Tag: politics

Musk’s employee stock options made them millions; Bezos’s employee options were worthless

8:31 am

According to a very intriguing article at Business Insider today, the stock options offered to employees at SpaceX and Blue Origin were starkly different, with SpaceX’s options making millions for its workers while Blue Origin’s were essentially worthless.

Three ex-employees of Jeff Bezos’ rocket maker Blue Origin told Business Insider that the company’s unusual approach to equity left them with stock options that are essentially worthless.

Meanwhile, they’ve watched SpaceX’s dizzying rise to a $2 trillion-plus valuation provide a massive windfall for early hires — from engineers to welders to cafeteria workers — who received stock options during their time at Elon Musk’s company.

Blue Origin’s options were written so that they only could be cashed in if the company went public within ten years. As Bezos has shown zero interest in going public — which would take away his full ownership and control of the company — those options have been steadily expiring as they reach their ten year due date.

At SpaceX however the employee stock options could always be cashed in, even before the company went public. Employees, both current and former, were allowed to sell their stock back to SpaceX or to its investors in private liquidity events that usually occurred twice each year. After the IPO they could now sell the stock on the open market, at the going rate.

The difference is possibly one additional reason the accomplishments of the two companies have been so starkly dissimilar/ SpaceX made sure its employees got a pay off for the long hours it demanded. Blue Origin did not.

9 comments

South Korea’s space agency wants to accelerate its launch capabilities

10:53 am

The head of South Korea’s space agency KASA, Oh Tae-seok, yesterday outlined plans to to accelerate the launch cadence of its government-built Nuri rocket, while also beginning research into building a second spaceport along with a specific launchpad for private companies.

Oh Tae-seok, head of KASA, held a press briefing at the agency in Sacheon, South Gyeongsang Province, on Thursday. “This week, the assembly of the first, second, and third stages of the fifth Nuri rocket will be completed,” he said. “From next week, we will begin full assembly of the entire rocket, and after the Launch Management Committee in early August, a September launch is expected.”

Oh also stressed the need to build a repeated launch system after the fifth launch to advance toward an era of “commercial launch services.” “To ensure the economic viability of Nuri, changes are needed in standardization and specification, as well as contracting methods and launch site operations, in addition to the advancement project,” he said. “We are preparing for four launches from 2029 to 2032.”

In addition, the agency plans to accelerate construction of the second spaceport. KASA began accepting candidate site applications for the second spaceport on the 22nd of this month. “We will select the final candidate site in October this year and aim to begin the project in 2028,” the agency said Thursday.

This second news report quoted Oh as also saying this:

“In the 2030s, rather than the current R&D approach, we should consider converting to a system where we commission launch services through purchasing, as NASA does.” This is a model similar to how NASA purchases launch services from private companies such as SpaceX.

In other words, even as he accelerates the use of Nuri, Oh wants to replace it with private rockets. Whether he can do both is questionable, because they act to cancel each other. A cheaper and viable government rocket will make it difficult for private startups to compete.

At the moment South Korea has one truly viable rocket startup, Innospace, which has one launch failure and hopes to try again before the end of the year. That it does not launch in South Korea but in Brazil suggests KASA has not been as cooperative with the commercial sector as Oh wants. His statements about building a launchpad for the private sector suggest he is aware of this.

7 comments

ESA to expand its program designed to encourage its commercial rocket industry

9:10 am

The European Space Agency (ESA) today announced it is expanding its “European Flight Ticket” program, designed to encourage its commercial rocket industry, by offering more rocket startups the opportunity to join.

The European Space Agency and the European Commission are inviting launch service providers across Europe to apply to join the European Flight Ticket Initiative. The objective of the Flight Ticket Initiative is to strengthen Europe’s access to space. European launch service providers compete to deliver missions for In-orbit Demonstration and Validation satellite (IOD/IOV) which test new space technologies in orbit. To support this, ESA launched a new two-part call for proposals.

To participate in the Flight Ticket Initiative, a launch service operator must first be awarded a framework contract. This allows them to compete for future missions under the Initiative. Avio, Isar Aerospace, PLD Space, and Rocket Factory Augsburg hold such contracts with ESA, following a first selection in 2024.

ESA and the European Commission are now expanding this pool by inviting additional European providers to apply. Companies that expect to be ready to launch before 2028 are encouraged to take part.

The program is also requesting bids for a new round of launch contracts. All bids are due by July 17, 2026.

The five European companies listed above are all either already operational (Avio), or hope to complete their first launch this year. There are several other European startups (Maiaspace, Latitude, HyImpulse) that are not far behind, and will likely bid.

1 comment

NASA IG: Isaacman’s decision to cancel Gateway and SLS upgrades saved billions

8:01 am

Isaacman: Saving billions and actually getting more done

According to a report released yesterday [pdf] by NASA’s inspector general, the decision by NASA administrator Jared Isaacman to not only “pause” the Lunar Gateway station (killing its HALO module) but also cancel SLS’s upgraded upper stage (EUS), its related stage adaptor (USA), and the giant mobile launcher (ML-2) needed for that taller upper stage, saved the taxpayer billions in additional cost overruns, and has likely accelerated the Artemis program significantly.

NASA’s reformulation of the Artemis campaign to meet the President’s National Space Policy and increase its cadence of missions by standardizing the SLS heavy-lift rocket resulted in the termination or repurposing of several Artemis-related systems, including the EUS, USA, ML-2, and HALO.

Over the course of their life cycles, the combined contract values for these efforts ballooned from nearly $2.8 billion to $5.9 billion and NASA extended their contracted delivery dates by up to 7 years. However, our projections indicate that if NASA allowed work to continue to completion, the systems would have cost more and taken longer than what was on contract.

Specifically, the IG estimated that the overruns for the upper stage, the stage adaptor, and the mobile launcher would have ended up costing four to five times their original budgets. Gateway’s HALO module was less out of control, but it was still going to go more than 30% over budget. Overall, all four projects would have cost NASA almost $5 billion in additional expenses, with all four likely to also be considerably behind schedule. The upper stage and mobile launcher were certainly not going to be ready when needed.

The IG made no recommendations. It released this report to provide NASA, the White House, Congress, and the public the information so as to properly judge the agency’s actions, as well as provide guidance to the agency itself.

10 comments

Boeing wins $2 billion satellite contract from Space Force

9:05 am

In what appears to be the first major space contract Boeing has won in awhile, the Space Force yesterday awarded it a $2 billion contract to build two new military communications satellites, part of the War Department’s MUOS constellation.

The Boeing Co., El Segundo, California, has been awarded a maximum $2,002,862,607 fixed-price-incentive-firm-target contract for the Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) service life extension Phase II effort. This contract provides for the design, development, build, launch support, and on-orbit test support of two MUOS satellites. Work will be performed in El Segundo, California, and is expected to be completed by Sept. 30, 2035. [emphasis mine]

Boeing won the contract competition over Lockheed Martin, which had built the previous MUOS satellites.

I highlight the fixed-price nature of the contract. Boeing’s space-related division in the past two decades has had trouble dealing with such contracts, its corporate culture having become spoiled with cost-plus contracts, which are essentially blank checks. Its fixed-price Starliner contract is the best example, but the company’s repeated inability to stay under budget or get things done got so bad that by 2020 NASA announced it would no longer entertain any contract bids from the company, a policy that it still follows.

For Boeing, making this fixed-price contract work is literally a make-or-break situation. It needs to beginning producing such contracts on-budget and on-time, or else it will die.

11 comments

Namibian government rejects Starlink

10:52 am

The Namibian government today announced it has rejected SpaceX’s application to provide Starlink to that country, apparently because the company will not comply with its laws that require ownership by Namibia citizens.

As a result, the regulator upheld its earlier ruling, stating that Starlink’s application remained non-compliant with the ownership and control requirements contained in Section 46 of the Communications Act, No. 8 of 2009. CRAN acknowledged that Low Earth Orbit satellite technology has the potential to improve connectivity across Namibia but stressed that all telecommunications operators must comply with the country’s legal and regulatory framework.

The authority also clarified that exemptions from the ownership requirements under Section 46(2) of the Communications Act can only be granted by the Minister of Information and Communication Technology and cannot be determined by CRAN through a reconsideration process.

In Africa such ownership laws almost always include a racial quota, requiring a certain percentage of ownership go specifically to blacks. SpaceX across the board refuses to do this.

The government apparently got 624 comments from the public asking it approve SpaceX’s application, but the regulators threw out all but 2 of those comments for what appears to be minor language or procedural issues.

My guess is that SpaceX refused to bribe these petty dictators, and so they denied the application.

Namibia, like South Africa, is making a foolish decision here, and as a result it is making itself a backwater, likely to trail the world in economic growth and prosperity for decades to come.

14 comments

China’s Shenlong X-37B copy deploys a satellite

9:33 am

Shenlong in orbit shortly after launch
Shenlong in orbit shortly after launch.
Click for source.

According to data from the space surveillance company LeoLabs, China’s Shenlong mini-reusable shuttle — similar to the X-37B — deployed a object sometime before June 22, 2026.

At 02:30 UTC on 22 June 2026, LeoLabs detected an unknown object in the vicinity of the Chinese Shenlong reusable spaceplane.

This object did not correlate to any other object in our catalog. It was first observed by our Tracker radar in New Zealand.

This is not the first time a Shenlong in orbit released an object. On two previous flights in 2023 and 2024 it did the same. The Shenlong in orbit now was launched on February 7, 2026, the fourth mission of this X-37B copycat.

Overall, China has released very little information about Shenlong. We have no idea if the same or multiple Shenlongs have launched on the four known missions. No official pictures have ever been released, though the image of it to the right was apparently captured in orbit by amateur astronomers shortly after that February launch.

0 comments

Two launches by China and SpaceX

8:29 am

Since yesterday there were two more launches by the global rocket industry.

First, China placed a “communication technology experimental satellite” into orbit, its Long March 7A rocket lifting off from its coastal Wenchang spaceport. No other information was provided.

Artist's rendering of Starfall provided during today's live steam
Artist’s rendering of Starfall provided during today’s live steam

Next, SpaceX launched in the early morning the first demo mission for its Starfall recoverable capsule, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The company has released little information about this project, including not showing the deployment or splashdown of Starfall in the launch broadcast. Its short description of Starfall during the live stream made it sound very similar to Varda’s recoverable capsule, though larger. According to Wikipedia,

Starfall has a circular, disk-shaped form measuring 10′ in diameter and 2′ 6″ in height. Its empty mass is 2,100 kg (4,600 lb). Starfall carries up to 1,000 kilograms of payload in a volume of 2.5 by 0.5 meters and a total mass of about 3,100 kilograms. The vehicle consists of a top plate with maneuvering thrusters and a heat shield that jettisons before a parachute assisted splashdown. Starfall reaches orbit as a payload on Falcon 9 or Starship. The design focuses on precision delivery to specific locations, supporting rapid delivery for critical cargo.

The company has at this time provided no information about the results of this demo mission.

The rocket’s two fairings completed their 24th and 36th flights respectively. The first stage (B1078) completed its 29th flight (29 days after its previous mission), landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. With this flight this booster moved past the space shuttle Columbia into a seventh place tie in the rankings for the most reused launch vehicle:

39 Discovery space shuttle
35 Falcon 9 booster B1067
34 Falcon 9 booster B1071
33 Atlantis space shuttle
33 Falcon 9 booster B1063
31 Falcon 9 booster B1069
29 Falcon 9 booster B1077
29 Falcon 9 booster B1078
28 Columbia space shuttle

Sources here and here.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

75 SpaceX
41 China
9 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
8 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 75 to 70.

1 comment

Botswana to sign the Artemis Accords

8:01 am

NASA yesterday announced that the Republic of Botswana will sign the Artemis Accords on June 25, 2026, becoming the 68th nation to join this American alliance in space.

The Republic of Botswana will sign the Artemis Accords during a ceremony at 9:30 a.m. EDT Thursday, June 25, at NASA Headquarters in Washington. NASA Deputy Administrator Matt Anderson will host Botswana’s Minister of Communications and Innovation David Tshere and U.S. Department of State Senior Advisor for Space Gregory Autry for the event.

Since NASA administrator Jared Isaacman took over, the NASA press releases announcing these signings have eliminated much of the pro-globalist language introduced during the Biden administration. No longer does NASA claim the accords are designed to “reinforce” the Outer Space Treaty. In today’s release the language is relatively vague, stating merely that the accords are

responding to the growing interest in lunar activities by both governments and private companies. The accords introduced the first set of practical principles aimed at enhancing the safety, transparency, and coordination of civil space exploration on the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

As the accords were originally conceived by Trump as a long term tool to overcome the Outer Space Treaty’s restrictions on private property and the establishment of American law in its colonies, this vagueness is likely intended to avoid antagonizing Russia and China, to lull them into apathy about the issue at this time. Later, when the U.S. Moon base is largely established expect that vagueness to fade. That will be the time to use the clout of this large alliance to force a major legal change in this international treaty.

The full list of nations in this American space alliance is as follows:

Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Botswana, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, the Philippines, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.

0 comments

NASA IG: NASA’s launch infrastructure at Kennedy and Wallops needs attention

12:30 pm

Launch sites at Kennedy and Cape Canaveral
Figure 2 of IG report, annotated further by me.

According to a report released today [pdf] by NASA’s inspector general (IG), NASA’s launch infrastructure at both the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia are aging and need upgrades, but there is a systemic limitation on NASA’s access to funds to do the work.

The IG report — as is always expected from such a government report — of course whines about the lack of funding in recent NASA budgets, noting that Congress recently allocated $250 million for this purpose, but NASA claims it needs four times that amount, or $1 billion.

The report however also recognizes that this not the real problem. The map to the right, Figure 2 from the report, has been further annotated by me to show who is leasing or using each launch complex at both the Kennedy Space Center (managed by NASA) and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (managed by the military but also supported significantly by NASA). As you can see, almost all launch sites are either leased by private rocket companies, or are being primed for future such leases. Yet, “statutory funding barriers” limit how much money NASA can collect from these companies. From the report’s conclusion:
» Read more

17 comments

Canada’s second proposed spaceport opens first rocket factory

9:03 am

Proposed Canadian spaceports
Proposed Canadian spaceports

The Canadian rocket startup Nordspace, which also hopes to operate the Atlantic Spaceport in Newfoundland, last week announced the opening of a new headquarters where it hopes to begin building its smallsat Tundra rockets.

The 60,000 square foot advanced manufacturing campus is dedicated to the production of the company’s light and medium-lift orbital launch vehicles alongside its space systems division, and represents a 10x expansion over NordSpace’s previous headquarters.

In reading between the lines of the press release, it appears this facility is mostly the company’s administrative and operations headquarters, though it is large enough to assembly two Tundra smallsat rockets at the same time, designed to put about three times more payload into orbit than Rocket Lab’s very successful Electron rocket.

Unlike Spaceport Nova Scotia, which was first proposed more than a decade ago and after years of struggle was leased in March by the Canadian government for $200 million, Nordspace has only been around since 2024 and has received a relatively small grant from the government, some portion of a $8.3 million program to support three Canadian rocket startups.

With both spaceports, there has been a lot of blarney spouted. Thus, separating the sizzle from the steak is difficult. No launch dates for Tundra have been provided, though the company says it has purchased the land for an even larger manufacturing facility, though once again it provides no timetables.

4 comments

Katalyst’s Link rescue satellite goes airborne in advance of launch

9:26 am

Katalyst's proposed Swift rescue mission
Katalyst’s proposed Swift rescue mission.
Click for original image.

Katalyst’s Link rescue satellite — that will attempt to grab the Gehrels-Swift space telescope and raise its orbit — began its journey to its launch area over the south Pacific on June 18, 2026 when Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus rocket that will launch it was taken airborne by company’s Stargazer L-1011 airplane.

Stargazer, a modified L-1011 operated by Northrop Grumman, took off for Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. Attached to the belly of the aircraft was one of the company’s Pegasus XL rockets with LINK inside.

…Stargazer will carry Pegasus and LINK to Kwajalein Atoll, part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific Ocean with stopovers in California and Hawai’i.

Sometime later this month Stargazer will go to its launch area, climb to 40,000 feet, and release the Pegasus rocket, which will then ignite its engines to carry Link into orbit. Link will then attempt to rendezvous with Gehrels-Swift, using its robot arms to catch it (the telescope has no grapple attachment). If successful, it will then raise the telescope’s orbit so that it can resume observations for years to come.

The mission is daring in more ways than just described. Katalyst has never done this before. It is a startup that reconfigured its first demo mission into this rescue mission.

19 comments

The real history of the United States

12:44 pm

Out Where the West Begins

In August last year Diane and I made one of our many visits to the Grand Canyon. Along the rim near the Bright Angel trailhead there is a bookstore/gift shop. As we were not doing any hiking on this visit, merely touring the rim like millions of other tourists, we stopped in to browse the trinkets, art, and books. In doing so, I happened upon a two volume history of the American west by Philip Anschutz, entitled Out Where the West Begins.

At the time I was reading a biography of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the transportation giant of the 1800s who built Grand Central Station in New York and for a time owned and operated almost every railroad in the eastern United States (see my November 2025 review). That book was not only teaching me things about Vanderbilt I had never known, it was telling me something about basic American history that was never covered at all in my public schooling: The country was built by businessmen, free, competitive, aggressive, and largely ethical (though often with a streak of the scoundrel about them).

American public schools ignore this history. Instead, their lesson plans focus almost entirely on the politicians and economic and social background of our history. Though important for sure, the nation was not really built by those battles. Good politicians might have freed the slaves, or laid down the legal framework for settling the west, but most of what they did was violent or caused division. Economics and social studies merely provide context and background. It was people like Vanderbilt who did the actual construction, and they did if for profit.

As I was reading Vanderbilt’s biography last summer, I sensed this large gap in my knowledge of our country’s past. Who were the other businessmen and women who built our country? What obstacles did they face and overcome? I very much wanted those questions answered.
» Read more

12 comments

Texas Supreme Court rejects beach closure lawsuit against SpaceX

9:35 am

The Texas Supreme Court today unanimously rejected the lawsuit by fringe activist groups against SpaceX and the closure of beaches near Boca Chica for Starship/Superheavy launches.

Siding with SpaceX and the attorney general’s office, the Texas Supreme Court on Friday ruled that environmental groups did not have a right to sue to preserve public access to a beach that has been closed during rocket launches. The unanimous ruling said a trial judge properly dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice, meaning the groups could not refile it with changes.

The lawsuit was brought by SaveRGV, a very small group of leftist anti-Musk activists who have tried to use lawfare for the past five years to shut down Boca Chica. Later, the Sierra Club and the Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas joined in. The latter is a fake Indian tribe, as this tribe never existed in Texas at all, and is presently non-existent.

This decision essentially ends the lawfare campaign of these groups. I am sure they will try again, but their options continue to shrink, especially because they have practically no support in the southern Texas region. Everyone else is enthusiastically enjoying the prosperity and wealth SpaceX is bringing to the area.

15 comments

Problems during first drop tests of Europe’s Space Rider prototype

8:23 am

Artist rendering of Space Rider in orbit
Artist rendering of Space Rider in orbit. Click for original.

It appears that there was an undisclosed problem in May that prevented the first drop tests from a helicopter of a prototype of Europe’s Space Rider mini-reusable shuttle.

During a June 17 press briefing following the 347th ESA Council meeting, weeks after the aborted attempt occurred, ESA’s head of strategy and institutional launches for space transportation, Lucía Linares, explained that the agency could not provide a concrete date for the final drop test, stating only that it would take place after the summer and before the end of the year.

When asked what had prompted the several-month-long delay, an ESA spokesperson confirmed that the previously unannounced test campaign had taken place. According to the agency, the two-week campaign had concluded on 8 May, when the anomaly forced teams to abort the final test sequence. According to the spokesperson, the anomaly occurred during the captive ascent phase. During this phase, the mock-up was raised to drop height by a CH-47 Chinook helicopter. The agency did not, however, provide details about the nature of the anomaly.

This reusable capsule concept by the European Space Agency (ESA) is essentially a variation of either Varda’s returnable capsule or Boeing’s X-37B, but its development has been ridiculously slow. It was first tested by ESA in 2015. By 2017 the agency was promising it would be flying commercially by 2025. A decade later and they have not yet begun testing a full scale spacecraft.

Last summer ESA did helicopter drop tests of just the “brain” and parafoil. Now the drop tests this year of a full scale model — not the real thing — has been delayed until the end of this year because of an undisclosed “anomaly.”

When ESA finally does helicopter drop tests of the actual flight model remains completely unknown. Based on its pace of development, this reusable capsule won’t fly for another five to ten years. By then, a dozen companies will be flying their own private reusable capsules and spacecraft, as well as offering similar services on private space stations.

At that point ESA will likely cancel the program, after wasting two decades and more than a $100 million.

5 comments

Anthony Fauci: Not only a liar from day one, evidence now proves he financed the creation of Covid

11:05 pm

Fauci: Washington's top liar
Anthony Fauci: a liar, crook, and most important,
the man who financed the Covid epidemic.

At the end of her final day in office as director of national intelligence, former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard today released a slew of formerly classified papers, documents, and email communications that prove that Anthony Fauci had not only approved extensive funding to the Wuhan lab in China that was the source of the Covid virus, he lied about his actions to Congress and to the public.

For years during the Covid panic Fauci repeatedly claimed under oath and publicly that the agency he headed, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), had never funded any “gain of function” research — research that specifically produces dangerous new pathogens like Covid. Moreover, he repeatedly denied under oath and publicly sending any funds to China’s Wuhan lab for that research.

The document dump by Gabbard proves without a shadow of a doubt Fauci was lying in every case. He is a duplicitous, deceitful, and dishonest man. This quote from press release alone should put him in prison for perjury:

Throughout the pandemic, Fauci and politicized leaders within the IC [intelligence community] created a self-serving circular reporting loop. He provided hand-picked NIAID-funded scientists to advise the IC. This input shaped official intelligence assessments, which were then publicly cited as scientific consensus to refute the lab-leak theory.

According to hundreds of reviewed emails, the IC almost always incorporated his recommendations. Fauci promoted a fraudulent paper, whose publication he helped prompt, as legitimate information for Intelligence Community consideration. Senior analysts praised Fauci not as a “policymaker,” but as an unbiased guide to “the real coronavirus experts”—while ignoring experts who might dissent from Fauci’s narratives.

The correspondence released today directly contradicts Fauci’s 2024 testimony to the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. In that hearing, while under oath, Fauci was repeatedly asked whether he spoke to “FBI, CIA, DIA or any U.S. intelligence agency concerning viral research” before, during, or after the pandemic. Fauci repeatedly dodged the questions, before falsely stating, “not to my knowledge about COVID.”

He lied. But then, he also lied about masks, about the jab, about natural immunity, all of which was patently obvious during and after the panic if you exerted the slightest effort to question his statements or positions.

Now, evidence in black and white has been released that shows without doubt that he lied about funding the Wuhan research that actually led to the epidemic. He used American funds to finance research at a Chinese laboratory — controlled by a hostile power — that ended up sloppily (or maybe on purpose) leaking the pathogen and causing the epidemic, and then lied about it for years, taking actions against whistle-blowers or anyone in the medical community that dared to raise question about his actions.

Will Fauci go to jail? Probably not. For decades our corrupt leaders in Washington have been increasingly playing these kinds of games, and getting away with it. I expect the same to happen now.

19 comments

Airplane crash that killed four blamed on Pentagon test of GPS jamming

11:09 am

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has concluded that a New Mexico crash that killed four of a medical ambulance airplane on an emergency flight to pick up a sick patient occurred because of a Pentagon test of its GPS jamming capability.

On May 14, an airplane ambulance based out of Roswell, New Mexico, was called to the Sierra Blanca Regional Airport in Ruidoso to pick up a patient. Before they arrived in Ruidoso, the plane went down shortly after midnight. The victims included two pilots and two flight nurses.

According to the preliminary NTSB report, investigators stated the crew reported losing GPS at midnight, minutes after departure. The report said they had to request assistance from air traffic control. “GPS jamming activities that encompassed the area around the accident flight were being conducted by the United States military during the time of the flight,” the report stated.

The report said air traffic control called their operation supervisor and requested the military to stop the GPS jamming. Air traffic control tried to guide the aircraft with radar headings and later cleared it for an instrument approach, then switched to a ground-based landing system. Several minutes later, the crew reported having a visual on Ruidoso. There were no other transmissions from the aircraft.

The report said flight tracking data showed the aircraft descending, approaching the Capitan mountains, which rise above 10,000 feet. The plane ultimately struck the side of the mountain at about 9,950 feet in elevation.

For the War Department to do this test in public areas where commercial flights occur is bad enough. Such tests should always be restricted to military bases in isolated areas, of which the Pentagon has many. If this isn’t satisfactory to the Pentagon than at a minimum it should be prepared to cancel the test instantly when notified a plane is in trouble because of it.

In this case it clearly was not prepared to cancel quickly, and thus four people died unnecessarily.

The NTSB notes this this report is still preliminary and that its investigation is on-going.

16 comments

France changes the companies to use its old Diamant shared launchpad

9:00 am

French Guiana spaceport
The French Guiana spaceport. The Diamant launchsite is labeled “B.”
Click for full resolution image. (Note: The Ariane-5 pad is now the
Ariane-6 pad, and the Soyuz pad is now controlled by rocket startup
MaiaSpace.)

France’s CNES space agency, which manages the French Guiana spaceport France owns, has now made some major changes in the rocket startups it will let share use of its old long unused Diamant launchpad.

In 2021, CNES opened a call for interest in a new commercial launch facility that it would build on the grounds of the old Diamant launch site at the Guiana Space Centre. On 25 July 2025, the agency announced seven companies that had been shortlisted: HyImpulse, Isar Aerospace, PLD Space, Rocket Factory Augsburg, Latitude, MaiaSpace, and Avio.

Since that announcement, Avio and HyImpulse have been removed from the list, with CNES offering no explanation. MaiaSpace voluntarily gave up its space after CNES, in September 2024, selected the company to assume control of the former Soyuz launch facility, now renamed ELM2.

The story today is that another new European rocket startup, Sirius Space, has been selected as a user of this pad. Thus, this shared launchpad will now be used by five companies, PLD, Isar, Rocket Factory, Latitude, and Sirius.

Of those five, the first three appear closest to launch, though only PLD intends to use this pad at present. Isar hopes to launch its Spectrum rocket from Norway’s Andoya spaceport on June 20th (after numerous scrubs). Rocket Factory has requested a launch license from the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to launch its RFA-1 rocket in July from the Saxavord spaceport on the Shetland Islands, but that remains to be seen, considering the CAA’s past slow behavior.

Meanwhile, PLD has committed €35 million to the Diamant site to prepare it for its own first launch of its Miura-5 rocket, presently expected before the end of 2026. How it will get reimbursed when those other companies begin using the launchpad facilities it built and paid for is not clear.

3 comments

One more launch yesterday for China

9:00 pm

UPDATE: China finally confirmed the launch today (June 18, 2026).

Original post:
————————–
Though China has still not issued any official update, it appears the Chinese pseudo-company Expace successfully placed seven satellites into orbit yesterday, its Kuaizhou-11 solid-fueled rocket lifting off from China’s Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

The launch itself was observed by locals, and later spent stages were found in “established hazard zones” in China. No announcement of any kind however has been released by China. There were rumors of a failure of the upper stages or the payloads, but according to Space Force tracking data, the launch itself appears to have been a success.

Tracking data from the U.S. Space Force suggests that Kuaizhou-11 achieved orbit and deployed seven satellites, then performed a deorbit burn. Based on the orbital inclination, 55 degrees, and source chatter, those satellites likely belong to Future Navigation’s positioning service, being its third deployment of them.

The lack of any announcement so far from China suggests some or all of the satellites had issues.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

72 SpaceX
40 China
8 Russia
8 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 72 to 68.

0 comments

NASA awards Relativity the launch and management contract for new Mars orbiter

4:31 pm

NASA today awarded the rocket startup Relativity the contract to provide the service module, rocket, and operations for the launch of its proposed four instrument Aeolus Mars orbiter, focused on studying the Martian atmosphere.

NASA will provide the Aeolus atmospheric‑science instrument payload suite, while Relativity Space supplies the spacecraft, rocket, and cruise operations necessary to deliver the instruments to Mars.

…Aeolus, scheduled to launch in 2028, is a NASA‑developed suite of four complementary instruments designed to provide the first integrated, daily, global view of Martian winds, temperatures, dust, and clouds. By improving models for dust, winds, temperature, and seasonal atmospheric behavior, Aeolus will generate the detailed environmental knowledge required to reduce risk for future crewed and uncrewed landings. These measurements will directly inform entry, descent, and landing systems and support safer, more predictable mission planning for astronauts.

…NASA will support operations of science instruments for at least one Martian year, while Relativity Space maintains the spacecraft.

The announcement made no mention of contract price. Relativity meanwhile has only launched once, a failure of its small Terran-1 rocket in 2023, after which the company abandoned that 3D-printed design to focus on its larger Terran-R rocket, which it hopes to launch for the first time before the end of this year.

2 comments
1 2 3 … 595