Tag: politics

Today’s blacklisted American: David Horowitz Freedom Center banned from Breakers hotel in Florida

11:10 am

No free speech allowed at The Breakers
No free speech allowed at The Breakers. Photo: David Broad

The new dark age of silencing: The Breakers hotel in Palm Beach, Florida has banned the conservative David Horowitz Freedom Center (DHFC) from holding an event there, despite the fact that it has allowed such an event every year without problems for the past twenty years.

The reason?

“After a 20-year relationship with The Breakers resort, the Freedom Center was informed that we would no longer be allowed to have our annual Restoration Weekend event at the resort due to the Center being too controversial,” DHFC President Michael Finch told The Epoch Times. [emphasis mine]

The hotel claims the ban isn’t because of politics, but because the “logistical and operational requirements” of holding the annual event had become more complex. While the hotel was not specific, its statement strongly implied that the increased cost of security against leftist threats of violence caused it to cancel the contract.

In other words, the hotel endorses the heckler’s veto. Threaten violence against someone who disagrees with you and The Breakers will bend over backwards to silence that speaker for you.

I would say that anyone planning to visit Palm Beach should celebrate The Breakers new policy of cowardice and find some other hotel to stay at. It certainly seems that this hotel really isn’t interested in protecting conservatives from violence. It would rather ban them from existence.

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NASA expected to finally certify Rocket Lab’s Virginia launchpad by end of year

9:15 am

It appears that after more than a year of delays, the NASA bureaucracy might finally approve launches at Rocket Lab’s new spaceport at Wallops Island, Virginia by the end of the year.

The article at the link is mostly about Rocket Lab’s planned acquisition of another company that builds satellite deployment systems. However, its real story was in the last paragraph:

[T]he company is still waiting for NASA to complete certification of an autonomous flight termination system the company needs to launch from Wallops Island, Virginia. Delays in NASA’s certification of that system has, in turn, delayed the use of Launch Complex 2 there for Electron missions. “The current expectation is that it could be done as early as the end of the year,” [Adam Spice, Rocket Lab’s chief financial officer] said of that certification, “which would allow us to commence flight operations out of LC-2 and Wallops in the first half of 2022.”

The company got FAA approval for launches more than a year ago, and had hoped to launch shortly thereafter. NASA however has blocked that launch, refusing for more than a year to approve the flight termination system Rocket Lab uses to destroy rockets should something go wrong just after launch.

The delay is baffling. Rocket Lab has successfully proven that its system works in that it has used it several times to safely abort launches in New Zealand. This success apparently has not been good enough for NASA’s bureaucrats, and the result is that Rocket Lab’s ability to launch rockets has been seriously hampered in ’21.

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Europe joins U.S. in condemning Russian anti-satellite test

8:57 am

Europe’s top space policy chief today joined the U.S. in strongly condemning the Russian anti-satellite test that produced a cloud of several thousand pieces of orbiting space junk.

European Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton condemned Russia’s anti-satellite missile system test, which led to the destruction of a satellite in low orbit.

“As European Union (EU) Commissioner in charge of EU Space policy and in particular of Galileo & Copernicus, I join the strongest condemnations expressed against the test conducted by Russia on Monday November 15, which led to the destruction of a satellite in low orbit (COSMOS 1408),” Breton wrote on Twitter late on Tuesday.

The Russians continue to insist the debris poses no threat to ISS, but their own state-run press proves them wrong. This TASS report claims the debris is no threat because it orbits 40 to 60 kilometers (25 to 35 miles) above the station.

That the debris is presently orbiting above the station is exactly why it poses a threat. While mission controllers will periodically raise ISS’s orbit to counteract the loss of altitude due to friction from the very thin atmosphere at that elevation, the various orbits of the satellite debris will continue to fall. Eventually that entire cloud will be drop into ISS’s orbit.

It is likely that the debris spread over time will make it easy for controllers to shift ISS to avoid individual pieces, but the need to dodge will certainly increase with time, raising the odds that something will hit the ISS.

The test seems almost so stupid an act by Russia that one wonders if its purpose was to create a long term threat to ISS itself. At least one private U.S. company, Axiom, plans to attach its own modules to ISS and use it as a base for the next few years for commercial operations. Others want to use ISS as a hotel for private tourists.

The Russians meanwhile are planning to launch their own new station. If the Russians put it in an orbit safe from this debris cloud, this test will have thus conveniently damaged their main competitor in commercial space operations.

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UAE to raise private money to help refurbish Baikonur launchpad

8:39 am

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has struck a deal with both Russia and Kazakhstan to jointly work together to upgrade the oldest Soyuz launchpad at Baikonur, the one used to put Yuri Gagarin into orbit in 1961.

The most interesting aspect of the deal is its private investment component:

The modernisation of the spaceport involves reconstructing the site to allow for more launches, including commercial and human space flights to the International Space Station.

As part of the agreement, all three parties will bring investors forward to contribute towards the upgrade.

“The UAE space agency is not investing or facilitating as the government. We’re looking for private partners within the UAE to partake. There’s a lot of interest,” Mr Al Qasim said.

This suggests that in exchange for providing private capital, the UAE will obtain launching rights at Baikonur, available for its own privately-built rockets. None yet exist, but it is clear the UAE government is encouraging such activity.

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History Unplugged – The Age of Discovery 2.0: Episode 5

4:21 pm

Episode five of the six part series, The Age of Discovery 2.0, from the podcast, History Unplugged, is now available here.

On this episode Scott Rank interviews Rand Simberg. From the show summary:

The history of exploration and establishment of new lands, science and technologies has always entailed risk to the health and lives of the explorers. Yet, when it comes to exploring and developing the high frontier of space, the harshest frontier ever, the highest value is apparently not the accomplishment of those goals, but of minimizing, if not eliminating, the possibility of injury or death of the humans carrying them out.

To talk about the need for accepting risk in the name of discovery – whether during Magellan’s voyage in which 90 percent of the crew died or in the colonization of Mars – is aerospace engineer and science writer Rand Simberg, author of Safe Is Not An Option: Overcoming The Futile Obsession With Getting Everyone Back Alive That Is Killing Our Expansion Into Space.

For decades since the end of Apollo, human spaceflight has been very expensive and relatively rare (about 500 people total, with a death rate of about 4%), largely because of this risk aversion on the part of the federal government and culture. From the Space Shuttle, to the International Space Station, the new commercial crew program to deliver astronauts to it, and the regulatory approach for commercial spaceflight providers, our attitude toward safety has been fundamentally irrational, expensive and even dangerous, while generating minimal accomplishment for maximal cost.

Rand explains why this means that we must regulate passenger safety in the new commercial spaceflight industry with a lighter hand than many might instinctively prefer, that NASA must more carefully evaluate rewards from a planned mission to rationally determine how much should be spent to avoid the loss of participants, and that Congress must stop insisting that safety is the highest priority, for such insistence is an eloquent testament to how unimportant they and the nation consider the opening of this new frontier.

Definitely worth a listen, especially considering our society’s panic over COVID. Our society appears incapable of accepting any risk at all, even though risk cannot be avoided, and to do great things you must embrace it in some manner.

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Hubble operations contract extended to 2026, even as engineers work to fix it

3:10 pm

NASA announced today that it has extended the contract for operating the Hubble Space Telescope through 2026, even as it also provided an update on the effort of engineers to bring all the telescope’s science instruments out of safe mode.

[T]he agency has awarded a sole source contract extension to the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) in Washington for continued Hubble science operations support at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, which AURA operates for NASA. The award extends Hubble’s science mission through June 30, 2026, and increases the value of the existing contract by about $215 million (for a total of about $2.4 billion).

…Currently, the spacecraft team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is investigating an issue involving missed synchronization messages that caused Hubble to suspend science observations Oct. 25. One of the instruments, the Advanced Camera for Surveys, resumed science observations Nov. 7, and continues to function as expected. All other instruments remain in safe mode.

During the week of Nov. 8, the Hubble team identified near-term changes that could be made to how the instruments monitor and respond to missed synchronization messages, as well as to how the payload computer monitors the instruments. This would allow science operations to continue even if several missed messages occur. The team has also continued analyzing the instrument flight software to verify that all possible solutions would be safe for the instruments.

In the next week, the team will begin to determine the order to recover the remaining instruments. The team expects it will take several weeks to complete the changes for the first instrument.

It appears that it is going to take some time to bring all the instruments back in line, considering that they are fixing the instruments one-by-one, in sequence, and that the first fix is taking weeks. Hopefully as they get each instrument back they will be able to move faster once they know what works.

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Russia confirms and defends anti-satellite test

1:33 pm

Russia today confirmed that it had done the anti-satellite missile test earlier this week that destroyed one of its defunct satellites and produced a cloud of space junk.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence also issued a Russian-language statement defending the test. The minister-general of the army, Sergei Shoigu, said that the test was successful and that “the resulting fragments do not pose any threat to space activities,” according to a machine-generated translation to English.

The U.S. State Department said Monday that the test created a cloud of space debris made up of over 15,000 objects, calling it a threat to astronauts and cosmonauts, and space activities of all countries. The debris could pose a threat for years to come, experts have said. The space station’s crew had to shelter in their return ships on Monday when the debris cloud was first detected.

Russia’s space agency Roscosmos wrote on Twitter Monday that the space debris cloud “has moved away from the ISS orbit”, which is roughly 250 miles (400 km) above Earth. The space debris tracker LeoLabs estimates the debris cloud is at 273 to 323 miles (440 to 520 km) in altitude. However, “the station is in the green zone,” Roscosmos added.

The Russian claim that the debris at present poses no threat to ISS could very well be true. The trouble is that it appeared to have posed a threat initially, and will likely be a problem in the future. As a signatory of the Outer Space Treaty, Russia was required to avoid such a situation, and chose not to.

The article at the link notes similar tests by China (2007), the U.S. (2008), and India (2019). Of all these anti-satellite tests, only the U.S. targeted a satellite in an orbit so low that the debris posed no threat to operating satellites or manned spacecraft, and was also quickly pulled Earthward to burn up in the atmosphere. India chose a higher satellite whose debris posed less threat, but took longer to burn up and was initially of some concern.

China and Russia could have done the same thing. They did not, and their irresponsibility has badly worsened a problem that already was considered a serious concern.

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Today’s blacklisted American: HS student sues after being punished for saying there are only two genders

11:12 am

No free speech allowed at Exeter High School in New Hampshire.
No free speech allowed at Exeter High School in New Hampshire.
Photo: Austin Blake Grant

They’re coming for you next: A freshman student from Exeter High School in New Hampshire is suing his school district and assistant principal for suspending him from one football game because he had stated his Catholic belief that there are only two genders in a text message exchange with another student.

The boy’s name is at this point being withheld, with the lawsuit being handled by his attorney, Ian Huyett of Cornerstone Action, a Christian advocacy group focused on New Hampshire issues.

The lawsuit alleges the student received a one-game suspension in September in violation of his constitutional right to free speech and the New Hampshire Bill of Rights because he expressed what the suit called his Catholic belief there are “only two genders,” male and female.
» Read more

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FAA targets finalizing Starship environmental report by end of year

3:56 pm

The FAA today announced that it hopes to complete the permit process for SpaceX’s Starship operations at Boca Chica by the end of this year.

If you go to the link you will see a table that shows the agency’s overall plan. The table also suggests that extensions in the permitting process are also possible, though it appears the FAA is working now to avoid this.

I say excellent. I also say I will believe it when I see it. I want the FAA to show me my skepticism of this bureaucratic process is not justified. I want it to prove to me that there is no politics working in the background to slow the process.

Remember, after six months of work the FAA’s draft reassessment approved SpaceX’s Starship operations. To now delay or reject that approval will require a some heavy outside pressure, since the majority of the comments received by the the FAA during the comment period were favorable to the project.

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Russian anti-sat test creates 1500 more pieces of space junk

3:40 pm

In what appears to be a test of Russia’s anti-satellite system dubbed Nudol, a defunct Russia satellite has been blasted into approximately 1,500 pieces by a missile launched from Russia.

Under normal circumstances, Kosmos 1408 would not have approached the International Space Station closely enough to pose a threat, however following the breakup, thousands of individual pieces of debris will have scattered into their own orbits. At least 1,500 pieces of debris from the satellite have already been identified by the United States Space Command. However, many smaller objects will have been generated, which will take much longer to identify. With high relative velocities, even a tiny fragment can cause significant damage should it collide with another spacecraft.

Owing to concerns about the debris cloud, the crew aboard the ISS were instructed to close hatches between the space station’s modules and take shelter aboard the Dragon and Soyuz capsules docked to the station.

According to the story at the link, ISS will cut through the expected debris cloud every orbit.

It is amazing that Russia would perform such a test on a satellite with an orbit that close to ISS’s, especially since there are many pieces of abandoned space junk in lower orbits so that their debris clouds would pose little problem, especially because their orbits would decay quickly.

This test is comparable to the Chinese anti-sat test in 2007, which caused a larger debris cloud that still poses a threat to ISS and other working satellites.

According to the Outer Space Treaty, a nation must control the objects it puts in space so that they pose no risk to others. Both the Russian and Chinese anti-sat tests prove these nations have no respect for the treaties they sign.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Texan denied COVID healthcare because he is white

1:34 pm

Racist criteria for medical treatment at MacArthur
Whites go to the back of the bus at MacArthur Medical Center

At the MacArthur Medical Center in Irving, Texas a white man was denied COVID monoclonal antibody treatments for the single reason that he happened to be white.

We know this is true because the individual, Harrison Hill Smith, posted a video of his experience, available at the link. Here is a transcript:

“So I’m not going to be able to get it today because I don’t qualify? What if I smoke or vape? What if I were black and Hispanic. Then I’d be able to qualify?” the white man, presumably Harrison Hill Smith, asks the healthcare worker in the video.

“Yup,” the healthcare worker, who’s black, replies.

“I’m being denied medical service because of my race?” Smith then asks again just to confirm.

“That’s the criteria,” the worker indifferently responds.

It also appears that the Texas Department of Health approves this discriminatory policy.
» Read more

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NASA IG: Artemis manned lunar landing will likely not happen in ’25

11:01 am

IG's estimate of SLS's per launch cost

According to a new NASA inspector general report released today [pdf], because of numerous technical, budgetary, and management issues, the planned Artemis manned lunar landing now set for 2025 is likely to be delayed several years beyond that date. From the report’s summary:

NASA’s three initial Artemis missions, designed to culminate in a crewed lunar landing, face varying degrees of technical difficulties and delays heightened by the COVID-19 pandemic and weather events that will push launch schedules from months to years past the Agency’s current goals. With Artemis I mission elements now being integrated and tested at Kennedy Space Center, we estimate NASA will be ready to launch by summer 2022 rather than November 2021 as planned. Although Artemis II is scheduled to launch in late 2023, we project that it will be delayed until at least mid-2024 due to the mission’s reuse of Orion components from Artemis I. … Given the time needed to develop and fully test [SpaceX’s Starship lunar lander] and new spacesuits, we project NASA will exceed its current timetable for landing humans on the Moon in late 2024 by several years. [emphasis mine]

Gosh, it sure didn’t long for my prediction from last week — that the new target date of ’25 was garbage — to come true.

Today’s report also states that it does not expect the first test launch of SLS to occur in February ’22, as NASA presently predicts, but later, in the summer of ’22. It then notes that the next SLS launch, meant to be the first manned launch of SLS and Orion and presently scheduled for late ’23, will almost certainly be delayed to mid-’24. And that’s assuming all goes well on the first unmanned test flight.

While the report lauds SpaceX’s fast development pace, it also does not have strong confidence in SpaceX’s ability to get its Starship lunar lander ready on time, and believes that NASA could see its completion occurring from three to four years later than planned.

The report also confirms an August 2021 inspector general report about NASA’s failed program to develop lunar spacesuits, stating that its delays make a ’24 lunar landing impossible.

The report states that Gateway is well behind schedule, and will likely not be operational until ’26, at the earliest. While the present plan for that first manned lunar landing does not require Gateway, Gateway’s delays and cost overruns impact the overall program.

Finally, the report firmly states that the per launch cost of SLS is $4.1 billion, a price that will make any robust lunar exploration program utterly unsustainable.

Before the arrival of Trump, NASA’s original plan for SLS and Gateway called for a manned lunar landing in 2028. The Trump administration attempted to push NASA to get it done by ’24. This inspector general report suggests to me that this push effort was largely wasted, that NASA’s Artemis program will likely continue to have repeated delays, announced piecemeal in small chunks. This has been the public relations strategy of NASA throughout its entire SLS program. They announce a target date and then slowly over time delay it in small amounts to hide the fact that the real delay is many years.

Expect this same pattern with the manned lunar landing mission. They announce a delay of one year from ’24 to ’25. After a year they will then announce another delay to ’26. A year later another delay to ’27. And so forth.

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Today’s blacklisted Americans: Parents threatened with doxxing by school board for criticizing the board’s mask policies

11:25 am

Owned by government
That’s apparently what the Scottsdale school board thinks.

They’re coming for you next: Parents who have publicly objected to the mask mandate policies of a Scottsdale, Arizona school board have discovered that at least two members of the school board, Jann-Michael Greenburg and Zachary Lindsay, had compiled or had access to a Google drive folder containing personal information of the parents, including social security numbers, financial information, pictures of themselves and their children.

The information as complied clearly suggested the board members were going to use it to harass and harm the parents.

Parents have since dubbed the Google Drive an “online dossier.” The folders housed within the dossier are labeled “SUSD Wackos,” “Press Conference Psychos,” and “Anti Mask Lunatics,” among others. Included under “Press Conference Psychos” was a video that shows parents calmly holding signs that read “CRT is Racist” and “SUSD We Demand Transparency.”

The dossier takes specific aim at the concerned parent group “Community Advocacy Network” (CAN). Administrators and founders of CAN’s active Facebook page have folders dedicated to screenshots of their Facebook comments, pictures of them with their husbands, and in some cases financial records.

Much of the information was apparently gathered by Greenburg’s father, who is documented to have videotaped the parents repeatedly, sometimes hiding his identity. He also has a track record of harassment.
» Read more

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South Korean lawmaker proposes his country build a reusable rocket

9:35 am

The new colonial movement: Following a meeting with high space officials, a South Korean lawmaker announced yesterday that his country is now planning the design and construction of a reusable rocket.

“Starting next year, the development of a high-performance reusable rocket with liquid-fueled 100-ton thrust engines will begin,” said Rep. Cho Seung-rae of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, who represents the committee. “Having such a liquid-fueled high-performance rocket engine is necessary [for South Korea] to successfully fulfill the missions of launching a [robotic] lunar lander by 2030 and building the Korea Positioning System by 2035 on its own.”

Cho said the envisioned engine will be “capable of controlling its thrust with four consecutive reburns,” a function which he said would “significantly slash launch cost.” The lawmaker said the government will carry out two-year preliminary research on the issue, with the budget of 12 billion won ($10.2 million) in hand.

South Korea has yet to successfully launch its own homebuilt Nuri rocket, with the first test flight failing less than a month ago.

In addition, this announcement was a surprise, as the budget request for ’22, made in September, had not included it. It appears that this lawmaker and those high space officials teamed up to propose it. We shall see if it gets into the final budget.

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Scientists: Asteroid in an orbit entwined with the Earth might be Moon rock

11:45 am

Data obtained by scientists using ground-based telescopes now suggests that the small asteroid Kamo`oalewa, which has an orbit that makes it a quasi-Moon of the Earth, might have originally come from the Moon.

From their paper’s abstract:

We find that (469219) Kamoʻoalewa rotates with a period of 28.3 (+1.8/−1.3) minutes and displays a reddened reflectance spectrum from 0.4–2.2 microns. This spectrum is indicative of a silicate-based composition, but with reddening beyond what is typically seen amongst asteroids in the inner solar system. We compare the spectrum to those of several material analogs and conclude that the best match is with lunar-like silicates. This interpretation implies extensive space weathering and raises the prospect that Kamo’oalewa could comprise lunar material.

Kam’oalewa — which is only about 150 feet across — is one of five such quasi-Earth-moons. All orbit the Sun in orbits that are similar to the Earth’s and are such that the asteroids periodically loop around our planet each year.

This data will be useful to the Chinese, who are planning a mission to Kamo-oalewa in ’24 to grab samples.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Professor forced to undergo mental examination because students didn’t like exam question

11:31 am

1966 in communist China
Mao’s 1966 cultural revolution comes to the
University of Illinois-Chicago

Persecution is now cool! Law professor Jason Kilborn at the University of Illinois-Chicago was suspended by his university and forced to undergo a mental examination plus drug tests essentially because some unnamed students objected to an exam question that referenced racial slurs and that Kilborn had been using in his tests for a decade.

Kilborn told Campus Reform that his classes “were cancelled for the entire semester on the very first day of class. He said he also had to undergo “an agonizing several-week period of ‘administrative leave,’” during which he was “barred from campus and prevented from participating in normal faculty communications and activities, including my elected position on the university promotion and tenure committee.”

Kilborn said he was compelled to submit to three hours of mental examination and a drug test by university doctors and a social worker, broken into two segments spanning the course of a week.

The exam question that caused the furor appears to have been part of a program focused on teaching law students how to determine the factual basis for any legal action, as Kilborn explains here,
» Read more

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ISS to maneuver around space junk leftover from Chinese anti-satellite test

8:41 am

Russian engineers will today fire engines on a Progress freighter docked to ISS to guarantee that a piece of debris left over from a 2007 Chinese military anti-satellite test does not hit the station.

The object the space station will dodge is called 35114 in NASA’s catalog of space objects, and is also identified at 1999-025DKS, a piece of debris from a Chinese anti-satellite weapons test in 2007. Originally part of a Chinese weather satellite, the debris resulted from an in-orbit missile test performed by China. As part of that test, a kinetic-energy, suborbital missile was fired at a defunct Chinese weather satellite called Fengyun-1C (which stopped working in 2002), obliterating it into thousands of pieces.

The destroyed satellite was originally in a much higher orbit, but atmospheric drag has pulled the debris closer to Earth over the years and ultimately into the flight path of the space station. The two objects’ closest approach is estimated to occur on Nov. 12, according to Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at Harvard who tracks and catalogs objects in space. McDowell tweeted on Tuesday that his calculations show that this will be the 29th space station debris avoidance maneuver, and the third related to the 2007 Chinese anti-satellite test.

The maneuver will take place prior to the arrival of Endurance, carrying four astronauts.

While the anti-sat test initially produced about 3,500 pieces of debris, that number has dropped in the past fourteen years to about 2,700 pieces as the orbits of these objects slowly decay. The test was also another example of China’s willingness to break the Outer Space Treaty. As a signatory China is required to control every object it puts into orbit in order to prevent collisions. Instead, it performed a military test that created debris in the thousands, in orbits that threaten ISS.

We shall get another demonstration of China’s contempt for treaties in the next few months, when it launches two more large modules to its space station and the large core stage of the rocket comes crashing down somewhere on Earth, out of control.

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Today’s blacklisted American: UCLA threatens to expell remote student for not revealing his COVID shot status

11:49 am

Dictatorial clowns are running UCLA
Dictatorial clowns are running UCLA.

They’re coming for you next: Christian Walker, an online student who never comes on campus was threatened with expulsion by UCLA if he did not reveal whether he had gotten his COVID shots or not.

“You are calling to tell me you will drop my classes after we’ve already paid $70,000 for the year if I don’t upload something about my vaccine status when all of my classes are online,” Walker is heard saying in his video. A UCLA official responded, “Correct.” “Got it.” responded Walker.

“All of my classes are online. I don’t step onto campus. I’ve already paid. We’re a week into classes. My university just called to tell me they are dropping my classes if I don’t report to them about my vaccination.” Walker commented on Twitter.

You can listen to Walker’s recording of this conversation at the link.
» Read more

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Viewing tonight’s Endurance launch with four astronauts

9:25 am

NASA has published an updated schedule for the launch tonight of four astronauts to ISS in SpaceX’s new Endurance Dragon capsule.

The launch now is targeted for no earlier than 9:03 p.m. EST Wednesday, Nov. 10, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The launch follows a successful return of the agency’s SpaceX Crew-2 mission.

The Crew Dragon Endurance is scheduled to dock to the space station at 7:10 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 11. Launch and docking coverage will air live on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website.

You can also watch it on SpaceX’s website, as well as the embedded live stream below, which begins around 4 pm (Eastern).

This will be the fourth manned flight SpaceX has launched for NASA, the fifth overall using three spacecraft.
» Read more

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NASA admits manned lunar landing can’t happen before ’25

3:37 pm

NASA administrator Bill Nelson admitted today that the goal of landing Americans back on the Moon by 2024 was impossible, and that the agency has now delayed that target date one year to 2025.

Nelson attempted to blame the delay on Blue Origin’s lawsuit against NASA for its award of the manned lunar lander contract to SpaceX.

He blamed the shifting timeline on a lawsuit over the agency’s moon lander, to be built by SpaceX, and delays with NASA’s Orion capsule, which is to fly astronauts to lunar orbit. “We’ve lost nearly seven months in litigation, and that likely has pushed the first human landing likely to no earlier than 2025,” Mr. Nelson said, adding that NASA will need to have more detailed discussions with SpaceX to set a more specific timeline.

This however is a bald-faced lie. The Trump 2024 deadline was never realistic. Moreover, delays in SLS and Orion have been continuous and ongoing for years, all of which made a ’24 landing quite difficult and if attempted extremely unsafe. Even as it is, trying this mission by ’25 is risky, especially if it depends on SLS. Moreover, as the article notes, how SLS, Orion, and SpaceX’s Starship will team up to get this mission — designed by a committee — to and from the Moon remains exceedingly unclear.

With great confidence I predict that if the lunar mission depends on SLS in any manner, it will not launch in ’25 either.

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Today’s blacklisted Americans: Hiring white men a sin at major investment firm

11:27 am

Discriminated against in Seattle
Eagerly discriminated against at
State Street Global Advisors

“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” Not only has the investment firm State Street Global Advisor, one of the largest in the world, decided that white men must be considered last in any hiring decision, the company has installed a race- and sex-based apartheid system designed to favor those groups in all matters.

The company aims to triple the number of Black, Asian and other minority staff in senior positions by 2023, the Sunday Times reported. If executives don’t meet the target, they will face lowered bonuses.

Recruiters will now have to establish panels of four or five employees, including a woman and a person with a minority background, when hiring middle management staff. The firm will still hire white men, [said Jess McNicholas, the bank’s head of inclusion, diversity and corporate citizenship in London,] but recruiters are required to show that women and minority applicants were interviewed by the panels.

The company is pledging to “hold ourselves accountable for strengthening black and Latinx owned businesses.”

The comments to this policy at the link are astonishing in their almost uniform hostility to this discriminatory policy. This is a typical comment:
» Read more

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Japan’s Epsilon rocket launches nine smallsats

9:07 am

Japan today successfully launched nine small satellites into orbit using its smallsat Epsilon rocket.

The article at the link provides a detailed description of all the satellites, which are either testing new technology or were built by college students for educational purposes, including a satellite built by Vietnamese engineers.

Epsilon itself has only flown five times since its first launch in 2013, which suggests its price is high and thus it does not attract many customers.

This was Japan’s second launch in 2021, which means it does not make the leader board. The leaders in the 2021 launch race remains as follows:

41 China
23 SpaceX
18 Russia
4 Northrop Grumman
4 ULA
4 Europe (Arianespace)

China still leads the U.S. 41 to 36 in the national rankings.

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Today’s blacklisted Americans: If you are unvaxxed you are banned from hospital care in Colorado

10:55 am

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

Blacklists are back and the Democrats have got ’em: It appears it wasn’t enough to ban one woman in Colorado from receiving a desperately needed kidney transplant because she and her donor had not gotten their COVID shots. Now, Jared Polis, the Democratic Party governor of Colorado, has told all hospitals in the state to ban everyone from getting treatment if they refuse to get the experimental drugs being touted, falsely, as vaccines against COVID.

Polis’ order reportedly gives health care professionals the authority to prioritize crisis care under the direction of the state health department. “If you are unvaccinated, a regular trip to the grocery store, a night out to dinner are more dangerous than they have been at any point during this pandemic,” Polis said, according to NBC News. “The delta variant is brutally effective at seeking out the unvaccinated, like a laser-guided missile.”

“While the state has a nearly 80 percent partial vaccination rate, unvaccinated people with severe Covid-19 are overwhelming hospitals, many of which reported being over 90 percent capacity,” said Scott Bookman, Covid-19 incident commander for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

The language of this executive order makes it clear that it authorizes discrimination against those who are not vaccinated for COVID-19.

Polis’ order was likely issued in response to the kidney transplant story in order to give the state’s hospitals some political cover as they ramp up their discrimination against those who refuse to get the experimental COVID shots.

Some news reports suggest that this order really only applies to elective treatments, but that does not appear to be the case. The actual order states:
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Crew on China’s space station complete first spacewalk

9:17 am

The crew on China’s Tianhe space station have successfully completed their first spacewalk, with two astronauts spending 6.5 hours on the exterior of the station, testing their new spacesuits, the station’s robot arm, and the overall equipment used during such outside activities.

Zhai Zhigang was doing his second spacewalk, the first in thirteen years. Wang Yaping was doing her first, which made her the first Chinese woman to walk in space. This was her second space mission, the first in 2013 when she was the second Chinese woman fly in space.

The third crew member, Ye Guangfu, stayed on aboard the station to coordinate activities with the crew outside.

The crew is expected to do one to two more spacewalks during the rest of their six month mission. During that time two more large modules will be launched to the station.

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China begins in-orbit test of what it claims is a “space debris mitigation” satellite

9:43 am

The Space Force has now detected a second object flying next to a recently launched Chinese satellite that China claims will do an in-orbit test of a “space debris mitigation” system.

On Nov. 3 U.S. Space Force’s 18th Space Control Squadron (SPCS) catalogued a new object alongside Shijian-21 with the international designator 2021-094C. The object is noted as a rocket body and more precisely an apogee kick motor (AKM), used in some launches for a satellite to circularize and lower the inclination of its transfer orbit and enter geostationary orbit.

Apogee kick motors usually perform a final maneuver after satellite separation so as to not pose a threat to active satellites through risk of collision. However both Shijian-21 and the SJ-21 AKM are side by side in geostationary orbit.

The close proximity of the two objects strongly suggests Chinese engineers plan to use the satellite in some manner to capture the AKM in order to de-orbit it.

While China is likely testing methods for capturing and removing space debris, using this AKM, it could also be testing military technologies, such the ability to snatch working satellites it does not own from orbit. The lack of transparency can only make everyone suspicious.

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China’s Long March 2D rocket launches three earth observation satellites

9:02 am

China today used its Long March 2D rocket to launch three more earth observation satellites, which could be for civilian or military use.

No word also on whether the first stage carried any grid fins or parachutes to control its return to Earth, or whether it crashed near habitable areas.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

41 China
23 SpaceX
18 Russia
4 Northrop Grumman
4 ULA
4 Europe (Arianespace)

China now leads the U.S. 41 to 36 in the national rankings.

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China launches Landsat-type satellite using Long March 6

2:04 pm

China today successfully placed a Landsat-type satellite into a sun-synchronous orbit, using its Long March 6 rocket. From the link:

The Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center sits at an altitude of approximately 1,500 meters (4,920 feet) above sea level, its dry climate making it an ideal launch site for the Chinese space program. Unlike the Kennedy Space Center or the Guyana Space Centre, however, Taiyuan is located inland rather than on China’s eastern coast. This means spent rocket stages can crash-land near populated regions depending on the rocket’s flight trajectory.

Some recent flights of [Long March] rockets have featured parachutes and even grid fins mounted on the first stage boosters, presumably in an attempt to mitigate any collateral damage caused by falling debris. Friday’s launch did not see this type of hardware in place.

No word yet on where the first stage booster landed, or if it landed near habitable areas.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

40 China
23 SpaceX
18 Russia
4 Northrop Grumman
4 ULA
4 Europe (Arianespace)

China now leads the U.S. 40 to 36 in the national rankings. Its forty successful launches so far this year is the most by a single nation since Russia completed 49 in 1994.

This was also the 100th successful launch this year. Based on the number of planned launches presently scheduled,, that number could easily rise to more than 125, the most since the early 1980s.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Rutgers bars student from remote classes because he had not gotten COVID shots

11:57 am

Clowns in charge at Rutgers
Clowns in charge at Rutgers

They’re coming for you next: Logan Hollar, a student at Rutgers University, was blocked by the college from his university email account as well as attending remote classes because he refuses to get any of the COVID-19 shots that the school is now requiring.

Logan Hollar, 22, told NJ.com he largely ignored the school’s coronavirus mandate “because all my classes were remote” from his Sandyston home, a distance of some 70 miles from the university’s principle campus in New Brunswick.

But he was locked out of his Rutgers email and related accounts when he went to pay his tuition at the end of last month — and was told he needed to be vaccinated even though he has no plans to attend in person, according to the report. “I’ll probably have to transfer to a different university,” Hollar told NJ.com, revealing at least one other student to his knowledge is in the same position.

“I find it concerning for the vaccine to be pushed by the university rather than my doctor,” he told the outlet. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted sentence is the bottom line. » Read more

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NASA runs out of money for building second SLS mobile launcher

9:37 am

SLS's two mobile launchers, costing $1 billion
NASA’s bloated SLS mobile launchers

NASA has had to halt construction of the second mobile launcher platform for its SLS rocket because the agency has run out of money.

Overall, NASA spent almost a billion dollars on the first launcher (to be used only three times), and now has budgeted almost a half billion dollars for the second.

That’s about $1.4 billion, and apparently it is not enough.

The second Mobile Launcher (ML-2) has a cost estimate of $450 million. However, like ML-1, that cost is likely to rise over time based on the challenges involving ML-1, which ranged from being overweight to suffering from a slight lean. Both of these issues have since been resolved via engineering solutions. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words illustrate more NASA incompetence. The first platform was designed and built badly, being too heavy for its purposes while also improperly tilting sideways The agency had to spend a lot of money and time fixing these problems.

Meanwhile, SpaceX moves its Starship spaceship and Superheavy booster about in Boca Chica using simple truck movers that probably cost the company no more than a million dollars each, if that. And they became operational quickly, and are now in use.

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