Tag: bankruptcy

A new study blasts the European Union’s proposed space act

9:28 am

The European Union
This label would be more accurate if it read
“NOT made in the European Union”

A new study [pdf] just published by the generally leftist Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) has concluded that the proposed European Union’s space act would do great harm to both the European and American space industries if passed and should be reconsidered.

The economic analysis relied on the European Commission’s own estimates of increased compliance costs. The commission projected that the act would increase the cost of manufacturing a satellite in Europe by 2% and a launch vehicle by 1%. The study assumed companies would pass those costs on to customers through average price increases of 2.7%. Depending on price elasticity in each market segment, that could reduce demand by 1% to 13.6%. The resulting loss to European companies would be 245 million euros ($285 million) in annual revenue and 100 million euros in profits, the study concluded.

U.S. companies exporting to the EU would also be affected. The study estimates that American firms would lose 85 million euros in annual revenue and 7 million euros in profits from reduced European sales.

Officials from PPI are further quoted as opposed to the act as presently written, calling for a complete rewrite before passage. As PPI is a decidedly partisan leftwing think tank, formed initially by the Democratic Party in 1989, this clear public opposition to this decidedly leftwing top-down law suggests support for the bill is truly waning.

The bill itself won’t be voted on until the summer of 2026, and even if approved would not begin going into effect until 2027. Considering the opposition from the U.S. and other member nations of the European Union and the European Space Agency, it would demonstrate the EU’s utter disregard for its claimed democratic principles if it were to go ahead and ratify it as presently written. And that remains a possibility.

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House hearing on Artemis yesterday signals strong doubts about the program in Congress

10:54 am

Artemis logo

The space subcommittee of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee yesterday held a hearing on space, one day after the Senate held its own hearing on the nomination of Jared Isaacman as NASA administrator.

The House hearing however was not about Isaacman, but was apparently staged to highlight what appears to be strong reservations within Congress about NASA’s Artemis program, as presently structured. Its timing, just after the Isaacman hearing, was clearly aimed at garnering as much publicity as possible.

Video of the hearing can be seen here.

The focus of the hearing was also on China, and how there is real fear in Congress that its space program is outstripping NASA’s. Both the Republican committee chairman and the ranking Democrat stressed these concerns, and the need to beat China to the Moon and beyond.

More important, all four witnesses pushed the same point.

The rallying cry at this hearing as well as yesterday’s is the “race” with China.

…Foushee asked each of the witnesses for one-word answers to the question: is NASA on track to get back to the Moon before Chinese taikonauts arrive?

Not all succeeded with one word, but their sentiment was similar. Cheng replied “no, I am very pessimistic.” Swope: “worried.” Besha: “maybe.” Griffin: “no possible way…with the present plan.”

Former NASA administrator Mike Griffin was the most blunt in his criticism of NASA.
» Read more

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Boeing is still not off the hook for its malfeasance behind the two 737-Max crashes that killed 346

3:06 pm

Boeing Logo

It turns out that one week after a judge approved a plea deal in early November between Boeing and the Justice Department that would allows the company to avoid a criminal prosecution for its malfeasance and fraud that led to two 737-Max airplane crashes that killed a total of 346 people — thus dismissing the pending criminal charges — the families of the victims filed an appeal, asking a higher court to overturn that deal.

The families had argued before U.S. District Court Judge Reed O’Connor that the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) non-prosecution agreement violated the judicial review provisions, which was reached behind closed doors without the families’ statutory right to confer. The writ of mandamus argues that no substantive proceedings before Judge O’Connor were held before he made his decision in favor of Boeing.

…DOJ initially presented Judge O’Connor with a non-prosecution agreement (NPA) that he rejected. Instead of coming back with something more stringent, DOJ presented Boeing with the lesser punishment of an NPA in which Boeing would merely pay a $243.6 million penalty, give $444.5 million to be divided amongst the 346 families, and make additional investments in its safety and compliance. In exchange, the DOJ agreed to dismiss the criminal charge against Boeing. On November 6, Judge O’Connor approved this revised NPA and granted the government’s motion to dismiss.

The families now look forward to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse this decision through its writ of mandamus. In the writ, Paul Cassell, pro bono, attorneys for the families and professor of the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah, argued on behalf of the families’ that the government’s NPA with Boeing would not provide sufficient oversight of Boeing and failed to account for the fact that Boeing’s criminal behavior was found to have caused the deaths of 346 crash victims. Boeing’s CEO and its lawyers had admitted to the fraud in a guilty plea issued four years ago.

In 2021 Boeing itself pleaded guilty to malfeasance and corruption charges, and was given three years to clean up its act or face criminal prosecution. When after three years Justice found Boeing had instead lied to it while doing little to fix things, it first proceeded with prosecution, only to suddenly back off and make this plea deal.

Thus, the families’ case is strong. Boeing is an admitted criminal and has also done nothing to change its behavior. Whether the families can get the plea deal overturned, however, remains unknown. The legal system no longer can be trusted when it comes to big government contractors like Boeing. The government acts routinely to protect them (as Justice is doing here), and thus there will be heavy political pressure on the courts to turn down this appeal.

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Yesterday’s Senate nomination hearing for Jared Isaacman was irrelevant; America’s real space “program” is happening elsewhere

10:20 am

Jared Isaacman
Billionaire Jared Isaacman

Nothing that happened at yesterday’s Senate hearing of Jared Isaacman’s nomination to be NASA’s next administrator was a surprise, or very significant, even if most media reports attempted to imply what happened had some importance. Here are just a small sampling:

To be fair, all of these reports focused on simply reporting what happened during the hearing, and the headlines above actually provide a good summary. Isaacman committed to the Artemis program, touted SLS and Orion as the fastest way to get Americans back to the Moon ahead of the Chinese, and dotted all the “i”s and crossed all the “t”s required to convince the senators he will continue the pork projects they so dearly love. He also dodged efforts by several partisan Democrats to imply Isaacman’s past business dealings with Musk and SpaceX posed some sort of conflict of interest.

What none of the news reports did — and I am going to do now — is take a deeper look. Did anything Isaacman promise in connection with NASA and its Artemis program mean anything in the long run? Is the race to get back to the Moon ahead of China of any importance?

I say without fear that all of this is blather, and means nothing in the long run. The American space program is no longer being run by NASA, and all of NASA’s present plans with Artemis, using SLS, Orion, and the Lunar Gateway station, are ephemeral, transitory, and will by history be seen as inconsequential by future space historians.
» Read more

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France’s space agency CNES found liable for environmental damage at French Guiana spaceport

9:36 am

French Guiana spaceport
The French Guiana spaceport. The Diamant launchsite is labeled “B.”
Click for full resolution image. (Note: The Ariane-5 pad is now the
Ariane-6 pad.)

France’s space agency CNES, which has taken back management from Arianespace of the French Guiana spaceport it owns, has now been found liable for destroying a protected habitat as it began construction to upgrade the old abandoned Diamant rocket launch site into a pad for several of Europe’s new commercial rocket startups.

In March 2022, the regional environmental authority of French Guiana (DGTM) formally informed CNES that it could not begin demolition or earthworks at the Diamant site without first securing the legally required species and water-law authorisations. Despite this, the agency leveled the area in the preceding weeks, with the environmental NGO CERATO discovering the destruction in April 2022.

In August 2022, the DGTM carried out an unannounced inspection of the Diamant site and found further destruction of protected habitats linked to the agency’s PV2 solar farm project. In October 2022, the PV2 project manager informed DGTM that CNES had known about the presence of protected species on the PV2 site since 1 July 2022, yet began earthworks anyway.

In response to repeated flouting of DGTM procedures, the Prefect of French Guiana, the top regional authority, issued a stop-work order requiring CNES to halt all works at both sites.

It appears this stop-work order has contributed to delays in construction. The news now is that the case appears to have been settled.

The agency has been ordered to repair the damage within three years or face a fine of €50,000. It will also be required to finance ecological compensation actions elsewhere on the grounds of the Guiana Space Centre. The conclusion of the lawsuit will allow the agency to fully resume construction at the site, which it had been ordered to stop in late 2022.

In other words, CNES has been told to spend money elsewhere at the spaceport to make the local environmental authorities happy. It remains unclear how these delays have or even will impact the plans of the Spanish rocket startup PLD, which hopes to do the first orbital launch of its Miura-5 rocket from this site in 2026. PLD expects the first flight-worthy Miura-5 to be delivered to French Guiana early next year, so the delays in French Guiana have not yet effected its plans. That might now change if the site won’t be ready as planned.

This whole story however does indicate a fundamental problem within all of Europe’s space regulatory infrastructure that in the future is likely to hinder the development of its new commercial space industry. Europe’s leadership likes its red tape, and has done nothing to reduce it as it has shifted from the government-run model (where it controls and owns everything) to the capitalism model (where it buys what it needs from an independent competing private sector).

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Russian astronaut kicked out of the U.S. for stealing proprietary SpaceX designs

9:10 am

A Russian astronaut scheduled to fly on the next upcoming Dragon mission to ISS as part of the barter agreement between NASA and Roscosmos, has been removed from that mission after being caught taking pictures of SpaceX equipment in violation of State Department ITAR regulations.

Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev has been removed from the prime crew of SpaceX’s Crew-12 mission to the International Space Station and replaced by fellow Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev after sources alleged he photographed confidential SpaceX materials in California in violation of US export control rules, according to The Insider on December 2.

The outlet reported that Trishkin also said NASA did not want the controversy around Artemyev to become public, while Artemyev was removed from training at SpaceX’s Hawthorne California, facility last week after allegedly photographing SpaceX engines and other internal materials on his phone and taking them off-site.

The sources for this story all come from within Russia but it appears the story is true. It now appears that when the next manned Dragon launches to ISS in February, Fedyaev will fly instead of Artemyev.

The irony of this is that Russia doesn’t really have the capability of developing a comparable SpaceX rocket using this information. If anything, it would be more likely for Russia to sell the information to China in exchange for military hardware it could use in the Ukraine.

Either way, this violation by Artemyev of ITAR does not speak well for the future of the U.S./Russian partnership in space. It will certainly continue until ISS is retired, but this incident cements the likelihood that it will then end. None of the American commercial stations have shown any interest in signing agreemennts with Russia, though they all have signed numerous international deals, some with former Soviet bloc nations and even former Soviet provinces. After ISS Russia will be on its own.

And based on its inability to develop anything new in the past three decades, don’t expect much from it in space.

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Blue Origin faces opposition renewing its permit to dump waste water at Florida launch facility

11:17 am

Chicken Little strikes again!
Chicken Little strikes again!

It appears several local politicians as well as the typical anti-everything activists are expressing opposition to Blue Origin’s request to renew its permit to dump waste water at its Florida launch facility.

Some county commissioners have concerns about the proposal because of how much money and effort has gone to cleaning up the Indian River. “That’s really troubling to me especially when we are spending so much money as a community on the half-cent sales tax and the save the Indian River Lagoon tax,” said Brevard County Commissioner Katie Delaney.

Space experts say large-scale companies don’t necessarily follow rules and regulations put on them. “There has been all sorts of industrial waste issues associated with the aerospace industry not just here in Florida but all across the country,” Florida Tech space professor, Don Platt, said.

The water is likely that used during launches to dampen the shock produced by the rocket’s engines, and like SpaceX’s systems, is almost certainly potable and harmless. This is also a permit that Blue Origin obtained five years ago and has used without harm during all its launchpad tests and launches.

None of this whining really matters, as it appears the county commission has no authority over the matter. The permit was issued by the state’s environmental department which will almost certainly approve the renewal. It is just unfortunate that these whiners almost always get positive coverage from our propaganda press. In this case the local Fox affiliate that reported the story clearly made no effort to research anything. It just simply spouted back the grumbles of these politicians and activists.

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ESA’s member nations approve a major budget increase

9:28 am

The European Space Agency

At the council meeting of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) member nations taking place this week in Bremen, Germany, the council approved a major 32% budget increase for the agency over the next three years.

The largest contributions in the history of the European Space Agency, €22.1 bn, have been approved at its Council meeting at Ministerial level in Bremen, Germany.

Ministers and high-level representatives from the 23 Member States, Associate Members and Cooperating States confirmed support for key science, exploration and technology programmes alongside a significant increase in the budget of space applications – Earth observation, navigation and telecommunications. These three elements are also fundamental to the European Resilience from Space initiative, a joint response to critical space needs in security and resilience.

“This is a great success for Europe, and a really important moment for our autonomy and leadership in science and innovation. I’m grateful for the hard work and careful thought that has gone into the delivery of the new subscriptions from the Member States, amounting to a 32% increase, or 17% increase if corrected for inflation, on ESA’s 2022 Ministerial Council,” said ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher.

How ESA will use this money however remains somewhat unclear, based on a reading of the various resolutions released in connection with this announcement. As is typical for ESA, the language of every document is vague, byzantine, and jargon-filled, making it difficult to determine exactly what it plans to do. Overall it appears the agency will continue most of the various projects it has already started, and do them in the same manner it has always done them, taking years if not decades to bring them to fruition (if ever). It also appears the agency will devote a portion of this money to create new “centers” in Norway and Poland, which as far as I can tell are simply designed to provide pork jobs for those nations and ESA.

The resolutions also placed as the agency’s number one goal not space exploration but “protect[ing] our planet and climate” (see this pdf), a focus that seems off the mark at a very base level. While I could find nothing specifically approving the odious space law that attempted to impose European law globally (and has been vigorously opposed by the U.S.), the language in this document suggests the council still heartily wants to approve that law, and if it doesn’t do so in total it will do so incrementally, bit by bit, in the next few years.

The most hopeful item among these resolutions was the €4.4 billion the council reserved for space transportation, with the money to be used to pay for upgrades to both the Ariane-6 and Vega-C rockets and the facilities in French Guiana, as well as expand ESA’s program encouraging the new rocket startups from Germany, Spain, and France. If ESA uses this money wisely — mostly for the latter item — it will do much to create for itself a competitive launch industry, something it presently does not have.

It will take a bit of time to see how these decisions play out. It remains very unclear at this moment if Europe is choosing the Soviet or the capitalism model for its future in space.

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European Space Agency faces reality: Its partnerships with NASA are fading

10:48 am

The European Space Agency

It appears that the European Space Agency (ESA) is now recognizing that two of its major partnership deals with NASA are likely going to fall apart, and it has therefore begun putting forth new proposals to repurpose those projects during a meeting in Germany this week of its member states.

The two projects are ESA’s Earth Return Orbiter intended to bring Perseverance’s Mars samples back to Earth, and its service module for NASA’s Orion capsule. In the former case, NASA’s decision to cancel the Mars Sample Return Mission leaves that orbiter in limbo. NASA might still fly a sample return mission, but it will almost certainly not do it as originally planned, involving numerous different components from many different sources in a complex Rube-Goldberg arrangement. ESA is now considering repurposing this orbiter as a research spacecraft studying the Martian atmosphere while also being a Mars communications satellite for other missions.

As for the Orion service module, ESA is now recognizing that it is unlikely NASA will continue funding Orion after it completes its presently scheduled missions, totaling at most four. ESA has contracted to build six service modules, and is now studying options for using the last few in other ways, such as a cargo tug in low Earth orbit.

ESA officials are also reviewing its entire future at the conference, considering how private enterprise has completely outrun it in all ways. Its expendable Ariane-6 rocket is a long term financial bust, being too expensive to compete in the modern launch market of reusable rockets. Its proposed IRIS2 satellite constellation will cost too much and launch far too late to compete with the private constellations already in service or being launched by SpaceX, AST-SpaceMobile, Amazon, and China.

To counter this trends, ESA has already made some major changes, shifting ownership and control of its rockets back to the private companies that build them. However, its bureaucracy has appeared resistant to this change, and is apparently lobbying for more funding and control at this week’s meeting, asking the member nations to increase their funding to the agency, giving it a total budget of 22.2 billion euros. There has also been lobbying by ESA supporters for a new Space Law that would supersede the individual space laws of its member states, and also attempt to impose its regulations on non-member nations, beyond its sovereign authority. That law is strongly opposed by the U.S., the private sector, and even some of ESA’s member nations.

The bottom line however is that the nature of the European Space Agency is undergoing major changes, with its work increasingly shifting to its member nations instead of being part of a cooperative effort. While ESA bureaucrats continue to push to protect and strengthen their turf, ESA’s member nations have been increasingly pushing back, and winning that battle.

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Thirty Meter Telescope is finally considering a move to the Canary Islands

8:58 am

The consortium that has been trying to build the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) in Hawaii for more than two decades but has been blocked by native Hawaiian DEI activists, announced on November 11, 2025 that it has finally decided to consider seriously the $740 million offer by the Spanish government is to move the telescope to the Canary Islands.

TMT International Observatory LLC (TIO LLC) announced today that in response to the generous offer from the Spanish Ministry of Science, it is exploring a promising avenue for a new observatory based in Spain.

While the Members of TIO LLC continue discussions regarding the TMT site, this represents a prospective opportunity to allow TIO LLC to proceed with the TMT project. For this reason, TIO LLC will jointly develop with the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities a detailed roadmap toward the potential realization of the TMT at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos (La Palma, Spain).

TMT was about to start construction in 2015, with a completion date expected by 2020. Instead, its construction was blocked by native Hawaiian leftist activists, aided by the support of the Democrats who control Hawaii’s government. Meanwhile, the astronomers in charge of TMT, being modern DEI-trained academics themselves, were generally unwilling to fight hard for their project. It has thus sat in limbo for a decade. Last year it was hit with a final blow within the U.S. when the National Science Foundation announced it would only fund the Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile, leaving TMT short of funds.

All of this remains the stuff of buggy-whips and horse-drawn carriages. Rather than spend billions on this giant ground-based telescope that will be seriously hampered first by the Earth’s atmosphere and second by the half-dozen-plus satellite constellations presently being launched, astronomers would be far smarter to spend that money on a new bigger replacement for the Hubble Space Telescope.

They aren’t, however, because their careers are grounded (literally) on this obsolete technology, and won’t change.

Meanwhile, the end of TMT in Hawaii signals the long-term end of astronomy in Hawaii. Those leftist activists are now in control, and they are outright hostile — to the point of bigotry — to any Western technology or any non-Hawaiians on their islands. They have been pushing to reduce the telescopes on Mauna Kea on the Big Island, and have had some success. Expect them to push harder to remove more in the coming years.

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A Midnight Repost: Farewell to America

12:29 am

I wrote the essay below the day before the November 2024 election, when it remained very uncertain whether it would be Donald Trump or Kamala Harris as our next president.

The essay itself did not get picked up at very many news aggregates. Nor did it garner as much traffic as would be expected, based on the aggregates that did pick it up. I believe the reason was the depressing title.

No matter, the point I made then still holds. The fundamental American culture — based on freedom, family, and the Judeo-Christian values of Western Civilization — that made this the most prosperous place ever created by humankind in its entire history no longer exists.

What will come remains unknown. We might see a resurgence of that culture, especially based on the public’s response following the murder of Charlie Kirk. Then again, we might not. As I said in the very first line of my history, Leaving Earth, societies change.

I repost this essay now, during Thanksgiving week, because I strongly believe it essential that we understand exactly where we stand, in order to make it possible for us to move forward, in the right direction. The essay is also another example of my never-ending and too often successful effort to look farther into the future than others. I think a year later this essay stands up quite well in this sense.

———————————–
Farewell to America

The Liberty Bell
“Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all
the inhabitants thereof.” Photo credit: William Zhang

Despite my headline, this essay is not intended to be entirely pessimistic. Instead it is my effort to accept a reality that I think few people, including myself, have generally been able to process: The country we shall see after tomorrow’s election will not be the America as founded in 1776 and continued to prosper for the next quarter millennium.

The country can certainly be made great again. Elon Musk’s SpaceX proves it, time after time. The talent and creativity of free Americans is truly endless, and if Donald Trump wins it is very likely that energy will be unleashed again, in ways that no one can predict.

The country can certainly become free again. There is no law that prevents the elimination of bureaucracy and regulation, no matter how immortal government agencies appear to be. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 proves this. Though Russia has sadly retreated back to its top-down government-ruling ways, the country did wipe out almost all its bureaucracy in 1991, resulting in an exuberant restart that even today is nowhere near as oppressive as Soviet rule.

Should Donald Trump win, we should have every expectation that he will do the largest house-cleaning of the federal government ever. The benefits will be immeasurable, and magnificent.

What however will not change, even if Donald Trump wins resoundingly tomorrow, is the modern culture and political ethics that now exist. That modern culture is fundamentally different than the America that existed during the country’ s first 200 years, and it guarantees that America can never be the country it once was.
» Read more

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NASA trims $768 million from Boeing’s Starliner contract

9:08 pm

Starliner docked to ISS
Starliner docked to ISS in 2024.

According to one story late today, the modifications NASA announced today on its Starliner contract with Boeing will trim $768 million from the total contract, assuming the two later optional manned missions never fly.

Originally valued at $4.5 billion, Boeing’s contract under the Commercial Crew Program envisioned six operational astronaut flights. NASA’s latest modification cuts that number to four, including up to three crewed missions and an uncrewed cargo flight set for April 2026. Two additional flights remain optional. With the changes, the contract’s value has dropped by $768 million to $3.732 billion; NASA has already paid $2.2 billion to date.

Boeing can still earn that additional money if if somehow manages to convince NASA to do all six flights. It will have great difficult achieving this, however, since there probably won’t be enough time to get all six flights up before ISS is retired. That fact is partly why NASA has made this change.

This report however suggests that NASA is not paying Boeing extra money for the unmanned cargo mission in April 2026. Instead, it is treating it as if it were the first operational manned Starliner flight, paying Boeing its purchase price as if it had achieved all its milestones during the manned demo flight last year.

It really pays in today’s America to be a big giant corporation that does lots of business with our bloated and very corrupt federal government. That government is then quite willing to bend over backwards to help you, even if you are like Boeing and incompetent (Starliner), corrupt (737-MAX), or routinely go over-budget and fail to deliver on time (Air Force One). That certainly appears to be the case here with Boeing.

Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay.

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