Tag: oppression

China launches classified communications test satellite

8:58 am

China yesterday successfully launched a classified communications satellite “to carry out multi-band and high-speed communication technology validation, its Long March 3B rocket lifting off from its Xichang spacesport in southwest China.

All we really know about this satellite is that it is part of series. Nor did China reveal where the core stage and four strap-on boosters of the rocket, which use very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

26 SpaceX
10 China
3 Russia
2 Rocket Lab

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Once again the leftist propaganda press takes out its knives to stab SpaceX and Musk

11:18 am

Superheavy captured safely by the chopsticks, for the third time in four attempts
Superheavy captured safely yesterday by the chopsticks,
for the third time in four attempts

As should be expected, the destruction of Starship yesterday just before it made orbit on its eighth test flight was immediately used by partisan leftist media outlets to play “Let’s beat up on SpaceX and Elon Musk because he’s a friend of Trump!”

All these outlets decided to emphasize the falling debris and disruption to air traffic, but in doing so they all spun the story in a very dishonest way. First, both SpaceX and the FAA had been prepared for this possibility, and had used well-established procedures — in league with all other involved nations — to respond to the launch failure. The air space was cleared for only about fifteen minutes, as only this Florida Today article noted. Take-off delays at affected airports ranged from minutes to almost an hour, but hardly much different that normal delays seen every day.

Most important, no one was hurt, no planes were damaged, and there were no negative consequences. If anything, yesterday’s Starship flight illustrated the competence shown by SpaceX as it runs a very ambitious and radical development program of the most powerful rocket ever built. For example, why so little mention of the successful catch of Superheavy, something SpaceX has been able to do three times in the first four test flights? That achievement is truly mind-blowing.

The obviousness of these attacks is truly getting tedious. Moreover, why the hostility to one of the most spectacular efforts by an American company? Shouldn’t the American news outlets above be enthused by this effort? Have they become so hateful of their own country in all things, they want it to fail, always?

Sadly, I think we know the answer to that last question. The leftist indoctrination effort that now dominates almost all of America’s universities has produced a generation that does hate America, because they literally know nothing of its history except the distorted lies put forth by these Marxist colleges. They would rather destroy success than have America succeed.

It is both tragic and shameful, and a perfect example of someone cutting off their own nose to spite their face.

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French official lauds Ariane 6 launch; demands Europe have its own launch capability

10:08 am

Philippe Baptiste, France’s Minister for Higher Education and Research, yesterday loudly touted the second successful launch of Ariane 6 rocket, even though it occurred years late and costs far more than any other rocket on the market today.

Baptiste did so even as he insisted the Europe must continue to have its own launch capability so that it need not depend on rockets from other countries.

Europe must have sovereignty in space and “not yield to the temptation of preferring SpaceX or another competitor that may seem trendier, more reliable, or cheaper,” Baptiste [said]. “This first commercial launch of Ariane 6 is not just a technical and one-off success. It marks a new milestone, essential in the choice of European space independence and sovereignty. In the labyrinth of the global space race, Ariane 6 is the guiding thread of our strategic autonomy for the years to come.

“We must also collectively advance, as Europeans, on the governance of Europe’s space ambitions. We must ask ourselves all the questions, without taboos. For Europe in space, I am convinced that the European Union must fully assume its role as the political leader in this matter. The challenges are immense, no one knows this better than we do.”

Note Baptiste’s focus on having the European Union (EU) run things, with a focus on Ariane-6, despite its high cost. He was previously head of France’s space agency CNES, which for years has used the EU and the European Space Agency’s (ESA) partners help pay for France’s space program by requiring that all rocket launches be run by ESA’s commercial division, Arianespace.

That situation is now changing, with other ESA nations (Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom) all breaking free from Arianespace and instead encouraging the development of competing private rocket startups independent of ESA or Arianespace. Moreover, these ESA partners have aggressive reduced Arianespace’s areas of control. It no longer runs the French Guiana spaceport. Its management of the Vega-C rocket has been transferred back to the Italian company Avio, which builds it. All it now has is Ariane-6, which has limited value because it is so expensive.

So while Baptiste desire for European autonomy matches the efforts of these European countries, his apparent desire to keep all control within the continent’s centralized government authority has been rejected. Europe has a chance to compete, but only because it is freeing its rocket startups from government control.

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Democrats: A party so filled with hate it can’t even cheer a child because Trump introduced him

1:32 pm

In the next day or so you will hear a lot of analysis of Trump’s speech yesterday to Congress, both good and bad. The bulk of that commentary will focus on what Trump has or has not accomplished, for good and ill. Some will talk about the overall foolish behavior of many Democrats, who refused to applaud anything Trump said (something Trump predicted would happen near the start of the speech), with one Democrat getting ejected from the building for heckling the president and refusing to stop.

During such speeches presidents usually tout their past achievements and future goals. With each proclamation, the members of that president’s party will repeatedly give him a short standing ovation, with the opposition party usually sitting quietly. This fake theater is one reason I generally don’t watch such events, relying on reviewing them after the fact to save a LOT of time.

Another tradition during these speeches is for the president to invite several ordinary citizens to attend in order to honor them in some way. At these moments, when the president introduces the citizen, the entire room would routinely stand and cheer, because these individuals are generally not party partisans, and the ruling president and his party usually have nothing to do with that person’s particular achievement.

Last night however was starkly different, and the screen capture below captures the one moment that demonstrates so fully the utterly bankrupt nature of the Democratic Party. One of the private citizens Trump invited to honor was a 13-year-old boy, DJ Daniel, who five years ago was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and given only six months to live. Five years later he is still alive and healthy, and proudly wears a police uniform frequently in public because of his dream to be a cop someday.
» Read more

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France opens public comment period for adapting old French Guiana launchpad for commercial rockets

9:04 am

CNES, France’s space agency that now runs the French Guiana spaceport, is now running public meetings for the public to comment on its plans for adapting the old, long-abandoned Diamant rocket pad there for use by a number of commercial rocket startups.

On 17 February, the first of four public consultation sessions into the construction of the new Multi-Launcher Launch Complex (ELM1) at the Guiana Space Centre was held at Kourou Town Hall. This process allows local residents, stakeholders, and organizations to review the project and provide feedback before construction begins. A second session was completed on 23 February, with the remaining two sessions set for 10 and 18 March.

The construction of ELM1 will include common structures like the nodal building, guard post, offices, and storage areas, as well as more specific structures like assembly and preparation buildings, roads, and fences. The project is subject to a building permit, a unique environmental authorization under the regulations for Classified Installations for Environmental Protection, the Water Law, and a request for exemption from the prohibition on the destruction of protected species.

CNES in 2024 approved seven rocket startups to use the site. It later announced its plan to standardize the launchpad so that all users will have to arrive with identical engineering, something that these startups did not like. This comment period will allow them to voice those objections, and likely get the standardization minimized to only those places where it really matters. For example, the impression initially given was that the assembly and preparation buildings would require matching systems from all companies, something that makes no sense.

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The real underlying battle between Trump and Zelinsky

2:01 pm

The kerfuffle last week between the United States and the Ukraine, instigated by the unprecedented ugly end to the press conference that concluded the visit of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to the White House, is actually quite understandable if one is willing to consider the perspective of both sides. Unfortunately, I have seen little such analysis anywhere. Instead we get emotional attacks. On the left Trump is a vicious politician who wants to carve the Ukraine up for the benefit of Russia. On the right Zelensky is a corrupt barbarian who simply wants the war to continue forever so that he can steal as much U.S. foreign aid as possible for his own private benefit.

Neither of these conclusions are very helpful. Nor do they provide any insight to what is really going on.

So, what are the different perspectives that caused this confrontation?
» Read more

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Falcon 9 first stage lost after landing yesterday

8:40 am

According to an update on SpaceX’s website, the first stage of the Falcon 9 that launched 21 Starlink satellites (not 23 as initially reported) yesterday was lost shortly after landing.

The first stage booster returned to Earth and landed on the Just Read the Instructions droneship, which was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean ~250 nautical miles off the coast of Florida. Following the successful landing, an off-nominal fire in the aft end of the rocket damaged one of the booster’s landing legs which resulted in it tipping over.

This is only the second time in years that a first stage has been lost in this manner. After the previous occurrence last year during the Biden administration, the FAA grounded all SpaceX launches for several days, an action that indicated clearly an effort to harass the company for political reasons. I will be very surprised if this happens again, with Trump now in office.

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Falklands government approves changes that will allow SpaceX to provide Starlink service

3:38 pm

After a small negotiating kerfuffle, the executive committee of the Falklands government has now approved a major licensing fee change that will allow SpaceX to offer its Starlink service to island residences.

The Executive Committee (ExCo) of the Falkland Islands Government has officially approved a considerable reduction in the VSAT licence fee – it is “minded” to slash it from £5,400 to just £180 but it will stay at £5,400 until final agreement in ExCo in early May. This decision paves the way for Starlink to begin providing services in the Falkland Islands, creating a game-changing step towards modernising the Islands’ telecommunications.

It appears that getting this approval required a major grassroots effort, as the government had initially been reluctant to change anything, despite the fact that numerous people were already using Starlink terminals illegally because there were no other options for good internet access, especially because the government’s deal with OneWeb had produced no results.

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FAA issues launch license for 8th Starship/Superheavy test flight

9:12 am

The FAA yesterday announced that it has given SpaceX the launch license for its 8th orbital test launch of Starship/Superheavy, presently scheduled for March 3, 2025 at 5:30 PM (Central).

“After completing the required and comprehensive safety review, the FAA determined the SpaceX Starship vehicle can return to flight operations while the investigation into the Jan. 16 Starship Flight 7 mishap remains open,” the FAA’s emailed statement reads. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted phrase reveals much. There is a new boss in Washington now who will not tolerate unnecessary red tape that stymies private enterprise unnecessarily. SpaceX is the only entity qualified to investigate the loss of Starship in the seventh flight, and it has completed its investigation. All the FAA can really do in its own “investigation” is retype SpaceX’s conclusion. It might have some clean-up work of its own relating to clearing the air space after Starship was destroyed, but even there SpaceX’s conclusion note that the plan worked out before launch between the company and the FAA worked perfectly.

Under Biden the FAA would have made SpaceX wait while that retyping took place, likely assigned to someone who can only hunt and peck at an old manual typewriter. No more.

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Varda’s successfully returns its 2nd capsule from orbit

8:58 am

The startup Varda yesterday successfully returned its second capsule from orbit, with the capsule re-entering the atmosphere and touching down in Australia after spending six weeks in space.

The W-2 capsule carried a spectrometer built by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and employed a heatshield developed in collaboration with NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. The capsule also carried internal research that will expand Varda’s pharmaceutical processing capacity and capability.

The capsule landed at the Koomibba Test Range, operated by the spaceport startup Southern Range and located on the southern coast of Australia. Varda had arranged this landing location after it had absurd regulatory delays getting permission to land its first capsule at the Air Force test range in Utah.

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House committee holds hearing to protect its Artemis pork

9:50 am

The space subcommittee of the House science committee yesterday held a hearing which appears to have been mostly designed to protect the Artemis pork that both parties have been funding for decades, designed not to get us into space but to funnel tax dollars into their districts.

The hearing had only two witnesses, one pro-SLS (Dan Dumbacher) and one only very slightly skeptical of it (Scott Pace). Both these men have been deep members of the Washington swamp for decades, and both made it clear that funding should continue for SLS, at a minimum through the third Artemis launch, presently scheduled for ’27, a launch date so uncertain no one should believe it.

NASA had been invited to send a witness, but it apparently declined to do so.

Pace, the supposedly skeptic of SLS, has actually been a big supporter for years. As executive secretary for Trump’s National Space Council during Trump’s first term, he consistently advocated big space and NASA-built rockets, showing continuous skepticism of commercial space. Even now, his suggestion that SLS be reconsidered after that third launch was very hesitant.

Essentially, this committee hearing was called by these congress critters to advocate the status quo, which is likely why NASA declined to send a witness. Why give them a chance to blast any potential or major change in Artemis and have the propaganda press savage NASA and the Trump administration with negative soundbites?

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Pushback: North Carolina University quickly backs down when challenged over its remaining DEI policies

2:03 pm

NC State: Maybe rotten to the core
NC State: Rotten to the core?

The tide really is turning: Two weeks ago I reported the effort by Stephen Porter, a professor at North Carolina State University, to force it to eliminate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs (DEI) from its many policies. Porter had been ostracized and demoted by its faculty and staff back in 2021 for daring to question these policies then, but managed to keep his job.

Though the university had claimed in 2023 it had dropped DEI and instead instituted a “institutional neutrality” policy, Porter had no trouble finding DEI requirements and webpages still scattered everywhere in its rulebooks and webpages.

He decided to go to war, to file complaints with the NC Board of Governors about four different violations of its own “institutional neutrality” policy.

To his surprise, less than two weeks later the university responded somewhat positively. First, the university eliminated DEI from its overall strategic plan. That this hadn’t been done earlier either indicates sloppiness and incompetence by NC State’s administration, or a real reluctance to eliminate DEI. Either way, they have finally done so.

Second, they have quickly removed the still standing DEI websites that Porter had cited in his complaint.
» Read more

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Australia’s government proposes subsidies to build spaceport in Western Australia

10:28 am

Australian spaceports
Proposed commercial spaceports in Australia

The Labor Party that presently runs Australia has now proposed a $2 million program to “develop a business case” for a spaceport in the generally unpopulated state of Western Australia.

The red arrow and two X’s on the map to the right shows three potential locations. The Eucla and Christmas Island locations have been proposed by a private startup dubbed Space Angel. The Albany location has been proposed by a different startup called WA Australia.

At present, only the Bowen spaceport on Australia’s eastern coast has all its license approvals to do orbital launches, with the first now scheduled for mid-March. Southern Launch however has been a suborbital launch site for decades, and is also where many spacecraft returning from space have landed.

That the present leftist Australian government is considering a program to encourage new spaceports at these other locations instead makes me wonder if there isn’t a bit of political quid-pro-quo going on. Why favor these new locations in Western Australia exclusively? Why not offer this program to all the spaceports? I am especially suspicious of this proposal considering the regulatory burden the Labor government has placed on those other eastern spaceports, delaying approvals for years.

With so many commercial Australia spaceport proposals however suggests the political pressure to ease those regulations might be soon forthcoming.

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Gilmour announces target date for first launch of its Eris rocket

8:32 am

Australian commercial spaceports
Australia’s commercial spaceports. Click for original map.

The rocket startup Gilmour Space today announced that it is targeting March 15, 2025 for the first orbital test of its Eris rocket, lifting off from its private Bowen spaceport on the east coast of Australia.

The news follows final airspace approvals from the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) and Airservices Australia, clearing the last regulatory hurdle before launch. It also marks the culmination of years of innovative R&D and manufacturing by the Gold Coast-based company, which developed the Eris launch vehicle and Bowen Orbital Spaceport in North Queensland.

Gilmour Space made history in March last year when its Bowen spaceport was granted the first orbital launch facility licence in Australia, and when it secured the country’s first Australian Launch Permit for Eris TestFlight 1 in November. Now, with airspace arrangements finalised and mandatory notice given to the Australian Space Agency, the company is preparing for liftoff.

Obtaining its permits from Australia’s government has taken years. The company first hoped to launch in 2022, but the red tape stymied that possibility.

If successful however this company’s achievement will be multifold. It will not only beat into orbit numerous other startups in the U.S. and Europe, it will give Australia its own orbital rocket built in Australia. For a country whose government never had much interest in joining the world’s space power — and appeared for the past three years determined to squelch this private company — Gilmour’s achievement will be significant. If anything, its success could force that government to change its ways

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Billionaire who fought Sutherland spaceport now owns at least half of competing Saxavord spaceport

9:46 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea

Anders Povlsen, the Danish billionaire who aggressively fought the establishment of the Sutherland spaceport on the north coast of Scotland, where he owns lots of land, has increased his holding of the competing Saxavord spaceport on one of the Shetland Islands, raising his share of ownership there to at least 50%.

Danish billionaire Anders Povlsen has increased his stake in Shetland Space Centre via his company, Wild Ventures Ltd, which now owns more than half of its shares. New filings with Companies House also show that Lise Kaae, the chief executive of Mr Povlsen’s investment firm, Heartland, has been appointed as a director at the spaceport.

Mr Povlsen, who made his fortune in retail fashion and is reported to be Scotland’s largest landowner, has been involved in the spaceport since 2020 when Wild Ventures Ltd invested £1.5m.

Povlsen had for years aggressively opposed Sutherland, expressing that opposition with repeated lawsuits that caused years of regulatory delays. Those delays in turn impacted Sutherland’s biggest customer, the rocket startup Orbex, which had a fifty year lease on a launchpad and had hoped to start launches of its Prime rocket in 2022. In December 2024, with no sign it would get a launch license from the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority anytime soon, Orbex essentially gave up on Sutherland, announcing suddenly it was switching launch operations to Saxaford.

It now appears Povlsen’s lawfare effort has born fruit, which I think explains why he has now suddenly increased his ownership share in Saxavord

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Justice Department drops absurd Biden-era discrimination lawsuit against SpaceX

9:15 am

As expected, the Justice Department now under Donald Trump’s presidency yesterday filed papers to end the insane Biden-era discrimination lawsuit against SpaceX that demanded it hire refugees and even illegal aliens, even though State Department rules forbid it to do so.

In an unopposed motion filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, the Justice Department said it intended to file a notice of dismissal with prejudice, which means prosecutors would not be able to file these charges again.

Of all the lawfare initiated against Musk and SpaceX by the Biden administration, this lawsuit was by far the stupidest and most ridiculous. SpaceX doesn’t discriminate against non-American citizens. If they meet State Department rules and also have the qualifications, it hires them. And has done so. For one federal agency, Justice, to demand that SpaceX violate the rules of another agency, State, proves the lawsuit’s real purpose was harassment only.

That harassment has ended with the arrival of Trump.

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Ghouls and Monsters in Gaza

12:22 pm

Hamas in all its monstrous glory

Word fail. For any decent human being, the behavior of the Hamas killers today in releasing the four bodies of their kidnapped hostages — which included a baby and a toddler — was beyond monstrous.

The picture to the right gives only a sense. The coffins were put on display on a stage, with celebratory music blaring. The poster in the background shows the faces of the four dead hostages, including a 9-month-old and a four-year-old, with a vampire-version of Bibi Netanyahu dripping blood on them. A large crowd of several thousand was there to watch, with many cheering. The coffins were then carried one by one to Red Cross vehicles while that crowd cheered and the music blasted. Even UN officials were offended, noting that the parading of bodies violates international law.

The coffins themselves were locked, and Hamas provided no keys. Before they can be pried open so that the bodies can be properly buried, Israeli technical experts have to first determine if the coffins are booby-trapped. (Sounds insane, but would you nonchalantly pry open one of these Hamas-sealed coffins?)

Hamas tried to put the blame on the death of these four innocents by claiming they were killed by an Israeli bombing attack. That however is utterly irrelevant, even if it was true. These four human beings were ripped from their homes on October 7, 2023 by Hamas/Gaza savages and imprisoned in the hellhole tunnels of Gaza, merely because they were Jews. Hamas is entirely at fault.

UPDATE: Forensic evidence has now shown that the baby and toddler were actually murdered about one month after their kidnapping while in captivity, and the woman’s body was not of their mother, Shiri Biba, but of an anonymous unidentified body. In other words, Hamas dug up a body of some unknown person and gave that back to Israel. At this moment we have no idea if Shiri Biba is alive or dead, though she is most likely dead but Hamas did not want to release the body probably because it would have revealed more evidence of their savagery. I suspect they raped and tortured her before killing her.

Worse, Hamas is proud of what it has done. At no point has the leadership of Hamas ever backed off from its goal of killing all Jews, worldwide, and then all Christians, in order to establish a worldwide caliphate of Islam.

As Islamic scholar Robert Spencer noted in documenting this horror show,
» Read more

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Australian rocket startup Gilmour Space appears to have finally gotten its launch license

3:29 pm

Australian commercial spaceports
Australia’s commercial spaceports. Click for original map.

According to two news reports (here and here) as well as an update today on the company’s website, the Australian rocket startup Gilmour Space has gotten its last government approval allowing it to finally do the first orbital test launch of its Eris rocket from its private Bowen launch site on the east coast of Australia.

Though the company has not yet announced a launch date, the news reports and previous announcements suggest it will occur in late March. This document [pdf] provides excellent details about the launch, including the range limitations and flight path. No live stream will be provided on this first launch attempt.

I expect more information to be announced either later today or tomorrow. If this is confirmed, it will have been a long time coming. Gilmour first applied for its launch license in April 2022, with the intention of launching that year. Unfortunately, Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) appears as slow and as difficult to work with as the United Kingdom’s Civil Aviation Authority. It took CASA almost three years to issue this license (assuming it has been issued). With that kind of red tape, I don’t know how Gilmour is going to become profitable. It certainly can’t wait three years between each launch.

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SaveRGV drops lawsuit against SpaceX’s Boca Chica operations

9:29 am

SaveRGV, one of several fringe activist groups that has been using lawfare to try to shut down SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy operations in Boca Chica, suddenly announced yesterday that it has dropped a lawsuit against the company that claimed the potable water released in the launchpad deluge system during launches polluted the wetlands there.

Save RGV board member Jim Chapman said they dropped the lawsuit because the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality [TCEQ], the state’s environmental agency, granted SpaceX a permit that “moots” their lawsuit. “We think we’re right,” Chapman said in a phone interview. “We just didn’t feel like [the lawsuit] was going to move in a positive direction for us.”

According to the article at the first link above, SaveRGV and its partner fringe groups have filed a different lawsuit against TCEQ, challenging its decision to issue SpaceX that permit.

When TCEQ issued the permit last week, I wondered if the lawfare of these groups would begin to fade away because their funding is now drying up because of the Trump’s DOGE team effort to shut down the laundering of money illegally to such groups by many agencies in the executive branch. SaveRGV’s decision yesterday, only days after TCEQ’s decision, makes me think my theory might have some merit. It could be it no longer has funds to pay its lawyers for multiple lawsuits, and has decided to focus on one for the time being. Only time will tell.

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ISRO’s head touts private construction of PSLV rocket

9:35 am

In comments published in the Times of India today, the head of India’s space agency ISRO, V Narayanan, enthusiastically touted the fact that a private consortium is presently manufacturing its first PSLV rocket under a five-rocket contract.

Isro chairman V Narayanan revealed this in an exclusive interview to TOI and said the launch, scheduled for the third quarter of this year, will mark a milestone as the first PSLV manufactured by the private sector under a contract for five rockets. The vehicle is in “advanced stages of realisation” with Isro providing technical guidance to the industrial partners.

Sounds good, eh? Actually, this instead appears to be an attempt by ISRO to thwart the Modi government’s desire to transfer ownership of ISRO’s rockets, starting with the long established PSLV rocket, from ISRO to the private sector. This five-rocket deal, first signed in 2022, doesn’t transfer anything. All it does is have private companies build the rocket, something that ISRO has had private companies do for decades. The one difference is that ISRO is no longer listed as the prime contractor, and appears to be somewhat less involved in management.

Well, it is at least a start. Getting government bureaucracies to give up power can sometimes be a struggle that lasts years, unless you are Donald Trump arriving for a second term disgusted with that same struggle during his first term.

The launch, targeting the third quarter of this year, will place a collection of tecnology test payloads into orbit.

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British rocket startup Skyrora targets ’26 for its first orbital test flight

10:06 am

According to an article yesterday in the British media, the British rocket startup Skyrora is now hoping to do the first orbital test flight of its XL smallsat rocket in 2026, launching from the Saxavord spaceport in the Shetland Islands.

The company applied for this launch license with the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) more than a year ago, but still waits an approval. Previously the company had completed in Iceland several successful suborbital test launches in 2018 and 2020, with a last test in 2022 ending in failure.

The company has been around a long time, with relatively little progress. Whether its schedule is realistic remains unknown, and is more questionable because it is burdened by the CAA’s red tape.

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Texas commission rejects anti-SpaceX calls to deny company its Starship deluge water permit

2:27 pm

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality this week strongly and finally dismissed the repeated demands by various fringe activist groups to shut down SpaceX’s launch operations at Boca Chica and the use of the deluge system designed to protect the launchpad and the Superheavy booster.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality on Thursday denied requests from a dozen area residents and several groups to reconsider the commercial space company’s permit to dump as much as 358,000 gallons of water into wetlands during tests and launches of its Starship rocket from its Starbase east of Brownsville.

Commission Chair Brooke Paup introduced the item as “quite a big deal,” then quickly moved to deny additional hearings on the subject and issue the permit. She said concerns raised by individuals and groups including Save RGV, the South Texas Environmental Justice Network and the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas failed to identify “new factual information or an error that would alter the executive director’s decision.

“The hearing requesters did not show that their ability to practice their religion or engage in recreational activities will be affected in a manner different than the general public,” Paup said.

The commission admitted in its ruling that there had been numerous technical errors by both the commission and SpaceX when it initially approved the permit, but none of those errors were significant.

It appears this particular effort by a very tiny minority of leftist anti-Musk activists has finally been shut down. We can only hope that these groups will now fade away, not because they want to give up but because their funding could be gone. I suspect their money came from somewhere within the fraudulent grant programs at EPA and other federal agencies that DOGE has now identified and shut down.

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Astronomers demand more regulations to prevent industry from ruining the Moon’s “environment”

9:33 am

According to two articles yesterday in the British press (here and here), both quoting extensively one astronomer, if strong regulation and control (given to them of course) isn’t imposed immediately, the space tourism of billionaires is going to ruin the Moon’s pristine environment, which on its far side is especially perfect for radio astronomy. From the first link:

“There’s a rush of companies and states who might want to get in on the act on the moon,” said [astronomer Martin Elvis, who added that there were also other concerns. “There’s a desire there from the billionaire class, ‘Oh I would love to spend a week on the moon’. And you don’t need many billionaires to start adding up. If they go without coordination, then it’s a mess. We could well lose these unique opportunities to do science on a scale that we couldn’t possibly imagine.”

One of the most exciting possibilities is the use of the far side of the moon for radio astronomy. As all signals from the Earth are blocked, telescopes would, Elvis said, have the sensitivity to see into the so called “dark age” of the universe, after the big bang but before stars had formed.

Elvis is based at Harvard and also co-chairs a working group at the International Astronomical Union (IAU) that wants astronomers to be given full legal control of the Moon, preventing anyone from building anything without their permission so they can instead build their telescopes there instead.

The problem is that the astronomical community has so far shown little interest in building telescopes in space. It has instead focused on building giant Earth-based telescopes while trying to get governments to restrict the launch of satellite constellations that might interfere with those telescopes. Now it wishes to restrict lunar development as well.

Elvis however admits “It’s a sort of first come, first served situation, which encourages people to rush in and do things without thinking too hard.” Let me translate: Everyone else is beating us to the Moon because we haven’t been interested in going, so now that we might be interested we want governments to shut down our competition.

It is long past time for astronomers and the IAU to stop trying to use government to squelch everyone else and get in the game. Initiate the building of telescopes both in space and the Moon. Not only are these better places to build telescopes than on Earth, it will give astronomers some credibility when they ask others to give them their own space.

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The movement to ban smartphones in schools widens

1:39 pm

The smart phone: Bad for kids
The smart phone: Proven very bad for kids

According to a detailed Washington Examiner story earlier this week, the campaign to ban smartphones in schools is expanding rapidly, with widespread bi-partisan support, backed up by studies and school reports that consistently show significant improvements in student behavior and learning when smart phones are banned.

Eight states have banned cellphone use in schools, with Florida being the first to do so when Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) signed a bill into law in 2023. The legislation in the Sunshine State allows teachers to ban cellphone use during classroom instruction and authorizes them to hold a student’s phone if it becomes a distraction.

Florida was followed by Indiana, Louisiana, Virginia, California, Minnesota, South Carolina, and Ohio in passing similar bans that have either been enacted or will be in the coming year. Each of the states that have passed bans has taken different approaches to implementing the policy.

Fifteen other states have proposed a ban, and an additional eight states are either doing test bans in selected regions or have issued recommendations endorsing bans. That makes for a total if 32 states out of 50 that are working to keep smart phones away from kids when they are in school.

The best aspect of this is the generally bi-partisan nature of the movement. While most of the initial action occurred in red states controlled by conservative politicians, blue states like California and Minnesota have also joined in. A Minnesota middle school for example was an early practitioner of the ban in 2023, finding it not only improved classroom participation, but the entire social atmosphere in the school improved. In California meanwhile Democrat Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law restricting smartphone that takes effect in July 2026. Even Washington, D.C. is debating legislation to institute a school ban.

The sooner the better. Kids don’t need smart phones. All they really need is a dumb phone to call their parents in case of an emergency. And when they are in school this is even less necessary. Spending their time staring at a screen is the worst way to learn to live with other humans, a learning experience that is probably their number one class assignment.

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Hal Holbrook – Lincoln’s second inaugural address, in honor of his birthday

6:01 pm

An evening pause: I last posted a recreation in April 2017. Today, on Lincoln’s birthday, I present a recreation by Hal Holbrook, performed live on the Ed Sullivan Show on February 13, 1966.

As I wrote in 2017, “Listen to the words, however. This is no pandering speech, as we routinely see today. It is hard, muscled, and honest, bluntly recognizing that all, from both sides of the Civil War, must pay for the scourge of slavery.”

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Modern academia: “We aren’t going to hire another white guy, are we?”

1:52 pm

Whites need not apply
Whites need not apply.

The quote in the headline above comes from a lawsuit [pdf] filed by a former professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago, Stephen Kleinschmit, who was eventually terminated because he had raised concerns within his department about its hiring practices, which beginning in 2019 became entirely focused on choosing its new faculty employees solely on whether they were born to the correct race, not on their talents or qualifications.

Kleinschmit raised his concerns because he was required to participate in the hiring process, and feared if he did not do so it “would make him a participant in illegal activities for which he would be held liable.” Instead of recognizing the clearly discriminatory and illegal nature of its racial hiring practices, however, the department decided to terminate Kleinshcmit’s contract instead.

He was ultimately terminated in August 2023 spring semester, ostensibly as a result of the need for “budget cuts.” Kleinschmit said the decision to fire him at that time appeared to be intentional, to not only cut him loose from his job at UIC, but also deny him the opportunity to seek employment at another university for more than a year.

However, Kleinschmit said he – the department’s only white male faculty member – was the only faculty member terminated at that time, despite claims of lack of finances, even as UIC moved forward with plans to hire more “diverse” faculty.

The complaint noted that Kleinschmit’s old job was later posted as eligible for hiring. But now the job ad was written in a way to encourage non-white male applicants, “as UIC shifted resources to a new job focused on fulfilling its racially discriminatory goals.” [emphasis mine]

In other words, the department fired its only white professor in order to replace him with a minority.
» Read more

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Orbex scouts Saxaford in advance of first launch

9:25 am

Map of spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Spaceports surrounding the Norwegian Sea

Though no details have been released, a team from the British rocket startup Orbex has arrived at the Saxaford spaceport in the Shetland Islands to begin preparations for the company’s first launch there, now planned to occur before the end of this year.

Originally Orbex was going to do its launches from the United Kingdom’s other proposed spaceport in Sutherland on the northern coast of Scotland. It had obtained a 50-year-lease to build its own dedicated launch facility, had built its rocket manufacturing facility nearby, and had originally hoped to do the first test orbital launch of its Prime rocket in 2022.

Three years later the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) had still not issued Orbex or Sutherland the necessary launch licenses. Faced with bankruptcy if it didn’t launch soon, in December the company announced it was switching its first launch to Saxaford, where the CAA had completed spaceport licensing. It hoped the CAA would thus be able to give it a launch license quickly. We shall see.

Note that the news is slow today. As much as I want to post lots of stuff, I can’t if nothing of significance appears to be happening.

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Maybe the only way to reform academia is to shut it down and start over

2:37 pm

NC State: Maybe rotten to the core
NC State: Maybe it’s rotten to the core

Back in 2021, when I was reporting new blacklist stories every single day during the intolerant madness after the COVID panic and the death of George Floyd, I posted the blacklisting and attempted destruction of a tenured professor at North Carolina State University, merely because Stephen Porter had publicly questioned the wisdom and soundness of its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies.

Though administrators tried hard to push Porter out, he managed to survive, and is still teaching at NC State. Sadly however his attempt for justice failed, his lawsuit against this harassment and slander campaign eventually being dismissed by the courts.

Porter however decided he couldn’t simply close the book on the matter. For example, the leftist effort at NC State to silence all debate during this same time resulted in one university employee committing suicide. He couldn’t take the constant harassment, the doxxing of his home address, the vandalism at his home, and the slanders accusing him of being a racist and “white supremacist” wherever he went on campus, all based on no evidence at all.

Moreover, even though the board of governors of the North Carolina university system in 2023 established an “institutional neutrality” policy that forbid its colleges from requiring new students or faculty to endorse DEI or compel them to obey the pronoun demands of others, Porter kept finding NC State violating that policy, in word and deed.

He decided that he needed to fight back.
» Read more

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It won’t be Democratic Party stupidity that will give Republicans victories in ’26 and ’28

12:06 pm

Vultures eating carrion
Democrats in Washington

In the past few weeks there have been a number of very entertaining essays describing the insane inability of Democrats to learn anything from their defeats in the 2024 elections. From the second link:

The Democratic Party just can’t help itself. For its own psychological reasons, it can’t move beyond the “denial” stage of grief. Doing so would jeopardize the party’s sense of purpose, identity, and ego. Right now, the “patient” cannot heal itself because it won’t accept the diagnosis.

Instead, it rejects it: Trump is Hitler! Musk is Hitler! MAGA is Hitler! I’m the only one defending democracy!

A sane, rational actor would take a step back and consider his own role in losing three branches of government, a majority of statehouses, and two-thirds of the Supreme Court. And then they’d develop a better product.

Fortunately for the GOP, they’re just not ready for that level of introspection. Not yet. (And probably not until it’s forced upon them.)

And so, the losing losers of the Democratic Party continue to lose. They can’t even counterpunch effectively, because they overreact to every feint. They’re so ridiculously undisciplined, they’re chasing shadows, following the champ around the ring like a puppy dog — eating a buffet of rights, jabs, and uppercuts. [emphasis in original]

All true, but if conservatives think this stupidity on the left will win Republicans the mid-term elections in ’26 and the next presidential election in ’28, they are fooling themselves. » Read more

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Boeing notifies SLS employees of impending layoffs

11:04 am

The real cost of SLS and Orion
The expected real per launch cost of SLS and Orion

Boeing yesterday sent a notice out to its employees working on NASA’s SLS rocket that up 400 could be laid off due to “revisions to the Artemis program and cost expectations.”

Boeing SLS employees were informed Feb. 7 that the company was making preparations to cut up to 400 jobs from the program because of “revisions to the Artemis program and cost expectations.” The specific positions being considered for elimination were not announced but would account for a significant fraction of the overall SLS workforce at the company.

This is probably the most significant update from the entire SLS program since it was first proposed by George Bush Jr in 2004. All other announcements either told us there were going to be more delays, the cost was going up, or there were newly discovered technical problems caused by bad management or sloppy work. This announcement instead actually indicates that NASA management — under pressure from the new Trump administration — is finally addressing these failures after two decades.

In the past few months there have been many indications from the swamp in Washington that it is finally beginning to recognize the absurdity and stupidity of the whole SLS/Orion infrastructure, a realization I outlined in detail fourteen years ago, soon after the project was reshaped from the absurd and stupid Ares project under Bush Jr. to SLS/Orion under Obama.

It took however the arrival of Trump (changed himself from his first administration) to do it. Trump is doing what no president has done in our lifetimes, going through all federal programs and ripping them apart if they are failing to do what they promise. And he is doing it with full and amazingly enthusiastic support of the American people. No one cares that government employees are “crying.” Nor does anyone pay attention any longer to these sob stories, put out by the propaganda press. It have proven itself to be habitual liars whose only interest has been prop up the Washington swamp, and everyone now recognizes it.

Expect a major reshaping of NASA and its entire manned program. We will still be heading to the stars, but finally doing it.

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