Random thoughts on politics, current events, popular culture, and whatever else interests me.
Wednesday, December 31, 2025
Tuesday, December 30, 2025
Monday, December 29, 2025
Sunday, December 28, 2025
Just an hour or so after Jared Isaacman was at long last sworn in as NASA Administrator, President Trump published an executive order for a new space policy which, in part, constitutes the new space agency chief’s marching orders.
While part of the order concerns national security and commercial space issues, part concerns the Artemis return to the moon program. The document mandates U.S. boots on the lunar surface by 2028 — the last year of the Trump presidency. It also mandates that a nuclear-powered lunar outpost be started by 2030.
Saturday, December 27, 2025
Friday, December 26, 2025
Thursday, December 25, 2025
Wednesday, December 24, 2025
Tuesday, December 23, 2025
Monday, December 22, 2025
Tom Fischer thought he had seen every horror imaginable while covering the war in Europe. Embedded with British and Canadian troops, he had seen the effects of battle from Normandy to the abortive Operation Market-Garden to the final assault on Nazi Germany.
But when he entered the newly liberated Bergen Belsen concentration camp, Fischer knew that he had come to a new kind of man-made hell that was unimaginable in the history of the world. Thousands of people had been left to die of starvation and disease. Despite the best efforts of the allies, thousands more would die during the days after the liberation. A month later, Fischer decided to interview one of the survivors of Bergen Belsen, a young, teenage girl who had been found on the brink of death but was now on the road to recovery.
Her name was Anne Frank.
In this work of alternate history, the girl whose diary gave a voice to the Holocaust survives to put her mark on history from war-torn Europe to an ancient land convulsed in the birth pangs of a nation both ancient and modern called Israel.
Sunday, December 21, 2025
When Elon Musk announced that he was taking SpaceX public with an initial public offering that would give the rocket company a $1.5 trillion valuation, shock waves erupted across the commercial space community. Why would Musk, who had previously resisted this step, reverse himself?
Saturday, December 20, 2025
Friday, December 19, 2025
Thursday, December 18, 2025
Wednesday, December 17, 2025
Tuesday, December 16, 2025
Monday, December 15, 2025
Sunday, December 14, 2025
The Senate Commerce Committee has confirmed billionaire entrepreneur and private space traveler Jared Isaacman to be NASA administrator. Isaacman has good hopes of being confirmed by the full Senate before the end of 2025.
Saturday, December 13, 2025
Friday, December 12, 2025
Thursday, December 11, 2025
Wednesday, December 10, 2025
Tuesday, December 09, 2025
Monday, December 08, 2025
Sunday, December 07, 2025
A Soyuz rocket lifted off from the Site 31 pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan recently, carrying Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergei Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev, and NASA astronaut Christopher Williams to the International Space Station.
The journey went off without incident, but the launch left such destruction in its wake that it may well have ended Russia’s storied history of human spaceflight.
Saturday, December 06, 2025
Friday, December 05, 2025
Thursday, December 04, 2025
Wednesday, December 03, 2025
Tuesday, December 02, 2025
Monday, December 01, 2025
Sunday, November 30, 2025
Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, both Republicans of Texas, want the space shuttle Discovery to be moved to Space Center Houston from its current location at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center near Washington D.C. The proposal is, putting it mildly, controversial.
Saturday, November 29, 2025
Friday, November 28, 2025
Thursday, November 27, 2025
Wednesday, November 26, 2025
Tuesday, November 25, 2025
Monday, November 24, 2025
Sunday, November 23, 2025
After a couple of scrubs and a few aggravating holds, the Blue Origin New Glenn finally rocketed into the clear, blue Florida sky.
