Tag: policy

Shetland Spaceport now faces same regulatory hurdles that destroyed Virgin Orbit

9:37 am

The new Shetland spaceport, Saxavord, is right now attempting to get launch approvals from United Kingdom’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), the same agency that dithered for six months approving a Virgin Orbit launch, thus causing the bankruptcy of that company.

According to Saxavord’s CEO, the spaceport has two launches aiming to launch before the end of this year, assuming the CAA can get its act together and give its approval. This quote however is worrisom:

The Saxavord spaceport says it is “still on track” to receive its necessary licences from the sector’s regulator before the summer. This relates to applications to the Civil Aviation Authority for range and spaceport licences.

Meanwhile SaxaVord CEO Frank Strang said the company is also on track for two rocket launches this year – “albeit they have moved slightly to the right”. [emphasis mine]

The delays could be coming from the rocket companies themselves. One of those companies is the German startup, Rocket Factory Augsburg, which has leased exclusive use of one launchsite. The other is the American startup ABL, which has had one launch attempt from the U.S. that failed.

Based on the CAA’s track record however the delays are just as likely coming from it. The CAA began this licensing process in November 2022, and is not done yet six months later.

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Judges expand hiring boycott of elite law colleges that allow violent protests and censorship

12:24 pm

Judge James Ho
Judge James Ho

Two federal judges have now expanded their hiring boycott to include Stanford Law School along with Yale Law School because the administrators at both schools have refused to punish violent student protesters who acted to silence others.

The judges, James C. Ho of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and Elizabeth Branch, a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, will hire no graduates from these schools, thus reducing the whole reason for going there. Law students graduate hoping this diploma will get them jobs working for important judges, an early step to becoming a judge themselves.

The question that Ho and Branch raise, however, is whether any judge would want to hire any students from these particular schools. As Judge Ho noted in a speech on April 1st at the annual meeting of the Texas Review of Law & Politics.
» Read more

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FAA issues travel advisory for Boca Chica for April 10, 2023 Starship launch

10:30 am

Though the FAA has not yet issued the launch license to SpaceX, allowing it to do the first orbital launch test of its Superheavy/Starship rocket, the agency today did issue a travel advisory for the Boca Chica area for April 10-11, 2023, in connection with this launch.

The FAA advisory is here. Scroll down to see the space activities section, which includes this information:

SPACEX STARSHIP SUPERHEAVY BOCA CHICA, TX
PRIMARY: 04/10/23 1310-1745Z
BACKUP(S): 04/11-12/23 1310-1745Z

Based on this information, we should expect the FAA launch license to be publicly announced any moment.

Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay, who trolls Twitter so I don’t have to.

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Pushback: University will hire no one who supports “critical race theory”

11:41 am

SouthernWesleyan University: still a supporter of Christianity and western civilization
Still a supporter of Christianity and western civilization

Bring a gun to a knife fight: According to the president of Southern Wesleyan University, it refuses to hire anyone who supports “critical race theory”, and instead seeks out scholars who support the basic tenets of Christianity and western civilization.

[A]s Southern Wesleyan University President Bill Barker enters his eighth month at the helm of the private, four-year institution, he said he has made it a priority to educate critically on critical race theory. … “I made it very clear where SWU stands on critical race theory, and we made it very clear in our hiring processes,” Barker said in a Zoom interview with The College Fix. “Personnel is policy.”

“We’re not hiring people – and I’ve been clear since I came here and the Board of Trustees has supported this – who endorse critical race theory. We will have the courage to let faculty or staff go if they are teaching critical race theory.” Barker took the helm of the South Carolina-based campus in July 2022.

Barker’s policy is more than words. » Read more

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NASA policy for naming missions now discourages honoring individuals

9:39 am

In a change apparently brought about by the fake and bigoted slanders against James Webb, who led NASA brilliantly for almost the entire 1960s space race and was thus honored by NASA when it named the James Webb Space Telescope after him, NASA has now changed its policy for naming missions in order to discourage any future missions to be named after individuals.

According to the new policy, a NASA historian must be involved, and “The historical analysis led by [the naming committee] will include a human capital review to ensure diversity, unity, inclusion, and inspiration are considered.” The policy also states:

Where possible, limit the practice of naming projects, missions, instruments, etc., after individuals. (a) Instead use the theme of unity, inspiration, or the accomplishments of a person as the primary criterion for a project or mission name. (b) Except in extraordinary circumstances will names of individuals be considered and, only in more rare circumstances, may individuals who are still living receive consideration. (c) The use of an individual’s name should be based on their contributions to America, NASA, and humanity, and therefore be so extraordinary that any other form of recognition by the Agency would be considered inadequate. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted phrase is typical jargon used by the “diversity, unity, inclusion” crowd, and indicates that any past great American who did something great for America but not for the rest of the world, will be considered unqualified. Thus, do not expect any missions to be ever named after our Founding Fathers, or other great Americans. Instead, I expect any individuals who get honored in the future will be chosen in order to push “diversity, unity, inclusion”.

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NASA names four astronauts to fly on first manned Artemis mission around Moon

9:23 am

NASA today named the four astronauts who will fly on its Artemis-2 in a 10-day mission around the Moon, launched on SLS’s second launch in an Orion capsule and tentatively scheduled for late 2024.

The crew assignments are as follows: Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Victor Glover, Mission Specialist 1 Christina Hammock Koch, and Mission Specialist 2 Jeremy Hansen. They will work as a team to execute an ambitious set of demonstrations during the flight test.

The approximately 10-day Artemis II flight test will launch on the agency’s powerful Space Launch System rocket, prove the Orion spacecraft’s life-support systems, and validate the capabilities and techniques needed for humans to live and work in deep space.

The flight, set to build upon the successful uncrewed Artemis I mission completed in December, will set the stage for the first woman and first person of color on the Moon through the Artemis program, paving the way for future for long-term human exploration missions to the Moon, and eventually Mars. This is the agency’s Moon to Mars exploration approach. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words illustrate some important facts. First, this first manned flight of Orion will also be the first that will use the capsule’s life-support systems, which were not included the first flight around the Moon in December. Thus, these four humans are essentially guinea pigs for this engineering. Seems such a plan should have been questioned by NASA’S corrupt safety panel, but then, it is corrupt, and never seems to have much problem with unsafe practices done by NASA itself. Instead, it spends a lot of time making up problems for SpaceX and missing problems at Boeing and NASA.

Second, note NASA’s emphasis on race and sex for the first landing on the Artemis-3 mission. Note too that Artemis-2 crew also includes a black and a woman. Though the press release wisely and correctly makes no mention of race when describing the four astronauts, it does tout the achievements of Christina Koch as a woman, not as a person.

Don’t get me wrong. It is good that a black and a woman are flying to the Moon. It just appears very clear that NASA now has a firm quota system, requiring one of each for every mission.

Finally, there is something not mentioned in the press release or on the Artemis-2 webpage that is very telling. Neither says anything about a launch date, which NASA had previously announced as November 2024. I have been predicting from the beginning that this date is a fantasy. It now appears NASA realizes it but is not yet ready to admit it publicly.

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Japan officially delays next H2A rocket launch because of H3 launch failure

10:07 am

Japan’s space agency JAXA has now officially delayed its next H2A rocket launch, scheduled for May and carrying a Japanese lunar lander dubbed SLIM, because that rocket shares some components of Japan’s new H3 rocket, which failed during its inaugural launch in March.

No new launches are currently planned after a series of setbacks for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, including the next-generation H3 rocket’s failure and that of the smaller Epsilon-6 in October, which was ordered to self-destruct after deviating from its intended trajectory shortly after takeoff.

The earliest the H2A launch can be rescheduled for is August, due to the orbital mechanics for getting it to the Moon. There are indications however that even this date will not be met.

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India successfully lands its own version of the X-37B on a runway

10:00 am

LEX landing

India’s space agency ISRO today successfully landed its own version of the X-37B on a runway.

The flight was a test of the landing system. The spacecraft, dubbed LEX, was dropped from a helicopter at an elevation of 2.8 miles above sea level. It then autonomously guided itself to the runway to land smoothly. The picture to the right shows LEX as it approaches the runway. Note how similar it looks to the X-37B.

ISRO had demonstrated the re-entry of its winged vehicle RLV-TD in the HEX mission in May 2016. … In HEX, the vehicle landed on a hypothetical runway over the Bay of Bengal. Precise landing on a runway was an aspect not included in the HEX mission. The LEX mission achieved the final approach phase that coincided with the re-entry return flight path exhibiting an autonomous, high speed (350 kmph) landing.

The next step will of course be to launch an orbital version, and bring it back to Earth for reuse.

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SpaceX and Chinese pseudo-company complete launches

9:46 am

Two launches today. First, a new Chinese pseudo-company, dubbed Space Pioneer, completed the first launch of its liquid kerosene-fueled Tianlong-1 rocket, putting a military surveillance satellite into orbit.

Space Pioneer is the third Chinese pseudo-company to achieve orbit, but the first to do it with a liquid-fueled rocket. The previous two, Ispace and Galactic Energy, used solid-fueled rockets based on military missile technology. All of these Chinese companies follow a private model. An individual or a group of individuals creates the company, obtains private investment capital, and then wins contracts from the Chinese government. What makes them pseudo is that they do not work independently and freely, and really do not own their products. The Chinese government supervises and approves everything, and can take over at any time.

The second launch today was by SpaceX, using its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California to put a new smallsat constellation of ten military satellites, designed to test the quick development (under two years) of such smallsats for use by the military.

The first stage successfully completed its second flight, landing back at Vandenberg. The fairings completed their fourth and sixth flights, respectively.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

22 SpaceX
14 China
6 Russia
3 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads China 25 to 14 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 25 to 24. SpaceX by itself trails the entire world, including American companies, 22 to 27.

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Stratolaunch’s Roc airplane completes another test flight

9:31 pm

Stratolaunch today announced that it has successfully completed the third capture-carry test using its giant Roc airplane, carrying an engineering test version of its Talon vehicle, designed to do hypersonic flight tests for the Air Force.

The flight was the tenth for the company’s launch platform Roc and marks the beginning of routine flight operations in Vandenberg Space Force Base’s Western Range off California’s central coast. The flight, which lasted a total of five hours, performed risk reduction by practicing a variety of separation profiles and confirming telemetry between Roc and Talon-A vehicles and Vandenberg Space Force Base’s communication assets, assuring that back-up telemetry data collection will occur during future flight tests.

Pending results of post-flight data analysis, the team will progress toward a separation test in the coming weeks, enabling the company to perform its first hypersonic flight in 2023.

There is a lot of potential test capability for Roc and Talon, not just with hypersonic missiles and aircraft. If Stratolaunch succeeds in fulfilling this Air Force contract, it will likely garner a good amount of additional business.

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Lunar rover startup signs deal to send rover to the Moon using Starship

9:25 pm

The lunar rover startup Astrolab has signed a deal with SpaceX to send its FLEX rover to the Moon’s south pole region using a lunar lander version of Starship.

Jaret Matthews, founder and chief executive of Astrolab, said in an interview that the mission, which will include 1,000 kilograms of customer payloads, will be the first flight of the FLEX rover. It will be a rideshare payload on a Starship mission landing somewhere in the south polar region of the moon.

“Because our rover can traverse up to a couple thousand kilometers in a given year, we’re less sensitive to exactly where we land,” he said. “’It is definitely optimized for the south polar region because that’s fundamentally where we think that the bulk of the activity is going to be.”

The company unveiled a full scale prototype of its rover one year ago, when it made it clear it intended to compete for the rover contract in NASA’s Artemis program, competing against several big established players. Since then there has been little news. The story today sadly reeks to me of a lot of blarney. For example, the company has only 20 employees. Astrolab might have signed this deal, but I suspect it is a very tentative deal, easily canceled by either party at no cost.

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Update on MOXIE’s two years on Mars, producing oxygen

9:17 pm

Link here. MOXIE is a technology test instrument on the rover Perseverance that has proven it will be possible to practically produce sufficient oxygen from the Martian atmosphere to sustain a human colony.

The link provides a nice summary of everything the engineering team has accomplished since Perseverance landed in testing this technology. As I wrote in my December post about MOXIE’s achievements:

Based on these tests, MOXIE has unequivocally proven that future human explorers will not need to bring much oxygen with them, and will in fact have essentially an unlimited supply, on hand from the red planet itself. More important, MOXIE has also proven that the technology to obtain this oxygen already exists.

All we need to do is plant enough MOXIE trees on Mars.

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Midnight repost: The Democratic Party of thugs and goons

1:01 am

The indictment of Donald Trump this week on bogus charges by a local New York Democratic Party machine politician, done for entirely political reasons, once again illustrates the ugliness of that party. Seems therefore appropriate to repost this August 2022 essay. The only thing that has changed since then an increase in the aggressive, vicious, and violent nature of the Democrats and their allies in the various LBGQTBIBOC etc queer and bigoted identity movements. They are acting with ever greater impunity, while we certainly have not seen any clear evidence that the decent population of the United States has risen up in outrage. Instead, it increasingly appears they are bowing their heads in fear, and letting the bullies win.

It also appears that even if decent Americans finally now step up with outrage, it will be too little too late. For far too long they slept, and now they reap the whirlwind.

The Democratic Party of thugs and goons

Rick, stating the truth in Casablanca
Will the Trump raid finally wake Americans up?

While the outrage and fury has only begun to rise over the unjustified raid of the home of former President Donald Trump yesterday by the FBI, ordered by Biden Justice Department with a warrant issued by an Obama-supporting judge with ties to Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex operation, nothing about that raid was anything new or startling. For the past seven years, since Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016, the Democratic Party and its supporters have increasingly acted like Nazi storm-troopers, willing, able, and eager to crush their opponents at every opportunity, and to do so cruelly and with great viciousness.

I therefore ask, shouldn’t we have exhibited the same amount of rage and fury for the hundreds and hundreds of ordinary Americans these same thugs have harassed and ruined since 2016? Why did it take a raid on Trump to finally bring that rage to the forefront?

Two Americans committed suicide because of Biden administration persecution after they dared protest the questionable election of Joe Biden on January 6th. What about them?

Scores of conservative FBI agents in the past two years have been fired from their jobs, simply because they did not agree politically with the Democrats. What about them?

What about the arrest by the FBI of a Republican candidate for Michigan governor, simply because he had also protested on January 6th the questionable election of thug Joe Biden? Or the threats of violence and murder against Supreme Court justices by leftist Democratic Party allies?

What about the effort by Biden’s labor board to shut down the conservative outlet The Federalist, simply because its founder sent out an anti-union joke?

What about the former Trump lawyer whose career was destroyed, simply because he was a former lawyer of Trump?

These stories are only a small sampling of the political abuses of power exercised by Democrats and the Biden administration time after time against their political opponents in just the last eighteen months. The list is long and painful to read.
» Read more

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Spain’s government officially establishes a Spanish space agency

9:41 am

Spain’s Council of Ministers has voted to officially established a Spanish space agency, with operations beginning on March 7, 2023 with an initial budget of $753 million.

This announcement comes only a month before the private Spanish company, PLD, attempts its first suborbital launch from a Spanish spaceport of its Miura-1 rocket, its first stage designed to come back to Earth by parachute, recovered, and then reused. If successful the company hopes to then develop an orbital version.

The news from Europe increasing suggests that the members of the European Space Agency (ESA) are beginning to go their own way, relying less upon it. In addition to these developments in Spain, Germany now has three private companies developing rockets while Italy’s government has provided $308 million to its own Italian rocket company Avio. The United Kingdom meanwhile has had its own space agency for several years, is building several spaceports, and has been trying to develop its own space industry, with very mixed results. In addition, both Norway and Sweden are building spaceports for commercial operations.

ESA, while mouthing support for commercial space, has so far not done well in the past decade in transitioning from a government run, built, and owned operation to one owned by commercial companies. Its new Ariane-6 rocket, built and controlled by ArianeGroup but heavily managed by ESA, is still too expensive to compete with the new commercial rockets from the U.S. Nor does it appear ESA is moving very fast to fix this situation. It appears many people in Europe have recognized this state of affairs, and are looking for alternatives.

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Two launches by China

9:15 am

China's spaceports
China’s spaceports

China yesterday and today successfully completed two launches using two different rockets from two different spaceports.

First, a Long March 2D rocket yesterday launched a set of four satellites establishing a new constellation of radar satellites designed to measure the Earth’s surface topography. Lift off was from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in the northeast of China. No word on where the rocket’s first stage crashed.

Next, a Long March 4C rocket today placed in orbit a classified military “remote-sensing” satellite, lifting off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China’s northwest. Once again, no information was released on where the first and second stages of the rocket crashed to Earth.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

21 SpaceX
13 China
6 Russia
3 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads China 24 to 13 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 24 to 23. SpaceX now trails the entire world combined, including American companies, 26 to 21.

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Virgin Orbit shuts down

5:12 pm

Unable to secure new funding, the managers of Virgin Orbit have shuttered the company, possibly forever.

Virgin Orbit is ceasing operations “for the foreseeable future” after failing to secure a funding lifeline, CEO Dan Hart told employees during an all-hands meeting Thursday afternoon. The company will lay off nearly all of its workforce. “Unfortunately, we’ve not been able to secure the funding to provide a clear path for this company,” Hart said, according to audio of the 5 p.m. ET meeting obtained by CNBC.

The layoffs include all but 100 positions, about 85% of its workforce.

The company was killed because the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) took an extra six months approving a launch license, during which the company could launch nothing and thus make no money. Lacking revenue, it ran out of cash. If the company goes into bankruptcy, this detail is most intriguing:

Branson has first priority over Virgin Orbit’s assets, as the company raised $60 million in debt from the investment arm of Virgin Group.

In other words, Branson will be able to walk off with everything, and even resurrect the company as his own, for pennies on the dollar. If he does, I guarantee our bankrupt mainstream press will shower him with praise, calling him a hero.

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Frank Rubio’s flight to ISS will exceed a year, setting a new American record

10:25 am

Frank Rubio
Frank Rubio

Initially, Frank Rubio’s first flight in space was intended to be a standard six month mission on ISS. Launched on September 21, 2022 on a Soyuz-2 rocket inside a Soyuz capsule, the plan was for him and his two crewmates to return in March, 2023.

Then their Soyuz capsule developed a leak in its coolant system in December 2022. Not knowing if it was safe to use this capsule with humans inside, a replacement unmanned Soyuz capsule was launched by the Russians to ISS in February 2023, with the leaking Soyuz capsule brought back unmanned earlier this week.

The Russians however decided that this new capsule, designed for a six month mission, would stay in orbit for six months, so that it would be used to its planned capability. This decision also hinged on the lack of a new crew arriving on this new capsule. If it brought Rubio and his crew home earlier, ISS would be short three crew members for at least several months.

The planned return date, September 27, 2023, now means that Rubio’s mission will be at least 371 days long, making him the first American to fly a full year in space. Previously NASA falsely touted Scott Kelly’s 340-day mission as a year-long mission, when it never was. Later, Mark Vande Hei’s mission, also launched on a Soyuz, was extended to 355 days, still just short of a year, because the Russians wanted to send a film crew to ISS and return them on the capsule which Vande Hei was intended to come home on.

Whether Rubio truly does spend a year in space however remains uncertain. Two different Russian spacecraft — the Soyuz and a Progress freighter — have developed this coolant leak in the past three months. If this problem is a systemic manufacturing error, which Russia is now investigating, the decision might be to return the new capsule sooner than planned, out of fear it will develop its own leak. We shall likely find out sometime in the next three months.

If Rubio does end up in space for a full year, however, it will likely be a dream come true, having become an astronaut in 2017 but waiting six years for his first flight.

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H3 failure delays Japan’s entire space program

9:53 am

According to one official of Japan’s space agency JAXA, the failure of the first launch of its new H3 rocket in early March now threatens the schedule of much of Japan’s entire space program, even those missions being launched on the older H2A rocket.

The investigation into the launch failure, when the upper stage of the H3 rocket failed to ignite, remains unfinished with no word when it will be completed.

The H3 upper stage uses an engine designated LE-5B-3 developed by MHI [Mitsubishi Heavy Industries] and similar to the LE-5B engine used on the existing H-2A rocket. That is putting launches of the H-2A on hold while the investigation continues.

That may delay the upcoming launch of two science missions sharing an H-2A. The X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM), an X-ray astronomy spacecraft, and the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM), a lunar lander, were scheduled to launch together as soon as May on an H-2A.

The article notes that XRISM replaces a 2016 Japanese X-ray telescope that failed immediately after launch. That failure then was bad, but just as bad is the seven years it has taken JAXA to have a replacement ready.

The H3 failure also threatens a JAXA Mars mission scheduled for launch in 2024, during the next launch window to Mars.

Japan’s space program more and more resembles Russia’s. It is controlled entirely by the government, which it appears does not allow competition within Japan, as all major rocket work is apparently confined to Mitsubishi. There have been unending quality control problems, within many probes as well as in the development of both the H3 and the Epsilon rockets. And the pace of operations is slow, much slower than other nations or companies.

It seems a major reform is needed, and it should start with Japanese government officials reading Capitalism in Space. They need to open up competition and release their space program from the control of JAXA, especially because JAXA is not doing a very good job. Like NASA, it would be better if JAXA stopped being a designer and builder, and become merely a customer obtaining products from many different competing private companies.

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Psyche asteroid mission now scheduled for October 2023 launch

3:40 pm

After a year delay because certain flight software was not ready on time for its first launch window in the fall of 2022, the science team for the Psyche asteroid mission are now aiming for an October 2023 launch.

The launch period will open Oct. 5 and close Oct. 25. The asteroid, which lies in the outer portion of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, may be the remains of a core of a planetesimal, a building block of a rocky planet.

Due to the new launch date, Psyche has a new mission plan, which includes a flyby of Mars for a gravity assist and arrival at the asteroid in August 2029. The mission then will enter its 26-month science phase, collecting observations and data as the spacecraft orbits the asteroid at different altitudes.

Meanwhile, the two Janus probes that were to launch with Psyche last year remain in limbo, as this new Psyche launch date is useless to that mission’s plan to fly past a different asteroid.

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Boeing & NASA; 1st Starliner manned mission to now launch on July 21

3:34 pm

In a update posted by NASA today, agency and Boeing officials announced that they are now aiming to launch Boeing’s Starliner capsule on July 21, 2023 on its first manned mission to ISS.

The new target date provides NASA and Boeing the necessary time to complete subsystem verification testing and close out test flight certification products and aligns with the space station manifest and range launch opportunities.

The specifics behind this somewhat meaningless press release jargon can be found at this twitter thread. Apparently Boeing & NASA want to do more ground tests of the capsule’s parachute system as well as its flight software. There also appears to be some issue relating to the capsule’s batteries.

Boeing is also mulling a redesign of Starliner’s batteries for after this delayed crewed flight test. It also expects to redesign Starliner’s smart initiator system, which separates the crew from service module. NASA’s paying $24 million for that redesign amid added requirements

Though Boeing has a fixed price contract with NASA, if NASA demands redesigns or changes it has to pay for them. That Boeing and NASA are finding these issues at this late date, four years after Starliner was first supposed to launch, does not speak well of Boeing’s workmanship and quality control systems.

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Israel launches spy satellite

9:04 am

Israel yesterday successfully launched a radar reconnaissance satellite using its Shavit-2 solid-fueled three-stage rocket.

This was Israel’s first launch since 2020. It took place from Israel’s coastal launchpad, and traveled west over the Mediterranean so that its stages would not fall on habitable areas. This retrograde orbit, opposite of the Earth’s rotation, is costly in terms of fuel and the size of payload put in orbit, which is why the satellite weighed only 661 pounds.

The leader board for the 2023 launch race remains the same:

20 SpaceX (with a planned launch later today)
11 China
5 Russia (with a planned launch later today)
3 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads China 23 to 11 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 23 to 20. SpaceX now trails the rest of the world, including other American companies, 20 to 23.

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Midnight repost: Genocide is coming to America

12:02 am

Rick, stating the truth in Casablanca
Will the murder and mutilation of innocent children
finally wake Americans up?

Considering the recent horrible murders of three young school children as well as three adults at Covenant School, a Christian elementary school in Nashville, merely because some sexually confused woman (not a “trans-person” as the insane insist we call her) decided it was her right to murder people, I thought it might be worthwhile to post my essay below from July 2020. In it I predicted that mass murder by the left was only around the corner, if the good people of America did not finally wake up and take seriously the madness that is taking over that part of the political spectrum.

I am still unsure whether ordinary decent Americans have finally awakened, but it appears the recent school violence might finally be providing the spark. We shall see.

————————-
Genocide is coming to America

In my last visit to Israel in 2018, my brother and sister-in-law took me sight-seeing to the northern parts of Israel near the Sea of Galilee. On our first night, we stayed at the home of one of their older friends, a man in his seventies.

That night we sat around their kitchen table so that they could catch up on family matters. At one point in the conversation our host reminisced about an older woman, now gone, who he had known in his childhood in the 1950s who had lived in Germany before and during World War II and had survived a concentration camp.

To paraphrase the story he told us, what this woman always remembered most starkly about that time, especially in the 1930s, was how difficult it was to get German friends who were not Jewish to believe the horrors she and other Jews were going through. To her, their calm nonchalant dismissal of the Nazi bigotry and oppression of Jews — too unbelievable to take seriously — was what had horrified her the most. Even twenty years later, it was this dismissal that appalled her the most, despite her time in a concentration camp and the death she had seen around her.

As he told us this story, what struck me was how similar my own experience has been. Time after time for the past four decades my liberal friends and relatives have refused to believe anything I say to them — always based on actual events — about politics and the growing corruption and bigotry within the Democratic Party. Like those decent Germans in the 1930s, these decent Americans find reasons to quickly dismiss what I say, without making any effort to find out if there is any merit to it.

In fact, less than two days after this very conversation it happened again. » Read more

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NASA goes woke!

9:39 am

NASA yesterday announced that it has named two individuals, based on their race and gender, to lead the agency’s effort to promote the Marxist and racist Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) movement.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson announced Monday he is taking additional steps forward to advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) at the agency. Nelson named Steve Shih to serve in a new position as the agency’s first Diversity Ambassador and selected Elaine Ho as the next associate administrator for the Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity at NASA Headquarters in Washington, effective immediately.

…As diversity ambassador, Shih will further NASA’s DEIA initiatives by building key strategic alliances with external partners, enabling NASA to continue being a model agency and leader for DEIA. In this role, Shih will engage NASA’s partners – including across the government, private sector, academia, and non-governmental organizations – to learn and promote best practices for NASA to recruit, hire, engage, and retain the most talented individuals from all backgrounds and life experiences. With his experience leading the Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity since 2017, Shih will build on his three decades of federal expertise and help NASA continue to enable everyone to contribute inclusively to NASA and to the United States.

As Shih transitions to the role of diversity ambassador, Ho will bring extensive DEIA expertise to the Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity. She most recently has served as the deputy associate administrator for NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement, leading a wide-ranging portfolio of projects benefiting students, universities, and educational institutions across the country to inspire, engage, and educate the Artemis Generation.

To further prove NASA’s commitment to favor some races over others, the agency also announced yesterday that it is committing $3 million to support “seven Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and one Predominantly Black Institution (PBI).”

Note the focus on race, not achievement. While it is nice to help the disadvantaged, these programs are not really aimed at that goal. Instead, this entire DEI movement is designed to give power to specific races, to the detriment of others. Or to put it more bluntly, it is a race-based apartheid system that encourages race hatred and resentment.

It is also probably illegal, based on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Of course, the law is now irrelevant when it comes to the new racism. Supporters of DEI are allowed to break it whenever they want, because clearly they are superior to all others and have that right.

Finally, this stuff has absolutely nothing to do with NASA’s fundamental purpose, which is to help American industry more successfully explore space. It is instead a return to the Obama administration’s policy of making NASA’s most important priority that of helping minorities. Then it was Muslims, now it is the alphabet soup of LBGQTBIPOCZXYZ (and so on).

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Leaking Soyuz capsule returns unmanned to Earth

9:06 am

The Soyuz capsule with a leaking coolant system successfully landed in Kazakhstan today, returning to Earth unmanned because of that leak.

Russian engineers will now analyze whether a crew would have been able to come home safely in that spacecraft, despite its damaged coolant system, which will provide information for future such problems. They will not be able to study the leak itself, however, as it was part of the capsule’s service module, which separates upon return and burns up in the atmosphere.

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Pushback: One doctor’s experience gives us all a ray of hope

1:52 pm

In the three years since the beginning of what I think should be called the Wuhan panic, the civilized world was overwhelmed by a tidal wave of mindless emotional terror, resulting in a never-ending stream of terrible COVID policy decisions — from social distancing to masks to lockdowns to jab mandates — that ended up killing tens of thousands unnecessarily, while trampling on the liberties and rights that western civilization had once consider sacrosanct.

During that panic a large number of individuals, including myself and most of the conservative press, desperately tried to fight that panic with hard data, noting repeatedly that masks accomplished nothing, that social distancing was a sham, that lockdowns only destroyed lives and businesses, and that mandates of any kind (especially in connection with the COVID jab) were misguided and dangerous.

All to no avail. The power-hungry were in charge, controlling all the major branches of government as well as its health bureaucracy, and these people were eager to use COVID epidemic as a vehicle for gaining power. The fear they engendered in the general public, long used to relying on these people for accurate information, caused that public to buy into that fear, and accede to the power grab by these government officials.

Doctor Robert Lending
Doctor Robert Lending.

One person who tried mightily throughout the panic to focus solely on the data was my own doctor, Robert Lending. Each week he would issue a detailed COVID report, documenting at length the actual statistics as well as the most recent research on the best treatment methods as well as those that were failures. I have quoted his reports several times previously on Behind the Black, always with permission, because his approach was so fact-based and devoid of partisan politics. His only concern was to find the best way to treat his patients.

I have also quoted Lending repeatedly because he contrasted so starkly with my previous doctor, Charles Michieli, who when I asked his assistant in April 2020 if I could work out some accommodation for me regarding masks, as I had both health and ethical reasons for not wearing one, Michieli simply responded by sending me a letter firing me as a patient. So much for putting patients first, and doing no harm.

Lending’s own experience during the entire panic was sometimes as disturbing. Though he always treated all patients regardless of politics or their own COVID fears, his insistence on logic sometimes enraged some patients to the point that they quit his practice. For example, back in June 2020, when the George Floyd riots were occurring, he wrote the following in his twelfth update:
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India launches 36 OneWeb satellites

9:09 pm

India’s space agency ISRO tonight successfully launched 36 OneWeb satellites using its LVM-M3 rocket, the largest version of its GSLV family of rockets.

This launch completes OneWeb’s constellation, with 618 satellites now in orbit, allowing them to now offer internet access worldwide in competition with Starlink. After Russia broke its contract and confiscated 36 OneWeb satellites, the company contracted SpaceX and ISRO to launch the satellites necessary to complete the constellation, with SpaceX doing three launches and ISRO two.

This was India’s second launch in 2023. The leaders in the 2023 launch race remain the same:

20 SpaceX
11 China
5 Russia
3 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads China 23 to 11 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 23 to 19. SpaceX by itself now trails the entire world, including other American companies, 20 to 22.

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The invulnerability of today’s academic blacklist culture

2:22 pm

Tirien Steinbach: in favor of censorship and mob rule
Stanford’s Tirien Steinbach:
in favor of censorship and mob rule

They’re coming for you next: In order to best understand how difficult it will be to regain the free and open society that was once the United States, we need only look at recent events at the Stanford Law School.

On March 9, 2023 a mob of students and faculty, led by Tirien Steinbach, the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion dean, shouted down U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Kyle Duncan when he tried to give a lecture about the law for the school’s chapter of the Federalist Society.

You can watch a video of this mob action at the link, where Steinbach actually took the podium away from Duncan to order to give a speech defending the mob and agreeing with their effort to silence him.

The story has gotten ample coverage in the press, including the general reaction from outside the school. For example, in Texas and in California action has been proposed to bar the students involved from getting law licenses.

The law school itself initially responded very weakly, simply sending a letter of apology to Duncan.
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Starliner’s first manned mission to ISS delayed again

9:36 am

According to a tweet by a NASA official, the first manned mission to ISS of Boeing’s Starliner capsule, carrying two NASA astronauts, has been delayed again, from the planned late April launch to sometime during the summer.

No reasons for the delay were given, as yet. The second link notes however that a schedule conflict at ULA, which is launching Starliner on its Atlas-5 rocket, might be part of the reason.

A launch in late April [of Starliner on the Atlas-5] would have put it in conflict with the inaugural launch of United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket, currently scheduled for as soon as May 4. Vulcan and Atlas use the same launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, and ULA has been conducting tests of the Vulcan rocket on that pad. It has not shared updates on the status of the Atlas 5 used for Starliner.

This conflict might also explain why Starliner itself has not yet been fueled, since Boeing officials have said they want to do this within 60 days of launch to avoid the same kind of valve leaks that delayed the second unmanned demo mission for almost a year.

Starliner itself is years behind schedule, a long delay that has cost Boeing an enormous amount of income. First, the problems during the first unmanned demo flight in December 2019 forced the company to do a second unmanned demo flight, on its own dime costing about $400 million. That second flight was then delayed because of those valve issues. All the delays next cost Boeing income from NASA, as the agency was forced to purchase many manned flights from SpaceX that it had intended to buy from Boeing.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Black DEI administrator fired by college for demanding accuracy and color-blind policies

1:18 pm

Tabia Lee
Tabia Lee

They’re coming for you next: Tabia Lee, the faculty director for the Office of Equity, Social Justice, and Education [OESE] at De Anza College in California, was denied tenure and fired from her job when she repeatedly demanded historical accuracy and color-blind policies from both her department and the rest of the college.

“Historical accuracy and color-blind policies” from a modern college run by leftists? It is to laugh.

Tabia Lee is a black woman who had been an adjunct professor at De Anza when she got the job to run part of the OESE department.

After years of working as a middle-school teacher and an adjunct professor, and founding a network to help minority teachers attain national board certification, Lee was excited get a tenure-track position at De Anza, where her job includes designing workshops to promote inclusion. “I researched them, and I thought we had similar values around diversity, equity and anti-racism,” she said. “I was selected, and I was like, wow, this is a dream come true.”

Instead, Lee found herself constantly harassed and slandered because she tried to bring to her work an even-handed philosophy that attempted to deal with the problems of racial conflict fairly. For example, when Jewish students and faculty members told her they had experienced anti-Semitism on campus, Lee tried to organize a campus event to discuss the problem.
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