Tag: policy

ESA contracts Airbus to build three more Orion service modules

11:38 am

The European Space Agency (ESA) late last week announced that it has awarded Airbus a contract to build three more service modules for NASA’s Orion capsule.

This new contract supplements the existing contract that already has Airbus building three service modules. With six service modules in the pipeline, the ESA is signaling that it is very confident the Artemis program will continue.

The key question remains: Will it continue with SLS as the rocket of choice? Right now there simply aren’t the funds to build six SLS rockets. Congress has only funded two. Moreover, the pace of construction for SLS means that, if funded, it will likely take a decade at least for it to launch these six capsule/service modules. Since SpaceX’s Starship/Super Heavy will likely be operational in about half that time, and will also be capable of much more for far less, I suspect that if these additional Orion capsules get launched, they will do so on something other than SLS.

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SLS-backer Senator Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) to retire

11:27 am

Senator Richard Shelby (R-Alabama), long time firm supporter of the very expensive and long-delayed Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, has announced that he will not run for office again when his term expires in ’22.

The 86-year-old Shelby was first elected to the Senate in 1986 after eight years in the House. Shelby served in the House, and the first eight years in the Senate, as a Democrat, switching to the Republican party in 1994.

Shelby is best known in the space community for his role shaping NASA programs as a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. That has included stints as chairman of the commerce, justice and science subcommittee, whose jurisdiction includes NASA, as well as of the full committee. With Democrats in control of the Senate, he is currently the ranking member of the full committee.

“I have worked to enhance Alabama’s role in space exploration and the security of our nation,” Shelby said in the statement announcing his decision not to run for reelection. That’s included support for programs based at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, such as the Space Launch System. “As chairman of the appropriations committee, I have more than a passing interest in what NASA does. And I have a little parochial interest, too, in what they do in Huntsville, Alabama,” he said at a March 2019 industry event

As the article makes clear, Shelby used his clout unceasingly to keep SLS funded. When NASA simply hinted in 2019 that it might switch to another rocket to launch Orion he made his displeasure known, and NASA immediately backed down.

His resignation now, at the same time that other members of Congress as well as the Biden administration appear to be separating the Artemis lunar program from SLS, is a strong signal that the political winds are blowing badly against SLS. Shelby has probably realized that he no longer has the same support for SLS in the rest of Congress that he once had, and knows there is a good chance it will go away, along with much of the pork he has been funneling to Alabama with it. When that happens, his chances of getting reelected drop precipitously. He probably doesn’t have to inclination to fight what might be a losing battle, especially at the age of 86.

The second static fire test of SLS’s core stage is presently scheduled for the fourth week in February. All had better go well, as time is running out in getting the rocket’s first launch off in ’21. Right now that schedule is very iffy. Further problems will make it impossible.

And any major failures would probably lead to the entire program’s cancellation. It would take years for SLS to recover the loss of the core stage, time the program does not have.

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Fiftieth anniversary of Apollo 14 lunar landing

9:22 am

Apollo 14 as seen by LRO
Click for full image.

In honor of the fiftieth anniversary today of the landing of Apollo 14 on the Moon, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) science team has used images from the spacecraft to map out what the astronauts did on the surface, as shown in the reduced image to the right. The orange and teal lines indicate the routes followed during the two EVAs, with the pink triangles indicating stopping points along the way.

Unlike Apollo 11 and 12, which focused on engineering goals such as landing precisely on the Moon, Apollo 14 focused on addressing science goals. Antares (lunar module) landed in the Fra Mauro highlands, the original destination of the failed Apollo 13 mission, essentially taking on that mission’s objectives. This was the first crewed landing in the lunar highlands and not in the mare.

The Apollo 14 astronauts who landed on the Moon, Alan Shepard (Commander) and Edgar Mitchell (Lunar Module Pilot), completed two extra-vehicular activities (EVAs) while on the surface. They spent a total of 9 hours and 22 minutes setting up equipment, taking photographs, collecting samples, and exploring.

This was the last mission where the astronauts had to walk. The next three Apollo missions brought a rover with them, so that they could drive to their research sites.

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UAE’s Hope or Al-Amal Mars Orbiter orbital insertion

8:31 am

UPDATE: The probe has apparently achieved orbit.

The new colonial movement: The United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) Mars orbiter, Hope, or Al-Amal in Arabic, is about to insert itself into orbit around the red planet, with that insertion to be confirmed by 11:08 (Eastern).

If you want to watch, I have embedded the live stream below the fold. A warning: The insertion is a relatively interesting event to watch, as the orbiter works autonomously and the signal confirming it happened arrives after the event. Most of the stream is propaganda for the UAE.
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Chase Bank blacklists Pro-Trump Covfefe Coffee

1:55 pm

Covfefe Coffee, blacklisted
Click image to buy their product.

They’re coming for you next: Chase Bank has suddenly decided that it can’t do business with the coffee company, Covfefe Coffee, apparently for the simple reason that the coffee company is unabashedly pro-Trump and supports the standard American values of freedom and liberty that made this nation the haven for the oppressed for more than two centuries.

Chase Bank has abruptly stopped a pro-Trump coffee company from using its payment processing service, WePay, and is currently preventing them from withdrawing any funds.

Covfefe Coffee, founded in 2018, brands itself as “Coffee For Deplorables By Deplorables.” The company, which says their goal is to “provide proud to Americans access to world-class coffee without having to fund your political and cultural opponents,” was informed via email on Wednesday that they would no longer be able to use their payment processing service because payments were “for one or more of the activities prohibited by” their terms of service. [emphasis mine]

Nor has this been all. Amazon suspended the company’s advertising on that platform in 2019 for using the phrase “Make America Great Again,” a phrase that Amazon thinks “incites hate.”

What this really tells us is that the people at Amazon and Chase Bank hate America, and want it to fail. Anyone who thinks different must be blacklisted and preventing from succeeding.

To understand how hateful Amazon and Chase are being, you need only read what Covfefe says on its own website:
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Journalist Andy Ngo

1:39 pm

They’re coming for you next: Journalist Andy Ngo has spent the last two years being pretty much one of the few real journalists covering the violent, fascist, storm-trooper tactics of the leftist Antifa and Black Lives Matter movements, carefully documenting in both print and visuals their riots and attacks of innocent citizens.

His reporting has been so effective that Antifa thugs attacked him in 2019, sending him to the emergency room in Portland.

Furthermore, those same Portland brownshirts stormed a local bookstore, causing its evacuation and early closure, because it happened to be selling Ngo’s book on Antifa activities in Portland, Unmasked. The protests eventually forced the bookstore to remove the book from its shelves, though it still sells it online.

Nor has that been the sum total of Antifa’s effort to blacklist Ngo. They have been issuing him death threats, and even though Ngo told the Portland police, even naming some names, the police did nothing.

Ngo was thus forced to flee Portland temporarily, moving to London. The irony is that his parents were refugees who came to the United States to gain freedom and the right to speak freely. Now their son has fled the U.S. for the same reasons.

When asked how he would describe Antifa in one sentence, he said, “For their world to live and thrive, America has to die.”

The worst part of these attacks has been the shallow willingness of the mainstream media to go along with the false slanders and lies against Ngo and to spread them.

National publications, such as Rolling Stone and Salon used a local alternative weekly “blog,” as Ngo puts it, to smear him using epithets with which we’re only all too familiar: racist extremist. “And then so whenever you google me now and [view] my Wikipedia page, all you see are these false accusations,” he explained. “All of this has been an attempt to get me canceled; to make me out to be someone I’m not, make me out to be a far-right extremist.”

It is all part of Obama’s legacy of hate, where slanders and libels by the left are now their first go-to argument in any debate.

Ngo deserves great kudos and support, however. Unlike many who fold to this fascist pressure, he has stood strong, and continued his reporting, honestly and in detail. Furthermore, the attacks have actually helped sales of Unmasked, making it a major bestseller. For a short while was number one on Amazon, and is still #37 as of today.

His fearless willingness to fight is of course the right response. Buying his book is another. We must not bow to these bullies and tyrants. We must look them in the eye and defy them. Only then will we ever have the chance to once again become free.

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Tianwen-1 takes first picture of Mars

12:48 pm

Mars as seen by Tianwen-1 for the first time
Click for full image.

The new colonial movement: China’s Tianwen-1Mars spacecraft has taken its first picture of Mars, cropped and reduced to post here to the right.

The photo shows Valles Marineris as the darker splotch in the center-right of the hemisphere, with the northern lowland plain that this canyon feeds into, Chryse Planitia, the triangular dark area to the north east. Both Viking-1 and Mars Pathfinder landed in this region. The whitish border area on the triangle’s eastern flank is the area that Europe’s Rosalind Franklin rover will hopefully land in ’23.

The whitish area that caps the north pole is likely the annual mantle of dry ice that covers the planet’s polar regions down to about 60 degrees latitude each winter. Right now it is early spring in the northern hemisphere, and that mantle has only begun to sublimate away. In another few months that mantle will disappear entirely, exposing the terrain below it.

Finally, the very bright edge on the planet’s eastern limb is either caused by a cloud layer, or is simply an over-exposure. Hard to say which.

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The new invasion of Mars begins next week!

10:13 am

In the next two weeks three spacecraft will arrive at Mars, including two orbiters and two rovers. This post is simply a heads up so that my readers will know what to expect and when to expect it.

First, we have the arrival in Mars orbit of the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) Hope orbiter on February 9th at 10:30 am (Eastern). The spacecraft was built in a partnership with U.S. universities and the UAE. Once in orbit it will focus on studying the Martian atmosphere.

Next will arrive China’s Tianwen-1 orbiter on February 10th. The exact time it will do its engine burn to enter orbit has not been announced, as far as I can tell. Once in orbit it will begin a four month reconnaissance of the landing site for its presently unnamed rover, which will descend to the surface in May.

Finally, on February 18th at 12:55 am (Pacific) the American rover Perseverance will land in Jezero Crater on Mars. Essentially an upgraded copy of the Curiosity rover, it will land in the same way, lowered by cables from its re-entry sky crane rocket above it. It will then spend years studying the geology of Mars, while also storing samples that a later mission can recover and return to Earth.

All in all February is going to be an exciting month for the exploration of Mars. Stay tuned for some cool stuff!

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NASA awards Firefly lunar contract

9:29 am

Capitalism in space: NASA yesterday announced that it has awarded the new smallsat rocket company Firefly a $93 million contract to build a lunar lander for delivering scientific payloads to the Moon’s surface.

This is the first delivery awarded to Firefly Aerospace, which will provide the lunar delivery service using its Blue Ghost lander, which the company designed and developed at its Cedar Park facility. This facility also will house the integration of NASA and any non-NASA payloads, and also will serve as the company’s mission operations center for the 2023 delivery.

The lander is based on the design of Israel’s Beresheet lunar lander that failed in its landing attempt in 2019. After that failure a group of Israeli engineers from that project formed their own company, and partnered with Firefly to build a new lander, which is now dubbed Blue Ghost.

The NASA contract itself replaces OrbitBeyond, which had won a lunar landing contract initially but had backed out in 2019.

Finally, the timing of this announcement immediately after Firefly had revamped its board of directors to remove its main Ukrainian backer from an obvious management position is most telling. Suggests to me that they did that revamping in direct response to NASA’s concerns, and once done NASA could then move forward with the contract award.

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Biden administration endorses Artemis program

9:14 am

During a press conference yesterday Biden’s press secretary Jen Psaki stated that the Biden administration plans to continue the Artemis manned lunar program that was initiated by the Trump administration.

“Through the Artemis program, the United States government will work with industry and international partners to send astronauts to the surface of the moon — another man and a woman to the moon,” Psaki told reporters in a White House press briefing Thursday. “Certainly, we support this effort and endeavor,” she added.

The Biden administration was under pressure to endorse Artemis, coming from its own party. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress want the pork it represents to them. This statement now aligns Biden with Congress. The American effort to return to the Moon, established by Trump, is now practically engraved in stone.

What the statement that Psaki read did not detail is whether that support will include the SLS rocket or the Orion capsule. Nor did her statement indicate any time schedule for a landing, which adds weight to the supposition that they are going to abandon the Trump’s effort to push for a 2024 manned landing on the Moon.

Moreover, the letter sent to the White House on February 3rd by eleven Democrats endorsing Artemis (available here [pdf]), also said nothing about SLS or Orion. Instead, it was more intent on encouraging the White House to award contracts to the private sector to build the manned lunar lander. NASA had announced on February 1st that it was delaying its decision on who should build it, and those Democrats did not want that delay to result in the contracts getting killed.

Both statements tell us is that SLS itself is presently on very thin ice. Congress wants Artemis, but Artemis is no longer synonymous with SLS. For the past two years the Trump administration had been awarding contracts to numerous private companies to design and build many components of Artemis, rather than have NASA do the designing and building (as it had with SLS). Those contracts have created a cohort of new vested interests that rely on Artemis, all of which I am sure are screaming at their representatives in Congress to keep their work funded.

Furthermore, SpaceX’s development of Starship is clearly showing everyone that an alternative to SLS does exist, and could be operational for much less and much sooner.

To my mind, all this evidence suggests that the Washington political world is getting itself ready for the possibility of abandoning SLS. They don’t want to, but if alternatives to its pork are available that are also more productive, they are steeling themselves for making the difficult political decision of switching.

This evidence also suggests that the Biden administration will continue the policies I outlined in my 2017 policy paper Capitalism in Space (available as a free download here [pdf]) and adopted by the Trump administration. I had recommended that all design and construction should be taken from NASA and given to many different private companies, with that private sector also owning what they build while competing for those government dollars. NASA would outline the project’s goals and concept, and then act merely as a customer which would find others to execute those goals and concepts, as quickly and as cheaply as possible.

If the Biden administration is embracing these recommendations, this is very good news. While the motives of these corrupt politicians might be bad, the result could be very good for the U.S. Allowing the private sector to do the job means it might actually get done, rapidly and for much less. It will also help fuel the growth of a very robust American space industry, which once established will soon no longer depend solely on the government for its business. The lower cost required by the competition to get NASA business will encourage others to buy the products, and soon thereafter the government will become irrelevant to this industry’s success.

This is the model used in the early 20th century to jump start the airline industry. It worked. It now looks like NASA and the govenment will do it in space.

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China’s Long March 3B rocket launches military satellite

8:24 am

China yesterday used its Long March 3B rocket to place a military communications satellite into orbit.

No word on whether this first stage or strap-on boosters lander near any residential communities.

The 2021 launch race:

4 SpaceX
3 China
1 Rocket Lab
1 Virgin Orbit
1 Russia

The U.S. still leads China 6 to 3 in the national rankings. SpaceX’s had planned to do another Starlink launch this morning but has rescheduled it for the weekend.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Democrats working to fire civil servant

10:32 am

They’re coming for you next: Congressional Democrats and the Biden administration have been on a campaign to fire a recently hired civil servant because he had previously been a Republican political appointee.

Michael Ellis, who last served as the former senior director for intelligence on the National Security Council during the Trump administration, was put on administrative leave from his new position as the general counsel at the National Security Agency, just hours after President Joe Biden was inaugurated.

Ellis — a Navy Reserve intelligence officer, Yale Law School graduate, and Jeopardy! winner — had first applied for the position in January 2020, and went through an extensive months-long vetting process conducted by a panel of non-partisan civil servants, according to the two former officials. Ellis was ultimately selected for the position in mid-November by Paul Ney, the Pentagon’s general counsel whose first job at the department came during the George W. Bush administration as the Navy’s principal deputy general counsel. He started his position on Tuesday, January 19.

However, recent news reports revealed that a day later, on Inauguration Day, NSA Director Army Gen. Paul Nakasone placed Ellis on administrative leave, pending the outcome of an inquiry by the Department of Defense inspector general into the circumstances of his hiring.

It is no secret that Democrat lawmakers for months opposed Ellis going from an appointed position in the Trump administration to a non-partisan civil service position in the government — a practice commonly referred to as “burrowing in.”

The Democrats might have a complaint about Ellis’ civil servant hiring if this “burrowing in” strategy was a new one, but in fact, far more Democratic Party political appointees have used it over the years to become civil servants — who are difficult to remove — than Republicans, and as far as I know, the Republican Party has almost never moved to get them fired when it took power.

No, what the Democrats are doing here is part of their on-going purge from government of any Republicans, as I have already shown by previous posts in this daily stream of blacklisted Americans. The bureaucracy in Washington is almost completely controlled by their supporters. Can’t have anyone there who might dissent from the Democratic Party’s agenda. They must all be removed, now!

Moreover, if this effort at a purge was unique, applied only to this one Republican, it might be more understandable in the dog-eat-dog world of politics. The Democrats might have justifiable reasons for opposing strongly this one person.

In this new age of Democratic Party blacklists and censorship, however, this kind of blacklisting effort is instead par for the course. The Democrats are trying to destroy all Republicans wherever they can, not because of any policy differences but merely because they are Republicans. This story is just one of many.

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Firefly shakes up board of directors

9:09 am

The smallsat rocket company Firefly, only a month or so from the first orbital test flight of its Alpha rocket, has drastically changed its board of directors, removing its main financial backer from the Ukraine and replacing him with Americans.

Among those no longer on the board is Firefly’s financial savior, Polyakov, who has dual Ukrainian-British citizenship and lives in Edinburgh. This is a substantial change, as it moves the company’s key financial backer from a role as a decision maker to that of a stockholder. Markusic said Polyakov has the rights of a stockholder but that Firefly’s board now directs the company. Polyakov remains Firefly’s largest shareholder.

“These changes are part of the logical growth and development of Firefly,” Polyakov told Ars. “I’m extremely proud of what we have accomplished to date. Moving forward, I have the utmost confidence in Tom, his team, and the new board members.”

Some concerns had previously been raised about Polyakov’s background. This move, however, is more due to having an all-American board of directors, which should bolster Firefly’s efforts to work with the defense community.

Essentially, the company and Polykov have moved Polykov out of a sensitive position so as to make the company seem more palatable to the federal government. His presence on the board would have likely made it difficult to win any government contracts. Making him in name just a stockholder will reduce that issue.

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SpaceX competitors lobbying to kill FCC subsidy for Starlink

9:00 am

A lobbying effort instigated by some of SpaceX competitors in the rural internet service business is now working to kill the $886 million subsidy the FCC had awarded the company for developing its Starlink internet constellation.

The losers in the awards process apparently are teaming up with the Democrats to challenge all the awards, with SpaceX their main target.

The [award to SpaceX was] made when Trump administration appointees still controlled the FCC and now the agency is led by Biden appointees who could cut off applicants it considers dubious. Last month, 160 House and Senate members urged the FCC to scrutinize recipients, in part because network construction takes time. “We fear that we will not know whether funds were improperly spent for years to come,” said the lawmakers.

There is a “a need for proper upfront assessment,” Representative Jim Clyburn, of South Carolina, the No. 3 House Democrat, said in an email. He said many applicants claim to be able to deliver faster service to new customers than they are delivering to current subscribers.

This is a fight for government hand-outs, period. The losers are now using political pressure to change the decision. And since the Democrats generally hate SpaceX (and Elon Musk) because it is so successful at actually achieving what it sets out to do, they are glad to help them. Not only will it bring these politicians campaign donations (called bribes if you are honest), it will destroy the one space company that is proving that capitalism and freedom works.

From my perspective, no one, including SpaceX, should get these funds. SpaceX is proving they aren’t necessary to get the job done (bringing fast internet service to rural communities). Moreover, the federal government really doesn’t have the cash, deep in debt as it is.

But then, my perspective is now considered quaint, even “raaaaaaacist”, in our modern corrupt Marxist society.

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Ten finalists in public Chinese contest to name Mars rover

3:15 pm

The new colonial movement: The Chinese public vote to pick the name of the Mars rover presently flying to Mars on its Tianwen-1 orbiter has now been narrowed to ten finalists.

The public can now vote for their favorites from a shortlist of 10 names for the Tianwen-1 mission rover.

The 10 names — Hongyi, Qilin, Nezha, Chitu, Zhurong, Qiusuo, Fenghuolun, Zhuimeng, Tianxing and Xinghuo — are taken from ideas including Chinese mythological figures, Confucian concepts and legendary animals.

Notably Hongyi, from the Confucian Analects, can be translated to “persistence” or perseverance, giving a similar meaning to the NASA Perseverance rover also heading for Mars. Others meanings include:

Zhurong: a god of fire
Qilin: a Chinese unicorn
Chitu: red rabbit
Qiusuo: to explore, referencing an ancient poem
Zhuimeng: to pursue a dream
Nezha: a mythological hero
Fenghuolun: Nezha’s weapons
Tianxing: referring to the motion of celestial bodies
Xinghuo: spark

Personally, I hope they pick Chitu (Red Rabbit), as that matches nicely with the name of China’s lunar rover, Yutu-2 (Jade Rabbit).

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Today’s blacklisted American: Professor fired from journal he founded

12:56 pm

They’re coming for you next: Timothy Jackson, a professor at the University of North Texas, was removed from the music journal he founded because he dared criticize in print the racial and anti-white politics of another academic.

In November 2019, music theorist Philip Ewell delivered a plenary address to the Society of Music Theory positing “a white racial frame in music theory that is structural and institutionalized.” Ewell took particular aim at 19th century music theorist Heinrich Schenker, whose influence on music theory is “hard to overstate,” arguing that Schenker was a “virulent racist” and that Schenker’s “racist views infected his music theoretical arguments.”

Timothy Jackson has devoted his career to the study of Heinrich Schenker. He is the director of the Center for Schenkerian Studies at UNT and a co-founder of the Journal of Schenkerian Studies, an academic journal published at UNT. Ewell’s widely-heard address related so directly to Schenker’s work that Jackson and the editorial staff of the journal decided to publish a symposium issue featuring a number of responses, both pro and con, to Ewell’s address. The journal issued a call for papers to all members of the Society of Music Theory, including Philip Ewell, who did not respond. Timothy Jackson himself published a response in the symposium that was highly critical of Ewell’s analysis.

The symposium issue was published in July 2020, and the calls for Jackson’s punishment began immediately. Rather than defend academic freedom against this obvious attempt to suppress unpopular opinions, UNT launched an investigation, creating an “ad hoc” panel to look into the process that allowed the symposium issue of the journal to be published. On November 30, 2020, this ad hoc panel published a report criticizing the journal’s structure and the editorial and review process used for the symposium.

In response to the ad hoc panel’s report, department chair Benjamin Brand “informed Professor Jackson that he would be removed from the Journal and that the university would eliminate resources previously provided to the Journal and Center for Schenkerian Studies,”

One important detail about the Heinrich Schenker whom Ewell calls a “virulent racist.” He was also a Jew who was a victim of German anti-Semitism and lost many relatives in the Holocaust, facts that Ewell somehow did not think important to mention.

This what academia has been like now for nigh on two decades. Only one political perspective is allowed, which for decades was merely liberal and Democrat. More recently this has transitioned into outright bigotry against whites. If you happen to be one of the continually shrinking tiny minority that disagrees publicly you will find yourself quickly squashed like a bug, as the University of North Texas is now attempting to do to Jackson.

Jackson however is not willing to get squashed without a fight. He has filed a defamation lawsuit (available here [pdf]) in response, noting that he was punished merely because he exercised his First Amendment rights of free speech. Jackson’s lawsuit not only names the University of North Texas, it also names many of the individuals who attacked him and participated in the witchhunt against him.

I hope he wins, and wins big, causing real pain to every single one of the bigots and tyrants who have tried to silence him, merely because he disagrees with them.

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Russia & China negotiating increased cooperation on the Moon

10:21 am

The new colonial movement: According to the state-run Russian news source TASS, Russia and China are in negotiations to increase Russia’s participation in China’s program to establish a manned base on the Moon.

Russia’s state-run space corporation Roscosmos is in talks with its Chinese colleagues to determine scientific tasks for a lunar base and to discuss technical aspects of the project’s implementation, Deputy Director General for International Cooperation at the Russian state space corporation Roscosmos Sergey Savelyev told TASS. “At present, work is under way to determine possible scientific tasks of mutual interest in the Moon research. Besides, possible technical implementation of the project is being analyzed,” he said.

The article is very vague about details. It does signal that Russia is strongly looking for alternatives to working with the U.S. on its Lunar Gateway project. If it teams up with China NASA will likely begin breaking off all cooperation with Russia because of the legal restrictions that prevent it from partnering in any way with China.

This article also illustrates Russia’s declining status as a space power. For years they have depending on the American program at ISS to have a place in space. Now they are looking to China. All in all, it appears they can’t get their own projects going, and need to attach themselves to others to have any part in the exploration of space.

As for China, that country wants to the good public relations that would come from making its space program international in scope. I expect therefore they want Russia to sign on. I also expect that China will dictate terms, as it doesn’t really need Russia in its effort.

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Russian launches military satellite

9:50 am

Russia this morning successfully launched a military intelligence satellite using its Soyuz-2 rocket.

This was Russia’s first launch in 2021. The 2021 launch race:

3 SpaceX
2 China
1 Rocket Lab
1 Virgin Orbit
1 Russia

The U.S. still leads China 5-2 in the national rankings, a lead that should widen by tomorrow as SpaceX has two Starlink satellite launches planned from Cape Canaveral four hours apart in the wee hours of the morning. If both are successful, that single American company will have as many launches as the entire world combined.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Liberal fired for posting stupid tweet

11:25 am

They’re coming for you next: While the bulk of blacklisting going on right now in America is coming from the left with the goal of silencing their opposition, the control freak nature of our society is doing harm to many others for sometimes the stupidest of reasons.

Today’s blacklisted American falls into this latter category. On January 21, 2021, Will Wilkinson, a writer at the very liberal Niskanen Center think tank in Washington, was fired because an apparently conservative twitter mob had complained about a very stupid tweet he had sent out. The wording of the tweet, sent the night after Biden’s inauguration, was ugly, without doubt: “If Biden really wanted unity, he’d lynch Mike Pence.”

Wilkinson claimed in his apology that the tweet was a very bad attempt at satire, making fun of both the left and the right, both of which had expressed at some time or another real anger or hate for Mike Pence. It didn’t work, which is not surprising considering the mindless emotional nature of Twitter. Instead, at first glance it looked like he was sincerely calling for Pence’s lynching.

As noted by Glenn Greenwald at the link,
» Read more

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Rocket of Chinese pseudo-private company fails on 2nd launch

8:52 pm

The new colonial movement: Today’s second launch of the Chinese pseudo-private company iSpace’s Hyperbola-1 rocket ended in failure soon after launch.

No details yet on what went wrong.

The company had successfully completed its first orbital launch in July 2019. The smallsat rocket, using four solid-rocket stages, is almost certainly derived from China’s military technology, and thus the company could not exist without significant government supervision.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Mike Lindell, CEO of My Pillow

2:10 pm

They’re coming for you next: And in the case of Mike Linddell, the CEO of the company My Pillow, the left is coming at him from all sides.

First he was banned from Twitter, merely because Twitter decided it apparently did not like him.

Twitter said Tuesday that it permanently suspended Lindell — a staunch ally of former President Donald Trump — because of his “repeated violations” of the company’s civic integrity policy, which it implemented last fall to clamp down on misinformation.

Twitter didn’t say which of Lindell’s posts pushed it over the edge. [emphasis mine]

As is typical of this corrupt leftist company, it does not provide any evidence for its claims. Nor does it outline clearly the standards that Lindell was supposed to have violated.

No, what Twitter really doesn’t like is that Lindell has been a vocal supporter of Trump, and for that he must be silenced.

Next, the computer company Dominion, which sits in the center of many of the election fraud allegations from the November 3rd election, has threatened Lindell with a defamation lawsuit for daring to note the many problems that others have identified with the manner in which Dominion’s machines tabulated votes in several states.
» Read more

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Environmentalists cheer FAA blocking of Starship test flight

9:28 am

Two Starship prototypes now on launchpads
Two Starships are better than one!

They’re coming for you next: It appears the environmentalist movement is thrilled that the FAA and the Biden administration blocked last week’s test flight of SpaceX’s ninth prototype of Starship.

It also appears they are gunning to end Starship entirely, and might now have the right people in charge to get it done.

Jim Chapman, president of the nonprofit Friends of the Wildlife Corridor, says it is unusual for a federal regulatory agency to allow a company to conduct tests prior to completion of an environmental review and licenses issued.

He and other environmentalists have repeatedly expressed concerns to Border Report of what they say is a lack of oversight by the FAA on this site. But Friday’s actions gave Chapman some hope. “The fact that the FAA is going by the book for a change is a good development,” Chapman said. “They’re following the law by doing that and they’re supposed to do the environmental evaluation before they issue new licenses and up until now they kind of haven’t been doing that.”

The irony here is that these environmentalists are claiming that SpaceX’s rocket facility at Boca Chica will threaten the local beach wildlife, when we have more than a half century of evidence from Cape Canaveral that a rocket launch facility does the exact opposite. When the federal government established its Florida spaceport it reserved vast tracts around it for safety, but also reserved that land as a wildlife preserve. The result has been that the beach wildlife at Cape Canaveral has thrived, and been protected.

What these environmentalist really want to do is prevent SpaceX from flying, merely because they hate the development of new technology and the advancement of human capabilities. The environmental movement is routinely against anything new, and has been for decades.

With the Democrats controlling Congress and the White House, their allies are now in power. I would not at all be surprised if the FAA’s action last week is also tied to this environmental review. If so, expect future test flights at Boca Chica to be further delayed and stretched out.

Meanwhile, this past weekend SpaceX rolled out its tenth Starship prototype, placing it on a second launchpad right next to prototype #9, as shown by the screen capture above from the LabPadre 24/7 live feed this morning. The company sure is making it clear that the only reason they have been stalled is the government.

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India is targeting ’21 for first unmanned test launch of manned system

9:07 am

The new colonial movement: According to Indian government officials, the first unmanned test flight of their Gaganyaan manned capsule will occur before the end of 2021.

The first unmanned launch is slated for December 2021. The Gaganyaan is a crewed orbital spacecraft expected to carry three astronauts into space for at least seven days. The spacecraft is likely to consist of an orbital module which will have a service and a crew module. The mission is estimated to cost around Rs 10,000 crore. The GSLV Mk-III, now called LVM-3 (Launch Vehicle Mark-3), will be deployed for the launch.

The new name for the rocket helps distinguish it from the GSLV Mk-II, a smaller version aimed mostly at commercial customers.

India also hopes to launch a new smallsat rocket in ’21, as well as its next lunar lander/rover, Chandrayaan-3. The country’s space effort will also be attempting to recover from its shutdown in 2020 due to the Wuhan virus panic.

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NASA delays lunar lander contract award

8:55 am

NASA, now under the control of the Biden administration, has quietly delayed by at least two months the contract award to two companies to build manned lunar landers for its Artemis program.

With short funding from Congress and a new administration focused on more pressing national issues, the move was expected.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX, a team of aerospace giants led by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, and Leidos-owned Dynetics won a combined $967 million in seed funding from NASA last year to develop rivaling concepts for a human lunar landing system. It’s the space agency’s first effort to spend money on astronaut moon landers since the Apollo program in the 1970s.

Last Wednesday, NASA told the three contractors that an extension to their development contracts “will be required,” picking a new award date of April 30th. Under the Trump administration’s timeline, the agency had planned to pick two of the three bidders in late February, giving a stamp of approval for two systems that would inevitably carry humans to the moon.

This delay would likely have occurred under Trump as well, mainly because Congress only appropriated less than a third of the money needed for this Artemis program.

However, under Biden it was guaranteed. A major review is about to happen, designed not to kill Artemis but to slow it down appreciable. Congress likes the pork Artemis produces, but is wholly uninterested in it actually flying any dangerous missions. I suspect Biden will agree. The focus will once again shift back to Gateway, making any lunar landing require it so that it must be built first. Such a shift will guarantee that no American manned missions to the surface of the Moon will occur before ’30, but also allow the spending of gobs of money building a small lunar station that will only be occupied for short periods.

The big loser here, to my mind, is Jeff Bezos. His company, Blue Origin, was building the descent portion of the lunar lander, with all other portions built by his big space partners, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Draper. Not only is most of the other work by these partners more easily shifted to other uses related to Gateway, but those companies already have plenty of government contracts. As far as I can remember, Blue Origin has no other big government deals, with its New Glenn having been rejected by the military, and its lunar descent technology unneeded until there is a lunar landing, and I expect that to be significantly delayed.

For the past four years Bezos has clearly wanted to make Blue Origin a new big space contractor. Right now it appears that effort has failed wholly.

Dynetics will also lose out big, as they are a new company and can ill afford losing a contract here.

SpaceX will likely be hurt the least. Not getting any money for designing Starship to land on the Moon will do little to slow its development. Starship is almost completely privately funded, and does not need NASA money to get built.

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NASA to do another static fire test of SLS’s core stage

10:52 pm

NASA has now scheduled a second static fire test of the core stage of its SLS rocket, tentatively scheduled for the fourth week in February.

The first test, planned to last eight minutes, shut down after only one minute when the stage’s computers decided the parameters on engine #2 were outside their conservative margins. That burn also had a sensor issue with its fourth engine.

Conducting a second hot fire test will allow the team to repeat operations from the first hot fire test and obtain data on how the core stage and the engines perform over a longer period that simulates more activities during the rocket’s launch and ascent. To prepare for the second hot fire test, the team is continuing to analyze data from the first test, drying and refurbishing the engines, and making minor thermal protection system repairs. They are also updating conservative control logic parameters that resulted in the flight computer ending the first hot fire test earlier than planned. The team has already repaired the faulty electrical harness which resulted in a notification of a Major Component Failure on Engine 4. This instrumentation issue did not affect the engine’s performance and did not contribute to ending the first test early.

Assuming this test is successful, they will then need a month to get the stage ready for shipment by barge to Cape Canaveral, where it will take several more months to get it assembled with its two strap-on solid rocket boosters, its upper stage, and the Orion capsule on top.

Right now the unmanned test flight into orbit of this entire rocket and Orion is set for November ’21. While NASA has not announced a delay, this additional static fire test puts significant pressure on that schedule.

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Today’s blacklisted Americans: Anyone who worked in the Trump administration

12:47 pm

Death to the Bill of Rights!

They’re coming for you next: Today’s post about the new effort by leftists and Democrats to blacklist all their opponents does not concern any single individual (as has been the focus of my previous posts), but instead will focus on the all-encompassing effort by the Democratic Party and its leftist supporters to blacklist anyone who worked in Trump administration, so they can never get work again.

Thus, today have three stories illustrating the left’s oppressive and intolerant effort to destroy any who oppose them.

First, there is a bill introduced in Congress by a congresswoman Stephanie Murphy (D-Florida) that would ban any person from federal employment or military service who might have attended any protest rally that claimed the November 3rd election was stolen, or even suggested that there was voter fraud.

This level of attempted government repression is breathtaking in its scope. As a rule, anyone who is convicted (and that’s a key word) of having breached the Capitol building on January 6th and committing acts of vandalism or attacks on law enforcement officers will likely disqualify themselves from obtaining a security clearance. (And hence, a federal job in most cases.) The same is true for all serious offenses, though you can generally receive a waiver for misdemeanors and minor violations. No new legislation would be needed to make that happen.

But this bill is something entirely different. It would effectively criminalize every person who showed up for the rally and remained out in the streets protesting. The same would go for the hundreds of other rallies held across the nation in the preceding months. Further, depending on how the legislation is interpreted, if you ever engaged with Q-anon believers on social media or other discussion groups, you could be similarly canceled from working in the public sphere.

In other words, Democrat Murphy is aiming to make second class citizens of anyone who dared protest the election of Joe Biden. While it is doubtful her legislation will pass as is, do not be surprised if it gets slipped into a larger omnibus bill somewhere, when no one can spot it. And don’t be surprised when the Democrats controlling Congress help her get this done.

Next we have an effort by leftist activists to develop a real blacklist and use it to prevent anyone who worked for the Trump administration from getting a job in the private sector.
» Read more

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Roscosmos’ commercial division to market tourist seats on Soyuz

9:29 am

The new colonial movement: Glavkosmos, the commercial division of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, has announced that it is now making available for sale to passengers up to four seats on the Soyuz capsule.

Roscosmos has previously sold such seats through a long-standing relationship with American company Space Adventures. In December, Glavkosmos tweeted its plans to start selling seats, which a company spokesperson has since confirmed. “We assume that each crewed Soyuz MS spacecraft intended solely for commercial spaceflight will have two seats for space tourists” with a professional astronaut occupying the third seat, Glavkosmos spokesman Evgenii Kolomeets told SpaceNews. “In 2022-2023, with a favorable combination of circumstances, we can count on four seats aboard the commercial spacecraft for space tourists.”

The first dedicated Glavkosmos flight should be Soyuz MS-23 in the fall of 2022 to the ISS, with a second flight expected some time in 2023. “Commercial spacecraft and launch vehicles for the 2022-2023 launch campaigns are being manufactured, and specific mission numbers are assigned to spacecraft only after they are included in the flight program,” Kolomeets said.

If this happens, it will mean that at least three different entities — Axiom, Space Adventures, and Roscosmos — will be selling tourists flights into space. And that doesn’t even count possible flights on Boeing’s Starliner, once it becomes operational.

This competition is certain to force a drop in price, which in turn should increase the customer base, making more such flights possible.

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Biden Justice Dept investigating SpaceX over hiring of non-citizens

9:21 am

They’re coming for you next: The Biden Justice Dept is now investigating SpaceX for discriminating against non-American citizens in its hiring practices.

The DOJ’s Immigrant and Employee Rights Section received a complaint of employment discrimination from a non-U.S. citizen claiming that the company discriminated against him based on his citizenship status.

“The charge alleges that on or about March 10, 2020, during the Charging Party’s interview for the position of Technology Strategy Associate, SpaceX made inquiries about his citizenship status and ultimately failed to hire him for the position because he is not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident,” DOJ attorney Lisa Sandoval wrote in a court document filed Thursday. The document was a request for a judge to order SpaceX to comply with an administrative subpoena for documents related to how the company hires.

It also appears that SpaceX refused to comply with a subpoena from this Justice Dept section, claiming that it exceeded that section’s authority. The Biden administration is now asking the court to enforce that subpoena.

This is not just absurd, it smacks of government overreach designed to destroy the company. SpaceX is a rocket company that must follow very strict ITAR rules designed to prevent the release of military technology to foreign powers. By its very nature the company cannot hire foreign nationals for almost any position. If SpaceX were to hire a non-citizen the State Department would have grounds to shut them down.

Now the Biden administration is demanding that SpaceX do exactly that, essentially placing the company between a rock and a hard place.

This action, combined with the refusal yesterday by the FAA to issue a launch permit to SpaceX so it could do a test flight of its Starship prototype #9, gives us another clear picture of what to expect from Democratic Party rule for the next four years. They have always been out to squelch any independent operations in any way they can, and they now have the power to do it.

Musk better get ready to pay that bribe to the Democratic Party. Otherwise they will shut him down.

As for Starship, according to SpaceX’s website they will make their next launch attempt in February 1. This could be because the FAA has finally relented, or the company is scheduling it to apply more pressure to the agency to get that permit approved. We shall have to wait until then to see.

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FAA bureaucrats block SpaceX Starship test flight

2:39 pm

Capitalism in space? It is now confirmed that the test flight of SpaceX’s ninth prototype of its Starship rocket was scrubbed because of the FAA’s refusal to approve the license. To quote the FAA:

We will continue working with SpaceX to resolve outstanding safety issues before we approve the next test flight.

Typically vague bureaucratic language. There is no word on why the government did this. The flight of Starship prototype #8 proved SpaceX has full control over its vehicle, to the point they could put it down right on target. Why the FAA should now suddenly get cold feet is inexplicable.

There is one difference between now and the December 9th flight of Starship prototype #8. Then the president was Republican Donald Trump, and the Senate was controlled by the Republicans. Now the president is Democrat Joe Biden, and both houses of Congress are in Democratic Party control. It would not surprise me in the least if some Biden officials called the FAA and demanded they impose stricter safety restrictions on SpaceX, and that they did so at the very last minute.

Or to put it another way, someone in the Biden administration essentially wanted to tell SpaceX, “Nice rocket company you got here. Sure would be a shame if something happened to it.”

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