Tag: bankruptcy

Trump’s NASA budget cuts and rejection of Jared Isaacman for NASA administrator signal a very bright future for American space

1:09 pm

To most Americans interested in space exploration, my headline above must seem extremely counter-intuitive. For decades Americans have seen NASA as our space program, with any cuts at NASA seen as hindering that effort. Similarly, Isaacman, a businessman and private astronaut who has personally paid for two flights in space, had initially been nominated by Trump to become NASA administrator expressly because of that commercial space background. For Trump to reject such a person now seems at the surface incredibly damaging to NASA’s recent effort to work with the private sector.

All of that seems true, but it really is not. Both of these actions by Trump are simply what may be the last acts in the major change that has been engulfing the American space industry now for the past decade.

Jared Isaacman

Jared Isaacman during his spacewalk
Jared Isaacman during his spacewalk in September 2024

First, let’s consider Isaacman. Before Trump had nominated him for NASA administrator, he had been a free American doing exactly what he wanted to do. As a very wealthy and successful businessman, he had decided to use that wealth to not only fly in space — fulfilling a personal dream — but to also use those flights to raise money for St. Jude’s Children’s hospital, whose work he considered priceless and wanted supported. He ended up flying two space missions, becoming the first private citizen to do a spacewalk, while also raising more than $200 million for St. Jude’s.

Isaacman’s second flight was also the first in what he hoped would be his own long term manned space program, which he dubbed Polaris. The first mission did this spacewalk from a SpaceX capsule. The second would hopefully do a repair mission to Hubble, or if rejected by NASA some other work in orbit. And the third would fly in SpaceX’s Starship around the Moon.

As this program was funded entirely by Isaacman and used no government funds, it was generally free from criticism. If anything, Americans hailed it as ambitious and courageous. He was following his own American dream, and doing it on his own dime.

This history however made him appear on the surface to be a perfect choice for NASA administrator under Trump, especially in a time where America’s space effort is shifting more and more to the private sector.

Everything changed however once Trump nominated him. He had to suspend his private Polaris program. He had to kow-tow to politicians, telling them what they wanted to hear. And he was no longer his own boss.
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Trump budget proposes putting a final end to the delayed and blocked Thirty Meter Telescope

12:01 pm

There is a lot more to report, and I will do so in a day or so, but I thought it worthwhile to quickly note the the proposed science cuts in the proposed Trump budget for 2026 includes the elimination of all funds for Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) in Hawaii.

In the budget request, NSF [National Science Foundation]… says it will back only one of the two $3 billion optical telescopes that the astrophysics community wants to build. That honor goes to the Giant Magellan Telescope already under construction in Chile. Its competitor, the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), “will not advance to the Final Design Phase and will not receive additional commitment of funds from NSF,” according to the budget request.

The NSF has never had enough money to finance both telescopes. The fact that TMT has been blocked for more than a decade by DEI protesters in Hawaii, with the aid of the state government (controlled entirely by Democrats), makes funding it pointless, and a waste of the taxpayers’ money. It long past time to pull the plug.

As I say, there is a lot more details to report in this budget proposal, including its effort to slash a lot of science government spending, but that will have to wait for later essays. I can promise you one thing, however: I will not do what the rest of the press does, and write a knee-jerk propaganda piece in support of that spending. The science mafia at NASA and the NSF and other agencies has funded a lot of junk in the last few decades. It is time for a reckoning.

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In demanding an investigation by SpaceX into the Starship failure on this week’s test flight, the FAA puffs up its chest and pounds it like a chimpanzee

11:44 am

My heart be still: As reported in numerous propaganda media outlets today, the FAA has announced that it is demanding an investigation by SpaceX into the fuel leaks that caused Starship to tumble and then burn up in an uncontrolled manner as it came down in its designated landing zone in the Indian Ocean. From the FAA’s statement:

The FAA is requiring SpaceX to conduct a mishap investigation for the Starship Flight 9 mission that launched on May 27 from Starbase, Texas. All Starship vehicle and Super Heavy booster debris landed within the designated hazard areas. There are no reports of public injury or damage to public property. The mishap investigation is focused only on the loss of the Starship vehicle which did not complete its launch or reentry as planned.

This FAA demand for an investigation is meaningless and not news, because SpaceX doesn’t need the FAA to require it. Does anything think SpaceX wasn’t going to do an investigation without an order from the FAA?

Nor will the FAA’s demand change anything. Once SpaceX completes and submits its investigation, the FAA will approve it immediately. No one at the FAA is qualified to question it. The FAA might participate in that investigation as an outside observer and add some value, but in the end the investigation and subsequent actions are entirely in SpaceX’s hands.

The FAA also admits that even though Starship came back out of orbit in an uncontrolled manner, breaking up over the Indian Ocean, it did so exactly as the mission’s contingency plans intended. No one was hurt. Nothing was damaged on the ground. And all the debris fell within the designated landing zone. From the FAA’s legal perspective, there is nothing to investigate, since its only responsibility is to limit harm to the public. SpaceX did what was requested, most admirably. The FAA admits as much in not requiring a mishap investigation of the Superheavy failure.

That the propaganda press is trying to make a big deal about this is a joke. These press reports are merely more propaganda attempting to pump up the importance of government power while denigrating anything to do with Elon Musk.

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Judge rules that SpaceX’s lawsuit against the California Coastal Commission can go forward

11:22 am

A federal judge yesterday ruled that SpaceX’s lawsuit against the California Coastal Commission for its actions attempting to block Falcon 9 launches at Vandenberg because a majority of the commissioners don’t like Elon Musk’s politics can now go forward.

U.S. District Judge Stanley Blumenfeld Jr., a Donald Trump appointee, denied in part California’s request to dismiss the case at a hearing Friday in Los Angeles federal court. In a tentative decision, which wasn’t made publicly available, the judge rejected the state’s argument that four of SpaceX’s claims for declaratory relief weren’t “ripe” because the commission hadn’t enforced a threatened requirement for SpaceX to obtain a coastal development permit for the expanded launch schedule. “The tentative doesn’t find that the evidence is compelling, but that it is sufficient at this stage,” the judge said at the hearing.

This same judge had earlier ruled in favor of the coastal commission, noting that the commission has no real power to limit SpaceX operations at the military base and thus the company could not demonstrate harm. SpaceX amended its complaint to emphasize the harm caused to Musk’s free speech rights, and this was sufficient for the judge to change his ruling in favor of SpaceX.

This ruling doesn’t mean SpaceX and Musk have won. It means the judge considers their case sufficient for it to the lawsuit to proceed.

SpaceX’s complaint stems from an insane October 2024 hearing before the commission, where multiple commissioners came out against a SpaceX request to increase its launches at Vandenberg not because it might harm the environment but because Elon Musk now supported Donald Trump.

Their actions that day were a clear abuse of power for political reasons, and a clear violation of Elon Musk’s right to free speech.

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Supreme Court unanimously rules the federal government’s regulatory overuse of environmental impact statements is wrong

12:34 pm

In a ruling that will have wide-ranging impacts across multiple industries, including rocketry, the Supreme Court yesterday ruled 8-0 that the mission creep expansion of federal government’s regulatory use of environmental impact statements (EIS) to hinder all new construction projects is incorrect and must stop.

The case involved a planned railroad in Utah, that had gotten all its permits for construction, including approval of its environmental impact statement, but was then stymied by lawsuits by political activist groups that claimed the impact statement, issued under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), had not considered the impact of the industries the railroads would serve, including impacts far from the railroad’s location itself.

This is a perfect example of the broad expansion of NEPA that has been imposed in the last two decades by federal bureaucracy working hand-in-glove with these leftist political groups.

The Supreme Court, including all of the Democratic Party appointees, said enough!

In its majority opinion, authored by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the Court clarified that under NEPA the STB “did not need to evaluate potential environmental impacts of the separate upstream and downstream projects.” The Court concluded that the “proper judicial approach for NEPA cases is straightforward: Courts should review an agency’s EIS to check that it addresses the environmental effects of the project at hand. The EIS need not address the effects of separate projects.”

This statement “is particularly significant for infrastructure projects, such as pipelines or transmission lines, and should help reduce NEPA’s burdens (at least at the margins),” wrote Jonathan Adler, a law professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law, in The Volokh Conspiracy. “The opinion will also likely hamper any future efforts, perhaps by Democratic administrations, to expand or restore more fulsome (and burdensome) NEPA requirements.”

The article notes (and confirms) what I have been writing now for the past five years in connection with the FAA’s demand that rocket companies require new impact statements every time they revise their operations, even when those changes are relatively minor.

This point could reduce one of the largest delays caused by NEPA: litigation. Since its passage in 1969, NEPA has been weaponized by environmental groups to stunt disfavored projects—which has disproportionately impacted clean energy projects. On average, these challenges delay a permitted project’s start time by 4.2 years, according to The Breakthrough Institute.

The increased threat of litigation has forced federal agencies to better cover their bases, leading to longer and more expensive environmental reviews. With courts deferring more to agency decisions, litigation could be settled more quickly.

This ruling is an excellent move in the right direction, but no one should assume it will be followed honestly by the next Democrat who sits in the White House. Just as Biden expanded red tape by simple forcing the FAA to slow-walk its launch licensing process, future presidents could do the same.

Nor should be expect the lawsuits by these luddite leftists to cease. They will find other legal challenges and will push those instead.

The real solution is to reduce the bureaucracy’s size entirely, so there won’t be paper-pushers for these petty dictators to utilize for their authoritarian purposes. Eliminating or simplifying these environmental regulations would help as well, giving the activists fewer handles on which to hang their lawsuits.

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NASA unwittingly reveals its bankruptcy by its reliance on AI

10:11 am

Uranus as seen by Hubble in 2014 and 2022
Click for original image.

In what appeared to be a totally inexplicable press release today, NASA posted the two pictures of Uranus to the right. The accompanying text was truly puzzling, describing in a somewhat brainless and inaccurate manner what is in the pictures;

Two views of the planet Uranus appear side-by-side for comparison. At the top, left corner of the left image is a two-line label. The top line reads Uranus November 9, 2014. The bottoms line reads HST WFC3/UVIS. At the top, left corner of the right image is the label November 9, 2022. At the left, bottom corner of each image is a small, horizontal, white line. In both panels, over this line is the value 25,400 miles. Below the line is the value 40,800 kilometers. At the top, right corner of the right image are three, colored labels representing the color filters used to make these pictures. Located on three separate lines, these are F467M in blue, F547M in green, and F485M in red. On the bottom, right corner of the right image are compass arrows showing north toward the top and east toward the left. [emphasis mine]

First, the description doesn’t match the pictures precisely, as if whoever wrote it wasn’t looking at these pictures. Second, the description is ridiculously literal, and really provides no information at all. (Consider for example the highlighted sentence. All it is doing is describing a standard scale bar, in the strangest most stupid manner possible.)

I immediately surmised that someone at NASA has decided to use AI to do this work, and AI (in its typical stupid brilliance) provided this worthless text. The unnamed NASA employee — equally as stupid — then posted it without reading it, assuming AI had done his or her job perfectly.

What makes this display of stupidity even worse is that these pictures, and a real press release, were issued back in 2023, when I posted these pictures initially. Does no one at NASA ever bother to read their own press releases?

Apparently not. The advent of AI has now produced human employees at the space agency who read nothing, know nothing, and do nothing. They instead plug stuff into AI and pump it out to the public mindlessly.

No wonder Trump wants to slash NASA’s budget. We certainly ain’t getting our money’s worth from the people that are there.

I also fully expect NASA management to soon deep-six this press release, or to fix it quickly once they read this post.

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Just as I refuse to say “native American”, I refuse to say “Gulf of America”

1:57 pm

A British map from 1700, with the Gulf of Mexico labeled at
A British map from 1700, with the Gulf of Mexico
labeled at “The Great Bay of Mexico”

The recent effort by Donald Trump to get the name of the Gulf of Mexico changed to the “Gulf of America” appears at first glance to have many laudable aspects, the most important of which his desire to energize the American people to have pride in their country. For too long young Americans have been indoctrinated with the anti-American Marxist poison pushed by our modern bankrupt academic community, and have thus been trained to think timidly and with hate about their own country.

Advocating this name change is Trump’s way of quickly countering that negativity. The United States is founded on noble principles — “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” — and it has lived up to those ideals with remarkable success during its entire 250 year history. Thus, Americans have plenty to be proud of, and to Trump’s mind something needed to be done to underline that fact.

Hence, his push to change the “Gulf of Mexico” to the “Gulf of America.”

And yet, as much as I support his general effort to invigorate Americans to their glorious past, to my mind this particular effort by Trump is as false and as shallow as the left’s never-ending demands that we use new language for everything. American Indians should be “native Americans”, even though everyone born in the U.S. is native. “Chairman” must become “Chair” or “Chairperson,” even though such usage is ugly and unnecessary. Spaceflight can never be “manned,” football teams can’t be “Redskins,” and “communists” must now be called “progressives.”

And worst of all we must all use the pronouns demanded by perverts, even if when by doing so we are denying reality.

Such abuse of language offends me, as a writer. » Read more

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Senate schedules vote for confirming Jared Isaacman as NASA administrator

2:48 pm

The Senate is now targeting early June for its vote on Jared Isaacman’s nomination as NASA administrator.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) filed cloture on Isaacman’s nomination May 22, a procedural move that would set up a vote on the nomination in early June. The Senate is not in session the week of May 26 because of the Memorial Day holiday.

Since his nomination was approved by the Senate Commerce committee in April, Isaacman has been meeting with many other senators. The article at the link does the typical mainstream press thing of pushing back 100% against the proposed NASA cuts put forth by Trump’s 2026 budget proposal, telling us that these senators were generally opposed to those cuts and questioning Isaacman about them, a claim not yet confirmed. It did note something about those senators and those proposed cuts that if true was very startling and possibly very encouraging.

While many of the proposals in the budget, like winding down SLS and Orion, were expected, the scale of the cuts, including a nearly 25% overall reduction in NASA spending, still took many by surprise. [emphasis mine]

In other words, Congress was not surprised by the proposed end of SLS and Orion. It even appears they are ready to give it their stamp of approval.

None of this is confirmed, so take my speculation with a grain of salt. Still, the winds do appear to be blowing against SLS and Orion.

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Boeing and Justice Department reach new deal on criminal prosecution for 737-Max crashes

3:26 pm

In order to avoid a criminal trial scheduled for June where Boeing would be on trial for the deaths of 346 people from two 737-Max crashes in 2018 and 2019, the company and the Justice Department have worked out a new plea bargain deal that includes a much larger pay-out to the suing families of the victims.

Under the agreement, Boeing will have to “pay or invest” more than $1.1 billion, the DOJ said in its filing in federal court in Texas on Friday. That amount includes a $487.2 million criminal fine, though $243.6 million it already paid in an earlier agreement would be credited. It also includes $444.5 million for a new fund for crash victims, and $445 million more on compliance, safety and quality programs.

In the filing the Justice Department states it has met with the families to discuss the deal, but it remains unclear whether they will accept it or continue their suit. If the latter it could be that this deal will fail, just as the previous deals in 2021 and 2024. A major sticking point for the families is that Boeing will be allowed to avoid a trial and being convicted for murder and fraud, facts that the company has already admitted to in the previous deals.

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NASA continues to push Biden-era interpretation of Artemis Accords

11:05 am

In a press release today describing another international workshop for the signatories of the Artemis Accords in Abu Dhabi this week, NASA continued to put forth the Biden-era interpretation of the Artemis Accords that is diametrically opposed to the original concept of the accords as conceived during the first Trump administration.

The key words are highlighted in quotes below.

The Artemis Accords are a set of non-binding principles signed by nations for a peaceful and prosperous future in space for all of humanity to enjoy. In October 2020, under the first Trump administration, the accords were created, and since then, 54 countries have joined with the United States in committing to transparent and responsible behavior in space.

“Following President Trump’s visit to the Middle East, the United States built upon the successful trip through engagement with a global coalition of nations to further implement the accords – practical guidelines for ensuring transparency, peaceful cooperation, and shared prosperity in space exploration,” said acting NASA Administrator Janet Petro. “These accords represent a vital step toward uniting the world in the pursuit of exploration and scientific discovery beyond Earth. NASA is proud to lead in the overall accords effort, advancing the principles as we push the boundaries of human presence in space – for the benefit of all.”

…participants reaffirmed their commitment to upholding the principles outlined in the accords and to continue identifying best practices and guidelines for safe and sustainable exploration.

…The Artemis Accords are grounded in the Outer Space Treaty and other agreements, including the Registration Convention and the Rescue and Return Agreement, as well as best practices for responsible behavior that NASA and its partners have supported, including the public release of scientific data.

Many of the highlighted phrases are of course quite laudable, such as the desire for peace and the use of space for the benefit of all. The tone and spin however is very globalist and communist, and leaves out entirely the primary reason Trump created the accords in the first place, to encourage private ownership, capitalism, competition, and freedom in space by bypassing or canceling the Outer Space Treaty’s rules that forbid such things.

According to the release there will be more talks among accord signatories in the upcoming September meeting of the International Astronautical Congress. I highlight this press release and its Biden-era language in an effort to make the Trump administration aware that — at least in space — Biden’s policies apparently remain in charge. While I also know this is not the most important priority for Trump, it is also something he does care about, and these issues are critical for the future lives of those who will soon explore and settle the solar system.

Someone in the Trump administration has got shift NASA back to pushing for private enterprise internationally, rather than the feel-good, empty, and communist agenda of the globalist crowd, as illustrated by the language above. And they need to do it before, or even very publicly at that September International Astronautical Congress.

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Pentagon official blasts ULA’s slow Vulcan launch pace to Congress

10:00 am

In written testimony to Congress submitted on May 14, 2025, the acting assistant secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration, Major General Stephen Purdy, blasted ULA’s very slow effort to get its new Vulcan rocket operational, causing launch delays for four different military payloads.

“The ULA Vulcan program has performed unsatisfactorily this past year,” Purdy said in written testimony during a May 14 hearing before the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Strategic Forces. This portion of his testimony did not come up during the hearing, and it has not been reported publicly to date. “Major issues with the Vulcan have overshadowed its successful certification resulting in delays to the launch of four national security missions,” Purdy wrote. “Despite the retirement of highly successful Atlas and Delta launch vehicles, the transition to Vulcan has been slow and continues to impact the completion of Space Force mission objectives.”

The full written testimony [pdf] is worth reading, because Purdy outlines in great detail the Pentagon’s now full acceptance of the capitalism model. It appears to be trying in all cases to streamline and simplify its contracting system so as to more quickly issue contracts to startups, which were not interested previously in working with the military because they could not afford the long delays between proposal acceptance and the first payments.

In the last decade it appears this process is having some success, resulting for example in the space field the launch of multiple hypersonic tests by a variety of rocket startups. Purdy’s written testimony outlines numerous other examples.

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Space Force to cut civilian workforce by 14%

9:49 am

As part of the Trump effort to reduce the size of the federal government, the Space Force will by the end of this year reduce its civilian workforce by 14%.

Civilians comprise about 5,600, or more than one-third, of the service’s 17,000 people. “Total reductions have been almost 14 percent of our civilian workforce inside the Space Force,” Saltzman said. That number is higher than the 10 percent Space Force officials previously expected to take.

And both numbers suggest that the Space Force is losing proportionally more civilians than the rest of the Defense Department, which Secretary Pete Hegseth is working to cut by five to eight percent—a process that has caused widespread uncertainty and fear among federal employees.

As is usually the case with today’s press, the article provides many quotes from people decrying these cuts. I say, it probably isn’t enough. The main job of the Space Force at this time is to issue contracts to the private sector to build satellites and spacecraft for the military. That work does not require a gigantic workforce, and it is very likely, based on the actions of this department during the Biden administration, that its leaders have been focused more on empire building that doing their job. Trimming that work force is likely practical and smart.

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