Tag: government

North Korea might have mobile ICBM capability

10:52 am

Does this make you feel safer? Satellite data suggests that North Korea might be preparing to test launch a mobile ICBM.

North Korea could launch either its Kn-08 or Kn-14 mobile ballistic missiles which would have a longer range and could potentially hit the Pacific Northwest of the United States. The Kn-14 is thought to be a more precise version of the Kn-08, and it is believed the regime showed it for the first time at a military parade in 2015, officials say.

…if the North were, for the first time, to launch a mobile missile with these types of ranges, it would be a significant military advance and a change in the North Korean calculus for the U.S., military officials say. In a conflict, mobile launchers can quickly shoot and move to a new position making it very difficult for satellites or spy planes to track them. It would also be a violation of U.N. resolutions banning North Korea from ballistic missile tests.

Well, why worry? Those U.N. resolutions will obviously prevent North Korea from doing anything. So will harsh words from Obama and his diplomats. Hasn’t that always worked?

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The Orion fantasy

10:21 am

There is a commercial space conference going on in Colorado this week, which explains the plethora of breaking stories from the new commercial space companies both yesterday and today.

Two stories today from Aviation Week, however, are more about the old big space industry and the old way of doing things, and both reveal the hollow nature of that entire effort.

Both stories are about work Lockheed Martin is doing in connection with its Orion capsule, and both try to convince us that this capsule is going to be the central vehicle for the first missions to Mars.

Function starts in the bones of the spacecraft,” [Mike Hawes, Lockheed Martin vice president and Orion program manager,] said in an April 12 interview at the 32nd annual Space Symposium here. “To be a deep space spacecraft, you have to build differently than you would if your requirements were to stay in low Earth orbit and be quiescent at the International Space Station for a few months. That’s driven Orion from the beginning. Any architecture you look at needs a crew capability, a long-term design requirement. So, you can debate a lot of different missions, but you need that fundamental capacity we have invested in Orion.”

I say balderdash. Orion is an over-priced and over-engineered ascent/descent capsule for getting humans in and out of Earth orbit. Spending billions so it can also go to Mars makes no sense, because its heat shield and other capsule technologies for getting through the Earth’s atmosphere are completely useless in interplanetary travel. Moreover, such a small capsule is completely insufficient for a long Mars mission, even if you test it for a “1,000 day” missions, as Hawes also says in the first article. To send a crew to Mars, you need a big vessel, similar to Skylab, Mir, ISS, or Bigelow’s B330 modules. A mere capsule like Orion just can’t do it.

Eventually, it is my hope that Congress will recognize this reality, and stop funding big space projects like SLS and Orion, and instead put its money behind the competitive private efforts to make money in space. Rather than trying to build its own capsules, space stations, rockets, and interplanetary vessels (something that NASA has repeatedly tried to do without any success), NASA should merely be a customer, buying the capsules, space stations, and interplanetary vessels that private companies have built, on their own, to make money, on their own.

Consider for example Bigelow’s B330. Each module is about as big as Skylab or Mir, and costs mere pennies to build and launch, compared to those government-designed stations. Moreover, Bigelow can build it fast, and repeatedly. Similarly, Orion has cost billions (about $16 billion when it makes its first manned mission in 2021 at the earliest) and will have taken 15 years to build. SpaceX built Dragon in seven years, Orbital ATK built Cygnus in five years, and Boeing is going to build Starliner in about four years, all for about $10 billion, total.

The contrast is striking, and though ordinary people with the ability to add 2 plus 2 can see it, it takes Congressman a little longer (as they need to use their fingers to count). Sooner or later they will get it, and Orion and SLS will disappear. Bet on it.

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French court rules against freezing Russian assets

9:38 am

In a complicated court battle involving multiple courts, multiple nations, multiple companies, and multiple industries (including Roscosmos), a French court has ruled in favor of Russia and against the shareholders of the liquidated Russian Yukos oil company.

The Ivry First Instance Court ruled in favor of Roscosmos in a dispute with Cyprus-based offshore company Veteran Petroleum, a shareholder in the former Yukos oil company, according to Roscosmos. “They have acknowledged that our arguments are correct and that there is no need to seize the money,” Roscosmos representative Igor Burenkov told the TASS news agency.

France has seized Russian assets worth $1 billion in total following the Kremlin’s refusal to pay damages to former Yukos shareholders. The seized assets included $400 million owed by French-based satellite provider Eutelsat to the Russian Satellite Communications company and $300 million owned by French space launch provider Arianespace to Roscosmos.

More details here. The dispute here is not just between Russia and the shareholders of Yukos. There is also a battle going on between the Hague International Arbitration Court and the French courts. Whether Russia will be able get its money however remains unclear at this moment.

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Russian assets in France seized

8:59 am

Russia’s refusal to pay damages in a court case has forced France to seize $700 million owed to Russia’s aerospace industry.

In total, France has seized Russian assets worth $1 billion following the Kremlin’s refusal to pay damages to former Yukos shareholders.

In July 2014, The Hague international arbitration court ruled that Russia must pay $50 billion for expropriating the assets of Yukos. The seized assets include $400 million owed by French-based satellite provider Eutelsat to the Russian Satellite Communications company and $300 million owned by French space launch provider Arianespace to Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, the magazine reported, citing the Shearman & Sterling legal firm which represents the Yukos shareholders.

This story is similar to the Sea Launch court suit by Boeing, whom the Russians owe $300 million. In that case Boeing has moved to block Russia from selling Sea Launch.

Both stories suggest that the Russians are in big financial trouble, partly caused by a lack of understanding of capitalism. In both cases, they formed partnerships with western businesses and failed to realize that those partnerships placed financial obligations upon them. From its Soviet days Russia probably thought they could ignore those obligations if it became inconvenient, and they are now discovering that this is not really possible if they wish to sell their goods to the rest of the world.

I expect Russia’s space industry to increasingly become isolated from the rest of the world market, partly because of these events.

In related news, Roscosmos has revealed that after the initial launch at Vostochny in April, the second launch will not occur until 2017. This indicates that the first launch is merely a face-saving effort to hide the fact that construction is really more than a year behind schedule, not three months.

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Delusional banking

9:39 am

Time to consider holding more of your money in cash: The International Monetary Fund said on Sunday that it now supports the idea of imposing negative interest rates on depositor money at some central banks.

In other words, steal the money, placed originally in the banks for safety from theft.

The following quote from the article, however, reveals how truly hopeless the situation really is:

Critics argue that the move to negative rates, especially in Japan where the central bank has failed to ignite growth or shift inflation upwards, are a sign of desperation. What is needed they say is additional government spending instead of more loose monetary policy. In addition, they charge that the move may damage the economy by inflating financial market asset bubbles and squeezing bank profit margins. [emphasis mine]

The idea that more government spending will solve the problem of too much government spending, which is why these central banks are in debt and need to steal the money of the depositors in order to become solvent again, is absurd. That the world’s economic experts can see no other solution, like maybe getting government spending under control so that reasonable taxes can pay the bills, tells us that no reasonable solution will be tried, and that eventually everything is going to crash badly.

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Serious security flaws found in Obamacare websites in three states

9:58 am

Finding out what’s in it: Federal investigators have found significant security problems with the Obamacare health insurance websites in the states of California, Kentucky, and Vermont.

The GAO report examined the three states’ systems from October 2013 to March 2015 and released an abbreviated, public version of its findings last month without identifying the states. On Thursday, the GAO revealed the states’ names in response to a Freedom of Information request from the AP.

According to the GAO, one state did not encrypt passwords, potentially making it easy for hackers to gain access to individual accounts. One state did not properly use a filter to block hostile attempts to visit the website. And one state did not use the proper encryption on its servers, making it easier for hackers to get in. The report did not say which state had what problem.

According to the story, it appears that nothing has been done in two of the three states to fix the problem. Worse, the study suggests similar problems exist at other state websites.

Hey, let’s solve the problem by voting for Clinton or Sanders! Both say the solution is to give the governments that screwed up here more power, money, and control. What could go wrong?

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Vet charities not getting promised Trump donations

9:31 am

What does this tell us? Three months after Donald Trump held a charity event for veterans rather than participate in a presidential debate, more than half of the $6 million raised has not been given to any of the veteran organizations.

A survey by The Wall Street Journal of 19 of the 22 groups originally listed by Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign as the prospective recipients of the funds found that they had received roughly $2.4 million of the estimated $6 million in donations the campaign said the event generated. The total received by all of the groups is likely to be more.

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Fascist New Jersey threatens prison for man flying Trump flag

9:24 am

Fascists: A man in New Jersey faces jail time for flying a campaign flag for Donald Trump in front of his home.

A New Jersey man who’s been flying Donald Trump’s campaign flag in front of his home since February could face up to a $2,000 fine or jail time when he faces a judge in the case.

Joe Hornick has been flying Trump’s “Make America Great Again” flag outside his West Long Branch home on a busy corner near the Monmouth University campus for months. But he got a ticket recently citing him for illegally posting political signage more than 30 days before an election. The New Jersey presidential primary isn’t until June 7. [emphasis mine]

Where in the Constitution does it say that political speech is forbidden thirty days before an election?

Anyway, this is another reason to avoid New Jersey, the state that routinely jails ordinary citizens for daring to exercise their second amendment rights. Now the state wants to jail people for exercising their first amendment rights.

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Brownshirts shut down student Trump meeting

9:13 am

Facists: A collection of leftwing, Marxist, Black Lives Matter brownshirts crashed the first meeting of a Students for Trump club forming at Portland State University, shutting it down and threatening the participants.

I have posted the video below the fold. Be sure to watch it all. There is no doubt that if and when these fascists gain power they will use it to oppress and persecute anyone who disagrees with them. In fact, they readily admit on the video that they are doing this now, gleefully. Their hate is palatable.
» Read more

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NASA picks Aerojet Rocketdyne engine for SLS upper stage

9:49 am

Government in slow motion: Only six years after program start, NASA has finally chosen Aerojet Rocketdyne’s legacy RL10 rocket engine for the upper stage of the SLS rocket.

The RL10 is an expander cycle liquid hydrogen/liquid oxygen rocket engine typically used on upper stage applications. It was first developed by Pratt & Whitney in the late 1950s and first flown in 1963. It has flown on hundreds of launches, logged approximately 15,000 hot fires, and accumulated more than 2.3 million seconds of hot fire operation time with a demonstrated reliability ratio greater than 0.999 throughout its history. The RL10 – which is used in various forms with Atlas’ Centaur Upper Stage (RL10A-4-2) and Delta IV’s Upper Stage (RL10B-2) – has a history back to the Saturn I’s S-IV Stage.

No other engine exists that can be built in time. Even so, the engine will not be ready for the first SLS launch tentatively scheduled in 2018, but will instead be used on the next two flights. The article also indicates that NASA is planning to delay SLS’s second flight two years to 2023, creating a five year gap which they will use to integrate the RL10 into SLS, while also rebuilding the mobile platform used to move SLS to the launchpad. (For some reason, the reconfiguration installed for the first SLS flight won’t work for later flights.)

The delay to 2023 has not been announced officially, but I have seen too much evidence recently, including statements in this GAO report, that tells me the delay is certain. Furthermore, it seems increasingly likely that the second flight will also be unmanned, and it won’t be until the third flight (as yet unfunded by Coingress) that humans will finally fly on SLS.

The cost? I am doing an analysis of this subject right now for a policy paper I am writing for a Washington think tank, and my preliminary estimate exceeds $41 billion for NASA to fly just one manned flight of SLS. That’s a bit more expensive than the $10 billion NASA is paying SpaceX, Orbital ATK, and Boeing to launch more than a dozen cargo freighters and as many as a dozen manned flights to ISS.

For those elected officials out there who have trouble with math, let’s compare again:

  • SLS: $41 billion for one flight, 15 years development to first flight.
  • Commercial space: $10 billion for two dozen flights, 5 years development to first flight.

Which costs less and gives more bang for the buck? Can you figure that out, Congressmen and Senators? If you need help I can provide you a few more fingers so you can count above ten.

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Ariane 6 delayed by tax and legal issues

5:35 pm

In the heat of competition: Even as Airbus Safran claimed today that Ariane 6 will be price competitive with SpaceX’s Falcon 9, the company cannot begin work on the new rocket because of a turf war Arianespace and French tax collectors.

The tax issue is as follows:

Airbus and Safran had agreed that Safran would pay Airbus 800 million euros ($874 million) in cash, in addition to its rocket-engine manufacturing capability, to become a 50-50 ASL shareholder with Airbus. Airbus officials since the beginning of the year have been negotiating with French tax authorities to determine how to minimize the tax bite of the cash transfer, which industry officials could be as high as 500 million euros, leaving Airbus with a net of just 300 million euros.

Delays in the cash transfer have meant that ASL, which is expected to count 8,000 employees, has been operating with only around 400 employees. In addition, it has made it difficult for the initial ASL team to present a fixed-price Ariane 6 production proposal to the 22-nation European Space Agency, which is financing the majority of Ariane 6 development.

In addition, the merger is being reviewed by the European Commission, part of the European Union.

The commission is looking at whether Arianespace’s minority shareholders, who are Ariane 6 contractors, will be protected once Airbus Safran Launchers raises its Arianespace shareholding to 74 percent from today’s 39 percent. The commission is also reviewing concerns expressed by satellite builders that Airbus, which is a major manufacturer of commercial satellites, might give its own satellites preferential treatment in setting the Ariane 6 manufest.

Airbus Safran still insists they can get the new rocket launched by 2020, but somehow that doesn’t seem reasonable to me, especially because I expect the French and European government authorities here to carve out their piece of the action, thus making it harder for the private company to deliver on time.

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Take-aways from Cruz’s win in Wisconsin

9:39 am

Link here. Key quote, which I think accurately predicts what will happen in the next few months:

Trump will not win 1237 delegates before the convention. The question is whether Cruz can catch him in a plurality or get close to it and win a mandate. It’s quite obvious that Trump’s victories during the first half of the race were a result of unprecedented name ID and a divided field. He would have lost most states had this been a one-on-one contest, which tells you that the majority of voters don’t want him. Thus, even if Cruz comes up short of a plurality, as long as he wins the aforementioned states, the Texas Senator will have a moral mandate when he likely wins a delegate race on the second ballot. Trump will argue that it doesn’t reflect the will of the voters, but it’s clear that 60% of voters in most states don’t want him. He only won in previous states because of Rubio, and the remaining wins come as a result of Kasich staying in the race or non-Republican voters.

The article has lots of good information and analysis. It correctly notes that if John Kasich would do the sensible and honorable thing and end his campaign now, Cruz’s path to the nomination would be significantly cleared.

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Boeing moves to block Russians from selling Sea Launch

9:21 pm

In a reaction to news that the Russians have a potential buyer for Sea Launch, Boeing has sued to block the sale.

In a motion for a preliminary injunction filed with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California April 2, Boeing argued that a sale of Sea Launch could hinder its ability to collect on a summary judgment issued last year against Energia of at least $300 million. “If Energia succeeds in selling these assets and moving all of the proceeds thereof to Russia, without paying the hundreds of millions of dollars that it owes, it would unquestionably complicate Boeing’s collection efforts,” the company’s lawyers stated in the court filing.

Energia has refused to pay that $300 million. However, since Sea Launch’s floating launch platform remains docked in California, Boeing retains a great deal of leverage in this legal dispute. I expect the court will eventually put a lock on those assets until the Russians pay up.

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Russia denies that Proton upper stage failed after launching ExoMars

9:16 pm

At a press conference today the head of Roscosmos today countered claims that some failure had occurred after ExoMars was placed on its course to Mars.

Briefing reporters in Moscow, Igor A. Komarov reiterated statements made by Proton prime contractor Khrunichev Space Center of Moscow, saying the Breeze-M upper stage separated ExoMars without incident and then proceeded with the standard passivation and collision-avoidance maneuvers.

Komarov said he had seen photos taken from a Brazilian ground telescope that appeared to show small objects in the vicinity of the Breeze-M stage and ExoMars. “I do have these pictures, provided by the Brazilian observatory, showing the ExoMars spacecraft surrounded by some dimly illuminated objects reportedly related to the upper stage,” Komarov said.

“Telemetry and other objectively verifiable data available to us, covering the entire time from the separation and the contamination and collision avoidance maneuvers to the passivation of the upper stage, show that all these steps have been performed successfully, without any anomalies,” Komarov said. “There is absolutely no indication of an upper-stage explosion or breakup.”

The uncertainty will only be settled in the next few weeks, when engineers activate all of ExoMars instruments. Should they all be working as expected, then it will likely be that nothing had happened to the Briz-M upper stage, as Roscosmos claims. If not, then Russia has a problem, since it depends on that stage for future Proton commercial launches and will not know what went wrong here.

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TSA wastes $1.4 million

10:49 am

Government marches on! The TSA spent $1.4 million to develop software that does the exact same thing as flipping a coin.

The “randomizer” app itself cost $336,000, the rest of the funds most likely went towards iPads themselves, Rare reports. There were four bids total for the project and IBM won the project. The app’s purpose is to eliminate potential bias when a TSA agent tells passengers which line to go to. Currently on the iTunes app store, there are multiple free coin flip apps which perform the same process as the TSA’s “randomizer.”

The corruption here reeks. Shut the whole thing down, and not only would we be safer, we would each have more wealth to make our lives better.

In a related story, the Department of Homeland Security has paid almost $20 million in salaries to corrupt employees who they can’t fire, so they pay them to do nothing.

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Using ICBMs to lower launch costs

10:02 am

The competition heats up: Orbital ATK is lobbying Congress to lift a ban on the use of decommissioned ICBM missiles for commercial launches.

Orbital ATK is pressing U.S. lawmakers to end a 20-year ban on using decommissioned intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) for launching commercial satellites and the effort has raised concern among companies that have invested millions of dollars in potential rival rockets. Orbital Vice President Barron Beneski said in an interview on Friday that the company was pushing Washington to get the ban lifted as part of the National Defense Authorization Act that sets defense policy for fiscal 2017, which begins Oct. 1. The missiles were idled by nuclear disarmament treaties between the United States and Russia in the 1990s.

The company wants to use the solid rocket motors in the surplus missiles to increase the capability of their Minotaur 4 rocket, designed for the small satellite market. Interestingly, Virgin Galactic, who is aiming for this same smallsat market with its LaunchOne rocket, is protesting, and has even garnered the lobbying support of the industry’s trade organization..

“It’s a dangerous precedent when the government tries to inject itself in the commercial marketplace. It can be disruptive, and not for the right reasons,” Eric Stallmer, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, a Washington DC-based trade organization, said in an interview on Thursday.

Orbital ATK is not asking for exclusive use, so other companies could also obtain surplus missiles for their own use. However, the ATK in Orbital ATK’s name comes from the half of the company that before the merger was an expert in using solid rockets for space. This gives Orbital an advantage here that the other companies do not have, and explains their protests.

Nonetheless, I say tough. The government should surplus these rockets, and let the competitive chips fall where they may. Anything that lowers the cost to put payloads in orbit cannot be a bad thing for the launch industry, as it will serve to increase the number of customers that industry will have and thus help to increase everyone’s sales figures.

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Misuse revealed of vomit comet at NASA

7:16 pm

It appears that, stuck with the “vomit comet” airplane that they no longer had much use for, NASA managers tried to justify its existence and budget by assigning it tasks for which it and its crew were not designed or trained to do.

The unorthodox use of the C-9 aircraft was driven, according to the complaints, by a desire at the high levels of the agency to prove the Vomit Comet was of practical use. Apparently, it didn’t work—the C-9 aircraft program was defunded and shut down in 2014.

Since 1959, NASA has used a variety of aircraft to simulate the weightlessness of space in order to train astronauts and perform basic experiments in zero gravity. From 2005 to 2014, the C-9, built in 1970, became one of NASA’s primary Vomet Comets. According to documents uncovered by Motherboard using the Freedom of Information Act (embedded at the bottom of this article) show that the Vomit Comet was used on at least two occasions for purposes other than simulating space flight, while still labeling the missions “crew training.” In 2013, the agency officially looked into having the plane reclassified to run these types of missions.

In one of these cases, the plane was flown to Greenland without the proper equipment or training for the crew, and experienced what was described by crew as “a near fatal crash.” It didn’t crash, but the crew apparently feared for their lives.

The program was shut down in 2014 with the operations handed over to private companies. Now if NASA needs to train astronauts, they simply hire these companies, which make the bulk of their money flying private missions, something NASA wasn’t allowed to do.

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Russia schedules first Vostochny launch

7:08 pm

The competition heats up: Roscosmos has scheduled April 27 as the date for the first launch from its new spaceport in Vostochny.

I do wish them luck. I don’t think the Russians will be very successful at competing in the new private launch industry that is beginning to emerge, centered as they are on Soviet-style, top-down, giant government-run organizations, but I still hope they succeed at whatever they attempt in space. As far as I am concerned, the more the merrier.

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Florida passes law outlawing theft by government

11:21 am

Good news: Florida’s Republican governor today signed a law that forbids state police from seizing any property from any citizen unless they actually arrest and charge that person with a crime.

The big deal with this particular reform is that, in most cases, Florida police will actually have to arrest and charge a person with a crime before attempting to seize and keep their money and property under the state’s asset forfeiture laws. One of the major ways asset forfeiture gets abused is that it is frequently a “civil”, not criminal, process where police and prosecutors are able to take property without even charging somebody with a crime, let alone convicting them. This is how police are, for example, able to snatch cash from cars they’ve pulled over and claim they suspect the money was going to be used for drug trafficking without actually finding any drugs.

I should also note that getting this law written and passed was spear-headed by the Republicans in Florida’s legislature, though Democrats there also supported it. I note this not to imply that Republican politicians are great, which they routinely are not, but to note that of the two parties, in recent years it has generally been the Republicans who have opposed asset forfeiture, which I like to call theft-by-government.

Sadly, the Republicans were key players in getting this kind of policy legalized in the first place.

In both cases, it is really the voters who to blame, or to be credited. When the laws were passed allowing police the right to confiscate private property, the voters cheered, thinking such actions would help stop the drug trade (which they were encouraging by buying the drugs). Politicians responded to the voters, and passed the laws, tweaking them as power-hungry politicians do to make them work to the government’s favor, not the citizens. Now, having realized how bad these laws are, the voters are electing politicians who want to remove the laws. That pressure is resulting in laws like this.

Milton Friedman explained this process quite wisely many years ago.

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Russia insures first Vostochny launch

8:40 am

In the heat of competition: Russia’s space agency Roscosmos has obtained insurance for the first launch from Vostochny, covering the rocket and the launch facilities it will use.

This story tells us more about Russia’s present circumstances than the situation at Vostochny. Normally, government space agencies self-insure. Russia, however, is having serious economic problems, and I suspect that the managers there have recognized that if this launch fails and the launchpad is damaged badly, they don’t have the cash to quickly rebuild it. Granted, the insurance itself will probably cost them a lot of money they also don’t have, but considering the significant quality control problems the Russian aerospace industry has had in recent years, combined with the corruption that has surrounded the construction at Vostochny, they are probably wise to cover themselves in the not unlikely chance that something goes wrong.

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Sierra Nevada favors Alabama for Dream Chaser’s commercial port

9:50 am

The competition heats up: At a workshop in Alabama this week Sierra Nevada’s vice president indicated that though the company has not yet finalized its decision, it is strongly leaning to picking Huntsville as the commercial spaceport for its Dream Chaser mini-shuttle, being built to ferry cargo to ISS.

“There was a leap of faith on the Huntsville side that we would be a company that could get this vehicle built and start servicing the space station…,” Sierra Nevada Vice President John Roth said Thursday. “Yes, we have been approached by other airports for ventures. We’re not moving forward at this time with any of those. Right now, Huntsville is the only community we’re moving forward with a (landing) license on.”

A preliminary local study identified four hurdles to landing Dream Chaser at the Huntsville International Airport: required licenses for the craft and airport, environmental impact approval, Federal Aviation Administration approval of the landing path and possible runway damage.

Why do I sense the unseen hand of porkmeister Senator Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) in this story? Could it be that one of the reasons NASA finally included Dream Chaser in its cargo contract was that the company had not only chosen the Alabama-based Atlas 5 rocket for its launch vehicle but was also courting Alabama for its commercial base, and Shelby had made it clear behind the scenes that he wanted that business? Could it be that Sierra Nevada is now returning the favor, having gotten the contract?

Don’t get me wrong. I think it was a good choice for NASA to give that contract to Sierra Nevada. I just think it important to note how giving some of our power away to politicians allows them to wield that power over us, sometimes to our benefit, sometimes against it, but always to make themselves more powerful. In the end, giving that power away is never a good option.

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Ordered to reduce red tape, federal bureaucrats increased it

6:53 pm

Government in action: In response to two executive orders by President Obama ordering federal agencies to review their regulations to eliminate red tape and streamline government operations, federal bureaucrats added 6.5 million paperwork hours to their workload and increased regulatory costs by $16 billion even as they wrote these reviews.

The American Action Forum has found the reviews consist mostly of recycled regulations by federal agencies that have actually increased regulatory costs. “The recent ‘retrospective reports’ from the administration reveal that executive agencies have added more than $16 billion in regulatory costs, up from $14.7 billion in the previous update, and 6.5 million paperwork hours,” the report said.

The agency reviews are a result of President Barack Obama’s initiative for a “government-wide review of rules on the books,” which the White House claims to have led to $28 billion in net five-year savings since 2011. However, the American Action Forum has found retrospective reviews often add additional costs to the economy. A review in 2014 added $23 billion in costs and 8.9 million paperwork burden hours.

No one should be surprised by this. Asking agencies to review their regulations will instead be seen by them as a glorious opportunity to justify their existence with more work. The way to eliminate these regulations is for the elected officials in charge to, surprise!, eliminate these regulations. Don’t ask the bureaucrats to do it. Tell them to do it.

And when these bureaucrats go to the press to complain and say how the elimination of this or that regulation will cause the sky to fall, the politicians have to have the courage to not back down, even when the press teams up with the bureaucrats to slander them for trying to bring the federal government under control.

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White nose syndrome found on Washington state bat

4:08 pm

Bad news for bats: Scientists have confirmed a bat with white nose syndrome in the state of Washington, 1,300 miles further west than the previous detection.

On March 11, hikers found the sick bat about 30 miles east of Seattle near North Bend, and took it to Progressive Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) for care. The bat died two days later, and had visible symptoms of a skin infection common in bats with WNS. PAWS then submitted the bat for testing to the USGS National Wildlife Health Center, which confirmed through fungal culture, molecular and pathology analyses that it had WNS.

I hate to express such a thought, but I can’t help wonder about the legitimacy of this detection. It is so far west and so far from the nearest other bat with white nose syndrome I cannot understand how this bat came to be infected, naturally. In order for this discovery to be confirmed they are going to have to detect it again, and more than once, on a number of bats. Otherwise, it will remain suspect and a possible false positive.

The worst part of this is that the government is surely going to begin instituting draconian measures to protect the bats in Washington, as well as across the entire western United States, even before this detection is confirmed. Having this single detection will make it much easier for government officials to ban humans from many more places, even though white nose syndrome is nowhere close.

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Further chaos at Vostochny

9:16 am

One week after the Moscow Commercial Court ordered the contractor building the new Russian spaceport Vostochny to repay $52 million in bank loans, that contractor has now filed three lawsuits totaling $17.9 million against the organization that runs the spaceport.

The new lawsuits suggest that even as the contractor’s managers were embezzling millions from the spaceport, the spaceport organization was also pocketing some money that was supposed to go to the contractor.

Russia: a true worker’s paradise!

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Russia selling Sea Launch?

12:12 am

The competition heats up? Though he couldn’t reveal any details, the director of Russian space agency Roscosmos today said that they have found a buyer for Sea Launch.

“I cannot tell you who the investor is, or the value of the contract, due to certain obligations. I hope that we will have something to say about it by the end of April,” Komarov said. He did, however, say that investors from the U.S., Australia, China and Europe have expressed interest in the project.

Because Sea Launch is a floating launch platform, there really is no reason the company can’t be taken over by anyone in the world. And should the buyer use the Ukrainian Zenit rocket that the platform was designed to use, the technical problems might be reduced as well.

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Another subsidized solar power company going bust?

11:13 am

Your tax dollars at work! The U.S.’s largest solar power company, heavily subsidized by the federal government, now faces bankruptcy.

An SEC filing from TerraForm Global, a unit of SunEdison, claims “due to SunEdison’s liquidity difficulties, there is a substantial risk that SunEdison will soon seek bankruptcy protection.” Both SunEdison and TerraForm are delaying the filing of their annual financial report to the SEC.

News of SunEdison’s impending bankruptcy filing comes after the company’s shares fell 95 percent in the past 12 months, with shares now trading for less than $1 for the first time since the green energy company went public in 1995. SunEdison’s market value fell from $10 billion in July 2015 to around $400 million today.

The news also comes after the SEC announced it was launching an investigation into SunEdison’s disclosures to shareholders regarding the company’s liquidity. SEC enforcement officials “are looking into whether SunEdison overstated its liquidity last fall when it told investors it had more than $1 billion in cash,” according to The Wall Street Journal.

…The pro-labor union group Good Jobs First reported last year that SunEdison and its subsidiaries got nearly $650 million in subsidies and tax credits from the federal government since 2000. It was the 13th most heavily-subsidized company in America. This includes nearly $4.6 million in subsidies from the Department of Energy and Department of Treasury. Watchdog.org reported in October 2015 that SunEdison had gotten nearly $4.6 million from the Obama administration, including funding to build semi-conductors. A SunEdison bankruptcy could leave taxpayers on the hook for more than $2 billion.

But hey, what’s a few billion here or there, if the cause is worthwhile?

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Democratic AGs team up to prosecute global warming skeptics

9:29 pm

Fascists: Democratic attorney generals from 16 states announced today that they plan on investigating and prosecuting companies for fraud if they dare express any skepticism about global warming.

“The bottom line is simple: Climate change is real; it is a threat to all the people we represent,” [New York Attorney General Eric] Schneiderman said. “If there are companies, whether they’re utilities, whether they’re fossil fuel companies, committing fraud in an effort to maximize their short-term profits at the expense of the people we represent, we want to find out about it. We want to expose it and want to pursue them to the fullest extent of the law.”

The concept of dissent and debate increasingly appears completely foreign to liberal, leftwing politicians and activists. Disagree with them in any way, and they think that gives them the right to destroy you.

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