Tag: bankruptcy

Democrats: A party so filled with hate it can’t even cheer a child because Trump introduced him

1:32 pm

In the next day or so you will hear a lot of analysis of Trump’s speech yesterday to Congress, both good and bad. The bulk of that commentary will focus on what Trump has or has not accomplished, for good and ill. Some will talk about the overall foolish behavior of many Democrats, who refused to applaud anything Trump said (something Trump predicted would happen near the start of the speech), with one Democrat getting ejected from the building for heckling the president and refusing to stop.

During such speeches presidents usually tout their past achievements and future goals. With each proclamation, the members of that president’s party will repeatedly give him a short standing ovation, with the opposition party usually sitting quietly. This fake theater is one reason I generally don’t watch such events, relying on reviewing them after the fact to save a LOT of time.

Another tradition during these speeches is for the president to invite several ordinary citizens to attend in order to honor them in some way. At these moments, when the president introduces the citizen, the entire room would routinely stand and cheer, because these individuals are generally not party partisans, and the ruling president and his party usually have nothing to do with that person’s particular achievement.

Last night however was starkly different, and the screen capture below captures the one moment that demonstrates so fully the utterly bankrupt nature of the Democratic Party. One of the private citizens Trump invited to honor was a 13-year-old boy, DJ Daniel, who five years ago was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and given only six months to live. Five years later he is still alive and healthy, and proudly wears a police uniform frequently in public because of his dream to be a cop someday.
» Read more

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The real underlying battle between Trump and Zelinsky

2:01 pm

The kerfuffle last week between the United States and the Ukraine, instigated by the unprecedented ugly end to the press conference that concluded the visit of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to the White House, is actually quite understandable if one is willing to consider the perspective of both sides. Unfortunately, I have seen little such analysis anywhere. Instead we get emotional attacks. On the left Trump is a vicious politician who wants to carve the Ukraine up for the benefit of Russia. On the right Zelensky is a corrupt barbarian who simply wants the war to continue forever so that he can steal as much U.S. foreign aid as possible for his own private benefit.

Neither of these conclusions are very helpful. Nor do they provide any insight to what is really going on.

So, what are the different perspectives that caused this confrontation?
» Read more

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Falklands government approves changes that will allow SpaceX to provide Starlink service

3:38 pm

After a small negotiating kerfuffle, the executive committee of the Falklands government has now approved a major licensing fee change that will allow SpaceX to offer its Starlink service to island residences.

The Executive Committee (ExCo) of the Falkland Islands Government has officially approved a considerable reduction in the VSAT licence fee – it is “minded” to slash it from £5,400 to just £180 but it will stay at £5,400 until final agreement in ExCo in early May. This decision paves the way for Starlink to begin providing services in the Falkland Islands, creating a game-changing step towards modernising the Islands’ telecommunications.

It appears that getting this approval required a major grassroots effort, as the government had initially been reluctant to change anything, despite the fact that numerous people were already using Starlink terminals illegally because there were no other options for good internet access, especially because the government’s deal with OneWeb had produced no results.

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Musk: Verizon’s upgrade of air traffic system failing; proposes Starlink instead

11:05 am

In a series of statements in the last few days Elon Musk has claimed that the $2.4 billion upgrade of the FAA’s air traffic system by Verizon is failing, and further suggested, in a proposal fraught with conflict-of-interest issues, that SpaceX take over the contract instead.

The CNN article that I link to above is surprisingly well written. It describes the situation fairly, and includes no slanderous asides on Musk or SpaceX, as I have found typical of almost every other article written by the propaganda press about this particular subject (or any about Musk).

If Musk says Verizon’s upgrade is failing, I would tend to believe him. That Verizon has barely begun work installing the upgrades, two years after winning the contract, reinforces his accusations. SpaceX has already provided the FAA at no cost three Starlink terminals for testing, and if it does get the job we can be sure the upgrade would be installed far quicker than this.

The conflict-of-interest issue however remains. I am not sure how, or even if, Musk or SpaceX can get around it.

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SpaceX reschedules the 8th Starship/Superheavy orbital test flight to March 3, 2025

9:40 am

SpaceX has rescheduled the 8th Starship/Superheavy orbital test flight from today to March 3, 2025, with the launch window opening at 5:30 pm (Central).

The company gave no reason for the delay, but it also indicated that the FAA has still not closed out the investigation of the Starship failure on the last test in January, nor issued the launch license.

That SpaceX is pushing for this quick launch date suggests it either expects the FAA to issue the permit momentarily, or it is purposely highlighting continuing delay tactics and is applying pressure on the agency. Unlike the Biden administration, which was very hostile to Musk and SpaceX and worked to harass it with lawfare, Trump will not take kindly to such tactics. By making such tactics patently obvious Musk and SpaceX will force Trump to step in.

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House committee holds hearing to protect its Artemis pork

9:50 am

The space subcommittee of the House science committee yesterday held a hearing which appears to have been mostly designed to protect the Artemis pork that both parties have been funding for decades, designed not to get us into space but to funnel tax dollars into their districts.

The hearing had only two witnesses, one pro-SLS (Dan Dumbacher) and one only very slightly skeptical of it (Scott Pace). Both these men have been deep members of the Washington swamp for decades, and both made it clear that funding should continue for SLS, at a minimum through the third Artemis launch, presently scheduled for ’27, a launch date so uncertain no one should believe it.

NASA had been invited to send a witness, but it apparently declined to do so.

Pace, the supposedly skeptic of SLS, has actually been a big supporter for years. As executive secretary for Trump’s National Space Council during Trump’s first term, he consistently advocated big space and NASA-built rockets, showing continuous skepticism of commercial space. Even now, his suggestion that SLS be reconsidered after that third launch was very hesitant.

Essentially, this committee hearing was called by these congress critters to advocate the status quo, which is likely why NASA declined to send a witness. Why give them a chance to blast any potential or major change in Artemis and have the propaganda press savage NASA and the Trump administration with negative soundbites?

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More changes in NASA’s upper management

9:40 am

NASA yesterday announced more changes in its upper management, almost all related to its manned Artemis program.

NASA announced today that Johnson Space Center Director Vanessa Wyche is now Acting Associate Administrator, succeeding Jim Free who retired over the weekend. Cathy Koerner, who has been leading the mission directorate that manages the Artemis program, will retire this Friday. Her Deputy, Lori Glaze, will take over on an acting basis.

These are not major changes. The new appointees, Wyche and Glaze, have been upper managers for a long time within NASA’s manned management structure that has created the present Artemis program.

These changes are also tentative depending on what Jared Isaacman decides to do once he is confirmed by the Senate as the actual administrator, replacing Janet Petro, who was named last week as the acting administrator. If Isaacman and Trump decide on canceling SLS and restructuring the entire Artemis program, both might also decide it needs an entirely new management staff.

I must also note the lack of any men in this list. NASA’s DEI effort for decades as apparently left no guys in that upper management, or if they are there, it continues to push them aside to support DEI racial and sex quotas, even though it now does not use those terms.

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Musk: ISS should be de-orbited quickly! And he may be right.

12:23 pm

Figure 3 from September Inspector General report
Figure 3 from September Inspector General report, showing ISS and outlining the airlieak annotated to show Zvezda and Poisk locations.

Food fight! Yesterday Elon Musk did a Donald Trump, issuing a bunch of tweets that are likely causing some heads to explode inside NASA, Congress, and Europe.

First — and far less significant — Musk got into a war of insults with European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen over his comments in recent days accusing the Biden administration of delaying the return of the two Starliner astronauts “for political reasons.” Mogensen accused Musk lying about this, and Musk responded by calling Mogenson “fully retarded” and an “idiot,” adding that “SpaceX could have brought them back several months ago. I OFFERED THIS DIRECTLY to the Biden administration and they refused. Return WAS pushed back for political reasons.”

Since Musk was there and Mogensen was not, it seems Musk won that battle. NASA meanwhile issued a mild statement saying everything it has done has been to maximize safety, a statement that matches the facts quite accurately.

Then Musk — on a far more important topic — stirred the pot more by tweeting his belief that ISS should be retired now.

It is time to begin preparations for deorbiting the Space_Station. It has served its purpose. There is very little incremental utility. Let’s go to Mars.

In a second tweet he recommended the de-orbit should occur “two years from now.”

Left unstated by Musk was what might be his most important reason for retiring ISS so quickly: the fragile condition of the Russian-built Zvezda module. » Read more

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Justice Department drops absurd Biden-era discrimination lawsuit against SpaceX

9:15 am

As expected, the Justice Department now under Donald Trump’s presidency yesterday filed papers to end the insane Biden-era discrimination lawsuit against SpaceX that demanded it hire refugees and even illegal aliens, even though State Department rules forbid it to do so.

In an unopposed motion filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, the Justice Department said it intended to file a notice of dismissal with prejudice, which means prosecutors would not be able to file these charges again.

Of all the lawfare initiated against Musk and SpaceX by the Biden administration, this lawsuit was by far the stupidest and most ridiculous. SpaceX doesn’t discriminate against non-American citizens. If they meet State Department rules and also have the qualifications, it hires them. And has done so. For one federal agency, Justice, to demand that SpaceX violate the rules of another agency, State, proves the lawsuit’s real purpose was harassment only.

That harassment has ended with the arrival of Trump.

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Ghouls and Monsters in Gaza

12:22 pm

Hamas in all its monstrous glory

Word fail. For any decent human being, the behavior of the Hamas killers today in releasing the four bodies of their kidnapped hostages — which included a baby and a toddler — was beyond monstrous.

The picture to the right gives only a sense. The coffins were put on display on a stage, with celebratory music blaring. The poster in the background shows the faces of the four dead hostages, including a 9-month-old and a four-year-old, with a vampire-version of Bibi Netanyahu dripping blood on them. A large crowd of several thousand was there to watch, with many cheering. The coffins were then carried one by one to Red Cross vehicles while that crowd cheered and the music blasted. Even UN officials were offended, noting that the parading of bodies violates international law.

The coffins themselves were locked, and Hamas provided no keys. Before they can be pried open so that the bodies can be properly buried, Israeli technical experts have to first determine if the coffins are booby-trapped. (Sounds insane, but would you nonchalantly pry open one of these Hamas-sealed coffins?)

Hamas tried to put the blame on the death of these four innocents by claiming they were killed by an Israeli bombing attack. That however is utterly irrelevant, even if it was true. These four human beings were ripped from their homes on October 7, 2023 by Hamas/Gaza savages and imprisoned in the hellhole tunnels of Gaza, merely because they were Jews. Hamas is entirely at fault.

UPDATE: Forensic evidence has now shown that the baby and toddler were actually murdered about one month after their kidnapping while in captivity, and the woman’s body was not of their mother, Shiri Biba, but of an anonymous unidentified body. In other words, Hamas dug up a body of some unknown person and gave that back to Israel. At this moment we have no idea if Shiri Biba is alive or dead, though she is most likely dead but Hamas did not want to release the body probably because it would have revealed more evidence of their savagery. I suspect they raped and tortured her before killing her.

Worse, Hamas is proud of what it has done. At no point has the leadership of Hamas ever backed off from its goal of killing all Jews, worldwide, and then all Christians, in order to establish a worldwide caliphate of Islam.

As Islamic scholar Robert Spencer noted in documenting this horror show,
» Read more

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The man who has been running NASA’s manned Artemis program resigns

9:31 am

Late yesterday NASA officially announced that Jim Free, who has been running NASA’s manned Artemis program for the past year, has decided to resign.

Only a month or so ago the people at NASA had assumed that Free would take over as the agency’s acting administrator during the transition from Bill Nelson, appointed by Biden, and Jared Isaacman, appointed by Trump. Instead, Trump’s transition team gave this job to Janet Petro, who had been head of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Free has been seen as a headquarters guy who has for years favored the old big space companies like Boeing and who also has favored SLS and Orion and the old way of doing things, whereby NASA designs, builds, and controls everything instead of simply buying what it needs from the private sector.

There have also been reports that “three key officials” at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama have also submitted their retirement papers. This would suggest that the earlier proposals by Trump’s NASA transition team to shrink or eliminate many of NASA’s numerous centers scattered across the country are being seriously discussed, and possibly being implemented.

Many news sources have concluded that the decision by the Trump administration to delay its major layoffs at NASA was because the Trump administration was reconsidering these major changes. I disagree. I think it is holding off because the new administrator has not yet been confirmed by the Senate, and it decided he should have a say in these reductions and changes. The retirement and resignation of these old school NASA management types further tells us that major changes are coming.

Overall, my guess is that a major reorganization of NASA — including the elimination of many of its centers — could reduce its overhead by $5 to $10 billion per year. Part of those savings could be used to reduce the deficit, but some could also be used to increase the amount of money available for all of NASA’s goals. I made this point fourteen years ago, and nothing has changed since then except that NASA has wasted billions over that time accomplishing nothing with SLS and Orion.

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Australian rocket startup Gilmour Space appears to have finally gotten its launch license

3:29 pm

Australian commercial spaceports
Australia’s commercial spaceports. Click for original map.

According to two news reports (here and here) as well as an update today on the company’s website, the Australian rocket startup Gilmour Space has gotten its last government approval allowing it to finally do the first orbital test launch of its Eris rocket from its private Bowen launch site on the east coast of Australia.

Though the company has not yet announced a launch date, the news reports and previous announcements suggest it will occur in late March. This document [pdf] provides excellent details about the launch, including the range limitations and flight path. No live stream will be provided on this first launch attempt.

I expect more information to be announced either later today or tomorrow. If this is confirmed, it will have been a long time coming. Gilmour first applied for its launch license in April 2022, with the intention of launching that year. Unfortunately, Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) appears as slow and as difficult to work with as the United Kingdom’s Civil Aviation Authority. It took CASA almost three years to issue this license (assuming it has been issued). With that kind of red tape, I don’t know how Gilmour is going to become profitable. It certainly can’t wait three years between each launch.

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Musk: Biden delayed the return of Starliner’s astronauts “for political reasons”

10:06 am

During a television interview with President Trump, Elon Musk suggested that the reason the two Starliner astronauts have been forced to remain on ISS for months was because of a political decision by the Biden administration last year.

The billionaire SpaceX CEO said his company was “accelerating the return of the astronauts” as per Trump’s instructions. Musk then appeared to take a shot at the Biden administration, saying the move was “postponed kind of to a ridiculous degree,” before the president chimed in saying “they got left in space.”

When Hannity pointed out the astronauts have been on the ISS for almost 300 days instead of the planned 8 days, Trump simply said “Biden,” before Musk claimed they were “left up there for political reasons, which is not good.”

While the decision to return Starliner unmanned certainly had a political component (a desire to avoid a disaster in the final year of Biden’s term), Musk’s claim is greatly exaggerated. Worse, Musk is papering over his own company’s contribution to the delays. Had SpaceX and NASA chosen in December to use an already existing Dragon capsule instead of a brand new capsule to launch the next crew to ISS, the astronauts would be home already. Instead, they decided to get that new capsule ready, requiring an almost two month delay in their return.

When it became obvious last month that even this extra time was insufficient to get the new capsule ready, only then did SpaceX and NASA choose to switch capsules. That switch allowed them to move up the return date by about a week.

In reporting Musk’s words here, our ignorant press has generally left these details out, allowing both Musk and Trump to make it appear as they are saviors for these poor astronauts. This is simply not true. SpaceX is certainly making it possible to bring them home (something Boeing was unable to do), but it also contributed to the delay in doing so.

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SaveRGV drops lawsuit against SpaceX’s Boca Chica operations

9:29 am

SaveRGV, one of several fringe activist groups that has been using lawfare to try to shut down SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy operations in Boca Chica, suddenly announced yesterday that it has dropped a lawsuit against the company that claimed the potable water released in the launchpad deluge system during launches polluted the wetlands there.

Save RGV board member Jim Chapman said they dropped the lawsuit because the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality [TCEQ], the state’s environmental agency, granted SpaceX a permit that “moots” their lawsuit. “We think we’re right,” Chapman said in a phone interview. “We just didn’t feel like [the lawsuit] was going to move in a positive direction for us.”

According to the article at the first link above, SaveRGV and its partner fringe groups have filed a different lawsuit against TCEQ, challenging its decision to issue SpaceX that permit.

When TCEQ issued the permit last week, I wondered if the lawfare of these groups would begin to fade away because their funding is now drying up because of the Trump’s DOGE team effort to shut down the laundering of money illegally to such groups by many agencies in the executive branch. SaveRGV’s decision yesterday, only days after TCEQ’s decision, makes me think my theory might have some merit. It could be it no longer has funds to pay its lawyers for multiple lawsuits, and has decided to focus on one for the time being. Only time will tell.

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ISRO’s head touts private construction of PSLV rocket

9:35 am

In comments published in the Times of India today, the head of India’s space agency ISRO, V Narayanan, enthusiastically touted the fact that a private consortium is presently manufacturing its first PSLV rocket under a five-rocket contract.

Isro chairman V Narayanan revealed this in an exclusive interview to TOI and said the launch, scheduled for the third quarter of this year, will mark a milestone as the first PSLV manufactured by the private sector under a contract for five rockets. The vehicle is in “advanced stages of realisation” with Isro providing technical guidance to the industrial partners.

Sounds good, eh? Actually, this instead appears to be an attempt by ISRO to thwart the Modi government’s desire to transfer ownership of ISRO’s rockets, starting with the long established PSLV rocket, from ISRO to the private sector. This five-rocket deal, first signed in 2022, doesn’t transfer anything. All it does is have private companies build the rocket, something that ISRO has had private companies do for decades. The one difference is that ISRO is no longer listed as the prime contractor, and appears to be somewhat less involved in management.

Well, it is at least a start. Getting government bureaucracies to give up power can sometimes be a struggle that lasts years, unless you are Donald Trump arriving for a second term disgusted with that same struggle during his first term.

The launch, targeting the third quarter of this year, will place a collection of tecnology test payloads into orbit.

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SpaceX engineers given task to review FAA air traffic operations

9:14 am

On February 16, 2025 the new head of the Department of Transportation revealed that he had invited SpaceX to review its air traffic control operations in Virginia and make recommendations.

Tomorrow, members of @elonmusk’s SpaceX team will be visiting the Air Traffic Control System Command Center in VA to get a firsthand look at the current system, learn what air traffic controllers like and dislike about their current tools, and envision how we can make a new, better, modern and safer system.

Because I know the media (and Hillary Clinton) will claim Elon’s team is getting special access, let me make clear that the @FAANews regularly gives tours of the command center to both media and companies.

Many propaganda news reports immediately did exactly what Duffy predicted, quickly finding people to attack both Musk and Duffy for this action and giving them a bull horn for those attacks:

That prompted criticism from some aviation professionals. “SpaceX put people in danger yesterday and their for-profit corporation should reimburse every other for-profit corporation that had to divert, change course or delay because of their operations in the national airspace system,” wrote Steve Jangelis, aviation safety chair for the Air Line Pilots Association, in a social media post after the incident.

Like many in the propaganda press, this article made a big deal about the debris that fell in the Caribbean during the January Starship/Superheavy test flight when Starship broke up soon after stage separation. It however buried this fact to the very end of the article:

In the case if January’s launch, Diez said SpaceX coordinated “debris response areas” with ATO [the FAA’s Air Traffic Organization] beforehand, as it had done on past flights, but this was the first time the areas were activated. “It was only a matter of minutes from when it was activated to when airspace began to be cleared,” she said, sufficient given the time it would take for debris to fall into the airspace. The airspace was cleared in about 15 minutes, she added.

Those debris response areas are developed in coordination with the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, or AST, said Katie Cranor, acting deputy director of AST’s office of operational safety, on the same panel. After the mishap, she said “only certain sections of the debris response areas were activated to allow traffic to still move freely.”

To put it more bluntly, SpaceX did the proper due diligence before launch — anticipating the possibility of such a failure — and worked well with the FAA to prepare for it. These facts have been conveniently left out of all the reports on that January launch, and we should at least give kudos to this article for finally mentioning it, albeit reluctantly.

Nonetheless, the insane hostile reaction to this invitation for help by the Transportation Department illustrates once again the stupidity of the left. In every case they attack blindly and without any thought at all, hoping such attacks will win them support and hurt their opponents. Instead, it simply makes them look petty and stupid, and is likely convincing their moderate supporters to rethink that support.

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With CBS helping him, under no condition should Trump settle his $10 billion lawsuit against the network

4:37 pm

Lying lefist propaganda, through and through
Lying lefist propaganda, through and through

Don’t settle! In the fall Donald Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against CBS News, alleging the network interfered with the election by maliciously editing a 60 Minutes interview with vice president Kamala Harris to hide and improve her incoherent word salad answers, and it did so to aid her just days before the election. In February, when the actual transcripts of the interview were released, proving CBS’s misconduct, Trump expanded the lawsuit to include CBS News’s parent company, Paramount Global, which streamed the program.

Though some might argue the lawsuit rests on weak legal grounds, it seems that Trump’s complaint has some merit, especially since the leftist bias of the older alphabet news outlets (CBS, CNN, NBC, MSNBC, ABC, PBS) has become so obvious in the past decade. These networks no longer even try to report the news fairly or with any accuracy. Instead, they twist every story to either promote the Democratic Party or slander the Republican Party.

That bias has caused these networks a lot of trouble in the courts in recent years, when others have sued them for defamation and slander. » Read more

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British rocket startup Skyrora targets ’26 for its first orbital test flight

10:06 am

According to an article yesterday in the British media, the British rocket startup Skyrora is now hoping to do the first orbital test flight of its XL smallsat rocket in 2026, launching from the Saxavord spaceport in the Shetland Islands.

The company applied for this launch license with the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) more than a year ago, but still waits an approval. Previously the company had completed in Iceland several successful suborbital test launches in 2018 and 2020, with a last test in 2022 ending in failure.

The company has been around a long time, with relatively little progress. Whether its schedule is realistic remains unknown, and is more questionable because it is burdened by the CAA’s red tape.

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Texas commission rejects anti-SpaceX calls to deny company its Starship deluge water permit

2:27 pm

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality this week strongly and finally dismissed the repeated demands by various fringe activist groups to shut down SpaceX’s launch operations at Boca Chica and the use of the deluge system designed to protect the launchpad and the Superheavy booster.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality on Thursday denied requests from a dozen area residents and several groups to reconsider the commercial space company’s permit to dump as much as 358,000 gallons of water into wetlands during tests and launches of its Starship rocket from its Starbase east of Brownsville.

Commission Chair Brooke Paup introduced the item as “quite a big deal,” then quickly moved to deny additional hearings on the subject and issue the permit. She said concerns raised by individuals and groups including Save RGV, the South Texas Environmental Justice Network and the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas failed to identify “new factual information or an error that would alter the executive director’s decision.

“The hearing requesters did not show that their ability to practice their religion or engage in recreational activities will be affected in a manner different than the general public,” Paup said.

The commission admitted in its ruling that there had been numerous technical errors by both the commission and SpaceX when it initially approved the permit, but none of those errors were significant.

It appears this particular effort by a very tiny minority of leftist anti-Musk activists has finally been shut down. We can only hope that these groups will now fade away, not because they want to give up but because their funding could be gone. I suspect their money came from somewhere within the fraudulent grant programs at EPA and other federal agencies that DOGE has now identified and shut down.

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Astronomers demand more regulations to prevent industry from ruining the Moon’s “environment”

9:33 am

According to two articles yesterday in the British press (here and here), both quoting extensively one astronomer, if strong regulation and control (given to them of course) isn’t imposed immediately, the space tourism of billionaires is going to ruin the Moon’s pristine environment, which on its far side is especially perfect for radio astronomy. From the first link:

“There’s a rush of companies and states who might want to get in on the act on the moon,” said [astronomer Martin Elvis, who added that there were also other concerns. “There’s a desire there from the billionaire class, ‘Oh I would love to spend a week on the moon’. And you don’t need many billionaires to start adding up. If they go without coordination, then it’s a mess. We could well lose these unique opportunities to do science on a scale that we couldn’t possibly imagine.”

One of the most exciting possibilities is the use of the far side of the moon for radio astronomy. As all signals from the Earth are blocked, telescopes would, Elvis said, have the sensitivity to see into the so called “dark age” of the universe, after the big bang but before stars had formed.

Elvis is based at Harvard and also co-chairs a working group at the International Astronomical Union (IAU) that wants astronomers to be given full legal control of the Moon, preventing anyone from building anything without their permission so they can instead build their telescopes there instead.

The problem is that the astronomical community has so far shown little interest in building telescopes in space. It has instead focused on building giant Earth-based telescopes while trying to get governments to restrict the launch of satellite constellations that might interfere with those telescopes. Now it wishes to restrict lunar development as well.

Elvis however admits “It’s a sort of first come, first served situation, which encourages people to rush in and do things without thinking too hard.” Let me translate: Everyone else is beating us to the Moon because we haven’t been interested in going, so now that we might be interested we want governments to shut down our competition.

It is long past time for astronomers and the IAU to stop trying to use government to squelch everyone else and get in the game. Initiate the building of telescopes both in space and the Moon. Not only are these better places to build telescopes than on Earth, it will give astronomers some credibility when they ask others to give them their own space.

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