Tag: freedom

SpaceX launches 20 Starlink satellites

8:43 am

After a ten day pause in launches, which included one launch abort at T-0, SpaceX yesterday successfully launched 20 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The pause is noteworthy because it is possibly SpaceX’s longest pause in launches this year (I haven’t gone back and checked). Consider this fact: A ten day pause between launches would have once been considered a fast launch pace. Now it seems like something is wrong.

The rocket’s first stage completed its fifth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

63 SpaceX (with another launch scheduled for later today)
27 China
8 Russia
7 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the world combined in successful launches, 73 to 41, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including other American companies, 63 to 51.

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Starliner return delayed again to June 26th

10:23 am

In a press briefing today, Boeing and NASA announced that they have decided to delay the return of Boeing’s Starliner capsule, carrying two astronauts, another four days to June 26, 2024. The landing would take place just before dawn, landing at White Sands in New Mexico.

The decision to delay is related to the results from the hot fire tests of the aft thrusters of Starliner on June 15, 2024. Engineers want to review the data, which included finding that one of the eight thrusters is producing unacceptable results and will not be used for the rest of the flight. The other seven thrusters however produced acceptable results, “good thrust” as noted by one official.

The extra time to review the data is also because these thrusters are on the service module, which will not return to Earth. They want to make sure they understand the issues entirely. The longer time docked to ISS is also giving them better data for future longer missions.

As for the helium leaks, the level of leaking appears to be dropping, and in fact dropped after the hot fire burns, and “appears to be somehow related to the thrusters.” Either way, the safety margins remain sufficient so that the return is not threatened in any way by these leaks.

The valve issue also seems under control, with all the valves now working as expected.

Overvall, engineers have decided they have a safe vehicle that can not only be used to return to Earth as scheduled, they are confident that they could also use Starliner as a lifeboat in a sudden emergency.

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Rocket Lab gets a new 10-launch contract from Japanese satellite company

9:08 am

Rocket Lab yesterday signed a new 10-launch contract with the Japanese satellite company Synspective, with the launches scheduled for the 2025-2027 timeframe.

Rocket Lab has been Synspective’s sole launch provider since 2020, having already launched four of its satellites, with two other launches already under contract. Thus, the satellite company has bought sixteen total launches from Rocket Lab. Its constellation is designed to provide surface data in any weather condition, using radar.

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German rocket startup looking for alternatives to Saxavord spaceport

9:13 am

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

Because of regulatory delays at the Saxaford spaceport in Great Britain, the German rocket startup Hyimpulse has signed a launch deal with the Australian commercial spaceport Southern Launch.

In May, HyImpulse launched the inaugural flight of its suborbital SR75 rocket from the Southern Launch Koonibba Test Range. The flight had initially been expected to be launched from SaxaVord in Scotland, but delays in the construction of the facility forced the company to look elsewhere for a host.

On 6 June, Southern Launch announced that it had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with HyImpulse for the launch of additional SR75 missions from Koonibba. The agreement also included provisions for the pair to explore the possibility of launching orbital flights aboard the HyImpulse SL1 rocket from Whalers Way Orbital Launch Complex on the south coast of Australia.

According to Hyimpulse’s November 2023 deal with Saxaford, it was to have flown two suborbital flights of the SR75 in 2024 and one orbital flight of SL1 in 2025.

It could very well be that SL1’s first orbital test launch will still take place from Saxavord, but the several years of delays caused by the red tape from the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority in approving Saxavord has forced its customers to seek alternatives. Hyimpulse for example now has agreements not only with Southern Launch in Australia. The French space agency CNES has approved it to launch from French Guiana as well.

In addition, the German rocket startup Isar Aerospace in November 2023 signed a deal with the new Andoya commercial spaceport in Norway. Andoya had come into this spaceport competition very late, but it apparently won this deal because Isar saw the regulatory problems in the UK and decided to look elsewhere.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Entire family kicked out of Catholic school because their 13-year-old son supported patriotism to America

3:56 pm

Jimmy Heyward, blacklisted for touting American patriotism
Jimmy Heyward, blacklisted for extolling
American patriotism

They’re coming for you next: When 13-year-old Jimmy Heyward decided to run for the position of “commissioner of spirit and patriotism” at St. Bonaventure Catholic middle school in Huntington Beach, California, he wrote a campaign speech that not only extolled the idea of patriotism, but wittily mimicked Donald Trump’s own campaign slogans. His conclusion:

So accordingly, I Jimmy Heyward, am running for Commissioner of Patriotism and School Spirit. I want to clarify that my ideas are not promises, but I can promise to make pep rallies great again! … I will make the school spirit great again! I will make patriotism within SBS great again! And most importantly I will MAKE SBS GREAT AGAIN!

The school principal, Mary Flock, didn’t like that. How dare he!
» Read more

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Space Force names SpaceX, ULA, and Blue Origin as its launch providers for the next five years

9:14 am

As part of the military’s program for issuing launch contracts, the Space Force yesterday announced that it has chosen SpaceX, ULA, and Blue Origin as its launch providers, allowing them to bid on $5.6 billion worth of planned launched over the next five years.

The NSSL Phase 3 program was structured into two “lanes.” Lane 1 is for less demanding launches to low Earth orbit, while Lane 2 is reserved for heavy lift rockets capable of delivering payloads to nine reference orbits, including some of the most demanding national security missions.

The selection of Blue Origin, SpaceX, and ULA for Lane 1 contracts confirms that no other launch providers met the criteria. Seven bids were submitted, according to the DoD announcement.

The Space Force apparently rejected the other four unnamed companies because they “are still maturing their launch capabilities.” It will allow them to re-submit applications next year, and could approve others for bidding at that time, which is a major change from past policy. Previously the military would name approved companies, but not reconsider others for years, a policy that limited its options and reduced competition. Now it appears it will be doing so frequently, possibly every year, in order to regularly increase the number of companies that can bid on military contracts.

This change is excellent news for the American launch industry, as it means the Pentagon has finally ended its long standing launch policy that played favorites.

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Starliner’s return delayed again

8:44 am

NASA today announced that the return of Starliner from ISS, carrying two astronauts, has been delayed again, from June 18th to June 22nd.

It appears engineers want to perform more tests of the the spacecraft’s attitude thrusters before undocking. The failure of some thrusters during docking on June 6th has raised some concerns.

NASA and Boeing teams also prepared plans for Starliner to fire seven of its eight aft-facing thrusters while docked to the station to evaluate thruster performance for the remainder of the mission. Known as a “hot fire test,” the process will see two bursts of the thrusters, totaling about a second, as part of a pathfinder process to evaluate how the spacecraft will perform during future operational missions after being docked to the space station for six months. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words are kind of a lie. While there is no doubt this test will tell engineers a lot about future operations, such a test, while attached to ISS, would never have been approved had the thrusters all worked as planned during docking. The real reason for this static fire test is to make sure the thrusters will work once undocked.

If they don’t work, there could be a safety issue putting the astronauts in Starliner for return to Earth.

NASA plans a press briefing on June 18th at noon (Eastern) to outline in better detail the situation.

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A new lawsuit filed against Elon Musk by former SpaceX employees

10:12 am

Elon Musk, a target for destruction by the left
Elon Musk, a target for destruction

The lawfare won’t stop until morale improves! A new lawsuit has been filed against Elon Musk by eight former SpaceX employees, who now accuse him of sexually harassing them by his sometimes pointed tweets on X, calling those tweets “juvenile, grotesque sexual banter.”

The suit also says Musk’s tweets “had the wholly foreseeable and intentional result of encouraging other employees to engage in similar conduct.”

At SpaceX’s Hawthorne offices, the suit claims, company meetings and employees mimicked Musk’s humor. At meetings, the lawsuit alleges, senior engineers called mechanical parts “chodes” and “schlongs.” A camera that was placed on the bottom of a second-stage Falcon rocket was referred to as the “Upskirt Camera,” and a structure used by astronauts to transfer from SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station was called the “Fun Tunnel,” a euphemism for anal sex.

Read the whole article. The complaints are quite hilarious. These employees need to get a life. This is all silly stuff, hardly worth even two nanoseconds of concern.

Unfortunately, these anti-Musk employees do have a life, and it is a very sad one, consumed wholly with destroying Musk, not accomplishing anything worthwhile on their own. These eight former employees are the same ones who were fired after they published an internal letter in SpaceX calling for others in the company to denounce Musk for his tweets. Following their firing they also instigated a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) suit against Musk, which is presently suspended because SpaceX is claiming the NLRB’s very existence is unconstitutional, and no further action on the complaint will occur until the courts decide on that claim.

This new lawsuit is simply another example of new harassment of Musk by these former employees.

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FAA announces schedule for new EIS public meetings on SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy operations at Cape Canaveral

9:48 am

FAA has now announced the schedule of public meetings in connection with the new environmental impact statement (EIS) it is doing for SpaceX’s proposed Starship/Superheavy operations at Cape Canaveral.

On June 12 and 13, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will host a series of public scoping meetings to inform the public and answer questions about SpaceX’s proposal to launch Starship from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A). There will also be a virtual meeting on June 17 for those unable to attend in person.

…Among those attending the public hearings will be representative of the Department of the Air Force, the U.S. Space Force, the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge, Canaveral National Seashore and SpaceX.

FAA officials claim this new EIS is required, after doing one only five years ago, because of major changes in SpaceX’s design of Superheavy. For example, it originally planned to land the rocket on a drone ship. Now it wants to catch it with the arms on the launch tower.

The FAA’s argument for this new EIS might sound plausible at first glance, but these regulations were never intended to require new environmental statements every time a project underwent changes. The goal was to make sure the environment would not be impacted by the work, and the first 2019 EIS achieved that. None of the changes SpaceX is proposing change significantly its impact on the local environment.

Moreover, the FAA has three-quarters of a century of empirical data at Cape Canaveral proving that spaceports help the local environment, not hurt it. We know without doubt that none of SpaceX’s launch plans will do harm. The FAA should get out of the way.

Instead, it is sticking its nose into everything. This new EIS is merely mission creep, government bureaucrats both covering their backsides while creating new work that increases their power and justifies bigger budgets for their existence.

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Review of 4th Superheavy/Starship flight; FAA clears SpaceX for next flight

9:32 am

Link here. The article provides a detailed step-by-step review of everything that happened on the fourth Superheavy/Starship orbital test flight on June 6, 2024, as well as describing the changes being applied to Starship and Superheavy due to that flight.

However, the article also included this announcement from the FAA, stating that it will not do its own mishap investigation on that flight.

The FAA assessed the operations of the SpaceX Starship Flight 4 mission. All flight events for both Starship and Super Heavy appear to have occurred within the scope of planned and authorized activities.

While this decision means SpaceX can go ahead with the fifth test launch as soon as it is ready — no longer delayed while it waits for the FAA to retype SpaceX’s investigation and then approve it — it is unclear whether this FAA decision will allow SpaceX to attempt a tower landing of Superheavy, with the tower’s arms catching the rocket.

If the FAA has not yet approved a tower landing, I suspect SpaceX will forgo that attempt on the next launch in order to get it off the ground as soon as possible, even as it pushes the FAA for such an approval for a subsequent launch.

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A new Chicken Little report: The mega satellite constellations are going to destroy the ozone layer!

1:50 pm

The American Geophysical Union, where science is no longer practiced
The American Geophysical Union, where
science is no longer practiced

We’re all gonna die! According to a new paper touted today by the PR department of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), a new study has concluded — based on computer modeling — that the many giant satellite constellations totaling tens of thousands of satellites pose a risk to the ozone layer because the aluminium used in their structures that gets vaporized upon re-entry will interact with the ozone layer and destroy it.

You can read the paper here. From the abstract:

This paper investigates the oxidation process of the satellite’s aluminum content during atmospheric reentry utilizing atomic-scale molecular dynamics simulations. We find that the population of reentering satellites in 2022 caused a 29.5% increase of aluminum in the atmosphere above the natural level, resulting in around 17 metric tons of aluminum oxides injected into the mesosphere. The byproducts generated by the reentry of satellites in a future scenario where mega-constellations come to fruition can reach over 360 metric tons per year. As aluminum oxide nanoparticles may remain in the atmosphere for decades, they can cause significant ozone depletion.

The uncertainties and biases here are hard to count. First, it is a computer model (“Garbage in, garbage out”). Second, the simulations make many assumptions, most of which cannot be confirmed, or are simply absurd. For example, the model is based on a single “typcial, small satellite” coming from a specific orbit and elevation when we know these satellites will have many variations in size, make-up, and orbits. Third, the scientists admit they use “a worst-case scenario” for determining what would happen when the satellite re-enters the atmosphere.

Finally, and most damning, the whole premise of this threat is based on a somewhat implausive chain of chemical actions.
» Read more

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SpaceX retrieves its Dragon debris that fell in Canada in February

11:08 am

SpaceX yesterday sent a crew and a U-Haul truck to five different farms in Saskatchewan, Canada, to retrieve eight pieces of debris that came from the service module trunk of a Dragon cargo capsule when the trunk was de-orbited to burn up in the atmosphere in February.

I am certain SpaceX engineers want to find out why this debris survived its fall through the atmosphere, so as to better predict what will happen on future de-orbits. If they determine that more of Dragon’s service module survives re-entry than previously predicted, it will require a rethinking on where such de-orbits are planned, making sure they always occur over the ocean.

It also appears that an academic who doesn’t know much about space engineering showed up during this retrieval to talk to the press and attack SpaceX.

Samantha Lawler, a University of Regina astronomy professor, was at the farm when SpaceX employees arrived on Tuesday. She said SpaceX needs to be transparent about how its operations are affecting the atmosphere, and how incidents like this are dealt with.

Lawler was quoted more fully (and more embarrassingly) in this other news report:

“SpaceX has over 6,000 Starlink satellites in orbit that they claim will burn up completely when they re-enter. That comes to 23 re-entries per-day when they are at full capacity. If those re-entries are all making it to the ground, dropping hundred pound pieces of garbage, that will kill lots of people,” Lawler explained.

To claim that any Starlink satellites are threat to hit the ground proves Lawler knowns nothing about space engineering and is acting merely as a anti-SpaceX “Karen” who wants to harass the company. Starlink satellites are too small to pose a threat. Moreover, SpaceX from day one has acted responsibly to de-orbit them under a controlled manner.

Nonetheless, this incident in Canada suggests that more material from larger orbiting objects can reach the ground, and requires a rethinking as to where to de-orbit them.

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Pentagon wants to buy from SpaceX its own 100-satellite Starshield constellation

10:21 am

The Pentagon is so impressed with its experience using SpaceX’s Starlink system as well as its military-hardened version dubbed Starshield that it is negotiating the purchase from SpaceX of its own 100-satellite Starshield constellation.

Col. Eric Felt, director of space architecture at the office of the assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration, said the plan is to acquire a constellation of Starshield satellites by 2029, contingent upon receiving the necessary funding appropriations from Congress.

Speaking at SAE Media Group’s Milsatcom USA conference on June 10, Felt noted that the military has been an avid consumer of SpaceX’s commercial Starlink services, but also wants to take advantage of the company’s dedicated Starshield product line and procure a government-owned constellation. In a briefing slide presented at the conference, titled “Satcom 2029,” Felt showed the DoD’s notional future satcom architecture including more than 100 Starshield satellites.

If approved for funding from Congress, this Starshield constellation would be used in conjunction with other military communciations satellites, which could also include satellites provided by other satellite companies such as Amazon and its as-yet unlaunched Kuiper constellation. The main advantage for such a system is redundancy. It is very difficult for an enemy to take the system down, since it uses so many small satellites. It is also cheaper to maintain and upgrade.

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Stoke Space test fires its first stage engine for the first time

10:02 am

The rocket startup Stoke Space has successfully completed the first static fire test of the methane-fueled rocket engine that will be used on the first stage of its entirely reusable Nova rocket.

The engine, designed to produce up to 100,000 pounds-force of thrust, went up to 50% of its rated thrust in the two-second test. The goal of the test was to see how the engine started up and shut down, Andy Lapsa, chief executive of Stoke, said in an interview. “All of the complexity and a lot of the risk is in that startup transient and shutdown transient,” he said. “The duration of the test was short because the goal was to demonstrate the transient and then back out.”

The engine uses a design called full-flow staged combustion, where both the engine’s fuel and oxidizer — liquified natural gas and liquid oxygen, respectively — go through separate preburners before going into the main combustion chamber. That approach offers greater efficiency and a longer engine life, but is more complex to develop. It is currently used only on SpaceX’s Raptor engines that power its Starship vehicle.

The rocket’s upper stage uses hydrogen as its fuel, as well as a radical nozzle design. Instead of a single large nozzle, the thrust is released from a ring of tiny outlets at the permeter of the stage. It is hoped this design will better protect the system during re-entry from orbit, while allowing for more precise control upon landing, and thus make it possible to reuse the upper stage.

The first test launch is presently scheduled for 2025. This new engine test makes that date more realistic.

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Starliner at ISS: One thruster shut down, another helium leak found, and a new valve issue

9:45 am

According to an update from NASA yesterday, engineers are evaluating three different on-going technical issues with Boeing’s Starliner capsule, presently docked at ISS.

First, of the 28 attitude thrusters on the capsule’s service module, one remains what NASA calls “deselected”, which means it is presently shut down and not in the loop during operations.

Ground teams plan to fire all 28 RCS thrusters after undocking to collect additional data signatures on the service module thrusters before the hardware is expended.

Since the service module is ejected and burns up in the atmosphere, they want to test each thruster beforehand, probably one-by-one to gather as much data as possible. They have to do this after undocking because testing the thrusters while attached to ISS is too risky.

Second, it appears engineers have detected a fifth small helium leak.
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Federal court rules conservative kids have no free speech rights

1:26 pm

The shirt that offended teachers at Nichols Middle School
Liam Morrison, wearing the evil shirt that he wore the
second time teachers at Nichols Middle School sent
him home.

They’re coming for you next: In a ruling that completely contradicts long standing court rulings that had insisted the first amendment allowed students to wear T-shirts and armbands with whatever political statements they wished, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit on June 9, 2024 ruled that a Massachusetts middle school had the right to censor and ban a 12-year-old boy wearing a shirt that said “There are only two genders.”

This story is a follow-up of a blacklist story from May 2023. At that time 12-year-old Liam Morrison was forced to leave Nichols Middle School when he refused to remove his T-shirt that said “There are only two genders.” He later came to class with the T-shirt shown in the picture to the right, with the words “only two” covered with the word “censored.” He was once again sent home, and subsequently his parents sued.

According to the court’s ruling this week (which you can read here), a student’s political clothing doesn’t have to cause any disturbances at all. All that matters is if school officials think it might (or they simply dislike the ideas expressed).
» Read more

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French startup gets another space station cargo contract

9:02 am

The French startup The Exploration Company has gotten its fourth contract for its proposed Nyx unmanned reusable cargo capsule, signing a deal with Vast to fly one freighter mission to its proposed second Haven station.

This startup, which has not yet flown anything, already had contracts to fly one cargo mission to ISS (a demo mission for the European Space Agency), one to Axiom’s space station, and three to Voyager Space’s Starlab station. This new contract means The Exploration Company already has a manifest of six missions.

These contracts pose a puzzle. Why is this startup getting all these deals, but not Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus or SpaceX’s Dragon capsules? Or have these two American companies signed deals without the same PR splash?

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Bill Anders, the thoughtful astronaut who liked to go fast

12:27 pm

Bill Anders suiting up for the December 1968 launch of Apollo 8
Bill Anders suiting up for the December 1968
launch of Apollo 8

The death of Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders on June 7, 2024 requires that I give the public my own personal taste of the man, whom I met and interviewed when I was writing my 1998 history of the Apollo 8 mission to the Moon, Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8.

The first time I met Bill Anders was in 1997. Anders had told me to fly into Los Angeles for our first interview. A few days before my arrival, however, his wife Valerie realized that both she and Anders would not be in Los Angeles, but in San Diego.

Rather than have me change flights, Anders agreed to drive up to LA, pick me up at the airport, and drive me to San Diego so I could interview Valerie. During the two hour drive I would be able to interview him.

Anders was waiting for me as I exited the terminal. As I have noticed routinely, he seemed much smaller than I expected, as does every astronaut at first meeting. Anders guided me to a low-slung sports car, which he slid into with ease. I — being 6′ 4″ — had to crowbar my way in.

And then Anders demonstrated instantly one reason he was chosen to fly to the Moon. He started the car, and backed out of the parking space and out of the lot at what seemed to me to be about seventy miles an hour. And he did it with total control.
» Read more

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After only seven commercial flights, Virgin Galactic retires Unity

9:33 am

The delays have never really ended: After only seven commercial flights (the most recent this past weekend), Virgin Galactic has now retired its Unity suborbital spacecraft, and will cease flights for two years while it builds a new generation suborbital craft.

Virgin Galactic flew the last commercial flight of Virgin SpaceShip (VSS) Unity yesterday. Future suborbital trips will have to wait until the new Delta-class spaceships are ready in 2026. They can carry six passengers instead of four, increasing revenue. This flight, Galactic 07, took a Turkish researcher and three private individuals across the imaginary line that separates air and space for a few minutes of weightlessness.

Founded in 2004 and largely funded by Sir Richard Branson as part of his Virgin Group, Virgin Galactic is still trying to demonstrate that commercial suborbital human spaceflight can be a profitable business. Last year Branson told the Financial Times he would stop investing in Virgin Galactic, putting pressure on CEO Michael Colglazier to cut costs and focus on getting the Delta version flying. After all these years of waiting to fly commercial passengers,VSS Unity will stop after just one year and seven commercial flights.

Branson had promised that Virgin Galactic would be flying hundreds of times per year by the mid-2000s. Didn’t happen. Virgin Galactic took deposits from hundreds (it claimed), but even now has only flown 30 people on those seven flights, many of whom have been recent customers, not the many original supporters. That’s the sum total of all of Richard Branson’s achievement with this company in two decades.

Now, with Branson out of the picture, the new management has to redo everything again, because what Branson designed was not profitable. I have serious doubts the company will fly again in 2026.

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SpaceX completes two Starlink launches hours apart

9:49 am

SpaceX last night completed two Starlink launches hours apart from opposite coasts. First its Falcon 9 rocket took 23 Starlink satellites into orbit, lifting off from Cape Canaveral. The first stage completed its 16th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

Then, a Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg carried 20 Starlink satellites into orbit, its first stage completing its 21st flight (tying the record), landing safely on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

62 SpaceX
27 China
8 Russia
7 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the world combined in successful launches, 72 to 41, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including other American companies, 62 to 51.

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Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders, 90, killed in plane crash

8:59 pm

Earthrise as seen from Apollo 8, December 1968

Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders, 90, who took the iconic Earthrise picture (to the right and oriented as he framed it when he snapped it), was killed today when the plane he was piloting went down in the waters near the San Juan Islands off the coast of the state of Washington.

A report came in around 11:40 a.m. that an older-model plane crashed into the water and sank near the north end of Jones Island, San Juan County Sheriff Eric Peter said. Greg Anders confirmed to KING-TV that his father’s body was recovered Friday afternoon.

Only the pilot was on board the Beech A45 airplane at the time, according to the Federal Aviation Association.

I will have more to write about Anders later, whom I had met and interviewed many times when I was writing Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8. Of all the astronauts, he was probably the most thoughtful about matters outside of engineering, space exploration, or aviation.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Biden’s Justice Dept prosecutes doctor who blew the whistle on child mutilation at hospital

1:26 pm

Ethan Haim
Ethan Haim

They’re coming for you next: This story provides possibly the best illustratration of the barbarism of the Democratic Party and the Biden administration. Rather than celebrate the courage of Ethan Haim, the doctor who in 2023 blew the whistle on the continuing secret sex change operations being performed on children as young as 11 at Texas Children’s Hospital, the Biden Justice Department this week indicted that doctor on four felony charges.

On the morning in June 2023 that Haim was to graduate from Texas Children Hospital’s residency program, federal agents knocked on his door. They had identified him as a potential “leaker,” presumably through forensic examination of the hospital’s computer systems. Shortly thereafter, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tina Ansari began threatening Haim with prosecution.

Now, Ansari has made good on those threats. Earlier this week, U.S. marshals appeared at Haim’s home and summoned him to court to face an indictment on four felony counts of violating HIPAA. His initial appearance is next Monday [June 10th], where he will learn more about the charges against him.

Haim should be proud. He has now joined Donald Trump as one of the many innocent Americans being persecuted by the weaponized lawfare of the Democrats and the Biden administration because they simply disagree with its policies.

The facts of the case prove the political nature of the charges.. First, Christopher Rufo, who broke Haim story at the City Journal, makes it very clear that Haim was very careful to violate no HIPPAA rules.
» Read more

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ESA signs deal with Vast to use its Haven-1 space station

2:51 pm

Vast Haven-1 station inside Falcon-9 fairing
Vast Haven-1 station inside Falcon-9 fairing

The European Space Agency (ESA) and the commercial space station startup Vast today signed an agreement that sets the initial terms for ESA to use Vast’s first space station, Haven-1, as well as any space stations to follow.

The agreement outlines the parties’ intention to foster human spaceflight, science, technology and commercialisation development and explore collaboration in low Earth orbit destinations other than the International Space Station. The collaboration will initially focus on exploring opportunities for access to space for Europe through the Vast Space Stations. These could include:

  • Access to the Vast Space Stations for ESA and its Member States, for astronaut missions and research activities as well as commercial business development.
  • Supporting European industry to supply subsystems and equipment for future Vast Space Stations.
  • Vast making use of future qualified European LEO cargo and/or crew transportation services, at market rates and commercially viable terms and conditions, also as a means for offsetting future ESA Astronaut Missions.
  • Vast and ESA jointly supporting European industry in getting certified for docking to future Vast Space Stations.

This deal is actually a very big deal, as Vast’s Haven-1 space station is the only one under construction that does not have a deal with NASA. It is being financed privately and will at first simply be a one module habitat set to launch as early as August 2025 on a Falcon 9 rocket, with the first 30-day 4-person manned mission to follow almost immediately on a Dragon capsule. Vast’s work is closely linked with SpaceX, as its station also has a deal to use Starlink for communications.

The plan is to add more modules in the coming years to build up to a full station.

This deal not only indicates that this independent station is going to give the NASA-supported stations some real competition, it indicates that Europe is committed to doing the same. Now that Europe has abandoned the government-owned and international cooperation model it has used for decades with decidedly mixed results and switched to the capitalism model, where it is merely a customer buying things from a competing private sector, it is doing so full speed ahead, without any hesitation.

The independence of this station also frees it and its customers from the heavy rules that NASA routinely imposes on anyone who deals with it. This aspect gives Vast a competitive advantage that many will clearly wish to take advantage of.

This deal is therefore a challenge that better be recognized by NASA and the other commercial stations. If they don’t react properly they could find themselves left in the dust completely.

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Boeing’s Starliner successfully docks with ISS

10:57 am

Despite several minor helium leaks and the failure of 6 of its 28 small attitude thrusters (four of which were reactivated during an improvised hot fire test during rendezvous operations), Boeing’s Starliner has successfully docked with ISS today.

Though now safely arrived at ISS, the hatch has not yet opened. The spacecraft carries NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, and will now spend about a week at the space station checking out its systems before undocking and returning to Earth.

All told, this docking is a success, though the various thruster issues are a concern that must be addressed by Boeing, especially because there were thruster issues as well during the previous unmanned demo flight.

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Telescope removed from Mauna Kea on Big Island as local Hawaiian council rejects new telescopes on Haleakala on Maui

8:09 am

Even as a local Hawaiian authority on the Big Island has completed the removal of the first of three telescopes on the top of Mauna Kea, a local council on the island of Maui have voted 9-0 to oppose an Air Force project to build new telescopes on top of Haleakala.

The proposed new facility is called AMOS STAR, which is an acronym for Air Force Maui Optical and Supercomputing Site Small Telescope Advanced Research. It would feature six telescopes enclosed in ground-mounted domes and one rooftop-mounted domed telescope.

The county’s resolution urged the military to heed community calls to cease their development efforts. It urged the National Park Service, Federal Aviation Administration and the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources to deny the project permits.

At this time it appears that Hawaiians desended from the original indigenous population are opposed to all western technology, even as they rely on it. These new telescopes are proposed by the Air Force because it needs better capilities to track the tens of thousands of new satellites being launched by numerous companies and governments. This information will help prevent collisions in space.

As for their claims that these peaks are “considered wao akua, or ‘realm of the gods,’ and [places] of deep spirituality for Native Hawaiians to engage in some of these traditional practices,” as stated in the council’s resolution, I have some doubts. For almost three-quarters of a century such religious concerns and objections were never mentioned by anyone. If they existed indigenous Hawaiians appeared to have no problem “engaging in traditional practices” right next to telescopes. Only when some activists appeared in the past decade, looking to insert themselves in the process (thus obtaining positions of power and money) did the peaks become so important religiously.

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SpaceX successfully launches and lands Starship and Superheavy

7:20 am

Damaged but working flap on Starship
Damaged but working flap on Starship

SpaceX this morning successfully launched and landed both Starship and Superheavy in the ocean, with both vehicles splashing down in a vertical position as planned.

Some quick details:

  • One engine on Superheavy failed during launch, but the vehicle completed its job, successfully releasing Starship as planned.
  • Superheavy then completed a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico, landing softly and vertically. It then tipped over into the water as planned. At this moment it is unclear how successful it was in landing precisely at its planned location. One engine during the landing burn failed.
  • Unlike the previous test, Starship flew under control for its entire flight, even though the camera view showed a flap actually begin breaking up.
  • That flap, despite damage, appeared to function through landing. The screen capture to the right was taken just before landing, as the flap adjusted its position despite the significant damage near its attachment point to the ship.
  • It appeared that Starship successfully completed its flip to vertical just before landing.
  • At landing it was unclear if the landing burn occurred as planned. It did appear the spacecraft splashed down softly, and the controllers announced the burn occurred, but the indicators on the screen showed no engine burn.

Overall, this launch was an incredible success. Based on the results, the fifth test flight should be approved by the FAA relatively quickly. The FAA’s responsibility is supposed to be limited to just issues of safety. As long as SpaceX demonstrates the rocket landed where it was intended, the FAA has no cause to delay future approvals.

If so, the next launch could occur very quickly, as the next prototypes are ready and waiting. We could see another launch within two months, at the most. I predict late July, though it could be a bit later if SpaceX engineers need more time to analyze what happened to Starship during descent and then apply that knowledge to the next prototype.

UPDATE: China also had a successful launch this morning. Pseudo-company Galactic Energy’s Ceres-1 rocket placed three satellites into orbit, lifting off from the Jiuquan spaceport in the northwest of China.

Little information was released by China’s state-run press, which didn’t even bother to mention the pseudo-company’s name in its report. The solid-fueled lower stages landed somewhere inside China, but we have no idea where or how close to habitable areas.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

60 SpaceX
27 China
8 Russia
7 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the world combined in successful launches, 70 to 41, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including other American companies, 60 to 51.

Note that for context the U.S. total at this moment, 70 launches and achieved in less than half a year, matches the nation’s previous annual record set in 1966 and held until 2022.

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Firefly gets a major 25-launch contract from Lockheed Martin

9:02 pm

Firefly today announced that Lockheed Martin has awarded it a launch contract for 25 launches through 2029.

The contract “commits Lockheed Martin to 15 launch reservations and 10 optional launches.”

What is interesting about this agreement is who Lockheed did not give the launches to. Lockheed Martin has been a major investor in Rocket Lab, which is about to complete its 50th operational launch. It also has been a major investor in the rocket startup ABL, which in 2021 Lockheed Martin awarded its own giant launch contract for 58 launches through 2029.

ABL however has not yet had a successful launch. It tried twice in 2022, but has done nothing since. It could very well be that this new contract for Firefly is a signal that Lockheed Martin has lost faith in ABL, that there are more fundamental problems in that company. Those problems could also be related to the new regulatory burdens from the FAA that in the past two years appear to have slowed development by all American rocket startups.

That Lockheed Martin did not give this contract to Rocket Lab, which is flying, could be because Lockheed is trying to encourage the development of multiple small satellite launchers, in order to provide its main satellite-making business a variety of good options.

Either way, this deal strengthens Firefly’s position, even though its Alpha rocket has only had two launches (in 2022 and 2023), both of which put the payloads in orbit but failed to place them in the correct orbit. Moreover, the company has said it would launch four times in 2024, and as yet to launch once.

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ULA’s Atlas-5 launches Boeing’s Starliner capsule on its first manned mission

9:17 am

After many delays and scrubs involving both the rocket and the capsule, ULA’s Atlas-5 rocket today successfully launched Boeing’s Starliner capsule on its first manned mission, carrying NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams.

I have embedded the live stream below, cued to just before liftoff. The spacecraft will dock with ISS tomorrow, where Wilmore and Williams will spend a week checking out the capsule’s operations before undocking and returning to Earth.

As this was only the third launch this year for ULA, the leader board for the 2024 launch race doesn’t change:

59 SpaceX
26 China
8 Russia
7 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the world combined in successful launches, 69 to 40, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including other American companies, 59 to 50.

» Read more

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SpaceX and Rocket Lab complete successful launches

8:45 pm

This evening both SpaceX and Rocket Lab completed launches only about an hour apart but on opposite sides of the world.

First, SpaceX this evening successfully launched another 20 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its 20th flight, landing safely on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

Next, Rocket Lab completed the second to two launches for NASA, placing the second Prefire climate satellite into orbit, following the first launch on May 25, 2024. Its Electron rocket lifted off from Rocket Lab’s launchpad in New Zealand.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

59 SpaceX
26 China
8 Russia
7 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the world combined in successful launches, 68 to 40, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including other American companies, 59 to 49.

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