Tag: politics

Unless Congress acts soon, the unelected administrative state will rule unopposed

1:53 pm

A dying document
A dying document

While much of the conservative press has been focusing on the illegal abuse of power by security agencies like the FBI, the CIA, and the Department of Justice, in the past week a whole slew of stories having nothing to do with election politics or Donald Trump have even more starkly illustrated the growing power of the many alphabet agencies of the federal government’s executive branch, power that is cancelling the real constitutional power of Congress — even as Congress looks on impotently.

Unlike abusive and illegal indictments of Trump, or evidence that the Justice Department and FBI are acting to protect Joe Biden and his son Hunter, however, these others stories have generally gone unnoticed, except by your intrepid reporter here at Behind the Black.

First, on July 26th we had the Space Force proposing new regulations that would allow it to literally take control over all private space assets in any declared international emergency, without any need to compensate the owners.

The Space Force’s draft framework for how commercial satellite services could be called up in times of crisis or conflict to support military missions would allow the Defense Department to deny participating companies the right to sell their wares to any other client in times of “war, major conflict, national or international emergency.” [emphasis mine]

What is the point of owning anything if the U.S. military has the power to simply steal it from you, without paying you for it, anytime any president or Congress on a whim decides to declare an international emergency? Such declarations were once rare, but now they happen routinely, with dire consequences for private citizens, as we all learned during the COVID panic.

On that same day we also learned that the FAA has refused to allow the private company Varda from bringing back to Earth a capsule it had launched to space several months ago, with the express intent to manufacture needed pharmaceuticals in weightlessness that can’t be made on Earth.
» Read more

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Voyager Space partners with Airbus to build its Starlab space station

12:00 pm

Voyager Space, one of the three companies with a contract from NASA to develop a commercial private space station, has now signed a partnership agreement with the European aerospace company Airbus to work together to build its Starlab space station.

The companies announced Aug. 2 the creation of a joint venture, also called Starlab, that will be responsible for the development and operation of the station. The joint venture builds upon an agreement announced in January where Voyager selected Airbus to provide technical support for the proposed station.

“This transatlantic venture with footprints on both sides of the ocean aligns the interests of both ourselves and Voyager and our respective space agencies,” said Jean-Marc Nasr, head of space systems at Airbus, in a statement. “Together our teams are focused on creating an unmatched space destination both technologically and as a business operation.”

Though no specifics of the deal were released, Voyager will continue to retain 51% control. It appears that Voyager’s goal with this deal is to get its foot in the door of Europe. With ESA no longer considering doing any work on the space stations of either China or Russia, it needs a place to go after ISS is retired. By signing up Airbus as a partner Voyager makes Starlab the most likely go-to station for these European companies and governments.

Isn’t private enterprise and freedom wonderful? Without even trying Europe is going to get a space station of its own, and it will do it by hiring this private consortium of American and European companies.

Hat tip to Jay, BtB’s stringer.

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Senate committee gives NASA and Commerce responsibility for removing space junk

9:10 am

The Senate Commerce committee has now okayed a bill that would require NASA to develop several space junk removal projects while giving the Commerce department the responsibility of identifying what space junk needs to be removed.

The core of the bill would direct NASA to establish an active debris removal program. That would include funding research and development activities “with the intent to close commercial capability gaps and enable potential future remediation missions for such orbital debris,” the bill states. NASA would also fund a demonstration mission for debris removal and allow it and other agencies to procure debris removal services.

The version of the ORBITS Act approved by the committee is different from the version introduced earlier this year. Among the changes is in a section that originally called on NASA to develop a prioritized list of orbital debris to remove. In the new version, that responsibility is given instead to the Commerce Department. The Commerce Department, through its Office of Space Commerce, is developing a space traffic coordination system called the Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS) that will take over civil space traffic management roles currently handled by the Defense Department. That involves taking in data from Defense Department and other sources and using it to provide warnings of potential close approaches to satellite operators.

Though unstated, this bill appears to be a direct slap at the FCC’s effort under the Biden administration to claim the power to regulate space junk, despite its lack of statutory authority to do so.

The bill is of course not yet law, as it still needs to be approved by both the House and Senate. However, some version that stops the FCC now seems very likely, as the House itself has already rejected a bill that would have approved the FCC power grab.

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Sunspot update: In July the Sun continued its high sunspot activity

5:05 pm

Today NOAA released its monthly update of its graph that tracks the number of sunspots on the Sun’s Earth-facing hemisphere. As I have done every month for the entire thirteen years I have been doing this website, I have posted that updated graph below, adding to it some extra details to provide some context.

Though the sunspot count in July was slightly less than the very high numbers in June (the highest seen in more than two decades), the decline was almost inconsequential. Except for June’s activity, the activity in July was still the highest sunspot count in a month since September 2002, when the Sun was just beginning its ramp down after its solar maximum that reached its peak in late 2001. From that time until the last two months, the Sun had been in a very prolonged quiet period, with two solar minimums that were overly long and a single solar maximum that was very weak with a extended double peak lasting almost four years.
» Read more

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Teachers, parents, and even school districts sue PA Ed Dept over Marxist guidelines

12:34 pm

Parents are rejecting this in droves
Now parents, teachers, and administrators are rejecting this mantra

In April a lawsuit against the Pennsylvania Department of Education was filed by the parents, teachers,and three different school districts in western Pennsylvania, challenging the guidelines issued by the state that would force leftist indoctrination down the throats of kids and teachers.

The Mars Area, Penn Crest, and Laurel school districts, as well as two teachers, several board members and parents, filed a lawsuit Monday trying to stop the Shapiro [Democrat] administration from implementing “culturally relevant and sustaining education,” also known as CRSE, in every school district in Pennsylvania.

Leonard Rich, the superintendent of the Laurel School District, explained to KDKA-TV why he and the district joined the lawsuit. “CSRE goes beyond and tells students what to think,” he said. “I’m more driven to tell students and encourage students on how to think.”

“The district’s objection that we are being mandated to not teach our kids how to think but what to think,” he added. “Freedom of expression is a First Amendment right.”

The Thomas More Society is representing the litigants. You can read the filed complaint here [pdf].

The new guidelines are right out of the critical race theory playbook, requiring schools and teachers to:
» Read more

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Chandrayaan-3 is now on its way to the Moon

9:11 am

Chandrayaan-3's mission profile

According to a tweet from India’s space agency, ISRO, engineers have successfully completed the trans-lunar-injection burn that has now sent its Chandrayaan-3 lunar lander/rover on its way to the Moon.

As shown in mission’s profile graphic to the right, the spacecraft spent the last two weeks in Earth orbit. repeatedly raising its orbit to reduce the amount of fuel necessary to send it to the Moon. It will now take about five days traveling to the Moon, entering its orbit on August 5th. It will then spend about two weeks lowering that orbit slowly, until it is in the proper orbit for the descent to the surface on August 23, 2023.

If all goes well, its Vikram lander will gently place the Pragyan rover in the high southern latitudes, where it will function for about two weeks, or during the daylight portion of one lunar day.

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Biden reverses late Trump decision to move Space Force headquarters

9:00 am

President Biden yesterday reversed a late Trump decision to move Space Force headquarters from Colorado to Alabama, allowing it to remain in Colorado where most of the former Air Force space operations have been.

Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado Springs has been the preferred choice of the top military space brass ever since the basing process began way back in 2018. Trump’s decision was made over their concerns that moving SPACECOM from its current home (previously the home of Air Force Space Command) would needless delay its full operational capability.

Biden, in the end, shared those concerns. “The most significant factor the President considered was the impact a move would have to operational readiness to confront space-enabled threats during a critical time in this dynamic security environment. U.S Space Command headquarters will achieve ‘full operational capability’ at Colorado Springs later this month. Maintaining the headquarters there maintains operational readiness and ensures no disruption to its mission or to its personnel,” a senior administration official told Breaking Defense in an email. “A move to Alabama, by contrast, would have forced upon that command a transition process between the mid-2020’s and the opening of the new site in the early to mid-2030’s.

Of course, politics was involved as well, with Colorado lawmakers putting great pressure on Biden to make this decision. Alabama lawmakers now say they will fight the decision, but because of the relative speed in which new headquarters can be established, their task is difficult if not impossible.

That difficulty will be reinforced by the proposal of the Senate Appropriations Committee decision to cut the Space Force’s ’24 budget by $1 billion, a 3% reduction. That proposal also has support in the House, which suggests it will become law. Though the cuts are scattered throughout the agency, it will lack the cash necessary to make the expensive shift to Alabama, a fact that will hinder any arguments for making that shift.

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Scientists increasingly put politics over uncertainty in their research papers

10:35 am

The modern scientific method
The modern scientific method

The death of uncertainty in science: According to a paper published this week in the peer-review journal Science, scientists in recent years are increasingly abandoning uncertainty in their research papers and are instead more willing to make claims of absolute certainty without hesitation or even proof.

If this trend holds across the scientific literature, it suggests a worrisome rise of unreliable, exaggerated claims, some observers say. Hedging and avoiding overconfidence “are vital to communicating what one’s data can actually say and what it merely implies,” says Melissa Wheeler, a social psychologist at the Swinburne University of Technology who was not involved in the study. “If academic writing becomes more about the rhetoric … it will become more difficult for readers to decipher what is groundbreaking and truly novel.”

The new analysis, one of the largest of its kind, examined more than 2600 research articles published from 1997 to 2021 in Science, which the team chose because it publishes articles from multiple disciplines. (Science’s news team is independent from the editorial side.) The team searched the papers for about 50 terms such as “could,” “appear to,” “approximately,” and “seem.” The frequency of these hedging words dropped from 115.8 instances per 10,000 words in 1997 to 67.42 per 10,000 words in 2021.

Those numbers represent a 40% decline, a trend that has been clear for decades, first becoming obvious in the climate field. » Read more

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India officials confirm Australian beach debris comes from an old PSLV rocket

9:12 am

Officials from India’s space agency ISRO have confirmed that the large metal cylinder that washed up on an Australian beach on July 16th came from an old PSLV rocket, which which one remains at present unknown.

“We have concluded the object located on a beach near Jurien Bay in Western Australia is most likely debris from an expended third-stage of a Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV). The PSLV is a medium-lift launch vehicle operated by ISRO,” the space agency tweeted.

A day after the object surfaced on July 16, the ISRO had confirmed to HT that the object was a part of PSLV upper stage but an old one. ISRO chairman S Somanath had said, “This is a part of PSLV upper stage but an old one. It is not from a recent mission, it must be older.” PSLV’s third stage is a solid rocket motor that provides upper stages high thrust after the atmospheric phase of launch.

If this came from an upper stage, it means it survived re-entry far better than expected, and then survived floating the the ocean for a long period. Since it does not appear as yet that the agency has determined which launch the object came from, we do not know how long.

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India’s PSLV rocket places seven satellites into orbit

6:23 pm

India today (July 30th in India) successfully used its PSLV rocket to put seven satellites into orbit, launching from its coastal Satish Dhawan spaceport. This was the first time since India panicked over COVID and shut down in 2020 that the country has managed two launches within one month.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

51 SpaceX
30 China
9 Russia
6 Rocket Lab (with a launch planned for later tonight. Live stream here— Launch aborted at T-0)
6 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 58 to 30, and the entire world combined 58 to 50, with SpaceX by itself leading the entire world (excluding American companies) 51 to 50.

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ESA successfully completes controlled re-entry of its Aeolus satellite

9:07 am

Engineers for the European Space Agency (ESA) yesterday successfully completed the controlled re-entry of its Aeolus satellite above Antarctica, where it burned up in the atmosphere.

The spacecraft would never have hit the ground had its re-entry — which would have happened anyway in just a matter of weeks — been allowed to happen in an uncontrolled manner. However, ESA decided to use the satellite to practice disposal techniques it wishes to make standard for all future satellites, especially those whose orbit keeps them in space long after their mission is finished.

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China’s Long March 2D rocket launches three satellites

2:22 pm

China yesterday successfully placed three “remote-sensing” satellites into orbit, using its Long March 2D rocket lifting off from its interior Xichang spaceport.

No word on where the rocket’s lower stages crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

50 SpaceX (with a Falcon Heavy launch scheduled for tonight. Live stream here.)
30 China
9 Russia
6 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 57 to 30, and the entire world combined 57 to 49, with SpaceX by itself leading the entire world (excluding American companies) 50 to 49.

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