Tag: bankruptcy

Europe’s old aerospace industry struggles with the concept of competition

Made in European Union

Two stories today from Europe’s aerospace industry suggest that its older big space companies are having real difficulties dealing with the new space landscape of competition and freedom.

First, Arianespace and Avio issued a statement demanding that Europe require that all European launches occur on European rockets.

The statement warned that without “sustained support,” European rocket builders were at risk of losing out to institutionally backed competitors from the US. “Major space powers support their industries through stable and guaranteed institutional markets, enabling long-term investments, innovation, and the preservation of leadership,” explained the statement.

…The pair argue that Europe risks falling behind not due to a lack of technical capability, but because of structural market weaknesses. While Ariane 6 and Vega-C have demonstrated competitiveness and reliability, they caution that this progress is fragile in the absence of guaranteed long-term demand.

While a preference for European launch providers is clearly in the best interest of both Avio and Arianespace, the pair did reserve a slice for new entrants to the market. “Enshrining European preference as an untouchable principle would support not only Ariane and Vega, but also foster the development of emerging projects in the small launcher sector.” [emphasis mine]

The highlighted sentence reveals the true reasons behind this call against competition. » Read more

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Under Trump FCC shifts from regulating satellite construction and de-orbit to streamlining red tape

FCC seal

According to a Space News article yesterday, the FCC’s regulatory focus since January and the advent of the Trump administration has shifted significantly from its focus during the Biden administration.

The article describes in detail the present focus to streamline regulations and speed license approvals.

One early result of this push is a reduction in the FCC’s licensing backlog. Schwarz said the space bureau has reduced pending applications by 35 percent since January, including those for new space stations and ground infrastructure.

Modernizing regulations for non-geostationary satellite systems is another priority. The FCC is considering revising so-called “power limit” rules aimed at preventing interference between low-orbit constellations and traditional geostationary satellites and earth stations. Schwarz said these reforms could help pave the way for higher-throughput services that rival terrestrial broadband.

This focus appears correctly centered on the FCC’s actual legal statutory authority to regulate the limited bandwidth of the electromagnetic spectrum to avoid conflicts in its use.

Under Biden, the FCC instead focused on expanding its power beyond that statutory authority, claiming it had the right to determine how satellites were built, when they would be de-orbited, and in what manner. None of those activities have anything to do with bandwidth and the FCC’s legal responsibilities.

There was some legislative push back from Congress during the Biden administration, but it was slow and relatively weak. Now that push back has become unnecessary, because the FCC under Trump is back to doing its actual job instead of trying to build empires of regulation.

The agency also appears, for the moment, to have ended its partisan abuse of red tape for political reasons. Under Biden it used its regulatory power against SpaceX in retaliation to Elon Musk’s decision to publicly support Biden’s political opponents. It appears the present effort to speed license approvals for everyone has ended this practice.

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Cruz’s pork/budget bill also adds new taxes to rocket launches

Ted Cruz, a typical
Ted Cruz, a typical “tax-and-spend” Republican

It appears the Senate appropriations bill that was put forth last week by senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), head of the Senate’s commerce committee, was not simply filled with pork, it also establishes a new tax structure for rocket launches, with the money supposedly allocated to pay for the increased red tape required by the FAA.

Cruz’s section of the Senate reconciliation bill calls for the FAA to charge commercial space companies per pound of payload mass, beginning with 25 cents per pound in 2026 and increasing to $1.50 per pound in 2033. Subsequent fee rates would change based on inflation. The overall fee per launch or entry would be capped at $30,000 in 2026, increasing to $200,000 in 2033, and then adjusted to keep pace with inflation.

You can read the bill here [pdf].

In a statement by Cruz during a senate hearing last week, he justified these new taxes as follows:
» Read more

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Why Kennedy’s decision to fire everyone at the CDC advisory panel was only a start

Sudden collapse
One of many sudden public collapses from jab-induced heart failure.
Click for full video.

On June 9, 2025 the head of the Health and Human Services at the federal government Robert Kennedy fired all seventeen members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices (ACIP).

According to Kennedy, each member was appointed by the Biden administration as part of a “concerted effort to lock in public health ideology” and to limit the Trump administration from taking “the proper actions to restore public trust in vaccines.” ACIP members usually serve four-year terms. Because 13 appointees took their seats in 2024, without the complete ouster, the committee would not have had a Kennedy-selected majority until 2028.

“A clean sweep is necessary to reestablish public confidence in vaccine science,” Kennedy said in the HHS release. He will be responsible for appointing the new committee members, which are scheduled to meet from June 25 to June 27 to discuss a slate of vaccines, including those for anthrax, chikungunya, COVID-19, cytomegalovirus, influenza and HPV.

All the usual suspects on the left, including members of Congress and in the propaganda press, immediately went into a hissy-fit, claiming Kennedy’s action was “politicizing the ACIP,” even though it is blatantly obvious that Biden had made his 2024 appointments, just before the election, for his own political reasons.

Politics aside, however, the real reason to dump these Biden-era appointees is that they were also part of the “intellectual” cabal that foisted jab mandates, mask mandates, six-foot social distancing, and lockdowns on everyone. None of these policies were based on any proven science research, and in fact they violated decades of infectious disease policy that recommended doing the exact opposite, across the board.

Worse, there is now clear evidence [pdf] that these same people demanded the imposition of jab mandates, even though they were well aware at the time that the jab caused serious side effects that killed. As noted in this June 11, 2025 report:
» Read more

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House committee moves to eliminate Trump budget cuts to Space Force

Useless: In its first review of Trump’s proposed budget cuts for the Space Force, the House Appropriations Committee, under Republican leadership, immediately moved to not only eliminate those cuts, but to increase the Space Force budget another $300 million.

And these turkeys are adding this money even though they admit, due to Congress’s incompetent budget process, they really have no way to determine exactly how the money will be spent.

The House Appropriations committee took the first step in crafting a FY2026 bill to fund the Department of Defense today, albeit reluctantly. Appropriators from both parties lamented the paucity of data they have about what the money will be used for, but decided to move ahead and mark up their bill at subcommittee level this afternoon. Full committee markup is scheduled for Thursday. President Trump’s request would cut about $2.5 billion from the U.S. Space Force’s budget, but the committee would restore it and add a little more.

According to the new budget put forth by this committee, the Space Force will have a budget of $29 billion, more than even the highest budget figure proposed for NASA.

This is what we can expect now from the Republican leadership in Congress. They will cut nothing, but instead restore all the spending that Trump attempts to eliminate, even money that is expressly designed to help leftist causes. They are worse than useless.

What these idiots don’t realize that if the country goes bankrupt, it will become impossible to accomplish anything. A smart person would realize it is better to only get part of what you want now (so you can maybe get the rest later) than to try to get it all immediately and instead end up with nothing at all.

But then, these are Congressmen. The word “smart” is the last word I would use to describe them.

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Mexican officials demand investigation into Starship/Superheavy debris on its beaches

Mexican officials of the border state adjacent to Texas are now demanding an investigation into Starship/Superheavy debris that has been found recent on its coast, claiming SpaceX is “polluting Mexican beaches.”

Karina Lizeth Saldivar, the head of the Tamaulipas Secretariat for Urban Development and Environment, recently announced that they would be requesting that federal authorities in Mexico investigate the damages and potential damages that rocket fragments could cause.

According to Saldivar, the rocket pieces could pose a potential danger to locals and claimed that her agency would request a formal investigation by Mexican federal environmental agencies. It remains unclear if Mexico’s government could do anything about the issue.

Saldivar is a typical government apparachik. Rather than try to develop the beach area in Mexico that is close to Boca Chica and thus provides a great tourist spot for viewing launches, she instead can only whine and demand the government shut things down.

Meanwhile, the article notes that ordinary Mexicans aren’t complaining. Instead, they have been collecting the rocket pieces enthusiastically, with some making money by selling them as collector’s iten on social media.

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The Senate, led by Ted Cruz, endorses NASA’s failed SLS, Orion, and Lunar Gateway

Let’s all go bankrupt! A bill introduced today by Ted Cruz (R-Texas), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, rejects the Trump budget plan to phase out NASA’s failed SLS, Orion, and Lunar Gateway programs that have cost so far tens of billions for decades without accomplishing anything, and instead expands funding over the next decade to these and many other projects and agencies at NASA.

The bill would allocate $2.6 billion to Lunar Gateway, $4.1 billion to build two more SLS rockets, $20 million to build one more Orion capsule, $1.25 billion more for ISS to continue its operations as is, and $1 billion to upgrade or expand facilities at five NASA centers in Florida, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana.

This pork-laden bill would also fund a Mars Telecommunications Orbiter for $700 million and add $325 million to the $843 million contract NASA has with SpaceX to build the de-orbit vehicle for bringing ISS down in a controlled manner once it is retired.

What this bill tells us is that these Senators, led by “lying” Ted Cruz (to use the nickname Trump pinned on him during the 2016 presidential election campaign), are still unwilling to face the realities of the national debt, and want to spend money we don’t have in order to make believe they are grand explorers sending Americans into space. Instead, these idiots are simply funneling cash to their states in order to bribe voters to vote for them.

As Elon Musk so correctly noted, there is an election coming in 2026. Maybe it is time to throw them all out.

What this bill also tells us is that Trump is going to find it very difficult to get the budget under control. The Senate doesn’t care if the country goes bankrupt. They intend to spend our money like it grows on trees, to hell with the future. Shame on them.

Sadly, these senators know they have the backing of almost the entire press corp, which is why they are doing this. They figure they will get great press for “saving” NASA, even if it bankrupts the country. Worse, it appears the press is all for helping them do so.

R.I.P. America.

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Long delayed ESA project to build a reusable first stage delayed again

The long delayed European Space Agency (ESA) project dubbed Themis to develop and test a reusable first stage for use in European rockets has been delayed again, with the first test hop now expected to occur next year instead of the fourth quarter of 2025.

Themis was first proposed by ESA in 2019, with the first hops expected in 2022. Three years later little has happened in the project. Instead, it appears the nations in the ESA as well as the new rocket startups on that continent have grown very disinterested in government-run projects like this. The closing paragraph at the article at the link illustrates this starkly:

While another delay to the start of the first Themis launch campaign is frustrating, the downstream consequences are likely to be minimal. The only direct application of the technology developed under the Themis programme is the first stage of the two-stage MaiaSpace rocket. However, the company appears to be continuing the development of its first stage largely independently of Themis, meaning the latest delay is unlikely to affect its progress.

In other words, this whole program is divorced entirely from any commercial application. We should therefore expect that once these test flights finally occur, the entire thing will vanish, like so many other similar government-run test programs by NASA and ESA.

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Understanding Trump’s proposed NASA cuts, in the larger context of the overall federal budget

U.S. debt as of June 4, 2025
U.S. debt as of June 4, 2025. Click for original.

For my entire life it has always been the same: Whenever any politician or elected official proposes any cuts to the federal budget, and most especially when those cuts are aimed at a popular government agency like NASA, the news reports in the mainstream press are uniformly hostile.

Trump’s proposal to cut NASA’s budget by 24% in 2026 has been no different. Here are just a few headlines:

This list is only a sampling, but they are typical of almost all the reporting now and that always happens when big cuts are proposed in any government program. The spin is always the same: “These cuts are horrible, their acceptance would be the act of a barbarian, and by doing so will certainly cause the fall of civilization!”

Above all, the focus is always on the cuts themselves, and never on the larger picture.

I am not going to do that. I have reviewed in detail the proposed cuts to NASA, and am now going to take a detailed look, but will do so by considering the larger context of the overall federal budget and the need to get its spending under control.

And out of control that budget is, as indicated by the screen capture above of today’s US Debt Clock. The United States is bankrupt. If we don’t gain some control over federal spending in a very near future some very bad things are going to happen, and soon. And those bad things will likely shut down luxury items like NASA entirely, not just impose some cuts to its overall budget.

All Trump is doing is attempting a first stab at this problem. The real question is whether he has made a rational and reasonable attempt, or whether it should be revised in some manner.

This is the perspective I bring to this issue. I just wish others would do the same.
» Read more

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

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

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

Jared Isaacman

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

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

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

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

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

Everything changed however once Trump nominated him. He had to suspend his private Polaris program. He had to kow-tow to politicians, telling them what they wanted to hear. And he was no longer his own boss.
» Read more

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Trump budget proposes putting a final end to the delayed and blocked Thirty Meter Telescope

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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NASA unwittingly reveals its bankruptcy by its reliance on AI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Senate schedules vote for confirming Jared Isaacman as NASA administrator

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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NASA continues to push Biden-era interpretation of Artemis Accords

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

The key words are highlighted in quotes below.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Space Force to cut civilian workforce by 14%

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

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

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

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

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Fish & Wildlife has expanded its regulatory rule to every tree in much of the U.S.

Areas now subject to regulation if you intend to cut down any trees
The blue and green areas are now subject to
Fish & Wildlife regulation if you intend to cut
down any trees

Apparently in a bid to give itself more power over every proposed building project in the United States, the Fish & Wildlife Service in October 2024 (just before the election) wildly expanded its regulatory rules for protecting endangered bats.

According to the new rules, Fish & Wildlife now considers the removal of any trees at such projects to be a risk to the endangered species, because those trees “may” have been used as roosts and would therefore threaten the species ability to survive if removed.

No matter that there may be thousands of other trees nearby, including many acres of forest. If you are building anything that involves cutting down any trees, you will be subjected to Fish & Wildlife supervision that could block construction. And the area this new rule covers includes almost the entire eastern and northern parts of the United States, as shown on the maps to the right, taken from the new regulation guidelines [pdf].

Long time reader Jack O’Leary informed me of this new power grab. He also sent me information about one particular project in Massachusetts involving the installation of a well and pump station in a forested area southeast of Boston, far from any bat hibernacula. The only impact this project might have on any bats is the removal of some trees, though the project is located in a forested area with hundreds of acres of trees all around (as shown clearly on the satellite view on Google maps).

Yet Fish & Wildlife makes it clear in its letter [pdf] to the project that its “Endangered Species Act requirements are not complete.” Fish & Wildlife admits that the project will pose no direct threat to the endangered bats, but the very act of cutting down a few trees “may affect” the bats, so therefore government regulatory supervision is required.
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South Africa courts Starlink; Musk says no

The South African government appears to be offering Starlink some concessions in order to get it approved in that country, but it also appears that Elon Musk is not interested in the deal, because it would still require the company to impose racial quotas on hiring and ownership that he not only considers immoral, but are illegal by U.S. law.

In an interview at the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha, Musk did not confirm whether a deal had been made with South Africa, as suggested in the reports. However, he maintains that Starlink’s failure to secure a license is attributed to his not being black.

“First of all, you should be questioning why there are racist laws in South Africa; that’s the problem. That’s the issue you should be attacking. The whole idea with Nelson Mandela, he was a great man, was that all races should be on equal footing in South Africa, that’s the right thing to do, not to replace one set of racist laws with another set of racist laws.”

“I was born in South Africa but can’t get a licence to operate in Starlink because I’m not black,” Musk said.

The first link notes that South Africa requires a 30% ownership by “historically disadvantaged groups, primarily Black South Africans,” a racist quota that Musk is likely to reject whole-heartedly.

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In telling us why they are fleeing Trump America, three Yale professors prove they are unqualified for their jobs

What many now label the
The “Poison Ivy League” may have finally
gotten better!

Good riddance! In a New York Times op-ed on May 14, 2025, three former Yale professors attempted to explain why they have quit their jobs at Yale and moved to teach in Canada at the University of Toronto.

Unbeknownst to them, their idiotic and ignorant reasons for leaving demonstrated that they are actually completely unqualified to be college professors, and that Yale (and the United States) will be better off without them.

Professor Stanley is leaving the United States as an act of protest against the Trump administration’s attacks on civil liberties. “I want Americans to realize that this is a democratic emergency,” he said.

Professor Shore, who has spent two decades writing about the history of authoritarianism in Central and Eastern Europe, is leaving because of what she sees as the sharp regression of American democracy. “We’re like people on the Titanic saying our ship can’t sink,” she said. “And what you know as a historian is that there is no such thing as a ship that can’t sink.”

Professor Snyder’s reasons are more complicated. Primarily, he’s leaving to support his wife, Professor Shore, and their children, and to teach at a large public university in Toronto, a place he says can host conversations about freedom. At the same time, he shares the concerns expressed by his colleagues and worries that those kinds of conversations will become ever harder to have in the United States.

As noted in this analysis of their actions, all three say they are doing this because they have studied fascism and thus “equate ‘Make America Great Again’ with Adolf Hitler’s ‘Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer.'”

The analogy is so weak and incoherent as to be laughable. As the essayist in this second link notes, it cheapens the meaning of fascism and in fact suggests these three “professors” don’t have the slightest idea what the word means, despite their claim they have studied it.

More important however are the three quirks of personality illustrated by their position and actions that signify why their are unqualified to be professors to begin with.
» Read more

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FAA issues revised launch window and flight restrictions for future Starship test flights

Flight path for Starship's ninth test flight

Due to the breakup of Starship over the Atlantic during its last two test flights, the FAA today issued [pdf] revised launch window and flight plan restrictions for future flights, in an attempt to placate somewhat the concerns of the United Kingdom.

The map to the right, taken from the FAA assessment, shows in red the area where air traffic is impacted by the next Starship/Superheavy launch, now tentatively planned for next week. Note how the path threads a line avoiding almost all land masses, thus limiting the worst impact to just the Bahamas, the Turks & Caicos Islands. Though the launch will effect 175 flights and require one airport on these islands to close during the launch window, to minimize the impact the FAA has required that the launch window be scheduled outside peak travel periods.

At the same time, the FAA after discussions with the governments on these islands has approved this flight plan, noting that “no significant impacts would occur” due to the ninth flight.

The agency has not yet actually issued the launch license, but it will almost certainly do so in time for SpaceX’s planned launch date. Since the advent of the Trump administration the FAA has no longer been slow walking these approvals in order to retype the results of SpaceX’s investigation. Instead, as soon as SpaceX states it has satisfactorily completed its investigation, the FAA has accepted that declaration and issued a launch license. Expect the same this time as well.

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NASA: Perseverance observed the first visible-light aurora in March 2024

According to a NASA/JPL press release today, Perseverance successfully observed the first visible-light aurora on another world when in March 2024 it photographed a faint aurora overhead, caused by a strong solar flare.

The images at the link are quite unexciting, so much so that I don’t see a reason to include it here. The aurora observed is barely noticeable. Moreover, this is not really a new discovery. Previous observations in the ultraviolet had determined that Mars does have a weak aurora. That in rare circumstances a strong solar event can have it also appear in visible wavelengths is hardly news.

Normally I would have considered this story unimportant enough to list merely as a quick link at the end of the day, but I post it now because of how the mainstream propaganda press has latched onto it as if it is a big deal. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Associated Press all posted stories, giving it far more play than it deserves.

My impression from all these articles is that their reporters know almost nothing about Mars and the research that is going on there, and were easily bamboozled by the press people at NASA and JPL to report this relatively minor story loudly. They no longer have anyone who covers science and space on a regular basis and thus understand the larger context, so therefore their coverage is often shaped entirely by the public relations departments at NASA.

More proof that in today’s internet world, if you want good information the last place you should go is the old dinosaur press.

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Academics in space community scheme to continue their racist DEI policies

USRA logo

A letter sent out yesterday by the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) clearly illustrated the bigoted desire of our modern Marxist academic community to continue its racist Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies in hiring by hiding or renaming them so that the Trump administration might not notice.

USRA is one of several university consortiums that manage a variety of space, science, and astronomical operations for the government. In USRA’s case, it manages the Lunar Planetary Institute (LPI) for NASA.

The letter purported to announce how the organization was complying with Trump’s executive orders banning such race-based programs, but instead revealed its desire to continue them, but to do so under the table where no one could monitor them.
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NASA cancels VIPER solicitation

NASA today announced that it has canceled its solicitation from the private sector, asking for proposals for launching its overbudget and as yet unfinished lunar rover VIPER to the Moon.

NASA announced Wednesday it is canceling its Lunar Volatiles Science Partnership Announcement for Partnership Proposals solicitation, which sought opportunities to send VIPER to the Moon at no cost to the government.

The announcement, which was very short and lacking in any details, stated also that the agency “will announce a new strategy for VIPER in the future.”

Some background: VIPER was originally budgeted at $250 million. When cancelled in 2024 its budget had ballooned to over $600 million, and that wasn’t enough to complete the rover for launch.

This decision suggests the agency did not get any worthwhile proposals. Apparently, no one was interested in paying the cost to get VIPER finished (about $100 million) and launched. It is also likely that the planned Trump budget cuts had an impact on this decision. NASA management probably recognized that there was no way they could con the administration into forking over any money to finance any private proposal.

It is also possible that this cancellation now is part of the typical game NASA managers always play to get Congress to fund bloated programs like this. Cancel it, get the propaganda press to cry about how the cancellation is so terrible, which in turn gets Congress outraged and willing to approve the extra funds.

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FAA approves SpaceX request to increase Starship launch rate at Boca Chica

The FAA today by email announced that it has released the final environmental reassessment that approves SpaceX’s request to increase the number of yearly Starship/Superheavy launches at Boca Chica to as many as 25.

The assessment is now available for public comment, and could still be revised. However, the FAA’s conclusions are clear, as indicated by the highlighted phrase:

The FAA is announcing the availability of the Final Tiered Environmental Assessment and Mitigated Finding of No Significant Impact/Record of Decision (FONSI/ROD) for the SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy Vehicle Increased Cadence at the SpaceX Boca Chica Launch Site in Cameron County, Texas (Final Tiered EA and Mitigated FONSI/ROD).

Under the Proposed Action addressed in the Final Tiered EA, the FAA would modify SpaceX’s existing vehicle operator license to authorize:  Up to 25 annual Starship/Super Heavy orbital launches, including: Up to 25 annual landings of Starship (Second stage); Up to 25 annual landinqgs of Super Heavy (First stage). The Final Tiered EA also addressed vehicle upgrades.

You can read the executive summary of this announcement here [pdf]. The full reassessment can be read here [pdf]. Its conclusion is quite blunt:

The 2022 PEA [Preliminary Environmental Assessment] examined the potential for significant environmental impacts from Starship/Super Heavy launch operations at the Boca Chica Launch Site and defined the regulatory setting for impacts associated with Starship/Super Heavy. The areas evaluated for environmental impacts in this EA [environmental assesssment] included air quality; climate; noise and noise‐compatible land use; visual resources; cultural resources; Department of Transportation Section 4(f); water resources; biological resources (terrestrial and marine wildlife); land use; hazardous materials; natural resources and energy supply; and socioeconomics, and children’s health. In each of these areas, this EA concludes that no significant impacts would occur as a result of SpaceX’s proposed action. [emphasis mine]

As I’ve noted repeatedly, this has all been self-evident for years, as proved by the environmental circumstances at the American spaceports at Cape Canaveral and Kennedy in Florida and Vandenberg in California. Spaceports help the environment by creating large wildlife refuges where no development can occur. We have known this for decades. That the FAA and the federal bureaucracy has in the past five years suddenly begun demanded these long reassessments time after time that simply restate these obvious facts can only be because that bureaucracy wants to justify its useless existence with make-work.

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Australia’s first rocket company continues to be blocked by red tape

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

The first rocket launch by Gilmour Space, Australia’s first rocket company, from its Bowen spaceport on the east coast of Australia has apparently been blocked by continuing bureaucratic regulatory red tape.

In February the company had announced a planned launch date in March, based on what appeared to be the issuance (after more than a year’s delay) of its launch licence. That launch however never happened, with no public explanation, until now. From the link above:

In an update on Sunday, the Queensland-based firm said it had received approval from CASA and is now waiting for final clearance from the Australian Space Agency.

…It had planned for an inaugural blast-off in April 2024 but faced a lengthy delay in obtaining its final permit from the Australian Space Agency.

In other words, the launch license had only been promised, but then was not issued, leaving the company stranded for several more months, with that license still buried in the government’s byzantine operations.

The article at the link says the Australian government is now moving to streamline its space regulatory system, but don’t believe it. The elections this week saw a resounding victory for the leftist coalition with the conservative party defeated handily. With the left now in firm control, expect the regulation to increase, not decrease. Leftwing governments almost never reduce regulation. It goes against their power-hungry genetics.

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