Tag: politics

Saudi Arabia signs Artemis Accords

10:31 am

According to an announcement yesterday by NASA administrator Bill Nelson, Saudi Arabia has now become the twenty-first nation to sign the Artemis Accords, joining the growing American alliance to explore the solar system.

The full list of signatories so far: Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, France, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, and the United States.

The accords were introduced by the Trump administration and are bi-lateral agreements between each nation and the United States. Their language is designed to protect property rights in space, and thus get around the limitations of the Outer Space Treaty. By signing up as many nations as possible, the accords are also creating this new American space alliance, which will be competing against the Chinese-Russian axis that opposes the accords.

Right now Germany and India remain the only major players in space who have not aligned themselves with either side. I expect Germany to eventually sign. India however appears to want to remain non-aligned.

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Rogozin removed as Roscosmos’ head

8:52 am

Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s Roscosmos space corporation which controls the country’s entire aerospace industry, was fired yesterday and replaced by another former deputy prime minister, Yuri Borisov.

Don’t think Rogozin is out of favor with Putin however. Instead, it appears Putin wants his bull-headedness for running one of the regions Russia has conquered in the eastern Ukraine.

Following its tumultuous tenure as the head of Roskosmos, Rogozin was expected to move to the presidential administration and, possibly, lead it or “curate” the Russian occupation of the Eastern Ukraine, the independent Meduza publication reported.

I wonder if Rogozin’s removal is connected in any way with the ongoing negotiations between NASA and Russia’s foreign ministry for the barter agreement to allow the two to fly each other’s astronauts on each other’s capsules.

That agreement has been in negotiations and reviews for months by the two agencies as well as the U.S. State Department and Russian Foreign Ministry. NASA has long advocated for the agreement to enable what it calls “mixed crews” or “integrated crews” on spacecraft. That would ensure at least one NASA astronaut and one Roscosmos cosmonaut would be on the station should either Soyuz or commercial crew vehicles be unavailable for an extended period.

Rogozin’s bellicose manner has I think made those negotiations difficult. Putin might have decided, especially with the break up of its space partnership with Europe, to tone things down. Moreover, he might have realized that Rogozin’s contentious manner might be better put trying to take control of occupied Ukrainian territory.

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Falcon 9 launches cargo Dragon to ISS

5:56 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX tonight successfully used its Falcon 9 rocket to launch a Dragon freighter to ISS, with docking expected on July 16 at 11:20 am (Eastern).

The first stage landed successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic, completing its fifth flight. The cargo Dragon is flying its third flight to the station.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

30 SpaceX
22 China
9 Russia
5 Rocket Lab
4 ULA

The U.S. now leads China 43 to 22 in the national rankings, and the entire globe combined 43 to 38.

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Today’s blacklisted American: University of California discriminates against everyone but American Indians

11:22 am

Academia: dedicated to segregation!
University of California: dedicated to the new segregation!

“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” The University of California has now joined with the University of Arizona in deciding that American Indians should be afforded special favored treatment above all other races and will therefore no longer have to pay tuition.

From the announcement letter [pdf], signed by the university’s president, Michael Drake:

Starting in Fall 2022, the University will ensure in-state systemwide Tuition and Student Services Fees are fully covered for California residents who are members of federally recognized Native American, American Indian, and Alaska Native tribes. This plan will be funded through a combination of existing State and University financial aid programs as well as other resources.

…The University of California is committed to recognizing and acknowledging historical wrongs endured by Native Americans. I am proud of the efforts the University has made to support the Native American community, including the creation of the UC Native American Opportunity Plan, and appreciate our conversations to date on all the ways in which we can better support Native American students. I am hopeful that this new program will benefit our students and continue to position the University of new program will benefit our students and continue to position the University of California as the institution of choice for Native American students. [emphasis mine]

For giving favored treatment to this special race of people, Drake has most generously decided that everyone else must pay for it:
» Read more

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New Hawaiian law takes control of Mauna Kea away from astronomers

9:01 am

A newly passed Hawaiian law has taken the management of the top of Mauna Kea away from the University of Hawaii and given it to a new community authority which will include many of the activists who have blocked the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT).

The new Maunakea authority will include Native Hawaiians in decisions about how the mountain is managed, with an emphasis on mutual stewardship and protecting Maunakea for generations to come. The authority will have 11 voting members, one of whom must be an active practitioner of Native Hawaiian cultural traditions, and one of whom must be a descendant of a cultural practitioner who is associated with Maunakea. There are also spots for representatives drawn from astronomy, education, land management, politics and other fields.

“I’m very hopeful for the new entity,” says Noe Noe Wong-Wilson, a Native Hawaiian elder who has helped to lead road blocks on the mountain. “It is beyond my imagination of where we would be at this time, because we have fought so long to be heard.”

The University of Hawaii has managed most of the lands around the Maunakea summit since 1968, when the state granted it a 65-year lease to operate a scientific reserve focused on astronomy. Maunakea has ideal skies for astronomical observation, given its 4,200-metre height and its stable and dark night skies. The university now has to transfer all of its management duties, including a complex set of subleases, permits and other agreements, to the new authority by 1 July 2028. [emphasis mine]

From the beginning of the protesters against TMT I made several predictions, all of which are now coming true.

  • This is a power play by some activist protesters for money and power. The new law gives them that.
  • The Democratic Party that controls Hawaii utterly supports the protesters, and was working behind the scenes to aid them. The new law proves that.
  • TMT will never be built. This new law makes that prediction almost certain.
  • The real goal of the protesters will be the eventual shut down of all astronomy on Mauna Kea. This new law is the first step in that process.

Forget about TMT. It is dead, as are any new telescopes or upgrades on Mauna Kea. Sometime around 2028, when this new authority takes over, we shall begin to see demands for the removal of telescopes.

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How the localized nature of Democrat vote tampering will influence the 2022 election

3:47 pm

Based on the ample evidence of election fraud, corruption, and vote tampering done repeatedly by Democrats nationwide during the 2020 election, we can expect these politicians and their minions to commit similar election crimes in the upcoming 2022 mid-term elections, especially because the effort by some Republicans to reform their state election systems in the key purple states was so effectively blocked by Democrats, by many quisling Republicans, and by a willing leftist press.

It is however important to understand where that election tampering was done in 2020 in order to understand the election fraud to come, as well as creating a strategy to prevent it. As real estate agents like to say, “Location is everything!”, and it appears this applies to election fraud as well.

Summary slide outlining Powell voter fraud allegations
The 2020 fraud in Democratically-controlled Fulton County (Atlanta), Georgia.

In 2020, in states that were purple and where the final result was in doubt, the Democrats took advantage of their total control of the local urban voting districts in those states — where there are very few Republican voters — to tilt the results. In such places (Philadelphia, New York, Atlanta, Detroit, Phoenix) the government is essentially a one-party Democrat operation. Many election districts in these cities have no Republican election judges at all. If the Democrats wish to commit election fraud, there is no one looking over their shoulder to question them, with some districts actually taking aggressive action in 2020 to illegally keep Republican poll watchers out.

Thus we saw strong evidence in all of these cities of pro-Democrat ballot-stuffing, of all types, from fake ballots to ballots counted multiple times to evidence the votes on the ballots themselves were changed by computer. The fraud however was strongly localized to these urban centers controlled by Democrats. The vote tampering was able to tilt the statewide results. but not the local contests.

For example, Democrat mayors in Wisconsin teamed up to have drop boxes placed illegally in unsupervised locations, where Democratic Party mules could stuff them with thousands of harvested ballots. The Wisconsin Supreme Court finally ruled on July 8, 2022 that these boxes were illegal, and violated the plain language of the state’s election laws:
» Read more

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Pushback: Doctor blacklisted by Twitter for citing peer-reviewed research threatens lawsuit

12:05 pm

Twitter's ban of Bostom's tweet

UPDATE: One day after this post was published, Twitter reinstated Bostom’s account, admitting he broke no rules. As Bostom noted in response, ““Twitter’s arbitrary COVID-19 Lysenkoism must cease, permanently.”

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Doctor and researcher Andrew Bostom, who was blacklisted by Twitter in June simply because he cited a peer-reviewed research paper that suggested the COVID shots impaired semen production, has now retained the same lawyer who successfully forced Twitter to reinstate Alex Berenson’s account after he had been similarly blackballed.

The banned tweet and Twitter’s account suspension are shown in the screen capture to the right. As Bostom notes at the first link above:

The tweet in question contained data from a recent peer reviewed publication in the journal Andrology, with the eponymous title, “Covid-19 vaccination BNT162b2 temporarily impairs semen concentration and total motile count among semen donors”.

The Journal Andrology is highly respected and published through a joint effort of American and European scientific associations, The study was a straightforward, serial analysis of young male Israeli semen donors evaluating the potential impact of Pfizer’s covid-19 mRNA vaccine on their sperm concentration (count), and related functional measures.

Berenson had been banned by Twitter for a similar tweet that summarized these obvious and now well documented facts about the COVID shots:

“It doesn’t stop infection. Or transmission,” he wrote. “Don’t think of it as a vaccine. Think of it – at best – as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS.”

After more than a year, Berenson’s Twitter account was finally reinstated, with Twitter admitting that he had said nothing wrong and should not have been banned. The details of the settlement are under seal, so we do not know if Berenson also received monetary damages from Twitter.

The lawyer who represented him is now representing Bostom in an almost identical case. Bostom’s account shouldn’t simply be reinstated. Twitter should suffer some financial penalty for the improper banning, since it acted to limit the public distribution of his work, and likely caused him some financial loss.

Bostom is not only pushing back against Twitter’s blackballing. He has also exposing Brown University’s effort to hide the negative health effects of its COVID shot mandate on its students. According to Bostom’s research:
» Read more

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Ariane-6 mock-up installed at launchpad for tests

9:28 am

The European Space Agency yesterday announced that it has installed an Ariane-6 full scale mock-up at its launchpad in French Guiana in preparation for tank and launch procedure tests.

The Ariane 6 combined tests model is highly representative of the flight model. It consists of the core stage and the upper stage, which make up the central core, as well as three pylons shaped like the rocket’s solid boosters and a fully representative but inert mockup of the fourth booster.

The Ariane 6 combined tests model central core was precisely mated in the purpose-built launcher assembly building, where this task is carried out horizontally. Automated guidance vehicles then brought the assembled core to the launch and, working with the crane at the mobile gantry, raised it to its vertical position.

The date of the actual first launch has not been announced, though ESA has officially admitted that it will not occur this year as hoped.

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Roscosmos forbids its astronauts from using Europe’s robot arm

9:19 am

In response to the final decision this week by the European Space Agency to officially end its cooperation with Russia on its ExoMars mission, Roscosmos today forbid its astronauts from using Europe’s new robot arm that was recently installed on the Russian Nauka module of ISS.

Russia’s crew onboard the International Space Station (ISS) will stop using the European ERA manipulator arm in response to the European Space Agency’s (ESA) refusal from cooperation on the ExoMars project, CEO of Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin said on Tuesday.

“In my turn, I instruct our ISS crew to stop using the European Robotic Arm (ERA). Let [ESA Director General Josef] Aschbacher along with his boss [EU foreign policy chief Josep] Borrell fly to space and do at least something useful in their entire lives,” he wrote on his Telegram channel.

The arm was designed to work on the Russian part of ISS, so it appears this decision by Rogozin is an example of someone cutting off his nose to spite his face. It essentially reduces Russia’s capabilities on the station.

As for ExoMars, it is unclear what will happen to the lander that Russia built to put Europe’s Franklin rover on Mars. Roscosmos has said it might proceed with its own mission to Mars, using that lander, but it has not made the full commitment to do so.

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OneWeb agrees with SpaceX: Dish’s ground-based plans a frequency threat

9:01 am

Capitalism in space: In a filing with the FCC, OneWeb has come out in full agreement with its competitor SpaceX, stating that Dish’s proposal to use the 12 GHz wavelength would threaten its satellite communications.

In a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, OneWeb urged the regulator to reject a request from satellite broadcaster Dish Network and spectrum holder RS Access to run two-way mobile services in the band. If approved, “it would leave significant areas of the United States unusable by the otherwise ubiquitous NGSO [fixed satellite service] user terminals,” wrote Kimberly Baum, OneWeb’s vice president of spectrum engineering and strategy.

To connect user terminals, the SpaceX-owned Starlink and OneWeb megaconstellations use a satellite downlink band that extends from 10.7 GHz to 12.7 GHz. The analysis from OneWeb is the latest in a string of studies assessing how a high-power mobile network in the 12.2-12.7 GHz band would impact NGSO services.

Though the FCC has not yet made a final decision, it has already rejected Dish network’s request to block SpaceX’s use with Starlink of these wavelengths.

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Rocket Lab & ESA complete launches

8:40 am

Very early today from New Zealand Rocket Lab successfully launched the first of two quickly scheduled launches for the National Reconnaissance Office, designed to demonstrate its ability to achieve fast scheduling and rapid turnaround. The second launch is targeting July 22, 2022, only ten days later.

Also today the European Space Agency (ESA) successfully completed the first launch of its new upgraded Vega-C rocket, putting its prime payload (a passive test satellite) plus six cubesats into orbit. Though ESA says it will eventually hand over operations to Arianespace, its commercial arm, the rocket itself is mostly built by the Italian company Avio. Also, the rocket’s solid rocket first stage will be used as an optional side booster on the Ariane-6 rocket ArianeGroup is building for ESA.

Though ESA launched Vega-C, as it will eventually be managed by Arianespace I include it in that company’s total, which is now three launches for 2022.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

29 SpaceX
22 China
9 Russia
5 Rocket Lab
4 ULA

American private enterprise. now leads China 42 to 22 in the national rankings, and the entire globe 42 to 38.

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China launches another communications satellite for its space program

1:01 pm

Using its Long March 3B rocket, China today launched the third satellite in the second generation of communication satellites used by its space program.

All told China now has seven satellites in this constellation, giving it a great deal of redundancy.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

29 SpaceX
22 China
9 Russia
4 Rocket Lab
4 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 41 to 22 in the national rankings, and the entire world 41 to 37.

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