Dafna Kol – The Story of Nicholas Winton
An evening pause: Some history that should never be forgotten, but sadly few now remember.
Hat tip Cotour.
Tag: freedom
Elon Musk’s presentation “The Road to Making Life Multiplanetary”
The Musk game plan for Mars exploration over the next few years.
It appears Elon Musk finally gave his public presentation to SpaceX employees today, entitled “The Road to Making Life Multiplanetary”, and had it posted on X.
I have embedded that presentation below.
After reviewing the present development program for Starship/Superheavy (without mentioning anything about this week’s flight), Musk then outlined the game plan for the the next few years, as shown in the graphic above. If all goes as planned (not to be expected), the first Starships will head to Mars in about eighteen months, at the next launch window near the end of 2026. These flights will be unmanned, and will require that by then SpaceX will have also developed orbital refueling capability.
Musk hopes the first manned missions will take place at the next launch window in 2028-29, with the number of ships increased from 5 to 20. Later windows will see 300 and then 500 ships launched. For those flights a lot of work will need to be done to make Starships function as interplanetary spaceships, something it appears SpaceX and Musk have not yet devoted much energy to.
As always, Musk’s target goals are ambitious and not likely to be met. But as always, his targets are not unreasonable, which means SpaceX will likely eventually get all this done but late by only one or several launch windows.
Musk also noted that this entire program is presently being funded by Starlink revenues. The government for SpaceX and Musk’s space exploration plans is largely now irrelevant. This fact is possibly the most historically significant revelation in his presentation.
I strongly recommend you watch his whole speech, if only to enjoy the “Wow!” factor.
The future is going to be exciting for sure.
Hat tip to reader Gary.
» Read more
Just as I refuse to say “native American”, I refuse to say “Gulf of America”
A British map from 1700, with the Gulf of Mexico
labeled at “The Great Bay of Mexico”
The recent effort by Donald Trump to get the name of the Gulf of Mexico changed to the “Gulf of America” appears at first glance to have many laudable aspects, the most important of which his desire to energize the American people to have pride in their country. For too long young Americans have been indoctrinated with the anti-American Marxist poison pushed by our modern bankrupt academic community, and have thus been trained to think timidly and with hate about their own country.
Advocating this name change is Trump’s way of quickly countering that negativity. The United States is founded on noble principles — “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” — and it has lived up to those ideals with remarkable success during its entire 250 year history. Thus, Americans have plenty to be proud of, and to Trump’s mind something needed to be done to underline that fact.
Hence, his push to change the “Gulf of Mexico” to the “Gulf of America.”
And yet, as much as I support his general effort to invigorate Americans to their glorious past, to my mind this particular effort by Trump is as false and as shallow as the left’s never-ending demands that we use new language for everything. American Indians should be “native Americans”, even though everyone born in the U.S. is native. “Chairman” must become “Chair” or “Chairperson,” even though such usage is ugly and unnecessary. Spaceflight can never be “manned,” football teams can’t be “Redskins,” and “communists” must now be called “progressives.”
And worst of all we must all use the pronouns demanded by perverts, even if when by doing so we are denying reality.
Such abuse of language offends me, as a writer. » Read more
South Korea rocket startup launches small prototype rocket
Unastella rocket at launch
A South Korea rocket startup dubbed Unastella on May 28, 2025 successfully launched a small prototype suborbital rocket from its own launch site near the country’s southern coast.
UNA EXPRESS-I is 9.45 meters long and has a total weight of 2 tons. It is a small launch vehicle that uses kerosene (jet fuel) and liquid oxygen as fuel, with a thrust of 5 tons. The vehicle successfully completed its flight to the target distance of 10 kilometers and fell into the maritime safety zone set by Goheung County, the company stated. Park Jae-hong, the CEO of Unastella, noted, “For the first launch, we lowered the altitude for safety and extended the reach.”
This is South Korea’s second rocket startup that has launched a small test prototype, the first being Innospace which launched its test rocket from Brazil in 2023 and hopes to do an orbital launch before the end of the year.
It appears that South Korea is shifting successfully to the capitalism model. Back in 2023 it was trying to develop its government-built Nuri rocket, but that development seems to have stalled. Since then its newly formed space agency has established policies encouraging private space commercialization, which has apparently resulted in these two new rocket companies.
A positive endgame in Gaza begins to loom
Israel food products, provided directly to Gazans.
Click for video.
Several news stories in the past few weeks suggest to me that we are beginning to see the first signs of the end game that will bring about the defeat of Hamas and the establishment of a sane society within the Gaza strip.
First, it appears that Hamas is short of cash, according to a news report from a Saudi newspaper and then re-reported by an Israeli news outlet.
Sources within the terror group revealed that Hamas is struggling to pay salaries — not only to government employees, but also to members of its military wing and staff in other affiliated bodies at all levels.
The sources added that the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, have not paid salaries to terrorists for approximately three months and are facing serious financial difficulties in acquiring essential equipment for their military operations.
One of the things that has propped Hamas up for decades has been its control of foreign aid. The money comes in and Hamas doles it out while keeping large portions for its own use. The distribution of money gives Hamas leverage, while the money it keeps reinforces its power. Under Trump that foreign aid spigot has been largely shut down, and this story suggests we are now seeing the first results of this policy.
Second, Israel is now taking over the direct distribution of humanitarian aid. In the past Hamas maintained its power over its citizens by acting as the go-between of food and medicine. Nothing would go to anyone unless Hamas got its dirty hands on it first. Often no aid at all would reach Gazans. Hamas would keep it all, shipping it underground to its tunnels for use later during siege. Or it would sell that aid on the black market, raising money to fund its terrorist operations.
Israel, in partnership with the United States, is now ending that vile practice.
» Read more
SpaceX launches more Starlink satellites
The beat goes on! SpaceX this morning successfully placed another 27 Starlink satellites into orbit (including 13 with cell-to-satellite capabilities), its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The first stage completed its nineteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
65 SpaceX
30 China (with two launches scheduled later today)
6 Rocket Lab (with one launch scheduled for today SCRUBBED)
6 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 65 to 49.
SpaceX launches Starship/Superheavy on ninth test flight, but experiences issues in orbit
Starship in orbit before losing its attitude control
SpaceX today was able to successfully launch Starship and Superheavy on its ninth test flight, lifting off from SpaceX’s Starbase spaceport at Boca Chica.
The Superheavy booster completed its second flight, with one of its Raptor engines actually flying for the third time. Rather than recapture it with the launchpad chopsticks, engineers instead decided to push its re-entry capabilities to their limit. The booster operated successfully until it was to make its landing burn over the Gulf of Mexico, but when the engines ignited all telemetry was lost. Apparently that hard re-entry path was finally too much for the booster.
Starship reached orbit and functioned successfully for the first twenty minutes or so. When engineers attempted a test deployment of some dummy Starlink satellites, the payload door would not open properly. The engineers then closed the door and canceled the deployment.
Subsequently leaks inside the spacecraft with its attitude thrusters caused the attitude system to shut down and Starship started to spin in orbit. At that point the engineers cancelled the Raptor engine relight burn. The spacecraft then descended over the Indian Ocean as planned, but in an uncontrolled manner. Mission control then vented its fuel to reduce its weight and explosive condition. It essentially broke up over the ocean, with data was gathered on the thermal system until all telemetry was lost.
Though overall this was a much more successful flight than the previous two, both of which failed just before or as Starship reached orbit, the test flight once again was unable to do any of its objectives in orbit. It did no deployment test, no orbital Raptor engine burn test, and no the re-entry tests of Starship’s thermal protection system. Obviously the engineers gathered a great deal of data during the flight, but far less than hoped for.
SpaceX has a lot of Superheavy and Starship prototypes sitting in the wings. I expect it will attempt its next flight test, the tenth, relatively quickly, by July at the very latest. I also do not expect the FAA to stand in the way. It will once again accept SpaceX’s investigative conclusions instantly and issue a launch license, when SpaceX stays it is ready to launch.
As Starship reached orbit as planned, I am counting this as a successfully launch. The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
64 SpaceX
30 China
6 Rocket Lab
6 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 64 to 49.
Supreme Court declines case of blacklisted student who declared “There are only two genders”, proving the large leftist blob is not going away no matter what Trump does
Liam Morrison, wearing the evil shirt that he wore the
second time teachers at Nichols Middle School sent
him home.
The Supreme Court today declined by a vote of 7-2 to hear the case of Liam Morrison, who as a 12-year-old was sent home from Nichols Middle School in Massachusetts because he wore a T-shirt that said “There are only two genders.” Later he came to school wearing the shirt in the picture to the right, and was sent home again.
Morrison and his parents sued, noting in their complaint that since the 1960s the courts have consistently ruled that students have free speech rights. However, in almost all those earlier cases the students were expressing views supportive of leftist causes, so of course their first amendment rights were aggressively protected by the courts.
Because Liam Morrison was taking a conservative rightwing position, however, the court now believes students like him are too young to have first amendment rights, and so of course he has been effectively silenced in school, permanently.
This case illustrates something that all freedom-loving Americans had better recognize. Just because Trump is shutting down whole agencies, firing hundreds of thousands of leftist government workers, denying federal funds to indoctrination universities like Harvard, we should not assume that all will be well in just a few years.
» Read more
SpaceX launches 24 Starlink satellites
SpaceX today successfully placed another 24 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force base in California.
The first stage completed its thirteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. At least, it appeared so, though there were problems this time with the live stream, which cut off just before touchdown.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
63 SpaceX
30 China
6 Rocket Lab
6 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 63 to 49.
Live stream of Elon Musk’s speech to SpaceX employees today
FINAL UPDATE: It appears his talk has been called off, for the present. I suspect he wants a better idea what happened on today’s flight before speaking.
UPDATE: It appears Musk has rescheduled his speech for 6 pm (Central) tonight, after the launch of the ninth test flight of Starship/Superheavy. The embedded live stream below is for this rescheduled broadcast.
I have embedded below the Space Affairs live stream of Elon Musk’s speech that he plans to give to his SpaceX employees today at 10 am (Pacific) today. Musk has entitled it “The road to making life interplanetary.” He has already indicated that he will outline in more detail SpaceX’s program for getting Starship/Superheavy operational, including the likelihood of test flights to Mars in the near future.
» Read more
The real reason we celebrate Memorial Day
To the right is another cool image, but this one has nothing to do with astronomy, though you will likely be hard pressed to figure out exactly what you are looking at without some study. It is clearly some broken metal object inside a forest, but identifying its exact nature is not obvious.
What you are looking at is the remains of a propeller plane (likely flown on a reconnaissance mission) that crashed in the jungles of Vietnam during that long and tragic war of the 1960s and 1970s. Most amazingly, despite its twisted nature, the pilot survived and was fortunately quickly rescued by American troops before the arrival of the Vietcong.
That pilot’s name was Francis James Floyd. His son Jeffrey, a regular reader of Behind the Black, sent me the picture to illustrate that guys who fly wingsuits are not the only ones willing to do crazy things in the air. As he wrote,
Our dad fought in WWII, Korea and Vietnam as an Air Force pilot. While he had to learn how to parachute jump, he hated it. Even if the engine(s) failed, as long as he had his wings attached, he would not exit (jump). He said “There are two kinds of people that jump out of airplanes: idiots, and people in the armed services.”
So, the attached photo is what was left of his plane in Vietnam. He used the tops of the forest trees to try to slow down, like skimming the water. Fortunately, the good guys reached him first, and he came home.
Francs Floyd however was not an exception or rare thing, like the wingsuit fliers are today. He was one of a massive generation of Americans who, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, quickly enlisted to defend the United States and — more importantly — its fundamental principles of freedom and limited government.
Floyd was only twenty when he enlisted in 1942. He had no flight experience, but was quickly trained to become a pilot who flew fighter bomber missions over Italy. Later he returned to fly in the Korean War, and then again in Vietnam. As his son adds,
» Read more
Cargo Dragon splashes down and is recovered successfully
A SpaceX cargo Dragon capsule was recovered successfully earlier today after it splashed down off the coast of California.
The spacecraft carried back to Earth about 6,700 pounds of supplies and scientific experiments designed to take advantage of the space station’s microgravity environment after undocking at 12:05 p.m., May 23, from the zenith port of the space station’s Harmony module.
Some of the scientific hardware and samples Dragon will return to Earth include MISSE-20 (Multipurpose International Space Station Experiment), which exposed various materials to space, including radiation shielding and detection materials, solar sails and reflective coatings, ceramic composites for reentry spacecraft studies, and resins for potential use in heat shields. Samples were retrieved on the exterior of the station and can improve knowledge of how these materials respond to ultraviolet radiation, atomic oxygen, charged particles, thermal cycling, and other factors.
Other cargo returned included a robot hand that tested its grasping and handling capabilities in weightlessness, as well as other experiments.
The capsule itself spent three months in orbit after launching at the end of April.