Tag: policy

Space station builder Voyager raises $80 million in private investment capital

8:36 am

Capitalism in space: Voyager Space, one of three companies that NASA has provided funds to build a private space station, has now raised $80 million in private investment capital.

The funding includes participation from NewSpace Capital, Midway Venture Partners and Industrious Ventures, according to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings and other documents viewed by TechCrunch. Seraphim Space also participated, TechCrunch has confirmed. The funding was filed with the SEC on January 27.

The company is building Starlab in partnership with Nanoracks (which is the majority owner of Voyager) and Lockheed Martin, which has already received $160 million from NASA.

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Sunspot update: Sunspots in January went through the roof!

2:07 pm

NOAA this week updated its monthly graph that tracks the number of sunspots on the Sun’s Earth-facing hemisphere. Below is that updated graph, with January’s numbers added to the timeline. As I have done monthly for the past dozen years here on Behind the Black, I have added some additional details to that graph to provide context.

Just as in December, the number of sunspots in January 2023 shot up to the highest amount since September 2014, which was during the previous solar maximum. Unlike December, however, January’s numbers came only a hairs-breath from topping that 2014 number. In fact, except for that one 2014 month, January 2023 saw the most sunspots on the Sun since November 2002, twenty years ago. In 2002 the Sun was ramping down from what had been a relatively strong double-peaked solar maximum, and was about to begin an extremely long period of little or no activity, followed by a very weak double-peaked solar maximum in 2013.

That period of little activity also corresponded with a long twenty-year period in which the Earth’s climate appeared to stop warming.
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Comic book writer slandered and then canceled because of the slanders

1:23 pm

Mike Baron's Private American, banned

They’re coming for you next: Long established comic book writer Mike Baron and his projects have now been blacklisted from a variety of sites, including having his most recent Kickstarter starter campaign shutdown, because of slanderous social media comments as well as a defamatory article on Daily Kos.

After a scathing article from a Daily Kos mouthpiece, Baron’s colleagues and fans realized they could not find his campaign on Kickstarter. The post smeared “Thin Blue Line” – a story about two police officers riding out a long night of rioting – along with “Private American.” The author, a person named Starr Mignon, called the comic a “diatribe of racist propaganda” and “stochastic terrorism disguised as a funny book.”

Prior to Kickstarter shutting his campaign down, it had also been banned from Twitter, as well as shadow-banned on Indiegogo.

A detailed blow-by-blow description of the slanderous attacks, based on no knowledge of these works, as well as the cowardly blackballing by others in response to those attacks, can be found here. This writer, who was helping Baron’s campaign, notes the following:
» Read more

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Yuma funds and applies for spaceport

10:13 am

The city of Yuma in Arizona has provided $250 million to fund the cost for applying for an FAA license for a building a spaceport there.

The city hopes to build the spaceport just east of San Luis on a plot of land it owns, which is near the border, and right next to the Arizona State Prison complex. The spaceport itself would be a concrete slab, with aerospace companies bringing their own launching equipment.

Something however is fishy about this story. It doesn’t cost $250 million to put together such a license, unless Yuma also expects serious opposition that it will need to fight in court. And it should, as any launches from Yuma will have to cross parts of Mexico, and without that country’s permission such a spaceport will likely be blocked.

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China to build space ground stations in Antarctica

10:06 am

According to a report on China’s state-run press that has now been deleted, China plans to build satellite ground stations in Antarctica for use by its ocean-observation satellites.

Official space industry newspaper China Space News reported Feb. 2 that a subsidiary of the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC), a giant state-owned defense and space contractor, won a bid to construct a ocean observation satellite ground system. The project is being overseen by the National Satellite Ocean Application Service (NSOAS) and is stated to be part of a long-term marine economic development plan.

Renders of the 43.95 million yuan ($6.52 million) project show four radome-covered antennas at Zhongshan in East Antarctica. It is unknown if these are new and additional to antennas already established at the base. The antennas will assist data acquisition from Chinese satellites that orbit in polar and near-polar orbits. Satellites in these orbits are visible near the poles multiple times a day, allowing more frequent opportunities for downlink than with stations at lower latitudes.

Such ground stations could of course do many other things, including aiding military satellite surveillance.

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Today’s blacklisted Americans: Catholic students kicked out of Air & Space museum for wearing pro-life hats

11:44 am

The evil hat that Air & Space banned
The evil hat that Air & Space officials banned

They’re coming for you next: A dozen Catholic students, having just attended the March for Life event on January 20, 2023 in Washington, found themselves being chased from the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum because they were all wearing hats with a pro-life message.

According to their lawyer,

Once in the museum, they were accosted several times and told they would be forced to leave unless they removed their pro-life hats. The group all wore the same blue hat that simply said, “Rosary PRO-LIFE.” Other individuals in the museum were wearing hats of all kinds without issue.

The museum staff mocked the students, called them expletives, and made comments that the museum was a “neutral zone” where they could not express such statements. The employee who ultimately forced the students to leave the museum was rubbing his hands together in glee as they exited the building.

According to the students and their parents, the kids were all wearing the same hats in order to find each other in the crowds.

When asked by the press about this incident, the museum responded as follows:
» Read more

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Fire in South Korean rocket facility

9:55 am

South Korea today reported that a fire had broken out in its Naro Space Center during work on a turbopump for a next generation rocket.

The fire started at 3:25 p.m. Tuesday at the Naro Space Center in the country’s southern coastal village of Goheung and was extinguished about an hour later, according to the Ministry of Science and ICT. The ministry said some experimental equipment was affected by the fire but reported no injuries.

The fire broke out while researchers were conducting an experiment to develop a 10-ton turbopump that injects fuel into an engine for a new space rocket, codenamed KSLV-III.

The KSLV-III will be an upgrade of the KSLV-II, also called Nuri, which has a launch scheduled right now in May. The KSLV-III is part of a $1.6 billion government project to develop this new rocket by 2032.

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Diesel fuel spill at Air Force surveillance facility on Hawaiian mountaintop

9:49 am

The Air Force reported today that about 700 gallons of diesel fuel spilled out on January 29, 2023 at Air Force’s surveillance telescope facility on top of Haleakala on the island of Maui.

The spill occurred at the Maui Space Surveillance Complex, which tracks satellites and space debris using several telescopes atop Haleakala, a dormant volcano. “Due to a mechanical issue, a diesel fuel pump for an on-site backup generator failed to shut off” Sunday night, the Air Force said in a news release.

At about 8 a.m. Monday, maintenance personnel discovered the failure and shut off the transfer pump, the Air Force said.

Since 2021 the military has had two other accidents at different Hawaiian facilities. Considering the hostile political atmosphere there for any facility not run by “native Hawaiians”, this new fuel spill could not have come at a worse time. Expect pressure to mount to remove this facility.

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South Korea officially cancels Russian launch contract, signs Vega-C instead

9:31 am

South Korea yesterday officially announced that it has canceled a Russian contract that was supposed to use an Angara rocket to launch a multi-purpose satellite last year and signed a deal with Arianespace to use the Vega-C rocket instead.

The cancellation appears directly because of the sanctions against Russia due to its invasion of the Ukraine. Picking the Vega-C as a replacement at this moment however seems a strange choice, considering its last launch was a failure and it has failed three times in the last eight launches. I suspect Arianespace gave South Korea an extremely good price.

Meanwhile, South Korean officials still seem willing to continue another Russian launch contract, using a Soyuz-2 rocket launching from Kazakhstan. According to the article, officials are right now merely negotiating a launch date.

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Pushback: Student appeals conviction for distributing Constitution on public campus

2:10 pm

Tizon's evil table at ASU
Tim Tizon (r) discussing free speech with another student on
March 3, 2022 at that banned YAL table on the ASU campus.

They’re coming for you next: Tim Tizon, a former Arizona State University (ASU) student, has now appealed his conviction for trespass, filed against him by the university because he had had the nerve to distribute copies of the Constitution to others, without obtaining the school’s permission.

He is being represented by the Liberty Justice Center (LJC). You can read his appeal here [pdf].

The facts of the case however are simple, and mirror numerous other similar incidents on many American campuses in the past decade, all designed to silence conservatives. On March 3, 2022, when he was still a student of ASU, he had set up a table on campus as a member of the ASU chapter of Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) to help educate others on the Constitution. As noted in his appeal:
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The next chapter in my own personal blacklisting story

12:01 pm

The ARA: An organization run by bullies
The ARA: An organization run by bullies

This past Saturday, January 28, 2023, another chapter in my own personal blacklisting saga took place. On that day the Arizona Regional Association (ARA), a division of the National Speleological Society, the country’s national organization for cavers, held its annual winter technical meeting at Kartchner Caverns in Arizona.

It is this same organization had blacklisted me and two other individuals in November 2021 because they did not like our opinions about COVID. Its leadership therefore assumed that it also the right to eject us from the public event on Saturday. It was our intention to show them they were wrong.

The goal of the winter technical, which has been occurring annually for about a half century, is to allow southwest cavers to present papers highlighting their research and projects during the past year. While intended mostly for Arizona cavers, it has not been unusual for others from other parts of the country to present, especially if their work has some connection with Arizona. Consider it a very informal kind of scientific conference.

Thus, this event has always been open to the public, and in fact has always been designed as a form of outreach.

The Wuhan panic had unfortunately caused the winter technical to be canceled in 2021 and 2022. Thus, the January 2023 event was to be the first in-person winter technical since 2020.

It was also going to be the first in-person winter technical since this organization had blacklisted myself and two others. » Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American found innocent of federal trumped up charges

11:27 am

The Houck Family: Targets of FBI harassment and arrest
The Houck Family: Targets of FBI harassment and arrest.

Back in September 2022 I wrote an essay entitled “The rising federal Gestapo” in which I described the numerous recent stories of the Biden administration using the FBI and the Department of Justice as weapons to harass its political opponents, either by conducting armed raids on their homes and persons, or by trumping up false charges against them.

Mark Houck, the father in the picture the right, was one of those under attack. Not only was his home raided by an FBI SWAT team, terrifying his children, but Houck was arrested on a trumped up charge of physically attacking a worker at an abortion clinic, a charge that had other courts had already dismissed as spurious.

The good news yesterday is that Houck has been found innocent of that trumped up charge.

At first it appeared the jury was deadlocked, but that changed instantly when one juror was replaced with an alternate. Within an hour the not-guilty verdict was in, strongly suggesting that juror had had a political ax to grind and was refusing to follow the facts of the case or the judge’s instructions.

As I wrote in that September essay,

In the past two years the effort by Democrats to portray Republicans criminals and traitors, merely because they disagree with Democratic Party policy, has become normalized. To Democrats today, if you are a Republican you are a fascist, an insurrectionist, a traitor, a criminal, and evil. Your rights are voided and they have the right to arrest you, at any time.

The Biden administration tried to void Mark Houck’s rights. It failed in court. Was this vicious effort however a failure? I say no, because 1) the Biden administration remains free to continue this abuse of power and 2) conservatives have now been put on notice that, at any moment, their lives could be torn apart by these thugs.

In fact, this short post is only posted to give an update on a previous column. It is not today’s daily blacklist column, which will follow shortly and will give perfect example of how the abusive power-hungry in our culture now routinely abuse their power against any who oppose them.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Professor quits because of the leftist takeover of his college

2:13 pm

Matthew Wielicki
Matthew Wielicki

Matthew Wielicki, a professor at the University of Alabama, has quit his job because of what he calls the “rise of illiberalism” as well as the takeover of the college by the leftist diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) crowd.

While Matthew Wielicki said his main reason for leaving Tuscaloosa was to be closer to family in Colorado, the “rise of illiberalism” made his decision easier. “The rise of illiberalism in the name of DEI is the antithesis of the principles that universities were founded on,” Wielicki tweeted Monday. “These are no longer places that embrace the freedom of exchanging ideas and will punish those that go against the narrative.”

You can read his full statement in this thread on Twitter.
» Read more

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Pushback: Two reporters sue ESPN for terminating them for not getting jabbed

12:35 pm

ESPN-opposed to religious freedom

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Two former ESPN employees, sports reporter Allison Williams and producer Beth Faber, have now sued the network and its owner Disney for religious discrimination when it refused to recognize their religious reasons for refusing the COVID shots and thus terminated them.

You can read their complaint here [pdf]. The thuggish, unreasonable, and irrational attitude of the company to both employees — typical of all pro-jab organizations during the Wuhan panic — is well illustrated by this quote:

Despite offering to test regularly and wear a mask, work remotely or in-studio, and claiming she had already had COVID-19 and “had natural immunity,” ESPN denied her exemption request and terminated her contract a week later, according to the suit.

Nor is this lawsuit the only one against ESPN by a sports reporter. » Read more

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NASA and Russian engineers meeting to discuss status of leaks on ISS’s Zvezda module

9:40 am

According to Russia’s state-run press, NASA and Russian engineers have been reviewing the status of the repairs on the cracks in the Zvezda module on ISS.

Repairs to the various cracks in Zvezda’s hull, done by Russian astronauts in ’20 and ’21, have reduced the leakage from 1,140 grams per day to 300 grams per day. Normally ISS is expected to lose 325 grams per day, across the entire station, so the Zvezda leak doubled this loss, even after the repair. Thus, the hatch to Zvezda is kept closed in order to maintain the atmosphere of ISS at its normal levels, and opened only when there is need to enter it. In addition, its port is no longer used for dockings.

The engineering review is also looking into the cause of the cracks, which are believed to be stress fractures caused by the age of Zvezda (ISS’s second oldest module) combined with the many dockings that had occurred at its port. The review is also discussing ways to reduce the problem, until ISS’s retirement in 2030.

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Japan’s H2A rocket successfully launches radar surveillance satellite

8:16 pm

Japan’s space agency JAXA today successfully launched a radar surveillance satellite using its H2A rocket, built by Mitsubishi.

This was Japan’s first launch since December 2021, a gap of more than a year, with no launches in 2022. JAXA hopes to finally launch its unimaginatively named H3 rocket, the replacement for the H2A, on February 12, 2023, after a two year delay because of cracks found in the engines.

The 2023 launch race:

5 China
5 SpaceX
1 Rocket Lab
1 Japan

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Today’s blacklisted American: Thin blue line banned on flags in Los Angeles and suburban Philadelphia

2:13 pm

They’re coming for you next: Today’s blacklist story illustrates most starkly the intolerant and insane culture that is now taking over many Democratic Party-controlled regions of the United States. Government officials in both Los Angeles and the town of Springfield, a suburb of Philadelphia, have banned use of the American flag with a thin blue line that for years has been used to symbolized support of the police and those who have fallen in duty.

In both cases, the banning occurred because some leftists made unsubstantiated accusations that the line really represented “white supremacy” and thus is racist. No evidence of course was ever presented to prove those allegations, but who cares about evidence in this day and age? All that matters is that the accusation is made, and all must immediately kow-tow to it, even if it destroys the first amendment and the lives of many innocent people.

LA police chief Michael Moore
LA police chief Michael Moore

Now for the specifics. In Los Angeles the chief of the LA police department on January 13, 2023 banned the use of the flag after receiving one complaint.

The “Thin Blue Line” flag has been banned from Los Angeles Police Department lobbies along with all other public areas on police property following a complaint from one person who thought it signified support for “extremist” ideologies such as “those espoused by the Proud Boys,” according to the chief.

LAPD Chief Michel Moore sent an email to department personnel on Friday making the announcement to remove the flags, blaming “extremist groups” who have “hijacked the use” of the Thin Blue Line.

Moore was desperate to protect the sensitive feelings of that one person, even though no evidence at all was presented to prove the allegations, and the police union and its nearly 10,000 members were utterly opposed to his decision.
» Read more

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ISRO about to test land a prototype of India’s own version of the X-37B

9:46 am

ISRO's own X-37B copy

According to S. Somanth, the head of India’s space agency ISRO, it will attempt the first flight on January 28, 2023 of a prototype reusable launch vehicle, similar to the Space Force’s X-37B.

According to ISRO’s website, Saturday’s landing demonstration will involve a “landing experiment (LEX)” in which the RLV will be carried using a helicopter to an altitude of 3-5 km and released at approximately 4-5 km from the runway with a horizontal velocity.

After the release, the RLV glides and navigates toward the runway, and carries out a conventional autonomous landing. This is planned in a defence airfield near Chitradurga in Karnataka.

The graphic to the right shows the flight profile of earlier tests that landed in the ocean. If this runway test is successful, it appears ISRO will next attempt an orbital flight and return.

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Arianespace’s chief condemns the idea of independent private European rocket companies

9:31 am

Stéphane Israël, the head of Arianespace, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) commercial rocket division, yesterday strongly condemned the idea of allowing independent private European rocket companies to develop and compete with his government operation.

“It is not possible to copy-paste the US model,” he said. “It is not possible. The level of space spending in the United States is five times higher than in Europe, and the private capital is not the same. So if the answer is to say let’s do what the US has done, I think we will not manage to do it.”

Moreover, Israël said the European Space Agency must resist supporting microlaunchers to the point where these companies might compete with the existing capabilities.

“A huge mistake would be that this focus on microlaunchers destabilizes Ariane 6 and Vega C—it would be a historic mistake,” he said. “Microlaunchers can be of support to boost innovation. But we should not make any confusion. This launcher will never give autonomous access to space to Europe. They’re on a niche market representing maybe 10 percent of the market, and less than that when it comes to European needs.”

He said this in Brussels at the 15th European Space Conference, where it appears he was trying to convince the ESA to block any competition with Arianespace.

Israël might say this, but not only has his track record in predicting the success of commercial space in the U.S. been bad, other European governments are not taking his advice. Both Germany and the United Kingdom have several rocket startups gearing up for their first launches this year, with others in Spain and France not far behind. Moreover, Israël doesn’t have much to offer in competition. Arianespace’s Vega rocket, intended to be a low cost option, has failed on three of its last eight launches. The Ariane 6 rocket is years behind schedule, and has not yet launched. And both are overpriced and cannot compete, not only with the American rocket startups but with India’s government rockets.

Moreover, those European governments have in recent years been taking control and power away from Israël and Arianespace. Unlike earlier rockets, the Ariane 6 rocket is not controlled or owned by Arianespace. Instead, it belongs to ArianeGroup, the partnership of Airbus and Safran that is building it. Arianespace’s role in operating it will be greatly limited, once it begins flying.

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Roscosmos predicts Russia’s new space station will launch by 2027

9:14 am

Wanna bet? Yuri Borisov, the head of Roscosmos, yesterday predicted that Russia’s new space station, dubbed the Russian Orbital Station, will launched and deployed by 2027.

“We will create sovereign infrastructure for human space flights to low near-Earth orbit. Its key element will be the Russian orbital station whose deployment we have scheduled for 2027,” he said.

The Russian space agency will carry out all the required feasibility studies by Cosmonautics Day celebrated in Russia on April 12, the Roscosmos chief said.

Based on Russia’s track record for the past three decades, this prediction will fail. Since the fall of the Soviet Union Russia’s space industry has consistently made many such predictions, none of which launched on time, with most never launching at all. Yet, that was during a time when Russia’s economy was booming, it was getting lots of revenue from the international markets, and wasn’t saddled with a draining war in the Ukraine. Now, international sanctions limit what it can get from that market, and its oil revenues have declined considerable due to the war. Moreover, the war prevents Russia from obtaining many cutting edge space components it needs for such a project. Replacing these with home-built components will take time.

If this station gets built, its launch will likely not happen before 2030.

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Stacked Starship and Superheavy complete first full wet dress rehearsal countdown

9:06 am

SpaceX yesterday successfully completed a full wet dress rehearsal countdown of its stacked Starship prototype #24 and Superheavy prototype #7, fueling both completely and taking the countdown down to T-0.

On this rehearsal however the Superheavy engines were not fired. From two SpaceX tweets:

Starship completed its first full flight-like wet dress rehearsal at Starbase today. This was the first time an integrated Ship and Booster were fully loaded with more than 10 million pounds of propellant

Today’s test will help verify a full launch countdown sequence, as well as the performance of Starship and the orbital pad for flight-like operations

Next step: Another full wet dress rehearsal countdown that includes a short static fire test of all 33 Superheavy Raptor-2 engines. Once that is done successfully, the company will be ready for that first orbital launch.

Meanwhile, SpaceX awaits its launch license from the FAA. I remain pessimistic that it will be issued on a timely manner, as there are clear signs the Biden administration wants to use its power against Musk, whom it now sees as an enemy.

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Classified Chinese test satellite releases second object in orbit

8:55 am

A classified Chinese test satellite, launched on January 8th, apparently released a second object into orbit on January 16th, suggesting the satellite might be doing robotic rendezvous and docking tests, similar to tests by an earlier classified satellite.

China’s Shijian 21 satellite, which launched in 2021, also reached GEO and released a satellite, which was then used for tests. Shijian 21 then proceeded to dock with the defunct Chinese navigation and positioning satellite Beidou-2 G2 and towed it away to an orbit out of the way of the active spacecraft in GEO.

China is clearly attempting to develop the same robotic servicing technologies that commercial companies in the west are beginning to fly.

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Russians successfully test replacement Soyuz capsule for leaks

8:49 am

The next Soyuz capsule to launch to ISS has now been passed its leak tests on the ground as it is being prepared for a February 20th launch.

“At the Baikonur cosmodrome, leak tests of the Soyuz MS-23 transport crewed spacecraft have been completed,” the [Roscosmos press release] said. In the coming days, checks of the propulsion system’s automation equipment, onboard digital computerized system and radio engineering systems will follow. Also, the thermal control system is to be filled with a coolant.

The launch has been moved up one month in order to speed the replacement of the leaking Soyuz presently on ISS.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Pro-parent event silenced by threats of violence from leftist queers

11:19 am

They’re coming for you next: An event organized by three different groups working to get the queer agenda out of elementary schools was canceled by the theater operator after he received numerous threats of violence from queer leftists.

“I was really proud to be able to provide an opportunity for a forum for some positive, hopefully positive, or what I thought would be possible discussions,” said operator Ron Onesti.

But instead it brought cascading concerns, and he said he canceled the event after receiving threats. “It’s not my role to have a stance with these issues. I’m merely the venue,” he said. “They said they were going to bring guns and show you what it’s really about. It just got really, really bad involving all kinds of things, bullets and dog feces.” [emphasis mine]

This is the left. Dare to express any opinion they disagree with, and they will work to blacklist and censor you, and if you show even the slightest resistance, they will then threaten you with violence.

Des Plaines Alderman Carla Brookman
Des Plaines Alderman Carla Brookman

The event itself had been scheduled to occur on February 8, 2023 in Des Plaines, Illinois. The organizers were a coalition of several organizations, Awake Illinois, Moms for Liberty, and Gays Against Groomers, all of whom oppose strongly the effort by queers to sexualize young children, often against the will of their parents. Though the theater is owned by the city, it was the theater operator who canceled the event.

I first found out about this story from this Pajamas Media story, which instead of focusing on the actual blacklisting and violence decided to center its story on the public statement of a Des Plaines council alderwoman, Carla Brookman, who called the effort to shut down the event wrong, a violation of free speech, and a demonstration of intolerance by the protesters.

You can watch her statement here.
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Game publisher fires employee for expressing conservative opinions

1:01 pm

Limited Run Games: opposed to free speech

They’re coming for you next: The game publisher Limited Run Games recently fired its community manager Kara Lynne (also known by her married name, Kara Gooch) because one anonymous person complained to the company that she had expressed some conservative opinions on her personal account on Twitter.

Twitter user Purple Tinker (who has since deleted their account) described Lynne as “a transphobe” with several known right-wing and transphobic accounts on the list of accounts she follows on Twitter, including Ben Shapiro, Libs of TikTok, and others.

Purple Tinker pointed to several tweets made by Lynne in the past, including one in which she says “if you think the # of trans crying about using a bathroom is higher than the perves [sic] using the excuse, you are what is wrong with this world”. Lynne has since made her Twitter account private, so it’s not possible to see any of the tweets she made.

Apparently, Lynne had expressed enthusiasm in an earlier tweet about the game Hogwarts Legacy, based on J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, and since Rowling is now being blacklisted by the left and its allies in the queer movement because she thinks rationally that you can’t become a woman merely because you say so, Purple Tinker decided Lynne had to also be investigated and destroyed for defying that blacklist.

You can read Lynne’s detailed full response to her firing here. Her account of her firing tells us a lot about the weak character of the management of her former employer.
» Read more

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First Vulcan rocket arrives at Cape Canaveral

8:50 am

ULA’s first Vulcan rocket has now arrived at Cape Canaveral in preparation for its planned inaugural launch before the end of March.

This first mission for Vucan will fly in a VC2S configuration. “VC” stands for “Vulcan Centaur.” The number, in this case “2,” represents the number of solid rocket boosters needed and the final letter stands for the payload fairing length.

VC2S will use a 51-foot-long Standard payload fairing. Nestled inside will be a few different payloads. This mission will send the first two Kuiper prototype satellites into Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander to the Moon and a Celestis Memorial Spaceflight payload into deep space. The remains of several people connected to the original Star Trek series will be launched on what Celestis dubbed the “Enterprise Flight,” including show creator Gene Roddenberry along with actors Nichelle Nichols and Jackson DeForest Kelley.

This first Vulcan launch will also be the first of two flights required by the Pentagon in order to certify Vulcan for military launches. Since ULA already has contracts for seven Vulcan military launches, it very much wants to get these two launches off this year, as soon as possible. According to the article at the link, ULA is thus aiming to fly this year those two test flights, followed quickly by the first military launch.

Whether it can complete three Vulcan launches in 2023 is quite uncertain. For example, it will need to get four more BE-4 engines from Blue Origin for the second and third launches, and there is no indication at this time that Blue Origin is close to delivering.

Then there is the delays and risks involved with this first launch. Though ULA has decades of experience building and launching rockets, the first launch of a rocket almost always experiences delays during testing. We should expect the same with Vulcan.

Assuming this schedule holds, however, this means ULA is targeting 10 launches in 2023, five Atlas-5 launches, two Delta Heavy launches, and three Vulcan launches. That would be the most launches by this company in a year since 2016.

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First launch from Shetland Islands predicted for the fall

8:36 am

According to an official at the SaxaVord spaceport in the Shetland Islands in Scotland, its first orbital satellite launch is now expected before the end of this year.

Scott Hammond, director of operations at SaxaVord spaceport, acknowledged there is often uncertainty around timetables for private space launches. However, he said a recent agreement with a German company, Rocket Factory Augsburg, would see them begin testing their engines in the summer ahead of a launch later in the year.

He told the Press Association: “Probably in July, we’re going to start full stage testing. That will be the full, first stage, nine engines all firing for about three minutes. So that’ll be really, really impressive. I expect about four months or so of that depending on success. And then we’re looking with Rocket Factory to launch towards the end of the year, for the orbital launch.”

I would not bet a lot of money on this schedule. Rocket Factory is a German rocket startup that has never launched before, and the first launch from such startups are routinely delayed months to years. What Hammond is really doing is creating buzz for SaxaVord, even as a rival spaceport in Sutherland, Scotland, is getting built.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Minnesota to blacklist all Christians, Jews, or Muslims from teaching

12:48 pm

The new Marxist rules for teaching in Minnesota

They’re coming for you next: Minnesota’s unelected education bureaucracy is about to impose new licensing requirements for teachers that will essentially blacklist all Christians, Jews, or Muslims by requiring teachers to teach the queer agenda as well as the critical race theory to young children.

Minnesota’s Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board (PELSB), a division of the state Department of Education, has been working to change teacher certification requirements since 2019. Its latest public draft, which is finalized save for a few tweaks that don’t affect the content, includes multiple requirements that licensure candidates publicly support critical race theory and transgender ideology and include both in their teaching. Teachers must receive state licensure to be employed in Minnesota public and many private schools. [emphasis mine]

You can read the new licensing rules here [pdf]. The screen capture above shows the language requiring teachers to agree to the queer agenda. It also hints at full approval of the Marxism program of critical race theory, whereby all western civilization and America in particular is seeped in bigotry and hate, and must be condemned at all times.

Only a few paragraphs later the hints go away, and the licensing requirements make it clear that all teachers must from now on condemn the heritage of the United States.
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Today’s blacklisted American: Court clerk fired despite having valid health and religious reasons to refuse jab

11:52 am

Judge Claire Bradley, petty tyrant

They’re coming for you next: Today’s blacklist story is only one of tens of thousands, but it illustrates starkly the cruel and vindictive intolerance of the petty dictators who now run American society. It doesn’t matter if the jab doesn’t work. It doesn’t matter if you have valid health reasons for avoiding it. It doesn’t matter that you have religious beliefs. It doesn’t matter if you offer to be tested frequently to prove you aren’t sick. It doesn’t even matter that no mandate has been imposed by the local government.

The boss demands you to get jabbed, and if you dare to refuse, the boss will fire you.

Less than three years from retirement, Kitsap County court clerk Tammy Duryea was terminated in 2021 from her job because she did not wish to get the COVID shots for both health and religious reasons.

She has now sued, but her chances of victory are quite slim, especially since it was the court judges, led by Judge Claire Bradley, the presiding judge of the District Court, who imposed the shot mandate.
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