Tag: Congress

Maybe it finally is time we actually made these major budget cuts at NASA

12:05 pm

Chicken Little rules!

This past weekend the pro-government propaganda press has been in an outraged uproar concerning unconfirmed rumors and anonymous reports that the Trump administration is considering major cuts to NASA’s many science divisions and projects, cuts so large that several space missions, such as Mars Sample Return and the Roman Space Telescope, would have to be canceled. Here are just a few examples, with the first few the ones that broke the story:

Of this list, the Politico story is the most amusing. Suddenly this leftwing news outlet loves Musk again, since he is expressing opposition to these cuts. Just days before he was the devil incarnate because of his partnership with Trump in cutting government waste. Now that he might oppose these NASA budget cuts will lefties start buying Teslas again? Who knows? The depth of their thinking is often quite shallow and divorced from rationality.

As is typical of the propaganda press, all these stories focused on quoting only those opposed to the cuts, from Democrats in Congress to leftist activist organizations. Very few offered any alternative points of view. These reports were thus typical of the propaganda press and the Washington swamp whenever anyone proposes any cuts to any government program: We are all gonna die! Civilization is going to end! Only evil people would dare propose such ideas!

The truth is that there are many ample and rational reasons to consider major budget cuts to most of NASA programs. Like the rest of our bloated federal government, NASA is no longer the trim efficient government agency it was in the 1960s.
» Read more

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Congress: Let’s throw some more astronaut lives away so we can preen for the camera!

2:48 pm

Jared Isaacman
Jared Isaacman

Here we go again: As I noted yesterday, the hearing this week of Jared Isaacman, Donald Trump’s nomination to become NASA’s next administrator, revealed almost nothing about what Isaacman plans to do once confirmed by the Senate. He very carefully kept his options open, even while he strongly endorsed getting Americans on the Moon as fast as possible in order to beat the Chinese there. When pressed by senators from both parties to commit to continuing the SLS, Orion, and Lunar Gateway projects to make that happen, Isaacman picked his words most cautiously. He noted that at the moment that plan seemed the best for getting to the Moon first. He also noted repeatedly that this same plan is years behind schedule and overbudget.

Like any smart businessman, Isaacman knows he cannot make any final decisions about SLS, Orion, or Gateway until he takes office and can aggressively dig into the facts, as administrator. He also knew he could not say so directly during this hearing, for to do so would antagonize senators from both parties who want those programs continued because of the money it pours into their states. So he played it coy, and the senators accepted that coyness in order to make believe they were getting what they want.

But what do these senators want? It appears our politicians (including possibly Trump) want NASA to launch humans to the Moon using SLS and Orion and do so as quickly as possible, despite knowing that both have real engineering issues of great concern. Instead, our elected officials want politics to determine the lunar flight schedule, instead of engineering, the same attitude that killed astronauts on Apollo 1 in 1967, on Challenger in 1986, and on Columbia in 2003. The engineering data then said unequivocally that things were not safe and that disaster was almost guaranteed, but NASA and Congress demanded the flights go on anyway, to serve the needs of politics.

With SLS and Orion it is now the same foolishness all over again. » Read more

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Ted Cruz: Isaacman in interview commits NASA to getting Americans to Moon fast

8:52 am

In a tweet posted yesterday, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) revealed that in his private interview with Jared Isaacman, nominee for the post of NASA administrator, Isaacman “committed to having American astronauts return to the lunar surface ASAP.”

During our meeting, Mr. Isaacman committed to having American astronauts return to the lunar surface ASAP so we can develop the technologies needed to go on to Mars.

The moon mission MUST happen in President Trump’s term or else China will beat us there and build the first moonbase.

Artemis and the Moon-to-Mars Program are critical for American leadership in space!

It appears Cruz is trying to apply pressure on Isaacman and the Trump administration to not cancel SLS, as has been rumored for months. Though SLS and Orion have numerous issues, being too costly and cumbersome with risky designs that threaten the lives of any astronauts on board, cancelling them would likely delay any American manned mission to the Moon for several years, possibly allowing China to get there first.

We shall get a better idea of this situation at Isaacman’s nomination hearing, scheduled for tomorrow.

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Senate schedules hearing to review Jared Isaacman’s nomination as NASA administrator

8:59 am

After months of delays, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation yesterday finally announced it has scheduled for April 9, 2025 the confirmation hearing for Jared Isaacman’s nomination as NASA administrator.

I have previously speculated that the delay in scheduling this hearing was because there was opposition to Isaacman among Republicans both in the Senate and inside the White House, based on his past donations to the Democratic Party as well his previously strong support for Divesity, Equity, and Inclusion in his companies. It appears Isaacman must have eased those concerns when he began face-to-face private meetings with several Senate Republicans in the last two weeks, thus allowing the hearing to be scheduled.

Isaacman has been in Washington in recent days for one-on-one meetings with senators, a standard part of the confirmation process before a formal hearing. That included Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kansas), who chairs the committee’s subcommittee on aviation, space and innovation, as well as the Senate Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee on commerce, justice and science, which funds NASA.

Moran said in an April 1 social media post that he met with Isaacman and discussed topics such as exploration and “a shared desire to beat our adversaries back to the Moon” as well as work on science and technology at NASA. “I am eager for the Commerce Committee to quickly conduct a confirmation hearing on his nomination to lead NASA,” Moran stated.

It now appears likely that this opposition is dissolving, and that Isaacman’s confirmation is likely.

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As Space Force switches to capitalism model for its satellites, it will also not name the companies it hires

9:58 am

Capitalism in space: The main reason President Trump got the Space Force established in his first term was because the Air Force resisted rethinking its space military operations. It insisted on building large government-built satellites that took years to complete and always went overbudget and behind schedule.

The creation of the Space Force gave new people the ability to push for a major change, switching to the capitalism model whereby the government designed and built nothing but instead acted as a customer buying what it needed from the private sector. In addition, it allowed a major shift from those big satellites — easy targets for destruction — to the large private constellations of many small satellites, cheap to build and launch and difficult for other militaries to take out.

The Space Force — in order to protect the satellite companies it hires to build these satellites — has now announced that it will no longer publish the names of those companies.

The U.S. Space Force plans to keep the names of commercial companies participating in its new space reserve program under wraps, aiming to protect them from potential adversary threats as commercial satellites play a growing role in military operations.

Col. Richard Kniseley, director of the Space Force’s Commercial Space Office, said companies signing agreements under the Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve (CASR) program can disclose their participation but are not required to. “That potentially puts a target on their back,” Kniseley told SpaceNews, underscoring the risk to private-sector firms providing space-based services during wartime.

Under this program, the Space Force has already signed contracts with four satellite companies, but the names remain undisclosed.

Though there is some logic to this decision, it carries great risk of corruption and misbehavior. Almost every time government bureaucrats and private companies are allowed to work in secret we routinely see kickbacks, bribery, and contract payoffs. And don’t expect congressional oversight to prevent such things, since there is now ample evidence from DOGE that our federal lawmakers have been quite willing to take their own payoffs to allow such corruption to prosper.

The switch to capitalism by the Pentagon is unquestionably a good thing. It will get more done for less. Letting it act in secrecy is a mistake however. Better to live with the risk of attack than allow our government and the companies it issues big money contracts to do things behind closed doors.

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Rolling Stone provides more details about Jared Isaacman and his nomination as NASA administrator

10:08 am

Jared Isaacman
Jared Isaacman

This article from Rolling Stone published yesterday provides a wealth of new information about Jared Isaacman, Trump’s still unconfirmed pick to become NASA’s next administrator.

Two key details: First, the article quotes Isaacman saying he opposes NASA’s policy of signing up two companies, SpaceX and Blue Origin, to build manned lunar landers.

I will try to help, but this is why I get frustrated at two lunar lander contracts, when will be lucky to get to the [Moon] a few times in the next decade. People falsely assume its because I want SpaceX to win it all, but budgets are not unlimited & unfortunate casualties happen.

In other words, he opposes using NASA to develop an aerospace industry with multiple companies capable of doing things NASA needs done. He also appears to dismiss the value of redundancy that two landers provides.

Second, the article provides links to the financial [pdf] and ethics [pdf] disclosures that he submitted to the government after being named as nominee. In the financial statement he indicates he paid SpaceX more than $50 million for providing the transportation for his multi-mission Dragon/Starship Polaris Dawn manned program. In the ethics statement he asserts he would end that contract if confirmed as NASA administrator, with SpaceX refunding any monies for services not yet rendered. The program itself would be suspended until Isaacman completes his term as administrator.

The Rolling Stone article, though detailed and fair-minded, appears to strongly endorse Isaacman, and thus joins a growing public campaign from many insider Washington players — a large number of whom have been passionately hostile to Donald Trump — to get Isaacman approved. At the moment however his nomination appears stalled because the Trump administration has not yet submitted to the Senate the paperwork needed to allow that body to schedule hearings.

The strange campaign by many of Trump’s opponents to endorse Isaacman continues to suggest to me that the Trump administration has had second thoughts about its NASA nominee. The swamp now wants him, and this is raising hackles inside the administration, which thus explains the slow-walking of his paperwork.

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Is the nomination of Jared Isaacman as NASA’s administrator facing political headwinds?

10:18 am

Jared Isaacman
Jared Isaacman

I admit immediately that I have no inside information to back up the speculation that will follow. Instead, it is based entirely on my fifty years of experience observing the political machinations that take place inside the DC swamp.

In the past week there have been a slew of stories all aimed at pressuring Congress to quickly confirm Jared Isaacman (billionaire, jet pilot, businessman, and commercial astronaut), Trump’s pick to be NASA’s next administrator. For example, two days ago NASA’s last Republican-appointed administrator Jim Bridenstine publicly called for Isaacman’s confirmation by the Senate.

“I think Jared Isaacman is going to be an amazing NASA administrator,” he said. “I think he’s got all the tools to be what could be the most consequential NASA administrator given the era in which we live in now.” That era, he said, involves greater reliance on commercial space capabilities. “He’s going to be able to take that and do things that have never been able to be done before.”

This week there was also an article in Space News, touting Isaacman’s desire to increase funding to NASA’s planetary defense program, expressed by him in February when it looked like asteroid 2024 YR4 had a good chance of hitting the Earth in 2032.

Furthermore, a group of seven Republican senators this week also joined the chorus, sending a letter [pdf] to Senators Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Maria Cantwell (D-Washington), the chair and ranking members respectively of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, extolling Isaacman in glowing terms and calling for his quick confirmation.

So with all this enthusiastic support bubbling out everywhere, why do I suspect Isaacman might actually be in trouble?
» Read more

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Democrats: A party so filled with hate it can’t even cheer a child because Trump introduced him

1:32 pm

In the next day or so you will hear a lot of analysis of Trump’s speech yesterday to Congress, both good and bad. The bulk of that commentary will focus on what Trump has or has not accomplished, for good and ill. Some will talk about the overall foolish behavior of many Democrats, who refused to applaud anything Trump said (something Trump predicted would happen near the start of the speech), with one Democrat getting ejected from the building for heckling the president and refusing to stop.

During such speeches presidents usually tout their past achievements and future goals. With each proclamation, the members of that president’s party will repeatedly give him a short standing ovation, with the opposition party usually sitting quietly. This fake theater is one reason I generally don’t watch such events, relying on reviewing them after the fact to save a LOT of time.

Another tradition during these speeches is for the president to invite several ordinary citizens to attend in order to honor them in some way. At these moments, when the president introduces the citizen, the entire room would routinely stand and cheer, because these individuals are generally not party partisans, and the ruling president and his party usually have nothing to do with that person’s particular achievement.

Last night however was starkly different, and the screen capture below captures the one moment that demonstrates so fully the utterly bankrupt nature of the Democratic Party. One of the private citizens Trump invited to honor was a 13-year-old boy, DJ Daniel, who five years ago was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and given only six months to live. Five years later he is still alive and healthy, and proudly wears a police uniform frequently in public because of his dream to be a cop someday.
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House committee holds hearing to protect its Artemis pork

9:50 am

The space subcommittee of the House science committee yesterday held a hearing which appears to have been mostly designed to protect the Artemis pork that both parties have been funding for decades, designed not to get us into space but to funnel tax dollars into their districts.

The hearing had only two witnesses, one pro-SLS (Dan Dumbacher) and one only very slightly skeptical of it (Scott Pace). Both these men have been deep members of the Washington swamp for decades, and both made it clear that funding should continue for SLS, at a minimum through the third Artemis launch, presently scheduled for ’27, a launch date so uncertain no one should believe it.

NASA had been invited to send a witness, but it apparently declined to do so.

Pace, the supposedly skeptic of SLS, has actually been a big supporter for years. As executive secretary for Trump’s National Space Council during Trump’s first term, he consistently advocated big space and NASA-built rockets, showing continuous skepticism of commercial space. Even now, his suggestion that SLS be reconsidered after that third launch was very hesitant.

Essentially, this committee hearing was called by these congress critters to advocate the status quo, which is likely why NASA declined to send a witness. Why give them a chance to blast any potential or major change in Artemis and have the propaganda press savage NASA and the Trump administration with negative soundbites?

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Another Democrat demonstrates her stupidity and ignorance, demanding NASA’s acting administrator revoke Musk’s access to headquarters

9:57 am

Congresswoman Grace Meng (D-New York)
Congresswoman Grace Meng (D-New York), describing
her terror when ordinary Americans walked through the
Capitol on January 6th, almost all of whom simply took
pictures. Click for video.

Proving she knows nothing about the Constitution and the powers it gives to the President, congresswoman Grace Meng (D-New York) earlier this week sent a letter to NASA’s acting administrator Janet Petro demanding that Petro revoke any access to the agency’s headquarters by Elon Musk as part of his work auditing government operations as part of Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Meng’s letter [pdf] is quite entertaining, especially because it repeats the new Democratic Party talking point that somehow because DOGE employees, including Musk, were “unelected” their access is inappropriate. How stupid. Except for the president, everyone who works in the executive branch of government is “unelected.”

That Meng also thinks NASA’s acting administrator has the power to block access to someone hired specifically by the president to do this work shows us how ignorant she is of the Constitution and basic law. Petro can’t cancel Trump’s orders, even if she wants to. Trump is her boss, and if he tasks Musk and DOGE to audit NASA’s books, she must comply.

There is only one part of Meng’s demand that makes some sense, where she demands Petro “set clear and public ground rules” to keep Musk from getting access to proprietary information of other space companies. Musk certainly has a conflict-of-interest issue at NASA, and such rules make sense. I am also quite sure that Musk is well aware of this issue, and will purposely leave the DOGE audit to others.

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It won’t be Democratic Party stupidity that will give Republicans victories in ’26 and ’28

12:06 pm

Vultures eating carrion
Democrats in Washington

In the past few weeks there have been a number of very entertaining essays describing the insane inability of Democrats to learn anything from their defeats in the 2024 elections. From the second link:

The Democratic Party just can’t help itself. For its own psychological reasons, it can’t move beyond the “denial” stage of grief. Doing so would jeopardize the party’s sense of purpose, identity, and ego. Right now, the “patient” cannot heal itself because it won’t accept the diagnosis.

Instead, it rejects it: Trump is Hitler! Musk is Hitler! MAGA is Hitler! I’m the only one defending democracy!

A sane, rational actor would take a step back and consider his own role in losing three branches of government, a majority of statehouses, and two-thirds of the Supreme Court. And then they’d develop a better product.

Fortunately for the GOP, they’re just not ready for that level of introspection. Not yet. (And probably not until it’s forced upon them.)

And so, the losing losers of the Democratic Party continue to lose. They can’t even counterpunch effectively, because they overreact to every feint. They’re so ridiculously undisciplined, they’re chasing shadows, following the champ around the ring like a puppy dog — eating a buffet of rights, jabs, and uppercuts. [emphasis in original]

All true, but if conservatives think this stupidity on the left will win Republicans the mid-term elections in ’26 and the next presidential election in ’28, they are fooling themselves. » Read more

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Trump has finally taught Republicans how to fight

3:48 pm

Trump defiant after being shot
Trump defiant

One of the biggest complaints conservatives have had about the Republican Party for decades is that its politicians just would not fight. At the slightest hint that a Democrat was offended or disagreed, they’d fold like a house of cards. And their fear of the propaganda press made them so timid that Democrats could literally do anything and get away with it (as we are now finding out in the USAID scandal, which became a money laundering operation funneling taxpayer funds to partisan leftist organizations and media outlets).

Well, no more. Donald Trump got elected the first time and the second time because the one thing that stood out about him was his unwillingness to back down, and to “Fight! Fight! Fight!” As time has passed and he has been subjected to these same kinds of Democratic Party slander games, instead of folding he has grown stronger and more defiant. And his unwillingness to bow has taught the new generation of Republicans to fight as hard, to not back down, and to stick it right back at Democrats when they try this game.

Today congresswoman Nancy Mace (R-South Carolina) demonstrated she is part of this new generation. In questioning several witnesses about USAID’s absurd and corrupt funding of queer projects in foreign nations, she bluntly used the correct but shortened term for those who like to cross-dress, “tranny” for “transvestites.” This did not sit well with one Democrat, congressman Gerry Connolly (D-Virginia). Watch and be entertained by her response:
» Read more

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Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) now demands “forced mandatory vaccinations”

3:02 pm

During confirmation hearings this week on Trump’s nominee to take over the Department of Health and Human Services Robert Kennedy, Jr., Democrat Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island once again demonstrated his fascist and petty dictator nature, demanding that Kennedy support “forced mandatory vaccinations” of Americans or else he will vote against Kennedy’s nomination.

Whitehouse also demanded that Kennedy promise to never again say “that vaccines are not medically safe when they in fact are.”

In other words Kennedy is to put aside his own research and knowledge, that has found some vaccines efficacy and safety are questionable, and join the government swamp to lie to Americans while forcing Americans to take drugs they might not want.

Sounds insane? If you don’t believe me then watch:
» Read more

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DeSantis: Put NASA headquarters in Florida

9:53 am

At an event yesterday Florida governor Ron DeSantis proposed moving NASA headquarters to Florida, saving the half a billion dollars NASA now wants to spend to build a brand new gold-plated new headquarters building in Washington.

[DeSantis:] “They have this massive building in Washington, D.C., and like nobody goes to it. So why not just shutter it and move everybody down here? I think they’re planning on spending like a half a billion to build a new building up in D.C. that no one will ever go to either. So hopefully with the new administration coming in, they’ll see a great opportunity to just headquarter NASA here on the Space Coast of Florida. I think that’d be very, very fitting.”

The NASA transition team for the Trump administration is already sent out a trial balloon about cutting the size of NASA headquarters considerably. That team has also proposed eliminating NASA centers in California and Maryland and consolidating their work into the Marshall Center in Alabama.

Note the trend: All these moves shifts money from decidedly Democratic states to Republican ones. The announced goal would be to reduce NASA’s overhead, but at the same time the moves would take money and power away from Democrat strongholds.

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More evidence SLS and Orion are on the way out

11:12 am

An article today by a local Fox station in Orlando calling NASA’s decision to fly the next Artemis mission using the Orion capsule as a return to the bad culture that caused both shuttle accidents is strong evidence that the political winds are now definitely blowing against the future of both NASA’s SLS rocket and its Orion capsule.

The article interviews former NASA astronaut Charles Camarda, who expressed strong reservations about NASA’s willingness to make believe the failures of the Orion heat shield on its only test flight could be dismissed.

“The way they’re attacking the problem is echoes of Challenger and Columbia, using exactly the same bad behaviors to understand the physics of the problem,” [former astronaut Charles Camarda] said. “They’re not using a research-based approach.” Camarda worries NASA is pressing ahead with the current heat shields because he says “a lot of the engineers are afraid to speak up, and that’s a serious problem.”

The point is not the article itself, but that a mainstream propaganda news outlet is publishing this perspective. This fact suggests that there is a growing willingness within the political community to end both SLS and Orion, and articles such as this are used to strengthen that narrative. Politicos in DC have a great fear of canceling big projects, and for them to agree to do so requires a great deal of groundwork to make sure the public will accept the decision. Articles such as this one are thus published in the propaganda press for exactly this reason.

In other words, the Washington swamp has now begun its own campaign to cancel SLS and Orion.

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Alabama Republican congressman introduces spaceport funding bill to help a non-spaceport

10:00 am

In an example of the typically corrupt behavior of the Washington swamp, Alabama Republican congressman Dale Strong yesterday introduced a bill dubbed the Spaceport Project Opportunities for Resilient Transportation (SPACEPORT) act that has a lot of high-minded goals, but is mainly designed to funnel federal money to local regions. To quote Strong himself:

“The U.S. is the global leader in space, and North Alabama is at the forefront of that effort,” Strong said. “As former Chairman of the Madison County Commission, I worked closely with local city officials and commercial space stakeholders to secure Huntsville International Airport’s designation as the first entry site for space vehicle landings. I understand the preparation, coordination, and support required to safely and efficiently manage space launches and reentries. North Alabama is ready to leverage our unparalleled civil, commercial, and national security space expertise to support space infrastructure projects and the future of space exploration.” [emphasis mine]

Huntsville International Airport is not a spaceport. Giving it cash for this is nothing more than pork and a waste of the taxpayer’s money.

Strong’s bill is merely a proposal, and has been announced I think mostly to give this guy a photo-op. Nonetheless, it shows that we cannot trust any politician to do what they say. The Republicans always run on cutting the budget, but here we have a Republican eagerly proposing we spend money we don’t have in order to provide pork to his district. It is essential that his own constituents tell him in no uncertain terms that this kind of legislation is not what they hired him for. If they don’t, then things in Washington will only continue to do downhill.

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NSF punts on its two big telescope projects

10:50 am

Because it presently does not have sufficient funds to build both the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) in Chile and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) in Hawaii, the National Science Foundation (NSF) asked an independent panel to look at both projects and give recommendations on which project it should go with.

That report [pdf] has now been released, and its conclusions essentially take the advice of former Yankee catcher Yogi Berra, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” From the report’s executive summary:

Both GMT and TMT have strong leadership, partnership and financial commitments but require $1.6 billion in NSF funding to proceed. Without this support, significant delays or project cancellations may result. The panel emphasized the critical need for congressional support, noting that without additional appropriations, NSF may face challenges balancing these projects with other national priorities, risking U.S. competitiveness in fundamental research. [emphasis mine]

If you dig into the report however you find that TMT is a far more uncertain project. GMT is already being built, while TMT is stalled because it has been unable to get political approval to build in Hawaii on Mauna Kea, even though it initially wanted to start construction almost a decade ago.

Clearly, this report was created simply as a lobbying ploy by the NSF to Congress. NSF didn’t want the report to make a choice. It wanted it to endorse both telescopes so that — rather than bite the bullet and fund one telescope with the money it has already been given by Congress — NSF could use the report to demand more funding so that it can fund both.

Though Congress is now controlled by more fiscally-minded Republicans, don’t expect them to be anymore responsible on this issue than Democrats. These guys really don’t understand basic economics, and think they have a blank check for anything they wish to do. I anticipate Congress will give NSF the extra cash for both telescopes.

The problems for TMT remain, however, and even with that cash it remains very doubtful the telescope will be built. But gee, that won’t be a problem for NSF. Who wouldn’t like getting an extra billion or two to spend as one wishes?

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NASA: forcing it to fly VIPER would cause it to cancel funding to 1 to 4 other commercial lunar landers

10:31 am

VIPER's planned route on the Moon
VIPER’s now canceled planned route at the Moon’s south pole

According to a response by NASA to a House committee and obtained by Space News, if Congress forces the agency to fly its canceled VIPER moon rover NASA would have to cancel funding to one to four other commercial lunar landers being built by private companies as part of NASA’s CLPS program.

In one scenario, NASA assumed VIPER would launch on Astrobotic’s Griffin lander as previously planned in September 2025. The agency estimated it would need to spend $104 million to prepare VIPER itself, $20 million of which had already been allocated for activities in fiscal year 2024, along with $20 million in “additional risk mitigation activities” for Griffin. “NASA estimated that these additional funding requirements would lead to cancellation of one CLPS delivery and delay of another delivery by a year,” it stated.

A second scenario anticipated a one-year slip in VIPER’s launch to September 2026. NASA projected an additional $50 million in costs for VIPER and $40 million for Griffin. That would have resulted in two canceled CLPS task orders and a one-year delay to two others.

NASA also revealed it considered “alternative delivery means” for VIPER other than Griffin. NASA did not disclose details about those alternatives, calling them “highly proprietary” but which would have delayed the launch of VIPER beyond 2026 “and would still include significant uncertainty about the reliability of delivery success.” NASA projected total costs of $350 million to $550 million with this scenario, resulting in the cancellation of four CLPS task orders and delaying three to four more by two years.

NASA preferred option is for a private company to take over VIPER. At the moment the agency is reviewing eleven proposals put forth by such companies that has “enough spaceflight experience and technical abilities to conduct the VIPER mission.”

Congress has gotten involved because the science community has lobbied hard to save it. The project itself has been a problem for NASA since its first iteration as Resource Prospector, when NASA would have built both the rover and lander. It has consistently gone over budget and behind schedule, even after NASA gave the lander portion to a private company, Astrobotic. At present the rover is 3X over budget with more overages expected, which is why NASA cancelled it.

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NASA’s annual audit is not only not as great as NASA claims, it illustrates how the poison of DEI permeates the agency

3:43 pm

Not all is well at NASA
Not everything is as great as NASA claims

Yesterday NASA issued a press release proudly announcing that its annual independent audit of NASA’s finances concluded “for the 14th consecutive year … an unmodified, or ‘clean,’ opinion [of] its fiscal year 2024 financial statements.”

The rating is the best possible audit opinion, certifying that NASA’s financial statements conform with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles for federal agencies and accurately present the agency’s financial position. The audit opinion reaffirms the agency’s commitment to transparency in the use of American taxpayers’ dollars.

In reading the actual financial statements and auditor’s report (available here [pdf]), I found however that all is not “clean”, as NASA claims. Two issues of concern — one financial and the other political — are well buried in the report and should be quickly dealt with by the upcoming Trump administration.

Sloppy bookkeeping

First, the independent auditor, Ernst & Young, found that NASA’s internal control system designed to track spending was not quite up to par. From pages 90-91 of the report:
» Read more

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A space journalist suddenly notices that the FCC has no legal authority to regulate space junk

9:34 am

An article posted yesterday at Space News was unusual in that this mainstream media space news source and its reporter suddenly recognized, more than a year late, that the FCC’s effort to impose regulations on all satellite companies requiring they build satellites a certain way to facilitate their de-orbit at the end of their lifespan, is based on no statutory authority and is thus illegal.

[A] Supreme Court ruling in June struck down a principle widely known as “Chevron deference,” which gave agencies greater latitude in interpreting ambiguities in laws they enforced. The move has raised questions over the FCC’s space sustainability jurisdiction without a federal law that explicitly authorizes it or other agencies to establish and enforce debris mitigation rules.

Still, the FCC is seen as the logical agency to handle the risk of orbital debris. If courts rule that the FCC has not been granted the authority, Congress will likely address this once it gets around to tackling the issue.

My, my! You mean a federal bureaucrat doesn’t have the right to make law out of thin air, just to facilitate what that bureaucrat thinks should be done? Who wudda thought it!

As an old-fashioned American who believes in freedom and limited government (as clearly established by our Constitution) I had recognized this legal fact immediately in January 2023, when the FCC first made its power grab. That our young modern journalists don’t understand this is both tragic and disgraceful.

What makes this even more disgraceful is that the entire article lobbies hard for the FCC, claiming with no real evidence that “the FCC is seen as the logical agency to handle the risk of orbital debris.”

What this reporter should have known and reported is that both the House and the Senate have disgreed, forcefully. In the House one bill was introduced to give the de-orbit regulatory power to the FAA, while later rejecting a second bill that would have given that power to the FCC. The Senate meanwhile introduced its own bill giving this de-orbit regulatory power to the FAA and Commerce, not the FCC.

Sadly it is probably a mistake to give any government agency too much power in this matter, but our Congress will do so regardless. That is how things are done nowadays. Americans are expected to kow-tow to Washington regulators, in everything they do. Freedom is not the default approach. Regulation is.

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NASA requests industry proposals for its canceled satellite refueling demo mission

9:14 am

NASA today issued a request-for-information, asking the commercial aerospace industry for “alternate use” ideas for using the “flight hardware, test facilities, and experienced personnel” of its canceled satellite refueling demo mission, dubbed OSAM.

The request suggests NASA is hoping a private company will pick up the mission at its own cost, thus getting it off NASA’s hands. The agency canceled it because it is almost a decade behind schedule, hundreds of millions of dollars over-budget, and has an absurd workforce of 450 people. The agency is also under pressure from the Senate not to cancel the project, because our idiotic elected officials like to make-believe that funding these make-work projects accomplishes something.

Even if a private company takes on the project, if it does so at its own expense that workforce is certain to be reduced, possibly as much as 90%. No commercial satellite company is going to get saddled with that cost. It will want NASA to pay the bill.

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Trump indirectly tells us the swamp WILL be drained if he is re-elected

1:31 pm

Trump defiant after being shot
Trump defiant

Today I saw a short clip of Donald Trump answering a question about whether he is getting the normal intelligence briefings traditionally given to all presidential candidates. His answer was startling:

Well I could [get them] if I wanted them, but I don’t want them. … They come in, they give you a briefing and then two days later they leak it and then they say you leaked it. The only way to solve that problem is not to take them.

On its face Trump is simply telling us he is now being careful with whom in the government he deals with. On a deeper level, he is showing us that he is no longer the naive businessman he was in 2016. At that time he wanted very much to reform Washington, but he thought he had the good will of the people in Washington to help him do it. (Remember, for most of his life he was a dedicated Democrat with many friends on the left.)

Instead, he found himself stymied and back-stabbed and attacked on all levels. » Read more

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NASA reconsiders cancellation of overbudget and behind schedule robotic refueling mission

8:59 am

Due to some pressure from Congress (which wants the 450 jobs the project employs), NASA is now reconsidering its cancellation of the On-Orbit Servicing, Assembly and Manufacturing (OSAM) 1 mission, designed in the late 2000s to demonstrate the robotic refueling of a dead satellite but is so overbudget and behind schedule that in the interim private enterprise accomplished the same goal now repeatedly for a fraction of the cost.

Language in the final fiscal year 2024 appropriations bill, released just days after NASA’s cancelation announcement, which fully funded OSAM-1 at $227 million, directed NASA to adjust the mission to launch in 2026 within the spending profile NASA included in its 2024 budget request. That could be done, the report accompanying the bill suggested, through “potential de-scoping of some non-essential capabilities,” adding that if it is not possible, NASA should conduct another continuation review in September.

In other words, Congress wants NASA to keep this project, even if it means cutting the budget of other more useful and valuable missions.

OSAM has cost a billion dollars so far, and after almost fifteen years has not yet flown. Meanwhile, Northrop Grumman’s MEV servicing robot has already provided fuel to several dead satellites, while orbital tug startups are flying missions and developing the same refueling capabilities for far less. The industry doesn’t need this demonstration mission anymore. It has already demonstrated it, and done so better.

Moreover, why the heck does OSAM require 450 people? That number is absurd, and likely exceeds the payrolls of all the orbital tug companies plus Northrop’s robotic servicing division combined.

There is hope for the American taxpayer. The legislative recommendations above come solely from the Senate. The House appears less interested in spending this money. And NASA has not yet decided what it will do.

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FAA releases proposed environmental assessment of Boca Chica permitting more Starship/Superheavy launches

10:19 am

Superheavy/Starship lifting off on March 14, 2024
Superheavy/Starship lifting off on March 14, 2024

In advance of several planned public meetings, the FAA today released [pdf] its proposed environmental assessment of SpaceX’s proposal to increase the number of orbital launches allowed per year from Boca Chica from 5 to 25.

The report makes for some fascinating reading. First and foremost it indicates the FAA’s general approval of this new launch cadence. That approval however must also be given by the public in comments at those meetings, as well as by the National Park Service (NPS), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Expect serious objections from the NPS and USFSW, both of which have acted to slow or stop SpaceX in the past, when each was given the opportunity. Both have a new opportunity here.
» Read more

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Senate gives NASA cash to stop its tantrum

9:35 am

Surprise, surprise! As expected after NASA proposed major cuts in several missions, such as the Chandra Space Telescope and the OSAM demo robotic refueling mission, the subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee has rejected those cuts and instead proposed that NASA not only get everything it asked for, it be forced to take more money than it requested.

I am certain that NASA is not going to complain, as this was its plan from day one. The cancellation of Chandra was intended as a toddler’s tantrum that our weak Congress was certain to bow to and come up with the cash. It has now done so.

The report directs NASA to spend at least $98.3 million on Hubble and up to $72.1 million on Chandra, similar to the budgets for those missions in recent years, emphasizing the ability of the telescopes to work in conjunction with the James Webb Space Telescope.

In this case the Senate action makes some sense, as these cuts would have been penny wise and pound foolish. But NASA knew that. If the Senate was really interested in controlling the budget (which it is not) it would have funded Chandra and Hubble as described, but demanded cuts from NASA elsewhere.

Instead the Senate committee not only demands that these telescopes be maintained, it doles out extra money the nation doesn’t have for other projects that NASA wanted to cut for entirely legitimate reasons. OSAM for example was conceived more than a decade ago as a mission designed to demonstrate robotic refueling in space. After spending a billion and a decade, it had still not flown, and during that time private companies had not only successfully demonstrated this capability several times for far less, they had done so in a far simpler and more profitable manner. The technical need for OSAM was gone. Why spend the additional billion we can’t afford for a project that will prove nothing?

Congress, especially the Senate, likes wasting money however, and so the appropriations committee in an entirely bi-partisan effort is pushing to revive OSAM, as well as several other projects that have either gone over budget or NASA had deemed correctly were unaffordable.

The dark age has already begun in many ways, but its official start will be marked by future historians by the date the United States undergoes a full financial collapse, due to its government’s unwillingness to rein in a national debt that is now in the many many trillions and growing uncontrollably each day.

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Everything connected to Washington and the Democratic Party stinks like a rotting corpse

1:00 pm

I didn’t post an essay yesterday because I could not figure out what to write. The insanity of the past week, with Trump’s near assassination, the horrendous incompetence of the Secret Service, the sudden disappearance of Joe Biden, and then his somewhat mysterious withdrawal from the candidacy of the presidency, all presented too many topics that were changing too fast to digest.

Vultures eating carrion

All I can now take from these events is an impression of a rotting corpse, the Democratic Party, that the voters should have buried decades ago. Instead, the voters have propped it up, allowing its stink to spread until it has poisoned everything related to American government and the noble but now dying principles that formed it.

For example, it now appears that the colossal security failure on July 13th during Trump’s Pennsylvania rally was the result of providing the Secret Service too few resources, forcing it to depend more on local authorities than normal. The Secret Service and the local police then showed themselves to all be utterly incompetent. It appears communications between these different government agencies was poor or non-existent. The local people were supposed to secure the top of the roof where the assassin eventually placed himself, but decided instead to go inside the building because the roof “was too hot.”

Unfortunately, it seems this decision wasn’t conveyed to the Secret Service properly. It therefore appears Crooks was able to station himself on the roof and fire at Trump because the Secret Service thought he was a local police sniper.

At least, that’s my interpretation of the facts, as presently understood. » Read more

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Another “rightwing COVID conspiracy theory” proves to be true

12:59 pm

Today's modern witch hunt
Burning witches: The debate technique used by
those in charge during the Wuhan panic

Since the very beginning of the COVID panic in 2020 many perfectly reasonable people, both inside and outside the medical community, suggested that COVID was artifically created and that the evidence strongly suggested its source was from a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Worse, the evidence suggested that this work was partly funded by the United States itself — approved by federal bureaucrats like Anthony Fauci — that funnelled government contracts to China to do dangerous infectious disease research which that hostile nation could then use against us.

Unfortunately, those individuals found themselves routinely mocked as pushing a “rightwing COVID conspiracy theory,” with many finding their careers destroyed by blacklisting. During those dark times it was forbidden to ask any questions that went against the leftist government narrative that pushed the myths that COVID was a deadly perfectly natural disease, that lockdowns, masks, and social distancing were the only ways to stop it, and that in the end only the COVID jab could cure it.

We now know without question that those accepted wisdoms, enforced by brutal intolerance, were all wrong, and that the blackballed individuals who advocated otherwise were 100% correct.

Or to put it more bluntly, the only difference between a “rightwing conspiracy theory” and the truth is a few months.

This week we got another proof of this apt saying.
» Read more

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Congress passes new authorization bill for FAA that includes short extension of “learning period”

10:05 am

The new FAA authorization bill that that House approved yesterday and was passed previously by the Senate includes a short extension to the end of the year of the so-called “learning period” that is supposed to restrict the agency’s ability to regulate the new commercial space industry.

That limitation was first established in 2004 with a time period of eight years. It has been extended numerous times since then. The most recent extensions however have been very short, suggesting Congress (mostly from the Democrat side of the aile) wants to soon eliminate it. Whether that happens when it comes up for extension again at the end of 2024 will depend greatly on which party is in control after the election.

It really doesn’t matter. Everything the FAA has been doing in the past three years suggests this learning period no longer exists anyway. The agency has been demanding every new American company or rocket or spacecraft meet much higher regulatory requirements, which appears to have slowed significantly the development of those new companies, rockets, or spacecraft in the past two years.

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These are the idiots WE have put in power

2:16 pm

Bill Nelson exhibiting his ignorance to Congress
Bill Nelson exhibiting his ignorance to Congress

On April 17, 2024 Bill Nelson, former Democratic Party senator and now NASA’s administrator, testified at a budget hearing in the House of Representives about the proposed 2025 NASA budget proposed by the Biden administration.

Such testimony is routinely boring and tells us nothing, which is why I no longer waste much time listening to it.

Other do, however, and as a result we all find out about moments of stupidity such as this one, spouted by Nelson:

“What do you think the Chinese are trying to get at, at the back side of the moon?” Rep. David Trone (D-MD) asked Nelson at a congressional hearing last week.

“They are going to have a lander on the far side of the moon, which is the side which is always in dark. Uh, we’re not planning to go there,” he said.

Trone followed up by asking, “And why not? What’s the benefit of doing so?”

“We don’t know what’s on the back side of the moon, so, uh, that would be something that they would discover,” the NASA administrator told lawmakers on Capitol Hill. “But our decision is that it’s more profitable for us to go to the South Pole of the moon because that’s where we think the water is,” he added.

First, Nelson exhibits the same kind of utter ignorance about basic space science as did congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) when she proclaimed on April 8, 2024 that the Moon “was made up mostly of gases.” Nelson says the “dark side” is always dark, when it is well known for many centuries that the back side of the Moon is sometimes referred to as the “dark side” not because it is dark, but because it is never visible to us on Earth, and until the space age no one knew what was there.

Furthermore, since the 1960s however we have known what is there, even if Nelson is an ignoramus about these basic facts. Landing there to research it up close and in detail is a entirely laudable science goal, something American scientists have wanted to do for decades. China is simply doing it.

Finally, China is also targeting the south pole for its lunar base, something Nelson seems utterly unaware, an ignorance that is shocking considering their lunar base goals are potentially in direct conflict with our lunar base goals.

You would think the administrator of NASA would know these basic facts.
» Read more

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It is simple: Conservatives don’t have the votes

2:53 pm

The Republican Party and its voters
The modern Republican Party and its voters

Many conservatives both in Congress and out have recently railed in fury at the compromises that House speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) has made with the Democrats in order to pass large multi-billion dollar foreign aid bills to help the Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan protect their sovereignty and borders, while doing nothing to pass any bills to secure the American border at all.

That fury is best represented by Marjorie Taylor Greene, (R-Georgia), who has filed a motion to vacate the speaker but as yet has not followed through to force a vote. She has repeatedly condemned his willingness to work to pass Democratic Party proposals while doing little to help Republicans get their bills passed.

The problem however for Johnson is the same one faced by the previous Republican speaker, Kevin McCarthy, as well as the Republican speaker before him, Paul Ryan, and the speaker before him, John Boehner. All struggled to get Republican proposals passed, and all failed. None could garner a majority strong enough, especially because the Democrats stood firm and united in opposition and many Republicans were actually more allied with the Democratic Party agenda. It is this same problem that Greene faces and is why she has not moved to force a vote for a new speaker.
» Read more

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