Tag: politics

SES cleared by the United Kingdom to buy Intelsat

11:01 am

The long-established Luxembour satellite company SES has now gotten regulatory approval from the United Kingdom to buy another long-established satellite company, Intelsat, with the purchase price €2.8 billion.

SES’s €2.8 billion acquisition of Intelsat was cleared by the UK’s competition regulator, in a move that will create a satellite giant to better compete with Elon Musk’s Starlink. The Competition and Markets Authority decided on the basis of “the information currently available to it,” to not subject the deal to an in-depth probe, it said in a statement on Friday.

The deal still needs to be approved by the European Union, which has set June 10th as the deadline for a decision.

This merger is because these older satellite companies are presently losing in competition with the many new low-orbit satellite constellations by new companies, led mostly by Starlink. By merging they hope to compete better.

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SpaceX launches GPS satellite for military

10:51 am

SpaceX this morning successfully placed a military GPS satellite into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its fourth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. As of posting the satellite has not yet been deployed.

This was the second military GPS launch that the Space Force has taken from ULA and its Vulcan rocket and given to SpaceX instead. Even though Vulcan was certified in late March by the military for these kinds of military launches, delays in getting Vulcan operational forced the Space Force to find another more reliable launch provider. Even now, two months after that certification, ULA has still not announced a launch schedule for this rocket. The company in December 2024 had predicted it would launch 20 times in 2025, with 16 of those launches being by Vulcan. The year is almost half over now and ULA has only launched once, using an Atlas 5 rocket.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

66 SpaceX
32 China
6 Rocket Lab
6 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 66 to 51.

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NASA unwittingly reveals its bankruptcy by its reliance on AI

10:11 am

Uranus as seen by Hubble in 2014 and 2022
Click for original image.

In what appeared to be a totally inexplicable press release today, NASA posted the two pictures of Uranus to the right. The accompanying text was truly puzzling, describing in a somewhat brainless and inaccurate manner what is in the pictures;

Two views of the planet Uranus appear side-by-side for comparison. At the top, left corner of the left image is a two-line label. The top line reads Uranus November 9, 2014. The bottoms line reads HST WFC3/UVIS. At the top, left corner of the right image is the label November 9, 2022. At the left, bottom corner of each image is a small, horizontal, white line. In both panels, over this line is the value 25,400 miles. Below the line is the value 40,800 kilometers. At the top, right corner of the right image are three, colored labels representing the color filters used to make these pictures. Located on three separate lines, these are F467M in blue, F547M in green, and F485M in red. On the bottom, right corner of the right image are compass arrows showing north toward the top and east toward the left. [emphasis mine]

First, the description doesn’t match the pictures precisely, as if whoever wrote it wasn’t looking at these pictures. Second, the description is ridiculously literal, and really provides no information at all. (Consider for example the highlighted sentence. All it is doing is describing a standard scale bar, in the strangest most stupid manner possible.)

I immediately surmised that someone at NASA has decided to use AI to do this work, and AI (in its typical stupid brilliance) provided this worthless text. The unnamed NASA employee — equally as stupid — then posted it without reading it, assuming AI had done his or her job perfectly.

What makes this display of stupidity even worse is that these pictures, and a real press release, were issued back in 2023, when I posted these pictures initially. Does no one at NASA ever bother to read their own press releases?

Apparently not. The advent of AI has now produced human employees at the space agency who read nothing, know nothing, and do nothing. They instead plug stuff into AI and pump it out to the public mindlessly.

No wonder Trump wants to slash NASA’s budget. We certainly ain’t getting our money’s worth from the people that are there.

I also fully expect NASA management to soon deep-six this press release, or to fix it quickly once they read this post.

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Just as I refuse to say “native American”, I refuse to say “Gulf of America”

1:57 pm

A British map from 1700, with the Gulf of Mexico labeled at
A British map from 1700, with the Gulf of Mexico
labeled at “The Great Bay of Mexico”

The recent effort by Donald Trump to get the name of the Gulf of Mexico changed to the “Gulf of America” appears at first glance to have many laudable aspects, the most important of which his desire to energize the American people to have pride in their country. For too long young Americans have been indoctrinated with the anti-American Marxist poison pushed by our modern bankrupt academic community, and have thus been trained to think timidly and with hate about their own country.

Advocating this name change is Trump’s way of quickly countering that negativity. The United States is founded on noble principles — “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” — and it has lived up to those ideals with remarkable success during its entire 250 year history. Thus, Americans have plenty to be proud of, and to Trump’s mind something needed to be done to underline that fact.

Hence, his push to change the “Gulf of Mexico” to the “Gulf of America.”

And yet, as much as I support his general effort to invigorate Americans to their glorious past, to my mind this particular effort by Trump is as false and as shallow as the left’s never-ending demands that we use new language for everything. American Indians should be “native Americans”, even though everyone born in the U.S. is native. “Chairman” must become “Chair” or “Chairperson,” even though such usage is ugly and unnecessary. Spaceflight can never be “manned,” football teams can’t be “Redskins,” and “communists” must now be called “progressives.”

And worst of all we must all use the pronouns demanded by perverts, even if when by doing so we are denying reality.

Such abuse of language offends me, as a writer. » Read more

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Chinese pseudo-company completes successful hop test of rocket

12:04 pm

YXZ-1 completing soft splashdown vertically
YXZ-1 completing soft splashdown vertically.
Click for movie.

The Chinese pseudo-company Space Epoch (also called SEpoch) announced today a successfully hop test yesterday where its prototype YXZ-1 grasshopper-type test prototype completed a vertical launch to an altitude of about 1.5 miles, shut down its engines, then relit them to achieve a soft splashdown over water.

The test article used thin-walled stainless steel and had a diameter of 4.2 meters, a total height of 26.8 meters and a takeoff mass of about 57 tons, according to Space Epoch. The test lasted 125 seconds and reached around 2.5 kilometers in altitude. The test article used Longyun methane-liquid oxygen engines provided by [pseudo]-commercial firm Jiuzhou Yunjian (JZYJ).

Sepoch says the test has laid a solid foundation for the first full flight of the YXZ-1, also known as Hiker-1 in English, later this year.

Without question China’s pseudo-companies as well as its official state space divisions are aggressively pursuing reusable rockets, far more aggressively than any companies (other than SpaceX) in the west. There are at least nine Chinese pseudo-companies or government agencies testing rockets that can land vertically (Space Epoch, Landspace, Deep Blue, Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Space Pioneer, Ispace, Galactic Energy, Linkspace), with eight having attempted hop tests with mixed results.

In the west, only SpaceX is flying reusable rockets. Blue Origin’s New Glenn is supposed to be reusable, but it has only launched once and on that flight its first stage failed to land successfully. The company has only done hop flights with its small suborbital New Shepard spacecraft. Rocket Lab is building its reusable Neutron rocket, but it also has never done any hop tests with that rocket. Stoke Space plans a completely reusable rocket, with the second stage returning as well, and has done one short hop test of a prototype of that stage. Other rocket companies are designing or developing such rockets, but none have done any hop tests.

In general China’s rocket industry appears far ahead in this race.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

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China launches classified satellite

10:02 am

China today successfully launched a classified Earth observation satellite to do “national land surveys, environmental management and other fields,” its Long March 4B rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

No word on where the rocket’s lower stages, which use very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

65 SpaceX
32 China
6 Rocket Lab
6 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 65 to 51.

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South Korea rocket startup launches small prototype rocket

9:45 am

Unastella rocket at launch
Unastella rocket at launch

A South Korea rocket startup dubbed Unastella on May 28, 2025 successfully launched a small prototype suborbital rocket from its own launch site near the country’s southern coast.

UNA EXPRESS-I is 9.45 meters long and has a total weight of 2 tons. It is a small launch vehicle that uses kerosene (jet fuel) and liquid oxygen as fuel, with a thrust of 5 tons. The vehicle successfully completed its flight to the target distance of 10 kilometers and fell into the maritime safety zone set by Goheung County, the company stated. Park Jae-hong, the CEO of Unastella, noted, “For the first launch, we lowered the altitude for safety and extended the reach.”

This is South Korea’s second rocket startup that has launched a small test prototype, the first being Innospace which launched its test rocket from Brazil in 2023 and hopes to do an orbital launch before the end of the year.

It appears that South Korea is shifting successfully to the capitalism model. Back in 2023 it was trying to develop its government-built Nuri rocket, but that development seems to have stalled. Since then its newly formed space agency has established policies encouraging private space commercialization, which has apparently resulted in these two new rocket companies.

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A positive endgame in Gaza begins to loom

2:10 pm

Israel food products, provided directly to Gazans
Israel food products, provided directly to Gazans.
Click for video.

Several news stories in the past few weeks suggest to me that we are beginning to see the first signs of the end game that will bring about the defeat of Hamas and the establishment of a sane society within the Gaza strip.

First, it appears that Hamas is short of cash, according to a news report from a Saudi newspaper and then re-reported by an Israeli news outlet.

Sources within the terror group revealed that Hamas is struggling to pay salaries — not only to government employees, but also to members of its military wing and staff in other affiliated bodies at all levels.

The sources added that the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, have not paid salaries to terrorists for approximately three months and are facing serious financial difficulties in acquiring essential equipment for their military operations.

One of the things that has propped Hamas up for decades has been its control of foreign aid. The money comes in and Hamas doles it out while keeping large portions for its own use. The distribution of money gives Hamas leverage, while the money it keeps reinforces its power. Under Trump that foreign aid spigot has been largely shut down, and this story suggests we are now seeing the first results of this policy.

Second, Israel is now taking over the direct distribution of humanitarian aid. In the past Hamas maintained its power over its citizens by acting as the go-between of food and medicine. Nothing would go to anyone unless Hamas got its dirty hands on it first. Often no aid at all would reach Gazans. Hamas would keep it all, shipping it underground to its tunnels for use later during siege. Or it would sell that aid on the black market, raising money to fund its terrorist operations.

Israel, in partnership with the United States, is now ending that vile practice.
» Read more

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China launches its first asteroid sample return mission

12:28 pm

China today successfully launched Tianwen-2, its first mission attempting to return a sample from a near Earth asteroid, its Long March 3B rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in southwest China.

Video of the launch can be found here. The probe will take about a year to reach asteroid Kamo’oalewa, where it will fly in formation studying it for another year, during which time it will attempt to grab samples by two methods. One method is a copy of the touch-and-go technique used by OSIRIS-REx on Bennu. The second method, dubbed “anchor and attach,” is untried, and involves using four robot arms, each with their own drill.

Some data suggests Kamo’oalewa is possibly a fragment from the Moon, but that is not confirmed.

After a year studying Kamo-oalewa, Tienwen-2 will then return past the Earth where it will release its sample capsule. The spacecraft will then travel to Comet 311P/PANSTARRS, reaching it in 2034. This comet is puzzling because it has an asteroid-like orbit but exhibits activity similar to a comet.

As for the launch, there is no word where the Long March 3B’s lower stages and four strap-on boosters, all using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China. It should be noted that the video I link to above was taken by an ordinary citizen watching from a hill nearby, bringing with him a group of children as well. Considering the nature of the rocket’s fuel (which can dissolve your skin if it touches you), China’s attitude is remarkably sanguine to not only drop these stages on its people, but to allow tourists to get so close to launches.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

65 SpaceX
31 China (with one more launch scheduled later today)
6 Rocket Lab (with one launch scheduled for today SCRUBBED)
6 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 65 to 50.

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Supreme Court declines case of blacklisted student who declared “There are only two genders”, proving the large leftist blob is not going away no matter what Trump does

12:54 pm

The shirt that offended teachers at Nichols Middle School
Liam Morrison, wearing the evil shirt that he wore the
second time teachers at Nichols Middle School sent
him home.

The Supreme Court today declined by a vote of 7-2 to hear the case of Liam Morrison, who as a 12-year-old was sent home from Nichols Middle School in Massachusetts because he wore a T-shirt that said “There are only two genders.” Later he came to school wearing the shirt in the picture to the right, and was sent home again.

Morrison and his parents sued, noting in their complaint that since the 1960s the courts have consistently ruled that students have free speech rights. However, in almost all those earlier cases the students were expressing views supportive of leftist causes, so of course their first amendment rights were aggressively protected by the courts.

Because Liam Morrison was taking a conservative rightwing position, however, the court now believes students like him are too young to have first amendment rights, and so of course he has been effectively silenced in school, permanently.

This case illustrates something that all freedom-loving Americans had better recognize. Just because Trump is shutting down whole agencies, firing hundreds of thousands of leftist government workers, denying federal funds to indoctrination universities like Harvard, we should not assume that all will be well in just a few years.
» Read more

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Senate schedules vote for confirming Jared Isaacman as NASA administrator

2:48 pm

The Senate is now targeting early June for its vote on Jared Isaacman’s nomination as NASA administrator.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) filed cloture on Isaacman’s nomination May 22, a procedural move that would set up a vote on the nomination in early June. The Senate is not in session the week of May 26 because of the Memorial Day holiday.

Since his nomination was approved by the Senate Commerce committee in April, Isaacman has been meeting with many other senators. The article at the link does the typical mainstream press thing of pushing back 100% against the proposed NASA cuts put forth by Trump’s 2026 budget proposal, telling us that these senators were generally opposed to those cuts and questioning Isaacman about them, a claim not yet confirmed. It did note something about those senators and those proposed cuts that if true was very startling and possibly very encouraging.

While many of the proposals in the budget, like winding down SLS and Orion, were expected, the scale of the cuts, including a nearly 25% overall reduction in NASA spending, still took many by surprise. [emphasis mine]

In other words, Congress was not surprised by the proposed end of SLS and Orion. It even appears they are ready to give it their stamp of approval.

None of this is confirmed, so take my speculation with a grain of salt. Still, the winds do appear to be blowing against SLS and Orion.

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Axiom signs deals with Egypt and the Czech Republic

2:39 pm

Axiom sent out two press releases yesterday touting separate agreements it has reached with two different countries that will either involve research or a future tourist flight to ISS or to its own station.

First the company announced that it has signed a partnership agreement with the Egyptian Space Agency to partner on a range of space-related research. The language describing this work was typically vague, and is so likely because it depends on the time table for the development and launch of Axiom’s station.

Second Axiom announced that the Czech Republic has signed a letter of intent to fly one of its own astronauts on a future Axiom manned flight. Like the Egyptian press release, view specifics were given, likely for the same reasons.

What both deals signal is that there is an international market for the commercial space stations under development and Axiom is aggressively working to garner that business. Its fourth commercial manned mission, set to launch in early June, carries paid government astronauts from Poland, Hungary, and India. The two new announcements add Egypt and the Czech Republic to the company’s international customers.

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Boeing and Justice Department reach new deal on criminal prosecution for 737-Max crashes

3:26 pm

In order to avoid a criminal trial scheduled for June where Boeing would be on trial for the deaths of 346 people from two 737-Max crashes in 2018 and 2019, the company and the Justice Department have worked out a new plea bargain deal that includes a much larger pay-out to the suing families of the victims.

Under the agreement, Boeing will have to “pay or invest” more than $1.1 billion, the DOJ said in its filing in federal court in Texas on Friday. That amount includes a $487.2 million criminal fine, though $243.6 million it already paid in an earlier agreement would be credited. It also includes $444.5 million for a new fund for crash victims, and $445 million more on compliance, safety and quality programs.

In the filing the Justice Department states it has met with the families to discuss the deal, but it remains unclear whether they will accept it or continue their suit. If the latter it could be that this deal will fail, just as the previous deals in 2021 and 2024. A major sticking point for the families is that Boeing will be allowed to avoid a trial and being convicted for murder and fraud, facts that the company has already admitted to in the previous deals.

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Cargo Dragon undocks from ISS

2:55 pm

That this story is not news anymore is really the story. A cargo Dragon capsule that has been docked to ISS since April 22, 2025 today undocked successfully and is scheduled to splashdown off the coast of California on Sunday, May 25, 2025 in the early morning hours.

SpaceX’s Dragon missions to ISS have become so routine that NASA is not even planning to live stream the splashdown, posting updates instead online. This is not actually a surprise, since NASA has practically nothing to do with the splashdown. Once the capsule undocked from ISS, its operation and recovery is entirely in the hands of SpaceX, a private American company.

For NASA, SpaceX is acting as its UPS delivery truck, bringing back to several tons of experiments. And like all UPS delivery trucks, making a delivery is not considered news.

And yet, this is a private commercial spacecraft returning from space, after completing a profitable flight for its owners! That this is now considered so routine that it doesn’t merit much press coverage tells us that the industry of space is beginning to mature into something truly real and sustainable, irrelevant to government.

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NASA continues to push Biden-era interpretation of Artemis Accords

11:05 am

In a press release today describing another international workshop for the signatories of the Artemis Accords in Abu Dhabi this week, NASA continued to put forth the Biden-era interpretation of the Artemis Accords that is diametrically opposed to the original concept of the accords as conceived during the first Trump administration.

The key words are highlighted in quotes below.

The Artemis Accords are a set of non-binding principles signed by nations for a peaceful and prosperous future in space for all of humanity to enjoy. In October 2020, under the first Trump administration, the accords were created, and since then, 54 countries have joined with the United States in committing to transparent and responsible behavior in space.

“Following President Trump’s visit to the Middle East, the United States built upon the successful trip through engagement with a global coalition of nations to further implement the accords – practical guidelines for ensuring transparency, peaceful cooperation, and shared prosperity in space exploration,” said acting NASA Administrator Janet Petro. “These accords represent a vital step toward uniting the world in the pursuit of exploration and scientific discovery beyond Earth. NASA is proud to lead in the overall accords effort, advancing the principles as we push the boundaries of human presence in space – for the benefit of all.”

…participants reaffirmed their commitment to upholding the principles outlined in the accords and to continue identifying best practices and guidelines for safe and sustainable exploration.

…The Artemis Accords are grounded in the Outer Space Treaty and other agreements, including the Registration Convention and the Rescue and Return Agreement, as well as best practices for responsible behavior that NASA and its partners have supported, including the public release of scientific data.

Many of the highlighted phrases are of course quite laudable, such as the desire for peace and the use of space for the benefit of all. The tone and spin however is very globalist and communist, and leaves out entirely the primary reason Trump created the accords in the first place, to encourage private ownership, capitalism, competition, and freedom in space by bypassing or canceling the Outer Space Treaty’s rules that forbid such things.

According to the release there will be more talks among accord signatories in the upcoming September meeting of the International Astronautical Congress. I highlight this press release and its Biden-era language in an effort to make the Trump administration aware that — at least in space — Biden’s policies apparently remain in charge. While I also know this is not the most important priority for Trump, it is also something he does care about, and these issues are critical for the future lives of those who will soon explore and settle the solar system.

Someone in the Trump administration has got shift NASA back to pushing for private enterprise internationally, rather than the feel-good, empty, and communist agenda of the globalist crowd, as illustrated by the language above. And they need to do it before, or even very publicly at that September International Astronautical Congress.

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Pentagon official blasts ULA’s slow Vulcan launch pace to Congress

10:00 am

In written testimony to Congress submitted on May 14, 2025, the acting assistant secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration, Major General Stephen Purdy, blasted ULA’s very slow effort to get its new Vulcan rocket operational, causing launch delays for four different military payloads.

“The ULA Vulcan program has performed unsatisfactorily this past year,” Purdy said in written testimony during a May 14 hearing before the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Strategic Forces. This portion of his testimony did not come up during the hearing, and it has not been reported publicly to date. “Major issues with the Vulcan have overshadowed its successful certification resulting in delays to the launch of four national security missions,” Purdy wrote. “Despite the retirement of highly successful Atlas and Delta launch vehicles, the transition to Vulcan has been slow and continues to impact the completion of Space Force mission objectives.”

The full written testimony [pdf] is worth reading, because Purdy outlines in great detail the Pentagon’s now full acceptance of the capitalism model. It appears to be trying in all cases to streamline and simplify its contracting system so as to more quickly issue contracts to startups, which were not interested previously in working with the military because they could not afford the long delays between proposal acceptance and the first payments.

In the last decade it appears this process is having some success, resulting for example in the space field the launch of multiple hypersonic tests by a variety of rocket startups. Purdy’s written testimony outlines numerous other examples.

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Russia launches classified satellite

9:42 am

Russia today successfully placed a classified military satellite into orbit, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its Plesetsk spaceport in northeast Russia.

The Russians provided extensive information about the places where the rocket’s lower stages and strap-on boosters would crash, issuing “warnings for the planned rocket boosters impacts between Yar Sale and Ports Yakha settlements, as well as in Panaevsk and Khadyta-Yakha sites.” These crash zones have been used previously. Though unlike China Russia routinely warns its people about such things, like China it has never had a problem dumping these stages on their head.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

60 SpaceX
30 China
6 Rocket Lab
6 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 60 to 49.

It is entertaining to see that the private American rocket company Rocket Lab is matching Russia launch for launch this year. Once Russia launched dozens of times per year. Now it will do well to achieve one launch per month. Rocket Lab meanwhile is trying to top twenty launches in 2025. It might not meet that number, but it is quite likely to top Russia when the year ends.

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Space Force to cut civilian workforce by 14%

9:49 am

As part of the Trump effort to reduce the size of the federal government, the Space Force will by the end of this year reduce its civilian workforce by 14%.

Civilians comprise about 5,600, or more than one-third, of the service’s 17,000 people. “Total reductions have been almost 14 percent of our civilian workforce inside the Space Force,” Saltzman said. That number is higher than the 10 percent Space Force officials previously expected to take.

And both numbers suggest that the Space Force is losing proportionally more civilians than the rest of the Defense Department, which Secretary Pete Hegseth is working to cut by five to eight percent—a process that has caused widespread uncertainty and fear among federal employees.

As is usually the case with today’s press, the article provides many quotes from people decrying these cuts. I say, it probably isn’t enough. The main job of the Space Force at this time is to issue contracts to the private sector to build satellites and spacecraft for the military. That work does not require a gigantic workforce, and it is very likely, based on the actions of this department during the Biden administration, that its leaders have been focused more on empire building that doing their job. Trimming that work force is likely practical and smart.

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Fish & Wildlife has expanded its regulatory rule to every tree in much of the U.S.

11:35 am

Areas now subject to regulation if you intend to cut down any trees
The blue and green areas are now subject to
Fish & Wildlife regulation if you intend to cut
down any trees

Apparently in a bid to give itself more power over every proposed building project in the United States, the Fish & Wildlife Service in October 2024 (just before the election) wildly expanded its regulatory rules for protecting endangered bats.

According to the new rules, Fish & Wildlife now considers the removal of any trees at such projects to be a risk to the endangered species, because those trees “may” have been used as roosts and would therefore threaten the species ability to survive if removed.

No matter that there may be thousands of other trees nearby, including many acres of forest. If you are building anything that involves cutting down any trees, you will be subjected to Fish & Wildlife supervision that could block construction. And the area this new rule covers includes almost the entire eastern and northern parts of the United States, as shown on the maps to the right, taken from the new regulation guidelines [pdf].

Long time reader Jack O’Leary informed me of this new power grab. He also sent me information about one particular project in Massachusetts involving the installation of a well and pump station in a forested area southeast of Boston, far from any bat hibernacula. The only impact this project might have on any bats is the removal of some trees, though the project is located in a forested area with hundreds of acres of trees all around (as shown clearly on the satellite view on Google maps).

Yet Fish & Wildlife makes it clear in its letter [pdf] to the project that its “Endangered Species Act requirements are not complete.” Fish & Wildlife admits that the project will pose no direct threat to the endangered bats, but the very act of cutting down a few trees “may affect” the bats, so therefore government regulatory supervision is required.
» Read more

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South Africa courts Starlink; Musk says no

9:33 am

The South African government appears to be offering Starlink some concessions in order to get it approved in that country, but it also appears that Elon Musk is not interested in the deal, because it would still require the company to impose racial quotas on hiring and ownership that he not only considers immoral, but are illegal by U.S. law.

In an interview at the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha, Musk did not confirm whether a deal had been made with South Africa, as suggested in the reports. However, he maintains that Starlink’s failure to secure a license is attributed to his not being black.

“First of all, you should be questioning why there are racist laws in South Africa; that’s the problem. That’s the issue you should be attacking. The whole idea with Nelson Mandela, he was a great man, was that all races should be on equal footing in South Africa, that’s the right thing to do, not to replace one set of racist laws with another set of racist laws.”

“I was born in South Africa but can’t get a licence to operate in Starlink because I’m not black,” Musk said.

The first link notes that South Africa requires a 30% ownership by “historically disadvantaged groups, primarily Black South Africans,” a racist quota that Musk is likely to reject whole-heartedly.

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China launches six satellites

9:25 am

China yesterday placed six satellites into orbit, its solid-fueled Kinetica-1 rocket lifting off from the Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

China claims this was a commercial launch, taking place from the launch facility at Jiuquan dedicated to commercial launches, but the rocket was built by CAS Space, a division of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It is also solid-fueled, which means it is likely derived from missile technology, something that the Chinese government will supervise quite closely.

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

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

60 SpaceX
30 China
6 Rocket Lab
5 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 60 to 48.

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More missions to Apophis when it flies past Earth in 2029?

11:45 am

Apophis' path past the Earth in 2029
A cartoon (not to scale) showing Apophis’s
path in 2029

There were two stories today that heralded the addition of one real and two potential new spacecraft to rendezvous with the potentially dangerous asteroid Apophis when it flies past the Earth on April 13, 2029.

First, the European Space Agency (ESA) awarded a 1.5 million euro contract to the Spanish company Emxys to build a small cubesat that will fly on ESA’s Ramses mission to Apophis. This is the second cubesat now to fly attached to Ramses, with the first designed to use radar to study Apophis’ interior.

The second CubeSat, led by Emxys, will be deployed from the main spacecraft just a few kilometres from Apophis. It will study the asteroid’s shape and geological properties and will carry out an autonomous approach manoeuvre before attempting to land on the surface. If the landing is successful, it will also measure the asteroid’s seismic activity.

Second, American planetary scientists have been lobbying NASA to repurpose the two small Janus spacecraft for a mission to Apophis. These probes were originally built to go to an asteroid as a secondary payload when the Pysche asteroid mission was launched, but when Pysche was delayed they could no longer go that that asteroid on the new launch date. Since then both Janus spacecraft have been in storage, with no place to go.

The scientists say they could easily be repurposed to go to Apophis, but NASA will have to commit to spending the cost for launch, approximately $100 million. NASA officials were not hostile to this idea, but they were also non-committal. I suspect no decision can be made until the new administrator, Jared Isaacman, is confirmed by the Senate and takes office.

Time however is a factor. The longer it takes to make a decision the fewer options there will be to get it to Apophis on time.

At the moment there is only one spacecraft in space and on its way to Apophis, and that is the repurposed Osiris-Rex mission, now called Osiris-Apex. Japan might also send a craft past Apophis as part of its mission to another asteroid.

Learning as much as we can about Apophis is critical, as there is a chance it will impact the Earth sometime in the next two hundred years.

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Space station startup Voyager Technologies about to go public

10:52 am

Starlab design in 2025
The Starlab design in 2025. Click
for original image.

The space station startup Voyager Technologies (formerly Voyager Space) has filed its paperwork for its expected initial public offering (IPO) of stock as it competes for a major contract from NASA to build its Starlab space station.

Voyager filed a preliminary prospectus for its planned initial public offering (IPO) with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission May 16. The company previously confidentially filed plans for its IPO with the SEC. The draft prospectus does not yet disclose how many shares the company plans to sell or the amount the company expects to raise in the IPO. It does, though, offer financial details about Voyager.

The company reported $144.2 million in revenue in 2024 and a net loss of $65.6 million, versus $136.1 million in revenue and a net loss of $25.2 million in 2023. The company also reported revenue of $34.5 million in the first quarter of 2025, and a net loss of $27.9 million.

This story actually made me less confident about this company’s plans, with this quote the most revealing:

The company received a funded Space Act Agreement from NASA to support initial design work on the station, currently worth $217.5 million with $70.3 million yet to be paid. … The NASA award covers only initial work on Starlab, and the company will have to compete for a second phase of NASA’s Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development program that will offer additional funding for station development. Voyager revealed in the prospectus that it projects Starlab to cost $2.8 billion to $3.3 billion to develop.

So far it appears Voyager has built nothing. Instead it has used NASA’s preliminary money to do and redo its on-paper design of Starlab (compare the more recent design concept in the image on the right with this older image from 2022), which as a concept is intended to be launched whole on a single Starship launch. No metal has been cut. The company appears to be following the old big space company approach of investing nothing of its own in development.

This does not mean its station will be a failure, but I expect it will not launch as scheduled in 2029 if it wins that major NASA contract. The company will have to build it all in less than three years, something that I doubt it will be able to do.

My present rankings for the four proposed commercial stations:

  • Haven-1, being built by Vast, with no NASA funds. The company is moving fast, with Haven-1 to launch and be occupied in 2026 for an estimated 30 days total. It hopes this actual hardware and manned mission will put it in the lead to win NASA’s phase 2 contract, from which it will build its much larger mult-module Haven-2 station..
  • Axiom, being built by Axiom, has launched three tourist flights to ISS, with a fourth scheduled for early June, carrying passengers from India, Hungary, and Poland. Though there have been rumors it has cash flow issues, development of its first module has been proceeding more or less as planned.
  • Orbital Reef, being built by a consortium led by Blue Origin and Sierra Space. Overall, Blue Origin has built almost nothing, while Sierra Space has successfully tested its inflatable modules, including a full scale version, and appears ready to start building its module for launch.
  • Starlab, being built by a consortium led by Voyager Space, Airbus, and Northrop Grumman, with an extensive partnership agreement with the European Space Agency. It recently had its station design approved by NASA, but it has built nothing, and appears unwilling to cut any metal until it wins NASA’s full contract.
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Air Force issues draft approval of second SpaceX launchpad at Vandenberg

9:44 am

Air Force last week issued a draft environmental impact statement approving SpaceX’s plans to rebuild the old Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6, pronounced “slick-six”) at Vandenberg that was first built for the space shuttle (but never used) and later adapted for ULA’s Delta family of rockets, now retired.

The plan involves rebuilding SLC-6 to accommodate both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches, including the addition of two landing pads. With its already operational launchpad at Vandenberg, SLC-4E, the company hopes to increase its annual launch rate from 50 (approved by the FAA earlier this month) to as much as 100.

The estimated launch cadence between SpaceX’s existing West Coast pad at … SLC-4E and SLC-6 would be a 70-11 split for Falcon 9 rockets in 2026 with one Falcon Heavy at SLC-6 for a total of 82 launches. That would increase to a 70-25 Falcon 9 split in 2027 and 2028 with an estimated five Falcon Heavy launches in each of those years.

The draft assessment is now open to public comment through July 7, 2025, with a final version expected to be approved in the fall. It appears the Air Force wants it approved, as it needs this capacity for its own launch requirements. It also appears it no longer cares what the California Coastal Commission thinks about such things, as it has no authority and its members appear motivated not by environmental concerns but a simple hatred of Elon Musk.

An annual launch rate of 100 however exceeds what the FAA approved in May, doubling it. In order to move forward either the FAA will have to issue a new reassessment of its own, or some legislative or executive action will be needed to reduce this red tape. Since Vandenberg is a military base, the military in the end makes all the final decisions. The FAA simply rubber-stamps those decisions.

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China launches communications satellite

9:17 am

China today successfully placed a communications satellite into orbit, its Long March 7A rocket lifting off from this coastal Wenchang spaceport.

SpaceX was supposed to have launched a set of Starlink satellites last night as well, but scrubbed the launch about two and a half minutes before launch. It plans to try again tonight.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

59 SpaceX
29 China
6 Rocket Lab
5 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 59 to 47.

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In telling us why they are fleeing Trump America, three Yale professors prove they are unqualified for their jobs

12:11 pm

What many now label the
The “Poison Ivy League” may have finally
gotten better!

Good riddance! In a New York Times op-ed on May 14, 2025, three former Yale professors attempted to explain why they have quit their jobs at Yale and moved to teach in Canada at the University of Toronto.

Unbeknownst to them, their idiotic and ignorant reasons for leaving demonstrated that they are actually completely unqualified to be college professors, and that Yale (and the United States) will be better off without them.

Professor Stanley is leaving the United States as an act of protest against the Trump administration’s attacks on civil liberties. “I want Americans to realize that this is a democratic emergency,” he said.

Professor Shore, who has spent two decades writing about the history of authoritarianism in Central and Eastern Europe, is leaving because of what she sees as the sharp regression of American democracy. “We’re like people on the Titanic saying our ship can’t sink,” she said. “And what you know as a historian is that there is no such thing as a ship that can’t sink.”

Professor Snyder’s reasons are more complicated. Primarily, he’s leaving to support his wife, Professor Shore, and their children, and to teach at a large public university in Toronto, a place he says can host conversations about freedom. At the same time, he shares the concerns expressed by his colleagues and worries that those kinds of conversations will become ever harder to have in the United States.

As noted in this analysis of their actions, all three say they are doing this because they have studied fascism and thus “equate ‘Make America Great Again’ with Adolf Hitler’s ‘Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer.'”

The analogy is so weak and incoherent as to be laughable. As the essayist in this second link notes, it cheapens the meaning of fascism and in fact suggests these three “professors” don’t have the slightest idea what the word means, despite their claim they have studied it.

More important however are the three quirks of personality illustrated by their position and actions that signify why their are unqualified to be professors to begin with.
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Chinese pseudo-company completes another launch from sea platform

8:42 am

The Chinese pseudo-company Galactic Energy today successfully placed four communications satellites into orbit, its solid-fueled Ceres-1 rocket lifting off from a sea platform off the eastern coast of China.

To prove how pseudo this company is, China’s state run press did not even mention its existence in the report at the link. The solid fuel of the rocket tells us that it was derived from missile technology, and there isn’t a chance in hell that a private independent company in China could do so without the strict supervision and control from that country’s government.

Nonetheless, this was its 19th successful launch, and its fifth from a sea platform. The rocket has only failed once since since its first launch in 2020.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

59 SpaceX
28 China
6 Rocket Lab
5 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 59 to 46.

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Third stage of India’s PSLV rocket fails during launch

9:36 pm

India’s PSLV rocket today (May 18 in India) experienced a launch failure in attempting to place an Earth observation satellite into orbit, with the failure occurring during the engine firing of the rocket’s third stage.

The link is cued to just before the tracking screen began showing the third stage drop from its planned trajectory. The suddenness of the loss of data as well as the drop in the trajectory suggests the engine exploded during firing, but that is pure speculation. Regardless, the launch, only the second India has attempted in 2025, was a failure.

Moreover, the first launch this year was a failure also, though the GSLV rocket in that launch performed as expected and deployed the satellite in its planned transfer orbit. At that point however the Indian-built satellite’s thrusters failed to operate, stranding the satellite in the wrong orbit , which soon decayed. UPDATE: According to a more recent report, it has remained in orbit but provides little service.

Thus 2025, which ISRO had predicted to be India’s most active year ever, is so far not turning out so well. ISRO hopes to begin launching its first unmanned test flights of its Gaganyaan capsule later this year, using its Heavy Lift Vehicle Mark 3 rocket (HLV-M3), an upgraded version of its GSLV rocket. One wonders if these issues will impact that schedule.

These failures by the space agency could however help the Modi government shift the balance of power away from ISRO and to its emerging private rocket sector. If the agency can’t get it done, maybe the private sector should be given the chance to do it. For example, the government has been pushing to have the ownership and management of the PSLV rocket transferred from ISRO to a private rocket company since in 2016. In the nine year since, there however has been little sign of this shift happening.

Part of the problem has been that none of India’s private rocket startups are really ready to take over these operations. The transfer is further made less likely by the strong resistance to change within ISRO’s bureaucracy. These failures provide political ammunition to push back against that resistance.

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Two launches last night, by China and Rocket Lab

10:23 am

The high pace of rocket launches this year continued last night, but in a rare exception this time it had nothing to do with SpaceX.

First, the Chinese pseudo-company Landspace successfully placed six radar satellites into orbit, its upgraded version of its Zhuque-2 rocket lifting off from the Jiuquan spaceport in China’s northwest.

No word on where the rocket’s lower stages crashed inside China. Unlike its larger Zhuque-3 rocket, which has not yet flown but is being designed as a copy of a Falcon 9 with its first stage able to return to Earth vertically, the Zhuque-2 has no such ability.

Next, Rocket Lab successfully placed a commercial radar satellite into orbit, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of the company’s two launchpads in New Zealand. This launch was the third by Rocket Lab for the satellite company iQPS, and is the second in an eight-satellite launch contract with the company.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

59 SpaceX
27 China
6 Rocket Lab
5 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 59 to 45.

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