Tag: oppression

Today’s blacklisted child: McDonald’s evicts unjabbed children with cancer from Ronald McDonald House in Vancouver

12:33 pm

Already here in Canada and the United States
That child being rounded up for a death camp in this picture could easily
be the sick son of Austin Fergason. Soon it will be your children, and you.

Now they’re coming for the children: The management at a Ronald McDonald House for sick children in Vancouver has told the families of its residents that any child who has not gotten a COVID shot by next week will be evicted from the facility.

Austin Fergason is the father of a four-year-old child with leukemia who received a notice from Ronald McDonald House Charities – British Columbia & Yukon chapter, that he had a month to move his child and his family out unless they submitted to the jab.

“Beginning January 17, 2022, everyone five years and older who are working, staying or visiting our facilities (both the House at 4567 Heather St. Vancouver and at the Family Room in Surrey Memorial Hospital) must show proof of full vaccination (two doses), in addition to completing our existing screening, unless an Accommodation has been sought and has been explicitly approved and granted by RMHC (Ronald McDonald House Charities) in writing,” reads the notice.

It gives these families till the end of the month to comply. Fergason and his family have been at the House since October.

» Read more

14 comments

Pushback: Former employee sues Smith College for discrimination and harassment because she is white

1:33 pm

No civil rights allowed for whites at Smith College
No civil rights allowed for whites at Smith College

Fighting back against bigotry: Jodi Shaw, a former librarian at Smith College in Massachusetts, has sued the college for discriminating against her because she was white, and harassing her by forcing her to attend critical race theory indoctrination sessions that demanded she admit to racism and the evils of the white race.

While she worked there, Shaw “was denied a significant professional career advancement opportunity when she was told by her supervisors that they canceled an orientation program she organized ‘because you are white.’” She was also expected to run a “Residential Life Curriculum” in which students were directed “to project stereotypes and assumptions onto themselves and others based on skin color.” The college asked Shaw to maintain “affinity houses,” which consisted of student housing segregated along racial lines.

During a professional development retreat at which attendance was compulsory, Shaw “was publicly humiliated for not admitting to ‘white supremacy’ and ‘white privilege’ and was continually expected to submit to shaming and harassing group race therapy as an ongoing condition of employment.”

The college harassed her, Shaw claims in the complaint. When she objected to the offending policies and the racially hostile environment at Smith College, the “defendants retaliated against her, attempted to stymie her efforts to file an internal complaint, and then hedged and delayed their investigation. Defendants steadily removed Plaintiff’s job responsibilities, denied her promotional opportunities consistent with all of her colleagues, placed her on furlough, launched a pretextual investigation into her email usage, and deliberately made any further employment at Smith College impossible for Shaw.”

» Read more

23 comments

Roscosmos struggles to figure out how private enterprise works

12:25 pm

null
Liberty for private enterprise in Russia’s space industry?

Doug Messier at Parabolic Arc today published a translation of an interview given by Oxana Wolf, Roscosmos Deputy Director of the Department of Advanced Programs and the Sphere Project, describing Roscosmos’ effort to work with Russian private commercial aerospace companies.

Though she declared near the end of the interview that “We want our private companies to succeed,” the rest of the interview indicated that she and Roscosmos don’t really understand how private enterprise works, though it also appeared both are struggling to figure it out.

For example, when asked why Russia is having so much difficulty changing its regulations to encourage private enterprise, Wolf said the following:

I wondered this question. I saw at what point the Americans decided to change their legislation in order to raise a whole galaxy of private owners and entrust them with tasks that were previously solved by the state. Changes in space laws began in the 1980s, and laws that got [Jeff] Bezos, [Elon] Musk and [Richard] Branson and others on their feet were passed in the mid-1990s. That is, the “era of private traders education” began more than 30 years ago!

When the “private traders” proved their ability to provide quality services, the American government agencies involved in space, on a competitive basis, gave them orders for launches. [emphasis mine]

To her mind, the government led this change. In Russia’s top-down culture, such change must always come from above, from government leadership. However, her impression of this history is wrong. » Read more

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NASA’s safety panel claims management expertise in ’21 annual report, demanding that NASA run Artemis using a “top-down” approach

10:17 am

NASA’s safety panel today issued its 2021 annual report, and rather than review issues of safety in the operations of the agency’s various manned programs, the panel focused on proposing a redesign of the management structure of NASA manned programs, demanding that NASA run Artemis using a “top-down” approach, taking power and control away from private commercial space and putting it in the hands of NASA’s bureaucracy. From the press release:

Specifically, the report recommends that NASA should develop a strategic vision for the future of space exploration and operations; establish and provide leadership through a “board of directors” that includes agency center directors and other key officials, with the emphasis on providing benefit to the agency’s mission as a cohesive whole; and manage Artemis as an integrated program with top-down alignment. The panel also reiterated a recommendation from its 2020 report that Congress designate a lead federal agency for civil space traffic management.

This summary captures nicely the substance of the entire report [pdf]. Rather than review the specific safety issues in each of NASA’s manned programs — the panel’s actual job — the panel decided it would look at how Congress, the White House, and NASA’s leadership have organized the management of its manned program, and tell them all how to do things.

None of this is the safety panel’s business. Such recommendations should come from Congress or the White House, or from a specific panel created by those elected officials or NASA’s top management, tasked with the specific job.

The panel meanwhile ignored its real job, to review the engineering of NASA’s manned program and spot areas where such work might need to be revised or fixed. While the panel spent its time in 2020 putting together this inappropriate report, it apparently missed entirely the valve problem in Boeing’s Starliner capsule that has caused an additional year delay in its launch.

This panel continues to demonstrate its corrupt and power-hungry attitude about how the U.S. should explore space. For years it did whatever it could to stymie NASA’s efforts to transfer ownership to the private sector, putting up false barriers to the launch of SpaceX’s manned Dragon capsule that made no sense and were really designed to keep all control within the government bureaucracy.

Now this panel has decided its job is no longer to review the specific technical and engineering issues that could cause a manned spacecraft failure, such as with Boeing’s Starliner. Instead it now believes it should be the designer of NASA’s entire management.

It is long past time that this panel is shut down. It isn’t doing its actual job, and is instead interfering with everyone else’s.

One comment

Today’s blacklisted American: Space historian and science journalist blackballed for opposing COVID shot mandates

12:25 pm

Banned because the author expressed an opinion
Banned because the author expressed an opinion.

After a year of daily reporting the blacklisting of hundreds of innocent Americans for merely expressing dissenting opinions, I am sad to say that the new leftist McCarthyism has finally come after me.

In December I was blackballed by most of the Arizona caving community because I had disagreed with their decisions to discriminate against anyone who had not gotten a COVID shot. One of the local clubs was going to run an outdoor camping/caving event and had decided to require everyone who attended to either prove they had gotten the jabs or could show they were tested negative for the Wuhan flu in the past two days. I objected, first because this was discriminatory and was demanding private medical information from people that by law was forbidden, and second because the policy made no sense because the shots provided no certain protection against the virus.

Realizing that their policy was not going to do anything to protect anyone from COVID, the organizers cancelled the event out of fear, and then made both me and one other protesting caver scapegoats for their decision, demanding we be banned from all caving organizations. What made this particular action especially hurtful was that it was pushed and imposed by a number of people who I thought had been close friends. I instead discovered that they really didn’t give a damn about me, and if I didn’t bow to their political will they were most eager to make me a non-person.

So much for friendship, eh?

I hadn’t reported this at length in public because it was essentially a personal matter. Now however this new fad of blacklisting anyone who disagrees with the new fascists and their medical mandates has reached out to try to hurt me and others professionally.
» Read more

26 comments

SpaceX pushing to launch 2nd generation Starlink satellites by March

9:36 am

Capitalism in space: In paperwork filed by SpaceX to the FCC, it has announced it is pushing to launch the first second generation Starlink satellites by March, 2022.

While some news reports have suggested that SpaceX intended to launch those upgraded satellites on Starship, this reporting is certainly wrong. As the article at the link correctly notes, SpaceX does not have to state what rocket it plans to use in its paperwork. It could very easily launch these first upgraded satellites on a Falcon 9.

The story however does provide this interesting tidbit about the FCC’s treatment of SpaceX in this licensing process:

SpaceX filed the first unmodified Gen2 Starlink application with the FCC in May 2020, requesting permission to launch an unprecedented 30,000 satellites. While the size of the proposed constellation is extraordinary, the FCC has also been exceptionally slow to process it. Only five months after SpaceX submitted its Starlink Gen2 modification request and nineteen months after its original Gen2 application did the FCC finally accept it for filing, which means that it has taken more than a year and a half to merely start the official review process. [emphasis in original]

In other words, the FCC stalled SpaceX for more than a year and a half. If the DC bureaucracy can play such games with Starlink, this suggests it might very well be doing the same with the approval of the environmental reassessment for SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility, which the FAA has now delayed repeatedly since last year. There are many people in Washington, both in the Biden administration and in the established and permanent bureaucracy, who do not like SpaceX’s success or its independence, and wish to use government power to squelch it. This story provides us some evidence that such misuse of government power in the FAA is very likely occurring.

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An independent Russian private space company?

9:20 am

Capitalism in space? The Russian company S7 Space announced today that plans to soon begin tests of the fuel tanks of its proposed reusable smallsat rocket, and is in the process of deciding what Russian facility to use.

“We plan to test the rocket’s elements, namely fuel tanks of a smaller size, with a diameter of 1.5 meters. The trials are aimed at proving that the structure is durable. A concrete laboratory is yet to be selected for the purpose. In other words, there has been no firm contract for trials so far,” [explained the head of the company’s technological research department, Arseny Kisarev.]

The official expressed hope that the trials would be carried out by TsNIIMash (Central Research Institute of Machine Building), a main research institution of Russia’s state-run space corporation Roscosmos.

“However, choosing another lab is also possible, if it corresponds to our requirements of the testing procedure,” he said.

This rocket was first announced in 2019. Development was suspended in 2020, however, when the Putin government imposed new much higher fees on the company for storing the ocean launch platform Sea Launch, fees so high that the company was soon negotiating to sell the platform to a Russian state-run corporation.

It is not clear whether that sale ever occurred, but the company itself appears only now to be resuming some operations. Though today’s story suggests it is operating independent of the control of Roscosmos and the Russian government, this is quite doubtful. Russia today functions much like the various Mafia mobs in the U.S. The various different government agencies divide up the work into “territories” that belong to each company. No other independent company can enter that territory and compete for business. Since S7 Space wants to build its own rocket, that makes it a direct competitor with Roscosmos and the government design bureaus within it that build the various Russian rockets.

More likely Roscosmos wants S7 Space to survive, but under its control and only for the purpose of building a smallsat rocket for Roscosmos. S7 Space appears to be struggling to stay independent, with this announcement likely part of that struggle.

2 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Boston policewoman suspended for leading opposition to COVID shot mandate

11:44 am

Coming to your town in America soon!
Death camps are certainly coming for the unclean unvaccinated.

They’re coming for you next: Shana Cotone, the Boston policewoman who helped form and heads Boston First Responders United, a group for Boston municipal workers that has sued to block the city’s COVID shot mandate on all workers, has been put on administrative leave by her department and is now under “an internal affairs investigation”.

Cottone said BPD officers came to her house and took her badge and gun Saturday morning. “They’re trying to come after me — to silence me,” Cottone told the Herald. “They’re not going to silence me.”

Cottone’s group is not the only one suing. » Read more

5 comments

Pushback: Children in England are refusing to wear masks or get tests

11:02 am

A little child shall lead them, by James Johnson
Painting by James L. Johnson.

And little child shall lead them: According to one teacher’s union official in Great Britain, children are refusing in “huge numbers” to wear masks or get twice-weekly tests for COVID, despite government mandates requiring both.

In its latest guidance issued on Jan. 2, the UK Department for Education (DfE) recommended that secondary school pupils in England should wear face coverings inside classrooms to slow the spread of the Omicron variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. Before that, masks were already recommended in outdoor communal areas and corridors. Secondary school students are also advised to take a lateral flow test twice a week.

But according to the NASUWT teachers’ union, there has been strong resistance from pupils to the new policy. Damien McNulty, a national executive member of the union, told the BBC on Thursday: “Sadly, we have had reports in the last 24 hours of at least six secondary schools in the northwest of England where children, in huge numbers, are refusing to take lateral flow tests or to wear masks.”

“We’ve got one school in Lancashire where only 67 children out of 1,300 are prepared to have a lateral flow test and wear masks,” he said.

» Read more

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Ariane-6 finally wins more launch contracts

9:29 am

Arianespace today announced a new slew of launch contracts, including two for its mostly Italian-built Vega rocket family and four for its Ariane family of rockets.

The latter launch contract is significant as those four launches, putting eight more Galileo GPS-type satellites in orbit for the European Union over the next three years, will all be launched by Arianespace’s new Ariane-6 rocket, built and owned by the commercial company ArianeGroup.

The significance is twofold. First, Ariane-6 has struggled to get launch customers because its launch cost is far higher than SpaceX’s, to a point that the low number of contracts weren’t paying for the cost of development. This new contract overcomes that difficulty by adding four more launches.

Second, the nature of all of Ariane-6’s contracts underscore the difficulties it is having. Before the arrival of SpaceX’s mostly reusable and very inexpensive Falcon 9 rocket, Arianespace held 50% of the market share for commercial launch contracts, using its Ariane-5 rocket. Those customers have mostly vanished, however, switching to SpaceX. Ariane-6 was conceived — by the government-run European Space Agency — as a newer cheaper rocket that would recapture some of that market. All of its launch contracts, both old and new, demonstrate that it is failing to do so, however. Its only customers so far are coming from European government entities, who are required to use Ariane-6 as part of their partnership in the European Union and the European Space Agency. No private concern, inside or outside Europe, seems interested in using Ariane-6. It just costs too much.

For Europe to compete in the new commercial launch market it needs to build better rockets. And to do this it needs to release its rocket industry from the control of government.

6 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Reuters fires long time employee for criticizing BLM

11:41 am

Leftist dictatorship coming to America
What we can look forward to if we all do not
start fighting back, loudly and without fear.

They’re coming for you next: Because Zac Kreigman, Director of Data Science for the Reuters news agency, refused to accept without question the company’s total endorsement of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) organization in 2020 and instead published detailed fact-based internal memos documenting BLM’s bigoted and Marxist agenda, Reuters fired him.

A chain of events—beginning with the death of George Floyd and culminating with a statistical analysis of Black Lives Matter’s claims—would turn the 44-year-old data scientist’s life upside-down. By June 2021, Kriegman would be locked out of Reuters’s servers, denounced by his colleagues, and fired by email. Kriegman had committed an unpardonable offense: he directly criticized the Black Lives Matter movement in the company’s internal communications forum, debunked Reuters’s own biased reporting, and violated a corporate taboo.

Driven by what he called a “moral obligation” to speak out, Kriegman refused to celebrate unquestioningly the BLM narrative and his company’s “diversity and inclusion” programming; to the contrary, he argued that Reuters was exhibiting significant left-wing bias in the newsroom and that the ongoing BLM protests, riots, and calls to “defund the police” would wreak havoc on minority communities. Week after week, Kriegman felt increasingly disillusioned by the Thomson Reuters line. Finally, on the first Tuesday in May 2021, he posted a long, data-intensive critique of BLM’s and his company’s hypocrisy. He was sent to Human Resources and Diversity & Inclusion for the chance to reform his thoughts.

He refused—so they fired him. [emphasis mine]

Of course, Kriegman has been proven right, on all points. The “defund the police” movement pushed by BLM and its allies in the Democratic Party did do great harm to minorities like blacks. Reuters does have a leftist bias, proven not only by Kriegman’s allegations but by his actual firing. He dared express a dissenting view, did not kow-tow to the leftist narrative the company wished to push, and got fired for doing so.

The highlighted words however are the most important. » Read more

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NASA finally makes available to the aerospace industry its new flight termination software

2:59 pm

After what appears to be about a year and a half delay, NASA finally today made available its new flight termination software so that the aerospace industry can now test it.

“This is a major milestone that enables Rocket Lab and other U.S. launch companies to integrate the software now with their launch vehicle’s hardware and run performance simulations,” said David L. Pierce, Wallops Flight Facility director. “This is a key achievement toward enabling Rocket Lab launches from Wallops, in parallel with the NASA teams’ final safety certification steps, which are currently underway. Rocket Lab’s use of the NASA software will enable a high degree of confidence moving forward toward launch.”

Rocket Lab had hoped to launch from Wallops more than a year ago, but was blocked by NASA because the agency was apparently behind schedule in preparing this software. Now that it is finally available for testing, expect Rocket Lab to move swiftly, with a likely Wallops launch within months.

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Today’s blacklisted American: A short list of just a few of the academics fired for having opinions

2:39 pm

Lysenko with Stalin
Trofim Lysenko, the person American academia now most admires,
preaching to Stalin as he destroyed Soviet plant research,
persecuted anyone who disagreed with him, and caused famines
that killed millions.

Today at the Daily Signal one of their writers, Douglas Blair, compiled a list of eight college professors whose lives were destroyed by the intolerant left and its effort to silence all opposition, by any means necessary. That list is as follows:

Five of those eight individuals had previously been a subject of my daily column, “Today’s Blacklisted American,” proving that the number of such cases of oppression and blacklisting by the academic left has grown so large that a daily column can’t possibly cover every story.

What struck me about this list however was the petty, ugly, and absurd reasons given for destroying or silencing these individuals. » Read more

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Debris from Russian anti-satellite test threatens more than ISS

10:26 am

According to an analysis by a commercial space tracking firm, the debris from the satellite destroyed during a Russian anti-satellite test in November threatens not just ISS but many military weather and spy satellites.

Hugh Lewis, head of the Astronautics Research Group at the UK’s University of Southampton, on Monday tweeted an analysis of predicted conjunctions, or close approaches, between satellites and the Cosmos 1408 debris for the first week of January. That analysis showed 8,917 likely conjunctions where a sat and a debris fragment would pass within five kilometers of each other — scarily close in terms of collision risk.

The COMSPOC analysis also shows that Russian government claims that the debris would not harm the International Space Station are blatantly not true. In fact, the opposite appears to be the case.

At the time of ASAT test, COMSPOC listed the ISS as 20th on the list of most imperiled spacecraft. But the analysis shows that risks of a catastrophic collision with the ISS will continue to grow as the debris pieces spiral downward from the impact point into the Earth’s atmosphere, Oltrogge said.

More and more it seems this Russian anti-sat test was a deliberate act of sabotage by the Putin government, aimed at harming U.S. assets.

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Starlink temporarily backs out of India due to regulatory snafu

9:38 am

Capitalism in space: Starlink in India has stopped taking new preorders and is refunding all previous preorders of its internet service because it had failed to get the proper regulatory permits for selling its service.

India’s Ministry of Communications issued a Nov. 26 statement instructing SpaceX to “refrain from booking/rendering” Starlink services “with immediate effect” because the company did not have a license to operate in the country.

In the days that followed, SpaceX appeared to be still accepting $99 preorder deposits via Starlink’s website for addresses in India.

But the website now tells prospective subscribers: “Starlink is not yet available in your area due to pending regulatory approval. As we receive approvals our coverage area will continue to expand, so please check back for future availability in your area.”

The head of Starlink India also announced his resignation today. It appears he not only did not get the proper permissions, he ignored that November 26 order from the government.

SpaceX apparently is now reviewing the legal situation, which is very unclear and might even block the company from selling its services in India entirely. No timeline is presently known for restarting its operations there.

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Iran finally admits rocket launch on December 30th was a failure

5:33 pm

One day after implying that the test launch of Iran’s Simorgh orbital rocket on December 30th was actually a suborbital flight and was a success, that same official admitted yesterday that this was not true, that the plan had been to put three satellites in orbit, and that the launch was a failure.

Ahmad Hosseini, an Iranian defense ministry spokesman, revealed that the rocket failed to put its three payloads into orbit after the rocket was unable to reach the required speed, according to the news agency.

“For a payload to enter orbit, it needs to reach speeds above 7,600 (meters per second). We reached 7,350,” he said in a documentary broadcast on state TV.

It was Hosseini who claimed the launch was a success the day earlier, implying that the low speed was because the flight was intended to be suborbital. Either he knows nothing about rocketry (very likely), or is merely a mouthpiece who was ordered to change his story when the first story was laughed out of the room (also very likely).

The article at the link focuses on France’s condemnation of the launch, claiming it was a ballistic missile.

France’s foreign ministry said the launch was in breach of UN Security Council resolutions, Reuters reported. “We call on Iran not to launch further ballistic missiles designed to be capable of carrying nuclear weapons, including space launchers,” the ministry said.

Simorgh however is not a ballistic missile. Everything I have read about it suggests it is designed to put payloads in orbit, not deliver bombs to other parts of the globe. A ballistic missile is technically a very different thing. It usually uses solid rockets which can be stored for long periods and launched at a moment’s notice. Simorgh uses hypergolic fuels which — though they can be used on ballistic missiles — are rarely used for that purpose because of their toxic nature.

At the same time, these facts about Simorgh should not make us think Iran is not a threat. If you can develop the manpower and technical know-how to built an orbital rocket, you will also have increased your ability to build missiles. Iran is without doubt working to develop both.

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A small victory in Nevada against COVID mandates illustrates the ongoing corrupt politicizing of all of American culture

12:31 pm

Might still exist in Nevada
Might still exist in Nevada.

First the good news: An elected Nevada legislative commission last week overturned an extension proposed by the state’s board of health of its mandate that all college students in the state get COVID shots or be banned from school.

Initially approved in August by the Nevada State Board of Health, the emergency provision was set to last only 120-days, according to The Nevada Independent. When the mandate expired last week and was sent to the Legislative Commission for review, the Commission chose not to make it permanent, with all six Republican lawmakers voting against the mandate and all six Democrats for it.

The tie means the mandate is not renewed.

This small victory for freedom and against irrational discrimination and blacklists illustrates some fundamental points about the entire COVID madness as well as America’s evolving culture.
» Read more

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SpaceX raises another $337 million in investment capital

9:45 am

Capitalism in space: In an SEC filing yesterday SpaceX revealed that it has raised another $337 million in investment capital.

The company raised in 2021 a total of $1.85 billion, and over the last six years has raised close to $7 billion total. While some of that capital is being used to finance its Starlink internet constellation of satellites, most is being funneled into the development of its totally reusable heavy lift Starship/Superheavy rocket.

The eagerness of investors to put money behind SpaceX is a strong vote of confidence in the company, coming from totally independent sources.

Adding in the $2.9 billion dollar contract from NASA for building a lunar lander version of Starship, SpaceX has raised about $10 billion total for building this rocket.

Whether that will be enough of course is not yet known. Based on SpaceX’s past work it should be. That however assumes the federal government’s bureaucracy doesn’t throw a serious wrench in the process, something it right now appears to be doing by stalling the orbital test flight of Starship/Superheavy.

32 comments

Firefly forced to postpone next launch because of security issues

3:35 pm

Capitalism in space: Firefly has been forced to postpone its next launch of its Alpha rocket, tentative scheduled for late January, because the federal government wants the Ukranian investor — who essentially saved the company when it went bankrupt — to completely divest himself of any ownership.

Noosphere Venture Partners, a fund run by Ukrainian-born investor Max Polyakov, said Dec. 29 that it will retain an investment banking firm to sell its interest in Firefly. That sale comes at the request of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), the company said.

Polyakov invested $200 million to bring the company from the ashes when it was about to be liquidated in bankruptcy proceedings. He left its board of directors last year and reduced his share in the company last year in an effort to ease these same concerns. Apparently that wasn’t good enough, even though his ownership was not a problem when the company obtained a lease for a launch site at Vandenberg Space Force Base.

Though there might be a real security issue, we must not dismiss the possibility that this is a corrupt power play by people in Washington to use Polyakov’s foreign roots to push him out so that they can replace him, now that the company is healthy and moving forward after Polyakov saved it.

I know this is a cynical suspicion, but based on the behavior of our Washington bureaucracy and legislators in the past decade, it is far from an unreasonable one.

7 comments

Iran launches orbital Simorph rocket, does not reach orbit

3:09 pm

According to Iran’s state run press, it successfully launched its orbital Simorgh rocket on a test suborbital flight today, carrying three payloads to an altitude of 292 miles.

Ahmad Hosseini, an Iranian defense ministry spokesman, said the satellite-bearing rocket named Simorgh, or “Phoenix,” had launched the three cargoes at an altitude of 292 miles (470 km) and at a speed of 7,350 meters (4,5 miles) per second. “The intended research objectives of this launch were achieved,” Hosseini said, in comments broadcast on state television.

“This was done as a preliminary launch … we will have an operational launch soon,” the spokesman added, without further clarifying whether the devices had successfully entered Earth’s orbit.

In 2020 Iran completed an orbital launch using a mobile launcher, which probably used a different solid rocket instead of Simorgh.

However, since Simorgh is intended as an orbital rocket and it did did not reach orbit this time strongly suggests the rocket failed. Since the Iranian press provided images of the rocket in flight soon after launch, the failure possibly occurred at first stage separation followed by ignition of the second stage, a critical moment in a launch where failures often occur.

No matter. Whether it failed or functioned exactly as planned, this launch will provide Iranian engineers valuable information for that inevitable successful orbital flight.

As an orbital rocket designed to launch satellites, Simorgh actually poses less of a threat than that mobile launcher from 2020. Simorgh isn’t really a missile designed to launch bombs. It takes too long to fuel, and its launch site is vulnerable. The mobile launcher used in 2020, likely using solid rockets, is far more dangerous.

5 comments

Pushback: Citizens create open Christmas soup kitchen when official food drive bans unjabbed

11:59 am

Spokane: Where some charities think some of the poor should starve during Christmas
Spokane: Where some charities think some of the poor should starve
during Christmas, while others step up to provide charity for all.

Pushback against blacklists: When the official annual Christmas soup kitchen in Spokane announced that the homeless and poor would be banned if they didn’t get COVID shots or tested first, a group of local citizens quickly organized an open soup kitchen where no jabs or testing would be required.

The image to the right illustrates the rules for the two competing soup kitchens.

A week before Christmas, in Spokane, WA, the Christmas Bureau food assistance program turned away needy people who could not show proof of Covid-19 vaccination or proof of a negative COVID test no more than 72 hours old.

The Christmas Bureau is an annual holiday assistance program coordinated by Catholic Charities Eastern Washington, Volunteers of America, and the Spokesman-Review. The program is made possible by generous monetary funds and volunteer hours donated by community members and organizations.

In response to the Christmas Bureau’s actions, a group of Christian patriots launched a “No Vaccine Canteen” to feed everyone — regardless of their medical history. [emphasis mine]

I purposely highlight the entities who decided that it was all right to deny charity to some of the poor and homeless during the Christmas season, merely because they hadn’t gotten the government jab. To paraphrase the words of Scrooge, “Maybe these unvaccinated should simply die and decrease the surplus population.”

For those in Spokane with the Christmas season in their hearts, this information should provide guidance next year when these particular organizations come begging for money. It is clear they really don’t have charity in mind, but power and enforcing their will, even onto the most vulnerable.

Instead, Spokane citizens should contact the people who ran the “No-Vaccine Canteen,” who teamed up with an organization called Blessings Under The Bridge, and give them their donations. When they heard about the Christmas Bureau’s decision to turn people away, these people were quickly able to raise $3500 and organize multiple free meal events for the poor.

Below is a video interview with Dan Bell, who helped organize the “No-Vaccine Canteen.” As he says,
» Read more

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Starship prototype #20 completes another static fire launchpad test

9:40 am

Capitalism in space: Despite being blocked by the federal government bureauceacy from launching its Starship/Superheavy rocket on its first orbital flight, SpaceX yesterday successfully completed another static fire launchpad test of the 20th prototype of Starship.

It appears that this was the second static fire test that used all six of prototypes’s Raptor engines.

Meanwhile, Superheavy prototype #4 sits on the orbital launchpad, where similar static fire tests were expected but have not yet occurred. Either SpaceX engineers found they needed to additional revisions of the prototype before attempted such a test, which could fire as many as 29 Raptor engines at once, or the company has decided to hold back its testing because the FAA has not yet approved the environmental reassessment for the Boca Chica launch site. Firing the engines on Superheavy before that approval could be used by SpaceX’s environmental enemies as a public relations weapon to help kill the approval entirely.

Personally I think the answer is the former. It is not Elon Musk’s way to cower in fear of others. In fact, he is more likely to push forward, knowing that the publicity from a successful Superheavy static fire test will almost certainly be mostly positive and enthusiastic, thus helping to force politicians to force the bureaucracy to sign off its approval.

4 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: NY elementary school bans singing “Jingle Bells”

11:48 am

Banned by Brighton Central School District, NY
Banned by Brighton Central School District, NY.

The administrators at an upstate New York elementary school, Council Rock Primary, have decided to ban the song “Jingle Bells” because it might be “controversial or offensive.”

“Jingle Bells,” explained Council Rock principal Matt Tappon in an email, has been replaced with other songs that don’t have “the potential to be controversial or offensive.”

…Allison Rioux, Brighton Central School District assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, offered a different reason for removing “Jingle Bells.” She wrote, “Some suggest that the use of collars on slaves with bells to send an alert that they were running away is connected to the origin of the song Jingle Bells. While we are not taking a stance to whether that is true or not, we do feel strongly that this line of thinking is not in agreement with our district beliefs to value all cultures and experiences of our students.

“For this reason,” Rioux concluded, “along with the idea that there are hundreds of other 5 note songs, we made the decision to not teach the song directly to all students.” [emphasis mine]

Rioux use of the weasel words “Some suggest” as her source for this ridiculous justification is of course another way of her saying “I’m making this up.” According to Kyna Hamill of Boston University, the foremost expert on the history of the song (and whose work the school cites as their justification for the banning),
» Read more

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FAA delays final approval of Starship environmental reassessment till Feb 28th

11:42 am

The FAA has now made it official and announced that the final approval of Starship environmental reassessment will not occur before the end of February, thus preventing any Starship orbital test flights until the spring, at the earliest.

As previously announced, the FAA had planned to release the Final PEA in on December 31, 2021. However, due to the high volume of comments submitted on the Draft PEA, discussions and consultation efforts with consulting parties, the FAA is announcing an update to the schedule. The FAA now plans to release the Final PEA on February 28, 2022.

When the rumors of a delay were first noted last week, I predicted that “Starship’s first orbital flight will not happen until the latter half of ’22, if then.” That prediction is now almost certainly confirmed.

Nor I am not confident the FAA’s environmental reassessment of SpaceX’s launch facility in Boca Chica will be ready even in February. The problem appears to be that the FAA needs to also get the approval of both NOAA and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife agencies, and both appear to be very hostile to SpaceX’s efforts.

In fact, this is beginning to look like the situation in Hawaii with the Thirty Meter Telescope. There protesters blocked the start of construction, and the government, controlled by Democrats, worked with those protesters to step by step keep that obstruction active and working. If so, SpaceX faces a very dangerous situation, as it appears the Biden administration is about to do the same thing to it.

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Pushback against blacklists: Man sues Trader Joe’s for firing him for not getting COVID shot

11:25 am

The religious are 2nd class citizens at Trader Joe's
The religious are 2nd class citizens at Trader Joe’s

Don’t comply: When Trader Joe’s instituted a rule requiring all managers to get the COVID shots, Greg Crawford , a manager there for 26 years, instead got the company to grant him a religious exemption.

The company’s upper management however then banned him from all management meetings, essentially crippling his ability to do his job.

[T]he grocery store’s regional manager informed Crawford that only vaccinated employees would be permitted to attend a required Leader’s Meeting in August; failure to attend the meeting would negatively affect Crawford’s performance review.

The manager also told Crawford that this was a decision by company President and that “There was nothing further to discuss.” The company was essentially penalizing Crawford for his religious beliefs. Under this arrangement, he had no future with the company and would soon either be forced to resign or be fired.

Crawford did not back down, however. » Read more

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China attacks SpaceX, claiming Starlink satellites threaten its space station

9:16 am

China earlier this month submitted a complaint against SpaceX to the UN, claiming that the company’s Starlink satellites have twice forced it to adjust the orbit of its space station to avoid a collusion.

The note said the incidents “constituted dangers to the life or health of astronauts aboard the China Space Station”.

“The U.S. … ignores its obligations under international treaties, posing a serious threat to the lives and safety of astronauts,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a routine briefing on Tuesday.

The story became news today because there was suddenly a flurry of outrage against SpaceX on Chinese social media, responding to Lijian’s statement, with much of it very likely astroturf posts prompted by the Chinese government itself.

This announcement likely signals that China is getting ready to launch the next module to that station. During that launch the large core stage of the Long March 5B rocket will reach orbit, but only for a few days. It will then crash uncontrolled somewhere on Earth. The Chinese government knows it is going to get a lot of bad press because of this fact, and is likely making this complaint to try to excuse its own bad actions.

The two issues however are not the same. Satellite orbits are very predictable, and any maneuvers required by China to avoid Starlink satellites were very routine. Moreover, if necessary SpaceX can adjust its own satellite orbits to avoid a collusion.

The crash of the Long March 5B core stage however is due entirely to a bad design that does not allow for any controlled maneuvers. Once the stage’s engines shut down after delivering the station module into orbit, they cannot be restarted, as designed. The stage must fall to Earth in an unpredictable manner, threatening every spot it flies over during that orbital decay.

At this time the actual launch date for that Long March 5B launch, carrying the next station module, has not been announced. The astronauts on the station just completed their second spacewalk, doing work to prepare for the arrival of the next module. Its arrival can’t be too far in the future, and this complaint by China today suggests it will be sooner rather than later. When it happens China will face a flurry of justified criticism, and the Xi government likely plans to use this UN complaint then to deflect that criticism.

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Today’s blacklisted Americans: School board votes to pay whites less than non-whites

11:46 am

Whites to the back of the bus in Minnesota
Whites go to the back of the bus in Minnesota

“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” The Mankato School Board in Minnesota voted unanimously last week to pay its white teachers less than its non-white teachers, while also voting to place them in “work environments based on their race.”

Board members hotly defended the policy vote earlier this month claiming it wasn’t “segregation,” according to AlphaNews on Tuesday.

“When you’re one [minority] of a [white] majority it can be very isolating and lonely,” declared board member Erin Roberts. “To have a support system in place for them is not to segregate them, it is absolutely to support them … It’s not about trying to throw the few [BIPOC] individuals we have into one building. It’s about showing them they aren’t alone.”

“It creates global citizens at the end of the day,” Vice Chair Kenneth Reid ridiculously stated.

Yeah, and I say the sky is orange, and thus it must be so.

This is the same school board that demanded that any person wishing to make a statement to them during comment period must dox themselves, identify themselves and state their address. The result of course is that people stopped speaking up, out of fear that antifa mobs — the modern Democratic Party’s KKK division — might attack them or their homes.

The school board passed this law now because the Minnesota state legislature recently voted an amendment to state law that allows for such discrimination. Since federal law supersedes state law and the federal civil rights acts forbid such discrimination, any white teacher who sued in the federal courts should easily win, while also getting this law ruled illegal.

Of course, we no longer live in “the land of the free and the home of the brave,” but in a land ruled by people who are aggressively working to make it a bankrupt and starving Venezuela. Laws no longer matter and can be ignored. And to treat people equally is now considered evil. If you say “All lives matter” you must be destroyed.

And if you were born white, you are now a second class citizen in Minnesota. Get to the back the bus, boy!

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Pushback against blacklists: Employee resistance force hospitals nationwide to abandon COVID shot mandates

12:09 pm

Patrick Henry
We should all emulate Patrick Henry, putting liberty and our freedom
above false security, even at the cost of our jobs or even our lives

Don’t comply: Numerous major hospital systems across the nation are abandoning the mandates that require employees to get the COVID shots or be fired because they have discovered that almost one third of their workforce are willing to walk away rather than get the shot.

The resulting staff shortages would then make operations in these hospitals impossible.

Facing serious staffing shortages, some of the largest and most prominent hospital systems in the United States, including HCA Healthcare Inc., Tenet Healthcare Corp., AdventHealth, and Cleveland Clinic have been forced to backpedal on their COVID-19 jab mandates in hopes of retaining crucial employees, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday

Townhall reported that University Hospitals in the Cleveland, Ohio area also recently announced the reversal of its jab mandate for hospital workers.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the major hospital systems have been forced to reevaluate their coercive COVID-19 jab policies after needed healthcare industry employees, especially nurses, chose to quit rather than get the experimental injections.

» Read more

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A detailed review of SLS’s present launch status

10:28 am

Link here. The article provides a detailed look at the engine controllers in the former shuttle engines that SLS is using on its core first stage, including some details about the failed unit and the issues involved in replacing it.

I found this historical data in the article most interesting:

The first attempt to launch Orbiter Atlantis and the STS-43 Shuttle vehicle was scrubbed before dawn on July 24, 1991, when the primary computer, DCU A, failed while propellants were being used loaded into the External Tank. … As a result, the launch was scrubbed to allow replacement of the controller, and the launch was rescheduled for August 1, 1991. The failure analysis of the controller revealed a broken blind lap solder joint connection of the bit jumper to the half stack, which is not a generic design problem.”

According to contemporaneous Shuttle Status Reports issued by NASA Public Affairs at KSC in late July, 1991, after the launch was scrubbed and the External Tank was drained and inerted, access to the engine area for maintenance was established on July 26. The broken engine controller was removed, and a new one was installed on July 27, followed by testing to verify the new controller on July 28; the three-day countdown was started over from the top on July 29 for the next launch attempt on the morning of August 1.

It took NASA less than a week to replace an engine controller in 1991. Now, it appears it might take NASA several months, including testing, to do the same thing on SLS. Moreover, the article suggests that there are other subcontractors and organizations (such as the range safety) that are also having trouble being ready for the presently scheduled mid-February launch.

All in all, this report suggests that SLS will not launch in February, will be delayed until April, with a strong chance that even that April date might not be met.

The report also illustrates the sluggish manner in which NASA operates today. Nothing is done with any speed. No task is done in one day if it can take a week. This is bad management, and also a very dangerous way to operate, as it actually encourages sloppiness because no one is under any pressure to work hard. The result has been endless niggling failures, each of which delays things interminably.

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Local judge blocks Camden spacesport

10:11 am

Capitalism in space? Almost immediately after the FAA last week issued a launch license for the proposed commercial spaceport in Camden, Georgia, a judge in the state courts issued an injunction blocking it.

The order and request for an interlocutory injunction was filed last week by Camden residents James Goodman and Paul Harris. Camden County Superior Court Judge Stephen G. Scarlett granted the restraining order on Tuesday and scheduled a hearing on the injunction for Jan. 5.

This order prevents the spaceport, being developed by the county itself, from purchasing any additional land for the project.

Meanwhile, a petition to force a referendum for or against the land purchase has obtained enough signatures. They needed 3,400 signatures — 10% of the registered voters of Camden county — and obtained 3,800. Those signatures are presently being verified by the county probate court, which has until mid-February to complete its work. If a special election is then called, it likely won’t occur before the middle of 2022.

It is perfectly legitimate for the citizens of the county to express their opposition to such a project. And if in a special election a majority disapprove, then it is perfectly correct for the county’s effort to be shut down.

This opposition however gives us a peek into the modern culture of America, hostile to innovation and new businesses, and willing to use the government aggressively to prevent it. Whether that hostility is felt by the majority in Camden County is at present unknown, though the success of the petition suggests it is. The special election will tell us.

I predict however that if the special election comes down in favor of the spaceport, the opposition will not accept that result, and will then move to find other legalities that they can enlist the government to use to block the project.

This project is beginning to remind me of Hawaii and the Thirty Meter Telescope, which has been effectively blocked from construction by what appears to be a very small number of radical protesters.

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