gan, in Au­gust 1914, both sides con­fi­dent­ly pre­dict­ed they would be vic­tor­i­ous “be­fore the au­tumn leaves fell from the trees”. In­stead, the war turned in­to a four-year dead­lock. It was the Ger­mans who broke first. The United States had bela­ted­ly en­tered the war in 1917, but it wasn’t un­til the sum­mer of 1918 that the has­ti­ly-trained dough­boys, armed large­ly with French wea­pons, be­gan ar­riv­ing in sig­nif­i­cant num­bers. It was enough to break the spine of the ex­haust­ed Ger­man Army, and by Sep­tem­ber 1918 the Kaiser’s troops were in re­treat every­where, and the Kai­ser him­self was forced to ab­di­cate by a rebel­lion of the war-weary Ger­man pop­u­la­tion.
+
November 11 1918, the last day of World War One
+
At 5 am the French, Brit­ish, Amer­i­can and Ger­man rep­re­sen­ta­tives signed the arm­is­tice treaty that for­mal­ly end­ed hos­til­i­ties in World War One. Un­der the terms of the Armis­tice, the war would of­fi­cial­ly end at 11 am that morn­ing. All the troops in the trenches had to do was sit tight for the next six hours. In­stead, al­lied forces con­tin­ued to launch a series of at­tacks, pro­duc­ing over 10,000 cas­ual­ties on the last morn­ing of a war that was al­ready over.
0510
At 5:10 am on No­vem­ber 11, the in­stru­ment of sur­ren­der was signed. To give every­one enough time to con­tact all their forces in the field, it was agreed that the for­mal end of hos­til­i­ties would oc­cur at 11 am that morn­ing.
An hour ear­lier, at 4 am, the Fifth Marine Divi­sion was or­dered to cross the Meuse Riv­er on pon­toon bridges, and came un­der ar­til­lery and MG fire. The Marines took over 1,100 cas­ual­ties.
The US Army’s 89th Divi­sion was or­dered to storm the town of Stenay be­cause, the com­mand­er later ex­plained, it had a num­ber of bath-houses and he didn’t want the Ger­mans to have them after the war was over. It cost the Amer­i­cans 61 dead and 304 wound­ed to take Stenay.
The 92nd Divi­sion, an Afri­can-Amer­i­can unit with white of­fi­cers, had been sched­uled for days to make an at­tack on the morn­ing of the 11th. The re­sult was, Gen­eral John Sher­burne bit­ter­ly de­clared, “an ab­so­lute­ly need­less waste of life”.
0600
Although the al­lied forces had known for the past three days that an arm­is­tice was be­ing dis­cussed and the war was al­most over, it wasn’t un­til 6 am that of­fi­cial in­struc­tions went out de­clar­ing that the war would for­mal­ly end at 11 am. Foch had picked that time, as it was poet­i­cal­ly the elev­enth hour of the elev­enth day of the elev­enth month.
0930
Irish­man Pri­vate George Ed­win Eli­son, who had helped de­fend Mons from the Ger­mans back in 1914, now be­came the last Brit­ish sol­dier killed. It was 9:30 am.
1040
At 10:40 am, in the 81st Divi­sion, the com­mand­ing of­fi­cer or­dered his men to stand down; his supe­rior coun­ter­mand­ed that or­der and told the men to ad­vance. The divi­sion lost 66 killed and 395 wound­ed.
1044
At 10:44 am, the 313th Regi­ment was or­dered to clear out a Ger­man MG post at the vil­lage of Ville-De­vant-Chau­mont. As the Amer­i­can troops ad­vanced, the Ger­mans, in ut­ter dis­be­lief, first waved at them fran­tic­al­ly, then fired over their heads to try to get them to stop, and fi­nal­ly in des­per­a­tion fired a short burst di­rect­ly at them. Pri­vate Hen­ry Gun­ter, who had ar­rived in the trenches four months ago, was struck in the head and died in­stant­ly. He was the last Amer­i­can killed in the war. The time was 10:59 am.
1058
Mean­while, the at­tack on Mons con­tin­ued. At 10:58 am, Cana­dian troop­er Pri­vate George Price be­came the last sol­dier of the Brit­ish Com­mon­wealth to be killed.
At 11 am, a Ger­man jun­ior of­fi­cer named Tomas left his trench and ap­proached a group of Amer­i­can troop­ers in No Man’s Land. As To­mas came for­ward, they shot him. It was 11:02 am. The cost on the last day of World War One was over 10,000 cas­ual­ties, wound­ed or killed: 1200 French; 2400 Brit­ish; 3000 Amer­i­cans; 4100 Ger­mans.


 EXCERPT  Battle of the Three Emperors, from War and Peace 1869 by Leo Tolstoy

ON the 18th and 19th of Novem­ber the [Rus­sia and Aus­tria] army ad­vanced two days’ march, and the [French] en­e­my’s out­posts after a brief inter­change of shots re­treat­ed. In the high­est army circles from mid­day on the 19th a great, excited­ly bust­ling activity be­gan which last­ed till the morn­ing of the 20th, when the mem­or­a­ble bat­tle of Aus­ter­litz was fought.
UNTIL mid­day on the 19th the activ­ity, the eager talk, run­ning to and fro, and dis­patch­ing of ad­ju­tants, was con­fined to the Em­peror’s head­quar­ters (i.e., Alex­an­der I of Rus­sia). But on the after­noon of that day this activ­ity reached [Gen­eral of the Rus­sian Army] Kutu­zov’s head­quar­ters and the staffs of the com­mand­ers of col­umns. By eve­ning the adju­tants had spread it to all ends and parts of the army, and in the night from the 19th to the 20th the whole eighty thou­sand allied troops rose from their bivouacs to the hum of voices, and the army swayed and start­ed in one enor­mous mass six miles long.
THE concen­trated activ­i­ty which had be­gun at the Em­peror’s head­quar­ters in the morn­ing and had start­ed the whole move­ment that fol­lowed, was like the first move­ment of the main wheel of a large tower-clock. One wheel slow­ly moved, anoth­er was set in mo­tion, and a third, and wheels began to re­volve fast­er and fast­er, levers and cog-wheels to work, chimes to play, fig­ures to pop out, and the hands to ad­vance with reg­ular motion as a result of all that activity.
JUST as in the mechan­ism of a clock, so in the mechan­ism of the mili­tary machine, an im­pulse once given leads to the final result; and just as indif­ferent­ly quies­cent till the mo­ment when motion is trans­mit­ted to them are the parts of the mech­an­ism which the im­pulse has not yet reached. Wheels creak on their axles as the cogs en­gage one an­oth­er and the revolv­ing pulleys whirr with the rapid­ity of their move­ment, but a neigh­bour­ing wheel is as quiet and motion­less as though it were pre­pared to remain so for a hun­dred years; but the mo­ment comes when the lever catches it, and obey­ing the im­pulse that wheel begins to creak, and joins in the com­mon motion the result and aim of which are be­yond its ken.
JUST as in a clock the result of the com­pli­cat­ed motion of in­num­er­able wheels and pulleys is mere­ly a slow and regu­lar move­ment of the hands which show the time, so the result of all the com­pli­cat­ed human activ­ities of 160,000 Rus­sians and French – all their pas­sions, de­sires, re­morse, humil­i­a­tions, suffer­ings, out­bursts of pride, fear, and enthu­siasm – was only the loss of the battle of Auster­litz, the so-called battle of the three Em­perors – that is to say, a slow move­ment of the hand on the dial of human history.








-¦  April 2023  ¦-


  SPACE RACE 


   ==    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.       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 2017prin­ci­ples 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 Feb­ru­ary 2023, were Aus­tra­lia, Bah­rain, Bra­zil, Cana­da, Colom­bia, France, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lux­em­bourg, Mex­i­co, New Zea­land, Niger­ia, Po­land, Re­pub­lic of Korea, Roma­nia, Rwan­da, Sau­di Ara­bia, Sing­a­pore, 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.




  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.


  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.



  PIXELS 
Still from The Migrants (1974)

  WORLD WIDE WAR 

 RED MIRAGE  Insurrectionists at the US Capitol

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 rejectving 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.


 DISPATCH 
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.


 TIMELINE 
The Last Day of World War One by Lenny Flank

BY THE FIRST WEEK of No­vem­ber 1918, the first world war was draw­ing to a close.
When it be­gan, in Au­gust 1914, both sides con­fi­dent­ly pre­dict­ed they would be vic­tor­i­ous “be­fore the au­tumn leaves fell from the trees”. In­stead, the war turned in­to a four-year dead­lock. It was the Ger­mans who broke first. The United States had bela­ted­ly en­tered the war in 1917, but it wasn’t un­til the sum­mer of 1918 that the has­ti­ly-trained dough­boys, armed large­ly with French wea­pons, be­gan ar­riv­ing in sig­nif­i­cant num­bers. It was enough to break the spine of the ex­haust­ed Ger­man Army, and by Sep­tem­ber 1918 the Kaiser’s troops were in re­treat every­where, and the Kai­ser him­self was forced to ab­di­cate by a rebel­lion of the war-weary Ger­man pop­u­la­tion.
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November 11 1918, the last day of World War One
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At 5 am the French, Brit­ish, Amer­i­can and Ger­man rep­re­sen­ta­tives signed the arm­is­tice treaty that for­mal­ly end­ed hos­til­i­ties in World War One. Un­der the terms of the Armis­tice, the war would of­fi­cial­ly end at 11 am that morn­ing. All the troops in the trenches had to do was sit tight for the next six hours. In­stead, al­lied forces con­tin­ued to launch a series of at­tacks, pro­duc­ing over 10,000 cas­ual­ties on the last morn­ing of a war that was al­ready over.
0510
At 5:10 am on No­vem­ber 11, the in­stru­ment of sur­ren­der was signed. To give every­one enough time to con­tact all their forces in the field, it was agreed that the for­mal end of hos­til­i­ties would oc­cur at 11 am that morn­ing.
An hour ear­lier, at 4 am, the Fifth Marine Divi­sion was or­dered to cross the Meuse Riv­er on pon­toon bridges, and came un­der ar­til­lery and MG fire. The Marines took over 1,100 cas­ual­ties.
The US Army’s 89th Divi­sion was or­dered to storm the town of Stenay be­cause, the com­mand­er later ex­plained, it had a num­ber of bath-houses and he didn’t want the Ger­mans to have them after the war was over. It cost the Amer­i­cans 61 dead and 304 wound­ed to take Stenay.
The 92nd Divi­sion, an Afri­can-Amer­i­can unit with white of­fi­cers, had been sched­uled for days to make an at­tack on the morn­ing of the 11th. The re­sult was, Gen­eral John Sher­burne bit­ter­ly de­clared, “an ab­so­lute­ly need­less waste of life”.
0600
Although the al­lied forces had known for the past three days that an arm­is­tice was be­ing dis­cussed and the war was al­most over, it wasn’t un­til 6 am that of­fi­cial in­struc­tions went out de­clar­ing that the war would for­mal­ly end at 11 am. Foch had picked that time, as it was poet­i­cal­ly the elev­enth hour of the elev­enth day of the elev­enth month.
0930
Irish­man Pri­vate George Ed­win Eli­son, who had helped de­fend Mons from the Ger­mans back in 1914, now be­came the last Brit­ish sol­dier killed. It was 9:30 am.
1040
At 10:40 am, in the 81st Divi­sion, the com­mand­ing of­fi­cer or­dered his men to stand down; his supe­rior coun­ter­mand­ed that or­der and told the men to ad­vance. The divi­sion lost 66 killed and 395 wound­ed.
1044
At 10:44 am, the 313th Regi­ment was or­dered to clear out a Ger­man MG post at the vil­lage of Ville-De­vant-Chau­mont. As the Amer­i­can troops ad­vanced, the Ger­mans, in ut­ter dis­be­lief, first waved at them fran­tic­al­ly, then fired over their heads to try to get them to stop, and fi­nal­ly in des­per­a­tion fired a short burst di­rect­ly at them. Pri­vate Hen­ry Gun­ter, who had ar­rived in the trenches four months ago, was struck in the head and died in­stant­ly. He was the last Amer­i­can killed in the war. The time was 10:59 am.
1058
Mean­while, the at­tack on Mons con­tin­ued. At 10:58 am, Cana­dian troop­er Pri­vate George Price be­came the last sol­dier of the Brit­ish Com­mon­wealth to be killed.
At 11 am, a Ger­man jun­ior of­fi­cer named Tomas left his trench and ap­proached a group of Amer­i­can troop­ers in No Man’s Land. As To­mas came for­ward, they shot him. It was 11:02 am. The cost on the last day of World War One was over 10,000 cas­ual­ties, wound­ed or killed: 1200 French; 2400 Brit­ish; 3000 Amer­i­cans; 4100 Ger­mans.


 EXCERPT  Battle of the Three Emperors, from War and Peace 1869 by Leo Tolstoy

ON the 18th and 19th of Novem­ber the [Rus­sia and Aus­tria] army ad­vanced two days’ march, and the [French] en­e­my’s out­posts after a brief inter­change of shots re­treat­ed. In the high­est army circles from mid­day on the 19th a great, excited­ly bust­ling activity be­gan which last­ed till the morn­ing of the 20th, when the mem­or­a­ble bat­tle of Aus­ter­litz was fought.
UNTIL mid­day on the 19th the activ­ity, the eager talk, run­ning to and fro, and dis­patch­ing of ad­ju­tants, was con­fined to the Em­peror’s head­quar­ters (i.e., Alex­an­der I of Rus­sia). But on the after­noon of that day this activ­ity reached [Gen­eral of the Rus­sian Army] Kutu­zov’s head­quar­ters and the staffs of the com­mand­ers of col­umns. By eve­ning the adju­tants had spread it to all ends and parts of the army, and in the night from the 19th to the 20th the whole eighty thou­sand allied troops rose from their bivouacs to the hum of voices, and the army swayed and start­ed in one enor­mous mass six miles long.
THE concen­trated activ­i­ty which had be­gun at the Em­peror’s head­quar­ters in the morn­ing and had start­ed the whole move­ment that fol­lowed, was like the first move­ment of the main wheel of a large tower-clock. One wheel slow­ly moved, anoth­er was set in mo­tion, and a third, and wheels began to re­volve fast­er and fast­er, levers and cog-wheels to work, chimes to play, fig­ures to pop out, and the hands to ad­vance with reg­ular motion as a result of all that activity.
JUST as in the mechan­ism of a clock, so in the mechan­ism of the mili­tary machine, an im­pulse once given leads to the final result; and just as indif­ferent­ly quies­cent till the mo­ment when motion is trans­mit­ted to them are the parts of the mech­an­ism which the im­pulse has not yet reached. Wheels creak on their axles as the cogs en­gage one an­oth­er and the revolv­ing pulleys whirr with the rapid­ity of their move­ment, but a neigh­bour­ing wheel is as quiet and motion­less as though it were pre­pared to remain so for a hun­dred years; but the mo­ment comes when the lever catches it, and obey­ing the im­pulse that wheel begins to creak, and joins in the com­mon motion the result and aim of which are be­yond its ken.
JUST as in a clock the result of the com­pli­cat­ed motion of in­num­er­able wheels and pulleys is mere­ly a slow and regu­lar move­ment of the hands which show the time, so the result of all the com­pli­cat­ed human activ­ities of 160,000 Rus­sians and French – all their pas­sions, de­sires, re­morse, humil­i­a­tions, suffer­ings, out­bursts of pride, fear, and enthu­siasm – was only the loss of the battle of Auster­litz, the so-called battle of the three Em­perors – that is to say, a slow move­ment of the hand on the dial of human history.




-|  April 2023  |-

  THREAD & THRUM  title of article: Rubble Rubble
Photo of meteorite that landed in Sanchore, northern India, in 2020.
Small space ob­jects enter­ing Earth’s gravi­ta­tion are, first and fore­most, a po­ten­ti­al­ly dan­ger­ous “near-Earth ob­ject”. When­ever such a visit­or buzzes Earth, it be­comes a (pass­ing) meteor­oid – it can free it­self and con­tin­ue its course. It’s a meteor if it can­not. And a meteor­ite, when it has crash landed.
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Photo of meteorite that landed in Sanchore, northern India, in 2020. Composed of germantium, iron, nickel and platinum.  Photo: Alan Fitzsimmons
It took a while to pin down what an aster­oid is. The space rocks that make up the Aster­oid Belt is a col­lec­tion that con­tains more than aster­oids. Af­ter much dis­cus­sions, an asteroid these days is under­stood to be a space rock that can come in a var­i­ous shapes, a width of from about half-a-mile (one kilo­meter) to about 600 miles (1000 kilo­meters); some­thing ir­reg­u­lar and small­er than the Moon. An aster­oid lacks an electro-mag­net­ic core and carries no atmo­spher.
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Enhanced photo of comet Neowise.
A space object with a tail (made of gas and dust) is a comet. There are dif­fer­ent kinds; some can even come from oth­er solar sys­tems.
Two photos: girls posing next to large boulder in Hawaii. Giant rock found ln Joshua Tree, California.





















❚-❚-❚•  In the after­math of the Trojan War, Olym­pians car­ried on the fight with each oth­er – god versus god. This theo=machia so angered Ge (pronunced Gaea), that the premier earth god­dess revolt­ed. Egypt dis­ap­peared in­to a “screaming wind”. An­oth­er Aesir-Vanir con­flict had been brew­ing when rip­ples from the war in the south trig­gered the eight­eenth Rag­narok, send­ing nine worlds and twelve hells top­pling into a watery worm­hole.

❚-❚-❚•  Ge began cramp­ing and vomit­ed out con­tents in her vaults. The larg­est eject­iles had been im­pris­oned there by her grand­son Jupiter. These (4th class) mon­sters, gain­ing back their agen­cy, prompt­ly at­tacked Olym­pus by stack­ing moun­tains and climb­ing up, trig­ger­ing giganto=machia 2.0. What else that didn’t climb out was shak­­en off in un­dulat­ing spasms, clear­ing out cav­­erns and empty­­ing all of the hells that Ge knew about. The last to de­part Tar­­ta­rus, with the keys, were under­world deities Pluto and his titan-aunt Hekate, mak­ing sure every gate was open and all left un­­guarded.

❚-❚-❚•  The goddess with no parents then picked Atlas up and threw the sec­ond-gen titan at her male coun­ter­part, which is what gave Uranus his famous red-eye. Their son, first-gen titan Hyper­ion, wit­nessed all this and had a hydro­gen-heart at­tack; in 1948, the solar god would step down from the Sun. Tak­ing his place on the grav­ity=throne was that “con­tain­er of multi­tudes”, com­plex god Apol­lon, whose outer manifestation now is Helius, “the eld­est flame”. Rendering of the invariable plane in relation to the inner solar system.

Eight planets (+ a few minor plan­ets + the Aster­oid Belt), i.e., the clas­si­cal solar sys­tem, go around the Sun along the “in­var­iable plane”, in har­mo­ni­ous align­ment. Be­yond Nep­tune, though, this pre­dict­able “music of the spheres” is no long­er the case.
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Rendering of the Kuiper Belt as a large band surrounding the inner solar system.
There is a vast­ness be­yond the in­ner solar sys­tem, en­larg­ing by extra­ordi­nary mag­ni­tudes the sway of the Sun. Just beyond Nep­tune is a lab­or­a­tory, in the guise of a ceme­tery lik­ened to the Aster­oid Belt, where ob­jects in res­o­nance to the Sun roam. Just be­yond Nep­tune lies a for­mid­able ring of iced rocks in rela­tive­ly stable or­bits, called the Kuiper Belt (1992), named for Dutch astron­o­mer Gerard Kuiper (b.1905). Posit­ed, ever since the 1930s, as debris and there­fore a part of the solar sys­tem, the first evi­dence sur­faced when Albion (1992), myth­o­log­i­cal Brit­ain, stepped into view: the first Kui­per Belt ob­ject ‐ half a mile (167 kilo­meters) wide, and tak­ing 289 years to go around the Sun.
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Rendering of the angled Scattered Disc in relation to trans-Neptune space.
The Sun has a third ring, an odd sec­tor where trans-Nep­tune ob­jects or­bit in res­o­nance with Nep­tune’s gravi­ta­tion­al heft, the Scat­tered Disc (1966).
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Rendering of the Öpik-Oort Cloud in relation to the inner and outer solar system.
In 1907, astron­omy began imagin­ing a re­gion in the hinter­lands of the out­er solar sys­tem, a “reser­voir of comets”, and where iced rem­nants from the for­ma­tion of the ear­ly solar sys­tem con­tin­ue liv­ing a half-life. In 1932, it be­gan prob­able. By mid-cen­tury, a map of what it may look like was be­gun. Named after Eston­ian astro­physi­cist Ernst Öpik (b.1893) and Dutch astron­omer Jan Oort (b.1900), the Öpik-Oort Cloud (1950).


❚-❚-❚•  Marooned on a chunk float­ing south as Pan­gea broke apart, indi­genes clung on and end­ed up on an­oth­er shore, un­der an­oth­er view of the Sun. Look­ing at sum­mer skies through wintry eyes, they saw the physi­cal, spirit­ual and mor­tal planes clear­er and earli­er than most. They were the first to notice, when the first atom­ic bomb test too place on July 17 1945 in New Mex­i­co, how Ge had curled up and suc­cumbed to cata­tonia. Now­adays, the first peo­ples of Austra­lia are best friends with the faded goddess of the Earth, and help to re­pair her bandag­ing to suit every season.

❚-❚-❚•  Nereus actual­ly didn’t fell any­thing while Ge went through her geo=­machia. His ab­orig­i­nal root mat­ter being H-two-oh, “Medi­ter­ran­ean” soon enough be­gan to splash some of it over the ex­posed parts of Earth, ini­ti­at­ing a tidal rite to soothe his beloved, his grand­mother, his only home.

❚-❚-❚•  In 1950, Pluto and Hekate pre­sent­ed them­selves at the gravity☷throne, and told every­one pres­ent what they had seen: a trans-Nep­tune region of space where there were more rings, where space rocks and ob­jects have zany or­bits, and where every­thing was sus­pend­ed in­side a stupen­dous gos­sa­mer cloud. The king and crone of the under­world had come to the house of the Sun to an­nounce the pass­ing of the old order.

❚-❚-❚•  This had al­ready be­gun dur­ing the for­ma­tion of the in­ner solar sys­tem, when Jupi­ter had jostled with neigh­bor Saturn over throne place­ments. This mini=machia, be­tween father and son, was won by the son. Yet by widen­ing and ad­just­ing their or­bits to avoid col­li­sion, it also caused near­by Uranus to flip onto his back, all the while mak­ing Nep­tune, near enough, to sway and heave, back and forth.

❚-❚-❚•  The premier sea god had im­medi­ate­ly coun­tered to save his trident☵throne, but in the ensu­ing tem­pest dam­age hap­pened, and fling­ing what flaked off into re­mote regions. Nep­tune had also smacked into some­thing sub­stan­tial, shat­ter­ing the ob­ject and hurl­ing debris large and small far, far, far away. Cas­ual­ties from this oly=machia are now every­where you look, yet are sub­ject one and all to the grav­ity☷throne. Thus end­ed Hekate’s ac­count of the gath­er­ing to­geth­er of a hypo­the­ti­cal heaven.

❚-❚-❚•  Pluto, the first minor plan­et, was rec­og­nized as the first trans-Nep­tune enti­ty, a fit­ting place­ment for the king of the dead over­see­ing a mov­ing ceme­tery in out­er space. The near­est cas­ual­ties made up a vast legion called the Kui­per Belt, the sec­ond ring around the Sun. There is yet a third ring, faint­ly sketched out, the odd-behav­ing ob­jects that make up the Scat­tered Disc. Fur­ther out yet is a bub­ble of ceme­tery dust, the Öpik-Oort Cloud, com­posed of multi-bil­lion bits of iced peb­bles. All these trans-Nep­tune ob­jects to­geth­er make up the “frozen forgots”, some larg­er some small­er, some spher­i­cal with moons, mari­nat­ing for the most part in blue-grey bruises un­der dessi­cat­ed dress­ings.

❚-❚-❚•  Pluto had, begin­ning 2004, come to under­stand this new neigh­bor­hood. In a gold­en chariot drawn by four black horses, the infer­nal god had crossed over the sec­ond ring of the Sun and got stuck momen­ta­ri­ly in bow shock, the first visit­or from the in­ner solar sys­tem to do so. Breach­ing which hurled Pluto inex­on­or­ably through un­known terri­tory be­fore end­ing up in poten­tial­ly hazard­ous inter­stellar space (1904). The king of shad­ows had to find a rip­pling band, caused by the Sun’s rota­tion, that resem­bles a “balle­rina’s skirt” in motion. Sens­ing his mo­ment, Pluto drew his sword and act­ed, cleav­ing the hydro­gen wall and step­ping over, ar­riv­ing at the final bar­rier of the helio­sphere, a gelat­in­ous mem­brane that causes ter­mi­na­tion shock – a shield fil­ter­ing out harm­ful rays from cross­ing over.
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A trans-Neptune ob­ject cov­ers all man­ner of space rocks out­side the in­ner solar sys­tem, i.e., be­yond Nep­tune. By this rec­kon­ing, Plu­to be­came the first tNo. The region where these ob­jects con­gre­gate cor­re­sponds rough­ly the size of the helio­sphere (1904). It can be home to minor planets, pro­to-plan­ets planet­esi­mals; minor moons, moon­lets, moon­moons; varie­ties of comets, etc.
+ Rendering of Kuiper Belt minor planet Haumea and two satellites.
The third minor plan­et from the Kui­per Belt, carry­ing two moons as well as a ring a ring, is a “col­li­sion­al fam­ily”, and one day the tri­nary sys­tem will de­stroy each other. Haumea (2004) is an elon­gated sphere devoid of meth­ane and bright as snow. A day for the Hawai‘ian child­birth god­dess is over with in 3.9 hours, yet she spends 285.5 years go­ing around the Sun. Daugh­ter Hi‘iaka 120 miles wide and makes an or­bit every 50 days. Nāmaka, the small­er moon-daugh­ter, is swad­dled in iced water.
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The duckegg-shaped orbit of Scattered Disc object Eris in relation to the inner solar system.
The twin sis­ter to Mars is a tNo with an ob­long 558-year-long or­bit around the Sun, ap­pear­ing out of the Scat­tered Disc and us­ing Plu­to, or Nep­tune, to swing around and go home, Eris (2005) is a large minor plan­et, 1,500 miles (2414 kilo­meters) wide, and capa­cious enough to stuff the en­tire Aster­oid Belt in her ice-re­flect­ing froz­en-meth­ane plan­et-sized mantle.
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Extreme-oval orbit of Öpik-Oort Cloud object Leleākūhonua in relation to the inner solar system. Img: Roberto Molar Dandanosa Scott Sheppard Carnegie Insitution for Science
Telescopes scan­ning be­yond the Kui­per Belt came across a very dis­tant ob­ject orbit­ing the Sun, and the first con­fir­ma­tion of a vast back­yard be­yond the out­er solar sys­tem. Named for a migra­tory Pacif­ic Ocean bird, Leleā­kū­ho­nua (2015) is a tNo with an or­bit so ex­treme as to also spend some a bit of time in the Kui­per Belt, and the rest of it trav­el­ling back to the Öpik-Oort Cloud.


❚-❚-❚•  Regular minis­tra­tions by human­kind on Ge was work­ing, and she be­gan to detox, then itched and bloat­ed and ac­ci­den­tal­ly shot great-grand­son Mars in­to out­er space. Ang­ered by this rejec­tion, the mili­tary god turned around and demol­ished the near­est planet; the year was 1534. Long before this event took place, daughter to the sea Venus had long departed the wretched Earth to seek safety closer to the Sun. Mars even­tual­ly bur­ied all the re­mains in his back yard, a ceme­tery now called the Aster­oid Belt (1801), and is the first ring around the Sun.

❚-❚-❚•  Six years later, corpses be­gan to float into view. The first ha­ppened to be spher­i­cal, and hap­pened to be small­er than the Moon, when it was later meas­ured. So er­ron­eous­ly it was tit­led first a plan­et, then an aster­oid, be­fore be­com­ing, in 2006, the first minor plan­et in the solar sys­tem. The larg­est ob­ject in the Aster­oid Belt is agri­cul­tural god­dess Ceres (1801).

❚-❚-❚•  Now revived, the sister to Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto – the second female in Pantheon 1.0 – crosses over to the Gar­den of Apol­lon 2.0, pre­pares beds for grow­ing bar­ley, com­poses hymns to sun­light. Made of am­bient mat­ter, hav­ing no def­i­nite bound­ary, the Sun is a star with the capac­i­ty to shed root mat­ter as ener­gy, in a form rapid enough as to seem solid; the Sun can as­sume diverse forms. Each sun al­so under­goes on­go­ing com­bus­tion, has grav­i­ta­tion­al sway over some sur­round­ing space, its helio­sphere: a shape­less bub­ble, be­cause solar wind plus inter­stel­lar wind plus motion in space.

❚-❚-❚•  A sizeable space rock with an elec­tro-mag­net­ic field is a plan­et, and can host one or more sat­el­lites. There are also plan­ets en­gulfed in visi­ble gasses; some have rings. The celes­tial court now lists the eight clos­est plan­ets to the house of the Sun as the sole first-gen pan­theon. And the oldest seat is the chthon☶­throne on Earth.


  SUPER CARS +

“Our last arrow! We’ll fire it to stop the get­away car – then end our careers as Green Arrow and Speedy!” “Yes, with our se­cret iden­ti­ties ex­posed, we’re use­lss against crim­i­nals!”

Francisco Mattos

Francisco Mattos Immortal Dane Whit­man brought his time-test­ed skills as the Black Knight to the early days of film­making, creat­ing a phantas­ma­gorical chariot race for Fritz Lang’s 1929 silent sci­fi Woman in the Moon. These days, he still does stunts for Holly­wood.

Francisco Mattos Although he owns a Legion flight ring from the 30th cen­tury, when not in a hur­ry to get some­where Michael Jon Car­ter pre­fers to drive. He comes from the future, sheathed in a super-suit boast­ing futur­is­tic tech, but the feel of rub­ber on road gives Booster Gold a jolt un­like any other.

Francisco Mattos Little is known about this shape­shift­ing foe of Bat­man Be­yond. Her fluid body al­lows Inque to seep in­to and out of her liq­uid limo.
Francisco Mattos Jimon Kwan’s car is parked be­hind the world’s first eco-fire sta­tion. She’s there to give a dem­on­stra­tion – in her capacity as Silver of China Force – on her mutant abil­ity to drain heat and then con­vert it into light.

Francisco Mattos Before he went to war as the Fight­ing Amer­i­can, Nel­son Flagg’s father gave him a 1915 Ford Speed­ster – it later crashed and burned. The orig­inal is al­so shown, fresh off the assem­bly line.

Francisco Mattos It takes two of Jamie Madrox, the Multi­ple Man, to con­trol this wide jeep be­cause it’s sure-as-hell gon­na be a bumpy ride.
Francisco Mattos The grandfather and great-grand­father of James Jesse were from the world of vau­de­ville, which is why their spawn con­tin­ued their forays into self-pow­ered loco­motion and built a por­ta­ble air-cooled en­gine, hooked up to an ac­cel­era­tor switch, an engine cut-off switch, and single-horse­pow­ered roller skates, and later tor­ment­ing the Flash w/ wea­pon­ized toys as the Trickster.

Francisco Mattos An inside-out refrig­er­a­ted truck driven by Leonard Snart, com­mit­ing crime as Cap­tain Cold using an ex­pe­ri­men­tal gun based on stol­en sci­ence and shoot­ing ab­so­lute-zero blasts that solid­i­fy as ice.

Francisco Mattos
H.G. Wells jumped at the chance to take a spin in an ex­pe­ri­men­tal con­trap­tion that his Amer­i­can friend and fel­low futur­ist, the head of Stark Indus­tries, brought over to Lon­don. The author of The Invis­i­ble Man is photo­graphed sit­ting in the back seat as the self-driv­ing car crosses Tow­er Bridge.

Francisco Mattos
This tasty USSR-era Trabant was on dis­play in a Bel­grade art gal­lery when Harle­quin, the “mer­ry men­ace”, hap­pened by, took one look, and prompt­ly brought it home.

Francisco Mattos
This rarely seen Bugat­ti Type 57 Atlan­tic be­longs to Arthur Curry (Aqua­man) and is nick­named the Drop be­cause he al­most nev­er has need for it.

Francisco Mattos Im­per­a­tor Furio­sa’s go-to wheels when she’s off the clock.
Francisco Mattos
Even super-heroes driv­ing sports cars have to stop and pay toll, as the Thing heckles John­ny Storm’s toss­ing chops. “Let’s get go­ing, Torchy! Hey! Ya missed the coin buc­ket!” “But I threw it okay! It wasn’t my fault! The buc­ket moved!”

Francisco Mattos
After punching Hitler in his de­but, the city of Man­hat­tan award­ed Steve Rogers w/ a spank­ing red 1937 Ford, and he prompt­ly took off to drive cross-coun­try. Then he made up for lost years w/ a Cor­vette. These days, his ride is a 1960 Chev­ro­let, al­ways parked on the street; re­peat­ed­ly stol­en then re­turned be­cause it was a badge of hon­or to leave the keys in the igni­tion.
 Before his life was im­bued w/ Bahd­ni­sian pow­ers and he took con­trol of the human thun­der­bolt, John­ny Thun­der was in Europe, hav­ing won a music schol­ar­ship while in high school. With some of his prize mon­ey he bought a sec­ond-hand Minor Mor­ris con­ver­tible.

Francisco Mattos
Bent­ley Witt­man, nar­row­ly es­cap­ing the Human Torch, is chauf­feured back to his man­sion on Long Island and his life as the Wizard. “Fire is a power­ful wea­pon! But I pos­sess the great­est wea­pon of all – the world’s great­est brain!”

Francisco Mattos
No way is the myste­rious Dolphin a land­lubber, so when­ever ad­ven­tures take her ashore she al­ways rides in her 1962 Shark road­ster, w/ its aqua­rium pod and oth­er aquatic must-haves al­low­ing her safe pas­sage.

Retiring as the Sor­ce­rer Su­preme, Steven Strange’s men­tor, the Ancient One, mas­ter of mys­tic arts, drove home to Kamar-Taj in Tibet, cross­ing rivers w/ the aid of local vil­lag­ers, ever grate­ful for deliv­er­ance from the evil Kaluu.

Francisco Mattos

Francisco Mattos Suddenly, the hover­ing air-car is jolt­ed by a fan­tas­tic wave of force … and that is when Nick Fury sees an awe­some fig­ure who stands wait­ing to con­front the dy­nam­ic director of SHIELD … Francisco Mattos A surreal episode of the Knights of the Galaxy is just start­ing. “For King Arthur and Brit­ain.” (Mys­tery In Space #8 (June-July 1952))

Francisco Mattos To have a bit of fun while Super­man is recov­er­ing from their latest en­coun­ter, Mr Mxyzptlk, the imp from else­where, uses fifth-dimen­sional sci­ence to re­arrange this car and pro­ceeds to demon­strate how to oper­ate it.

Francisco Mattos Vic Sage blends into his camou­flage car, ephem­eral behind a pseudo­derm mask, dur­ing the time he joined Blue Beetle, Cap­tain Atom and Night­shade as the Ques­tion in the orig­in­al Sen­ti­nels of Justice.
Francisco Mattos When insect-female hybrid Queen Zaz­za­la of planet Korll re­turned for a re­match w/ the Justic League, she went first to the Citroen museum in Aulnay-sous-Bois near Paris, and took pos­ses­sion of an ex­pe­ri­men­tal 1940s light-weight hover­car which she used as a bee­hive-nest. Bad­ly dam­aged and aban­doned, it still os­cil­lates when touched, await­ing new in­struc­tions from the Queen Bee.

Francisco Mattos The nomadic Roy Har­per, leav­ing be­hind his Speedy per­sona, took to the road in an oft-van­dal­ized there­fore oft-dis­guised van. When he land­ed in Eng­land, the for­mer bat­tling bow­man per­suad­ed Bank­sy to let him take the famous SWAT van for an ex­ten­ded spin as Arsenal.
Francisco Mattos Random page from the mid-cen­tury port­folio of bil­lion­aire in­dus­trial­ist Tony Stark: 1958 Nucleon, Nor­man Bel Ged­des proto­type, 1949 Tabot Iago, 1959 Fire­bird.

Francisco Mattos Sue Rich­ards fetched Agatha Hark­ness, her boy Frank­lin’s new gov­ern­ess, in a cus­tom-built His­pano-Suiza, pre­vi­ous­ly owned by an heir to the Dubon­net for­tune. It was a regal ride be­fit­ting the lead-witch of New Salem, who has brought along a mys­tical rock­ing sea­horse as a baby present. Francisco Mattos
Francisco Mattos An early electric car proto­type from the morbid mind of Os­wald Hu­bert Loo­mis, aka the Prank­ster.
Francisco Mattos When her mom asked if her new car was safe, Jen­ni­fer Wal­ters sent this blurr­y pix of her un­usual find while in col­lege. It proved ideal for camp­ing, and that was when she got into an ac­ci­dent, need­ed a blood trans­fu­sion from her cou­sin Bruce, and be­gan a new exis­tence as the ravish­ing rough She-Hulk.

Francisco Mattos In 1923, Tony Stark’s dad vis­it­ed the Fiat Fac­tory in Turin and open­ly ad­mired their roof treat­ment. When what later be­came the Avengers Man­sion was built, he put a race-car track on the roof.

Francisco Mattos Besides lending his oc­cult skills to com­bat evil, Gio­van­ni Zatara per­forms as a stage magi­cian, and is the rea­son he drives a 1959 Lin­coln, which has a sturdy trunk to fit all his stage props.

Francisco Mattos Tony Stark awarded his exec­u­tive assis­tant Pep­per Potts w/ this pink 1954 Ford in rec­og­ni­tion for her aid in their first caper to­geth­er, bat­tling “The Mad Pharaoh”.
Francisco Mattos Kent Allard’s elu­sive 1957 Lin­coln Prem­iere, which he drove as the Shadow, caught on a U.S. post­age stamp.

Francisco Mattos Blackhawk’s 1949 Hud­son, later owned by Jack Kerouac when he was do­ing a lot of driving. Re­stored and no long­er driven.

Francisco Mattos Carter Hall was so smit­ten when Hal Jor­dan drove up in a Phan­tom Cor­sair that the test-pilot prompt­ly gifted this one-off auto­mobile to the extra­terres­trial detec­tive, known to Earth as the Hawk­man, for a planet-warm­ing pres­ent.

Francisco Mattos An ex­pe­ri­men­tal float­ing for­tress from the malev­o­lent minds at Ad­vanced Idea Mechan­ics.

Francisco Mattos Although a haunt­ed horse ac­com­pa­nies his cursed exis­tence, the ghost of high­way­man James Crad­dock also owns a train, break­ing the law as the Gentle­man Ghost, and trav­el­ing the world w/ out a home.

Francisco Mattos Long after the own­er of Goth­am Broad­cast­ing Co. Alan Wel­ling Scott, was vis­it­ed by the Green Flame of Life (“Three times shall I flame green! First to bring death! Sec­ond to bring life! Third to bring pow­er!”) and fought evil­doers as the Green Lan­tern, he would con­tin­ue to tool around in his trust­ed 1939 Chev­ro­let clunk­er.

Francisco Mattos Prof. X’s band of super-human teen­agers are driv­en to the air­port in a spe­cially-built Rolls Royce w/ dark-tint­ed win­dows. “Boy! It musta tak­en a heap of green stamps to buy a chariot like this!” “No jok­ing, please! Con­cen­trate on your mis­sion! Re­view your pow­ers! Our foe is cer­tain to be high­ly danger­ous!”

Francisco Mattos Brain­iac 5 re­tooled an an­tique and cre­ated the “fris­bee”, armed w/ repel-rays, as a com­bat suit for Chuck Taine, the Bounc­ing Boy.

Francisco Mattos Hook­ing up to his Ply­mouth Bar­ra­cuda’s bat­teries to re­charge his pyro-cos­tume, Gar­field Lynns un­leashes a color crime­wave based on rain­bow rays as the Human Fire­fly.
Francisco Mattos Ted Grant’s ride when he’s fight­ing crime as Wild­cat, im­mor­tal­ized on a U.S. pos­tage stamp.

Francisco Mattos Brainiac 5 con­struc­ted this bi-cycle for Luor­nu Durgo Taine (Duo Dam­sel) to aug­ment her super-power.

Francisco Mattos With wealth to spare, social­ite Wes­ley Dodds had a taste for dan­ger and cars. Which is why he could im­peril his 1935 Bugat­ti Aero­lithe by taking it out to strike ter­ror among wrong­doers as the Sand­man, de­clar­ing “There is no land be­yond the law, where tyrants rule w/ un­shak­able pow­er! It’s but a dream from which the evil wake to face their fate … their ter­ri­fy­ing hour!”

Francisco Mattos A gift from Brain­iac 5, this ex­pe­ri­men­tal bike al­lowed Lana Lang to ap­ply 30th-cen­tury tech­nol­o­gy to her 20th-cen­tury life. While fid­dling around w/ the tele­porta­tion but­ton dur­ing a ride in the country­side, she man­aged to trade bodies w/ all the in­sects in a near­by field, be­com­ing for a spell the Insect Queen.
Francisco Mattos Socialite Kathy Kane, in her first ap­pear­ance as a masked crime­fighter, lead­ing the Bat­mobile into the fray on her Bat Bike. “Hur­ry, Bat­man – the Bat­woman is beat­ing us on this mis­sion!” (Detec­tive Com­ics #233 July 1956)

Francisco Mattos The keys to this ex­pe­ri­men­tal car from Stark In­dus­tries were hand­ed to Matt Mur­dock, giving add­ed com­fort to his forays as Dare­devil in­to exis­ten­tial evil.

Francisco Mattos Sam­uel Jo­seph Scud­der drove this solar lab­o­ra­to­ry on wheels in his first ap­pear­ance in Flash #105, “The Mas­ter of Mir­rors”.

Francisco Mattos This in­noc­u­ous van offers stor­age for Rory Regan’s col­lec­tion of mys­ti­cal rags, al­low­ing Rag­man, the tatter­demalion of jus­tice, to find respite a­fter a jolt of elec­tric­i­ty ran into his body and which by all ac­counts hasn’t exit­ed yet.

Francisco

The second Shield, Lance­lot Strong, drove a 1970 AMC Rebel for a short period un­til its color scheme gave him away to every bad actor on every city block.

Francisco Mattos Model kit from Auro­ra for Britt Reid’s spe­cial-built 1965 Chrysler, fea­tur­ing a 413 engine. Bruce Lee as Kato drove the Black Beauty to fight crime w/ the Green Hor­net, ever ready to de­ploy a pair of hood-mount­ed machine guns, a flame throw­er, and sting­er missles.

Francisco Mattos Sow­ing feline felony in Goth­am City w/ her Cat Mobile, Selina Kyle leads a law­less life as the Cat­woman.

Francisco Mattos Wins­low Schott, the ter­ri­ble Toy­man, had his ful­ly func­tion­al dwarf Cadil­lac sur­round­ed by in­dig­nant town­folk hop­ing to save Doll Man and Doll Girl from a threat they were not yet aware of.
Francisco Mattos The seldom driven Joker Mobile is de­ployed to track down a double-cross­ing mob­ster. “The whole job – the safe-crack­ing, the get­away - all bear the stamp of Dink Devers! The cops think he died – but he’s right here in town, at the Blake Hotel! Ha-HA-HA!” “Gosh, Joker – I bet you’re right!”

Francisco Mattos A proficiency in auto mechan­ics as well as min­ia­turi­za­tion land­ed Ray Palmer a plum po­si­tion as a team mem­ber re­hab­ili­ta­ting a Fer­ra­ri 375 Plus. Pal­mer kept tin­ker­ing some more on the rac­ing car, giv­ing it a cap­abil­i­ty of be­ing shrunk, and con­sti­tutes the first step in his quest, as the Atom, to jump into, then out of, the quan­tum realm at will.
Francisco Mattos While parked on a cloud, the Ghost Patrol are active­ly bored ... “Ho Hum! An­oth­er quiet day. Noth­ing do­ing on our sec­tor of earth late­ly.” “Strange! This is us­ual­ly the most trou­ble­some of the plan­ets!” “What’s that ahead? Why – it’s a horse!”

Francisco Mattos King T’chal­la of Wakan­da’s elusive jeep parked in San Fran­cis­co’s South of Mar­ket neigh­bor­hood, where he was on a secret mis­sion as the Black Panther.

Francisco Mattos This “fire” truck, de­signed by Stark In­dus­tries, later pat­ent­ed by Gen­eral Motors as the Futur­liner, was used to house JIm Ham­mond, an and­roid spawned in the mind of Prof. Phin­eas T. Hor­ton. This lab-on wheels is re­mote­ly con­trolled, in­su­lat­ed in­side to with­stand the in­tense fire gen­er­at­ed by the golden age Human Torch.