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Covid

I had been lucky for more than two years. Perhaps two vaxes plus two boosters and being cautious helped but maybe my immunosuppressed status was a factor. Seven days after returning from a week in Montreal, I tested positive. The symptoms were mostly mild and after three days I feel 90% normal. Seems the virus is everywhere. It is still worth being careful and vaxxed to the max.

Ukraine

A posting on Telegram says weapons Ukraine obtains as aid from international partners gets to the front lines almost instantly. A Ukraine Ministry of Defense spokesman said, “We see the results of the use of American 777 guns (M777 howitzers). The General Staff also reported on the success of using French CAESAR artillery systems; this is a very effective weapon that allows hitting the enemy at a distance with precise strikes”. As of today, the Ukrainians have converted 1,456 Russian tanks into scrap metal.

Space

SpaceX is racking up lots of records with the furious launch cadence of its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, which is the only orbital class rocket with a reusable first stage, or booster. On Friday, SpaceX started a launch campaign with three Falcon 9 launches in three days, beginning with a another batch of Starlink satellites into orbit from Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. This launch has a number of notable milestones, such as the following:

– 1st booster to fly for a 13th time
– 100th re-flight of a booster
– 124th booster landing
– 50th consecutive landing (a record)

SpaceX has recently certified the Falcon 9 booster for 15 flights, up from 10. NASA has even flown crew on reused boosters, signaling a high level of confidence in the safety and performance of the vehicle.

SpaceX makes it look easy, but it is not. There are many things that can go wrong but everything has to go right to get off the pad, out of the atmosphere, and into orbit. Recently, Astra, a startup launch provider, had a launch attempt to send a pair of hurricane monitoring satellites for NASA into orbit from KSC. Astra’s rocket, called Rocket 3, has successfully taken payloads to orbit on previous attempts, but on this occasion the second stage shut down early and the payloads fell back to Earth. NASA has two additional pairs of these satellites it plans to launch with Astra. That is, of course once they identify and fix the issue leading to the second stage failure on this flight.

– Aaron J. Patrick

 

Reflection Attitude

More progress on Reflection Attitude. A final cover is underway with assistance from Irina in Romania. She has done all but one of my book covers. Am working on a third edit based on feedback.

Wall Street

The Dow was down again but the NASDAQ is regaining some ground.  A long way to go. Many techs are at or close to their 52-week lows.  Gammat stocks down to $7.6 trillion but still nearly 20% of S&P 500.

Crypto

Almost 20,000 cryptocurrencies. Crypto market cap just below $1 trillion. Half of what it had been. Bitcoin is 45% of the total. Ethereum is 15%. All the rest is 40%. Things are heating up about government regulation. I see this as a good thing. One of the provisions in a congressional bill exempts from capital gains tax any purchase with crypto of good or services at less than $200 . This is very important and I believe it will fuel growth of cryptocurrency payments. I believe as tech stocks come back, so will crypto. However, most of the 20,000 are jokes or schemes which will fall to the wayside. Too bad so many of been suckered into these. Same as 2000 when many websites had promised to make water run up hill.