Edgar Winter Group – Frankenstein
An evening pause: Performed live 1973.
Hat tip wamphyr.
Year: 2025
Starbase to take control of nearby beaches
The new government of Starbase has reached an agreement with its local county to take control of the nearby beaches that will allow Starbase to not only maintain them but close them when it chooses.
Cameron County commissioners approved the agreement to hand over a portion of Boca Chica Beach on Tuesday. The deal outlines cleaning and maintenance obligations among other terms. Under the agreement, Starbase will be allowed to set requirements for beachfront construction and special events on the beach.
…The compact includes a plan to address beach erosion, which occurred at a rate of 10 to 20 feet per year from 1950 to 2012, Starbase Commissioner Jordan Buss told the county commissioners, citing a study conducted by the University of Texas at Arlington.
This agreement mirrors one Starbase had previously made with South Padre Island for other beach portions.
The article once again gives lots of column space to the fringe groups that oppose SpaceX and its operations at Boca Chica, even though the evidence suggests they have almost no support from the general public.
Another day, another leftist sniper; Another day, another Democrat incites violence
Click for source from FBI.
The madness from the left continues: A rooftop sniper who had engraved “anti-ICE” messages on his ammunition today killed on one and injured two in Dallas before killing himself.
The now-deceased shooter who targeted a Dallas, Texas ICE facility wrote “anti-ICE” messages on his rounds, according to the FBI.
Three people at an ICE facility were shot by a gunman on the roof of an adjacent building on Wednesday morning. The victims were reportedly detainees, though law enforcement did not confirm this on Wednesday. Authorities did confirm, however, that no officers were injured in the shooting. One of the victims died at the scene, and the shooter died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
At this same Dallas ICE facility last month a man was arrested when he claimed he had a bomb in his backpack. Nor are these recent attacks limited to this one facility.
This incident comes just two weeks after a threatening letter with a white powdery substance was sent to an ICE office in New York City. Less than a week ago, a violent rioter was charged with assault in San Francisco after he threatened to stab an ICE officer and harm his family,” a DHS senior official said in a statement about the incident at the time.
In another case six anti-ICE vandals have been charged in a shooting at a different ICE facility in Texas in July.
According to federal court documents, police initially responded to reports of vandalism at the facility, with several cars spray-painted with anti-immigration statements. However, when authorities arrived on the scene, one was shot in the neck. Authorities said the officer who was shot survived.
Meanwhile, California governor Gavin Newsom last night continued the Democratic Party’s vicious rhetoric that has encouraged this behavior by saying on Stephen Colbert’s leftwing propaganda show that ICE is President Trump’s “private domestic army.” Nor did Newsom stop there.
» Read more
Chinese satellite photographs commercial Maxar satellite
Click for original. More images here.
In what appears to be a tit-for-tat competition, a Chinese reconnaissance satellite, dubbed Jilin-1, has now taken photographs of a commercial Earth imaging satellite owned by Maxar, that the company had previously used to photograph other Chinese satellites.
Chinese commercial remote sensing constellation operator Changguang Satellite Technology (CGST), a spinoff from an arm of the state-owned Chinese Academy of Sciences, published images Sept. 13 of a Maxar Worldview Legion 2 satellite.
The images were taken by CGST’s Jilin-1 remote sensing constellation satellites across a few hours on Sept. 8, from ranges between 40-55 kilometers, showing details of the spacecraft. While part of an expanding Earth observation constellation, Jilin-1 satellites have apparently had their operations adjusted to include Non-Earth Imaging (NEI).
Maxar had earlier published high resolution images of China’s Shijan-26 satellite, being used to test remote sensing and surveillance technologies.
None of this is particular new, though for China the technology is the most advanced it has ever had. Nations have been launching high resolution surveillance satellites since the 1960s. Nor is there anything anyone can do about it. Nations will always do this. If anything, having this ability to observe each other closely will likely reduce tensions and misunderstandings.
Firefly’s stock sags due to poor revenue numbers in 1st quarter report
Apparently Wall Street has lost faith in the rocket startup Firefly since that company went public last month. The stock zoomed initially, but has now sagged due to a poor 1st quarter report that showed revenues far below expectations.
The stock’s initial price had been predicted to range from $35 to $39, but quickly rose to $70.
Since then the price has steadily dropped, so that today it sits about about $41.
The news reports seem to think this indicates bad things for the company. I see this as simply a long term correction from the initial over-enthusiasm by buyers. The company had first offered a stock price close to this number. The price is now exactly where Firefly predicted.
If I was interested in buying stock, this might actually be a good time to buy. As a rocket startup, Firefly appears quite solid, being the only startup to successfully soft land on the Moon. Its Alpha rocket has also been cleared for further launches, and though it has had a mixed launch record, with several launches failing due to upper stage issues, it has likely solved these problems.
NASA now targeting a February-to-April launch window for first manned Artemis mission
Damage to Orion’s heat shield caused during re-entry in 2022,
including “cavities resulting from the loss of large chunks”.
Nor has this issue been fixed.
According to a NASA official at an event yesterday, the agency is now targeting launch window starting on February 5, 2026 and extending into April for the first manned Artemis mission, dubbed Artemis-2, that will slingshot four astronauts around Moon and back to Earth on a 10-day-flight.
If Artemis 2 does lift off on Feb. 5, it will be at night, NASA officials said. The space agency has about five days apiece in February, March and April to launch the flight. The latest possible date is April 26, according to NASA. NASA will aim to hit the earlier part of that launch window, Hawkins said, but she stressed that crew safety will drive the timeline.
That mission will fly with an Orion capsule that has safety concerns, including a questionable heat shield (see picture above) and an untested environmental system.
Meanwhile, as part of NASA’s never-ending PR effort to sell the mission, it announced today that the mission’s four astronauts have now given their Orion capsule a name, Integrity.
The name Integrity embodies the foundation of trust, respect, candor, and humility across the crew and the many engineers, technicians, scientists, planners, and dreamers required for mission success.
Considering NASA’s level of dishonesty during the entire development of SLS and Orion, the ironies of this name and these claims is quite breath-taking.
Canadian rocket startup to try suborbital launch today after yesterday’s launch was scrubbed due to a fire on the launchpad
Proposed Canadian spaceports
UPDATE: The launch attempt today has also been scrubbed due to another small pad fire due to leaking fuel. The company is now aiming for another launch attempt tomorrow.
Original post:
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The Canadian rocket startup Nordspace was forced yesterday to cancel its first launch attempt of its Taiga suborbital rocket when flames and smoke appeared on the launchpad.
An update posted to the company’s website said it had to delay the launch “due to an anomaly on the launch pad. … Rocket, pad, and personnel are safe. We are working to resolve the issue and return to launch,” the update said. Later, in a comment on its livestream, the company said it would reschedule the launch to Wednesday morning.
I have embedded a live stream of today’s launch attempt below, set for lift off a little past noon today (Pacific).
With this launch, the company will not only complete the first Canadian launch of any kind from Canada by a private company, it will initiate operations at its own spaceport in Newfoundland, dubbed the Atlantic Spaceport. This achievement would also leapfrog Canada’s other proposed spaceport in Nova Scotia, which has been promising launches since 2016 without success.
» Read more
Two launches by China and SpaceX
Both China and SpaceX completed launches today. First, China launched another 11 satellites for its Geely internet-of-things constellation, its Smart Dragon-3 rocket lifting off from a ocean platform off the nation’s eastern coast.
This was the sixth launch for this constellation, bringing the number of satellites in orbit to 64, out of a planned 240. The constellation is designed to provide positioning and communications for trucking and other ground-based businesses.
Next, SpaceX successfully placed three government science satellites into orbit (two for NASA and one for NOAA), its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The first stage completed its second flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The two fairings both completed their first flight.
The two NASA satellites were the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) to study the Sun’s heliosphere at the edge of the solar system and the Carruthers Geocorona Observatory to study the exosphere, the outermost layer of the atmosphere. The NOAA probe, Space Weather Follow On – Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1), will observe the Sun from one million miles from Earth, providing advance knowledge of strong solar flares and eruptions so that utility companies can shield the electric grid appropriately.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
123 SpaceX
55 China
13 Russia
12 Rocket Lab
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 123 to 94.
Riccardo Cocchi & Yulia Zagoruychenko – 2018 Fred Astaire Cup Latin dance competition
An evening pause: The camera soon focuses on this couple, whose performance eventually won the competition, which apparently was their tenth victory. As noted in the comments, “You don’t understand exactly how great they are until you see them in a roomful of other people dancing the same dance.”
Hat tip Judd Clark.
September 23, 2025 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- Rocket startup Exos Aerospace brags its tanks are so strong you can jump on them
Jay notes that the “Russians walk on theirs all the time.”
- Blue Origin touts the sunshield it will use on its Lunar Transporter
The shield will protect crews from radiation while acting as a solar panel generating 23 kilowatts, which Jay says “is a lot, enough to power two average U.S. homes.”
- PLD touts the first fully intergrated Teprel-C engine for its Miura-5 first stage
It is targeting producing one engine every two weeks by the end of this year.
- SpaceX releases video of the successful full duration static fire test of the next Starship to fly
Right now the eleventh orbital test flight is targeting an October launch.
The real pushback against Disney, ABC, and Kimmel continues
Jimmy Kimmel on September 15, 2025, spreading lies and
slandering half the nation. Click for original video.
Not surprisingly, the leftist Disney corporation that owns ABC backed down yesterday from its suspension of Jimmy Kimmel, posting a pandering explanation for why it no longer considers it a problem that Kimmel spouted a blatant lie about the leftist killer of Charlie Kirk.
“Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country. It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive,” Disney said in a statement Monday. “We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.” [emphasis mine]
Kimmel’s comments weren’t “ill-timed” or “insensitive.” What Kimmel said was an outright slander of every person who voted for Donald Trump by claiming it was one of them that killed Kirk.
The pushback against Disney and ABC over Kimmel however has not diminished. The independent companies Nexstar and Sinclair, which own 30 and 40 affiliate television stations that are presently part of ABC’s network, have not backed down. Both have announced they will continue to refuse to air Kimmel’s show, Jimmy Kimmel Live! Sinclair has further said that it won’t change its position until Kimmel apologizes to Kirk’s family and makes a “meaningful personal donation” to them and Turning Point USA.
Sinclair has additional personal reasons for standing up to Disney, ABC, and the terrorist left. It had planned to air a tribute to Charlie Kirk, but decided to cancel it because of multiple violent threats from the left to is local stations.
» Read more
Blobby Martian crater filled with ice
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 4, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
The science team labels this a “concentric fill crater,” a term used by planetary scientists for Martian craters that appear to be filled with glacial material. That certainly appears to be the case, but this 3.5-mile-wide unnamed crater also appears to have been warped by the ice that impregnates the ground all around it.
The overview map above explains why. The white dot marks the location, on the eastern end of the 2,000-mile-long northern mid-latitude strip that I label glacier country, because almost every image in this region shows similar glacial features. Though it is hard to tell from the inset, all the craters here have similar glacial material within them, and the ground surrounding them also appears glacial in nature.
This particular location is at 40 degrees north latitude. While it might be difficult to establish a colony here, on ground that appears so unstable, going 700 to 800 miles to the southeast would put you in what is considered one of Mars’ prime mining regions. Thus, with the right equipment mining operations would have accessible water not that far away.