NASA official in charge of its manned program denigrates the idea of fixed-price contracts

Jim Free, apparently hostile to commercial space despite running the NASA manned program dependent on it
Jim Free, apparently hostile to commercial space despite
running the NASA manned program dependent on it

Eric Berger on June 16, 2023 wrote up a careful analysis of comments made by NASA official Jim Free, who is in charge of its Artemis manned program, when he appeared on June 7, 2023 before the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board and Space Studies Board in Washington, DC.

During that appearance, in which Free provided an update on the program’s status, including admitting that the manned lunar landing will not happen in 2025 but in 2026 — something that everyone in the space industry has known for years but NASA had been denying — Berger then noted this further comment by Free:

Oddly, Free also questioned the value of the contract mechanism that NASA used to hire SpaceX and its Starship lander. “The fact is, if they’re not flying on the time they’ve said, it does us no good to have a firm, fixed-price contract other than we’re not paying more,” he said.

Free did this after trying to place the entire blame for the launch delay on SpaceX, made worse by the regulatory delays being imposed on it by the FAA.

Berger than proceeded to outline in great detail why fixed-price contracts work far better than cost-plus contracts — also known widely in the space industry and detailed myself in Capitalism in Space. To sum up, cost-plus contracts produce very little but cost gobs of money, while fixed-price contracts save money while guaranteeing results. He then asked, “What’s going on here?” and answered it as follows:
» Read more

Some real pushback: Former Starbucks employee, fired to give Starbucks a white scapegoat, wins $25 million in lawsuit

Enthusiastically supports racial discrimiation
Punished enthusiastically for enthusiastically
supporting racial discrimination

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Shannon Phillips, a former Starbucks employee for thirteen years who was fired from the company following a racial incident at one of its stores, has been awarded back pay and $25.6 million in compensatory and punitive damages by a jury, who ruled she was fired simply because she was white and Starbucks needed a scapegoat.

The controversy began when the staff at a Starbucks store called the police on two blacks sitting in the store.

Rashon Nelson and his friend Donte Robinson were arrested at the Philly Starbucks in April 2018 after an employee called 911 to say they weren’t paying customers and had refused to leave. The men, who said they had been simply sitting at a table waiting for a potential real estate business partner to arrive, were arrested for trespassing.

In response to the widespread protests that followed, Starbucks temporarily shut its 8,000 locations nationwide in order to give its employees “anti-bias training,” while coming to an out-of-court settlement with the two men, whereby they each were paid a symbolic $1 but the company set up a $200,000 program to help young entrepreneurs.

The company also decided to fire Phillips, even though she was not at the store when the incident occurred. That firing was because she had objected to the company’s order for her to suspend a white manager who had had no connection to the incident at all.
» Read more

House proposed cuts pose no threat to NASA, despite the screams of agony

Proposed Republican budget cuts
Proposed Republican budget changes

Before even beginning this story, it is critical for my readers to understand that the worst any of these possible cuts could do to NASA’s budget in 2024 would be to bring it back to budgetary levels from most of the last decade, levels that hardly crippled the agency in the slightest.

The graph to the right, posted initially by Roll Call, outlines in detail the required cuts the Republicans in the House are demanding in the federal budget for the 2024 fiscal year. The percentages in the last column list the amount each of these twelve appropriation subcommittees must cut from their area of focus. NASA is part of the Commerce-Justice-Science category, which requires a total cut of 28.8%.

NASA’s budget in 2023 was $25.4 billion. If the House imposes that percentage cut to NASA, it would lower its 2024 budget to about $18 billion.

O my! We are all going to starve!
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World Economic Forum decides its business is running space too!

We’re the government and we’re here to help you! The World Economic Forum (WEF) yesterday released its proposed new set of guidelines for mitigating space junk in orbit, even though some of the most important commercial satellite operators (SpaceX and Viasat) have not signed on.

The Space Industry Debris Mitigation Recommendations document, released by the WEF June 13, outlines recommendations to avoid collisions that can create debris by limiting the lifetime of satellites in orbit after they have completed their missions and improving coordination among satellite operators.

Among those recommendations is to establish a success rate for “post-mission disposal,” or removal of satellites from orbit after the end of their missions, to 95% to 99%. That disposal should be completed no more than five years after the end of each satellite’s mission.

You can read the guidelines here [pdf], which the WEF is pushing governments worldwide to adopt. Though SpaceX and Viasat have not signed on, 27 companies have endorsed the guidelines, including OneWeb, Airbus, Axiom, and a host of orbital tug and space junk removal startups, the latter of which all benefit from these guidelines.

While the proposals makes some sense, everyone in the space industry should remain skeptical, and resist the call for more government regulation. Once this power is given to government it will never be recanted, and will only grow with time. Moreover, all signs indicate that such interference by law by government is unnecessary. Both satellite operators and most rocket companies (the exception mostly China) have been making strong efforts to deal with the issue of space junk, for profit. The fact that there are a host of orbital tug and space junk startups right now illustrates this. Investors have realized there is money to be made removing satellites and space junk. They don’t need government telling them what to do.

Today’s blacklisted American was arrested for quoting the Bible

Damon Atkins being arrested by McClure for quoting Bible
Atkins (r) being arrested by McClure for quoting Bible

They’re coming for you next: On June 3, 2023 there was a rally supporting the queer agenda in front of the Reading City Hall in Pennsylvania, partly instigated it appears by the endorsement of the city’s Democratic Party mayor, Eddie Moran. On the other side of the street were several Christians who vocally expressed their opposition to that rally.

Those Christians found themselves repeatedly harried by the police. As Matthew Wear noted, “I preached for 10 minutes or so until a tyrant cop laid hands on me and threatened to arrest me if I continued.” Soon thereafter a second Christian, Damon Atkins, began quoting the Bible in protest. That same policeman, Police Sergeant Bradley McClure, immediately arrested him.

According to an affidavit of probable cause, McClure claims that “[Atkins] was carrying a sign with a slogan written on it that showed his opposition to the event.” The video footage shows Atkins holding a sign that read “JESUS SAID GO AND SIN NO MORE.”

In the affidavit, McClure also claims that Atkins “began to yell to the people” attending the pride event. “I immediately approached him and told him that, while he was free to stand on that side of the street and hold his sign,” McClure wrote in the affidavit, “he could not cross the street nor yell comments intended to disrupt the event.” McClure added that Atkins “said he understood.”

But the video does not show Atkins agreeing to remain silent and Atkins told The Lancaster Patriot that he never agreed to McClure’s instructions.

The affidavit continues with McClure claiming that in less than a minute Atkins “resumed yelling derogatory comments to the people at the event.” The video records the only words from Atkins as “God is not the” immediately prior to McClure arresting him.

I have embedded the video taken by Wear below.
» Read more

Boeing gets NASA contract to develop new airplane wing design

In its effort to reduce fossil fuel use and thus save us from being burned to death by global warming in only a decade, NASA has now awarded Boeing a contract to develop new airplane wing design that it predicts will lower fuel use by up to 30%.

The X-66A is the X-plane specifically aimed at helping the United States achieve the goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. To build the X-66A, Boeing will work with NASA to modify an MD-90 aircraft, shortening the fuselage and replacing its wings and engines. The resulting demonstrator aircraft will have long, thin wings with engines mounted underneath and a set of aerodynamic trusses for support. The design, which Boeing submitted for NASA’s Sustainable Flight Demonstrator project, is known as a Transonic Truss-Braced Wing.

While developing a more efficient wing design is certainly worthwhile, having skepticism about this project is certainly reasonable. First of all, it seems somewhat strange to award Boeing such a contract at this time, considering NASA own experience with the company with Starliner, as well as that company’s problems with other government contracts for the military.

Secondly, the press release makes a big deal about the project getting an X-plane designation, an entirely superficial and PR related title that if anything suggests there is very little steak to this sizzle.

Third, it is unclear the nature of this contract. Is is cost-plus, or fixed price? The press release says NASA will “invest $425 million over seven years, while the company and its partners will contribute the remainder of the funding, estimated at about $725 million.” If cost-plus, this means nothing. Boeing will use any excuse to go over budget in order to get more money from NASA.

Finally, half a billion dollars to develop and test a new airplane wing design, using an already existing airplane, seems incredibly exorbitant. And to require seven years to build it seems ridiculously long.

All in all, I suspect the real goal of this project is to funnel tax dollars to Boeing to help keep it afloat, not to build a new green airplane.

New House bill proposes giving FAA responsibility for monitoring space junk

A just proposed House bill for reauthorizing the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) also proposes giving that agency the responsibility for monitoring space junk.

The bill instructs the FAA to establish a program to track objects “that are potential sources of covered airborne debris” with a focus on identifying those about to reenter and could pose a risk to aircraft in airspace. That program would coordinate with the FAA’s air traffic control system to identify airspace that needs to be closed for a reentry. It would allow the FAA to establish its own space situational awareness (SSA) facilities and work with other federal agencies, companies or international organizations for data on such objects.

While the focus of the bill is tracking debris to assess airspace risks, the bill does enable additional uses of the data the FAA collects. In particular, it directs the FAA to offer “a basic level of data, information, and services” at no charge. That includes maintaining a public catalog of space objects and “emergency conjunction notifications” of such objects.

The article at the link notes that this new FAA job would also duplicate work of the Space Force, as well as a new Commerce Department office tasked with similar responsibilities. It also duplicates the same responsibilities the FCC has created for itself, outside of its statutory authority.

In other words, there is a factional turf war going on within the swamp, with each faction attempting to establish its territory and control over this work.

The result? Expect Congress to allow this duplication to go forward, funding all three efforts. As we all know, money grows on trees, and hiring as many Washington bureaucrats is the most important thing Congress can do, even if those bureaucrats don’t do anything useful.

Astronomers admit new satellite constellations “are not a threat” to Hubble

In a June 5, 2023 press release from the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) that operates both the Hubble and Webb space telescopes, astronomers admitted that the increased number of orbiting satellites from SpaceX and OneWeb have had little impact on Hubble’s observations, and even that impact has been reduced by new software tools.

Stark applied the new tool, based on the image analysis technique known as the Radon Transform, to identify satellite trails across Hubble’s camera with the widest field of view, the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). In 2002 the satellite streaks were present in five percent of ACS exposures, with many of those too faint to discern easily. This rose to ten percent by 2022, although the typical brightness of the detected trails remained unchanged.

…”To date, these satellite trails have not had a significant impact on research with Hubble,” said Tom Brown, Head of STScI’s Hubble Mission Office. “The cosmic rays that strike the telescope’s detectors are a bigger nuisance.”

Radiation from space hits the ACS electronic detectors on every exposure, leaving streaks. These are easy to identify from exposure to exposure. The same holds true for artificial satellites. “The average width I measured for satellites was 5 to 10 pixels. The ACS’ widest view is 4,000 pixels across, so a typical trail will affect less than 0.5% of a single exposure. So not only can we flag them, but they don’t impact the majority of pixels in individual Hubble images. Even as the number of satellites increases, our tools for cleaning the pictures will still be relevant,” said Stark. [emphasis mine]

In other words, the claims by many astronomers that the increase in satellites is a threat to astronomy have been exaggerated. The new satellites might have a greater impact on ground-based telescopes, but based on these numbers (which would be comparable if not better for the giant 8-meter-plus big telescopes on Earth), that impact should be as easily mitigated.

I am gob-smacked that STScI issued this press release, since it undercuts the entire political narrative of the astronomical community that demands these new satellite constellations be either regulated, limited, or even banned, because otherwise all astronomy will be impossible. Based on the information presented here, none of those regulations are justified, at all, and that narrative is an utter lie.

NASA worried FAA launch permit delays to Starship/Superheavy will delay first lunar landing

During a public meeting on June 7, 2023, a NASA official expressed concerns that the FAA’s slow launch permit process for SpaceX’s test program for developing Starship/Superheavy will end up seriously delaying the first Artemis manned lunar landing, presently targeting a December 2025 launch date.

The official, Jim Free, was very careful how he worded his comments, but the FAA issue loomed large in his mind.

Free said NASA met with the Federal Aviation Administration recently to discuss the importance of the Starship rocket to the space agency’s moon exploration plans. The FAA is overseeing SpaceX’s investigation into the problems encountered on the April 20 test launch, when the flight termination system took longer to destroy the rocket than expected. The destruct system is designed to terminate the flight before an errant rocket threatens populated areas.

The FAA is not expected to grant SpaceX another Starship launch license until the investigation is complete, and federal regulators are satisfied with changes to the rocket to address any public safety concerns. “They just have to get flying,” Free said of SpaceX. “When you step back and you look at (it), that’s a lot of launches to get those missions done, so our FAA partners are critical to that.”

For the FAA to treat SpaceX’s test program like ordinary launches, requiring a detailed investigation by it after every test flight, will likely delay the development of Starship/Superheavy by years.

Following the early suborbital tests of Starship, the FAA did not “oversee” the investigations. The FAA merely observed closely SpaceX’s investigation, and let it move forward when SpaceX was satisfied. Now the FAA wants to determine for itself when each launch will occur, even though there is no one at the FAA truly qualified to do that. The result will be endless delays and paperwork, and many fewer flights spaced many more months apart, none of which will do anything to aid the development.

NASA is obviously trying to get the FAA to see this, but we must remember that the change in policy at the FAA almost certainly came from the Biden administration, which doesn’t care as much for getting to the Moon as it does wielding its power to hurt Elon Musk, whom it now sees as a political opponent. Expect NASA’s pleas to fall on deaf ears.

Pushback: Racial quotas on corporate boards, imposed by California Democrats, struck down by court

The Democratic Party's long held support of racial hate
Segregation: The Democratic Party’s long held #1 goal,
then and now.

Pushback: A federal court has now struck down a 2020 law passed by the California legislature — run entirely by a Democratic Party super-majority — that required corporations to impose racial quotas on who they hired for their corporate boards.

In Alliance for Fair Board Recruitment v. Weber, [the court] struck down a state statute that required racial and gender-identity quotas for board members of publicly held corporations in California. The court ruled that this quota statute violates the U.S. Constitution as well as federal civil rights law.

The 2020 statute, AB 979, required California corporations to have as members on their board of directors individuals from supposedly “underrepresented groups,” including “an individual who identifies as Black, African American, Hispanic, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, Native Hawaiian, or Alaska Native, [or] gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender.”

The number of directors needed to satisfy these quotas was determined by the size of the corporation, but a minimum of one to three members was required. This racist statute went so far as to impose fines ranging from $100,000 to $300,000 for noncompliance.

» Read more

The explanation as to why Democrats today are fearless in proposing insane policies

How the change in Don Lemon in the past ten years reveals why Democrats are no longer afraid to propose insane policies
Don Lemon unwittingly reveals the Democrats’
assumed grip on power

A recent post at ZeroHedge made a big deal about how Don Lemon’s positions so drastically changed in less than a decade. As the article correctly noted, the positions Lemon took in 2013 would have had Don Lemon in 2023 label himself a white supremacist.

The video [from 2013] shows Lemon talking about what the black community should do to fix its problems, including stop littering, and encouraging kids to try harder in school. The host also extols the virtues of marriage, and warns about the problem of absent fathers, asserting “just because you can have a baby doesn’t mean you should.”

Lemon even tells young black men to stop using the N word and to pull up their pants and stop walking around with their asses hanging out looking like prison bitches.

If you dare say these things now you are called a racist and a white supremacist (no matter your skin color) exerting your white privilege. The Don Lemon of 2023 himself has done this exact thing.

What the article found most shocking however was the speed in which these things changed. As noted by this tweet:

It’s terrifying how fast society fell off the cliff

10 years ago Obama, Hillary, and Biden were defining marriage as “a man and a woman”

10 years ago Don Lemon was telling black people “pull your pants up”

10 years ago Dems only supported “safe, legal, and rare” abortions

Why? How did it become okay for Democrats and leftists to suddenly in less than a few years go from defending normal sex and marriage to supporting the genital mutilation of young children and to support cross-dressing men changing in women’s locker rooms? Why have inner city Democratic Party politicians gone from trying to arrest shoplifters in order to at least maintain a semblance of law to passing laws making illegal for any employees at a retail store from stopping shoplifting in any way, while simultaneously advocating “defunding the police” and routinely releasing murderers and criminals without charge?

How is any of this even possible in a democratic society? Shouldn’t Democrats be worried that their insane policies might be offending the vast majority of normal people who vote?

The answer lies in a false assumption most conservatives and ordinary people still have about our nation. » Read more

NASA: Psyche asteroid mission now targeting October ’23 launch

A report [pdf] from NASA on the steps taken by JPL to get the Psyche asteroid mission back on track after it failed to meet its launch date last fall says those steps are working, and the spacecraft should now succeed in meeting its new October ’23 launch date.

Both the report and today’s press release are filled with vague PR blather interspersed with complementing JPL for addressing the issues, including hiring about a dozen more people to get the main software issue that had prevented last year’s launch solved. I noticed one point however that was not mentioned clearly in the press release nor had been made clear in the earlier investigation report that today’s newly released report labels as “COVID-19 Related” issues.

The return to majority in-person work has made a tremendous difference in restoring visibility and informal communications across the project. Drop-in meetings, social coffee hours, off-site intensives, and individuals “walking the floor” have improved team interaction, problem-solving, efficiency, and trust. The team is also making judicious use of remote and hybrid access options as appropriate to ensure flexibility while not compromising their collaboration.

In other words, the panic over Wuhan had so restricted in-person contact at JPL that it had hampered the project’s development. Based on the vague language used to describe almost everything else mentioned in this new report, it appears that this issue more than anything else contributed the launch delay. Not surprisingly, no one at NASA, JPL, Caltech, or in the government wishes to make this admission bluntly. It would illustrate once again the foolishness of the lockdown policies imposed during the panic by the government and academia.

Pushback: Court victory for volleyball student and coach father who were blacklisted for disagreeing with queer agenda

Blake Allen, punished for being a normal high school girl
Blake Allen, punished for being a normal high school girl

Bring a gun to a knife fight: After an eighteen-month court battle, school officials in Vermont on June 1st conceded defeat, settling the lawsuit [pdf] with a high school student and her father who the school had suspended for having the nerve to write publicly about the school’s sexual policies that allowed boys to leer at girls in the girl’s dressing rooms.

The school district will pay the father and daughter $125,000 and the suspensions will be removed from their records, according to the White River Valley Herald.

The background, which I have reported on several times previously: In the fall of 2022 high school student Blake Allen was suspended by her Vermont high school for daring to write an op-ed criticizing its policy allowing a cross-dressing boy to change in the girl’s lockeroom. School officials also suspended her father, Travis Allen, from his job as the high school’s volleyball coach for the crime of stating these facts on social media.
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Pushback: Christian adoption agency wins against NY’s attempt to force it to send kids to queer families

New Hope: willing to fight for its religious beliefs
New Hope: willing to fight for its
religious beliefs

Bring a gun to a knife fight: When two different New York state agencies threatened to investigate and penalize the Christian nonprofit New Hope Family Services because it refused to place orphans with queer couples, instead insisting that the children under its care be adopted only by a mother and father, New Hope sued — twice — and has now won two settlements that will allow it to continue to place children in the manner that matches its beliefs.

Faith-based adoption provider New Hope Family Services secured a second victory against New York state officials, after securing a favorable settlement and a payment of $250,000 for attorneys’ fees in a related lawsuit settled last month. In settlement of the second lawsuit—which challenged an attempt by a different New York state agency to punish New Hope for adhering to its religious convictions—New York officials agreed to pay an additional $25,000 in attorneys’ fees and costs, and broadly confirmed New Hope’s right to continue its critical work of placing infants in permanent homes without government harassment.

» Read more

Pushback: If the young are beginning to resist the leftist queer agenda, then there is real hope

A little child shall lead them, by James Johnson
“A little child shall lead them,” painting by James L. Johnson.

And a little child shall lead them: There appears to be increasing evidence that it isn’t just the parents that are becoming aware and opposed to the queer and Marxist agenda that the public schools and leftist governments have been force feeding down children’s throats for the past decade. It now appears the students themselves are beginning to rise up in rebellion.

This story from May 29, 2023 illustrates the point:
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New data gives the same result as old data: Like the flu, COVID hurt NO ONE who was young and healthy

Lysenko with Stalin
Trofim Lysenko (on the left), the person now considered the ideal
scientific model by health officials, preaching to Stalin as he destroyed
Soviet plant research, persecuted anyone who disagreed with him,
and caused famines that killed millions.

New data from Israel has now confirmed what was obvious almost from the beginning, that COVID-19 was nothing more than a variation of the flu, a danger only to the elderly and the chronically sick.

According to newly revealed Israeli Ministry of Health data, during the entire epidemic there were zero deaths (that’s 0, nil, none, naught, zilch, null) from COVID to anyone under fifty who was of average and reasonable health.

Zero healthy individuals under the age of 50 have died of COVID-19 in Israel, according to newly released data. “Zero deceased of 18–49 years of age with no underlying morbidities,” the Israel Ministry of Health (MOH) said in response to a formal request from an attorney. Officials noted that the statement only applies to COVID-19 deaths where the MOH conducted an epidemiological investigation and had received information about the underlying diseases.

“Zero is a very, very clear number, and cannot be subject to interpretation,” Yoav Yehezkelli, a specialist in internal medicine and medical management, and former lecturer in the Department of Emergency and Disaster Management at Tel Aviv University in Israel, told The Epoch Times.

“Why were all the extreme measures of school closures, vaccination of children, and lockdowns needed?” he added. [emphasis mine]

This data simply confirms what numerous health experts unwilling to play political games with the data have said from the beginning, that COVID was essentially similar to the flu, harmless to healthy people and only a risk to the elderly and those with serious chronic health issues. Just like the flu, if you are healthy you have no reason to fear it, and in fact, you should be unbothered about getting it as it will give you natural immunity, thus making the spread of the virus more difficult and reducing the risk to those whom the virus (and the flu) could kill.

Trump — along with a lot of other Washington officials — proved this point when they all got COVID in October 2020 and quickly recovered. As I wrote then:
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How real is the Texas legislature’s proposed ban on the racist “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” programs at colleges?

Failure Theater!

Failure theater? This week the Texas legislature passed a proposed ban on race-based “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) programs at its public colleges, requiring all such offices be closed within six months with the staff of such offices terminated.

The final legislation says universities cannot create diversity offices, hire employees to conduct DEI work, or require any DEI training as a condition for being hired by or admitted to the university. All hiring practices must be “color-blind and sex-neutral.” The bill would also prohibit universities from asking job candidates to provide written answers about how they consider diversity in their work or sharing how they would work with diverse populations, commonly known as diversity statements. Critics have equated diversity statements with ideological oaths, while supporters say they help ensure job candidates are prepared to support students from all backgrounds.

The legislation says university governing boards must adopt policies to discipline employees who violate these rules. Under the final version of the draft, university leaders cannot spend state money until they have declared to the state they are in line with the new law.

The bill still has to be signed by Texas’ Republican governor Greg Abbott, but that signature is expected.

Will this ban work? » Read more

NASA inspector general finds more cost overruns in the agency’s SLS rocket program

Surprise! Surprise! A new NASA inspector general report [pdf] has found that the agency’s SLS rocket program is continuing to experience cost overruns and mismanagement that are “obscene”, as noted in this news report.

An independent report published Thursday contained troubling findings about the money spent by the agency on propulsion for the Space Launch System rocket. Moreover, the report by NASA Inspector General Paul Martin warns that if these costs are not controlled, it could jeopardize plans to return to the Moon.

Bluntly, Martin wrote that if the agency does not rein in spending, “NASA and its contracts will continue to exceed planned cost and schedule, resulting in a reduced availability of funds, delayed launches, and the erosion of the public’s trust in the agency’s ability to responsibly spend taxpayer money and meet mission goals and objectives—including returning humans safely to the Moon.”

Things are really much worse than this, mostly because it appears the Marshall Space Flight Center that runs the SLS program for NASA uses cost-plus contracts, which are essentially a blank check for contractors to run up costs endlessly, all of which the government must cover, and allows the process to go over-schedule against its own regulations. Furthermore, the cost overruns are for rockets and engines that are not newly developed, but in use for decades by Northrop Grumman and Aerojet Rocketdyne.

Note that this really isn’t news. Anyone with any intellectual honesty at all will know that every aspect of SLS and Orion is mismanaged and will go over budget and behind schedule endlessly. These problems are not a bug, however, but a feature of the system. The goals of SLS and Orion are not really to build a rocket to explore the solar system but to create an endless jobs program in congressional districts here on Earth. This misguided approach meanwhile robs America of a viable space effort because the money wasted could have actually been used to jumpstart a viable and competitive space-faring economy that actually achieves something.

NASA’s corrupt safety panel doubts Starliner is ready for its first manned flight in July

The head of NASA’s safety panel — which over the years has consistently missed the big safety issues while whining about things that did not matter — expressed strong doubts yesterday on whether Boeing’s Starliner manned capsule is ready for its first manned flight in July.

Speaking at a May 25 public meeting of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, Patricia Sanders, chair of the committee, expressed skepticism that NASA and Boeing will be able to close known issues with Starliner in time for a launch currently scheduled for as soon as July 21.

“There remains a long line of NASA processes still ahead to determine launch readiness” for the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission, the first crewed flight of the spacecraft with two NASA astronauts on board. “That should not be flown until safety risks can either be mitigated or accepted, eyes wide open, with an appropriately compelling technical rationale.”

This panel hasn’t the faintest idea what it is talking about, and should be ignored. It appears that NASA and Boeing are presently reviewing the capsule’s parachute system. Sanders however raised other issues which actually appear more designed to simply slow or even prevent the capsule’s launch.

The panel did the same thing during the development of SpaceX’s manned Dragon capsule, making irrelevant claims about paperwork and the safety of the company’s Falcon 9 fueling procedures that were ridiculous. Meanwhile, it has ignored much more fundamental numerous safety issues with NASA’s SLS rocket and Orion capsule, such as the agency’s plan to fly it manned using its capsule environmental system for the first time.

It is very possible that there remain serious safety issues with Starliner. I simply note that I would not rely on NASA’s safety panel to provide me an honest or educated appraisal of the situation.

As parents and students continue to flee public education the consequences are both good and dire


“But Brawndo’s got what plants crave. It’s got electrolytes!”

Two recent stories have clearly illustrated that the abandonment of the public school system, from kindergarten to college, is continuing unabated. It appears that the Wuhan lockdowns and mask and jab mandates helped to open the eyes of many parents and students as to the ineffectual and often harmful teaching going on in these institutions.

We begin with the precipitous drop in children attending K through 12 public schools.

Public school enrollment declined by 1.4 million students between fall 2019 and fall 2020, dipping to 49.4 million, a loss of nearly 3 percent, and remains at the lowest point in more than a decade. The decline could be closer to 2 million, according to a survey by Education Next showing that traditional public school enrollment as a percentage of all school enrollment declined sharply between 2020 and 2022.

Enrollment in traditional public schools fell from 81 percent to 76.5 percent of total enrollment during that period, while enrollment in public charter schools, private schools, and homeschooling grew by a combined 4.5 percent.

Those numbers suggest that nearly 2 million students left traditional public schools for other educational options between 2020 and 2022. The findings are based on the May 2022 survey of a national representative panel of more than 3,600 American adults commissioned by Education Next.

The abandonment in the last three years by so many parents of the public school system can be attributed to three things. » Read more

Bankrupt Virgin Orbit is dead, its assets purchased by a variety of different companies

After failing to find a single buyer for the whole company, Virgin Orbit is now officially dead as a company, its assets broken up during bankruptcy proceedings and purchased by several different companies.

Rocket Lab paid $16.1 million for Virgin Orbit’s main manufacturing facility in California, which it intends to use for developing its larger Neutron rocket. Stratolaunch paid $17 million for the company’s 747 airplane and related equipment. Launcher, a former rocket startup that is now owned by the space station startup Vast, paid $2.7 for the company’s test site in Mojave, California, which it plans to use for static fire engine tests of a rocket engine it is developing for sale to others. A liquidation company purchased other assets, while the various LauncherOne rockets under construction remain unsold.

It is essential the reasons for this failure are made very clear. The destruction of this company occurred because regulators in the United Kingdom prevented it from launching from within the UK for almost half a year, during which it could not perform other launches elsewhere and therefore earn revenue. It then ran very low on cash, and when the UK launch failed in January, the company no longer had the resources to weather to time necessary to complete the investigation, fix the problem that caused the failure, and resume launches.

For other rocket startups, it is very important to consider this story before committing to launching in the UK. where you will face major bureaucratic obstacles from its government. Until there is evidence that something has changed, it might be better to consider other launch sites.

“The deaths that we saw, I’m afraid, were medical malpractice at best and murder at worst.”

The quote in my headline today comes not from some wild-eyed partisan quack who wears a tin-foiled hat and sees comspiraces behind every corner. Instead, it is the considered and educated conclusion of Mike Yeadon, former Pfizer chief scientific officer of allergy and respiratory. His comments sum up the entire Wuhan panic quite concisely, and provide an excellent foundation to today’s essay listing the recent research into that panic and the disaster it caused worldwide. As Yeadon added,

“They lied to us about absolutely everything,” he said. “They lied to us about the magnitude of the public health emergency which never existed. They lied to us about the necessity of having measures like lockdowns, mass testing, social distancing, masks and it goes on and on.”

Nothing Yeadon says contradicts anything that any reasonable and cool-headed individual might have concluded, from day one of the panic. However, the advice of reasonable and cool-headed individuals was the last thing wanted from most governments and health officials worldwide. Nor was most of the general public interested either. Instead, fear ruled, and that fear was then used by a lot of corrupt power-hungry officials to garner more power for themselves, all to the detriment of everyone else.

Nor am I speaking out of turn. I have spent the last three years documenting the foolishness, the failure, and the downright ugliness of the COVID response. Today is simply another update covering the last two months. And sadly, the new data simply reinforces again and again what Yeadon says.
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Pushback: California loses big for trying to force churches to violate their religious beliefs

Mary Watanaba, head oppressor in California's health system
Mary Watanaba, head oppressor
in California’s health system

They’re coming for you next: After California health authorities in 2014 imposed a mandate requiring requiring churches to provide elective abortion coverage to its employees, four churches sued, and after a long court battle, have now won a $1.4 million settlement.

Alliance Defending Freedom [ADF] attorneys represent Skyline Wesleyan Church, located in the San Diego area, in one federal lawsuit, and Foothill Church in Glendora, Calvary Chapel Chino Hills in Chino, and The Shepherd of the Hills Church in Porter Ranch in another. Both lawsuits challenged California’s abortion-coverage mandate. In both cases, the courts ruled that the U.S. Constitution protects the churches’ freedom to operate according to their religious beliefs, which include their belief in the sanctity of unborn lives.

The rulings in both lawsuits (here and here [pdfs]) not only release the churches from the illegal abortion mandate, they both require payments to ADF and the church’s local attorneys to pay all legal costs. Interesting, in both lawsuits Mary Watanabe, the director of the California Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC) was named, and in one case she was the only defendant. Unfortunately, she walks away unharmed, because DMHC will pay for everything, out of tax dollars.

What made the mandate especially egregious is that it was written in league with officials at Planned Parenthood and the ACLU, as shown by emails [pdf] between DMHC and those officials. » Read more

Pushback: Arizona drops trespassing charges against student for handing out the Constitution at Arizona State U

Tizon's evil table at ASU
Tim Tizon (r) discussing free speech with another student on
March 3, 2022 at that banned YAL table on the ASU campus.

They’re coming for you next: Today’s story is a followup of a February blacklist story. Tim Tizon, a Arizona State University (ASU) student at the time of the incident in March 2022, had been charged with trespass by the university when he set up a Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) table on campus to hand out free copies of the U.S. Constitution.

The location was a designated space for free speech and had not been reserved by anyone. His table was not blocking anything, as numerous witness testified. Yet, school officials showed up and demanded he leave, moving his table to a remote part of the campus where no one would see it. Apparently, Arizona State University officials were uncomfortable with the ideals of freedom and law as stated by Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Tizon however refused to move, and was charged with trespass, convicted, and sentenced to a fine $300 plus fifteen hours of community service.
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The old blacklisting against Jews has now been enthusiastically renewed on American campuses

The goal of college diversity programs for Jews
The goal of college diversity programs for Jews

They’re coming for you next: Rather than write a column today (I feel very burnt out by all that I read), I would instead like to point my readers to this detailed overview of the return of wide-spread and pervasive anti-Semitism at American universities, all under the guise of the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) mantra, which in itself is merely a restatement of “critical race theory,” which is also merely a rewording of basic Marxist racism.

This quote sums the article up:

[T]he DEI regime is key to understanding the climate on college campuses for Jewish students. Our desire to quantify everything has led the network of Jewish advocacy groups in the United States to measure anti-Semitism by “incidents.” That is certainly part of it—but only part. It is unnerving to see a swastika or “from the river to the sea” scrawled in chalk on the sidewalk outside a campus Hillel. But what those incident reports don’t show are actions and thought leadership sometimes orders of magnitude more sinister.

In an atmosphere where DEI has great sway, merely to denounce anti-Semitic violence is to risk one’s job, reputation, career, livelihood. And to express one’s Judaism openly on college campuses in that atmosphere requires a dose of courage no one should be required to show just to live a day-to-day life. In 2021, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law surveyed “openly Jewish” college students and found that nearly 70 percent “personally experienced or were familiar with an anti-Semitic attack in the past 120 days.” In addition, more than 65 percent “have felt unsafe on campus due to physical or verbal attacks, with one in 10 reporting they have feared they themselves would be physically attacked.” And, the Brandeis Center continues, roughly 50 percent “have felt the need to hide their Jewish identity.”

Of those who hid their identity on campus, 30 percent did so because they were worried about how their professors would treat them. And why wouldn’t they worry? George Washington University sided with the professor who harassed Jewish students and retaliated when they objected—all in the name of “diversity.”

The story recounts many examples of this kind of bigotry, all endorsed and even instigated by the diversity officers at the colleges, with many of those stories already specifically described by me in past blacklist columns. What makes this article useful is how it takes a wider view to clearly illustrate how the administrative culture of academia is now hand-in-glove with anti-Semitism, and is working hard to encourage it at all levels.

Today’s blacklisted American: 12-year-old sent home from school twice for understanding the 1st amendment better than his teachers

The shirt that offended teachers at Nichols Middle School
Liam Morrison, wearing the evil shirt that he wore the
second time teachers at Nichols Middle School sent
him home.

They’re coming for you next: When 12-year-old Liam Morrison came to Nichols Middle School in Massachusetts on March 21, 2023 wearing a T-shirt with the words “There are only two genders” on the front, two teachers pulled him from class and told him he would have to remove the shirt or he couldn’t return to class. He refused, and so his father came to pick him up.

The teachers claimed he was causing a disruption, that some other unnamed students felt unsafe seeing the shirt. Liam however had experienced the exact opposite. Not only did he hear no complaints, he found many other students telling him they liked the shirt and wanted one for themselves.

Rather than retell his tale in its entirety, however, let’s hear it from his own mouth. I have embedded below Liam Morrison’s statement to the Middleborough School Committee on April 13. Note how clear and articulate he is. If I had to guess, he is getting a lot of education outside of his Massachusetts public school, because based on these events I would have no faith they are teaching him anything of value.
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Astronomers make first radio observations of key type of supernova

The uncertainty of science: Using a variety of telescopes, astronomers have not only made the first radio observations of key type of supernova, they have also detected helium in the data, suggesting that this particular supernova of that type was still atypical.

This marks the first confirmed Type Ia supernova triggered by a white dwarf star that pulled material from a companion star with an outer layer consisting primarily of helium; normally, in the rare cases where the material stripped from the outer layers of the donor star could be detected in spectra, this was mostly hydrogen.

Type Ia supernovae are important for astronomers since they are used to measure the expansion of the universe. However, the origin of these explosions has remained an open question. While it is established that the explosion is caused by a compact white dwarf star that somehow accretes too much matter from a companion star, the exact process and the nature of the progenitor is not known. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted sentences are really the most important take-away from this research. Type Ia supernovae were the phenomenon used by cosmologists to detect the unexpected acceleration of the universe’s expansion billions of years ago. That research assumed these supernovae were well understood and consistently produced the same amount of energy and light, no matter how far away they were or the specific conditions which caused them.

This new supernovae research illustrates how absurd that assumption was. Type Ia supernovae are produced by the interaction of two stars, both of which could have innumerable unique features. It is therefore unreasonable as a scientist to assume all such supernovae are going to be identical in their output. And yet, that is what the cosmologists did in declaring the discovery of dark energy in the late 1990s.

It is also what the scientists who performed this research do. To quote one of the co-authors: “While normal Type Ia supernovae appear to always explode with the same brightness, this supernova tells us that there are many different pathways to a white dwarf star explosion.”

Forgive me if I remain very skeptical.

Surprise! The mainstream press still refuses to admit there was never any evidence of collusion between Trump and the Russians

CNN's Jake Tapper, the face of the corrupt mainstream media
CNN’s Jake Tapper, the face of the corrupt mainstream
media

The release of the Durham final report [pdf] this week has produced a flurry of stories, reiterating the wholly unsurprising news that there was never any evidence of collusion between Trump and the Russians and the entire story was a fraud, based on no evidence and drummed up by Democratic Party operatives working for Hillary Clinton both inside and outside of the FBI and Department of Justice.

The leftist mainstream press and the Democratic Party-controlled federal government of course reacted in mixed ways. First, Jake Tapper at CNN reluctantly admitted that the report is “devastating to the FBI, and to a degree it does exonerate Donald Trump.” In the same breath however he also tried to minimize the reports damning conclusions, which proved unequivocally that the reporting on this story from day one by him and everyone at CNN was either incompetent or outright lies.

The FBI meanwhile responded to the report with a short three sentence statement, admitting “missteps” were made but “dozens of corrective actions” have been taken since to make sure the agency “continues to do its work with the rigor, objectivity, and professionalism the American people deserve and rightly expect.”

Yeah, right. If you believe this hogwash from the FBI I have a bridge in Brooklyn I can sell you, cheap.

Meanwhile other leftist mainstream news outlets scrambled to spin the report, to discredit it without even reading it.

Liars in 2017 and liars now, in 2023.

In truth, the facts brought out by the Durham report, detailed nicely in analyses here and here, simply restate what was patently obvious in 2017, for anyone with the willingness to look dispassionately at the plain facts. As I wrote in July 2017,
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Today’s blacklisted American: Father gets fired immediately after speaking at school board against queer agenda

Afraid and cowed by the queer movement
Afraid and cowed by the queer movement

They’re coming for you next: Immediately after Jason Brunt, a father of three boys in the public schools, gave a three minute speech at his local Sarasota School Board meeting, pleading for the school to provide his “straight” kids a safe space instead of harassing them for their preferred sexuality, queer activists began harassing his family and calling his employer with slanderous accusations, resulting in his immediate firing.

Mr. Brunt said that the attention he received turned into a living nightmare after radical progressive activists started harassing him and threatening his family, including homosexual acts toward his children. They even called his workplace with false accusations, which resulted in his immediate termination.

“However, the attention soon turned into a nightmare. Radical progressive activists began attacking me personally, sending me hate mail and threats. The situation only escalated when I began receiving phone calls at my job, making false allegations and defaming me to an obscene level. To my utter dismay, my employer decided to fire me effective immediately, citing the video as a reason for making people feel unsafe at work. It was devastating to lose a job I had worked so hard to obtain and succeed in,” Mr. Brunt said.

“As an HR professional, I am understanding and supportive of all people to express themselves as they see fit. However, it seems that today, if you disagree with the progressive ideology, you will be canceled and criminalized. It is not right that merely asking for equality and safe spaces for children like mine, I faced an all-out assault on my personal life,” he added.

So, what did this father say that was so egregious? Here is his speech:
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Pushback: Three teachers blacklisted by Rhode Island for refusing the jab score total victory in court

Rhode Island: haven to oppression
Oppressive Rhode Island

Bring a gun to a knife fight: After a legal battle lasting more than a year, three teachers in Rhode Island have won a full victory in court after their school district fired them for refusing the COVID jab in 2021.

The school committee has agreed to full reinstatement with back pay, as well as attorney’s fees, it announced today: “The three teachers have the opportunity to return to teaching positions within the Barrington School District should they choose to do so, at the steps they would have been at had they worked continuously. Each individual will receive a payment of $33,333, along with back payments: Stephanie Hines ($65,000), Kerri Thurber ($128,000), and Brittany DiOrio ($150,000). Attorney fees totaling $50,000 will be paid to the teachers’ legal counsel.”

Piccirilli says the school has also agreed to pay punitive damages totaling $100,000 to be split three ways among the teachers. The teachers’ two-year battle with the district also took a toll on their names and reputations. The agreement requires their termination records to be expunged, Piccirilli explained today in an interview.

The teachers have been made whole in every respect, he says. It is as if they were never fired. [emphasis mine]

These three teachers join the small select group of blacklisted individuals who lost their jobs because they refused the jab but later won in court. Sadly, they are the exception, not the rule. In general, the vast majority of people hurt by all the COVID mandates — from lockdowns to jab mandates — have not been made whole. For example, even though the Biden administration has lost in court repeatedly over its attempt to force government employees to get the jab, it continues to refuse to rehire the many military and civilian employees it fired. In the case of the military this refusal is even more insane and petty, as the Pentagon has been in the last few years falling far short of its recruitment quotas.

Note also that the full announcement by the Barrington school district (available here) not only admits no error, it even underlines how correct it considered its draconian policies. Despite extensive data beginning in the summer of 2021 that the various COVID shots did nothing to prevent transmission, the district still claims everything it did was proper. To quote:
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