It is an exciting time to be a space enthusiast. After the amazing highs of the space race of the 1960s and moon landings into the early 1970s, the exploration of space has been a sad afterthought in the American conversation. The Space Shuttle was interesting, but it never went anywhere we hadn’t already been and became so tired, uninteresting, and quite frankly, cost inefficient that the entire enterprise was scrapped by President Bush in 2004. The last Shuttle flight was in 2011. Since then, NASA has depended on the Russian space program and then SpaceX and other private companies to accomplish progress.
That move – encouraging commercial enterprise in space, as the subsequently slashed NASA budget could not accomplish much – turned out to be a force multiplier. Companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic, and Intuitive Machines – the company that just landed Odysseus on the moon, the first such mission to the moon by any entity in the United States in more than fifty years – sprang up to begin a new space revolution.
SpaceX, run by Elon Musk, has been the commercial partner of NASA, the Department of Defense and many others, launching four times as many satellites as the rest of the world combined. SpaceX launched Odysseus, will be the rocket that powers the next NASA mission to the moon with astronauts, and is working itself to an historic manned mission to Mars.
Blue Origin, the darling of Jeff Bezos, has had a slower start to its space endeavors, but has successfully launched a manned mission into space, and, according to Mr. Bezos on the Lex Friedman podcast, is focusing on building efficiencies in moving material into orbit, a necessary step for the next generation of space stations, space hotels and other infrastructure to explore the solar system. These plans could include a deep space station that would make it easier to reach Mars and eventually outer planets (think of a refueling station somewhere on the way).
Virgin Galactic seems to be the furthest behind, mostly focusing on near Earth space tourism.
One of the exciting things about the development of these companies is that they are building the infrastructure for which space exploration, space experiments, space mining and other future businesses will be able to take advantage. As Mr. Bezos related in that same Friedman podcast, he likens it to the beginnings of the internet and startup technology firms. Before companies like Amazon, Facebook or Google could be started in a garage by a few techies, the building blocks of the internet were created first by the Department of Defense and large commercial pioneers that built the infrastructure to connect the world. Bezos hopes that SpaceX, Blue Origin and others will likewise build an infrastructure that enables the next generation of space technologists to have low barriers of entry to create the space enterprises of the 22nd century.
As a proud American and a space enthusiast, it is a great time to be alive and watch our fellow humans tackle the next frontier, perhaps the greatest challenge we will ever attempt. What a country.
Is There A Person in That Egg?
A controversial ruling in Alabama this week provided just the fodder needed to motivate Pro Choice advocates in the fall election. In a majority opinion, the State Supreme Court of Alabama ruled that parents whose frozen fertilized embryos were destroyed, through the alleged negligence at the Mobile hospital where the embryos were stored, could sue the hospital for wrongful death of a minor.
The court cited a 2018 amendment to the Alabama Constitution (that passed with 61% of the vote) that states, “to declare and otherwise affirm that it is the public policy of the state to recognize and support the sanctity of unborn life and the rights of unborn children … and to provide that the constitution of this state does not protect the right to abortion or require the funding of abortion.”
The court found that this language makes no exclusion for “extrauterine” unborn children and thus the suit by the “parents” of these fertilized embryos could move forward.
To this observer, the ruling seems narrow in scope, and perhaps based upon awkward language in the amendment that led to unintended consequences. Most of the subsequent controversy and concern seems to be centered around speculation about how this one ruling (which in my opinion could be overturned at the Supreme Court) will affect other rulings in the future. It is once again terrible timing for Republicans (like the Dobbs decision of 2022) that may swing an otherwise change election back to Democrats who will hammer Republicans on abortion until the sun doesn’t shine. If Republicans had any sense, they would support a compromise, common sense abortion ban at 25ish weeks and take this issue off the table. They won’t, and it may mean four more years of President Biden and a Democratic Speaker of the House in 2025.
CBS News Acts As An Arm of the Deep State
CBS News is under serious pressure after they not only fired Catherine Herridge but allegedly seized all of her files, computers and notes. Ms Herridge has been recognized for years as one of the few investigative reporters left in Big Corporate Media who chases down important stories and breaks them regardless of their political implications.
The most chilling part of the seizure is that Ms. Herridge was reportedly working on the Biden family corruption case at the time of her firing. She is under indictment for refusing to reveal sources in the investigation, and this smells of deep state corruption forcing CBS to break the law and the First Amendment. I hope some day soon the rest of Corporate Media will wake up to the sad state of their news organizations – they are being reduced to mouthpieces of the Democratic Party and the parts of the Intelligence Community running PsyOps on the American electorate.
The Russians Are Coming, 2.0
In the never-ending silliness that is the Russia moral panic eight years on, and that Trump likes to summarize as “Russia, Russia, Russia,” the narrative writers in Washington have trotted out the old Russian disinformation line to describe the entire case of Biden Family Corruption.
It seems that one witness – identified in reporting as Alexander Smirnov – has been indicted and arrested for lying to the FBI. Smirnov has been a trusted FBI informant for years, but suddenly is no longer trusted due to his admitting freely that he has contacts in Russian Intelligence.
David Weiss, the special prosecutor assigned to the Hunter Biden case, whom IRS Whistleblowers accused of covering up the investigation, who disallowed investigation into the leads linking Joe Biden, “the Big Guy,” to the corruption, who slow-walked charges past the statute of limitations, who offered such a stunningly sweetheart plea deal to Hunter Biden that the judge threw it out immediately, is the prosecutor who has accused Smirnov.
Once again, our entire political engine is embroiled in a Russian panic that most closely resembles the Alien & Sedition Acts of 1798, switching out France for Russia. It is amazing that whenever Democrats are caught up in mischief, the old Russia card is played to media fanfare. It must really drive clicks and eyeballs.
The arrest of Smirnov and the charges seem a little unorthodox. He was arrested, freed by a judge and then re-arrested. And the need to have Smirnov’s testimony (that the Bidens received $10M in a secret bribe from Burisma) in order to find the Bidens guilty has been completely misconstrued, and is being used by partisans to pretend that the entire case rests on Smirnov, and thus Russian intelligence.
The truth is we can erase Mr. Smirnov’s claims completely, and the facts of the case against Biden are unchanged. As Jonathan Turley wrote in the New York Post, “In relation to the influence-peddling investigation, this filing does not change the evidence that the Biden family made millions in shaking down foreign companies and business figures.”
Of course. Hunter received millions from Burisma, Chinese energy companies and Americore, among others without Smirnov’s $10M Burisma bribe. And we seem to constantly forget (when it supports our conclusions) that indictments are not findings of guilt – the prosecutor needs to prove his case before we dismiss Smirnov’s FD-1023. There hasn’t been a plea hearing yet in this case.
Finally, to succinctly address the claim that the Biden Impeachment case is over without Smirnov’s testimony, watch Jim Jordan completely destroy CNN reporter Manu Raja who wants to repeatedly scream (like many other low information people on the left) “But it’s all lies!”
Justin Weller is the Founder and Editor of The Country, and host of the podcast The Country with Justin Weller. Prior, he was a general manager and sales leader in startup and Big Tech firms, interned on Capitol Hill, and was a Contributing Editor at mxdwn.com. This piece is republished from The Country
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