Tag: politics

NASA: No further Artemis Moon landings for at least two years after first in 2025

11:53 am

The tortoise appears to be dying: NASA today announced that there will be a two-plus year pause of Artemis missions to the lunar surface after it completes its hoped-for first manned Moon landing in 2025.

In presentations at a two-day meeting of the NASA Advisory Council’s Human Exploration and Operations Committee Jan. 18 and 19, agency officials said the Artemis 4 mission, the first after the Artemis 3 mission lands astronauts on the moon, will not attempt a landing itself.

Instead, Artemis 4 will be devoted to assembly of the lunar Gateway. The mission will deliver the I-Hab habitat module, developed by the European Space Agency and the Japanese space agency JAXA, to the Gateway. It will be docked with the first Gateway elements, the Power and Propulsion Element and Habitation and Logistics Outpost, which will launch together on a Falcon Heavy in late 2024 and spend a year spiraling out to the near-rectilinear halo orbit around the moon.

Essentially, the Biden administration appears to be switching back to NASA’s original plans, to require use of the Lunar Gateway station for any future lunar exploration, thus delaying that exploration considerably. Do not expect any of this schedule to take place as promised. The 2025 lunar landing will be delayed, as will all subsequent SLS launches for Artemis. The rocket is simply too complicated and cumbersome to even maintain one launch per year, while inserting Gateway into the mix only slows down lunar exploration even more.

NASA officials also revealed that they are limiting their lunar landing Starship contract with SpaceX to only that single planned ’25 Moon mission. For future manned missions to the Moon the agency will request new bids from the entire industry.

NASA’s Human Landing System (HLS) Option A award to SpaceX last year covers only development of a lander and a single crewed flight on Artemis 3. NASA will acquire future landings through a separate effort, called Lunar Exploration Transportation Services (LETS). The goal of LETS is to select one, and possibly more, companies to provide “sustainable” landing services.

The timing of LETS — a draft request for proposals is scheduled for release this spring — means there will be a gap of a couple years before the first landing service acquired through that program would be ready. “It’ll be about two years from the Option A award to the LETS award before we’ll have this sustainable lander,” Kirasich said. “It’s a different lander with more aggressive requirements than Option A.”

It appears that Jeff Bezos’ political lobbying efforts have paid off, and that NASA is now reopening bidding so that his consortium, led by Blue Origin, can once again compete for that lunar lander contract. Whether the Bezos’ team will be able to propose anything comparable to Starship is however very questionable.

None of this really hurts SpaceX. Its contract with NASA helps them develop a Starship lunar lander. Then, while NASA twiddles its thumbs building Gateway, it will be free to fly its own lunar missions, selling tickets on the open market. I suspect that — should NASA succeed in landing humans in ’25 — the next American manned landing on the Moon will be a bunch of SpaceX customers, not that second Artemis mission sometime in the late 2020s.

SpaceX of course will also be able to bid on that second lunar landing competition. And it will be hard for NASA not to award Starship a further contract, even if others are competing against it. Starship will be operational. The others will merely be proposed.

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Latvian/Bulgarian commercial partnership to launch cubesats to monitor space weather

11:30 am

Capitalism in space: Mission Space, a Latvian company, plans to build a constellation of 24 cubesats designed to monitor space weather and solar activity, using cubesats manufactured by the Bulgarian company EnduroSat.

Mission Space plans to make its software model of the near-Earth radiation environment available in mid-2022, before launching its Aurora-1 detectors with EnduroSat in the fourth quarter of the year.

Mission Space was founded in 2020 to offer space weather monitoring as a service. With data supplied by its constellation, Mission Space will provide data and analytics to government agencies in addition to establishing a cloud-based platform to help commercial satellite operators prepare for solar storms, assess risks and monitor radiation levels.

EndoroSat already has five satellites in orbit, with ten more planned for launch in the next two years.

I think that both these companies demonstrate that a modern satellite business truly can be started in someone’s garage. Because cubesats are so small and are also somewhat standardized, you don’t need a large facility to build them.

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SpaceX’s Starship gets Air Force point-to-point cargo study contract

10:46 am

Capitalism in space: The Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) has signed a $102 million five year contract with SpaceX to study the practicality of using its Starship spacecraft as a method for transporting large cargo point-to-point on Earth.

[Program manager Greg] Spanjers said the SpaceX work is focused in four areas: collecting data from commercial orbital launches and landings; exploring cargo bay designs compatible with U.S. Transportation Command containers [TRANSCOM] and support rapid loading and unloading; researching landing systems that can operate on a variety of terrain; and demonstrating the heavy cargo launch and landing process.

The emphasis on landing options and interoperability with TRANSCOM containers and loading processes is an important element of the project, Spanjers noted, because the department’s vision for how the point-to-point capability could be used is broader than just the commercial business case. While companies are primarily interested in delivering cargo to and from established sites, the military wants to deliver supplies and humanitarian aid to locations that may not have spaceports.

This contract is in many ways similar to NASA’s manned Starship lunar lander contract. Both provide SpaceX some cash for developing a different version of Starship, even as the bulk of development money for building Starship comes from the private investment community.

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NRO to buy radar data from private companies

10:37 am

Capitalism in space: The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) has signed contracts with five commercial companies to purchase the Earth radar data that they produce to see if that data will be useful for future reconnaissance and surveillance.

The National Reconnaissance Office announced Jan. 20 it has signed agreements with commercial radar imagery providers Airbus U.S., Capella Space, Iceye U.S., PredaSAR and Umbra.

These agreements are study contracts that give the NRO access to the data collected by these companies’ synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites, and are intended to help the agency better understand the quality of commercially available imagery. “We know that users across the national system for geospatial intelligence are eager to explore commercial radar, and these contracts will allow us to rapidly validate capabilities and the benefits to the national mission,” NRO Director Chris Scolese said in a statement.

Essentially, NRO is looking to see if it can fill some of its radar data needs from inexpensive privately built satellites, rather than build and launch its own very costly radar satellites. The agency is already doing the same with commercial optical data.

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Debris from Russian anti-sat test just misses Chinese satellite

10:28 am

A Chinese satellite was almost destroyed on January 18th when a piece of debris from Russia’s November 15th anti-satellite test zipped past at a distance of less than a few hundred yards.

Expect more such events in the coming years.

This quote from the article I found somewhat ironic:

In an article from Beijing tabloid Global Times Jan. 20, cited experts stated that further close encounters cannot be ruled out. “Currently, they keep a safe distance but the chance for these two getting close in the future cannot be excluded,” said space debris expert Liu Jing.

Aerospace commentator Huang Zhicheng, told the publication that the growing issue of space debris should be addressed, including through international legal mechanisms. “It is not only necessary to conduct research on experimental devices or spacecraft to remove space debris, but also to formulate corresponding international laws and regulations on the generation of space debris under the framework of the UN,” Huang said. [emphasis mine]

Since anything published in the Chinese press must be approved by the Chinese government, this statement is essentially what the Chinese government wants said. For China however to demand other nations obey international law and not create more space junk that threatens others is hilarious, considering that China this year will likely launch two rockets whose core stages will crash to Earth uncontrolled, in direct violation of the Outer Space Treaty that China is a signatory to.

Since China doesn’t obey the treaties it signs, why should it expect others to do the same?

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Judge clears way for land acquisition for Georgia spaceport

10:11 am

The judge overseeing the lawsuit against the Georgia spaceport that Camden County officials wish to build has ruled that the county can proceed with its deal to purchase land, denying the request to delay it.

It seemed the judge ruled on very technical legal grounds, related to the late date the opponents filed their request.

The spaceport’s future still remains somewhat in limbo, even if the land is purchased. A petition to hold a referendum pro or con, still being checked for the accuracy of its signatures, would require a special county election which the voters would decide.

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NATO issues new space policy filled with blather

11:11 am

NATO on January 17th published a new space policy document that with a great deal of bureaucratic blather essentially says that space is important, NATO’s enemies threaten those assets, and NATO recognizes these facts.

You can read the full document here.

This is obviously a policy document so we should not expect it to lay out proposed or planned operational projects. At the same time, it is so filled with generalizations it really says very little. In a sense, the blather is designed to hide how little it says, besides the very obvious or the most common sense goals, such as for example making sure the equipment of all of NATO’s partners is compatible with each other. To give you a flavor, here is one quote:

NATO will identify and, if necessary, develop appropriate mechanisms, based on voluntary participation, to fulfil and sustain requirements for space support in NATO operations, missions and other activities in the above functional areas. Allies’ capabilities, and, if necessary, trusted commercial service providers, should be leveraged to meet these requirements in the most secure, efficient, effective and transparent manner.

In plain English, NATO wants the cooperation of both private and government space entities to make sure it can function fully in space. As I said, stating the obvious.

The language actually tells us more about the foggy and inefficient thinking among DC and Pentagon bureaucrats. They can’t write clearly because they really don’t think clearly.

Still, the policy outlined essentially commits NATO to support a thriving infrastructure in space, from both the private and governmental sectors. The policy’s strong apparent support for “voluntary” private space is especially encouraging.

The policy’s position against aggressive actions by others, such as Russia and China, is also somewhat encouraging, though its expression in such mealy-mouth language suggests a fundamental lack of commitment that could be worrisome. Russia’s response to this new policy statement was not so vaguely put:

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova took NATO to task over its space policy paper at a briefing on Thursday, branding it as slanted and incendiary. According to her, the document entitled NATO’s Overarching Space Policy, which was published on January 17, covers the Western-led bloc’s priorities in space. “The document is one-sided and in fact incendiary as it is based on destructive beliefs of the US-led NATO members who have an important role in space,” Zakharova emphasized.

I suspect, based on Zakharova’s comments, that Russia has determined from the new policy statement that NATO’s policy is weak, and that Russia can therefore continue to push the envelope against it and the western powers, just to find out exactly how much it can get away with.

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Yutu-2 scientists find soil “cloddy” during its journey

10:46 am

Chinese scientists today published a paper describing results from Yutu-2’s two year journey on the far side of the Moon, with the most interesting discovery being that the soil is “cloddy” there.

They found that the bearing property of the regolith is similar to that of dry sand and sandy loam on Earth, stronger than the typical lunar soil of Apollo missions.

But they estimated, based on the cloddy soil observed in Yutu-2’s wheels, that the soil there is stickier than the landing site of its predecessor Chang’e-3 which soft-landed on the moon’s Bay of Rainbows in Dec. 2013, according to the study.

The researchers attributed the increased soil cohesion to the higher percentage of agglutinates in the regolith, which make the soil particles more likely to hold together when ground by the wheels.

Since the blocky soil has adhered onto the rover’s wheel lugs instead of its meshed surface, they suggested that the lug’s surface could be coated with a special anti-adhesion material in future missions to improve the machine’s ability of traction.

The rover also traveled by the number of small and relatively fresh secondary craters.

Yutu-2 continues to operate. It is at present in hibernation during the lunar night, and will resume operations when the Sun comes up in about a week or so.

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SpaceX now blocked from Pakistan; OneWeb signs deal to operate in India

9:44 am

Capitalism in space: Two stories this morning suggest that the competition between the internet satellite constellations Starlink and OneWeb is being partly influenced by local politics, with the influence favoring OneWeb and hindering SpaceX.

First, Pakistan ordered SpaceX to stop taking preorders from its citizens for its Starlink system.

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) said in a Jan. 19 news release that “Starlink has neither applied for nor obtained any license from PTA to operate and provide internet services” in the country. The telecoms regulator advised the general public to refrain from pre-booking the service in Pakistan through Starlink or associated websites.

This order follows a similar decree in India. Like India, SpaceX had apparently not been granted a license or permit to take preorders. SpaceX has now been blocked entirely from the subcontinent by the governments of both countries.

Second, OneWeb and Hughes announced a partnership agreement to distribute its internet service in India.

In the statement, OneWeb’s CEO Neil Masterson said the company would partner with Hughes to “offer high-speed, low-latency satellite broadband solutions and contribute to the Digital India vision”. OneWeb’s constellation, he said, would cover the length and breadth of India, from Ladakh to Kanyakumari and from Gujarat to the Northeast and bring secure solutions to enterprises, governments, telcos, airline companies and maritime customers. “OneWeb will invest in setting up enabling infrastructure such as Gateways and PoPs in India to light up the services,” he added.

According to the announcement, OneWeb intends to start offering its service this year.

OneWeb is half-owned by the Indian-based Bharti group. It seems that this connection with India has greased the bureaucratic wheels in that country for OneWeb, allowing it begin offering its services there. It also appears that this same connection with India is likely one reason both India and Pakistan have put a break on SpaceX’s operations.

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Flight dates for SpaceX’s next two manned flights to ISS revised

9:24 am

Capitalism in space: A NASA official yesterday announced that the flight dates for SpaceX’s next two manned flights have been firmed up, with the private commercial Axiom AX-1 flight delayed from February 21st to March 31st, followed two weeks later by NASA’s own manned mission on April 15th.

Axiom has also noted that this commercial flight, piloted by a former NASA astronaut and carrying three passengers, will be its only commercial manned flight in ’22.

…Commanded by former NASA astronaut Michael López-Alegría, Ax-1 will only carry private citizens. Each paying $55 million for the privilege, the mission’s three customers are Larry Connor, Mark Pathy, and Eytan Stibbe – all businessmen who’ve respectively amassed multmillion-dollar fortunes in real estate; entertainment and shipping; and military equipment and venture capitalism.

Their Dragon spacecraft will be Resilience, making its third flight.

Axiom’s next private commercial flight has now been delayed until ’23.

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Freedom is under siege, and the besiegers have now told us they have no mercy

1:06 pm

Liberty under siege
Liberty under siege.

For many years I deeply and sincerely believed that many rank-and-file Democrat voters honestly did not know how corrupt and power-hungry the political leaders of their party had become. I thought that if I could simply get them to see the clear evidence of misbehavior and abuse of power that has been going on in the Democratic Party without check since Bill Clinton was president, they would reconsider their voting habits and abandon their support of that party.

I thought that the vast majority of Democrats were decent people who opposed oppression and intolerance and simply were unaware that they were voting for it when they supported the Democratic Party.

I now know unequivocally that I was wrong. Two stories in the past week illustrate bluntly that a large number of ordinary Democrats, maybe even a majority, are eager supporters of oppression and intolerance and dictatorship. They like the corruption and abuse-of-power coming from Democratic Party politicians. They even want more of it.
» Read more

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NASA: Russian anti-satellite test in November doubled the threat to ISS

9:17 am

According to a presentation by a NASA official at a conference today, further tracking of the debris from the Russian anti-satellite test on November 15, 2021 suggests that it has doubled the overall chance of a debris collision with ISS.

NASA ISS Program Director Robyn Gatens told a NASA advisory committee today that the November 15, 2021 Russian ASAT test forced the Expedition 66 crew to implement safe haven procedures, closing hatches to parts of the ISS and sheltering in the Soyuz and Crew Dragon spacecraft that could return them to Earth if worse came to worse.

Russia denied the test imperiled the crew, but Gatens said the threat of a piece of debris penetrating the ISS now has doubled to one chance in 25,000-33,000 orbits, versus one in 50,000 orbits prior to the test. The ISS does about 6,000 orbits a year.

It should be noted that, according to these numbers, the overall threat seems quite manageable. Nonetheless, the Russian anti-sat test was entirely irresponsible, especially because it targeted a defunct satellite in an orbit slightly higher than ISS, which means its debris will over time move into ISS’s orbit. The test also violated the Outer Space Treaty, which Russia has signed, which requires all signatories to control what they do in space so that it does not threaten either the persons or property of anyone else.

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Chinese pseudo-company preparing first launch of methane-fueled rocket

9:07 am

The Chinese pseudo-private company, Landspace, is apparently prepping its new launchpad and Zhuque-2 rocket for launch in one of China’s interior spaceports.

Satellite imagery and deleted social media postings indicate that work is progressing on a new complex for facilitating methane-liquid oxygen launch vehicles at Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China. Timelapse and high resolution satellite imagery show the development near the national Jiuquan center in the Gobi Desert and suggest the presence of a Zhuque-2 test article. A recent, now-deleted article indicates a new flame trench has been completed at Jiuquan.

The article at the link also cites statements by the company’s CEO in November, where he claimed they would launch in the first quarter of ’22. If successful, it would be the first orbital launch of a methane-fueled rocket, beating out both SpaceX’s Starship and Blue Origin’s New Glenn.

The article also says that the company is working on making the first stage reusable, which makes sense in that it will launch from inside China and that first stage if expendable will crash uncontrolled on Chinese territory. A second Chinese pseudo-company, iSpace, also claims it will begin hop tests of its own reusable rocket later this year.

For new readers: I call these companies pseudo because they really are not independent entities, as private companies are in the west. China’s government since 2014 has allowed private investors to create these companies and for the companies to compete against each other for government business, but none of them do anything without the full supervision of the Chinese government. Most have completed their first launches using solid rockets, technology almost always reserved for military use. None could have done so without that government permission and control.

The strategy here of China’s government is nonetheless smart, as the policy is creating competition and thus some innovation within its aerospace industry. The top-down control however will likely prevent these companies from doing anything truly different. Instead, they are apparently latching onto the new ideas, such as methane-fueled rockets and vertically landing first stages, that they have seen demonstrated by the truly independent private companies in the west.

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Israel approves Artemis Accords

8:51 am

The Israeli government has apparently agreed to sign the American-led Artemis Accords, making it the fifteenth nation to do so.

While Israel’s foreign ministry has not released an official statement on the issue, local media reports said a signing ceremony involving NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and Israel Space Agency Director-General Uri Oron is expected the week of Jan. 23. ISA will host the 17th Ramon International Space Conference on Jan. 25 as part of Israel’s Space Week.

Once Israel officially signs, the full list of signatures will be as follows: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, South Korea, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Ukraine, and the United States.

Since the accords are designed to encourage private enterprise and private property rights in space, both Russia and China oppose them. The lack of both France and Germany to sign at this point suggests the politicians presently in charge of those capitalist countries are reconsidering their commitment to free enterprise.

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Russian astronauts locate another leak on Zvezda

8:44 am

According to Russia’s state-run TASS press, Russian astronauts have located what it calls “the last air leak” on the Zvezda module of ISS.

Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov discovered the last air leak location in the International Space Station’s Zvezda module, Roscosmos spokesman Dmitry Strugovets said Tuesday, adding that the leak will be eliminated after special equipment is delivered to the station.

Like most of the other leaks previously found, this one was located in the aft transition chamber where the Zvezda docking port is located, once again suggesting that these leaks are the result of stress fractures caused by age and the more than a hundred dockings that have occurred there since Zvezda was launched more than twenty years ago.

The Russians’ belief that no more leaks will be found is probably based on their decision to reduce, even cease the use of this port. The new Prichal docking hub, which two Russians today are doing a spacewalk to finalize its integration with the station, makes the shuttering of Zvezda’s port possible.

At the same time, the existence of numerous stress fractures in an ISS module is not something to be dismissed lightly, as the TASS article attempts to do. It is akin to cracks in the hull of a submarine, and I don’t know anyone who would be willing to send such a vessel deep underwater.

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Pushback: New VA Attorney General shows Republicans the right way to fight the left

12:50 pm

The way it has been for decades
The way it has been for decades

All around us the oppressive leftists of the Democratic Party are in control. They dominate the mainstream media, the education and science communities, the bureaucracy, the major social media companies, and the entertainment industry. That monolith of top-down rule now imposes its will everywhere, blacklisting and destroying anyone who dares dissent from its agenda.

For decades these intolerant socialists and communists and hate-filled bigots have steadily gained more and more control and power because no one would truly resist them. Time after time they would do something egregious and never face any consequences. For example, in 1999 a DC bureaucrat was forced to resign because he used the word “niggardly,” properly describing how the political world was sometimes cheap and miserly for the wrong reasons. Several ignorant co-workers accused him falsely of using a racial slur, and DC mayor, Democrat Anthony Williams, quickly forced the man to resign. Shortly thereafter Williams realized his error and arranged for the man’s rehiring, but never did anything to discipline the illiterate fools who caused the furor.

Republicans in this matter are far worse. » Read more

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Philippino presidential candidate meets with SpaceX officials

9:35 am

SpaceX officials have held a virtual meeting with two senators from the Philippines, one of which is running for president, to discuss allowing Starlink service in their country as well as the establishment of a launch site.

TOP executives of SpaceX met with Senators Emmanuel “Manny” Pacquiao and Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel 3rd to discuss the use of low-orbit satellites to provide cheap internet to the Philippines. SpaceX is a space exploration company owned by technology magnate and billionaire Elon Musk.

During the virtual meeting on Saturday, the SpaceX executives also talked about the possibility of setting up a spaceship launch pad in the Philippines.

Pacquiao also proposed projects for Musk’s other companies, Tesla and Boring. He seems enthusiastic about bringing SpaceX to the Philippines. The odds right now of him becoming president however is not great, according to recent polling. This meeting with SpaceX was clearly an effort by him to garner attention and increase his poll numbers.

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Update on SLS: Still aiming for very unlikely March launch

9:20 am

A detailed update on the work being done by NASA and Boeing engineers to prepare SLS for its first unmanned test launch suggests that though a March launch is still the target, it is likely to be delayed.

The update at the link is very thorough, and outlines a large number of tests that need to be done to get this very cumbersome and complicated rocket ready for launch. They are just about done with the prep work for the core stage, and are now shifting to final testing of the upper stage, followed by some countdown sequence testing and a test of the flight termination system. In addition there are a number of other tests they wish to perform, all of which will take time.

Once these are done they will be ready to roll the rocket out to the launchpad for a final dress rehearsal countdown — dubbed the Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR), now scheduled for mid- to late-February.

NASA will not set a launch date until after the WDR is completed and they can factor in any additional tasks with already-known work. “We’ve continually said that until we get through WDR we won’t set a launch date, so us getting out in mid-February for WDR allows them to look at March and April as opportunities,” Lanham said.

“I really can’t put my finger on it again until we come back from WDR and see if we have any issues there that we’ve got to go correct.” After the WDR test, the vehicle and Mobile Launcher will be rolled back to the VAB for final pre-launch maintenance and servicing.

Some have said the earliest realistic launch date is May, with the mid-summer more likely. We shall have to wait and see.

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Japan delays launch of JAXA’s new rocket

8:46 am

According to unnamed sources in Japan’s space agency JAXA, the first launch of its new H3 rocket, presently scheduled for the end of March ’22, will be delayed by as much as a year because of “defects” in the rocket’s engine.

…the discovery of defects forced the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to delay it a second time as it remains unclear by when the vehicle’s engine can be redesigned and produced, the sources said Monday.

Some people in the government expressed concerns over the postponement being potentially prolonged, the sources said.

…In May 2020, a test conducted on the H3 rocket’s main engine found holes on the wall of a combustion chamber and a crack on a turbine that feeds fuel to the chamber, prompting the agency to announce the first delay.

Since then, JAXA has reviewed its design and has been reassembling the rocket at Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima Prefecture, from where the rocket is planned to lift off.

None of this has as yet been officially announced. If true, this is a serious blow to Japan’s space effort, which has not been very competitive anyway in the global launch industry. The older H2 rocket in use now is very expensive, so that it has garnered few customers outside of the Japanese government. The new H3 was supposed cost less, but it is entirely expendable, so it can’t compete with the reusable rockets of SpaceX, Blue Origin, or Rocket Lab.

It is also apparently being designed and controlled by JAXA, not Mitsubishi, the prime contractor. Government-run programs nowadays routinely experience endless delays and cost overruns, and the H3 project appears to be more of the same.

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Pushback: For calling parents “terrorists” National School Board Association facing “collapse”

12:11 pm

Not an organization parents should associate with
Parents and state school boards should return the favor, and get out.

Because of a letter [pdf] it sent to the Justice Department suggesting that protesting parents were akin to “domestic terrorists,” the National School Board Association (NSBA) now faces “total collapse,” with nineteen state school board organizations exiting the association, along with 6 members of its 19-person executive board.

More information here, including this quote:

Until this fall, the National School Boards Association was a noncontroversial, bipartisan lobby group. Then its leaders wrote President Biden a letter. It alleged that the threatening and aggressive acts against school board members across the country might be a form of “domestic terrorism” and asked for federal law enforcement intervention.

Now, the association is at risk of total collapse.

…Nineteen mostly GOP-led states have withdrawn from the association or promised to when this year’s membership expires, and six members of what was a 19-person board have left. Several states are discussing forming an alternative association for school boards. A new executive director of the National School Boards Association (NSBA) is working to save the organization, lobbying individual states to reconsider, but so far he has not persuaded any of them to change their minds.

» Read more

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China launches military test satellite

8:49 am

The new colonial movement: China yesterday completed its first launch in 2022, using its Long March 2D rocket to launch a military test satellite into orbit.

No word on where the first stage crashed in the interior of China, or whether it used parachutes or grid fins to control its landing.

The 2022 launch race:

2 SpaceX
1 Virgin Orbit
1 China

These numbers should change later today, as SpaceX has a Falcon 9 Starlink launch scheduled. UPDATE: The SpaceX Starlink launch has been delayed one day to tomorrow.

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Study: Weightlessness might produce long term anemia

3:13 pm

The uncertainty of science: A study of fourteen astronauts who spent six months on ISS has found that weightlessness appears to increase the loss of red blood cells, and that the continuing loss extends well past their return to Earth.

Before this study, space anemia was thought to be a quick adaptation to fluids shifting into the astronaut’s upper body when they first arrived in space. Astronauts lose 10 percent of the liquid in their blood vessels this way. It was thought astronauts rapidly destroyed 10 percent of their red blood cells to restore the balance, and that red blood cell control was back to normal after 10 days in space.

Instead, Dr. Trudel’s team found that the red blood cell destruction was a primary effect of being in space, not just caused by fluid shifts. They demonstrated this by directly measuring red blood cell destruction in 14 astronauts during their six-month space missions.

On Earth, our bodies create and destroy 2 million red blood cells every second. The researchers found that astronauts were destroying 54 percent more red blood cells during the six months they were in space, or 3 million every second. These results were the same for both female and male astronauts.

The study also found that for as much as a year afterward the astronauts continued to lose red blood cells at a rate 30% greater than normal.

The researchers immediately suggested further invasive monitoring of anyone who wants to go to space. From their paper:

Space tourism will considerably expand the number of space travelers. Medical screening of future astronauts and space tourists might benefit from a preflight profiling of globin gene and modifiers. Postlanding monitoring should cover conditions affected by anemia and hemolysis. Monitoring individual astronaut’s levels of hemolysis during mission may be indicated to reduce health risks.

Without question, this data strongly suggests that it would be wise for anyone who wants to go into space for long periods have themselves checked for anemia, and have it treated prior to going, or if they still have it at launch time to decide not to go. However, the choice should belong to the individual, not bureaucrats imposing regulations or legislators passing laws.

Unfortunately, our modern leftist society now assumes such decisions no longer belong to the individual, but must be made by their betters in Washington. Provisions in the 2004 Space Amendments act allows the FAA to impose such invasive medical testing on future space tourists. Its bureaucrats have not yet done so, but the recent history with government mandates over the COVID shots suggests strongly that they will not hesitate to do so when they think they can get away with it.

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Texas grants $5 million grants to two spaceport regions

12:45 pm

Texas today awarded $5 million grants to two spaceport regions, one in Houston and the other in Cameron County where SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility is located.

Governor Greg Abbott today announced Spaceport Trust Fund grant awards of $5,000,000 to the Cameron County Spaceport Development Corporation and $5,000,000 to the Houston Spaceport Development Corporation. Administered by the Governor’s Office of Economic Development and Tourism, the Spaceport Trust Fund is a financial tool to support the development of infrastructure necessary for establishing a spaceport in the state of Texas. The 87th Legislature appropriated $10,000,000 in funds in fiscal year 2022 to provide grants, disbursed on a cost-reimbursement basis, to help support the creation of quality jobs and attract continuing investments that will strengthen the economic future of the state.

The money is obviously intended to help pay for things like roads and bridges and other various improvements required to handle the increased traffic and population brought to the locations because of the new spaceport activity.

One wonders, however, why Houston got as much as the Boca Chica area. As far as I know, there is no spaceport begin built near Houston. It houses the Johnson Space Center, but that handles activities prior to and after launch.

I suspect there was some politics involved. Abbott couldn’t award Boca Chica while ignoring Houston, especially because Houston’s importance in the space industry is presently declining as the industry moves from a government-run model (epitomized by the Johnson center) to a private commercial model (epitomized by SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility). Abbott probably felt obliged to send some support Houston’s way to avoid accusations that he is ignoring its increasingly problematic position.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Four-year-old rejected by Make-A-Wish for not getting COVID shot

11:15 am

4-year-old cancer boy rejected by Make-A-Wish
Four-year-old rejected by Make-A-Wish because
he hasn’t gotten the jab

Now they’re coming for the children: The Make-A-Wish Foundation has rejected the wish of a four-year-old cancer patient to go to Disneyworld because the boy has not gotten his COVID shots.

The Make-A-Wish Foundation is refusing to grant 4-year-old cancer patient Rocco DiMaggio’s wish to go to Disneyworld — all because he is not vaccinated.

Rocco and his two-year-old brother are not yet even eligible for the jab.

“It was a punch in the gut,” Rocco’s mom told Newsmax about Make-A-Wish Foundation canceling the Disneyworld opportunity.

Not only do children regardless of individual medical conditions have to get the mRNA shots, according to Make-a-Wish, the group’s policy says all family members who receive air travel must be vaccinated. The mRNA shots have thus far failed to deliver as promised and there is no long-term safety data on vaccinating children. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted sentence illustrates the utter brainlessness of the Foundation’s policy. Even if the parents were gung-ho to get the shots, which they are not, it can’t be administered to him at this time because of FDA regulations.

That’s not all however. The stupidity of this is further illustrated by these additional facts:
» Read more

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House Democrats attempt end-around of filibuster to pass election law using NASA bill

9:09 am

A bill initially written to give authorization to NASA lease its property to others and and passed by the Senate has been stripped entirely of that language by House Democrats and replaced with their proposal to federalize elections nationwide.

H.R. 5746 was introduced in October by Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), chair of the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee. The bill extended NASA’s authorization to enter into what are known as enhanced use leases, or EULs, of agency property to companies, government agencies, or educational institutions, for 10 years. The House passed the bill by a voice vote Dec. 8.

The Senate amended the bill, extending the EUL authorization by only three months instead of 10 years, and passed it by unanimous consent, sending it back to the House.

The Democratic leadership of the House, in an unusual move, then took the Senate-amended bill and stripped out the NASA provisions, replacing it with the text of two voting rights bills and now called the “Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act.” They did so because H.R. 5746 had already passed the House and Senate, so the amended version could go directly to the Senate floor without the threat of a filibuster from Senate Republicans, who oppose the voting rights legislation. [emphasis mine]

The level of corruption exhibited by this Democratic Party action is beyond words. The Senate approved one bill. The House Democrats have now turned it into another bill that the Senate did not vote on initially.

In the past, such a corrupt action by the House would never have been attempted because the House would have known that the entire Senate would have rejected this tactic immediately as an insult to its legislative rights. Today however the Democrats care nothing for legalities or law or legislative rights. All they care about is power, and they are willing to do anything to get it. You can expect for certain that all but two Democrats in the Senate will support this crooked action.

That vote’s passage however rests with those two Democrats. Since this tactic is a direct attack on the filibuster, and if successful would forever make it null, we must wonder if Senators Kysten Sinema (D-Arizona) and Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) will vote against it. If they don’t, their high-minded claims that they will not end the filibuster rule will be proven to be empty words.

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Today’s blacklisted child: McDonald’s evicts unjabbed children with cancer from Ronald McDonald House in Vancouver

12:33 pm

Already here in Canada and the United States
That child being rounded up for a death camp in this picture could easily
be the sick son of Austin Fergason. Soon it will be your children, and you.

Now they’re coming for the children: The management at a Ronald McDonald House for sick children in Vancouver has told the families of its residents that any child who has not gotten a COVID shot by next week will be evicted from the facility.

Austin Fergason is the father of a four-year-old child with leukemia who received a notice from Ronald McDonald House Charities – British Columbia & Yukon chapter, that he had a month to move his child and his family out unless they submitted to the jab.

“Beginning January 17, 2022, everyone five years and older who are working, staying or visiting our facilities (both the House at 4567 Heather St. Vancouver and at the Family Room in Surrey Memorial Hospital) must show proof of full vaccination (two doses), in addition to completing our existing screening, unless an Accommodation has been sought and has been explicitly approved and granted by RMHC (Ronald McDonald House Charities) in writing,” reads the notice.

It gives these families till the end of the month to comply. Fergason and his family have been at the House since October.

» Read more

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India gets a new head of its space agency

9:36 am

The new colonial movement: The Modi government of India has put a new person in charge of its space agency ISRO, scientist Dr S Somanath.

As he takes over as the 10th ISRO chairman, succeeding K Sivan, that will be one of the biggest challenges before Somanath — putting the agency’s human space flight programme back on track following setbacks due to launch failures, the Covid-19 outbreak, and a general slowdown since the failure of the Chandrayaan 2 robotic moon landing mission in September 2019.

As director of the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre since 2018, and as head of the Liquid Propulsion Systems Centre, Somanath has been closely associated with developing the key rocket technology that will go into the mission.

He was the project director and mission director for the development of the GSLV Mk-III rocket that will be used for the programme. He has also been involved in making it usable for human flight in recent days.

Like Sivan, Somanath’s appointment is for a limited period of time, presently set for three years. Sivan’s had been extended a year during the Wuhan panic. Whether the almost complete shut down of India’s space effort during that panic, plus several launch failures, were a factor in this change is unclear, though they likely played a part in the decision. If all had gone as originally planned, Sivan’s appointment might have been renewed.

Somanath’s extensive background as a rocket engineer however appears to make him ideal for heading ISRO in the next few years, when it attempts its first manned launch.

In related news, ISRO today announced that it has successfully completed a 720 second qualification test of the cryogenic engine to be used in that manned flight.

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Pushback: Former employee sues Smith College for discrimination and harassment because she is white

1:33 pm

No civil rights allowed for whites at Smith College
No civil rights allowed for whites at Smith College

Fighting back against bigotry: Jodi Shaw, a former librarian at Smith College in Massachusetts, has sued the college for discriminating against her because she was white, and harassing her by forcing her to attend critical race theory indoctrination sessions that demanded she admit to racism and the evils of the white race.

While she worked there, Shaw “was denied a significant professional career advancement opportunity when she was told by her supervisors that they canceled an orientation program she organized ‘because you are white.’” She was also expected to run a “Residential Life Curriculum” in which students were directed “to project stereotypes and assumptions onto themselves and others based on skin color.” The college asked Shaw to maintain “affinity houses,” which consisted of student housing segregated along racial lines.

During a professional development retreat at which attendance was compulsory, Shaw “was publicly humiliated for not admitting to ‘white supremacy’ and ‘white privilege’ and was continually expected to submit to shaming and harassing group race therapy as an ongoing condition of employment.”

The college harassed her, Shaw claims in the complaint. When she objected to the offending policies and the racially hostile environment at Smith College, the “defendants retaliated against her, attempted to stymie her efforts to file an internal complaint, and then hedged and delayed their investigation. Defendants steadily removed Plaintiff’s job responsibilities, denied her promotional opportunities consistent with all of her colleagues, placed her on furlough, launched a pretextual investigation into her email usage, and deliberately made any further employment at Smith College impossible for Shaw.”

» Read more

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Roscosmos struggles to figure out how private enterprise works

12:25 pm

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Liberty for private enterprise in Russia’s space industry?

Doug Messier at Parabolic Arc today published a translation of an interview given by Oxana Wolf, Roscosmos Deputy Director of the Department of Advanced Programs and the Sphere Project, describing Roscosmos’ effort to work with Russian private commercial aerospace companies.

Though she declared near the end of the interview that “We want our private companies to succeed,” the rest of the interview indicated that she and Roscosmos don’t really understand how private enterprise works, though it also appeared both are struggling to figure it out.

For example, when asked why Russia is having so much difficulty changing its regulations to encourage private enterprise, Wolf said the following:

I wondered this question. I saw at what point the Americans decided to change their legislation in order to raise a whole galaxy of private owners and entrust them with tasks that were previously solved by the state. Changes in space laws began in the 1980s, and laws that got [Jeff] Bezos, [Elon] Musk and [Richard] Branson and others on their feet were passed in the mid-1990s. That is, the “era of private traders education” began more than 30 years ago!

When the “private traders” proved their ability to provide quality services, the American government agencies involved in space, on a competitive basis, gave them orders for launches. [emphasis mine]

To her mind, the government led this change. In Russia’s top-down culture, such change must always come from above, from government leadership. However, her impression of this history is wrong. » Read more

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NASA’s safety panel claims management expertise in ’21 annual report, demanding that NASA run Artemis using a “top-down” approach

10:17 am

NASA’s safety panel today issued its 2021 annual report, and rather than review issues of safety in the operations of the agency’s various manned programs, the panel focused on proposing a redesign of the management structure of NASA manned programs, demanding that NASA run Artemis using a “top-down” approach, taking power and control away from private commercial space and putting it in the hands of NASA’s bureaucracy. From the press release:

Specifically, the report recommends that NASA should develop a strategic vision for the future of space exploration and operations; establish and provide leadership through a “board of directors” that includes agency center directors and other key officials, with the emphasis on providing benefit to the agency’s mission as a cohesive whole; and manage Artemis as an integrated program with top-down alignment. The panel also reiterated a recommendation from its 2020 report that Congress designate a lead federal agency for civil space traffic management.

This summary captures nicely the substance of the entire report [pdf]. Rather than review the specific safety issues in each of NASA’s manned programs — the panel’s actual job — the panel decided it would look at how Congress, the White House, and NASA’s leadership have organized the management of its manned program, and tell them all how to do things.

None of this is the safety panel’s business. Such recommendations should come from Congress or the White House, or from a specific panel created by those elected officials or NASA’s top management, tasked with the specific job.

The panel meanwhile ignored its real job, to review the engineering of NASA’s manned program and spot areas where such work might need to be revised or fixed. While the panel spent its time in 2020 putting together this inappropriate report, it apparently missed entirely the valve problem in Boeing’s Starliner capsule that has caused an additional year delay in its launch.

This panel continues to demonstrate its corrupt and power-hungry attitude about how the U.S. should explore space. For years it did whatever it could to stymie NASA’s efforts to transfer ownership to the private sector, putting up false barriers to the launch of SpaceX’s manned Dragon capsule that made no sense and were really designed to keep all control within the government bureaucracy.

Now this panel has decided its job is no longer to review the specific technical and engineering issues that could cause a manned spacecraft failure, such as with Boeing’s Starliner. Instead it now believes it should be the designer of NASA’s entire management.

It is long past time that this panel is shut down. It isn’t doing its actual job, and is instead interfering with everyone else’s.

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