Tag: policy

Russia launches another 36 OneWeb satellites

8:37 am

A Russian Soyuz-2 rocket today successfully launched 36 more OneWeb satellites, raising the total of the satellite constellation in orbit to 358.

The launch was from Russia’s new spaceport Vostochny. As with all launches from Russia, the expendable first stage core and strap-ons landed inside Russia within designated drop zones. And as usual, no word from Russia on whether they landed on anyone’s head.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

34 China
23 SpaceX
17 Russia
4 Northrop Grumman

The U.S. still leads China in the national rankings, 35 to 34. With launches scheduled by both countries (two by the U.S. and one by China) over the next three days, these numbers will continue upward.

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Webb telescope finally arrives at launch site in French Guiana

2:54 pm

Webb deployment

After almost twenty years of construction (a decade behind schedule) and a cost of $10 billion, ($9.5 billion over budget), the James Webb Space Telescope today arrived at the processing facility at Arianespace’s French Guiana spaceport, where it will be prepared for a December 18, 2021 launch on an Ariane 5 rocket.

Once launched the telescope, which is not a replacement for Hubble because it observes in the infrared (not optical) and is optimized for deep space cosmology, will take two weeks to reach its orbital position about a million miles from Earth, as shown in the graphic.

Let us all cross our fingers and toes that it all works as designed, for if it doesn’t this will be the biggest failure ever in the history of NASA.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Brownstone Institute blackballed by LinkedIn for associating with famed Harvard epidemiologist

11:12 am

They’re coming for you next: The non-profit Brownstone Institute, founded in 2021 to provide an outlet for educated dissent on science and economic issues, has found itself repeatedly censored by LinkedIn in the past two weeks because one of its founders is famed Harvard epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff.

Brownstone Institute: Censored

If you are a regular reader of this column you might remember Kulldorff’s name. He was blacklisted by the CDC, Twitter, and LinkedIn in late August because he dissents from the oppressive lockdown policies those organizations advocate. He was also one of the leading authors of the Great Barrington Declaration [also available here a pdf], which strongly opposes the policies of lockdowns, mandates, and the other totalitarian actions taken by governments since 2020, and instead calls for the more traditional (and successful) “focused” approach for dealing with epidemics and diseases: Protect the vulnerable (the old and sick) from the disease while letting everyone else (the young and healthy) live normal lives and thus get infected quickly, become immune, and thus squelch off the virus.

Kulldorff is also one of the world’s preeminent experts on vaccine safety and “helped develop the CDC’s current system for monitoring potential vaccine risks.”

Anyway, it appears that on October 1st, LinkedIn suddenly discovered that Kulldorff was one of the senior scholars at the Brownstone Institute, and began deleting the institute’s posts.
» Read more

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Australia to build unmanned lunar rover for NASA

7:06 am

NASA and Australia have signed a deal whereby Australia will provide an unmanned lunar rover on which NASA will put its science instruments, with the package taken to the Moon by a commercial lander.

As part of the agreement, a consortium of Australian businesses and research organizations will develop a small rover that can operate on the lunar surface. The rover would have the ability to pick up and transfer lunar regolith (broken rock and dust) to a NASA-operated in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) system on a commercial lunar lander. Such a rover could fly to the Moon as early as 2026.

While this agreement helps widen the competition in the commercial unmanned planetary aerospace industry, it does so by helping the industry of another country. This policy fits the general philosophy of the Democratic Party and the Biden administration, which generally focuses on aiding other countries before the U.S.

Posted on the road to Phoenix.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Trump’s former lawyer and anyone associated with him shunned and censored

12:20 pm

Today's modern witch hunt
The witchhunt against Trump lawyer John Eastman continues.

Blacklists are back and the Democrats have got ’em: For the crime of representing President Donald Trump during the post-election fervor from November 2020 to January 2021, John Eastman has not only been fired as a teacher by Chapman university back in January, more than 250 professors who belong to the American Political Science Association (APSA) have now petitioned that organization to blacklist and censor both Eastman as well as anyone associated with him.

A September 23 letter, signed by over 250 professors and graduate students, accused Eastman of being part of an “attempted coup.” … David Karpf, a professor at George Washington University, organized the letter. “John Eastman has violated our discipline’s professional ethics by participating in the dangerous attempt to overturn the institution of electoral democracy in the United States,” the political scientists wrote.

The letter then demanded that the APSA “strip John Eastman of APSA membership” as well as sever all ties with those supporting him.

This last demand by these professors forced the APSA to kick out of its convention the live presentations by the Clairmont Institute because Eastman was giving two of those presentations.
» Read more

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Today^s blacklisted American: Volunteers at the Art Institute of Chicago fired for being mostly white

11:54 am

Discriminated against in Chicago
Discriminated against by the Art Institute of Chicago.

“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” The Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) has fired all 122 of its unpaid volunteer docents because they happen to be mostly white.

Many of the volunteers—though not all—are older white women, who have the time and resources to devote so much free labor to the Museum [average length of service 15 years]. But the demographics of that group weren’t appealing to the AIC, and so, in late September, the AIC fired all of them, saying they’d be replaced by smaller number of hired volunteers workers who will be paid $25 an hour. That group will surely meet the envisioned diversity goals. [emphasis mine]

Let me translate the highlighted words more honestly and accurately:
» Read more

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OneWeb to use India’s rockets for satellite launches

8:44 am

Capitalism in space: OneWeb today announced that it has signed a deal with India to use its rockets for satellite launches.

Low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite communications company OneWeb has announced its plans to collaborate with the commercial arm of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), NewSpace India Limited (NSIL), to utilise indigenously built Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) and the heavier Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV-MkIII) as likely platforms to launch OneWeb’s satellites in India from next year.

This is not good news for either Russia or Arianespace. Up to now these entities pretty much were launching all of OneWeb’s satellites. Now some of that business is being shifted to India.

The deal was revealed at a press conference that announced the formation of an Indian commercial trade organization, the Indian Space Association (ISpA), that partnering with the government will use the government’s space assets to develop private commercial space resources.

The Indian Space Association (ISpA) will be headed by Jayant Patil, senior executive vice president – Defence, L&T-NxT as its chairman, and Bharti Airtel’s chief regulatory officer Rahul Vatts as its vice-chairman, while Lt Gen. A.K. Bhatt (Retd.) has been appointed as the director-general of the association.

Among its early members include Bharti Airtel, Larsen & Toubro, Nelco (Tata Group), OneWeb, Mapmyindia, Walchandnagar Industries and Ananth Technology Limited.

Bharti is the company that invested $500 million to bring OneWeb out of bankruptcy, partnering with the United Kingdom.

The key question is whether these private companies will invest in developing private rockets, or will simply continue to launch using ISRO’s rockets. Based on this announcement, it appears the latter, but since the whole goal here of the Modi government of India appears to be to encourage a private sector, this could soon change.

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Putin reduces budget for Roscosmos by 16%

9:06 am

The Putin government has significantly cut the budget for Roscosmos, reducing it by 16% for each of the next three years.

For 2022, the state budget for space activities will be set at 210 billion rubles ($2.9 billion), a cut of 40.3 billion rubles ($557 million) from the previous year. Similar cuts will follow in subsequent years. The most significant decreases will be in areas such as “manufacturing-technological activities” and “cosmodrome development.” Funding for “scientific research and development” was zeroed out entirely.

The publications say Russian President Vladimir Putin is unhappy with the performance of Russia’s space program. At a space industry meeting on September 29, they report, Putin criticized the industry’s failure to fulfill directives on long-term goals in the space sphere. In 2020, for example, Roscosmos failed to hit 30 of the 83 stated goals of the national space program.

Putin’s dissatisfaction is quite justified. Since his government consolidated all of Russia’s aerospace industry into a single corporation run by Roscosmos, the space agency has made many promises but achieved little. It is clear that he hopes these cuts will force it to get its act together.

The problem is that Putin has done nothing to change the root cause that has fueled this failure, the government aerospace monopoly that Putin himself created. Without competition and a willingness to allow new Russian aerospace companies to succeed — in direct competition with Roscosmos — there is little chance of reform. Roscosmos will struggle on, and it might even begin to show a bit of success, but in the end its best prospect is to become one of many competitors in the new commercial space market. And its market share will be small, because the competitive private companies in the west will easily beat it in cost and innovation.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Policeman suspended for four months for praying

10:17 am

The Bill of Rights cancelled in Louisville
No freedom of speech allowed in Louisville.

They’re coming for you next: Matt Schrenger, a police officer in Louisville, Kentucky, was suspended for four months simply because, while off duty and not in uniform, he quietly prayed with his father on the street outside an abortion clinic.

The prayer event took place on February 2021.

That same day, Schrenger was locked out from his work computers, relieved of his police vehicle, and removed from the patrol schedule. Schrenger was suspended and he was stripped of his police powers, pending investigation of his off-duty prayer.

Schrenger was wrongly accused of violating Louisville Metro Police Department Standard Operating Procedures and Kentucky law. By way of a letter dated June 15, 2021, LMPD [Louisville Metro Police Department] Chief Shields admitted that none of the allegations against Officer Schrenger could be sustained. Even after that letter, Schenger’s police powers inexplicably were not restored until June 29, 2021. Even though the facts of the incident were not in dispute, it took the police department more than four months, plus a week, to make its decision after the off-duty prayer incident. [emphasis mine]

The article also notes that on that same day numerous other officers were participating in both a gay rights parade and a Black Lives Matter protest, while on duty and in uniform, and received no punishment though those actions did violate Kentucky law and the department’s procedures.
» Read more

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Chang’e-5 lunar samples youngest ever found

6:28 am

The uncertainty of science: The lunar samples returned to Earth by China’s Chang’e-5 lander have been found to be the youngest ever found, about two billion years old and a billion years younger than any other previous sample, with a composition that confirms the material in this area was also the youngest volcanism so far found on the Moon.

Collecting young lunar rocks was one of the main objectives for the Chang’e-5 mission, which sent a lander to the Moon in December 2020. The craft grabbed 1.7 kilogram (4 pounds) of lunar regolith from the vast volcanic plain of Oceanus Procellarum and flew back to Earth within the month. Observations from lunar orbit had identified this mare to be younger than other areas by its paucity of craters, which suggested that the lava there had flowed more recently. By dating the samples returned to Earth, the scientists confirm that volcanism occurred later in Oceanus Procellarum than other areas of the Moon.

Many news stories are claiming that the young age of these samples is a surprise, but this isn’t true. It was expected, as the quote above indicates.

However, the composition of the rocks did not match what was expected. Though created by volcanism, it appears the material did not have kind of composition seen in other lunar volcanic rocks. This is now a new puzzle for scientists.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Seattle runs segregated critical race theory classes, teaching that whites are evil

12:58 pm

Discriminated against in Seattle
Eagerly discriminated against in Seattle

“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” The city government of Seattle is funding a series of segregated critical race theory (CRT) seminars for its employees, with whites and blacks sent to different sessions, which then teach from these different perspectives that all whites are racist and evil and work to oppress blacks.

City staffers ‘who identify as people of color’ were invited to the three-hour ‘Internalized Racial Inferiority’ session on September 3, after it was organized by the city-funded Race and Social Justice Initiative (RSJI), revealed KTTH radio host Jason Rantz on Monday.

A similar sister session was offered exclusively to white workers, which taught attendees that they are ‘responsible’ for racism because of the color of their skin.

The lesson was billed as a way to explore ‘the process which American conditioning, socialization and history leads People of Color to internalize racialized beliefs, ideas and behaviors about themselves, undergirding the power of White Supremacy.’ It also outlined 10 ‘truths’ that must be accepted by city employees, which include, ‘colonialism is at the root of white supremacy,’ ‘Racism is based on the legal and social construction of whiteness’ and ‘Government has a responsibility to be anti-racist.’

Those ten truths, shown in seminar documents at the link, also specifically demand that blacks and American Indians be given special and favored treatment.

Essentially, these are Nazi-like courses designed to foster hate between the races, and encourage all to oppress whites. Worse, the racist 10 “truths” that form the heart of these seminars are all lies, based on nothing but Marxist propaganda.
» Read more

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Advocacy group in India calls for criminal prosecution of Musk and Starlink

10:56 am

A non-profit advocacy group in India, dubbed Telecom Watchdog, has demanded that the Indian government prosecute Elon Musk and Starlink because it asks for and gets $100 deposits from customers without guaranteeing a specific delivery date for its Starlink internet service.

The organisation further asked the telecom regulator to take effective steps to ensure refund with interest, and reprimand the telecom department (DoT) officials of “inaction” on the prevailing issue. [It also] said that the firm was cheating consumers by accepting pre-orders with a deposit of Rs 7,500 ($100) for yet-to-be-launched service.

It is unclear who funds Telecom Watchdog. I would not be surprised if it is backed by those in India who have also have vested interest in SpaceX’s chief competitor, OneWeb. The Indian company, Bharti Enterprises Ltd, has invested $500 million to OneWeb, which plans to initiate service to India next year. Starlink poses a serious financial threat to that roll-out.

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Report: Reduce contamination restrictions for some future Mars missions

10:35 am

A new policy paper from the National Academies has proposed reducing the planetary protection rules for some future Mars missions, concluding that Earth life cannot survive on Mars for long, and as long as a lander or rover does not land close to cave entrances or on extensive ice, the need to decontaminate is significantly reduced. From the press release:

In this report, the Committee focused on regions on Mars that might not be negatively impacted if visited by spacecraft that are not stringently sterilized. For missions that do not access the subsurface, such regions could include a significant portion of the surface of Mars, because the UV environment is so biocidal that terrestrial organisms are, in most cases, not likely to survive more than one to two sols, or Martian days. For missions that access the subsurface (down to 1 meter), regions on Mars expected to have patchy or no water ice below the surface might also be visited by spacecraft more relaxed bioburden requirements, because such patchy ice is likely not conducive to the proliferation of terrestrial microorganisms.

The report finds that it is imperative that any mission sent to Mars with reduced bioburden requirements remain some conservative distance from any subsurface access points, such as cave openings. Furthermore, though less stringent than current requirements, these missions with relaxed bioburden requirements would still need some level of cleanliness, which could be achieved for instance using standard aerospace cleanliness practices.

The report essentially concluded that missions to Mars’ dry equatorial regions as well as its glacial mid-latitudes pose no risk to contaminating the red planet with Earth life.

While the press release pushes the idea that this is a reduction in the planetary protection rules, it could be seen in a much worse light. Based on the proposed rules, missions to the Martian poles or higher latitudes, where ice is extensive and not “patchy,” might be entirely forbidden. This will significantly limit Martian exploration by the United States. Meanwhile, China and Russia and others will be faced with no such restrictions.

Note too that this report likely forbids SpaceX from landing its Starship in the company’s candidate landing sites, all of which are in the northern lowland plains ranging from 35 to 40 degrees north latitude. This region is thought to have extensive ice sheets very close to the surface. To land there, the rules proposed will either require extremely strict and very costly decontamination procedures, many of which do not even exist as yet, or will forbid landing there at all.

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Biden administration to streamline regulations for commercial military satellites

10:09 am

Biden administration has decided to use capitalism in space in the building and launching of future military reconnaissance and surveillance satellites.

The Intelligence Community (IC) and key policy-makers within the Biden administration are intensifying efforts to reduce regulatory burdens and encourage more competition in the commercial remote sensing satellite marketplace, said Stacey Dixon, deputy director of national intelligence.

While she provided few specifics about plans in her address to the annual GEOINT conference today, she did say that in their deliberations on the way forward, government officials are looking to the model of streamlined space launch licensing practices. Regulatory reform has freed the launch industry in a way that has allowed prices to loft satellites to orbit to drop dramatically, she explained, and there is a thriving ecosystem of American companies competing for business. “It is important to realize and recognize that there’s a growing consensus, not only in the IC but also among policy-makers, that the kind of change that we’ve seen in launch services is the right way to go in other areas,” Dixon said at the conference hosted by the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF).

It appears that the success by SpaceX and others in the rocket industry has finally convinced the Washington swamp community, from both parties as well as within the bureaucracy, to embrace private enterprise and freedom, at least in their efforts to launch their space assets.

Don’t be fooled, however, into thinking the Washington bureaucracy and the Biden administration are now free market capitalists. Hardly, as illustrated by this further statement by Dixon:

“If we don’t adapt, others will set the rules and challenge our new leadership. We should set the rules. We should influence the standards, and do so in a way that is consistent with our democratic values,” Dixon said. [emphasis mine]

The swamp is embracing capitalism because they have realized that if they don’t, they will lose all control as private enterprise runs circles around them. By now supporting capitalism, they can create the illusion that they made things happen, when in truth they have simply hitched their mostly useless covered wagon to a very powerful sports car.

Regardless, this decision is good news, as it shows that the Biden administration will continue the free market policies in space that were established during the Trump administration.

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Millions have gotten COVID, almost none have died

2:21 pm

In questioning Health & Human Services (HSS) secretary Xavier Becerra during Senate hearings last week, Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) made a comment whose significance has largely gone unnoticed. In challenging the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates that demand everyone get vaccinated, even those who have gotten the Wuhan flu and thus have a natural immunity far better than any of the vaccines, Rand said the following to Becerra:

You presume somehow to tell over 100 million Americans who have survived COVID that we have no right to determine our own medical care?” Paul asked. “You alone are on high, and you’ve made these decisions? A lawyer with no scientific background, no medical degree. This is an arrogance coupled with an authoritarianism that is unseemly and unAmerican. You, sir, are the one ignoring the science.[emphasis mine]

Most of the reporting of this hearing and Paul’s questioning of Becerra has focused on the vaccine mandate and the obvious absurdity of forcing everyone to get it, even when there is no need.

The highlighted words however are far more important. » Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Woman denied kidney transplant in Colorado because she is unvaccinated

1:10 pm

The unvaccinated denied healthcare in Colorado
No healthcare in Colorado permitted for the unvaccinated. Let them die!

Persecution is now cool! A woman who has stage 5 renal failure was suddenly told by UCHealth (University of Colorado Health) — just before her kidney transplant operation — that she was banned from the hospital because both she and her donor are unvaccinated.

“Here I am, willing to be a direct donor to her. It does not affect any other patient on the transplant list,” Jaimee Fougner, Leilani Lutali’s kidney donor, told CBS4. “How can I sit here and allow them to murder my friend when I’ve got a perfectly good kidney and can save her life?”

Lutali said she received a letter from Colorado health system UCHealth at the end of September explaining that she and Fougner have 30 days to begin the vaccine process. They would be removed from the kidney transplant list if they refuse the shots. “I said I’ll sign a medical waiver. I have to sign a waiver anyway for the transplant itself, releasing them from anything that could possibly go wrong,” said Lutali. “It’s surgery, it’s invasive. I sign a waiver for my life. I’m not sure why I can’t sign a waiver for the COVID shot.”

According the article, when they first scheduled the surgery in August they were told by the hospital that being unvaccinated was not a problem. This changed suddenly in late September, at the last moment.
» Read more

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Military satellite imagery to be obtained from competitive commercial market

9:18 am

Capitalism in space: The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) is shifting how it gets the government’s military satellite surveillance imagery so that instead of having a long term contract with one company, multiple satellite companies will compete to provide the data.

Under this new imagery procurement, the NRO plans to buy products from multiple vendors and move beyond the current single-supplier arrangement that the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency signed more than a decade ago with DigitalGlobe, which is now Maxar Technologies. The NGA in 2017 turned over responsibilities for commercial imagery procurement to the NRO, while the NGA remains the primary buyer of commercial geospatial data analytics.

The NRO is expected to select at least three U.S. suppliers and structure the program with onramps for new providers. The agency also will require vendors to sign “end user license agreements” so imagery can be shared across government agencies without additional licensing fees.

This change illustrates how other government agencies are following NASA’s lead and shifting from controlling everything to buying the needed product from the open market. While NRO was getting imagery before from a commercial company, Maxar, depending on a single vendor limited competition and innovation while raising costs.

Buying the data from multiple companies means that NRO will get more choice for less cost.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Football scout fired for refusing to get vaccinated

12:45 pm

Coming to your town in America soon!
Death camps are coming for the unclean unvaccinated.

They’re coming for you next: The Atlanta Falcons football team has fired one its scouts, Rodrik David, simply because he, like many others, had decided that it made more sense for him to not get vaccinated against COVID.

The owner of the company had issued a policy requiring all employees, both full- and part-time, to be vaccinated. David refused, for reasons that were his own.

As noted at this report, David was good at his job, and had been working for the Falcons for the past five years.

This is his fifth season with the Falcons and his second as an area scout. He joined the club as a scouting intern during training camp, prior to the 2015 season, and was hired as a scouting assistant in February of 2016. He was promoted to pro scout prior to the 2017 season.

David was a riser.

» Read more

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2018 review by Blue Origin suggested changes that were not adopted

10:52 am

Capitalism in space: Shortly after Bob Smith took over as CEO of Blue Origin he hired a consulting firm to review the company’s corporate culture and management policies, then had a top management briefing to review what that analysis had found.

Notes from that meeting by Blue Origin’s management have now become available, and suggest that the company’s management recognized it needed to make some changes in how it operated in order to better compete with SpaceX. Blue Origin had become hidebound, timid, and structured in a manner that made the creation of cost-effective engineering difficult. For example,

“Traditionally Blue team has not been focused on producibility and cost when designing,” another executive commented.

In response to the Avascent’s report on SpaceX’s cost focus, Blue Origin officials also acknowledged that they did not have an effective means of estimating costs before beginning a project. “Blue is riddled with poor estimating,” one executive wrote, specifically citing the New Glenn rocket. “The estimates barely cover the spot cost buy of that material based on market price, let alone the entire part material purchase. How did SpaceX keep to their target cost? They probably did a good job estimating. How they accomplished such good estimating is beyond me right now, but they did it somehow for their early years.” [emphasis mine]

As noted at the link, however, there is no evidence the company every made any of the suggested changes:

Whatever Bob Smith hoped to glean from the Avascent study, it’s not clear that the work has had a salutary effect on Blue Origin’s culture.

In the nearly three years since the report’s completion, SpaceX has gone on to launch more than 60 rockets, including four human missions, into orbit. SpaceX also has leaped ahead on a number of other fronts, including winning a multi-billion contract from NASA to build a Human Landing System for the Artemis Moon Program.

Blue Origin, by contrast, has succeeded in launching a single human flight on its New Shepard system—carrying Bezos into space for a few minutes in July. The company’s first orbital flight likely remains about three years away. Far from embracing openness, it remains more opaque than ever. And there are emerging questions about the company’s culture.

I would be more blunt. Prior to Bob Smith’s arrival in 2017 Blue Origin’s management style appeared somewhat similar to SpaceX’s, with regular almost monthly test flights of New Shepard. After he arrived everything slowed down, with the management style becoming all the things the 2018 Avascent study found wrong. And in the three years since that report and management meeting, it appears Smith did nothing to change anything. Blue Origin appears to remain a hidebound company going nowhere.

The company has vast resources due to the cash that Jeff Bezos has poured into it. It needs some good courageous leadership however. The main question will be whether Bezos can provide that.

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Due to cracks, Russia will no longer use Zvezda’s docking port

9:39 am

Russian officials today revealed that they will no longer use the docking port on its Zvezda module on ISS because of the stress fracture cracks they have found in the section where that port is located.

Russia is unable to use one of the docking ports of the ISS to its full extent due to cracks in the transitional chamber of the Zvezda module, the general designer of Russia’s Energia corporation, associate member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Solovyov said on Monday. “The transitional chamber’s loss of airtightness is often mentioned these days. We are very fortunate the cracks are at the end. We shut down that compartment, thus losing one docking port, which narrows our opportunities somewhat. The crack is very insignificant, though,”

In other words, they have sealed the aft section of Zvezda to reduce further air leaks, thus also closing off access to the port.

The Russian portion of ISS presently has two docking ports on two different modules. When Roscosmos launches its Prichal docking hub in November, to be attached to Nauka’s port, they will then add four more ports.

This decision underlines the impending end to ISS’s life span. Zvezda is not the only old Russian module on ISS where stress fractures have been found. “In August they found cracks in the module Zarya, the oldest module on ISS.

Though the U.S. part of ISS shows no such problem, it is designed to rely on the Russian half for its operations. If Russia must shut down its modules then the station will not be able to function for much longer.

The U.S. will likely overcome some of these issues with the planned launch in ’24 of Axiom’s private commercial module to ISS, which will eventually evolve into an complete space station separate from ISS. For the Russians the pressure to design and launch their own new station has become more critical. Whether they can do it however is unknown. Russia has not built a new space station module in decades. Their new ISS module, Nauka, was built in the 1990s.

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Space Force payload problems force delay until ’22 of next Falcon Heavy launch

9:18 am

Capitalism in space: The Space Force has announced that because more time is needed to prepare its military payload, the next Falcon Heavy launch, scheduled later this month, will be delayed until ’22.

This is not the first time payload issues have delayed the launch, which had been previously scheduled for July. The Space Force has not announced a new launch date, nor was it very specific in describing the issues that has forced this delay.

As for the Falcon Heavy, though there has been a long delay since its last flight in June 2019, it appears that SpaceX has four launches scheduled for ’22, with another six already contracted and scheduled for later.

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Russia imposes new restrictions on any reporting of Roscosmos

9:08 am

According to this report of today’s launch by Russia of a movie crew to ISS, Putin’s government has just passed new restrictions on reporting of its space effort by Russian citizens, either in or out of Russia.

The new regulations, which took effect on September 29, 2021, essentially prohibit Russians from reporting on the Russian space program outside of Russia. Violators of these regulations will be classified as “foreign agents” — which would create numerous legal issues for Russian citizens.

Specifically, the new regulations target the field of military and technical activities that are not related to or connected in any way with state secrets but which, with vague language, “can be used against Russia.” Most of the activities on the newly released list by the FSB specifically focus on Roscosmos. Prohibited topics of reporting regarding Roscosmos now include information on investigations conducted by the agency, the organization’s financials, condition of rockets and ground support equipment, development plans for Roscosmos vehicles, Roscosmos’ cooperation with other nations for space activities, and new technologies.

These rules essentially forbid Russian citizens from publishing almost anything that Roscosmos itself does not publish. If they do so without permission from outside the country, returning to Russia will become very problematic.

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UAE to launch probe to asteroid belt

9:01 am

The new colonial movement: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) today announced that it is planning an unmanned probe to visit a number of asteroids in the asteroid belt.

The project targets a 2028 launch with a landing in 2033, a five-year journey in which the spacecraft will travel some 3.6 billion kilometers (2.2 billion miles). The spacecraft would need to slingshot first around Venus and then the Earth to gather enough speed to reach an asteroid some 560 million kilometers (350 million miles) away.

It appears they have not yet chosen their targets in the belt.

The big question will be how much of this project will be built in the UAE, and how much they will have to farm out to others. For their Al-Amal Mars orbiter, the satellite was mostly built by U.S. universities, as they trained UAE engineers, who now run the mission entire.

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Russia launches movie director and actor to ISS

8:40 am

Capitalism in space: Early today Russia successfully used its Soyuz-2 rocket and Soyuz capsule to launch a movie crew to ISS to begin a twelve day visit where they will film scenes for a science fiction movie.

An actress Yulia Peresild and a movie director Klim Shipenko arrived at the International Space Station aboard the Soyuz MS-19 spacecraft on Oct. 5, 2021, for a 12-day visit to shoot scenes of a sci-fi drama. They were accompanied by a professional cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, who had to switch to manual control during the final approach to the station due to a failure of the Kurs automated rendezvous system aboard Soyuz. Shkaplerov will remain aboard the station for nearly six months.

This is the second in a steady string of passenger commercial spaceflights that have been purchased by various people from either Roscosmos in Russia or SpaceX in the U.S. We shall see two more such flights in December, and another early in ’22, with additional flights to be scheduled beyond that. The full list, at this time:

  • September 15, 2021: SpaceX’s Dragon capsule flew four private citizens on a three day orbital flight
  • October 2021: The Russians launch two passengers to ISS for 12 days to shoot a movie
  • December 2021: The Russians will fly billionaire Yusaku Maezawa and his assistant to ISS for 12 days
  • cDecember 2021: Space Adventures, using a Dragon capsule, will fly four in orbit for five days
  • January/February 2022: Axiom, using a Dragon capsule, will fly four tourists to ISS
  • 2022-2024: Three more Axiom tourist flights on Dragon to ISS
  • 2024: Axiom begins launching its own modules to ISS, starting construction of its own private space station
  • c2024: SpaceX’s Starship takes Yusaku Maezawa and several others on a journey around the Moon.

Expect this list to grow. There appears to be plenty of demand for such commercial manned spaceflights, and with more flights and more competition (once Boeing’s Starliner enters the game) the cost will certainly drop.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

34 China
23 SpaceX
16 Russia
4 Northrop Grumman

With this launch Russia has now exceeded the number of launches it completed last year. If they complete all their presently scheduled launches for ’21, Roscosmos will have its best year since 2015.

The U.S still leads China 35 to 34 in the national rankings.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Chief editor on Oklahoma State U’s student newspaper forced to resign for holding a dissenting opinion

10:51 am

The Bill of Rights cancelled at Oklahoma State University
No freedom of speech allowed at
Oklahoma State University.

The new dark age of silencing: Maddison Farris, the editor-in-chief for Oklahoma State U’s student newspaper The O’Colly was forced to resign her position after she wrote an op-ed opposing any mask mandate on campus and her fellow editors ganged up on her, demanding she leave.

Two days after publication the newspaper’s editorial board issued “a correction”, essentially condemning Farris’s op-ed. They followed this up two days later with a meeting where they demanded Farris resign.

Farris submitted a letter of “forced resignation,” explaining that she had been called into a September 13 meeting with the rest of the editors and pressed into leaving her post.

Farris told Campus Reform that although most students at Oklahoma State support free speech, but there is a “portion of students who value free speech until it makes them uncomfortable.”

More details here. It appears Farris wrote her op-ed as a result of being forced to leave a classroom because she would not wear a mask, even though the law apparently allows her to do so.
» Read more

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Italy switches from Arianespace to SpaceX for launch contract

9:05 am

Capitalism in space: Because of the two recent launch failures of Arianespace’s Vega rocket (built mostly in Italy), the Italian space agency (ASI) has decided to take the launch of an Earth observation satellite from Arianespace and award the launch contract instead to SpaceX.

The article at the link describes in detail the history and politics that make this decision significant. Essentially, because Arianespace in the past decade has failed to meet the challenge of SpaceX, so that its launches continue to be more expensive, this government-subsidized business has tried to force nations in the European Space Agency (ESA) to use Arianespace rockets via political agreements.

With this decision Italy is defying that pressure, which in turn is going to increase the pressure on Arianespace to finally step up its game, or die from lack of business. For example, when the ESA agreed to have Arianespace build its next generation rocket, the Ariane 6, it failed to require it to be reuseable. The Ariane 6 rocket was therefore designed as an expendable rocket, which meant that right from the start it could not compete with SpaceX’s Falcon 9. It has therefore failed to win launch contracts.

Expect the Ariane 6 to continue to fade as the years pass, simply because the bureaucrats in ESA and Arianespace refused to take their competition seriously.

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NASA issues request for commercially-built spacesuits for its Artemis program

10:39 pm

Capitalism in space: After more than a decade of delays in building its own in-house next generation spacesuits, NASA this week issued a request for proposals from the commercial space industry for new spacesuits for its Artemis program.

Bidders can use the technology NASA developed for [its unfinished upgraded spacesuits] in its proposals, or they can use their own designs, the document states. The suits must be able to meet a variety of requirements, including up to six spacewalks on the lunar surface during initial Artemis Moon missions. They must also be made of materials such that less than 100 grams of lunar regolith is brought back into the “cabin environment” after each spacewalk on the Moon. NASA plans to award a contract by next April.

The plan is comparable to what NASA has been doing across the board now for the last three years, buy the product from the commercial sector in a fixed price contract. The company that builds the suits will retain ownership of the design, and can make money selling its use to others.

This policy approach continues the agency’s acceptance of almost all the recommendations put forth in my 2017 policy paper, Capitalism in Space, a free pdf download.

It also likely means NASA might finally get the spacesuits it needs for future lunar missions quickly and at a reasonable cost, something the agency itself has been unable to do.

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The Arizona election audit found significant issues that could easily have changed the final result

12:22 pm

Maricopa County election audit
Click for full graph.

Now that the election audit of the biggest county in Arizona is complete and released, it is necessary to look at what it found. This article does a nice job of summarizing the audit’s conclusions, which in total make it very clear that a lot of corruption and incompetence occurred in the 2020 election in Maricopa County, some of it possibly bordering on outright election fraud.

The graph to the right, from the audit, illustrates this. In twenty-two different categories the audit found votes that should not have been counted because they were illegal or invalid in some manner. Of those, seven categories described illegal or invalid votes totaling more than 53,000 votes, five times the 10,457 vote margin of Joe Biden’s victory in the state.

Does this meant Trump won Arizona? Who knows? The audit did not determine the number of illegal or invalid votes that went to either candidate. What it did find, however, is that the entire voting system is corrupted and untrustworthy, and must be fixed.

The audit results have also revealed why the election officials in Maricopa County have been fighting this audit from day one. They clearly knew the election system was untrustworthy, and wanted to hide this fact, either to protect themselves from prosecution or to maintain their ability to defraud the voters.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Louisiana health company to punish employees with unvaccinated spouses

11:27 am

Coming to your town in America soon!
Death camps are coming for the unclean unvaccinated.

They’re coming for you next: A Louisiana hospital system, Ochsner Health Systems, has informed its employees that they will be fined $100 per salary check for having an unvaccinated spouse on their health plan.

From the memo sent to all employees:

New in 2022: Ochsner is implementing a new Spousal COVId Vaccine Fee as part of its 2022 medical plan premiums. This means, if a spouse/domestic partner is covered by one of our medical plans in 2022 and unvaccinated against COVID-19, a $100-per-pay-period fee will apply.

The chutzpah and irrationality of this policy is really beyond words. » Read more

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Biden signs budget continuing resolution, preventing shutdown

9:00 am

At the very last second Congress and President Biden passed and signed another budget continuing resolution that will keep the federal government operating till December and thus preventing another shutdown.

From NASA’s narrow perspective, the action means that the asteroid mission Lucy will likely launch in October as planned. From the perspective of the nation, this last second action merely illustrates the overall failure of the federal government and the elected officials who have been tasked to run it. They are all incompetent, and wouldn’t last five seconds in a real job outside the government.

That the voters keep re-electing them also speaks poorly of America today. We all should be ashamed.

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