GOP denial of reality is fundamental

 

Destroyer of worlds

 If Trump 2.0 intended to destroy the country (and maybe the planet), what would they do differently than they are doing now?

The Trump administration has asked NASA employees to draw up plans to end at least two major satellite missions.

[...]

The data the two missions collect is widely used, including by scientists, oil and gas companies and farmers who need detailed information about carbon dioxide and crop health. They are the only two federal satellite missions that were designed and built specifically to monitor planet-warming greenhouse gases.

[...]

The equipment in space is state of the art and is expected to function for many more years, according to scientists who worked on the missions. An official review by NASA in 2023 found that "the data are of exceptionally high quality" and recommended continuing the mission for at least three years.

[...]

It is unclear why the Trump administration seeks to end the missions.

[...]

Two current NASA employees also confirmed that NASA mission leaders were told to make termination plans for projects that would lose funding under President Trump's proposed budget for the next fiscal year, or FY 2026, which begins Oct. 1. The employees asked to remain anonymous, because they were told they would be fired if they revealed the request.

  NPR

 They are our elected administration.

Also...anything Biden did, Trump will undo, regardless of its success or usefulness.

Earth is drying up

 

Obviously, NASA research is going to have to be shut down.

We still have SpaceX

 I mean, Elon has SpaceX.  America has shit.  Will the last one out, please turn out the lights?  Or wait.  The lights are probably being turned off by the new regime.

Trade-offs

 

Stop electing Republicans.

If Democrats can regain both houses of Congress in 2026, we have a chance, with great cost, to rebalance.  If they don't, I think we'll be in a nationwide collapse with global repercussions.  If things ARE reparable at that point, it will be decades.

DOGE was NEVER about efficiency

 

Only SpaceX from now on

 

So this is where we are

NASA personnel were told to “drop everything” to scrub public sites of mentions of DEI, indigenous people, environmental justice, and women in leadership.

[...]

The directive, sent on January 22 and obtained by 404 Media, states:

“Per NASA HQ direction, we are required to scrub mentions of the following terms from our public sites by 5pm ET today. This is a drop everything and reprioritize your day request. Note that the list below is the list that exists this morning, but it may grow as the day goes on.

DEIA
Diversity (in context of DEIA)
Equity (“ “)
Inclusion (“ “)
Accessibility (“ “)
MSI
Minority Serving Institution
Indigenous People
EEJ
EJ
Environmental Justice
Underrepresented groups/people
Anything specifically targeting women (women in leadership, etc.)”

  404 Media

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Trump continues to drive the country toward cryptocurrency

To line his own pockets, of course, Elon has convinced him to invest in crypto where they both hope to increase their fortunes. And most likely destroy the US economy, upsetting global economics. Fasten your seatbelts.

Also...Elon appears to be raking in Trump life perks...

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Speaking of Elon Musk election interference...

That's not all there is to worry about him.  He and Trump both have sensitive national security information and a love of Putin.

What if a Pentagon contractor from South Africa, using his money and social media platform to try and return a seemingly declining former president labeled a “fascist” by his former top aide to the White House, did not have the best interests of America at heart?

[...]

On Thursday, the [Wall Street Journal] owned by Rupert Murdoch reported that Elon Musk, the CEO of X and Tesla, has been “in regular contact” with Russian President Vladimir Putin since late 2022.

[...]

In October 2022, [Musk] was adamant that he was being defamed: Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, had just reported that the 53-year-old billionaire spoke with Putin before he himself proposed a Ukraine “peace” deal on X — one that called for Kyiv ceding territory to Moscow and pledging to remain “neutral” by never joining NATO.

“I have spoken to Putin only once and that was about 18 months ago,” Musk responded. “The subject matter was space.”

But, according to the Journal, citing officials in the U.S., Europe and Russia, Musk has been engaged in conversations not just with Putin but “other high-ranking officials” ever since, “past 2022 and into this year.” Conversations have touched on everything from “geopolitical tensions,” the outlet reported — Putin asked Musk to shut off his Starlink internet service above Taiwan as a favor to China, where the billionaire also has substantial business dealings — to unspecified “personal topics.”

The Journal previously reported that Musk’s erratic behavior and use of illegal drugs was of concern to executives at his own company, raising questions as to why he still enjoys a security clearance from the Department of Defense.

  MSN

So they say

Astronomers say a Chinese satellite has been caught on video beaming down green lasers over the Hawaiian Islands.

[...]

The lasers flashed for just a couple of seconds and were initially thought to be from a NASA altimeter satellite. The NAOJ put out a correction note on Monday, Feb. 6 that said NASA scientists “did a simulation of the trajectory of satellites that have a similar instrument and found a most likely candidate as the ACDL instrument by the Chinese Daqi-1/AEMS satellite.”

[...]

“It’s a Chinese satellite that is measuring pollutants, among other things,” said University of Hawaii Institute of Astronomy’s Roy Gal. “It has many different instruments on it … Some kind of topographical mapping or they’re also used for measuring stuff in Earth’s atmosphere, and I think that’s what it is, environmental measurement satellite.”

  The Hill

So now we're just guessing.

A former chief of staff of Marine Forces Pacific had a different perspective. “I’m not sure, and this is my opinion, why the Chinese — who are probably some of the most prolific polluters on the planet — would be collecting data on pollutants on this side of the Pacific,” say Ray L’Heureux.

Good question.

“The U.S. has satellites to do the same thing, so, in this case, despite all the flurry, well deserved flurry, about Chinese spy satellites and other devices, this one is just orbiting earth and has a known orbit,” Gal said.

[...]

“It seems to me that those tensions are there. People are a little antsy, and I think that we just need to be a little bit more aware, vigilant,” L’Heureux said.

A little more honest a long time ago might have gone a long way.

Hopefully, Mitch, they're coming to take you home.

UPDATE 07:52 pm:

Are we gonna shoot it down?

About that asteroid...

Can't help but wonder what unintended consequences might show up in the future. "Seemed like a good idea at the time."

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

No shit

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Another Trump campaign ad in the spotlight

The Trump campaign took down a video late Thursday trumpeting NASA’s return to human spaceflight, after harsh criticism that it was politicizing the event and violating NASA advertising rules.

The video featured Trump watching last week’s launch from the Kennedy Space Center along with the slogan “Make Space Great Again” and historic footage from the Apollo era.

On Twitter, Karen Nyberg, a former astronaut and wife of Doug Hurley, who was carried to the International Space Station by the SpaceX launch, blasted the advertisement, saying she found “it disturbing that a video image of me and my son is being used in political propaganda without my knowledge or consent. That is wrong.”

  WaPo

So, not a Trump supporter?

But Internet posts are hard to delete forever; the ad surfaced on another YouTube page.

Of course. It will get around to all the MAGA base.

“Astronauts or employees who are currently employed by NASA cannot have their names, likenesses or other personality traits displayed in any advertisements or marketing material,” [NASA] rules say.

[...]

An online petition urging the campaign to remove the ad had more than 7,000 signatures by Friday. “NASA and the space industry as a whole have long tried to stay out of politics, and, until this Administration, that goal was at least partly attained,” the petition read.

NASA goes to great lengths to avoid endorsing any ideology or product, even going so far as to call the M&Ms astronauts gobble in space “candy-coated chocolates” out of fear of appearing to favor one brand of candy.

[...]

“Watching the ad, I was reminded of Richard Nixon at the time of Apollo 11,” said John Logsdon, a space historian and a professor emeritus at George Washington University. “He had nothing to do with Apollo 11; he just happened to be the president when it happened. But he wrapped himself in the event. And never once mentioned Kennedy.”

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Speaking of educated women...

RIP  Katherine Johnson

Falling behind

[Vice President Mike Pence announced] on Thursday at the same time that NASA's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released a damning report depicting a space agency willing to accept serious delays and to pay Boeing hundreds of millions of dollars for cost overruns [...] "After years of being out of the launch business, we're going to be back. And before spring arrives next year, we're going to send American astronauts on American rockets, from American soil, back into space.

"We're going to have our own platforms to take us back, and we don't need to hitch a ride with the Russians any more," he said.

[...]

In light of the OIG report, Pence's deadline puts SpaceX - and more specifically Boeing - on notice that missed deadlines and cost overruns associated with NASA's Commercial Crew Program are no longer acceptable. The OIG report states that delivery of a reliable launch system - rocket and spacecraft - is already two years behind schedule.

[...]

The OIG asserted that the "schedule slippage" was because Boeing missed a milestone deadline by 13 months, "and due to Boeing seeking higher prices than those specified in its fixed price contract".

  alJazeera

I know why he made this announcement on Thursday - news came out that China had hit a milestone in its schedule to send an unmanned craft to Mars next year - but I don't know how he plans to make the Commercial Crew Program (who says private industry is better at this than a government agency?) make up two years plus by spring. I'd like to think the equipment will be sound and ready before they put people in it.

The NASA OIG report could not have come a more damaging time. NASA is already facing stiff resistance in the US House of Representatives, where members are baulking at its $22.6bn budget request for 2020.

Currently, the US government is being funded by a continuing resolution set to expire in seven days on November 21. While Congress is expected to pass another continuing resolution to keep the government open, NASA's need for the extra money, and its ability to spend it wisely, is unresolved.

The OIG found that for the Commercial Crew Program, NASA agreed to pay Boeing an extra $287.2m on top of a multibillion-dollar fixed price contract. The payments, according to the report, were intended to help the Seattle-based company take the necessary steps to make up for lost time.

[...]

Boeing [...] said that [a] renegotiated contract offered NASA better terms that, in effect, increased Boeing's financial risk.

I find it hard to accept that Boeing made a deal that increased its financial risk.

"The structure of the original contract would have increased cost and schedule uncertainty and would have limited NASA's flexibility in mission planning," the company said.

"Boeing is also now holding all of the up-front mission costs, which NASA will not have to pay until after each mission is officially ordered and given the Authority to Proceed," it said.

So, the risk is that NASA never gets that authority. That's not a zero risk.

Boeing's launch system, called the Crew Space Transportation (CST)-100 Starliner spacecraft, has been designed to be a reusable capsule capable of taking up to seven passengers, or a mix of crew and cargo, up into low earth orbit.

Not exactly on a par with landing on Mars - something that Trump trumpeted would be happening. I don't know why he quit talking about that. Maybe he got distracted with more personal concerns. But it could be a profitable commerical enterprise if it actually ever got underway and was safe. And if enough people could come up with the price of a ticket to just circle the earth in low orbit.

By 2014, NASA chose to award the second and final phase agreements to Boeing and SpaceX, which took the form of firm-fixed-price contracts, to pay for further development, test flights and, perhaps most notably, crewed missions to the ISS.

According to the OIG report, these second-phase contracts in May of this year were worth $6.8bn, with Boeing accounting for $4.3bn, and its competitor SpaceX garnering roughly $2.5bn.

In addition, NASA has paid up through 2020 an averageof $85.4m a seat to Roscosmos, formerly known as Russia's Federal Space Agency, to send its astronauts on 70 completed and planned missions to the ISS on board Soyuz rockets.

Since 2017, the year when Commercial Crew Program launches were originally scheduled, NASA has paid approximately $1bn for 12 seats to send US astronauts to the ISS on Soyuz rockets, according to the OIG report.

By the way...how's that Space Force coming along?

Congress has yet to authorize the establishment of a U.S. Space Force.

  Military.com

They've been downgraded to a branch of the Air Force.

Oh, well. They have a logo..  (A cheap-looking reference to Star Trek.)

And a website.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Don't ask me - another thing...

Impeach before it's too late.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Don't ask me

The moon is a part of Mars.

UPDATE:







Amen

President Deals makes an offer

Prior to a phone call with NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson from the Oval Office in April 2017, Trump pressed Robert Lightfoot Jr., then the acting NASA administrator, for NASA's plans for Mars, New York Magazine reported Tuesday, citing an advance copy of Cliff Sims's upcoming book "Team of Vipers."

“Is there any way we could do it by the end of my first term?” Trump reportedly asked Lightfoot, who explained to the president that NASA planned to try a manned spaceflight by the 2030s and that there were logistical challenges of doing so before then.

[...]

“But what if I gave you all the money you could ever need to do it?” Trump asked. “What if we sent NASA’s budget through the roof, but focused entirely on that instead of whatever else you’re doing now. Could it work then?”

  The Hill

Let me guess. Lightfoot, unlike the ignorant ass in the oval office, knew that Congress holds the purse strings, not the president. Not to mention, NASA couldn't just drop everything they were doing.

Lightfoot reportedly responded to the president by telling him he didn't think that was possible. That left Trump "visibly disappointed," wrote Sims, a former White House communications staffer.

Trump also pressed the issue during the phone call with Whitson, saying that he wanted to get humans on Mars "at worst, during my second term."

A second term would indeed be at worst.

This is a book we're going to be getting more quotes from. There've already been some doozies, including from Stuff (notably with a nasty Paul Ryan take-down by Trump) and Axios (recounting the making of Trump's enemies - leakers - list).

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.