Author: Robert Zimmerman

Head of France’s space agency blames too many subcontractors for high cost of Ariane-6

9:26 am

At a conference yesterday the head of France’s CNES space agency, Philippe Baptiste, strongly blasted the European Space Agency’s (ESA) system of distributing contracting work to many subcontractors in its partner countries for high cost of its new expendable Ariane-6, a high cost that makes it uncompetitive in today’s launch market.

While giving his remarks, the CNES boss explained that “the European space industry, which is largely French, is in danger today. Our industry is not pivoting quickly enough. We must move quickly, reduce cycles, costs, otherwise we will all die.” It should be noted that the hyperbole towards the end of that statement may be exaggerated thanks to its translation from French to English.

On Ariane 6, Baptiste stated that “today, we are too expensive, including on Ariane 6. We are missing several tens of millions of euros, which we cannot find among European subcontractors.”

As the article then notes, this is not a new problem. ESA attempted to reduce it when it agreed in 2017 to give ownership of Ariane-6 to ArianeGroup, a joint partnership of Airbus and Safran, two of Europe’s biggest aerospace companies. The idea was that ArianeGroup would be in charge, and thus less bound to give out multiple subcontracts to many different companies scattered throughout ESA’s European partners.

This apparently did not happen, and the reason is likely because Ariane-6 was still a rocket conceived by the ESA to be run by the ESA, not a private company. That government control is also the reason Ariane-6 was designed not be reusable, even though in 2017 it was very obvious that an expendable rocket would be uncompetitive in the 2020s launch market. The bureaucrats at ESA didn’t want to take chances, so they choose a conservative design.

Baptiste’s remarks today I think help explain France’s decision earlier this week to award contracts to four rocket startups. France has finally realized that its partnership in ESA has been hindering its own space industry, and is now moving to encourage its growth outside of ESA.

There is great irony here. France led the way in creating ESA, because it wanted others to help pay for its space program. Now it rejects that partnership because its partners are simply doing what is natural, demand their own piece of the action.

Regardless, this breakup is good news. It means the European government monopoly on launch services is truly ending.

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March 28, 2024 Quick space links

3:15 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who also tipped me off to the China and Japan stories immediately below. 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.

 

 

 

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Leftist students take-over building illegally and by force at Vanderbilt

2:38 pm

Leftist protesters break into Vanderbilt building
Anti-Israel protesters assault a security guard (grey jacket)
at Vanderbuilt. Click for full video.

The lawless left: Because Vanderbilt University officials canceled a vote on a student amendment to the student government constitution, on March 25, 2024 about thirty students broke into the chancellor’s office, assaulting a security guard as they did so, and occupied it about 22 hours before police forced them out.

The university canceled the amendment vote because it would require the boycott of any businesses linked with Israel, and thus would likely violate federal and state laws and would make the university “ineligible for new state contracts and could have existing contracts voided.”

Whether or not the cancellation was right, the violence of the students is typical of the spoiled-child tantrums of the left, that assume it has the right to do anything at all, including violence and trespass, if it doesn’t get what it wants.

In a statement, the Vanderbilt spokesperson said the protest was “not a peaceful one.”
» Read more

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Japan awards development agreements with four rocket startups

1:14 pm

Capitalism in space: Japan’s space agency this week awarded development agreements to four Japanese rocket startups, signaling that nation’s attempt to shift from depending on JAXA’s government-built rockets to becoming a customer of an industry of competing commercial rocket companies.

Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Interstellar signed a basic agreement in March. Space One, whose Kairos solid rocket exploded seconds after liftoff earlier this month, was also selected under the JAXA-SMASH (JAXA-Small Satellite Rush Program) initiative. Two further companies also signed basic agreements. These are Space BD and Mitsui Bussan Aerospace, which offer services aimed at the commercial utilization of space.

The agreements mean the companies will have priority for future contracts. These are designed to support private-sector entities capable of launching satellites developed under JAXA’s small satellite missions and advance the commercialization of space transportation services.

These deals are part of a new policy announced in November that includes $6.6 billion to help encourage the growth of a Japanese commercial space sector, independent of that nation’s space agency.

It remains uncertain whether JAXA will let go the purse strings and actually allow these new companies ownership of what they do. The deals as described sound like the agency is using its power to attempt to capture the companies, rather than encourage their independent growth.

We shall have to wait and see. On its face this announcement is very good news for Japan’s space industry, as it suggests that things might be changing.

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A detailed look at the international partners for China’s Moon base

1:03 pm

Link here. The article provides a nice summary of who has signed on to China’s project to build a Moon base in competition with the American Artemis project, prompted by the announcement that an astronomical association in Colombia has now signed on.

The contrast is stark between the nations that have signed the Artemis Accords to participate in the American project (36 so far) and the entities that have partnered with the Chinese. China at present only has seven partner nations (Belarus, Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Russia, Venezuela, South Africa, Egypt), only one of which, Russia, has any space capabilities. The remaining nine partners are all academic organizations of one kind or another, all of which also have little or no major space capabilities.

Essentially, these partners are mostly PR by China to make it appear it has an international team. In reality almost all of its lunar project will be done by China. China doesn’t even expect Russia to contribute that much. As the article notes, “China has regularly omitted any mention of Russia as an ILRS partner” since the Russia invaded the Ukraine in February 2022. Before then Russia’s ability to accomplish much of anything new in space had long been questionable, and since then the doubts have escalated.

Though many of the nations who have signed the Artemis Accords are as weak, the list also includes almost all the world’s major players in space, such as France, Germany, India, Japan, and Luxembourg.

Like the Cold War, the western capitalist alliance is larger and more capable, because no one really wants to join an partnership that discourages freedom and private enterprise.

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Martian waves of ridges and cracks

12:42 pm

Martian waves of ridges and cracks
Click for original image.

In preparing today’s cool image I initially planned to post an picture taken on December 26, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), as it showed a strange series of ridges that almost resembled waves or ripples on a pond.

In digging into MRO’s context camera archive to get the larger context, however, I immediately switched to the photo on the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here. Taken on December 17, 2010, it shows a much more mysterious and striking set of geological features than the closer view of the high resolution image, with the wave-shaped ridges on its western half but another set of wave-shaped cracks on its eastern half.

Even more intriguing, the arcs for the ridges curve in the opposite direction from the arcs for the cracks. It is almost as if there were two flows moving in opposite directions, right next to each other.
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The remnant of the supernova from 1181, as seen in multiple wavelengths

9:44 am

Supernova remnant as seen in multiple wavelengths
Click for original image.

Using a number of different telescopes and observing in many wavelengths outside the visible spectrum, astronomers have produced a new composite image of the remnant of a supernova that was detected in the year 1181 and remained visible to the naked eye for about six months.

That composite picture is to the right, cropped and reduced to post here. From the press release:

X-ray observations by ESA’s XMM-Newton (blue) show the full extent of the nebula and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (cyan) pinpoints its central source. The nebula is barely visible in optical light but shines bright in infrared light, collected by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Space Explorer (red and pink). Interestingly, the radial structure in the image consists of heated sulfur that glows in visible light, observed with the ground-based Hiltner 2.4 m telescope at the MDM Observatory (green) in Arizona, USA, as do the stars in the background by Pan-STARRS (white) in Hawaii, USA.

Because the remnant is so dim in visible light, it has taken years of searching to locate it.

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SLIM survives its second lunar night, re-establishes contact

9:33 am

SLIM's view after surviving its 2nd night on the Moon
Click for original image.

According to Japan’s space agency JAXA, the SLIM lunar lander has successfully survived its long night on the Moon, re-establishiing contact with ground controllers yesterday.

Last night, we received a response from #SLIM, confirming that the spacecraft made it through the lunar night for the second time! Since the sun was still high and the equipment was still hot, we only took some shots of the usual scenery with the navigation camera

One of those pictures is to the right, reduced slightly to post here. It looks west across the floor of Shioli Crater, with the far rim about a thousand feet away. The picture is identical to previous images, tilted because the spacecraft landed on its side and has limited scientific capabilities, being primarily an engineering test mission.

That this engineering test has now survived two lunar nights speaks well for its design. It tells us that future Japanese lunar landers (and rovers) will have a good chance of surviving for a long time on the Moon.

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Real Space – Every Space Station Size Comparison

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Some quick visual space station history. Note how almost all the non-U.S. stations are essentially assembled using revisions of the same early Soviet-era modules. Note too how the future private stations are all very different from each other. The contrast illustrates the difference between what you get when governments control everything, and when competition and freedom rule.

Hat tip Edward Thelen.

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March 27, 2024 Quick space links

4:07 pm

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.

 

 

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Part 3: The expected tantrum of madness should Biden actually lose the election

1:48 pm

The Democratic Party: hostile to freedom and fair elections

For the past two days I have tried to lay out some of the illegal and immoral strategies and tactics of the Democratic Party in its relentless effort to guarantee a win in this year’s presidential election, no matter what. (For the first two parts, go here and here.)

The bottom line is that Democratic Party politicians and their allies in the press and big tech will stop at nothing to prevent Donald Trump from regaining the White House. They will cheat, lie, encourage riots and looting, censor and blacklist their opponents, and in the end, even commit election and voter fraud on a massive scale.

But despite all this, what if Donald Trump still ends up victorious? Right now a rational look at both the polling trends and the disastrous consequences of Joe Biden’s presidency all suggest the American public is screaming for a change. The historic shift in the black and hispanic populations to Trump and away from the Democratic Party underlines these trends quite clearly. These trends are further underlined by the presence of two different moderate-left alternative presidential tickets, both drawing the bulk of their support from the Democrats.

In the end, this data tells us that it is very likely that none of the chaos and violence and fear-mongering and vote tampering by the Democrats will work, that in the end Donald Trump will emerge as the winner.

How will this now very close-minded and very vicious Democratic Party respond when that happens? The signs tell us that they can no longer tolerate defeat, or even the existence of alternative parties. (For example, consider the relentless effort by the Democrats to legally squelch these alternative parties from the ballot box.) For them, “democracy” only exists when they win.

We should therefore expect these terrible things to happen in short order after election day.
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Scientists release detailed geological map of the landing site for Europe’s Franklin rover

10:01 am

Low resolution cropped section of map
Click for original image.

Scientists today released a new high resolution and very detailed geological map of the landing site for Europe’s Franklin rover, produced using orbital data from the U.S.’S Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Europe’s Trace Gas Orbiter.

A very low resolution version of the map is to the right.

The work was divided into 134 one-square-kilometre areas, so that the [80-person] team could fully cover the estimated landing area. Scientists used a web-based system that allowed everyone to work on the map in parallel. The software was provided by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and set up at ESA [European Space Agency]. Data came from the Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System (CaSSIS) onboard the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter and several instruments on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), including the HiRISE camera, which returns images from Mars orbit at 25 cm per pixel.

The mapping leads then pieced together the information on all the areas to form a coherent map that shows the geology of the landing site in unprecedented detail. The map includes the main types of bedrock, and structures with distinct shapes like ridges and craters. It even features the material that rests on top, for example blown by the wind, or thrown long distances when meteorites impacted the surface.

The result is the highest resolution map of Oxia Planum yet, created at a scale of 1:25 000, by which every centimetre equals 250 metres on the martian surface. An average drive of 25 to 50 metres a day for Rosalind Franklin would be one to two milimetres on the map.

The team had the extra time to compile this map because the launch of Franklin to Mars was delayed a number of times because of engineering issues and the Ukraine War, which ended the Europe’s partnership with Russia, requiring ESA to find other means to launch and land the rover.

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Data from Perseverance suggests the delta in Jezero Crater was formed by a wide variety of different “fluvial” events

9:43 am

Jezero Crater delta
Jezero Crater delta

Using data from the Perseverance rover in Jezero crater, scientists now conclude that the delta that poured through a gap in the crater’s rim was formed by a wide variety of different “fluvial” events, not a steady flow as previously assumed.

From the paper’s conclusions:

The origin of this variability as well as that of the high discharge represented by the boulder conglomerate is still unknown. Realistic hypotheses include seasonal variations due to melting of snow, glacial input with possible episodic surges punctuating more regular fluvial input, or arid climate type of flows with intense storms and related flash floods.

We do not speculate further about the nature of fluvial activity in this study. However, the variability and the presence of high discharge rates have important implications on the lake evolution. Firstly, previous modeling of Jezero delta formation used steady-state discharge rates to estimate the time required to form the delta, an assumption that we can no longer justify according to our observations. Secondly, estimates of discharge rates … may be used as upper limits for some of the peak discharge rates, although the number of flood events is still difficult to determine from the sparse outcrops and the ubiquitous presence of scree.

In other words, the delta was not formed by a single event or a long stream of liquid flowing into the crater to form the lake that scientists believe once filled the crater. Instead, that flow varied, involved numerous distinct and different events over time, and likely included glacial ice transport as well.

Not that this is a surprise, but as always, the closer we get to a planet and the more detailed our data about it, the more complicated we find its nature and origins.

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Members of Texas Space Commission unveiled

9:27 am

The governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, yesterday revealed the names of the 18 individuals who will head the Texas Space Commission, created by the legislature to encourage the development of that state’s commercial space industry.

The Texas Space Commission will be tasked with developing a statewide strategy that promotes innovation, creates incentives (including grant funding) and develops workforce training. They initially have $350 million to work with, $150 million budgeted for grants and $200 million for a new research and training facility built by the Texas A&M University System.

The Texas Aerospace Research and Space Economy Consortium, which is part of the Texas Space Commission, will identify research and development opportunities and find ways to further integrate space into the Texas economy.

The commission appears strongly made up of representatives from many commercial companies, including the big companies SpaceX, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing as well as a number of newer smaller companies. Linked as it is so closely with the state government, this commission will be well placed to eliminate any obstacles within the state to commercial development.

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The spiraling magnetic field surrounding the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole

9:19 am

The magnetic field lines surrounding Sagittarius A*
Click for original image.

Astronomers have now produced the first detailed image of polarized light surrounding the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole, dubbed Sagittarius A* (pronounced “Sagittarius A-star”) which in turn maps out the spiraling field lines of that black hole’s magnetic field.

The image to the right, reduced to post here, shows that image. From the press release:

“What we’re seeing now is that there are strong, twisted, and organized magnetic fields near the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy,” said Sara Issaoun, CfA NASA Hubble Fellowship Program Einstein Fellow, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) astrophysicist, and co-lead of the project. “Along with Sgr A* having a strikingly similar polarization structure to that seen in the much larger and more powerful M87* black hole, we’ve learned that strong and ordered magnetic fields are critical to how black holes interact with the gas and matter around them.”

Light is an oscillating, or moving, electromagnetic wave that allows us to see objects. Sometimes, light oscillates in a preferred orientation, and we call it “polarized.” Although polarized light surrounds us, to human eyes it is indistinguishable from “normal” light. In the plasma around these black holes, particles whirling around magnetic field lines impart a polarization pattern perpendicular to the field. This allows astronomers to see in increasingly vivid detail what’s happening in black hole regions and map their magnetic field lines.

Despite this similarlity, it still remains a mystery why the much larger M87 black hole is very active while Sagittarius A’ remains generally quiet.

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Engineers resolve issue on IXPE space telescope

9:01 am

Engineers have resolved the issue on the IXPE (Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer) space telescope that was jumbling the data it was sending to Earth, and expect to return it to full science operations shortly.

On March 26, using procedures developed following that previous interruption, the team initiated a spacecraft avionics reset to address the issue, which put IXPE into a planned safe mode. The team has confirmed that IXPE is once again transmitting valid telemetry data and is now working to resume science operations, in as rapid and safe a manner as possible. The spacecraft is in good health.

The “previous interruption” was in 2023. In both cases it appears that simply rebooting the telescope’s software fixed the problem.

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China’s Long March 6 rocket launches remote sensing satellite

8:51 am

China yesterday successfully launched a classified remote sensing satellite, its Long March 6 rocket lifting off from its Taiyuan spaceport in the northeast of China.

No word on where the rocket’s four solid-fueled strap-on boosters and liquid-fueld core stage crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

30 SpaceX
13 China
4 Rocket Lab
4 Russia

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 35 to 23, while SpaceX still leads the entire world, including American companies, 30 to 28.

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March 26, 2024 Quick space links

3:30 pm

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.

 

 

 

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Part 2: A further list of upcoming Democratic Party election chaos

2:21 pm

The Democratic Party: hostile to freedom and fair elections

In part one of this series yesterday I outlined one Democratic Party scenario for stealing a Trump election victory, based on the possibility that they might regain control of both Houses of Congress this year due to Republican resignations, and use that power to interfere with the election result as a lame duck Congress.

To do this however will require some groundwork. Today I will to outline several of the far more likely tactics the Democratic Party will use in the coming months, before, during, and after the election, to make the first scenario above more doable, should it be necessary due to a Trump victory. These tactics are also intended to use fear and violence to supress the Republican vote while energizing Democrats.
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Bursting bubbles of water gas on Mars

12:41 pm

Bursting bubbles on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on January 12, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Because of a technical issue that leaves a blank strip down the center of recent high-res MRO images, I have filled in that gap using a MRO context camera photo taken on January 12, 2015. The resolution is much less, but by doing so we can see the ground features as a unit.

What are we looking at? According to the scientists, this picture shows “fresh-looking ruptures,” referring to the broken line of sharp tears inside that meandering canyon that almost resemble a fresh wound in flesh. As this location is at 28 degrees south latitude, it lies on the edge of dry equatorial regions, where orbital images have sometimes found hints of a few remaining buried glaciers that are much more common closer to the poles.

In this case it appears the warmer equatorial climate has acted to heat up the buried ice so that it sublimated into gas. At some point the gas pressure caused the surface to burst, much like bubbles bursting on the surface of a pot of simmering tomato sauce, leaving behind these scars.
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Report: 3D printing in space

10:44 am

A new report released today [pdf] from the space think tank Intro-act provides a nice detailed summary of the economic and technological state of 3D printing industry in space.

The report first outlines the types of 3D printing presently available, using plastics and metals, and then outlines the advantages of printing things in orbit rather than carrying them up from Earth. Essentially, 3D printers are the real version of replicators seen in sci-fi movies, except that reality requires much more complexity, including a whole range of different machines designed for specific materials and final products.

The report lists four companies of note:

Made in Space (acquired by Redwire Corp.), Relativity Space, and AI SpaceFactory are the leading companies in the 3-D printing segment. With the addition of Vaya Space, the list provides a more comprehensive overview of the companies that are pioneering the use of 3-D printing technology in the realm of space exploration and development, showcasing the diverse applications and innovative strategies being employed in this exciting field.

Each company appears to have a different focus. Redwire is developing 3D printers for use on ISS, Relativity developing 3D printers for building rocket components, and AI Spacefactory developing 3D printed space colonies for Mars or the Moon.

If I had to choose which company to bet on, my pick would be Relativity followed by Redwire. The former’s large 3D printing technology for rockets can be very easily shifted to other uses and products, giving it a product of great value far beyond space. Redwire meanwhile has already launched and operated printers on ISS, proving it can provide that technology to future space stations.

This industry is however in its infancy. As the private space stations presently under construction launch, their need for this technology will skyrocket, and thus there will be opportunities galore.

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Orbital tug startup ExLabs plans mission to asteroid Apophis in 2028

9:03 am

The orbital tug startup Exploration Labs (ExLabs) has announced it is planning to use its tug to deliver three cubesats on a rendezvous mission to asteroid Apophis in 2028, shortly before the asteroid does a close fly-by of Earth in April 2029.

The article at the link provides no other information about this mission. In searching the web I was unable to find anything further. It seems this mission is at present nothing more than a proposal, issued at this time mostly for public relations purposes to showcase the abilities of its proposed orbital tug, presently under development.

This conclusion does not mean the mission won’t happen, only that it is very far from a reality.

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Intuitive Machines: Odysseus is dead

8:53 am

In a tweet on March 23, 2024 the company Intuitive Machines announced that the mission of its first lunar lander, Odysseus, is officially over with the spacecraft failing to come back to life after sunrise on the Moon.

As of March 23rd at 1030 A.M. Central Standard Time, flight controllers decided their projections were correct, and Odie’s power system would not complete another call home.

The engineers had begun listening for a signal on March 20th, when their computer models said enough sunlight would reach the solar panels to charge its communications system.

The failure of the lander to survive the lunar night is a disappointment, but it was never considered a strong possibility. Right now the company’s main task is to prevent the issues that caused Odysseus to land too fast and tip over, so that the next two missions, scheduled for either this year or next, each deliver their payloads properly on the Moon’s surface.

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SpaceX launches 23 more Starlink satellites

10:02 pm

The beat goes on and on and on and… SpaceX today successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Caneveral.

The first stage completed its eighth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

30 SpaceX
12 China
4 Rocket Lab
4 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 35 to 22, while SpaceX now leads the entire world, including American companies, 30 to 27.

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March 25, 2024 Quick space links

5:51 pm

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.

 

 

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Pushback: Smithsonian to pay Catholic students $50K and publicly apologize for ejecting them from Air & Space for wearing pro-life hats

5:25 pm

The evil hat that Air & Space banned
The evil hat that Air & Space officials banned

Bring a gun to a knife fight: The Smithsonian has agreed to pay twelve Catholic students $50K and publicly apologize to them for ejecting them from the Air & Space museum last January because they were wearing pro-life hats.

That hat is to the right. Though many others were wearing t-shirts and hats with other political statements, museum officials singled these students out for harassment and ejection. According to their lawyer,

Once in the museum, they were accosted several times and told they would be forced to leave unless they removed their pro-life hats. The group all wore the same blue hat that simply said, “Rosary PRO-LIFE.” Other individuals in the museum were wearing hats of all kinds without issue.

The museum staff mocked the students, called them expletives, and made comments that the museum was a “neutral zone” where they could not express such statements. The employee who ultimately forced the students to leave the museum was rubbing his hands together in glee as they exited the building.

According to the settlement deal [pdf]:
» Read more

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