Russian/Ukrainian Zenit rocket puts Angola’s first satellite into orbit

A Ukrainian Zenit rocket with a Russian Fregat upper stage successfully launched Angola’s first communications satellite into orbit today. [Update: While the rocket succeeded, it appears there is a problem with the satellite, which Russia built for Angola. Engineers have lost contact with it.]

The launch occurred earlier today, but it took nine hours for the Fregat upper stage to complete several engine burns and maneuvers to place the satellite in the correct orbit. Considering that it was a Fregat upper stage that caused the launch failure of a Soyuz rocket last month, it seemed wise to wait for these maneuvers to complete successfully before announcing this launch a success.

That Russia and Ukraine worked together to make this happen is quite amazing, considering that the two countries are essentially still fighting a war against each other. It also indicates, as noted by this article, that the future of Zenit and the Ukrainian rocket industy might not be dead.

Angosat 1 was originally supposed to blast off on a Zenit rocket from Sea Launch’s commercial ocean-going platform in the Pacific Ocean. But Sea Launch flight operations ceased in 2014, and Russian officials considered launching Angosat 1 on the heavy-lift Angara 5 rocket before deciding last year to put the satellite on a fully-assembled Zenit booster already in storage at the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

At the time of the last Zenit launch in December 2015, there were no more missions on the Ukrainian-made rocket’s manifest, leaving the Zenit program’s future in question.

But with the switch of Angosat 1’s launch to a Zenit rocket, and the purchase of Sea Launch infrastructure mothballed in Long Beach, California, by a commercial Russian airline company, there are plans for the resumption of Zenit missions in the future. The new Sea Launch company, called S7 Sea Launch, ordered a dozen new Zenit launch vehicles from Yuzhmash in April for ocean-based missions and flights staged from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Another Zenit rocket is slated to launch a long-delayed Ukrainian telecom satellite from the Baikonur Cosmodrome next year.

This launch also probably closes out the launch schedule for 2018, with the standings as follows:

29 United States (including all companies)
20 Russia
18 SpaceX
17 China

Russia, China, and SpaceX have all indicated that they are aiming for a launch rate of about 30 launches per year. If that happens in 2018, we could see the most rocket launches next year since the late 1980s.

Academic fascism in 2017

Rather than publish another weekly update on the fascist culture that presently dominates many American campuses, I thought I would look back on the year and compile a list of all the colleges I reported where acts of oppression or the silencing of free speech were carried out by the administration, facility, or student body.

There were many ways I could have compiled this list. In the end, I decided to list the colleges alphabetically by state, and then sort the states into three groups, based on how those states voted in the past two presidential elections. States that voted Democratic or Republican both times are grouped together as either Democratic- or Republican-dominated. States that flipped from one party to the other (all flipping Republican, by the way) were listed as battleground states. If a college had more than oppressive incident during the year the number of incidents is indicated in parenthesis.

Because the list is so long, I have placed it, as well my analysis of it, below the fold. Before you read on, make sure you scan down take a look at the list of colleges itself.
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India aims to double launches in 2018

The new colonial movement: The head of India’s space agency ISRO said in a newspaper interview today that the agency hopes to more than double the number of launches it completes in 2018, increasing the number to between 10 to 12 launches from the four successful launches in 2017.

“We are targeting 10 to 12 launches next year. The communication satellite GSAT-6A and Chandrayaan-2 mission will be launched by GSLV-Mk-II rockets. The second mission of GSLV-Mk-III rocket with a communication satellite and the launch of navigation satellite also will take place next year”, Kiran Kumar explained.

The much-awaited Chandrayaan-2 mission could be launched in the second quarter of 2018. “The moon lander is ready for the mission and undergoing tests. The flight hardware is getting assembled and going through tests. We are targeting the second quarter of the next year for the launch”, the top scientist said.

The two GSLV launches are critical, as this larger rocket is needed for India to really compete in the international market.

Trump administration finally takes over Justice and FBI

Four stories at the end of this week, all apparently timed to hit the press over the weekend and thus be less noticeable, all indicate that the Trump administration, specifically Attorney General Jeff Sessions and FBI Director Christopher Wray, might finally be taking control respectively of the Justice Department and the FBI from the Democratic partisan hold-overs from the Obama administration, who for all intents and purposes have apparently been running those agencies during Trump’s first year in office.

The first story is significant in that the lawyer reassigned, James Baker, was also the lawyer used by Andrew McCabe for his defense during his eight hours of stone-walling during a closed-door House hearing this week about his part in the Mueller Russian collusion investigation, and is also a good friend to fired FBI director James Comey. The Trump administration has now removed this lawyer from the game.

The middle two stories indicate that the Trump administration is not going to let Obama and Clinton off the hook for their own apparent collusion with both the Russians and terrorists. (An update: It behooves every American to read the full and very detailed Politico report about the Obama administration’s effort to shut down any investigations of Hezbollah’s drug operation in order to get the Iran deal signed. I finally got around to reading it carefully, and found it to be quite damning, both for Obama and for everyone in his administration. And remember, this is coming from a media source that has generally been favorable to Democrats.)

The last story involves what appears increasingly to be a terrible abuse of power by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Justice Department in its prosecution of the Bundy family following their stand-off with federal officials, a prosecution that has now resulted in a mistrial because the Justice Department improperly withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense.

That it took this long for the Trump administration to make these moves strongly illustrates how fragile our hold on democracy presently is. Trump was duly elected. By law, he is in charge, and has the right to fire anyone in the executive branch, as well as set policy there. Yet, he and his appointed cabinet officials have apparently felt they needed to tiptoe carefully during the first year of their administration, as if the people that Obama appointed and the policies he established were still in control.

Even now, I am unsure that these actions will put the Trump administration truly in charge of the administrative state. There is ample evidence in both the Uranium One deal and Iran deal that the Obama administration committed acts that at the least should destroy political careers, and at the most might even send some people to prison. Unless one of those scenarios actually happens, however, Trump will have done little to rein in the administration state. They will continue to act as if they can do whatever they want, defying elected officials, with impunity, because it will be apparent that there are no consequences for such actions.

Russia to launch luxury hotel room module to ISS?

Capitalism in space: Roscosmos is considering a plan to launch a hotel module to ISS where it could house tourists for profit.

According to a detailed proposal seen by Popular Mechanics, the 20-ton, 15.5-meter-long module would provide 92 cubic meters of pressurized space. It would accommodate four sleeping quarters sized around two cubic meters each and two “hygiene and medical” stations of the same volume. Each private room would also have a porthole with a diameter of 228 millimeters (9 inches), while the lounge area of the module would have a giant 426-millimeter (16-inch) window.

The external structure of the tourist module looks like the Science and Power Module, NEM-1, which Russia is currently building for the International Space Station. The second NEM module had originally been on the books in the station’s assembly scenario, but the Russian government funded only one module. It will serve primarily as a science laboratory and a power-supply station for the ISS.

Now, Russia’s prime space station contractor, RKK Energia, came up with a scheme to pay for the second NEM module through a mix of private and state investments. To make profit, the NEM-2 would be customized for paid visitors.

Makes sense to me. Russia doesn’t really have the money right now to fund a big deep space exploration program. Better they aim for profits in space, as that will keep them in the black and provide them the capital they presently lack.

Benjamin Shapiro – Theme from Schindler’s List

An evening pause: Performed live in 1996, when Shapiro was twelve years old. Note that this is that Ben Shapiro, the orthodox Jew and well-known conservative columnist whom leftists ignorantly love to call a Jew-hater and white supremacist. How they come to that conclusion can only be because they are willfully ignorant or so filled with hate and their ideology that they can’t look at reality with any honesty.

I think, during this holiday season, it is wise to also reflect on humanity’s tragic failures, one of the worst of which was the Holocaust during World War II.

Hat tip Jim Mallamace.

This week in fascist academia

Time for another depressing update on the fascist and childish culture that unfortunately seems to presently dominate the college campuses of modern America. (To read my earlier updates, posted almost weekly since October, go here.)

To begin, below are some stories illustrating the fascist and intolerant nature of many college administrations:

In every case above, we either have the college administrations taking actions to suppress speech they did not like, or college facility announcing to the world that they haven’t the faintest understanding of freedom of speech or its fundamental basis for the establishment of western civilization.

The last story describes a recent Columbia Journalism Review report about how a number of universities have become very hostile to working journalists, and have even taken actions to have journalists arrested. The universities mentioned including the University of Colorado-Boulder, Keene State College, and two New York state colleges, Bronx Community College and Kingsborough Community College.

However, as I have noted in earlier updates, the fascist culture at academia is unfortunately not limited to the administrators and teachers. Many students advocate intolerance as well.
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China’s 2017 year in review

Link here. The review summarizes every significant achievement and failure that occurred in the Chinese space industry in the past year. Unfortunately, it provides no further information of the cause of the launch failure of Long March 5 in July, nor when that rocket, China’s biggest, will resume launches.

The article also summarizes China’s long term plans as released earlier in the year. This quote struck me as most interesting:

The main contractor for the Chinese space programme, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), set out a space transportation roadmap in November. These targets include flying the low-cost Long March 8 by 2020, development of a reusable space plane by 2025, and super heavy-lift launch vehicle, referred to as the Long March 9, to make its maiden flight by 2030.

2035 is the target for full reusability for its launch vehicles, while 2040 is marked for developing next-gen launch vehicles capable of multiple interplanetary round-trips, exploiting space resources as well as a nuclear-powered space shuttle.

I don’t know if China will achieve these goals, but I do know that it intends to try, and that this effort guarantees that the 21st century will be the century where what I call the new colonial movement will take flight, with many nations on Earth pushing and succeeding in the establishment of viable bases on other worlds.

A weaponized and partisan Justice Department and FBI

On many of today’s complicated political stories, I tend to hang back and avoid posting my thoughts about them when the stories initially break. Often I do so because the story itself is either unreliable or simply trivial, and time is needed to find this out. Often I wait because I want more information to confirm my initial conclusions. Sometimes I wait because I consider the story merely a Republican partisan attack that is not strong on the merits and will fade with time.

Though I have previously posted my impression that Robert Mueller investigation into Russian-Trump collusion during the campaign is nothing more than a Democratic Party witch hunt against the Trump administration, I have recently held back noting recent stories because I wanted to compile them to see if they really did fit this pattern. Below are those stories, all of which have appeared in the past two weeks. They strongly prove that Mueller’s investigation is exactly what I first surmised.

These stories all confirm a July story that was headlined: Here’s a Look at Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 15 Attorneys: A Who’s Who of Liberal Activism. Of those 15 attorneys, four have now been proven to be part of the Democratic Party partisan machine. Furthermore, evidence has been found that the FBI agent directly involved with both the Clinton and Trump investigations, Peter Strzok, moved to change the Clinton investigation conclusions to exonerate her, despite the evidence, while he was also repeatedly expressing strong partisan and anti-Trump opinions to one of those 15 attorneys.

One anti-Trump text by FBI agent Strzok is especially disturbing. In responding to a statement by Special Counsel Liz Page that she thought there was no way Trump could win, Strzok wrote the following:
» Read more

Local Florida officials battle over $8 million grant to Blue Origin

Local county officials in Florida are involved in a court fight over the decision by the county to borrow $8 million in order to pay a grant to Blue Origin for locating its factory there.

Brevard County commissioners narrowly approved a plan that would allow the county to borrow money to pay for an $8 million economic incentive to rocket manufacturer Blue Origin. The vote was 3-2, with Chair Rita Prichett and Commissioners Jim Barfield and Curt Smith supporting the proposal. Vice Chair Kristine Isnardi and Commissioner John Tobia voted against the plan.

Brevard County Clerk of Courts Scott Ellis told commissioners he plans to go to court to challenge the legality of the county borrowing money to pay for the grant to Blue Origin.

Isnardi is quoted in the article as saying “I don’t think it’s a great policy to give $8 million to a billionaire.” The opposition to this grant also questions the legality of borrowing money to pay it.

Algeria’s space agency reveals its plans for the next two decades

The new colonial movement: With the successful launch by China of its first geosynchronous satellite (mostly built by China as well), the Algerian space agency has revealed its preliminary plans through 2040.

Algeria plans to send several state-of-the-art satellites as part of its space programme 2020-2040, which is “under study now,” the director general of the Algerian Space Agency, Azzedine Oussedik, said on December 18, 2017, in Algiers.

A national space programme, which includes plans for the launch of many cutting-edge satellites, is under consideration at the Algerian Space Agency, Oussedik told a news conference about the successful launch, on December 11, 2017, of the Algerian space communication satellite Alcomsat-1 from the Chinese launch site at Xichang.

He added that the new programme will be put into operation after the completion of the current national space programme 2006-2020, under which five satellites have been successfully launched, the latest of which is Alcomsat-1.

There really isn’t much of an Algerian space program. China built this first satellite, and I suspect that most of the remaining four satellites planned under the current program will be built by foreign companies also. Essentially, this announcement is Oussedik is pushing for government funds to sustain his office into the future. It might serve Algeria to have its own satellites, but from my perspective this is not how to do it.

ArianeGroup to begin production of first Ariane 6 rocket

Capitalism in space: Having completed a new review of the design of its new Ariane 6 rocket, ArianeGroup and ESA have decided to begin production for a planned launch in 2020.

I continue to wonder how they expect this expendable rocket to compete for launch business with both SpaceX and Blue Origin flying reusables by 2020. At best, I see the member states of the European Space Agency saddled with the requirement to use this more expensive rocket, which will seriously handicap them in the competition to settle the solar system.

XCOR bankruptcy revelations

XCOR’s bankruptcy has revealed how far the company was from actually building and flying its Lynx suborbital spacecraft.

In original financial filings, XCOR reported having $1,424.66 in cash.

No value was given to the Lynx MK1, a spaceplane in development that would take off and land horizontally. Between $15 million and $20 million would be required to finish the Lynx, according to documents. An estimated $25 million to $30 million was invested.

It is hard to say whether XCOR was a scam, or a good idea that simply never could get the investment capital to fly. In the end, however, it essentially turned out to be both. According the article, local government agencies in both Florida and Texas have lost millions from investments they made in the company in the hope it would produce jobs in their communities.

Soyuz launches new crew to ISS

The Russians today launched a new crew to ISS using their Soyuz rocket.

Since the capsule only has to fly to ISS in low Earth orbit, it did not use the Fregat upper stage that failed in another recent Soyuz launch.

This launch probably clinches Russia’s lead over SpaceX for the most successful launches in 2017. At the same time, the U.S. overall will still win handily, with its most total launches in this century.

28 United States
19 Russia
17 SpaceX
15 China

I will be publishing a complete table of the launches with analysis, as I did last year, once the year is complete.

The Trump administration’s space policy, according to Scott Pace

Scott Pace, the executive secretary of the National Space Council, outlined at a symposium earlier this week the overall space policy of the Trump administration.

The United States should seek to ensure that its space activities reflect “our values and not just our technologies,” Pace urged. “We should seek to ensure that our space activities reflect those values: democracy, liberty, free enterprise, and respect for domestic and international law in a peaceful international order.”

To influence the development and utilization of space, the United States needs to “create attractive projects and frameworks in which other nations choose to align themselves and their space activities with us, as opposed to others.”

He went on to outline several very general concepts that they are using to shape this policy. He also praised the Outer Space Treaty, and was challenged about this by another symposium participant.

Pace was challenged on the last point by University of Mississippi space law professor emerita Joanne Gabrynowicz. She agreed that the concept that space is the common heritage of all mankind has not been accepted internationally. Pursuant to the Outer Space Treaty, however, it is the “province of all mankind” and that language is based on the principle of res communis, she asserted. Pace held his ground, saying he takes advice from the State Department’s Office of Legal Adviser which has concluded that it is not. Asked later what framework he does use, Pace replied that international law can be created by the pen or by practice and ultimately is whatever sovereign nations decide to do with each other. He added that involving the international private sector is also important because it brings in best practices that can be turned into guidelines.

In other words, Pace is going along with the general Washington culture that is afraid to push for a significant change in the Outer Space Treaty, and is instead saying that property rights can still be established by other agreements within international law and individual national negotiations.

As I have been saying for years, this is bad policy. Without a right to establish sovereignty and borders in space, there will be no mechanism for nations and individuals to function legally, which is only going to cause conflict while discouraging investment and development.

Nonetheless, the position taken by Pace and the general culture in Washington is par for the course. I have very seen few good policy decisions coming out of Washington in the past three decades, especially when it comes to space. This is only another example.

India to build a smallsat rocket

Capitalism in space: India’s space agency ISRO has announced that it developing a smallsat rocket expressly designed to launch cubesats and thus compete with the new smallsat rocket companies now about to become operational.

ISRO has been very successful in providing a launch platform for smallsats on its PSLV rocket, but in this case the smallsats fly as secondary payloads, dependent on the needs of the larger primary satellite. It appears that the space agency has realized that their market share in this area is now threatened by the small rockets being developed by Rocket Lab and Vector, and is therefore moving to compete.

This announcement also provides more evidence that the space industry is splitting between smaller unmanned payloads and larger manned payloads. I predict that in ten years most unmanned satellites launched to circle the Earth will be tiny and launched on tiny rockets, while simultaneously we will see a new generation of giant rockets putting manned spacecraft into orbit and beyond.

Arizona’s Court of Appeals sides with Pima County on space balloon deal

Arizona’s second highest court has agreed with Pima County and approved a deal the county made, without competitive bidding, with the space balloon company World View.

In a unanimous ruling, the three-judge panel acknowledged the purpose of competitive bids is to ensure that the county — and, by extension, the taxpayers — gets the most money for the property. But Judge Peter Eckerstrom, writing for the court, said that does not apply when the real goal is not immediate income but longer-term economic development.

The Goldwater Institute, which brought the suit that claimed that the deal violated the state constitution because the lease was signed without competitive bidding, has said it will appeal to Arizona’s Supreme Court.

More than 1,000 sign up to compete for four UAE astronaut positions

The new colonial movement: More than 1,000 people have signed up to compete for four United Arab Emirate (UAE) positions as astronauts.

Those chosen will undergo three years of training in order to prepare them for a trip to ISS. The article does not say how the UAE will get them there, but I suspect at some point the country will sign a contract with either Russia, Boeing, SpaceX, or China for a seat on one of their manned capsules.

New exoplanet makes eight in rival solar system

comparing solar systems

Worlds without end: Astronomers using Kepler data mined by computers have discovered an eighth planet in another solar system, making that system somewhat comparable to our own.

The newly discovered Kepler-90i — a sizzling hot, rocky planet orbiting its star once every 14.4 days — was found using computers that “learned” to find planets in data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope. Kepler finds distant planets beyond the solar system, or exoplanets, by detecting the minuscule change in brightness when a planet transits (crosses in front of) a star.

Vanderburg, a NASA Sagan fellow at UT Austin, and Shallue, a Google machine learning researcher, teamed up to train a computer to learn how to identify signs of an exoplanet in the light readings from distant stars recorded by Kepler. Similar to the way neurons connect in the human brain, this “neural network” sifted through the Kepler data to identify the weak transit signals from a previously missed eighth planet orbiting Kepler-90, a sun-like star 2,545 light-years from Earth in the constellation Draco. “For the first time since our solar system planets were discovered thousands of years ago, we know for sure that our solar system is not the sole record holder for the most planets,” Vanderburg said.

The image to the right compares the planet sizes between this solar system and ours. It does not show that, for this distant star, all eight planets have orbits closer to the star than the Earth, and would therefore be very unlikely to harbor life.

One more thing: This story is very cool, but it also is another one of those NASA press releases that the agency PR department overhyped beforehand, even allowing some reporters to think that it might involve the discovery of life beyond Earth. Not surprisingly, several news sources and radio shows asked me to talk about it. To their disappointment I said I’d rather wait, since NASA has overhyped more than a few stories like this in recent years. Once again, my instincts were right. This story has nothing to do with alien life, and though interesting, is actually not that big a deal.

This week in fascist academia

The childish nature of modern American culture often gets me very depressed. Sadly, this depression is worsened by the fascist and intolerant culture that dominates much of America academia and that I have been noting with regular weekly reports since October. If our intellectual community acts like jack-booted thugs how can we expect our overall culture to be mature and civilized?

Anyway, here are a few more stories from the past week that unfortunately intensify my depression and the lack of enthusiasm I presently have for posting anything related to culture or politics. It all seems to be a cesspool, and horribly the academic community appears to relish the idea of swimming in it.

First, some stories indicating the close-mindedness and intolerance of the teaching community:

The second story is especially disturbing. The professor, Donna Riley, is head of the School of Engineering Education at Purdue. This is what she advocates for her school’s engineering program:

She claims that rigor can “reinforce gender, race, and class hierarchies in engineering, and maintain invisibility of queer, disabled, low-income, and other marginalized engineering students,” adding that “decades of ethnographic research document a climate of microaggressions and cultures of whiteness and masculinity in engineering.” She evens contends that “scientific knowledge itself is gendered, raced, and colonizing,” asserting that in the field of engineering, there is an “inherent masculinist, white, and global North bias…all under a guise of neutrality.”

To fight this, Riley calls for engineering programs to “do away with” the notion of academic rigor completely, saying, “This is not about reinventing rigor for everyone, it is about doing away with the concept altogether so we can welcome other ways of knowing. Other ways of being. It is about criticality and reflexivity.”

So, would you want to fly on a rocket built by engineers taught at Purdue, under this professor’s program?

Next we have stories that show that the intolerance is definitely not confined to the teachers, that the students are becoming as intolerant and as fascist.
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Sea Launch will assemble rockets in U.S.

Capitalism in space: S7, the Russian company that now owns Sea Launch, announced today that it plans to assemble its rockets in United States.

This means the dock for the floating launch platform will remain in California. The article also indicates that S7 will continue to use Ukrainian Zenit rockets, which the platform was designed for, despite the desire of the Russian government to cut off all dependence on Ukrainian technology. There is also this tidbit:

The S7 company, which is about to resume the Sea Launch program, has enough clients, S7 Group co-owner and chair of the board of directors Natalia Filyova told the press. “We have [launch] orders, there is a long line [of clients], and we offer a good price. We are expecting revenue, but this will not happen right away. We will be investing heavily but we realize that we will make money,” Filyova said.

No details of the clients or the launch schedule were announced, however, so I remain skeptical. Meanwhile, Roscosmos announced today that it is negotiating with Boeing for future space tourism flights. This second story is directly related to Sea Launch, but you would only know this if you read Behind the Black. To pay off Boeing, which used to be a half partner in Sea Launch and was owed $320 million by the Russians, Roscosmos gave Boeing an unspecified number of seats on future Soyuz capsules to sell to others. Two of those seats were sold to NASA.

These new negotiations probably are an effort to arrange further sales for Boeing to help it get its money back. Boeing’s lawsuit for that money has placed a lien on the Sea Launch platform, and until its concerns are satisfied, S7 really can’t begin operations.

Trump signs new space policy directive, making Moon 1st priority again

Yawn. President Trump today signed a new space policy directive that makes the Moon the U.S.’s first exploration priority again.

“The directive I am signing today will refocus America’s space program on human exploration and discovery,” said President Trump. “It marks a first step in returning American astronauts to the Moon for the first time since 1972, for long-term exploration and use. This time, we will not only plant our flag and leave our footprints — we will establish a foundation for an eventual mission to Mars, and perhaps someday, to many worlds beyond.”

As I wrote above, yawn. Same old same old. In 2004 Bush declared we will go to the Moon. In 2010 Obama declared we will go to an asteroid. In 2017 Trump declares we will go to the Moon.

In all those years, where have we actually gone? Nowhere. The government’s effort during all that time to build a rocket and a manned spacecraft to do any of this stuff has come up completely empty. Neither will carry humans into space for at least another five years, if not longer.

The only thing these empty promises have accomplished is to waste a god-awful amount of taxpayer money, now about $33 billion, with appropriations likely to increase that to more that $43 billion before that first manned SLS/Orion flight.

I predict that this government promise will come up empty as well, at least in the manner the government and NASA is trying to sell it. It won’t be the government rocket and capsule that will get us back to the Moon, but a host of new private companies, making profits and doing things efficiently and fast, that will get us there. And I am firmly confident that they will do it before the government even gets off the ground.

Lawsuit reveals two customers for Soyuz circumlunar tourist flight

Capitalism in space: A lawsuit against Space Adventures, the company that has previously organized tourist trips to ISS using Russian rockets, has finally revealed the names of the two individuals who had purchased tickets for a circumlunar flight around the Moon using a modified Soyuz capsule.

The details are included in a lawsuit now winding its way through U.S. District Court in Virginia. Harald McPike, a wealth Austrian investor and adventurer who resides in the Bahamas, has sued Space Adventures, its chairman and CEO Eric Anderson, and its president Thomas Shelley seeking to recover the $7 million down payment he put down on the flight in March 2013.

The other lunar tourist? The lawsuit says Space Adventures told McPike that it was Anousheh Ansari, who flew to the International Space Station (ISS) as a tourist in 2006 on a Soyuz in a deal the company brokered with the Russians. Ansari’s family also sponsored the $10 million Ansari X Prize won by Burt Rutan’s SpaceShipOne in 2004.

The dispute centers on McPike’s realization, after paying $7 million of the $30 million down payment, that Space Adventures probably could not deliver on its promises, mostly because of a Russian reluctance to sent tourists on such a mission. He wants his money back, and Space Adventures doesn’t want to return it.

While several modified Soyuz capsules, called Zond, were sent around the Moon during the 1960s, that was a very long time ago. Configuring the modern Soyuz for such a manned mission would require a lot of work, and I suspect the Russians didn’t want to do it without money up front. Moreover, I’m not even sure that the $300 million from the two tourists would have been sufficient.

Update on Russia’s troubled Sea Launch

Link here. It appears that the launch platform faces numerous additional obstacles before it can become operational again, including complex political maneuvering withing Russia and with Ukraine.

Yuzhmash officials [in Ukraine] gave their Russian counterparts at the S7 Group a list of components which are no longer available for the Zenit [rocket]. One of the most important items on the list is the ignition systems produced in the Lugansk region which has been taken over by pro-Russian rebels and remains practically cut off from the rest of Ukraine. The igniters burning black powder are used to initiate small solid-propellant motors which generate reverse thrust to facilitate the safe separation of the first and second stages during the ascent of the Zenit rocket to orbit.

According to industry sources, the S7 company has been so far unable to secure the delivery of Russian equivalents of the necessary hardware and materials, probably due to lack of permissions from Moscow. Instead, the S7 Group asked KB Yuzhnoe to organize the production of missing components in Ukraine. However, in the case of black powder, launching its production in Ukraine would not make economic sense due to lack of other applications beyond the very small amount required for the ignition systems, one source said.

Some observers question whether the S7 company has a real motivation to see the Sea Launch venture through because the airline with no prior experience in the space launch business ended up with the Sea Launch assets in its lap likely under pressure from the Kremlin. [emphasis mine]

S7 has also proposed using the Sea Launch platform to launch Russia’s next generation unmanned freighter, but this faces numerous technical issues. Regardless, the highlighted sentence above indicates how much the Russian government and the top-down Russian approach to everything interferes with efficient operations. It suggests that S7 didn’t buy into Sea Launch because it thought it could make money on it, but because of political pressure. Such pressure does not produce effective and profitable companies.

Leftist prosecutors spied on conservatives, defied court orders

The law is such an inconvenient thing: Newly released documents in connection with the leftwing Democratic Party political “John Doe” witchhunt in Wisconsin against conservatives have revealed that the prosecutors not only used their power to obtain private and inappropriate information about their political opponents, they continued to do so even after the courts had repeatedly ordered them to cease and desist.

A Wisconsin Attorney General report on the year-long investigation into leaks of sealed John Doe court documents to a liberal British publication in September 2016 finds a rogue agency of partisan bureaucrats bent on a mission “to bring down the (Gov. Scott) Walker campaign and the Governor himself.” The AG report, released Wednesday, details an expanded John Doe probe into a “broad range of Wisconsin Republicans,” a “John Doe III,” according to Attorney General Brad Schimel, that widened the scope of the so-called John Doe II investigation into dozens of right-of-center groups and scores of conservatives. Republican lawmakers, conservative talk show hosts, a former employee from the MacIver Institute, average citizens, even churches, were secretly monitored by the dark John Doe. State Department of Justice investigators found hundreds of thousands of John Doe documents in the possession of the GAB long after they were ordered to be turned over to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

The Government Accountability Board [GAB], the state’s former “nonpartisan” speech cop, proved to be more partisan than originally suspected, the state Department of Justice report found. For reasons that “perhaps may never be fully explained,” GAB held onto thousands of private emails from Wisconsin conservatives in several folders on their servers marked “Opposition Research.” The report’s findings validate what conservatives have long contended was nothing more than a witch-hunt into limited government groups and the governor who was turning conservative ideas into public policy.

No charges can be filed because the hard drive that held the most damning evidence has mysteriously vanished.

And in an all-too familiar occurrence involving allegations of government abuse, a key hard drive believed to contain the court-sealed John Doe documents leaked to The Guardian in October 2016 has suspiciously disappeared – GAB officials with knowledge of the hard drive can’t seem to explain what happened to it. Still, despite a damning report laying out myriad examples of criminal misconduct by government bureaucrats, Schimel, a Republican, says his Department of Justice cannot file criminal charges – chiefly because of disappearing evidence, less-than-cooperative John Doe agents and the “systemic and pervasive mishandling of John Doe evidence (that) likely resulted in circumstances allowing the Guardian leak in the first place.” Such failures prevent prosecutors from proving criminal liability beyond a reasonable doubt, the attorney general wrote, although the report points to a small universe of GAB employees that had access to the leaked documents. They also seemed to have a political ax to grind.

Essentially, this corrupt political operation and abuse of power by leftists in Wisconsin appears to have been a dress rehearsal for the political witch hunt now being engineered in Washington by the FBI and political hack and Democratic operative Robert Mueller.

More delays expected for launch of Webb telescope

NASA’s chief scientist admitted during House hearings this week that there will possibly be further delays in the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, now set for the 2nd quarter of 2019.

“At this moment in time, with the information that I have, I believe it’s achievable,” he said of the current launch window of March to June 2019, which NASA announced in September after delaying the launch from October 2018. However, he said an independent review “is exactly what we should be doing, and frankly I have directed the team to do just that in January.”

That review won’t start until January, he said, because of ongoing tests of unfolding the sunshade of the space telescope. Previous tests, he said, took much longer than anticipated, playing a key factor in the decision to delay the launch. An updated launch date, he said, would likely come in “January or February.”

Such an independent review was proposed earlier in the hearing by another witness, retired aerospace executive Thomas Young. “In my opinion, the launch date and required funding cannot be determined until a new plan is thoroughly developed and verified by independent review,” he said.

While it does make perfect sense to make sure everything is really really really ready before launch, that this telescope is already 8 years behind schedule and yet might still need more delays suggests that the whole project was managed badly, from start to finish.

The hearing also dealt with the cost increases NASA is experiencing for WFIRST. As is usual, it sounds like NASA’s buy-in approach there has worked, and that Congress will fork up the extra cash to keep that project alive, until it experiences further delays and more cost increases, when Congress will fork up even more money. Then, wash and repeat. The WFIRST budget is already up from about $3.5 billion to more than $4 billion. I predict before it is done it will have cost around $8-$10 billion, and not launch until the late 2020s, at the earliest.

“Mueller’s anti-Trump investigation is effectively dead.”

Link here. The article details the legal reasons why it will be difficult if not impossible for Special Counsel (and partisan Democratic Party hack) Robert Mueller to bring further criminal charges against anyone in the Trump administration.

Under federal law, a prosecutor is required “to disclose exculpatory and impeachment information to criminal defendants and to seek a just result in every case.” Specifically, pursuant to Giglio v. United States, prosecutors are obligated to provide defendants with impeachment evidence, which includes, according to the DOJ’s guidelines, evidence of a witness’s biases, “[a]nimosity toward defendant,” or “[a]nimosity toward a group of which the defendant is a member or with which the defendant is affiliated.”

As a result, in any prosecution brought by Mueller against a Republican target, defense counsel would be entitled under the Constitution to all evidence in the government’s possession relevant to exploring the apparent biases of FBI agent Peter Strzok and his animosity toward Trump and the Republican Party. This, in and of itself, could be a case-killer because it is very unlikely that Mueller or the DOJ would want defense counsel poring through all the records and documents, emails, and texts in the DOJ’s and Strzok’s possession revealing the agent’s biases since this could fatally undermine any other cases or investigations the agent has worked on—such as the FBI’s decision to recommend charging General Flynn with lying to federal agents even though Hillary Clinton’s besties, Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin, were given a free pass despite apparently doing the same thing.

Significantly, the fatal damage done to Mueller’s anti-Trump investigation does not only rest in the fact that defense counsel will be able to conduct an unlubricated prostate examination on the FBI’s key agent at trial. Instead, the real reason why Mueller will not risk a criminal trial is the lasting damage that would be done to the FBI’s reputation by having Strzok’s baggage brought into the daylight.

To expose the agent’s biases, defense counsel would have the opportunity to cross-examine the agent and his apparent mistress, an FBI lawyer who also worked on Mueller’s investigation and the Clinton email probe, about their exchanged messages showing support for Clinton and hostility to Trump. Additionally, the agent’s wife, a high-profile attorney at another federal agency, apparently was a member of several pro-Obama and pro-Clinton Facebook groups and is a follower of a Facebook page called “We Voted for Hillary.”

One can only imagine the fun that an aggressive defense attorney would have shredding Strzok’s credibility by grilling him to see if he shared his wife’s posted political views. [emphasis in original]

To anyone with the slightest objectivity and common sense, this whole investigation into “Trump/Russian collusion” has been a joke, from the start. During the process however it has become increasingly clear that both the FBI and the Obama administration worked together to try to undermine the election, to spy on Obama’s political opponents for purely political purposes.

This fact, more than anything else, is probably going to kill this witch hunt. The risks to the corrupt Washington establishment that has been trying to bring Trump down has now grown too great.

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