Our Time Press, which I am told is the largest black owned newspaper in Brooklyn, has just picked up my piece about Major Robert Lawrence, the first black astronaut.

Also, what if Robert Lawrence had lived?: A Brother on the Moon

Monday, July 26, 2021

Japan is joining the push to return to the moon

According to Space News, Japan has recently passed a space resources law similar to ones enacted by the United States, Luxembourg and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that would give Japanese companies permission to “prospect for, extract and use various space resources.” The new law is an indication that Japan intends to be part of the international return to the moon, led by NASA. Japan is a signatory of the Artemis Accords that seeks to spell out rules for cooperation in the exploration of space, particularly the lunar surface.

Sunday, July 18, 2021

NASA should beware of Critical Race Theory

Ever since NASA announced, “Mission Equity,” the more conservative media warned about the corruption of the space agency by identity politics. The National Review, for example, suggests that Mission Equity is “is not to explore space, land on Mars, or advance human understanding of the cosmos, but to promote woke identity politics.”

Saturday, July 17, 2021

‘Let Them Die’: NAACP Official Attacks Anti-CRT Parents
This is disturbing if true:

"In the movie, Phoebe Waller-Bridge figures out that a conspiracy is at hand. One of the Apollo 11 astronauts dropped dead before the mission and someone (the government?) put an imposter/ lookalike in his place. Ultimately, she is arrested when Boyd Holbrook’s character (a police officer) sees her flashing off a picture of the deceased body being loaded into an ambulance, looking to shuttle him away."

The problem is that this makes no sense. Apollo 11 had a backup crew that was training in the same way as the prime crew. If Armstrong, Aldrin, or Collins had "dropped dead" his backup would have been assigned to take his place. Something similar happened during Apollo 13 when one of the prime crew had been exposed to the German Measels.

The wasted outrage over the private space race

Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson has already flown into space on board his SpaceShipTwo rocket plane. Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos is set to celebrate the July 20th anniversary of the first moon landing on his New Shepard rocket with another suborbital flight. SpaceX’s Elon Musk is developing a space tourism business on spacecraft that actually go into low Earth orbit.

Octavia was excited to journey with her uncle, Caius Julius Caesar, to Gaul. Her knowledge of magic and her skill with weapons would be an asset for Caesar's plan to add Gaul as a province to the Roman Republic. However, stirring in the north, beyond the Rhine, an army of the undead threatens to overrun the world and plunge it into eternal night. Can an alliance of Roman legions and Gallic warriors stop the threat? Octavia's adventure in the northern lands was about to take a dread turn.

In which the most annoying and racist song about space exploration is trotted out to slam Richard Branson
From a sourpuss killjoy, aka Bernie Sanders: "Here on Earth, in the richest country on the planet, half our people live paycheck to paycheck, people are struggling to feed themselves, struggling to see a doctor — but hey, the richest guys in the world are off in outer space!"
Sir Richard Branson and crew have landed safely. Also, The space race between Branson and Bezos is about business and branding

The race between Richard Branson of Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos of Blue Origin for which billionaire will be the first to fly into space on his own rocket has certainly captured the public imagination. If schedules hold up. Branson will be the first at the head on a six-person crew on July 11. Bezos will follow on July 20 with a crew that includes his brother, someone who paid $28 million to charity for a seat, and “Mercury 13” pilot Wally Funk.

Saturday, July 10, 2021

A blast from the past: A Final Commercial Frontier, things have changed considerably in the past 15 years

Sunday, July 04, 2021

Are UFOs from outer space? Key questions the UAP report left unanswered

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has released its Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena report. The report analyzes 144 reports of UAPs, what the government calls UFOs, being sighted by military personnel between 2004 and 2021. Eighty of the reports referred to objects that were tracked by multiple sensors. Twenty-one of the reports describe 18 incidents in which the objects displayed unusual flight characteristics.

Saturday, July 03, 2021

“The Tomorrow War” is a fun ride with some heart behind it

“The Tomorrow War,” starring Chris Pratt as an everyman high school science teacher and military veteran who is thrust into a future war against alien invaders, recently became available on Amazon Prime. On one level it is an explosion and gun fire-laden action movie of the sort we see too little of in these woke times. On another level, the movie has some lessons to impart about the primacy of family above all in modern life.

The Veep From ‘Veep’ or Selina Meyer walks among us