Tag: government

Today’s blacklisted American: Mother sued by teacher’s union for requesting her child’s kindergarten curriculum

2:14 pm

Nicoletta-Solas
Nicoletta-Solas testifying to Congress

They’re coming for you next: Nicoletta Solas, a Rhode Island mother of a 5-year-old, was harassed by her school board and sued by the National Education Association (NEA), the largest teacher’s union in the nation, for simply requesting her child’s kindergarten curriculum. As she stated bluntly during her testimony at House hearing on March 2, 2023,

If you ask questions about public education, they will come after you. … My school district and my teachers’ union didn’t want to just hide the curriculum from me, they wanted to ruin my life.

Below is video of her full testimony. All she wanted to know was whether the school would be teaching queer theory to her 5-year-old. The ugly and vicious response to this request, by the school, the school board, and the NEA, is striking.
» Read more

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Biden administration proposes more budget increases for NASA

10:25 am

In releasing its proposed federal budget for 2024 with many major spending increases, the Biden administration has also proposed a significant increase in NASA’s budget. the third year in a row it has done so.

The shortened summary version of the Biden budget proposal [pdf] covers its proposals for NASA in two pages, with the most important proposals as follows:

  • A half billion dollar increase in the budget for the Artemis program for a total of $8.1 billion.
  • A commitment to partner on Europe’s ExoMars Franklin rover mission, replacing Russia.
  • $949 million to develop the Mars sample return mission to bring back Perseverance’s core samples.
  • $180 million to begin development of “a space tug” that can de-orbit ISS as well as “be useful for other space transportation missions.”
  • $1.39 billion for developing new space technologies, an increase of $190 million.

The last two items will likely be money offered to many new commercial startups.

Though we can expect some resistance by the Republican House to most of the budget increases in the overall Biden budget proposal, expect Congress to rubber stamp the NASA increases, as it has done routinely in recent years. Congress might shift or reject some of these ideas, but generally, when all is said and done, it will only make superficial changes. NASA will likely more money.

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House subcommittee proposes five bills that would change FCC operations

10:06 am

The House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on March 8, 2023 approved five bills affecting the FCC and how it operates.

The first bill [pdf], Satellite and Telecommunications Streamlining Act, is the most significant, as it appears to try to establish legal limitations and rules specifically designed to address the FCC’s recent effort to expand its power and regulatory authority beyond what its legal authority allows. While most of the bill’s language appears to allow the FCC to do what it wants (including limiting or regulating future space stations and setting lifetime limits on all orbiting spacecraft), it also insists that licenses be approved quickly and adds this caveat:

[T]he Commission may not establish performance objectives that conflict with any standard practice adopted by the Secretary of Commerce.

In other words, the FCC cannot grab the regulatory responsibilities of other agencies, especially the Commerce Department, where Congress in recent years has been trying to shift most commercial regulatory authority.

Nonetheless, this bill appears to mostly endorse the FCC ‘s power grab.

The bills still have to be approved by the full committee, then approved by the full House, then approved by the Senate, and then signed by the president.

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Russia considering bringing Soyuz launched on February 23rd home earlier

9:35 am

According to unnamed sources in the Russian press, Roscosmos officials are considering bringing the Soyuz capsule launched on February 23rd to ISS back to Earth in June rather than September, while moving up the launch of the next Soyuz manned mission.

As noted by space journalist Anatoly Zak:

The existence of such plans indicated that specialists had still been concerned about the possibility of a critical leak in the thermal control system of the fresh crew vehicle similar to those that hit two previous transport ships. Such change in schedule would also debunk the official explanation of previous two accidents by Roskosmos and NASA as caused by meteors rather than production defects.

The two previous coolant leaks occurred about three months after launch. Bringing the Soyuz home in June would get it home in about three and a half months, suggesting the Russians are no longer confident their Soyuz and Progress spacecraft can withstand six months in space.

If this plan is adopted it will also put less strain on the crew slated to come home on that Soyuz. Their mission has been planned for six months. Extending it to a full year without any prior preparation risks serious health issues.

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China’s Long March 4C rocket launches two Earth observation satellites

9:23 am

China today used its Long March 4C rocket to launch two Earth observation satellites from one of its interior spaceports.

No word on whether the expendable first stage landed near habitable areas. In related news the upper stage of a Long March 2D rocket, launched in June 2022, burned up over Texas on March 8, 2023. Such upper stage uncontrolled de-orbits are not unusual, and the effort by this news outlet to make a big deal about it is just politics. Unlike the lower stages of China’s rockets that hit the ground right after launch, it is very unlikely any pieces reached the surface, and any that did were small and posed a small risk.

The 2023 launch race:

16 SpaceX
8 China
3 Russia
1 Rocket Lab
1 Japan
1 India

American private enterprise still leads China 17 to 8 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 17 to 13. SpaceX alone still leads the entire world, including American companies, 16 to 14.

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Pushback: Texas A&M to stop favoring minorities in hiring & admission policies

11:56 am

Texas A&M logo
Texas A&M: abandoning its discriminatory
policies?

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Less than a month after Texas governor Greg Abbott ordered all state agencies to cease considering race and gender in hiring, Texas A&M (TAMU) officials announced they were removing all mention of diversity, equity, and inclusion policies from the university’s hiring and admissions practices.

After receiving the Feb. 6 memo, Texas A&M Chancellor John Sharp immediately ordered all A&M System institutions to review their employment and admission practices and confirm their compliance, according to the university. … Sharp directed all universities and agencies within the TAMU system to remove the DEI statements from their employment or admissions practices. The directive also standardizes faculty and staff applications, limiting them to a cover letter, curriculum vitae, statements about research and teaching philosophies, and professional references. It further instructs universities and agencies to make all websites or printed materials dealing with employment and admission practices compliant with the directive, says TAMU.

Will this change anything? It appears that for now, no, not much. » Read more

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Space Force assigns launchpads to four smallsat rocket startups

9:16 am

The Space Force has assigned launchpad space at Cape Canaveral to four different new smallsat rocket startup companies, ABL Space Systems, Stoke Space, Phantom Space, and Vaya Space, none of which have yet launched.

There are currently four active launch complexes on the Eastern Range; Launch Complex 37 for ULA Delta rockets; Launch Complex 40 for SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets; Launch Complex 41 for ULA Atlas rockets; and Launch Complex 39A, which is owned by NASA.

ABL Space Systems, which has the RS1 rocket, has been allocated property at Space Launch Complex 15. ABL’s first orbital attempt in January failed. Stoke Space was allocated property at SLC 14. The launcher is based in Washington state and working to develop a fully reusable rocket. And Phantom Space and Vaya Space were allocated space at SLC 13. Phantom Space is developing the Daytona Launch System and executed a successful hot fire test in November.

This article provides a nice overview of the four companies, of which Vaya is the newest entrant into the smallsat rocket industry.

Space Force officials have made it clear they want to maximize use of their facility at the Cape, while helping to energize this private commercial market.

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ISS maneuvers to avoid satellite

9:02 am

Though a collision was unlikely, Russian engineers fired the engines of a docked Progress freighter on March 6, 2023 to adjust ISS’s orbits in order to guaranteethat an Earth-observation satellite would fly past harmlessly.

At approximately 7:42 a.m. (12:42 GMT), thrusters on the Progress 83 resupply vessel currently docked with the International Space Station (ISS) fired for a little more than six minutes, raising the station’s orbit to prevent the potential collision, NASA said in a blog post (opens in new tab).

The satellite in question appears to have been an Argentinian Earth-observation satellite launched in 2020, according to Sandra Jones, from NASA’s Johnson Space Center. In a tweet, Dr. Jonathan McDowell, astronomer and astrophysicist at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, narrowed the possible candidates down to Nusat-17, noting the constellation’s orbital decay.

The article at the link includes a nice graph showing the number of times per year engineers have had to do this since 1999. The number of such maneuvers ranges from 0 to 5 per year, with no clear trend up or down. That lack of a trend suggests the constant howls claiming that space junk is a growing problem might be a bit overstated. This is not to say it isn’t a problem, merely that the problem might not be as severe as some claim.

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America’s blacklist culture: Survey finds almost half of America’s major corporations are eagerly willing to blacklist others

1:00 pm

1792 Exchange: Exposing oppression in corporate America
1792 Exchange: Exposing blacklisting in
corporate America

They’re coming for you next: A survey by the non-profit 1792 Exchange has found that almost half of a list of 1,000+ major corporations, from Google to Kroger, are very willing and eager to “cancel a contract or client, or boycott, divest, or deny services based on views or beliefs.”

Of these, 160 companies were found to be “high risk” for blacklisting. For example, its report [pdf] on high-risk Coca-Cola found the following:

Coca-Cola Co. has demonstrated a willingness to terminate relationships with organizations based on ideology and require unconstitutional diversity mandates from vendors and suppliers. It lacks policies to prevent viewpoint discrimination, while it denounced local legislative efforts to reform election security and protect the unborn. Coca-Cola will not give to faith-based charities but gives to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Based on its policies and past practices, Coca-Cola Company receives a “High Risk” rating.

Note that Pepsi was also considered “high-risk”, even though it was slightly less willing to blacklist. According to the survey’s report of Pepsi [pdf]:
» Read more

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ISRO successfully de-orbits defunct satellite

9:09 am

Last orbit of MT1

ISRO announced today that it successfully de-orbited the defunct Earth observation MT1 satellite on March 7, 2023, bringing it down over the Pacific Ocean.

The map to the right shows the timing of the last two de-orbit burns during the satellite’s last orbit.

MT1’s orbit was high enough so that it would have remained in space for about 100 more years, with a lot of fuel that might have caused an explosion and the release of many pieces of space junk. ISRO managers decided to allocate the funds to use that fuel to de-orbit it, as a test for making this a routine part of any satellite end-of-mission.

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Post-Artemis-1 report: heat shield ablated more than expected; power system issued unexpected commands; damage to launchpad

8:56 am

In a March 7, 2023 briefing, NASA officials provided an overall report of what happened during the first SLS launch, noting that there were some minor engineering issues but none that appeared to them significant.

The biggest issue of note was the Orion heat shield.

Howard Hu, Orion program manager at NASA, said that material on the heat shield had ablated differently than what engineers expected from ground tests and computer models. “We had more liberation of the charred material during reentry than we had expected,” he said. Engineers are just beginning detailed analysis of the heat shield to determine why it behaved differently than expected.

The amount ablated was well within safety margins, but engineers still do not understand why the material behaved differently than expected.

Engineers are also trying to understand why the power system of the Orion service module issued unplanned commands, several times opening what officials called a “latching current limiter.” This action caused no problems to the capsule’s operations, but it is concerning it occurred.

The launch also did more damage to the mobile launcher tower than expected.

According to NASA officials, none of these issues will delay the planned November 2024 launch date for the Artemis-2 mission, the first intended to carry humans.

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America’s blacklist culture: Republican in Florida proposes bill to regulate speech

1:09 pm

Jason Brodeur: Republican politician in love with restricting free speech
Jason Brodeur: Republican politician in love with
restricting free speech

They’re coming for you next: The desire of people in our culture today to control and regulate the behavior of everyone else is not a partisan thing. Though the Democrats and their leftist allies have certainly led the way in blacklisting, censoring, and destroying anyone who disagrees with them, Republican politicians are just as likely to try to use their power to squelch opposition, and should never be trusted either.

Today we have a perfect example of this non-partisan lust for power. On March 7, 2023, Florida Republican state senator Jason Brodeur introduced a bill that would amend state law to require all websites to register with the government if they made any money reporting on government actions.

You can read the bill here. The underlined portions are the sections that Brodeur wishes to add to the law. The key paragraphs state the following:
» Read more

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