Tag: oppression

Dynetics has joined Blue Origin in protesting Starship contract by NASA

5:06 pm

Capitalism in space? Dynetics today joined Blue Origin in protesting NASA’s decision to award SpaceX the sole contract for building a manned lunar lander, using its Starship spacecraft.

Though the company’s protest did not going into specifics, it appears that Dynetics main complaint is the decision to not award two companies a contract, as originally planned. Even so, these factors make Dynetics bid quite problematic:

Of the three bidders, Dynetics was the lowest ranked. It had a technical rating of “Marginal,” one step below the “Acceptable” that Blue Origin and SpaceX received. Its Management rating of “Very Good” was the same as Blue Origin but one step below SpaceX’s “Outstanding.”

In the source selection statement, Kathy Lueders, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations, said the Dynetics lander “suffered from a number of serious drawbacks” that increased risk. The lander was overweight, which at this early stage of development “calls into question the feasibility of Dynetics’ mission architecture and its ability to successfully close its mission as proposed,” she wrote. The evaluation also questioned the maturity of the technology for performing in-space cryogenic fluid transfer required to refuel the lander, as the company planned.

Lueders concluded that “while Dynetics’ proposal does have some meritorious technical and management attributes, it is overall of limited merit and is only somewhat in alignment with the objectives as set forth in this solicitation.” The document only stated that Dynetics’ proposal had a price “significantly higher” than Blue Origin’s proposal, which in turn was significantly higher than SpaceX’s winning bid of $2.89 billion. Blue Origin disclosed in its protest that it bid $5.99 billion. [emphasis mine]

So, Dynetics proposed to build an overweight lander and do it at the highest price. If anything this protest enhances Blue Origin’s protest. It certainly doesn’t do much for Dynetics.

In fact, a good metaphor for the bidding here would be to imagine three vacuum cleaner salesman arriving at your door, all at the same time. One salesman, Mr. Newbie Dynetics, offers you a vacuum cleaner (as yet unbuilt in any form) that as presently designed will only be able to suck in about two-thirds of the dirt on your floor, and demands you pay $800 for it. The second salesman, Jeff “Blue” Origin, says his design (also unbuilt) is far better because they’ve done some successful tests of a tiny handheld prototype, and in addition he’ll only charge you $599 for it.

Neither Newbie or Jeff have any financing, so you will have to foot the entire bill.

The third salesman, Elon Starship, shows up with a full size prototype that while it has some problems, actually functions, and has been tested a number of times already. He also has more than two thirds of his development already financed by others, and only wants to charge you $289.

Who would you pick?

Since I know my readers are neither elected officials nor government officials in Washington and therefore know how to use their brains intelligently, I suspect I know.

We shall soon find out just how smart or dumb those elected officials or government officials in Washington really are.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Any business in a Massachusetts town that does not genuflect to BLM and its Marxist agenda

11:31 am

Today's modern witch hunt
Witch burning returns to Massachusetts!

The worst horror of the new leftist blacklisting that is sweeping America is how pervasive it is. This intolerance for dissent is not limited to a small number of people leading the way, but seems to instead be springing upward from that movement’s grass roots.

Today’s blacklist story illustrates this quite starkly.

In the small town of Sturbridge, Mass., a group of 200 left-leaning citizens organized on Facebook to compile a list of businesses to avoid due to insufficient wokeness. The group even planned to present every local business with a pro-Black Lives Matter statement to sign — or face a local boycott.

When the website Turtleboy Sports published that list in full, the woman who created it, Sarah Prager, as well as the administrators of that private Facebook group, Amanda Ivey and Chelsea Ann, then apparently claimed (along with others from that group) that it was merely an internal document not meant for public viewing. They also justified its existence by saying it was not a blacklist but a list of all businesses in town, and had been designed merely to record the political leanings of each so that people would know which businesses had bad political leanings and could be properly avoided. Here are some examples, as noted by Turtleboy:
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: There are now so many that an online database now exists

3:04 pm

They’re coming for you next: Because of the epidemic of blacklisting and oppression that has been sweeping the United States in the past four months, a new online database now exists to track and document them all, with the total now almost 200 people long.

The site’s home page lists the following reasons for getting blackballed, all of which are absurdly unjust and intolerant:
» Read more

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The devastating epidemic that simply wasn’t devastating

1:04 pm

It is now more than a year since the arrival of the coronavirus in the United States and the panicky wave of fear it brought to our governments and many of our citizens, shutting down whole states, bankrupting millions of businesses, and shuttering schools for practically a whole year. In the process our governments have demanded we change how we live in fundamental ways, from no longer gathering together in any social setting to wearing masks wherever we go, inside or out.

Was that reaction correct? Readers of my website know that I never believed it rational, and that it was an entirely out-of-proportion response to what was really nothing more than a new variation of the flu.

Well, we now have some data that reveals the actual scale of the COVID-19 epidemic, as shown by the CDC graph below:
» Read more

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Bill Nelson: now an advocate of private commercial space?

9:49 am

Though this is certainly not a firm rule, I rarely pay much attention to the nomination hearings in the Senate that take place whenever a new administration from another party takes over and nominates a new set of Washington apparatchiks to run various government agencies. Almost always, you can glean most of what you need to know by reading the nominee’s opening statement as well as later news reports. Saves a lot of time.

Last week came the nomination hearing of former senator Bill Nelson as NASA’s new administrator. As I had expected, based on all reports the hearing was a lovefest, with almost all questions friendly and enthusiastic. This is generally what happens when a Democrat gets nominated, as the Democrats have no reason to oppose the nominee and the Republicans generally don’t play “we oppose all Democrats, no matter what.” It also always happens when the nominee is a former member of that exclusive senatorial club, as Bill Nelson was.

The first news reports also mentioned that Nelson seemed surprisingly enthusiastic towards commercial space, given his past hostility towards it. This report by Mark Whittington today at The Hill provides a much deeper look, and notes that, as his report’s headline states, Nelson is now “a born-again” believer in the idea of capitalism in space, with NASA now merely being the customer. This is a major change from his position when he was a senator, when he tried repeatedly to strangle commercial space and give its money to SLS.

Nelson also announced that he was totally committed to continuing the Artemis program and timetable as laid out by the Trump administration:
» Read more

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China and Russia sign agreement to build moon base

10:24 am

The new colonial movement: Yesterday China and Russia announced that they have signed an agreement to jointly work together to build a base on the Moon.

The link above is from the Chinese state-run press, stating:

In a joint statement issued at the conference, the CNSA and Roscosmos said the moon station will be open to all interested countries, international organizations and partners in terms of planning, design, research, development, implementation and operation at all stages and levels of the project.

The Russian state-run press made a similar announcement.

The new Cold War in space is beginning to shape up. On one side will be free enterprise, led by the United States and the many private companies working independently to make their own profits in space, and on the other side will be the former communist nations whose cultures require all such efforts be controlled from the top by the government.

And like the Cold War of the 20th century, the big question will be the actions of third parties, like Europe, India, Japan, the UAE, and other new space-faring nations. Will they join with the U.S., or join China and Russia to gang up on private enterprise? Right now I will not be surprised if all these countries eventually join the Chinese/Russian effort. Worse, I have great doubts about the U.S. government’s commitment to the capitalist path it is presently taking. If enough pressure was applied by these authoritarian regimes we should not be surprised if our generally authoritarian present government decides to join them as well, using their combined power to squelch freedom and private enterprise in space.

The battle is drawn, but the forces for liberty and freedom are sadly outnumbered.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Police officer fired for making anonymous donation to another man’s defense fund

12:47 pm

Today's modern witch hunt
Burning witches: Norfolk’s new policy for anyone they don’t like.

They’re coming for you next: : A high-ranking police officer in Norfolk, Virginia, was fired from his job when the leftwing newspaper The Guardian revealed he had made an anonymous donation to the defense fund that had been set up for Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager who when attacked by BLM rioters shot and killed two.

According to the Guardian newspaper on Friday, Lieutenant William Kelly, who served as the executive officer of NPD’s internal affairs division, made an anonymous $25 donation to Rittenhouse’s defense in September. … The revelation came after a data breach of the Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo, which showed official email addresses belonging to many police officers and public officials. The information was shared with the Guardian by the transparency group Distributed Denial of Secrets.
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Democrat wants IRS to shut down conservative organization

1:06 pm

The future show trials desired by Democratic Party Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
Show trials are what Sheldon Whitehouse and the Democrats really want

Blacklists are back and the Dems’ have got ’em: Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island) has demanded that the IRS strip the conservative college organization Turning Point USA of its non-profit status because it had held large events in the last year (similar to many Black Lives Matter protests during the same time period).

According to Whitehouse, the Turning Point USA events were “superspreader” events and a threat to public health. Apparently he also believes that the coronavirus can’t appear at comparable Black Lives Matter protests, nor does he appear interested in finding out if any such superspreader events actually occurred following the Turning Point USA gatherings (they did not). From Whitehouse’s letter:
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: John Schnatter, founder of Papa John’s Pizza

1:08 pm

One burned witch is not enough! Burn them all!
One burned witch is not enough! We’ve got to burn them all!

They’re coming for you next: The effort by the left and many like-minded fascists in modern America to destroy anyone who disagrees with them did not begin with the ascension to power of Joe Biden and the Democratic Party following the elections in 2020.

No, the blacklisting and slander campaigns started decades ago, maybe as early as the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for nominees Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas, but clearly accelerating after Trump’s election in 2016.

In 2018 we had a perfect example. Then the founder of Papa John’s Pizza, John Schnatter, was forced out of the company he founded based on lies and slanders issued by the public relations company Laundry Services that he himself had hired to improve his public image after he had publicly criticized the NFL for not stopping the national anthem protests.

Apparently, that pr firm had carefully edited comments Schnatter had made during a telephone call with them, making it look like he was a bigot and had used curse words against blacks. The resulting scandal, spread eagerly throughout the mainstream press, served to destroy his reputation and his business, making him a pariah to the entire world.
» Read more

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Momentus losing contracts due to security concerns

9:37 am

Capitalism in space: The orbit tug company Momentus appears to be losing some of its contracts because of security concerns that have delayed FAA approvals of its launch licenses and forced the cancellation of flights.

The company delayed the launch of its first Vigoride vehicle, which was to fly on a SpaceX rideshare mission in January, because it could not complete a payload review by the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation in time. Momentus said that the FAA could not approve the payload “due to national security and foreign ownership concerns regarding Momentus raised by the DoD during an interagency review.”

Momentus now hopes to launch that first Vigoride mission on another Falcon 9 rideshare mission in June. The company said the FAA is still working on that interagency review that is being held open by the Defense Department. The review needs to be completed by the end of May for the company to keep its slot on that June launch.

The company has also lost a contract with Lockheed Martin, which though the reasons have not been stated probably relates to the same issue.

That issue apparently is the company’s former chief executive Mikhail Kokorich and its co-founder Lev Khasis and his wife. To address these concerns, Kokorich has stepped down, and the Khasis have put their shares in the company in a voting trust and will divest them within three years.

All does not appear lost however. Momentus Vigoride tug is presently the only option available for cubesats that need an upper stage to move them to different orbits, and it appears that neither Lockheed Martin nor its other customers are entirely abandoning it. They are simply playing safe, standing back, and waiting until the security issues are resolved and the FAA gives its approval.

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The anti-satellite missile the Soviet Union designed for one of its early space stations

9:25 am

Link here. Apparently a prototype was actually flown in 1975 on the second successful Soviet space station, Salyut 3, a military mission. A more sophisticated version was never flown when the Soviet’s cancelled their military space station program. However, its design was most fascinating:

[L]ittle is known about the specifications and operation of the system, but, according to the Head of Science and Research Center at NPO Mashinostroenia Leonard Smirichevsky, who introduced the weapon, the vehicle’s grenade-like solid propellant charges doubled as engines! RussianSpaceWeb.com’s 3D recreation of the displayed variant established that it held 96 casings with solid propellant arranged in a globular fashion like the petals of a dandelion around a central combustion chamber. Upon their ignition, the chambers/grenades might have fed hot propulsive gas into a single or multiple combustion chambers at the center of the contraption, producing either the main thrust and/or steering the vehicle. When the missile reached the proximity of the target, according to its guiding radar, the entire vehicle would explode and the small solid chambers would eject under their own propulsive force in every direction acting as shrapnel.

The missile had a flight range of about 70 miles, and was designed to destroy any hostile satellite or spacecraft that approached the military station.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Liberal black journalist Juan Williams for not being “black enough”

12:15 pm

Blacklists are back and PBS has got ’em: He might be liberal, a Democratic Party cheerleader, and black, but that didn’t stop a PBS host from blacklisting television pundit Juan Williams from appearing on his show because Williams was simply not “black enough”.

Williams alleges the host is on the PBS-affiliated show “This Is America & The World” and that he declined to have Williams talk about race-related issues because he was born in Panama, not America. Williams, a Democrat, said he received a note from the show host telling him about his decision.

“A white TV host recently dismissed me from appearing on his show to discuss race relations by telling me I didn’t qualify because I was born in Panama,” Williams said in his opinion piece in The Hill. “He thinks I’m not Black enough. Seriously.”

When you make race and skin color your number one criteria in all your decisions, then you will begin to make insane and very bigoted decisions like this. Ideas no longer matter. Nor does talent or skill. Only skin color determines who you like or dislike. The only thing that makes this particular example of the left’s constant blacklisting of others for racial reasons different is that it was aimed at a Democrat and a moderate leftist who also happens to not fit the exact racial measure they needed for their narrative.

Nor is this the end. The demand to judge people based solely on their race or ethnicity and the unwillingness of most people to challenge it is leading us directly to race war. Sooner or later the oppressed are not going to take it anymore, especially when some of those oppressed are highly qualified and will view their subjugation as unjust and will have the brains to do something about it.

Americans of all colors have got to start standing up and defying these bigots, loudly. It is the only way we can prevent that race war, and bring us back to the free society we have been for most of the last half century.

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