Tag: Trump

Isaacman hints of future space plans

9:11 am

In receiving an award from a space advocacy group on June 21, 2025, billionaire Jared Isaacman hinted that his future space-related plans could include working with science organizations to finance scientific probes.

[Had he become NASA administrator he had wanted] NASA to partner with academic organizations on missions where such organizations would have had a bigger role in funding. “My priorities would have been leadership in space and the orbital economy,” he said, “and trying to introduce a concept where NASA could help enable others to conduct interesting scientific missions, getting academic organizations to contribute.”

That was something he said he might be interested in pursuing outside the agency. “I wouldn’t mind maybe trying to put that to a test and see if you could fund an interesting robotic mission, just to show that it can be done, and try and get some of the top tier academic institutions who want to perform. So that’s on my mind.”

He also indicated that he generally has no problem with the Trump administration’s proposed NASA cuts, noting that such academic organizations need to figure out how to work with less money.

Despite this statement, it appears he is still unsure of what he will do next in space. He has not restarted his Polaris Dawn manned program — suspended when he was nominated to become NASA administrator — and has said that right now he is more focused taking advantage of this unexpected break from work to spend more time with his family.

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Why should anyone listen to people who behave like infantile toddlers?

1:15 pm

A modern Democrat protester
The modern face of the Democratic Party.
Click for video.

For decades the Democratic Party and the left (I repeat myself) have used public demonstrations to garner support for their agenda. A bunch of protesters would gather in some public place, holding preprinted signs and demanding “action” for some leftist cause or another. The propaganda press would then give the protest loving coverage, advocating the cause nationwide as something that “must be done.”

For decades these protests have had some success. They forced the public debate to move in the direction the protesters wanted, and almost routinely resulted in legislative or executive actions that they supported.

All this has changed. The recent protests against the Trump administration’s effort to deport illegal immigrants, often devolving into violence, rioting, and looting, have done nothing to shift Trump’s policies. More important, they have done nothing to convince the public to their cause. If anything, all polls indicate these protests have been counter-productive, that the public has shifted even more strongly in its support of Trump.

The picture to the right, a screen capture from the video below, I think illustrates beautifully why these protests have failed so spectacularly. It shows a woman insanely trying to stop an ICE vehicle carrying captured illegals by grabbing the bus’ front grill. As she does this she starts screams madly, first by shrieking “Let my people go!” and then “Don’t kill me!” as the vehicle begins to accelerate. Eventually ICE officers pull her away, but then she tries to grab the side of this bus as well as two others that follow, all the while continuing her mindless screeching.
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Under Trump FCC shifts from regulating satellite construction and de-orbit to streamlining red tape

9:15 am

FCC seal

According to a Space News article yesterday, the FCC’s regulatory focus since January and the advent of the Trump administration has shifted significantly from its focus during the Biden administration.

The article describes in detail the present focus to streamline regulations and speed license approvals.

One early result of this push is a reduction in the FCC’s licensing backlog. Schwarz said the space bureau has reduced pending applications by 35 percent since January, including those for new space stations and ground infrastructure.

Modernizing regulations for non-geostationary satellite systems is another priority. The FCC is considering revising so-called “power limit” rules aimed at preventing interference between low-orbit constellations and traditional geostationary satellites and earth stations. Schwarz said these reforms could help pave the way for higher-throughput services that rival terrestrial broadband.

This focus appears correctly centered on the FCC’s actual legal statutory authority to regulate the limited bandwidth of the electromagnetic spectrum to avoid conflicts in its use.

Under Biden, the FCC instead focused on expanding its power beyond that statutory authority, claiming it had the right to determine how satellites were built, when they would be de-orbited, and in what manner. None of those activities have anything to do with bandwidth and the FCC’s legal responsibilities.

There was some legislative push back from Congress during the Biden administration, but it was slow and relatively weak. Now that push back has become unnecessary, because the FCC under Trump is back to doing its actual job instead of trying to build empires of regulation.

The agency also appears, for the moment, to have ended its partisan abuse of red tape for political reasons. Under Biden it used its regulatory power against SpaceX in retaliation to Elon Musk’s decision to publicly support Biden’s political opponents. It appears the present effort to speed license approvals for everyone has ended this practice.

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House committee moves to eliminate Trump budget cuts to Space Force

10:45 am

Useless: In its first review of Trump’s proposed budget cuts for the Space Force, the House Appropriations Committee, under Republican leadership, immediately moved to not only eliminate those cuts, but to increase the Space Force budget another $300 million.

And these turkeys are adding this money even though they admit, due to Congress’s incompetent budget process, they really have no way to determine exactly how the money will be spent.

The House Appropriations committee took the first step in crafting a FY2026 bill to fund the Department of Defense today, albeit reluctantly. Appropriators from both parties lamented the paucity of data they have about what the money will be used for, but decided to move ahead and mark up their bill at subcommittee level this afternoon. Full committee markup is scheduled for Thursday. President Trump’s request would cut about $2.5 billion from the U.S. Space Force’s budget, but the committee would restore it and add a little more.

According to the new budget put forth by this committee, the Space Force will have a budget of $29 billion, more than even the highest budget figure proposed for NASA.

This is what we can expect now from the Republican leadership in Congress. They will cut nothing, but instead restore all the spending that Trump attempts to eliminate, even money that is expressly designed to help leftist causes. They are worse than useless.

What these idiots don’t realize that if the country goes bankrupt, it will become impossible to accomplish anything. A smart person would realize it is better to only get part of what you want now (so you can maybe get the rest later) than to try to get it all immediately and instead end up with nothing at all.

But then, these are Congressmen. The word “smart” is the last word I would use to describe them.

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Trump eliminates restrictions against supersonic flights over the U.S.

9:50 am

In an executive order released on June 6, 2024, President Trump eliminated the half-century-old regulations that forbid supersonic airplanes to fly over the land mass of the United States.

The Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) shall take the necessary steps, including through rulemaking, to repeal the prohibition on overland supersonic flight in 14 CFR 91.817 within 180 days of the date of this order and establish an interim noise-based certification standard, making any modifications to 14 CFR 91.818 as necessary, as consistent with applicable law. The Administrator of the FAA shall also take immediate steps to repeal 14 CFR 91.819 and 91.821, which will remove additional regulatory barriers that hinder the advancement of supersonic aviation technology in the United States.

This order makes sense for several reasons. First, the restrictions were always absurd. The sonic boom concern was always over-rated. Second, the concern increasingly doesn’t exist due to improvements in technology. In a flight test in January, the commercial supersonic airplane startup Boom Aerospace confirmed that its test plane broke the sound barrier three times and each time with “no audible sonic boom.”

Though Boom isn’t the only supersonic startup, it is far ahead of the others. It already has orders from United and Japan airlines for its Overture 80-passenger supersonic jet. This new Trump order will certainly help it attract investment capital, as well as more airlines willing to buy its planes.

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White House issues new orders to streamline federal broadband regulations

8:52 am

As part of its effort to eliminate the red tape imposed by Biden during his term as president, the White House last week issued new orders to streamline the federal broadband regulations as well as cancel those Biden restrictions.

This Trump executive order cancels a number of Biden executive orders that imposed net neutrality, DEI, climate change, and other requirements that added paperwork and cost money and time. Most important of all for rocket companies, this new order aims to streamline the environmental review process on new projects, a process that was expanded exponentially during Biden but had been growing out-of-control for decades, and appeared during Biden to destroy many rocket startups.

Of course, because this executive order was issued by Trump, it will likely be blocked by a federal judge, because only Democratic Party presidential executive orders are allowed in America now.

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The Senate, led by Ted Cruz, endorses NASA’s failed SLS, Orion, and Lunar Gateway

9:48 am

Let’s all go bankrupt! A bill introduced today by Ted Cruz (R-Texas), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, rejects the Trump budget plan to phase out NASA’s failed SLS, Orion, and Lunar Gateway programs that have cost so far tens of billions for decades without accomplishing anything, and instead expands funding over the next decade to these and many other projects and agencies at NASA.

The bill would allocate $2.6 billion to Lunar Gateway, $4.1 billion to build two more SLS rockets, $20 million to build one more Orion capsule, $1.25 billion more for ISS to continue its operations as is, and $1 billion to upgrade or expand facilities at five NASA centers in Florida, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana.

This pork-laden bill would also fund a Mars Telecommunications Orbiter for $700 million and add $325 million to the $843 million contract NASA has with SpaceX to build the de-orbit vehicle for bringing ISS down in a controlled manner once it is retired.

What this bill tells us is that these Senators, led by “lying” Ted Cruz (to use the nickname Trump pinned on him during the 2016 presidential election campaign), are still unwilling to face the realities of the national debt, and want to spend money we don’t have in order to make believe they are grand explorers sending Americans into space. Instead, these idiots are simply funneling cash to their states in order to bribe voters to vote for them.

As Elon Musk so correctly noted, there is an election coming in 2026. Maybe it is time to throw them all out.

What this bill also tells us is that Trump is going to find it very difficult to get the budget under control. The Senate doesn’t care if the country goes bankrupt. They intend to spend our money like it grows on trees, to hell with the future. Shame on them.

Sadly, these senators know they have the backing of almost the entire press corp, which is why they are doing this. They figure they will get great press for “saving” NASA, even if it bankrupts the country. Worse, it appears the press is all for helping them do so.

R.I.P. America.

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Scientists release the first year’s data from the Pace orbiter

10:07 am

Pace global data, August 2024
Click for original movie.

Launched in early 2024, the Pace orbiter was designed to track the evolution of the leaves of trees globally throughout the entire year. NASA has now released the data from the first twelve months, showing the seasonal changes of trees as the Earth rotates the Sun and the seasons change globally.

The map to the right is a screen capture from one of many videos showing these changes. The green indicates the global spread of tree cover in the middle of August in the northern hemisphere as well as in the equatorial regions of South America and Africa. Other movies focusing on North America, South America, Europe, India, etc, can be viewed here.

PACE measurements have allowed NASA scientists and visualizers to show a complete year of global vegetation data using three pigments: chlorophyll, anthocyanins, and carotenoids. That multicolor imagery tells a clearer story about the health of land vegetation by detecting the smallest of variations in leaf colors.

…Anthocyanins are the red pigments in leaves, while carotenoids are the yellow pigments – both of which we see when autumn changes the colors of trees. Plants use these pigments to protect themselves from fluctuations in the weather, adapting to the environment through chemical changes in their leaves. For example, leaves can turn more yellow when they have too much sunlight but not enough of the other necessities, like water and nutrients. If they didn’t adjust their color, it would damage the mechanisms they have to perform photosynthesis.

In the visualization, the data is highlighted in bright colors: magenta represents anthocyanins, green represents chlorophyll, and cyan represents carotenoids. The brighter the colors are, the more leaves there are in that area. The movement of these colors across the land areas show the seasonal changes over time.

You can read the full paper describing the first year’s data here.

The Trump budget presently funds Pace for two more years of observations, at about $26 million per year. This is an obvious example of a satellite whose life should be extended for as long as possible. This long term data would likely confirm other data that indicates the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is greening the Earth, helping plant life that provides us oxygen to breath and food to eat.

To do so, however, other cuts in NASA will have to be found to pay for that extension. I once again wonder about the half a billion NASA spends for its “Mission Enabling Services”, which covers NASA’s human resources division, public relations department, and its equal opportunity division, as well as other more useful departments. Surely some money from these bureaucratic divisions could be found to finance this actual useful research.

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Understanding Trump’s proposed NASA cuts, in the larger context of the overall federal budget

1:44 pm

U.S. debt as of June 4, 2025
U.S. debt as of June 4, 2025. Click for original.

For my entire life it has always been the same: Whenever any politician or elected official proposes any cuts to the federal budget, and most especially when those cuts are aimed at a popular government agency like NASA, the news reports in the mainstream press are uniformly hostile.

Trump’s proposal to cut NASA’s budget by 24% in 2026 has been no different. Here are just a few headlines:

This list is only a sampling, but they are typical of almost all the reporting now and that always happens when big cuts are proposed in any government program. The spin is always the same: “These cuts are horrible, their acceptance would be the act of a barbarian, and by doing so will certainly cause the fall of civilization!”

Above all, the focus is always on the cuts themselves, and never on the larger picture.

I am not going to do that. I have reviewed in detail the proposed cuts to NASA, and am now going to take a detailed look, but will do so by considering the larger context of the overall federal budget and the need to get its spending under control.

And out of control that budget is, as indicated by the screen capture above of today’s US Debt Clock. The United States is bankrupt. If we don’t gain some control over federal spending in a very near future some very bad things are going to happen, and soon. And those bad things will likely shut down luxury items like NASA entirely, not just impose some cuts to its overall budget.

All Trump is doing is attempting a first stab at this problem. The real question is whether he has made a rational and reasonable attempt, or whether it should be revised in some manner.

This is the perspective I bring to this issue. I just wish others would do the same.
» Read more

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Trump’s NASA budget cuts and rejection of Jared Isaacman for NASA administrator signal a very bright future for American space

1:09 pm

To most Americans interested in space exploration, my headline above must seem extremely counter-intuitive. For decades Americans have seen NASA as our space program, with any cuts at NASA seen as hindering that effort. Similarly, Isaacman, a businessman and private astronaut who has personally paid for two flights in space, had initially been nominated by Trump to become NASA administrator expressly because of that commercial space background. For Trump to reject such a person now seems at the surface incredibly damaging to NASA’s recent effort to work with the private sector.

All of that seems true, but it really is not. Both of these actions by Trump are simply what may be the last acts in the major change that has been engulfing the American space industry now for the past decade.

Jared Isaacman

Jared Isaacman during his spacewalk
Jared Isaacman during his spacewalk in September 2024

First, let’s consider Isaacman. Before Trump had nominated him for NASA administrator, he had been a free American doing exactly what he wanted to do. As a very wealthy and successful businessman, he had decided to use that wealth to not only fly in space — fulfilling a personal dream — but to also use those flights to raise money for St. Jude’s Children’s hospital, whose work he considered priceless and wanted supported. He ended up flying two space missions, becoming the first private citizen to do a spacewalk, while also raising more than $200 million for St. Jude’s.

Isaacman’s second flight was also the first in what he hoped would be his own long term manned space program, which he dubbed Polaris. The first mission did this spacewalk from a SpaceX capsule. The second would hopefully do a repair mission to Hubble, or if rejected by NASA some other work in orbit. And the third would fly in SpaceX’s Starship around the Moon.

As this program was funded entirely by Isaacman and used no government funds, it was generally free from criticism. If anything, Americans hailed it as ambitious and courageous. He was following his own American dream, and doing it on his own dime.

This history however made him appear on the surface to be a perfect choice for NASA administrator under Trump, especially in a time where America’s space effort is shifting more and more to the private sector.

Everything changed however once Trump nominated him. He had to suspend his private Polaris program. He had to kow-tow to politicians, telling them what they wanted to hear. And he was no longer his own boss.
» Read more

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Trump is withdrawing Jared Isaacman’s nomination for NASA administrator

2:48 pm

Jared Isaacman
Jared Isaacman

According to numerous reports in various news outlets today and first revealed at Semafor, President Trump has informed Jared Isaacman that he is withdrawing his nomination for NASA administrator.

The White House is pulling the nomination of Jared Isaacman to be the next NASA administrator, just days before he was set to receive a confirmation vote in the Senate, according to three people familiar with the matter and confirmed by the administration.

It must be emphasized that many of these stories speculate absurdly about the reasons for this decision, such as the Washington Post suggestion, underlined by conservative reporter Laura Loomer, that it was Isaacman’s links with Elon Musk that caused this decision, implying that Trump as problems with Musk, something that seems blatantly wrong based on Trump’s positive and many public expressions of support for Musk.

The Semafor story however indicated the most likely reason for this decision, by quoting one White House spokeswoman:

“It’s essential that the next leader of NASA is in complete alignment with President Trump’s America First agenda and a replacement will be announced directly by President Trump soon,” said Liz Huston, a spokesperson for the White House.

This statement confirms something I sensed in March, before anyone else. I noted Isaacman’s past support for Democratic Party candidates and his apparent support in his companies for DEI, and wondered if the delay in getting him confirmed was due to headwinds in the White House and Republican Party over these issues. As I noted then:

These facts suggest to me that within both the Trump administration and among Republican in the Senate there are now second thoughts about Isaacman. Trump’s experience in his first administration, with federal appointees constantly sabotaging his efforts behind his back, has made him very determined to only bring people into his second administration he is certain to trust. Isaacman’s long support for the Democratic Party as well as DEI could be the reason the administration is delaying his confirmation.

More recently Isaacman has publicly expressed some concerns about the budget cuts at NASA proposed by the White House. Those tweets could have been the final blow to his nomination.

For Isaacman, this simply means that he can resume his own private Polaris space program, and align it with Musk’s parallel private Starship program to send humans to Mars, with both entirely without any government funding.

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Trump budget proposes putting a final end to the delayed and blocked Thirty Meter Telescope

12:01 pm

There is a lot more to report, and I will do so in a day or so, but I thought it worthwhile to quickly note the the proposed science cuts in the proposed Trump budget for 2026 includes the elimination of all funds for Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) in Hawaii.

In the budget request, NSF [National Science Foundation]… says it will back only one of the two $3 billion optical telescopes that the astrophysics community wants to build. That honor goes to the Giant Magellan Telescope already under construction in Chile. Its competitor, the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), “will not advance to the Final Design Phase and will not receive additional commitment of funds from NSF,” according to the budget request.

The NSF has never had enough money to finance both telescopes. The fact that TMT has been blocked for more than a decade by DEI protesters in Hawaii, with the aid of the state government (controlled entirely by Democrats), makes funding it pointless, and a waste of the taxpayers’ money. It long past time to pull the plug.

As I say, there is a lot more details to report in this budget proposal, including its effort to slash a lot of science government spending, but that will have to wait for later essays. I can promise you one thing, however: I will not do what the rest of the press does, and write a knee-jerk propaganda piece in support of that spending. The science mafia at NASA and the NSF and other agencies has funded a lot of junk in the last few decades. It is time for a reckoning.

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In demanding an investigation by SpaceX into the Starship failure on this week’s test flight, the FAA puffs up its chest and pounds it like a chimpanzee

11:44 am

My heart be still: As reported in numerous propaganda media outlets today, the FAA has announced that it is demanding an investigation by SpaceX into the fuel leaks that caused Starship to tumble and then burn up in an uncontrolled manner as it came down in its designated landing zone in the Indian Ocean. From the FAA’s statement:

The FAA is requiring SpaceX to conduct a mishap investigation for the Starship Flight 9 mission that launched on May 27 from Starbase, Texas. All Starship vehicle and Super Heavy booster debris landed within the designated hazard areas. There are no reports of public injury or damage to public property. The mishap investigation is focused only on the loss of the Starship vehicle which did not complete its launch or reentry as planned.

This FAA demand for an investigation is meaningless and not news, because SpaceX doesn’t need the FAA to require it. Does anything think SpaceX wasn’t going to do an investigation without an order from the FAA?

Nor will the FAA’s demand change anything. Once SpaceX completes and submits its investigation, the FAA will approve it immediately. No one at the FAA is qualified to question it. The FAA might participate in that investigation as an outside observer and add some value, but in the end the investigation and subsequent actions are entirely in SpaceX’s hands.

The FAA also admits that even though Starship came back out of orbit in an uncontrolled manner, breaking up over the Indian Ocean, it did so exactly as the mission’s contingency plans intended. No one was hurt. Nothing was damaged on the ground. And all the debris fell within the designated landing zone. From the FAA’s legal perspective, there is nothing to investigate, since its only responsibility is to limit harm to the public. SpaceX did what was requested, most admirably. The FAA admits as much in not requiring a mishap investigation of the Superheavy failure.

That the propaganda press is trying to make a big deal about this is a joke. These press reports are merely more propaganda attempting to pump up the importance of government power while denigrating anything to do with Elon Musk.

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NASA unwittingly reveals its bankruptcy by its reliance on AI

10:11 am

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1:57 pm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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A positive endgame in Gaza begins to loom

2:10 pm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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NASA continues to push Biden-era interpretation of Artemis Accords

11:05 am

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

The key words are highlighted in quotes below.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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SpaceX confirms 9th test flight of Starship/Superheavy now scheduled for May 27, 2025

9:19 am

Starship/Superheavy on March 6, 2025 at T-41 seconds
Starship/Superheavy on March 6, 2025 at T-41 seconds

SpaceX has now confirmed May 27, 2025 as the launch date for the ninth test flight of Starship/Superheavy out of its Starbase spaceport at Boca Chica.

The launch window opens at 6:30 pm (Central), with the live stream beginning 30 minutes earlier. The flight will attempt to refly the Superheavy booster used on flight seven. To push the booster’s limits, it will test “off-nominal scenarios” upon return, requiring for safety that it land in the Gulf of Mexico and not be recaptured by the chopsticks. (Just as I don’t change names or my language willy-nilly because leftists demand it, I won’t play Trump’s name-changing game here. The Gulf of Mexico was given that name more than two centuries ago, most likely by the early Spanish explorers, and that name has been good enough since.)

Starship meanwhile attempt the same test profile planned for the previous two flights but stymied by the failure of the spacecraft before reaching orbit. It will test a Starlink satellite deployment system, do a relight of one of its Raptor engines, and test its thermal ability to survive re-entry.

The company also released a report describing the results of its investigation into the previous launch failure on March 6, 2025.
» Read more

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Space Force to cut civilian workforce by 14%

9:49 am

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

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

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

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

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Trump bypasses Boeing to get an newly refurbished 747 Air Force One

12:40 pm

Apparently disgusted with Boeing’s inability to get two Boeing 747s refurbished on budget and before he leaves office in 2028, the Trump administration has now enlisted another aerospace company, L3Harris, to refurbish a 747 formerly used by the Qatar government.

The president hopes to use the refurbished plane by the fall, sources told the outlet, and is regularly checking on its progress . This aircraft will be an interim solution until the Boeing jets are delivered.

The current presidential jets — which have been in service since the George H.W. Bush administration — are nearing their end of life.

Boeing’s conduct here has been truly disgraceful. It got the $3.9 billion fixed-price contract to refurbish two of its own 747s in 2018. Yet, despite having two working 747s — a plane it designed and built — it can’t refurbish them in less than a decade, while going over budget by about $2.4 billion, money it has to lay out because of the fixed-price nature of the contract.

Hat tip to reader James Street.

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Trump administration releases its proposed NASA budget for 2026

10:29 am

The Trump administration today released [pdf] its proposed federal budget for the 2026 fiscal year, calling for an overall reduction in federal spending by about 7.6%, with NASA getting a budget cut of about 24%.

A summary of the budget can be found in this NASA press release. The main bullet points are these:

  • SLS and Orion will be retired after flying the two more missions. Whether those flights will be manned or not however is left vague.
  • Lunar Gateway will be shut down
  • The Mars Sample Return mission will be cancelled.
  • The overall manned budget for interplanetary development is increased, and now includes a line item of $1 billion for “Mars-focused programs”.
  • Flights to ISS are reduced (cutting a half billion from this budget) to facilitate the “transition to a more cost-effective commercial approach to human activities in space as the space station approaches the end of its life cycle.”
  • Eliminates “low-priority climate monitoring satellites”, shifting the focus to getting such data from commercial sources.
  • Major budget cuts are proposed for many other departments, and also include a major restructuring of NASA’s entire operation to “streamline the workforce, IT services, NASA Center operations, facility maintenance, and construction and environmental compliance activities.”

Below is a screen capture from the budget proposal detailing these cuts.
» Read more

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Jared Isaacman’s nomination approved by Senate committee

12:24 pm

The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee today voted 19 to 9 in favor of Jared Isaacman, Trump’s nominee to become NASA administrator.

The vote was 19-9, with all Republicans and four Democrats voting yes and nine Democrats voting no. The four Democratic yes votes were Senators Maria Cantwell (Washington), Tammy Baldwin (Wisconsin), John Hickenlooper (Colorado) and Andy Kim (New Jersey).

The nine Democratic no votes were Senators Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota), Brian Schatz (Hawaii), Ed Markey (Massachusetts), Gary Peters (Michigan), Tammy Duckworth (Illinois), Jacky Rosen (Nevada), Ben Ray Luján (New Mexico), John Fetterman (Pennsylvania) and Lisa Blunt Rochester (Delaware).

The opposition here is almost solely based on Trump Derangement Syndrome. The only policy for these Democrats is to oppose all things Trump, even if that opposition makes no sense. This is not to say that Isaacman is a perfect choice. At the moment it is not clear exactly where he stands on Trump’s effort to shrink the waste in the federal government, including NASA.

Isaacman’s nomination still has to be confirmed by the full senate. Expect him to be approved handily, with the vote breaking down along similar party lines.

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The American Geophysical Union: the privileges of government-paid scientists must come above the Constitution and the ordinary citizens who pay the bills

2:08 pm

The American Geophysical Union, where science is no longer practiced
The American Geophysical Union, where
science is no longer practiced

In a public letter issued late yesterday, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) announced it has joined a lawsuit attempting to make the salaries, jobs, and various research grants of scientists immune from cancellation or the budget cuts that have been ordered by the elected president of the United States, Donald Trump.

Plaintiffs assert that such a sweeping Executive Order — which would impact hundreds of thousands of federal workers — goes far beyond the authority of the President to direct, and that such a massive reorganization of federal agencies must be planned in accordance with law and approved by Congress. AGU’s role in the case will involve illustrating the extensive ways in which scientists and the public will be irreparably harmed by the execution of the President’s order, in particular through proposed mass terminations at NOAA, the Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, the Environmental Protectional Agency, and the National Science Foundation.

“This Executive Order is demanding layoffs on such a massive scale that they will have drastic, cascading effects on our members, the global scientific community, and the public,” said Janice R. Lachance, Interim Executive Director and CEO of AGU. “From forecasting severe weather and ensuring healthy crops to preventing uncontrollable wildfires and preparing communities for sea level rise, fully functioning federal scientific agencies are critical.” [emphasis mine]

The highlighted phrases show the priorities. The public comes last. More important are “federal workers,” the “members” of the AGU, and “the global scientific community.” Moreover, the letter reeks of privilege and smug superiority. It assumes that the paychecks from the taxpayers must never end, no matter what. The very idea that the president — duly elected by the American people and whom the Constitution vests with the sole power to run the executive branch of the federal government — should actually do what he promised the voters during the campaign actually offends them. “We come first! To hell with what the public wants!”

None of this should surprise anyone. The AGU, along with most national scientific organizations, has been corrupted by leftist politics for decades. It threw out the fundamentals of objective science years ago when it declared that it will reject any paper that does not support the theory of human-caused global warming. Its PR department has consistently reinforced this unscientific bias, pushing global warming in practically every press release.

And if you still have doubts about its leftist agenda divorced from objective science, you need only read its own description at the end of yesterday’s letter, outlining the organization’s priorities:
» Read more

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Head of the FAA’s commercial space office takes Trump buy-out

10:36 am

Kelvin Coleman, the head of the FAA office that regulates and issues all launch licenses, has now decided to accept the buy-out offered by the Trump administration and retire.

Coleman has led the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, known as AST, since 2022, after being named deputy associate administrator in 2017. During that time, the amount of commercial launch activity has grown enormously, from 23 licensed launches in 2017 to 157 in 2024.

That has put a strain on the office, which the FAA has responded to by seeking additional staff and other resources, as well as streamlining the licensing process. The latter included new launch and reentry licensing regulations, called Part 450, that took effect in 2021.

Industry, though, has complained about the implementation of Part 450, leading the FAA to create a space-related Aerospace Rulemaking Committee, or SpARC, to collect industry input on ways to improve Part 450. FAA officials said at the Commercial Space Conference in February that the SpARC was expected to complete its work by July, and that it was working on other improvements, such as a new electronic system for license applications.

It was apparently under Coleman’s leadership that Part 450 was created and implemented. The FAA claimed it would streamline the licensing process. Instead, it did the exact opposite. Under Coleman and Part 450, the red tape from the FAA actually increased significantly, to the point that it apparently caused the several rocket startups to close down.

It is quite possible therefore that Coleman decided to take the buy-out because he suspected his time at the FAA was limited anyway, that the Trump administration wanted him out.

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Trump cuts to NOAA include major shake-up on how it gathers weather data

9:26 am

According to the budget data that was leaked anonymous last week, the Trump administration is proposing a major restructuring of NOAA’s satellite operations, shifting from building geosynchronous weather/climate satellites in partnership with NASA to focusing on buying weather data from commercial smallsats.

The plan would initially reduce NOAA’s program by two-thirds.

The document suggests NOAA’s National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service (NESDIS) “immediately cancel all major instrument and spacecraft contracts on the GeoXO program,” saying the projected costs are “unstainable, lack support of Congress, and are out of step with international peers.”

GeoXO is a $19.6 billion program that includes six satellites and ground infrastructure to significantly enhance NOAA’s ability to monitor weather, map lightning, and track ocean and atmospheric conditions over decades. To maintain observations from geostationary orbit at the conclusion of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)-R Series, the White House memo calls on NOAA to “immediately institute a major overhaul to lower lifecycle costs by 50 percent” with annual costs below $500 million, while remaining on schedule to launch the first satellite in 2032.

Rather than expanding the geostationary constellation to include satellites over the East, West and Central United States, the proposal includes only East and West satellites like the GOES-R Series. OMB also recommends an immediate end to NOAA relying on NASA to help it acquire weather satellites.

Maybe the most controversial recommendation calls for NOAA to focus on gathering daily weather data while ending its monitoring of long term ocean and atmospheric climate trends.

The shift from NOAA-built satellites to purchasing weather data from commercially launched and built satellites makes great sense, and is the most likely part of this plan to get implemented. Similarly, ending NOAA’s reliance on NASA will help streamline the fat from both agencies.

Whether the Trump administration can force an end to NOAA’s climate gathering operations is less clear. The politics suggest this will be difficult. The realities however suggest that a major house-cleaning in this area is in order, as there is ample evidence that the scientists running this work have been playing games with the data, manipulating it in order to support their theories of human-caused global warming.

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Texas lawmakers now lobbying to move NASA headquarters to Houston

9:20 am

First it was Florida. Then it was Ohio. Now Texas lawmakers are lobbying the Trump administration to move NASA headquarters from Washington to Houston.

A coalition of Texas lawmakers is calling on President Donald Trump to relocate NASA’s headquarters to Houston when the office lease in Washington D.C. expires in 2028. U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and U.S. Rep. Brian Babin (R- Woodville) are leading the charge to make Houston the new landing spot for NASA headquarters. Several other Texas representatives signed onto the letter Wednesday urging Trump to make this shift.

That politicians in three different states are lobbying in this manner tells us it is almost certain that NASA’s headquarters is leaving DC. More important, it tells us that the agency’s entire bureaucracy — including its many scattered centers nationwide — are going to go through a major shake-up, including major reductions and closures. It appears Trump has made the headquarters a plum that these politicians are chasing in order to get them to agree to major cuts elsewhere.

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Maybe it finally is time we actually made these major budget cuts at NASA

12:05 pm

Chicken Little rules!

This past weekend the pro-government propaganda press has been in an outraged uproar concerning unconfirmed rumors and anonymous reports that the Trump administration is considering major cuts to NASA’s many science divisions and projects, cuts so large that several space missions, such as Mars Sample Return and the Roman Space Telescope, would have to be canceled. Here are just a few examples, with the first few the ones that broke the story:

Of this list, the Politico story is the most amusing. Suddenly this leftwing news outlet loves Musk again, since he is expressing opposition to these cuts. Just days before he was the devil incarnate because of his partnership with Trump in cutting government waste. Now that he might oppose these NASA budget cuts will lefties start buying Teslas again? Who knows? The depth of their thinking is often quite shallow and divorced from rationality.

As is typical of the propaganda press, all these stories focused on quoting only those opposed to the cuts, from Democrats in Congress to leftist activist organizations. Very few offered any alternative points of view. These reports were thus typical of the propaganda press and the Washington swamp whenever anyone proposes any cuts to any government program: We are all gonna die! Civilization is going to end! Only evil people would dare propose such ideas!

The truth is that there are many ample and rational reasons to consider major budget cuts to most of NASA programs. Like the rest of our bloated federal government, NASA is no longer the trim efficient government agency it was in the 1960s.
» Read more

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New Trump executive order requires Pentagon to “prioritize commercial solutions”

9:24 am

A new Trump executive order signed on April 9, 2025 now requires the space divisions in the Defense Department to “prioritize commercial solutions” in all its future space projects.

The executive order, called “Modernizing Defense Acquisitions and Spurring Innovation in the Defense Industrial Base,” referenced commercial technology multiple times, including call to utilize existing authorities to “expedite acquisitions throughout the Department of Defense, including a first preference for commercial solutions” and “the restructuring of performance evaluation metrics for acquisition workforce members to include the ability to demonstrate and apply a first consideration of commercial solutions.”

According to Pentagon officials, this order simply underlines what they have been doing. Maybe so, but the reason the Pentagon has been moving in this direction is not because it wanted to, but because of two factors in the past decade that forced action. First, for the past three decades the Pentagon has increasingly failed to get much accomplished in space. Under Air Force leadership (before the creation of the Space Force) the military focused on designing its own big satellites, creating projects that generally went overbudget and behind schedule. That general failure demanded change.

Second, to institute change Trump created the Space Force in his first term with the express desire to shift the military from building its own gold-plated satellites to buying them from the private sector. And despite the four years when Biden was president, the Pentagon maintained that shift, which is why this new Trump executive order will do little to disturb its present space plans.

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Congress: Let’s throw some more astronaut lives away so we can preen for the camera!

2:48 pm

Jared Isaacman
Jared Isaacman

Here we go again: As I noted yesterday, the hearing this week of Jared Isaacman, Donald Trump’s nomination to become NASA’s next administrator, revealed almost nothing about what Isaacman plans to do once confirmed by the Senate. He very carefully kept his options open, even while he strongly endorsed getting Americans on the Moon as fast as possible in order to beat the Chinese there. When pressed by senators from both parties to commit to continuing the SLS, Orion, and Lunar Gateway projects to make that happen, Isaacman picked his words most cautiously. He noted that at the moment that plan seemed the best for getting to the Moon first. He also noted repeatedly that this same plan is years behind schedule and overbudget.

Like any smart businessman, Isaacman knows he cannot make any final decisions about SLS, Orion, or Gateway until he takes office and can aggressively dig into the facts, as administrator. He also knew he could not say so directly during this hearing, for to do so would antagonize senators from both parties who want those programs continued because of the money it pours into their states. So he played it coy, and the senators accepted that coyness in order to make believe they were getting what they want.

But what do these senators want? It appears our politicians (including possibly Trump) want NASA to launch humans to the Moon using SLS and Orion and do so as quickly as possible, despite knowing that both have real engineering issues of great concern. Instead, our elected officials want politics to determine the lunar flight schedule, instead of engineering, the same attitude that killed astronauts on Apollo 1 in 1967, on Challenger in 1986, and on Columbia in 2003. The engineering data then said unequivocally that things were not safe and that disaster was almost guaranteed, but NASA and Congress demanded the flights go on anyway, to serve the needs of politics.

With SLS and Orion it is now the same foolishness all over again. » Read more

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Senate schedules hearing to review Jared Isaacman’s nomination as NASA administrator

8:59 am

After months of delays, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation yesterday finally announced it has scheduled for April 9, 2025 the confirmation hearing for Jared Isaacman’s nomination as NASA administrator.

I have previously speculated that the delay in scheduling this hearing was because there was opposition to Isaacman among Republicans both in the Senate and inside the White House, based on his past donations to the Democratic Party as well his previously strong support for Divesity, Equity, and Inclusion in his companies. It appears Isaacman must have eased those concerns when he began face-to-face private meetings with several Senate Republicans in the last two weeks, thus allowing the hearing to be scheduled.

Isaacman has been in Washington in recent days for one-on-one meetings with senators, a standard part of the confirmation process before a formal hearing. That included Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kansas), who chairs the committee’s subcommittee on aviation, space and innovation, as well as the Senate Appropriations Committee’s subcommittee on commerce, justice and science, which funds NASA.

Moran said in an April 1 social media post that he met with Isaacman and discussed topics such as exploration and “a shared desire to beat our adversaries back to the Moon” as well as work on science and technology at NASA. “I am eager for the Commerce Committee to quickly conduct a confirmation hearing on his nomination to lead NASA,” Moran stated.

It now appears likely that this opposition is dissolving, and that Isaacman’s confirmation is likely.

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