Tag: oppression

European rocket startups team up to send letter to ESA outlining their priorities

11:18 am

In a surprising joint action, six European rocket startups have sent a detailed letter to the European Space Agency (ESA) outlining several recommendations about policy required by these rocket startups in order for their industry to prosper.

The companies involved were HyImpulse, Latitude, MaiaSpace, Orbex, Rocket Factory Augsburg and The Exploration Company. The letter’s recommendations were wide-ranging and appeared focused on getting ESA to free up the industry from traditional European red tape.

  • Provide funding in the range of €150 million to a limited number of rocket companies, not all. The companies say that funding will make it possible for the winning companies to raise another €1 billion in private investment capital. Limiting the number of companies getting awards will also force competition and achievement. The awards should also be granted only after specific milestones are achieved, not based on promises of eventual achievement.
  • Ease access to launchpads both at French Guiana and in Norway and the United Kingdom. Right now French rule-making at French Guiana is hindering that access, and ESA rules about launches make it harder to use the new commercial spaceports in Norway and the UK.
  • Red tape must be reduced. For example, ESA should not set rules on the size of payloads, but give companies “the freedom to determine their payload capabilities, allowing market dynamics to drive innovation rather than imposing artificial requirements.”

That the German rocket startup Isar Aerospace did not sign this letter is interesting, especially since it is now only a few months from completing its first orbital test launch of its Spectrum rocket from the new spaceport in Andoya, Norway. It also has a twenty-year lease for that launchpad.

It is also interesting that the letter did not include the newly proposed orbital spaceport Esrange in Sweden. That launch site has been used for decades for suborbital tests. It is now attempting to make itself available for orbital tests as well. Its interior location however is likely the reason these rocket companies left it out. Too many issues for them to consider launching from there.

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NASA quickly shutters its DEI offices

9:10 am

NASA has quickly complied with the executive order issued by Donald Trump right after taking office that demanded all Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) offices within the federal government be shut down by January 22, 2025 at the latest.

In a memo to employees Jan. 22 obtained by SpaceNews, NASA Acting Administrator Janet Petro said the agency was working to close offices related to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) at the agency and cancel relevant contracts. “These programs divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination,” she wrote in the memo.

The steps, she wrote, are intended to implement an executive order issued by President Trump hours after his Jan. 20 inauguration. The order called on federal agencies to terminate DEIA programs and positions related to them, calling such efforts “discriminatory” and an “immense public waste.”

That was followed the next day by a memo to federal agencies by Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), directing them to remove “outward facing media” related to DEIA programs by 5 p.m. Eastern Jan. 22 and to place employees of DEIA offices on paid administrative leave. The memo also requires agencies to provide lists of their DEIA offices and employees, as well as related contracts, by Jan. 23, and submit plans for laying off DEIA employees by the end of the month.

As of today it appears the NASA DEI websites have all been removed. It also appears that NASA is complying completely, unlike some government agencies that have tried to save its DEI programs and employees by changing their job titles. We should also expect the racist quota hiring system NASA instituted during the Biden administration to favor some races over others will now be dismantled. Couldn’t happen sooner.

What I have found interesting is the relatively lack of leftist protests — so far — for these actions. It will happen, of course but it also appears the general public won’t buy into it. The leftist propaganda press will highlight those protests, but since very few people trusts or even pays attention to that propaganda press any longer these protests will carry little weight.

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Fake news teams up with European childishness to attack Elon Musk

11:00 am

In what might be the stupidest and most fake slanderous attack yet on a supporter of Donald Trump, leftist fake news outlets PBS, CNN, MSN, and MSNBC have teamed up to accuse Elon Musk of making a Nazi salute during his inauguration day speech, when all he was doing was thanking Americans, from his heart, for voting Trump back into office. As he did so he placed his hand on his heart and threw it out to the crowd, in gesture of love and gratitude.

Very quickly the somewhat leftist Anti-Defamation League defended Musk, noting it was absurd and inflammatory to make such an absurd accusation when it was most clearly false and slanderous.

This of course hasn’t stopped Democratic Party politicians from spreading this lie. And in Germany the Deutsches Museum in Munich, Germany immediately and very childishly removed a picture of Musk that had been part of a permanent exhibit on space travel.

“It can always be problematic to honor living people in such a prominent position in an exhibition, because such a display can be seen as an uncritical tribute. However, a person’s lifetime achievements can often only be properly assessed in retrospect,” said a spokesperson for the Deutsches Museum.

What idiots. Musk’s own response on X to this fake controversy ginned up by these slanderers said it best:

Frankly, they need better dirty tricks. The “everyone is Hitler” attack is sooo tired

I personally think these leftist fools should keep doing this stupidity. No one buys it anymore, and every time they do it they put another nail in their own coffin, proving once again that they are unreliable, dishonest propaganda outlets that should not be watched for any reason.

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Finland signs Artemis Accords

9:50 am

Finland today became the 53rd nation to sign the Artemis Accords. Based on the official statement from Wille Rydman, Finland’s minister of economic affairs, it appears Finland sees the accords as a way to encourage its own private space sector:

“Finland has been part of the space exploration community for decades with innovations and technology produced by Finnish companies and research institutions,” said Rydman. “The signing of the Artemis Accords is in line with Finland’s newly updated space strategy that highlights the importance of international cooperation and of strengthening partnerships with the Unites States and other allies. We aim for this cooperation to open great opportunities for the Finnish space sector in the new era of space exploration and in the Artemis program.”

The NASA press release still appears to focus on strengthening the Outer Space treaty, but I suspect that this Biden-imposed goal will change now that Trump is president. The original purpose of the accords as created during Trump’s first term was to work around the Outer Space treaty’s limitations on private ownership in space. Expect a return to that goal.

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, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, 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.

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South Korea’s space bureaucracy attempts to encourage private sector development

9:38 am

South Korea’s space agency, the Korea Aerospace Administration, has announced a new effort to encourage that country’s private sector in developing rockets and satellites.

[A] plan will be established to link the National Space Council, the highest policy decision-making body overseeing government space policy, with the Aerospace Development Policy Review Committee. Systems will also be established for workforce training in aerospace and the designation of a space development mission center.

To establish an aerospace economic ecosystem, the participation of the private sector in the development and utilization of launch vehicles and satellites will be expanded. In the aviation sector, future aircraft technologies, including urban air mobility (UAM), will be secured, and localization of aircraft materials and components will be supported. To encourage smooth research and development (R&D) investments in aerospace corporations, the aerospace fund will be revitalized with improvements to regulations and support for overseas expansion.

Overall, a lot of this sounds like meaningless bureaucratic gobbledygook. The goal might be to expand the private sector, but the program still has the space agency running everything, from its new government-built Nuri rocket to its other satellite development programs.

Nonetheless, the desire to encourage the private sector is good. It could simply be that South Korea’s private sector is not mature enough yet to take the lead, and the agency by this announcement is working to push it forward.

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Japan’s government wants its private sector to do all its future space station work, not its space agency JAXA

9:05 am

In a major shift of power away from its government, the Japanese science and technology ministry is presently drafting a policy that would have that country’s private sector lead all work that Japan does on any of the future commercial private space stations being built, not its space agency JAXA as has been done now for decades.

The draft policy specifies how Japan will be involved with the next space station. According to the draft, “the private sector will have such responsibilities as managing [the new space station], and JAXA will support its use.”

JAXA is currently responsible to the management and maintenance of the ISS and serves as the point of contact for its commercial use. However, the government will select a Japanese private-sector company to be the point of contact for the next space station. When JAXA, research institutes or other companies plan to use the ISS, they will have to contact the next station’s point of contact.

While Japan wants to have one of its own modules on one of the commercial stations, as it presently has on ISS, it appears the government does not want JAXA to lead this project. Instead, it wants Japan’s private sector to run the show by working out its own deals with the private commercial stations. At present the Japanese company Mitsui is partnering with Axiom on its station, so this is likely the first station where a deal could be worked out.

It seems that Japan is trying to poke its private sector out of its doldrums. Right now that sector seems unable to take any action on its own. It sits and waits for guidance from the government before acting, and even then acts timidly, waiting to see if the government approves of each step. What the Japanese government now wants instead is some independent action, not linked to government policy.

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FAA demands SpaceX do “mishap investigation” into the loss of Starship yesterday

1:04 pm

The FAA today announced that it is going to require SpaceX “to perform a mishap investigation into the loss of the Starship vehicle during launch operations on Jan. 16.”

Will this demand involve the same delays seen during the Biden years? I strongly believe they will not, for several reasons.

First, the FAA’s announcement seemed to me to have a decidedly different tone than in the past. It didn’t say “The FAA needed to complete a mishap investigation,” it said SpaceX had to do it. During the Biden administration the FAA made believe it was qualified to investigate any issues on a Starship/Superheavy launch, when in reality it had no such qualifications at all. It simply waited for SpaceX to complete its investigation, then would spend one to three months as it retyped SpaceX’s report.

Before Biden, the FAA let the company do the investigation, and quickly accepted its conclusions. That appears to be what it is doing now.

Second, Musk’s own response in announcing the preliminary results of the SpaceX investigation yesterday suggests he already expects the FAA to change its approach in this manner. “Nothing so far suggests pushing next launch past next month.” Right away he is signaling us that when SpaceX completes its work it expects the FAA to quickly okay the next flight. No long waits for paper work.

Third, there is Trump. If any FAA bureaucrats still try to play power games against SpaceX they will quickly discover they have no allies in the chain of command. Musk will make these games public, and Trump will come down hard against them.

That’s my hopeful prediction. We shall shortly see if my optimism has merit.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

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Rocket Factory Augsburg gets conditional licence for launching at Saxavord

11:00 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea

After years of delays and multiply approvals that in the end turned out to be meaningless, the United Kingdom’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) announced today that it has finally issued a launch license to the German rocket startup Rocket Factory Augsburg to do an orbital test launch from the Saxavord spaceport in the Shetland Islands.

The license however is not entirely without strings.

The licence is effective immediately, but a number of conditions need to be met before a launch can take place — including insurance arrangements and international agreements. The company is also required to give the CAA 60 days’ notice before launching.

Rocket Factory had hoped to launch last year, but it lost its RFA-1 rocket during a static fire test in August. It was planning a subsequent launch on the assumption the CAA would approve its licence in 2024. That assumption was wrong however. Even if the rocket had not been destroyed and was ready to go, the CAA was not, and continued to twiddle its thumbs until 2025. It is this twiddling that caused another German rocket startup, Hyimpulse, to abandon its plans to do launches from Saxavord, and switch to a new spaceport in Australia.

Rocket Factory now says it will attempt its first launch before the end of this year. Let’s see if the CAA lets that happen.

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After more than two years, Australian rocket startup thinks its launch approval is about to finally arrive

12:39 pm

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

The Australian rocket startup Gilmour Space originally expected to complete its first test launch of its three-stage Eris rocket off the east coast of Australia in April 2022.

At that time it thought the approvals for the licenses for its rocket, its Bowen spaceport, and the launch were just weeks away.

Hah! It is now two years later, and the company is still awaiting that launch license. According to the company’s head Adam Gilmour he is now hopeful the license is only weeks away.

“There is a lot of goodwill at CASA [Civil Aviation Safety Authority], and we recognise that they have been working very hard to get it done,” Mr Gilmour said. “We know they have been working towards it. It’s just that this is the first time for everyone involved, and it is quite complex. To give you an idea, we have had Zoom calls with literally 30 people on the call.”

Based on wait periods, if the CASA permit is approved (which comes with regulatory input from Airservices Australia), the earliest Gilmour could conduct the Eris Testflight One mission would be the middle of February. It is possible the permit will be granted as early as this week.

Gilmour however has been making the same exact statements about CASA now for two years. They are great! They are working hard! They want to approve!

Yet nothing happens.

I suspect that approval is close, but this long delay suggests other rocket startups in Australia are going to face the same governmental head winds. The government there seems uninterested in allowing freedom and competition to function. Instead, it sees itself as god, deciding who can do what when, and heaven forbid you challenge it in any way. (Which by the way explains Gilmour’s kow-towing in all his statements.)

Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay.

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The old media logjam has broken: Even the left is now getting its news from new media

1:18 pm

Sara Foster sees the light
Sara Foster sees the light

In my essay yesterday describing how the wildfires in the Los Angeles area appear to finally be making conservatives out of a lot of partisan knee-jerk Democrats, I used a quote that I think is important because it illustrates a major cultural change in a way that is not obvious at first. It also demonstrates a new political reality that the Democratic Party has not yet grasped.

The quote was from a tweet on X by actress Sara Foster. This is what she wrote:

We pay the highest taxes in California. Our fire hydrants were empty. Our vegetation was overgrown, brush not cleared. Our reservoirs were emptied by our governor because tribal leaders wanted to save fish. Our fire department budget was cut by our mayor. But thank god drug addicts are getting their drug kits. @MayorOfLA @GavinNewsom RESIGN. Your far left policies have ruined our state. And also our party.

Note the facts this clearly partisan Democrat cites.
» Read more

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Cruz reveals another area where red tape is blocking SpaceX at Boca Chica: roads

9:13 am

In a interview with a local news outlet in Texas, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) revealed that the state’s bureaucracy is stymieing SpaceX at Boca Chica in another unexpected way, getting the road to the facility repaired and upgraded.

“SpaceX has offered to invest their own money to improve the highway, and the problem is they’re running into permitting obstacles, environmental permitting obstacles that is slowing it down,” Senator Cruz said.

Cruz is the new Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. There are steps he says he can take to fix these roads, even if it is not something that will directly address the issue. “As chairman of the Commerce Committee, I am very focused on permitting, on reducing the barriers of permitting, on speeding up the ability to do things like improve and expand State Highway Four,” Cruz said.

In a statement, Texas Department of Transportation spokesman Ray Pedraza said, “TxDOT is currently providing upgrades and pavement improvements for the existing SH 4 between Brownsville and Starbase Texas (SpaceX). TxDOT is also working with SpaceX on further planning and environmental efforts to achieve additional widening on SH 4 in the future.”

I think Cruz did this interview to apply some public pressure on the Texas Transportation Department. Hopefully it will get the tortoise moving.

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The new conservatives who have been mugged by a wildfire

2:57 pm

Gavin Newsom, surveying his domain
Gavin Newsom, surveying the hellhole his
policies created. Looks proud, doesn’t he?

The news today is about how numerous Hollywood celebrities who have lost their homes in the wildfires that have been destroying huge swatches of the Los Angeles metropolitan area are one-by-one expressing loud public outrage at the mismanagement and failures of the Democrats running California’s state and city governments.

The list is long and detailed at the link. This comment is quite typical:

Actress Sara Foster also took to X to lament how Los Angeles residents pay exorbitant taxes but the state was still completely unprepared to take on such massive wildfires. “Our fire hydrants were empty. Our vegetation was overgrown, brush not cleared. Our reservoirs were emptied by our governor because tribal leaders wanted to save fish. Our fire department budget was cut by our mayor. But thank god drug addicts are getting their drug kits,” she wrote.

The politically active actress, who is the daughter of music mogul David Foster, called on [LA mayor] Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom to resign, writing, “your far left policies have ruined our state. And also our party.” [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words tell us however that Foster is not yet ready to reject the corrupt, bigoted, and incompetent Democratic Party that she so loves. This has been the pattern now for decades. No matter how bad its policies, the partisan adherents to the Democratic Party have too often consistently resisted opening their minds to other choices.

It immediately occurred to me however that this present outrage is only a foretaste of the real outrage soon to come. » Read more

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The biggest members of ESA cut their annual contributions to the partnership

9:43 am

In a continuation of the recent trend to go their own way in space, most of the largest partners in the European Space Agency (ESA) have decided to cut back their annual contributions this year to the agency.

The European Space Agency’s 2025 budget has dropped below its 2024 level after Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom collectively cut their contributions by €430 million.

During his annual press briefing on 9 January, ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher revealed that the ESA budget for 2025 would be €7.68 billion, down from €7.79 billion in 2024. The reduction in the agency’s budget could have been far worse, as all of the ‘big four’ countries, apart from France, significantly reduced their contributions.

Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Spain all reduced their contributions. Except for Belgium, all have instead been recently diverting such funds directly either to space startups in their own country (see here and here), or forgoing contributing to large ESA projects and instead buying the services from other private sources (see here).

In general, it appears the bigger nations in Europe have realized that ESA has not been providing them a good deal. It takes their money, but doesn’t deliver competitive goods. Consider the Ariane-6 rocket. Conceived by ESA and ArianeGroup in 2015, it was five years late in launching. Worse, it was conceived as an entirely expendable rocket — even though SpaceX had just proven in ’15 that re-usability was possible — so that it is now too expensive to compete in today’s rocket market.

ESA also requires its projects to distribute contracts among all the partners, which increases costs and slows development.

In the past five years these countries have been increasingly bypassing ESA, especially when it comes to rocketry. Instead of having all European rockets built and managed by ESA’s commercial arm, Arianespace, these nations are switching to the capitalism model, whereby they each purchase launches from independent competing rocket companies.

The ESA budget cuts reflect this continuing trend. No point in giving cash to this moribund bureaucracy when the money can be better spent elsewhere.

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Oman plans three more suborbital launches in ’25 from its proposed spaceport site

9:59 am

Middle East, showing Oman's proposed spaceport
The Middle East, showing the location of
Oman’s proposed spaceport at Duqm.

Oman is now planning three more suborbital launches from its proposed spaceport site at Duqm on the coast of the Indian Ocean, intended to further sell the location as a viable spaceport for use by others.

The first launch, of which little was revealed, took place in early December. What Oman’s state-run has revealed about the rocket is this:

Measuring 6.72m in length and weighing 123kg when fuelled, the rocket was developed with strict adherence to environmental and safety standards. … The Duqm-1 project involved 15 Omani engineers and technicians, who gained valuable experience in the space industry. While the rocket components were manufactured abroad, assembly took place locally, reflecting Oman’s efforts to transfer and localise advanced technologies.

I suspect the planned launches in 2025 will involve a similar-sized rocket. Though I know through various sources that Oman has been trying to encourage American rocket startups to consider this location, no deals have been made because of the State Department’s strict ITAR rules that are designed to prevent hostile nations from stealing American technology. The location however is a good one, and other Middle Eastern Arab nations might begin to consider it for their own rocket programs.

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Blue Origin fined by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection for using its launch deluge system

9:43 am

Because it conducted a static fire test using its launchpad deluge system in September 2024, before the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) had issued it a permit, the department has now fined Blue Origin $3,250.

The actual permit was subsequently approved in November 2024.

The story is very reminiscent of the red tape treatment SpaceX has been getting at Boca Chica. I am certain Blue Origin’s deluge system uses potable water (confirmed in the comments below), which will do no harm to the environment — proven by decades of government launches at both Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center. Yet, FDEP accuses the company of dumping “untreated industrial wastewater [in]to the environment.”

This story kind of proves that leftist politicians and activists can never stay bribed. Bezos for years has cozied up to the left with major donations to leftist organizations, including many many environmental groups. But when he finally gets ready to launch they are still ready and willing to make his life difficult.

It seems to me that Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida should have a conversation with the officials at FDEP that issued this fine, explaining to them that the real problem was likely that permitting was taking longer than it should, especially when everyone knows such deluge systems cause no harm. The permit should have been approved instantly.

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FBI investigating reports of an effort to bomb SpaceX’s Boca Chica Starship facility

9:00 pm

According to news stories from several sources tonight, the FBI is investigating a reported threat to bomb SpaceX’s Boca Chica Starship facility.

The source to the story comes from a local.

The report was made by Calvin Wehrle of Galveston, who frequently camps along Texas 4 near the Starship launch site.

In an interview Friday, he said he was there on the afternoon of Christmas Eve when an SUV pulled up with five male passengers who rolled down their windows to converse. They said they were from the Middle East. “I said something like, ‘What are y’all here for? ’ and the driver said, ‘Oh, we’re here to blow (Starship) up,’ ” Wehrle said. “I just went stone cold, and he said, ‘Oh, I got you. I was joking.’ ”

As the conversation went on, though, Wehrle’s visitors said at least three times they were in South Texas to attack Starship. He reported the incident to SpaceX and the sheriff’s office and said he was contacted later by an investigator.

This could be nothing, or it could be serious. The location of the Starship/Superheavy facilities is right along the road at Boca Chica, and it is very easy for anyone to get quite close. In fact there have been several incidences where people were caught trespassing.

Considering that SpaceX is gearing up for the seventh orbital test flight of Starship/Superheavy on January 10, 2025, the risks are now higher. The tank farm there, also not far from public access, is going to be filled with oxygen and methane, and will be an ideal target for attack.

And we can thank Joe Biden and his Democratic Party for allowing millions of illegals to enter the country un-vetted over the past four years, including tens of thousands who the evidence suggests could be potential terrorists. And we can also thank the Biden administration for sucking the quality out the FBI, making it incapable of doing its real job while it was used for political purposes harassing and persecuting Trump, many Republicans, and many ordinary conservatives.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

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Scientific American is looking for a new and “diverse” editor-in-chief!

1:15 pm

Scientific American, where discrimination and bigotry thrive!
Scientific American, where discrimination and
bigotry thrive!

Scientific American needs a new editor-in-chief, but right off the bat I must warn qualified white men they needn’t bother to apply. They won’t get the job.

More on why later. First we must give the background. In November Scientific American’s editor-in-chief, Laura Helmuth, resigned, claiming it was time for her “to take some time to think about what comes next (and go birdwatching).”

In truth, it was time for her to go. She had disgraced herself repeatedly by posting some very ugly posts condemning Trump and insulting his supporters in a most emotional and irrational manner. But those posts weren’t the real reason she need to leave.
» Read more

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FAA cancels one of three public meetings on the Starship/Superheavy environmental reassessment

9:38 am

The FAA today announced that it has canceled one of three meetings that it plans to hold in the Brownsville region next week to obtain public feedback on SpaceX’s request to increase its Starship/Superheavy launch rate at Boca Chica to 25 launches per year.

The FAA was scheduled to hold in-person public meetings on January 7th and 9th, 2025. However, due to the designation of January 9, 2025 as a National Day of Mourning to honor the late former President Jimmy Carter, the January 9th meetings are now cancelled.

The meeting schedule is now as follows:

  • In-person meeting: 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
  • Virtual on-line meeting: Monday, January 13, 2025; 5:30 PM–7:30 PM CDT Registration Link here. Dial-in phone number: 888-788-0099 (Toll Free), Webinar ID: 879 9253 6128, Passcode: 900729

As I noted in November when the new environmental reassessment and these meetings were announced, it is practically certain 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 in force, demanding SpaceX’s Boca Chica operations be shut down.

If the rest of the public, which is the vast majority of the Brownsville community, does not show up to counter these fringe activists, it will make it much easier for the bureaucrats who hate Musk at the FAA to take action against SpaceX. It is essential that the business community at least make an appearance, as the arrival of SpaceX has brought billions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs to Brownsville.

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The global launch industry in 2024: A year of amazing highs and depressing lows, with the best yet to come

9:40 am

For the past five years the entire global rocket industry has experienced a revolution that has resulted in a rise in global launch numbers unprecedented since the launch of Sputnik in 1957. 2024 was no different, with the total number of successful launches topping 256, two to four times the average number of launches that had occurred yearly prior to 2020.

This success has almost entirely been driven by the arrival of many private rocket companies competing for government and commercial business — led largely by SpaceX — aided by the decision by governments worldwide to get out of the way and let private enterprise do the job. The result has been spectacular, so much so that it now seem possible in the very near future to see humans finally revisiting the Moon and even getting to Mars and the asteroids.

At the same time, 2024 saw some significant signs that this success is not guaranteed, and could vanish in an instant if care is not taken.

The graph below, my annual count of launches world wide, provides the groundwork for these conclusions.
» Read more

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Seventh Starship/Superheavy test launch now targeting January 10, 2025

9:55 am

Based on a single word tweet by Elon Musk as well as the FAA’s license approval, it now appears that SpaceX is targeting January 10, 2025 for the seventh Starship/Superheavy test orbital launch.

According to the FAA license, the launch window that day opens at 4 pm (Central), with backup launch opportunities each day through January 15th.

Reading that license is very illuminating. The depth in which the FAA now demands compliance from SpaceX is beyond daunting, and illustrates the mission creep the agency has used to grow its power. Based on a recent Supreme Court ruling, the company likely has grounds to sue and win, correctly claiming that Congress never gave it such power over so many things, and that its regulatory oversight is unconstitutional.

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Space Force starts environmental impact study of SpaceX’s launches at Vandenberg

3:35 pm

In mid-December the Space Force initiated a new environmental impact study (EIS), reviewing SpaceX’s request to significantly increasing the number of launches it would do out of Vandenberg, an increase that could climb to as much as a hundred launches per year.

The EIS will examine the environmental impacts from the redevelopment of Space Launch Complex (SLC) 6 for use by SpaceX for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches. The Space Force awarded SpaceX access to SLC-6, aka “Slick Six,” in 2023 after the final launch of United Launch Alliance’s Delta 4 from the site.

SLC-6 was built in the 1960s for the Air Force’s Manned Orbiting Laboratory program, which was canceled in 1969 before any launches took place. It was later converted to support Space Shuttle launches, but mothballed after the Challenger accident in 1986 before hosting a single launch. ULA took over the site in 2006.

The EIS would also allow SpaceX to conduct up to 100 launches annually between SLC-6 and its existing launch pad at Vandenberg, SLC-4. That includes booster landings at both launch sites as well as droneships downrange.

This is where we are are in the first quarter of the 21st century. Nothing new can be done anywhere without detailed environmental impact statements that take months, sometimes years, to complete, and almost always conclude that the proposed work can proceed without harm. Often however that conclusion can only come if the government and the private sector agree to funnel cash to environmental causes and organizations, if only to shut them up and prevent further lawsuits. (That’s exactly what happened in Boca Chica. Expect the same now in California.)

It must be noted again that we now have almost eight decades of empirical proof in both Florida and California that rocket launches do no significant harm to the environment, and that if anything they act to protect wildlife by creating large undeveloped refuges in the surrounding land. These new impact statements forced on SpaceX in California, in Florida, and in Boca Chica are therefore nothing more than a government power play, done in order to tell everyone who really is boss.

A new boss however takes over the executive branch of the federal government in only a few weeks. I suspect he will not look kindly at these games. Expect some quick changes almost immediately.

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Chinese pseudo-company gets major cash influx for its Starlink copycat constellation

9:53 am

The Chinese pseudo-company Genesat, which is making the satellites for the 14,000 Starlink-type satellite constellation being developed by the Chinese pseudo-company SpaceSail, has been awarded $137 million in cash from a variety of Chinese sources, most of which are government agencies focused on encouraging development by these pseudo-companies.

Superficially everything about these companies appears real. They compete for contracts and investment capital, and can only function if they make a profit. They also compete with other similar Chinese pseudo-companies. The reality however is that they only exist because the Chinese government wants them to. For example, Genesat was formed by a partnership of SpaceSail and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (which is entirely government-run). And SpaceSail was formed earlier with support of both the national and local Shanghai governments. For example, consider today’s story:

Shanghai Gesi Aerospace Technology, also known as Genesat, announced the more than 1 billion yuan (approximately $137 million) funding round Dec. 30. The main investors include China’s National Manufacturing Transformation and Upgrading Fund, China Development Bank Science and Technology Innovation, Guosheng Capital, SIMIC Capital and Shanghai FTZ Fund.

The first two backers are both government agencies created to funnel government cash to these pseudo-companies.

Overall this approach by the communist Chinese government has worked remarkably well. It has created an robust space industry within a competitive and innovative atmosphere. That industry only exists however as long as the present policies of the Chinese government exist. If there is a major change in leadership it all could vanish in a moment, as there are no property rights in China. A new government could do as Putin did in Russia, consolidate all these pseudo-companies into a central government-run agencies in order to more closely control them.

For the present however China’s pseudo-capitalist approach means it will be a major player in space in the coming years. That success might even lead to a positive change in government, throwing the communists out of power eventually. It is not only demonstrating the advantages of freedom and competition over a top-down command economy, it is developing a class of people doing it. They might eventually have enough wealth and power to take over the government and changes things for real.

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Beware the DEI shell game

1:09 pm

Don't trust it to do the right thing
Don’t trust the leftists who run it to do the right thing

In the past few months the conservative has been repeatedly celebrating the retreat of the racist “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) movement. From corporations to universities DEI departments are being shut down.

Today I report on one of the most recent examples, but I do so as a warning. Just because a university or company announces plans to shut down a DEI department does not mean this racist policy is no longer being taught or used in hiring. In many cases, the shut down is merely a shell game to fool the general public while the policies continue, under the radar.

On December 17, 2024, the University of Iowa announced that was shuttering a number of programs, including its department of Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies, and combining them into a new department dubbed the School of Social and Cultural Analysis. From the university’s press release:

Under the proposed plan, the college would close the departments of American Studies and Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies, as well as the current majors in American Studies and in Social Justice, which have fewer than 60 students combined, and create a new major in Social and Cultural Analysis. The existing programs have limited faculty and overlapping curricula, causing challenges for faculty in sustaining teaching capacity. The new curricula will not only streamline operations but offer clarity and flexibility in students’ educational pathways.

“Right now, these programs are administered by multiple department chairs and multiple directors,” said Roland Racevskis, CLAS associate dean for the arts and humanities. “Under this proposed plan, the school would have a single leadership team dedicated to overseeing the operations of the programs. This new structure would provide better coordination of curriculum across these related programs, easier pathways for degree completion, and support for interdisciplinary research opportunities.”

Existing minors and certificates in associated areas would move into the new school. No changes to graduate programs are currently being proposed. [emphasis mine]

One of the reasons for this action is that the state legislature had recently passed an education appropriations bill [pdf] that specifically banned spending any money on DEI-type programs. From page 8 of the bill:
» Read more

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China replaces head of its space agency

9:16 am

The man who has headed China’s space agency since 2018 during its most aggressive and successful period, Zhang Kejian, has been replaced by the Chinese government. Zhang has also been removed from another important political post.

Zhang, 63, who has been head of the China National Space Administration (CNSA) since May 2018, is to be removed as Party Secretary of the State Administration for National Defense Science, Technology, and Industry (SASTIND), the agency announced Dec. 26. Shan Zhongde, 54, has been appointed as his replacement. The leader of SASTIND typically also heads CNSA and the China Atomic Energy Authority, both of which are subordinate agencies to SASTIND. CNSA has yet to announce the expected change.

China’s state run press provided no explanation for this change, though it also follows the removal of two other high ranking managers this year from another space agency, CASC, that is supervised by CNSA. Those removals are thought related to reports of corruption.

In the past two decades CNSA administrators went on to become heads of Chinese provinces, the approximate equivalent of a state governor in the U.S. and a somewhat powerful position. It appeared the Xi government was using its space agency as a training ground for its future political leaders. This in turn gave its space operations a favorable political position within the government.

Zhang’s removal in this manner and the rumors of corruption suggest this policy failed in his case. Another possibility is ven more significant if true. It might imply Zhang was involved in some power struggle that threatened Xi and his leadership. If this last possibility is so, the present favored political position of China’s space operations might be seriously threatened. Xi might have decided he did not like the power its leaders have garnered, and is now moving to squash it.

This does not mean the government will now move to reduce its space effort. It could mean however that funding will be more closely watched, and new projects questioned and rejected more easily.

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Roscosmos buys Earth observation data from private Russian satellite company

11:05 am

According to a report today by Russia’s state-run news agency TASS, Roscosmos has awarded a commercial contract to a private Russian satellite company, dubbed Sputnix, to purchase earth observation data its satellites have already collected.

“In 2024, up to 1.4 billion rubles [around $14.285 million] were allocated in budget funds to conclude forward contracts with private companies on buying out Earth’s remote sensing data obtained from their satellites and created under the federal project ‘Developing the Advanced Space Systems and Services High-Tech Sector.’ The first contract on buying out data has been concluded with the Sputnix Group of Companies,” Roscosmos said in a statement.

The Sputnix Group confirmed to TASS that the contract had been signed.

“Under the contract, the data already loaded into the database were bought out. We hope that next year we will be able to sign a forward contract as part of implementing the roadmap for the ‘Advanced Space Systems and Services’ project,” the company said, emphasizing that cooperation with Roscosmos remained a priority for Sputnix.

Sputnix was founded in 2011, and has so far launched 20 satellites into orbit, though many were short-lived cubesats. While on the surface this company appears real, it is not unlike the pseudo-companies in China. Its contracts appear to be almost all with the Russian government, all its work appears supervised by that government, and at any moment the Russian government can take it over, as it essentially did with the effort of the so-called private rocket startup S7 to launch from the Sea Launch ocean platform.

In other words, this news piece is simply the Russian government’s attempt to convince the world and its own people that there is a competitive and independent private sector in Russia, when in reality it doesn’t exist.

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Blue Origin finally gets FAA license to launch New Glenn, now targeting January 6, 2025

2:27 pm

The first completely assembled New Glenn, on the launchpad
The first completely assembled New Glenn,
on the launchpad

The FAA, after months of apparent delays, today finally issued Blue Origin a license to launch its New Glenn rocket for a period covering the next five years.

As has now become the FAA’s custom, in issuing this license it also brags about its success in issuing the license “well in advance of the statutory deadline” for doing so.

What a crock. Blue Origin and NASA were originally targeting an October launch of New Glenn carrying two Mars orbiters, but had to cancel when the rocket couldn’t lift off during the six-day launch window. Though delays at Blue Origin certainly contributed to this cancellation, I suspect the FAA’s red tape played a major factor as well.

According to another source, Blue Origin is now targeting a launch date of January 6, 2025. The company is presently doing a static fire test on the launchpad.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

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Chinese solid-fueled rocket fails during launch

9:26 am

The commercial division of a Chinese space agency, dubbed CAS Space, late yesterday experienced a launch failure of its solid-fueled Kinetica-1 rocket, lifting off from the Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

A statement by the pseudo-company described the failure tersely:

We can confirm that the first two stages were nominal. Stage 3 lost attitude three seconds after ignition and the self-destructing mechanism was activated.

Nothing was said about where the first two stages crashed inside China, or whether they landed near habitable areas.

According to the first link above, this was the second launch failure by China in 2024, which is incorrect. This was the third launch failure for China (see here and here for previous two). That article also says this was the 68th total launch this year, suggesting China has completed 66 successful launches. This does not jive with my count, which presently says China has had 64 successful orbital launches this year. I suspect the two additional launched might have been suborbital tests — such as first stage hop tests (here, here, and here) — which I do not include in these totals. It also might be including the accidental launch of one first stage during a static fire test when it broke free and launched itself unintentional.

More recent information from my readers (see the comments below) suggests that, though the numbers above are not correct, my own count for China’s total successful orbital launches needs adjusting as well. I had marked a March 13th Chinese launch as a failure because the satellites were not placed in their proper orbit. However, using their thrusters engineers were eventually able to get them into place and they are operating. I have therefore increased China’s totals below by one.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

134 SpaceX
65 China
17 Russia
14 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 154 to 97, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 134 to 117.

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Post COVID data in the UK: Those who got the jab substantially increased their chances of death

12:43 pm

How health scientists determined policy against COVID
How health officials and governments determined
policy against COVID during the epidemic.

Data assembled by the government of the United Kingdom now proves unequivocally that getting the jab during the COVID panic was a very bad idea. It did less than nothing to prevent you from getting the virus, and in fact significantly increased your chances of dying.

[T]he data show that 30 percent of the UK population remained completely unvaccinated as of July 2022. 34 percent were not double vaccinated, and 50 percent were not triple vaccinated.

However, the vaccinated population accounted for 95 percent of all COVID-19 deaths between January and May 2023.

The unvaccinated population, meanwhile, accounted for just five percent of Covid deaths.

Perhaps the most troubling information revealed in the data is the fact that deaths increased among the groups who received more “vaccine” doses. The vast majority of the deaths are among those vaccinated four times. This quad-vaxxed population accounts for 80 percent of all COVID-19 deaths, and 83 percent of all Covid deaths among the vaccinated.

The numbers for many other time periods following the introduction of the jab are comparable.
» Read more

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Liechtenstein signs the Artemis Accords

10:16 am

The tiny nation of Liechtenstein in Europe yesterday became the 52nd nation to sign the Artemis Accords.

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, Liechtenstein, 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.

There has been a flurry of new nations signing the accords since the November election of Trump. I suspect his coming encouraged these nations to sign, knowing the moribund leadership of Biden will soon be replaced with something more robust. It is also likely that these nations see a renewal of Trump’s original goals for the Artemis Accords, to create an international alliance, led by the United States, with the goal of overcoming the Outer Space Treaty’s limitations on private property.

I hope this turns out to be true. This alliance gives Trump a powerful lobby he can wield to force change.

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Enrollment in colleges nationwide dropped 5% in 2024

4:47 pm


Modern college education: “But Brawndo’s got
what plants crave. It’s got electrolytes!”

According to a report by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, college enrollment in 2023 dropped by 5% from the previous year, suggesting that high school students are beginning to question the value of attending colleges where anti-Semitism and bigotry is promoted and white and Asian students are treated like dirt.

It could also be because they are beginning to realize that — at least in the soft sciences like history, sociology, literature, etc — all they will get is leftist/Marxist indoctrination, not a true education.

The statistics point in this direction:

Enrollment declined across racial groups for 18-year-old freshmen, though white students saw the steepest decline, the analysis found. White 18-year-old enrollment dropped 10 percent between fall 2023 and 2024, compared to 8.4 percent for multiracial students, 8.2 percent for Black students, 5.7 percent for Asian students and 2.1 percent for Hispanic students.
» Read more

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