For several years now, I've been saying it's time to scrap NASA.  That is still true, I believe, but until that happens, NASA keeps spending money on pointless and futile projects that deserve the taxpayers' attention.

This page is all about the latest news on the subject of space exploration and the enormous price tags that come with those projects.  The obsolescense and pointlessness of NASA's manned space flight program is covered on this page, but NASA's other make-work projects are highlighted below.  In addition, there are links to other articles with derogatory commentary about NASA's pointless goals and colossal cost.

These space exploration projects have very few tangible end products — certainly nothing that benefits the average taxpayer.  The exploration of other planets (or any other space flight) is not authorized by the Constitution and is not the proper role of government.  The exception would be military projects in support of our national defense, but the Pentagon has its own aerospace facilities.

Yes, I know NASA's projects are the highest of high tech.  I'm not saying space flight research isn't cool, but spending taxpayers' money on it is illegal.  The Constitution defines the limits of our government, and NASA operates outside those limits.  The work being done by NASA should (according to the 10th Amendment) be conducted by private industries, and of course no private company could afford to spend billions of dollars per year on pointless experiments in zero-g.

As the shuttle Atlantis landed in Florida recently I noticed that NASA called the flight a "mission to expand the global village of space." [1] [2] [3]   NASA seems to have two ultimate goals:  finding life on another planet, and building a global village in space, for the purpose of advancing a unified world government.  It is difficult to imagine a greater waste of taxpayers' money.

Look at the numbers:  NASA's Budget Appropriations for 2007 and Projections for 2008 to 2012.

Incidentally, the section about NASA's mission to appease the Muslims has been moved to this page.

New NASA Mars Crew Has a Muslim, No White People: "To reach out to the Muslim world".  NASA no longer has the right stuff, so all it's got is the DEI stuff.  Remember this?  ["]In July 2010, NASA chief Charles Bolden, an Obama appointee, told Al Jazeera that his boss had given him three priorities... none of them involving space exploration.  The foremost priority for the agency once tasked with sending a man to the moon was 'to reach out to the Muslim world... to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.'["]  How many of you remember Obama's "Muslim List"?  ["]The Muslim list included two alternative candidates for NASA administrator.  One of them, Dr. Charles Elachi of JPL was dismissed as 'possibly Christian.'  Indeed Elachi, who grew up admiring John Wayne and believes that American success is possible because it isn't 'held back by the long-standing, ingrained systems and beliefs found in the Middle East' would have been a rather poor fit.  The other name on the list however is Firouz Naderi, an Iranian board member of the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans which advocated in support of the Iran nuke sellout.["]  While Trump threw out some of this stuff, under Biden NASA is fully woke and going where no one has gone before or ever wanted to go before.

NASA's Mars sample return plan is getting a major overhaul: 'The bottom line is $11 billion is too expensive'.  NASA is looking for a new way to get its precious Mars samples back to Earth.  Those samples are being collected by the Perseverance rover in Mars' Jezero Crater, which hosted a lake and a river delta billions of years ago.  Getting ahold of the samples is one of NASA's top science goals; studying pristine Red Planet material in well-equipped labs around the world could reveal key insights about Mars — including, perhaps, whether it has ever hosted life, NASA officials say.  The agency has had a Mars sample-return (MSR) architecture in place for some time now, but repeated delays and cost overruns have rendered the original plan impractical, NASA officials announced today (April 15).

Socialist Democrats are really good at solving problems nobody has.  That describes NASA, too.
Biden White House Directs NASA to Establish Standard Time Zone on The Moon.  On Tuesday, the Biden White House directed NASA to establish a standard time zone on the moon.  In a memo obtained by Reuters, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has instructed NASA to establish a standard of time for the moon and other planets.  The memo stated the U.S. government plans to establish Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC) by the end of 2026.  NASA's space communications and navigation chief, Kevin Coggins, shared that a Coordinated Lunar Time is needed because "The same clock that we have on Earth would move at a different rate on the moon."

NASA gets $25.4 billion in White House's 2025 budget request.  NASA won't be getting a big budget boost next year.  The White House allocated $25.4 billion to NASA in its federal budget request for fiscal year 2025, which was released today (March 11). That's a 2% increase over the $24.9 billion the agency is getting for fiscal 2024, an amount that was enacted by Congress just last Friday (March 8).  That enacted amount is a substantial cut from the $27.2 billion that the White House requested for the current fiscal year.  So there's certainly no guarantee NASA will get the full $25.4 billion requested for fiscal 2025, which starts on Oct. 1 of this year.

NASA: Solar Storms 'Could Cause Internet Apocalypse' by 2025.  NASA is warning that the Sun is entering a period of high volatility as it nears the peak of its 11-year solar maximum cycle.  During this time, sunspots have the potential to generate intense solar storms, which — if directed at the Earth — could cause widespread outages to electronics and radio communications.The last several months have seen a spike in solar activity, with sunspots causing several coronal mass ejections (CMEs) — phenomena responsible for solar storms.  NASA, which has been monitoring our Sun's activity using the Parker Solar Probe (PSP), warns the potential for a solar storm-caused "internet apocalypse" remains a cause for concern through 2025.  Such an event could surge currents through our planet's infrastructure, disrupting navigation, communications systems, and the GPS-enabled time synchronization critical to the functioning of the internet.

The Editor says...
I tend to agree with George Carlin:  Anything the federal government says should be met with a great deal of skepticism.  Including anything NASA says.  (Especially NASA.)  Particularly anything that sounds like an excuse for the internet to collapse right before Election Day.  They'll blame it on sunspots.  They'll blame it on a freak storm wiping out all 38 GPS satellites at once.  Horse hockey.  If the whole internet fails right before another election is handed to Joe Biden, it won't be due to solar activity.

5,800 pounds of batteries tossed off the ISS in 2021 will fall to Earth today.  A nearly 3-ton leftover tossed overboard from the International Space Station is nearing its plunge toward Earth.  The multi-ton Exposed Pallet 9 (EP9) was jettisoned from the space station back in March 2021.  At the time, it was reported to be the most massive object ever tossed overboard from the International Space Station.  Disposing of used or unnecessary equipment in such a way is common practice aboard the space station, as the objects typically burn up harmlessly in Earth's atmosphere.

The Editor says...
Right.  When NASA does it, the batteries "burn up harmlessly in Earth's atmosphere."  But if you set fire to three tons of batteries, and produced three tons of smoke, you'd probably go to prison.

NASA launches its 1st official tabletop roleplaying game campaign.  NASA is full of surprises.  Perhaps the last thing RPG enthusiasts would expect out of the serious engineers and scientists at the storied space agency is a fun table-top fantasy adventure game.  Yet the geeky folks at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center have devised a compelling new amusement centered around a cosmic mystery and the Hubble Space Telescope that space fans can download today free of charge.

The Editor says...
Nothing is free.  The taxpayers paid for all this.

US performs first Moon landing since 1972.  The Odysseus lander designed by private aerospace company Intuitive Machines has become the first US-made spacecraft to touch down on the Moon since 1972.  It was launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on February 15.  "Without a doubt, our equipment is on the surface of the Moon, and we are transmitting," Intuitive Machines co-founder Tim Crain said during the livestream.  "Today for the first time in more than a half-century, the US has returned to the Moon," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said shortly after the 14-foot-tall lander successfully reached the lunar surface.  "Today is a day that shows the power and promise of NASA's commercial partnerships."

Nuclear power on the moon:  NASA wraps up 1st phase of ambitious reactor project.  NASA is wrapping up the design phase of a project to develop concepts for a small, electricity-generating nuclear fission reactor for use on the moon.  The Fission Surface Power Project aims to develop safe, clean and reliable energy sources on the moon, where each nighttime lasts around 14.5 Earth days.  Such a system could play a big role in the agency's Artemis program for lunar exploration. [...] The agency set requirements for a 40-kilowatt reactor that uses low-enriched uranium and weighs no more than 13,200 pounds (6,000 kilograms). [...] In the U.S., 40 kW can, on average, provide electrical power for 33 households, according to NASA.

The Editor says...
[#1] Why is NASA wasting money on nuclear energy for the Moon (population: zero), when the U.S. just barely has enough electricity available?  [#2] Since nobody lives on the Moon, why is there any concern about the reactor being safe?  (Or clean.)  How much does that add to the price of this project?  [#3] What is the price of this project?  The writer of the article above somehow failed to mention the cost.  [#4] Who will benefit from this project, aside from the government contractors who build it and launch it?  Nobody!  [#5] NASA says 40 kilowatts is enough to power 33 households.  That is utter nonsense.  Two houses, maybe three (in good weather) would be marginally believable.  One house, if there's an electric car charging outside.  But not 33.  Do not believe anything a U.S. government agency — including NASA — says about anything.

Who benefits from this project?  Nobody!
1st gravitational wave detector in space 'LISA' will hunt for ripples in spacetime.  Humanity's first space-based gravitational wave detector has received the go-ahead.  The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission, which consists of three spacecraft that together form a single gravitational wave detector, is a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).  It's set to launch in the mid-2030s.  The adoption of LISA was announced by ESA on Jan. 25, and recognizes that the mission concept and associated technology are sufficiently advanced.  Getting the green light means scientists can start building the spacecraft as well as its required instruments; work will begin in Jan. 2025 after a European industrial contractor has been selected for construction.

After DEI, Every Country Except America Can Land on the Moon.  On January 18th, the latest attempt in over 50 years by the United States to return to the moon burned up over the Pacific Ocean.  A day later, Japan's lunar lander made it to the moon.  In 2023, India landed its robot lander on the moon in a mission that only cost $75 million, while in 2020, China became the third nation, after America and the USSR, to return lunar samples.  So why is the United States still struggling to manage something that every other country seems to be able to do and that American engineers used to be able to pull off with slide rules?  The Apollo computer used memory made of wire ropes woven by women in the garment industry.  Back then we picked the best and the brightest who had the "right stuff".  Now the right stuff consists of checking DEI boxes.

Who benefits from this?
NASA's Tech Demo Streams First Video From Deep Space via Laser.  The video, featuring a cat named Taters, was sent back from nearly 19 million miles away by NASA's laser communications demonstration, marking a historic milestone.  NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications experiment beamed an ultra-high definition streaming video on Dec. 11 from a record-setting 19 million miles away.  The milestone is part of a NASA technology demonstration aimed at streaming very high-bandwidth video and other data from deep space — enabling future human missions beyond Earth orbit.  "This accomplishment underscores our commitment to advancing optical communications as a key element to meeting our future data transmission needs," said NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy.  "Increasing our bandwidth is essential to achieving our future exploration and science goals, and we look forward to the continued advancement of this technology and the transformation of how we communicate during future interplanetary missions."

Mark Your Calendar!  US Looks to Make First Lunar Visit in Decades by 2024.  The upcoming lunar trip, which is expected to take place in January of next year, will be the first US mission to the moon since the last Apollo mission in 1969, during which American astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to walk on the moon.  The US is returning to the moon, but this time, they're going private.  The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has commissioned a private American company, Astrobotic, to carry out the lunar mission.  The six-foot-tall lander, Peregrine, will have no one on board but will instead carry NASA instruments that will be used to study the moon's environment.

The Editor says...
If a private company is doing this, and no tax money is involved, I'm all for it.  The mission is completely pointless and will likely provide inconclusive evidence at best, but go ahead.

NASA and Japan to launch world's 1st wooden satellite as soon as 2024. Why?  NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) are planning to launch the world's first wooden satellite into space in a bid to make spaceflight more sustainable.  LignoSat, a coffee mug-size satellite made from magnolia wood, is set to launch into Earth's orbit by summer 2024, according to the space agencies.  Wood doesn't burn or rot in the lifeless vacuum of space, but it will incinerate into a fine ash upon reentry into Earth's atmosphere — making it a surprisingly useful, biodegradable material for future satellites.  After successfully testing their wood samples aboard the International Space Station (ISS) earlier this year, the scientists believe the test satellite is fit for launch.

Astronauts Lose Tool Bag in Orbital Oopsy.  NASA astronauts Jasmin Moghbeli and Loral O'Hara concluded their spacewalk today at 2:47 p.m. EST after 6 hours and 42 minutes.  Their spacewalk began at 8:05 a.m. [...] During the activity, one tool bag was inadvertently lost.  Flight controllers spotted the tool bag using external station cameras.  The tools were not needed for the remainder of the spacewalk.  Mission Control analyzed the bag's trajectory and determined that risk of recontacting the station is low and that the onboard crew and space station are safe with no action required.

The Editor says...
Brilliant.  That's like a guy in a fishing boat who drops his cell phone in the lake and then says, "That's okay, I wasn't going to make any phone calls anyhow."  And the rocket scientists then "analyzed the bag's trajectory" and discovered that down is not up, so there's no danger that the tools they dropped might swing around and hit them later.  Superior deductive skills, Holmes.  Generally, when you drop tools from a great height, there's not much of a chance that they'll hit you later.

Houston, We Have Un Probleme:  Europeans Ground Own Space Program by Quitting Cooperation With Russia.  European economies and industries have taken a beating after joining the United States in trying to suffocate the Russian economy through sanctions, with politicians and business leaders warning that the downturn could culminate in the region's deindustrialization.  But turns out there's more bad news.  The European Space Agency is facing the fallout of the EU's self-imposed restrictions on cooperation with Russia in space, cornering itself into a "temporary alliance" with America's SpaceX and exposing Europe's lack of independence in this crucial technological field.  That's according to an analysis by the francophone newspaper La Nouvelle Tribune, which examined Europe's situation in the context of difficulties being faced by the ESA's Galileo global navigation satellite system project — a key technology "essential for sovereignty in geolocation," which is now "at an impasse with the boycott of Russian technologies and the unavailability of the usual launchers."

Nearby asteroid may contain elements 'beyond the periodic table', new study suggests.  A handful of asteroids in our solar system are so dense that no element on Earth can explain their properties.  Instead, they may be made of naturally occurring "superheavy elements" beyond those listed in the periodic table — our current best catalog of 118 chemical elements — new research suggests.  "If asteroids do indeed contain superheavy elements, it would open numerous questions surrounding how these elements were formed and why we have not discovered them outside of asteroids yet," study co-author Johann Rafelski, a physics professor at the University of Arizona, told Live Science.  Immensely heavy space rocks, known as compact ultra dense objects (CUDOs), are typically heavier than osmium, the heaviest naturally occurring element on Earth.  One such rock is 33 Polyhymnia, located in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

The Editor says...
[#1] How many people in the world care about this great mystery?  Maybe one in a billion?  [#2] How many people in the U.S. would like to have money extracted from their paychecks to pay for the multi-billion-dollar (white elephant) mission to extract (inconclusive) samples from an asteroid?  Probably zero, or close to it.  [#3] The rest of us have to accept NASA's statements, studies, and theories as factual, since there's no way for us to challenge their findings.  How do we know this "discovery" isn't just a math error?  [#4] The people who believe that previously-unknown "superheavy elements" exist — but not here on Earth, of course — are the same people who think that the universe created itself out of nothing.

Metal In The Stratosphere:  The Unseen Cost of Space Exploration On Earth.  In a startling discovery, scientists warn that the stratosphere, one of the most remote and stable regions of Earth's atmosphere, is now showing signs of human interference due to space exploration activities.  These unexpected changes, experts caution, might have unforeseen consequences for the planet's climate, the protective ozone layer, and ultimately, the sustainability of life on Earth.  Scientists, led by atmospheric veterans Dan Cziczo and Dan Murphy have unearthed alarming data.  Using tools delicately hitched to their research planes, they've been probing the secrets of the sky, particularly the stratosphere, more than 11 miles above the Earth's surface.  This area was believed to be an untainted sanctuary.  Instead, what they've found is alarming:  a significant accumulation of metal particles, believed to originate from the debris of spacecraft and satellites that have been launched and re-entered Earth's atmosphere.

Scientists excited by first look at OSIRIS-REx asteroid samples.  NASA unveiled samples of the asteroid Bennu returned by its Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security — Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx, spacecraft during an Oct. 11 event at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.  The center is home to an astromaterials curation facility that the agency delivered the OSIRIS-REx sample canister to a day after it landed in the Utah desert Sept. 24.  An initial analysis of material showed evidence of water, in the form of hydrated minerals, and a high abundance of carbon.  Scientists said the material studied so consisted of 4.7% carbon by weight, among the highest levels of any meteorites studied.  Scientists had hoped that the OSIRIS-REx samples would help them understand the formation of the solar system and the building blocks of life on Earth, and that quick-look analysis appeared to confirm that.

The Editor says...
This amounts to the establishment of atheism as a state religion.  There's an explanation of "the formation of the solar system" in the first chapter of the Bible, which is widely available at low cost.  NASA spends billions of dollars a year trying to disprove the Bible, for the benefit of a handful of atheist scientists.

A long-awaited asteroid sample has landed in the US.  An asteroid sample collected by NASA has touched down on Earth, giving scientists the opportunity to learn more about the origins of the solar system and capturing a piece of a massive space rock that has a chance of colliding with our planet in the future.  It's the first time the agency has accomplished such a feat.  Seven years after launching to space, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft flew by Earth Sunday to deliver the pristine sample from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu.  OSIRIS-REx, which stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer, lifted off in 2016 and began orbiting Bennu in 2018.  The spacecraft collected the sample in 2020 and set off on its lengthy return trip to Earth in May 2021.

The Editor says...
The CNN article above goes on and on, but never mentions the cost of this mission.  Nor does it explain how this benefits anyone.  It is as if NASA is looking for ways to look busy, in order to justify its continued existence.

'Emergency' Spending.  Did you survive the budget cuts from the last debt ceiling fight?  President Joe Biden called them "draconian," while Republicans praised the deal's "historic reductions in spending."  But both parties conned us, as my new video explains.  What they call "cuts" were just a reduction in their planned spending increase.  Instead of raising spending by 7.8%, they increased it by "only" 3.9%.  Only politicians get to call an increase a cut.  Biden praised the deal, saying, "We're cutting spending and bringing the deficits down at the same time!"  But they didn't.  Now they're using tricks to spend even more.  "Call it an emergency — done," says Cato Institute budget specialist Romina Boccia.  "Spend the money on whatever you want."  Boccia reports how the Senate is moving to increase spending beyond the agreed-upon caps simply by calling it "emergency" spending.  "They gave $296 million to NASA for 'emergency infrastructure.'"

A big telescope on the moon could peer deeper into the universe than James Webb.  A robotic telescope on the moon could peer deeper into the universe than the famed James Webb Telescope can and perhaps even help find life on exoplanets, scientists say.  Astronomers think that powerful instruments on the moon may open the next frontier in astronomical research, allowing them to study phenomena invisible to existing ground and space-based observatories.  Various ideas have been proposed, including supersensitive gravitational wave detectors that could spot more subtle ripples in space-time than Earth-based detectors can and radio telescopes that could take advantage of the moon's quiet environment to detect signals from the earliest epochs in the universe's history.

The Editor says...
[#1] If you want to take up a collection and pay for this project through voluntary donations, go ahead.  But if you're using the taxpayers' money (or just printing new baseless money) to pay for it, I am opposed.  [#2] How many people in the U.S. would benefit from this project?  Twenty?  Thirty?  How many people are clamoring for such a project today?  Maybe ten?  [#3] What is the end product, and is it worth the cost?  If the telescope breaks, what will it cost to fix it?

Even NASA admits that the SLS is unsustainable.  If you have been following the sad saga of the Space Launch System — the rocket that NASA is depending on to get America back to the moon — you wouldn't be surprised to learn that the General Accounting Office is a critic of the rocket.  Everybody sane is a critic of the rocket.  But it was a bit of a surprise to see that even NASA, which has poured about $50 billion into a rocket (and space capsule) that costs more than $4 billion dollars a launch, has admitted that it cannot sustain the program unless its budget skyrockets to a level that seems unlikely.  So far SLS has launched once.  We got some extremely nice pictures out of it.  (That cost estimate is higher than NASA's because it includes more than the hardware itself).  The SLS is the core piece of hardware that NASA plans to use to jump-start our return to the moon more than 50 years after our first landing there.  It is also the most ridiculous program in American history.

Lovesick Astronaut Accused of Sabotaging Half a Billion Dollar Spacecraft.  A female American astronaut allegedly purposely damaged a $500 million Russian-built spacecraft because she was lovesick and wanted to go back home to planet Earth.  Texan Serena Aunon-Chancellor, 47, stands accused by Roscosmos, Russia's space agency of maliciously drilling a hole in its Soyuz MS-09 vehicle, docked with the International Space Station (ISS), because she wanted to go home over "a fight with her boyfriend."  In June 2018, along with astronauts Sergey Prokopyev of Russia and Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency, Aunon-Chancellor had completed a two-day journey in the Soyuz MS-09 vehicle to the ISS as part of a "ISS Expedition 56."  They were scheduled to remain in space for six months.  But two months into the mission, a two millimeter hole was discovered in the vehicle.

The Cost of Rocket Science.  I was very struck by an aside he had about halfway through the show re India becoming the fourth nation to make a "soft landing" on the moon (by "soft", they mean the spacecraft doesn't get totaled on impact).  The cost of the Chandrayaan-3 mission was about US $75 million, which, as John pointed out, is less than the cost of the Barbie movie.  If you want to be nitpicky, you might quibble that that doesn't include the cost of the first two less successful Chandrayaan space missions.  Okay, total expenditures on the Indian space programme since its launch in 2003 are approx $140 million — which is still less than the Barbie movie. [...] India can land a spaceship on the moon for less than the cost of an American movie about a space mission.  But let's set aside the showbiz comparisons.  As I said, the total cost of the Indian space programme, since 2003, is about $140 million — or seven million per annum.  What can you get from American government for seven million bucks a year?  Nothing.  That's a rounding error in the federal budget.

"A key lesson in unintended consequences:"
NASA's Planetary Defense Test, DART, Reportedly Unleashed a Boulder Storm.  Legal Insurrection readers may recall that last September, I reported that NASA tested the "Double Asteroid Redirection Test" (DART) spacecraft successfully, as it intentionally slammed into an asteroid in an historic test of humanity's ability to protect Earth from an impact event.  The data analyzed from the mission confirmed that the asteroid's course has been altered.  However, there are some unanticipated results that are now being shared.  ["]Astronomers using Hubble's extraordinary sensitivity have discovered a swarm of boulders that were possibly shaken off the asteroid when NASA deliberately slammed the half-ton DART impactor spacecraft into Dimorphos at approximately 14,000 miles per hour.  The 37 free-flung boulders range in size from three feet to 22 feet across, based on Hubble photometry.  They are drifting away from the asteroid at little more than a half-mile per hour — roughly the walking speed of a giant tortoise.  The total mass in these detected boulders is about 0.1% the mass of Dimorphos.["]

The Editor says...
These are the same people who gripe about the increase in "space junk" endangering our satellites and manned space flights.  Now there are 37 rogue asteroids to watch out for.

'Woke' NASA, Which Prizes Diversity Hires, Loses Contact With Major Space Probe Due To Massive Mistake.  NASA has announced that contact with the Voyager 2 spacecraft is now lost, possibly permanently, raising concerns about the competence of government agencies, including NASA, and their prioritization of diversity over merit.  The recent incident involving the spacecraft's accidental antenna misalignment has led some to question whether such mistakes have become more frequent due to a shift in priorities.  Having been launched in 1977 and having made historic discoveries, Voyager 2 was exploring the farthest reaches of our solar system, nearly 12 billion miles away from Earth.  [Tweet]  However, the spacecraft's communications were disrupted after its antenna tilted away from Earth by a mere 2% due to an erroneous command sent by NASA on July 21.  Despite efforts to realign the antenna through a scheduled orientation reset, NASA has now conceded that the loss of contact is permanent, leaving Voyager 2 adrift in the depths of space.

NASA enters 'home stretch' in mission to reach golden asteroid worth $10,000 quadrillion.  NASA scientists say they are in the "home stretch" of preparing to launch a mission to a $10,000 quadrillion asteroid this year.  The preparation is taking place at Cape Canaveral, with the Psyche spacecraft's liftoff scheduled for Oct. 5.  The mission's goal is to study a space rock which, in terms of potential value, surpasses the entire global economy, currently estimated at approximately $110 trillion.  The asteroid in question, named 16 Psyche, is a unique, metal-rich entity located some 499,555,545 kilometers away from Earth, orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter.  It is believed to have a core composed of iron, nickel, and gold, potentially valued at an astounding $10,000 quadrillion.

The Editor says...
[#1] Stories like this appear in the American newspapers whenever a Democrat president faces credible charges that could lead to his impeachment.  The press is hoping you will be distracted from the biggest scandal in at least a century.  [#2] Why say "ten thousand quadrillion," if you mean ten quintillion?  [#3] Part of the value of gold is its scarcity.  If you sell a few ounces of gold this afternoon, you might get $2,000 per ounce.  But if you sell 50 trillion ounces (4.167 trillion troy pounds, or roughly two billion tons) of gold, the market will be flooded, and its value will plummet.  [#3]  When NASA makes a rash and implausible pronouncement about harvesting a gold asteroid, you have no way to confirm or refute what they say.  There is simply no way that NASA will lasso a two-billion-ton gold asteroid, gently drop it somewhere in U.S. territory, and use it to pay off the national debt,  or whatever their plans are.  I can assure you that even if NASA's story is true, the proceeds from the sale of all that metal will never benefit anyone outside the U.S. government, other than NASA contractors.  If the national debt were to be paid off, government spending would accelerate out of control, and the national debt would be back to insurmountable levels in no time.  [#4]  Meteorites are mostly made of iron, and 5 to 25 percent nickel.^*  If a gold asteroid exists, why has a gold meteorite never hit the Earth?

NASA plans to mine the moon by early 2030s, says rocket scientist.  NASA has plans to start mining for resources on the moon by the next decade.  Gerald Sanders, a rocket scientist at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, said America's space agency will at the beginning look into the development of oxygen and water on the moon and will later contemplate exploiting minerals on the moon like iron and rare earth minerals.  "We are trying to invest in the exploration phase, understand the resources... to [lower] risk, such that external investment makes sense that could lead to development and production," Sanders announced at a mining industry event in Australia.  Sanders noted that the upcoming Artemis manned mission to the moon will collect knowledge that the agency could then use to measure the resources available on the moon so NASA can draw up future plans for exploration and mining activities.

The Editor says...
I'd like to open up a gold mine behind my house, and begin extracting gold by the end of next year.  There's only one little problem:  Nobody has ever suggested that my yard contains anything but dirt and rocks and numerous varieties of grass.  Thus the gold mine idea is without merit.  In a similar manner, NASA may draw up elaborate plans to open up a mine on the moon, but nobody has ever found any evidence that the moon contains anything other than sterile rocks and dirt.  Digging does not cause gold to materialize under your shovel — one digs because there's some indication (perhaps from a prospector) that he might find something of value underground.  Moreover, even if the moon was littered with gold, uranium, diamonds, or silver, it would be too expensive to go get it, even with unmanned probes.  NASA apparently doesn't care too much for unmanned probes, because manned missions bring in much more money.  But be sure to watch for future updates to this "mining" story, especially when a Democrat president is about to be removed from office against his will and the White House needs to distract the news media.

Appended two days later:
Beware also of an old trick NASA has used to extend an expensive program that should be brought to an end:  When the Challenger space shuttle blew up, that was an opportunity to ask hard questions about what exactly is being accomplished by flying people around in circles, but instead, NASA began to push for a continuation of the shuttle program, because "that's what the [deceased] astronauts would have wanted."  So watch for a lunar mining operation to result in a few deaths, followed by weeks of national mourning and sensational news coverage, followed by expansion of the lunar mining, not its termination.

What Was NASA's Role In Developing The Doomed Titan Sub?  The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had a deal with submersible company OceanGate to collaborate on the materials and manufacturing process of the Titan craft that imploded while exploring the wreck of the Titanic, according to public statements and contract documents.  The Titan likely suffered a "catastrophic implosion" during its expedition, killing all five people on board, the Coast Guard said Thursday; however, OceanGate claimed that NASA played a pivotal role in the "development and manufacturing" of the doomed submersible.  In truth, OceanGate had a formal agreement with the agency to provide "institutional and mission support," according to NASA contract documents, while NASA has stated it did not "conduct testing and manufacturing" with the company, and instead only acted as a consultant.

Price Tag of NASA's Martian Rock Retrieval Mission Is Skyrocketing.  As NASA's chief of science programs, Thomas Zurbuchen oversaw missions like the James Webb telescope launch and the landing of the Mars Perseverance rover.  When he stepped down from that post in 2022, he told The New York Times that the key to innovation was to take smart risks and not to panic when some of them don't pay out.  It appears NASA itself is struggling to apply that wisdom.  Last week, according to reporting from Ars Technica, leaders at the space agency were told that the development cost for the Mars Sample Retrieval (MSR) program had doubled.  Originally, the cost to collect rock samples from Mars was estimated at $4.4 billion; now, that number is north of $8 billion.  And that's just for development.  The estimate does not include launch costs, construction, or operating costs.  The final tab could be north of $10 billion.  The plan is to send an unmanned sample retrieval lander to Mars in 2028.  That vehicle would return to Earth with the rock and soil samples that the Perseverance rover has collected since it landed on Mars in 2021.

The Editor says...
Here's an idea:  NASA can set up a crowd-funding page to see if they can collect $10 billion to gather rocks on Mars.  If they can raise the money from those who contribute voluntarily, the project should go ahead.  But if they're taking the taxpayers' money, that was collected under threat of imprisonment, the project (along with all similar NASA white elephants, if not NASA itself) should be scrapped.

NASA's Artemis moon rocket will cost $6 billion more than planned: report.  An independent report looking into the development of NASA's new moon rocket has found significant cost overruns and delays that could harm the agency's plans to put astronauts back on the moon.  Development of the Space Launch System (SLS) began in November 2011.  It had a successful test flight in November 2022, six years after its first targeting a debut launch in late 2016.  The SLS megarocket is intended to return humans to the moon as part of NASA's Artemis program, but increases in costs related to contracts awarded to Aerojet Rocketdyne and Northrop Grumman for SLS's propulsion systems could threaten that objective.  That's according to a 50-page report by NASA Inspector General Paul Martin published by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) on May 25.  Altogether, the four contracts for the rocket's booster and engine were initially projected to cost $7 billion over a span of 14 years, but are now projected to cost at least $13.1 billion over nearly 25 years.

The True Purpose of 'Earth Day' Was Not Politics or Climate Alarmism.  The real founders of Earth Day were not the politicians who rode the wave of environmental consciousness that swept the public in the late 60s and early 70s to establish the logistics of the organization.  Nor was it the United Nations or peace and environmental activists who jumped on board the train when it became apparent that people across the world were demanding action to solve the environmental problems of the day.  No, it was the scientists, engineers, and courageous astronauts who took us to the Moon.  For it was as a result of their actions, photographs, and stories that our perspectives of our small planet changed forever.  Indeed, their most important legacy may very well be how their work was a catalyst for a profound philosophical transformation, without which Earth Day and most of the modern environmental movement, would never have taken off.

Man Challenges NASA At Brevard County Commission Meeting, Shows Evidence No One Is Inside The Internation Space Station.  Possibly the greatest short compilation clip complete with commentary exposing NASA's Lies on the internet.  [Video clip]

Could China beat us to the moon and claim it as their territory?  In the 1960s there was a space race to see who could get to the moon first, American astronauts or Russian cosmonauts.  As we all know, we won that battle.  Over the weekend NASA administrator Bill Nelson gave an interview to Politico in which he said the US was in a new space race with China to see who would get to the moon first.  Nelson even warned that China might try to claim the moon, or at least some territory, as their own.

The Editor says...
[#1] As usual, NASA is desperately trying to justify its continued existence by cooking up an urgent goal that is of great concern to (and will ultimately benefit) absolutely nobody outside of NASA and its contractors.  [#2] We've already been to the moon, so nobody is gonna "win the race to the moon."  [#3] The moon is a giant pile of sterile dirt.  Let China waste its money on fruitless exploration of the moon.  That will give them something to do.  What are they going to find on the moon that is of any use?  What is the value of the moon as a military base?  In the absence of power plants, enormous antennas, and a steady stream of resupply missions, the answer is zero.  Let them find out the hard way.  [#4] Assuming that the moon, or Mars, or any other land mass is the property of whoever takes it by military force — which seems to be the current system — is it inevitable that wars will be fought in future centuries over lunar property rights?

NASA shows leftist bias against Trump, Musk.  Space dot com is a NASA website that reports on the latest news in such topics as astronomy, satellites, and space travel.  It has even reported on news of UFO/UAP phenomena.  Its articles and commentary are well written and informative.  They contribute to NASA's reputation as an objective, science-oriented, and nonpartisan agency.  One would think that NASA would value that reputation and make its protection a high priority.  If NASA, through its website, were to allow itself to become yet another propaganda arm of the Democrat party, as have many other federal agencies, then about half of the public would likely cease to place any trust in its taxpayer-funded programs.  NASA's goodwill is worth literally billions of dollars.  It is somewhat of a mystery, then, that on at least two occasions, NASA has published clearly partisan pieces at Space dot com.

Artemis 1 moon launch is delayed: NASA engineers discover leaks and [a] crack in [the] $22.2 [billion] rocket.  NASA was forced to call off its highly anticipated Artemis I mission Monday following several issues with the Space Launch System (SLS) that now leaves the world's most powerful rocket grounded until at least September 2.  Engineers were working against the clock to troubleshoot an issue with engine 3, which was not reaching the proper temperature and experiencing an engine bleed that was not tested during the last wet rehearsal due to a fuel leak that cut the event short.

NASA tests new moon rocket, 50 years after Apollo.  Years late and billions over budget, NASA's new moon rocket makes its debut next week in a high-stakes test flight before astronauts get on top.  The 322-foot (98-meter) rocket will attempt to send an empty crew capsule into a far-flung lunar orbit, 50 years after NASA's famed Apollo moonshots.  If all goes well, astronauts could strap in as soon as 2024 for a lap around the moon, with NASA aiming to land two people on the lunar surface by the end of 2025.

Russia will withdraw from International Space Station by 2024.  Russia's new space chief, Yuri Borisov, said Tuesday that the space agency Roscosmos plans to create its own space station.  Dimitry Rogozin, Borisov's predecessor, had previously said that Russia would be willing to discuss keeping its astronauts on the ISS, but only if the United States dropped its sanctions against Russia's space industry.

The Editor says...
It's another Biden administration first!  The first hostage situation in space!  Somebody notify the Space Force!  Fortunately, SpaceX (presumably) will pick up the remaining astronauts, when the time comes.  But of course that won't be necessary because Biden will give Russia whatever they want.

Uh-oh.  It's a lunar emergency!  Scientists are baffled!  Give us five billion dollars!
NASA is to launch a 'priority' mission to explore mysterious domes on the moon.  NASA is to launch a 'priority' mission to explore mysterious mounds on the moon that have baffled scientists.  The US space agency has unveiled plans for a rover to visit the Gruithuisen Domes, geological features which experts believe were formed by a sticky magma rich in silica, similar in composition to granite.  On Earth, formations like these need oceans of liquid water and plate tectonics to form, but without such ingredients on the moon, experts are unsure how the domes formed and evolved over time.

Bad News!  The Plants Grown in Moon Soil Turned Out Wretched.  Remember when scientists grew seedlings in actual Moon soil, collected by Apollo astronauts?  Well, don't get too psyched for delicious lunar salad just yet.  In a new interview with Astronomy Magazine, University of Florida horticultural scientist Rob Ferl — the author of a recent Communications Biology study detailing the experiment — brought us down to Earth with a description of just how wretched the miraculous plants turned out.  "Plants grown in lunar soil tended to be smaller," Ferl told the magazine, "and they contained purplish pigments that were indications of stress."

NASA employees caught buying child porn escape prosecution and now their names are being kept secret.  NASA employees were caught buying child pornography from a criminal ring in Eastern Europe that distributed images of minors as young as three, it can be revealed.  An investigation by Daily Mail Online found staff members from the space agency paid for pictures and videos of children in sexual situations, but were never prosecuted.  Their names have never been released because of government guidelines which protect their privacy.

Astronauts will grow artificial steak from beef cells on the ISS in a bid to produce 'tender and juicy' meat.  If humans are to live on the moon and one day make it to Mars then scientists must come up a way for them to grow their own food.  To that end, astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) could soon be tucking into a tasty meal of fresh steak — but only if they can perfect the technology of cultivating it from beef cells in microgravity first.  That is just one of the scientific experiments being carried out by three amateur astronauts who are launching to the orbital observatory later today for what will be NASA's first ever space tourism mission.

Understanding the Progressive Mind.  The money progressives rob from the nation's bank will be redistributed according to the dictates of "social justice" — a measure based on their social whims.  In the name of social justice, for example, the Biden regime has allocated $7.5 billion to put a black female astronaut on the moon because she is black and female.  This is a preposterous virtue signal that violates the very spirit of America's color- and gender-blind Constitution.  But a government that has no respect for the Constitution or the nation's laws needn't be bothered by that.

Elon Musk's Space X Might Need to Rescue an American Astronaut Stranded by Russia.  [Scroll down]  The whole idea of the I.S.S. was to have governments cooperate with operating a space station, which would (hopefully) force or teach the folks down here to behave.  That concept has seemed to work for over two decades, even when Russia invaded Georgia and Crimea.  When George W. Bush made the boneheaded decision to end the Space Shuttle program, which left America depending on Russia for rides to and from the I.S.S., that put us behind in our space exploration.  Thankfully, the private sector, led by Elon Musk and his company Space X in conjunction with NASA, recently allowed the United States to forgo depending in Russia for rides, and now can send manned rockets from the United States' soil again.

Russian Space Chief Threatens to Crash International Space Station into U.S. or Europe.  Russia is certainly getting very good at making threats.  Today, President Vladimir Putin threatened nuclear war or something.  He put Russia's nuclear forces on "high alert," according to media reports.  Now, Dmitry Rogozin, the director-general of Russia's space program, Roscosmos, tweeted out a threat to the International Space Station, saying that U.S. and NATO sanctions could "destroy our cooperation on the ISS."  He also suggested that the ISS could crash in the United States or Europe.  There are currently four NASA astronauts, two Russian cosmonauts, and one European astronaut onboard the space station.

Rep. Maria Cantwell:  NASA's role in space travel is confusing Americans.  NASA's days aren't numbered but it's billionaires with aspirations of conquering other planets that are capturing people's imagination and changing the trajectory of American exploration of outer space.  Congress is aware that Americans thinking about a return to the moon now picture billionaires in corporate offices leading the charge instead of NASA's Mission Control Center, according to Sen. Maria Cantwell, Washington Democrat.  At a Senate hearing for oversight of NASA, Ms. Cantwell told NASA officials that she has witnessed a shift in people's thinking about the government's role in space exploration.

White Scientists At NASA Are Made To Feel Shame During Race Workshop.  This workshop presentation by Lila Higgins and Miguel Ordeñana from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County made sure every scientist at NASA was made to feel shame for being white and made sure moving forward they will be more mindful of how the tone of their skin can trigger those who darker tones.  An entire guideline on how to speak to anyone considering a minority was outlined including 'being mindful of sharing when it could cause FURTHER harm to black, indigenous, or people of color.'  The guidance also suggests using SIMPLE language so it is easy for everyone to understand, as if to say, people of color may be dumber than you white folks so make sure to speak down to them.  [Video clip]

Forget Biden:  We Just Parked a Telescope a Million Miles in Space to Peer Deep Into the Origins of Time.  At its launch on Christmas Day, the James Webb Space Telescope cost $10 billion.  That seemed like a lot until a year ago when a certain political party took over Washington and began spending several trillion dollars, with trillions more planned.  Since its launch, the 14,300-pound observatory has been traveling a million miles out to its reserved parking spot, there to orbit the Sun alongside Earth. [...] The Webb telescope is 100 times more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, that has delivered for study over the ensuing years thousands of stunning images of distant galaxies, clouds of space dust and gases, and star nurseries where new stars are forever forming.

The Editor says...
For a Godless humanist, trying to disprove the first chapter of the Bible, by using elaborate instruments like this, is all very exciting.  Who else benefits from this project?  Nobody!  For the rest of us, it's ten billion dollars down the drain.

Scientists cheer as Nasa's $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope module detaches from rocket and begins one million mile journey into space.  NASA's revolutionary James Webb Space Telescope has begun its one million mile voyage into solar orbit after successful lift off following decades of planning and delays.  Jubilant scientists and engineers shouted 'Go Webb, go!' as the telescope module detached from its rocket and floated off into space far above the earth's surface.  It is hoped that the observatory, a replacement for the 30-year-old Hubble telescope, will by travelling so far out be able to peer back in time 13.5 [billion] years — to a point within a mere 100 [million] years of the big bang.

Webb Telescope away with two major hurdles cleared after flawless launch.  Today [12/25/2021], the James Webb Space Telescope started its journey to a location over a million kilometers from Earth, where it will start its science mission in roughly six months.  "This is a day for the ages," said Ken Sembach, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute.  "Science won't be the same after today."  Sembach said those words roughly an hour before the launch, well before any last minute glitches could have delayed matters, and long before the complicated series of events that would see parts of the observatory unfold from their compact launch configuration.

When NASA goes woke.  [Scroll down]  At page 348, NASA gives examples of how it's taken the lead in figuring out the obvious: poor people are less likely to have power returned quickly after hurricanes than rich people; satellites may be useful in locating water sources in dry regions; big cities without trees get hot (at least, I think that's what it said); and climate change causing rising waters always hits poor people hardest (and apparently never hits rich people like the Obamas, with their multi-million-dollar waterfront properties).  Ultimately, as best as I can tell having skimmed this gobbledygook, NASA is restating facts we already know and political points that have already been scored, wrapping them up in woke language, and taking taxpayer money to put a big bow on the package.

Getting the willies about some of those new NASA space probes.  I had some apprehension when I heard the news.  The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) launched a mission to crash a spacecraft into an asteroid in an attempt to "knock it off course." [...] There are approximately 1.113 million asteroids identified by NASA ranging in size from 329 miles across to 33 feet across.  The objective of the DART mission, the U.S. component of a collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) called AIDA (Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment), is to determine if the motion of an asteroid on a collision course with Earth could be changed to avoid Earth impact.  If DART can change the trajectory of an asteroid millions of miles from Earth, even by a little, it could significantly decrease the chance of a collision with the Earth.  What could go wrong?  Well, lately the scientific community has a less-than-stellar track record when conducting experiments for "the good of mankind."  What contingencies have been explored to ensure a course change in the trajectory of Dimorphos, no matter how slight, does not pose a future threat to Earth?  What "Butterfly Effect," could result should the trajectory of the mini-moon be altered by just one degree?

NASA, SpaceX Launch DART: First Test Mission to Defend Planet Earth.  NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), the world's first full-scale mission to test technology for defending Earth against potential asteroid or comet hazards, launched Wednesday [11/24/2021] at 1:21 a.m. EST on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket [...] at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.  Just one part of NASA's larger planetary defense strategy, DART — built and managed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland — will impact a known asteroid that is not a threat to Earth.  Its goal is to slightly change the asteroid's motion in a way that can be accurately measured using ground-based telescopes.

Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART).  DART is a spacecraft designed to impact an asteroid as a test of technology.  DART's target asteroid is NOT a threat to Earth.  This asteroid system is a perfect testing ground to see if intentionally crashing a spacecraft into an asteroid is an effective way to change its course, should an Earth-threatening asteroid be discovered in the future. [...] DART is the first-ever mission dedicated to investigating and demonstrating one method of asteroid deflection by changing an asteroid's motion in space through kinetic impact.  This method will have DART deliberately collide with a target asteroid — which poses no threat to Earth[,] in order to change its speed and path.  DART's target is the binary, near-Earth asteroid system Didymos, composed of the roughly 780-meter (2,560-foot) -diameter "Didymos" and the smaller, approximately 160-meter (530-foot)-size "Dimorphos," which orbits Didymos.

The Editor says...
As usual, there is no mention of the price tag for this mission.  I really wish NASA had consulted with me before launching (presumably) hundreds of millions of dollars out into space (again) on a mission to solve a problem we don't have; but now that it's underway, I hope it is successful, and it doesn't accidentally steer a huge boulder into the earth.  That would be detrimental to the Dart brand.

NASA Seeks Ideas for a Nuclear Reactor on the Moon.  If anyone has a good idea on how to put a nuclear fission power plant on the moon, the U.S. government wants to hear about it.  NASA and the nation's top federal nuclear research lab on Friday [11/19/2021] put out a request for proposals for a fission surface power system.  NASA is collaborating with the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory to establish a sun-independent power source for missions to the moon by the end of the decade.  "Providing a reliable, high-power system on the moon is a vital next step in human space exploration, and achieving it is within our grasp," Sebastian Corbisiero, the Fission Surface Power Project lead at the lab, said in a statement.

The Editor says...
[#1] Who would benefit from this boondoggle, other than the contractors who put it together?  [#2] The moon is made of sterile dirt.  There is no reason to go there, other than to impress other countries with our rockets.  In the Cold War, when rockets were relatively new, that was important.  Today it is not.  [#3] The people making this proposal are the same people who oppose the construction of nuclear power plants in the United States, and instead recommend the use of solar panels.  With 100 percent sunny days, and no atmosphere, the moon is an ideal place for solar panels; however, the nights are long and cold.

NASA's Lucy mission will explain the origins of our solar system, UCF researcher says.  NASA's Lucy mission that launched at 5:34 a.m. Saturday from Kennedy Space Center will give the science community its first look at untouched asteroids and will deepen an understanding of how our solar system was formed.  Over the next 12 years, Lucy will fly by the seven Trojan asteroids believed to be the only remaining original matter that formed giant planets.  "What we are looking for is a view back in time to the earliest days of when the solar system was put together," said Daniel Britt, University of Central Florida physics professor and part of NASA's Lucy mission science team.  "It gives us a better idea of how solar systems are put together and what the material that makes up a solar system was like in the early days."

The Editor says...
As is often the case, there is no mention of the price tag for this mission in the article above.  But in the next article, we find that NASA blew a billion dollars on this pointless probe, looking for a way to "unlock secrets to the formation of planets in our solar system."  It's no secret.  It's explained in the first chapter of the Bible.

NASA's Lucy spacecraft begins its wild 4 billion mile journey around the solar system.  The Trojan asteroids share an orbit with Jupiter, but they're not actually close to the planet.  The Trojans are as far away from Jupiter as they are from the sun.  That means Lucy will travel nearly 4 billion miles in 12 years.  "What's amazing about this trajectory is we can continue to do loops," said Coralie Adam, Lucy's deputy navigation team chief at KinetX Aerospace.  "So after the final encounter with the binary asteroids, as long as the spacecraft is healthy, we plan to propose to NASA to do an extended mission and explore more Trojans."  Lucy was built by Lockheed Martin Space and launched Saturday atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.  When the spacecraft flies through the Trojan asteroids, it will have traveled farther from the sun than any other solar-powered spacecraft (the record is currently held by the Juno spacecraft that's orbiting Jupiter).  Its far-flung predecessors relied on nuclear power.  Solar power is preferred for its lower cost — the Lucy mission cost $981 million — and for safety reasons.

NASA plan for Wi-Fi on the moon tested to span Cleveland's digital divide.  A new study from NASA reveals how a proposed lunar Wi-Fi network could impact communities that lack reliable internet on Earth.  The Compass Lab at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland conducted the study in an effort to address connectivity concerns on Earth as a test-case for space.  Local neighborhoods were compared to the size of the prospective Artemis basecamp near the Moon's South Pole.  At the same time, the Greater Cleveland Partnership, an economic development organization, reached out to NASA to figure out the most effective way to bring Wi-Fi to nearly 31% of Cleveland households without broadband access.

The Editor says...
You would need an antenna bigger than your house to pick up anything similar to a wi-fi signal from the moon.  And even if this were possible, do you really think you could share a wi-fi signal with everyone who can see the moon when you can see it?  And if that were possible, do you really think only the poor neighborhoods in Cleveland would benefit?  This idea is too stupid for a comic book, but NASA expects you to buy into it (one way or another).  On the other hand, maybe I'm mis-reading it.  Maybe NASA's great concern is finding a way to provide the internet to those of us who live on the moon.  As if such people would rather look at click bait than bounce around in 1/6th G.  Here's a news bulletin:  Nobody lives on the moon, and it is a virtual certainty that nobody will ever live on the moon. given the number of other contributors to the national debt.  The news media is happy to lead the cheers for NASA, even though NASA hasn't accomplished anything that would benefit the population as a whole in many years.

Kamala Harris used child actors in her space video.  Vice President Kamala Harris's YouTube space series featured child actors in its first installment.  The YouTube Original Series, entitled "Get Curious with Vice President Harris," is aimed at getting children interested in space and included an appearance by NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough from the International Space Station.  But the children featured in the first installment of the series were child actors, including 13-year-old Trevor Bernardino. [...] The kid actors appear to be genuinely excited, and Harris seems to be revealing something to them that they don't already know.  The kids are relentlessly ebullient throughout the video.

Kamala Harris Uses Child Actors in Video to Promote NASA.  Vice President Kamala Harris is starting a new series of videos on YouTube aimed at promoting NASA to children, but was found to have used child actors in its very first video instead of regular children, Fox News reports. [...] Despite being actors, the children pretended to be as amazed by the presentation as regular children would have been.  The video features a virtual meeting between the children and NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough, who is currently stationed in the International Space Station.  Through the Zoom call, Kimbrough led the child actors on a "scavenger hunt" for components to build a telescope, before the actors then got to meet Harris at the Naval Observatory.

Kamala Harris's NASA video featured child actors.  The first installment of Vice President Kamala Harris's YouTube Originals space series featured child actors who auditioned for their roles in the project.  Trevor Bernardino, a 13-year-old actor from Carmel, California, and one of five teenagers featured in the video, was asked to submit a monologue discussing something he is passionate about and three questions for a world leader, according to an interview with KSBW TV.  Trevor then interviewed with the production director. [...] Filmed in August and released during World Space Week, the video shows a group of children meeting with Harris at her residence, the Naval Observatory, where she introduces herself as the chairwoman of the National Space Council.

Kamala Harris Hired Child Actors For Rebranding Effort That Failed.  The Washington Examiner dug a little deeper into the background of the Kamala Harris cringe video.  Apparently, team Harris hired child actors to help create the illusion for her rebranding effort.  There are many details in the report that represent just how artificial and fake the Biden administration is. [...] A fake stage set for Joe Biden to pretend he's giving discussions from the White House.  A group of kids hired by the White House to play the role of kids for a Kamala Harris propaganda effort.  Well, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see just how fake this entire effort is as constructed.

NASA's high-orbit telescope will study the origin of stars and galaxies.  With so many institutions failing us, it is a surprise to find a part of the federal government that more-or-less works:  NASA's space exploration program.  In February, the agency's Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter returned spectacular footage from the Jezero Crater on Mars.  Of the upcoming space missions, the James Webb Space Telescope has generated the most excitement.  After years of delay, it is scheduled to launch on December 18 from Kourou in French Guiana.  Its 6.5-meter (21 foot) mirror will make Webb far more precise than the Hubble Space Telescope, which has a 2.4-meter mirror.  The mirror is composed of 18 hexagonal segments that will fold up like origami to fit on an Ariane 5 rocket.  The $10 billion project is twenty times over budget and fifteen years behind schedule.  What's the problem?  Northrop Grumman, the principal contractor, refuses to cooperate with investigators.

Air Force's Secretive X-37B Spaceplane Orbits Earth For 500th Day.  The U.S. Air Force's secretive X-37B, also known as the Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV-6), is a robotic spacecraft circling Earth for more than 500 days, according to Space.com.  X-37B's real mission in low Earth Orbit (LEO) is classified.  But a 2017 Air Force press release detailed the plane as a "host platform for experimental payloads."

What Is Going on With Boeing's Starliner?  New details are emerging about a technical problem that prevented NASA and Boeing from conducting a test launch of a CST-100 Starliner spacecraft last week.  The problem appears to be more severe than previously believed, casting doubt on plans to launch the spacecraft later this month.  Like a car in the garage for repairs, Boeing's Starliner is back in the hangar as engineering teams scramble to fix a problem related to the spacecraft's propulsion system.  Specialists are working to "restore functionality" to 13 valves in the spacecraft's propulsion system, as NASA explained in a recent statement.  These valves, as NASA says, "connect to thrusters that enable abort and in-orbit maneuvering," and they failed to open during the countdown on August 3, resulting in the scrub.  The Boeing Orbital Flight Test-2 mission to the International Space Station is now on an indefinite delay.

Russia's space chief threatens to leave International Space Station program unless U.S. lifts sanctions.  Russia's space chief threatened Monday [6/7/2021] to withdraw from the International Space Station program if U.S. sanctions against Moscow's space entities are "not lifted in the near future."  "If the sanctions against Progress and TsNIIMash remain and are not lifted in the near future, the issue of Russia's withdrawal from the ISS will be the responsibility of the American partners," Roscosmos Director General Dmitry Rogozin said during a Russian parliament hearing on Monday, according to an NBC translation.  "Either we work together, in which case the sanctions are lifted immediately, or we will not work together and we will deploy our own station," he added.

NASA's choice of Starship proves government now fully embraces capitalism in space.  Five years ago, before Donald Trump had even announced he was running for president, before Elon Musk had proposed his Starship/Superheavy rocket, and even before SpaceX had successfully begun to dominate the launch market, Jerry Hendricks at the Center for for New American Security (CNAS) asked me to write a policy paper on the state of the American launch industry, providing some background and more importantly, some recommendations that policy makers in Washington, dependent on that launch industry, could use as guidance in the coming years.  CNAS is a Washington, D.C., think tank that was founded in the middle-2000s by two political Washington insiders, one a Democrat and the other a Republican, with a focus on foreign policy and defense issues and the central goal of encouraging bi-partisan discussion.  Hendricks' area of focus was defense and aerospace matters, and at the time he thought the changes being wrought by SpaceX's with its partly reusable Falcon 9 rocket required in-depth analysis.

America is Ready for The Moon.  Space is more than "the final frontier," it represents America's future — and Americans are ready to embrace that future.  Space is a chance to bring together the public and private sectors toward a noble end and it is fast becoming the psychological bridge between Americans uncertain of the present and future.  With space policy direction for the new administration still largely undefined — space was not a significant issue for the Biden campaign — we must swiftly recommit to lifting humans — and our national pride — back toward the moon, and onto to Mars.  If cynics doubt the power of space — commercial, civilian, national security, big science, and human exploration — to lift a nation, they need only review the Apollo program, pathfinder to the current Artemis effort, once again ambitiously aiming to put humans on the moon.

The Editor offers this rebuttal:
[#1] Space exploration and manned space travel are flashy distractions to draw our attention away from our abusive government, stolen presidential election, open borders, pork barrel spending in trillion-dollar quantities, incompetent video-conference schools, and the corrupt two-tier justice system.  "Stimulus" checks are the bread, and manned space flights are the circuses.  [#2] There is nothing to be gained by sending people to the Moon or to Mars, either on a round trip or a one-way ticket.  The only people who would benefit are politicians and government contractors.  [#3] The national debt is already $30 trillion.  There is no money for frivolous electives.  [#4] If several people are killed when the rocket to Mars blows up, it will only make the space program even more costly and more permanent, because "that's what the [deceased] astronauts would have wanted."  This whole idea is a trap, and a bottomless money pit.  Let us avoid this mistake before it is made.

SUV-Sized Battery Was Just Jettisoned From The ISS.  With space junk becoming a significant problem that could wreak havoc on working satellites, the International Space Station (ISS) decided to dump an SUV-sized pallet of batteries into low Earth orbit. [...] The pallet is made of nickel-hydrogen batteries and will orbit the Earth for the next two to four years "before burning up harmlessly in the atmosphere," according to NASA. [...] The ejection of the 2.9-ton object comes as the European Space Agency (ESA) recently warned that millions of objects are orbiting Earth, and there's bound to be a collision between space junk and working satellites.

The Editor says...
Sounds harmless, if it breaks up into little pieces — except for all that nickel pollution in the atmosphere.

US considers using NASA facility to house migrant children.  A NASA site in California is being considered as a potential location to house the growing number of migrants coming across the border, according to sources briefed on the plans.  Sources told ABC News that plans are still in flux, but the site, Moffett Federal Airfield in Mountain View, is expected to house a number of unaccompanied minors in Customs and Border Protection custody, which has risen to just under 3,500 in recent weeks, according to sources and internal CBP documents reviewed by ABC News.

After 3 Fails, SpaceX Rocket Lands Safety.  More [than] that it was caught midair.  I did not know the Federal Communications Commission awarded Elon Musk's SpaceX with nearly $900 million worth of federal subsidies.  [Video clip]

The Editor says...
If SpaceX works, why do we need NASA?

A manned mission to Mars would be completely pointless.
Mars Is a Hellhole.  The central thing about Mars is that it is not Earth, not even close.  In fact, the only things our planet and Mars really have in common is that both are rocky planets with some water ice and both have robots (and Mars doesn't even have that many).  Mars has a very thin atmosphere; it has no magnetic field to help protect its surface from radiation from the sun or galactic cosmic rays; it has no breathable air and the average surface temperature is a deadly 80 degrees below zero.  Musk thinks that Mars is like Earth?  For humans to live there in any capacity they would need to build tunnels and live underground, and what is not enticing about living in a tunnel lined with SAD lamps and trying to grow lettuce with UV lights?  So long to deep breaths outside and walks without the security of a bulky spacesuit, knowing that if you're out on an extravehicular activity and something happens, you've got an excruciatingly painful 60-second death waiting for you.  Granted, walking around on Mars would be a life-changing, amazing, profound experience.  But visiting as a proof of technology or to expand the frontier of human possibility is very different from living there.  It is not in the realm of hospitable to humans.  Mars will kill you.

Is space exploration a waste of money or a necessary endeavor?  In 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first satellite (Sputnik) into orbit.  The Soviets had "beaten us" into space.  That was a "wake-up call" to the United States on many levels.  In response, the U.S. began a massive program to catch up with, and pass, Russian technology.  That effort led America to the first manned landings on, and safe return from, the Moon in 1969.  Since then, we have sent unmanned landers as far away as Titan, a moon of Saturn, and produced astounding photographs from the surface of that frozen world, where there are oceans of liquid methane.  Many other amazing achievements since then have occurred, and the efforts continue, not only by the U.S., but by other nations including India, China, and even Qatar.  In the U.S., those efforts consume billions of dollars.  Many question whether it is worth the cost, especially by a nation that is trillions of dollars in debt, most of it to a foreign enemy nation (China).

NASA's Perseverance rover nails Mars landing, ready to search for life.  NASA's done it again.  The agency's Perseverance rover, a 1-ton mobile science laboratory, slowly lowered to the surface of an ancient lakebed on Mars on Thursday afternoon.  Hoots and hollers rang throughout NASA's Mission Control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, at the moment of touchdown, but this wasn't like past Mars landings.  Jubilant scientists and engineers jumped from chairs, but social distancing requirements prevented them from their usual embrace.  That's what landing a rover on Mars during a global pandemic looks like.

NASA's Mars rover Perseverance successfully touches down on the red planet.  NASA kicked off a new era of Mars exploration Thursday with the successful landing of Perseverance, a car-size robotic explorer that will search for traces of ancient life on the planet and collect what could be the first rocky samples from Mars that are sent back to Earth.  The rover touched down at around 3:55 p.m. ET, after executing a daring and dramatic landing that had been nicknamed the "seven minutes of terror."  Perseverance is now NASA's fifth rover to land on Mars and is set to begin a two-year mission to roam its surface and search for signs of ancient microbial life.  It is also the latest of three new missions that arrived at the red planet in February.  Earlier this month, two other spacecraft launched by the United Arab Emirates and China reached Mars and moved into orbit around the planet.

The Editor says...
I've said all this before about NASA's robotic probes on Mars, but I'll say it again on this occasion:  [#1] News articles about NASA missions almost never mention the cost, and never mention the fact that nobody (except NASA contractors) benefits in any tangible way from this expense.  [#2] NASA's entire reason for sending probes to Mars is to disprove the first chapter of the Bible:  NASA's stated goal is to try to find "clues to the origin of the universe."  [#3] This latest probe will find no evidence of life on Mars, past or present.  The response from NASA will be, "we've got to send another probe!"  If this probe drives around, flips over a rock, and finds a knife and fork made of titanium, the response from NASA will be, "we've got to send another probe!"  But the former result is, of course, much more likely.

Three Private Citizens Paying $55 Million Each For Trip To International Space Station.  Three private citizens, all from three different countries, will pay $55 million each to travel to the International Space Station for eight days as soon as next January in what has been proposed as the first entirely private spaceflight mission in human history.  The trip, which will be conducted by Axiom Space, plans to send the three private citizens to the ISS along with Michael López-Alegría, a former NASA astronaut and the vice president of Axiom Space.  The other men who will be on the mission include:  Larry Connor, 71, an American entrepreneur and real estate investor, Mark Pathy, 51, a Canadian investor, and Eytan Stibbe, 63, an Israeli businessman and ex-fighter pilot.

The Editor says...
I wonder if these amateur astronauts will be (or have been) required to sign non-disclosure agreements about the activities (or lack thereof) they will observe while aboard the ISS.

Space Force Nearly Tripling in Size, Gaining a Reserve Component in 2021.  The nation's newest branch of the military has announced that it expects to nearly triple its forces next year.  According to Stars and Stripes, the Space Force, established in December 2019 with the strong backing of President Donald Trump, aims to expand from 2,400 active-duty personnel to 6,200 by the end of 2021.  The Space Force was created to increase the nation's capabilities when it comes to the construction and operation of space vehicles, rockets and satellites, according to Forbes.  Additionally, it's charged with more familiar projects, such as the nation's global positioning system and weather satellite program.

The Editor says...
The Global Positioning System is currently administered by the U.S. Air Force.  When this is transferred to the Space Force, will that be an additional expenditure, or just a new name for the same facilities and personnel?

Space Force Reveals What Their Personnel Will Officially Be Called.  The United States Space Force (USSF), which is the sixth branch of the United States Armed Forces, revealed on Friday that their personnel will officially be called "Guardians."  "Today, after a yearlong process that produced hundreds of submissions and research involving space professionals and members of the general public, we can finally share with you the name by which we will be known:  Guardians," the USSF said in a statement.  "The opportunity to name a force is a momentous responsibility.  Guardians is a name with a long history in space operations, tracing back to the original command motto of Air Force Space Command in 1983, 'Guardians of the High Frontier.'"

The Editor says...
Now that the Space Force is up and running, why are we still spending money on NASA?  On the other hand, if we really need a Space Force, why not just militarize NASA?  If both entities exist, something tells me the great majority of the Space Force's activity will be secret and/or redundant, and thus ten times as costly as it should be.

NASA chief says he does not plan to serve in Biden administration.  NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said this week that he does not plan to stay in his role as head of the space agency under President-elect Joe Biden's administration even if he is asked to serve, according to a report published Sunday.  Bridenstine told Aviation Daily that his decision was driven by a desire to support the "best interest" of NASA and the country's space exploration goals as a whole, rather than any partisan leanings.  "For that, what you need is somebody who has a close relationship with the president of the United States.  You need somebody who is trusted by the administration... including the OMB [Office of Management and Budget], the National Space Council and the National Security Council, and I think that I would not be the right person for that in a new administration," Bridenstine said in an interview with the outlet.

NASA doles out half a million in taxpayer dollars for far-out alien detection program at Georgetown.  This election week, our [Golden Horseshoe] award is going to the District of Columbia's non-voting member of Congress Eleanor Holmes Norton for her role in securing more than half a million taxpayer dollars to ponder new and unconventional alien life detection techniques.  According to a recently released report from Open the Books, in 2019, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) awarded $549,974 to a Georgetown University program — a school with a $1.7 billion endowment — with a focus on new methods for the detection of alien life.

Not that it matters to anyone...
NASA says there's more water than previously thought on the moon.  NASA scientists have found more water on the moon than previously thought — a crucial discovery that could help greatly fuel deep-space exploration, the agency revealed Monday [10/26/2020].  The water — which was discovered for the first time in areas outside the moon's sunless frigid poles — is possibly trapped in "glass beads" about the size of a pencil tip in the soil, scientists said at a press conference.  "This discovery that water might be distributed across the lunar surface and not limited" to ice at the poles, as the space agency thought, raises the possibility that it could be "accessible as a human resource," said Paul Hertz, NASA's astrophysics director.  Enough water was detected in a cubic meter of sunlit soil to fill a 12-ounce bottle, said Casey Honniball of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

The Editor says...
The nerds and geeks who carefully study articles about NASA news and NASA's proposed multi-billion-dollar missions are a lot like the American housewives obsessed with the British royal family, or old rednecks in Lubbock who closely follow all the news about the Dallas Cowboys, or college graduates in Dallas who are big fans of European soccer.  None of them have the slightest chance of participating in their idols' daily activities, yet they are perpetually fascinated.  The story immediately above probably thrills the aforementioned geeks.  But would you spend all day digging up a cubic meter of dirt just to get a drink of water?  Is the discovery of minuscule quantities of water supposed to make us believe that the Moon is potentially a decent place to live — or that something lives there already?

Potty training:  NASA tests new $23M titanium space toilet.  NASA's first new space potty in decades — a $23 million titanium toilet better suited for women — is getting a not-so-dry run at the International Space Station before eventually flying to the moon.

NASA's new $23 million space toilet is ready for launch.  NASA is launching a new space toilet to the International Space Station next week for astronauts to test out before it's used on future missions to the moon or Mars.  The $23 million toilet system, known as the Universal Waste Management System (UWMS), is 65% smaller and 40% lighter than the toilet currently in use on the space station, and can support larger crews.

Publicity stunt:
NASA astronaut will vote in 2020 presidential election from space.  NASA astronaut Kate Rubins plans to cast her vote for the 2020 presidential election on the International Space Station — more than 200 miles above the Earth's surface, according to The Associated Press.  "I think it's really important for everybody to vote," said Rubins.  "If we can do it from space, then I believe folks can do it from the ground, too."

49 NASA Scientists Tell The Truth.  Next time someone tells you that scientists all support the "dangerous climate change from CO2" hypothesis, point out to them that forty-nine former NASA scientists have written an open letter to NASA pointing out that NASA is hyping unsubstantiated and unverified claims about climate.

Trump's DOJ Indicts NASA Researcher Involved In Chinese Communist Party Espionage Scheme.  The Thousand Talents Plan seeks to lure top scientific talent from the world — especially the U.S. — to aid China's technological development, allowing the country to obtain a scientific cutting edge by deploying deceitful tactics such as intellectual property theft.

"Overstressed" NASA Mars exploration budget threatens missions.  [Scroll down]  Mars 2020 [now known as Perseverance] previously suffered technical problems that caused cost increases.  NASA's fiscal year 2021 budget proposal estimated the cost to develop the mission at nearly $2.04 billion, an increase of 21.4% from the baseline cost estimate made in 2017.  Problems with one of the instruments on the rover as well as its sample caching system contributed to the overruns.

NASA's Mars Perseverance rover launches to hunt for signs of ancient life.  The biggest, most sophisticated Mars rover ever built — a car-size vehicle bristling with cameras, microphones, drills and lasers — blasted off Thursday [7/30/2020] as part of an ambitious, long-range project to bring the first Martian rock samples back to Earth to be analyzed for evidence of ancient life.

[Another] Mars rover set to launch from Florida in search of ancient life on the Red Planet.  Perseverance will soon be on its way to Mars to look for signs of ancient life and test technology that could one day be used to send astronauts to the Red Planet.  The rover, about the size of a car, will collect samples that for the first time will be brought back to Earth by a spacecraft sent to gather them, building upon discoveries of NASA's past rovers that found Mars could have once supported life.  Perseverance is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral on Thursday [7/30/2020] between 7:50 a.m. and 9:50 a.m. atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket and is one of three spacecraft launching to Mars this summer.  Two others have already launched: the Hope Orbiter from the United Arab Emirates that will observe the planet's atmosphere and weather, and China's Tianwen-1 lander and rover.

The Editor says...
NASA is looking for any sign of life — past or present — by sending probe after probe to Mars.  To put it another way, they're trying the same thing over and over, expecting different results someday.  That's insanity.  This latest mission has a price tag of $2.04 billion,  and the rover will never benefit anyone outside of NASA and its circle of overpaid contractors.  That's not only insane, it's an expense that is not authorized by the Constitution (as if that matters any more.)  But you can search high and low, and you'll never find a U.S. politician — especially in Florida or Texas — who will say anything bad about NASA.

IG report:  NASA's Orion is a program of lies.  In a report released today [7/16/2020], NASA's inspector general confirmed unequivocally what I have been saying for years, that the agency's project to build the Orion capsule has been built on lies, from the beginning.  First of all, the report slams NASA for purposely excluding from its public budget almost 60% of the total cost for the entire Orion project. [...] In other words, since 2006 NASA has been illegally mislabeling 59% of Orion's cost to hide this from the public.  Through 2030 it expects Orion to cost almost $30 billion, but it has been advertising the cost as only $12 billion.  It appears that to Congress NASA has been more honest, though they and Congress have worked together to try to keep this fact quiet.

Why did NASA's head of human spaceflight suddenly resign?  People resigning or being dismissed from the Trump administration is obviously nothing new these days.  We've seen virtually unprecedented rates of turnover for the past couple of years.  But the most recent departure comes at a very strange time and leaves a bit of a mystery in its wake.  The resignation of Doug Loverro, NASA's chief of human space exploration programs, was announced last night.  He'd only been on the job for six months, but that's not the only strange part of this event.  We're only eight days away from the first launch of astronauts into orbit from an American spaceport on a rocket built in America in over a decade.  Elon Musk's SpaceX corporation is prepared to launch two astronauts into orbit on a Falcon 9 Crew Dragon flight on May 27th, but Loverro won't be the one overseeing this historic mission.

NASA's human spaceflight chief resigns just days before historic SpaceX manned launch.  The head of NASA's human spaceflight office has resigned just a little more than one week before the agency plans to have its first manned launch from American soil for the first time in nearly a decade.  Doug Loverro was selected in October as NASA's new associate administrator for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate[.]  In a congressional notification first obtained by POLITICO, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said Loverro resigned on Monday [5/18/2020].

White elephant:
NASA wants to turn a moon crater into a giant telescope.  NASA has given out some new grants for innovative space projects.  Perhaps the wildest of the chosen projects is a plan to put a radio telescope on the moon that could give us a glimpse of some of the earliest moments after the Big Bang.  The NASA supported project aims to put a 3,281-foot radio telescope within a crater on the far side of the moon.

The Editor says...
If the United States had a $24 trillion surplus instead of a $24 trillion national debt, and if there was any beneficial end product resulting from radioastronomy, then I might be in favor of this idea.

Mercury probe makes successful flyby to head deeper into solar system.  A spacecraft taking the scenic route to Mercury successfully completed a crucial maneuver on its journey: a precisely choreographed swing past Earth. [...] Scientists hope this work will help them understand how Mercury — and, in turn, the entire solar system — formed.

The Editor says...
I already know how the entire solar system was formed.  It's explained in the first chapter of the Bible.  Please don't spend the taxpayers' money trying to disprove the Bible.

Trump signs order encouraging US to mine the moon.  The moon's water ice and other natural resources can be mined and used by the United States, according to a new executive order signed by President Trump.  The president on Monday [4/6/2020] signed the executive order, which has been in the works for about a year, titled Encouraging International Support for the Recovery and Use of Space Resources.  The directive stresses that the 1967 Outer Space Treaty allows for the use of space resources on the moon, Mars and elsewhere.

The Editor says...
There is nothing on the surface of the moon but sterile dirt, and very small patches of ice at the poles.  There is no shortage of dirt or ice on this planet.  President Trump's Space Force is only a few months old, and apparently it is already looking for something to do.

NASA announces launch of manned American rocket from American soil.  For the first time since the final space shuttle mission in 2011, astronauts will launch into space aboard an American rocket and spacecraft from American soil, according to NASA.  The agency, along with SpaceX, is eyeing a mid-to-late May launch for the manned SpaceX Demo-2 flight test from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

What the Failure of Boeing's Starliner Space Capsule Really Means.  Boeing's new spacecraft, the CST-100 Starliner, experienced a partial failure during its first test flight to the International Space Station (ISS) on December 20, 2019.  Originally, the Starliner was supposed to launch from Earth and dock with the ISS to prove that the capsule could safely carry humans to the station.  However, an error in the mission timer aboard the capsule meant that the spacecraft fell short in its orbit and could not rendezvous with the station as intended.  Boeing said that had there been a crew on board, they would not have been in danger.  More so, a crew on board could have possibly corrected the error while in transit.  However, the nature of the failure implies that there are further systemic problems with the software architecture itself.

The Editor says...
Don't ever believe statements about how "the astronauts were never in danger," or "would not have been in danger."  Anybody who is attached to a rocket when it takes off is in danger.

NASA Still Light-Years Away from Spending Reform.  If recent developments at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are any indication, the prospect for spending reform is still light-years away.  This week, taxpayers learned that America's space agency overpaid Boeing $287 million for operational flights to the International Space Station (ISS).  The Inspector General (IG) report revealed that NASA continues to contract with Boeing for these spacefaring flights, despite Boeing charging NASA over 60 percent more than its competitors.  If lawmakers don't sound the alarm and call for greater oversight and accountability, taxpayers will be sucked further into a black hole of wasteful spending.  On November 14, the IG released a bombshell report on agency watchers unaccustomed to timely (or particularly biting) IG reports.

Wine cellar in space: 12 bottles arrive for year of aging.  A dozen bottles of fine French wine arrived at the space station Monday [11/4/2019], not for the astronauts, but for science.  The red Bordeaux wine will age for a year up there before returning to Earth.  Researchers will study how weightlessness and space radiation affect the aging process.

The Editor says...
This is a publicity stunt that benefits almost nobody, and could have been done with unmanned space vehicles.  Projects of this sort are all that's left of America's manned space flight program, which costs about $19 billion per year.

NASA paid SpaceX for safety review after Musk smoked pot.  SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's infamous pot-smoking incident last year prompted NASA to order a mandatory review of the federal contractor's workplace culture — but taxpayers, not the company, are bearing the cost, according to contracting records reviewed by Politico.  The space agency agreed to pay SpaceX $5 million in May to cover the cost of the review, which includes educating its employees and ensuring they are following strict guidelines for federal contractors barring illegal drug use.

Affirmative Action and NASA.  In the 47 years since the last man set foot on the moon, the space program has changed a great deal.  One of those changes has been incorporating mandated affirmative action policies.  These policies have had an incredibly negative effect on both the progress in the space program and the engineers whose careers have been destroyed by them.  The federal government mandates that a given percentage of work on a government contract go to minority-owned businesses.  When building a large and complicated system like a space vehicle, it is almost impossible for a company like Boeing or Lockheed to meet this requirement by hiring out specific design work to small, minority-owned companies.  Even if that were feasible, those companies do not exist.  Enter subcontracting companies.  A subcontracting company is owned by someone of the appropriate race or sex to fulfill the quotas established by the government funding requirements.

NASA astronaut accused of stealing identity, accessing bank account of [her] estranged wife while in space: report.  A NASA astronaut has been accused of committing the first crime in outer space after her estranged wife alleged she stole her identity and accessed her bank account without permission during a six-month mission aboard the International Space Station.  Former Air Force intelligence officer Summer Worden, from Kansas, has been involved in a bitter divorce with astronaut Anne McClain since 2018 but the battle heated up after Worden filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission and NASA's Office of Inspector General accusing her wife of assuming her identity and gaining improper access to her private financial records while orbiting the earth, the New York Times reported.

Was she arrested in space?
NASA astronaut accused of crime committed in space.  Authorities are investigating the first allegation of a crime committed in space.  Astronaut Anne McClain has been accused of unlawfully accessing her estranged spouse's bank account aboard the International Space Station.  McClain and her spouse, Summer Worden, have been engaged in a custody battle over Worden's six year-old son Briggs after filing for divorce in October 2018.

NASA puts Alabama center in charge of moon lander program, drawing Texans' ire.  NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced today that Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama will take the lead role in developing the vehicles for landing astronauts on the moon — which could be good news for Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin space venture, but definitely came as bad news for Texas lawmakers.

Will NASA Sole-Source Northrop to Build a Space Station to Orbit the Moon?  NASA's Artemis Project is a multi-billion dollar bet that we can return to the moon in just five years' time.  To get us there, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration plans to build a "Lunar Gateway" space station where spaceships will dock, and from which lunar shuttles will descend and ascend, carrying astronauts to and from the lunar surface.  There's just one problem with this plan:  Originally envisioned as a near-decade-long marathon in which NASA would methodically make its way back to the moon by 2028, the moon race has morphed into a sprint.

Americans change their mind:  Majority now favor a manned Mars mission.  Two planets in our galaxy are inhabited.  One is Earth, where humans have made a mess of things for quite a few centuries.  The other is Mars, which is totally inhabited by robots, driving, drilling, listening, sampling their way around that sandy wasteland.  For reasons that escape some flat-earthers, abundant curiosity exists about the Red Planet that's only half the size of Earth.  The desolation on Mars, they believe, might shed light on the origins of life on Earth.  Of course, exploring the desolation of Arizona would be a lot cheaper.

The Editor says...
The Constitution does not authorize the exploration of other planets.  The popularity of such an idea does not change the Constitution.

Because the "clues about the origins of the universe" might be hiding there, and only there.
NASA is going to Titan:  Space agency reveals Dragonfly mission to explore the surface of Saturn's largest moon.  NASA has announced a plan to explore the surface of Saturn's largest moon, Titan.  The space agency made the announcement in a media teleconference Thursday afternoon [6/27/2019], detailing its vision of a robotic rotorcraft dubbed Dragonfly that will collect samples and measure soil composition in search for signs of habitability.  The enormous, icy moon is said to be the most Earth-like world in the solar system, and previous findings by the Cassini mission suggest it holds some of the ingredients necessary for the emergence of life.

The Editor says...
The godless scientists at NASA do not understand, or will not admit, that the main ingredient "necessary for the emergence of life" is creation.  They gone to the moon.  They've gone to Mars.  They've looked everywhere.  But the creation of life is in short supply everywhere they look, except here at home.  The first chapter of the Bible offers an explanation of the creation of the universe that is far more credible than anything NASA has produced.  NASA's entire purpose in the 21st Century is to disprove the Bible.

Whittington:  A Replacement For NASA's International Space Station Is On The Way.  The International Space Station, by any measure, has been a triumph for the scientific discoveries and the technological innovations that it has given birth to.  The ISS has also proven to be a model for international cooperation in space that NASA would like to see replicated for the "return to the moon" program.  However, noting that all good things must come to an end, the space agency is already entertaining commercial replacements for the ISS.  Current thinking proposes that a company (likely several) would build its own space station, and NASA would become an anchor customer.

The Editor says...
There is no public clamor for this.  You didn't vote on it.  NASA has decided to spend your money on this project anyway.  What activity aboard the current space station has benefitted you in any way?

A Government Coup by NASA's Bureaucracy.  Every single big space project since the founding of NASA has always been proposed and approved by elected officials.  NASA officials might have lobbied for one version or another, but always, always, it was understood and accepted that the project did not exist without first getting an enthusiastic and very public authorization from elected officials.  What was understood without question was that the right to make these fundamental policy decisions belonged only to the lawmakers, elected as they were by the citizenry under the Constitution.  NASA's new Lunar Gateway project, however, is something altogether different.  It was conceived, designed, and proposed by the big aerospace companies Lockheed Martin and Boeing as a justification for the continuing construction of SLS and Orion.  It was added as a budget line item by NASA bureaucrats who supported it, and it now exists as a growing major space project comparable to Apollo, the Space Shuttle, ISS, and SLS/Orion.  Yet no president has ever officially and publicly proposed the Lunar Gateway.  No Congress ever reviewed or endorsed the program.

This NASA Experiment Shows Promise for Farm-Fresh Foods in Space.  On long space voyages, food variety will be key.  A new NASA experiment called Veg-PONDS 02, which astronauts just ran on the International Space Station, offers a chance to attain that variety.  While the experiment used a food already grown in space — romaine lettuce — future crops could include tomatoes or other plants, NASA officials said in a statement.

The Editor says...
NASA is spending billions of dollars to solve problems that nobody has.  Astronauts volunteer for dangerous assignments, exchanging safety for fame.  If the food is bland and monotonous, they don't care.  Moreover, there is no demand for the exploration of other planets, nor is any such mission authorized by the Constitution.  The only people pushing for a manned mission to Mars are NASA employees and contractors.

NASA Covers for SpaceX.  Video footage of SpaceX's Crew Dragon space capsule exploding on the ground during an April 20 test at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida was leaked online by the next day.  Yet SpaceX and NASA are unacceptably dragging their feet in explaining this taxpayer-financed fiasco in the American space program and thus continued SpaceX's worrisome undue influence on government.  SpaceX's April 20 press release with its "anomaly" euphemism was immediately contradicted by images provided by a photographer from a local Florida publication covering a surfing festival on a beach near Cape Canaveral.  In the telling photos, toxic reddish smoke clouds billow upwards from the space center.  The accident is a poor omen for the Crew Dragon, in which NASA wants to transport astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).

Do NASA's Latest Figures Confirm Global Warming?  The new paper uses the AIRS remote sensing instrument on NASA's Aqua satellite.  The study describes a 15-year dataset of global surface temperatures from that satellite sensor.  The temperature trend value derived from that data is +0.24 degrees Centigrade per decade, coming out on top as the warmest of climate analyses.  Oddly, the study didn't compare two other long-standing satellite datasets from the Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) and the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH).  That's an indication of the personal bias of co-author [Dr. Gavin] Schmidt, who in the past has repeatedly maligned the UAH dataset and its authors because their findings didn't agree with his own GISTEMP dataset.

Environmentalists Have Now Declared War On Our Lawns.  [Scroll down]  "On balance, lawns are awful for the planet," Eric Holthaus wrote last week in Grist, an environmentalist online magazine.  "Our addiction to lawns means that grass is the single largest irrigated agricultural 'crop' in America, more than corn, wheat, and fruit orchards combined," he adds.  "A NASA-led study in 2005 found that there were 63,000 square miles of turf grass in the United States, covering an area larger than Georgia."  Is there no end to the left's screeching sermons, its demands we "do better," the arrogance driven by a sense of moral superiority that believes it can make decisions for others?  While Holthaus admits lawns can be "pleasing," "help reduce the urban heat island effect," "help restore groundwater and reduce urban flooding," and draw carbon dioxide from the air, Grist is much more interested in dispatching a tirade.

The Editor says...
[#1] NASA obviously has nothing important to do.  [#2] If the total area of all the lawns in the U.S. is greater than the area of Georgia, that's surprisingly small, but no matter what the total is, the correct reaction is, So what?  What would the environmentalists prefer that we grow on our private property?  Apparently the definition of "lawn" is an area of grass near a residence that is mowed.  Sure, I'd like to have a rain forest in my back yard, or a couple of 200-foot redwood trees, but the lawn (which is mostly just closely-cropped weeds) will have to do.

NASA's Insight Mars Lander arrives on the Red Planet, ends successful journey.  The InSight lander entered Mars' atmosphere just shortly after 2:40 p.m.  EST on Monday [11/26/2018] and touched the surface at approximately 2:54 p.m.  EST.  The last part of the journey was the most harrowing, with NASA calling it "seven minutes of terror" due to the agency's inability to control the landing of the spacecraft, which cost $828 million.

One of NASA's Mars Exploration Tools Has a Glitch That Created The Illusion of Water.  We've arrived at a sad realisation.  A handful of pixels in about 90 percent of the images taken by one of the major instruments on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter are showing things that just aren't there.  Researchers uncovered the error after searching for better signs of moisture-absorbing materials on the Martian surface.  Not only did they turn out to be a mirage, doubts have now been raised over the precise distribution of water across the planet.

House Joins Senate in Push to Extend International Space Station.  A key House member announced Sept. 26 that he is introducing legislation that would extend operations of the International Space Station to 2030, weeks after senators sought a similar extension.  In his opening statement at a House space subcommittee hearing on the past and future of NASA's space exploration efforts, Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas), chairman of the subcommittee, said he was introducing legislation called the Leading Human Spaceflight Act that he said was designed to "provide further congressional direction to NASA."

Boeing may have used a lobbying firm to plant a scathing opinion piece about SpaceX in US news outlets.  Boeing, the 102-year-old titan of the aerospace industry, is in a heated competition with SpaceX, Elon Musk's rocket company, for billions of dollars in NASA contracts.  As Boeing is seeking to secure that taxpayer funding — and the prestige of launching astronauts into space — the company might be secretly placing an opinion article that criticizes SpaceX in newspapers around the US.  Both companies are trying to show NASA they can safely launch the agency's astronauts to and from the International Space Station as part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, a roughly $8 billion competition the agency launched to spur private companies to build safe, cost-effective, American-made spaceships.

This is only slightly off-topic:
4 Pines Brewing Company creating world's first beer for space.  Imagine if you could crack open an ice cold brew... in space.  "The story will one day be a space engineer walks into a bar and simply asks the question how would you like to put your beer in space," Jaron Mitchell, the co-founder of 4 Pines Brewing Company, told FOX Business' Maria Bartiromo during "Mornings with Maria" on Friday [9/7/2018].  4 Pines has partnered with a space engineering firm to create what it says is the perfect brew and bottle to be guzzled, for the first time ever, beyond the Earth's atmosphere.  Space exploration has typically been limited to astronauts, but it might not be long before tourists have a chance to travel to outer space.

Rocket Emissions and the Environment.  A recently released study by one set of scholars suggests that rocket launches are having only minimal impact on the environment but that rapid growth of this sector — for all good and proper reasons, creating American jobs as rockets are built and launches proliferate inside the U.S. — indicates advance thinking. [...] More to the point, "solid rocket motors inject chlorine directly into the ozone layer and chlorine has been subject to international regulation since 1987."  Moreover, "a second concern has come to light," tied to particle emissions from solids that affect solar energy.  In short, solids are bad news in some ways, even if minimal for now and unclear how bad, since we do not know how "tall" the problem will grow.

NASA explores placing ads on rockets, allowing astronaut endorsements: report.  A NASA spacecraft to Mars could someday feature a Mars chocolate bar logo plastered across one of its wings.  NASA has called for a new committee to explore branding and endorsement opportunities, reports said Monday [9/10/2018].  NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced he was setting up a committee to examine "provocative questions" of transforming rockets into corporate billboards, much like how ads wrap all around NASCAR race cars, The Washington Post reported.

International Space Station crew race to patch a 'leak' caused by a collision with a Meteorite.  Crew inside the International Space Station are racing to patch a 'leak' likely caused by a collision with a small meteorite, officials say.  The 'micro fracture' in the $150 billion space station was discovered after astronauts noticed a drop in pressure.  This was caused by air from inside the ISS rapidly leaking out into space. [...] Officials say the crew is not currently in any danger and will be able to patch the micro fracture from inside the space station.

The Editor says...
Any assertion that the astronauts are "not in any danger" is an intentionally misleading canard.  The astronauts have been in more danger than most of us since they climbed aboard a Russian rocket to depart for the International Space Station.  Fortunately the station got hit by a fairly small particle this time.

NASA is using underwater robots to explore the deep-sea off the Hawaiian coast.  NASA is launching a new project to help it better understand the deepest parts of space, without ever leaving Earth.  The announcement, made on Tuesday [8/28/2018], is part of the government space agency's Systematic Underwater Biogeochemical Science and Exploration Analog (SUBSEA) project and will help aid NASA's search for life in deep space, as well as better understanding of our own planet.  NASA believes the environment around a deep-sea volcano off the coast of Hawaii is similar to that of Saturn's moon, Enceladus.

The Editor says...
It's the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.  What does oceanography have to do with aeronautics and space, and What part of the Constitution authorizes the exploration of the ocean floor?

Scientists discover water ice on moon's surface.  Here's why that's big news.  For the first time, scientists have found what they say is definitive evidence of water ice on the surface of the moon.  The discovery suggests that future lunar expeditions might have a readily available source of water that would make it easier "to explore and even stay on the moon," officials at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a statement Tuesday about the discovery.  The ice was detected at the darkest, coldest regions of the moon's north and south poles.  It exists in sparse patches in the north and is concentrated in permanently shadowed craters in the south, where temperatures never climb above minus 250 degrees Fahrenheit.

The Editor says...
Ri-i-i-i-ight.  Thirsty?  Too bad we didn't bring enough water on this trip to the moon.  Well... just climb a few thousand feet down into this crater, and you'll find water.  Oh, but it's about 250 degrees below zero.  Is that a problem?

Yes, we really do need a 'Space Force'.  When President Trump first floated the idea of an entirely new branch of the armed forces dedicated to space-based operations, the response from political observers was limited to bemused snickering.  That mockery and amusement have not abated in the intervening months.  Thursday's [8/9/2018] announcement by Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of Defense James Mattis that the administration plans to establish a sixth armed forces branch by 2020 occasioned only more displays of cynicism, but it shouldn't have.  This is deadly serious stuff.  The expansion and consolidation of US capacities to defend its interests outside the atmosphere are inevitable and desirable.

International Space Station Not Ready for Privatization.  Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has led the charge in the Senate on protecting future funding sources for the space station past the current date for defunding it in 2025.  The Office of Management and Budget has zeroed out funding for the space station in the future on the promise from private vendors that they will take over the U.S. mission at the space station, yet that does not make much sense.  Private enterprise is in the business of making money and if there is no business interest in the research done by the space station, they will just not do it.

The Editor says...
What does that tell you?  It is a white elephant money-losing project that isn't worth doing.  The government can't sell the space station to any private investor, because it isn't worth anything to a private company.  It only has value as a public relations tool for Big Government.

Make Space Great Again:  American Astronauts Flying American Rockets.  [Scroll down]  U.S. astronauts now take Russian capsules to the space station, with NASA paying as much as $82 million a seat.  That was the work of the party that now ceaselessly howls about the Russians.

In Just One Week, NASA Will Launch a Spacecraft to 'Touch the Sun'.  NASA is just a week away from launching its next science mission, a spacecraft called the Parker Solar Probe that will eventually "touch the sun."  If all goes according to plan, the probe will take off aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket in the early morning of Aug. 11 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. [...] To successfully reach the sun, the Parker Solar Probe needs to leave Earth incredibly quickly — hence the massive rocket, which is second in launch power only to SpaceX's brand new Falcon Heavy rocket.

Cruz Is Right on Space Station.  [Scroll down]  Frank Slazer, vice president of space systems for the Aerospace Industries Association, backed up the other point.  "It will be very hard to turn ISS into a truly commercial outpost because of the international agreements that the United States is involved in," Slazer told the Washington Post.  "It's inherently always going to be an international construct that requires U.S. government involvement and multinational cooperation."

NASA Talking To Private Companies On Taking Over The International Space Station.  NASA is putting together a coalition of private companies that can run the International Space Station as a commercial space lab, The Washington Post reports.  The Trump administration plans on ending direct government funding of the ISS by 2025, according to documents uncovered in February.  The federal government spends about $3 billion to $4 billion a year to operate the ISS and has sunk about $100 billion into the station, so far.

Report: NOAA Set to Abandon Climate Change Mission.  For decades, like NASA, NOAA has been a leading player in promoting climate alarmism.  As recently as the beginning of this year it was caught red-handed trying adjust the Big Freeze of the winter of 2017/2018 in the U.S. out of existence.  But that was just the tip of the iceberg.  One of NOAA's jobs is to maintain the United States Historical Climatology Network (USHCN), one of the world's major earth surface temperature datasets.  It has frequently been caught adjusting this data in order to make early 20th century temperatures colder and recent temperatures hotter so as to give a more dramatic impression of "global warming."

Nasa could launch nuclear bombs into space to defend Earth from asteroids.  Nasa and the National Nuclear Security Administration have announced they are now working together on the possibility of destroying hazardous asteroids using nuclear weapons.  And like the film Armageddon — where Bruce Willis flies a space shuttle to an oncoming asteroid to drill a warhead into its core — the nuclear payload could be delivered by rocket.

Organic molecules 'fundamental to our search for life' found by NASA rover.  NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has found organic molecules on Mars, the space agency revealed in a major announcement Thursday [6/7/2018].  During a press conference at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Goddard, Md., and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., scientists noted that the molecules provide fresh insight into the Red Planet.  "We found organic molecules in rocks from an ancient lake bed," explained Jen Eigenbrode, research scientist at Goddard.  A variety of molecules were identified, she added.  The rocks are billions of years old, according to NASA.

The Editor says...
NASA is straining to find a few molecules of evidence that Mars might be habitable.  In this case, the probe found a little bit of methane, and NASA is now trying to infer far more than that which is reasonable.  For one thing, Jupiter's atmosphere contains methane, ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and water, yet nobody suggests for a minute that there's life on Jupiter.

Americans Think Climate Change Should Be NASA's Top Priority, Not Sending Astronauts to Mars.  We chose to go the Moon because it was hard, but it turns out difficulty might not be a compelling enough argument to sway Americans these days.  That's according to a new poll released by the Pew Research Center, a non-partisan polling group that studies a range of fields including science and U.S. government policy.  Perhaps the most interesting set of results came when the researchers asked how NASA should prioritize the suite of tasks the agency oversees.

The Editor says...
Here's another option:  How about not spending money on things we don't need, since we're 21 trillion dollars in debt?

Former NASA scientist says Trump's climate change policy fills agency with 'fear and anxiety'.  One former NASA scientist is claiming that the agency's employees are crippled by the "fear and anxiety" brought on by the Trump administration and its adamant denial of climate change.  "Nasa's talking point is that it's business as usual, but that's not true," former NASA science communicator, Laura Tenenbaum, told The Guardian.  People inside the agency are concerned Trump will cut climate science funding.  There is a fear and anxiety there and the outcome has been chaos."  The climate change data and research meant for general public knowledge has come to a near halt under President Trump's administration, Tenenbaum claimed, noting she received a warning to stay away from phrases like "global warming" when posting on social media or speaking with the press.  She said drafts of blog posts on coal plants becoming solar plants and other "reasons to be positive about NASA" were thrown out by other officials who feared retribution from the new President.

NASA study shows humans are responsible for major changes to Earth's water availability.  A stunning new study from NASA highlights the impact humans are having on fresh water availability across the globe.  The study, published earlier this week, found that Earth's wetlands are getting wetter and dry regions are getting drier, due to human water management, climate change and natural cycles.

The Editor says...
There is exactly the same amount of water on the Earth today as there was 5,000 years ago.  There could be places around the world where the government at some level has mismanaged the water supplies, but that doesn't make wetlands wetter and dry regions drier.

Mars Helicopter to Fly on NASA's Next Red Planet Rover Mission.  The Mars Helicopter, a small, autonomous rotorcraft, will travel with the agency's Mars 2020 rover mission, currently scheduled to launch in July 2020, to demonstrate the viability and potential of heavier-than-air vehicles on the Red Planet.  "NASA has a proud history of firsts," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.  "The idea of a helicopter flying the skies of another planet is thrilling.  The Mars Helicopter holds much promise for our future science, discovery, and exploration missions to Mars."

Congress' Omnibus Bill Ended Funding for NASA's Carbon Monitoring System.  Science magazine reported this week that funding for NASA's Carbon Monitoring System (CMS), which costs $10-million a year and is designed to measure greenhouse gas emissions, was not included in the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill passed by Congress and signed into law by President Trump in March, which in effect kills the program.

Trump administration quietly cancels $10m NASA program that tracks key greenhouse gases.  A $10 million per year NASA program to track key global warming contributors carbon and methane has been canceled.  The program called the Carbon Monitoring System (CMS) was cut due to 'budget constraints and higher priorities within the science budget, a spokesperson for the space agency said Thursday [5/10/2018].  A report from the journal Science called the shut down the latest move in a 'broad attack on climate science' by the White House.

Forget about sending humans to Mars — we need a permanent moon base instead.  NASA's successful launch Saturday [5/5/2018] of the InSight lander on an exploratory mission to Mars — costing taxpayers about $814 million — is just the latest example of the long fascination people have had with the Red Planet.  The lander will study earthquakes — make that marsquakes — to learn more about our neighbor in the solar system.

The Editor says...
Neither the United States nor any other country needs a permanent base on the moon.  This is a white elephant.  This sounds like an idea that originated from a military contractor or NASA bureaucrat.  There is nothing to be gained from such an outpost, and once again, there is nothing in the Constitution that authorizes such an expense.  Moreover, we don't need manned space flight at all.

Inside NASA's epic first mission to the last planet.  They called it the "first mission to the last planet."  In 2006, a 224-foot-tall rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., carrying a tiny, thousand-pound probe named New Horizons.  Its mission:  to wing its way across billions of miles of cold, dark space for a rendezvous with the solar system's most distant planet, Pluto.  The undertaking would finally close a chapter of space exploration, marking the last of the Milky Way's planets to be probed.

New NASA chief sees Moon missions building a 'railroad' to Mars.  In his first major address as NASA administrator, Jim Bridenstine defended the new agency directive to go to the moon first before voyaging to Mars.  But his webcast speech at the Humans to Mars summit in Washington, D.C., May 9 did not disclose any new initiatives by NASA to send humans to the Red Planet.  Bridenstine, the former Republican congressman from Oklahoma's 1st District, was sworn in as administrator three weeks ago after NASA went 15 months without a permanent leader.  While the agency was under interim leadership, the Trump administration tasked NASA with taking humans back to the moon before going to Mars.

Trump dismantles NASA climate change program.  The Trump administration has cut off funding for a major NASA satellite-based climate change research program, according to the latest issue of Science magazine.  The magazine reported that even though Congress has successfully fended off much of the White House's "broad attack on climate science," a spending deal signed in March made no mention of NASA's $10-million-a-year Carbon Monitoring System.  Unlike the satellites that provide the climate data, the research program that uses the data had no private contractor to lobby for it.

NASA launches historic InSight spacecraft with mission to Mars.  NASA launched its InSight spacecraft bound for Mars on Saturday morning [5/5/2018] from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, marking the first interplanetary mission ever to depart from the West Coast.  The spacecraft's trip will last approximately seven months and cover some 301 million miles, with arrival in the Elysium Planitia region of the red planet in late November.  According to NASA, it is "the first mission dedicated to understanding the internal structure of Mars." [...] The $1 billion mission involves scientists from the U.S., France, Germany and elsewhere in Europe.
[Emphasis added.]

The Editor says...
This latest probe will dig into the Martian soil to look for clues about the origin of the planet, because the people at NASA obviously don't believe the first chapter of the Bible which says that God made Mars and the Earth and everything else.  This is even more puzzling because it isn't necessary to dig up Martian soil samples to learn about that planet's origins.  One could more easily dig into the Earth for the same clues — again, assuming that the Bible can't be belived.  But suppose this latest device lands in exactly the right spot, digs down ten feet, and comes up with some pottery or a diamond ring or something.  What then?  Will we have to build a trillion dollars' worth of machines to find the rest of it?  On the other hand, suppose this billion-dollar project results in absolutely nothing new, which will almost certainly be the case.  Can we then, at long last, quit throwing away money on the exploration of Mars?  How much more money will be thrown into this blasphemous pit?

NASA's new planet finder is in space.  Now what?  Most everyone reading this story will probably know that a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched on Wednesday [4/18/2018] carrying a NASA spacecraft into orbit — the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite — that will further the space agency's mission of searching for exoplanets. [...] At a cost of $200 million, the TESS spacecraft is about one-third the cost of the Kepler spacecraft, which had a main mirror with a diameter of 0.95 meter.  The TESS apertures are considerably smaller:  10cm for four identical cameras.

NASA's new satellite TESS is about to lift off in search for alien worlds.  TESS or the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite is scheduled to lift off this week, from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.  NASA's hope its that it will help us finally find undiscovered worlds that could harbor extraterrestrial life.

NASA awards Lockheed Skunk Works $247.5M supersonic X-plane.  Supersonic commercial air travel may once again become a reality under a partnership between NASA and Lockheed Martin.  The American space agency announced on Tuesday that it awarded a contract to Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works to design, build and flight test the Low-Boom Flight Demonstrator (LBFD), an X-plane that will be used by NASA to find ways to bring supersonic jet travel back to the skies.  The cost-plus-incentive-fee contract is valued at $247.5 million.

The Editor says...
If supersonic commercial air travel is economically feasible, that is, if there is sufficient demand for such a service, the airlines should pay for the development of the aircraft.  The Concorde proved there is insufficient demand.  Therefore this $247 million project is either a cover story or a white elephant.

What's the Deal with SpaceX, NOAA and Live Rocket Launch Video?  Whenever SpaceX launches a rocket, you can bet the views will be spectacular.  After all, SpaceX has cameras up and down its Falcon 9 rockets that offer live views from space as each booster soars into (and sometimes back from) space.  So it was weird today (March 30) when, 9 minutes into an otherwise routine Falcon 9 launch of 10 Iridium Next communications satellites from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base, SpaceX cut the feed.  The video blackout was intentional because of "restrictions" from a U.S. government agency known for its own live views of Earth from space.

Trump Considering Privatizing International Space Station.  In what might be a turning point for the International Space Station, the Trump administration is considering privatizing the orbiting satellite in the near future.  According to The Washington Post, the Trump administration does not plan on allocating funds for the ISS after 2024, which will effectively end direct federal support for the station.

Trump Wants to Privatize the International Space Station.  The Trump administration is going to think about thinking about considering ending federal funding for the International Space Station (ISS) in 2025.  Cue a bunch of people freaking out about the prospect of space station privatization.  Before we get into the nitty girtty — a note:  if I had a nickel for every major goal set by an American president for the space program with a time horizon of 6 to 20 years, I'd have enough money to continue funding the ISS well past 2025.  Every administration comes up with its own blueprint/roadmap/guidebook to go to the moon/Mars/Alpha Centauri with all of the major deadlines conveniently kicking in long after the relevant president is somewhere on a yacht moored outside his presidential library.  These plans rarely come to fruition, and even incremental steps are frequently reversed.

NASA's Insight Lander Spreads Its Solar Wings.  May 2018 is the launch window for NASA's next mission to Mars, the InSight Lander.  InSight is the next member of what could be called a fleet of human vehicles destined for Mars.  But rather than working on the question of Martian habitability or suitability for life, InSight will try to understand the deeper structure of Mars.  InSight stands for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport.  InSight will be the first robotic explorer to visit Mars and study the red planet's deep interior.

The Editor says...
How many U.S. taxpayers care about the deep interior of Mars?  Maybe one in a million?  And most of them work for NASA, I presume.  NASA has a web page about this project that will tell you everything (positive) there is to know, without mentioning the cost.  As if the cost is immaterial.

The state of the space race in 1 chart.  Satellite launches by primary use and operating nation.

Space dust could help life jump from planet to planet.  It may not take an asteroid strike to transport life from one planet to another.  Fast-moving dust could theoretically knock microbes floating high up in a world's atmosphere out into space, potentially sending the bugs on a trip to another planet — perhaps even one orbiting a different star, according to a new study.

The Editor says...
It takes far more faith to believe this idea than to believe in the six-day creation described in the Bible.  In order for dust particles, microbes, rocks, or anything else to leave the gravitational field of a planet, those objects must reach escape velocity.  There is no mechanism in place to hurl dust into space at speeds greater than the escape velocity of this planet, or even a planet with no atmosphere.

Goodbye, four billion dollars.
Cassini: NASA's £3 billion spacecraft explodes in Saturn's atmosphere after a historic 20-year mission.  In its thirteen years at Saturn and two decades in space, the $4 billion (£3 billion) Cassini probe has transformed our understanding of the ringed planet and its moons.  It has watched giant storms on the gas giant, recorded its ring system in stunning detail, and revealed incredible new insights on the potential habitability of Saturn's moons.

The Editor says...
We the taxpayers spent $4 billion to study "the potential habitability of Saturn's moons?"  How will that improve the lives of anyone outside of NASA?

President Trump Appoints New NASA Chief.  All the right people are complaining about President Trump's new NASA chief Jim Bridenstine, who once demanded an apology from Obama for squandering money on climate research.

'Don't mess with Yellowstone supervolcano' NASA slammed by park geologists over risky plan.  A geologist at the national park said the proposal could have dire consequences, including killing scores of animals.  The warning comes after the US space agency revealed its options to prevent the volcano from exploding, including drilling into the bottom to release heat from it.  Fears were immediately raised the "risky" plan could actually backfire and trigger an eruption — potentially triggering a deadly nuclear winter.

NASA wants to prevent the Yellowstone super volcano from destroying the US.  There are about 20 known super volcanoes on Earth, NASA says.  A major eruption occurs about once every 100,000 years.  And these odds are much higher than a repeat of an Earth-changing comet impact of the type that wiped out the dinosaurs.  So NASA tasked a team with figuring out how to prevent one.

The Editor says...
What does this have to do with aeronautics and space?  Has there ever been a volcanic eruption that was prevented?

NASA is hiring a 'planetary protection officer' to guard us against alien life — and vice versa.  There's a vacancy at NASA, and it may have one of the greatest job titles ever conceived:  planetary protection officer.  It pays well, between $124,000 and $187,000 annually.  You get to work with really smart people as part of the three- to five-year appointment but don't have to manage anyone.  And your work could stave off an alien invasion of Earth or, more important, protect other planets from us.  President Trump has expressed bullish enthusiasm for America's space program, signing an executive order last month resurrecting the National Space Council, on hiatus since the 1990s, and gleefully discussing the prospect of sending people to Mars.  His proposed budget for NASA seeks a slight funding reduction overall, though he wants to realign spending to focus on "deep space exploration rather than Earth-centric research," as The Washington Post reported in March.

Fly over the surface of Pluto in stunning NASA video.  Now, the space agency has released breathtaking flyover videos using the New Horizons data and digital elevation models, revealing a close-up look at everything from ominous craters of Pluto's 'Cthulhu Macula,' to the bizarre 'moated mountains' on its largest moon, Charon.  In recognition of the two-year anniversary of New Horizons' Pluto flyby, NASA also revealed a stunning set of global elevation maps, showing the complex terrain of Pluto and Charon.

The Editor says...
How much did this cost, and who — outside of NASA — will benefit from this?

Former NASA Chief Scientist:  America is "Under Siege" from Climate Disinformers.  The science is NOT unequivocal that we face a climate emergency.  Using the IPCC's own climate figures, there is a real possibility anthropogenic CO2 is not a big deal.  Calling people who point this out purveyors of "fake news" is pure climate alarmism.  As for what happens after the year 2100, frankly that is their problem.  By the year 2100 humanity will know whether CO2 is causing climate problems — and will have the energy supply options and advanced engineering capabilities to deal with any eventuality.

Nasa unveils six-wheeled Mars rover complete with full laboratory and life support systems.  Nasa has unveiled a new Mars rover concept vehicle designed to function "as both a working vehicle and laboratory" for the next generation of space explorers.  The 8.5-metre vehicle would not look out of place in a science-fiction film.  It features six huge wheels to allow it to travel over craters, dunes and rocks, a sloping front reminiscent of the Nolan-era Batmobile and solar panels to power everything.

NASA's Worst Plan Yet.  In the early months of the Trump administration, some lunar advocates spread the rumor that the new president would seek a return to the Moon within his first four years, thereby dramatically making America great again in space.  That is not the plan.  Nor is the plan to send humans to Mars within eight years, something that I think we could achieve.  Nor is it to send human missions to explore near-Earth asteroids, as then President Obama suggested in 2010, nor is it even to send humans to a piece of an asteroid brought back from deep space to lunar orbit for study, as called for in the ARM. No, instead NASA is proposing to build a space station in lunar orbit.  This proposal is notable for requiring a large budget to create an object with no utility whatsoever.

Unmanned U.S. Air Force Space Plane Lands After Secret, Two-Year Mission.  The U.S. military's experimental X-37B space plane landed on Sunday at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, completing a classified mission that lasted nearly two years, the Air Force said.  The unmanned X-37B, which resembles a miniature space shuttle, touched down at 7:47 a.m.  EDT on a runway formerly used for landings of the now-mothballed space shuttles, the Air Force said in an email.

Mysterious military spacecraft lands in Florida causing sonic boom.  The Air Force posted tweets that the X37B spacecraft landed Sunday morning [5/7/2017] at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral after 718 days in orbit.

Widow can sue over NASA's sting operation on her.  A 75-year-old widow in tough financial straits reached out to NASA about selling a speck of moon rock her late husband had given her.  Joann Davis then became the target of a sting operation at a Denny's that a federal appeals court suggested Thursday was outrageous overkill.  The lead agent "organized a sting operation involving six armed officers to forcibly seize a Lucite paperweight containing a moon rock the size of a rice grain from an elderly grandmother," wrote Judge Sidney Thomas of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in the decision allowing Davis to sue, per the Los Angeles Times. [...] Agents also forcibly restrained her second husband, who had accompanied her to the supposed sale.  Davis' first husband, Robert, worked as an Apollo 11 engineer, and he saved a paperweight with moon material and another with a bit of the heat shield.

Solar wind stripped Martian atmosphere away.  Solar wind and radiation are responsible for stripping the Martian atmosphere, transforming Mars from a planet that could have supported life billions of years ago into a frigid desert world, according to new results from NASA's MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission) spacecraft led by the University of Colorado Boulder.  "We've determined that most of the gas ever present in the Mars atmosphere has been lost to space," said Bruce Jakosky, principal investigator for MAVEN and a professor at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP).

The Editor says...
This may be the least plausible work of science fiction I've ever heard, and, with a price tag of $452.9 million, it is also the most expensive.  If what they say is true, then why do Venus and Earth — which are much closer to the Sun — still have their atmospheres and oceans intact?  What NASA is saying, with a great deal of desperation, is that it is impossible to believe that Mars was created just the way it is.  Believing the first chapter of the Bible is much easier than believing that "solar wind" blew the atmosphere completely off Mars, and affected Mars exclusively.

This is exactly what President Hillary Clinton would have done.
President Trump's Proposed OMB Budget.  The President's 2018 Budget [...] Provides $3.7 billion for continued development of the Orion crew vehicle, Space Launch System, and associated ground system, to send American astronauts on deep-space missions.  To accommodate increasing development costs, the Budget cancels the multi-billion-dollar Asteroid Redirect Mission.

Trump renews NASA mission for human space travel, deep space exploration.  President Trump put NASA on course for deep space exploration Tuesday [3/21/2017], signing a bill that authorizes $19.5 billion in funding to revive the agency's manned-space flight program and plan missions to Mars and beyond.  Mr. Trump spoke of the renewal of NASA's mission, including development of new spacecraft and preparation for a mars mission, in historic terms.  "Almost half a century ago our brave astronauts first planted the American flag on the moon.  That was a big moment in our history," he said at an Oval Office signing ceremony.  "Now this nation is ready to be the first in space once again.  Today we are taking the initial steps toward a bold and bright new future of American space flight."

Trump wants to make space exploration great again.  President Trump peeled back the curtain on his plans for the US space program on Tuesday — singing a sweeping NASA policy bill into effect and reaffirming the agency's commitment to human exploration and putting a man on Mars.  "For almost six decades NASA's work has inspired millions and millions of Americans to imagine distant worlds and a better future right here on Earth," Trump explained during the signing, which was attended by astronauts, lawmakers and scientists.

Is Anybody Else NOT Surprised That NASA Making an Announcement Days after Defunding?  NASA never fully recovered after the Apollo program.  To be fair, it hasn't always been NASA's fault.  The agency is constantly the victim of politics.Yet they managed to struggle their way through the shuttle program, the International Space Station, and many different science projects including telescopes, and probes — every one of them costing millions more than budgeted due to technical errors, and accidents.  Currently the Juno probe is having engine trouble and is indefinitely stuck in orbit around Jupiter and their heavy-lift rocket motor is plagued with problems[.]  Worse yet, the agency has become another tentacle in the Democrat agenda in attempts to make the case of global warming.

NASA proposes radical plan to surround Mars with a magnetic field to restore an 'Earth-like' atmosphere.  NASA scientists have proposed a radical idea to launch a magnetic field around Mars, with hopes it could protect the red planet from intense solar wind and allow humans to explore alongside rovers.  Jim Green, NASA's Planetary Science Division Director, revealed the idea today [3/2/2017] at the Planetary Science Vision 2050 Workshop in Washington DC.

Infuriating List of Ridiculous Spending Items By Obama Administration.  NASA spent $124,955 to develop pizza that can be printed on a 3-D printer.  It already pays Lockheed Martin $1 million a year to develop food for a Mars mission that isn't happening for several decades.  The space agency also spent $390,000 to develop a "green ninja" cartoon character to promote climate change, $360,000 on "pillownauts" that lay in bed for 70 days and $3 million on a mission to study the inner workings of Congress.

Why is NASA is Exploring an Alien World in Antarctica?  Mount Erebus is at the end of our world — and offers a portal to another.  Covered in ice and filled with bubbling lava, the massive volcano rising 12,448 feet (3,794 meters) above Ross Island in Antarctica is the perfect proxy for an alien world, which is why NASA's Aaron Curtis, who joined JPL's Extreme Environments Robotics Group in 2016, travels there to test space exploration robots.

Has the Cold War started up again?
NASA, heeding Trump, may add astronauts to a test flight moon mission.  President Trump has indicated that he wants to make a splash in space.  During his transition, he spoke with historian Douglas Brinkley about John F. Kennedy's famous 1961 vow to go to the moon before the decade was out.  Now Trump and his aides may do something very similar:  demand that NASA send astronauts to orbit the moon before the end of Trump's first term — a move that one Trump adviser said would be a clear signal to the Chinese that the U.S. intends to retain dominance in space.

NASA Gets Religion About Extraterrestrials.  [Scroll down to page 58]  "How might the world's religions respond to the discovery of life on other planets?"  NASA is enlisting theologians to answer that question to prepare for if and when human contact is made with extraterrestrials.  The NASA Astrobiology Program awarded more than $1.1 million to the Center of Theological Inquiry (CTI) to examine "the societal implications of the search for life in the universe."

NASA to explore asteroid made of $10,000 quadrillion worth of metal.  NASA recently announced it's latest endeavor:  Explore a giant metal asteroid the size of Massachusetts.  Made up of mostly nickel and iron, the giant hunk of space metal is about three times further away from the Sun than Earth.  Enticingly, the mission's lead scientist has put a price tag of $10,000 quadrillion on the asteroid, known as "16 Psyche."

The Editor says...
The metal may be worth a lot of money — nickel is about $10,000 per ton — but even at that price, the transportation costs would be prohibitive.  Moreover, there would be considerable costs involved in sending robots out there to do the assaying — autonomously.  If we need nickel that badly, perhaps the government should stop creating "national monuments" that prevent mining in the western U.S.  Nice try, NASA.  Keep searching for a reason to exist, and do it quickly, because there's a new president now who was sent to Washington to cut wasteful spending.

NASA's next stop — Mars or the Moon?  [W]ith NASA's limited funds, even before possible cuts under a Trump administration, the space agency can't do both.  Sending astronauts to the Moon and establishing a colony would push human exploration of Mars into the second half of this century.  Alternatively, making a direct push toward Mars would preclude any meaningful human exploration of the Moon.  A choice must be made.

The Editor says...
There is a third option:  Stay home and stop spending borrowed money on pointless boondoggles.  And a fourth option:  if you really want samples of lifeless dirt from another planet, send a machine to get them and return them to Earth.

Making NASA Great Again.  In 1962, at the height of the Cold War, space was important and worthy of such risk.  We were going to the moon to demonstrate our technological superiority to the Soviets and the world, and Glenn's flight was a crucial milestone on that path.  Half a century later, that sense of importance — and the willingness to take risks that came with it — has been lost.

Return America to glory:  Retake U.S. space lead.  For a couple of decades now, I have been writing that the manned and unmanned space programs of the United States have to be, first, in the best interests of the national security of our nation and, second, never wasteful of the American tax dollar.  In full disclosure, I say this as one who has no interest in being part of the Trump transition team, being part of the Trump administration, or having any access whatsoever to those who do.  None.  I say this only as an American who for years has been deeply concerned that the Obama administration has systematically ceded control of space to the People's Republic of China and Russia and, in the process, has greatly endangered the national security of our nation.

The Editor says...
If manned space flight is a matter of national defense, it should be undertaken by the Air Force.  All other defense-related activity in space should be done by the Air Force and the Army.  NASA is all about the exploration of other planets and the operation of various scientific research projects that have more to do with atmospheric science (i.e., global warming) than national defense.

NASA was neutered, turned into political PR machine, and Trump is going to fix that.  In the last 20 years NASA has been turned from a space agency to one that ignores satellite data in favour of doing statistical tricks with badly placed ground thermometers and relies on Russia to do things in space.  Former NASA stars have been protesting for year at the dismal standards in NASA climate research.  The same guys who walked on the moon, worked on the Apollo missions, and ran the shuttle program were fed up with NASA's excellent brand name being exploited by junk scientists to do political promotions.  Under Obama NASA was told to do three things — inspire kids, help international relationships and help Muslim nations "feel good".  So much for space exploration and science.

Donald Trump expected to slash Nasa's climate change budget in favour of sending humans back to the moon — and beyond.  US President-elect Donald Trump is set to slash Nasa's budget for monitoring climate change and instead set a goal of sending humans to the edge of the solar system by the end of the century, and possibly back to the moon.  Mr Trump, who has called climate change a "Chinese hoax", is believed to want to focus the agency on far-reaching, big banner goals in deep space rather than "Earth-centric climate change spending".  According to Bob Walker, who has advised Mr Trump on space policy, Nasa has been reduced to "a logistics agency concentrating on space station resupply and politically correct environmental monitoring".

Gavin Schmidt Warns Donald Trump Not to Interfere with the NASA Climate Division.  Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has "warned" President-elect Donald Trump not to interfere with their climate activities.  Schmidt maintains the GISS global temperature series, arguably the most adjusted of all the global temperature products.

The Editor says...
Climate science is what NOAA is for — not NASA.

AT&T And NASA To Build National Drone Tracking System.  AT&T and NASA aren't the only ones trying to regulate the skies.  In September, DARPA announced the Aerial Dragnet program, requesting proposals for technology that would allow the government to keep track of all objects flying below 1,000 feet.  The agency initially envisioned their system relying on a network of tower- or drone-mounted "surveillance nodes" scattered throughout cities.

NASA in talks with Russian space agency over joint mission to Venus - report.  The US and Russia may join efforts in exploring the second planet from the Sun, as NASA and Russian space agency Roscosmos are discussing a joint mission to Venus, Russian media reports.  NASA has already drawn up a number of scenarios for the joint mission with their Russian counterparts to Venus, director of the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences Lev Zeleny told the Izvestiya daily.

The Editor says...
Like everything NASA now undertakes, this mission to Venus is pointless.  How will this benefit anyone without connections to NASA?

Obama Is Restarting the Mars Program He Canceled 8 Years Ago.  President Barack Obama will restart NASA's mission to Mars after he effectively canceled the program eight years ago, according to an op-ed he wrote.  Obama's op-ed calls for NASA to send humans to Mars by 2030, but Obama has a long history of slashing programs that would have sent America to Mars much sooner.

Obama Vows Mars Mission Even as He Cuts NASA's Budget.  [Scroll down]  Of course, Obama forgets to mention in the piece that, memories of grandpa and astronauts being fished out of the sea near Hawaii aside, he proposed earlier this year significantly cutting the funding for space exploration so he could pursue all his various earthbound social welfare and environmental policies.

Air Force's X-37B Space Plane Mystery Mission Wings by 500 Days in Orbit.  The U.S. military launched the robotic X-37B space plane on May 20, 2015, marking the fourth flight for the Air Force program.  A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket lofted the spacecraft from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station to kick off the OTV-4 mission (short for Orbital Test Vehicle-4).  Exactly what the winged space plane's duties are while it's in orbit continues to remain a tight-lipped affair.  Similarly, how long the vehicle will remain in orbit has not been detailed.

Obama [is] Helping U.S. Lose a New, Dangerous Space Race to Red China.  President Barack Obama's anti-space exploration policies have created a vacuum that's being filled by China, bemoaned lawmakers on both sides of the aisle during a congressional hearing Tuesday [9/27/2016].  China is catching up to the space programs of NASA and the U.S. military, according to expert witnesses at the hearing, causing Republicans and Democrats to blame Obama for delays and funding cuts.  "All of [NASA's] success came to a screeching halt when President Obama was sworn in," Texas Republican Rep.  Brian Babin, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Space, said during the hearing.  "His fiscal year 2010 budget request slashed well over a billion dollars from the exploration project and budget... China has capitalized on this administration's weakness."

The Editor says...
How is this a dangerous space race, and what is at risk here?  What have we lost if some other country sends a (most likely) suicidal mission to Mars to collect samples of frozen-over sterile dirt?  How are we worse off if some other country sends astronauts to the Moon?  If the next person to walk on the Moon is from a Communist country, how does that do us any harm?  The ugly reality is this:  We don't have the money for fruitless science projects.

NASA is going to an asteroid, and it wants your help.  NASA is seeking research partners for its ambitious asteroid redirect mission, the space agency recently announced.  The asteroid mission sounds like science fiction.  In December 2021, NASA plans to launch a robotic mission that will travel to an asteroid, grab a multiton boulder off its surface, bring it back — and then put it in orbit around the moon.  The space agency says they've already identified four asteroid candidates.  After that, with a launch in 2026, astronauts will travel to the asteroid and research it, bringing back samples to Earth.

The Editor says...
Somehow the writer neglected to mention the cost of this project, or the benefit it will bring to the average taxpayer.

Private Moon Mission Gets Go-Ahead From U.S. Government.  A small startup is to become the first private company to receive permission from the U.S. government to land a craft on the moon. [...] On Wednesday [8/3/2016], Moon Express announced on its website that it had become the first private enterprise to be granted permission to land a robotic spacecraft on the Moon's surface, following discussions with the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA), the U.S. State Department, NASA and other federal agencies.

The Editor says...
Since when do you need permission from the FAA or NASA (or anyone else) to go to the moon?  What's the penalty for landing on the moon without permission?  When was that law enacted?

Why NASA still believes we might find life on Mars.  The day Gil Levin says he detected life on Mars, he was waiting in his lab at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, watching a piece of paper inch out of a printer.  Levin snatched the sheet and scrutinized the freshly inked graph.  A thin line measuring radioactive carbon crept steadily upward, just as it always did when Levin performed the test with microbes on Earth.  But this data came from tens of millions of miles away, where NASA's Viking lander was — for the first time in history — conducting an experiment on the surface of Mars.  "Gil, that's life," his co-investigator, Patricia Straat, exclaimed when she saw the first results come in.  There was jubilation at JPL. [...] It was July 30, 1976.  Forty years later, Levin and Straat still believe that their experiment was evidence of microbiotic Martians.  But few people agree with them.

NASA's next Mars rover will 'seek the signs of life' on red planet.  NASA gave a glimpse into its plans for its next Martian rover on Friday [7/15/2016], a craft that will focus on looking for evidence of life on the red planet and preparing samples for possible return to Earth someday.  The still-unnamed rover will launch in the summer of 2020 (so the space agency is calling the program Mars 2020) and will arrive at its destination in February of 2021.

NASA Spends $73,500 on 'Unconscious Bias' Training.  The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is spending at least $73,500 to teach astronauts about diversity, their "unconscious biases," and how to "use their privilege."  NASA is adding a new curriculum to its "Diversity Dialogue Project," and has hired a contractor to hold "regularly scheduled dialogue sessions" about inclusion.  The program is designed for employees to "engage in a facilitated dialogue process in an "open, non-judgmental and comfortable environment," according to documents released by the agency.

NASA is really good at finding solutions for which there is no problem.
NASA Unveils Plans for Electric-Powered Plane.  A new experimental airplane being built by NASA could help push electric-powered aviation from a technical curiosity and pipe dream into something that might become commercially viable for small aircraft.  At a conference on Friday [6/17/2016] of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics in Washington, Charles F. Bolden Jr., the NASA administrator, announced plans for an all-electric airplane designated as X-57, part of the agency's efforts to make aviation more efficient and less of a polluter.  "The X-57 will take the first giant step in opening a new era of aviation," Mr. Bolden declared.

NASA Hopes to Reach Mars by 2030s, With Israel's Help, Space Agency's Administrator Says.  NASA hopes to reach Mars in the 2030s, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said, adding that the U.S. space agency looks forward to working with Israel, whose "incredibly innovative people on the cutting edge of technology" can help NASA successfully launch the first human voyage to the red planet.  Bolden's lecture was attended by a packed audience at Bar-Ilan University Monday morning [6/6/2016].  On Tuesday evening, the university will present Bolden with an honorary doctorate.  During his visit to Israel, Bolden will meet with representatives of the Israel Space Agency to discuss the 250 experiments taking place during every six-month expedition on the International Space Station.  "We are excited about ongoing relations with the Israel Space Agency and what we can do together on the International Space Station," Bolden said.

The Editor says...
Nobody outside of NASA or Roscosmos benefits from the existence of the International Space Station, and its purpose — basic scientific research — is not authorized by the Constitution.  The United States should sell its interest in the space station to the Russians, and let them waste money on it.

NASA struggles to inflate space 'bounce house'.  NASA's attempts to inflate a unique new module on the International Space Station have stopped for today, the space agency announced this morning [5/26/2016], because the module only inflated "a few inches."  The new module, called BEAM, was supposed to be expanded early this morning.  But NASA announced that the operation did not go as planned.

NASA to officially unveil its green rocket fuel project in Colorado this week.  Since 2012, the folks over at NASA have been working on developing a high performance "green" rocket propellant it hoped to one day use as an alternative to the incredibly toxic hydrazine fuel currently in use.  According to a press release published in August of 2012, the Washington D.C.-based space agency selected Boulder, Colorado's Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation to research the fuel alternative and as of this month, it appears it's ready to show off its work.  In an invite sent to media outlets late last week, Ball Aerospace will officially open its doors on March 31 to unveil NASA's Green Propulsion Infusion Mission.

Here's Why Congress Says Obama Has Wrecked NASA.  Lawmakers grilled National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Administrator Charlie Bolden during a Thursday [3/17/2016] congressional hearing on President Barack Obama's 2017 budget plan.  Republicans argued the budget hurts the space agency by diverting more money into global warming research.  NASA's budget proposal is far more concerned with spending on global warming research than supporting the agency's mission of space exploration, according to Republican lawmakers.

Pluto's moon could have been home to subsurface ocean.  Pluto's largest moon Charon may have once had a subsurface ocean that long ago became frozen and expanded.  As a result, the expanding ocean that was identified through images from NASA's New Horizons mission may have pushed out the moon's surface — causing it to stretch and fracture on a massive scale, NASA said.  The side of Charon viewed by the passing New Horizons spacecraft in July 2015 is characterized by a system of "pull apart" tectonic faults, which are expressed as ridges, scarps and valleys — the latter sometimes reaching more than 4 miles deep.

The Editor says...
Given that the average temperature of Pluto is 44° Kelvin, it is unlikely (to say the least) that anything resembling an "ocean" has ever existed there, inasmuch as there are very few substances that are liquids at those temperatures.  Even ordinary air is a solid at that temperature, and in the absence of atmospheric pressure, liquid air would boil away into space.  NASA says there might have been an ocean there years ago, but anyone who paid attention in high school can see it's impossible.

NASA wants to unlock the universe's secrets with telescope more powerful than Hubble.  NASA has unveiled plans for a powerful new telescope with a view more than 100 times wider than Hubble.  The Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) is designed to help researchers unravel the secrets of dark energy and dark matter, and explore the evolution of the universe, according to NASA.  "It also will discover new worlds outside our solar system and advance the search for worlds that could be suitable for life," explained the space agency, in a statement released Thursday [2/18/2016].

The Editor says...
There is no mention of the pricetag for this telescope on NASA's web page, which explains every other aspect of the project in detail.  Wikipedia indicates that the total cost will be somewhere around two billion dollars.

Scientists find evidence of gravitational waves predicted by Einstein.  After decades of searching, scientists announced Thursday [2/11/2016] that they have detected gravitational waves — essentially ripples in the fabric of space-time — that had been predicted by Einstein.  An international team of astrophysicists said that they detected the waves from the distant crash of two black holes, using a $1.1 billion instrument.

The Editor says...
How are you any better off, knowing that another of Einstein's theories was allegedly proven?  Is 1.1 billion dollars a negligible amount now?

The Moon or Mars? NASA must pick 1 goal for astronauts, experts tell Congress.  NASA can't afford to put humans on Mars while also pursuing missions to put astronauts back on the moon, according to a panel of experts who testified to the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Space Wednesday [2/10/2016].  "Today the future of NASA's human spaceflight program is far from clear," said Tom Young, former director of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.  "There has been continual debate about should we go to the moon or Mars or both ... It is clear, again, that we cannot do both.  And there is a need to focus our attention, capability and resources on one option."

The Editor says...
NASA is currently flying around in circles, and now somebody at NASA thinks that the Moon is a stepping stone to Mars.  It was already demonstrated, in the early 1970's, that the Moon is a mass of lifeless sand and rocks.  As I have said before, if the Moon were made of uranium, it still would be economically infeasible to send astronauts there.  The same is true — and perhaps even more true — of Mars.  It is not by any means an imperative national priority to send men to Mars.  It is only an instrument NASA is using to extend its own existence.

White House proposes $19 billion NASA budget.  The Obama Administration's final budget request, released Feb. 9, offers $19 billion for NASA in fiscal year 2017, a decrease of $300 million from the agency's final 2016 budget.  The budget, as proposed, would shift some funds from NASA's exploration programs to aeronautics and space technology, in addition to the overall cuts, while also shifting funds within the agency's science account.  The budget request is likely to face strong opposition in Congress, where House and Senate leaders have already said that the administration's overall budget request will be considered dead on arrival.

NASA Will Return to the Moon in Preparation for Human Mars Mission.  Project managers from Lockheed Martin and NASA gathered last week at Kennedy Space Center in Florida to usher in the return of the Orion crew module and to discuss future missions that will see humans travel beyond low-Earth orbit for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972.  Development of the Orion spacecraft will now be ramping up in preparation for Exploration Mission 1 — the module's first journey to the Moon and into deep space.  This feat will act as a dress rehearsal for a crewed asteroid retrieval mission in lunar orbit and be a major stepping stone for NASA's manned mission to Mars.

NASA Bans The Word 'Jesus'.  The name of Jesus is not welcome in the Johnson Space Center newsletter, according to a complaint filed on behalf of a group of Christians who work for NASA.  The JSC Praise & Worship Club was directed by NASA attorneys to refrain from using the name 'Jesus' in club announcements that appeared in a Space Center newsletter.  "It was shocking to all of us and very frustrating," NASA engineer Sophia Smith told me.  "NASA has a long history of respecting religious speech.  Why wouldn't they allow us to put the name Jesus in the announcement about our club?"  Liberty Institute, one of the nation's largest religious liberty law firms, threatened to file a federal lawsuit unless NASA apologizes and stops censoring the name 'Jesus'.

The Space Shuttle's Last Launch.  The infrastructure behind NASA's shuttle program was unimaginably vast.  At $1 billion each, the launches were so audacious that they seemed to risk collapsing under the weight of their own hubris.  And yet, for 30 years the orbiters came and went, acting as a protective vessel, enabling a select group to contemplate the fury of the world in a stillness unobtainable by the rest of us.  Then in early 2011, the space shuttle program came to an end.

The Editor says...
I don't share this writer's nostalgia, but it is interesting that he says the Shuttle launches cost $1 billion apiece.

Harsh: Obama Official Who Pled Guilty to Espionage Gets... $250 Fine.  Glenn Woodell, a NASA supervisor who pled guilty to violating U.S. espionage laws involving a Chinese NASA contractor was given a slap on the wrist with six months' probation and a $250 fine, the Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.  Daniel Jobson, a Woodell colleague and fellow NASA supervisor, had his espionage charges reduced to a misdemeanor and was released without any penalty.  The lenient plea deals were quietly delivered October 26 in U.S. District Court in Newport News, Virginia.  The U.S. Attorneys office did not to [sic] issue a press release about the deals and declined comment when contacted by the DCNF.

Government Funding of Basic Science? Knock It Off.  For decades now, even free-market economists have argued that the government should fund basic scientific research.  I myself have always felt suspicious of the argument — this is one reason I remain skeptical of NASA, despite the ridicule of my comrades Rob Long and James Lileks, who can barely contain their pleasure at the thought of spending untold sums to send someone to Mars — but I confess that I've never possessed the analytical skills to investigate the argument, let alone refute it.

Mars Shows Strong Signs of Flowing Water, Researchers Say.  A new study provides the "strongest evidence yet" that salty liquid water sometimes flows on modern-day Mars, researchers said on Monday [9/28/2015] in a discovery that holds implications for future expeditions to the Red Planet.  "Our quest on Mars has been to 'follow the water' in our search for life in the universe, and now we have convincing science that validates what we've long suspected," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator at NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C.  "This is a significant development, as it appears to confirm that water — albeit briny — is flowing today on the surface of Mars."

NASA Confirms Signs of Water Flowing on Mars, Possible Niches for Life.  [Scroll down]  Many mysteries remain.  For one, scientists do not know where the water is coming from.

Water Found on Mars Could Be First Signs of Martian Life.  Mars is drier than the driest desert on Earth:  It has no lakes, oceans, or rivers, and its atmosphere has at best tiny traces of water vapor.  However, Mars used to be much wetter.  We can see signs of long-gone lakes and riverbeds, though it's unlikely the planet was ever warm enough to be a lush, damp place like Earth is.  The disappearance of Mars' surface water is one of the mysteries we still have to solve.  However, we've suspected water can sometimes flow on Mars for a while.  The various orbiting Mars-mapping probes have spotted small landslides along slopes that appeared between orbital passes, which could be caused by water, but are more likely to be the result of more boring geological processes.

The Editor says...
The assertion that "Mars used to be much wetter" is highly speculative.

Mars Has Water: Why NASA Discovery Matters.  Traces of liquid water have been found on Mars, NASA said today [9/28/2015], raising questions about the possibility of life on the Red Planet.  Dark, 100-meter-long streaks flowing downhill on Mars are believed to have been formed by contemporary flowing water, according to NASA.  The findings come from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and raise the possibility there could be life — or even microbes — living inside the Red Planet. [...] While today's discovery is huge, it is small compared to the rivers, lakes and vast oceans that are believed to have flowed on Mars billions of years ago.

The Editor says...
What happened on Mars "billions of years ago" — if anything — is idle speculation.  The announcement of water "flowing" on Mars — without clouds or rain — water originating from nowhere, accumulating nowhere, visible from an orbiting spacecraft, and "flowing" in sub-zero temperatures, is way beyond dubious.  But it's NASA's satellite orbiting Mars, so when they announce a "discovery," the poorly-educated public is expected to take their word for it.  Apparently NASA believes that if we all keep chanting "life on Mars" long enough, eventually that will make it come true.  Much of this "water on Mars" story depends on what the meaning of "water" is.  The the average recorded temperature on Mars is -81° F.  Even a river of ethylene glycol would have a hard time "flowing" in that weather.  Besides the low temperature, there's the near-zero atmospheric pressure to consider (and NASA hopes you don't).  The atmospheric pressure on Mars is about 0.087 psi — the same as the pressure at about 117,000 feet above the Earth's surface.  With an average temperature well below zero, water exists only as ice, and at near-zero ambient pressure even ice will dissipate due to sublimation, unless the ambient temperature is too low.  There is no water flowing on Mars.

NASA reports flowing water on Mars. But how?  A U.S. satellite, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, has found evidence there of water, the foundation of life.  Actually, flowing water from as recently as a year ago.  Observers, of course, have known of vast quantities of water locked within Mars' polar ice caps.  But water elsewhere?  Flowing?  On a surface ranging from about 80 degrees to minus 190?

The Editor continues...
Water is not the foundation of life.  God himself is the foundation of life.  If this alleged liquid on Mars can run downhill in sub-zero temperatures, it's something other than pure water.  Even if the temperature occasionally went above 32°F., when exposed to near-zero atmospheric pressure the water would boil immediately.

Is exploring Mars worth the investment?  It's hard to calculate a total price tag, but over the 48 years that NASA has been launching missions to Mars, Americans have spent a significant sum.  The Viking missions alone cost nearly $1 billion — in 1970s dollars.  The twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity cost a total of about $1 billion to build and operate as well.  Curiosity, as the Mars Science Laboratory rover is known, is over budget at $2.5 billion.

Bias alert:
Notice that the LA Times calls it an investment, not an expense.

Cost of NASA's Next Mars Rover Hits Nearly $2.5 Billion.  NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission needs an $82 million cash infusion to maintain its late November launch date after development of the $2.47 billion rover exhausted program funding reserves last year, according to agency officials.

Has NASA Become Mars-Obsessed?  $390 million for Mars Odyssey, $500 million for Opportunity, $820 million for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, $2500 million for Curiosity, $670 million for MAVEN, $600 million for Insight, $1500 million for the Mars Rover in 2020 (yet to be named).  Total:  $6.98 billion.

NASA's $17.5 Billion Budget Request for 2015 Would Fund New Science Missions.  NASA's 2015 budget would remain essentially flat at $17.5 billion under a White House spending proposal unveiled today (March 4) that would hold the line on the agency's biggest space programs while laying the groundwork for major new astrophysics and planetary science missions.

NASA employees caught buying child porn from site which showed three-year-olds being abused — but they escape prosecution.  NASA employees were caught buying child pornography from a criminal ring in Eastern Europe that distributed images of minors as young as three, it can be revealed.  An investigation by Daily Mail Online found 16 staff members from the space agency paid for pictures and videos of children in sexual situations, but were never prosecuted.  Their names have never been released because of government guidelines which protect their privacy — prompting fears some of the culprits are still employed by NASA.

Japan launches vital supplies (and mice) toward International Space Station.  A robotic Japanese cargo vessel launched toward the International Space Station Wednesday [8/19/2015], embarking on a five-day journey to the orbiting lab to deliver tons of supplies and experiment gear, including a rodent crew of 12 mice [...] whose experiences aboard the space station will help researchers better understand the effects of microgravity on the bodies of mammals.

The Editor says...
How much do the Russian charge us for transporting mice into space?  Hasn't every manned space mission resulted in similar studies already?  Has anyone published any conclusions about the adverse (or beneficial) effects of microgravity on humans?  Does anyone, other than future astronauts, have the slightest concern about those effects?  The only reason science projects like this are conducted is because the government and the news media are in a symbiotic relationship.  The news media love animal stories, espcially those involving newborn animals or small non-threatening animals.  (Animal stories are wedged in to the local TV news in the last two minutes of the Big Show, especially when there's surplus time to fill.)  The local news media really like upbeat stories about big government.  If they can combine the two, everyone's happy.  The government can get away with wasting billions of dollars on pointless space travel if the news media keep publicizing the warm and fuzzy aspects of space flight.

NASA: Seats on Russian rockets will cost us $490 million.  NASA Administrator Charles Bolden sent a letter to Congress saying the agency would need to pay $490 million to Russia for six seats on Soyuz rockets for U.S. astronauts to fly through 2017.

Methane in Mars meteorites suggests possibility of life.  Methane, a potential sign of primitive life, has been found in meteorites from Mars, adding weight to the idea that life could live off methane on the Red Planet, researchers say.  This discovery is not evidence that life exists, or has ever existed, on Mars, the researchers cautioned. [...] Much of the methane in Earth's atmosphere is produced by life, such as cattle digesting food.  However, there are ways to produce methane without life, such as volcanic activity.

NASA's head of science says humans 'are on the cusp' of answering the ultimate question.  When NASA representatives made their case for more funding to lawmakers in Washington D.C. Tuesday [7/28/2015], they made a bold announcement:  that humanity could be about to turn a page in its history.  We're nearing contact with alien life, NASA's head of science John Grunsfeld said to the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology near the end of a two-hour hearing.  That was his response to a question by committee member John Moolenaar (R-Michigan), who asked what should inspire people to continuing following NASA like they did in the days of the space race.

The Editor says...
First of all, what does "contact with alien life" mean?  It doens't mean radio contact, because it would be impossible to predict the reception of the first radio signals from other planets.  It apparently means NASA hopes to be close to the discovery of bacteria or fungus on another planet, in addition to methane or CO2.  But again, how does one testify before Congress that he is about to discover something?  (Mr. Grunsfeld needs to find a dictionary and look up the word discover)  This is an obvious attempt by NASA to stay relevant and keep the money flowing.

Hi-def space telescope to be used in search for alien life.  25 times more powerful than Hubble.

The Editor says...
Searching for alien life is most of what NASA does.  Such a search is pointless and expensive.  Suppose we pick up a radio station on a planet that's 100 light years away.  What will that prove?  What would be the point of responding?  Who among us would benefit in any way?

NASA selects 4 astronauts to fly first commercial space expeditions.  Each astronaut has test pilot experience and has flown twice in space.

Methane in Mars meteorites suggests possibility of life.  To shed light on the nature of the methane on Mars, Blamey and his colleagues analyzed rocks blasted off Mars by cosmic impacts that subsequently crash-landed on Earth as meteorites.  About 220 pounds of Martian meteorites have been found on Earth.

The Editor says...
In my opinion, which I have stated before, the likelihood of "Martian meteorites" is approximately zero.  Where are all the meteorites that were spontaneously knocked off the Moon by the same "cosmic impact" mechanism?  How massive would an object have to be, and how fast would it have to be traveling, in order to spray relatively large rocks into space (at greater than the Martian escape velocity of 16,500 feet per second*)?  The rocks would have to be massive enough to withstand entry into Earth's atmosphere, which is dense enough to burn up almost all but the largest meteors^*.  Why would rocks ejected in such a manner from Mars come to Earth of all places?  And how can anyone prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a rock came from Mars?  To summarize, this is an implausible rationalization of the most unlikely physics since the Magic Bullet killed President Kennedy and wounded Governor Connally without incurring any damage itself.

Earlier story from 2012 with editorial comments attached:
Mars meteorite chunks fall to Earth.  Meteorite chunks from Mars fell over Morocco last summer — the first time in 50 years such an event has occurred, scientists confirmed Tuesday [1/17/2012].  It is only the fifth time newly fallen Martian rocks have been confirmed chemically by experts.  Known Martian meteorite falls have happened only once every 50 years or so — 1815 in France, 1865 in India, 1911 in Egypt and the last in 1962 in Nigeria.  Scientists and collectors were celebrating the find.

The Editor says...
My skepticism of this story knows no bounds.  Why should we send probes to Mars if Martian rocks spontaneously "fall to Earth?"  How much energy would it take to launch a rock from the Martian surface?  (For those of you who attended public schools, rocks don't just fall off of other planets.)  Why would rocks leap from the Martian surface in excess of the planet's escape velocity and head for the Earth?  What are the odds that a rock leaving Mars in a random direction would find its way to Earth and not burn up in the atmosphere?  (Zero.)  What chemicals are found in Martian rocks that are not found on Earth?  Why don't parts of other planets "fall to Earth" as well?  Why just Mars?  What about the moon — why don't rocks travel from the moon to the Earth (and remain intact, and are somehow identifiable as having lunar origin?  Mars is, on average, about 581 times as far away as the moon.

NASA sets $2.25m prize for 3D printed Mars habitats.  Getting astronauts safely to Mars is only the start of your problems when you're trying to explore the red planet:  then you have to give them somewhere to live.  NASA has kick-started a competition to figure out just how to do that, challenging inventors to come up with a way to not only 3D print a habitat — preferably using materials found on-site — but do so at least semi-autonomously.  To encourage the best brains in construction, NASA is dangling a $2.25m prize in the 3-D Printed Habitat Challenge.

Mercury Killed The Messenger Probe.  The scientific instruments aboard measured the planet's magnetic field and variations in gravity that show how dense rock is below the surface.  MESSENGER scientists determined that Mercury's interior is very different than the other terrestrial worlds (Venus, Earth, the Moon, and Mars).  Instead of a slippery plasticine layer called the mantle between the solid crust and hot core, Mercury has a layer of molten rock.

The Editor says...
As usual, there is no mention of the cost, no mention of the benefit.

Messenger probe crashes on Mercury after 4-year historic mission.  Messenger, a mission that cost $450 million, was launched in August 2004 and in 2011 became the first probe to go into orbit around the closest planet to the Sun and one of those holding the most mysteries for scientists.

NASA probe detects possible polar cap on Pluto.  New photos and animations of Pluto and its large moon Charon taken by the fast-approaching New Horizons probe are revealing distinct surface features for the first time, including a bright area that could be a snowy polar cap, mission managers said Wednesday [4/29/2015].

The Editor says...
So what?  If Pluto is a solid ice ball, what does that prove?  How would that discovery benefit anyone?

We'll Find Alien Life Within 20 Years, NASA Says.  Is there life on other planets?  People have pondered this question for millennia, without any definitive answer.  But now, NASA officials say, we may soon be on the cusp of a breakthrough.  "I believe we are going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth in the next decade and definitive evidence in the next 10 to 20 years," Ellen Stofan, chief scientist for NASA, said at a public panel Tuesday [4/7/2015] in Washington, according to the Los Angeles Times.  "It's definitely not an if, it's a when," said Jeffery Newmark, one of Stofan's colleagues.

The Editor says...
NASA's primary mission, if not its only mission, is to find life on other planets.  How can this obsession be justified?  If NASA searches for another hundred years and finds nothing, what rationale will be peddled for continuing the hunt?

Here Is NASA's 18-Motor All-Electric Plane.  This is NASA's LEAPTech plane, an all-electric aircraft that could help to usher in a new era of environmentally friendlier aviation.  The prototype is small, with just a 31-foot wingspan.  It's also light, built out of carbon composites.  A total of 18 independently operated motors keep it aloft, and NASA says the plane will be able to reach speeds similar to that of most small planes.  It'll be the Tesla of the skies.

The Editor says...
Obviously if there were any demand for an aircraft that runs on batteries, one of several aircraft manufacturers would have already built this plane.  And if the plane had any military use, it would have already been built by the Air Force.  In other words, this is somebody's science project in search of a reason to exist.

NASA launches billion-dollar mission to solve mystery of magnetic fields.  NASA launched four identical spacecraft Thursday [3/12/2015] on a billion-dollar mission to study the explosive give-and-take of the Earth and sun's magnetic fields.

MMS Launched on March 12, 2015.  The Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission is a Solar Terrestrial Probes mission comprising four identically instrumented spacecraft that will use Earth's magnetosphere as a laboratory to study the microphysics of three fundamental plasma processes:  magnetic reconnection, energetic particle acceleration, and turbulence.  These processes occur in all astrophysical plasma systems but can be studied in situ only in our solar system and most efficiently only in Earth's magnetosphere, where they control the dynamics of the geospace environment and play an important role in the processes known as "space weather."

The Editor says...
Every last tiny detail about the MMS mission — other than the cost — is available here.

NASA spacecraft blast off to provide 3D views of magnetic field reconnection.  The findings from the $1.1 billion US mission will be useful in understanding magnetic reconnection throughout the universe.  Closer to home, space weather scientists along with everyone on Earth hopefully will benefit.  "We're not setting out here to solve space weather," Burch said.  "We're setting out to learn the fundamental features of magnetic reconnection because that's what drives space weather."

The Editor says...
The NASA description of the project is as follows:

"The Magnetospheric Multiscale, or MMS, mission studies the mystery of how magnetic fields around Earth connect and disconnect, explosively releasing energy via a process known a magnetic reconnection.  MMS consists of four identical spacecraft that work together to provide the first three-dimensional view of this fundamental process, which occurs throughout the universe.  The mission observes reconnection directly in Earth's protective magnetic space environment, the magnetosphere.  By studying reconnection in this local, natural laboratory, MMS helps us understand reconnection elsewhere as well, such as in the atmosphere of the sun and other stars, in the vicinity of black holes and neutron stars, and at the boundary between our solar system's heliosphere and interstellar space."

What does soil moisture have to do with aeronautics and space?
NASA launches $916 million soil moisture satellite.  A United Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket boosted an innovative NASA satellite into orbit Saturday [1/31/2015], kicking off a three-year, $916 million mission to measure the moisture, frozen and liquid, in the top few inches of Earth's soil to improve forecasting, to better understand the causes and impact of droughts, floods and other natural disasters and to improve long-range climate change projections.

NASA's Soil Moisture Satellite Goes Into Orbit.  The uncrewed Delta 2 launched NASA's Soil Moisture Active Passive observatory, or SMAP, which is to spend at least three years making precise measurements of the amount of water in Earth's topsoil. [...] NASA's price tag for the launch, spacecraft and three years of operation is $916 million.

Get NASA Out of the Climate Alarm Business.  Unless you live on the moon you've probably heard lots of feverish hype attributed to NASA about 2014 being the "hottest year" ever.  And being NASA, you'd expect that they should know, given that they have all those advanced satellites we taxpayers bought them.  Well, maybe you'd be very wrong to assume that, much less to expect an honest and objective report.  A lot more skepticism on the part of the media would be prudent.

White House budget would fund NASA's Europa, Mars missions.  The White House budget request for 2016 has proposed to give NASA $18.5 billion, including funding for the Mars 2020 rover and a mission to Jupiter's icy moon Europa. [...] The White House proposal would set aside $1.361 billion for planetary science, which is about $76 million less than Congress allotted the division in 2015.

Isn't this what NOAA is for?
NASA climate scientists: We said 2014 was the warmest year on record... but we're only 38% sure we were right.  The Nasa climate scientists who claimed 2014 set a new record for global warmth last night admitted they were only 38 percent sure this was true.  In a press release on Friday [1/16/2015], Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) claimed its analysis of world temperatures showed '2014 was the warmest year on record'.  The claim made headlines around the world, but yesterday it emerged that GISS's analysis — based on readings from more than 3,000 measuring stations worldwide — is subject to a margin of error.  Nasa admits this means it is far from certain that 2014 set a record at all.

NASA Facing The Heat For Hottest Year Lie.  With great fanfare NASA announced that 2014 was the hottest year on record.  The part of the story they didn't mention is they are only 38% sure it was the hottest on record.  The other thing they didn't mention is that surface temperatures were used rather than satellite data and part of their data used estimated temperatures.  Per the UK Daily Mail, "the claim made headlines around the world, but yesterday it emerged that GISS's [NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies] analysis — based on readings from more than 3,000 measuring stations worldwide — is subject to a margin of error.  NASA admits this means it is far from certain that 2014 set a record at all.

Spacecraft Nears Pluto After Nine-Year Trip.  NASA spacecraft New Horizons is finally drawing close to Pluto almost nine years after setting off on the three-billion-mile journey from Earth.  Pluto is around 3.67 billion miles from the Sun and, when it was discovered in 1930, it was the planet furthest from the solar system's centre.

Before explosion, NASA knew aging Soviet engines posed risks.  Years before an unmanned rocket erupted in a fireball in October, NASA officials knew the metal in its 50-year-old Soviet-made engines could crack, causing fuel to leak and ignite, government documents show.  As early as 2008, a NASA committee warned about the "substantial" risk of using the decades-old engines, and a fire during a 2011 engine test in Mississippi heightened the agency's concern.

Lockheed Gets NASA Funding for the SR-72 Hypersonic Spy Drone.  NASA awarded Lockheed Martin a modest $892,292 earlier this month to study the feasibility of developing an unmanned hypersonic spy plane called the SR-72.  This superfast recon drone, first teased in November 2013, would fly at speeds of Mach 6.0, or 4,500 mph.  That's almost double the speed of the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, which made its first flight 50 years ago.

NASA's $349 million monument to its drift.  In June, NASA finished work on a huge construction project here in Mississippi:  a $349 million laboratory tower, designed to test a new rocket engine in a chamber that mimicked the vacuum of space.  Then, NASA did something odd.  As soon as the work was done, it shut the tower down.  The project was officially "mothballed" — closed up and left empty — without ever being used.

NASA launches Orion spacecraft.  [Lockheed Martin Corp.] handled the $370 million test flight for NASA from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, opting for the Delta IV rocket this time given its heft.

Design a climate change coping app and win cash in NASA's new $35,000 challenge.  NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) are offering more than $35,000 in prizes to citizens who design apps — computer applications — to make use of available climate data to respond to climate change.  The competition opens Dec. 15.  The challenge stems from the latest National Climate Assessment that says the U.S. already faces or will face challenges because of climate change.

Where did Earth's water come from? Rosetta data muddies [the] picture.  Water vapor emitted by Comet 67P/Churyumov-Geramisenko is very different from the water found on Earth, casting doubt on the belief that Earth's water originally came from comets. [...] A leading theory to explain the Earth's oceans has been that the water was delivered from space by heavy bombardment by comets in the distant past.

The Editor says...
No, the "leading theory" is in the first chapter of the Bible.  Only a fool would believe that comets from nowhere delivered the oceans to this planet, especially considering that the mass of the oceans is 1.35 x 10¹⁸ metric tons, and further considering the fact that comets must have stopped bringing water (for no reason) sometime before written history began, and the comets from nowhere delivered water to this planet, but not to Venus or Mars.

NASA's New Horizons Pluto Probe 'Wakes Up' for Work.  From 2.9 billion miles away, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft let its handlers know on Saturday that it has awakened from hibernation and is ready for the climax of its nine-year trip to Pluto.  The first signals were received at the mission's control center at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland via a giant radio antenna in Australia just before 9:30 p.m. ET, nearly four and a half hours after it was sent by the piano-sized probe.  It takes that long for signals to travel between there and here at the speed of light.

The Editor says...
Wow-eeee!  I just can't wait to see what Pluto looks like, especially after we spent $650 million for the pictures — assuming there'e enough light to make pictures.

51 Examples of Government Waste.  [#43] NASA spent $360,000 for people to stay in slightly declined beds for 70 days to test the effects of gravity on humans over long durations of time.  NASA had already conducted this experiment many times since the 1960s.  [#44] NASA gave two grants totaling $237,205 to the University of Washington to study how rainfall effects the red crab's annual migration to Christmas Island.  Researchers hope this study will help them better understand the potential consequences of climate change for the red crabs.

Mystery Surrounds NASA's Secret Mission in Africa.  A NASA official recently confirmed that one of the agency's aircraft had been spotted on an American military airstrip in eastern Africa a few weeks ago, but like a series of U.S. military officials, declined to say what the space agency's high-tech bird was doing there.  "I really can't give you any of the details," Jim Alexander, a NASA official with the WB-57 High Altitude Research Program, told ABC News.  "You know, the airplane was there, you see it in the picture.  But I really can't tell you what it was for."

The wobbling of Saturn's moon might mean there's an ocean sloshing inside of it.  Planets aren't always filled with molten rock, and guessing the composition of distant planets can be a tricky business.  But scientists now believe that Saturn's moon Mimas has one of two things under its icy, rocky surface:  a core shaped like a football or a liquid ocean.  In a study published Friday [10/17/2014] in Science, researchers analyzed Mimas's movements as it orbited Saturn.  By looking at images from NASA's Cassini satellite, they determined how much Mimas was wobbling.  The wobble was a lot wonkier than expected, leaving the research team puzzled.

The Editor says...
That's all very amusing, and it must be nice to make a living by engaging in idle speculation about such immaterial concerns.  (That's a problem if they are government scientists whose paychecks come from tax dollars.)  But the maximum temperature of Mimas is something like 80 or 85 degrees Kelvin, and there aren't many materials that "slosh" at those temperatures.

Having solved all other problems...
White House Seeks Ideas For Building a 'Solar System Civilization'.  While the rise of the barbarous Islamic State and the spread of the modern day plague of Ebola has many concerned about the state of civilization here on earth, some at the White House are turning their attention beyond our planet.  A Tuesday [10/14/2014] entry on the White House blog solicits ideas for "massless exploration and bootstrapping a Solar System civilization" and "how the [Obama] Administration, the private sector, philanthropists, the research community, and storytellers can further these goals."  "Bootstrapping" is a term employed by Dr. Phillip Metzger, former NASA research physicist now on the University of Central Florida faculty.

Get ready! NASA's MAVEN mission is about to reach Mars.  The spacecraft, the first mission to examine the planet's upper atmosphere, was 218 million kilometers away from Earth on Wednesday [9/17/2014] and a mere 1.2 million kilometers from Mars.

MAVEN takes off: what you need to know about NASA's new mission to Mars.  Today [11/18/2013], NASA will launch a new mission — one that cost $671 million and has been in development for 10 years — to determine what happened to the water on Mars.

The Editor says...
How will your life improve if and when NASA reaches an indisputable conclusion about what happened to the water on Mars — assuming they can tell if there ever was any water?  Such a discovery won't make any difference to anybody.  The entire project is a complete waste of taxpayers' money.

MAVEN spacecraft enters Mars orbit to explore its climate change.  It won't land on the red planet but instead study Mars' atmosphere from above to answer questions about its climate change, NASA says.  NASA's MAVEN craft will live up to its formal name — the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution craft — by helping scientists figure out how ancient Mars changed so dramatically into the planet we know today.

The Editor says...
The writer of the article immediately above relies (as Perry Mason would say) on facts not in evidence.  How do NASA scientists know with any certainty what Mars looked like long ago, and what makes them think Mars has changed at all?  More importantly, how is the history of the Martian climate relevant to anything on Earth?

NASA picks Boeing and SpaceX to ferry astronauts.  NASA will turn to aerospace giant Boeing and "new space" startup SpaceX to launch U.S. astronauts again from American shores, ending a reliance on Russian Soyuz capsules that began after the last space shuttle landed on Earth three years ago.

Boeing and SpaceX Will Fly Astronauts to the International Space Station.  In a much anticipated announcement, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said today (Sep. 16) during a webcast that spacecraft made by Boeing Company and SpaceX will carry American astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) by 2017.  Two vehicles, Boeing's CST-100 and SpaceX's Dragon V2, will launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida and take Americans into low Earth orbit, before docking with the ISS.  Each company will run between two to six missions, carrying teams of four astronauts per mission.

NASA's Mars Curiosity rover reaches 'far frontier'.  The biggest Mars rover ever made landed on the Red Planet in August 2012 after a dramatic touchdown, with the goal of exploring the terrain for traces that life may once have existed.

The Editor says...
Or, to put it another way, looking for traces of life that probably never existed.

New space race: 3 companies vie to build space shuttle successor.  The agency says a decision on which company will build its next-generation vehicle to put astronauts in space is imminent.  A $4 billion contract is at stake, and that's made for some intense competition.  Boeing is one of three companies competing to build the successor to the space shuttle.  It hopes its CST-100 capsule will be chosen to ferry Americans to the International Space Station.

Scientists think they have dust specks from outside our solar system.  Researchers studying the contents of a capsule returned to Earth in 2006 at the conclusion of the Stardust spacecraft's primary mission believe that they have found seven remarkable specks on its collection panels.  Although they weigh about 10 trillionths of a gram in all, the microscopic motes of "alien" dust described in the journal Science could alter astronomers' perception of the galaxy beyond our own stellar neighborhood.

The Editor says...
So-called scientists are determined to find and explain the real origins of the universe — not that mythical story in the Bible — and they are willing to base their beliefs on a few picograms of dust.

Historic rendezvous between a comet and a space probe.  If all goes well, the mission in November will carry out the first landing on a comet.  Rosetta will send a robot chemistry lab to the surface to delve into a theory that comets hold the key to understanding how our star system formed.  "After completing a complex series of nine orbital manoeuvres since the end of hibernation on January 20, Rosetta is finally in position to rendezvous with the comet," the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Tuesday [8/5/2014].

The Editor says...
As usual, the whole purpose of this probe is to find a way to disprove the first chapter of the Bible.  That's what they mean when they talk about "searching for clues about the origin of the universe."  At least in this case, it's the European Space Agency throwing money into space, not NASA.

The Mars Mission: Red Ink for the Red Planet.  [Scroll down]  What we don't see with our earth-bound eyes is a dollar sign anywhere in this exciting news.  Visionaries aren't fond of mundane concerns such as the costs of their pet projects.  George W. Bush, who was never very good at counting costs, urged the nation to embrace the Mars mission in 2004.  Bob Park of the American Physical Society recalled at the time that the president's father was boosting a Mars mission when he was in the White House in 1989.  "He invoked Columbus, as they always do," Park said.  "He said like Columbus 'we dream of shores we've never seen' and went on to propose a return to the Moon and then on to Mars.  And that lasted until they got a cost estimate."  Cost estimates of the Mars mission appear to be rarer than moon rock and wide as the solar system, ranging from $6 billion to $500 billion or more.  The race to put men on the moon has been pegged at $100 billion.  The space station cost another $100 billion.

Editor's note:
The total cost of the International Space Station, through 2015, is estimated at $150 billion.  [1] [2]

Is the International Space Station Worth $100 Billion?  Asking the International Space Station to justify its existence is a tall order.  NASA estimates the station has cost U.S. taxpayers $50 billion since 1994 — and overall, its price tag has been pegged at $100 billion by all member nations. [...] The space agency contends that the weightless environment provided by the station offers a unique way of unmasking processes of cell growth and chemistry that are hidden on Earth.  But some critics don't see a zero gravity laboratory as filling a crucial scientific need.

The Editor says...
Why study zero-gravity cell growth?  Nobody operates a farm in zero gravity.

Congress should phase out the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.  NASA could not mask its embarrassment when the $125 million Mars Climate Orbiter was lost after reaching the Red Planet because technicians neglected to convert crucial numbers from English to metric units.

Saving Two American Astronauts From Russian Blackmail.  The United States paid Russia 60 million dollars per American astronaut to get access to the Space Station.  Russia pledged tit-for-tat measures in revenge for U.S. sanctions, by refusing to allow Americans access to our 150 billion-dollar International Space Station, of which the United States paid 84 percent of the cost.  Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin even threatened to cut off American access to the station, saying "I propose that the United States delivers its astronauts to the ISS with the help of a trampoline."  Sadly, today NASA cannot put men into space without Russian cooperation and hasn't done so for years.

Why NASA is Stagnant.  [W]hile NASA was able to put men on the Moon within eight years of the Apollo program's start, the space agency has been unable to go further in the four and a half decades since.  In fact, it is no longer capable of going to the Moon and, as these lines are written, is totally adrift, with no real plan for going anywhere.

The Editor says...
This is the perfect time to eliminate NASA — while nothing is being accomplished.

NASA to launch replacement global warming satellite.  The $468 million mission is designed to study the main driver of climate change emitted from smokestacks and tailpipes.

The Editor says...
By that, the Associated Press apparently means carbon dioxide; however, CO2 is not the main driver of climate change.  In my opinion, the variable output power of the sun is.  Nor is carbon dioxide the most influential greenhouse gas.  That would be water vapor.  Even so, one must give the AP credit for one thing:  At least they mentioned the half-billion-dollar price tag of this futile mission.  Most news coverage of NASA projects omit dollar amounts.

Activists Seek to Block Florida Space Launch Facility.  Environmental activists are attempting to block construction of a space launch facility in Florida, claiming the proposed site should be preserved for scrub jays and other species.

Dramatic NASA satellite images show our air getting cleaner.  If Americans are breathing easier than they were a decade ago, these new NASA satellite images may help explain why.  They show — in vividly color-coded maps — that levels of nitrogen dioxide, an important air pollutant, have plummeted across the country over the last decade.

The Editor says...
That's all very nice, and it proves that the EPA's work is finished, so we can get rid of the EPA now.  But why was this a NASA project rather than a NOAA project?

NASA's deep-space craft readying for launch.  The U.S. space shuttle program retired in 2011, leaving American astronauts to hitchhike into orbit.  But after three long years, NASA's successor is almost ready to make an entrance.  Orion, the agency's newest manned spaceship, is being prepared for its first mission in December.  In future missions, it will journey into deep space — to Mars and beyond — farther than humans have ever gone before.

The Editor says...
There is no mention of the cost of Orion in this article, but it is estimated elsewhere at $500 million per launch.

Global Warming 'Fabricated' by NASA and NOAA.  Scientists at two of the world's leading climate centres — NASA and NOAA — have been caught out manipulating temperature data to overstate the extent of the 20th century "global warming".  The evidence of their tinkering can clearly be seen at Real Science, where blogger Steven Goddard has posted a series of graphs which show "climate change" before and after the adjustments.  When the raw data is used, there is little if any evidence of global warming and some evidence of global cooling.  However, once the data has been adjusted — i.e., fabricated by computer models — 20th century 'global warming' suddenly looks much more dramatic.  This is especially noticeable on the US temperature records.

The news media waves a shiny object to divert us from Barack H. Obama's many scandals.  Providing those distractions may be their primary mission!
NASA Curiosity Rover Celebrates First Martian Year.   Today marks the first Martian year — 687 Earth days — since NASA's Curiosity rover landed safely on Mars.  The robot has had a string of groundbreaking discoveries since it landed on the red planet in August 2012.

NASA: Humans on Mars by 2035 is 'primary focus'.  "In the near term, Mars remains our primary focus," Ellen Stofan, NASA's chief scientist said May 15 in a talk at the Royal Institution in London. [...] "I don't think that first group will necessarily stay there, but we need to think of this as establishing an outpost," she said.  "We want it to be possible for those people to come back if they want to, but it's the beginning of sustained human presence on Mars."  Stofan said the drive behind this huge undertaking is the fundamental question: "Are we alone?"  NASA also plans to continue studying the moon and asteroids, she said.

The Editor says...
Someday the American taxpayers are going to realize that as a country we do not have money to spend on the exploration of other planets.  There is no practical reason for it, and it does not "promote the general Welfare," as some people tend to claim about every government undertaking.  Samples of lunar dirt were brought back in the 1970's and they're just dry, sterile and lifeless rocks and dirt.  The same is almost certainly true of the rocks and dirt on asteroids and other planets.  NASA has no tangible end product, and even if NASA could import a truckload of dirt from the Martian surface, it would be a laboratory specimen of no value to the general public.

As NASA seeks next mission, Russia holds the trump card.  As an uncommonly brisk night fell over Houston last week a tiny Russian spacecraft, bathed in blinding sunlight, re-entered the Earth's atmosphere and plunged toward a dusty steppe in Kazakhstan.  Of the three astronauts inside one was American, Rick Mastracchio, returning from a 188-day stay aboard the International Space Station. His arrival was closely watched in Houston, where Johnson Space Center has responsibility for U.S. human operations in space. [...] Such is today's space Realpolitik that, while the United States paid for most of the $140 billion space station, launched nearly all of it into orbit, and controls most of its day-to-day operations from Houston, Russia still holds the trump card:  access.  "They have us right where they want us," said three-time NASA astronaut Mike Coats.

Where no man has gone before.  James Van Allen, after whom the radiation belt is named, asked in 2004 whether human spaceflight is a legacy dream, a survival of some outdated science-fiction notion, now overtaken by harsh reality. [...] He asks the obvious question:  why bet on the loser, manned space flight when unmanned space has proved the winner?

Russia to ban US from using Space Station over Ukraine sanctions.  Russia is to deny the US future use of the International Space Station beyond 2020 and will also bar its rocket engines from launching US military satellites as it hits back at American sanctions imposed over Ukraine crisis.  Russia's deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin announced a series of punitive measures on Tuesday [5/13/2014] against the US in response to sanctions imposed after Russia annexed Crimea.  The two countries have long cooperated closely on space exploration despite their clashes in foreign policy.  The Space Station is manned by both American and Russian crew, but the only way to reach it is by using Russia's Soyuz spacecraft.

As Obama tightens sanctions, Russia notes its control of U.S. space access.  In the event of escalating sanctions, Russian diplomats promise a "tit for tat" exchange of punishments.  Which might seem comical given Russia's relatively small economic power.  Except for one major thing.  Because Obama allowed the U.S. space shuttle program to die in 2011, scores of missions short of the crafts' designed lifespans, the only way for American astronauts to reach space and return now is in Soyuz spacecraft atop Russian rockets.  This relinquished America's hard-won space superiority.

Rocket Science: House Conservative Targets NASA's $3 million Spent to Find Intelligent Life ... in Congress?  An Arizona conservative congressman is shining light on how President Barack Obama is using $3 million of taxpayer money to teach National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) officials how to lobby Congress.  In the first of a series of efforts targeting wasteful government spending, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) wrote to House Appropriations Committee chairman Rep. Hal Rogers (R-KY) last week to pressure him to include language banning the Obama administration from spending money on the program.

Nasa Cuts Ties With Russia Over Ukraine.  Nasa employees cannot travel to Russia, host visitors, or email Russian counterparts, according to a memo sent out to workers.  Activities relating to the International Space Station are exempt.  In a statement Nasa said it will continue to work with Russia's space agency "to maintain safe and continuous operation" of the station.

The Editor says...
It's hard to imagine that the Russians will continue to provide transportation for American astronauts if the U.S. is burning its bridges.  In other words, this is a bad time to be an American in space.

NASA Pays Russians $71 Million to Send American Astronaut into Space.  President Obama cancelled NASA's $9 billion space program in 2010, which was set to build three new shuttles.  "To people who are working on these programs, this is like a death in the family," NASA chief Charles Bolden said at the time.  Bolden has expressed concern about relying on the Russians for space missions, and others are worried that current tensions with the country could leave American astronauts stranded in space.

NASA launches a mission to measure snowpack in California, Colorado mountain ranges.  The snowpack atop mountain peaks in California and Colorado has a new set of eyes watching from high above to better gauge the amount of water that will rumble down rivers and streams each spring as runoff.

Here's How NASA Thinks Society Will Collapse.  Few think Western civilization is on the brink of collapse — but it's also doubtful the Romans and Mesopotamians saw their own demise coming either.  If we're to avoid their fate, we'll need policies to reduce economic inequality and preserve natural resources, according to a NASA-funded study that looked at the collapses of previous societies. [...] As limited resources plague the working class, the wealthy, insulated from the problem, "continue consuming unequally" and exacerbate the issue, the study said.

The Editor asks...
What does this have to do with aeronautics and space?

Our Comrades at NASA.  You may well wonder just what NASA, (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) is doing funding research on the decline of the Roman Empire when officially it is supposed to be responsible for America's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research.

Which Gov't Agency Is Becoming an 'Organ to Play the Music of Karl Marx'?  Glenn Beck slammed NASA on his radio program Tuesday [3/18/2014], saying it should be "defunded right now" and is being fitted into an "organ to play the music of Karl Marx."  Beck's ire centered around a study sponsored by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center claiming industrialized nations have created an unsustainable model doomed to implode, and the solution is to dramatically reduce resource consumption and income inequality.

NASA is planning to make water and oxygen on the Moon and Mars by 2020.  NASA is forging ahead with plans to make water, oxygen, and hydrogen on the surface of the Moon and Mars.  If we ever want to colonize other planets, it is vital that we find a way of extracting these vital gases and liquids from moons and planets, rather than transporting them from Earth.

The Editor says...
Projects of this sort take money out of your pocket and result in no benefit to you whatsoever.

NASA launches newest communication satellite.  This newest $350 million satellite — which will work its way up from a temporarily low orbit — is designated "L" in the TDRS series.

Nasa to try growing vegetables and herbs on the moon to see if humans could one day live there.  Nasa is to try growing vegetables and herbs on the moon to see if humans could one day live there.  The US space agency plans to send seeds to the moon in 2015 in sealed canisters containing everything that is needed for the seedlings to thrive.  As well as ten seeds each of basil and turnips, there will also be around 100 seeds of Arabidopsis, a small flowering plant related to cabbage and mustard.

MAVEN takes off.  Today [11/18/2013], NASA will launch a new mission — one that cost $671 million and has been in development for 10 years — to determine what happened to the water on Mars. [...] It could be that some of the missing water has been absorbed into the soil or simply frozen.  But scientists are intrigued by another possibility — water on Mars may have evaporated and been lost to space.

NASA Aims for Mars, With Robotic Maven Set to Soar.  The Maven mission will cost $671 million over its entire lifetime.

NASA launches new spacecraft to orbit Mars.  You may have heard it before: Billions of years ago, Mars probably looked more like Earth does now, with clouds and oceans and a much thicker atmosphere. [...] So what happened? Where did the air and water go? [...] NASA says the mission will cost $671 million.

The Editor says...
NASA — or at least CNN — presumes to know what Mars looked like "billions of years ago."

It's Official! Voyager 1 Spacecraft Has Left [the] Solar System.  A spacecraft from Earth has left its cosmic backyard and taken its first steps in interstellar space.  After streaking through space for nearly 35 years, NASA's robotic Voyager 1 probe finally left the solar system in August 2012, a study published today (Sept. 12) in the journal Science reports.

Voyager probe 'leaves Solar System'.  Launched in 1977, Voyager was sent initially to study the outer planets, but then just kept on going.  Today, the veteran Nasa mission is almost 19 billion km (12 billion miles) from home.  This distance is so vast that it takes 17 hours now for a radio signal sent from Voyager to reach receivers here on Earth.

Exiting the Solar System and Fulfilling a Dream.  By today's standards, the spacecraft's technology is laughable:  it carries an 8-track tape recorder and computers with one-240,000th the memory of a low-end iPhone.  When it left Earth 36 years ago, it was designed as a four-year mission to Saturn, and everything after that was gravy.

The Editor says...
This event happened about a year before it was announced.  I suspect NASA is just now announcing it to push Obama's many scandals off the front page of the local newspapers.  In the next few weeks, look for other wonderful discoveries to be announced by various government agencies.  Don't listen to the American mainstream "news" media without a great deal of skepticism.

Google's Brin, Page lose Pentagon fuel subsidy on private jets.  Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page have lost a jet fuel perk, according to a new report.  Google and the Pentagon inked a deal, which started in 2007, that let Google purchase fuel for its entire fleet — seven jets and two helicopters — at a discounted price from the US government, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Google Jet Fleet Loses a Pentagon Fuel Perk.  The agreement between the Google founders and the government, which started in 2007, ended Aug. 31 after officials at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration — which sponsored the arrangement — opted not to renew it, according to a Pentagon spokeswoman.

Man Made Climate Change Arguments Don't Survive Scrutiny.  As an example, in 2006 NASA predicted sunspot cycle 24, the current cycle we're in now, would be the strongest in 300 years.  The reality is that it will be the weakest in 100 years.  They could not have been more wrong.  Computer models from the 1990s predicted that global average surface temperature would continue to increase after the year 2000.  They were wrong.  There has been no measured temperature increase since 1998.

Everything you need to know about LADEE, the thing NASA just sent to the moon.  It's the first spacecraft designed and built by NASA's Ames Research Center and the first spacecraft to use a modular body.  It's 7.7 feet high, 4.74 feet deep and wide, and powered by a bunch of solar cells mounted on the body.

The Editor says...
The article goes on and on and on about the technical specifications of the satellite, and indeed, tells you "everything you need to know" about it — except the cost.  Apparently the Washington Post writer believes you don't "need to know" that.  Once again NASA, with nothing else to do, is flying around in circles, but this time the circles will be around the moon.

LADEE.  The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) is designed to study the Moon's thin exosphere and the lunar dust environment. [...] Total mission cost is $263 million.

Energy Department nominee struggled with financial management at NASA.  Elizabeth Robinson, the woman President Obama has named to make the Energy Department's oft-criticized contracting more efficient, is leaving behind a trail of spending questions in her past job as NASA's chief financial officer.  A Washington Times review of NASA inspector general reports finds the space agency struggled to achieve austerity under Ms. Robinson's financial leadership, as cost overruns grew sixfold from $50 million in 2009 to $315 million in 2012.

Sounds like busy work to me.
NASA To Study How Pollution, Storms And Climate Mix.  NASA aircraft will take to the skies over the southern United States this summer to investigate how air pollution and natural emissions, which are pushed high into the atmosphere by large storms, affect atmospheric composition and climate.

Caution:  Chinese propaganda site.  May not be factual.
US eyes Mars mission.  The Obama administration has called to an end to the Constellation program which was initiated by the Bush administration, but his new space policy commits to increasing NASA funding and focuses on a Mars mission.  What does his administration's Aerospace plan mean for the US?  "We start by increasing NASA's budget by $6 billion dollars over the next 5 years. [...]"

NASA Makes Another Useless Global Warming Prediction.  A new NASA study says global warming could "increase the risk for extreme rainfall and drought."  We've heard this sort of threat many times before and, no, there's nothing to see here.

Another day, another pointless and expensive experiment.
Why NASA Is Firing Cell Phones Into Space.  The space agency this week took a handful of cheap but powerful smartphones, slapped them to a gigantic rocket and blasted them into low-earth orbit to see how they'd fare.  The project, called PhoneSat, is one of those wacky experiments that seems at first to have nothing to do with science.

US won't be returning to moon, NASA chief says.  "NASA is not going to the Moon with a human as a primary project probably in my lifetime," Bolden told a joint meeting of the Space Studies Board and the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board in Washington last week, according to Jeff Foust of SpacePolitics.com.  "And the reason is, we can only do so many things."  Instead, he said the focus would remain on human missions to asteroids and to Mars.

Senator: NASA to lasso asteroid, bring it closer.  NASA is planning for a robotic spaceship to lasso a small asteroid and park it near the moon for astronauts to explore, a top senator revealed Friday [4/5/2013].

The Editor says...
Park it near the moon?  Why not park it near the Earth?  Would that not be more reasonable?  Are we going to send astronauts almost all the way to the moon, so they can study a hijacked asteroid instead?  Not likely.  Chances are, every asteroid is a mass of sterile dirt and rocks, much like Mars and the Moon.  I suspect the robots have already seen everything worth seeing.  With a national debt approaching $17 trillion, do we have the money for this foolishness?  What could NASA possibly find on a randomly selected asteroid that would justify this expense?  And what exactly IS the price tag on this boondoggle?

This article makes no mention of lunar orbit, except in a photo caption.
NASA unveils plans to tow asteroid into Earth's orbit for astronauts to explore: senator.  Florida Sen. Bill Nelson said Friday $100 million of President Obama's budget will be set aside for the space mission.  The two-phased plan would help put an astronaut on an asteroid by 2021, four years ahead of Obama's previous goal.

Treasonous Obama Strikes Again.  The world is laughing at us.  It has come to light that the Obama administration has allowed hundreds of Chinese nationals — who are closely associated with the Chinese Liberation Army — to work in a sensitive area of NASA's Langley Research Center.  What could possibly go wrong?  Here's what:  one of these nationals, Bo Jiang, was arrested on Monday [3/18/2013] at Dulles International Airport for apparently attempting to take sensitive information out of the U.S.

NASA's Chinese Spy Problem.  Looks like NASA is suffering from a massive infestation of Chinese spies.  So, let me get this straight (and I'm not being funny here):
  •   We've got radical Islamists in our government, committing a soft coup from within.  Check.
  •   We've got Commie radicals in our unions, schools and major institutions.  Check.
  •   We've got Commies, radical Islamists and spies in our political ranks.  Check.
  •   We've got Commie spies from China throughout our scientific communities.  Check.
The only surprise here, is that we haven't been totally destroyed from the enemies within yet.

NASA — Subjugated, "Repurposed" and Sleeping With Our Enemies.  When Obama came into power over four years ago, I knew it was the opening volley of the destruction of much of what America holds dear.  One of the first things he did was attack NASA.  People may have forgotten the layoffs and changes in NASA.  I haven't.  Obama has overseen the Islamization of NASA with instructions to run a Mohammedan outreach program.  He cut the Constellation program, intended to develop new rockets to carry people into space and the space shuttle program was mothballed — with a special dissing of Texas because they bucked Obama's EPA mandates.  Stellar thuggery gone mad — space exploration, the Chicago way.

FBI probe of defense tech allegedly leaked from NASA stonewalled, sources say.  A four-year FBI investigation into the transfer of classified weapons technology to China and other countries from NASA's Ames Research Center is being stonewalled by government officials, sources tell FoxNews.com.  Documents obtained by FoxNews.com, which summarize these and other allegations and were given to congressional sources last week by a whistle-blower, described how a "secret grand jury" was to be convened in February 2011 to hear testimony from informants in the case, including a senior NASA engineer.  But federal prosecutor Gary Fry was removed from the case, which was then transferred from one office in the Northern District of California to another where, according to the documents, "this case now appears to be stalled."  "The information is staggering," the whistle-blower told FoxNews.com.

NASA spends your money on projects unrelated to space travel:
The Green Ninja.  What, you might ask, is the Green Ninja?  It is an animated climate-action superhero aimed squarely at school children.  In other words, mind poisoning climate alarmist propaganda meant to indoctrinate children into the green belief system.  What's worse, it is being funded by US government grant money.  Not since communism has such a concerted effort been made to brainwash the young before they have a chance to learn how to think for themselves. [...] The project has received a $390,000 grant from NASA to support professional development for teachers, and $20,000 from PG&E to pilot an energy reduction contest for Santa Clara County middle schoolers.

NASA to smash two probes into the moon today.  [Scroll down]  This information will give scientists insights into what lies beneath the lunar surface, and in addition to enlightening us about the moon, it will tell us about the evolution of Earth and other rocky worlds in the inner solar system.

NASA crashes two probes into a mountain on the moon.  A pair of NASA moon-mapping probes smashed themselves into a lunar mountain on Monday [12/17/2012], ending a year-long mission that is shedding light on how the solar system formed.

The Editor says...
The two articles immediately above included no mention of the cost of this mission.  Nor is there any explanation of how the average taxpayer benefits from gravity mapping the moon.  Nor is there any proof that NASA is any closer to disproving the first chapter of the Bible, which offers a theory (at the very least) of "how the solar system formed."

The Air Force has its own space program.
U.S. military sends mystery space drone back into orbit.  The U.S. military launched its highly secretive unmanned $1 billion X-37B space plane into orbit today from Cape Canaveral on top of an Atlas V rocket.  The U.S. Air Force which operates the small, top-secret version of the space shuttle still will not say how long the third X-37B mission will last, nor what the vehicle will be doing in orbit.

NASA to send new rover to Mars in 2020.  Most missions to Mars have failed, although there have been a handful of successful projects, including the Pathfinder, which landed in 1997 and the Spirit, which landed in 2004 and roamed the surface for six years before contact was lost.  The $2.5 billion nuclear-powered Curiosity is designed to hunt for soil-based signatures of life on the Earth's nearest neighbor and send back data to prepare for a future human mission.

The Editor says...
How many Martian probes do we really need?  There have been multiple robotic probes sent to Mars already, and they have all landed in exactly the most favorable spots to "find evidence of life" or to "pave the way for manned missions" to Mars, etc., and they have all found nothing but sterile dirt.  Every Mars mission is called a success, even if nothing is found.  The Martian probe business is a classic example of multi-billion-dollar pork that benefits almost no one in this country.

Of Space and Men.  With its moon mission accomplished, if NASA was to achieve the eternal life that Ronald Reagan identified, space travel needed to be cheaper.  The answer appeared to be a reusable orbiter.  The space shuttle promised, but it failed to deliver.  Over its 30-year life, 135 missions have cost over $200 billion, two orbiters, and fourteen astronaut lives.

As far as why the Columbia was destroyed any analysis or comments regarding politics is outside the scope of this website and anything written here is pure conjecture.  It is very difficult to believe that anyone in our government would willingly give an order to murder seven astronauts and destroy a space shuttle.  It would be far easier to believe that Columbia's destruction was simply a terrible accident.  Either a test of the HAARP transmitter was being conducted without the knowledge that a Space Shuttle was reentering the atmosphere or the Columbia was part of a test that went terribly wrong. … The reason for the cover-up is probably to keep the capabilities of the HAARP system secret.*

NASA budget requested for 2015.  $17,460,600,000 — including 3,050,800,000 for the International Space Station