Tag: policy

Northrop Grumman wins $45.6 million contract to launch Space Force weather smallsat

9:59 am

Northrop Grumman has won $45.6 million contract from the Space Force to launch a weather smallsat, using its Minotaur-4 rocket that was formerly a military ICBM.

The weather satellite, built by General Atomics, is part of an effort by the military to stop building its big expensive and continuously delayed weather satellites and instead buy the services from the private sector. This three year demonstration mission will prove whether General Atomics’ weather satellite can do the job. The Space Force has also contracted with Orion Space Systems to test its own weather satellite in orbit.

For Northrop Grumman, this contract helps keep its launch business alive while it awaits a new American engine for its Antares rocket, replacing the Russian engines it has previously depended on.

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Satellite fuel company Orbit Fab signs Impulse to build part of its fuel depot

9:51 am

The satellite fuel company Orbit Fab, which is offering a way for satellites to get refueled on a regular basis based on a firm price schedule, has selected the orbital tug company Impulse to build part of its fuel depot in advance of a demonstration refueling mission for the Space Force.

The Space Force last year awarded Orion Space Solutions a $50 million contract for the Tetra-5 experiment. Three satellites will be stationed in geostationary orbit (GEO) where Impulse Space’s Mira orbital service vehicle will serve as a hosting platform for Orbit Fab’s fuel depot. “This demonstration will pave the way for future commercial orbital refueling services, as well as additional collaborative opportunities and missions between Orbit Fab and Impulse Space,” said Barry Matsumori, chief operating officer of Impulse Space.

The Tetra-5 satellites and the fuel depot will use Orbit Fab’s refueling port known as RAFTI, or Rapidly Attachable Fuel Transfer Interface. Impulse Space will provide hosting services such as power, communications, attitude control and propulsion for the fuel depot. The Tetra spacecraft will rendezvous and dock with the depot.

If successful, this mission will prove the viability of this refueling system, and encourage other satellite manufacturers to include RAFTI on their satellites.

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NASA’s corrupt safety panel doubts Starliner is ready for its first manned flight in July

9:26 am

The head of NASA’s safety panel — which over the years has consistently missed the big safety issues while whining about things that did not matter — expressed strong doubts yesterday on whether Boeing’s Starliner manned capsule is ready for its first manned flight in July.

Speaking at a May 25 public meeting of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, Patricia Sanders, chair of the committee, expressed skepticism that NASA and Boeing will be able to close known issues with Starliner in time for a launch currently scheduled for as soon as July 21.

“There remains a long line of NASA processes still ahead to determine launch readiness” for the Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission, the first crewed flight of the spacecraft with two NASA astronauts on board. “That should not be flown until safety risks can either be mitigated or accepted, eyes wide open, with an appropriately compelling technical rationale.”

This panel hasn’t the faintest idea what it is talking about, and should be ignored. It appears that NASA and Boeing are presently reviewing the capsule’s parachute system. Sanders however raised other issues which actually appear more designed to simply slow or even prevent the capsule’s launch.

The panel did the same thing during the development of SpaceX’s manned Dragon capsule, making irrelevant claims about paperwork and the safety of the company’s Falcon 9 fueling procedures that were ridiculous. Meanwhile, it has ignored much more fundamental numerous safety issues with NASA’s SLS rocket and Orion capsule, such as the agency’s plan to fly it manned using its capsule environmental system for the first time.

It is very possible that there remain serious safety issues with Starliner. I simply note that I would not rely on NASA’s safety panel to provide me an honest or educated appraisal of the situation.

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Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket lifts two more NASA hurricane monitoring satellites into orbit

8:58 pm

Rocket Lab today successfully used its Electron rocket to place the last two of NASA’s four-satellite Tropics hurricane monitoring constellation into orbit.

The first launch occurred about two and a half weeks ago, on May 7, 2023. Both launches were originally contracted to Astra, but when that company discontinued operations of its Rocket-3 rocket, NASA turned to Rocket Lab.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

34 SpaceX
19 China
7 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

The U.S. now leads China 39 to 19 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 39 to 33. SpaceX by itself now trails the entire world, including American companies, 34 to 38.

Note that at this moment SpaceX and Rocket Lab are the only American companies that have launched. The established rocket companies, ULA and Northrop Grumman, have launches planned but none as yet, while two American companies have ceased operations, Astra (supposedly temporarily) and Virgin Orbit (permanently).

American freedom resulted in the competition in rocketry which has lowered costs but taken business from the established companies. Freedom has also caused the death of two companies, because the success that freedom brings also carries risks. Failure can happen, but the sum total of achievement is always greater than when competition is squelched.

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South Korea successfully launches its Nuri rocket for the second time

12:43 pm

The new colonial movement: South Korea today successfully launched its home-built Nuri rocket for the second time, lifting off from a coastal South Korean spaceport and carrying eight smallsats.

This was South Korea’s first launch this year. The leaders in the 2023 launch race remain the same:

34 SpaceX
19 China
7 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

The U.S. still leads China 38 to 19 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 38 to 33. SpaceX by itself now trails the entire world, including American companies, 34 to 37.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay for reminding me of this launch.

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As parents and students continue to flee public education the consequences are both good and dire

12:35 pm


“But Brawndo’s got what plants crave. It’s got electrolytes!”

Two recent stories have clearly illustrated that the abandonment of the public school system, from kindergarten to college, is continuing unabated. It appears that the Wuhan lockdowns and mask and jab mandates helped to open the eyes of many parents and students as to the ineffectual and often harmful teaching going on in these institutions.

We begin with the precipitous drop in children attending K through 12 public schools.

Public school enrollment declined by 1.4 million students between fall 2019 and fall 2020, dipping to 49.4 million, a loss of nearly 3 percent, and remains at the lowest point in more than a decade. The decline could be closer to 2 million, according to a survey by Education Next showing that traditional public school enrollment as a percentage of all school enrollment declined sharply between 2020 and 2022.

Enrollment in traditional public schools fell from 81 percent to 76.5 percent of total enrollment during that period, while enrollment in public charter schools, private schools, and homeschooling grew by a combined 4.5 percent.

Those numbers suggest that nearly 2 million students left traditional public schools for other educational options between 2020 and 2022. The findings are based on the May 2022 survey of a national representative panel of more than 3,600 American adults commissioned by Education Next.

The abandonment in the last three years by so many parents of the public school system can be attributed to three things. » Read more

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Spaceport startup launches small amateur rockets from ship

9:56 am

A company dubbed The Spaceport Company on May 22, 2023 launched two small amateur rockets from a ship in the Gulf of Mexico in order to demonstrate the logistics of such launches in advance of developing a floating launchpad.

The Spaceport Company, based in northern Virginia, launched on Monday 4-inch and 6-inch diameter rockets from a vessel about 30 miles south of Gulfport, Miss. The one-year-old company wanted to demonstrate its operations and logistics, which included getting approval from federal regulators, before developing larger floating platforms that would send satellites into orbit.

These offshore launches, as small as they were, were the first such ocean launches in U.S. history.

It appears that the company wants to offer an alternative launch option that might avoid the problems created by regulators in the UK that destroyed Virgin Orbit.

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Bankrupt Virgin Orbit is dead, its assets purchased by a variety of different companies

9:34 am

After failing to find a single buyer for the whole company, Virgin Orbit is now officially dead as a company, its assets broken up during bankruptcy proceedings and purchased by several different companies.

Rocket Lab paid $16.1 million for Virgin Orbit’s main manufacturing facility in California, which it intends to use for developing its larger Neutron rocket. Stratolaunch paid $17 million for the company’s 747 airplane and related equipment. Launcher, a former rocket startup that is now owned by the space station startup Vast, paid $2.7 for the company’s test site in Mojave, California, which it plans to use for static fire engine tests of a rocket engine it is developing for sale to others. A liquidation company purchased other assets, while the various LauncherOne rockets under construction remain unsold.

It is essential the reasons for this failure are made very clear. The destruction of this company occurred because regulators in the United Kingdom prevented it from launching from within the UK for almost half a year, during which it could not perform other launches elsewhere and therefore earn revenue. It then ran very low on cash, and when the UK launch failed in January, the company no longer had the resources to weather to time necessary to complete the investigation, fix the problem that caused the failure, and resume launches.

For other rocket startups, it is very important to consider this story before committing to launching in the UK. where you will face major bureaucratic obstacles from its government. Until there is evidence that something has changed, it might be better to consider other launch sites.

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Russia launches Progress with cargo to ISS

9:18 am

Russia today used its Soyuz-2 rocket to launch a new Progress freighter to ISS, with its docking to the station to occur shortly.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

34 SpaceX
19 China
7 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

The U.S. still leads China 38 to 19 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 38 to 32. SpaceX by itself now trails the entire world, including American companies, 34 to 36.

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“The deaths that we saw, I’m afraid, were medical malpractice at best and murder at worst.”

1:57 pm

The quote in my headline today comes not from some wild-eyed partisan quack who wears a tin-foiled hat and sees comspiraces behind every corner. Instead, it is the considered and educated conclusion of Mike Yeadon, former Pfizer chief scientific officer of allergy and respiratory. His comments sum up the entire Wuhan panic quite concisely, and provide an excellent foundation to today’s essay listing the recent research into that panic and the disaster it caused worldwide. As Yeadon added,

“They lied to us about absolutely everything,” he said. “They lied to us about the magnitude of the public health emergency which never existed. They lied to us about the necessity of having measures like lockdowns, mass testing, social distancing, masks and it goes on and on.”

Nothing Yeadon says contradicts anything that any reasonable and cool-headed individual might have concluded, from day one of the panic. However, the advice of reasonable and cool-headed individuals was the last thing wanted from most governments and health officials worldwide. Nor was most of the general public interested either. Instead, fear ruled, and that fear was then used by a lot of corrupt power-hungry officials to garner more power for themselves, all to the detriment of everyone else.

Nor am I speaking out of turn. I have spent the last three years documenting the foolishness, the failure, and the downright ugliness of the COVID response. Today is simply another update covering the last two months. And sadly, the new data simply reinforces again and again what Yeadon says.
» Read more

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SpaceX files to join FAA as defendant in lawsuit trying to shut down Boca Chica

9:01 am

SpaceX on May 19, 2023 submitted a motion to become a defendant in the lawsuit filed by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and others that demands its Starship/Superheavy launchsite at Boca Chica be shut down.

“SpaceX’s Starship/Super Heavy launch program hinges on the FAA’s review and licensing decision challenged here. If the Court were to rule in Plaintiffs’ favor, the FAA’s decision could be set aside, and further licensing of the Starship/Super Heavy Program could be significantly delayed, causing severe injury to SpaceX’s business,” the company said in the motion, which was filed on May 19.

The full motion can be read here [pdf].

SpaceX’s motion notes that it has followed all government regulations in the decade since it established its Boca Chica launch site, and invested more than $3 billion in doing so. The motion points out that “the FAA does not adequately represent SpaceX’s interests” and that the company must participate because the lawsuit will have direct financial impact on its business.

In other words, the big guns are now being hauled out against this lawsuit, which on its face is somewhat weak. We shall see if it can withstand the much more aggressive fight that SpaceX is certain to put up.

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Pushback: California loses big for trying to force churches to violate their religious beliefs

1:33 pm

Mary Watanaba, head oppressor in California's health system
Mary Watanaba, head oppressor
in California’s health system

They’re coming for you next: After California health authorities in 2014 imposed a mandate requiring requiring churches to provide elective abortion coverage to its employees, four churches sued, and after a long court battle, have now won a $1.4 million settlement.

Alliance Defending Freedom [ADF] attorneys represent Skyline Wesleyan Church, located in the San Diego area, in one federal lawsuit, and Foothill Church in Glendora, Calvary Chapel Chino Hills in Chino, and The Shepherd of the Hills Church in Porter Ranch in another. Both lawsuits challenged California’s abortion-coverage mandate. In both cases, the courts ruled that the U.S. Constitution protects the churches’ freedom to operate according to their religious beliefs, which include their belief in the sanctity of unborn lives.

The rulings in both lawsuits (here and here [pdfs]) not only release the churches from the illegal abortion mandate, they both require payments to ADF and the church’s local attorneys to pay all legal costs. Interesting, in both lawsuits Mary Watanabe, the director of the California Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC) was named, and in one case she was the only defendant. Unfortunately, she walks away unharmed, because DMHC will pay for everything, out of tax dollars.

What made the mandate especially egregious is that it was written in league with officials at Planned Parenthood and the ACLU, as shown by emails [pdf] between DMHC and those officials. » Read more

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