Tag: freedom

First delivery of new Starlink terminals arrives in the Ukraine

5:09 pm

The first promised deliver by Elon Musk of new Starlink terminals arrived in the Ukraine today, only two days after promised.

Ukraine digital minister Mykhailo Fedorov, who tagged Musk in a request on Twitter on Saturday, posted that Starlink was “here” in Ukraine — with a photo showing more than two dozen boxes of the company’s user kits in the back of a truck.

Each Starlink kit includes a user terminal to connect to the satellites, a mounting tripod and a Wi-Fi router. It’s not known how many kits SpaceX is sending to support Ukraine.

Fedorov thanked Musk in his tweet; Musk responded: “you are most welcome.”

Ukraine-based Oleg Kutkov tweeted a screenshot of an internet speed test on Monday, saying “Starlink is working in Kyiv” and thanked SpaceX for the company’s support.

Two dozen Starlink terminals is only a drop in the bucket, but with a first delivery this quickly, many more are likely to follow, and make a significant difference in helping the Ukraine block Russia’s invasion.

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Rocket Lab successfully launches Japanese radar satellite

1:56 pm

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab today successfully completed its first launch in 2022 as well as the first launch from a second launchpad in New Zealand, using its Electron rocket to place in orbit a Japanese commercial radar satellite.

At the moment of writing the upper stage has not yet deployed the satellite, though deployment should happen momentarily. UPDATE: Satellite deployed successfully.

The new launchpad gives Rocket Lab three launchpads, two in New Zealand (both operational) and one in Virginia (delayed due to the NASA bureaucracy but about to go operational).

Rocket Lab is now tied with five other rocket operations, 4 private and 2 government, all with a single launch in ’22. The leaders in the 2022 launch race remain unchanged:

8 SpaceX
4 China
2 Russia

The now U.S. leads China 12 to 4 in the national rankings. At this same point in 2021, the U.S. had only completed 8 launches, so the pace this year is significantly higher. If this pace is maintained, the U.S. will complete 72 launches, which will just break the country’s best previous year of 70 successful launches in 1966. This total would also more than double the average yearly launch total for U.S. since 1966.

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Pushback: Professor, fired for having an opinion, sues university

12:10 pm

Gregory Manco
Gregory Manco, a fighter for free speech

Don’t comply: Professor Gregory Manco, fired a professor at St. Joseph’s University because he publicly expressed some opinions, has now sued the university and six individuals (including one student whom Manco never even taught) for discrimination, breach of contract, negligence, defamation, slander, and civil conspiracy.

Manco’s story was covered twice previously in my daily blacklist column, first in March 2021 when he was suspended for having opinions the university did not like, and then in August 2021 when the university fired him for having those opinions.

Manco however is not bowing to this ill treatment. His complaint outlines in detail how the college and these individuals conspired to destroy him through false statements and slanders. He is demanding a full financial recovery for the loss of income plus compensatory and punitive damages for their actions.

Read his complaint, especially the section outlining the facts of the case. It is most revealing, especially at the level of viciousness and dishonest against Manco by these individuals, documented by screen captures of emails and texts. Worse, it appears the university in public endorsed their lies, despite that fact that its own investigation had exonerated Manco on all counts.

Based on the facts of the case, Manco is likely to win, and win big. The best part of his suit is that he is demanding damages from the actual individuals who defamed him, not just the university itself. People who nonchalantly slander others for the purpose of destroying them must be made to realize that this bad behavior will only result in their own destruction. Only then will these blacklisting tactics cease. Kudos to Manco for fighting back.

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SpaceX successfully launches 50 Starlink satellites

10:22 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully launched another 50 Starlink satellites using its Falcon 9 rocket.

The first stage, on its fourth flight, landed successfully on the drone ship in the Pacific. The fairings completed their third flight. The satellites themselves have not yet been deployed, as of this moment. Deployment is expected in about an hour.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

8 SpaceX
2 China
2 Russia

SpaceX is so far maintaining a launch rate of one launch per week in ’22, as the company had predicted.

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Stratolaunch’s Roc successfully completes 4th test flight

9:02 am

Capitalism in space: Stratolaunch’s Roc airplane, the largest ever flown, successfully completed its 4th flight yesterday, testing for the first time the retraction and extension of its landing gear.

The flight lasted one hour and forty-three minutes.

The company is now aiming to begin full operations in the second half of ’23, when it hopes it will also be dropping versions of its Talon-A test vehicle from the bottom of Roc to perform hypersonic tests for the military as well as commercial companies.

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The deadly impact of Russia’s Ukraine invasion on commercial space, on ISS, and beyond

11:50 am

The International Space Station
The Russian invasion might be signaling the end of the ISS partnership.

Though the international ramifications of the invasion of the Ukraine by Russia in the past week will be far reaching and hard to predict, we can get a hint by reviewing the impact on Russia’s long-standing partnership on ISS as well as the effect the invasion will have on a number of commercial enterprises dependent on both Russian and Ukrainian space rocketry.

The International Space Station

All signs so far from the western partners on ISS indicate that they are guardedly hopeful that the cooperation with Russia will continue unimpeded. According to two stories (here and here) describing a panel discussion today at George Washington University Space Policy Institute, state department officials expressed complete confidence that the partnership at ISS will continue without interruption, as it did in 2014 when Russia invaded the Crimea, taking it from the Ukraine. From the first link:
» Read more

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Pushback: Federal court grants injunction against United Airlines COVID shot mandate

1:49 pm

United Airlines: Run by fascist clowns
United Airlines: Run by fascist clowns

Our body, our choice! A federal court of appeals, in a 2-1 ruling on February 18, 2022, overruled a lower court judge and granted an injunction halting any punitive action by United Airlines against any employee who refuses to get a COVID shot because of religious or medical reasons.

The Fifth Circuit judges ordered the case to go back to Pittman for review. With Pittman’s concerns about irreparable harm assuaged, he will consider remaining preliminary injunction factors and ultimately decide whether unvaccinated employees with exemptions will return to work.

In November, Pittman notably told United Airlines employees that besides their inability to prove irreparable harm, their “arguments appear compelling and convincing at this stage. … United’s mandate thus reflects an apathy, if not antipathy, for many of its employees’ concerns and a dearth of toleration for those expressing diversity of thought,” he wrote in part. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words illustrate the general intolerance of the left in imposing its mandates these past two years. Anyone who disagrees with them is considered a non-human who deserves no rights and can be oppressed and destroyed in any way the left sees fit.

United Airlines itself demonstrated its support for this intolerance when in December 2020 it kicked a family off a plane because the parents could not keep a mask on their two year old. As I wrote then,

You must watch the video to see how crazy and irrational this is. The father is holding her with a mask covering her face, even if it isn’t on her. More important, children don’t get COVID-19. Children don’t infect others. And the child is clearly not sick. To demand a mask on her makes no sense.

The lawsuit on which the judges ruled above is part of a pushback by United employees against the company’s rules that placed more than 2,000 people on unpaid leave, with many still under United contracts that prevent them from seeking other work.

Sadly, I can’t advise my readers to choose another airline company. All the airline companies have been pretty much as oppressive as United these past two years, generally treating their passengers like cattle on the way to slaughter. It would seem there is room here for some real competition, offering employees a tolerant work environment and its customers a pleasant flight. Right now no one is doing it.

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Astra releases update on February 10th launch failure

9:50 am

Capitalism in space: Astra yesterday released an update on its investigation into its February 10th launch failure at Cape Canaveral.

The update doesn’t provide any conclusions, but merely notes that the company has completed its review of all “video and telemetry” from the event, and has reconstructed a full timeline from that data.

It is now reviewing that timeline to create what engineers call “fault trees”, each a specific scenario path pointing at a possible cause of the failure. Once that cause has been identified, engineers can then propose a solution.

According to the press release, the company is already “implementing corrective actions”, though the release provides no information as to what the cause was or what they are doing to correct. It states instead that once the investigation and corrections have been completely, the company will then release a full report.

Meanwhile, it appears that at least six law firms are considering suing the company, which became a publicly traded company in July 2021. These law firms “…are seeking clients who lost significant amount of money after purchasing the stock.” The launch failure caused the stock value to drop significantly, and these law firms apparently think that the company has made false claims about its plans — such as its claim that it will eventually be launch 300 times per year — and wish to put together a class action lawsuit based on this accusation plus the drop in stock price.

Whether Astra can meet its goal of 300 launches per year is certainly at this time questionable. However, it is too soon to call the company a failure. Once it recovers from the launch failure and resumes launches — a process that for any new rocket company generally takes a few years — that stock price will certainly recover, and will rise with each successful launch.

Only should Astra fail to resume launches, or continue to fail with each launch, will the stock truly crash, and thus provide these law firms with a possible case.

At the same time, in a free society we are supposed to recognize the concept of “buyer beware.” If you buy a product or a stock, it is at your own risk. If you fail to do due diligence beforehand, your loss is your responsibility, not the company who made the product or whose stock crashed.

It appears, based on everything Astra has so far done, an investment in its stocks while quite risky has not been an unreasonable gamble, making the present case for these lawsuits somewhat weak. Time will tell however whether that changes in the future.

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A thumbnail bio of George Washington

6:01 pm

An evening pause: This day, February 22nd and the birthday of George Washington, was once celebrated yearly by Americans to honor the leader of the American army in the Revolutionary War, the leader in the effort to write the Constitution, and the country’s first president who had the humbleness to step down after two terms in office.

Congress in 1971 turned that celebration into the empty “Presidents Day” holiday, that means nothing and devalues the profound importance of Washington, especially when compared to the generally mediocre individuals — with the except possibly of Lincoln alone — who followed him in that office.

I choose to celebrate Washington instead, on this the actual anniversary of this birth. The video below is a short but succinct and accurate outline of his life. It only touches the surface of the man’s unfathomable importance to American history, but it is start.

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Northrop Grumman to launch new satellite serving mission in ’24 on Falcon 9

9:12 am

Capitalism in space: Northrop Grumman yesterday announced that it has awarded the contract for the first launch of its Mission Robotic Vehicle (MRV) — designed as a robot capable of installing multiple mission extension pods (MEP) on satellites — to SpaceX for a launch scheduled in 2024.

Once in orbit each MEP [Mission Extension Pod] is captured by the MRV and stowed for transport to the client satellite. The MRV rendezvous and docks with the client to install the MEP, which operates like an auxiliary propulsion device and uses its own thrusters to maneuver the client vehicle. Then the MRV detaches itself and moves on to grab another MEP for the next customer. The MRV is designed to stay in orbit for 10 years.

Anderson said the company expects to install as many as 30 propulsion pods over the life of the MRV.

“Our manifest for the MRV is full through mid 2026,” he said. Besides Optus, five other customers have signed term sheets to purchase mission extension pods.

Essentially, Northrop Grumman upgraded its Mission Extension Vehicle design to separate the repair section from the robot that installs it so that it is cheaper to launch everything. It can now launch multiple lighter and smaller repair pods as needed, with the robot already in orbit ready to go.

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Northrop Grumman launches Cygnus freighter to ISS

8:29 am

Capitalism in space: Northrop Grummann yesterday used its Antares rocket to successfully launch its Cygnus freighter to ISS.

This fact about this Cygnus is important:

This is the first Cygnus mission featuring enhanced capabilities to perform a re-boost to the space station’s orbit as a standard service for NASA; one re-boost is planned while Cygnus is connected to the orbiting laboratory.

In other words, Cygnus has been enabled to replace the boost capability that the Russians and Japanese provided.

The 2022 launch race:

6 SpaceX
2 China
2 Russia
1 Virgin Orbit
1 ULA
1 India
1 Europe (Arianespace)
1 Northrop Grumman

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Virgin Galactic chairman resigns

8:54 am

Getting out while the getting is good: Chamath Palihapitiya, who has been chairman of Virgin Galactic’s board since it went public in 2019, suddenly announced today that he has resigned from the company.

Palihapitiya’s SPAC, or special purpose acquisition company, took Virgin Galactic public in October 2019. The company’s stock has faced volatile trading since then — climbing above $60 a share in the months ahead of Sir Richard Branson’s test spaceflight, but it recently fell below its public debut price on news of a further delay in the start of commercial service.

The now-former chairman sold his personal Virgin Galactic stake in early 2021 that was worth over $200 million at the time. But he indirectly owns about 15.8 million shares through Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings.

Like Richard Branson, Palihapitiya sold the majority of his stock when the price was high, about the time the company flew its first and only passenger flight in July, with Richard Branson on board. His exit now suggests he wants out before the company’s dismal future prospects become obvious.

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You can now buy payload space on a lunar rover!

11:18 am

Capitalism in space: Lunar Outpost, which is building a mini-rover that will fly on the private Intuitive Machines lunar lander scheduled for launch later this year, has now partnered with the company Copernic to sell the rover’s spare payload space to whoever wants to buy it.

Lunar Outpost of Evergreen, Colorado, is preparing to send a 10-kilogram robotic rover to the moon on an Intuitive Machines lander and SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket later this year. While the lander’s primary payload is a Nokia LTE 4G technology demonstration, Lunar Outpost is working with Copernic Space to sell an additional 3.475 kilograms on its first Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP).

…Copernic Space created the online platform to streamline the process of buying and selling space-related products and services like shares in a space startup, satellite sensor tasking or payload space. By applying blockchain technology, Copernic Space converts space assets into non-fungible or digital tokens, which are designed to be bought and sold online.

For the next 11 days, Lunar Outpost is selling a gram of payload capacity on its MAPP Lunar Rover for $4,250. The minimum order is 100 grams. In April, the public sale begins, allowing people to buy or sell as little as one-hundredth of a gram of payload space.

It appears purchase will be by using blockchain currency, and appears to also involve the purchase of “non-fungible or digital tokens”.

Normally I would applaud this effort, but the addition of these digital tokens makes the sale process seem less than straightforward and even a little suspicious. What exactly are customers buying? And what exactly will go to the Moon? Copernic’s website describes this process, but even there its seems exceedingly vague and uncomfortably like a con game.

From what I can gather, customers who buy payload space can use Copernic to create these non-fungible tokens which can then be resold to others to make back some of the cost. I wonder, however, why would anyone buy these tokens in the first place. As far as I can tell, they have absolutely no value in the real world.

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Astroscale about to resume space junk capture test

10:06 am

Capitalism in space: After several weeks of delay due to unstated technology issues, the Japanese company Astroscale has begun maneuvers in its test to see if its robot satellite can approach from a distance and capture a target satellite acting as orbital space junk.

The Japanese startup has started moving its 175-kilogram servicer spacecraft closer to the 17-kilogram client satellite ahead of deciding whether to restart the demonstration, Astroscale said in a social media post.

According to Astroscale, it has made “good progress in working through solutions to the anomalous spacecraft conditions that we identified with ELSA-d,” or End-of-Life Services by Astroscale-demonstration.

The company did not disclose the nature of the issue, when it could restart the mission or the distance between the two objects.

That no specifics have been stated, and that the company also says it is “keeping regulators and key partners updated on our status,” suggests that maybe the problem wasn’t technical, but bureaucratic. Maybe some Biden administration functionary got nervous, and demanded Astroscale slow down the test so that he or she could review what was happening.

This would not surprise me in the least, though I admit it is nothing more than some wild speculation.

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Shetland spaceport in Scotland delayed

9:45 am

Capitalism in space: The proposed spaceport planned for the Shetland Islands in the United Kingdom is now delayed because a government planning committee has failed to put it on its schedule for discussion.

A spokesperson for SaxaVord UK Spaceport said the SIC has now confirmed to them that the application will not be on the agenda on Monday, and has given no clear indication when it will be discussed.

…The council’s development director Neil Grant said: “This is a complex planning application and recently there has been great deal of information flowing between the applicant, ourselves and statutory consultees. We are working hard to ensure this is presented to the planning committee for a decision as soon as possible.”

So there will be no confusion among my readers, this proposed spaceport is not the same as the Sutherland spaceport in Scotland, presently under construction. It is a competitor, and until recently faced opposition from environmentalists, who have now withdrawn their objections.

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Firefly savior Max Polyakov gives away his stock

9:58 am

Capitalism in space: Forced by the Biden administration to leave the smallsat rocket company Firefly Aerospace because he is not a U.S. citizen, the billionaire Max Polyakov — who brought the company back from bankruptcy — has now sold his 58% share to the company’s founder, Tom Markusic for one dollar.

His announcement of this decision did not speak well of the federal government:

I am giving up for 1 usd consideration all my 58% stake in Firefly to my co-founder and partner Tom. Dear CFIUS, Air Force and 23 agencies of USA who betrayed me and judge me in all your actions for past 15 months . I hope now you are happy . History will judge all of you guys. Max love Ukraine and yes I have Ukrainian passport and I am Founder of Firefly !!! Bye my “bird” and at the end of the days I proud what I done for my Land soul and heritage !!!

While it is generally not a good idea to have a non-U.S. citizen controlling a rocket company, Polyakov’s record here was outstandingly positive, for the U.S. Moreover, the Ukraine is a strong ally of the U.S., or used to be. To force him out for no reason seems irrational. A more rational approach would have been for the government to insist on monitoring his actions closely, so that only if he appeared to be acting against our interests would it act.

Polyakov’s decision to give Markusic the company further proves his good will. Too bad we have now lost him.

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FAA administrator, a Trump holdover, announces resignation

9:41 am

FAA administrator Steve Dickson yesterday announced that he will officially resign from the agency on March 31, 2022.

Dickson was appointed by President Trump in 2019 to a five year term, so his resignation now cuts his term short by two years.

Dickson gave as his reason for resigning a desire to spend more time with his family, the go-to explanation for every Washington official’s resignation. While this may be true, I can’t help wondering if friction and pressure from the Biden administration contributed to his decision.

For example, though Dickson’s record with private enterprise has been mixed, his record in connection with commercial space was mostly good, working to help the new launch industry prosper by keeping out its way as much as possible. This record was especially obvious with SpaceX’s operations in Boca Chica, where there was little regulatory effort to slow that work until Biden became president, and even then relatively little. It could be the Biden administration was unhappy with this approach, and was trying to force Dickson to regulate SpaceX more.

A new administrator, appointed by Biden, will certainly be less friendly. Based on most Biden appointees in the past year, the administration will likely want to put someone in place who is hostile to capitalism, favors a communist agenda, and wants to impose strong government control. Thus, this resignation almost certainly puts another nail in the coffin of SpaceX’s desire to launch Starship test flights from Boca Chica.

Then again, that new administrator would have to be approved by the Senate, and right now, based on the Senate’s 50-50 split between Democrats and Republicans, it will be difficult for the Biden administration to get a radical leftist approved. This difficulty will be further magnified by Biden’s horrible poll numbers as well as similar polls suggesting a bloodbath for Democrats in the mid-term November elections. For them to force through an extremist in this position now will not help those poll numbers.

I therefore predict the nominee put forth by Biden will likely mouth empty support for private enterprise during the confirmation hearings. If the Senate Republicans are fooled by this disingenuousness (something that has happened frequently), when confirmed that person will immediately act to impose the government’s will on most commercial operations, especially those by SpaceX.

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Pushback: Three school board members recalled in San Francisco

11:10 am

London Breed, mayor of San Francisco
San Francisco’s Democratic Party mayor London Breed,
who now takes full control of school board.

Vote the bums out! Voters in San Francisco yesterday ousted three members of the city’s seven-member school board members because of their focus on renaming schools honoring American heroes like Washington and Lincoln while refusing to reopen the city’s schools or deal with its budget issues.

School board president Gabriela López, vice president Faauuga Moliga and commissioner Alison Collins were all stripped of their positions during a special election, according to tallies by the San Francisco Department of Elections.

Furious parents launched the recall effort in January 2021 after arguing the school board was pushing progressive politics instead of acting in the best interests of children amid the pandemic.

…The recall effort was launched as the school board was trying to rename 44 school sites that it said honored public figures linked to racism, sexism and other injustices — including Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and trailblazing US Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.).

Critics argued the push made a mockery of the country’s racial reckoning — as parents demanded to know why the board would waste time renaming schools when the priority needed to be reopening classrooms. The board eventually scrapped the plan after widespread uproar.

Opponents had called the recall a waste of time and money given the district is facing a number of challenges, including a $125 million budget deficit and the need to replace retiring Superintendent Vincent Matthews.

» Read more

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A rebranded Virgin Galactic to reopen ticket sales

9:14 am

Capitalism in space: Virgin Galactic today announced both a major rebranding of the company — significantly deemphasizing its links to Richard Branson — as well as a resumption of ticket sales for its suborbital flights.

Virgin Galactic opened ticket sales to the general public and rebranded itself today a week ahead of what promises to be another dismal quarterly earnings report. The company most recently reported to having 700 reservations for suborbital spaceflights, with plans to reach 1,000 later this year. Space tourism flights are currently scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2022.

Virgin Galactic’s battered stock, which opened at $8.93, soared by more than 29 percent to $10.50 on the New York Stock Exchange. The company is scheduled to report earnings (actually a loss) for the fourth quarter of 2021 on Feb. 22.

Tickets will cost $450K, with a $150K deposit required. It also appears that — in order to encourage sales — the company is capping present sales to the first 1,000 who provide the deposit. Since it has for years claimed it has 700 paying customers already, this suggests they are looking for only another 300 at this time.

Branson’s share in the company is now only about 11% — having successfully pumped and then dumped 80% of his shares — and it appears its management senses his name and the association with his Virgin Group now carries more negative than positive connotations. The new company logo for example shrinks the word “Virgin” so much that if you didn’t look close, you’d think the company was simply called “Galactic.”

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