Tag: freedom

SpaceX: Ready to launch Starship/Superheavy by end of January but it won’t

9:28 am

Surprise! During the NASA press update yesterday making official the new delays in its entire Artemis lunar program, a SpaceX official revealed that the company will be ready to launch the third orbital test flight of its Starship/Superheavy rocket by end of January, but it also does not expect to get a launch approval from the FAA for at least another month.

Speaking during the press conference, SpaceX Vice President of Customer Operations & Integration Jensen said Starship hopes to be ready to test Starship once more by the end of January and to receive the necessary license from federal authorities to do so by the end of February.

During the conference Jensen made it repeatedly clear that it will require numerous further launch tests to get ready ready for its lunar landing mission for NASA — about ten — and that the company hopes to have this task completed by 2025 so that the agency’s new delayed schedule can go forward as now planned.

Yet how will SpaceX do this if the FAA is going to delay each launch because of red-tape by at least one month? SpaceX might be confident the FAA will give the okay for a launch in late February, but no one should be sanguine about this belief. Bureaucrats when required to dot every “i” and cross every “t”, as it appears the Biden administration is demanding, can be infuriatingly slow in doing so, even if they wish to hurry.

This news confirms my prediction from November that the launch will happen in the February to April time frame. It also leaves me entirely confident that my refined December prediction of a launch no earlier than March will be right.

SpaceX wants to do about six test launches per year. I don’t know how it can do so with the FAA holding it back.

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Proposed removal of William Penn statue proves the Democrats really are anti-American

12:33 pm

The William Penn statue in Welcome Park
The William Penn statue in the center of
Welcome Park. Note the panels on the wall
behind, describing the achievements of his life.
The park service was also planning to “rehabilitate”
this as well.

Though the Biden administration and the National Park Service immediately backed down from its proposal to remove the statue of William Penn from the Pennsylvania park dedicated in 1982 to honor his memory, the very proposal proved without doubt how much the Democrats who dominate our government truly hate America, its founding, and everything it stands for.

First, let’s review the proposal that has now been dumped. According to the National Park Service press release issued on January 5th,

The proposed rehabilitation of Welcome Park includes expanded interpretation of the Native American history of Philadelphia and was developed in consultation with representatives of the indigenous nations of the Haudenosaunee, the Delaware Nation, Delaware Tribe of Indians, the Shawnee Tribe, and the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma. The reimagined Welcome Park maintains certain aspects of the original design such as the street grid, the rivers and the east wall while adding a new planted buffer on three sides, and a ceremonial gathering space with circular benches. The Penn statue and Slate Roof house model will be removed and not reinstalled. [emphasis mine]

In other words, a park built at the site of William Penn’s pioneer home and designed expressly to honor his achievements as the founder of Pennsylvania as a religious haven for all people was to be redesigned instead as a memorial to the primitive stone-age Indian tribes that once lived there, focusing instead on how Penn and the Quakers oppressed them by coming to America. And to rub salt in the wound, this change was to be done in connection with the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 2026.

As I said, the Democrats who dominate our federal bureaucracy as well as academia are our enemies. They truly intend to wipe any positive mention of America from every history book or place, and replace it with Marxist icons and false anti-American propaganda.

Very quickly there was an uproar against this plan. » Read more

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Rocket Lab gets contract to build 18-satellite constellation for U.S. military

9:36 am

Rocket Lab was yesterday awarded a half billion dollar contract to build the next set of eighteen satellites of the U.S. military’s Tranche communications satellite constellation.

Rocket Lab will act as prime contractor for the $515 million USD firm-fixed price agreement, leading the design, development, production, test, and operations of the satellites, including procurement and integration of the payload subsystems. The contract establishes Rocket Lab’s position as a leading satellite prime contractor, providing supply chain diversity to the Department of Defense (DoD) through vertical integration. The contract comprises $489 million base plus $26 million of incentives and options and will be carried out by Rocket Lab National Security (RLNS), the Company’s wholly owned subsidiary created to serve the unique needs of the U.S. defense and intelligence community and its allies.

The plan is for these satellites to launch in 2027. It does not appear that the contract includes the launches itself. Rocket Lab can do some, but it is likely the military will award some to SpaceX and others.

This deal continues the military’s shift from designing and building its own satellites that usually cost too much and are years behind schedule to buying the product from the private sector. It also continues the shift from large unwieldly and very exposed single satellites to constellations of many small satellites that are difficult to destroy..

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Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander suffers major failure

12:10 pm

According to updates by the engineering team running Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander, launched early today by ULA’s Vulcan rocket, the lander’s propulsion system suffered a major failure shortly after activation.

After successfully separating from United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket, Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander began receiving telemetry via the NASA Deep Space Network. Astrobotic-built avionics systems, including the primary command and data handling unit, as well as the thermal, propulsion, and power controllers, all powered on and performed as expected. After successful propulsion systems activation, Peregrine entered a safe operational state. Unfortunately, an anomaly then occurred, which prevented Astrobotic from achieving a stable sun-pointing orientation.

The company later released an update, stating that the failure caused “a critical loss of propellant” that will make the mission impossible as planned. They are reassessing to see if they can come up with an alternate plan, but without sufficient fuel no lunar landing will be possible under any mission profile.

Peregrine is a smaller test version of Astrobotic’s larger Griffin lunar lander, which has contracts with NASA and ESA for later missions. This failure will likely impact those missions, forcing either delays or redesigns.

This mission was always an engineering test mission designed to prove out Astrobotic’s landing design, so experiencing a failure was not a surprise. The problem is that this failure occurred so soon after launch that it prevents the company from testing that landing design, at all.

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Americans push back against government overreach with some real defiance

11:54 am

Are Americans finally waking up and emulating their country's founders?

Bring a gun to a knife fight: For the first time since 2020, when state and federal governments nationwide decided the Constitution and Bill of Rights no longer applied to them and began imposing a whole range of abusive illegal regulations and lockdowns and mandates and blacklisting on Americans everywhere, we are now finally beginning to see some real push back from ordinary people, in ways that leave these tinpot dictators no choice but to back down.

Two examples in the past week. First in St. Louis the city government (controlled by radical leftist Democrats) decided it was time to institute a new panic over COVID, likely to give them the ability to once again easily manipulate voting in 2024, by instituting a new city mask mandate. Though it only recommended strongly that everyone wear masks everywhere, its director of health Matifadza Hlatshwayo Davis said that masks were required of government employees if they were indoors or in a car with another person.

Davis’s problem was that, unlike 2020, almost no one obeyed her demands.
» Read more

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ULA’s Vulcan rocket successfully places payload in orbit on first launch

1:10 am

Vulcan at liftoff.
Vulcan at liftoff.

After four years of delay, mostly caused by delays at Blue Origin in delivering the two BE-4 engines used in the first stage, ULA’s Vulcan rocket finally completed its first launch early on January 8, 2024, lifting off from Cape Canaveral and successfully placing Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander into orbit.

As of posting the upper stage had just deployed Peregrine, which will leave Earth orbit in about four days using its own engines. The upper stage has one more burn to send it into solar orbit, carrying the ashes of numerous people for the company Celestis.

The 2024 launch race:

3 SpaceX
1 India
1 China
1 ULA

For ULA, this launch is a very big deal. It is the first of two required in order for the Space Force to certify the rocket for future military launches. It also positions the company to begin the many launches that Amazon has awarded it to place into orbit a large percentage of that company’s Kuiper internet satellite constellation, assuming of course Blue Origin can deliver on schedule the many BE-4 engines that ULA will require.

This launch will also likely lead to the sale of ULA. » Read more

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SpaceX sues to have NLRB complaint dismissed

10:31 am

SpaceX yesterday filed a lawsuit in the federal courts to have the employee complaint filed by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) dismissed as a violation of the company’s fifth and seventh amendment rights as well as article II of the Constitution.

You can read SpaceX’s lawsuit here [pdf]. It specifically lists as defendants the board members of the NLRB, as well as the unnamed administrative judge who will run the NLRB’s case, once it begins.

The SpaceX lawsuit is interesting in that it challenges the very legal structure that has established the NLRB, stating that its actions are illegal because that structure forbids the President from having full control over its actions, as required by article II of the Constitution.

Whether this lawsuit succeeds is of course unknown, but its quick filing tells us that SpaceX was prepared for this NLRB action, even before it was filed. It also tells us that the company now recognizes the overall threat to it by the Biden administration, which appears to be trying to weaponize every agency in the federal government to destroy the company, and is prepared to fight long and hard against this abuse of power.

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NASA and one private company respond to Navaho nation’s demand to cancel lunar mission

9:32 am

Both NASA and one of the private companies involved in ULA’s first Vulcan rocket launch on January 8, 2023 that will carry the Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander to the Moon have now responded to the Navaho nation, which has stated its religion gives it the unlimited right to decide what can go there.

Navaho President Buu Nygren had claimed earlier this week that the “Moon is sacred to numerous Indigenous cultures” and the payloads of human ashes being sent to the Moon was “tantamount to desecration.” He demanded the mission be delayed or canceled.
» Read more

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Can the Democrats offend enough people to make even their aggressive election tampering impossible?

3:24 pm

Are Americans finally waking up and emulating their country's founders?

I normally pay little attention to polls, since for the last two decades they have not only been unreliable but generally weighted unfairly against Republicans. More often than not they have been used not to give us a sense of the state of the political campaign but to make us all believe a Democratic Party victory was inevitable.

However, a poll this week was so astonishing that I think it deserves some discussion. According to a national USA Today-Suffolk University poll published on January 2, 2023 by USA Today, large numbers of blacks, Hispanics, and young voters are now willing to abandon the Democratic Party, and do so in numbers that are shocking and unprecedented. As noted in this article about the poll,
» Read more

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National Labor Relations Board files complaint against SpaceX

9:51 am

Elon Musk, a target for destruction by Joe Biden
Elon Musk, a target for destruction
by Joe Biden

The Biden administration’s continuing legal harassment of SpaceX and Elon Musk was escalated yesterday when the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed a new complaint against the company, accusing it of firing eight employees illegally for writing a public letter criticizing the company in 2022.

The letter, circulated in 2022, criticized Musk’s actions and the allegations of sexual harassment against him, claiming they were negatively contributing to the company’s reputation. The letter also said the company was failing to live up to its “No Asshole” policy and its policy against sexual harassment.

The letter, whose authorship was not known at the time it was first reported, called on SpaceX to “publicly address and condemn Elon’s harmful Twitter behavior,” to “hold all leadership equally accountable” for bad behavior, and to “clearly define what exactly is intended by SpaceX’s ‘no-asshole’ and ‘zero tolerance’ policies and enforce them consistently.”

According to the NLRB, one SpaceX employer held interviews to determine the writers of the letter, after which they were fired. The case will go before the NLRB in March.

Is this another case of blacklisting, similar to the numerous stories I’ve reported for the last four years where someone was fired for having political opinions? I don’t think so, though some could argue otherwise. In those many other cases, the opinions expressed were generally political in nature and unrelated to the work environment itself. If a company is demanding you bow to critical race theory and admit you are racist simply because you are white and fires you when you refuse, that is not the same as writing a letter accusing your employer of sexual harassment and creating a hostile work environment, and then soliciting signatures from the entire workforce before releasing it publicly. The first case is a direct slander against the employee and is an unreasonable demand. The second is a concerted effort to foster a workplace mutiny, something unacceptable to all employers. It seems the company would have the right to remove such malcontents from its place of business.

Gywnne Shotwell, SpaceX’s CEO, made these facts very clear at the time the letter was published.
» Read more

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SpaceX launches commercial communications satellite

9:27 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched a commercial geosynchronous communications satellite, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage successfully completed its tenth flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral. The fairings completed their ninth and fourteenth flights respectively.

The 2024 launch race:

2 SpaceX
1 India

No one else has launched as yet, though many launches are scheduled through the first ten days of January.

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SpaceX launches six next generation Starlink satellites

9:09 pm

SpaceX tonight completed its first launch in 2024, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California and putting six next generation Starlink satellites into orbit.

The first stage completed its first flight, successfully landing on the drone ship in the Pacific. The fairings successfully completed their eleventh and ninth flights, respectively. This was the first new stage introduced since August 2023, and continues SpaceX’s pattern of adding about two new first stage boosters per year.

The six Starlink satellites are designed to work directly with the cell phones that people already use, thus increasing the customer base available for the product. As the first generation of this design, it is expected that there will be upgrades with later launches.

At this moment India and SpaceX are the only two entities to launch in 2024, each once.

4 comments

The global launch industry in 2023: A record third year in a row of growth, with dark clouds lurking

10:37 am

In 2023 the world saw a continuing rise in the global launch industry. As happened in 2021 and 2022, the record for the most launches in a single year was smashed. In 2023 nations and companies managed to complete more than 200 launches for the first time ever, with the number of launch failures so small you could count them on one hand.

Furthermore, if the predictions by several companies and nations come true, 2024 will be an even greater success. These predictions however all depend on everything continuing as it has, and there are many signs this is not going to be the case. More and more it appears the political world will act to interfere with free world of private enterprise, in some cases intentionally, in others indirectly.

Let us begin by taking a look at 2023.
» Read more

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SpaceX completes its second launch in less than 3 hours at Cape Canaveral

9:11 pm

SpaceX tonight launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral less than three hours after a Falcon Heavy lifted off from its second launchpad at Cape Canaveral, carrying an X-37B mini-shuttle.

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

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

96 SpaceX
65 China
19 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 110 to 65, and the entire world combined 110 to 102. SpaceX in turn trails the rest of the world (excluding other American companies) 96 to 102.

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Japan’s space agency JAXA schedules next H3 rocket launch

9:11 am

JAXA, Japan’s space agency, announced today that it has now scheduled the next test launch of its new H3 rocket for February 15, 2024.

This rocket, built by Mitsubishi for JAXA, is supposed to replace the H2A rocket, which completed its last launch in September 2023. The H3 was supposed to be flying years ago, but has experienced numerous engineering problems throughout its development. It was initially supposed to launch in 2020, but was first delayed to 2021 because of “engine issues,” which were later described as cracks and holes in the engine’s combustion chamber.

That launch date was never met. When JAXA was gearing up to launch in 2022 news sources revealed another yearlong delay until 2023 because of new engine problems, which appeared to require a complete engine redesign.

Then in February 2023 the rocket’s first launch attempt was aborted at T-0 when the two strap-on solid rocket boosters failed to ignite. A second launch attempt a month later failed when the second stage failed during launch.

Even if the rocket successfully launches in February, it still leaves Japan far behind the rest of the space-faring industry. The H3 is entirely expendable, and is far more expensive to launch than the new reuseable rockets in use or being developed by numerous private American companies or other nations. JAXA says it hopes to launch it six times a year, but I can’t imagine it getting even a third that number of customers.

What Japan’s government really needs to do is to get the launch business away from JAXA completely. Let other companies besides Mitsubishi build their own rockets and have JAXA buy their services, rather than try to design its own rockets. This system is working marvelously in the U.S., so much so that India is now aggressively trying to copy it, while communist China has made its own pseudo attempt, somewhat successfully, to do the same for the past five years.

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All I feel is fury at the bankruptcy of academia decades ago

1:55 pm


A modern Ivy League education: “But Brawndo’s got what plants crave.
It’s got electrolytes!”

Recently Bari Weiss, former New York Times journalist who it blacklisted because she refused to follow the leftist narrative when the facts said otherwise, wrote a heart-wrenching column about the fall of American academia. She began as follows:

Twenty years ago, when I was a college student, I started writing about a then-nameless, niche ideology that seemed to contradict everything I had been taught since I was a child.

…What I saw was a worldview that replaced basic ideas of good and evil with a new rubric: the powerless (good) and the powerful (bad). It replaced lots of things. Color blindness with race obsession. Ideas with identity. Debate with denunciation. Persuasion with public shaming. The rule of law with the fury of the mob.

People were to be given authority in this new order not in recognition of their gifts, hard work, accomplishments, or contributions to society, but in inverse proportion to the disadvantages their group had suffered, as defined by radical ideologues. According to them, as James Kirchick concisely put it: “Muslim > gay, black > female, and everybody > the Jews.”

I was an undergraduate back then, but you didn’t need a PhD to see where this could go. And so I watched, in horror, sounding alarms as loudly as I could.

I was told by most Jewish leaders that, yes, it wasn’t great, but not to be so hysterical. Campuses were always hotbeds of radicalism, they said. This ideology, they promised, would surely dissipate as young people made their way in the world.

It is essential to repeat her second paragraph again to understand the utter bankruptcy of this new “philosophy.” It was…

… a worldview that replaced basic ideas of good and evil with a new rubric: the powerless (good) and the powerful (bad). It replaced lots of things. Color blindness with race obsession. Ideas with identity. Debate with denunciation. Persuasion with public shaming. The rule of law with the fury of the mob.

» Read more

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Record-setting Falcon 9 1st stage booster lost after landing

3:27 pm

The SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage booster that launched on December 23, 2023 for a record-setting nineteenth time was damaged beyond repair when, after landing on its drone ship successfully, experienced rough seas that caused it to fall over.

The picture at the link shows the crushed booster on its side on the drone ship. SpaceX noted the spectacular history of this booster in a separate tweet:

This one reusable rocket booster alone launched to orbit 2 astronauts and more than 860 satellites — totaling 260+ metric tons — in ~3.5 years.

In a sense, it actually put more mass into orbit that a Saturn 5 rocket, for significant less money though over a much longer period of time.

For SpaceX the loss of this booster is hardly a set back, because it has several other boosters with only a few less total launches in its fleet. Expect one to exceed twenty launches in the near future.

Hat tip to out stringer Jay as well as several readers.

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Repost: The real meaning of the Apollo 8 Earthrise image

11:19 am

I wrote this essay in 2018, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 8 mission to the Moon. I think it worth reposting again, especially because stories about Apollo 8 still refuse to show the Earthrise image as Bill Anders took it.
———————————————

Earthrise, as seen by a space-farer
Earthrise, as seen by a space-farer

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the moment when the three astronauts on Apollo 8 witnessed their first Earthrise while in orbit around the Moon, and Bill Anders snapped the picture of that Earthrise that has been been called “the most influential environmental picture ever taken.”

The last few days have seen numerous articles celebrating this iconic image. While all have captured in varying degrees the significance and influence of that picture on human society on Earth, all have failed to depict this image as Bill Anders, the photographer, took it. He did not frame the shot, in his mind, with the horizon on the bottom of the frame, as it has been depicted repeatedly in practically every article about this image, since the day it was published back in 1968.

Instead, Anders saw himself as an spaceman in a capsule orbiting the waist of the Moon. He also saw the Earth as merely another space object, now appearing from behind the waist of that Moon. As a result, he framed the shot with the horizon to the right, with the Earth moving from right to left as it moved out from behind the Moon, as shown on the right.

His perspective was that of a spacefarer, an explorer of the universe that sees the planets around him as objects within that universe in which he floats.

When we here are on Earth frame the image with the horizon on the bottom, we immediately reveal our limited planet-bound perspective. We automatically see ourselves on a planet’s surface, watching another planet rise above the distant horizon line.

This difference in perspective is to me the real meaning of this picture. On one hand we see the perspective of the past. On the other we see the perspective the future, for as long humanity can remain alive.

I prefer the future perspective, which is why I framed this image on the cover of Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 the way Bill Anders took it. I prefer to align myself with that space-faring future.

And it was that space-faring future that spoke when they read from Genesis that evening. They had made the first human leap to another world, and they wished to describe and capture the majesty of that leap to the world. They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

Yet, they were also still mostly Earth-bound in mind, which is why Frank Borman’s concluding words during that Christmas eve telecast were so heartfelt. He was a spaceman in a delicate vehicle talking to his home of Earth, 240,000 miles away. “And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth.” They longed deeply to return, a wish that at that moment, in that vehicle, was quite reasonable.

Someday that desire to return to Earth will be gone. People will live and work and grow up in space, and see the Earth as Bill Anders saw it in his photograph fifty years ago.

And it is for that time that I long. It will be a future of majesty we can only imagine.

Merry Christmas to all, all of us still pinned down here on “the good Earth.”

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SpaceX launches two German military radar satellites

10:39 am

SpaceX today successfully launched two German military radar surveillance satellites, completing a planned three-satellite constellation, with its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage completed its eighth flight, landing back at Vandenberg.

This launch almost certainly in the past would have launched on a Arianespace rocket, but Arianespace presently has no operational rocket, its Ariane-5 rocket retired and its Ariane-6 rocket not yet operational. Furthermore, its Vega and Vega-C rockets are grounded due to launch failures, and its partnership with Russia ended with Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. Thus, SpaceX gets the business, being less expensive than ULA (which also has no rockets available right now to handle this launch) and there being no other company capable of launching such a payload.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

94 SpaceX
61 China
18 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 108 to 61, and the entire world combined 108 to 97. SpaceX now trails the rest of the world (excluding other American companies) 94 to 97.

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SpaceX launches 23 Starlink satellites

8:54 pm

Early on December 23, 2023 SpaceX successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage successfully completed its 19th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. This reuse was new record. In fact, the reuse numbers of SpaceX’s fleet Falcon 9 first stages are beginning to resemble the reuse numbers of NASA’s shuttle fleet, and are doing so in a significantly shorter period of time and for a lot less money.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race remain the same:

93 SpaceX
61 China
18 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 107 to 61, and the entire world combined 107 to 97. SpaceX now trails the rest of the world (excluding other American companies) 93 to 97.

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Firefly successfully launches for the second time in 2023

10:41 am

Alpha seven seconds after liftoff
Alpha seven seconds after liftoff

UPDATE #2: According to a Firefly tweet on X, the second stage failed to fire its second burn. The satellite however was deployed, communications established, and mission operations started. Though its orbit will decay prematurely, it appears the customer, the Space Force, will achieve most of its mission objectives. This should be considered a successful launch, albeit not one that Firefly will want to repeat in this manner.

UPDATE: It appears the upper stage might have had a problem in its final engine burn intended to circularize the orbit for deployment. Either the burn failed to occur, or did not fire correctly. See this tweet. (Hat tip Jay.) I have found other reports that indicate the same question.

The question now is whether this is considered a successful launch. One of its main tasks was to demonstrate fast assembly and prelaunch procedures, for the Space Force. This was accomplished. If the satellite cannot function however is isn’t a full success. I will wait for more information before deciding whether to remove it from the launch stats.

Original post:
——————
Firefly today successfully completed its second launch in 2023, its third launch overall, its Alpha rocket lifting off from its launchpad at Vandenberg in California.

With this launch Firefly also met its launch prediction for 2023, two launches. The mission was its second for the Space Force this year, both designed to test quick launch procedures. As of posting the payload has not been deployed.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race remain the same:

92 SpaceX
61 China
18 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 106 to 61, and the entire world combined 106 to 97. SpaceX still trails the rest of the world (excluding other American companies) 92 to 97.

2 comments

White House issues “policy framework” to lobby for its space regulatory proposal

9:28 am

Faced with stiff opposition from industry and politicians from both parties in Congress to its regulatory proposal issued in mid-November, the White House yesterday released what it called a “policy framework” for implementing that proposal.

You can read this policy framework here [pdf]. It is filled with high-sounding claims about its goal is to encourage private development and reduce red tape, but in the end it only adds more government entities to the entire bureaucracy that regulates commercial space. From the framework itself:

The Secretaries of Commerce and Transportation will co-lead a Private Sector Space Activities Interagency Steering Group in consultation with the Chairperson of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), comprising representation from the Departments of Defense, Energy, Homeland Security, Interior, and State, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and any other Federal entities with expertise or equities pertaining to private sector novel space activities, including relevant stakeholders from the Executive Office of the President. The Steering Group serves as a coordinating body to ensure that the U.S. Government oversight system is prepared to meet U.S. priorities while taking into consideration the competitiveness of U.S. industry now and into the future.

One of the criticisms of the White House proposal from mid-November was that it would split regulation between Commerce and Transportation, thus increasing the complexity for commerical companies. This steering group is clearly an effort to answer those complaints, but based on this proposal, it simply adds one more bureaucratic layer to the mix, making things even more complicated.

The framework also calls for the expansion of the government’s regulatory footprint on several fronts, such as controlling orbital debris, and achieved through “expanding existing, or establish new, federal advisory committees to account for all expanded space authorities in furtherance of this Framework and related legislative proposals.”

From the viewpoint of freedom, this entire proposal reads like a zombie end-of-the-world horror film, with bureaucratic zombies appearing endlessly from all directions, aimed at consuming any independent private company as quickly and as thoroughly as possible.

The original commercial space act proposal from Congress, that the Biden administration (and most Democrats) oppose but carries the endorsement of the private commercial space industry, was passed by its House committee, but still needs to be voted on by the full House, as well as the Senate. Because it remains in limbo, the White House has issued this framework, in the hope it can give its side the ammunition needed to defeat that bill and replace it with the White House’s.

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Starship prototype #28 completes full duration static fire test

8:49 pm

Gearing up for Starship/Superheavy orbital test flight #3: Starship prototype #28 today successfully completed a full duration static fire test, with all six engines firing for about five seconds.

The link goes to SpaceX’s X feed, and shows that test.

This is more evidence that SpaceX intends to be ready in all ways to do that third orbital test flight of Superheavy/Starship by mid-January, at the latest. It also suggests the company is getting close to finishing its investigation into the previous test flight in mid-November.

Of course, none of this means it will launch in mid-January. I predict SpaceX will be stuck twiddling its thumbs waiting for a launch license from the FAA, which will also be waiting for an okay from Fish & Wildlife. Both will likely be forced to work as slowly as possible, likely because of interference from the White House.

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The Biden war against Musk is a war against America

1:33 pm

How the modern Democratic Party has evolved madly to the left, according to Elon Musk
How the modern Democratic Party has evolved
madly to the left, according to Elon Musk

In 2022 Elon Musk essentially completed the long process of going from what he described as a moderate who had previously voted overwhelming for Democrats to a Republican voter strongly hostile to the present Democratic Party.

He announced this shift in a tweet on May 18, 2022, in which he said the following:

In the past I voted Democrat, because they were (mostly) the kindness party.

But they have become the party of division & hate, so I can no longer support them and will vote Republican.

Now, watch their dirty tricks campaign against me unfold. [emphasis mine]

In the almost twenty months since Musk made that statement, his prediction of a “dirty tricks campaign” by the Democrats has become quite evident and true. Numerous federal agencies under the control of President Joe Biden began taking strong actions to stymie Musk’s companies, sometimes abusing the law in what appear to be legitimate ways, and sometimes abusing power in ways that are absurd. Below is a short list, many of which have been repeatedly reported here at Behind the Black:
» Read more

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Congress passes short term extension of commercial space regulatory “learning period”

9:19 am

The Senate yesterday passed a short term extension of the regulatory “learning period” at the FAA that limits its ability to regulate commercial space.

[The Senate] quickly passed an extension of the FAA’s authorization, a final piece of “must pass” legislation before the end of the year. The bill (H.R. 6503) passed the House on December 11. Among other things, it extends the “learning period” for commercial human spaceflight until March 9, 2024 that otherwise would have expired on January 1. The learning period, or “moratorium,” prohibits the FAA from promulgating new regulations on commercial human spaceflight while the industry is in its infancy.

The president still needs to sign this bill, but that is expected.

Originally passed in 2004 as an eight-year period, this “learning period” has been extended several times since. The industry wants a longer extension, as it still considers itself quite rightly to be in an experimental test phase, not operational in the sense of airplane manufacture.

Not that this extension matters. It appears in the past two years that the regulators at the FAA have decided to ignore the law and make believe this learning period really doesn’t exist, based on how that agency has treated test launches by SpaceX and others. Rather than let their launches proceed quickly as tests, the FAA has begun to treat each test as an operational flight that requires a long investigation before further launch approvals are given.

Unless there is a major change in leadership in the White House, we should expect a major slow-down of the American launch industry in the coming years, regardless of whether this “learning period” is extended or not.

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Launch of Intuitive Machines Nova-C lunar lander delayed until February

8:45 am

South Pole of Moon with landing sites

Because of scheduling conflicts impacting other SpaceX launches now, SpaceX and Intuitive Machines have delayed the launch of the latter’s Nova-C lunar lander from a mid-January to a mid-February launch window.

The conflict involves the use of the launchpad, that the Falcon Heavy also uses. Technical issues had forced SpaceX to reschedule its next launch to December 28, 2023, leaving little time afterward to reconfigure the pad for the Falcon 9 Nova-C mid-January launch window. Any Falcon Heavy launch delays due to weather would likely make that mid-January window impossible, so the companies have decided better to reschedule now.

Nova-C is targeting a crater rim near the Moon’s south pole, as shown on the map to the right. The floor of that crater is thought to be permanently shadowed, but Nova-C does not have the capability to enter it. This mission is mostly an engineering test mission, to prove Intuitive Machine’s design. If it works, it will operate on the Moon surface for one lunar day, about two weeks. The company then has two more lunar missions contracted with NASA, with the next mission aiming to fly in 2024 as well.

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Spain’s new space agency

9:32 am

Link here. The article provides a detailed description of the history leading up to the formation in March 2023 of Spain’s new space agency, Agencia Espacial Española (AEE) (the Spanish Space Agency in English).

It appears the goal was to consolidate Spain’s government space operations from eleven different agencies so as to better coordinate that government’s work with the nation’s burgeoning new commercial space sector.

By law, Spain has created the AEE without any increase in public spending. The new agency has been allocated an initial budget of 700 million euros per year, which was primarily drawn from funding for ESA [European Space Agency] participation, the CDTI, and INTA [two other Spanish agencies]. However, it is expected that the AEE will receive higher budgets in the future for the development of its own programs outside those directly linked to the ESA. The task of financing space activity public and private alike is of utmost importance, and one of the agency’s roles should be to create mechanisms for making investment attractive and effective, either directly or through public-private partnerships — a model that is producing excellent results in several countries around the world, like the United States. [emphasis mine]

It appears the goal is to emulate the policies followed by NASA in the past few years, buy services and products from the private sector rather than build these things within the government. If so, AEE will likely help jumpstart that new space industry. Whether it can stay focused on this goal, or shift into a typical government empire-building operation that sucks the life out of everything, will be its real fundamental test.

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Firefly schedules second launch in 2023

9:19 am

Firefly has now scheduled the second launch of its Alpha rocket in 2023, with a launch window of about 20 minutes on the morning of Decmeber 20, 2023.

The payload is a smallsat from Lockheed Martin testing new antenna technology, but the launch is for the Space Force. Like the previous September 15, 2023 launch, it is designed to test the ability of Firefly to get a payload into orbit quickly, from assembly to launch.

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