Tag: politics

What bad news is NASA hiding about the heat shield it will use on the next Orion/SLS manned mission around the Moon?

3:59 pm

Orion's damage heat shield
Damage to Orion heat shield caused during re-entry in 2022,
including “cavities resulting from the loss of large chunks”

Even as our uneducated media goes bonkers over another Musk kerfuffle, this time with interim NASA administration Sean Duffy, it is ignoring what now appears to be a strong effort by NASA to cover up some serious issues with the Orion capsule’s heat shield, issues that might be far more serious than outlined in a May 2024 inspector general (IG) report.

That IG report [pdf] found the following:

Specifically, portions of the char layer wore away differently than NASA engineers predicted, cracking and breaking off the spacecraft in fragments that created a trail of debris rather than melting away as designed (see Figure 3 [shown to the right]). The unexpected behavior of the Avcoat creates a risk that the heat shield may not sufficiently protect the capsule’s systems and crew from the extreme heat of reentry on future missions. Moreover, while there was no evidence of impact with the Crew Module, the quantity and size of the debris could have caused enough structural damage to cause one of Orion’s parachutes to fail. Should the same issue occur on future Artemis missions, it could lead to the loss of the vehicle or crew.

In our judgment, the unexpected behavior of the heat shield poses a significant risk to the safety of
future crewed missions. [emphasis mine]

NASA spent the next few months reviewing the situation, and decided in December 2024 that it did not have the time or funding to redesign and replace the heat shield before the next flight. Instead, it chose to fly the next manned Orion mission — dubbed Artemis-2 and scheduled for the spring of 2026 carrying four astronauts around the Moon — using this same heat shield design but change the flight path during reentry to reduce stress on the shield.

NASA also admitted then that this heat shield design is defective, and that it will replace it beginning with the next mission, Artemis-3, the one that the agency hopes will land people back on the Moon.

The decision to fly humans in a capsule with such a known untrustworthy heat shield design is bad enough. Any rational person would not do this (as the inspector general above concluded). Yet NASA is going ahead, because it has determined that meeting its schedule, getting Americans back to the lunar surface ahead of China and during Trump’s present term of office, is more important than rational engineering and testing.

What now makes this decision even more worrisome is that it appears NASA is covering up the findings of its own engineers, completed in August 2024 but not made public until now.
» Read more

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Duffy’s shiny object worked

9:21 am

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

As expected, Elon Musk responded yesterday with anger and insults to the announcement by interim NASA administrator Sean Duffy that he will consider other manned lunar landers besides Starship for the first Artemis landing on the Moon.

And as expected, our brainless and generally uneducated propaganda press grabbed the shiny object that Duffy had put out with this announcement to focus entirely on the public spat. Here is just a sampling of the typical reports:

Not one of these articles reported the fact that Duffy’s announcement also included an admission that NASA is now delaying this manned Moon mission until 2028. Not one went into any depth as to why this program is delayed, if they discussed it at all. And any articles that did discuss the program’s overall slow pace, the focus was always entirely on SpaceX, as if its Starship program was the sole cause of all the problems. Essentially, they picked up Duffy’s talking points and ran with them, blindly. In fact, for almost all of these articles, it appeared as if the reporter was writing about NASA’s Artemis program for the first time, and really knew nothing about it.

Only the Ars Technica story attempted some thoughtful analysis, but it focused on the office politics of choosing NASA’s next administrator, missing entirely the fundamentals of this story, that the Artemis program is and has always been a mess, and that Duffy’s decision will do nothing to fix the problem.

Musk of course foolishly played into Duffy’s hands by reacting so violently, with insults, helping Duffy distract from the real issues. At the same time, Musk also spoke truth with this one tweet:
» Read more

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Fake blather from NASA administrator Sean Duffy to hide more Artemis delays

9:47 am

Sean Duffy
Sean Duffy: “Look at the shiny object!”

During a press interview yesterday, interim NASA administrator Sean Duffy revealed almost as an aside that NASA’s mid-2027 launch for the first Artemis manned lunar landing is no longer realistic, and that NASA is now targeting a 2028 launch date instead.

Duffy managed to hide this revelation by also announcing that he is re-opening the bidding for the manned lunar lander NASA will use on that third Artemis mission. To quote Duffy:

Now, SpaceX had the contract for Artemis III. By the way, I love SpaceX and it’s an amazing company, but the problem is, they are behind. They pushed their timelines out and we are in a race against China. The president and I want to get to the moon in this president’s term. So, I’m going to open up the contract and I’m going let other space companies compete with SpaceX, like Blue Origin. Whatever one gets us there first to the moon, we are going to take. If SpaceX is behind and Blue Origin can do it before them, good on Blue Origin.

By the way we might have two companies that can get us back to the Moon in 2028.

The propaganda press of course is going wild about this SpaceX announcement, making believe it signifies something of importance. “SpaceX is behind! Elon Musk can’t do it! Duffy is giving Jeff Bezos the job!” And as I think Duffy intended, everyone is ignoring the fact that NASA has now admitted it won’t meet that 2027 launch target.

The irony is that Duffy’s decision to re-open bidding on that manned mission is utterly meaningless. » Read more

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The “No Kings” demonstrations this past weekend showed the future belongs to the right

11:25 am

Contrasting the protesters from the left and the right
Click here and here for sources.

This past weekend hundreds of thousands of leftist protesters gathered in numerous cities nationwide to protest Donald Trump under the strange banner of “No Kings” that somehow portrayed Trump as a new king attempting to subvert democracy. Numerous commenters on the webpage have documented the protest’s emptiness, noting that it offered no real policy options except a desire to have Donald Trump removed from office (violently in many cases), even though he was properly elected by law.

Many others, including an NBC anchor, also could not help noticing the aged nature of the protesters.

So from what we can see from our viewpoint here in the studio and talking to our crew on the ground and some people I know who are there, this is an older crowd. There’s not a lot of folks, and granted, it’s a big crowd here, I’m not good at estimating, but it’s definitely over 2000, maybe close to 3000. We can’t see everyone, but it’s an older crowd, a lot of white hair you see out there, Q-tips, as we used to call them in the business. They are out protesting, and not a lot of young people.

None of this is a surprise. The strongest base of the Democratic Party is the 1960s baby boom crowd that protested the Vietnam War in the 1960s, celebrated sex, drugs, and rock & roll, and has never found a Democrat they did not love blindly. For the past decade this aging Baby Boom generation has been repeatedly told to hate Trump, and this past weekend’s demonstration allowed these old hippies the chance to show off how well they have been indoctrinated by the left.

What was far more striking about this event to me however was the contrast between the old, white-haired “No Kings” protesters and the very youthful attendees at every single conservative demonstration or event. » Read more

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Debris from suspected Chinese rocket discovered in western Australia

9:00 am

Though it has not yet been confirmed, a burned tank has been found in western Australia that is thought to come from the fourth stage of China’s solid-fueled Smart Dragon-3 rocket that lifted off from an ocean platform on September 24, 2025.

Suspected space junk that crashed near an iron ore mine in remote WA has been linked to a Chinese rocket launch, as authorities continue to probe the object’s origin. The smoking [sic] piece of debris was found on Saturday about 30 kilometres east of Newman, on a BHP mine access track.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau and WA Police are investigating, but Flinders University space archaeologist Alice Gorman said she believed the debris was from the fourth stage of a Chinese rocket called Jielong [Smart Dragon].

If that debris is from the September launch, there is no where it was “smoking” when found two days ago. The images of the object simply show it to be well-blackened from its trip. It is also not clear when the object fell to Earth, making pinpointing its source more difficult.

If it is from China’s Smart Dragon-3 rocket, it suggests China has more work to do to keep its rockets’ stages from falling on land. Smart Dragon-3’s launch from an ocean platform just off China’s northeast coast, so one would think the lower stages would all fall in the ocean. In this case it appears the problem is similar to what has happened to some parts of the service module from de-orbiting SpaceX Dragon cargo capsules. The company found that if it allowed the service module to fall on its own, some parts would hit the ground. It has since changed its de-orbit procedures to guarantee this won’t happen any longer.

China needs to do the same. Based on its past record, it is not clear it will make any effort to do so.

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South Korea issues launch license to Korean rocket startup Innospace

8:36 am

Engineering test prototype during tests
Engineering prototype of Hanbit-Nano testing portable
launchpad. Click for original image.

The South Korea Aerospace Administration (KASA) today issued its first launch license for a private South Korean rocket company, clearing the way for the first launch Innospace’s Hanbit-Nano rocket in the next few weeks from Brazil’s Alcantera spaceport.

For the launch, Innospace has set a launch window from Oct. 28 to Nov. 28. The launch window refers to the period during which the actual launch can take place. Initially, it was set for Oct. 28 to Nov. 7, but was extended to Nov. 28 after coordinating launch inspection procedures, mission stability and joint operation schedules with the Brazilian Air Force.

Innospace said the upcoming launch will also mark the first commercial vehicle launch from a Brazilian space center, adding that Brazilian authorities have provided active support to ensure optimal conditions and a stable launch. While the launch site is operated by the Brazilian Air Force, Innospace will use its own independently built launch platform for the mission.

The rocket will carry five smallsats and three other payloads, one of which is from a South Korean beer company.

If successful, Innospace will become the first commercial rocket startup outside the U.S. to get to orbit, excluding the pseudo-companies in China. The launch will also re-open Brazil’s long abandoned Alcantera spaceport, off of its northeast coast. Used only a few times in the 1990s and then shut down when the Brazilian government abandoned its rocket program, Brazil has been trying to get commercial rocket companies to come there now for about five years, with little success.

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The three launches completed today including two major new achievements

12:33 pm

The beat goes on: There were three launches globally today, repeating a pattern we’ve seen several times in the past few weeks, with China completing one launch and SpaceX completing two.

First, China’s solid-fueled Kinetica-1 (Lijian-1) rocket placed three Pakistani satellites into orbit, one of which is what Pakistan’s state-run press claimed was its first multi-spectral environmental satellite. China’s press also provided no information about where Kinetica-1’s lower stages crashed inside China, having launched from its Jiuquan spaceport in the country’s northwest. The rocket itself is supposedly commercial, but it is built by a government agency, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the government state-run press illustrated this by making no mention of this agency in reporting the launch.

Next, SpaceX set a new record for the reuse of a Falcon 9 first stage in placing 28 Starlink satellites into orbit, the rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The first stage, B1067, completed its 31st flight, a new record for a Falcon 9 first stage, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The updated rankings for the most reflights of a rocket:

39 Discovery space shuttle
33 Atlantis space shuttle
31 Falcon 9 booster B1067
29 Falcon 9 booster B1071
28 Columbia space shuttle
28 Falcon 9 booster B1063
27 Falcon 9 booster B1069

Sources here and here.

Finally, less than two hours later, SpaceX launched another 28 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The first stage completed its 11th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

With these two launches, SpaceX has now placed more than 10,000 Starlink satellites into orbit, though a large percentage have been de-orbited over the years as the company has upgraded the satellites. Nonetheless, the number of Starlink satellites presently in orbit far exceeds all the satellites now in orbit for every other planned constellation, combined.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

135 SpaceX
63 China
13 Russia
13 Rocket Lab

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 135 to 104.

In the coming days the global rocket industry will also achieve a number of additional milestones. SpaceX is just two launches short of its record of 137 launches achieved last year, while the U.S. is just three launches short of its own record of 157 launches, also set last year. Similarly, China is just three launches short of its own record of 66 set in 2023.

Globally, the world has presently completed 239 successful launches in 2025, a number only exceeded by the 2024 record of 256. Expect this record also to fall before the end of the year.

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China launches 18 satellites

8:56 am

China today successfully placed 18 more Spacesail or Quifan satellites in orbit, its Long March 6A rocket lifting off from Taiyuan spaceport in northeast China. No word on where the rocket’s lower stages crashed inside China.

This was the sixth launch for this internet satellite constellation, intended to provide Chinese citizens service similar to Starlink, but controlled by the Chinese government. At present it has 119 satellites in orbit, out of a planned 648 in the constellation’s first phase. That phase was supposed to be completed by the end of this year, something that now seems very unlikely. The constellation’s final configuration could have as many as 10,000 satellites.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

133 SpaceX
62 China
13 Russia
13 Rocket Lab

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 133 to 103.

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ESA awards contract to Italian company to provide an ocean landing platform

10:19 am

Avio's proposed reusable upper stage
Click for original.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has awarded the Italian company Ingegneria Dei Sistemi (IDS) a contract to build an ocean vessel for recovering the planned reusable test upper stage being built by the Italian rocket company Avio, as shown in the graphic to the right.

In late September, ESA awarded a €40 million contract to Avio for the design of a reusable rocket upper stage. The project scope encompasses preliminary design work, including system requirements and technological solutions, for both the launch system and the ground segment. According to the agency, the project has a number of potential applications, including as an evolution of Avio’s Vega family of rockets.

On 15 October, IDS announced that it had been awarded the contract to design the project’s recovery vessel, which falls under the systems ground segment. The company has subcontracted Italian naval systems consultancy Cetena and Norwegian shipbuilder Vard to assist with the project.

ESA very clearly is trying to encourage the development of reusable rockets by Europe’s private sector, but the nature of this particular program seems badly thought out. Rather than have Avio design the system in its entirety, in order to make it as efficient and profitable as possible, it appears ESA is micromanaging the design process, and thus bringing other subcontractors in who are outside Avio’s control. As a result, the final demo might work, but it is not likely it will be competitive with the private reusable rockets being built in the U.S. and elsewhere. Too many cooks in the kitchen.

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South African red tape will likely delay Starlink there for years to come

10:06 am

According to an article in South Africa yesterday, regulatory red tape and political demands in South Africa will likely block approval of Starlink in that country for years to come, if not forever.

Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies Solly Malatsi gazetted a draft policy direction on the role of EEIPs [Equity Equivalent Investment Programme] in the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector on 23 May 2025. He explained that rules requiring electronic communications service providers to have 30% historically disadvantaged ownership prevented some companies from contributing to the country’s transformation in ways other than traditional ownership.

The Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) Act and the ICT Sector Code supported the use of EEIPs to allow qualifying multinationals to meet empowerment obligations through alternatives. These can include investing in local suppliers, enterprise and skills development, job creation, infrastructure support, research and innovation, digital inclusion initiatives, and funding for small businesses.

However, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa’s (Icasa) ownership regulations do not provide for EEIPs.

In other words, the laws contradict each other, and to make it possible to issue any licenses for a foreign company like SpaceX, the government needs to resolve this conflict. That is expected to take years of political maneuvering.

Even if this issue is resolved, SpaceX has already said it would not agree to the racial quota system proposed. It has offered to instead provide Starlink for free to 5,000 schools. It is not clear if politicians in South Africa will consider that sufficient.

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Scientists find that three normally incompatible substances can interact in the alien conditions on Titan

9:54 am

Artist rendering of Dragonfly soaring over Titan's surface
Artist rendering of Dragonfly soaring
over Titan’s surface

Scientists have discovered that, under the very cold conditions on Titan, three normally incompatible substances — methane, ethane and hydrogen cyanide — can mix together in a way that previously was considered impossible.

The background to the Chalmers study is an unanswered question about Titan: What happens to hydrogen cyanide after it is created in Titan’s atmosphere? Are there metres of it deposited on the surface or has it interacted or reacted with its surroundings in some way? To seek the answer, a group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California began conducting experiments in which they mixed hydrogen cyanide with methane and ethane at temperatures as low as 90 Kelvin (about -180 degrees Celsius). At these temperatures, hydrogen cyanide is a crystal, and methane and ethane are liquids.

When they studied such mixtures using laser spectroscopy, a method for examining materials and molecules at the atomic level, they found that the molecules were intact, but that something had still happened. … In their analysis, they found that hydrocarbons had penetrated the crystal lattice of hydrogen cyanide and formed stable new structures known as co-crystals.

Not surprisingly, this result suggests that the alien environment on Titan includes a lot of very unexpected chemistry, some of which we right now cannot predict, or even imagine. While exciting, it also suggests that NASA’s Dragonfly mission to Titan will face challenges that make that mission far more risky. It could quickly fail once it arrives, because of this alien environment.

Such a failure will of course help engineers design later missions, but Dragonfly is a very expensive mission, already overbudget at $3 billion. It might have made more sense to fly a fleet of small and cheaper missions to Titan to begin with, to lower the risks.

Sadly, that is not NASA’s plan.

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Thailand studying feasibility of establishing its own commercial spaceport

9:36 am

Thailand
Click for source.

Thailand’s government has begun a study to find out whether it makes financial and technical sense to establish its own commercial spaceport in that country.

The Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency (Public Organisation), or GISTDA, organised a seminar titled “Thailand’s Future Opportunities for Spaceport Development” on October 15 at iConsiam. The seminar aimed to establish a platform for exchanging views and gathering suggestions from all sectors regarding the future of a “Spaceport” in Thailand, underscoring a critical juncture for the country to elevate its presence on the global space stage fully.

Pakorn Apaphant, GISTDA Director, revealed that GISTDA is currently conducting a feasibility study for establishing a Spaceport in Thailand, in collaboration with the business consulting firm KPMG Phoomchai Business Advisory Ltd. The comprehensive study covers economic aspects, business strategy, environmental and social impacts, as well as a nationwide survey of potential sites to evaluate the most suitable location for future development.

As the map to the right shows, Thailand’s geography is not perfect. It has plenty of coast, in the country’s south, but at any location the trajectory of most launches would almost have to cross land of Thailand or other countries. Nonetheless, with the advent of reusable lower stages, such considerations will eventually become less of a concern.

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Three launches since yesterday

9:15 am

The beat goes on. Since yesterday there were three launches, one by China and two by SpaceX.

First, China’s Long March 8A rocket placed the twelfth set of satellites in the Guowang internet constellation, eventually aiming to be 13,000 satellites strong. China’s state-run press did not specify the exact number of satellites. Based on previous launches using the Long March 8A, the number was likely nine, bringing the number of this constellation’s satellites now in orbit to 96.

The launch was from China’s coastal Wenchang spaceport, and had a flight path that dumped the lower stages of the rocket near islands in the Philippines.

Next, SpaceX placed 21 satellites into orbit for the Pentagon, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. This was the second launched by SpaceX for this military communication constellation, dubbed Tranche-1, intended to be 158 satellites total. The first stage completed its seventh flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. The fairing halves completed their third and fourth flights respectively.

Finally, SpaceX launched another 28 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The first stage completed its third flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

133 SpaceX
61 China
13 Russia
13 Rocket Lab

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 133 to 102.

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Orbital tug startup Impulse Space to develop its own unmanned lunar lander

8:25 am

Impulse's tug and proposed lunar lander
Click for original image.

The orbital tug startup Impulse Space, founded by Tom Mueller (one of SpaceX’s first engineers), is now proposing to build its own unmanned lunar lander, with a target for delivering six tons of cargo on two missions, starting in 2028.

Our proposed architecture combines our existing Helios kick stage and a new lunar lander, to be developed by our team in-house. Helios would launch on a standard medium- or heavy-lift rocket. Our lunar lander would ride as a payload on Helios. Once Helios and the lander are deployed in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Helios serves as a cruise stage, transporting the lander to low lunar orbit within one week. The lunar lander then separates from Helios and descends to the surface of the Moon. By taking advantage of Helios’s high delta-v capabilities, this mission architecture doesn’t require in-space refueling.

This solution can bridge the existing cargo delivery gap by offering direct transportation of the necessary mass to kickstart infrastructure, resource utilization, and economic activities on the Moon. We’ve already begun engine development for our lunar lander solution, and we stand ready to execute as dictated by industry demand and interest.

With this Helios and Impulse-made lander combination, we estimate delivering up to 6 tons of payload mass to the Moon (across two missions) per year starting in 2028 at a cost-effective price point. Each Helios + lander combo would take approximately 3 tons of cargo to the Moon.

It appears the company has identified a need (transporting cargo to the Moon cheaply and quickly) that no one (including NASA) is presently considering. SpaceX will be able to do it with Starship. Blue Origin is also proposing to do it with various versions of its Blue Moon manned lander. Impulse has decided however that both of those spacecraft are too large and tied to SLS and Lunar Gateway, with Starship requiring refueling, that makes their cargo missions more costly than a direct mission. Impulse proposes a simpler option.

This decision is also another indication that the demand for low orbital tugs is not developing as expected. It appears satellite companies and the available rocket companies have worked out ways to get most of their satellites to the orbits they require without tugs.

It will be interesting to watch if this proposal gains traction. If it does, than it will likely encourage other orbital tug as well as the other lunar lander companies to propose their own alternatives.

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Space Force approves Vandenberg environmental assessment, allowing SpaceX’s to launch as much as 100 times annually

8:02 am

Map of Vandenberg Space Force Base, showing SpaceX's two launchpads
Figure 2.1-1 of the final environmental assessment report

The Space Force on October 10, 2025 announced it has now finalized and approved the environmental assessment that will permit SpaceX’s to increase its launch rate at Vandenberg to as much as 100 times per year.

The DAF [Air Force] has decided to increase the annual Falcon launch cadence at VSFB [Vandenberg] through launch and landing operations at SLC-4 and SLC-6 [the two SpaceX launchpads], including modification of SLC-6 for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles to support future U.S. Government and commercial launch service needs. The overall launch cadence will increase from 50 Falcon 9 launches per year at SLC-4 to up to 100 launches per year for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy at both SLCs combined. Falcon Heavy, which has not previously launched from VSFB, would launch and land up to five times per year from and at SLC-6. The DAF will authorize SpaceX to construct a new hangar south of the HIF [SpaceX’s horizontal integration facility] and north of SLC-6 to support Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy integration and processing.

You can read the full environmental assessment here [pdf]. The map to the right, from the assessment, shows the location at Vandenberg of the two SpaceX launch sites. SLC-4 (pronounced “slick-four”) is the pad SpaceX has been using for years to launch Falcon 9s. SLC-6 was originally built for the space shuttle but never used for that purpose. Subsequently ULA leased it to launch its Delta family of rockets. When that rocket was retired SpaceX won the lease to reconfigure the site for both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches.

The Space Force apparently decided to ignore the objections of the California Coastal Commission as well as a number of anti-Musk leftwing activist groups. And its decision is well grounded in facts. The report documents at length the lack of any consequential environmental impacts from the increase of launches, which is further supported by almost three quarters of a century of actual use.

The decision is also well founded in basic American culture and law. The Space Force as a government agency must act as a servant of the American people, in this case represented by the private company SpaceX. It must therefore do whatever it can to aid and support that company, not put up roadblocks because it doesn’t like what the company proposes.

At least under Trump, this is the approach the Space Force is taking. I fear what will happen if a Democrat regains the presidency, based on the radical and enthused communist make-up of that party today.

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The hurricane season in 2024 confounded the predictions again

1:04 pm

The trail of bad global warming predictions

The uncertainty of science: Though the climate science community had predicted that last year’s hurricane season was going to be one of the most active ever, a new study published two weeks ago in Geophysical Research Letters of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) found that the 2024 season did not behave as predicted. It ended up producing about the predicted number of hurricanes, but did so only because of a sudden rise in activity near the end of the season, after a long lull with almost no activity. From the study’s conclusion:

As has been noted throughout this study, the lull was immediately followed by one of the busiest ends to an Atlantic hurricane season on record, including two major hurricane landfalls in Florida (Helene and Milton), resulting in more than 250 fatalities and $100 billion in damage (National Centers for Environmental Information, 2025). Though the final overall number of hurricanes and major hurricanes were aligned with the seasonal forecasts, the extremely busy beginning and end to the season and marked lull in the middle highlight just how unusual the season was.

Last year’s prediction was not the first to be incorrect, though this time the error was in how the season unfolded instead of the total numbers. In the past two decades — since Al Gore prophesied that global warming would cause a gigantic increase in violent storms — NOAA has repeatedly called for very active hurricane seasons, and repeatedly those predictions have turned out wrong. In fact, from 2006 until 2018 there were almost no major hurricanes at all, the exact opposite to what Gore had foretold. Since then the seasons have returned to more normal numbers, but the predictions of the scientists have continued to be no better than throwing a dart at a wall while wearing a blindfold.

The ongoing 2025 hurricane season is following this same pattern. In May 2025 NOAA predicted this year would be a very active hurricane season. Instead, this season has matched those from 2006 to 2016, in which no hurricanes made landfall in the U.S. and the number of strong hurricanes was almost nil.

The season of course is not yet over. We could see a burst of activity in the next few months, similar to what happened in 2024. Nonetheless, the important takeaway from this story is that the scientists who claim to know what is going to happen simply don’t know anything. They are guessing, because as the paper above admits, the Earth’s weather and climate are incredibly complex, and our understanding of it is still in its infancy.

Remember this when you read the next “We’re all gonna die!” prediction touted in the propaganda press.

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Three launches in the past day

9:45 am

Even as all eyes focused on SpaceX’s 11th test launch of Starship/Superheavy yesterday, there were three other launches in the past fourteen hours taking place on three different continents by China and two different American companies.

First, China placed a technology test satellite into orbit, its Long March 2D rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China. The only information about the satellite is that it will test “new optical imaging.” No information at all was released on where the rocket’s lower stages, using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China.

Next, SpaceX placed 24 of Amazon’s Kuiper satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The first stage completed its second flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

With this launch, Amazon now has 154 satellites in orbit, out of a planned constellation of about 3,200. Its FCC license requires it to have about 1,600 in orbit by July of ’26, but that goal seems increasingly unlikely to be met. With this launch SpaceX completed its three-launch contract for Amazon. It has contracts with ULA for 46 launches (having so far completed three in 2025), and that company appears ready to launch regularly in the coming months. Amazon’s other launch contracts with Blue Origin’s New Glenn (27 launches) and ArianeGroup’s Ariane-6 (18 launches) however are more uncertain. Neither company has achieved any launches on their contracts, and it is not clear when either company, especially Blue Origin, will ever begin regular launches.

Finally, this morning Rocket Lab placed the seventh radar satellite into orbit for the company Synspective, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its two launchpads in New Zealand. Rocket Lab has a contract for another twenty Synspective launches over the next few years. The launch also featured a larger fairing that will give the company the ability to launch bigger-sized satellites with Electron.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race, now including yesterday’s Starship/Superheavy launch:

131 SpaceX
60 China
13 Russia
13 Rocket Lab

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 131 to 101.

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Another round of layoffs at JPL

3:06 pm

The management at the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) in California today announced it will be laying off 550 people this week, about 11% of its work force.

As part of this effort, JPL is undergoing a realignment of its workforce, including a reduction in staff. This reduction — part of a reorganization that began in July and not related to the current government shutdown — will affect approximately 550 of our colleagues across technical, business, and support areas. Employees will be notified of their status on Tuesday, Oct. 14.

As the statement makes clear, this reduction is unrelated to the government shutdown, and is also mostly unrelated directly to the 24% budget cut the Trump administration wishes to impose on NASA. JPL has had major management issues in the last few years, including two previous rounds of layoffs of similar amounts. Much of these budget issues stem from the cancellation by NASA of the Mars sample return mission, which JPL was to play a major part. That money is gone, and even if the mission is resurrected, JPL is almost certainly not going to play a major part.

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Michael Knowles – Celebrating Columbus

11:01 am

A mid-day pause: I posted twice in the past, but think it should be seen again. As I wrote in 2021,

On this day when all should be celebrating Christopher Columbus and his willingness “sail beyond the sunset,” to use a phrase from Tennyson, this short video give us an accurate picture of the man, his times, and his achievements. It also puts the lie to the bigoted, hateful, leftist slanders that have been used in recent years to poison his legacy.

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Faced with loss of the federal gravy train, Lowell Observatory makes major changes

8:58 am

According to a press release last week, the Lowell Observatory in Arizona is now making major changes to it management and operations due to “declines in federal research funding.”

The new framework centers on two defining pursuits: Planetary Defense, safeguarding our world from cosmic hazards, and Exoplanetary Research, seeking to understand distant worlds and the potential for life beyond Earth.

Declines in federal research funding, coupled with uncertainty about future national priorities, have impacted research institutions across the country. At the same time, Lowell’s historic reliance on internal funding to sustain research is no longer a viable long-term model. To ensure stability and growth, the Observatory will focus its efforts on key scientific areas while building new endowments to support the scientists and technology that drive discovery.

Essentially, it can no longer depend on easy federal cash (thank you Donald Trump!), and thus needs to actually do real research work in fields that others consider important. It will also abandon its “traditional academic tenure system.” Scientists who use the facility will now have to earn that right, in a case-by-case basis. And such researchers will have to be funded by “private, endowed support.”

In other words, Lowell is returning to the model that had been used by American researchers for most of the nation’s history, until World War II, getting their funding from private sources rather than the federal teat.

We should expect therefore the work at Lowell to become more effective and focused, something it has not been for decades.

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Germany’s space agency DLR delivers one prototype leg for Europe’s Callisto grasshopper

8:45 am

Callisto's basic design
Callisto’s basic design

Government in-action: After a decade of work, the German space agency DLR this week finally delivered for testing a prototype leg of the Callisto grasshopper-type demo rocket, intended by the European Space Agency (ESA) to demonstrate vertical take-off and landing.

On 9 October, the Institute of Structures and Design announced that it had delivered a qualification model of the demonstrator’s landing leg to the Institute of Space Systems in Bremen. According to a 3 December 2024 update, the leg will now undergo a series of tests at the Institute’s Landing and Mobility Facility, including deployment, touchdown, and vibration testing.

Once the qualification test campaign is complete and the landing leg design has been validated, the Institute of Structures and Design will proceed with the construction of the four flight-ready legs.

Note again that Callisto, as shown to the right, was proposed as a joint ESA and JAXA project in 2015. Only now, a decade later, as DLR delivered one prototype leg. The first test hop has been repeatedly delayed, so that now it is now not expected to happen until 2027, and that rocket will not even be an operational version, it will simply be a small scale prototype.

Meanwhile, SpaceX has landed its Falcon 9 first stage hundreds of times, and reused them dozens of times. Other companies are flying or building their own reusable rockets, and hope to fly operational versions next year.

The contrast between this government project and the private sector is quite embarrassing. What makes it even more embarrassing is that it is par for the course, and yet so many people still look to the government as the god who can get things done. When will people learn?

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Rocket Lab gets two-launch contract from Japan’s space agency JAXA

10:07 am

In what appears to be a significant slap at its own rockets (especially its delayed Epsilon-S rocket), Japan’s space agency JAXA this week signed a two-launch deal with the American rocket company Rocket Lab.

Launching from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand, the two Electron missions will deploy satellites for JAXA’s Innovative Satellite Technology Demonstration Program. The first launch, scheduled from December 2025, will deploy the agency’s RApid Innovative payload demonstration SatellitE-4 (RAISE-4) spacecraft, a single satellite that will demonstrate eight technologies developed by private companies, universities, and research institutions throughout Japan.

The second launch, scheduled for 2026, is a JAXA-manifested rideshare of eight separate spacecraft that includes educational small sats, an ocean monitoring satellite, a demonstration satellite for ultra-small multispectral cameras, and a deployable antenna that can be packed tightly using origami folding techniques and unfurled to 25 times its size.

Rocket Lab has previously won contracts from several private Japanese satellite companies (Q-Shu, Astroscale, ALE), but this I think is the first JAXA contract it has won. What makes it significant is that JAXA has always focused on using its own rockets, the large retired H2A and the new H3 as well as the smaller Epsilon-S. To go to an American company is somewhat unprecedented.

Though larger than Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket, Epsilon-S was being developed to compete for the same market. That development however has been plagued by failure, including explosions of engines during tests of both its upper and first stages in ’23 and ’24 respectively. After the second explosion JAXA announced in December 2024 the rocket’s first launch would not occur in the spring of 2025 as planned, but provided no additional information. Since then there have been no updates.

This Rocket Lab deal suggests the Epsilon program is in big trouble. In the long run however this might be a very good thing for both JAXA and Japan’s own nascent rocket industry. JAXA might finally be recognizing that building and owning its own rockets is not the best plan, that it would be better to use the capitalism model and simply be a customer buying the services from the private sector. At the moment Japan doesn’t yet have a viable commercial rocket sector, with only Mitsubishi having an operational commercial rocket, the H3 (mostly controlled by JAXA). There are a number of new startups however, including Interstellar, Honda, Space One, and Tispace, all of which have done tests of one kind or another. If JAXA is ready to abandon its own government rockets and buy the service from the private sector, those Japanese startups will start to prosper.

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China launches three satellites from ocean platform

1:53 pm

The Chinese pseudo-company Orienspace yesterday successfully placed three satellites into orbit, its solid-fueled Gravity-1 rocket lifting off from an ocean platform off the country’s northeast coast.

This was Orienspace’s second launch, both using its Gravity-1 rocket from the ocean. Of the three satellites, one was an Earth observation satellite, and the other two were part of the pseudo-company Geespace’s Geely constellation of satellites, though it is not clear if these are for its Internet-of-Things (IoT) constellation or for general communications. The IoT constellation already has 64 satellites in orbit out of a planned 240.

Another launch of China’s Long March 8A rocket was supposed to happen yesterday, but there is no indication in China’s state-run that it took place, nor any information about a rescheduled launch date. That state-run press also illustrated the pseudo nature of these Chinese companies by only mentioning Orienspace as an afterthought at the end of the article.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

129 SpaceX
59 China
13 Russia
12 Rocket Lab

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 129 to 99. The company will try again this evening to launch its third mission for Amazon, placing a set of Kuiper satellites into orbit. Weather has scrubbed the past two attempts in the previous few days.

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Orbital tug company Momentus gets two NASA contracts

9:54 am

The orbital tug startup Momentus yesterday announced that NASA has awarded it two contracts worth $7.6 million total to fly two experimental NASA payloads on its Vigoride tug.

One payload will test “test the ability to make semiconductor crystals in microgravity”, while the second will “test a rotating detonation rocket engine, a propulsion system designed to provide higher efficiency than traditional engines.” In this case the propellants used will be nitrous oxide and ethane.

Both will fly on the same Vigoride tug on a mission to be launched no earlier than October 2026. Momentus also says there is room for additional payloads on that mission.

It appears the increase in the number and launches of rockets has actually hurt the orbital tug business:

Momentus is among several companies that developed orbital transfer vehicles, or OTVs, like Vigoride to ferry spacecraft between orbits. They are designed to provide last-mile delivery to specific orbits for spacecraft launched on rideshare missions such as [SpaceX’s] Transporter [launches]. However, demand for such services has been slower to materialize than expected. “Candidly, that part of the market has not developed as much as people thought, say, five years ago,” [said John Rood, Momentus’ chief executive] during a panel at World Space Business Week in September. “The reason is many small manufacturers are multi-manifesting satellites to deploy a single plane with a single launcher.”

As a result, Momentus has focused on getting technology demonstration contracts such as the two above, with the tug acting more like a service module.

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Canadian rocket startup Nordspace signs deal for its mission control center

9:01 am

Proposed Canadian spaceports
Proposed Canadian spaceports

The Canadian rocket startup Nordspace, which earlier this week signed a deal for another company to establish ground stations for its proposed Atlantic Spaceport, today signed an agreement with the company Kongsberg Geospatial to provide software for running its mission control center.

According to the news release TerraLens “will ingest data from multiple sensors to deliver real-time three-dimensional (3D) visualization of launch operations, range safety, decision support, and vehicle tracking. This will help streamline launch operations and enable deployment of critical space missions to orbit in under 48 hours.” Kongsberg said TerraLens builds on their “experience supporting range safety and mission-critical visualization for the Andøya Space and Defence project in Norway.”

Andøya is Norway’s new commercial spaceport that has been launching suborbital government rockets for decades.

Nordspace continues to move forward quickly, having been established only three years ago. It is putting the pieces together for its spaceport, and is testing both a small suborbital rocket and the engines for its proposed orbital Tundra rocket. Though the race is certainly not over, it does appear Nordspace will get to orbit ahead of the Nova Scotia spaceport that was first proposed in 2016.

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Is Trump considering re-nominating Jared Isaacman for NASA administrator?

9:59 pm

Jared Isaacman
Billionaire Jared Isaacman

According to a report late today (based on anonymous sources), President Trump has held several face-to-face meetings in the past few weeks with billionaire Jared Isaacman, and those meetings have raised the possibility of Trump re-nominating him for NASA administrator.

According to Bloomberg News, President Trump has reportedly met with Isaacman several times in recent weeks to discuss NASA’s operational plans and future plans. Isaacman is the founder of fintech company Shift4 Payments and a private astronaut at SpaceX who has had a longstanding relationship with Elon Musk.

Isaacman, who has flown two private missions in space (and done one spacewalk), had been nominated by Trump for NASA administrator in December 2024, and was only days away from a Senate confirmation vote when Trump suddenly withdrew the nomination on May 31, 2025. Though it has never been clear why Trump withdrew the nomination, Isaacman’s past support of Democrats and his close links to Musk have been raised as issues, especially because of the Trump-Musk kerfuffle in the spring. Isaacman has also expressed some opinions since then about NASA and what it should do that might not have fit with Trump’s plans.

At the same time, NASA is presently without its own administrator, with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy holding down the job as an interim head. It appears Trump might be reconsidering his earlier decision in order to get someone in charge of NASA who isn’t distracted by other responsibilities.

Note however that this report is solely from anonymous sources, and we all know how unreliable those are. The whole story could be fantasy cooked up by someone in DC for any number of devious political purposes.

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Dominion Voting Systems purchased by American company run by Republican election reform activist

1:02 pm

Maricopa County election audit
The issues discovered in an audit of Maricopa County in Arizona
of 2020 election results. Note the problems found related to voting
machines, Dominion’s responsibility. The reason the “Ballots
Impacted” column is marked “N/A” (not available) is because
Dominion refused to cooperate. Click for full graph.

In what could be a major move towards election reform, the electronic voting system company Dominion — that many have suspected or have accused of either doing a bad job tabulating computer ballots or purposely manipulating them — has now been purchased by an American company dubbed Liberty Vote that is owned by Republican election reform activist Scott Leiendecker.

Leiendecker, former GOP election reform advocate, has officially become the sole owner of Dominion after making the deal contingent on dropping several remaining lawsuits against prominent conservatives and One America News Network (OANN).

Leiendecker further disclosed to the Caller that remaining litigation with MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell will be dropped by Dominion Voting Systems as part of the acquisition agreement. Dominion also filed a lawsuit against Herring Networks, which owns OANN, in August 2021. The lawsuit remained unresolved, though Leinendecker further confirmed that future litigation will be discontinued following the acquisition.

None of the charges against Dominion have ever been proven, and many have become impossible to investigate because the company’s very successful lawfare campaign, suing anyone who said anything against it, including news organizations such as Fox and Newsmax, both of which settled with Dominion, paying it $787 million and $67 million respectively. Nonetheless, the allegations have been numerous, substantial, and alarming (see also here, here, here, and here). Audits found errors, fraud, and the ability for outsiders to hack Dominion’s machines.

Leiendecker, in announcing the purchase, said that the new company will move all operations to the U.S. and will make third-party audits standard. It will also make paper ballots a fundamental component of its electronic tabulating system, something that Dominion did poorly or not at all.

Even if Dominion had been completely honest in its work, its resistance to investigation or even any criticism helped fuel the growing belief that the 2020 election of Biden was tampered with and might even have been fraudulent. That much of the company’s operations were foreign-based further fueled those suspicions. This purchase should help ease those concerns, though the proof will be in the pudding.

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Congressional budget action appears to just save two of seventeen on-going NASA missions

9:33 am

Though no final budget has yet been approved, based on the language in the budget the House has approved and sent to the Senate, only two of the seventeen on-going missions presently in space are specifically allocated money, thus allowing the Trump administration to zero out funding for the remaining fifteen.

The two missions saved are Osiris-Apex, on its way to the potentially dangerous asteroid Apophis, and the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission (MMS), four satellites in orbit that observe the Earth’s magnetosphere.

The article at the link is typical of our propaganda press. It clearly opposes any cuts to NASA, and lobbies repeatedly for all funding to be reinstated. This pattern has gotten quite boring and tedious. It would be so refreshing to see a more objective take, at least one in a while.

However, its reporting confirms my own reporting from mid-September, where I noted that the vague language in the House budget bill would allow Trump to cut these missions. Congress wants to preen itself as supporting all funding for NASA, while carefully allowing Trump to go ahead with large cuts.

It is a good thing these two missions have been saved, though it does appear their funding has been trimmed. Of the fifteen missions in limbo, the only two that seem worth keeping is the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and New Horizons, though the second should likely be set up similar to the two Voyager spacecraft, with a very small crew aimed mainly at keeping the spacecraft functioning and able to send back data periodically.

We are in great debt. It is time that the federal government make some real choices. We can no longer afford to buy all the candy in the store.

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Is the fate of the independent live streams in Boca Chica uncertain?

12:52 pm

My headline paraphrases this interesting, very detailed, and largely accurate article today from Texas Monthly. It outlines how the newly formed town of Starbase there has the power to block the many independent lives streams and tourist operations that have sprung up since SpaceX opened its facility in Boca Chica.

This proxy government also has the power to create zoning rules and enforce them. In July the city adopted a plan that leaves those with the closest views of the launchpads in violation of new zoning designations. The mainstay launch-day ticket sellers here—Rocket Ranch and a few others—operate in what’s now officially a residential area, near newly built homes for SpaceX executives. The same violation applies to the spots where the streamers have mounted their video cameras.

These cottage industries aren’t doomed. Texas law has grandfathering provisions that allow existing businesses to remain open after zoning changes. But Starbase city attorney Andy Messer raised eyebrows during a recent city commission meeting by saying that the grandfathering would be considered on a “case-by-case basis.” Hearing this, some property owners expressed hesitation to approach the city to ask if their status was in question. “I don’t want to poke the bear,” as one put it.

Will SpaceX force the town of Starbase to shut these independent operations down? The article describes the possibilities in great detail. The very nature of SpaceX and its founder, Elon Musk, suggests it won’t happen. The company thrives on openness and straight talk. Musk himself is a proven supporter of free speech and competition. It would be shocking if his company suddenly took a different position. Moreover, SpaceX, Starbase, or its residents (almost all of which are SpaceX employees) generally benefit from the good publicity of these independent operations, publicity that the company’s own employees enjoy.

Yet, Starbase is a company town, and the long history of such places is that with time, the company takes over and rules everything, allowing nothing that it does not control.

Stay tuned. Above all things won’t be dull in Boca Chica.

Hat tip Robert Pratt of Pratt on Texas.

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The Juno mission at Jupiter is almost certainly over

8:52 am

An article yesterday at Space.com speculated that the Juno mission to Jupiter is likely over, but added that we cannot yet be sure because the government shutdown has prevented NASA from making any definitive announcement.

NASA’s management had previously extended the orbiter’s mission several times, with the last extension going until the end of the 2025 fiscal year, that ended on September 30, 2025. No new budget has yet been approved, and the proposed Trump budget had included no money for extending the mission farther.

Due to the government shutdown, NASA is currently unable to say whether Juno is still operating or already powered down. At the time of publication, responses from agency officials state that “NASA is currently closed due to a lapse in government funding … Please reach back out after an appropriation or continuing resolution is approved.”

Under shutdown rules, only missions that fall under “excepted activities” — those required to protect life, property, or national security — can continue operations or communications. NASA’s continuity plans also specify that carryover funding may only be applied to “presidential priorities,” which limits what science programs can proceed during a lapse.

Juno does not fall into those protected categories, and was also zeroed-out on the President’s fiscal year 2026 budget request — making the mission, presumably, not a priority. So, until normal government operations resume, the spacecraft’s future is uncertain.

I think Juno’s future at this point is not uncertain in the least. While other active missions that the Trump proposed shutting down might get revived, Juno is unlikely to be one of them. I suspect the science team has put it in hibernation, and is already beginning to move on to other projects and work. They are being coy about this in the faint hope Congress will save Juno, but this should not be a priority. At this point I think NASA would be wiser to spend its resources elsewhere.

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