Tag: freedom

Luxembourg formally establishes space agency

11:08 pm

The new colonial movement: Luxembourg this week formally established its space agency, along with a fund to back new commercial space companies.

Unlike traditional national space agencies, which support spacecraft missions and scientific research, the Luxembourg Space Agency will focus primarily on building up the country’s space industry as well as supporting education and workforce development.

Schneider noted that Luxembourg’s recent efforts, most notably the SpaceResources.lu project to attract companies working in the nascent space resources field, had led to 20 countries establishing a presence in the country. “All this is why it’s so important to me to launch today this Luxembourg Space Agency in order to professionalize our approach to this new community,” he said.

Serres said that the agency will work with a wide range of other organizations, both within the government and the private sector, to meet the agency’s goals. “The agency will be well-equipped to support industry in their daily challenges, and it leads to the most favorable environment for this sector to continue to grow,” he said, describing its four “strategic lines” as expertise, innovation, skills and funding.

That last item will include a new fund for supporting space companies. Schneider announced that the space agency will work with other government agencies and the private sector to establish the Luxembourg Space Fund, valued at 100 million euros ($116 million). The fund, according to a government statement, will “provide equity funding for new space companies with ground-breaking ideas and technology.”

Only part of the new fund will involve government money. “It will be a public-private partnership, where the government will take a share of 30 to 40 percent,” Schneider said.

The agency’s entire work force will be about 12 people, since its focus will be attracting private space companies to come to Luxembourg.

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Leftist election terrorism

11:03 am

They’re coming for you next: The level of hatred and insanity coming from the partisan left has in the past two years steadily moved from mere vicious hyperbole to increasing violence. The upcoming midterm elections is now fueling this increase in violence, as seen by these stories from yesterday:

The first two stories were generated mostly by Twitter threats, a sewer of such vicious evil. They might not result in violence, but such leftist threats on Twitter are definitely becoming more common. And interestingly, even as Twitter is shutting down conservative speech it seems to have little problem with death threats against conservatives.

The third story however is more worrisome. It is part of a pattern where the insane over-the-top statements by Democratic Party elected officials is fueling a hatred among those who are less than stable themselves, resulting in acts of violence. Nor is this the only story recently where an unstable person attacked something or someone because they were perceived as conservative.

And the craziness on the left shows no signs of letting up, as indicated by the decision of leftist Las Vegas professor to shoot himself in the arm “in protest of President Donald Trump.” Though I have no evidence to support this theory, it appears to me from the story that he might have planned on suicide, but chickened out.

I am very worried that in the next two months we will see at least one attack against Republicans similar to the attempted mass murder last year of Republican congressmen at a charity baseball practice. In fact, I fear that such violence is almost certain.

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First manned flights on Blue Origin’s New Shepard delayed to 2019

9:18 am

Capitalism in space: Blue Origin has now delayed the first manned flights on its New Shepard suborbital spacecraft into 2019.

They had said they would be doing manned test flights before the end of 2018, but these flights have not happened, and now they admit that they will be delayed until 2019.

Overall, the lack of test flights in 2018 is somewhat puzzling. They have a spacecraft that is built on a design that previously flew multiple times. Why should the second craft have problems causing such delays?

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New research confirms leftward domination in academia

8:44 am

The blacklist lives! New research has confirmed that the bulk of American universities are dominated by liberal and Democratic professors, with many having zero conservatives or Republicans in their facility.

The political registration of full-time, Ph.D.-holding professors in top-tier liberal arts colleges is overwhelmingly Democratic. Indeed, faculty political affiliations at 39 percent of the colleges in my sample are Republican free—having zero Republicans. The political registration in most of the remaining 61 percent, with a few important exceptions, is slightly more than zero percent but nevertheless absurdly skewed against Republican affiliation and in favor of Democratic affiliation. Thus, 78.2 percent of the academic departments in my sample have either zero Republicans, or so few as to make no difference.

My sample of 8,688 tenure track, Ph.D.–holding professors from fifty-one of the sixty-six top ranked liberal arts colleges in the U.S. News 2017 report consists of 5,197, or 59.8 percent, who are registered either Republican or Democrat. The mean Democratic-to-Republican ratio (D:R) across the sample is 10.4:1, but because of an anomaly in the definition of what constitutes a liberal arts college in the U.S. News survey, I include two military colleges, West Point and Annapolis.1 If these are excluded, the D:R ratio is a whopping 12.7:1.

Political homogeneity is problematic because it biases research and teaching and reduces academic credibility.

Just to make it clear, the ratio of Democrat to Republican averages 13 to 1, if you exclude the two military colleges. This can only be occurring if the facility at American colleges is making a conscious effort to exclude conservatives or Republicans. Or to put it more bluntly, to blacklist anyone who dares express a dissenting view.

The article has some good information however about the handful of universities that do have diversity of thought in the facility.

The two military colleges in my sample, West Point and Annapolis, have D:R ratios of 1.3:1 and 2.3:1. Although it is debatable whether military colleges are liberal arts colleges, U.S. News’s inclusion of them in the liberal arts category is fortuitous because they offer evidence that when colleges provide supportive environments, intellectual diversity is achievable. There are other exceptions, such as Claremont McKenna, which adopted a viewpoint diversity strategy early in its history, and Kenyon, which is one of a few of the top-ranked liberal arts colleges located in a predominantly Republican state and which did not become coed until 1969.

Thomas Aquinas and St. John’s, another college with above average Republican representation, have emphasized interdisciplinary teaching and downplayed the publish or perish imperative, which [other researchers] have argued contributes to left-oriented groupthink.

These are the colleges every parent and teenager should consider as the place to go. Everywhere else is crap, and should be avoided like the plague.

It is definitely worth reading the entire article, which also includes breakdowns by disciplines, and finds the blacklisting to be especially egregious in the humanities.

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New enrollment at Evergreen drops 50%

8:56 am

Couldn’t happen to a nicer college: The enrollment in the freshman class at Evergreen State College is down 50% since to the college’s takeover by leftist thugs two years ago.

This fall, we expect less than 300 freshmen to attend Evergreen, a fifty percent drop from two years ago. It is the only four year institution in the state of Washington that has seen a decrease in applications, and is currently publicly funded for 4200 students, far greater than this year’s anticipated total attending class of 2800.

This decline at Evergreen is in contrast to an increase in enrollment at competing Washington state colleges. And expect things to become worse for Evergreen, since it has taken no actions to change its leftist indoctrination bent, as noted by one professor at the college:

Advocacy and activism rather than the pursuit of truth and knowledge is being promoted as a way of recruiting desperately needed new students (In 2011 Evergreen changed its official mission statement to read: “Evergreen supports and benefits from a local and global commitment to social justice”). Bringing in new faculty or guest speakers with conservative or centrist political perspectives is considered risky and out of the question at the moment. Fear and self-censorship is pervasive among Evergreen faculty, especially under the existing budget crisis. An “independent” External Review Panel exonerated the president and administrators while blaming Evergreen’s woes on Bret Weinstein and ‘alt-right’ agitators prompted one journalist to ask, “Who Will the Evergreen Mob Target Next?”

The best thing that could happen would be for this college, as well as many others, to shut down. They no longer teach, but act instead as leftist and Democratic Party propaganda machines.

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SpaceX successfully launches communications satellite

9:12 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX last night successfully launched a communications satellite as well as recovered the Falcon 9 first stage.

The biggest news here is how routine the landings of the first stage have become, getting its first mention eight paragraphs into the article above, with its landing described almost as an aside. This was a new Block 5 first stage, and it will likely fly again within a relatively short period of time.

The leaders in the 2018 launch race:

24 China
16 SpaceX
8 Russia
6 ULA
5 Arianespace (Europe)

China still leads the U.S. in the national rankings, 24 to 23.

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Armstrong filmmakers purposely obscured American flag

1:19 pm

The filmmakers for the Neil Armstrong biography film, First Man, made a conscious decision to hide or obscure the American flag in certain situations.

This new information has been provided to me by a Washington consultant who, because of his own outrage over their decision to not show the planting of the American flag during the lunar landing, had been given the opportunity to see selected clips from the movie as well as ask questions to the production team.

First Man movie flightsuits, without American flag

According to that meeting, he learned that they had consciously made the decision to either reposition or remove American flags from the blue flight suits that the astronauts wore from day to day so that it would not be visible. The image on the right, from the movie, illustrates this, as the American flag was almost always sewn into the upper left shoulder of these suits.

The filmmakers also purposely repositioned the flag or filmed angles for many scenes that acted to obscure the flag on the astronauts’ white pressure suits.

The reasons the filmmakers gave for doing this was to enhance their foreign ticket sales.

To this I say, baloney. They might have had this financial excuse, but I think this holds little or no weight. By willingly admitting that they hid the flag in this petty way they have confirmed their political agenda, their desire to convince the world that this mission was not an American achievement but a “human achievement.” Both the film’s Canadian star as well as its director have made it clear they have a globalist vision of the Apollo program, and wanted to spread the credit of its achievement to all humanity. Consciously hiding the flag in this small-minded manner demonstrates their political motives.

Moreover, even though the director, Damien Chazelle, might have wanted to focus on “Neil Armstrong’s personal saga and what he may have been thinking and feeling during those famous few hours,” removing or obscuring icons of the United States serves no purpose other than to remove the United States from this decidedly American moment. Showing the flag on the flightsuits and pressure suits does not make this a jingoistic pro-American propaganda film. Nor does it do anything to prevent Chazelle from telling Neil Armstrong’s personal story. In fact, if anything, hiding the flag detracts from that goal, as Armstrong was very much doing this for his country (as numerous people who knew him have said), and to de-emphasize that reality is to rewrite history in a very dishonest way.

The pettiness of this entire action further outrages me. There is no doubt that sales would not have suffered in foreign countries, in the slightest, had the American flag been left where it belonged on these suits, and had been shown appropriately in other scenes. It accomplishes nothing positive for the film. What it does do is tell us what these Hollywood “artists” think of America.

So that there is no misunderstanding, I must add that neither my source nor I have as yet seen the entire film. It is still possible that these criticisms are unfair, and that the filmmakers might have shown the American flag appropriately in other scenes, and might even have shown it prominently.

Nonetheless, what we now know is that these filmmakers did made a conscious effort to rewrite history so that the United States no longer appeared as prominent in these events as it should have. Once again, it appears to me that these Hollywood filmmakers did this to express their disdain, almost hatred, of the United States and all that it stands for.

For this fact alone I think Americans should reconsider spending any of their hard-earned money on seeing this propaganda piece.

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More details about Chinese suborbital launch earlier this week

9:56 am

Link here. The article really only provides one new detail about the flight itself, that the rocket used solid rocket motors. This fact, plus the overall secrecy, suggest to me that the company, iSpace, is doing its work for the Chinese military.

The article at the link also provides a good overview of the entire Chinese “private” smallsat rocket industry.

China is still run from the top, so any “private” rocket company must have the approval and support of the government. What makes China different from Russia, also ruled from the top, is the Chinese government’s willingness to encourage competitive independent operations, something the Russians has not done. The result is that China’s rocket industry is not stagnating, but growing.

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SpaceX’s Big Falcon Rocket and the colonization of Mars

7:49 pm

Link here. Lots of details about what SpaceX wants to do, as well as the company’s request for help in areas it is weak.

Below the fold is the youtube video from the Mars Society conference last week which forms the basis of the article at the link.

I only have one comment at this time: I worry that SpaceX is developing a rocket, the BFR, that has no marketable value, at this time. They succeeded with the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy because they could market them and make money from them. The commercial space industry needed these rockets that could fly at lower cost, and that has paved the way for SpaceX’s success.

There are real questions whether a similar market exists for BFR. To paraphrase a line from the movie Field of Dreams, it is possible that if they build it the customers will come, but few businesses succeed with that market strategy.
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Director of Neil Armstrong movie responds to flag critics

9:41 am

The director of the movie about Neil Armstrong, First Man, has issued a statement about criticism the movie is getting for not showing a scene of Armstrong and Aldrin planting the American flag on the Moon.

Below is Damien Chazelle’s statement in its entirety:

In “First Man” I show the American flag standing on the lunar surface, but the flag being physically planted into the surface is one of several moments of the Apollo 11 lunar EVA that I chose not to focus upon. To address the question of whether this was a political statement, the answer is no. My goal with this movie was to share with audiences the unseen, unknown aspects of America’s mission to the moon — particularly Neil Armstrong’s personal saga and what he may have been thinking and feeling during those famous few hours.

I wanted the primary focus in that scene to be on Neil’s solitary moments on the moon — his point of view as he first exited the LEM, his time spent at Little West Crater, the memories that may have crossed his mind during his lunar EVA. This was a feat beyond imagination; it was truly a giant leap for mankind. This film is about one of the most extraordinary accomplishments not only in American history, but in human history. My hope is that by digging under the surface and humanizing the icon, we can better understand just how difficult, audacious and heroic this moment really was. [emphasis mine]

That he did show the American flag on the Moon is encouraging to me, and makes me think that the criticisms about this issue being leveled at the film, including mine, are possibly unfair.

At the same time, I have witnessed too often the desire of Hollywood to denigrate the United States, so I remain suspicious. Getting eyes on the film to get another perspective would I think be very helpful. I might myself have to view it to give my own perspective.

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Hollywood once again reveals its distaste for America

10:36 am

The just released new Hollywood movie detailing the life of Neil Armstrong, First Man, has so far gotten rave reviews.

Sadly, however, there is one detail about the Apollo 11 mission that the filmmakers decided they couldn’t include, even though it was in many ways the entire point of the mission. They made a conscious decision to exclude any mention of the planting of the American flag on the surface of the Moon.

Star Ryan Gosling, who plays Armstrong, defended director Damien Chazelle’s decision to omit the star-spangled moment when asked about it in Venice. “I think this was widely regarded in the end as a human achievement [and] that’s how we chose to view it, ” Gosling said per the Telegraph. “I also think Neil was extremely humble, as were many of these astronauts, and time and time again he deferred the focus from himself to the 400,000 people who made the mission possible.”

The Canadian actor added that based on his own interviews with Armstrong’s family and friends, he doesn’t believe the pioneering astronaut considered himself an American hero. “I don’t think that Neil viewed himself as an American hero,” Gosling said. From my interviews with his family and people that knew him, it was quite the opposite. And we wanted the film to reflect Neil.” [emphasis mine]

This is bunk. All the astronauts who flew to the Moon were very aware that they were warriors in the Cold War against the Soviet Union and communism, and did it very consciously so that the U.S. could win that space race, for the U.S. Planting the flag was thus for them a very important aspect of the mission, maybe in many ways the most important.

That these Hollywood filmmakers purposely excluded that moment only illustrates to me once again the hostility, even hate, that the modern elitist culture has for the United States and everything it has stood for since 1776: freedom, blind justice before the law, and individual responsibility. Here it appears they are making an effort to separate that very decidedly American culture, which made the lunar landing possible, from that achievement. They want to honor Armstrong as an individual, but do not want to give any credit to the country and culture that sent him to the Moon. Instead, they want to claim that the Apollo landings were merely “a human achievement.”

For shame.

This makes me very unwilling to spend any money to see this movie. Why should I support the work of such intellectually dishonest people?

I must add that I have already been emailed by several readers who are similarly outraged. I wonder therefore if this will turn into something that will actually hurt ticket sales. I suspect not, as too many Americans today do not care very much about these issues. They will go to be entertained, and many will buy into the lie that the Apollo missions was an achievement not of America but of the entire global world, working together in love and peace.

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Scotland’s first commercial rocket test flight

9:34 am

Capitalism in space: A private smallsat rocket company, Skyrora, has successfully completed a suborbital test flight, the first commercial rocket test flight in Scotland.

Skyrora saw its 2.5 metre (9ft) projectile reach altitudes of almost four miles after taking off at the Kildermorie Estate in Ross-shire. Known as Skylark Nano, it accelerated to Mach 1.45 – more than 110mph.

One could also describe Skylark Nano as nothing more than a big model rocket. Nonetheless, the company is using this test flight to improve its chances to win the competition for some of the money the UK government will award to private companies in connection with the establishment of its new spaceport in Sutherland, Scotland.

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Pollster: Elitists still refusing to listen

1:35 pm

Link here. Key quote:

Elites simply don’t understand these voters and find their voting behavior unfathomable because they rarely really interact with them, socialize with them, and, most important, listen to them. And people know it. To quote one voter’s attitude toward elites: “They think that because they’re [so] smart, that their opinion matters more than yours, because you’re not as smart as them.”

Frankly, Washington ought to remember that there is an America west of the Hudson and east of the San Andreas Fault, and for people there, dealing with getting by paycheck to paycheck is a bigger priority than the political spat of the week or the latest media preoccupation.

People’s views of elites isn’t a passing fad. It is an existential threat to government, political parties, the media and even business and academia, because people are fundamentally questioning the motivations and usefulness of so-called experts.

He calls the experts “elites”, but that implies a superior status that the power structure in Washington and modern academic circles no longer deserve. I prefer “elitists,” which instead describes someone who thinks they are superior but are really quite inferior to everyone else. This conclusion is based on forty years of interacting with them. See for example my conclusions after visiting a Washington think-tank conference in 2016:

Nor has Trump’s success as a candidate made them wonder or question their assumptions. Instead, his name was generally mentioned with derision or contempt (most often by Republican Senator Graham), followed by scattered laughter from the audience.

While I might actually agree with many of Graham’s conclusions about Trump, unlike Graham I also recognize that Trump is no fool, that he has proposed some worthwhile policy proposals, and that the reason he won the Republican nomination is because the public is very unhappy with many of the policy decisions being made by the very people at this conference. The public is aware of the wider issues, and wants their government to consider them.

Rather than ask why Trump has been successful, however, this crowd was ready to dismiss him, and the people who voted for him. To give another example, consider the first panel, “The Case for Inclusivity”, where four national security leaders expounded the importance of guaranteeing gender equality in the workforce, even on the battlefield. At one point one of the panelists noted that some of the gender policies that Hillary Clinton created in the State Department during her tenure as Secretary of State are now permanent and will never go away, no matter who gets elected in the future. Neither the rest of the panel nor the audience saw anything worrisome about this statement. In fact, it appeared to me that they clearly supported it.

So much for democracy and following the wishes of the electorate.

The elitists in power today are close-minded, refuse to consider other points of view, and routinely dismiss anyone who dissents from their generally liberal mindset. And their contempt for ordinary people not of their ilk is often awe-inspiring, especially because they have so little self-awareness of it.

The worst part is that they have shown absolutely no effort to reexamine their assumptions, even now almost two years after Trump was elected. If anything, the leftist elitists in politics and academia have doubled down, becoming even more hostile and close-minded to other perspectives.

If something doesn’t change soon, some very bad things are going to happen.

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Virgin Orbit performs more flight tests of 747

9:37 am

Capitalism in space: Virgin Orbit has completed a series of flight tests of the 747 airplane that will be used to launch its LauncherOne smallsat rocket.

The flights of the company’s Boeing 747 aircraft, nicknamed “Cosmic Girl,” were the first since the company installed a pylon on the plane’s left wing that will be used to carry the LauncherOne rocket on future flights of the air-launch system.

The company disclosed few details about the test flights, but flight tracking services such as Flightradar24 list three flights of the aircraft in recent days, most recently Aug. 27, taking off from the Southern California Logistics Airport in Victorville, California. The flights ranged in duration from one and a half to three and a half hours in airspace over the Mojave Desert and over the Pacific Ocean off the California coast.

The company appears to be making progress, though its also appears that their promised first rocket flights are not happening this summer, as previously announced.

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Launch schedule shuffles for SpaceX

9:29 am

Link here. A combination of payload issues, scheduling conflicts, and rocket refurbishment demands has forced SpaceX to shuffle and delay many of its remaining launches scheduled for the rest of 2018.

The biggest conflict appears to be between the first manned Dragon test flight, and the second Falcon Heavy flight, both of which are now listed for a November launch. Since both will use the same launchpad, there must be some space between them.

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Dragon/Starliner schedules firming up

9:11 am

At a meeting at NASA this week a status update of SpaceX’s manned Dragon and Boeing’s manned Starliner capsules indicated that their proposed flight schedules, with the first manned flights occurring next year, are increasingly firm.

Overall, the updates were quite positive with most of the flight hardware nearing completion. The two companies must each execute two test flights to the International Space Station (ISS) in order to be certified to perform operational crew rotation missions.

On the SpaceX side, the company will first execute an uncrewed test flight of the Crew Dragon spacecraft called Demonstration Mission 1 (DM-1) – currently scheduled for this coming November. It will then be followed by a crewed test flight designated Demonstration Mission 2 (DM-2). In between the two missions, SpaceX will also execute an in-flight abort test.

In terms of Boeing, they will perform an uncrewed Orbital Flight Test (OFT) with the CST-100 Starliner followed by a Crewed Flight Test (CFT). A pad abort test will be also conducted between the two missions.

While Boeing’s schedule for these flights is somewhat uncertain as they investigate the recent failure of several valves to close during an engine test, SpaceX’s schedule has become very solid. Assuming nothing goes wrong on the unmanned test flight in November and the in-flight abort test, they will fly humans in April, 2019.

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3D gun files still available to public despite judge’s ruling

4:36 pm

Pushback: Despite a judge’s apparently unconstitutional ruling that banned the free give-away of the plans for printing 3D guns, the company that is producing them has instead made them available for purchase, at any price the buyer designates.

The ruling was intensely shaky and a jab to both the First and Second Amendment, so naturally Democrats were aroused.

But their celebration was premature.

Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson crushed their short-lived happiness during a Tuesday press conference where he revealed that he actually won’t be stopped from sharing technical data; he will simply sell the files via his website, defcad.com. (Yes, he can do this.) “This judge’s order, stopping us from simply giving things away, was only an authorization that we could sell it, that we could mail it, that we could email it, that we could provide it by secure transfer. I will be doing all of those things, now,” announced Wilson.

“A lot of this to me was about principle,” he continued. “For many years, I just chose not to sell these files, because I’m an open-source activist. I believed in demonstrating that there was a right to commit this information to the public domain.”

“But, this is my opportunity to correct the media all in one place. To read headline after headline about how you can no longer 3D-print a gun, you can no longer have these files, this is not true. This has never been true. I now have to demonstrate this to you, forcefully, to deliver the point.”

There is no set price for the material; patrons are asked to give whatever they’d like in exchange. Wilson said the money would be used for further legal fees.

The judge’s ruling was completely bogus, especially since the Trump Justice Department had already settled the suit that the Obama Justice Department had brought. Moreover, since when can a judge ban the publication of any information the U.S.? His ruling appears to violate the First Amendment, and possibly the Second Amendment as well.

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EXOS completes successful test flight of reusable suborbital rocket

9:30 am

Capitalism in space: EXOS Aerospace yesterday completed a successful test flight of its reusable suborbital rocket, SARGE, at Spaceport America in New Mexico.

The company’s first Suborbital Autonomous Rocket with GuidancE, or SARGE, rocket lifted off from Spaceport America in New Mexico at approximately 2:15 p.m. Eastern. After reaching an unspecified peak altitude, the rocket descended under parachute, landing about 15 minutes later a short distance from the pad. The rocket’s nose cone, descending under a ballute, landed several minutes earlier.

The company didn’t immediately disclose technical details about the flight, such as the peak altitude, but in a live webcast of the launch appeared to be satisfied with the vehicle’s performance, despite the vehicle appearing to veer from its vertical trajectory briefly after liftoff.

“This was a very successful test for us,” said John Quinn, chief operating officer of Exos, on the webcast. “We’re very excited that we had all of our recovery systems operational.”

It sounds as if they were mostly testing the recovery systems that will allow the rocket and payload to land safely in a condition to fly again.

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NASA considering purchase of communications services

9:33 am

Capitalism in space: Rather than build its own communications satellites, as it has done in the past, NASA is now considering purchasing these services from private communications satellite companies.

NASA had been studying a next-generation communications system that would ultimately replace the current generation of Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) spacecraft in Earth orbit, as well as support missions beyond Earth orbit. That included the possibility of partnerships with the private sector.

“Past networks have been expensive to operate and maintain because they were designed to only serve government customers, which has limited their ability to leverage commercial partnerships,” the agency said in its fiscal year 2019 budget proposal released in February. “The next generation project will engage with commercial industry through mechanisms such as services contracts, hosted payloads, and other public-private-partnerships to allow multiple commercial entities to partner with the Government in order to significantly reduce and eventually eliminate reliance on NASA or NASA contractor run ground systems.”

In a paper presented last year by several NASA officials at the International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide, Australia, the agency said working with both commercial and international partners would be among the elements of its next-generation architecture. “Using open, commercial, and international standards will enable the use of commercial services by specifying required performance and interfaces without specifying provider-specific capabilities,” the paper stated. “Commercial entities will compete based on price, quality, timeliness, support and other factors that maintain a competitive environment.”

That desire to work with the commercial sector, along with harnessing new technologies like optical communications, was a reason cited by NASA a year ago for not exercising an option for an additional TDRS satellite under a contract NASA awarded to Boeing in 2007. The last satellite built under that contract, TDRS-M, launched in August 2017.

Using commercial communications satellites makes perfect sense. It will be faster, provide more redundancy, and will save the taxpayer a lot of money.

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EXOS to test fly reusable suborbital rocket in New Mexico

8:54 am

Capitalism in space: EXOS Aerospace has chosen Spaceport America in New Mexico as the location where it will test fly its reusable suborbital rocket dubbed SARGE.

EXOS has completed the design, test and build; has received its FAA launch license and completed the final integration and test hovering for the rocket. A successful test flight is needed to solidify the company’s plans to use the technology as the basis for a planned reusable Orbital class vehicle, the company said in a pres release issued Tuesday.

“We are excited to enter into the testing phase of our SARGE platform at Spaceport America, and even more excited to reveal our plans for our Jaguar Reusable (first stage) LEO launcher,” EXOS COO John Quinn said in a prepared statement. “We look forward to enabling space research, manufacturing and educational opportunity for the world by providing frequent suborbital flights that provide fast and affordable access to space.”

Spaceport American CEO Dan Hicks said a successful test flight could lead to further testing and development at the spaceport.

EXOS is another one of the host of new smallsat rocket companies vying for expected large launch needs in the 2020s. For Spaceport America, a state-run spaceport that was built for Virgin Galactic and its hyped surge in space tourism that never happened and thus has seen practically no activity for the past decade, this announcement is helpful in its effort to attract other launch business.

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Flying Boeing’s Starliner capsule

9:54 am

Link here. The article provides some nice details about the way the spacecraft will operate (mostly by computer), with the astronauts monitoring and capable of taking over at any point.

Unlike Dragon, the control panel has no touchscreens. According to astronaut Chris Ferguson, the design was “borrowed a little bit from Orion, and it’s kind of the way some of the 5th generation military planes interact with pilots.” Not as fancy, but maybe more practical. I still have my doubts about the ability of astronauts to accurately press a touchscreen during the vibrations of launch.

There is something else, however, about this article that bugs me. It reads too much like an SLS update, filled with glowing reports that, in the case of SLS, are designed to disguise a program that is not going to meet its schedule. This is pure speculation based on nothing but instinct, but it is an impression I have and do not like.

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Stratolaunch to build its own upper stages

9:40 am

Capitalism in space: Stratolaunch today announced that it is designing and building three differently-sized upper stage rockets to attach to the fuselage of its giant Roc airplane.

Beside the Pegasus rocket, owned by Northrop Grumman, aimed for first flight in 2020, Stratolaunch will build a medium and medium-heavy rockets, with the former set for a 2022 flight, as well as a fully reusable space plane, now in early development.

The space plane concept would apparently be capable of taking payloads up and down from orbit, and could therefore become the first totally reusable launch capability.

Overall, it does appear that the company, unable to find someone else to design its upper stage, has been forced to do it itself.

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NASA officially approves SpaceX’s fueling system

9:08 pm

Surprise, surprise! NASA on August 17 officially approved SpaceX’s fueling system where the astronauts would enter the Dragon capsule before the Falcon 9 rocket would fueled.

In a statement published late Aug. 17, the agency said that it was allowing SpaceX to move ahead with plans to use what’s colloquially known as “load-and-go,” where the Falcon 9 launch vehicle is filled with liquid oxygen and kerosene propellants after astronauts board the Crew Dragon spacecraft on top of the rocket.

“To make this decision, our teams conducted an extensive review of the SpaceX ground operations, launch vehicle design, escape systems and operational history,” Kathy Lueders, NASA’s commercial crew program manager, said in the statement. “Safety for our personnel was the driver for this analysis, and the team’s assessment was that this plan presents the least risk.”

Blah, blah, blah. They had made it clear they were going to approve SpaceX’s fueling approach last week. NASA safety bureaucrats have been whining about SpaceX’s fueling approach for more than a year and a half, for no logical reason, and for what I surmised were purely political reasons having zero to do with safety. At times I have stated that when SpaceX was getting close to actually flying, NASA would back down. And I also expected SpaceX to push its launch dates to force NASA to back down, in contrast to the old-time big space contractors who routinely would kowtow to NASA in these matters and allow its bureaucracy to push them around.

These events are more evidence that the April 2019 manned Dragon launch is on schedule.

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SpaceX unveils access arm jetway astronauts will use to board Dragon

2:04 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX has begun installing its airport-jetway-like access arm that astronauts will use to board Dragon at Launchpad 39A in anticipation of the first manned flight in April 2019.

They were originally going to install the jetway after the first unmanned demo flight, which they hoped to fly this month. That plan has now changed.

Prior to the visual milestone this week of the Crew Access Arm, or CAA, being moved to the pad surface and the base of the Fixed Service Structure (launch tower), previous information from SpaceX and NASA indicated that the arm would be installed after the Dragon’s uncrewed demo flight.

However, that schedule was based around a launch of the uncrewed Dragon flight, DM-1, in August 2018.

With NASA announcing a 3-month slip to the DM-1 flight (largely due to ISS scheduling and crew reduction aboard the International Space Station in the coming months), SpaceX found itself with an unanticipated delay to the DM-1 flight – which in turn opened up a possibility that didn’t exist before to install the CAA in August.

…But now that DM-1 is NET (No Earlier Than) November – a date Gwynne Shotwell is confident the company will meet, SpaceX is forging ahead with CAA installation because, quite simply, there is no reason to wait, at this point, to install the arm after DM-1.

Making the crew access arm resemble an airport jetway is a fine example of the pizazz that helps sell SpaceX. It also helps make space operations appear more like an ordinary transportation option, something that is necessary if the human race is ever going to become truly spacefaring.

Hat tip to reader Kirk.

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An update on Trump appointments to the federal circuit courts

10:13 pm

Link here. The article provides a very clear status report on the number of remaining vacancies nationwide, and the politics that explain the nomination status for the 9th circuit court.

The Senate has confirmed a record 24 new circuit court judges nationwide in 20 months — with two more nominees scheduled for votes this week. But Trump has made far less progress in the jurisdiction he criticizes the most: the liberal-leaning U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, including California and eight other Western states.

Since Trump took office, the Senate has confirmed only one 9th Circuit judge — in Hawaii — leaving seven openings. A nominee in Oregon was abruptly withdrawn last month when it became clear he lacked the votes for Senate approval. And Trump has yet to even nominate anyone for the three vacancies in California, partly because of a standoff with Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris.

But there are signs that the administration is beginning to set its sights on the 9th Circuit, likely triggering a bruising fight with Democrats. For one thing, Trump is running out of vacancies in other circuits, particularly in conservative states where confirmation is easier. “They’ve been focusing on lower-hanging fruit,” said Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute. “After a while there are only so many seats to fill.”

More than half of the 13 vacancies remaining nationwide are on the 9th Circuit.

It appears to me that the Trump administration strategy has been to hold off in these liberal states until after the November election, betting that the Democrats will lose seats in the Senate and thus have less ability to block these nominations. This is a risky but reasonable strategy, considering the number of vulnerable Democratic Senators up for election in states Trump won handily in 2016.

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A review of yesterday’s primaries

10:50 am

Link here. The results, like last week, are inconclusive as to indicating what might happen in November. The only clear pattern is the continuing increase in the American political divide. Pro-Trump candidates seemed to win more Republican primaries, but radical leftist candidates seemed to win more Democratic primaries.

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Will SpaceX bail out Tesla?

10:13 am

Link here. There appears to an effort on Wall Street to convince SpaceX to use its significant profits to bail out failing Tesla. It is also unclear whether Musk agrees with this approach.

If SpaceX does this, it will be a very bad thing for the company’s future, throwing good money after bad. Musk might love both companies and what they are trying to accomplish, but the future of the two companies appears to be heading in opposite directions. To weigh SpaceX down with an unprofitable company that has a failing product would seriously harm SpaceX’s abilities in the future.

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SpaceX unveils interior of manned Dragon

10:02 am

Capitalism in space: Earlier this week SpaceX unveiled the interior of its Dragon capsule, along with the suits and other details, to reporters in California.

The article at the link has some good videos showing the capsule interior as well as its touchscreen control panel. It also includes quotes from SpaceX’s president Gwynne Shotwell repeating their intention to launch the manned mission by April 2019.

“Whenever we talk about dates we’re always confident and then something crops up,” Shotwell said. “Predicting launch dates can make a liar out of the best of us. I hope I am not proven to be a liar on this one. We are targeting November for Demo 1 and April for Demo 2.”

“I would love to say that this mission is going to be like every other mission, because I want every rocket and every capsule to be reliable, but I can tell you there will be about 7000 extra sets of eyes on the build of this system, the testing of this system and all the interfaces,” Shotwell added.

I would not be surprised if there was a few months slip in that schedule. I will be surprised if it slips more than that.

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Ghana considers its first national space law

9:20 am

The new colonial movement: Ghana moves to write and pass its first national space law.

In setting out space legislation, Ghana would be following international precedent. More than 25 countries have enacted such laws. The space powers Russia and the US are among them, but so are smaller states like Argentina, Kazakhstan, Indonesia and Iran. Closer to home, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa already have space laws. Other nations on the continent will undoubtedly follow suit.

A national space law would ensure that space activities launched within Ghana’s jurisdiction – whether on land, ships or aircraft – and perhaps even abroad by its nationals or registered companies are appropriately regulated. Such laws may govern a host of space-related ventures. These include launches; remote sensing and space data protection; aeronautics; rocket and satellite development, space tourism and space mining.

Of course, the complexity of space activities combined with the rapid pace at which technology develops means that national space laws are unlikely to cover every eventuality. They do, however, provide a degree of certainty for the public, investors and courts should disputes arise. National laws also facilitate compliance with global obligations. Article 6 of the Outer Space Treaty, for example, requires all space activities to be authorised and continually supervised by the state. National laws which demand licensing of space activities foster adherence to the treaty.

Article 7 makes states liable for damage caused by space objects under its jurisdiction, including those belonging to private commercial entities. A Space Act can be vital in limiting a state’s liability through provisions on indemnities.

Ghana has signed the Outer Space Treaty. The next step will be for the government to ratify it, and then to establish a legislative framework for space activities. [emphasis mine]

I have highlighted the fundamental problem with the Outer Space Treaty. If Ghana wants to attract investment capital for its space industry, they are forced to sign the treaty. It establishes the only existing rules for liability. Unfortunately, the treaty is also hostile to freedom, and puts the government in charge, which is why it has taken so long for private enterprise to finally gain a foothold in space.

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Russian lawmaker threatens to block sale of Russian rocket engines to ULA

8:52 am

In response to new U.S. sanctions, a Russian lawmaker has now threatened to block the sale of the Russian RD-180 rocket engine that ULA uses in its Atlas 5 rocket.

Russian lawmaker Sergei Ryabukhin, who heads the budget committee in the upper house of the Russian parliament, responded to the new sanctions by vowing: “The United States needs to finally understand that it’s useless to fight with Russia, including with the help of sanctions.”

According to the Russian news agency RIA, Ryabukhin found a place to hit Washington where it’s soft: the rocket engine. Losing access to the RD-180 would make American access to space—something Donald Trump desires enough to create a separate military service branch devoted to it—much more complicated. The engine helps get everything from satellites to astronauts into orbit.

More details here.

If Russia does this they will be shooting themselves in the foot. ULA is their only customer for the RD-180 engine. Without those sales, they would cut themselves off from one of the few remaining international space contracts they still have, further bankrupting their dying space industry. Furthermore, the U.S. has many other options even if the Atlas 5 can no longer fly. ULA might suffer until it can get a replacement engine, but in the meantime the Falcon Heavy is now available to replace it, at less cost.

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