Tag: politics

FCC denies Starlink $886 million grant

9:48 am

Despite the fact that SpaceX Starlink constellation is presently providing internet access to more rural customers than any company worldwide, the FCC yesterday announced that it will not award the company a $886 million subsidy under its program for expanding broadband service to rural areas.

The FCC announced today that it won’t award Elon Musk’s Starlink an $886 million subsidy from the Universal Service Fund for expanding broadband service in rural areas. The money would have come from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund program (RDOF), but the FCC writes that Starlink wasn’t able to “demonstrate that it could deliver the promised service” and that giving the subsidy to it wouldn’t be “the best use of limited Universal Service Fund dollars.”

That was the same reason the FCC gave when it rejected Starlink’s bid last year, which led to this appeal. SpaceX had previously won the bidding to roll out 100Mbps download and 20Mbps upload “low-latency internet to 642,925 locations in 35 states,” funded by the RDOF.

This decision can only be explained by utterly political reasons. SpaceX right now is experiencing a booming business, with its traffic up two and a half times from last year,almost all of which is in rural areas. That number is from a news report today, the same day the FCC claims Starlink can’t provide such service. As noted by one SpaceX lawyer:

“Starlink is arguably the only viable option to immediately connect many of the Americans who live and work in the rural and remote areas of the country where high-speed, low-latency internet has been unreliable, unaffordable, or completely unavailable, the very people RDOF was supposed to connect.”

The initial award was made in December 2020, when Trump was still president. It was first canceled in August 2022, after Biden took over. SpaceX appealed, but today’s announcement says the FCC rejected that appeal.

While there is absolutely no justification to give any company this money — SpaceX is proving private companies don’t need it to provide this service to rural areas — this decision is clearly political, driven by the hate of Elon Musk among Democrats and the Biden administration. They don’t care that SpaceX is a successeful private company providing tens of thousands of jobs as well as good products to Americans. Musk does not support them, and so he must be squashed.

9 comments

In 2023 scientists set a new record for the most papers retracted

9:33 am

According to a report in the science journal Nature published today, in 2023 scientists set a new record for the most papers retracted in a single year and illustrating the steady rise of fake papers in recent years.

The number of retractions issued for research articles in 2023 has passed 10,000 — smashing annual records — as publishers struggle to clean up a slew of sham papers and peer-review fraud. Among large research-producing nations, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Russia and China have the highest retraction rates over the past two decades, a Nature analysis has found.

The bulk of 2023’s retractions were from journals owned by Hindawi, a London-based subsidiary of the publisher Wiley. So far this year, Hindawi journals have pulled more than 8,000 articles, citing factors such as “concerns that the peer review process has been compromised” and “systematic manipulation of the publication and peer-review process”, after investigations prompted by internal editors and by research-integrity sleuths who raised questions about incoherent text and irrelevant references in thousands of papers.

Wiley is moving to shut down this Hindawi subsidiary, canceling many of the journals and abandoning the name entirely. Meanwhile, the overall problem continues to grow, and threatens to get worse with the introduction of papers that can be written entirely by the new artificial intelligence software.

Much of this problem is tied to our bankrupt academic system, which judges scientists by the number of papers the publish rather than how they teach in the classroom. Thus, research scientists at universities have no motive to teach well. Instead they focus on getting papers in print, even if they have to fake it.

3 comments

JAXA identifies cause of Epsilon-S solid-fueled engine failure during test

9:23 am

Japan’s space agency JAXA has now identified the cause of the explosion that destroyed an Epsilon-S solid-fueled engine during a static fire test in July.

The explanation at the link is somewhat unclear, but the bottom line is that the failure was caused “by the melting and scattering of a metal part from the ignition device inside the engine.”

JAXA is working on a fix to prevent the part from melting, but the report provides no timeline on when the next Epsilon launch will occur. Nor do we know when Japan’s larger new rocket, the H3, will launch next as well, having failed during its first launch in the spring. At the moment, Japan is essentially out of the game.

Leave a comment

Russia & China appear to time their secret space operations to American holidays

9:13 am

According to data gathered by the startup LeoLabs, which attempts to track objects in orbit, both Russia and China appear to time their secret space operations to American holidays, likely in the hope fewer eyes are watching at that moment.

The latest evidence happened on Nov. 23, US Thanksgiving, when Russia’s Cosmos 2570 satellite in low Earth orbit (LEO) revealed itself to be a Matryoshka (nesting) doll system — comprising three consecutively smaller birds, performing up-close operations around each other, according to the company. This “spawning” event mimicked the activity of Cosmos 2565, launched on Nov. 30, 2022 and believed to be an electronic reconnaissance satellite, which released a daughter satellite (Cosmos 2566) on Dec. 2, and which, in turn, released its own baby satellite on Dec. 24 (Christmas Eve), according to LeoLabs.

Similarly, on the 25 and 26 of November 2022, LeoLabs said it observed China’s spaceplane, which Beijing calls Test Spacecraft 2, “conduct[ing] rendezvous and proximity operations” that involved a docking maneuver by a satellite it released, Victoria Heath, LeoLabs team lead for communications and marketing, told Breaking Defense. A second docking “likely took place” around Jan. 10, 2023, she said.

In the end it appears this effort only delays observations, at best, but that does give these countries a slight window to do some tests unobserved.

Leave a comment

Chinese pseudo-company successfully completes second rocket vertical take-off and landing

9:31 am

Ispace hopper about to land, December 10, 2023
Ispace hopper about to land, December 10, 2023.
Click for video.

The Chinese pseudo-company Ispace on December 10, 2023 successfully completed the second veritical hop flight of a rocket prototype, testing vertical take-off and landing for the eventual purpose of recovering its first stages, as done now routinely by SpaceX.

ISpace’s Hyperbola-2Y methane-liquid oxygen reusable verification stage lifted off from a pad at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert at 4:07 a.m. Eastern (1107 UTC) Dec. 10.

The Hyperbola-2Y reached an altitude of 343.12 meters, translating 50 meters to a landing zone and touching down with a velocity of 1.1 meters per second and an accuracy of 0.295 meters. The entire flight lasted 63.15 seconds, according to an iSpace press statement. The flight came just over a month after a first hop test Nov. 2. That test reached 178 meters and returned to its landing spot. iSpace says it will attempt a test at sea next year after completing ground tests.

Right now the race to become the second company or nation after SpaceX to return and reuse a first stage is between Ispace and Rocket Lab. No one else is even close, though there are a number of other Chinese pseudo-companies that are doing hop tests. Though Rocket Lab — which is not attempting a vertical engine landing but recovering the stage from the ocean — has already flown a recovered engine, as well as recovered several first stages for refurbishment, it has not yet flown a reused first stage. Based on its schedule, that might happen ’24.

Ispace meanwhile hasn’t yet flown to orbit the prototype’s rocket, Hyperbola-3. It hopes to attempt the first orbital test flight in 2025, with the recovery of its first stage in 2026.

One comment

China’s Long March 2D rocket launches classified remote sensing satellite

8:57 pm

Early on December 10, 2023 (Chinese time) China successfully launched a classified remote sensing satellite, its Long March 2D rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in the south of China.

The state-run Chinese press released almost no information. Nor did it say where within China the lower stages of the rocket, using toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed.

As expected, China’s launch pace in December has picked up, as it has routinely in recent years. The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

91 SpaceX
58 China
16 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches, 103 to 58, and the entire world combined 103 to 92. SpaceX by itself now trails the rest of the world (excluding other American companies), 91 to 92, though it plans two launches on December 10th.

5 comments

China launches three satellites using methane-fueled rocket

9:54 am

China's spaceports
China’s spaceports

The Chinese pseudo-company Landspace yesterday successfully used its methane-fueled Zhuque-2 rocket for the third time, placing three satellites into orbit from China’s Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

As China’s state-run press is now consistently doing, its report fails to mention this pseudo-company at all, recognizing the reality that it is actually controlled and owned by the Chinese government, though structured to function like a private company to enhance competition within China.

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

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

91 SpaceX
57 China
16 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches, 103 to 57, and the entire world combined 103 to 91. SpaceX by itself is now tied with the rest of the world (excluding other American companies), 91 to 91, though it plans two launches tomorrow.

10 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: The University of Washington proudly says “no whites need apply!”

2:09 pm

University of Washington: dedicated to the new segregation!
University of Washington: dedicated to the new segregation!

“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” According to a recent investigation [pdf] completed by the University of Washington, its Department of Psychology broke numerous civil rights laws as well as the university’s own rules by using race as a criteria in the hiring of five new tenure track assistent professors. From the report’s summery:

The review showed that both the hiring decision and the hiring process were inconsistent with EO 31 [the university’s own anti-discrimination rule], as race was used as a factor. Specifically, faculty inappropriately considered candidates’ races when determining the order of offers and altered the process to provide disparate opportunities for candidates based on their race.

The investigation’s report was obtained by the National Academy of Scholars (NAS), which noted that the department rejected the recommendations of its hiring committee expressly because one candidate recommended was white, and then arbitrarily rearranged the rankings so that all five positions would be filled with people of “color,” as the department’s own Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion office so proudly notes, even now.

This racist hiring practice was then used as the template for a handbook [pdf] to set these discriminatory policies in stone, guaranteeing that future hiring practices continue to exclude whites and especially white men. As noted by the City Journal,
» Read more

20 comments

NIH workers vote to form union

10:03 am

What could possibly go wrong? The newest workers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have now voted overwhelmingly to unionize, thus shifting power from research to workers’ rights.

Hundreds of early-career researchers at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) have voted overwhelmingly to form a union, nearly completing the official process required to do so. They plan to call on the agency — the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research — to improve pay and working conditions, and to bolster its policies and procedures for dealing with harassment and excessive workloads.

About 98% of the research fellows who participated in the ballot voted on 6 December to form the union, with 1,601 voting in favour and just 36 against. Barring any objections, the result will be certified by the US Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA) after five business days, and the union will become the first ever to represent fellows at a federal research agency and the largest union to form in the US government in more than a decade.

Routinely these government unions have been a disaster for both the taxpayer and the work the agency does. The focus becomes pay instead of doing the job. And because it is a government operation, politics always plays a hand. In most cases the government works hand-in-glove with the union. The union donates money to the politician’s campaign coffers, the politician then passes legislation favoring the union or the pay scales.

We have seen this disaster most horribly in our public schools. During and after the Wuhan panic the unions have consistently fought to keep schools closed, pushing remote teaching so that the teachers can stay home, not teach, while still getting paid. Before COVID the unions forced high wages and low standards, which has resulted in kids leaving schools badly educated at great cost.

It should be noted that the existence of these federal government unions began with a presidential executive order by John Kennedy in the early 1960s that a future president has the ability to cancel. One wonders if such a thing might happen in the future.

In the meantime, expect research coming out of the NIH to continue to go downhill.

6 comments

GAO wants the FAA to exert more control over future launch mishap investigations

9:46 am

We’re here to help you! A new GAO report now calls for the FAA to change how it does investigations after launch mishaps, both exerting more control of the investigations as well as demanding companies release more proprietary information after the investigation is complete.

The Government Accountability Office wants the FAA to improve how it investigates space launch mishaps, especially how it decides whether to do an investigation itself or allow the operator to do it. Historically operators are allowed to investigate their own mishaps under FAA supervision, but over the course of 50 mishaps since 2000, GAO found the FAA has not evaluated whether that’s an effective approach. GAO also champions creating a mechanism for sharing lessons learned among operators even though efforts in the past have not succeeded.

This GAO report proves several conclusions I have noted in the past year.

First, the so-called “investigation” by the FAA into the first Starship/Superheavy launch was utterly bogus, as I have repeatedly suggested. The FAA had no ability to do any investigations on its own. It merely rubber-stamped SpaceX’s conclusions, but did so as slowly as possible so as to delay the company’s effort. Before Joe Biden was installed as president, the FAA would quickly permit further launches once a company completed its investigation. Under Biden, that policy has changed to slow-walk approvals.

This also means the present “investigation” by the FAA into the second Starship/Superheavy launch is bogus as well. When SpaceX announces its investigation is complete and all engineering fixes have been accomplished, any further delay from the FAA will be entirely political.

Second, it appears the Biden administration is applying pressure to both the GAO and the FAA to increase this regulatory control. It wants the FAA to write new procedures for determining when it will take control of an investigation rather than let the company do it. While providing some clarity to this decision could be beneficial, it is likely this change under the Biden administration will work against free enterprise. It will give the government a procedure for grabbing control, and holding it for as long as it desires. Politics will become part of any mishap investigation, rather than leaving it solely to engineering.

Third, the desire of the goverment to make companies reveal the details of the investigation, including propertiary information, will only squelch future innovation. Why develop new technology if you will be forced to give it away free during testing, when things are certain to go wrong?

6 comments

NASA to allow bidders on de-orbiting ISS to work under cost-plus contracts

9:19 am

In a major change of recent policy trends, NASA has decided to allow any bidders on the project to deorbit ISS to have the choice of working under either a fixed-price or a cost-plus contract.

In a procurement notice posted Dec. 5, NASA announced it would allow companies the choice of using either firm fixed price or cost plus incentive fee contract structures for both the design and the production of the U.S. Deorbit Vehicle (USDV).

When NASA issued the original request for proposals (RFP) for the vehicle in September, the agency gave bidders a choice. They could propose to develop the vehicle using a cost-plus contract and then produce it under a fixed-price contract, a so-called “hybrid” approach. Alternatively, they could propose doing both development and production under fixed-price contracts.

The revised approach now adds an option to perform both the development and the production under cost-plus contracts. NASA, in both the procurement notice and a blog post, did not disclose the reason for the change.

In recent years NASA had been shifting more and more to fixed-price contracts, because it works. It either forces discipline on companies, making them get the job done at cost and on time, or it reveals that the company is incompetent (as in the case of Boeing and its Starliner capsule), valuable information for future bidding.

I suspect that Boeing’s recent decision to refuse to sign any fixed-price contracts played a hand in this decision. For the last decade or so there have been many government officials who like to treat Boeing as their best friend, despite its recent failures. By doing so they increase the chances the company will hire them as consultants when they retire from their government job. Also, politicians tend to bow to this big company due to its large footprint in many congressional districts.

The result is this shift back to cost-plus. This will also mean that this project will likely go overbudget and behind schedule, as such contracts routinely do. The winning bidder will have no incentive to rein in costs. In fact, the nature of the contract will encourage just the opposite, as any cost overruns will be picked up by the government.

9 comments

Pakistan creating a national space policy

9:06 am

Pakistan, as a signatory to the Outer Space Treaty, is finally creating a national space policy as the treaty requires.

That policy however is not yet finalized, nor has it been published. The only information at the link states this:

Under the policy, a National Space Agency would be established in the country and satellite service providers who intend to provide satellite services in the country would be required to register themselves and obtain a non-objection certificate (NOC), sources added.

Bottom line: The government of Pakistan will retain full control over any future industry proposal.

One comment

Americans might finally be noticing the depravity in academia that has existed for more than two decades

12:21 pm

Rick, stating the truth in Casablanca
Has the bankrupt testimony of three college
presidents finally awakened ordinary Americans?

For more than two decades conservatives have been reporting the growing immoral and depraved culture on the campuses of America’s most prestigious colleges, all to no avail.

These colleges instituted bigoted and racist policies of hiring, admissions, and funding that favored some races over others, so much so that today there are so few conservatives on their campuses that debate is impossible. The right has documented this repeatedly. Nothing was done.

These colleges worked to censor and silence the few conservatives that remained or came to speak as a guest, sometimes even allowing riots by leftist students to make sure such speech was prevented. The right has documented this repeatedly. Nothing was done.

These colleges further acted to remove and fire anyone, whether they were conservatives or not, who dared criticize any of the above actions. Often the terminations were done with no due process, and in direct violation of law and the colleges’ own rules. The right has documented this repeatedly. Nothing was done.

These colleges have steadily reshaped their curriculums so as to indoctrinate students into Marxism, “safe spaces”, and close-mindedness, instead of teaching the values of Western Civilization, liberty, the rule of law, personal responsibility, and most important, the requirement that an educated adult must be able to think critically. Students now come out of these colleges hostile to any debate, their minds closed to thinking because such thinking makes them uncomfortable.

The right has documented this repeatedly. Nothing was done.

As was the case in the early years of World War II, before the attack of Pearl Harbor (which occurred 82 years ago today), Americans were asleep. Then, Americans didn’t want to face the evil that was growing in Europe and threatened to engulf the world in war, and inevitably did so. Now, Americans have done everything they could to avoid facing the evil that has been growing in their own backyard. The result is the chaos we see today, with a younger generation that ignorantly believes America is the root of all evil, and that the best policies for the future should be censorship, socialism, and racial discrimination.

The situation has gotten desperate, and threatens to engulf us in another world war, potentially far more deadly than World War II. Worse, that war will be fought here, in America, from the start, because the enemies of Western Civilization have been deeply impregnated in our society by these corrupt colleges.

And as happened on December 7, 1941 when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, it appears that something has finally happened that has at last maybe wakened Americans up. Our Pearl Harbor today might simply be the bankrupt clueless testimony of three college presidents in front of Congress on December 5, 2023.

First everyone must listen to the most revealing moments of that testimony. If you haven’t seen the video below, you need to watch it now. And if you have already seen it, watch it again. It is short, and quickly illustrates the moral depravity of the leadership at three of America’s most elite colleges, Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania.
» Read more

46 comments

December 6, 2023 Quick space links

3:26 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

Leave a comment

Another example of the inability of Democrats to condemn bigotry

2:49 pm

House vote condemning anti-Semitism
Final totals of House vote condemning anti-Semitism.
Click for source.

This column today might sound familiar, as I have reported similar examples numerous times before (See previous essays here, here, here, here, and here). Yet, it is important to document the inability of the modern Democratic Party to unequivocally condemn bigotry, because so much of its base and membership are actually are in favor of such things.

Yesterday the House passed a resolution condemning the horrible rise of anti-Semitism seen nationwide and globally, mostly expressed during pro-Hamas demonstrations that have often descended into violence and calls for the murder of all Jews in Israel.

The resolution [pdf] is quite clear. After listing numerous examples of harrassment and violence against Jews in the U.S., Australia, Israel, and globally, it condemned such behavior, and made it clear that the term “anti-Zionism” is simply a euphemism for anti-Semitism.

The final vote totals are shown in the screen capture to the right, taken from C-SPAN. As you can see, except for one nay vote and four not voting at all, the entire Republican caucus voted in favor of this resolution.

The Democrats however were not so unanimous. While a little less than half of the Democrats in the House voted in support of this amazingly simple resolution, half voted “present”, following the instructions of Congressemen Jerry Nadler (D-New York), Dan Goldman (D-New York), and Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) (all members of the Democratic Party House leadership). These Congressmen opposed the resolution because it is…
» Read more

9 comments

Iran and China complete orbital launches

9:35 am

Iran's launch December 6, 2023
Iran’s Salman rocket lifting off today.
The launch site itself was not disclosed.

According to the official state-run press of each country, both Iran and China yesterday completed successfully launches, both of which appeared to test new capabilities of some note.

First Iran announced that it had used its Salman rocket to put a 500-kilogram capsule that it said was carrying biological samples, and was also “has the ability to carry a human,” though the mass of this capsule makes that highly unlikely. Little other information was provided. Nor has this orbital launch as yet been confirmed by the orbital monitoring services of the U.S. military. The image to the right is a screen capture from the launch video at the link, and appears to show that this rocket has only one stage, thus making an orbital launch impossible.

Assuming this orbital launch is confirmed, it was Iran’s second orbital launch in 2023 and will therefore not show up on the launch race leader board below. If further information is obtained I will update this post appropriately.

China in turn announced the successful launch today of a test satellite, using its new Smart Dragon-3 solid-fueled rocket lifting off from a barge in the South China Sea 1,300 nautical miles off the coast of Guangdong province, where Hong Kong is located. To arrive at this ocean launch location took five days. The launch thus tested the use of this mobile floating platform from remote ocean locations.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

89 SpaceX
56 China
16 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches, 101 to 56, and the entire world combined 101 to 90. SpaceX by itself now trails the rest of the world (excluding other American companies) 89 to 90, though it has another launch planned for tonight, with the live stream here.

9 comments

Pushback: Macy’s sued for its illegal discriminatory hiring policies

3:35 pm

Banned at Macy's
Banned at Macy’s

Bring a gun to a knife fight: The pro-bono non-profit legal firm America’s First Legal (AFL) has filed a federal civil rights complaint against Macy’s for its blatantly illegal diversity and inclusion policies that required hiring quotas bases solely on race.

You can read the complaint here [pdf]. AFL’s letter to Macy’s announcing the complaint is here [pdf]. As noted in AFL’s press release:

In a 2019 press release entitled “Bold Vision To Advance Diversity and Inclusion and Ensure The Company Reflects The Diversity Of The Customers and Communities Served,” Macy’s details its five-point plan with specific directives focused on achieving greater diversity for all aspects of the company’s business model.

The plan explicitly instructs Macy’s management to “[a]chieve more ethnic diversity by 2025 at senior director level and above, with a goal of 30 percent,” as well as to initiate a “12-month program designed to strengthen leadership skills for a selected group of top-talent managers and directors of Black/African-American, Hispanic-Latinx, Native American and Asian descent.” Quotas such as these are patently illegal under the law.

The language of that release is quite appalling. » Read more

3 comments

Stratolaunch completes first test captive carry flight with powered Talon hypersonic vehicle

9:34 am

Test engineering vehicle attached below Roc
Test engineering vehicle attached to Roc during
a flight in October 2022

Stratolaunch has successfully completed the first test captive carry flight with its prototype Talon hypersonic vehicle fueled and powered, carried by its giant Roc airplane.

The flight was the twelfth for the company’s launch platform Roc and the first in which the aircraft carried a Talon vehicle with live propellant as part of a buildup approach for Talon-A’s first powered flight.

The flight lasted a total of three hours and 22 minutes and represented a significant step forward in the company’s near-term goal of completing a powered flight with the Talon-A vehicle, TA-1. A primary objective was to evaluate Talon-A’s propulsion system and the Talon environments while carrying live propellant. A second objective was to verify Roc and TA-1’s telemetry systems, which provides the situational awareness to ensure all systems are ready for powered flight during the release sequence.

The company has two contracts to do hypersonic test flights using flightworthy Talon vehicles, one with the Air Force and the second with the Navy. It is not clear however when those flights will occur.

Leave a comment

China launches two satellites

9:22 am

The Chinese pseudo-company Galactic Energy today successfully launched two satellites, its Ceres-1 rocket lifting off from China’s Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

China’s own state-run press illustrates how pseudo this company is by not even mentioning its name in its reporting. It mentions the launch was “commercial,” but that’s as far as it goes. China’s press knows the government runs and owns this company, and only allows it the superficial appearance of a private company to enhance competition within its space industry.

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

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

89 SpaceX
55 China
16 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches, 101 to 55, and the entire world combined 101 to 88. SpaceX by itself still maintains its lead over the entire world (excluding other American companies) 89 to 88.

Leave a comment

Cowardice and fear from Western leaders; Courage and determination from Israel and its Arab allies

1:00 pm

The model presently used by all leaders in the free world
The model presently used by today’s leaders
in the free world

If you wish to understand why the Middle East in general has had relatively few pro-Hama demonstrations — even in the Arab territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank — while the western nations have been largely engulfed by them — some of which have been violent and bluntly anti-Semitic by actually advocating the genocide of all Jews — you need only listen to the leaders of these countries, because those leaders reflect their populations and their overall attitude to the murder, rape, and beheading of innocent civilians, including children, by Hamas on October 7th.

In Israel Benjamin Netayahu made it once again very clear his country’s determination to eliminate Hamas and its terrorist cell in Gaza in a speech to his nation on December 2nd.

I state clearly and unequivocally: We will continue the war until we achieve all of its goals and it is impossible to achieve these goals without continuing the ground incursion. The ground incursion was essential in order to bring about the results up to now, and it is necessary to bring about future results.

I tell our friends around the world, you share our goal of eliminating Hamas and releasing our hostages; therefore, I also emphasize to them that there is no way of achieving these goals except by victory, and there is no way to achieve victory except by continuing the ground incursion. The IDF and the security forces are doing this with determination, strength and while upholding international law.

The second paragraph above was very specifically but carefully aimed at the leaders of Israel’s allies in the west, who from day one of this conflict have repeatedly waffled in their support, constantly looking for a way to stop Israel’s effort, to appease Hamas, and to make believe that an early end to this fighting, with Hamas still intact and in control of Gaza, will somehow bring peace. French President Emmanuel Macron illustrated their weaselly cowardice quite well during a press conference that same day:
» Read more

16 comments

Italian subcontractor for Arianespace misplaces two rocket tanks

8:58 am

This story is hard to believe but true: The Italian company Avio, one of the subcontractors for Arianespace that builds its smaller rockets Vega and Vega-C, apparently misplaced two rocket tanks that were to be used on the Vega rocket’s last launch, thus preventing that launch entirely.

The two propellant tanks that went missing were housed in an Avio production department in Colleferro that had undergone renovation work. At some point following the completion of the renovations, the two tanks were found to be missing.

According to the initial source, the tanks had not been entered into a company-wide asset management system that tracked the location of all vital Avio components. This ensured that the teams tasked with investigating the disappearance had very little to go on when beginning their search for the missing tanks.

Despite the futility of the search, the tanks were eventually found. This was, however, not the good news Avio had hoped for. The tanks are, unfortunately, not in a usable state. They had been crushed and were found alongside metal scraps in a landfill.

The tanks power Vega’s fourth stage that deploys satellites in orbit. They were to be used on the final flight of Vega, which has been delayed repeatedly for unexplained reasons. We now know the reason.

Because this was the final flight, however, the tanks cannot be replaced because the Vega production line has been shut down. The company is considering using two of the four qualification tanks first built more than a decade ago when Vega was first being tested, but those were test tanks and have been sitting unused for as long. It will be difficult to determine their reliability.

Europe’s government-run rocket program thus at present has no rocket capable of launching. Its Ariane-5 is retired. Its Vega cannot launch. Its Vega-C, which replaces the Vega, remains grounded due to a launch failure in December 2022, with the next launch expected no earlier than late in 2024. And its new Ariane-6 rocket won’t do its first launch until the summer of 2024, at the earliest.

6 comments

South Korea successfully test launches a new solid-fueled rocket

8:43 am

South Korea today successfully launched a new solid-fueled rocket on its third test launch and first orbital flight.

The space launch vehicle was launched from a barge floating in waters about 4 kilometers south of Jeju Island at 2 p.m. and placed a small Earth observation satellite into orbit at an altitude of about 650 km, the ministry said.

The 100-kilogram synthetic aperture radar satellite, made by Hanwha Systems, succeeded in sending signals to a ground station at 3:45 p.m., which means it is operating normally, the company said. The rocket is designed to put a small satellite into a low Earth orbit for surveillance operations.

This four-stage rocket uses solid fuel for its first three stages and liquid fuel for the final stage. That it launched from a barge is as significant, as having this ability gives South Korea an added launch flexibility.

This was South Korea’s second launch in 2023, so the leader board for the 2023 launch race remains unchanged:

89 SpaceX
54 China
16 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches, 101 to 54, and the entire world combined 101 to 87. SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world (excluding other American companies) 89 to 87.

One comment

China launches Egyptian Earth observation satellite

12:03 am

China successfully launched an Egyptian Earth observation satellite on December 4, 2023, its Long March 2C rocket lifting off from its Jiquan spaceport in northwestern China.

The satellite was built in Egypt with Chinese assistence, and is designed to study water and land resources for Egypt.

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

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

89 SpaceX
54 China
16 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches, 101 to 54, and the entire world combined 101 to 86. SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world (excluding other American companies) 89 to 86.

2 comments

Boeing dropped from competition for Air Force “doomsday” plane

6:09 pm

It appears that by mutual agreement the Air Force has eliminated Boeing in the competition to build a new replacement for the E-4B Nightwatch, what the military calls its “doomsday” airplane, designed to survive a nuclear war.

Sources told Reuters that Boeing – the incumbent manufacturer of the E-4B Nightwatch – could not agree with the USAF on data rights and contract terms for the replacement plane that began flying in the 1970s. In other words, the planemaker did not want to sign a fixed-price agreement.

…”Rest assured, we haven’t signed any fixed-price development contracts nor (do we) intend to,” Brian West, Boeing’s chief financial officer, told investors in October.

With Boeing out of the competition, Sierra Nevada (the parent company of Sierra Space) is left as the only bidder. It is also quite willing to operate under a fixed price contract.

As I noted in a comment thread after a reader first posted a link to this story,

Boeing is signing its own death warrant. The entire federal defense and space agencies are steadily switching to fixed-price, and will simply go to others if Boeing refuses to accept those terms.

In fact, those agencies will want to go to others, because Boeing is making it clear it can’t meet its contractual obligations.

This decision also tells us a great deal about Boeing as a company. Its inability to fulfill any contract under a fixed price means it no longer has the discipline to do anything right. It seems buying products from it at this point might be a very foolish proposition.

8 comments

Angola signs Artemis Accords, becoming the 33rd nation to join the alliance

12:34 pm

Angola today officially signed the Artemis Accords, becoming the 33rd nation to join this space alliance conceived during the Trump administration as a way to get around the limitations of the Outer Space Treaty.

The full list of signatories is as follows: Angola, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, Germany, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, and the United States.

The competing alliance of communist nations, led by China, includes only Russia, Venezuala, Pakistan, Belarus, Azerbaijan, and South Africa. That former deep Soviet bloc nations like Bulgaria and Romania, as well as previously very Marxist Angola, went with the west rather than China illustrates the international distrust of China and its authoritarian methods.

As bilateral agreements between the U.S. and each nation. the accords were designed to create for the U.S. a strong political alliance focused on protecting private property and capitalism in space, something the Outer Space Treaty essentially forbids. As I think it was conceived, the plan had been to use this alliance to eventually either force changes to the Outer Space Treaty, or abandon it entirely. Whether that plan will continue under Biden is unclear, and in fact there have been indications it will not.

These trends could all change should a different president take over after 2024.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay for cluing me in to this story.

3 comments

GAO: First Artemis manned landing likely delayed to 2027

10:28 am

A new GAO report says that the first Artemis manned landing on the Moon is almost certainly not happen in 2025 as NASA presently wants, but will probably be delayed to 2027.

You can read the report here [pdf]. It clearly references the delays experienced by SpaceX due to regulatory roadblocks, but couches its language carefully so as to lay no blame on the government for those delays, placing the problem entirely on SpaceX instead.

In April 2023, after a 7-month delay, SpaceX achieved liftoff of the combined commercial Starship variant and Super Heavy booster during the Orbital Flight Test. But, according to SpaceX representatives, the flight test was not fully completed due to a fire inside the booster, which ultimately led to a loss of control of the vehicle. Following the launch, the Federal Aviation Administration—which issues commercial launch and reentry licenses—classified the commercial Starship launch as a mishap and required SpaceX to conduct a mishap investigation. The Federal Aviation Administration reviewed the August 2023 mishap report submitted by SpaceX and, as a result, cited 63 corrective actions for SpaceX to implement before a second test.

SpaceX had planned this demonstration as the first test flight of the booster stage, as well as the first test with the Starship riding on the booster and the whole system experiencing stage separation. However, SpaceX representatives said their Autonomous Flight Safety System initiated the vehicle self-destruct sequence and the vehicle began to break up about 4 minutes into the flight after the vehicle deviated from the expected trajectory, lost altitude, and began to tumble. HLS [Human Landing System] officials said that while the flight test was terminated early, it still provided data for several Starship technologies, including propellant loading, launch operations, avionics, and propulsion behavior.

GAO graphic

Note how this language makes it seem like the launch was a failure, when in fact SpaceX never expected it to reach orbit and instead intended to use the problems that occurred during this engineering test launch to find out what engineering designs needed to be reworked.

This language illustrates the fundamental dishonesties that routinely permeate government actions. The funniest and most absurd example of this intellectual dishonesty however has to be the graphic posted to the right, taken from the GAO report. The graphic gives the false impression that Orion and Lunar Gateway are far larger than Starship, when in fact, several of both could easily fit inside Starship’s planned cargo bay. In fact, when Starship finally docks with Lunar Gateway the size difference is going to make NASA’s effort here seem very picayune. Apparently, the GAO (or possibly NASA) decided it needed to hide this reality.

The real problem NASA’s Artemis program faces is red tape coming from the FAA and Fish & Wildlife. The GAO fails to note this fact, which makes its report far less helpful than it could have been.

4 comments

Sutherland spaceport reconfigures design in effort to satisfy environmental concerns

9:57 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea.

The Sutherland spaceport being built in the north of Scotland has announced plans to shrink its size in order to satisfy environmental concerns, likely raised by the many bureaucrats in the United Kingdom that have to approve its spaceport license.

Orbex is now consulting with the local community on proposed changes, including a smaller launch pad, to better protect the surrounding environment. There will also be smaller access roads, and the size of the integration facility, where rockets are assembled before launch, is to be reduced.

The company said: “These changes will make the building footprint smaller, leading to a reduction in peat disturbance and a lower impact on the groundwater ecosystem. The visual impact of the site will also be reduced, and there will be less disturbance to local watercourse crossings, with mammal migration paths widened to better preserve the natural environment.

Orbex has signed a 50-year lease to use this spaceport, and has been building its Prime rocket in a facility nearby. It had hoped to complete a first launch in 2023, but that is clearly not going to happen. It had applied for a launch license in February 2022, but apparently the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in the United Kingdom has still not issued it, almost two years later.

Much of the environmental opposition to the Sutherland spaceport was initially instigated by a billionaire who had invested in the competing Saxavord spaceport on the Shetland Islands. Though his lawsuit was dismissed in August 2021, this does not mean that the opposition by him and others has ceased.

Overall, it appears that like at Saxavord in Shetland, work at Sutherland has significantly slowed in recent months. It appears both are being blocked for regulatory reasons, delays that once again provide an opportunity for the spaceports being developed in Norway and Sweden.

Leave a comment

Intelsat partnering with both Starlink and OneWeb

9:37 am

The satellite communications company Intelsat has begun partnering with both Starlink and OneWeb to provide service to its customers using satellites from its own constellation as well as the constellations of these competiting companies.

Intelsat is producing a new flat panel antenna that enables moving vehicles to use broadband services from the company’s geostationary satellites and from SpaceX’s Starlink network in low Earth orbit. The phased array electronically steered antenna was installed on the roof of a sports utility vehicle for demonstrations at an Intelsat investor day event Nov. 30.

This antenna is designed to be rugged enough for military use, thus targeting the prime customer Intelsat is aiming at. It also hopes to make a deal to use Amazon’s Kuiper constellation in the same way, once that constellation is launched.

The company also has a deal with OneWeb to use a combination of their satellites to provide broadband services during commercial airline flights.

2 comments

Ursa Major raises $138 million in private investment capital

9:30 am

The rocket engine startup Ursa Major has successfully raised an additional $138 million in private investment capital in an extended round of fund-raising.

Rocket propulsion startup Ursa Major announced Nov. 30 it has raised $138 million in Series D and D-1 funding rounds. Investors include Explorer 1 Fund and Eclipse, RTX Ventures, funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, Exor Ventures, Mack & Co., XN and other institutional shareholders.

Based in Berthoud, Colorado, Ursa Major manufactures liquid engines for small space launchers and hypersonic vehicles, and recently announced plans to expand into solid rocket motors. An initial Series D round was completed earlier this year. But Ursa Major said it extended fundraising to include a Series D-1 round “due to strong interest in accelerating development on several future programs.”

The company’s decision to enter the solid rocket motor market was apparently greeted with enthusiasm by investors. The biggest user of these motors is the U.S. military, and it desperately needs more provides to refresh its stockpile, since so much of that stockpile has been shipped to the Ukraine.

Leave a comment

Russia launches Progress to ISS

9:09 am

Russia early this morning successfully launched a Progress freighter to ISS, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from Baikonur in Kazakhstan.

The rocket’s core stage, strap-on boosters, and second stage crashed in the standard drop zones the Russians have used since the launch of Sputnik in 1957. It is unclear how close to inhabited areas any of these are.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

87 SpaceX
53 China
16 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches, 99 to 53, and the entire world combined 99 to 85. SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world (excluding other American companies) 87 to 85.

SpaceX however has two launches scheduled for today, one at Vandenberg at 10:04 am (Pacific) and the second at Cape Canaveral at 11 pm (Eastern). The links go to the live streams.

Leave a comment
1 … 46 47 48 49 50 … 379