Tag: oppression

Watch the first launch of Europe’s Ariane-6 rocket

9:14 am

Europe’s Ariane-6 rocket, first proposed in 2014 and about four years behind schedule, will finally make its first launch at 2 pm (Eastern) today.

I have embedded the live stream below.

The rocket was conceived by the European Space Agency (ESA) as an attempt to compete with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. It failed to do this from day one, since the rocket was from day one designed to be expendable. By the 2020s it became clear to European satellite companies and government agencies that its launch cost would be far higher that the Falcon 9, and these companies and agencies have therefore resisted signing launch contracts with ArianeGroup. In fact, if Amazon had not decided in ’22 to give the Ariane-6 a contract for 18 launches to put up its Kuiper satellites, the rocket would have almost no launches in its manifest.

This situation was made even more starkly evident at the end of June, when the European governent weather company Eumetsat cancelled its Ariane-6 contract and switched to the Falcon 9.

Though the unelected bureaucrats and apparatchiks in the European Union are trying to require the use of Ariane-6, ESA and Europe’s rocket future resides in the independent rocket startups (Rocket Factory Augsburg, Isar Aerospace, Hyimpulse, PLD). Because they are in competition with each other as well as SpaceX, and are not saddled with heavy government interference, they can focus on innovating to lower cost. Expect them to quickly begin launching in the next three years, with reusability soon to follow.

» Read more

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$243.6 million plea deal allows Boeing to avoid a criminal trial

9:59 pm

The Justice Department and Boeing have made a plea deal so that the company can avoid a criminal trial for breaking its previous plea deal over 737-Max plane crashes that killed 346 people.

Under the agreement, Boeing will plead guilty to a criminal fraud charge stemming from the fatal crashes in Indonesia in October 2018 and in Ethiopia less than five months later that killed a combined 346 people.

Boeing must also pay the hefty fine [$243.6 million], invest at least $455 million in compliance and safety programs, and have an independent monitor oversee Boeing’s safety and quality procedures for three years

The company had made similar deal in 2021 with Justice when it became clear it had deceived FAA regulators about the software on new 737-Max planes that caused these crashes. This new deal is because the company apparently violated that 2021 deal, and allows it to avoid a criminal trial.

A judge still has to approve this new plea deal. Many families of the deceased oppose it, demanding instead that company managers be put on trial. Even if the judge accepts it, Boeing will still be liable for other more recent incidents.

All in all, Boeing comes off as a morally corrupt and incompetent company that was willing to cut corners, lie about it, thus allow more planes to crash because of its actions.

No wonder everyone wants to blame Boeing for every single incident that has recently occurred on various commercial jets, even though in many cases the blame resides more with the maintenance departments of the airlines that had purchased the planes. And no wonder no one believes the claim that the astronauts that flew up to ISS in June are not “stuck” there. They probably aren’t, but why believe anyone from such a compny.

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Study: Mortality rates higher for those who got the COVID jab

12:50 pm

According to a new study [pdf] of death rates from all causes in a province in Italy, mortality was greater for those who got the jab versus those who did not.

From the paper’s conclusion:

We found all-cause death risks to be even higher for those vaccinated with one and two doses compared to the unvaccinated and that the booster doses were ineffective. We also found a slight but statistically significant loss of life expectancy for those vaccinated with 2 or 3/4 doses.

As noted in the second link above,

“The main point of the paper is that COVID-19 vaccination did not ‘save lives’ as so many in Washington have proclaimed without evidence,” commented epidemiologist and cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough on his Substack Courageous Discourse. “The trend was for multiple vaccine doses to increase COVID-19 mortality and there was an important signal for increased all-cause death with one or two doses.”

We should therefore not be surprised that several thousand doctors and scientists have signed a declaration called the Hope Accord, calling for all governments worldwide to ban COVID mRNA shots.
» Read more

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Coeur d’Alene’s regional chamber proves it hates the First Amendment and free speech

1:47 pm

Hostile to free speech
Hostile to free speech

An uproar took place in the Idaho town of Coeur d’Alene prior to July 4th this year when the town’s regional chamber issued regulations on what was allowed to be displayed by individuals during its July 4th holiday parade.

Under parade regulations adopted by the chamber board this year, “Symbols associated with specific political movements, religions, or ideologies” were unacceptable. [Linda Coppess, chamber president and CEO,] wrote that in the past, the chamber received numerous complaints about displays that people found offensive, including “Confederate flags, derogatory illustrations, harsh politically-based language, and graphic photographs.” Coppess wrote that last year alone, she received over 50 complaints about different signage and symbols that were deemed offensive.

To address those concerns, the chamber consulted national organizations to ensure its guidelines were transparent and fair, she wrote. “Our intention with this policy was simple: to create an environment where everyone feels welcome and respected,” Coppess wrote.

The chamber listed several other things as unacceptable for the parade, including signs promoting controversial political issues, displays containing divisive or inflammatory language related to political debates and signs displaying slogans or messages that incite political division or unrest. [emphasis mine]

Within days the chamber was overwhelmed with thousands of complaints from local citizens, most of whom appeared to be especially offended by the ban of religious symbols. As a result, the chamber backed down partly, rescinding that particular restriction. Below is a short clip from the July 4th Coeur d’Alene parade. As you can see, a lot of people came carrying crosses. I suspect they would have been there whether or not the religious ban was rescinded, expressing defiance.
» Read more

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European Parliament member demands cancellation of launch deal with SpaceX

9:26 am

Christophe Grudler, a member of the European Parliament (MEP) has written a letter to the government-run weather satellite company Eumetsat, demanding that it cancel its decision on June 26, 2024 to use a Falcon 9 rocket rather than the Ariane-6 on its next launch.

In a letter headlined “Request to reconsider launch decision in favour of European strategic interests”, Grudler disputes the decision of EUMETSAT, the intergovernmental European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, to choose America rather than Europe for launching its new satellite. He argues it goes against the principle of giving preference to Europe, something the organisation denies.

“I am writing to urgently request that you reconsider the recent decision to allocate the MTG-S1 satellite launch to a non-EU launch provider, and instead await the results of the inaugural launch of Ariane-6, which was your first choice for this satellite,” the Liberal member of Parliament wrote in a letter to the board.

…Grudler’s requests are threefold: “Cancel the last Council decision regarding a specific launcher solution, Await the inaugural launch of Ariane-6 before making any final decisions for MTG-S1; Reaffirm your dedication to European strategic autonomy by supporting European launch solutions”.

Eumetsat’s decision was clearly a financial one. SpaceX charges much less than Ariane-6, and its Falcon 9 rocket is proven and launching routinely. Ariane-6 won’t have its first launch until next week, on July 9th.

Grudler’s demands are purely political, but since the EU has generally been run top-down, letting politics and power determine its policy, he could force a cancellation of the contract. In the short term this will help ArianeGroup, a partnership of the aerospace companies Airbus and Safran that own Ariane-6, while hurting Europe’s weather satellite capabilities. In the long run it however might aid the growth of Europe’s new competing rocket startups, as it will provide them a guaranteed market. At the same time, having a guaranteed market by government fiat tends to limit competition and thus raise costs.

It appears that some politicians in Europe are still not sold on capitalism and freedom.

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Repost: Why we really celebrate the Fourth of July

10:30 am

I posted this essay in 2022 on July 4th and reposted it last year as well. It needs to be reposted again today. As I noted last year, my hopes for the November 2022 election were not realized, and we have suffered by that failure the past two years. We now face an even more critical election in November 2024. I wonder if Americans might finally decide to vote to clean house. I am hopeful, but also recognize that my optimism has been proven wrong consistently for decades.

—————-
Why we really celebrate the Fourth of July

The Declaration of Independence

If you really want to know why the Fourth of July has been the quintessential American holiday since the founding our this country, you need only return to the words of the document that became public to the world on that day.

Below the fold is the full text of the Declaration. Read it. It isn’t hard to understand, even if the style comes from the late 1700s. Its point however is clear. Governments that abuse the rights of the citizenry don’t deserve to be in power. The most important quote of course is right near the beginning:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed — that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. [emphasis mine]

What a radical concept — a nation founded on the principle of allowing its citizens to pursue happiness.

Right now, however, we have a federal government in America that more fits the description of King George III’s Great Britain in 1776 in the Declaration. The corrupt elitist uni-Party of federal elected officials and the federal bureaucracy in Washington has for too long run roughshod over the general population. If you take the time to read the full text of the Declaration, you will be astonished at the remarkable conceptual similarity between the abuses that Jefferson describes coming from Great Britain and the many abuses of power that are now legion and common by the uni-Party in Washington.

When November comes the American public will likely have its last chance to overthrow the political wing of the uni-Party, led by the Democratic Party. The Republicans are no saints, but at least that party contains within it many decent politicians who honor the Constitution, the rule of law, and the Bill of Rights. Many are right now campaigning on those ideals. Based on the past six years, we now know that no one in the Democratic Party honors those values. What they honor is blacklisting, racism, segregation, anti-American hate, and above all power. If they are not removed from office, they will ramp up that power, in league with quislings like Romney and Cornyn in the Republican Party, to further corrupt our Constitutional government.

These people do not like losing power. The longer they hold it, the more they will work to undermine the election system to make sure they do not lose. The corruption and election fraud in 2020 election was merely a dress rehearsal of what these goons will do if they have the chance next year.

In fact, November 2022 might very well be the last election that has any chance of producing legitimate results. Americans had better not waste this last chance.
» Read more

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Survey: Major shift rightward in Israel since October 7

10:43 pm

According to a series of surveys taken from August 2023 through June 2024, the Israeli population shifted significantly rightward in Israel after the Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023.

The shift was not so much ideological — leftists still professed support for socialist policies — but mostly related to security issues and attitudes towards the Arabs living in Gaza and the West Bank. For example,

According to the Agam Labs survey, 52 percent of Jewish Israelis oppose the government’s wartime facilitation of humanitarian aid to Gaza, and just 30 percent support the policy—roughly the reverse of the numbers prior to Oct. 7.

Support for direct Israeli aid to and cooperation with the Palestinians has fallen even faster and farther, down to roughly one-fifth of the public in both cases.

One former leftist is quoted in the article as follows, “They can have aid in Gaza when they give us back our hostages. That’s how I feel,” she said. “I guess that makes me a right-wing extremist.”

I would say this survey proves Israel is the perfect example of a liberal who becomes a conservative after getting mugged.

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Pushback: Jury awards former BlueCross researcher almost $700K for firing her vindicatively for not getting the jab

12:10 pm

BlueCross BlueShield of Tennesse, eager to blacklist
…and now paying for it.

Bring a gun to a knife fight: A jury has now awarded Tanja Benton, a former BlueCross research scientist, $687,000 in back pay and punitive damages against BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee for firing her vindicatively in 2021 after she asked for an exemption from getting the COVID jab due to religious concerns.

I call the firing vindicative because by all measures, the fact tell us it was so.

Hamill [Benton’s attorney] said Benton’s job rarely involved direct interaction with clients, with only 1% of her total annual working hours involving client interaction. In the lawsuit, Hamill said Benton “never performed any work or attended any meetings in medical facilities where patients were being treated” and “physical in-person interaction with co-workers was never a job requirement.”

Moreover, for nineteen months prior to her firing, Benton had done all her work remotely, as ordered by BlueCross itself due to the COVID panic. As noted in her lawsuit:
» Read more

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Democrats: You got what you asked for when the Supreme Court ruled presidents have absolute immunity for official actions

3:18 pm

Cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war!

As always, the Democrats have once again demonstrated their utter inability to reflect even slightly on the consequences of their actions.

On July 1, 2024 the Supreme Court, faced with an appeal from Donald Trump that claimed he as president should have immunity from prosecution when his political opponents gain power, ruled that yes, Trump is right, that presidents do have absolute immunity for their “official” actions while in office.

The majority opinion finds that presidents have absolute immunity for core constitutional powers and presumptive immunity for other official acts. This immunity does “not extend to conduct in areas where his authority is shared with Congress,” and unofficial acts taken while in office receive no immunity at all.

The court ruled that President Trump’s conversations with the acting attorney general were core conduct subject to absolute immunity. It also ruled that his conversations with the vice president about the counting of the votes were part of his official duties, thus subject to presumptive, but not absolute, immunity—finding that Judge Chutkan should now assess whether prosecution of these actions intrudes on the authority and functions of the executive branch, and prosecutors will have to rebut the presumption of immunity if so.

Since then Democrat politicians and pundits have been gnashing their teeth in horror, claiming that this ruling now allows presidents to do almost anything once in office, from assassinating their opponents to using the military to arrest and eliminate judges he or she does not like.

The irony here of course escapes the Democrats. First, hasn’t Biden and his Department of Justice and the FBI been doing a milder form of the same abuse of power in their lawfare against Trump and those who worked for him?

Second, this case would never have gotten to the Supreme Court in the first place if the Democrats had not started that lawfare campaign. By prosecuting Trump on numerous weak and sometimes utterly bogus charges, it forced the issue to the courts, which was then forced to rule.

The biggest irony of this whole issue is that the Democrats are right. » Read more

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PLD pushes for first orbital launch from French Guiana in 2025

10:40 am

The Spanish rocket startup PLD announced last week that it has invested more than $10 million in developing its own launchpad and assembly facility at France’s French Guiana spaceport, and is targeting 2025 for the first orbital launch of its Miura-5 rocket.

The launcher company PLD Space has announced today an investment of 10 million euros in MIURA 5 Launch Complex at Guiana Space Center (CSG), Europe’s spaceport in Kourou (French Guiana), owned by the French Space Agency (CNES) and the European Space Agency (ESA). With the first launch of its rocket at the end of 2025, PLD Space will become the first non-institutional launch operator that will go to orbit from this historical base.

The company is reconfiguring the launchpad used by France to launch its Diamant rocket back in the 1960s and 1970s. It will include “its own launch zone and a preparation area, comprising an integration hangar, a clean room, a control center, and both commercial and work offices.”

Right now it appears that PLD along with several other European rocket startups are going to bypass a number of American rocket startups that had had a significant headstart, but also appear to be stalled in the last year or so because of a new regulatory framework at the FAA.

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New Polish suborbital rocket to be test flown from Andoya spaceport in Norway

10:26 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea

A new Polish suborbital rocket, dubbed “ILR-33 Amber 2K,” and being developed by the Łukasiewicz Institute of Aviation, will do its next test flight from the Andoya spaceport in Norway.

After four consecutive test missions completed successfully in Poland, the next stage of preparations of the ILR-33 AMBER 2K to reach the edge of space will take place this year in July. Polish technology will be tested in Norway where one of the key European space centers for launching space vehicles is located.

According to this report, this rocket has a core stage with a hybrid-fueled engine plus two strap-on solid-fueled boosters, a configuration rare for suborbital rockets. After this test flight it will then begin operational suborbital flights, run by a Polish company Thorium from 2025 to 2027.

This deal is another competitive blow to the Saxaford and Sutherland spaceports in the United Kingdom. Both started commercial operations years ahead of either Andoya or Esrange, but because of red tape nothing has been yet allowed to launch from either. This Polish deal one of several for both the Andoya and Esrange spaceports that might have gone to the UK otherwise.

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Sixteen Nobel economists once again prove that our “expert” class is expert at nothing

1:57 pm

Our modern intellectual class
Our modern intellectual class

Earlier this week a group of sixteen Nobel laureate economists issued a public letter endorsing Joe Biden’s economic agenda and claiming that a return of Donald Trump to the White House would lead to economic ruin.

“We believe that a second Trump term would have a negative impact on the U.S.’s economic standing in the world, and a destabilizing effect on the U.S.’s domestic economy,” the economists write in the letter. “Many Americans are concerned about inflation, which has come down remarkably fast. There is rightly a worry that Donald Trump will reignite this inflation, with his fiscally irresponsible budgets.”

You can read their letter here. It was signed by the following (the date of their Nobel award in parenthesis):

George A. Akerlof (2001), Sir Angus Deaton (2015), Claudia Goldin (2023), Sir Oliver Hart (2016), Eric S. Maskin (2007), Daniel L. McFadden (2000), Paul R. Milgrom (2020), Roger B. Myerson (2007), Edmund S. Phelps (2006), Paul M. Romer (2018), Alvin E. Roth (2012), William F. Sharpe (1990), Robert J. Shiller (2013), Christopher A. Sims (2011), Joseph Stiglitz (2001), and Robert B. Wilson (2020).

What is hilarious about their letter is how it exposes these so-called economic giants as partisan hacks. A dive into their campaign contributions finds that eleven are donors to Joe Biden or the Democrats, while the remaining five have all previously endorsed Biden publicly. Before the 2020 election two of these sixteen economists signed a similar letter, calling for Joe Biden’s election, claiming he would “…build an economy that works for all Americans.” In 2021 thirteen of these same economists then followed up with another letter, endorsing all of Biden’s spending proposals then before Congress (costing an expected $1.9 trillion).

A comparison between the claims in all three letters and what actually happened also reveals how little these economists know about economics. As noted at this City Journal article by James Piereson:
» Read more

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European weather satellite company cancels launch contract with Ariane-6, switches to SpaceX

9:37 am

We now know the reason why an Arianespace official on June 26th demanded new legislation requiring all European payloads to launch on European rockets. Today it was revealed that the European weather satellite company Eumetsat has canceled a launch contract on an Ariane-6 rocket and instead switched to SpaceX’s Falcon 9.

Late yesterday, French news outlet Le Monde reported that the executive committee of Eumetsat, the European meteorological satellite agency, had asked the agency’s board of directors to cancel a contract it signed with Arianespace four years ago to launch its Meteosat MTG-S1 satellite. The mission would have been flown aboard the third Ariane 6 flight, which is expected to be launched in early 2025. The satellite will now be launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

Not surprisingly, another French official today — Philippe Baptiste, the head of France’s CNES space agency — once again demanded action to require European companies to use European rockets. In his whining however he revealed an amazing inability to understand why this decision was made.

“How far will we, Europeans, go in our naivety. … I am impatiently waiting to understand what reasons could have led Eumetsat to such a decision at a time [when] all major European space countries as well as the European Commission are calling for launching European satellites on European launchers.”

The reasons why are quite obvious, and if this guy can’t recognize them then there is little hope the European Ciommision will ever figure out how to compete. Not only is the cost for a Falcon 9 launch likely one third that of an Ariane-6, it is a proven launcher. Ariane-6, four years behind schedule, won’t make its first launch until July 9, 2024, assuming all goes as planned. Eumetsat officials probably decided they couldn’t afford the extra cost and risk.

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Supreme Court to SEC: Use of in-house administrative law judges unconstitutional

1:43 pm

SEC: no longer above the law
SEC: no longer above the law

The Supreme Court today ruled 6-3 that the SEC has violated the Constitution with its use of in-house administrative law judges to rule on its various securities fraud cases.

The agency, like other regulators, brings some enforcement actions in internal tribunals rather than in federal courts. The S.E.C.’s practice, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for a six-justice majority in a decision divided along ideological lines, violated the right to a jury trial. “A defendant facing a fraud suit has the right to be tried by a jury of his peers before a neutral adjudicator,” the chief justice wrote.

This ruling against the use of administrative law judges has a direct bearing on SpaceX’s own lawsuit [pdf] against the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). In January the NLRB filed a complaint against SpaceX, accusing it of firing eight employees illegally for writing a public letter criticizing the company in 2022. Rather than fight that complaint directly, SpaceX’s response was to file a lawsuit challenging the very legal structure of the NLRB itself, including its use of administrative law judges.
» Read more

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Japanese government proposes 300-mile-long conveyor belt for moving packages

12:27 pm

Pork to the max! A supposedly “expert panel” in Japanese government’s Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ministry has proposed building a 300-mile-long conveyor belt — possibly underground in a tunnel — between the cities of Tokyo and Osaka for moving packages, to be completed by 2034.

The biggest challenge is cost. According to a survey of construction companies, the cost of building an underground tunnel ranges from ¥7 billion to ¥80 billion per 10 kilometers, so a system linking Tokyo and Osaka would cost up to ¥3.7 trillion. When the ministry in the year 2000 first planned logistics links above ground, it estimated construction costs of ¥25.4 billion per 10 kilometers.

In dollars, the total cost of ¥3.7 trillion equals about $23 billion.

The so-called goal would be to eliminate 25,000 trucks, supposedly saving the world from those evil fossil fuels. That the belt would have to be powered of course is not mentioned, which I bet would probably require burning about the same amount of fuel.

The panel also claimed the conveyor belt would save money and reduce labor needs because it would also eliminate 25,000 truck drivers. With Japan facing a crash in population, the panel claims a shortage of labor is expected in the coming decades, and this plan will supposedly solve that. That’s also a fantasy. Who would upload the pallets onto the belt? Who would offload them? And how would those pallets be delivered at each point? And what about maintaining this giant conveyor belt? In the end, this plan will do nothing to reduce labor needs.

Nor is such a plan really necessary. When the population drops, the amount of cargo will drop as well. There will be no labor shortage in the shipping industry.

All this plan does is create a gigantic public works project that will almost certainly go over budget, fail to meet its schedule, and increase the cost of goods for both the companies and the public. But boy, it sure is going to employ a lot of government workers to supervise construction and operations!

Note I found about this project through a report at New Atlas, which as a left-leaning techno website accepted the plan instantly as brilliant and awe-inspiring.

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Firefly signs deal to launch its Alpha rocket from Esrange spaceport in Sweden

9:43 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea

Firefly has now signed a deal to launch its Alpha rocket in 2026 from the Esrange spaceport in Sweden, becoming that spaceport’s second orbital customer.

Esrange is not really a new spaceport. It was originally built in the 1960s and was used for decades for suborbital test launches, much like Wallops Island in the U.S. In January 2023 it upgraded one launchpad to allow commercial orbital launches, and in May 2024, signed a launch deal with a new rocket startup from South Korea named Perigee.

This new contract with Firefly is a bigger deal, because Firefly has already launched several times, and is more established.

These developments indicate as well the cost of red tape in the United Kingdom. The map to the right shows the spaceports competing for business in Europe. The two UK spaceports (Saxaford and Sutherland) began construction years before Esrange decided to upgrade, but both are now losing business to Sweden because regulatory delays at the Civil Aviation Authority in the UK has delayed all launches there for years.

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Arianespace calls for Europe to require all European space payloads use European rockets

9:57 am

Arianespace, whose many-decade-long European launch monopoly is presently threatened by a wave of new rocket startups and an effort by European governments to created a competitive launch industry of many companies, has now urged Europe to require that all European space payloads use European rockets.

Arianespace head of public affairs Charlotte Lang has advocated for legislation that would require European missions to be launched aboard European rockets. Lang made the comments during the “Ensuring Long Term Autonomous Access to Space for Europe” panel on the first day of The European Space Forum conference. “The EU should enforce the principle of European launcher preference,” said Lang.

In a follow-up statement, Arianespace reiterated “the need for the EU to legislate that European missions are launched from European territory using launchers and technology manufactured in Europe by European providers.” The company identified the European Union’s planned IRIS² constellation as the “perfect opportunity to advance this initiative.”

Arianespace is like Blue Origin. It can’t get its rockets built and flying at a competitive price, so instead it advocates lawfare to limit competition in order to give it a favored position when it bids on future launch contracts.

In the case of Europe, I think this Arianespace effort will generally fall on deaf ears. The trend among numerous European governments (Germany, France, Italy) is to encourage new rocket companies to compete with Arianespace, in order to create options. These governments will of course wish to favor these new European rocket companies with any contract awards, but they will also not want to tie their hands with the kind of legislation Arianespace proposes. They all discovered in the past two years what could happen if they do that, when Arianespace failed to get Ariane-6 launched on time, and Europe ended up with no launch capabilities. During that time period they still had the option to use other non-European options (such as SpaceX). Having that flexibility in the future makes great sense.

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Blue Origin to FAA: Limit future SpaceX Starship launches at Cape Canaveral

9:38 am

Blue Origin has once again decided to use lawfare against SpaceX rather than actually build rockets that are competitive. As part of the process by the FAA to do a new Environmental Impact Statement on SpaceX’s plans for Starship/Superheavy launches at Cape Canaveral, Blue Origin last week submitted its own comment asking the FAA to cap the launches of its competitor, citing environment concerns.

The company recommends the following mitigation method for SpaceX’s Starship launches, prior to the company being issued a Vehicle Operator License:

“Capping the rate of Ss-SH launch, landing, and other operations, including but not limited to test firings, transport operations, and fueling, to a number that has a minimal impact on the local environment, locally operating personnel, and the local community, in consideration of all risks and impacts, including but not limited to anomaly risks, air toxin and hazardous materials dispersion, road closures, and heat and noise generation.”

Along with requesting a max number of Starship launches at the site, Blue Origin argues that the government increase launch infrastructure that opens other launchpads to nearby lessees when roads are forced to be closed for SpaceX launches. The filing also notes that SpaceX has already received environmental testing at its Starbase site in Boca Chica, Texas.

You can read Blue Origin’s full comment here [pdf]. Essentially, Blue Origin is attempting to use this new impact statement to have the federal government damage or destroy its competition.

Musk’s response was a two word tweet: “Sue Origin.”

It is very clear that Jeff Bezos’s company is poorly focused. In the last decade it has built almost nothing, while spending a lot of time filing lawsuits against its competition. This action is simply another example.

Worse, Blue Origin’s comment will provide ammunition for the continuing Biden administration lawfare against Musk and SpaceX, making it difficult for the FAA to approve the impact statement as requested by SpaceX. If so, the development and operational use of Starship/Superheavy will be seriously threatened.

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More garbage science about wildfires and global warming from Nature

12:31 pm

Nature: the science journal that no longer does real science
The science journal which no longer
understands how real science is done

The once highly respected science journal Nature continues its descent into propaganda and bad science, all because it bows unskeptically before the altar of global warming and leftist science fantasies.

Today’s example is an article this week entitled “You’re not imagining it: extreme wildfires are now more common,” describing a new Nature paper that attempted to use satellite data to prove that the intensity of wildfires has increased in the past two decades.

For the current study, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution on 24 June, Cunningham and his colleagues scoured global satellite data for fire activity. They used infrared records to measure the energy intensity of nearly 31 million daily fire events over two decades, focusing on the most extreme ones — roughly 2,900 events. The researchers calculated that there was a 2.2-fold increase in the frequency of extreme events globally in 2003–23, and a 2.3-fold boost in the average intensity of the top 20 most intense fires each year.

We’re all gonna die! As is usual for these crap climate-related studies, the entire goal is to drum up some manufactured new crisis that justifies the claim that the climate is warming. This study is no different, as the article eagerly notes:

Although the study doesn’t directly connect the fire trend to global warming, Cunningham [the study’s lead author] says “there’s almost certainly a significant signal of climate change”. Research has shown that rising temperatures are drying out ecosystems — such as coniferous forests — that are naturally prone to fire. This provides fuel that can boost the fires’ size and longevity. The latest study also found that the energy intensity of the fires increased faster during the night-time over the past two decades than during the daytime, which aligns with evidence4 that rising night-time temperatures are contributing to fire risk.

Not surprisingly, the New York Times immediately jumped on the bandwagon with its own article that accepts the conclusions of this research with utter naivety.

What junk. First, Cunningham fails to note this minor fact mentioned in the abstract of his own paper:
» Read more

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Reparations: Taking money from people who never owned slaves and giving it to people who never were slaves

12:48 pm

Harvard: where you get can get a shoddy education centered on hate and bigotry
Harvard: where you can spend a lot of money
getting a shoddy education teaching hate and bigotry

The effort to justify the new fad of forcing all Americans today to pay blacks reparations for the evil of slavery that was eliminated a century and a half ago at the cost of more than 600K lives continues. A recent published study by two “Didn’t Earn It” (DEI) academic elites at the Harvard Kennedy School attempts to justify the distribution of reparations now by claiming that the U.S. has a long history of paying out money to harmed individuals. From the paper’s abstract:

[T]he United States has a long-standing social norm that if an individual or community has suffered a harm, it is considered right for the federal government to provide some measure of what we term “reparatory compensation.” In discussing this norm and its implications for Black American reparations, we first describe the scale, categories, and interlocking and compounding effects of discriminatory harms by introducing a taxonomy of illustrative racial harms from slavery to the present. We then reveal how the social norm, precedent, and federal programs operate to provide victims with reparatory compensation, reviewing federal programs that offer compensation, such as environmental disasters, market failures, and vaccine injuries. We conclude that the government already has the norm, precedent, expertise, and resources to provide reparations to Black Americans. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted word is key to understanding the fundamental intellectual dishonesty of these incompetent Harvard academics. In their paper they use numerous examples of cases where the government has provided compensation to actual individuals — such as veterans, individuals harmed by radiation from nuclear tests, and those who lost their pensions due to bankruptcy or mismanagement of their pension funds — and then claim this proves paying reparations to the community of blacks, based merely on their race and the past existence of slavery, is within traditional American jurisprudence.

This is all a lie. » Read more

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Emerson College in Boston leads the way in supporting Hamas and losing enrollment

12:52 pm

Emerson College: Where only leftist pro-Hamas speech allowed
Emerson College: Where only
leftist pro-Hamas speech is allowed

This week Emerson College in Boston announced that, because of a significant and unexpected drop in enrollment for the coming year, it is going to have to lay off staff as well as not fill a number of vacant positions.

In an email to college’s faculty and staff, the college’s president Jay Bernhardt obliquely mentioned what could be the main cause of this lack of new students:

We attribute this reduction to multiple factors, including national enrollment trends away from smaller private institutions, an enrollment deposit delay in response to the new FAFSA rollout, student protests targeting our yield events and campus tours, and negative press and social media generated from the demonstrations and arrests, [emphasis mine]

To put Bernhardt’s oblique comments into clarity, Emerson was hit in April with a gigantic pro-Hamas occupation that took over a local public right-of-way. The university’s response to this take-over was, to put it mildly, very supportive of the mob, even after the police moved in to clear the road and arrested 118. Here is what Bernhardt wrote to the Emerson community after those arrests:
» Read more

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Italy approves new space law

9:40 am

Italy’s Council of Ministers yesterday approved language for a new space law and five year space economic plan, designed to regulate the commercial space operations inside Italy as well by Italian companies operating in foreign lands.

In addition to mandating authorization for national and foreign operators who intend to conduct space activities from Italian soil, the law will also regulate the activities of national operators intending to conduct business from foreign territories. One element of regulatory compliance outlined within the law addresses the management of space incidents. Operators will be required to secure insurance coverage of up to €100 million per incident. There are, however, provisions allowing for the potential for lower caps in cases of reduced risk.

More details about the law can be found here. It gives regulatory authority to Italy’s space agency ASI, while also establishing a five-year government program (funding not disclosed) to stimulate the space sector.

The released details are insufficient to find out the real consequences of this law. If written correctly, the regulations could actually make it easier for the private sector to prosper. If not, it could instead squelch new startups as well as existing companies.

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Japan’s space agency reveals it was hacked in 2023

9:02 am

Japan’s space agency JAXA today revealed that beginning in 2023 and periodically into this year it has been attacked repeatedly by hackers, with data from more than 10,000 files stolen.

Attacks occurred in June 2023 and multiple times a year, although investigations are ongoing regarding whether more information was stolen in this year’s attacks.

In addition to internal data, potentially compromised entities include NASA, Toyota Motor Corp., Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. and the Defense Ministry, with which JAXA has nondisclosure agreements. Information from numerous aerospace and defense-related organizations and companies was also exposed.

JAXA stated that no sensitive information related to national security or rocket technologies was stolen in last year’s breach. Personal data of approximately 5,000 JAXA personnel and employees from partner companies was used to access the Microsoft 365 accounts of JAXA executives.

It appears JAXA officials only found out about the attack when police told them about it months after the June 2023 attack. Agency officials now say no sensitive rocket or satellite data was stolen. Instead, it appears the attack targeted personal communications as well as research facilities.

The report provided no indication about the source of these attacks, but noted that a 2016 attack is known to have come from China.

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The intellectual dishonesty of Democrats proven once again

12:43 pm

Democrat Neil Baron, either very lazy or a enthused slanderer
Democrat Neil Baron, either very lazy
or a enthused slanderer

The Cleveland Plain Dealer was forced on June 18, 2024 to retract entirely a June 9th op-ed written by Democrat lawyer and political consultant Neil Baron when it was threatened with slander and libel lawsuits from three FBI whistleblowers because of the blatent false accusations Baron included in this op-ed.

Baron’s op-ed, which can still read here, was mostly a partisan attack on Congressman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and his effort to expose the FBI’s non-stop abuse of power. In doing so, however, Baron accused three FBI whistle-blowers of doing things they did not do.

George Hill, advocated dismantling the FBI, claiming it’s better to “die than to have domestic intelligence.” Another, Garret O’Boyle, said Jan. 6 was a “set up” by Democrats and the FBI. He posted a video of himself at the Capitol sporting body armor, a gas mask and an AR-15 rifle. A third, Marcus Allen, assaulted several Capitol Police on Jan. 6, and claimed the insurrection was a government scheme.

As noted in the newspaper’s apology and retraction it admitted Baron’s accusations were simply false.

Allen was not a participant in the Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington D.C. and has never been accused of assaulting Capitol Police officers during the insurrection. O’Boyle did not claim the insurrection was set up by Democrats or post video of himself at the Capitol wearing body armor, a gas mask and an AR-15 rifle. While George Hill has been critical of his former employer, he did not make a quote attributed to him in the column or advocate for dismantling the FBI.

In other words, Baron was making these accusations up, and the newspaper did no fact-checking prior to publication, accepting those bald-faced lies without question. » Read more

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Pro-Hamas lefty arrested for several arson attacks on UC-Berkeley campus

1:35 pm

Casey Goonan, a pro-Hamas activist arrested for arson
Casey Goonan, a pro-Hamas activist
arrested for arson

If you want to know the mentality of the pro-Hamas movement across America and largely centered on many “elite” campuses, you need only look at the story of Casey Goonan. Goonan is a 34-year-old long time leftist activist who was previously arrested in September 2023 for “felony vandalism & resisting arrest” (he had used a hammer to destroy the sign of a hotel at the protest site).

He has now been arrested again as the prime suspect in a series of four arson attacks on the UC-Berkeley campus in the past three weeks.

On Monday evening [June 17], Cal Fire announced the arrest of 34-year-old Casey Robert Goonan “in connection with the firebombing attack of a UC Berkeley Police Department vehicle and three other arson attacks on UC Berkeley campus during the month of June.”

Goonan was arrested Monday “following a comprehensive investigation” by Cal Fire’s Office of the State Fire Marshal Arson and Bomb Unit, UC Berkeley police, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Goonan is now facing multiple felony charges, authorities said, including “the possession and use of destructive devices and multiple counts of arson.” He is in custody at Santa Rita Jail with a bail of $1 million, according to Monday’s statement.

In all these arson attacks, the firebomber (allegedly Goonan) released anonymous statements claiming credit. The first such statement, proudly admitted to firebombing a UC-Berkeley police vehicle and concluded as follows:
» Read more

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Slovenia becomes 23rd member nation of the European Space Agency

9:05 am

Formerly part of Yugoslavia and largely aligned with the communist bloc during the Cold War, Slovenia has now signed on to become the 23rd member nation of the European Space Agency (ESA).

Slovenia has been working with ESA since 2008, when it signed a first Cooperation Agreement, followed by a European Cooperation Agreement. This cooperation was strengthened with its accession to associate membership in 2016, which it upgraded in 2020 with a new Agreement for an enhanced Association. This included a provision that after its expiration in 2025, Slovenia can apply for ESA membership.

Slovenia’s membership still needs to be ratified, but that is expected.

Increasingly Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine has proven to be incredibly stupid. It has not only trapped Russia in a quagmire that it can’t easily escape, with victory nowhere in sight, it has caused all of its other neighbors to look west, away from Russia, out of fear of getting invaded themselves. Slovenia is just the most recent example.

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Kansas sues Pfizer for lying about the safety and effectiveness of its COVID jab

1:13 pm

Apparently a company of liars
Apparently a company of liars

The state of Kansas yesterday filed a detailed suit against the pharmaceutical company Pfizer over the many lies and misrepresentations it pushed as it rolled out its COVID jab, such as hiding the actual documented “adverse events”, including many deaths, that occurred after people got jabbed.

You can read the complaint here [pdf]. It opens as follows;

Pfizer misled the public that it had a “safe and effective” COVID-19 vaccine.

  • Pfizer said its COVID-19 vaccine was safe even though it knew its COVID-19 vaccine was connected to serious adverse events, including myocarditis and pericarditis, failed pregnancies, and deaths. Pfizer concealed this critical safety information from the public.
  • Pfizer said its COVID-19 vaccine was effective even though it knew its COVID-19 vaccine waned over time and did not protect against COVID-19 variants. Pfizer concealed this critical effectiveness information from the public.
  • Pfizer said its COVID-19 vaccine would prevent transmission of COVID-19 even though it knew it never studied the effect of its vaccine on transmission of COVID-19.
  • To keep the public from learning the truth, Pfizer worked to censor speech on social media that questioned Pfizer’s claims about its COVID-19 vaccine.

The lawsuit has lots of juicy factoids. For example, Pfizer kept its own database of adverse events after people took its jab, and lied about that data to the public.
» Read more

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Just remember: These obnoxious disturbers of the peace are all Democrats

12:46 pm

They’re coming for you next: In what is actually a relatively mild example of the obnoxious and almost always illegal protests by pro-Hamas supporters — such as taking over and trashing buildings, attacking Jews and blind children, and blocking traffic — for the past six months protesters have been disturbing the peace at late evening and early morning hours in the residential neighborhood where senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) lives with his family in Houston.

For the past 6 months, anti-Israel protestors have come to my home just about every Sat morning at 7 am and most Fri nights until 10 or 11 pm. They scream, disturb the peace & wake the neighbors.

I have embedded below the video of these protesters that Cruz included with his tweet:
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German rocket startup looking for alternatives to Saxavord spaceport

9:13 am

Australian commercial spaceports
Australia’s commercial spaceports. Click for original map.

Because of regulatory delays at the Saxaford spaceport in Great Britain, the German rocket startup Hyimpulse has signed a launch deal with the Australian commercial spaceport Southern Launch.

In May, HyImpulse launched the inaugural flight of its suborbital SR75 rocket from the Southern Launch Koonibba Test Range. The flight had initially been expected to be launched from SaxaVord in Scotland, but delays in the construction of the facility forced the company to look elsewhere for a host.

On 6 June, Southern Launch announced that it had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with HyImpulse for the launch of additional SR75 missions from Koonibba. The agreement also included provisions for the pair to explore the possibility of launching orbital flights aboard the HyImpulse SL1 rocket from Whalers Way Orbital Launch Complex on the south coast of Australia.

According to Hyimpulse’s November 2023 deal with Saxaford, it was to have flown two suborbital flights of the SR75 in 2024 and one orbital flight of SL1 in 2025.

It could very well be that SL1’s first orbital test launch will still take place from Saxavord, but the several years of delays caused by the red tape from the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority in approving Saxavord has forced its customers to seek alternatives. Hyimpulse for example now has agreements not only with Southern Launch in Australia. The French space agency CNES has approved it to launch from French Guiana as well.

In addition, the German rocket startup Isar Aerospace in November 2023 signed a deal with the new Andoya commercial spaceport in Norway. Andoya had come into this spaceport competition very late, but it apparently won this deal because Isar saw the regulatory problems in the UK and decided to look elsewhere.

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