Tag: bankruptcy

Like the Senate the House appropriation committee rejects Trump’s NASA cuts, but differently

The NASA 2026 budget approved this week by the House appropriation committee has rejected the 24% cut proposed by the Trump administration, in a similar manner as the parallel Senate committee.

However, the two congressional committees are not in agreement on any of their spending proposals.

The totals recommended by the two committees are similar — $24.8 billion in the House, $24.9 billion in the Senate — but the specifics are different in many cases.

For example, the House wants to spend $300 million for NASA’s very messed-up Mars Sample Return project, while the Senate eliminated it entirely. The House also increases NASA’s manned exploration budget over Trump’s proposal, while the Senate cuts it. In science spending the House is less generous than the Senate, though both houses reject Trump’s cuts. In education the House agrees with Trump, zeroing out that funding, while the Senate wants to increase the ’25 budget slightly.

Before the 2026 budget is approved the two houses will have to negotiate an agreement to make their numbers match. What has usually happened in past negotiations is that the houses agree to approve the highest spending numbers in any budget item so that nothing gets cut and the budget continues to go up uncontrollably. We should not be surprised if our corrupt Congress does exactly that.

Even so, we should expect Trump to force significant changes at NASA, including budget reductions. Recent Supreme Court rulings have confirmed the president’s right to reorganize and even eliminate bureaucracies, as long as Congress doesn’t specify a particular spending item.

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Spain offers $470 million to move Thirty Meter Telescope to Canary Islands

The Spanish government this week announced it is willing to commit $470 million to fund the long delayed and no longer funded Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) and move it from Hawaii to the Canary Islands.

Last month, the administration of US president Donald Trump announced plans to abandon further support for the telescope, as part of its proposals to slash by half funding for the US National Science Foundation (NSF), which has until now supported the telescope’s design.

Now the Spanish government has pitched to bring the giant facility to La Palma, in Spain’s Canary Islands — and backed up the effort with a pledge to contribute €400 million (US$470 million). “Spain reinforces its commitment as a refuge for science, betting on excellent research and technological innovation,” wrote the Spanish minister for science and innovation, Diana Morant, on X, as she announced the funding on 23 July. According to a statement from her ministry, Morant has already submitted a formal proposal to host the telescope to the TMT board, which would have to back such a move for it to go ahead.

The quote incorrectly spins the Trump cuts. The NSF never had the funds to build both the Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile and TMT. For years it has been lobbying to get that additional money, and failed. Even now, Congress is not interested in funding both even as it restores much of the funding cuts proposed by Trump.

The idea of moving TMT to the Canary Islands was first put forth in 2016, but in 2021 a Spanish judge blocked the tentative deal. The move also caused Japan to cut its funding to the project, leaving it without the cash to continue.

This new financing commitment by Spain might actually revive the telescope.

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Mexico’s president says it will investigate SpaceX for doing salvage operations off its coast

Mexico to SpaceX:
Mexico to SpaceX: “Nice business you got here. Shame
if something happened to it.”

You can’t win with these people: First Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum complained loudly about the debris that landed or washed up on its beaches after several of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy test launches, demanding an investigation followed by sanctions against the company.

Now Sheinbaum is complaining and demanding a new investigation about SpaceX’s effort the last two weeks to salvage and remove that debris from the ocean off its coast.

During a passage of her daily press conference, Sheinbaum said the agencies are analyzing whether the company has to be sanctioned after its unit tasked with clearing debris from the Starship launch, located in the Gulf of Mexico, worked without proper authorization. “We are investigating but the Environment, Navy, Digital Transformation, Government and Foreign Relations secretariats are conducting their research. The study is practically done,” Sheinbaum said.

Navy Secretary Raymundo Pedro Morales Angeles said the company hired by SpaceX to retrieve debris from its Starship rocket was allowed to enter the country but didn’t fulfill the requirements to work and ended up leaving the country.

If this behavior doesn’t prove Sheinbaum’s lust for power and control, nothing will. She doesn’t really care about Mexico’s beaches or environment. If she did, she would celebrate SpaceX’s salvage operations. What she really doesn’t like is that someone is doing something without her permission. She is the boss, and SpaceX better remember that!

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Rocket Lab’s new Neutron rocket faces red tape delays at Wallops

Proposed dredged channel
Proposed dredged channel. Click for original.

We’re here to help you! Rocket Lab appears to be having regulatory problems getting approvals to transport hardware for its new Neutron rocket to its new launchpad at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) on Wallops Island in Virginia, delays that might prevent it from launching as planned later this year.

It appears the company needs to dredge a deeper channel to ship the heavier Neutron hardware into Wallops, but it has not been able to begin work because of approval delays by the federal government.

The dredging project was approved by VMRC [Virginia Marine Resources Commission] in May, but the company has yet to start digging because it’s still awaiting federal sign-off from the Army Corps of Engineers.

Lacking this approval and unable to get the channel ready for this year’s launch, the company is seeking permission to use a stop-gap different approach to transport the hardware through these shallow waters.

Kedging, a little-known nautical method, is used to ensure the barges can safely navigate the existing shallow channel. Workers would use a series of anchors and lines to steer the barge through the shallow waters. The company is seeking permission to use this method through the end of June 2026 or until the dredging work is complete, whichever comes first.

Lacking an okay to do even this alternative approach, Rocket Lab will be forced to transport the hardware using “ramps and cranes,” an approach that is impractical in the long run for achieving a profitable launch pace. It also would likely result in not meeting its targeted launch date before the end of 2025 for the first Neutron launch.

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Senegal to sign Artemis Accords

According to a NASA announcement today, Senegal will become the 56th nation to sign Artemis Accords tomorrow.

The full list of nations now part of this American space alliance: Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Panama, Peru, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.

It remains unclear whether the second Trump administration has taken a new interest in using this alliance to renew the accords’ original goals, of encouraging private enterprise and property rights in space. The Biden had shifted the purpose away from those goals towards the more globalist approach represented by the Outer Space Treaty.

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Trump administration moving to reduce rocket launch environmental regulations

FAA logo

According to a draft executive order that has not yet been released, the Trump administration is planning a major revision of the FAA’s environmental and launch regulations that has badly impacted rocket companies, with the goal of streamlining licensing.

The order would give Trump even more direct control over the space industry’s chief regulator by turning the civil servant position leading the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation into a political appointment. The last head of the office and two other top officials recently took voluntary separation offers.

The order would also create a new adviser to the transportation secretary to shepherd in deregulation of the space industry.

…The draft order also seeks to restrict the authority of state coastal officials who have challenged commercial launch companies like SpaceX, documents show. It could lead to federal officials interfering with state efforts to enforce their environmental rules when they conflict with the construction or operation of spaceports.

The order would also have the secretary of transportation ‘reevaluate, amend, or rescind’ sections of Part 450, the FAA licensing regulations that it imposed during the Biden administration that was supposed to streamline licensing but ended up adding considerable new red tape which contributed significantly to squelching the new launch industry that had popped up during the first Trump term.

As is usual for the propaganda press, the article at the link implies that these changes would result in horrible environmental consequences as well as increased safety risks to the public. What it does not note is that these changes appear to simply return the regulatory framework back to what existed prior to the Biden administration, a framework that had existed for more than a half century previously. The environment and public safety did just fine under those more freedom-oriented rules. I am sure both will do just fine again.

This order might also help explain Trump’s decision to withdraw Jared Isaacman as NASA administrator and appoint Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy as interim NASA administrator. The order puts much of this work on his head, and having him in charge of NASA will likely aid that work.

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Local county abruptly stops delivering water to Boca Chica

Without any warning Cameron county early this month abruptly stopped its decades-long delivery of water to residents of Boca Chica and the newly formed town of Starbase.

[T]he county suddenly stopped the $15 monthly service — with no notice — earlier this month, said Keith Reynolds, a Starbase resident unaffiliated with SpaceX.

“Abruptly cutting off water service without notice poses safety and public health risks,” Kent Myers, Starbase’s city administrator, wrote in a letter to County Commissioner Sofia Benavides, whose precinct includes that stretch of Texas 4. Starbase, he pointed out, “has neither the legal authority nor operational capacity to deliver water to these residents.”

Neither the county nor Commissioner Benavides has responded to multiple requests for comment about the decision. Reynolds said the county and Benavides “decided to leave everybody high and dry without water — didn’t say a word.”

…Reynolds, who’s had his troubles with his SpaceX neighbors over the years — including power surges, traffic, drones and behavior he’s described as bullying, said the county’s recent move bothers him more than anything SpaceX has done. “That’s just a willful denying of basic services to your residents,” he said. “You can’t just stop being a provider of water for a whole community.”

The county’s action including cutting off service to residents both inside Starbase and those nearby.

SpaceX has been topping off residents tanks for the time being at no charge. It is in the process of establishing its own water system, but for these locals to access it will require them to sign agreements that require them to evacuate during launches if ordered to by SpaceX.

The lack of explanation or warning strongly suggests the county’s actions were a political retaliation against the recent creation of the town of Starbase. County Commissioner Benavides had previously opposed the recently passed state law that gave Starbase the power to close Boca Chica’s beaches.

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Government employees: The most spoiled and privileged individuals on Earth

NASA: home to the privileged and perfect
NASA: home to the privileged and perfect

Timed to coincide with the anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, NASA employees and many of their supporters gathered yesterday for protests, demanding that their jobs be saved and that Congress not only cancel Trump’s proposed budget cuts to NASA, that Congress even consider increasing the budget because the work they do is so so SO vital.

The protests appeared to be organized by several groups, all claiming to be “grassroots” but all seeming to be well funded and comparable to other recent government protest groups at other agencies, issuing sanctimonious “declarations” that claim the cuts “to waste public resources, compromise human safety, weaken national security.”

Yet, the Trump cuts would only reduce NASA’s staffing of 17,000 by about 2,600 employees. How horrible!

This quote from the first link above is typical of the attitude of these government workers:
» Read more

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2016 documents now prove Obama and his top intelligence officials conspired to create the Russian collusion hoax

Evidence Obama conspired to overthrow Trump
Click for full graphic.

Treason: Documents now released from 2016, just after Trump’s election victory, prove without doubt that Obama and his top intelligence officials conspired to create Russian collusion hoax, despite having assessments by their intelligence agencies declaring Russian actions did not include Trump and had no impact at all on the 2016 election.

That assessment is nicely summarized by the screen capture to the right.

We assess that Russian and criminal actors did not impact recent US election results by conducting malicious cyber activities against election infrastructure.

After getting that negative assessment, Obama immediately called a meeting to rewrite the conclusions, in order to create a fake political issue aimed directly at destroying Trump’s presidency.
» Read more

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Poll: A near majority of Americans are now disgusted with the Ivy league

What many now label the
A better name might be the “Poison Ivy League”

Good news: A new poll taken of 2,000 registered voters in June 2025 has found that the reputation of the Ivy League universities continues to decline, and has now dropped so much that almost half of those polled had no trust at all in these institutions.

A new poll by the Manhattan Institute found that only 15 percent of voters have a great deal of trust in the elite universities, while 46 percent have little to no trust at all.

Most of those polled said they want to see reforms such as the elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion and race-based admissions and programs. Additionally, 64 percent “support requiring universities to advance truth over ideology by enforcing rigorous academic standards, controlling for academic fraud, requiring preregistration of scientific studies, and basing decisions on merit,” the poll found.

You can read the poll itself here. Though it covers many other major institutions, such as Congress, big business, the Presidency, public colleges and universities, it is this line item shown in the figure below that I think that stands out most starkly.
» Read more

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Another win for a blacklisted professor

Professor Timothy Jackson
Music historian Timothy Jackson

Fight! Fight! Fight! After the public University of North Texas (UNT) blacklisted and dismissed professor Timothy Jackson in 2020 from his job as editor of the music history journal he founded for daring to express some academic conclusions the faculty and students didn’t like, he sued.

After a five year battle, Jackson and the university have now settled out of court, with the terms of the settlement [pdf] largely a big win for Jackson.

First the background: In 2019 woke music theorist Philip Ewell of Hunter College in New York gave a presentation to the Society of Music Theory where he claimed 20th century music theorist Heinrich Schenker was a “virulent racist” whose “racist views infected his music theoretical arguments.”

Jackson, who had devoted his career studying Schenker and had co-founded at the university the Journal of Schenkerian Studies focused expressly on Schenker’s works, knew this was patently untrue. For example, Schenker was also a Jew who was a victim of German anti-Semitism and lost many relatives in the Holocaust, facts that Ewell somehow did not think important to mention. To counter Ewell’s historical slanders, Jackson decided to dedicate the next issue of the journal to this issue, presenting essays from both sides. He even asked Ewell to write an essay.

Ewell did not respond. In Jackson’s own essay he outlined in detail the historical facts — as he knew them as an expert on this subject — that put the lie to Ewell’s claims. As Jackson noted, “Ewell peddled a ‘conspiracy theory’ that is ‘part and parcel of the much broader current of Black anti-semitism.'”

Instead of celebrating this perfect example of free speech, the university immediately moved to punish Jackson.
» Read more

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House follows Senate in canceling most of Trump’s proposed NASA budget cuts

Like pigs at the trough
Like pigs at the trough

The House appropriations committee’s draft budget for NASA has followed the Senate appropriations committee in canceling all of Trump’s proposed NASA budget cuts, though it has shifted that funding significantly from science to manned space operations.

The House Appropriations Committee released the draft text of their version of the FY2026 Commerce-Justice-Science bill that funds NASA today. Like their Senate counterpart, the House committee would essentially keep NASA at its current funding level instead of imposing the severe 24.3 percent budget cut proposed by the Trump Administration. The CJS bill also includes almost $2 million for a White House National Space Council even though the Trump Administration has yet to establish one.

Unlike the Senate, which mostly kept the budget the same across all NASA departments, this House draft budget would reduce science and aeronautics spending from about $8.2 billion to $6.8 billion. Trump had requested only $4.5 billion for these departments.

In turn, the House would increase Trump’s request for NASA’s manned operations from $10.8 billion to $11.9 billion. Note that Trump’s proposed budget had already called for an increase here, so the House is clearly shifting funding to manned space in an enthusiastic manner.

At the same time, the House continues funding for the SLS and Orion programs Trump wishes to cancel. Both of these projects are over budget and behind schedule. Neither is very useful in the long run for exploring the solar system. If the House truly wanted to save money, it could easily fund all the cuts in science by cutting the billions spent yearly on these pork projects, and still lower NASA’s budget in total.

Based on the draft budget’s language [pdf], it is unclear whether the House has also funded the Lunar Gateway space station, as the Senate has, another useless pork project that Trump wishes to cancel.

I should note that the appropriations committee’s overall draft budget [pdf] does reduce the federal budget by about 2.8 percent. This is a marked change from past budgets, which often claimed (a lie) to cut spending but really only reduced the rate of budget growth. It appears the House is finally making some effort to shrink the size of the budget, though that effort is quite wimpy.

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Judge narrows SpaceX lawsuit against California Coastal Commission

Though U.S. district judge Stanley Blumenfeld ruled in May that SpaceX’s lawsuit against California Coastal Commission for targeting the company because the commissioners did not like Elon Musk’s political views can proceed, in early July he also narrowed the lawsuit significantly.

Blumenfeld granted a motion to dismiss violations of the First Amendment and due process against the commission and individual members based on lack of standing, sovereign immunity and failure to state a claim, but allowed allegations of “biased attempts to regulate SpaceX’s activity” and unlawfully demanding a CDP to proceed.

“In sum, SpaceX has plausibly alleged a ripe, nonspeculative case or controversy over whether it must obtain a CDP to continue its Falcon 9 launches,” Blumenfeld said in his order. “The credible threat that defendants will bring an enforcement action and subject SpaceX to daily fines for not having a CDP — which defendants pointedly do not disavow — is sufficient to establish an actual injury under Article III [of the U.S. Constitution].”

It appears the judge acted to protect the commissioners themselves from direct liability, using the made-up concept from the 20th century that government employees are somehow wholly immune from any responsibility for their actions.

Nonetheless, SpaceX has a great case, and is very likely to win in court, a victory that could very well cause the coastal commission and the state of California serious monetary pain.

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Senate committee moves to cancel most of Trump’s proposed NASA budget cuts

Like pigs at the trough
Like pigs at the trough

We’ll just print it! Though disagreements prevented the Senate’s appropriations committee from approving the 2026 bills covering the commerce, justice, and science agencies of the federal government (including NASA) , the committee yesterday appeared poised to cancel most of Trump’s proposed NASA budget cuts and even add more spending across the board.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland), the top Democrat on the CJS subcommittee, said this morning the bill would fund NASA at $24.9 billion, slightly above its current $24.8 billion level, with the Science Mission Directorate (SMD) remaining level at $7.3 billion.

By contrast, the Trump Administration wants to cut NASA overall by $6 billion, from $24.8 billion to $18.8 billion. SMD’s portion would drop 47 percent, from $7.3 billion to $3.9 billion.

The disagreements centered not on NASA, but on the Trump administration’s effort to cancel a very expensive new FBI headquarters building in the Maryland suburbs and instead shift the agency to an already existing building in DC. Van Hollen opposed this, and the ensuing political maneuvering forced the committee to cancel the vote.

This bill would once again continue full funding for SLS, Orion, and Lunar Gateway. It also includes funding for NASA’s very messed-up Mars Sample Return mission (which comprises the large bulk of the money added back in for science). From this it appears that the Republicans in the Senate are quite willing to join the Democrats in spending money wildly, as they have for decades. They have no interest in gaining some control over the out-of-control federal budget, in any way, as Trump is attempting to do.

What remains unknown is this: Who has the support of the American people? The election suggests the public agrees with Trump. History suggests that this support for cutting the budget is actually very shallow, and that while the public says it wants that budget brought under control, it refuses to accept any specific cuts to any program. “Cut the budget, but don’t you dare cut the programs I like!”

It is my sense that the public’s view is changing, and it is now quite ready to allow big cuts across the board. The problem is that the vested interests in Congress and in the DC work force are quite powerful, and appear to still control the actions of our corrupt elected officials.

Thus, the more of that work force that Trump can eliminate as quickly as possible, on his own, the more chance he will have to eventually bring this budget under some control.

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The walls of Jericho blocking Trump’s effort to streamline government have now fallen

Trump defiant after being shot
Trump defiant

Fight! Fight! Fight! The Supreme Court ruling yesterday that allowed Trump’s plan to reorganize and reduce the federal workforce to go forward was far more significant than most realize. It in fact tells us that opposition to Trump’s effort is dissolving, and that he will have the ability in the last three years of his present term in office to complete this effort in a manner that will reshape the federal bureaucracy in ways so radical we will not recognize it when he is done — assuming Trump maintains his present aggressive effort.

First the background. In February Trump issued an executive order requiring agency managements throughout the executive branch to institute plans for reducing staffing signficiantly.

Titled “Implementing The President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Workforce Optimization Initiative,” the executive order also severely limits federal departments’ ability to bring on more staffers and mandates that agency heads closely coordinate with their DOGE representatives on future hiring plans. Once the hiring freeze that Trump put in place is lifted, agencies will only be allowed to replace one of every four employees who leave and hiring will be restricted to the highest-need areas.

Plus, agencies will not be able to fill vacancies for career positions that DOGE team leaders think should remain open, unless the department head determines they should be filled. DOGE leaders at each agency will file a monthly hiring report to DOGE.

Not surprisingly numerous lawsuits were immediately filed to block this order, claiming that Trump was required to get Congressional approval for such actions.
» Read more

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Coalition of space companies begs Congress to fund office designed to track satellites

A coalition of 450 space companies has now submitted letters to both the House and Senate begging Congress to not kill the funding for an office in NOAA created during the first Trump administration and designed to help manage satellite traffic in orbit.

A coalition of space industry associations representing hundreds of companies is urging Congress to reject Trump Administration plans to kill the nascent Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS). Developed through NOAA’s Office of Space Commerce, TraCSS began beta testing last fall to provide data to civil and commercial satellite operators to avoid collisions. Just as the system is finally taking shape, it is targeted for elimination in the FY2026 budget request. The Senate Appropriations Committee takes up that proposal on Thursday when it marks up the Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) bill that includes NOAA.

This new office was first conceived as a replacement for the tracking that the U.S. military has been doing since Sputnik was launched in 1957, information that it provides free to the industry. It appears Trump in his second administration has now concluded this new NOAA office is essentially redundant and therefore unnecessary.

The letters to the House [pdf] and Senate [pdf] urge Congress to reinstate the $65 million in spending for this NOAA office, but offer no suggestions on what to cut to fund this extra cost. Instead, like all such lobbying efforts, it expects Congress to simply print money to pay for the expense.

Meanwhile, it remains a valid question why this additional office is needed if the military has been doing the job quite successfully for the last three-quarters of a century. The letters argue this is a job better suited to a civil agency, but why? The military has to do it anyway for security reasons. Why waste money on a duplicate effort?

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ESA tests parachutes and guidance system for its proposed Space Rider reusable mini-shuttle

The engineering
Click for original image.

The European Space Agency (ESA) revealed today that it has completed drop tests from a helicopter of an engineering vehicle of its proposed Space Rider reusable mini-shuttle — similar in concept to the U.S. military’s X-37B — testing the spacecraft’s parachutes and re-entry guidance system.

The drop-test campaign had two objectives: the qualification of the parachutes used to slow the spacecraft during descent, and to test the software that controls the parafoil, guiding the Space Rider’s reentry module to its precise landing site. Space Rider models were dropped from a CH-47 Chinook Italian Army helicopter from altitudes ranging from 1 to 2.5 km, at the Italian military’s training and experimentation area Salto di Quirra.

The press release provides no movie of any of the drop tests, and the images it provides are almost all taken from very far away, making it impossible to see in detail what the engineering vehicle looks like. Only one picture clearly shows it, and that is what I have posted to the right. This is not a model of a spacecraft, but a square box carrying the parachutes and sensors.

Note also that ESA was doing similar drop tests last summer of a similar model. Apparently they aren’t yet ready to test the real thing.

This X-37B copy was first tested by ESA in 2015 and by 2017 the agency was promising it would be flying commercially by 2025. A decade later and they have not yet begun testing a full scale spacecraft. In addition, ESA has established some very complex rules about who can use it commercially, rules so complex I predict few will be interested.

Europe might be trying to adopt capitalism and freedom as its model, but in many ways it behaves as if it hasn’t the foggiest idea what it is doing.

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COVID health slanderer gets fired for wishing death on Texans because Texas voted for Trump

Christina Propst, spreading different lies at a town hall meeting during the COVID panic
Christina Propst, spreading different lies at a town
hall meeting during the COVID panic. Click for video.

Fight! Fight! Fight! A Houston pediatrician, Christina Propst, has now been fired because she expressed glee that some Texans might die in this week’s flash floods there because Texas had the nerve to vote for Trump in the 2024 election.

Her exact words:

May all visitors, children, non-MAGA voters and pets be safe and dry.
Kerr County MAGA voted to gut FEMA.
They deny climate change.
May they get what they voted for.
Bless their hearts.

The implication was that she really didn’t care that some kids died as well. She hates Trump that much.

This is not the attitude a health organization wants from its pediatricians, whose job it is to treat children. Within hours her employer, Blue Fish Pediatrics, suspended her, then quickly followed up by firing her.

This story though has a greater context. » Read more

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Woke heads of Merchant Marine Academy who banned painting of Jesus fired

USSMA Superintendent Vice Admiral Joanna Nunan
USSMA Superintendent Vice Admiral Joanna Nunan

Fight! Fight! Fight! The two top officials whom Biden brought in to head the Merchant Marine Academy and who then proceeded to cover a painting of Jesus because some leftists complained about it — painted originally by a private citizen for the academy’s chapels — have now been relieved of duty.

The two fired individuals were superintendent Vice Admiral Joanna Nunan and deputy superintendent Rear Admiral David M. Wulf.

While the Transportation Department didn’t pronounce that the leaders were fired, Restoration News obtained a text message sent by Admiral Nunan’s husband that confirms it was not Nunan’s choice to leave.

…There is no lack of cause for these removals—parents, midshipmen, and alumni applaud that these leaders are no longer in charge. Brooke Garrison, USMMA alumna and parent of a recent graduate, told Restoration News that she is “very thankful Nunan is gone.” Garrison said, “Joanna Nunan started implementing her woke agenda from day one.”

» Read more

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Air Force won’t land rockets on a Pacific island as part of its program to test point-to-point rocket cargo delivery

Faced with loud opposition from activists groups, the Air Force has decided it will not land rockets on Johnston Atoll in the Pacific island as part of its program to test point-to-point rocket cargo delivery.

The service had chosen Johnston Atoll, an unincorporated U.S. territory about 700 nautical miles southwest of Honolulu, for testing a program using rockets to rapidly deliver tons of cargo around the globe. The Air Force had announced in the Federal Register in March that it was undertaking an environmental assessment for the construction of two rocket landing pads on the atoll. It anticipated issuing a draft assessment by April, but publication was delayed as opposition to the plan by environmental groups surged. A petition calling for the Air Force to abandon the plan had garnered 3,884 signatures as of Wednesday.

…The Pacific Islands Heritage Coalition, which launched the change.org petition, said in a March 13 news release that building the launch pads on Johnston “only continues decades of harm and abuse to a place that is culturally and biologically tied to us as Pacific people.”

I wonder if this coalition included many local residents. I have doubts. This complaint sounds like something that comes out of the racist anti-white DEI offices in many American colleges.

This decision doesn’t kill this program, but eliminates this island as a test landing site, which means its residents won’t benefit from the development the program would have brought them.

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ESA picks five rocket startups for future launch contracts

European Space Agency

Capitalism in space: The European Space Agency (ESA) today announced that it has chosen five rocket startups — out of twelve that applied to its “European Launcher Challenge” — now approved to bid on future ESA launch contracts.

The startups are Isar Aerospace and Rocket Factory Augsburg from Germany, PLD Space from Spain, MaiaSpace from France, and Orbex from Great Britain. Though none have successfully completed a first launch. all five showed the most advancement. Isar has had one attempted launch failure, while Rocket Factory lost its rocket during a static fire test just before launch. PLD meanwhile has achieved a short suborbital test, while Orbex has said it was ready to launch three years ago but was blocked by red tape in the United Kingdom.

MaiaSpace is technically the least advanced, but it is also a subdivision wholly owned by ArianeGroup, a partnership of Europe’s largest aerospace companies, Airbus and Safran. It was also established in partnership with France’s space agency CNES. Thus, it has well-established connections within Europe’s aerospace industry that makes it favored.

The goal of this ESA program is to shift from the government model it has used for decades, where ESA builds and owns the rockets, to develop a competitive rocket industry of independent companies that market their rockets to ESA for contracts. ESA has seen the success in the U.S. when NASA shifted to this capitalism model in the past decade, and wishes to emulate this.

Whether it remains uncertain. ESA is still mired by bureaucratic government thinking, as illustrated by the next phrase in this challenge:

The next phase of the proposal will see ESA open dialogue between the preselected companies and their respective Member States. This process will help formalise the proposal ahead of the agency’s Ministerial-Level Council meeting (CM25), which will take place toward the end of the year. At CM25, Member States are expected to formally commit funding to the initiative. Following the meeting, ESA will issue a Phase 2 call for proposals, which will be restricted to the preselected candidate companies. European Launcher Challenge contracts will then be awarded after a final evaluation period.

The ESA’s very nature seems to impose odious bureaucratic rules on its member nations that could hinder these private companies. For example, these rules now block any other independent rocket startups from bidding on contracts. Like the bootleggers during Prohibitioin, the ESA has essentially divided competition up by territory and given it to these favored companies. No one else is allowed in.

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EPA employees who publicly signed letter opposing Trump’s agenda have now been put on leave

Trump defiant after being shot
Trump in charge

They apparently forgot who the American people elected and who is thus the boss! The 170 EPA employees who publicly signed a letter this week announcing their opposition to Trump’s policies at EPA have now all been put on leave, with the expectation that they will eventually lose their jobs as well.

Staffers at the Environmental Protection Agency who signed a letter of dissent against President Donald Trump have been placed on leave, reports The Hill. “The Environmental Protection Agency has a zero-tolerance policy for career bureaucrats unlawfully undermining, sabotaging, and undercutting the administration’s agenda as voted for by the great people of this country last November,” EPA spokeswoman Brigit Hirsch said in a written statement.

The letter, posted on June 30, 2025, made it very clear in its opening paragraph that these employees were willing to defy orders and sabotage the Trump administration.
» Read more

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Senate reconciliation budget bill includes Cruz’s big spending additions to NASA

Senate NASA budget increases

According to a tweet yesterday by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), the reconciliation budget bill that was passed by the Senate included the budget additions that Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) had proposed to save SLS, Orion, and Lunar Gateway.

The graphic to the right lists these budget numbers. It is not clear whether the launch taxes on payloads that Cruz proposed were also included, though likely not based on the rules under which the reconciliation bill was passed.

This additional money for these projects contradicts directly the NASA 2026 budget proposal put forth by Trump that aimed to cancel Lunar Gateway and end SLS and Orion after only two more flights. Their existence in this passed Senate bill suggests that Congress is cool with the idea of spending this money and continuing these projects, even though they do nothing but waste taxpayer money and get us no where in space.

It also appears from the language in the graphic that the Senate is eager to also spend more money on NASA’s Mars sample return project, even though NASA itself still has no idea how to accomplish the task.

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Orbex delays first launch from Saxavord until 2026

Map of spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding the Norwegian Sea

The rocket startup Orbex has now announced that “infrastructure requirements and engagement with regulators” has forced it to delay the first launch of its Prime rocket from 2025 until 2026.

Orbex at the start of this decade had signed a 50-year lease to launch its Prime rocket from the proposed Sutherland spaceport on the north coast of Scotland. In February 2022 it applied for a launch license, with the hope of launching before the end of that year. For three years it waited for the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to approve that license, to no avail.

Finally in December 2024 it gave up on launching from Sutherland and shifted its plans to the Saxavord spaceport in the Shetland Islands, apparently because that spaceport had been more successful in getting its CAA approvals (though even it had to wait years).

Though the company attributes this new delay as much to getting its launch facility ready at Saxavord, delays caused by British red tape continues to be a systemic and entrenched problem in the United Kingdom. It appears it remains so.

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European Union proposes new space law to supersede national space rules

The European Union

The European Union (EU) has now released its proposed Space Act that would impose European-wide regulations on the space industries of all its partnering nations, superseding their own regulations and policies.

The press release claims, at the start, that this space act would “cut red tape, protect space assets, and create a fair, predictable playing field for businesses,” but in reading the act itself [pdf], it appears to do the exact opposite. It imposes new environmental, safety, and cybersecurity regulations on the design of satellites and spacecraft in a manner that will likely slow development and competition in Europe significantly. And it applies these regulations not only to European companies but to the rest of the world’s space industry, should it do any operations at all in Europe.

This European Union space law was initially supposed to be released last year, but was delayed because it appeared there was strong opposition to it from many of the union’s member nations.

The proposed law appears to have been reshaped to limit the areas the EU can regulate space, but my appraisal of these regulations is that they are designed to quickly expand to cover everything, while adding an unneeded layer of red tape across Europe’s space industry that will only cause it to founder.

It must also be noted once again that there is no one in the bureaucracy of the EU qualified to impose these regulations on the space industry. The EU launches nothing. Its bureaucracy knows nothing about space technology. All it can do is say no to anyone that wants to achieve anything, just because it thinks it knows better.

It will be interesting to see if this space law passes. It still must be approved by European Parliament and the European Commission. I expect there to be significant opposition from several different member states, most especially Germany, Spain, and Italy, each of which have a newly emerging space industry. We should also expect opposition from the member nations formerly part of the Soviet bloc, as their past totalitarian experience makes them very skeptical of this kind of bureaucratic power play.

At the same time, the political structure of the European Union is designed to encourage the passage of such laws, which is one reason there is a rising movement in many member nations to leave the union. If the law passes, expect it to cause more fragmentation within Europe, rather than unifying the continent as it claims it will do.

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Mexican president threatens action against SpaceX at Boca Chica

The president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, yesterday indicated that her government was considering taking legal action against SpaceX because of the debris from its Superheavy rocket that was found washed up on its beaches after a test launch.

Mexico’s government was studying which international laws were being violated in order to file “the necessary lawsuits” because “there is indeed contamination”, Sheinbaum told her morning news conference on Wednesday.

…Mexican officials are carrying out a “comprehensive review” of the environmental impacts of the rocket launches for the neighboring state of Tamaulipas, Sheinbaum said.

Other than this one quote, the article at the link is largely junk, focusing on the test stand explosion last week of Starship, an event that has nothing to do with the material found on Mexico’s beaches. Moreover, that debris was apparently so harmless Mexicans were able to quickly gather it for souvenirs, with some immediately making money from it by selling it on social media.

In other words, this “investigation” and this “reporting” is nothing more than anti-Musk rhetoric because Musk has aligned himself with Trump.

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ESA partners with French company to build space plane “demonstrator”

The European Space Agency (ESA) and the French company Dassault Aviation yesterday announced a partnership for building a space plane “demonstrator” that will lay the groundwork for developing a family of such spacecraft dubbed Vortex.

The ESA press release is here. Both this release and the Dassault release linked to above provided little detailed information, other than the demonstrator will be a small scale suborbital testbed for eventually developing the full scale orbital vehicle. Neither a budget nor time schedule were even hinted at.

ESA has funded a number of these demonstrators in the past decade — Themis and Calisto come to mind — all of which are behind schedule and have as yet not flown. It will be interesting to see if this project fares better, as it seems it is being led by a single commercial company rather than the government run mishmashes of the other projects.

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NASA delays Axiom manned mission again

Without providing any specific details, NASA today announced that it has once again scrubbed the June 22, 2025 launch of Axiom’s Ax-4 manned mission to ISS as it assesses the Russian repairs to the air leaks in the Russian Zvezda module.

The space agency needs additional time to continue evaluating International Space Station operations after recent repair work in the aft (back) most segment of the orbital laboratory’s Zvezda service module. Because of the space station’s interconnected and interdependent systems, NASA wants to ensure the station is ready for additional crew members, and the agency is taking the time necessary to review data.

No new launch date has been set. Because the agency provides so little specific information, we don’t know if the air leak repairs are working, are failing, or have indicated even more serious problems that make any station docking a greater risk. Almost certainly, this latter fear is unfounded and the repairs have succeeded in stopping or slowing the loss of air, but the paucity of information from NASA allows for wild speculations. It would be better if the agency told us what it has so far learned, and exactly why that knowledge requires it to extend the data-gathering time period.

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Why should anyone listen to people who behave like infantile toddlers?

A modern Democrat protester
The modern face of the Democratic Party.
Click for video.

For decades the Democratic Party and the left (I repeat myself) have used public demonstrations to garner support for their agenda. A bunch of protesters would gather in some public place, holding preprinted signs and demanding “action” for some leftist cause or another. The propaganda press would then give the protest loving coverage, advocating the cause nationwide as something that “must be done.”

For decades these protests have had some success. They forced the public debate to move in the direction the protesters wanted, and almost routinely resulted in legislative or executive actions that they supported.

All this has changed. The recent protests against the Trump administration’s effort to deport illegal immigrants, often devolving into violence, rioting, and looting, have done nothing to shift Trump’s policies. More important, they have done nothing to convince the public to their cause. If anything, all polls indicate these protests have been counter-productive, that the public has shifted even more strongly in its support of Trump.

The picture to the right, a screen capture from the video below, I think illustrates beautifully why these protests have failed so spectacularly. It shows a woman insanely trying to stop an ICE vehicle carrying captured illegals by grabbing the bus’ front grill. As she does this she starts screams madly, first by shrieking “Let my people go!” and then “Don’t kill me!” as the vehicle begins to accelerate. Eventually ICE officers pull her away, but then she tries to grab the side of this bus as well as two others that follow, all the while continuing her mindless screeching.
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A blacklisted American wins in court

Bruce Gilley of Portland State University, willing to fight
Bruce Gilley, formerly of Portland State University

Back in 2017 political science professor Bruce Gilley wrote a quite reasonable historical paper in the academic journal Third World Quarterly that took a look at the colonialism of the western nations in 1800s and concluded that this colonialism had not been all bad, and in fact had brought “significant social, economic and political gains” to the nations colonized.

For this sin of honest academic analysis (certainly open to debate), the academic community put together a coordinated international campaign to get his paper withdrawn and his reputation ruined. He received death threats, and later in response to these threats and this campaign — including the resignation of fifteen of its board members — the journal withdrew Gilley’s paper. It didn’t do so because of any academic flaws in the work, only because it dared state conclusions that today’s leftist, Marxist, and very bigoted academic community cannot tolerate.

Soon thereafter Gilley found himself blacklisted and censored at his university, Portland State University in Oregon. The communication manager for its Division of Equity and Inclusion, Tova Stabin, blocked him from a college X discussion group because Gilley had had the nerve in one email to quote Thomas Jefferson, noting that “all men are created equal.”
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