Tag: politics

A space journalist suddenly notices that the FCC has no legal authority to regulate space junk

9:34 am

An article posted yesterday at Space News was unusual in that this mainstream media space news source and its reporter suddenly recognized, more than a year late, that the FCC’s effort to impose regulations on all satellite companies requiring they build satellites a certain way to facilitate their de-orbit at the end of their lifespan, is based on no statutory authority and is thus illegal.

[A] Supreme Court ruling in June struck down a principle widely known as “Chevron deference,” which gave agencies greater latitude in interpreting ambiguities in laws they enforced. The move has raised questions over the FCC’s space sustainability jurisdiction without a federal law that explicitly authorizes it or other agencies to establish and enforce debris mitigation rules.

Still, the FCC is seen as the logical agency to handle the risk of orbital debris. If courts rule that the FCC has not been granted the authority, Congress will likely address this once it gets around to tackling the issue.

My, my! You mean a federal bureaucrat doesn’t have the right to make law out of thin air, just to facilitate what that bureaucrat thinks should be done? Who wudda thought it!

As an old-fashioned American who believes in freedom and limited government (as clearly established by our Constitution) I had recognized this legal fact immediately in January 2023, when the FCC first made its power grab. That our young modern journalists don’t understand this is both tragic and disgraceful.

What makes this even more disgraceful is that the entire article lobbies hard for the FCC, claiming with no real evidence that “the FCC is seen as the logical agency to handle the risk of orbital debris.”

What this reporter should have known and reported is that both the House and the Senate have disgreed, forcefully. In the House one bill was introduced to give the de-orbit regulatory power to the FAA, while later rejecting a second bill that would have given that power to the FCC. The Senate meanwhile introduced its own bill giving this de-orbit regulatory power to the FAA and Commerce, not the FCC.

Sadly it is probably a mistake to give any government agency too much power in this matter, but our Congress will do so regardless. That is how things are done nowadays. Americans are expected to kow-tow to Washington regulators, in everything they do. Freedom is not the default approach. Regulation is.

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France’s space agency aims to standardize its French Guiana commercial launchpad

9:04 am

France’s space agency CNES has announced a project to standardize its French Guiana commercial launchpad, which France owns and CNES now manages, for many different customers.

Launch facilities and launch pads in particular are generally specifically built for a single rocket. This will, however, not be the case with the Guiana Space Centre’s new commercial launch facility. As a result, a set of standardized ground systems will be utilized to ensure that the facility can manage a number of different rockets.

At the moment, those rockets include seven different European rocket startups — Avio, HyImpulse, Isar Aerospace, MaiaSpace, PLD Space, Rocket Factory Augsburg, and Latitude — none of which has yet launched a rocket. CNES is telling them all that if wish to use French Guiana, they must design their rocket to fit its facilities.

This project will accomplish two things. First, it will limit use of the pad to these European companies. CNES is essentially establishing French Guiana as a European-only facility. Second, like China’s commercial launchpads — run by that government so that all its pseudo-companies are dependent on it for launches — CNES (and France) is attempting to establish some control and power over these new independent and competing rocket companies, most of which have no facilities or operations in France. Three are German (Hyimpulse, Isar, and Rocket Factory), one is Spanish (PLD), and one is Italian (Avio). Only two are French-based (Latitude and MaiaSpace), with MaiaSpace a subsidiary of ArianeGroup which means it has facilities in many places in Europe. This project will force all these companies to cater their designs to the demands of France.

The American approach I think is far better. Government spaceports lease specific launchpads to specific companies, which then build the facilities to their needs, not the government’s. They can then each work fast and efficiently without consultation with others. CNES’s effort here will likely slow development in Europe, as all these companies will have to meet with CNES and work out some common engineering.

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Russia’s Angara rocket launches pair of classified military satellites

8:47 am

Russia early today used its Angara-1.2 rocket to launch a pair of classified military satellites, lifting off from its Plesetsk spaceport in northwestern Russia.

The Angara-1.2 is the smallest member of the Angara family of rockets, intended to eventually replace all of Russia’s other rockets. This was that rocket’s third launch, all from Plesetsk. The rocket’s upper stages and fairings fell in Barents Sea.

The leader board in the 2024 launch race remains unchanged.

91 SpaceX
38 China
11 Russia
10 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 106 to 60, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world, including American companies, 91 to 75.

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Partisan Democrats hate so much they are willing to commit murder, and worse, now admit it openly

11:52 am

The assassination of Abraham Lincoln
An earlier example of the Democratic Party’s
reasonablity, that time against Abraham Lincoln

They’re coming for you next: The words couldn’t have made it clearer. When asked by a reporter of the Daily Mail what he thought of his father’s actions, the son of attempted Trump assassin Ryan Routh said that his father hates Trump as “every reasonable person does. I don’t like Trump either.”

The problem is that reasonable people don’t hate. Reasonable people think about the differing opinions of others and decide as rationally as possible what they think might be the right answer. And if reasonable people are faced with true evil, they don’t act with hatred. They instead follow the biblical mantra, don’t condemn the sinner, only the sin.

Routh’s son however illustrates the contrasting attitude of the base as well as the leadership of today’s Democratic Party. They don’t simply disagree, they hate. Worse, they think that hatred is “reasonable,” and that everyone “reasonable” agrees with it.

Thus you get two assassination attempts in just over two months against Donald Trump, whose only crime — according to Democrats — is that he is running for president against them, and has said he will change the governmental policies they believe in. “Reasonable Democrats” can’t tolerate such a possibility, so therefore these “reasonable Democrats” appear out of nowhere, over and over again, attempting to kill the source of their hatred.

It is this same mindless hatred that allowed Kamala Harris as well as the Democratic Party operatives running the Trump-Harris debate last week to repeat slanderous lie after slanderous lie. The list below is only a sampling:
» Read more

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Investigation into upper stage failure during Ariane-6’s first launch completed

8:38 am

The Ariane-6 rocket investigation team, including people from the European Space Agency (ESA), CNES (France’s space agency), ArianeGroup (which built and owns the rocket), and Arianespace (which presently manages the rocket), has identified the issue that caused the rocket’s upper stage failure during the rocket’s first launch in July.

In a 16 September update, the Task Force announced that the investigation had identified a single temperature measurement that “exceeded a predefined limit” as the root cause of the anomaly. The tripped limit caused the software to trigger a shutdown of the APU which ensured the rocket’s Vinci upper stage engine could not be restarted for the final burn.

In order to remedy this issue and ensure a similar shutdown does not occur in the future, the ignition preparation sequence, specifically the APU chill-down sequence, has been changed. The updated flight software is already being tested as teams prepare for the rocket’s first commercial flight which is set to take place before the end of the year.

Because of that incorrect temperature, the upper stage did not do its final burn, thereby stranding the stage and two demonstration return capsules in the wrong orbit. This prevented the test return of both capsules, as well as the test planned de-orbit of the stage over the ocean.

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Two Russian astronauts mark one year in orbit

11:38 am

Russian astronauts Oleg Kononenko and Nikolay Chub today marked the one year anniversary of their launch in 2023, thus marking another Russian yearlong mission in space.

The two cosmonauts were sent to the orbit aboard the Soyuz MS-24 manned spacecraft, which blasted off from the Baikonur space launch center on September 15, 2023. The third crew member on board was NASA astronaut Loral O’Hara, who returned to the Earth on April 6, 2024. Kononenko and Chub, as well as NASA astronaut Tracy Dyson, will travel back aboard the Soyuz MS-25 spacecraft, whose departure is scheduled for September 23.

Their return next week will not mark a record for the longest flight in space. That belongs to Valeri Polykov, who occupied the Soviet-built Mir space station in the mid-1990s for one year, two months, and two weeks in the mid-nineties, or 438 days. The second longest flight was by Sergey Avdeev, 380 days on Mir in 1998-1999, with the third longest flight by Sergey Prokopyev, Dmitry Petelin, and Franco Rubio, 371 days in 2022-2023.

When Kononenko and Chub return on September 23rd, their flight will 373 days long, passing the 2022-2023 mission.

Note that only one American is on this list. A few have flown almost a year, but only Rubio has made it, and that was forced on him unplanned because of problems with the Soyuz capsule that brought him into orbit. He was forced to stay up an extra six months and come down on the next Soyuz.

The reason for this lack of long American flights is entirely NASA’s fault. It has consistently resisted doing such long missions, even holding the Russians back during the first two decades of ISS’s operation. The Russians no longer follow NASA’s timidity, and have been doing more such missions, because such missions will be the only way to gather the necessary medical data needed for future missions to Mars.

Meanwhile, NASA hesitates, and sometimes touts eleven-month missions (such as Scott Kelly’s) as year-long missions, a blatant lie that our propaganda press repeats mindlessly. I fully expect the first planned year-long American mission will be done privately, outside of our government, once Starship begins flying regularly.

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Iran completes third orbital launch in 2024

10:17 am

Iran's spaceports

According to Iran’s state-run press and now confirmed by independent sources, Iran yesterday completed its third orbital launch in 2024, its new solid-fueled three stage Qaem-100 rocket lifting off on its second launch from Iran’s interior Semnan spaceport. No word on where the rocket’s lower stages crashed.

The payload was an engineering test satellite, which according to the Iranian press is operating as planned.

At the moment Iran appears to aggressively accelerating its civilian space program. It now has two functioning rockets, the Simorgh rocket, which placed three satellites in orbit in January, and the Qaem-100, its first launch taking place also in January. The country is also building a coastal spaceport near the town of Chabahar, as shown on the map to the right. Moreover, this third launch is the most the country has ever achieved in a single year. Until 2024, Iran had never launched more than once in any year.

And while these rockets and satellites do not appear to be military in nature, the technology development will certainly result in advances in Iran’s missile capabilities. The Qaem-100’s solid-fueled design is exactly what most ballistic missiles use, since it allows the missile to be stored fueled for long periods.

The leader board in the 2024 launch race remains unchanged.

91 SpaceX
38 China
10 Rocket Lab
10 Russia

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 106 to 59, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 91 to 74.

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Intuitive Machines targeting January 2025 for launch of its next lunar lander

9:37 am

The landers either at or targeting the Moon's south pole
The landers either at or targeting the Moon’s south pole

The company Intuitive Machines is now aiming to launch its second Nova-C lunar lander, dubbed Athena, during a January 1-5, 2025 launch window.

The landing site is indicated on the map to the right, on the rim of Shackleton crater and almost on top of the south pole. While Chang’e-7 is targeting the same crater rim, it is not scheduled for launch until 2026.

The lander will not only include a drill for studying the surface below it, it will release a small secondary payload, the Micro-Nova Hopper, which will hopefully hop down into the permanently shadowed craters nearby.

The launch will also carry a lunar orbiter, dubbed Lunar Trailblazar, which will not only do spectroscopy of the lunar surface, looking for water, it will also be used as a communications relay satellite with Athena. That orbiter, designed to demonstrate the ability to build a smallsat at low cost, was previously threatened with cancellation because its builder, Lockheed Martin, went way over budget.

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Heritage Foundation releases guide to colleges that teach instead of indoctrinate

2:23 pm

Heritage map of good and bad colleges
Click for interactive map.

In an effort to find at least two universities in every state that are focused not on leftist and queer indoctrination but instead on free expression and open inquiry, the conservative Heritage Foundation has now put together an interactive map and guide that parents and high school students can use to choose a quality college to attend.

The image to the right is a screen capture of that map, located here. You can click on each dot to get more detailed information about why Heritage recommends or not recommends it. For example, for Thomas Aquinas College in California the guide says the following in explaining why it lists it as a “great option.”

The mission of Thomas Aquinas College (TAC) is to renew “what is best in the Western intellectual heritage and to [conduct] liberal education under the guiding light of the Catholic faith.” TAC has an impressive “A+” rating from the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. It does not have a bias response team, nor does it require diversity statements for hiring. It has an impressive 80 percent four-year graduation rate. Thomas Aquinas College also accepts the Classical Learning Test for admission.

Meanwhile, the guide says the following in giving Cornell University, Duke, Brown, Harvard, and Tufts a “not recommended” status:
» Read more

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Italian rocket company Avio outlines its future rocket plans

11:07 am

Link here. The plans include steady upgrades to its Vega-C rocket, including replacing the upper stage engine presently provided by a Ukrainian company with an engine built by Avio itself.

The bigger development will be a more powerful rocket, the Vega-E, to replace the Vega-C in 2027.

This version of the rocket will retain the first and second stages of the Vega C+ rocket and substitute the third and fourth stages for a single liquid fuel stage powered by the company’s new M10 methalox rocket engine.

The company is also hoping to begin test flights in 2026 of a Grasshopper-type small-scale demonstration rocket leading to the development of a reusable two-stage rocket that would eventually replace Vega-E.

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NASA receives 11 VIPER proposals from the private sector

10:58 am

NASA is now evaluating eleven different proposals from private companies to take over the agency’s canceled VIPER lunar rover.

Equipped with three scientific instruments and a drill, the rover was to be delivered to the Moon by a commercial lander, Griffin, built by Pittsburgh-based Astrobotic as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. Astrobotic and several other companies have CLPS contracts to deliver NASA science and technology experiments to the Moon. NASA pays for delivery services for its payloads. The companies are expected to find non-NASA customers to close the business case.

NASA is paying Astrobotic $323 million for landing services on top of the cost of VIPER itself. NASA’s commitment to Congress was that VIPER would cost $433.5 million with landing in 2023. By the beginning of this year, that had become $505.4 million with landing in 2024.

It appears NASA canceled the VIPER mission because the agency had doubts Astrobotic would launch Griffin on time. The rover cost overruns, plus additional costs from that launch delay, made NASA management back out.

Though NASA has not revealed any details about the new eleven proposals, we know that Astrobotic’s competitor, Intuitive Machines, is one of those proposals. How it can get it launched to the Moon for less than it would have cost to launch on Astrobotic’s Griffin however is a mystery to me.

Meanwhile, Griffin is still going to launch, with Astrobotic now able to sell that VIPER payload space to others and NASA paying for the flight.

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The UK awards space removal contract to Astroscale/Clearspace partnership

10:49 am

The United Kingdom yesterday awarded a new $3 million contract to a partnership of the Japanese company Astroscale and the Swiss company Clearspace to further develop a mission to de-orbit two satellites in 2026.

The British subsidiaries of Japan-based Astroscale and Switzerland’s ClearSpace announced about 2.35 million British pounds ($3 million) each in funding before tax Sept. 11 to continue de-risking their robotic arm capture system and debris de-tumbling capabilities. The grants enable the ventures to continue working on their technologies until March, when the UK Space Agency is expected to decide which will conduct the demonstration mission.

Both consortiums passed preliminary design reviews for their mission earlier this year.

Both companies are positioning themselves as space junk removal operations, with Astroscale having already flown a partly successful mission to demonstrate rendezvous and capture technologies using its own proprietary magnetic capture system.

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FAA attempts to justify its red tape

10:06 am

The FAA today responded to SpaceX’s harsh criticism of the licensing process that is delaying the next test orbital launch of Starship/Superheavy, claiming the delays were entirely SpaceX’s fault for changing the flight profile of the mission, likely involving the landing of Superheavy at the launch tower rather than in the Gulf of Mexico.

The agency also claimed that this change meant that the “environmental impact” would cover a wider area, requiring imput from “other agencies.”

An FAA official reiteriated these claims at a conference yesterday, stating that the delay was “largely set by the choices that the company makes.”

All crap and utter rationalizations. The FAA has decided that any change of any kind in the launch operations will now require major review, including bringing in Fish & Wildlife, the Coast Guard, and others to have their say. This policy however has nothing to do with reality, as there is absolutely no additional threat to the environment by these changes. Nor is there any significant increase in safety risks by having Superheavy land at Boca Chica. Even if there were, the only ones qualified to determine that risk are engineers at SpaceX. The FAA is merely rubberstamping SpaceX’s conclusions, and taking its time doing so.

This is America today. Unless something changes soon, freedom is dead. To do anything new and challenging Americans will have to beg permission from bureaucrats in Washington, who know nothing but love to exert their power over everyone else. Under these circumstances, we shall see the end of a great and free nation.

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A new study, commissioned by NASA, endorses giving NASA more power and money, even as NASA becomes more irrelevant

2:32 pm

NASA logo
It’s all about power and control.

Surprise, surprise! A just released report from the National Academies and paid for by NASA has concluded that the agency suffers from insufficient political and financial support, and that the agency’s recent shift to relying on private enterprise should be de-emphasized in order to grow NASA instead.

Two quotes from the report’s executive summary tells us everything we really need to know about its purpose and political goals:

NASA’s shift to milestone-based purchase-of-service contracts for first-of-a-kind, low-technology-readiness-level mission work can, if misused, erode the agency’s in-house capabilities, degrade the agency’s ability to provide creative and experienced insight and oversight of programs, and put the agency and the United States at increased risk of program failure.

In plain English, NASA’s transition to relying on the private sector for the development of rockets, spacecraft, and even planetary missions “erodes” the ability of the agency to grow. That those private companies are actually building and launching things and doing so for far less money, compared to NASA’s half century of relatively little achievement since the 1960s while spending billions, is something the report finds utterly irrelevant. If anything, that success by the private sector should recommend that NASA should shrink, not grow.

The second quote from this NASA-commissioned report underlines its effort to lobby for NASA:
» Read more

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Russia launches three astronauts to ISS

9:45 am

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

With this launch there are now nineteen humans in orbit, a new record. This includes the three Chinese astronauts on China’s Tiangong-3 space station, the four astronauts on the private Polaris Dawn mission, the three astronauts on this Soyuz, and the nine astronauts on ISS (four from a Dragon launch, two from the Starliner launch, and three from a previous Soyuz launch).

The Soyuz capsule will dock with ISS this afternoon.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

89 SpaceX
38 China
10 Rocket Lab
10 Russia

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 104 to 58, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 89 to 73.

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Space industry and Congress blast FAA for its so-called “streamlined” regulations

9:32 am

At hearings yesterday before the House Science committee numerous space companies as well as elected officials heaped numerous complaints about the FAA’s regulartory framework, called Part 450, that it adopted in March 2021 supposedly to “streamline” and “speed up” the licensing required to launch.

The result has been the exact opposite, as predicted by many in the industry when the agency was writing these regulations.

Many in the launch industry have warned since the regulations went into force in March 2021 that it was difficult for companies to obtain licenses under Part 450. Industry officials raised concerns about Part 450 at an October 2023 hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee’s space subcommittee, with one witness, Bill Gerstenmaier of SpaceX, warning the “entire regulatory system is at risk of collapse” because of the difficulties getting licenses under the new regulations.

Witnesses at the House hearing made clear those concerns have not abated. “The way it is being implemented today has caused severe licensing delays, confusion and is jeopardizing our long-held leadership position,” said Dave Cavossa, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, an industry group whose members include several launch companies.

He cited specific concerns such as a long “pre-application” process with the FAA where companies, he said, “get stuck in an endless back-and-forth process” with the agency to determine how they can meet the performance-based requirements of Part 450 with limited guidance. “This process is taking years,” he argued.

It first must be noted that this hearing was not called in connection with the FAA’s stonewalling of SpaceX Starship/Superheavy test program. It was called because since 2021 the entire new rocket industry in the U.S. has ground to a halt, with launches from new rocket companies practically ending because of the red tape imposed on them by Part 450. If something is not done to fix this, new companies in Europe and India will quickly grab market share, choking off profits for the new American companies.

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Why would anyone who wants a good college education ever go to Harvard?

1:53 pm

Harvard: where you get can get a shoddy education centered on hate and bigotry
Harvard: where you can spend a lot of money
getting a shoddy education

Two stories last week proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Harvard is at this moment in time the worst American college in the nation, its faculty and staff clearly having no interest in teaching critical thinking. Instead, they are more focused on suppressing dissenting views while making their prime task indoctrinating students into the Marxist and queer agenda that is divorced from reality but eager to discriminate against whites and Jews.

First the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and the College Pulse published their fifth annual College Free Speech Rankings, surveying almost 60,000 students across more than 250 universities. Guess which university ranked at the very bottom of the list, for the second year in a row?

Harvard University retained its position as the lowest-ranked institution for free speech for the second consecutive year. Harvard, Columbia University, New York University all received an “Abysmal” rating for their speech climates. The University of Pennsylvania and Barnard College round out the bottom five. These schools not only have low levels of administrative support for free speech. They also have low levels of student comfort in expressing their views on controversial political topics and a strong bias in favor of allowing liberal speakers on campus over conservative ones.

Next, to prove this ranking was well deserved, it appears that Harvard’s administration has refused to cooperate with the local district attorney and the police in investigating the pro-Hamas rioters who attacked Jewish students during the violence that occurred on campus in October 2023, violence committed in support of the rape, torture, and murder of innocent men, women, and children near Gaza that same month.
» Read more

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FAA delays launch license approval of next Starship/Superheavy test launch until late November

9:51 am


The White House to SpaceX: “Great business you got there! Really be
a shame if something happened to it!”

According to an update today on SpaceX’s Starship webpage, the FAA has told the company to not expect a launch license for its next Starship/Superheavy orbital test launch until late November.

We recently received a launch license date estimate of late November from the FAA, the government agency responsible for licensing Starship flight tests. This is a more than two-month delay to the previously communicated date of mid-September. This delay was not based on a new safety concern, but instead driven by superfluous environmental analysis. The four open environmental issues are illustrative of the difficulties launch companies face in the current regulatory environment for launch and reentry licensing.

This two month delay is actually a four month delay, since SpaceX had previously stated it was ready to launch in early August. » Read more

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CEO of the German rocket statup Isar Aerospace pulls a Musk

9:27 am

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea

During an interview at a conference this week, Daniel Metzler, the CEO of the German rocket statup Isar Aerospace, imitated the kind of comments issued routinely by Elon Musk prior to one of SpaceX’s daring test launches, stating that the first launch of Isar’s Spectrum rocket will be a success “if we don’t blow up the launch site.”

“For me, the first flight will be a success if we don’t blow up the launch site,” explained Metzler. “That would probably be the thing that would set us back the most in terms of technology and time.” He went on to explain that the company’s “test early and improve iteratively” development approach was inherently risky.

Though no launch date has been set, there are indications based on the activity at the Andoya spaceport in Norway, where Isar has a 20-year lease on the only launchpad, that this launch could occur within the next month or so. Andoya received its spaceport license late last month, and it also appears that Norway’s bureaucracy is not acting to delay this activity, as has the Civil Aviation Authority in the United Kingdom.

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In approving Europa Clipper’s launch, NASA and JPL claim its non-spec transistors will “heal” themselves in Jupiter orbit

9:12 am

Europa in true color
Europa in true color, taken by Juno September 2022.
Click for full image.

In making the decision to allow Europa Clipper to be launched on a Falcon Heavy on October 10, 2024, NASA and JPL officials explained that after several months of testing, they believe the improperly hardened transistors installed throughout the orbiter will “heal” themselves while in the low radiation portions of its orbit around Jupiter.

[The testing] showed the transistors in question will, in effect, heal themselves during the 20 days between the high radiation doses the probe will receive during each of 49 close flybys of Europa, all of them deep in Jupiter’s powerful magnetic field and radiation environment.

In addition, onboard heaters can be used as needed to raise the temperature of affected transistors, improving the recovery process. “After extensive testing and analysis of the transistors, the Europa Clipper project and I personally have high confidence we can complete the original mission for exploring Europa as planned,” said Jordan Evans, Europa Clipper project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

I hope this analysis is right, though I fear there is a lot of wishful-thinking involved. It could be however that this testing, in combination with what engineers have learned during Juno’s so-far 64 orbits around Jupiter, might have reassured them.

We however will not know for sure until Europa Clipper is on its way and reaches Jupiter in 2030.

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