Tag: oppression

The continuing stalemate in the Ukraine War

12:32 pm

In the past few months the situation in the war between Russia and the Ukraine has had some significant battlefield events that suggested the situation is becoming unstable. First, Russia began an offensive campaign along the northern border of the Ukraine near the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, pushing back into the same territory it had abandoned during its major retreat and defeats in the fall of 2022.

This offensive, combined with the gains Russia has made in the past few months in eastern Ukraine, suggested that it had completely recovered from those 2022 defeats, and was now moving forward in its effort to conquer the Ukraine in its entirety. At least, that’s how it seemed from a cursory outsider’s view.

Then, last month, the Ukraine launched its own offensive across the border into Russia’s Kursk region, the first time any Russian territory had been invaded since Russia’s unprovoked invasion of the Ukraine in February 2022. That same cursory view suggested that the situation was becoming unstable, and that Russia now faced a serious problem of its own.

To me, the only way to find out how serious these changes are since my last Ukraine War update six months ago, in February 2024, is to do another, and to compare the territorial changes on a map, as I have done every time previously.

Not surprisingly, a look at the map brings clarity to the situation.
» Read more

28 comments

Rocket startup Stoke Space is saddled with the same red tape as SpaceX

10:06 am

Stoke's Nova rocket
Stoke’s Nova rocket

We’re from the government and we’re here to help you! The rocket startup Stoke Space appears to be struggling with the same kind of environmental red tape that is hindering SpaceX, though in Stoke’s case the red tape appears absurdly unnecessary.

Stoke is the only company besides SpaceX developing a rocket with both its first and second stages returning to Earth to land vertically and then be reused. Unlike SpaceX Starship/Superheavy, which is gigantic and revolutionary in all ways, Stoke’s Nova rocket is comparable in size to the hundreds of rockets that have launched from Florida since the 1960s. Based on that six-decade track record, it would seem that getting rights to launch Nova (but not for its return) would be considered basic and routine, requiring little complex bureaucracy.

Hah! Fooled you!

Before any of this can take place, the Space Force must complete its “environmental assessment” of the company’s plans at LC-14 [the launchpad used for John Glenn’s first orbital mission and many others subsequently], in order to evaluate how repeat launches will affect local flora and fauna. These assessments are mandatory under federal law, and they can often take months — but the upside is that they provide a closer look at a company’s operational plans.

» Read more

7 comments

Pushback: Former police chief who illegally raided local Kansas newspaper charged

1:26 pm

Police Chief Gideon Cody, proud to emulate Nazi tactics
Former Marion police Chief Gideon Cody,
apparently proud to emulate Nazi tactics

The wheels of justice ground slow, but grind they do: In August 2023 the entire police department of Marion, Kansas, performed a Gestapo-like raid of a local newspaper’s offices as well as the homes the town’s vice mayor, the newspaper’s 98-year-old owner Joan Meyer (resulting in her death the next day from a heart attack), and one reporter.

All the evidence suggested the police chief, Gideon Cody, had performed the raid as a personal favor to a local businesswoman, Kari Newell, who was worried that newspaper might publish a story about her arrest for driving while intoxicated and without a license. Newell and Cody then worked together to use the police and a local judge, Laura Viar, to harass and hopefully destroy a newspaper. The newspaper survived, but their actions ended up killing its 98-year-old founder.

The public outrage was instantanous. Cody was soon suspended, and if Newell wished to keep her history out of the papers this raid was exactly the wrong way to do it. The story went national, exposing her drunk driving history to the world. Meanwhile five different federal lawsuits were filed against Cody and various other county and city officials. The reporter, Debbie Gruver, also resigned from the newspaper, saying she no longer felt comfortable in the Marion community.

It now appears that Cody, who officially resigned in October 2023, has now been charged with a crime in connection with the raid.
» Read more

4 comments

Let’s take a look at the college teachers and students who support Hamas and the torture and murder of little children

2:23 pm

Hamas vs Israel
Apparently too many college students and teachers
support Hamas despite these very obvious facts.
Courtesy of Doug Ross.

Fight! Fight! Fight! At the website Campus Reform one of its reporters, Michael Duke, has been doing magnificent work in identifying in detail college by college the students and professors who rioted this spring on numerous university campuses in support of the terrorist organization Hamas and its October 7, 2023 massacre of more than 1200 people, including the rape, torture, and murder of men, women, children, and babies.

I thought it was time to do the public a service and provide a link to all of Duke’s reports, so that future employees will have a handy place to go to find out whether the future college prospect before them thinks it is acceptable to kill babies in support of an ideology. Duke’s work has only begun, but it appears he is trying to identify every single pro-Hamas rioter this year who was arrested. His list so far:
» Read more

8 comments

It’s the audience that counts

11:27 am

The short clip below from the Stephen Colbert late night show has been making the rounds today. Colbert is interviewing a CNN news anchor and says the following, ““I know you guys are objective over there, that you just report the news as it is.”

To his shock the audience laughs, clearly recognizing how inaccurate, stupid, and clueless Colbert’s description of CNN is. Kaitlan Collins, the news anchor, responds, “That supposed to be a laugh line?” and Colbert, clearly uncomfortable, answers, “It wasn’t supposed to be.”

Watch an enjoy:
» Read more

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Axiom’s next commercial manned mission to ISS delayed until 2025

9:26 am

Axiom’s next commercial manned mission to ISS, dubbed Ax-4, which had been targeting an October 2024 launch date, has now been delayed until 2025 because of “required interagency approval processes.”

NASA’s only announcement describing the delay was a tweet on X, which stated the following:

The Ax-4 crew members are pending approval to fly to the orbiting lab by the Multilateral Crew Operations Panel.

Neither Axiom nor NASA provided further comment or explanation. The mission will fly three passengers from India, Poland, and Hungary and be commanded by Peggy Whitson, a former NASA astronaut who now fulfills that role for Axiom. Since the three passengers are all government astronauts, it is possible that the bureaucracies from all three nations, plus NASA and its ISS partners, are entangled in negotiations far more complex than necessary.

This situation highlights quite clearly why both billionairs Jared Isaacman and Chun Wang have signed on with SpaceX to flight orbital missions — avoiding a docking with ISS — that require no permissions from NASA. Wang for example announced his deal yesterday, for a flight that is targeting a launch before the end of the year. Though that schedule is tight and might not be met, it appears the mission will likely fly before the Axiom one, which has been planned now for quite awhile.

4 comments

Trump to sue Justice Department over Mar-a-Lago raid and subsequent indictments

11:36 am

Trump defiant after being shot
Trump defiant

Fight! Fight! Fight! According to a report today by Fox News, Trump’s lawyers are about to sue the Justice Department for $100 million, claiming the Mar-a-Lago raid and subsequent now-dismissed indictments by Jack Smith (who the courts have ruled was appointed illegally) were done with the “clear intent to engage in political persecution.”

Trump attorney Daniel Epstein filed the notice to sue the Justice Department. The Justice Department has 180 days from the date of receipt to respond to Epstein’s notice and come to a resolution. If no resolution is made, Trump’s case will move to federal court in the Southern District of Florida.

…Epstein argued that the DOJ violated Florida law, intrusion upon seclusion, which is recognized as a form of invasion of privacy. Intrusion upon seclusion includes “an intentional intrusion, physically or otherwise, into the private quarters of another person” and the intrusion “must occur in a manner that a reasonable person would find highly offensive.”
» Read more

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FAA cancels scheduled public meetings to review new Boca Chica environmental assessment

9:52 am

For as yet unknown reasons, the FAA today sent out an email canceling all the public meetings that it had scheduled in mid-July and were designed to allow the public to comment on its new environmental assessment of SpaceX’s application to increase its Starship/Superheavy launch rate at Boca Chica from five to as much as 25 launches per year.

The FAA is cancelling the in-person public meetings on the Draft EA scheduled for: Tuesday, August 13, 2024; 1:00 PM–3:00 PM & 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM CDT City of South Padre Island Convention Center, 7355 Padre Blvd, South Padre Island, TX 78597 Thursday, August 15, 2024; 1:00 PM–3:00 PM & 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM CDT Port Isabel Event & Cultural Center, 309 E Railroad Ave, Port Isabel, TX 78578 The FAA is also cancelling the virtual public meeting scheduled for: Tuesday, August 20, 2024; 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM CDT The FAA will provide notice for new dates for the meetings and a new date for the close of the comment period in the future.

The FAA’s email also noted that public comments can still be submitted either electronically here or by mail sent to Ms. Amy Hanson, FAA Environmental Specialist, SpaceX EA, c/o ICF 1902 Reston Metro Plaza Reston, VA 20190. In both cases, the commenter must reference Docket No. FAA-2024-2006. The email also stated that the public comment period would be extended beyond its August 29, 2024 closure date.

This cancellation mirrors the situation in 2021-2022, when the FAA was reviewing its previous environmental reassessment of the Boca Chica site. At that time the agency repeatedly failed to meet its own deadlines, sometimes on a month-by-month basis, so that the final approval process ended up stretching out more than a half year. Similar delays further stalled the first Starship/Superhavy test flight by another full year.

I once again suspect that higher ups in the White House are applying pressure on the FAA to stall this process, for political reasons, probably because those higher ups want no action taken before the November election. I am guessing, but this is how Washington works. Real achievement by American private citizens must always take a back seat to the power lusts of the DC politicos who now rule us.

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FAA red tape apparently stalling the next Starship/Superheavy orbital test launch

9:37 pm

Superheavy being captured by the tower chopsticks at landing
Superheavy being captured by the tower chopsticks at landing.
Click for video.

Back in mid-June, shortly after 4th orbital test flight of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy rocket, it appeared based on an FAA statement that the company could proceed with the next test flight as soon as it was ready to fly.

Subsequently, Elon Musk said the company expected to be ready by early August. There were also indications that the company wished to attempt a chopstick landing of Superheavy back at the launch tower at Boca Chica. Such an attempt however would require approval from the FAA, as the flight profile would not be the same as the previous flight.

I and others speculated that SpaceX would forego that chopstick landing in order to fly the fifth test flight quickly, while simultanously requesting permission from the FAA for such a landing on a later test flight. My thinking was that this would allow test flights to proceed with as little delay as possible.

Though it remains unknown whether or not the next test flight will include that chopstick landing attempt, it does appear that FAA red tape is blocking the next flight. In an update from NASASpaceflight.com about the work at Boca Chica posted on August 9, 2023 was a link to a SpaceX tweet the day before that said the following:
» Read more

9 comments

Florida proves that too many professors at public colleges might be better employed as dish washers

1:35 pm

Most of all beware this boy.’
As noted by the Spirit of Christmas Present in Dickens’ The Christmas
Carol, “This boy is ignorance, this girl is want. Beware them both,
but most of all beware this boy.” It appears Florida has taken this
warning to heart. Click for movie.

Last year the Republican-controlled state government in Florida passed legislation requiring its public universities to do what are called “post-tenure reviews” on all their tenured professors every five years, as part of an effort to eliminate what Governor Ron DeSantis called “deadweight” and “unproductive tenured faculty.” The bill not only limited the ability of professors to protest termination decisions, it was also aimed at eliminating “diversity, equity, and inclusion” programs across the board.

At the University of Florida the first round of tenure review has now produced some startling numbers, literally proving DeSantis’ claims.

The report said that, out of 262 professors up for review, 31 “either retired, entered retirement agreements or resigned during the review period.” A further 34 didn’t meet expectations and five were dubbed unsatisfactory. Add those categories up, and it’s 27 percent.

In other words, when faced with a real review of their qualifications, more than a quarter of the professors either quit or were removed. Though it is unclear whether those who quit did so because they knew they’d be fired anyway, that conclusion is a reasonable one to make. By resigning, they avoid having a stain on their record and thus increase their chances of getting work elsewhere.
» Read more

9 comments

Rocket Factory Augsburg completes 2nd static fire test of first stage

9:47 am

The German startup Rocket Factory Augsburg has apparently completed a second static fire test of the first stage of its RFA-1 rocket.

The test occurred on the launchpad the company will use to launch at the Saxaford spaceport in the Shetland Islands. Video of the test is available here.

The test itself lasted for approximately 15 seconds and included five of the company’s Helix rocket engines. While this is one more than the previous test, it’s still short of the full nine-engine complement that will be utilized aboard every RFA ONE first stage.

A full static fire test of all nine engines is still necessary before launch. The rocket’s upper stage has already completed its full test compaign and is on the way to Saxaford for stacking.

The hope is that the first orbital test launch will occur before the end of the year, but for that to happen Rocket Factory must get its launch license from the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). Based on how slow it approved its only previous launch license for Virgin Orbit (bankrupting the company because it took so long), no one should be expect a launch this year.

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Chinese Long March 6A upper stage breaks up into debris shortly after deploying satellites

9:37 am

Ground and satellite reconnaissance data now indicates that the upper stage of the Chinese Long March 6A rocket that on August 6 launched the 18 satellites in a proposed Chinese 14,000 satellite internet constellation broke up into numerous pieces shortly after deploying the satellites.

The detection was made by the company Slingshot Aerospace, which tracks orbital spacecraft looking for the appearance of this kind of space junk.

This is actually the second time recently that an upper stage of a Long March 6A has broken up shortly after launch. In December 2022 the same thing was detected following a November launch.

All told, this relatively new Chinese rocket has launched seven times, and has had its upper stage break up twice. Apparently, China not only doesn’t care if the lower stages of its many rockets crash on top of its own citizens, it is quite okay with littering near-earth orbital space with debris. It needs to fix the upper stage of this rocket now, so such break-ups no longer occur.

5 comments

August 7, 2024 Quick space links

3:49 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

 

 

  • Another relatively boring press release of an image from Europe’s Mars Expresss orbiter

    • I post so few images from Mars Express because Europe releases so few, and when they do, they don’t usually provide enough good information to understand what one is looking at. For example, this release never really tells us the global location of the picture, info that is crucial to understanding it. I could look it up, but the image itself is just not that interesting.

 

 

2 comments

Students win settlement against college for censoring their speech illegally

2:04 pm

One poster that Clovis Community College tried to censor
One of the posters that Clovis Community College officials agreed to
“gladly” remove because it made some students “very uncomfortable.”

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Back in November 2021 three students at Clovis Community College who were also members of the college club for Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) got permission to put up posters on campus showing in detail the historic and documented horrors of communist rule worldwide. The picture to the right shows one such poster.

Soon thereafter some people supposedly complained that the posters made them “uncomfortable.” Despite the fact that everything in the posters is factually true, the then college president Lori Bennett ordered the posters torn down, claiming she did it because they weren’t specifically a “club announcement.

In August 2022 the students sued [pdf] with the help of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), noting that Bennett’s policy was not only inconsistent and arbitrarily, it was mostly used to block conservative political statements college administrators did not like.

The students have now won a settlement in court.
» Read more

9 comments

Sunspot update: In July the Sun produced the most sunspots in almost a quarter century

9:13 am

Every month since this website began fourteen years ago, when NOAA posts its update of its monthly graph tracking the number of sunspots on the Sun’s Earth-facing hemisphere, I post my own analysis, adding some details to provide the larger context.

Of all those updates — numbering about 168 — this month’s is possibly the most significant. Since around 2008, the Sun began a long period where it was unusually quiet, with the solar maximum that occurred in 2014 possibly the weakest in two hundred years. Before that weak maximum begun, half the solar science community predicted it would be a very powerful maximum, while half predicted a weak maximum. Both got it wrong, though the weak prediction was closer though still too high.

When it came time to predict the next solar maximum, expected around 2025, that same solar science community was once again in disagreement. Most approved a NOAA science panel prediction in April 2020 calling for another weak minimum, similar to the one in 2014. A few dissented, however, and instead predicted in June 2020 that the maximum would be one of the strongest ever. In April 2023 however those dissenters chickened out, and revised their prediction downward, still forecasting a peak higher than the NOAA prediction but no longer anywhere as intense.

Based on what happened on the Sun in July, they should have had more faith in their earlier prediction.
» Read more

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Charges against pro-Hamas rioters have routinely been dropped nationwide

1:23 pm

The instruction manual of the left
The instruction manual of the left

According to an excellent report today at the website Campus Reform, charges against more than 300 pro-Hamas rioters that illegally occupied and damaged campuses at eleven different universities nationwide have been dropped by prosecutors.

The list is discouraging, to put it mildly:

  • School of the Art Institute of Chicago: 80 criminal charges were dropped
  • University of Texas at Austin: 79 criminal charges were dropped
  • Indiana University: 56 criminal charges were dropped
  • Columbia University: 31 criminal charges have been dropped
  • California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt: 27 criminal charges have been dropped
  • University of Minnesota: 9 criminal charges have been dropped
  • University of New Hampshire: 8 criminal charges have been dropped
  • The City University of New York: 7 criminal charges have been dropped
  • Northwestern University: 4 criminal charges have been dropped

The reasons why prosecutors have dropped these charges are manifold. In some cases (such as in California, Illinois, and New York), the prosecutors were partisan Democrats who approved of the riots, and thus acted to protect the rioters by dropping the charges. In several cases however the prosecutors expressed extreme unhappiness with their own action, stating that they did so reluctantly because they did not think they could win in court.
» Read more

8 comments

NASA/Boeing push back final decision of Starliner return

8:58 am

Starliner docked to ISS
Starliner docked to ISS.

Someone at NASA getting cold feet? According to a NASA posting today, the review that was supposed to happen this week to determine a return date for Starliner and its two-astronaut crew has been postponed until next week as engineers continue analzying the results of the recent thruster hot fire tests, both on the ground and on ISS.

The wording of this posting is intriguing, to say the least:

Teams are taking their time to analyze the results of recent docked hot-fire testing, finalize flight rationale for the spacecraft’s integrated propulsion system, and confirm system reliability ahead of Starliner’s return to Earth from the International Space Station.

Forward work for the team also includes finalizing the spacecraft’s undocking procedures and operational mitigations that could be used in flight, if needed, to build further confidence in the system. Meanwhile, Starliner ground and mission support teams are continuing to prepare for undocking by participating in integrated simulations with space station operations teams.

Following the completion of Starliner’s return planning, which is expected to continue into next week, more information will be shared about the agency’s return readiness review preparations and subsequent media briefing. As always, astronaut safety remains the top priority for both NASA and Boeing. [emphasis mine]

Up until this posting, I have been confidently predicting the two astronauts would return on Starliner. Now I am not so sure. It seems the data from the hot fire tests, especially the most recent tests on the Starliner capsule docked to ISS, was not as encouraging or did not confirm the conclusions drawn from the previous ground-based tests, and have required further analysis. This might not in the end make a difference, but the wording of this NASA’s press release, including the highlighted emphasis on astronaut safety, suggests NASA is at least considering the idea of bringing the astronauts home on a Dragon capsule.

27 comments

China launches “high-orbit internet satellite”

8:45 am

China last night successfully launched what its state-run press merely labels as a “high-orbit internet satellite”, its Long March 3B rocket lifting off from its Xichange spaceport in southwest China.

No word on where the rocket’s lower stage and strap-on boosters, using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China. Previous launches have had those booster crash near habitable area.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

75 SpaceX
32 China
8 Rocket Lab
8 Russia

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 88 to 48, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 75 to 61.

0 comments

My heart bleeds: The new head of the Secret Service is hurt because his people are “hurting”

1:39 pm

New Secret Service head Robert Rowe testifying before the Senate
New Secret Service head Robert Rowe
testifying before the Senate

During testimony earlier this week before a Senate committee, the new head of the Secret Service, Robert Rowe, was asked by Senator Marsha Blackburn (R.-Tennessee) to comment on the whistleblower email that claimed the only interest of the agency’s top five supervisors was to cover their ass, not fix the incompetence that allowed a sniper to kill one innocent bystander and injure three others, including presidential canddate Donald Trump.

Rowe’s response summed up his misplaced priorities perfectly, and showed the utter truth of the whistleblower’s accusations.

Blackburn: I want to know how you feel about the fact that employees in your agency are worried about covering their behind. And not worried about protecting a former president.

Rowe: Thank you, Senator. So, I am hurt by that email, but not in the way you think I’m saying it. I’m hurt because my people are hurting right now. … My agency is hurting. Um, Emotions are raw.

How horrible. People at the Secret Service are “hurting!”
» Read more

10 comments

Update on Starship/Superheavy at Boca Chica

10:48 am

Link here. Progress is being made, but it remains unclear when the next orbital test flight of Superheavy/Starship will take place. Musk had predicted early August, and though the company appears getting close, there remains no word yet on from the FAA about issuing a launch license.

The article at the link however provides a lot of information about the construction of the second launch site at Boca Chica, as well as the future Starship prototypes to be launched. The next flight, the fifth, will use what SpaceX is calling its Block 1 version of the spaceship. The sixth flight will also fly this version. The seventh flight however will fly what SpaceX dubs its Block 2 verison, incorporating many upgrades and changes based on the previous test flights.

This information suggests several things. First, SpaceX wants to do three more orbital test launches in the near future, likely before the end of this year. Whether the FAA will allow such a thing remains unknown. The environmental reassessment that it issued in 2022 allows SpaceX to do five launches per year at Boca Chica, but requires the company to get FAA approval for each one, and also requires SpaceX to submit extensive paperwork before that approval will even be considered. Whether the FAA can move quickly enough between test flights to get this three more launches completed before December seems very doubtful, based on its past track record.

Second, it gives us a sense of the overall development. In developing Falcon 9, SpaceX went through five Block designs before the operational Block 5 that now flies so routinely. The company however was flying operationally and profitably by Block 2. If SpaceX is now moving to Block 2 for Starship, it means it is likely confident that this version will be capable of returning Starship to the ground undamaged and up to additional flights.

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