Tag: oppression

FAA issues license for SpaceX’s seventh test flight of Starship/Superheavy

7:33 pm

My, what a difference an election makes! FAA today proudly announced that it has issued the launch license for SpaceX’s seventh test flight of Starship/Superheavy at Boca Chica, now tentatively set for mid-January.

I say “proudly” because of this quote in the announcement:

“The FAA continues to increase efficiencies in our licensing determination activities to meet the needs of the commercial space transportation industry,” said the Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation Kelvin B. Coleman. “This license modification that we are issuing is well ahead of the Starship Flight 7 launch date and is another example of the FAA`s commitment to enable safe space transportation.”

For the past three years it was like pulling teeth to get the FAA to issue these licenses for Starship/Superheavy test flights. Every time SpaceX had to wait from one to six months extra, and would only get the license mere hours before launch. During that time the FAA made no effort to “increase efficiencies” in its licensing process. Instead it found more ways to slow things down, not just for SpaceX but for the entire launch industry.

Trump gets elected and now suddenly the agency is interested in reducing red tape? What you are seeing instead a lot of bureaucrats desperately trying to convince the incoming administration that the delays for the past three years were not their fault, that they were really against red tape!

Or to put it more bluntly: “Please don’t fire us!”

I hope Trump doesn’t fall for this. A major house-cleaning in management and regulations is necessary at the FAA, and it must be done fast.

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Thailand signs the Artemis Accords

8:26 am

Thailand yesterday became the 51st nation to sign the Artemis Accords, joining the American alliance in space.

The full list of nations now part of this American space alliance: Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Panama, Peru, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.

Trump created the accords with the goal to create an alliance with enough clout to overcome the Outer Space Treaty’s restrictions on private property. Biden rewrote the goal to accomplish the exact opposite, as NASA states in all recent press releases about new nations joining:

The Artemis Accords are grounded in the Outer Space Treaty and other agreements including the Registration Convention, the Rescue and Return Agreement, as well as best practices and norms of responsible behavior that NASA and its partners have supported, including the public release of scientific data.

I expect there to be a shift back to the original goals in the second Trump administration.

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FAA eliminates a stupid licensing requirement imposed when it “streamlined” its launch licensing regulations

9:18 am

We’re from the government and we’re here to help! The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced last week that it will stop demanding rocket companies redo a flight safety analysis that have already been done by the rocket’s spaceports, a new bit of red tape that was apparently added when the agency introduced its Part 450 “streamlined” licensing regulations in 2021.

The FAA announced Dec. 13 that it will accept flight safety analyses performed by federal launch ranges in California, Florida and Virginia in applications for launch licenses under regulations known as Part 450. That decision means that companies will no longer have to perform similar analyses specifically for the FAA as part of the licensing process. Launch companies had complained of the duplication of work needed to carry out FAA analyses in addition to those required by the ranges they were launching from.

The FAA’s own bureaucracy had recognized the stupidity of this requirement (as well as many others) in July 2023 report [pdf], but the agency’s management did nothing. Apparently the political appointees who ran the agency during the Biden administration either liked this red tape — slowing American business — or were too dense to take action.

Trump’s election victory has now obviously forced some action. Not only has the agency suddenly recognized this particular problem, one week after Trump’s victory it announced the formation of an independent committee of industry and academia to review, once again, its Part 450 regulations.

It seems this committee is largely a Potemkin Village to make the Trump leadership think the agency is doing something. Instead, the FAA should do what it did last week, and adopt the many recommendations of the July 2023 report, now. The committee can then move forward cleaning up Part 450 in other areas instead of simply repeating that past work.

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Head of FAA resigns

1:32 pm

You could leave now for all I care: Mike Whitaker, who has been director of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) under the Biden administration and who has apparently been the main source of that agency’s increased red tape that has almost destroyed the new rocket industry that had been emerging during the first Trump administration, announced today that he is stepping down next month.

Mike Whitaker announced his pending resignation in a message to employees of the FAA, which regulates airlines and aircraft manufacturers and manages the nation’s airspace. He became the agency’s administrator in October 2023.

Since then, the challenges confronting Whitaker have included a surge in close calls between planes, a need for stricter oversight of Boeing. antiquated equipment and a shortage of air traffic controllers at a time of high consumer demand for air travel.

The article at the link is from PBS, so of course it makes this federal bureaucrat appear a hero. Instead, he was a disaster for America’s space industry, forcing unnecessary delays in SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy program, imposing new regulations that claimed to streamline the launch licensing process but did exactly the opposite, and generally forcing FAA regulators to take a fearful attitude to any new technology, so much so that it became almost impossible for that new technology to launch.

As for the aviation industry, Whitaker’s term did little to change things. For example, he did nothing to shut down the DEI programs at major airline and airplane companies that were causing the hiring of unqualified people.

All I can say is good riddance.

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Two congressmen demand FAA streamline its launch licensing process

10:22 am

In a letter [pdf] sent to the FAA on December 6, 2024, two congressmen have called for the FAA to fix what it calls its Part 450 launch licensing process, established in 2021, that has been choking off rocket development in the U.S.

The congressmen, Sam Graves (R-Missouri) and Rob Wittman (R-Virginia), specifically focused on the problems these new regulations have imposed during what the FAA calls its “pre-application review.” From the letter:

In November of 2024, the FAA indicated that 98 percent of applications are met within the statutory 180 day timeline. However, this timeframe does not include the months, and oftentimes years, of pre–application review that create extensive delays for companies seeking a launch and reentry license. [emphasis mine]

Consider the implications of this one quote. The FAA is proud of the fact that it approves license applications within six months — an ungodly long time for a startup — but doesn’t mention that the approval process is actually far longer because it requires new applications to be reviewed at length, before they can even be submitted.

In November, a week after Trump’s election victory, the FAA announced that it was forming a committee made up of people from the launch industry as well as academia to review Part 450. In their letter the congressmen approved of this new committee, but noted its work would not be completed until mid-2025, and that “the system is broken and must be fixed” immediately.

We, however, urge the FAA to act now and ensure that all actions short of rulemaking that can help mitigate the deficiencies of the part 450 regulation are taken in advance of any necessary regulatory changes to ensure that the commercial space industry does not have to wait years for relief.

I suspect we shall see some real action at the FAA come January 20, 2025, after Trump takes office.

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Superheavy to be used on next test flight completes 15-second static fire test

10:04 am

SpaceX has successfully completed a launchpad 15-second static fire test of the 33 engines on the Superheavy booster that will be used on the next test flight (the seventh) of its Starship/Superheavy rocket.

The video at the link is remarkable in that it appears all 33 Raptor-2 engines fired for the entire test with no problems either to the rocket or launchpad, despite producing more thrust in that time than any rocket ever in the history of space exploration.

According to this report, it appears SpaceX is targeting January 11, 2025 for that seventh test flight.

SpaceX has not yet announced a launch date for Starship’s seventh test flight, but the company appears to be eyeing Jan. 11; an email sent by NASA to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration identifies that date as the target. (According to that email, NASA plans to deploy a Gulfstream V jet to observe the upcoming flight.)

This date however has not yet been confirmed by SpaceX. Nor has the FAA indicated it will issue a license. The FAA’s approval will depend on the flight plan SpaceX chooses for the test. If similar to the previous two test flights, then that approval will be fast. If not, the red tape will likely cause several more months of delays.

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One of Australia’s proposed spaceports moves

9:37 am

Australia's spaceports
Australia’s spaceports

“I’m from the government and I’m here to help!” Because of its inability to get the proper permissions from a local council, the management of Equatorial Launch Australia (ELA) has abandoned its original spaceport location on the Gove peninsula in the Northwest Territory of Australia and shifted east to a new location on the York peninsula in Queensland.

On the map to the right the “X” shows the old location, with the new location near the town of Weipa on the west coast of the peninsula. The change was forced on the company when it could not get proper approvals from the Northern Land Council (NLC), which manages the Arnhem Land Aboriginal Land Trust where the original site was located.

In a statement late on Monday, ELA said its most recent attempt to finalise a lease for the expansion of the ASC in October had been unsuccessful, following three other failed attempts in the last 12 months. In each case, it said the NLC had “failed to meet its own specified deadline for the approval of the Head Lease” or “provide any official reason for the delay”, despite pleas from the NT government and the Gumatj Aboriginal Corporation.

Because ELA has a launch contract with a South Korea rocket startup Innospace that intends to launch next year, it decided the switch had to occur now to make sure it could meet its obligations under this launch contract.

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Panama and Austria to sign Artemis Accords

9:18 am

NASA yesterday announced that both Panama and Austria will sign Artemis Accords tomorrow, bringing the total number of nations in the alliance to fifty.

The full list of nations now part of this American space alliance: Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Panama, Peru, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.

The accords were created by the first Trump administration with the goal to create an alliance with enough clout to overcome the Outer Space Treaty’s restrictions on private property. Under the Biden administration, the goal has been rewritten to accomplish the exact opposite, as noted by NASA yesterday:

The Artemis Accords are grounded in the Outer Space Treaty and other agreements including the Registration Convention, the Rescue and Return Agreement, as well as best practices and norms of responsible behavior that NASA and its partners have supported, including the public release of scientific data.

With Trump back in charge, expect him to bring the accords back to its original goal. Unlike his first term, the alliance is now large, and he can use it to quickly apply pressure on the international community to overcome the Outer Space Treaty’s limitations on private property.

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Ten stupid academic studies funded by the federal government

9:18 am

Campus Reform last week posted a list of ten academic studies funded by federal government that any sane person would not only consider stupid, but an utter waste of money.

Number 1 on the list was a grant of almost a half million dollars to researchers at Reed College in Oregon to study the gambling habits of pigeons. The researchers claimed the study would shed light on human gambling behaviors, but if you believe that then you would likely also fork over your life savings to buy the Brooklyn Bridge.

Of the ten studies listed, the National Institute of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded four each, while the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Cancer Institute funded one each.

National Cancer Institute’s study is surely going to help cure cancer, as it gave $7 million to the con artists faking as researchers at Stanford University to build an AI toilet equipped with cameras to scan the user’s waste and backside.

The studies were done at a range of other major universities, including Cornell, the University of California, the University of Illinois, and the University of Connecticut. Most are publicly funded institutions.

This list demonstrates clearly the bankruptcy of the government agencies involved and justifies any effort to slash their budgets by significant amounts. It does more however. It shows us the bankruptcy of the academic community as well. If scientists at major universities think this drivel is valid research, then we know they are teaching their students garbage as well. The public funding to these colleges should be slashed also.

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Why Orion’s heat shield problems give Jared Isaacman the perfect justification to cancel all of SLS/Orion

9:43 am

Orion's damage heat shield
Damage to Orion heat shield caused during re-entry in 2022,
including “cavities resulting from the loss of large chunks”

In yesterday’s press conference announcing new delays in NASA’s next two SLS/Orion Artemis missions to the Moon, agency officials were remarkably terse in providing details on why large chunks of Orion’s heat shield material broke off during its return to Earth in 2022 during the first Artemis mission. That damage, shown to the right, is one of the main reasons for the newly announced launch delays.

All they really said was that the damage was caused during re-entry, the atmosphere causing more stress than expected on the heat shield.

Today NASA finally released a more detailed explanation.

Engineers determined as Orion was returning from its uncrewed mission around the Moon, gases generated inside the heat shield’s ablative outer material called Avcoat were not able to vent and dissipate as expected. This allowed pressure to build up and cracking to occur, causing some charred material to break off in several locations.

…During Artemis I, engineers used the skip guidance entry technique to return Orion to Earth. … Using this maneuver, Orion dipped into the upper part of Earth’s atmosphere and used atmospheric drag to slow down. Orion then used the aerodynamic lift of the capsule to skip back out of the atmosphere, then reenter for final descent under parachutes to splashdown.

[Ground testing during the investigation showed] that during the period between dips into the atmosphere, heating rates decreased, and thermal energy accumulated inside the heat shield’s Avcoat material. This led to the accumulation of gases that are part of the expected ablation process. Because the Avcoat did not have “permeability,” internal pressure built up, and led to cracking and uneven shedding of the outer layer.

In other words, instead of ablating off in small layers, the gas build-up caused the Avcoat to break off in large chunks, with the breakage tending to occur at the seams between sections of the heat shield.
» Read more

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Republican California state legislator introduces bill to overturn California Coastal Commission’s effort to block SpaceX

9:46 am

Wants to be a dictator
Wants to be a dictator

Republican state assemblyman Bill Essayli has now introduced a bill that would overturn the decision by the California Coastal Commission to reject SpaceX’s request to increase its launch rate at Vandenberg spaceport, a decision the commissioners readily and publicly stated was made not to protect the state’s beaches (the commission’s prime function) but because they did not like Musk’s political positions.

“AB 10 will reverse the politically-motivated decision by the California Coastal Commission to restrict SpaceX launches for the Space Force due to their hatred of Elon Musk. This dangerous and illegal decision threatens our national security and erodes the public trust we place in our officials to act in the best interest of the people — not politics,” Essayli said in a statement this week.

SpaceX has already sued the commission and its commissioners for violating Musk’s first amendment rights as well as exceeding their statutory authority.

The bottom line however is that the commission’s decision carries no legal weight. Vandenberg is an federally operated military base, and thus this state commission has no authority to dictate what happens there. The Space Force has simply tried to work with it in the past.

Thus, if the commission’s fangs are not pulled by Essayli’s legislation as well as SpaceX’s lawsuit, the military will likely just ignore it.

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Japan awards $32.5 million contract for lunar GPS-type satellite constellation to startup

9:52 am

Capitalism in space: As part of the multi-billion dollar fund the Japanese government has allocated to encourage private enterprise by new Japanese startups, its space agency JAXA has now awarded a $32.5 million development contract to the startup ArkEdge Space to design and fly a GPS-type satellite in orbit around the Moon, thus demonstrating the technology.

Under the agreement, ArkEdge Space will plan and design the mass production and operation of micro-satellite constellations to lead the development of a next-generation Lunar Navigation Satellite System (LNSS), a vital component to the International “LunaNet” initiative driven by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), European Space Agency (ESA) and JAXA. LunaNet seeks to establish essential infrastructure to support sustainable lunar exploration and foster the growth of the lunar economy.

The real significance of this contract award is that it signals JAXA’s growing shift from designing, building, and owning everything to simply becoming the customer who gets what it needs from the private sector. The Japanese government had established that fund for this express purpose, but JAXA has shown a reluctance to proceed, as it directly threatens its turf. This award indicates that reluctance is finally being pushed aside.

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Orbex gives up on the Sutherland spaceport, switches to SaxaVord

9:27 am

Map of spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Spaceports surrounding the Norwegian Sea

In a very sudden decision, the rocket startup Orbex, based in Great Britain, has “paused” its long-delayed work to develop a launch facility at the Sutherland spaceport in northern Scotland and instead decided to launch its first rockets from the competing SaxaVord spaceport on the Shetland islands.

Orbex says it is halting construction work on the £20 million spaceport and instead is mothballing the project, which has received a £14.6 million public investment package. The space company, which was to have made the Sutherland Spaceport its home port, will now launch its rockets carrying commercial satellites from another north spaceport – SaxaVord on Unst, Shetland.

According to the company’s CEO, it will retain its 50-year lease at Sutherland to give it “flexibility to increase launch capacity in the future.”

The company had originally hoped to launch its Prime rocket from Sutherland in 2022, but has been faced with red tape from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), which has still not issued a launch licence, even though the application was submitted almost three years ago. Orbex has also faced lawfare opposition from local activists as well as a major local landowner, billionaire Anders Povlsen, who is also a major investor in SaxaVord.

That last detail might help explain this decision. In private talks Orbex might have learned that the red tape and opposition would disappear if it switched to SaxaVord. The timing is also suggestive, as only a few days ago construction started on a new spaceport in Scotland, located on the island of North Uist.

All told, Orbex might have decided that the stars were aligned against it at Sutherland, and it was better to move. It now hopes to complete the first test launch of its Prime rocket from SaxaVord next year.

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The real proof that the American political scene is about to experience a new revolution

10:27 am

The Democratic Party for the past half century
The Democratic Party for the past half century

While the conservative press is today going ga-ga over Joe Biden’s pardoning of his son Hunter yesterday — noting accurately that Biden’s action proved himself once again to be a liar and a fraud, having spent the last four years insisting he would never do such a thing while also insisting that “no one is above the law” — I think it more instructive to look at what some of the most rabid partisan leftists have been saying, before and after the election of Donald Trump.

You see, some of these partisan leftists are actually doing something I have not seen a partisan leftist do since before Bill Clinton was president — they are showing an ability to have an open mind.

Let’s begin with two members of a leftist podcast group dubbed the Young Turks that for years saw nothing good about any Republican and considering Donald Trump the epitomization of the devil himself. Anything Trump did was wrong. Everything Trump and the Republicans represented was evil and must be opposed blindly. During and after this presidential election campaign however two of the more noted members of this podcast, Ann Kasparian and Cenk Uygar, changed their tune, and did so in an astonishing way.

First there was Kasparian’s announcement in October that she has left the Democratic Party. Watch:
» Read more

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Construction begins for 3rd spaceport in Scotland

8:04 am

Map of spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea

Construction of a third spaceport in Scotland has now begun, its location on the northwest coast of the island of North Uist (as shown on the map to the right), with its plans to serve suborbital launches initially.

The Highlands and Islands Enterprise, a Scottish government agency focused on regional development, has allocated £947,000 for the construction of the site’s enabling infrastructure. Additionally, the Comhairle is contributing £675,000 from its 2023-2028 capital programme. The total cost of the enabling works project is estimated to be £2.6 million.

After the construction of the enabling infrastructure is complete, which is expected to occur by Spring 2025, a private sector operator will take over to complete the second phase of construction and manage the spaceport.

According to the Wikipedia page for this area on North Uist, the project was first proposed in 2019, and was then hoping to attract orbital launches. Subsequent opposition by activists slowed development and likely reduced the project from orbital to suborbital, at least for now.

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Trump’s picks to run all the federal health agencies guarantees major change is coming

1:02 pm

Trump defiant after being shot
Trump defiant

Fight! Fight! Fight! The announcement late yesterday that president-elect Donald Trump has picked Jay Bhattacharya, the director of Stanford University’s Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging, to head the National Institutes of Health (NIH) underlined quite forcefully the certainty that the outsider nature of all of Trump’s picks to head all the health-related agencies in the federal government will led to major changes in how those agencies operate.

Bhattacharya had been blacklisted for his very vocal opposition to the government’s lockdown and mandate policies during the COVID epidemic. He along with Martin Kulldorff, one of the world’s foremost experts on vaccines and who was also blacklisted during the epidemic, co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration that strongly criticized the policies of imposed by these health agencies, calling instead for a return to the standard response to infectious diseases that had been followed successfully for more than a century.

Putting Bhattacharya in charge of NIH is incredibly ironic. When he along with Kulldorff had come out opposed to the lockdown and jab mandates advocated by Francis Collins, then-head of the NIH, Collins in league with Anthony Fauci, then head of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), put together a back-room campaign to have Bhattacharya, Kulldorff, and many others blacklisted across social media. This campaign also had Kulldorf removed as a member of the CDC’s vaccine safety advisory committee.

Two years later, Collins is now gone, is being sued for his actions, and Bhattacharya has replaced him.

Trump’s defiant choice of Bhattacharya however is only one of many similar decisions, beginning last month with the choice of Robert Kennedy Jr. to run the Department of Health and Human Services.
» Read more

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Judge dismisses lawsuit against SpaceX by activists

9:41 am

A federal judge has now thrown out a lawsuit that had been filed by anti-Musk activists in an attempt to halt all launches by SpaceX of its Starship/Superheavy rocket at Boca Chica.

U.S. District Judge Rolando Olvera issued his ruling last Thursday in response to the request filed by Save RGV on Oct. 9. The group has alleged that SpaceX’s water deluge system is releasing untreated industrial wastewater during launches and sought to halt the launches.

The water deluge system is designed to dampen the effects of Starship’s rocket engine blasts during liftoff and static fire engine testing.

“At the beginning of the Starship-Super Heavy Launch System’s development, it became evident that a deluge water system was necessary to protect the launch site and surrounding areas during launches,” Olvera wrote in the order. “A deluge water system sprays large quantities of potable water at the base of the spacecrafts during launch to prevent fires and reduce dispersal of dust and debris.

“Because of these dangers, Defendant cannot launch its spacecrafts without the deluge water system.”

SpaceX had argued that environmental reviews by both federal and state agencies had determined that the deluge system caused no harm. Olvera concurred, and also noted that to block launches would do significant harm to SpaceX and NASA’s entire lunar program.

This activist group, which represents almost no one in southern Texas, has no real interest in the environment. It filed this and other lawsuits simply as lawfare to try to stymie SpaceX for political reasons, knowing that we have more than seven decades of data at spaceports in Florida and California that prove rocket launches and deluge systems cause no environmental harm. In fact, they help wildlife by creating a large refuge where that wildlife can thrive.

Expect further similar lawsuits, all of which will be summarily dismissed afterward.

What I wonder is who is paying for this lawfare? SaveRGV likely doesn’t have the resources.

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If ordinary people don’t show up at those upcoming FAA Starship/Superheavy public meetings they WILL be screwed

1:24 pm

Starship splashing down vertically
Starship splashing down vertically in the
Gulf of Mexico on November 19, 2024

Yesterday radio host Robert Pratt sent me a news story from a Texas newspaper, the Texas Tribune, which attempted quite surprisingly to capture fairly the local response to the most recent Starship/Superheavy test launch out of Boca Chica on November 19, 2024.

The reporter, Bernice Garcia, clearly made it a point to talk to a lot of people, especially those who came out to see the launch. As a result, she showed that in general, no matter what people felt about Donald Trump or Elon Musk, the local population was almost entirely in favor of SpaceX’s efforts there. For example:

Sanchez was slightly concerned about [the rocket’s sonic booms] but believed the benefits of jobs created by SpaceX was worth the risk. “They know what they’re doing,” Sanchez said.

But his favorable opinion of Musk’s company did not extend to Trump. A naturalized citizen who gained amnesty under the Reagan administration, Sanchez didn’t view Trump’s immigration policies as logistically sound. “If you throw those people out, who’s going to work?” Sanchez said. “You don’t see a white man laboring out in the sun. On the other hand, Mexicans, foreigners, people from other countries –– that’s why they come here, to work.”

While the story found locals with a whole range of opinions about Trump, both positive and negative, it only quoted one person who was hostile to SpaceX, and that quote and person tells us a great deal about the bankrupt nature of that opposition:
» Read more

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Part 3: Fixing our bloated federal government and the administrative state is going to take decades

12:43 pm

The lion now is roaring, quite loudly
The lion now is roaring, quite loudly.
Photo by Travis Jervey.

In part 1 of this series I described how it appears the American public today is no longer asleep and is instead very aggressively participating in the political and cultural debate in ways it has not in many decades, noting how this shift suggests we are experiencing a much more fundamental societal change than a mere shift in voting demographics.

In part 2 of this series I described how this fundamental shift has begun to express itself within the courts and politics in ways unheard of only five years ago. This expression illustrates the bottom-up nature of America, whereby the citizen is sovereign and our so-called leaders can only resist what those citizens want for only so long. And when those citizens become energized, as they now are, that resistance will evaporate with amazing speed.

In part 3 today I am going to take a more pessimistic view, based not on recent events but on the longer view I take naturally as a historian. I do this all the time in my histories. In Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, in describing the political background behind that mission, I could not help noting how that mission changed America and its social goals significantly, for both good and ill. In Leaving Earth, I opened the book like so:

Societies change. Though humans have difficulty perceiving this fact during their lifetimes, the tide of change inexorably rolls forward, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse.

I then documented in detail the space efforts by both Russia and the United States in the decades after the Apollo landing and the politics behind those programs, with both providing a great window into how both societies changed in the second half of the 20th century. As I concluded, “They were like ships passing in the night.”

Similarly, the major cultural and political shift away from big government and the regulatory state that I think we are now experiencing in the United States is not going to change our country overnight. These things take time. People who firmly believe it is a good idea to “gender affirm” confused little kids by cutting off their breasts or castrating them are not going to change their minds easily. People who believe in big government — especially those who benefit from it — are not going to meekly allow that big government and those benefits to vanish without a fight.

The left’s long march through the institutions
» Read more

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FAA approves revised launch rate for Boca Chica; schedules public meetings

10:42 am

The FAA today announced that it has issued a revised draft environmental assessment [pdf] of SpaceX’s operations at Boca Chica in which the agency approves the company’s request to increase its Starship/Superheavy launch rate from 5 to 25 launches per year.

This does not mean that SpaceX can now launch that many times in 2025. The draft still has to go through more red tape, including public meetings and a comment period, then reviewed again by the FAA. In this announcement the FAA rescheduled those public meetings, as follows:

  • Tuesday, January 7, 2025; 1:00 PM–3:00 PM & 5:30 PM–7:30 PM CDT at the Texas Southmost College, Jacob Brown Auditorium, 600 International Boulevard, Brownsville, TX 78520
  • Thursday, January 9, 2025; 1:00 PM–3:00 PM & 5:30 PM–7:30 PM CDT at the Port Isabel Event & Cultural Center, Queen Isabella Room, 309 E Railroad Avenue, Port Isabel, TX 78578
  • Virtually on Monday, January 13, 2025; 5:30 PM–7:30 PM CDT. Registration Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_6f5su5mtTne_vBr8MqJOLA
    Dial-in phone number: 888-788-0099 (Toll Free),
    Webinar ID: 879 9253 6128, Passcode: 900729

I strongly suggest that local businesses and citizens in the Brownsville area organize to show up en masse at these meetings to express their approval of SpaceX, because I can guarantee that the fringe anti-Musk activists groups SaveRGV, Sierra Club, the Friends of Wildlife Corridor, and the fake Indian Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas (which never existed in Texas) are organizing to be there to demand SpaceX be shut down.

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Flights into Brownsville sold out prior to SpaceX’s sixth test flight of Starship/Superheavy

8:57 am

If anyone thinks the anti-Musk activists groups that have been using lawfare to try to shut down SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility have any local support, this story should put a quash on that. According to the airport director for the Brownsville-South Padre Island Airport, all flights sold out leading up to the sixth test flight of Starship/Superheavy.

Airport director Angel Ramos told Channel 5 News he’s noticed traffic increases whenever SpaceX does a flight test. “People are excited,” Ramos said. “They’re wearing SpaceX hats and SpaceX shirts [when they come] in to the airport.”

Ramos said flights were sold out between Sunday and Tuesday, and 700 people have been arriving daily at the airport since Sunday. “There is no launch that happens that we don’t see lots of people coming in and out of the airport, and now that they continue to be more frequent and more successful, people are paying more interest and actually coming days before,” Ramos said.

The story was reported by the local ABC television affiliate, and reflects the very positive impact SpaceX is having on the local community that is recognized quite clearly by everyone who lives there. The Brownsville area had been economically depressed for decades. Now the economy is booming, all because of SpaceX.

The public wants SpaceX there. The nay-sayers represent practically no one. That many local news organizations not only don’t report these facts when they cover the lawfare of these activists but instead often frame their stories as if the opposition is general throughout the region is shameful and an indication of the bankrupt nature of these press outlets.

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Part 2: The waking sleeping giant lurks not just in public places

11:05 am

The lion now is roaring, quite loudly
The lion now is roaring, quite loudly.
Photo by Travis Jervey.

In the first part yesterday of this three part essay, I described how Americans are no longer the disinterested public that we have seen for more than a half century. No longer is the left the only group with passion. Ordinary Americans are now paying attention, and appear aggressively unwilling to allow leftist bad policy and slanderous blacklisting go unchallenged. The public might not be partisan Republicans or conservatives, but it is nonetheless finally aware and outraged by the leftist agenda that has dominated government policy for the past decade, including policies that encouraged the mutilation and castration of children, allowed the queer agenda in schools, promoted anti-Semitism and bigotry throughout the workforce, and fueled an out-of-control federal government that only serves itself even as it squashes the freedoms of ordinary people.

In today’s second part, I wish to dig deeper, because the public’s willing outrage has already caused unexpected major attitude changes in places where such changes have been impossible for decades.

Let us begin with a somewhat complex court decision that I reported on last week. In this court decision, a two-judge panel went beyond the specifics of the lawsuit before it to rule instead on the basic legal authority of the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), concluding that its decades-long requirement that all government agencies obey its environmental recommendations in writing regulations was illegal, that CEQ simply did not have the statutory authority to do this.

As I said, the case itself is very complex. It is not even clear this ruling will stand up, since in the end the CEQ’s recommendations essentially reflect those of the President, whose authority to determine how the agencies under him create regulations based on Congressional law is legal and quite final.

The point however is not whether this decision will stand up. The point is that the judges were quite willing to rule on the legal authority of a government entity, and rule against its authority, essentially invalidating its power.
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Judge rules that Ligado’s $39 billion lawsuit against federal government can proceed

9:32 am

A federal judge has now ruled that the $39 billion lawsuit by the satellite company Ligado against the federal government can move forward.

In October 2023, Ligado sued the government for $39 billion over claims that officials at the Departments of Defense and Commerce took “unlawful actions” to, in effect, improperly seize without compensation the firm’s L-band spectrum. In January, the government had asked a judge to dismiss the suit. Today Judge Edward J. Damich of the US Federal Claims Court ruled in part in favor of Ligado and in part for the government over aspects of the case, but ultimately said the case “may proceed.”

Essentially, after the FCC had awarded this spectrum to Ligado, the feds stepped in to take it away for its own use. The company argued that once it was given that spectrum to use for its satellites it was essentially its property, and that the seizure without due compensation was an illegal taking under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. This court decision allows this lawsuit to proceed.

The reason these federal agencies seized the spectrum this that they believe Ligado’s satellite constellation would interfere with GPS, something the FCC disputed in awarding the spectrum. Whether the company will win in court remains unclear.

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Part 1: The sleeping giant of the American public has finally awakened

1:20 pm

Rick, stating the truth in Casablanca
Have Americans finally awakened?

In my long life there have been a number of times post-election when pundits nationwide have claimed that the results signaled a major cultural transition. This claim was made in 1980 when Ronald Reagan was elected president. It was made again in 1994 when voters gave the Republicans their first majority in the House of Representatives in about four decades. A similar claim was made in 2016, when Trump was elected for the first time.

In every single one of these cases the claim was false. There was no major cultural transition. Republicans might have won control, but the American public and its political class still largely leaned leftward. There was almost no change politically. Despite for example Bill Clinton’s announcement that “The era of big government is over” after the 1994 election, the federal government continued to grow in size and power, and to do so with ever increasing speed.

Even more significant, in every single case, the American people went back to sleep after the election. They considered the election their statement of what must be done, and assumed naively that the new elected officials would obey that statement. No matter how much conservatives attempted to make the public aware that the government remained out of control and was further beginning to institute leftist policies far outside what anyone in America wanted, those attempts fell on deaf ears.

The American people were essentially not interested. The only political movement that moved with any passion was that of the left, and it took advantage of this passion to successfully to get its policies imposed.

It seems however that the 2024 election signals a real cultural transition, far deeper and more significant than the mere shift of voting patterns to the right that most pundits are noting by all demographic groups.

No, what is happening is a shift in passion. The American public has awakened in a way I have never seen. I give you this news report as a clear sign, as the events it describes occurred last week, after the November election, when Americans in the past would gone back into slumber and stop paying attention. Watch and be amazed, not just by the outrage by hundreds of ordinary citizens, but by the fact that this outrage was reported correctly and sympathetically by a television news report.
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Oh no! Starship/Superheavy is loud!

9:21 am

Superheavy after its flight safely captured at Boca Chica
Superheavy after its October flight, safely captured at Boca Chica

Time for another Chicken Little report: A new study of the sound levels produced by SpaceX’s Superheavy booster during its fifth launch and landing at Boca Chica in October 2024 suggests that it produces more noise than predicted.

Overall … Gee et al. note that one of the most important conclusions from their data is the differences between Starship’s launch noise levels and those of SLS and Falcon 9. The team found that Starship produces significantly more noise at liftoff than both SLS and Falcon 9 in both A-weighted and Z-weighted (unweighted) noise metrics.

When compared to Falcon 9, the noise produced by a single Starship launch is equivalent to, at a minimum, 10 Falcon 9 launches. Despite SLS producing more than half of Starship’s overall thrust at liftoff, Starship is substantially louder than SLS. More specifically, one Starship launch is equivalent to that of four to six SLS launches regarding noise production. As has been hypothesized by numerous other studies into the noise produced by rockets, this significant difference in noise levels may be due to the configuration of first-stage engines on the rockets. For example, although the Saturn V produced less overall thrust than SLS, it produced two decibels more noise than SLS, which may be due to the clustered engine configuration on Saturn V’s first stage.

We’re all gonna die! Despite the doom-mongering of this study (which you can read here), the only issue noted by the paper from this noise was car alarms going off. And even here, the spread of the noise was asymmetrical, occurring in only one direction.

The concern about sonic booms has always been the annoyance they cause to residents near airports. In the case of Superheavy, it is very unlikely it will ever fly at a frequency to make its noise intolerable. More important, the nature of a spaceport versus an airport reduces the concern considerably, since a spaceport requires a much larger buffer area, and at both of SpaceX’s Starship launchsites in Florida and Texas almost everyone living close by works for the company or in the space business. They are not going to complain.

And while studying these noise issues is useful, we must not be naive about the real purpose of such studies. Underneath its high-minded science goals is a much more insidious one: finding a weapon for shutting down SpaceX. This concern of mine might be overstated, but remember, almost our entire academic community is rabidly leftist and made up of partisan Democrats. They hate Musk for his politics, and have been aggressively looking for ways to hurt him. This sound study is just another tool in that war.

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NASA’s annual audit is not only not as great as NASA claims, it illustrates how the poison of DEI permeates the agency

3:43 pm

Not all is well at NASA
Not everything is as great as NASA claims

Yesterday NASA issued a press release proudly announcing that its annual independent audit of NASA’s finances concluded “for the 14th consecutive year … an unmodified, or ‘clean,’ opinion [of] its fiscal year 2024 financial statements.”

The rating is the best possible audit opinion, certifying that NASA’s financial statements conform with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles for federal agencies and accurately present the agency’s financial position. The audit opinion reaffirms the agency’s commitment to transparency in the use of American taxpayers’ dollars.

In reading the actual financial statements and auditor’s report (available here [pdf]), I found however that all is not “clean”, as NASA claims. Two issues of concern — one financial and the other political — are well buried in the report and should be quickly dealt with by the upcoming Trump administration.

Sloppy bookkeeping

First, the independent auditor, Ernst & Young, found that NASA’s internal control system designed to track spending was not quite up to par. From pages 90-91 of the report:
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Rocket startup ABL abandons its effort to build a rocket

12:42 pm

The rocket startup ABL, which had one failed launch attempt and a second failure during a static fire test, announced yesterday in a long tweet on X that it is abandoning its effort to build a rocket and will instead use its assets to provide products to the military.

[W]e have made the decision to focus our efforts on national defense, and specifically on missile defense technologies. We’ll have more to share soon on our roadmap and traction in this area. For now, suffice to say we see considerable opportunity to leverage RS1, GS0, the E2 engine, and the rest of the technology we’ve developed to date to enable a new type of research effort around missile defense technologies.

In other words, they are repurposing their RS1 rocket for missile technology.

The company’s announcement claims this decision is partly because the competition from established companies diminished its opportunity to gain market share, but I think its real problem was twofold. First, failure breeds failure. ABL’s rocket failures, combined with its very slow response after each failure, probably caused a shrinkage in investment capital. For example, one of its biggest investors had been Lockheed Martin, which had signed ABL up for a big launch contract. ABL’s failure to get its rocket off the ground however had Lockheed switch rocket companies, signing a new launch deal with Firefly in 2024. ABL had thus lost its biggest customer.

Second, as a new company with a rocket under development, it probably faced heavy regulatory burdens getting new launch licenses. The FAA under its “steamlined” Part 450 regulations probably required new license applications every time the company realized it needed to redesign something, and that red tape made it difficult to move forward.

In any new industry one must expect a shake-out to occur whereby many of the startups fail or get absorbed by others. This is natural. It is unfortunate however that government regulation has become an unnecessary and unnatural factor in this shake-out.

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SpaceX scraps its land swap offer to Texas

10:11 am

SpaceX has decided to scrap its land swap offer to Texas, whereby the company would have given the state 477 acres of wildlife land it owns elsewhere in exchange for ownership of 43 acres of state park land adjacent to its Boca Chica facility.

In a Sept. 26 letter seen by Bloomberg News, SpaceX Vice President Sheila McCorkle told the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department that the company “is no longer interested in pursuing the specific arrangement.”

In exchange for SpaceX getting the 43 acres, the company would have given the state some 477 acres of its land near Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, around 10 miles away. The land could have given Texans access for hiking, camping and other recreational purposes, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission said. In March, the commission approved the deal.

Environmental activists worry their fight’s not over with SpaceX and Musk, who has achieved newfound political power through his close ties to President-elect Donald Trump. “We’re concerned that he has something bigger and more disruptive to the beach and to the wildlife in mind,” Bekah Hinojosa, a representative from the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, an advocacy group, said in an interview. [emphasis mine]

The blind opposition of these leftist activists to Musk and anything he does has merely caused them to cut off their nose to spite their face. SpaceX’s proposal would have given the public a much larger wildlife area that was also far enough away from Boca Chica to allow its use all the time. Now the state is stuck with 43 acres of state park land that is going to be useless whenever Starship/Superheavy launches.

The lawsuits against this swap claimed it violated the Texas constitution. My guess is that SpaceX decided it wasn’t worth fighting this battle. Or maybe it is now playing hardball in negotiations. These activists do not have the support of the local community, which wants SpaceX’s operations to be successful. By scrapping the plan now SpaceX might be acting to force the Texas legislature to change the law to make the land swap legally acceptable.

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SpaceX and Amazon take their lawsuits against the NLRB to a higher court

9:58 am

NLRB logo

Both SpaceX and Amazon have now brought their lawsuits questioning the very constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Boards (NLRB) enforcement structure to the Fifth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals.

The two companies—founded by the world’s two richest men—will each square off against the [NLRB] that protects workers’ unionizing rights during separate oral argument sessions at the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit on Nov. 18.

The Fifth Circuit has played a central role in the intensifying constitutional attacks on the NLRB. District courts in Texas, one of three states covered by the Fifth Circuit, have granted the only preliminary injunctions to block agency proceedings based on constitutional arguments.

A lower court judge has already ruled in favor of SpaceX’s lawsuit [pdf], stating that “Under binding precedent, this Court is satisfied that SpaceX has demonstrated a substantial likelihood of success on its claims that Congress has impermissibly protected both the NLRB Members and the NLRB ALJs [administrative law judges] from the President’s Article II power of removal.”

The arguments by both Amazon and SpaceX were greatly strengthened by the Supreme Court’s decision in June 2024, ruling that the SEC’s use of administrative law judges is unconstitutional. Much of that ruling’s logic applies directly to this NLRB case.

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