Tag: freedom

Boeing writes off another half billion dollars due to Starliner

10:02 am

In filing an annual report to the SEC, Boeing revealed that has written off another half billion dollars due to Starliner delays and technical problems, bringing the total the company has lost on the capsule to more than two billion.

In the company’s 10-K annual filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Feb. 3, Boeing said it took $523 million in charges on Starliner in 2024. The company blamed the losses on “schedule delays and higher testing and certification costs as well as higher costs for post certification missions.”

Both Boeing and NASA remain utterly silent on the future of Starliner. It remains uncertified for operational manned flights, which means Boeing continues to earn nothing from it. Will it have to fly another manned mission on its own dime to get that certification? Or will NASA instead pay it to fly a cargo mission to ISS, as rumors have suggested, to prove the capsule is ready for manned flights?

No one knows. Nor do we know if Boeing will either sell off its space division or cancel Starliner entirely and thus free itself of the problem.

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The first real Republican president in a half century

3:50 pm

Which president is different than all the others?
Which president is different than all the others?

When George Bush Jr. was elected president in 2000, he also won majorities in both the House and the Senate in Congress. At the time I remember quite naively saying that he now was in a position to force through some real change, because any radical leftist proposal needed three different signatures, and the Republicans in all three branches just weren’t going to give it.

Hah! What a fool I was. During Bush Jr’s eight year rein the federal government grew in leaps and bounds, even more than under Bill Clinton, with every leftist desire fulfilled, though generally quietly in order to avoid outraging the American public that wanted change.

Nor was Bush Jr. the exception to the rule. No, every Republican president since Dwight Eisenhower has been nothing more than a Democrat in disguise, and that includes Donald Trump during his first term as president.

Only now do we see a real conservative president in power. You need only look at the official portraits of all these presidents to the right to understand this. Just compare Donald Trump’s official picture in 2017 with this picture in 2025. In 2017 he was a happy leader who innocently thought the administrative state he was in charge of would do as he said.

In 2025 he is innocent no longer. Instead, he is a hardened warrior ready to do battle. And that is exactly what we have seen, a Republican president unlike any since before World War II.

For once, the voters got a choice on election day. For once, the Republican who said he wanted to change things really meant it.
» Read more

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Is SpaceX routinely stiffing its outside construction contractors in Boca Chica?

9:31 am

According to an article today in the San Antonio Express-News SpaceX has been routinely not paying its bills to construction contractors hired by it to build things in Boca Chica, and almost three dozen have had to file liens against the company to get their money.

A San Antonio Express-New review of Texas property records found at least 29 contractors — and six in San Antonio — have filed 77 liens against SpaceX since March 2022. Their total value is up from $2.5 million in May. Since then, SpaceX has settled at least six liens but gained another 44.

Though it’s unclear whether the money is owed by SpaceX, its general contractors or subcontractors, landowners are ultimately responsible for unpaid construction bills on their properties under Texas law. The liens are a legal mechanism for contractors and suppliers to secure their claims.

The article admits repeatedly that its information is incomplete, and that many of these liens might already be settled. It also admits that the failure to pay might not be by SpaceX, but as landowner with the most money, it is the biggest target capable of forcing payment by others.

It is also likely, with the amount of work and expansion that is going on at Boca Chica, such liens are somewhat expected, especially because they seem to be a relatively small amount compared to the billions that SpaceX is spending in the area.

Thus, though the article appears to suggest SpaceX is a deadbeat company, it also appears the article might also be part of the propaganda press’s effort to slander Elon Musk wherever it can.

Regardless, if SpaceX is behind in paying its bills, it needs to fix this issue now.

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Satellite startup Astranis awards SpaceX another launch contract

9:17 am

The satellite startup Astranis, which already has five small satellites placed in orbit by SpaceX, has announced a new SpaceX launch contract for launching its next five satellites later this year.

By making its geosynchronous satellites small, like cubesats, the company is challenging the recent trend away from these high orbits. In the past five years very few new big geosynchronous communications satellites have been built or launched, because they can’t compete with the cheaper low-orbit smallsats.

Astranis is bucking that trend, partly because of its small satellites, and partly because SpaceX’s launch costs are so much less than anyone else’s.

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British rocket start-up Orbex wins two-launch contract from Italian orbital tug company D-Orbit

9:10 am

The British rocket start-up Orbex, which hopes to complete its first test orbital launch of its Prime rocket this year, after years of regulatory delays, has gotten a two-launch contract from the Italian orbital tug company D-Orbit.

The contract appears to be part of Europe’s effort to have its European payloads launch on European rockets. Previously D-Orbit tugs have mostly been launched by SpaceX because the only available European rockets, Ariane-6 and Vega-C, have either not been operational or available. Moreover, all these rockets are too big for D-Orbit’s tugs, which thus have to fly as secondary payloads.

Orbex’s Prime rocket is small, and so the tugs can be launched as the primary payload. The rocket however is not yet operational, unlike for example Rocket Lab’s small Electron rocket. The decision to go with Orbex’s untested rocket suggests Europe is forcing D-Orbit to sign with a European rocket company.

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OneWeb is years behind schedule in activating its service in the Falklands

8:59 am

Despite contracts with the local government that said service would begin in 2023, OneWeb has still not activated its service in the Falklands, and that government is considering switching to Starlink as it considers legal action to recover its money.

Local reports say that the Falkland Islands government “wants its money back” from an agreement which it entered into with local telco SURE and which provides national and international fixed line, mobile data and broadband services as well as data centre and enterprise solutions to consumer and corporate customers. SURE is part of Bahrain’s Batelco Group and SURE’s coverage extends to the Ascension Islands and Saint Helena in the South Atlantic.

The problem is seemingly OneWeb. Mark Pollard, a member of the Falkland’s Legislative Assembly, speaking on January 30th, said that the telco had failed to introduce a promised service from OneWeb, which itself was supplied with capacity from Eutelsat and prime contractor Intelsat.

The article at the link does not provide any explanation for the delay. It is probably related to OneWeb’s requirement for ground stations to connect the local communications network with the satellites. There must be issues building those ground stations. Starlink meanwhile provides antennas to customers which connect directly to the satellites.

The article also notes the company’s stock value has been plummeting, dropping 62% in the past six months.

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SpaceX and Vast jointly request research proposals for first mission to Vast’s Haven-1 space station

10:39 am

Artist's rendering of Haven-1 interior
Artist’s rendering of Haven-1 interior.
Click for original.

With the launch of Vast’s single module space station Haven-1 still scheduled for August, SpaceX and Vast have jointly requested research proposals (here and here) for station’s first manned mission, expected to be a four person 30-day flight soon thereafter. From the Vast press release:

Building on their established partnership, the two companies seek high-impact research projects to support humanity on Earth and advance our capacity to live and work in Earth orbit and beyond. Submitted proposals will be evaluated based on scientific and technical merit, feasibility, and alignment with mission objectives. Approved research proposals will be able to leverage the capabilities of the Haven-1 Lab, Dragon spacecraft, and/or private astronaut missions to the International Space Station (ISS).

Haven-1 is the only one of four commercial space stations being designed or built that has taken no NASA money. It also appears it will be the first to launch, thus putting it an excellent position to win the larger space station contract from NASA to build its much larger Haven-2 station.

Though neither SpaceX nor Vast are offering any funding for these proposals, they offer researchers access to space quickly and with relatively little bureaucracy (something all scientists routinely face in working with NASA). Researchers who fly on that first mission will also become well positioned to win further NASA research space station contracts later on.

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NASA’s useless safety panel makes another useless announcement about Starliner

10:15 am

An official of NASA’s ineffectual and largely corrupt safety panel yesterday made another meaningless update on the work Boeing is doing to fix the thruster problems that occurred on the first manned flight of its Starliner manned capsule last summer, and as always told us absolutely nothing.

Paul Hill, a member of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), said at a Jan. 30 public meeting that the committee was briefed on the status of the investigation into Starliner’s Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission recently. That mission launched in June with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on board, but the spacecraft returned to Earth three months later uncrewed because of agency concerns about the performance of spacecraft thrusters.

“NASA reported that significant progress is being made regarding Starliner CFT’s post-flight activities,” he said. “Integrated NASA-Boeing teams have begun closing out flight observations and in-flight anomalies.” He didn’t elaborate on the specific issues that the teams had closed out but stated that it did not include the thrusters, several of which shut down during the spacecraft’s approach to the station. The propulsion system also suffered several helium leaks. [emphasis mine]

In other words, this announcement was meaningless, because it included no information about the main problem. Hill’s comments were mostly empty blather, which is generally what this panel says in all its announcements. We still do not know when or if Starliner will fly again with astronauts on board.

Over the years the panel has bent over backwards to say positive things about Boeing, so that it missed all of Boeing’s design and construction failures from day one. At the same time it repeatedly slammed SpaceX, even though that company clearly had its act together and ended up fulfilling all of its contract obligations to NASA, even as Boeing has failed to do so.

If I was a member of Trump’s DOGE project, eliminating this safety panel would be very high on my list of things to do to make NASA’s more efficient. All it does is slow things down, often for exactly the wrong reasons.

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Ispace posts first picture taken by its Resilience lunar lander

9:30 am

Map of lunar landing sites
Landing sites for both Firefly’s Blue Ghost and
Ispace’s Resilience

The Japanese startup Ispace on January 29, 2025 released the first picture taken by its Resilience lunar lander, a series of images of Earth.

More important, the company reported that the spacecraft is “in excellent health.”

Though launched on the same rocket with Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander, Resilience is taking a longer route to the Moon. Blue Ghost plans to land on the Moon in about six weeks. Resilience won’t get there for about four more months. Both are using the same technique, slowly over time raising the spacecraft’s Earth orbit until its high point enters the Moon gravitational sphere of influence, where each will transfer to lunar orbit. This method saves weight and fuel, as it requires a smaller rocket engine to make the trip. That Resilience is taking longer is simply because it uses an even smaller engine that can only raise that orbit in smaller increments.

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The crew and passengers for Axiom’s fourth tourist flight to ISS

9:19 am

Axiom this week publicly introduced the international crew and passengers for its fourth tourist flight to ISS, presently planned for this spring.

During a Thursday press conference, former NASA astronaut and Axiom commander Peggy Whitson introduced her team. Shubhanshu Shukla will pilot the fourth mission to the ISS. He has been a fighter pilot for 15 years and will be the first Indian pilot to travel to the ISS.

The private mission also carries the first astronauts from Poland and Hungary to stay aboard the space station. Sławosz Uznański-Wiśniewski is an ESA astronaut representing Poland. Tibor Kapu is a mechanical engineer who was selected as an astronaut for Hungary’s Hungarian to Orbit (HUNOR) program in May of last year.

Axiom had made deals with India, Poland, and Hungary years ago to fly astronauts in space, and this flight fulfills those deals. Launched on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, their Dragon capsule will spend 14 days in space, most of which will be docked to ISS.

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Update on upcoming Starship/Superheavy test flights

9:23 am

Link here. As usual, this NASASpaceflight.com article provides an excellent overview of what SpaceX is likely to do on the next few test flights, including details about the possibility of reusing the Superheavy that was successfully recovered on the seventh flight.

And as usual, NASASpaceflight.com ignores the importance of politics and Trump’s election in changing the regulatory culture at the FAA. Just as it has made believe the Biden administration wasn’t forcing the FAA to slow-walk its license approvals to SpaceX, it is now making believe the Trump administration won’t do anything to force the FAA to speed its approvals.

We know however that it will. I fully expect that when SpaceX completes its investigation of the failures from flight 7 and describes its fixes, the FAA approval will following very quickly thereafter, within days. Under Biden that approval would still take months.

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SpaceX launches Spanish communications satellite

7:06 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched the first satellite in a constellation of two Spanish communications satellites, the Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The first stage completed its 21st flight. Because of the fuel needed to get the satellite into its proper orbit, the stage was not recovered.

The 2025 launch race:

13 SpaceX
6 China
1 Blue Origin
1 India

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Astroforge names the target asteroid for its first commercial interplanetary mission

3:48 pm

The asteroid mining startup Astroforge today finally named the asteroid that its first commercial interplanetary mission will do a close fly-by, set to launch as a secondary payload on a SpaceX Falcon 9 on February 26, 2025.

The mining startup is headed to asteroid 2022 OB5 as soon as Feb. 26, launching alongside Intuitive Machines’ second lunar mission. CEO Matt Gialich told Payload that they picked that asteroid for the initial mission for a few reasons:

  • It’s under a kilometer wide.
  • It could be a high-value, metal-filled M-type asteroid.
  • AstroForge’s spacecraft will fly by the asteroid when it’s close to Earth, so imagery can be sent back quickly.

This will be Astroforge’s second mission, the first being an Earth-orbit demo flight to prove out its systems. The spacecraft, dubbed Odin, was quickly prepped when the planned satellite satellite failed vibration testing. The company quickly replaced it with the cubesat intended for the third mission.

The company is also proud that the entire cost for this asteroid mission is just $6.5 million. “Hopefully we’re going to show the world that NASA doesn’t need to be funded for $5B missions when we can do it for much less,” said Gialich. The company also announced it has signed a multi-launch contract with the rocket startup Stoke Space, though no specifics were released.

Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay.

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Apple joins T-Mobile’s project to use Starlink satellites as orbiting cell towers

12:52 pm

In releasing a new update on its Iphone operating system, Apple quietly revealed that it has joined T-Mobile’s partnership with SpaceX to use a subconstellation of Starlink satellites with direct-to-cellphone capability, thus acting as orbiting cell towers to fill in gaps in T-Mobile’s service.

Originally spotted by Bloomberg, it seems that Apple has secretly worked with SpaceX and T-Mobile U.S. to provide an alternative satellite service. This is quite a surprise, as T-Mobile had previously specified Starlink as an option for Samsung phones, like the Galaxy S25 Ultra and the Galaxy Z Fold 6. Meanwhile, Apple has an in-house Satellite connection service due to a partnership with Globalstar Inc.

However, the Bloomberg report states that a select number of iPhone users have been able to enable the Starlink beta through T-Mobile. While we don’t know which models will be compatible as of yet, T-Mobile told Bloomberg that the full release will support the vast majority of iPhones.

The system is being tested right now, but still requires FCC license approval.

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United Kingdom awards rocket startup Orbex $25 million

9:29 am

The government of the United Kingdom has made a sudden and unexpected $25 million grant to the British rocket startup Orbex, which recently announced it was abandoning its launchpad at the Sutherland spaceport and switching to the Saxavord spaceport on the Shetland Islands.

While the UK Government has supported Orbex through grants awarded via the European Space Agency’s Boost! programme, the £20 million investment appears to represent the state acquiring a stake in the company and its future. This signals a significant show of support from the government as the company gears up to compete in the European Launcher Challenge.

Channeling former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, Technology Secretary Peter Kyle declared that the government’s backing of Orbex would enable the launch of “British rockets carrying British satellites from British soil.”

It seems to me that this cash award is less an investment in the company and more a kind of guilt payment by the United Kingdom government because the red tape of its bureaucracy, the Civil Aviation Authority, prevented Orbex from launching at Sutherland for almost three years, delays that eventually forced the switch to Saxavord, which after its own long red tape delays finally has its license approvals not yet issued to Sutherland.

Orbex has probably indicated to the government that these delays have caused it significant cash flow problems, similar to what happened to Virgin Orbit where red tape delays eventually drove it to bankruptcy. The company also probably told the government it needed extra cash to prepare the launchpad at Saxavord for its rocket, money it had already spent at Sutherland and no longer had.

Thus, this $25 million government grant. The UK government realized that if a second rocket company went belly-up due to its red tape, it would likely end forever any chance of getting any rocket company from considering launching from the United Kingdom.

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Blue Ghost makes second orbital burn, setting up transfer from Earth to lunar orbit

9:14 am

Blue Ghost's first view of the Moon
Blue Ghost’s first view of the Moon.
Click for original image.

Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander has successfully completed its second orbital burn, raising its Earth orbit in preparation for its shift into lunar orbit in the coming weeks.

Routine assessments while Blue Ghost is in transit show that all NASA payloads continue to be healthy. Firefly and NASA’s payload teams will continue to perform payload health checkouts and operations before reaching the Moon, including calibrating NASA’s Lunar Environment Heliospheric X-ray Imager (LEXI), continued transit operations of the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE), and analysis of radiation data collected from the Radiation Tolerant Computer (RadPC) technology demonstration.

The picture to the right looks across the top of Blue Ghost, with the small bright object beyond its first image of the Moon. The actual landing is at least four weeks away.

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Pushback: The left discovers it doesn’t have the right to break the law

2:00 pm

The Bill of Rights, still in force
The Bill of Rights, still in force

In the past few months, since Trump won re-election in November, the string of legal and political victories by the thousands of individuals blacklisted by the left and the Democratic Party in the past decade has been so overwhelming that for me to report each story as it happened would have required me to change the focus of this website entirely, something I did not wish to do.

Instead, I have collected a short list of these victories, hardly complete, and am now posting them here in one essay. This will not only put these victories on the record, it will show unequivocally how many leftists since 2020 somehow came to believe they were not required to follow the law in imposing their leftist agenda on others. The belief however was a delusion. It has just taken a few years to make the rule of law regain its primacy.

Read now and celebrate. Note also that Trump’s election win was completely irrelevant to most of these stories. While his return to the presidency clearly accelerated the trend, the trend had been established long before his election. And that trend has only just begun.
» Read more

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Boom Supersonic’s XB-1 test plane breaks the sound barrier

9:09 am

UPDATE: The XB-1, using the exact same air corridor used by Chuck Yeager when he became the first pilot to break the sound barrier in 1947, has successfully become the first privately funded and constructed airplane to fly faster than the speed of sound, doing it three times for about six minutes total.

Original post:
—————————
The airplane startup Boom Supersonic is hoping to complete its first manned supersonic flight today, piloted by chief test tilot Tristan “Geppetto” Brandenburg.

The flight will be manned, using its prototype XB-1 test plane.

Since March 2024, Boom has carried out 11 test flights as it gradually pushed the envelope toward breaking the sound barrier. [Today’s] flight of the 68-ft-long (21-m) XB-1 prototype will be conducted in a special air corridor reserved for supersonic aircraft. During the 38-minute flight at an altitude of 34.000 ft (10,000 m), the aircraft is expected to reach Mach 1.1, which is half of the ultimate goal of Mach 2.2.

Once the company completes test flights of XB-1 it will begin building its Overture commercial supersonic plane for sale to airline companies, capable of carrying up to 80 passengers. It already has contracts and financial support from a number of major airlines, including United and Japan Airlines.

I have embedded the live stream below. It has already started.
» Read more

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Firefly planning five launches from Vandenberg in 2025

9:00 am

In announcing its plans to begin launches from both Wallops Island in Virginia and Esrange in Sweden in 2026, Firefly has also said it is planning five launches from Vandenberg in 2025.

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea

The company is also building a launchpad at Cape Canaveral, so if these plans reach fruition it will eventually have four different launch sites. One issue for all these sites remains red tape. For example:

[Firefly VP Adam] Oakes said Firefly is continuing to work on regulatory issues for launches from Esrange. “The regulatory piece can really put you back if you want to let it,” he said. “We have a lot of paperwork in place. We’re not quite there on everything but things are moving in the right direction.”

One serious problem for Esrange is its interior location in Sweden. Any orbital launch will have to cross land, with most crossing significant territory of other countries. While the site has been used for decades for suborbital test launches, no orbital launches have ever taken off from there, and getting clearance will not be easy for orbital rockets to cross either Norway, Finland, or Russia. And unless the lower stages are reusable they will have to crash inside those territories, or inside Sweden itself.

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SpaceX launches another 21 Starlink satellites, including 13 with direct-to-cell capabilities

3:13 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched another 21 Starlink satellites, including 13 with direct-to-cell capabilities, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its 20th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. At this time the first iteration of the direct-to-cell Starlink sub-constellation is largely complete, and the company has begun beta testing using these satellites directly with smartphones on Earth.

The 2025 launch race:

12 SpaceX
6 China
1 Blue Origin

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European rocket startups team up to send letter to ESA outlining their priorities

11:18 am

In a surprising joint action, six European rocket startups have sent a detailed letter to the European Space Agency (ESA) outlining several recommendations about policy required by these rocket startups in order for their industry to prosper.

The companies involved were HyImpulse, Latitude, MaiaSpace, Orbex, Rocket Factory Augsburg and The Exploration Company. The letter’s recommendations were wide-ranging and appeared focused on getting ESA to free up the industry from traditional European red tape.

  • Provide funding in the range of €150 million to a limited number of rocket companies, not all. The companies say that funding will make it possible for the winning companies to raise another €1 billion in private investment capital. Limiting the number of companies getting awards will also force competition and achievement. The awards should also be granted only after specific milestones are achieved, not based on promises of eventual achievement.
  • Ease access to launchpads both at French Guiana and in Norway and the United Kingdom. Right now French rule-making at French Guiana is hindering that access, and ESA rules about launches make it harder to use the new commercial spaceports in Norway and the UK.
  • Red tape must be reduced. For example, ESA should not set rules on the size of payloads, but give companies “the freedom to determine their payload capabilities, allowing market dynamics to drive innovation rather than imposing artificial requirements.”

That the German rocket startup Isar Aerospace did not sign this letter is interesting, especially since it is now only a few months from completing its first orbital test launch of its Spectrum rocket from the new spaceport in Andoya, Norway. It also has a twenty-year lease for that launchpad.

It is also interesting that the letter did not include the newly proposed orbital spaceport Esrange in Sweden. That launch site has been used for decades for suborbital tests. It is now attempting to make itself available for orbital tests as well. Its interior location however is likely the reason these rocket companies left it out. Too many issues for them to consider launching from there.

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China and SpaceX complete launches

10:02 am

Both China and SpaceX successfully completed launches since last night.

First, China placed a classified technology communications test satellite in orbit, its Long March 3B rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in southwest China. No further details about the satellite were released. Nor did China’s state-run press provide any information about where the rocket’s lower stages and four strap-on boosters, all using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China. UPDATE: One of the four strap-on boosters crashed next to a home.

Then SpaceX this morning launched 23 more Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. The first stage completed its 23rd flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The 2025 launch race:

11 SpaceX
6 China
1 Blue Origin

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Space Perspective needs new investors

9:50 am

According to this news article today, the high altitude balloon company Space Perspective is in need of new investment capital, and its apparent lease default in the Cape Canaveral area is because the company has apparently shifted operations about ninety miles south because costs there are lower.

Space Perspective co-founder Jane Poynter told OBJ in a Zoom interview in December that although Port Canaveral “is our home port” and “we’re very committed to the community we work in” the company had been operating out of Fort Pierce, nearly 90 miles south, for several months. “They are having to struggle with how they balance what’s happening with the cruise industry and space industry growing like gangbusters,” she said of the Space Coast. “It’s so congested that we can’t actually stay there.”

While the company claims it is still moving forward, it has had to lay off most of its staff as it tries to find more investment capital. While it also claims it will return to full staffing when that investment arrives, the question is whether it will arrive. At this moment the default of $90,295 in rent to Titusville-Cocoa Airport Authority is not a good look at all.

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AST SpaceMobile raises $400 million in capital

9:33 am

The direct-to-cell satellite company AST SpaceMobile has raised another $400 million in investment capital, giving it a total of $900 million in cash on hand for building its full constellation of its much larger second generation Bluebird satellites.

The operator now has more than $900 million of cash on its balance sheet to shift production of its Block 2 BlueBird satellites into a higher gear this year, after deploying five smaller Block 1 spacecraft to low Earth orbit (LEO) in September.

At about 223 square meters when fully deployed, a Block 2 satellite is significantly larger than Block 1, which spans 64 square meters, enabling 10 times the capacity to support up to 120 megabits per second (Mbps) peak data rates.

It has plans to launch 45 of these larger satellites in the next two years.

At the moment AST SpaceMobile and SpaceX are the only two companies offering direct-to-cell service. One component of SpaceX’s Starlink constellation has this capability, and the company has a deal with T-Mobile to use it to fill in gaps in its cell tower ground network. AST in turn has a deal with AT&T.

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Report predicts both Boeing and Airbus will sell off their space divisions this year

9:23 am

According to an analysis of industry trends by the company Space Capital, it predicts that both Boeing and Airbus will sell off their space divisions this year.

According to Space Capital’s latest investment trends report released Jan. 23, these aerospace giants are struggling to maintain pace with the rapidly evolving space sector. “These divestitures by entrenched government contractors marks a pivotal moment in the space economy, as it changes the competitive landscape, establishes a new power broker system, and creates new opportunities and risks in the government’s extended capabilities in space,” the report states.

This prediction for Boeing is not a surprise, especially as the company has also recently announced it expects to take a $1.7 billion loss in the fourth quarter of 2024 from five different program in its Defense, Space and Security business unit.

Most of those charges will go towards two programs: $800 million for the KC-46A tanker and $500 million for the T-7A trainer aircraft. That leaves $400 million in charges for Starliner as well as the VC-25B presidential aircraft and MQ-25 drone.

Airbus’s space division is likely in trouble because of the failure of its Ariane-6 to compete successfully in the modern launch market. It has obtained some launch contracts, but not as many as expected because, as an expendable rocket, it costs too much to launch.

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NASA quickly shutters its DEI offices

9:10 am

NASA has quickly complied with the executive order issued by Donald Trump right after taking office that demanded all Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) offices within the federal government be shut down by January 22, 2025 at the latest.

In a memo to employees Jan. 22 obtained by SpaceNews, NASA Acting Administrator Janet Petro said the agency was working to close offices related to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) at the agency and cancel relevant contracts. “These programs divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination,” she wrote in the memo.

The steps, she wrote, are intended to implement an executive order issued by President Trump hours after his Jan. 20 inauguration. The order called on federal agencies to terminate DEIA programs and positions related to them, calling such efforts “discriminatory” and an “immense public waste.”

That was followed the next day by a memo to federal agencies by Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), directing them to remove “outward facing media” related to DEIA programs by 5 p.m. Eastern Jan. 22 and to place employees of DEIA offices on paid administrative leave. The memo also requires agencies to provide lists of their DEIA offices and employees, as well as related contracts, by Jan. 23, and submit plans for laying off DEIA employees by the end of the month.

As of today it appears the NASA DEI websites have all been removed. It also appears that NASA is complying completely, unlike some government agencies that have tried to save its DEI programs and employees by changing their job titles. We should also expect the racist quota hiring system NASA instituted during the Biden administration to favor some races over others will now be dismantled. Couldn’t happen sooner.

What I have found interesting is the relatively lack of leftist protests — so far — for these actions. It will happen, of course but it also appears the general public won’t buy into it. The leftist propaganda press will highlight those protests, but since very few people trusts or even pays attention to that propaganda press any longer these protests will carry little weight.

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Rocket Lab wins launch contract with German satellite constellation

8:58 am

Rocket Lab has won a launch contract with the German satellite constellation Orora Technologies,with the launch to occur only four months hence and place eight satellites into orbit.

The constellation is focused on monitoring wildfires for fire-fighting teams, and will eventually have 100 satellites in orbit.

OroraTech is developing a constellation of satellites with thermal infrared cameras that can provide 24/7 monitoring of wildfires globally, supporting better and faster wildfire response to protect forests, people, and infrastructure worldwide. The mission will deploy its latest plane of satellites called OTC-P1 to their current constellation, further expanding OroraTech’s capabilities to first responders, governments, and industry partners. The company will expand their constellation with up to 100 satellites in total by 2028.

If this launch goes as planned, expect Rocket Lab to win launch contracts for the rest of the constellation, a minimum of 11 more launches.

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Fake news teams up with European childishness to attack Elon Musk

11:00 am

In what might be the stupidest and most fake slanderous attack yet on a supporter of Donald Trump, leftist fake news outlets PBS, CNN, MSN, and MSNBC have teamed up to accuse Elon Musk of making a Nazi salute during his inauguration day speech, when all he was doing was thanking Americans, from his heart, for voting Trump back into office. As he did so he placed his hand on his heart and threw it out to the crowd, in gesture of love and gratitude.

Very quickly the somewhat leftist Anti-Defamation League defended Musk, noting it was absurd and inflammatory to make such an absurd accusation when it was most clearly false and slanderous.

This of course hasn’t stopped Democratic Party politicians from spreading this lie. And in Germany the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany immediately and very childishly removed a picture of Musk that had been part of a permanent exhibit on space travel.

“It can always be problematic to honor living people in such a prominent position in an exhibition, because such a display can be seen as an uncritical tribute. However, a person’s lifetime achievements can often only be properly assessed in retrospect,” said a spokesperson for the Deutsches Museum.

What idiots. Musk’s own response on X to this fake controversy ginned up by these slanderers said it best:

Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The “everyone is Hitler” attack is sooo tired

I personally think these leftist fools should keep doing this stupidity. No one buys it anymore, and every time they do it they put another nail in their own coffin, proving once again that they are unreliable, dishonest propaganda outlets that should not be watched for any reason.

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