Tag: oppression

Is the Republican Party finally doing the election due diligence it should have been doing since 2020?

1:31 pm

The Republican Party: Finally waking up?
The Republican Party: Is it finally waking up?

Too late is better than nothing: Three stories in the past week suggest that after almost four years of twiddling its thumbs, the Republican National Committee (RNC) is finally beginning to do the hard work necessary to prevent Democratic Party vote tampering in the 2024 election.

This new apparently aggressive approach began almost immediately after Michael Whatley and Lara Trump took over as co-chairs of the committee from Ronna McDaniel, who for seven years seemed incapable of achieving anything beneficial for Republicans, or conservatives for that matter. In addition, a new chief of operations, Chris LaCivita, was brought in.

Four days after these people took over they did a complete house-cleaning of the staff at the committee.

As we reported Monday night, political director Elliott Echols and one of his top staffers, Tripp Looser; communications director Keith Schippert; Mike Mears (chief of staff to former co-chair Drew McKissick); and the lead data director were all given their walking papers. We also reported at that time that an email went out to staff from Sean Cairncross, LaCivita’s number two, stating that all existing vendor contracts were going to be reviewed.

We now know that every one of the RNC’s regional political directors, state directors, RNC Community Center staffers, and members of its election-integrity team were fired. Some of those let go were informed that they could reapply for their old positions, and the rest were simply let go but paid until the end of March.

This article also outlines the major restructuring of the entire committee management staff and programs. Included in these changes was the hiring of two people to coordinate the committee’s election integrity legal effort.

LaCivita brought in Charlie Spies, one of the most experienced Republican election law attorneys out there, as chief counsel, and former Trump attorney Christina Bobb as senior counsel for election integrity.

The arrival of Spies and Bobb has apparently resulted in immediate action, in two states, with more predicted. Two days after these changes the committee sued Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson for failing to maintain proper voter rolls, as required by law. One week later the committee followed up with a similar lawsuit against Nevada’s secretary of state Cisco Aguliar. As noted in the introduction to the Michigan lawsuit (available here [pdf]):
» Read more

14 comments

SpaceX’s next Superheavy/Starship launch, according to SpaceX

10:06 am

According to SpaceX’s CEO, Gwynne Shotwell, the company hopes to be ready to fly its fourth orbital test flight of Superheavy/Starship in about six weeks, and will not attempt to deploy any Starlink satellites, as I speculated earlier this week.

“We’ll figure out what happened on both stages,” she said, not discussing what may have gone wrong with either, “and get back to flight hopefully in about six weeks,” or early May. She added that the company doesn’t expect to deploy Starlink satellites on the next Starship launch, as some had speculated. “Things are still in trade, but I think we’re really going to focus on getting reentry right and making sure we can land these things where we want to land them.”

The story however provided one very important tidbit of information about the launch license process from the FAA. Kelvin Coleman, FAA associate administrator for commercial space transportation, noted that after the second test flight in November 2023 “the company completed that report in several weeks.”

That statement confirms my conclusion in late December that SpaceX had been ready to launch in early January, but couldn’t do it because the FAA had to spend another two months rewriting SpaceX’s investigation report.

We should therefore not be surprised if the same thing happens on the next test flight. Shotwell says SpaceX hopes to be ready to launch in early May. That means it will likely submit its report to the FAA around then. Expect the agency to then spend at least one to two months retyping the report, as it has done now after both the first and second flights.

Based on this information, we should now expect the fourth flight to occur sometime in the June-July timeframe, with July more likely.

I am sure that the people at the FAA want to move as quickly as possible. I am also sure their bosses in the White House are demanding they dot every “i” and cross every “t”, with meticulous care, so that things cannot move as fast as desired. That has been the pattern since Joe Biden took office, and I have seen no evidence of that changing now.

8 comments

Make no mistake, Israel is about to begin the final defeat of Hamas in Gaza

1:38 pm

Hamas vs Israel
Even the Arabs recognize these facts.
Courtesy of Doug Ross.

If anything should illustrate the bankrupt, mindless, stupid and out-of-touch mentality of the leaders of the Democratic Party, it has been the efforts recently of President Joe Biden and Senate Majority leader Charles Schumer (D-New York) to push for a major slow-down or even shut down of Israel’s war against the murderous Hamas leadership and its minions in Gaza.

Biden wants Israel to slow down and to limit its offensive and not move into the last Hamas stronghold in its southern city of Rafah. Schumer has called for new elections in Israel to remove Netanyahu, who Schumer called “an obstacle to peace.”

Both, along with many members of their party, are presently considering ways to punish Israel if it defies them and invades Rafah, including withholding military aid.

Both men are actually excellent examples of the majority of the modern Democratic Party, willing to excuse rape and murder of women and children, if it furthers their political agenda. Both want the American Muslim vote, and are willing to tolerate any evil by Islamic terrorists to get it. In fact, it is very likely that they are doing this because of a strong undercurrent of anti-Semitism and Jew-hate within their party ranks.

What these leaders of the Democratic Party do not understand at all is that Israel is no longer interested in compromising with them, with Hamas, or with any Islamic terrorists anywhere. As Netanyahu made clear in his response to these calls this past weekend, Israel is moving forward in this war, and nothing is going to stop it.
» Read more

20 comments

What to expect on the next few Starship/Superheavy test launches

11:28 am

Superheavy/Starship lifting off on March 14, 2024
Superheavy/Starship lifting off on March 14, 2024

As noted last week by Eric Berger after the third orbital test launch of SpaceX’s Superheavy/Starship rocket on March 14, 2024, this rocket is presently only a few short steps to becoming an operational expendable rocket that can put 100 to 150 metric tons into orbit for about the cost of a Falcon Heavy launch.

To completely achieve this status SpaceX will still have to accomplish several additional engineering goals during the next few test flights, beyond what it has been done so far. This is what I predict therefore for the next test flight, number four:

Superheavy

SpaceX will once again attempt to softly bring Superheavy down over the ocean in the Gulf of Mexico, hovering the stage vertically over the surface for a few seconds to demonstrate it could do the same once it eventually comes down next to the launch tower so that the chopsticks can grab it. To do this the company will have to figure out what went wrong on last week’s flight, when the stage began to tumble as it dropped below 100 kilometers altitude. It also appeared to be unable to fire its engines as planned.

An even more important achievement on this third flight however will be a third straight successful hot fire stage separation, sending Starship on its way to orbit as planned. If Superheavy can do this for the third time, it will prove without doubt that the rocket stage is now capable of doing its number one job, launching payloads. Reusability can follow later.

Starship
» Read more

18 comments

The DEI disaster now appears to be hitting American Airlines

2:54 pm

American Airlines; Clowns in charge!

The continuing and almost daily airline incidents in recent weeks, with planes repeatedly being forced to make emergency landings because of mechanical failures, has too often been blamed by the media on Boeing and the airplanes it builds, when almost all of these mechanical problems have had nothing to do with that airplane manufacturer. Once Boeing sells a plane to an airline, it becomes the airline’s responsibility to maintain it and keep it airworthy. Boeing itself might have serious management and quality control problems making its new planes suspect, but when older planes fail it is not Boeing’s fault. For example, all of the recent failures at United were clearly due to failures of United’s own maintenance staff, failures quite likely instigated by that company’s decision since 2020 to make race and gender the primary qualifications for hiring, not skill, talent, or knowledge.

We are now seeing the same phenomenon at American Airlines (AA), which since December has experienced its own string of flight emergencies:
» Read more

33 comments

Pushback: Judge rules again that awarding federal grants based on race is illegal

1:52 pm

Modern segregation
Modern Democratic Party segregation

The only race or ethnic options offered by MBDA's Orlando office
The only race or ethnic options offered by
MBDA’s Orlando office

“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” On March 5, 2024, federal judge Mark Pittman for the Northern District of Texas reiterated an earlier decision from June 2023 and once again ruled that the race-based awards issued by the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) violate numerous civil rights laws as well as the Constitution and are illegal.

Pittman then issued a permanent injunction that barred this federal agency from awarding any more benefits based on race. You can read his new ruling here [pdf].

Pittman had made an almost identical ruling in this case last year. At the time I noted that it appeared that at least one MBDA office in New Mexico was ignoring the ruling and continuing to give awards based on race. The graphic to the right, included in the judge’s ruling last week, shows a typical MBDA application form at the time. It literaly makes it impossible for a white person who is not Jewish or Hispanic from even applying.

One year later the New Mexico has changed the wording of its webpage to eliminate any mention of racial requirements. The application form [pdf] used by that office and others now includes an extra category, “Other (white),” so clearly whites can now apply.

I guarantee whites still won’t win any contracts, despite this ruling. As I predicted then,
» Read more

14 comments

SpaceX’s Superheavy/Starship successfully launches

9:19 am

Superheavy/Starship lifting off today
Superheavy/Starship lifting off today

Early this morning SpaceX successfully launched its Superheavy/Starship heavy-lift rocket on its third orbital test flight.

The flight achieved almost all of its test goals, and far exceeded what was accomplished on the previous test launch in November.

First, Superheavy appeared to operate perfectly through launch, putting Starship into its correct near-orbit trajectory. The hot-fire stage separation, where Starship begins firing its engines before separation, worked as planned for the second straight time. Superheavy then refired some of its engines so as to target its correct landing zone in the Gulf of Mexico. As it approached the ocean surface, however, it started to tumble, and though some engines appeared to light for the landing burn, something went wrong and the stage was lost.

Next, Starship continued on its coast phase, during which engineers apparently tested opening and closing the payload doors as well as demonstrating a propellant transfer between two tanks. It also appeared that the engineering team was testing a variety of orientation modes for Starship. First it flew oriented stable to the Earth’s horizon. Then it appeared they placed the spacecraft in barbeque mode, where a spacecraft is placed in a steady roll in order to evenly distribute the heat on its surface.

For reasons not yet explained, the team cancelled the refire test in orbit of its Raptor engines. As the orbit chosen was low, the atmosphere still slowed the spacecraft down so that its de-orbit would still occur over the Indian Ocean.

As Starship started to descend it appeared its flaps were working successfully to control its orientation. It also appeared the heat shield tiles were working, as shown in the picture below. As Starship entered the thicker part of the atmosphere however, some tiles could be seen flying away from the ship and the spacecraft began to tumble. At an altitude of about 65 kilometers signal was lost.
» Read more

45 comments

Defiance: Blacklisted Portland professor joins New College in Florida

2:57 pm

Bruce Gilley of Portland State University, willing to fight
Bruce Gilley of Portland State University

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Bruce Gilley, the Portland State University political scientist professor who was vilified, blacklisted, and threatened with death after writing a paper arguing that western colonialism was not all evil, that it also brought benefits to third world nations, has now taken a job as a scholar in residence at New College in Florida.

Left-leaning scholars have shown active disdain for both Gilley and New College, the latter of which is in the process of being remade from a poorly ranked campus heavily focused on social justice and critical race theory into one that prioritizes a classical liberal education.

“What they are doing there is of global significance, because this is a public university, it’s where the clearest democratic fight is,” Gilley told The College Fix in a telephone interview Friday discussing his new post. In a piece for the American Conservative, Gilley explained further: “New College is the first Reconquista of a publicly-funded venue. …Taking back power from the academic mullahs who have turned higher education in the West into little more than a madrassa system of leftist thought depends on storming the public institutions, not fleeing from them.”

Gilley’s paper on colonialism had made this quite reasonable historical statement:
» Read more

9 comments

The investors behind Space One, the Japanese commercial rocket company that had a launch failure yesterday

9:01 am

The explosion yesterday of the new Japanese-built Kairos-1 solid-fueded rocket shortly after lift-off immediately raised questions whether the new rocket company that built it, Space One, could survive that failure.

This story from CNBC suggests it will, based mainly on the nature of its principal investors.

Space One was set up in 2018 by a consortium of Japanese companies including Canon Electronics, IHI Aerospace and construction firm Shimizu, along with the government-owned Development Bank of Japan. Mitsubishi UFJ and Mizuho Financial Group, two of Japan’s biggest banks, also own minority stakes in Space One.

The story is focused on the declines in the stock values of these companies, following the failure, with Canon’s stock falling the most, 12.7%.

My takeaways from the article however are different. First, these are not small investors. Space One is backed by some of Japan’s biggest corporations as well as indirectly by the Japanese government. One failure should not cause them to back out of the project.

Second, that the company was formed in 2018 by these Japanese heavy-hitters and only now was able to finally attempt a launch — that ended in failure — suggests Japan’s heavy-hitters continue to do things slowly and poorly. Not only have these big companies been working much too slow to build this relatively small rocket, Mitsubishi’s effort to build the much larger H3 rocket for Japan’s space agency JAXA has also been fraught with delays and problems, from engine cracks to launch failures. It appears Japan’s space industry is building things with the same lackadaisical attitude of America’s modern airline industry.

Third, that this “startup” was created by a team of old space large companies suggests Japan still doesn’t get the basics of capitalism. This new company isn’t creating any real competition. It was instead apparently formed to keep these heavy hitters in control of the Japanese launch market. This partnership reminds me of the many projects put together for decades by American consortiums of old space companies, such as Boeing teaming with Lockheed Martin to create ULA. All such partnerships were designed not to create new companies and new innovative products that would compete, but to maintain the control these old companies had on the industry.

Space One will likely fly again, but until we begin to see completely new companies from Japan, backed by independent new investors, this country is going to continue to lag behind everyone else.

3 comments

Another United airplane makes an emergency landing

1:26 pm

United Airlines: Run by bigoted clowns
United Airlines: Run by bigoted clowns

As more proof that the United Airlines policies for hiring and promotion — focused solely on skin color, ethnicity, and sex more than talent, knowledge, and skills — is making flying on that airline downright dangerous, another United flight today had to make an emergency landing when immediately after take-off fluid began pouring from the plane.

Just 10 seconds after flight 830 from Sydney to San Francisco took the air, video by plane spotter New York Aviation got clear images of fluid spewing from the plane — it looks like it was coming from the rear right landing gear.

The crew of the Boeing 777-300 jet continued over the ocean for a while before turning around. Video from a passenger shows the crew dumping fuel before landing. The plane landed safely back at the airport in Sydney, with no injuries, but a lot of questions.

This was the fifth such incident of a United flight in just over a week, including four emergency landings and a failure after landing.

Though this was a Boeing jet, the fault here lies entirely with United, its pilots, and its maintenance department. Though pilots should be able to rely on their maintenance departments to keep the plane airworthy, they are also supposed to check their airplanes carefully before take-off. That neither the pilots of this plane or the maintenance staff detected anything before take-off suggests that no one is really doing their job right.

No matter. United is determined to make sure that half its employees are blacks or minorities or women, no matter how little those new hires know about maintaining an airplane. So what if planes fall from the sky and people die? United will have achieved diversity, equity, and inclusion!

3 comments

The “news” outlet that slandered a 9-year-old football fan is no more

12:39 pm

Holden Armenta on his way to the Superbowl
Holden Armenta in face-paint and headdress,
on his way to the Superbowl. Click for video.

Bring a gun to a knife fight: The “news” outlet Deadspin, that slandered a 9-year-old football fan for no reason other than outright hate of America, is no more, its owner G/O Media selling it to another company that immediately shut it down.

In the past few months the struggles of G/O have been well publicized, from their being forced to shutter (and later sell the rights to) Jezebel to facing down a lawsuit from the family of a Kansas City Chiefs fan who was smeared as ‘racist’ for wearing what they called ‘blackface’ to a game by Deadspin.

Well, apparently Deadspin has proved to be more trouble than it’s worth to the suits at G/O, because today it was announced that they’d sold the property to European firm ‘Lineup Publishing’… who have no interest in retaining any of the current Deadspin staff.

» Read more

6 comments

FAA lists possible launch windows for Starship/Superheavy launch

11:59 am

Though it as yet not issued a launch permit, the FAA has now released an advisory to the public, listing the possible launch windows for the next Starship/Superheavy launch, beginning on March 14, 2024 and including windows on each day through March 18th.

The advisory lists a primary date of Thursday, March 14, with the time 12:00Z-14:13Z (7 a.m. to 9:13 a.m. central). The plan also includes backup dates for the following four days, with the window closing at 8:01 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday before increasing to 9:13 a.m. again on Monday.

It is very possible this advisory is premature. It does strongly suggest however that the FAA is about to issue the launch licence. Based on past actions, expect that license to be announced as close to the launch date as reasonably possible, in order to make difficult or impossible any legal action to stop it by the various independent activist groups that have been suing both SpaceX and the FAA. (While the FAA has clearly been ordered by higher-ups in the Biden administration to slow-walk SpaceX’s effort, its people generally want SpaceX to succeed.)

If the first launch attempt will be on March 14th, two days hence, that license licence must be issued soon.

2 comments

United Airlines diversity quotas finally begin paying off in disaster

11:57 am

United Airlines: Run by fascist clowns
United Airlines: Run by fascist clowns

In the past week there have been four serious airplane incidents involving United Airlines. Though most of the media focus has been aimed at Boeing — which clearly has demonstrated significant management and design issues with almost all its new products in the past few years — the real culprit of these recent failures is not Boeing. All of the following potentially deadly incidents occurred on United flights, and all suggest major problems within its maintenance and hiring departments.

  • March 4: A United Boeing 737 had to make an emergency landing shortly after take-off when a fire started in one of its engines. One news report claimed the fire was caused when some bubble wrap was pulled into the engine, an explanation that seems exceedingly unconvincing, especially because no investigation has yet been completed.
  • March 7: While taking off in San Francisco, one wheel on a United Boeing 777-200 airplane fell off, crushing several cars in an airport employee parking lot, with the plane making an emergency landing in Los Angeles. United had purchased the airplane 22 years previously, so the problem had to come from within United’s maintenance department.
  • March 8: A United Boeing 737-Max ended up on the grass while taxiing off the runway after landing when its left main landing gear collapsed. One passenger reported the incident occurred due to bad driving by the pilot, who mistakenly steered the plane onto the grass, causing the gear to collapse.
  • March 8: A United Airbus A320 had to make an emergency landing in Los Angeles when it experienced “complete hydraulic failure” in one of the airplane’s three hydraulic systems.

In 2020, shortly after George Floyd’s death, United officials made a very public commitment to instituting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) quotas in hiring, from maintenance to pilots. For example, it announced it would favor training and hiring pilots based on skin color and sex, regardless of qualification.
» Read more

17 comments

A No Labels third party 2024 presidential ticket will give Americans a chance to replace the failed Democratic Party

3:38 pm

The Democratic Party: Fostering election tampering everywhere
This party has got to be replaced

With the announcement today that the No Labels third party, made up of disaffected moderates from both parties (with the majority from the Democratic Party side), will field a 2024 presidential ticket in November, most news reports are doing what this AP report does, focus on the impact that candidacy will have on the Trump-Biden match-up.

Biden supporters worry No Labels will pull votes away from the president in battleground states and are critical of how the group won’t disclose its donors or much of its decision-making.

The executive director of the group MoveOn, which is aligned with Democrats, said a No Labels ticket would help Trump win. “Any candidates who join the No Labels presidential ticket will be complicit in making it easier for Donald Trump and MAGA extremists to win a second term in the White House,” Executive Director Rahna Epting said in a written statement.

Third Way, another group that is aligned with Democrats and opposes a No Labels ticket, noted No Labels was moving forward without having first found a candidate.

Americans need to look at this a different way. » Read more

11 comments

Two Democrats in Congress go after SpaceX for the alleged Russian theft of Starlink terminals

9:58 am

Two of the more radical Democrats in Congress, Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) and Robert Garcia (D-California), have issued a public letter [pdf] to SpaceX, accusing the company of not having the “appropriate guardrails and policies in place to ensure your technology is neither acquired nor used illegally by Russia.”

The letter then demands SpaceX answer a number of detailed questions, such as the number of thefts SpaceX has detected, what does the company do to prevent such thefts, and how the company is acting to adhere to the present federal sanctions against Russia. It demands answers by March 20, 2024.

SpaceX has made it very clear it is doing what it can to prevent the use of stolen Starlink terminals, not only in the war situation in the Ukraine but elsewhere. It is not in the company’s interest to allow such thefts.

This letter therefore is just another effort by the Democrats to harass Elon Musk, because Musk has also made it clear he personally no longer supports the agenda of today’s Democratic Party. These two politicians likely intend to use whatever answer they get from SpaceX to further attack the company, and even institute sanctions against it.

Welcome to the new America, where politicians can routinely abuse their power to harass any private citizen who disagrees with them.

6 comments

Budget bill includes very short extension of commercial space “learning period”

9:39 am

The budget bill that Congress has just passed and awaits signature by the president included a very short extension of commercial space “learning period” that supposedly prevents heavy safety regulation by the FAA of the new commercial space industry.

That learning period was first established in 2004, and has been extended several times since. This new bill extends that period until May 11, 2024, only two months, supposedly to allow Congress time to pass a new commercial space act.

The truth is that, at present, the Biden administration has long since abandoned that learning period exemption, and has been applying a much stricter safety regulatory framework from space companies than required by law, as best illustrated by its treatment of SpaceX’s Superheavy/Starship launches. The FAA now expects all launches to function perfectly, even if testing a prototype, and should anything not go perfectly it treats the failure the same as an airplane mishap that requres any investigation to get full government approval before further launches can resume.

Unless there is a change in leadership in Washington, it is very likely we shall see few new American rocket companies from here on out. The existing companies with lots of money and power will survive, but under this heavy regulatory atmosphere it will be hard if not impossible for new companies to get established.

0 comments

Hamas anti-Semitic bullies shut down physics class because the professor was Israeli

1:59 pm

The seal of UNLV. The motto means
The seal of UNLV. The motto means “All
things for god’s country,” a motto UNLV
no longer follows.

Last month a group of Hamas anti-Semitic bullies invaded a classroom at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas (UNLV) and shut down the lecture about black holes by a physics professor, simply because that professor, Asaf Peer, happened to be Israeli.

Peer, from Israel’s Bar-Ilan University, actually invited the activists to remain to learn about black holes and then discuss “unrelated issues” after his lecture. But the demonstrators continued their antics, leading to the UNLV police to be called in.

When the police arrived, they refused to remove or silence the protesters so the lecture could continue. Instead, they decided that the First Amendment gave this mob the right to silence whomever they wanted. The police further decided that for Peer’s “safety,” his lecture must end and they would “escort” him off campus.

This led Professor Asaf Peer … to ask “What about my freedom of speech?”

How naive of Peer. Doesn’t he know that in today’s America, the First Amendment only guarantees the left the right to speak and shout and harass and riot and even kill? It also gives the left, and only the left, the right to silence and blacklist and ban any other speech, and if that doesn’t work it gives the left to right to use force and violence to shut up any dissent.

Or to put it more simply, their violence is speech, your speech is violence.

At the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, it is very clear this is how university officials and the police interpret the Bill of Rights.
» Read more

12 comments

Another woman sues SpaceX for sexual discrimination and retaliation

10:10 am

On March 5, 2024 Michelle Dopak filed a lawsuit against SpaceX for sexual discrimination and retaliation, claiming the company paid her less than male workers, refused to promote her, and ignored her complaints about sexual abuse by her married manager that eventually led to a pregnancy.

Dopak said in the suit that in 2020, her manager offered her $100,000 to have an abortion, which she declined. She is suing the company for an unspecified amount of damages. Reuters was first to report the existence of the lawsuit. Dopak accused SpaceX of colluding with her former manager by allowing him to transfer $3.7 million in SpaceX stock out of his name to evade child support payments, according to the lawsuit obtained by Business Insider.

This suit is one now of several discrimination suits against the company. Unlike the others, however, if Dopak’s accusations prove true it would be the most damaging of all, since she claims the company itself took action against her to protect this manager. The other suits appear more frivolous on their face, issued by individuals claiming to have been fired by SpaceX for their opinions, when the facts strongly suggest they were more interested in causing trouble at the company then doing their job, and thus deserved to be fired.

4 comments

NJ man arrested for trafficking 675 Starlink terminals illegally

10:00 am

A New Jersey man was arrested on December 4, 2023 while driving a vehicle carrying more than two hundred Starlink terminals, and later charged with trafficking 675 Starlink terminals that he obtained illegally using “stolen credit card accounts or hacked Starlink billing accounts.”

The man, 35-year-old Kelvin Rodriguez-Moya, was stopped by police Dec. 4 while driving 223 Starlink terminals in a pickup truck and trailer after leaving a residence in Lawrence Township, New Jersey, a criminal complaint said. The terminals had shipping labels addressed to multiple different names at the same address.

Lawrence Township police had been tipped off about a suspiciously large number of Starlink terminals being shipped to that home, the complaint said. Detectives then witnessed Rodriguez-Moya loading a FedEx shipment of terminals onto the truck and trailer.

SpaceX is working with the police to determine how Rodriguez-Moya obtained so many terminals. I suspect it was because so much of Starlink operations are automated. The computer programs that issue terminals to new customers aren’t smart enough to notice such things.

This case might also help explain the stories in both Russia and Botswana of unauthorized terminals being sold.

0 comments

UK government to invest £10 million in Saxavord spaceport

9:45 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea.

The government of the United Kingdom announced yesterday that it will directly invest £10 million in the Saxavord spaceport being built on one of the Shetland Islands, as shown on the map to the right.

Coming in addition to around £40 million of private investment, the government funding will allow SaxaVord to accelerate its capital works programme to ensure it is ready to support the first orbital launch.

That capital works program was forced to shut down last year when red tape at the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) delayed the licensing of Saxavord. It could be this grant has been issued partly to repay the losses the spaceport company experienced due to those bureaucratic delays. The timing kind of reinforces this speculation, as only yesterday Saxavord got its spaceport license approved, though other approvals remain pending.

All this news suggests strongly that the first test flight at Saxavord by the German rocket startup Rocket Factory Augsburg will occur later this year, as promised.

Meanwhile, the other spaceport in Sutherland must be wondering if it can get similar government aid, or if the government is now playing favorites.

0 comments
1 … 31 32 33 34 35 … 388