They’re coming for you next: Hundreds of nurses at Children’s Wisconsin have either been fired or quit their jobs over the hospital’s irrational COVID shot mandate.
Many were denied their request for a religious exemption, after being subjected to a harsh and prolonged interrogation by the hospital.
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According to South Korean officials, the launch later this year of two new home-built satellites on Russian rockets is now unlikely because of the sanctions imposed because of Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine.
South Korea’s CAS500-2 remote sensing satellite is set to launch in the first half of this year on a Russian Soyuz rocket from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. South Korea’s KOMPSAT-6 multipurpose satellite, equipped with synthetic aperture radar (SAR), is due to launch in the second half of the year on a Russian Angara rocket from Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia.
“For now, nothing has changed to the plan,” Korea Aerospace Research Institute spokesman Roh Hyung-il told SpaceNews. “We are taking a close look at how the situation unfolds because it could have a significant impact on our missions.” He admitted that it’s “very likely” that the satellites won’t be launched as planned.
Those officials also said that losing Russia as a launch option will be a “serious blow” to South Korea’s entire space effort. I find that puzzling. There are plenty of other rocket companies now available. Why South Korea feels a need to depend on Russia seems short-sighted.
Based on new satellite photos, it appears that an attempt by Iran to launch a satellite failed this week when the rocket exploded on the launchpad.
Before and after images taken by imagery satellites from two different private companies, Maxar and Planet Labs, suggest the incident likely occurred around February 26th.
Satellite images from Maxar Technologies seen by The Associated Press show scorch marks at a launchpad at Imam Khomeini Spaceport in Iran’s rural Semnan province on Sunday. A rocket stand on the pad appears scorched and damaged, with vehicles surrounding it. An object, possibly part of the gantry, sits near it.
Successful launches typically don’t damage rocket gantries because they are lowered prior to takeoff. Iran also usually immediately trumpets launches that reach space on its state-run television channels, and it has a history of not acknowledging failed attempts.
The news reports claims that the failed rocket was Iran’s Zuljanah rocket, which uses solid rocket motors for its lower stages. Zuljanah has never made orbit, having been unveiled one year ago after a single suborbital test flight.
OneWeb’s board of directors has voted to cancel all further launches of its satellites from Russia, refusing to meet Russia’s demand that the United Kingdom divest its half share in the company.
On Thursday, OneWeb said the company’s board had voted to suspend all launches from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, where the Russian spaceport operated by Roscosmos is based.
OneWeb didn’t elaborate on the vote. But the UK’s Business and Energy Secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, said his government had refused to divest from OneWeb, which received funding from British authorities in 2020 to stave off a bankruptcy. “The UK Government supports OneWeb’s decision,” Kwarteng tweeted on Thursday. “In light of Russia’s illegal and unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, we are reviewing our participation in all further projects involving Russian collaboration,” he added.
OneWeb hasn’t commented on the company’s contingency plans. But it’s almost certainly looking for a new launch partner. Russia’s Roscosmos previously helped OneWeb send up 428 of 648 satellites for its internet system, which is designed to serve enterprise users.
This decision, combined with Russia’s decision to suspend further Soyuz-2 rocket launches from French Guiana, essentially ends Russia’s partnership with Arianespace. It also likely ends for many years Russia’s place in the international launch market. OneWeb and Arianespace were its last remaining international customers, and their business is now gone. Even if the Ukraine War was settled today, I suspect neither would wish to renew their business with Russia.
As for OneWeb, it has a number of options in the growing launch market, with Arianespace’s rockets its most likely choice. Financially, the delay hurts them in two ways: First, they have paid Russia for a number of launches already, and Russia has said it will not refund the money. Thus, those launches will cost twice as much. Second, the delay hurts them in their effort to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink constellation.
Romania on March 1st became the sixteenth nation to sign the Artemis Accords, designed to get around the Outer Space Treaty’s restrictions on private enterprise and property rights in space.
Romania is now the third former Soviet block nation to sign the accords, joining Poland and the Ukraine. The full list of signatories now includes Australia, Brazil, Canada, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, South Korea, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, and the United States.
Up to now Germany and France — two of the west’s most important major space powers — have resisted signing, probably because both countries have had strong partnership ties with Russia, and Russia opposes the accords. The Russian invasion of the Ukraine however has caused Germany to break off all such Russian cooperation, which suggests it now may be more amendable to signing. I also suspect France may become more willing, though predicting France in these matters is always difficult.
As part of Germany’s decision to break off all scientific cooperation with Russia in response to Russia’s Ukraine invasion, the Max Plank Institute has turned off its instrument on the Spektr-RG orbiting X-ray telescope.
Meanwhile, Roscosmos’ head, Dmitry Rogozin revealed he will demand compensation from Europe for its sanctions, including this shut down on Spektr-RG.
Europe’s sanctions cause real losses to Russia’s space corporation Roscosmos. The corporation will estimate them and demand a compensation from partners in Europe, Roscosmos’s press-service told TASS on Tuesday. “They have caused harm to the Spektr-RG laboratory’s research program by turning off one of the two telescopes. Their sanctions cause real losses to us. The damage will be estimated and a bill presented to the European side,” Roscosmos said.
It now appears that all the European cooperation with Russia in space is likely dead, at least until Russia gets out of the Ukraine.
The head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, today announced that he has halted all launch preparations for the March 5th launch of 36 OneWeb satellites on a Soyuz-2 rocket from Baikonur in Kazakhstan unless he received reassurances by March 4th that they would not be used for military purposes against Russia.
Roskosmos head Dmitry Rogozin announced that the mission would not proceed unless he received assurances by 21:30 Moscow Time on March 4 of non-military use of the satellites. Rogozin also demanded that the British government give up its stake in OneWeb.
I suspect Rogozin’s action here is a response to SpaceX’s delivery of Starlink terminals and the activation of its use for the Ukraine to fight the Russian invasion.
It is now certain that all the planned Soyuz-2 OneWeb launches this year will likely not occur, unless the situation in the Ukraine becomes settled quickly. This means OneWeb will have to scramble to find a new launch provider and pay for the launches a second time, since they have already paid Russia for, according to sources I spoke to last night, the next four Russian launches. It won’t get a refund from Russia, for sure.
At a House hearing today the NASA Inspector General Paul Martin stated unequivocally that the cost of NASA’s SLS rocket, Orion capsule, and the associated ground systems is about $4.1 billion per launch, which made the entire program, in his words, “unsustainable.”
Appearing before a House Science Committee hearing on NASA’s Artemis program, Martin revealed the operational costs of the big rocket and spacecraft for the first time. Moreover, he took aim at NASA and particularly its large aerospace contractors for their “very poor” performance in developing these vehicles.
Martin said that the operational costs alone for a single Artemis launch—for just the rocket, Orion spacecraft, and ground systems—will total $4.1 billion. This is, he said, “a price tag that strikes us as unsustainable.” With this comment, Martin essentially threw down his gauntlet and said NASA cannot have a meaningful exploration program based around SLS and Orion at this cost.
Martin’s testimony confirms what was contained in his November 2021 report, from which I took the graphic above. The article at the link details at length Martin’s testimony today, which was amazingly harsh. He also said that
NASA is obscuring costs that it is spending on the Artemis program and that, in aggregate, his office believes NASA will spend $93 billion from 2012 to 2025 on the Artemis program. “Without NASA fully accounting for and accurately reporting the overall costs of current and future Artemis missions, it will be much more difficult for Congress and the administration to make informed decisions about NASA’s long-term funding needs—a key to making Artemis a sustainable venture,” Martin said.
Martin has merely confirmed what I have been writing now for more than a decade, and documented at great length in my 2017 policy paper, Capitalism in Space. In fact, let me quote from one of my earliest essays on this subject on Behind the Black, from 2011:
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As noted by the Spirit of Christmas Present in Dickens’
The Christmas Carol, ‘This boy is ignorance, this girl is want.
Beware them both, but most of all beware this boy.’
Only months and years after most Republican Party governors and politicians had lifted or halted all mandates requiring masks or COVID shots or social distancing, in the past week Democrats in numerous places have suddenly decided that masks and COVID shots and social distancing have suddenly become unnecessary or ineffective, and have canceled almost all their government-edicts mandating such things.
Simultaneously, the CDC late last week finally loosened its mask recommendations, no longer demanding that Americans wear masks indoors or in many other circumstances.
What none of these announcements mentioned was any evidence of any new scientific results to justify the new recommendations or the loosening of mandates. These changes were based — not on new scientific results — but on the fear-based opinions of politicians and health bureaucrats who for the past two years have consistently based their edicts and mandates solely on emotions and politics, not scientific evidence, and were repeatedly wrong every single time.
That they happened to be correct now is not because they are basing their actions on any new”science”, but like a broken clock, even idiots can stumble on the truth once in awhile, by accident.
In this case however their stumbling is not entirely by accident. » Read more
Capitalism in space: NASA today officially announced that it has extended its contract with SpaceX for manned Dragon flights by three, paying the company an additional $900 million.
Prior to the modification, SpaceX was contracted to fly three more missions to the ISS: Crew-4 and Crew-5 in 2022 and Crew-6 in 2023. With the extension, which is “fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity,” per NASA’s statement. SpaceX’s period of performance now runs through March 31, 2028 — a nice regular paycheck for the growing launch and space operations company.
This contract extension raises what NASA is paying SpaceX for manned launch services from $2.6 billion to $3.49 billion.
While it is likely NASA would have brought more Dragon flights, it is also likely that some of these flights would have instead been bought from Boeing, if its much delayed Starliner manned capsule had been available. It is not, so SpaceX gets the business.
Boeing’s next attempt to complete Starliner’s first unmanned demo mission to ISS is now scheduled for May.
Capitalism in space: Construction of the United Kingdom’s first spaceport in more than a half century is now set to begin this month in the Shetland Islands, with the first launch expected before the end of the year.
The Lamba Ness peninsular in Unst will be home to the £43 million spaceport, with builders set to start work in late March, after Shetland Islands Council gave the project planning permission.
Three launchpads will be built at the SaxaVord spaceport, allowing for the launch of small satellites into either polar or sun-synchronous low-Earth orbits.
The company is aiming to launch 30 rockets a year, and has set the target of seeing its first orbital launch from UK soil after the third quarter of this year.
It appears now that the United Kingdom is going to have two different competing spaceports, one on the Shetland Islands and the second in Sutherland, Scotland. It appears the UK rocket startup Skyrora as well as a partnership between Lockhead Martin and the smallsat rocket startup ABL will launch from Shetland, while the UK company Orbex will use Sutherland.
Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab announced yesterday that it will build the manufacturing factory for its new Neutron rocket at the Wallops Island in Virginia, close to the company’s launchpad there.
The complex will be home to a rocket production, assembly, and integration facility, as well as a dedicated launch pad for the Neutron rocket located on the southern end of Wallops Island. The estimated 250,000 square foot state-of-the-art complex will be constructed on a 28-acre site adjacent to the Wallops Island Flight Facility and will include a Launch Control Center, Rocket Lab’s fifth global operations center for launch activities and on-orbit operations. To support rapid production of the Neutron rocket, current plans for the complex include automated fiber placement robotic production systems capable of laying up meters of Neutron’s new, specially formulated carbon composite structures in minutes. As a reusable rocket, Neutron is designed to land back on the launch pad after a mission and from there it would be returned to the production complex for refurbishment and re-flight.
The Wallops Island spaceport hopes the state of Virginia will commit $45 million of its own money to this project, but that money still needs to be approved by the state’s legislature.
“Assuming that is done and blessed by the legislature, and we have no reason to believe it will not be, $15 million will go into construction for the facility, and the 30 million will be geared toward the construction of the new launch pad,” Mercer said, noting that the pad would be multi-purpose, not a Neutron exclusive.
