Tag: government

Space Force awards SpaceX and ULA new launch contracts worth $2.5 billion

8:37 am

Space Force yesterday awarded both SpaceX and ULA new launch contracts worth $2.5 billion and totaling 21 launches over the next two to three years.

The final batch of assignments were split almost evenly, according to Col. Doug Pentecost, the deputy program executive officer of the Space Force’s Space Systems Command. ULA received 11 missions, valued at $1.3 billion, and SpaceX received 10 missions, valued at $1.23 billion.

Space Systems Command said the missions are scheduled to launch over the next two to three years. ULA, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, will use its soon-to-debut Vulcan rocket for the 11 missions, while SpaceX will fly seven missions with its Falcon 9 rocket and three missions with its Falcon Heavy rocket.

For SpaceX this award is no surprise. The ULA contract is more puzzling. Supposedly the Space Force was not going to award any launch contracts for ULA’s new Vulcan rocket until it successfully launched twice and was certified by the military as operational. Yet, it has now awarded ULA this contract for Vulcan launches. Has the military awarded the contract on a contingency basis? What happens if Vulcan has a failure on one of its first two launches?

The Space Force’s present arrangement limits bidding for launches to just these two companies. If Vulcan fails will it open bidding to other companies, or will it transfer launches to SpaceX?

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The Netherlands signs Artemis Accords

8:26 am

Confirming what it announced in early October, the Netherlands yesterday officially signed the Artemis Accords, becoming the thirtieth nations to join.

The full list of signatories to the Artemis Accords is now as follows: Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, and the United States.

We now have the rough outline of the national alliances that will compete with each other in space. On one hand are the nations above, generally from the west with a larger focus on private enterprise and ownership. On the other hand are the authoritarian nations, led by China and Russia with a few failed communist nations like Venezuela.

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Gadsden flag kid sues school and its officials for violating his first amendment rights

1:26 pm

Jaiden and school official
Jaiden Rodriguez reacting with bemused
disbelief by the ignorance of the school
official behind him. Click to watch the video

In August 2023 the Vanguard School in Colorado Springs demanded that 12-year-old Jaiden Rodriguez remove patches on his daypack showing the Gadsden flag as well as some funny Pac-men holding guns or he would be banned from classes. Jaiden refused, and the resulting uproar — forcing the cancellation of a scheduled parents night — caused school officials to quickly back down and give Jaiden permission to attend classes with the daypack and Gadsden flag patch.

For the school the most embarassing part of the story was how it illustrated the total ignorance of school officials about American history as well as the First Amendment. School officials, who are supposed to teach history to their students, knew less about American history than Jaiden. They falsely claimed that the Gadsen flag had “its origins in slavery and the slave trade,” when it was actually created during the American Revolution as a symbol against tyranny. In addition, they ignorantly claimed they had the right to censor Jaiden, simply because his patches “might” offend some students, when the Supreme Court has consistently ruled for more than a half century that they did not have that right.

The uproar caused the school’s board of directors to issue a retraction, though they did not waive the ban on the armed Pac-men patches. Moreover:
» Read more

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China successfully launches classified satellite

10:27 pm

China tonight (November 1, 2023 in China) successfully launched a classified satellite, its Long March 6 rocket lifting off from its Taiyuan spaceport in the north part of the country.

No video of the launch was released. Nor were any pictures. In addition, no information was released describing where the rocket’s first and second stages crashed. Both use kerosene and oxygen, so neither is as toxic as China’s other older rockets using hypergolic fuels, but China also does not make any apparent effort to control these crash landings.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

78 SpaceX
49 China
14 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise still leads China 90 to 49 in successful launches, and the entire world combined 90 to 78. SpaceX by itself is now tied with the rest of the world (excluding American companies) 78 to 78.

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Chinese crew completes five-month mission on Tiangong-3 after return to Earth

8:32 am

The new colonial movement: A three-man Chinese crew successfully landed today in north China in their Shenzhou capsule, completing a five-month mission on the Tiangong-3 space station.

The full mission length was 154 days. China claims that one of the astronauts was a civilian, but that really means nothing considering the security required to participate in these missions.

The crew that has taken over on Tiangong-3 are expected to do a mission of comparable length, probably pushing the length to six-months.

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Don’t forget: The protesters supporting the Hamas mass murderers are all Democrats

12:51 pm

Pro-Hamas demonstrations

As Israel now ramps up its offensive against Hamas in Gaza, slowly but steadily moving tanks and troops into the strip from numerous directions, protests by supporters of Hamas’s mass murders on October 7th have exploded in numerous locations in the United States and elsewhere.

To the right are screen captures from two very large protests, the top showing a demonstration of an estimated 7,000 pro-Hamas protesters taking over the Brooklyn Bridge in New York on October 28, 2023. In the video at one point you can read a sign that clearly says, “Our soldiers will not be held accountable for anything.”

The second picture is from a protest in Chicago. The demonstrators at this moment are chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”, a chant that has always meant in plain language, “We will kill all the Jews in Israel because Allah said only Muslims can live there.” It is also written into the Hamas founding charter, which states unequivocally that it “owes its loyalty to Allah, derives from Islam its way of life, and strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine.”
» Read more

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Intuitive Machines delays launch of its Nova-C lunar lander two months

10:04 am

South Pole of Moon with landing sites

Intuitive Machines yesterday announced that it has decided to delay the launch of its Nova-C lunar lander from in November launch window to a new window beginning on January 12, 2023.

The company did not elaborate on the reasons for the delay. However, executives warned at a media event Oct. 3 that “pad congestion” at LC-39A could delay their launch. The mission has to launch from that pad, rather than nearby Space Launch Complex 40, because only LC-39A is equipped to fuel the lander with methane and liquid oxygen propellants on the pad shortly before liftoff.

That pad is used for Falcon 9 crew and cargo missions to the International Space Station as well as Falcon Heavy launches. The pad is scheduled to host the Falcon 9 launch of the CRS-29 cargo mission Nov. 5 followed by a Falcon Heavy mission for the Space Force in late November. Converting the pad between Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches can take up to three weeks.

The landing site is indicated by the green dot on the map of the south pole to the right. Note that this landing will be the closest to the south pole yet, though not at the south pole. It will also be the first to land next to a crater that has a permanently shadowed interior, though Nova-C will not be able to enter it because it carries no rover and is only designed to last through the first lunar day.

Based on the present launch schedule, Astrobotic now gets the first chance to successfully land a privately built lunar lander. It is scheduled to launch on December 24, 2023 on a Vulcan rocket. The Japanese company Ispace attempted and failed to land its Hakuto-R1 spacecraft in April.

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The son of one of the co-founders of Hamas tells it like it is

2:13 pm

Rather than write another long essay detailing (based on facts) the evil and genocidal nature of Hamas in Gaza, I think it better today to let Mosab Hassan Yousef, the oldest son of Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef, do the speaking. An interview of him by Sky News Australia conducted yesterday is embedded below.

His passionate horror of Hamas — from long very personal experience — is evident and clear. So is his intellectual honesty. He will not lie to himself for the sake of alliance, ethnicity, religion, or anything. All that matters is the truth, which he states very bluntly.

“This is my message: an ex-Hamas member, as a son of one of Hamas’ founders, enough of this. If we don’t stop them now, the next war is going to be deadlier and only God knows what will happen next if Hamas is not finished as soon as possible,” Mr Yousef said.

“They opened the gates of hell on the Palestinian people.

“They are willing to actually sacrifice many Palestinian children, the entire Palestinian people and use them as fuel to … achieve their ideological agendas, their religious agendas.”

To underline the truth of his words, for his own protection Yousef now lives in the United States, his location was kept secret, and he refused to answer any personal questions about his specific plans. He knows better than anyone that Hamas will kill him if it can. It is a organization of violence, hate, and murder. Defy it, no matter who you are, and it will have no mercy upon you.

For such an organization civilized people should exhibit no mercy. It must be treated as the Nazis were treated in World War II. It must be obliterated, no matter the cost.

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UK awards German launch startup Rocket Factory Augsburg $4.3 million for first launch

10:32 am

The United Kingdom has given a $4.3 development grant to the German launch startup Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) to pay for launch preparations at the Saxavord spaceport in the Shetland Islands.

The real news from this article however is the continuing delays for anyone to launch from Great Britain. Previously the two Scottish spaceports, one in Shetland and the other in Sutherland, had anticipated the first launches in 2023, from the three companies RFA, Orbex, and ABL. Now it appears that those launches could be delayed into the middle of 2024.

RFA currently expects to launch its three-stage, 30-meter-tall RFA One rocket at some point during the three months to the end of June, recently delayed from the end of this year.

…ABL had planned to conduct its SaxaVord Spaceport launch in 2023, but has yet to announce a date for its next launch attempt anywhere after its inaugural mission from Alaska failed to reach orbit Jan. 10.

ABL is gearing up for its second launch attempt, hopefully before the end of this year, but it will do it from the Kodiak spaceport in Alaska.

One can’t help wondering if these delays are connected the red tape from UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), which delayed issuing a launch licence to Virgin Orbit so long it literally helped bankrupt the company. For example, Orbex applied for its launch license from Sutherland in January 2022, and 22 months later it apparently has still not gotten an approval from the CAA.

This grant from the UK government might be that government’s effort to keep RFA — faced with CAA delays — from switching its launch site out of Great Britain.

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No launch of Starship/Superheavy until February?

10:15 am

Superheavy still going strong, shortly after Max-Q
Superheavy still going strong, shortly after Max-Q,
during April test launch

In an email statement released on October 19, 2023 by the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and reported by Bloomberg news today, FWS decided to initiate a ” a formal review of the upgrades SpaceX has made to its Starship launch system”, beginning on October 5.

Most of the Bloomberg article is behind a paywall, but the second paragraph is really the key quote:

The FWS now has as long as 135 days to create an updated biological opinion about how Starship and its launches impact the local environment, however the agency does not “expect to take the full amount of time,” a representative said in the statement.

If FWS does take the full time period, no launch can occur before February. Nor should anyone naively believe its statement that it does not expect to take the full amount of time. For example, SpaceX completed installation of its upgraded Starship/Superheavy launch system, including the water deluge equipment at its base, in early August. Why did Fish and Wildlife wait till now, almost three months later, to begin its review?
» Read more

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Russia’s Soyuz-2 rocket launches military satellite

9:40 am

Russia today used its Soyuz-2 rocket to launch a classified military surveillance satellite, lifting off from its Plesetsk spacesport in northern Russia.

A graphic at the link shows the rocket’s flight path crossed over almost all of Russia as it flew east, with its lower stages and fairings crashing on land. Though the drop zones were inside Russia, there are very isolated regions in the high Arctic latitudes, with few inhabited areas.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

76 SpaceX
48 China
14 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise still leads China 88 to 48 in successful launches, and the entire world combined 88 to 77. SpaceX by itself now trails with the rest of the world (excluding American companies) 76 to 77.

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Pushback: Fired director of college’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion department accuses movement of promoting bigotry

2:31 pm

Tabia Lee
Tabia Lee, fighter for freedom and a
color-blind society

They’re coming for you next: Tabia Lee, a black woman who was fired as faculty director for the Office of Equity, Social Justice, and Education [OESE] at De Anza College in California has, as promised, refused to go quietly.

As I reported in March, Lee was fired because she took the word “inclusion” literally, trying to establish a color-blind policy that would provide some aid and comfort to the Jewish students on campus who were experiencing almost daily incidents of harassment and bigotry, simply because they were Jewish.

Her reward? She was herself harassed, with some calling her a “dirty Zionist,” then denied tenure, then fired.

Since then she has not gone quietly into that good night. In July Lee suited De Anza College, as well as ten specific school officials, charging the school violated her First Amendment rights, California’s Constitution, and its Common Law in censoring and firing her.

Her name came up again this week because she wrote a blistering op-ed for the New York Post, blasting not only De Anza for its racist DEI policies, but blasting the entire “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” movement as nothing more that a Nazi-like movement promoting bigotry and hate.
» Read more

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Australia and the U.S. agree to facilitate rocket launches in Australia

10:37 am

A technology agreement announced on October 25, 2023 between Australia and the U.S. included language that will allow for American rocket companies to launch from Australia, as well as Australian rocket companies to launch American satellites.

According to the White House statement, the agreement…

…provides the legal and technical framework for U.S. commercial space launch vehicles to launch from Australia in a manner that: protects sensitive U.S. launch technology and data in Australia consistent with our shared nonproliferation goals; and creates the potential for new space-related commercial opportunities.

A private Australian spaceport, Equatorial Launch Australia (ELA), has been working to bring U.S. launches there. In addition, an Australian rocket startup, Gilmour Space, wants to launch American payloads. This new government agreement is supposed to facilitate both.

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Rocket Lab expects to resume Electron launches before end of year

10:26 am

Following September 2023 launch failure of its Electron rocket, Rocket Lab now says it has obtained a launch approval from the FAA, and expects to resume Electron launches before end of year.

In the company’s October 25, 2023 press release, it stated the following:

The FAA, the federal licensing body for U.S. launch vehicles, has now confirmed that Rocket Lab’s launch license remains active, which is the first step to enable launches to resume. Rocket Lab is now finalizing a meticulous review into the anomaly’s root cause, a process that involves working through an extensive fault tree to exhaust all potential causes for the anomaly, as well as completing a comprehensive test campaign to recreate the issue on the ground. The FAA is providing oversight of Rocket Lab’s mishap investigation to ensure Rocket Lab complies with its FAA-approved mishap investigation plan and other regulatory requirements. In addition, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) was granted official observer status to the investigation. The full review is expected to be completed in the coming weeks, with Rocket Lab currently anticipating a return to flight later this quarter with corrective measures in place.

Though the FAA is apparently not trying to slow things down, this release gives us a hint at how the new so-called streamlined regulations established this year are actually making things harder. These regulations force the FAA to get more involved in making sure the company has done all due diligence, something the FAA really isn’t qualified to do. To meet these demands, companies now apparently have to jump through many new hoops to satisfy the new regulations.

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Russian astronauts locate coolant leak on spacewalk

9:29 am

Coolant leak on Nauka radiator

In an almost eight hour spacewalk yesterday, two Russian astronauts were able to locate the source of the coolant leak on a radiator unit connected to the new Nauka module on the Russian half of ISS.

The image to the right, a screen capture from the live stream, shows the leak location, where a small white droplet sits on one of the coolant lines that connect two radiator panels. You can also see darkening on the tubes to either side, likely also caused by the leaking ammonia. To locate it ground controllers opened valves to let coolant into the line while the astronauts watched for changes, and were able to see the coolant come out of this spot.

One astronaut also noted the following during the inspection:

[B]efore noticing the growing deposit of liquid coolant, Kononenko reported seeing a myriad of small holes on the surface of the radiator’s panels. “The holes have very even edges, like they’ve been drilled through,” Kononenko radioed to the flight controllers working in Moscow Mission Control. “There are lots of them. They are spread in a chaotic manner.”

In the past year similar coolant leaks have occurred on both a Progress freighter and a Soyuz manned capsule, with the leak location in almost the exact same spot, suggesting an intentional cause, not a random micrometeorite hit. This coolant leak in Nauka is on equipment that was launched to ISS in 2010. If it was also drilled, whoever did it did so a long time ago, which implies Russia has a long standing saboteur within its operations.

This conclusion however remains wild speculation. In the dozen-plus years since launch, this radiator has been stored on the outside of ISS, where it could easily have been hit by micrometeorites that would cause those holes and this leak.

The plan is to consider some repair operation on future spacewalks. In the 1980s the Russians did something similar, with astronauts doing six spacewalks to replace a section of fuel line that was leaking on its Salyut-7 station. They cut open its hull and installed a second section of line so that the valves could remove leaking section from operations.

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China launches new three-man crew to its Tiangong-3 space station

9:02 am

The new colonial movement: China today successfully used its Long March 2F rocket to place a Shenzhou manned capsule into orbit, carrying a new three-man crew to its Tiangong-3 space station and lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

Though relatively little specific information about the crew’s mission has been revealed, it is expected they will do a six month mission, as have previous crews, and conduct spacewalks and maintenance on the station. Meanwhile, the present crew on board will spend about a week transferring duties to the new crew, and then return to Earth after completing its own six-month mission.

No word on where the Long March 2F first stage and its four side boosters crashed in the interior of China, all of which use toxic hypergolic fuels.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

76 SpaceX
48 China
13 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise still leads China 88 to 48 in successful launches, and the entire world combined 88 to 76. SpaceX by itself is now tied at 76 with the rest of the world (excluding American companies).

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Has the tide actually turned?

12:53 pm

Winston Churchill, who recognized you can't negotiate with mass murderers
Winston Churchill, who understood you can never
negotiate with mass murderers

My essay yesterday on the present unstable world situation — sparked by the murderous attack by Hamas on Israel — opened with a noteably pessimistic conclusion:

In the past week, it seems more and more that appeasement is the watchword of the day.

I had come to this conclusion by citing two unfolding events, first Israel’s seemingly endless delays in initiating its promised invasion of Gaza to destroy Hamas, and second, the apparent decision by Republicans in the House of Representatives to choose as their pick for speaker Tom Emmer, the only man running who denied any voter tampering and election fraud in the 2020 election and who also had been a spokesman for an organization funded by George Soros, making him clearly an untrustworthy person to lead conservatives.

One day later there are signs that my pessimism might have been premature. First, the Republicans in the House finally came together today to elect a speaker, choosing Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), a man who appears not only wholly different than Emmer but in fact almost all Republican speakers since Newt Gingrich. Unlike the moderates of the past three decades, Johnson is a strongly conservative man (pro-life, opposes the queer agenda, skeptical of too much aid to the Ukraine). Maybe the best sense of his fighting spirit is gained from his comments in 2020, when he actually noted Nancy Pelosi’s violation of the law when she tore up the original of Donald Trump’s state of the union speech in January 2020.

Thus, Republican voters might finally have a speaker in the House who is more allied with their goals than the corrupt goals of the establishment based in Washington, DC. The battle itself over the speakership further suggests that the establishment itself is losing power over the Republican Party. In the end the only viable candidates that remained were all Trump supporters who had repeatedly opposed the endless continuing resolutions that the Republican leadership has forever given to its Democratic Party allies.

We shall see however. In matters of politics it always pays to never get too enthusiastic about any positive development, as for the past six decades the positive has too often quickly turned negative.

Next there is the situation in Israel. » Read more

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No Starship/Superheavy launch likely until January?

9:13 am

No Starship test launch until 2024
SpaceX is ready but the federal government says “No!”

We’re from the government and we’re here to help! In describing the effort of Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to help SpaceX prod the federal bureaucracy into approving a new launch license for the company’s Starship/Superheavy rocket, space writer Mark Whittington included this significant but not previously mentioned tidbit that might help us predict when Fish & Wildlife (FWS) might finally give its okay for a launch:

The FWS has as long as 135 days to complete its review.

Let’s review the situation to understand what this tidbit means. At present it appears the FAA is ready to issue a launch licence, having closed its own investigation into the April Starship/Superheavy test flight on September 8, 2023.

At the time the FAA however was very clear: No launch license until Fish & Wildlife gave its environmental approval as well. Never before had this environmental agency had veto power over launches, but under the Biden administration it now has it.

Though Fish & Wildlife could have begun its own investigation in April, and met the 135-day deadline to give its approval for a launch the same time as the FAA, in September, it now appears that it did not start its clock ticking until after the FAA closed its work. If so, it appears Fish & Wildlife has until early January to complete its investigation.

Since FWS admitted in April, right after the failed test launch of Starship/Superheavy, that it caused no harm to wildlife, there appears no reason for this long delay.

The delay therefore can only be for two reasons, neither good. Either the people at Fish & Wildlife are utterly incompetent, and need eight months to write up the paperwork (even though in April they already knew that there was no reason to delay), or they are vindictive, power-hungry, and wish to exercise an animus against SpaceX in order to hurt the company.

Mostly likely we are seeing a combination of both: The bureaucrats at Fish & Wildlife are incompetent and hate SpaceX, and are using their newly gained power over issuing launch licenses to hurt it.

Either way, if Fish & Wildlife uses its entire 135-day window to issue its launch approval to SpaceX, no launch can occur this year. SpaceX will be stymied, and the development of this new heavy-lift reuseable rocket, possibly the most important new technology in rocketry ever, will be badly crushed. Not only will NASA’s Artemis program be damaged (it wants Starship as its manned lunar lander), SpaceX might face huge financial loses, as it needs Starship to launch and maintain its Starlink communications constellation.

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At the moment our modern Nazi movement appears to be winning

12:25 pm

Chamberlain in 1938
In 1938 Chamberlain thought he could negotiate
with Hitler. Today American politicians think
they can negotiate with Hamas.

Now that we have clear evidence that the left is nothing more than a revised but reborn Nazi movement — allied with murderous Islamic groups like Hamas, it is imperative we track whether the good people in the world are willing to fight it, or appease it as was done so stupidly in the 1930s when Hitler first began his march for world domination and the extermination of the Jews.

In the past week, it seems more and more that appeasement is the watchword of the day.

First, Israel has repeatedly delayed its invasion into Gaza, mostly because of demands from western leaders, led by Democrat Joe Biden, to hold off so that negotiations can continue to get the hostages released. A news report today further reiterated that Israel has agreed to hold off, pending these negotiations.

The reasoning from Israel is the hope that Hamas will release a “big number” of hostages quickly, such as all women and children. Getting one or two hostages released on a weekly basis — which is what Hamas is presently doing — is not considered acceptable to Israel. At that pace it will take more than two years to get all released, and based on how the news cycle goes, after a few more months Israel will have lost its military initiative and Hamas will likely stop releasing any hostages.
» Read more

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India releases on-board camera views during its Gaganyaan launch abort test

9:46 am

India’s space agency ISRO today released the on-board camera views taken during its Gaganyaan launch abort test on October 21, 2023.

The test was a complete success, and the footage shows each step clearly, from launch to stage separation to deployment of parachutes.

ISRO is still targeting 2024 for the first manned Gaganyaan mission, which will carry two to three astronauts into orbit for three to seven days. To meet that target however will require a lot of fast work, as the agency intends to fly three separate unmanned orbital missions of the Gaganyaan capsule prior to putting humans in it. More likely the manned mission will happen in 2025.

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Belarus joins China’s lunar base project

9:33 am

The former province of the Soviet Union Belarus has now signed an agreement to partner in China’s lunar base project, joining another former part of the U.S.S.R., Azerbaijan, as well as Russia, Pakistan, Venezuela, and South Africa.

Except for Russia, all the other partners in this project have little space capabilities, so don’t expect Belarus to contribute much. This deal is mainly for public relations purposes, to show that China has obtained some international partners.

In truth, the partnership more resembles the communist block run by the former Soviet Union — made up of failing communist states — except that communist China is now leads it.

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Varda signs deal with Australian private spaceport operator to land its capsules

9:13 am

Blocked from landing its American-built space capsules by the American government, the startup Varda has now completed negotiations and signed an agreement with Southern Launch, an Australian private spaceport operator, to land its capsules at the Koonibba Test Range northwest of Adelaide.

Varda’s business plan is to launch unmanned capsules in which pharmeceuticals and other products that can’t be made on Earth are manufactured, then return the capsule to earth where they are sold for a profit. This deal will allow Varda to land its next capsule there in 2024.

Meanwhile, Varda first capsule, presently in orbit after manufacturing pharmeceuticals for HIV, appears to be a total loss because the FAA and the Pentagon refused it permission to land in the U.S., for what appear to be purely bureaucratic reasons.

There was no single specific issue that held up the reentry, he said. “It was ultimately a coordination problem amongst three different groups that had not worked through this operation before.” He added that there were no safety concerns with Varda’s spacecraft or its ability to meet requirements for an FAA license. An additional challenge is that Varda is the first company to seek an FAA reentry license through a new set of regulations called Part 450. Those regulations are intended to streamline the process but, on the launch side, have been criticized by companies for being difficult.

The U.S. government is now the enemy of its citizens, so incompetent that it actually works to block them from achieving their goals.

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China launches classified satellite

8:59 am

China today successfully launched a classified reconnaissance satellite, its Long March 2D rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in the south of China.

No word on where the first stage, which uses toxic hypogolic fuel, crashed in the interior of China.

The leaders in 2023 launch race:

76 SpaceX
47 China
13 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 88 to 47, and the entire world combined 88 to 75. SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined (excluding American companies) 76 to 75.

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“Formerly clandestine Nazis will continue protesting, sometimes violently”

1:37 pm

Enthusiatically and publicly cheering for another genocide
The left is now enthusiastically cheering for another
Jewish genocide in Israel

The headline sums up the situation. It is a quote from an article about the Israeli army’s green light to invade Gaza and take as long as necessary in order to utterly destroy Hamas. In its conclusion that article couldn’t help noting the expected and guaranteed enraged protests from all the usual suspects when that invasion begins.

The attempt by Israel to defend itself after a brutal terrorist attack by Hamas, torturing and killing what appears to be more than a thousand people, including many women, children, and babies, has accomplished one and only one good thing: It has caused the Nazis among us — almost all of which are on the left — to finally make clear their true feelings and goals: It’s all right to kill Israelis, especially if they are Jews. And it’s also all right to torture little children before you do it.

The examples of this are so many it is difficult to document them all. Over and over people from all walks of life but especially our elitist intellectual class enthusiatically called for the massacre of Jews while demanding Israel stand down and let Hamas do it. Here are only a few examples:
» Read more

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Gaganyaan abort test flight flies successfully after short delay

10:13 am

When I went to bed last night India’s Gaganyaan abort test flight had been cancelled due to a launch abort at T-0, with the live stream ending and an expectation that engineers would need at least another day to fly.

When I woke up it turned out that ISRO behaved more like SpaceX than a government agency. It quickly figured out what was wrong, recycled the countdown, and two hours later successfully flew the test of its launch abort rescue system for its manned Gaganyaan capsule.

Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) successfully executed the Test Flight Abort Mission, for the Gaganyaan mission on Saturday after the first test flight was aborted at 8:45 am due to a problem in the engine ignition. ISRO Chief S Somanth said the planned lift off the TV-D1 rocket could not happen following an anomaly that will be analysed. He said that the engine ignition of the TV-D1 rocket did not happen over time.

The space agency then said that the errors have been identified and corrected and the second launch was scheduled for 10:00 Hrs today.

And at 10 am, ISRO successfully launched the test vehicle from Sriharikota today. Chairman Somanath expressed happiness and said, “I am very happy to announce the successful accomplishment of Gaganyaan TV-D1 mission”.

The test rocket launched, the abort system separated from the rocket as planned, the capsule was released from the abort system, its parachutes then opened, and the capsule then safely splashed down in the Bay of Bengal about ten miles off the coast, where it was recovered successfully.

ISRO plans a second launch abort test prior to flying the actual manned mission, but at this moment it appears very close to being ready for a manned mission in 2024, its present goal.

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India’s Gaganyaan launch abort test aborts at T-0

8:21 pm

India’s attempt today to test the launch abort system to be used to safely propel its manned Gaganyaan capsule away from a failing rocket aborted at T-0.

They need to take the spacecraft back to the assembly building in order to figure out what went wrong, so the next attempt will likely be delayed at mininum several weeks. UPDATE: That’s what the head of ISRO said at the end of this live stream, but that is not what happened. See new post above.

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Blocked by its own American government, Varda now looks to Australia

9:18 am

Because the U.S. military as well as the FAA refused to issue Varda a license to land its recoverable capsule from orbit — carrying actual HIV pharmaceuticals that can only be manufactured in space — the company is now negotiating with a private range in Australia for landing rights.

The agreement between Varda and Southern Launch, a company based in Adelaide, Australia, would allow Varda’s second mission, scheduled to launch in mid-2024, to reenter and land at the remote Koonibba Test Range. “We plan, with the Koonibba Test Range, to conduct a reentry operation as soon as our second orbital mission, which the launch and reentry would be in mid-2024,” [Delian Asparouhov, the company’s chairman, president, and co-founder,] told Ars.[emphasis mine]

In other words, Varda’s first launched capsule, in space now but unable to land, has become a total loss, simply because the U.S. government blocked its return. The HIV drugs it produced while in orbit will never become available for sale. Nor will Varda be able to use it to demonstrate the returnable capability of its orbiting capsule.

Such a loss could easily destroy a startup like Varda, which is certainly not yet in the black as it develops its technology.

What is most disgusting about this blocking is that at the same time the military and the FAA refused Varda permission to land, those agencies had no problem letting NASA drop its OSIRIS-REx sample capsule in the same landing range in Utah.

Right now our federal government has become the enemy of the American people, doing whatever it can to stymie them, whether by intention or by incompetence.

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Russia announces revised schedule for its lunar unmanned projects

9:04 am

NPO Lavochkin, the Roscosmos division that builds Russia’s lunar landers, has now announced a revised schedule for all of that country’s proposed lunar unmanned projects, following the failure of its Luna-25 lander in August.

The program calls for at least six missions, including orbiters, landers, and a rover, launching from 2027 through the 2030s. However, this quote from the article is the reality:

As often before, the latest strategy relied on the development time frames that had never been demonstrated by NPO Lavochkin in comparable projects in the past three decades.

What is worse is the 100% failure record of Lavochkin’s planetary probes once launched. It takes forever to build anything, and then what it builds and launches doesn’t work.

Not that this absimal record will cost Lavochkin anything. The Russian government and the bureaucracy that controls it does not allow any competition. Instead, like prohibition-era mobsters, divisions like Lavochkin carve up territories that they control, and allow no one else in. For example, Lavochkin owns planetary research while Energia, another division in Roscosmos, controls manned space flight as well as its launch industry. No one else is allowed it enter these markets, which means Lavochkin can fail repeatedly for the next century and nothing will change.

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Japan awards Ispace $80 million to develop larger lunar lander

8:49 am

The Japanese government, not its space agency JAXA, today announced it has awarded the commercial company Ispace an $80 million grant to develop a larger lunar lander, following its failed attempt earlier this year to land its first Hakuto-R1 lander on the Moon.

Japan will provide a subsidy of up to 12 billion yen ($80 million) to moon exploration startup ispace (9348.T) as part of a grant programme for innovative ventures, industry minister Yasutoshi Nishimura said on Friday.

The new lander is targeting a 2027 launch, and according to the company’s own statement [pdf] will replace the Hakuto-R lander being used on its first two lunar missions, as well as the Apex lander the American division of Ispace is now building for NASA. It also appears that the contract is fixed price, and will only be paid out when the company achieves actual milestones of development.

In other words, the Japanese government is doing what NASA is now doing, moving away from a government model, where its space agency JAXA builds and controls everything, to a capitalism model, where it buys what it needs from the private sector. That JAXA did not issue this award demonstrates this transition, in that until now all such space contracts were through that agency solely.

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At Senate hearings numerous launch companies complain of regulatory bottleneck

8:18 am

At a hearing in the Senate yesterday officials from SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic all expressed strong concerns about how the regulatory bottleneck at the FAA is damaging the entire launch business.

Gerstenmaier emphasized that the FAA’s commercial space office “needs at least twice the resources that they have today” for licensing rocket launches. While he acknowledged the FAA is “critical to enabling safe space transportation,” Gerstenmaier added that the industry is “at a breaking point.”

“The FAA has neither the resources nor the flexibility to implement its regulatory obligations,” Gerstenmaier said.

…The other four panelists’ testimonies largely echoed SpaceX’s viewpoint on the need to bolster the FAA’s ranks and speed up the process of approving rocket launches. Phil Joyce, Blue Origin senior vice president of New Shepard, said the FAA “is struggling to keep pace” with the industry “and needs more funding to deal with the increase in launches.”

Likewise, industry expert Caryn Schenewerk, a former leader at SpaceX and Relativity Space, said that the FAA’s recent changes have yet to “streamline licensing reviews” and instead have “proven more cumbersome and costly.”

Wayne Monteith — a retired Air Force brigadier general who also led the FAA’s space office — said that Congress should consider consolidating space regulations. “I believe a more efficient one stop shop approach to authorizing and licensing space activities is necessary,” Monteith said.

As always, the focus is on giving the government agency “more resources”. No one ever suggests that maybe its inability to meet the demand is because of mission creep, in which the government continually grabs more regulatory power than it is supposed to have, which then requires it to have additional resources, which then allows it to grab even more power, which then requires more resources, and on and on the merry-go-round goes.

To really solve this problem we need to trim the regulatory framework. The FAA’s responsibilities must be cut, not enhanced. It must be told it “will issue” launch licenses, rather than take the position it “might issue” them. It also must be told to cut back on the checklists it is demanding from companies. All that should concern it is scheduling and arranging air traffic and the launch range to prevent conflicts. Beyond that any regulation is simply overreach, and is something that was never under its control in the past.

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