Category: Essays And Commentaries

Long essays or op-ed length commentaries on the issues of the day or on topics of special interest.

Blue Origin successfully launches New Glenn

12:35 am

New Glenn 18 seconds after liftoff
New Glenn 18 seconds after liftoff

Better late than never! After almost a decade of development and five years behind schedule, Blue Origin tonight successfully launched its massive New Glenn orbital rocket, placing its second stage into orbit carrying a demo version of the company’s Blue Ring orbital tug.

It appears the first stage had a problem during what Blue Origin calls its “booster reentry burn”, which appears somewhat equivalent to SpaceX’s entry burn. Unfortunately no camera views were made available. From that point no further telemetry came down from the first stage, suggesting something had gone wrong enough to require initiation of the flight termination system so the stage would not crash on the landing barge.

The second stage will operate in orbit for six hours, testing Blue Ring.

For Blue Origin this success, though late, is a grand achievement. The company has a full launch manifest, with a 27-launch contract with Amazon for its Kuiper internet constellation. It also has a deal with the Space Force to get the rocket certified for military launches, once it completes two successful launches. Once certified the Space Force very much wants to use it, a lot.

America now has three major rocket companies, SpaceX, ULA, and Blue Origin. It also has Rocket Lab, which has a smaller rocket but intends to introduce its own larger version in 2025.

The 2025 launch race:

8 SpaceX
2 China
1 Blue Origin

Nor is the launch action over. Tomorrow SpaceX will attempt the seventh orbital test launch of its Starship/Superheavy rocket, the one-hour launch window opening at 4 pm Central.

9 comments

The old media logjam has broken: Even the left is now getting its news from new media

1:18 pm

Sara Foster sees the light
Sara Foster sees the light

In my essay yesterday describing how the wildfires in the Los Angeles area appear to finally be making conservatives out of a lot of partisan knee-jerk Democrats, I used a quote that I think is important because it illustrates a major cultural change in a way that is not obvious at first. It also demonstrates a new political reality that the Democratic Party has not yet grasped.

The quote was from a tweet on X by actress Sara Foster. This is what she wrote:

We pay the highest taxes in California. Our fire hydrants were empty. Our vegetation was overgrown, brush not cleared. Our reservoirs were emptied by our governor because tribal leaders wanted to save fish. Our fire department budget was cut by our mayor. But thank god drug addicts are getting their drug kits. @MayorOfLA @GavinNewsom RESIGN. Your far left policies have ruined our state. And also our party.

Note the facts this clearly partisan Democrat cites.
» Read more

18 comments

The new conservatives who have been mugged by a wildfire

2:57 pm

Gavin Newsom, surveying his domain
Gavin Newsom, surveying the hellhole his
policies created. Looks proud, doesn’t he?

The news today is about how numerous Hollywood celebrities who have lost their homes in the wildfires that have been destroying huge swatches of the Los Angeles metropolitan area are one-by-one expressing loud public outrage at the mismanagement and failures of the Democrats running California’s state and city governments.

The list is long and detailed at the link. This comment is quite typical:

Actress Sara Foster also took to X to lament how Los Angeles residents pay exorbitant taxes but the state was still completely unprepared to take on such massive wildfires. “Our fire hydrants were empty. Our vegetation was overgrown, brush not cleared. Our reservoirs were emptied by our governor because tribal leaders wanted to save fish. Our fire department budget was cut by our mayor. But thank god drug addicts are getting their drug kits,” she wrote.

The politically active actress, who is the daughter of music mogul David Foster, called on [LA mayor] Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom to resign, writing, “your far left policies have ruined our state. And also our party.” [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words tell us however that Foster is not yet ready to reject the corrupt, bigoted, and incompetent Democratic Party that she so loves. This has been the pattern now for decades. No matter how bad its policies, the partisan adherents to the Democratic Party have too often consistently resisted opening their minds to other choices.

It immediately occurred to me however that this present outrage is only a foretaste of the real outrage soon to come. » Read more

33 comments

The global launch industry in 2024: A year of amazing highs and depressing lows, with the best yet to come

9:40 am

For the past five years the entire global rocket industry has experienced a revolution that has resulted in a rise in global launch numbers unprecedented since the launch of Sputnik in 1957. 2024 was no different, with the total number of successful launches topping 256, two to four times the average number of launches that had occurred yearly prior to 2020.

This success has almost entirely been driven by the arrival of many private rocket companies competing for government and commercial business — led largely by SpaceX — aided by the decision by governments worldwide to get out of the way and let private enterprise do the job. The result has been spectacular, so much so that it now seem possible in the very near future to see humans finally revisiting the Moon and even getting to Mars and the asteroids.

At the same time, 2024 saw some significant signs that this success is not guaranteed, and could vanish in an instant if care is not taken.

The graph below, my annual count of launches world wide, provides the groundwork for these conclusions.
» Read more

15 comments

Beware the DEI shell game

1:09 pm

Don't trust it to do the right thing
Don’t trust the leftists who run it to do the right thing

In the past few months the conservative has been repeatedly celebrating the retreat of the racist “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) movement. From corporations to universities DEI departments are being shut down.

Today I report on one of the most recent examples, but I do so as a warning. Just because a university or company announces plans to shut down a DEI department does not mean this racist policy is no longer being taught or used in hiring. In many cases, the shut down is merely a shell game to fool the general public while the policies continue, under the radar.

On December 17, 2024, the University of Iowa announced that was shuttering a number of programs, including its department of Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies, and combining them into a new department dubbed the School of Social and Cultural Analysis. From the university’s press release:

Under the proposed plan, the college would close the departments of American Studies and Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies, as well as the current majors in American Studies and in Social Justice, which have fewer than 60 students combined, and create a new major in Social and Cultural Analysis. The existing programs have limited faculty and overlapping curricula, causing challenges for faculty in sustaining teaching capacity. The new curricula will not only streamline operations but offer clarity and flexibility in students’ educational pathways.

“Right now, these programs are administered by multiple department chairs and multiple directors,” said Roland Racevskis, CLAS associate dean for the arts and humanities. “Under this proposed plan, the school would have a single leadership team dedicated to overseeing the operations of the programs. This new structure would provide better coordination of curriculum across these related programs, easier pathways for degree completion, and support for interdisciplinary research opportunities.”

Existing minors and certificates in associated areas would move into the new school. No changes to graduate programs are currently being proposed. [emphasis mine]

One of the reasons for this action is that the state legislature had recently passed an education appropriations bill [pdf] that specifically banned spending any money on DEI-type programs. From page 8 of the bill:
» Read more

8 comments

Repost: The real meaning of the Apollo 8 Earthrise image

1:56 pm

I wrote this essay in 2018, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 8 mission to the Moon. I have reposted previously, but I think it is worth reposting again and again, especially because stories about Apollo 8 still refuse to show the Earthrise image as Bill Anders took it. Even today, the Air and Space Museum did it wrong again, and it seems to me to be a slap in the face of Anders himself, who died this year while flying.
———————————————

Earthrise, as seen by a space-farer
Earthrise, as seen by a space-farer

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the moment when the three astronauts on Apollo 8 witnessed their first Earthrise while in orbit around the Moon, and Bill Anders snapped the picture of that Earthrise that has been been called “the most influential environmental picture ever taken.”

The last few days have seen numerous articles celebrating this iconic image. While all have captured in varying degrees the significance and influence of that picture on human society on Earth, all have failed to depict this image as Bill Anders, the photographer, took it. He did not frame the shot, in his mind, with the horizon on the bottom of the frame, as it has been depicted repeatedly in practically every article about this image, since the day it was published back in 1968.

Instead, Anders saw himself as an spaceman in a capsule orbiting the waist of the Moon. He also saw the Earth as merely another space object, now appearing from behind the waist of that Moon. As a result, he framed the shot with the horizon to the right, with the Earth moving from right to left as it moved out from behind the Moon, as shown on the right.

His perspective was that of a spacefarer, an explorer of the universe that sees the planets around him as objects within that universe in which he floats.

When we here are on Earth frame the image with the horizon on the bottom, we immediately reveal our limited planet-bound perspective. We automatically see ourselves on a planet’s surface, watching another planet rise above the distant horizon line.

This difference in perspective is to me the real meaning of this picture. On one hand we see the perspective of the past. On the other we see the perspective the future, for as long humanity can remain alive.

I prefer the future perspective, which is why I framed this image on the cover of Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 the way Bill Anders took it. I prefer to align myself with that space-faring future.

And it was that space-faring future that spoke when they read from Genesis that evening. They had made the first human leap to another world, and they wished to describe and capture the majesty of that leap to the world. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

Yet, they were also still mostly Earth-bound in mind, which is why Frank Borman’s concluding words during that Christmas eve telecast were so heartfelt. He was a spaceman in a delicate vehicle talking to his home of Earth, 240,000 miles away. “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth.” They longed deeply to return, a wish that at that moment, in that vehicle, was quite reasonable.

Someday that desire to return to Earth will be gone. People will live and work and grow up in space, and see the Earth as Bill Anders saw it in his photograph fifty years ago.

And it is for that time that I long. It will be a future of majesty we can only imagine.

Merry Christmas to all, all of us still pinned down here on “the good Earth.”

7 comments

Post COVID data in the UK: Those who got the jab substantially increased their chances of death

12:43 pm

How health scientists determined policy against COVID
How health officials and governments determined
policy against COVID during the epidemic.

Data assembled by the government of the United Kingdom now proves unequivocally that getting the jab during the COVID panic was a very bad idea. It did less than nothing to prevent you from getting the virus, and in fact significantly increased your chances of dying.

[T]he data show that 30 percent of the UK population remained completely unvaccinated as of July 2022. 34 percent were not double vaccinated, and 50 percent were not triple vaccinated.

However, the vaccinated population accounted for 95 percent of all COVID-19 deaths between January and May 2023.

The unvaccinated population, meanwhile, accounted for just five percent of Covid deaths.

Perhaps the most troubling information revealed in the data is the fact that deaths increased among the groups who received more “vaccine” doses. The vast majority of the deaths are among those vaccinated four times. This quad-vaxxed population accounts for 80 percent of all COVID-19 deaths, and 83 percent of all Covid deaths among the vaccinated.

The numbers for many other time periods following the introduction of the jab are comparable.
» Read more

23 comments

Oh no! The sonic booms of SpaceX are coming!

10:00 am

Superheavy after its flight safely captured at Boca Chica
Superheavy after its flight, safely captured at Boca Chica
on October 13, 2024.

When the current (but soon to step down) administrator of the FAA Mike Whitaker testified before Congress in September 2024 and attempted to explain his agency’s red tape that have significantly slowed development of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy rocket, he claimed that the sonic booms produced when Superheavy returned to land at the launchpad posed a “safety issue” that needed a detailed review.

“I think the sonic boom analysis [related to returning Superheavy back to Boca Chica] is a safety related incident.”

The sudden introduction of this issue was somewhat out of the blue. While loud, the sonic boom of a rocket launch is hardly a concern. The space shuttle produced the same for decades when it landed, and that was always considered a fun plus to watching the landing. And even if SpaceX begins launching its rockets once a day from any spaceport, that added noise does nothing to hurt anyone. In fact, it is a local signal of a thriving economy.

Since then it appears the leftist “intellectual elitists” that don’t like it when they don’t run everything — which is one reason they now hate Elon Musk — have run a full court press trying to make these rocket sonic booms a cause celebre that can be used to block SpaceX launches.
» Read more

20 comments

Ranking the four private space stations under construction

10:18 am

the proposed Starlab space station
the proposed Starlab space station

Yesterday NASA posted an update on the development of Starlab, one of the four private space stations under development or construction, with three getting some development money from NASA. According to that report, the station had successfully completed “four key developmental milestones, marking substantial progress in the station’s design and operational readiness.”

As is usual for NASA press releases, the goal of this announcement was to tout the wonderful progress the Starlab consortium — led by Voyager Space, Airbus, and Northrop Grumman — is making in building the station.

“These milestone achievements are great indicators to reflect Starlab’s commitment to the continued efforts and advancements of their commercial destination,” said Angela Hart, program manager for NASA’s Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development Program. “As we look forward to the future of low Earth orbit, every successful milestone is one step closer to creating a dynamic and robust commercialized low Earth orbit.”

I read this release and came to a completely opposite conclusion. » Read more

14 comments

Thanksgiving/Christmas fund drive is over. Big thanks to everyone who donated!

11:41 pm

Scroll down to read the newest posts.

Readers!

My annual Thanksgiving/Christmas fund drive for Behind the Black is now over. Though it sagged in the middle, the final week was an amazing barn-burner. My readers responded in an astonishing manner, so that 2024 now looks like it will turn out to be the best year for me financially since I started this webpage in 2010.

Thank you to all! I am always at a loss to express my gratitude for this support. No one is required to pay anything to read my work. And yet so many of you are still willing to do so. Thank you again!

I will leave this thank you notice up for the next few days, so that everyone can see it.

7 comments

Part 2 of 2: De-emphasize a fast Moon landing and build a real American space industry instead

10:41 am

In part one yesterday of this two-part essay, I described the likelihood that Jared Isaacman, Trump’s appointment to be NASA’s next administrator, will push to cancel NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and its Orion capsule, deeming them too expensive, too unsafe, and too cumbersome to use for any viable effort to colonize the solar system.

I then described how the Artemis lunar landings could still be done, more or less as planned, by replacing SLS with Starship/Superheavy, and Orion with Starship. Such a change would entail some delay, but it could be done.

This plan however I think is short-sighted. The Artemis lunar landings as proposed are really nothing more than another Apollo-like plant-the-flag-on-the-Moon stunt. As designed they do little to establish a permanent sustainable human presence on the Moon or elsewhere in the solar system.

Isaacman however has another option that can create a permanent sustainable American presence in space, and that option is staring us all in the face.

And now for something entire different

Capitalism in space: I think Isaacman should shift the gears of Artemis entirely, and put a manned Moon landing on the back burner. Let China do its one or two lunar landing stunts, comparable to Apollo but incapable of doing much else.
» Read more

32 comments

Part 1 of 2: What NASA’s next administrator should do if SLS and Orion are cancelled

2:29 pm

When George Bush Jr. first proposed in 2004 an American long term effort to return to the Moon that has since become the Artemis program, he made it clear that the goal was not to simply land in 2015 and plant the flag, but to establish an aerospace industry capable of staying on the Moon permanently while going beyond to settle the entire the solar system.

The problem was that Bush proposed doing this with a government-built system that was simply not capable of making it happen. Though this system has gone through many changes in the two decades since Bush’s proposal, in every case it has been centered on rockets and spacecrafts that NASA designed, built, and owned, and were thus not focused on profit and efficiency. The result has been endless budget overruns and delays, so that two decades later and more than $60 billion, NASA is still years away from that first Moon landing, and the SLS rocket and Orion capsule that it designed and built for this task are incapable of establishing a base on the Moon, no less explore the solar system.

The real cost of SLS and Orion
The expected real per launch cost of SLS and Orion

For one thing, SLS at its best can only launch once per year (at a cost of from $1 to $4 billion per launch, depending on who you ask). There is no way you can establish a base on the Moon nor colonize the solar system with that launch rate at that cost. For another, Orion is simply a manned ascent/descent capsule. It is too small to act as an interplanetary spacecraft carrying people for months to years to Mars or beyond.

These basic design problems of both SLS and Orion make them impractical for a program to explore and colonize the solar system. But that’s not all. Orion has other safety concerns. Its heat shield has technical problems that will only be fixed after the next planned Artemis-2 manned mission around the Moon. Its life support system has never flown in space, has issues also, and yet will also be used on the next manned flight.

Thus, it is very likely that when Jared Isaacman, Trump’s appointee for NASA administrator, takes over running the agency, he will call for the cancellation of both SLS and Orion. How can he ask others to fly on such an untested system?

When he does try to cancel both however the politics will require him to offer something instead that will satisfy all the power-brokers in DC who have skin in the game for SLS/Orion, from elected officials to big space companies to the bureaucrats at NASA. Isaacman is going to have to propose a new design for the Artemis program that these people will accept.

Artemis without SLS and Orion

Before I propose what Isaacman should do, let’s review what assets he will have available within the Artemis lunar program after cancelling these two boondoggles.
» Read more

26 comments

Why Orion’s heat shield problems give Jared Isaacman the perfect justification to cancel all of SLS/Orion

9:43 am

Orion's damage heat shield
Damage to Orion heat shield caused during re-entry in 2022,
including “cavities resulting from the loss of large chunks”

In yesterday’s press conference announcing new delays in NASA’s next two SLS/Orion Artemis missions to the Moon, agency officials were remarkably terse in providing details on why large chunks of Orion’s heat shield material broke off during its return to Earth in 2022 during the first Artemis mission. That damage, shown to the right, is one of the main reasons for the newly announced launch delays.

All they really said was that the damage was caused during re-entry, the atmosphere causing more stress than expected on the heat shield.

Today NASA finally released a more detailed explanation.

Engineers determined as Orion was returning from its uncrewed mission around the Moon, gases generated inside the heat shield’s ablative outer material called Avcoat were not able to vent and dissipate as expected. This allowed pressure to build up and cracking to occur, causing some charred material to break off in several locations.

…During Artemis I, engineers used the skip guidance entry technique to return Orion to Earth. … Using this maneuver, Orion dipped into the upper part of Earth’s atmosphere and used atmospheric drag to slow down. Orion then used the aerodynamic lift of the capsule to skip back out of the atmosphere, then reenter for final descent under parachutes to splashdown.

[Ground testing during the investigation showed] that during the period between dips into the atmosphere, heating rates decreased, and thermal energy accumulated inside the heat shield’s Avcoat material. This led to the accumulation of gases that are part of the expected ablation process. Because the Avcoat did not have “permeability,” internal pressure built up, and led to cracking and uneven shedding of the outer layer.

In other words, instead of ablating off in small layers, the gas build-up caused the Avcoat to break off in large chunks, with the breakage tending to occur at the seams between sections of the heat shield.
» Read more

51 comments

Next two Artemis missions delayed again, with the future of SLS/Orion hanging by a thread

1:22 pm

Orion's damage heat shield
Damage to Orion heat shield caused during re-entry in 2022,
including “cavities resulting from the loss of large chunks”

In a press conference today, NASA officials admitted that their present schedule for the next two Artemis missions will not be possible, and have delayed the next mission (sending four astronauts around the Moon) from the end of 2025 to April 2026, and the next mission (landing astronauts on the Moon) to a year later.

It must be noted that when first proposed by George Bush Jr in 2004, he targeted 2015 for this manned landing. Should the present schedule take place as planned, that landing will now occur more a dozen years late, and almost a quarter century after it was proposed. We could have fought World War II six times over during that time.

Several technical details revealed during the conference:

  • It appears a redesign of Orion’s heat shield will take place, but not until the lunar landing mission. For Artemis-2 (the next flight), engineers have determined they can make the shield work safely by changing the re-entry path. They have also determined that the design itself is still insufficient, and will require redesign before Artemis-3.
  • Though Orion’s life support system will still be flown for the first time on Artemis-2, the first to carry humans, they have been doing extensive ground testing and have resolved a number of issues. They are thus confident that it will be safe to fly with people on its first flight.
  • Though SLS’s two solid-fueled strap-on boosters will be stacked for more than one year when Artemis-2 launches in April 2026, they are confident based on data from Artemis-1 that both will still be safe to use.

The political ramifications that lurked behind everything however are more significant.
» Read more

16 comments

Trump picks billionaire and private astronaut Jared Isaacman to run NASA

10:50 am

Jared Isaacman
Jared Isaacman

Capitalism in space: In a decision that is certain to send shock waves throughout NASA and the established aerospace industry, President-elect Donald Trump today announced that he has chosen billionaire and private astronaut Jared Isaacman to be his nominee for NASA administrator.

Isaacman quickly accepted the nomination.

Besides being a jet pilot with extensive experience in the aerospace industry, Isaacman has also commanded two space missions, financed out of his own pocket. Both missions used SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Resilience capsule. Both also pointedly avoided any involvement with NASA, spending several days in free Earth orbit instead of docking with ISS. The second mission achieved several major engineering milestones, testing the first privately built spacesuit during a spacewalk while also flying farthest from Earth since the 1970s Apollo missions.

These flights were part of Isaacman’s own long term space program, dubbed Polaris, with two more missions already in planning stages. The first would be another Dragon orbital mission in which Isaacman had tried to get NASA to shape as a Hubble repair mission. NASA declined. The second is intended as a manned mission around the Moon using SpaceX’s Starship.

That program will now likely get folded into NASA’s Artemis program, which we can all expect Isaacman to force major changes. For one thing, this is another blow to the future of SLS and Orion. As a very successful businessman Isaacman will look with great skepticism at this boondoggle.

For another, Isaacman’s markedly different experiences working with SpaceX versus NASA will likely encourage major bureaucratic changes at the space agency. It is almost certain that Isaacman’s manned flights avoided ISS in order to avoid its Byzantine red tape, that would have likely also blocked use of SpaceX’s spacesuit on a private spacewalk. NASA’s decision to reject Isaacman’s proposal to do a simple but very necessary Hubble repair mission will also likely influence his management of the agency. Isaacman is going to force NASA to depend on the private sector more. He is also likely to reduce the agency’s risk adverse mentality that while often reasonable is many times very counter-productive.

Unlike many of Trump’s other radical nominees, I would be very surprised if Isaacman is not confirmed quickly and with little opposition.

Whether Isaacman will still fly his two remaining private Polaris manned missions is at this moment unknown. Practically it would make sense to cancel them, since he will have much bigger fish to fry at NASA. Emotionally and politically however it would be truly spectacular to have NASA’s administrator fly in space, on a mission using no taxpayer funds. That more than anything would demonstrate the ability of freedom and private enterprise to get things done.

32 comments

The real proof that the American political scene is about to experience a new revolution

10:27 am

The Democratic Party for the past half century
The Democratic Party for the past half century

While the conservative press is today going ga-ga over Joe Biden’s pardoning of his son Hunter yesterday — noting accurately that Biden’s action proved himself once again to be a liar and a fraud, having spent the last four years insisting he would never do such a thing while also insisting that “no one is above the law” — I think it more instructive to look at what some of the most rabid partisan leftists have been saying, before and after the election of Donald Trump.

You see, some of these partisan leftists are actually doing something I have not seen a partisan leftist do since before Bill Clinton was president — they are showing an ability to have an open mind.

Let’s begin with two members of a leftist podcast group dubbed the Young Turks that for years saw nothing good about any Republican and considering Donald Trump the epitomization of the devil himself. Anything Trump did was wrong. Everything Trump and the Republicans represented was evil and must be opposed blindly. During and after this presidential election campaign however two of the more noted members of this podcast, Ann Kasparian and Cenk Uygar, changed their tune, and did so in an astonishing way.

First there was Kasparian’s announcement in October that she has left the Democratic Party. Watch:
» Read more

36 comments

Lincoln proclaims a day of Thanksgiving — in the middle of the Civil War

9:01 am

Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln

As I wrote in 2023 for Thanksgiving last year, just six weeks after the horrible murderous massacre of innocent people by Hamas on October 7, 2023:

The date was October 3, 1863. The Civil War was at its height, with no end in sight and no clear sign yet of victory for the Union. For all anyone knew, the great American experiment in self-government, freedom, and constitutional law was about to end in failure, with one half of the nation committed to the idea that it was okay to enslave other human beings, based on their race.

In such a moment, President Abraham Lincoln did what all past leaders in America had done, call for a day of prayer to God for the future while giving thanks for the blessings still abounding. For this purpose he set aside the last Thursday of November of that year.

Since then, Americans have never stopped celebrating Thanksgiving on that day. Today comes another Thanksgiving during a time of chaos, hate, violence, and oppression. There is much to invoke horror and outrage.

There is much more to be thankful for. As much as some have tried to squelch freedom here in America and abroad, all signs say that freedom-lovers everywhere are refusing to go down without a fight. Let us join together to renew that effort, so that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Thanksgiving continues to be an utterly American holiday. No other nation has anything like it. And it lives on, because deep down, all ordinary Americans — from all walks of life and political persuasions — are still hopeful and determined to build a life for themselves and their loved ones, with joy and justice and freedom at its heart.

Thus, the words of Lincoln’s 1863 Thanksgiving proclamation still rings true to us all. Let us put aside our petty factional differences and, as Lincoln asked, give thanks as “one heart and one voice by the whole American People.”
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A Proclamation.

The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.
» Read more

16 comments

Trump’s picks to run all the federal health agencies guarantees major change is coming

1:02 pm

Trump defiant after being shot
Trump defiant

Fight! Fight! Fight! The announcement late yesterday that president-elect Donald Trump has picked Jay Bhattacharya, the director of Stanford University’s Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging, to head the National Institutes of Health (NIH) underlined quite forcefully the certainty that the outsider nature of all of Trump’s picks to head all the health-related agencies in the federal government will led to major changes in how those agencies operate.

Bhattacharya had been blacklisted for his very vocal opposition to the government’s lockdown and mandate policies during the COVID epidemic. He along with Martin Kulldorff, one of the world’s foremost experts on vaccines and who was also blacklisted during the epidemic, co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration that strongly criticized the policies of imposed by these health agencies, calling instead for a return to the standard response to infectious diseases that had been followed successfully for more than a century.

Putting Bhattacharya in charge of NIH is incredibly ironic. When he along with Kulldorff had come out opposed to the lockdown and jab mandates advocated by Francis Collins, then-head of the NIH, Collins in league with Anthony Fauci, then head of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), put together a back-room campaign to have Bhattacharya, Kulldorff, and many others blacklisted across social media. This campaign also had Kulldorf removed as a member of the CDC’s vaccine safety advisory committee.

Two years later, Collins is now gone, is being sued for his actions, and Bhattacharya has replaced him.

Trump’s defiant choice of Bhattacharya however is only one of many similar decisions, beginning last month with the choice of Robert Kennedy Jr. to run the Department of Health and Human Services.
» Read more

16 comments

NASA once again gambling on the lives of its astronauts for political reasons

10:07 am

Orion's damage heat shield
Damage to Orion heat shield caused during re-entry in 2022,
including “cavities resulting from the loss of large chunks”

NASA this week began the stacking one of the two strap-on solid-fueled boosters that will help power SLS on the Artemis-3 mission, still officially scheduled for September 2025 and aiming to send four astronauts around the Moon.

A NASA spokesperson told Ars it should take around four months to fully stack the SLS rocket for Artemis II. First, teams will stack the two solid-fueled boosters piece by piece, then place the core stage in between the boosters. Then, technicians will install a cone-shaped adapter on top of the core stage and finally hoist the interim cryogenic propulsion stage, or upper stage, to complete the assembly.

At that point the rocket will be ready for the integration of the manned Orion capsule on top.

The article at the link sees this stacking as a good sign that NASA’s has solved the Orion capsule’s heat shield issue that occurred during the unmanned return from the Moon on the second Artemis mission. The image to the right shows that heat shield afterward, with large chunks missing. Though it landed safely, the damage was much much worse than expected. At the moment NASA officials have said it has found the root cause, but those officials also refuse to say what that root cause is, nor how the agency or Orion’s contractor Lockheed Martin has fixed it.
» Read more

19 comments

Part 3: Fixing our bloated federal government and the administrative state is going to take decades

12:43 pm

The lion now is roaring, quite loudly
The lion now is roaring, quite loudly.
Photo by Travis Jervey.

In part 1 of this series I described how it appears the American public today is no longer asleep and is instead very aggressively participating in the political and cultural debate in ways it has not in many decades, noting how this shift suggests we are experiencing a much more fundamental societal change than a mere shift in voting demographics.

In part 2 of this series I described how this fundamental shift has begun to express itself within the courts and politics in ways unheard of only five years ago. This expression illustrates the bottom-up nature of America, whereby the citizen is sovereign and our so-called leaders can only resist what those citizens want for only so long. And when those citizens become energized, as they now are, that resistance will evaporate with amazing speed.

In part 3 today I am going to take a more pessimistic view, based not on recent events but on the longer view I take naturally as a historian. I do this all the time in my histories. In Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, in describing the political background behind that mission, I could not help noting how that mission changed America and its social goals significantly, for both good and ill. In Leaving Earth, I opened the book like so:

Societies change. Though humans have difficulty perceiving this fact during their lifetimes, the tide of change inexorably rolls forward, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.

I then documented in detail the space efforts by both Russia and the United States in the decades after the Apollo landing and the politics behind those programs, with both providing a great window into how both societies changed in the second half of the 20th century. As I concluded, “They were like ships passing in the night.”

Similarly, the major cultural and political shift away from big government and the regulatory state that I think we are now experiencing in the United States is not going to change our country overnight. These things take time. People who firmly believe it is a good idea to “gender affirm” confused little kids by cutting off their breasts or castrating them are not going to change their minds easily. People who believe in big government — especially those who benefit from it — are not going to meekly allow that big government and those benefits to vanish without a fight.

The left’s long march through the institutions
» Read more

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Freedom wins again: SpaceX completes the 6th orbital test flight of Starship/Superheavy

3:50 pm

Starship/Superheavy at T+6 seconds

SpaceX today successfully completed the sixth orbital test flight of its Starship/Superheavy heavy lift rocket, only forty days after its previous test flight, the shortest turn-around so far, mainly because the FAA imposed no red tape to hold SpaceX back.

Before describing details of the flight, it is essential to note that this giant rocket, bigger than the Saturn-5 that sent Apollo astronauts to the Moon and intended to be completely reusable and being designed to be able to relaunch in mere hours, has been conceived, designed, built, and tested entirely by a private company and free American citizens, funded almost entirely by private investment capital hoping to make a profit from the rocket. The government and NASA has played almost no part, except possibly using its regulatory power improperly to slow development down by a year or two.

Even more important its development has cost a tiny amount compared to similar government programs, and has been accomplished in less than a third of the time.

Thus this rocket is a perfect example of freedom in action. Get the government out of the way and allow humans the freedom to follow their dreams, and they will do astonishing things.

As for the flight, Superheavy worked perfectly in getting Starship off the launchpad and on its way into orbit. However, engineers canceled a second tower catch attempt and instead diverted Superheavy to complete a soft splashdown just off the coast in the Gulf of Mexico. The booster touched down on the water quite softly, and then fell over into the water. Expect SpaceX to quickly do salvage operations to recover it.

Starship reached its orbit as planned, carrying for the first time a payload, a single plastic banana suspended by cords in the center of the Pez deployment payload bay where SpaceX hopes to soon begin deploying Starlink satellites. Though somewhat silly, the banana is being used by SpaceX and the FAA to certify future payload operations.

About 38 minutes into the flight engineers did the first re-light of one Raptor-2 engine while in orbit, the burn lasting about three-four seconds. This burn demonstrated that Starship is capable of doing a de-orbit burn so that in a future flight it can be launched into a full orbit and use the engines to bring it back to a precise location on Earth, including possibly a return to the launch tower for its own chopstick catch.

Starship splashing down vertically
Starship splashing down vertically

During re-entry the flight plan called for pushing Starship beyond its technical margins in order to learn exactly what those limits were. Even so, it appeared that — unlike the previous flights — there was very little evidence of damage to the flaps from the heat of re-entry. One flap appeared to have damage at one pointed end, and even that burn-through appeared far less than the previous flights.

During final descent and moving slower than the speed of sound they pointed the ship nose down in order to stress the flaps the most. Even so, the ship performed as planned, and splashed down softly and vertically in the Indian Ocean.

Though the flight plan for this Starship flight as well as the previous flights was purposely designed to bring it back to Earth before it completes an orbit, this was still essentially a successful orbital launch, and thus I am including it in my launch totals. The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

118 SpaceX
53 China
13 Russia
12 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 136 to 79, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 118 to 97.

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Part 2: The waking sleeping giant lurks not just in public places

11:05 am

The lion now is roaring, quite loudly
The lion now is roaring, quite loudly.
Photo by Travis Jervey.

In the first part yesterday of this three part essay, I described how Americans are no longer the disinterested public that we have seen for more than a half century. No longer is the left the only group with passion. Ordinary Americans are now paying attention, and appear aggressively unwilling to allow leftist bad policy and slanderous blacklisting go unchallenged. The public might not be partisan Republicans or conservatives, but it is nonetheless finally aware and outraged by the leftist agenda that has dominated government policy for the past decade, including policies that encouraged the mutilation and castration of children, allowed the queer agenda in schools, promoted anti-Semitism and bigotry throughout the workforce, and fueled an out-of-control federal government that only serves itself even as it squashes the freedoms of ordinary people.

In today’s second part, I wish to dig deeper, because the public’s willing outrage has already caused unexpected major attitude changes in places where such changes have been impossible for decades.

Let us begin with a somewhat complex court decision that I reported on last week. In this court decision, a two-judge panel went beyond the specifics of the lawsuit before it to rule instead on the basic legal authority of the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), concluding that its decades-long requirement that all government agencies obey its environmental recommendations in writing regulations was illegal, that CEQ simply did not have the statutory authority to do this.

As I said, the case itself is very complex. It is not even clear this ruling will stand up, since in the end the CEQ’s recommendations essentially reflect those of the President, whose authority to determine how the agencies under him create regulations based on Congressional law is legal and quite final.

The point however is not whether this decision will stand up. The point is that the judges were quite willing to rule on the legal authority of a government entity, and rule against its authority, essentially invalidating its power.
» Read more

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Part 1: The sleeping giant of the American public has finally awakened

1:20 pm

Rick, stating the truth in Casablanca
Have Americans finally awakened?

In my long life there have been a number of times post-election when pundits nationwide have claimed that the results signaled a major cultural transition. This claim was made in 1980 when Ronald Reagan was elected president. It was made again in 1994 when voters gave the Republicans their first majority in the House of Representatives in about four decades. A similar claim was made in 2016, when Trump was elected for the first time.

In every single one of these cases the claim was false. There was no major cultural transition. Republicans might have won control, but the American public and its political class still largely leaned leftward. There was almost no change politically. Despite for example Bill Clinton’s announcement that “The era of big government is over” after the 1994 election, the federal government continued to grow in size and power, and to do so with ever increasing speed.

Even more significant, in every single case, the American people went back to sleep after the election. They considered the election their statement of what must be done, and assumed naively that the new elected officials would obey that statement. No matter how much conservatives attempted to make the public aware that the government remained out of control and was further beginning to institute leftist policies far outside what anyone in America wanted, those attempts fell on deaf ears.

The American people were essentially not interested. The only political movement that moved with any passion was that of the left, and it took advantage of this passion to successfully to get its policies imposed.

It seems however that the 2024 election signals a real cultural transition, far deeper and more significant than the mere shift of voting patterns to the right that most pundits are noting by all demographic groups.

No, what is happening is a shift in passion. The American public has awakened in a way I have never seen. I give you this news report as a clear sign, as the events it describes occurred last week, after the November election, when Americans in the past would gone back into slumber and stop paying attention. Watch and be amazed, not just by the outrage by hundreds of ordinary citizens, but by the fact that this outrage was reported correctly and sympathetically by a television news report.
» Read more

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Freedom: What Trump’s election will mean for America’s space policy

2:24 pm

The resounding landslide victory by Donald Trump and the Republicans yesterday is going have enormous consequences across the entire federal government. As a space historian and journalist who has been following, studying, and reporting on space policy for decades, this essay will be my attempt to elucidate what that landslide will mean for NASA, its Artemis program, and the entire American aerospace industry.

The cost of SLS
The absurd cost of each SLS launch

The Artemis Program

Since 2011 I have said over and over that the government-designed and owned SLS, Orion, and later proposed Lunar Gateway space station were all badly conceived. They all cost too much and don’t do the job. Fitting them together to create a long term presence in space is difficult at best and mostly impractical. Their cost and cumbersome design has meant the program to get back to the Moon, as first proposed by George Bush Jr. in 2004, is now more than a decade behind schedule and many billions over budget. Worse, under the present program as currently contrived that manned lunar landing will likely be delayed five more years, at a minimum.

For example, at present SLS is underpowered. It can’t get astronauts to and from the Moon, as the Saturn-5 rocket did in the 1960s. For the first manned lunar landing mission, Artemis-4, SLS will simply launch four astronauts in Orion to lunar orbit, where Orion will rendezvous and dock with the lunar lander version of Starship. That Starship in turn will require refueling in Earth orbit, using a proposed fuel depot that has been filled by multiple earlier Starship launches.

Once Starship is docked to Orion the crew will transfer to Starship to get up and down from the Moon, and then return to Earth in Orion.

You think that’s complicated? » Read more

36 comments

Expect fewer and less violent protests should Trump win

11:46 am

Nazi brown shirts destroying Jewish businesses on Kristallnacht
No more American Kristallnachts

Based on recent events, I am willing to predict that we shall see much less violence than expected in the days after the election should Donald Trump win. And if those protests occur, they will mostly be concentrated in Democratic Party strongholds where the protesters feel reasonably confident they can get away with it.

I base this optimistic prediction on the trends we have been seeing. As I first noted in April 2024, the strength of these leftist protests has clearly lost steam in the last four years. While in 2020 the protests and looting and violence occurred almost everywhere, destroying many inner cities, in the last year those protests have mostly been confined to college campuses, and have resulted in relatively little damage in comparison.

The reasons have been two fold. First, the authorities, while still generally treating these protesters too gently, have still responded more aggressively. Violent protesters are now arrested. Some face prison terms. Faced with real consequences, this violent leftist protest movement can no longer get the same numbers to turn out.

Second, the protests and violence has declined because of the utter failure of these protests to work. If anything, the looting and destruction has convinced vast numbers of Americans to oppose the left and to now vote with even greater energy against the politicians who support it.

Thought trends have been obvious for months, recently we have had even more evidence that the protests and violence will be less should Trump win. And that evidence is striking.
» Read more

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Farewell to America

12:57 pm

The Liberty Bell
“Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all
the inhabitants thereof.” Photo credit: William Zhang

Despite my headline, this essay is not intended to be entirely pessimistic. Instead it is my effort to accept a reality that I think few people, including myself, have generally been able to process: The country we shall see after tomorrow’s election will not be the America as founded in 1776 and continued to prosper for the next quarter millennium.

The country can certainly be made great again. Elon Musk’s SpaceX proves it, time after time. The talent and creativity of free Americans is truly endless, and if Donald Trump wins it is very likely that energy will be unleashed again, in ways that no one can predict.

The country can certainly become free again. There is no law that prevents the elimination of bureaucracy and regulation, no matter how immortal government agencies appear to be. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 proves this. Though Russia has sadly retreated back to its top-down government-ruling ways, the country did wipe out almost all its bureaucracy in 1991, resulting in an exuberant restart that even today is nowhere near as oppressive as Soviet rule.

Should Donald Trump win, we should have every expectation that he will do the largest house-cleaning of the federal government ever. The benefits will be immeasurable, and magnificent.

What however will not change, even if Donald Trump wins resoundingly tomorrow, is the modern culture and political ethics that now exist. That modern culture is fundamentally different than the America that existed during the country’ s first 200 years, and it guarantees that America can never be the country it once was.
» Read more

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Has there been a wave of fraudulent election ballots swamping PA? Let’s find out!

2:08 pm

What does the newly discovered election fraud in PA tell us?
What does the newly discovered election
fraud in PA tell us?

In the past week there have been a bunch of stories in the conservative press from three different counties in Pennsylvania, suggesting that each county has been swamped with thousands of fraudulent ballots, produced in bulk and then delivered in large numbers so as to make it difficult to trace or investigate them.

I decided to take a closer look, because this story could either be telling us how corrupt the upcoming election will be, or it might actually be telling us that it is going to be much more reliable than we have anticipated.

The three counties involved are Lancaster, York, and Monroe. All told, less than six thousand voter registration applications, all submitted apparently in bulk by a Arizona-based company called Field+Media Corps, were under review, the number from each county being 2,500, 3,087, and 30 respectively. Note that these do not appear to be actual ballots, but registration forms that would once approved would allow the individual to vote, either by mail or in person.

Of these applications, the reviews have already produced results. For example, York County has found that of the 3,087 submitted, 47% were verified and approved, 29% needed more information, and 24% were declined and are under further review. In Monroe County the investigation has apparently only flagged these 30 forms, with one coming from a deceased person and others flagged for different reasons that in the end might be legitimate.

In Lancaster County officials have not yet issued a report. Initially it announced:
» Read more

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A return to Phantom and the reminiscences of an Apollo astronaut

3:04 pm

Charles Duke, Apollo 16 astronaut
Charles Duke, Apollo 16 astronaut

Yesterday I had to pleasure of getting my second tour of the Phantom Space facilities, located here in Tucson. Jim Cantrell, the founder of the Tucson-based rocket/satellite company Phantom Space, had last week graciously invited me to attend the event he was holding there, where astronaut Charles Duke, from the April 1972 Apollo 16 lunar landing, would be giving a talk to the company’s employees, investors, and customers. Duke had become an advisor for the company, and this would be his first visit to its operations.

First, the talk by Charles Duke, describing his life and Apollo 16 walk on the Moon, was as usual awe-inspiring, mostly because Duke spoke like every astronaut I’ve ever met so matter-of-factly about what he had done. During the second of three excusions on the surface with his commander John Young, they drove their rover up the slope of nearby Stone Mountain, climbing to an elevation of 500 feet, the highest any human has so far been on the lunar surface. From there he could look back and see for miles, including the entire valley where the lunar module was nestled as well as the mountains and craters that surrounded it.

When I asked him if he had had any sense of his remoteness from humanity, his response was a good-natured laugh. “We felt at home there!” They had done so much study of the terrain beforehand, including simulations, that from the moment they approached to land it all looked very familiar. This is where they were supposed to be!

Following Duke’s presentation we all were given a tour of the facility. My first visit there had been in 2022. At the time Cantrell’s effort was to aggressively succeed from his earlier failure at the rocket startup Vector, focusing this new company on building its Daytona rocket. After the tour I concluded as follows:
» Read more

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As if on cue, the Democrats now go after Musk for daring to campaign for Trump

12:56 pm

Elon Musk under attack
The target is now Elon Musk

When Elon Musk revealed in May 2022 that he had decided to switch his political allegiance from the Democratic to the Republican Party, he immediately predicted quite correctly the following: “Watch their dirty tricks campaign against me unfold.”

As I noted in detail a year ago, the federal campaign against Musk and his companies since then has been extensive and disgusting, with investigations opened by the Department of Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Transportation Department.

Nor has this harassment eased in the past year. If anything it has accelerated, with the red tape by the FAA slowing down operations at SpaceX to the point of absurdity.

Now, as the campaign season moves to its climax on election day and the polls increasingly show a major shift in the direction of a Trump win, barring any illegal vote tampering, we should not be surprised that the Democrats are now demanding that Elon Musk shut up, and are doing so by issuing new false accusations against him.

Leading the way was a Wall Street Journal report [behind a pay wall], picked up by all the usual suspects in the propaganda press, based solely on anonymous sources, that accused Musk of having private and secret phone conversations with Vladimir Putin, head of Russia. From this typical propaganda piece at NPR:
» Read more

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But will loyal Democrats actually abandon their beloved party? History says no

2:57 pm

The Democratic Party: Given decades of blind loyalty by its supporters
The Democratic Party: Decades of blind loyalty
by its supporters

This week the publication Issues and Insights had a poll taken of registered Democrats to garner some idea of their overall opinion of the Democratic Party’s sudden back-room deal to dump Joe Biden as presidential candidate and replace him with Kamala Harris. The poll asked whether those polled agreed or disagreed with these three statements:

  • The process the Democratic Party used to select its nominee for President did not yield the strongest candidate.
  • The process the Democratic Party used to select Kamala Harris as its nominee was undemocratic.
  • I lost significant faith in the Democratic Party because it did not disclose Biden’s health issues during the primary process.

For Democratic Party politicians, the results should be disheartening at best. A significant majority of the 1,240 registered Democrats polled agreed with all three statements, with 58% agreeing strongly or somewhat with the first statement, 52% agreeing strongly or somewhat with the second statement, and 54% agreeing strongly or somewhat with the third statement. As noted by Scott Pinsker of PJMedia in analyzing the results:
» Read more

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