SpaceX has put Europe to shame
One American company can do what the vast EU bureaucracy cannot
The flawless launch of SpaceX’s 5,000-ton Starship and its Super Heavy Booster, and the precision recovery of the booster on its launch pad, has opened the way to a manned mission to the moon next year and perhaps to Mars as soon as 2030. One giant leap for Elon Musk’s company on Sunday was one more reminder that Europe’s space programme is a colossal failure.
Europe is currently unable to launch even its own weather satellites, and India, which managed a soft landing on the Moon last year, now has a more credible space program. Twenty years ago, before SpaceX had launched a single rocket, Richard Bowles, a sales director of the European Arianespace launch consortium, said SpaceX’s ambition to launch, recover and reuse rockets, cutting the price of launches in half, was a dream.
‘SpaceX primarily sems to be selling a dream. Which is good, we should all dream,’ he said. ‘I think reusability is a dream… How am I going to respond to a dream?… First of all you don’t wake people up. They have to wake up on their own… They’re not supermen. Whatever they can do, we can do.’
Elon’s Musk’s dream has become Europe’s nightmare. France’s Arianespace has this year managed to launch just one of the new Ariane 6 rockets made by its ArianeGroup umbrella company. It came four years late and hundreds of millions of euros over budget. SpaceX has already completed 96 launches this year, recovered and reused almost all of them, and expects to reach 148 launches by the end of December. Even if Arianespace can get the new rocket to work properly, it has planned to launch no more than nine missions a year, of which four will be institutional missions, such as reconnaissance satellites, and only five commercial missions.
European failure to embrace reusable rockets has made it completely uncompetitive. The estimated cost of a launch using the already obsolete Ariane 6, when it becomes operational, perhaps next year, is more than £83 million. The cost of a comparable launch on SpaceX is around £54 million. And Europe has nothing in the pipeline to match the SpaceX Starship, which will be able to launch payloads of 100 tons or more.
Access to space is the sine qua non of a credible space program. Without it, the scientific and commercial applications of space technology are impossible.
The Galileo global satellite system created by the European Union through the European Space Agency to compete with the Americans has so far launched 32 satellites and has failed to deliver a robust system. Many the satellites were launched using Russian rockets, no longer available due to the war in Ukraine. Further launches are on hold, pending the availability of Ariane 6.
OneWeb, the private European communications satellite project designed to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink, has launched its own limited constellation using SpaceX and Indian rockets. Even the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) is now buying launches from SpaceX.
‘This decision was driven by exceptional circumstances’ said EUMETSAT’s Director General Phil Evans. The exceptional circumstance being that Arianespace had no capability. SpaceX has meanwhile launched 7,000 Starlink communications satellites offering high-speed internet access and text messaging to mobile phones.
Europe’s space agency (the UK remains a member) is an example of European hubris at its absolute worst, its failures a masterclass in how not to be globally competitive, while spending billions on institutional grandiosity. The European Space Agency, which presides over Europe’s failed efforts, has a budget of €7.8 billion and a staff of around 2,500. ArianeGroup, which is subsidised by ESA, employs 8,300 people. Between them, they are unlikely to produce a reusable rocket before 2030.
It’s been a while since I was at the European launch base in Kourou, French Guiana, but I’m not missing much because nothing is happening there. The last launch of the small European Vega rocket was last month. Perhaps four launches of the new Vega C rocket might be attempted next year. Fewer missions in a year than SpaceX completes in a fortnight. Europe’s space programme is all show and no-go.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/10/spacex-has-put-europe-to-shame/
*********************************************Buying the News: How Leftwing Donors Are Taking Over Local Journalism
American journalism has experienced a spectacular collapse in the last 25 years – daily newspaper circulation has declined from over 60 million subscribers to just over 20 million. And the trend is accelerating: According to the Pew Research Organization, the average monthly number of unique visitors to the websites of the country’s top 50 newspapers plummeted 20% in one year from 2021 to 2022.
At the same time, the remaining readership expresses a historically low level of faith that the news they are getting is accurate. Just 32% of Americans say they have a “great deal or a fair amount of trust” in the media, according to polling from Gallup.
If there is a bright spot here, polling has long shown that American consumers trust local media more than the national press. “In 2021, Americans were 17 points more likely to say they trust reporting by local news organizations ‘a great deal’ or ‘quite a lot’ than to trust reporting by national news organizations,” notes a survey done by Gallup and the Knight Foundation. But the rapid consolidation of the news industry has adversely affected the level of trust in the news Americans are consuming.
Local news organizations, however, have been hit especially hard by the decline in readers. Many have folded, cut staff, been purchased by private equity firms, or absorbed by national news organizations, which has diminished their editorial independence.
In recent years, hundreds of millions of dollars in new investment poured into local media in what appears to be a salutary injection of faith in the power of the community or regional press. However, the lion’s share of these investments is coming from sources some worry will further undermine trust in the media – progressive foundations and left-leaning activists who have overtly ideological and partisan agendas. While conservative donors also support news outlets (including RealClearInvestigations), their contributions are far smaller than those coming from the left – contributions large enough to radically remake the local news landscape. Significant examples of that largesse include:
The MacArthur Foundation’s launch of its “Press Forward” initiative last fall, which committed to spending $500 million over the next five years to “enhance local journalism at an unprecedented level to re-center local news as a force for community cohesion; support new models and solutions that are ready to scale; and close longstanding inequities in journalism coverage and practice.”
The National Trust for Local News’ 2021 announcement of its goal of amassing $300 million for a “non-profit newspaper company dedicated to protecting and sustaining community news … [to] publish sustainable community newspapers that safeguard the public trust, elevate the facts, empower communities with solutions, and foster a strong sense of place.” Last year, the National Trust for Local News quietly acquired Maine’s largest paper, The Portland Press-Herald, along with 22 other newspapers in the state.
The creation of States Newsroom, which was founded just six years ago with the goal of “nonpartisan coverage of state policy,” and has already formed partnerships with local outlets in all 50 states. Its stated mission is “hard-hitting reporting and commentary to change the political debate.”
The creation of The American Journalism Project, which describes its mission as “venture philanthropy,” has committed $55 million to “rebuilding local news.”
RealClearInvestigations reached out to States Newsroom, National Trust For Local News, American Journalism Project, and Courier Newsroom. None of them responded to a request for comment.
Meet the Funders
While not all the funding sources for these projects are expressly partisan, to the extent the funding of these new local journalism initiatives is publicly known, some of the biggest donors and foundations on the progressive left are closely associated with them. These donors had little previous interest in local journalism and have a track record of supporting initiatives that are ideological or partisan – or both.
The MacArthur Foundation, for instance, in addition to its $500 million Press Forward initiative, also provided funding for the National Trust for Local News and The American Journalism Project. Long known for funding left-wing causes, MacArthur endorsed one of the most politically controversial works of advocacy journalism in the last decade. The foundation awarded one of its generous $800,000 “Genius Grants” to Nikole Hannah-Jones, the architect of the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which claimed that the year enslaved people were first brought to Virginia was the “true founding [date] of America,” not 1776. The 1619 Project received scathing criticism from some of America’s most eminent historians and one of the 1619 Project’s own fact-checkers, and entire essays in the project were so factually incorrect that there were calls for them to be retracted entirely.
The MacArthur Foundation also supports the National Trust for Local News, which has also received financial support from two of the largest sources of left-wing political funding – the Tides Foundation and the Open Society Foundations.
The Tides Foundation, a “donor-advised” fund, allows contributors to direct where the money goes. By acting as an intermediary, Tides obscures the original source of the funds, making it what transparency advocates call a “dark money” group. Tides is one of the largest dark money operations and spent $854 million in 2022 alone. It donates millions in grants to pro-Democrat get-out-the-vote operations, abolishing pre-trial bail even for defendants charged with violent crimes, and pro-Hamas demonstrations following the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack in Israel.
The Open Society Foundations network was created by leftist billionaire megadonor George Soros. According to NBC News, between 2020 and 2023, “Soros’ contributions to political campaigns and causes since January 2020 [amount] to roughly half a billion dollars – at the least – most of it steered through dark money nonprofit groups and going largely toward political causes aligned with the Democratic Party.” In addition to funding the National Trust for Local News, Soros also has the power to influence local news consumption after his family office recently purchased a large stake in 227 radio stations across the U.S.
Both the National Trust for Local News and States Newsroom have received funding from controversial Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, who has spent nearly half a billion dollars on American left-wing causes. Between 1990 and 2006, Wyss gave almost $120,000 to candidates and political committees despite it being illegal for foreign nationals to spend money on U.S. elections. Wyss was never punished because the statute of limitations had passed by the time the Federal Elections Commission investigated his illegal donations.
In 2021, Wyss partnered with another influential Democratic donor, hotel magnate Stewart W. Bainum Jr., in an unsuccessful attempt to purchase Tribune Publishing, which then owned the Chicago Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, and the Baltimore Sun among other newspapers and media properties.
In addition, some of the largest donations to The American Journalism Project are from the foundations of high-profile Democratic megadonors. The Emerson Collective, funded by Laurene Powell Jobs, owner of The Atlantic and one of the largest shareholders in Disney/ABC, has given in excess of $5 million. Also, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s The Democracy Fund and the Craig Newmark Philanthropic Fund of the eponymous Craigslist founder have given The American Journalism project donations somewhere between $1 million and $5 million.
For her part, Powell Jobs has built out a well-funded network designed to explicitly advance the policy goals of the Democratic Party.
In addition to numerous political causes, Omidyar has long funded journalism efforts – he provided the seed money for the left-wing news site The Intercept, and Democracy Fund has given sizable grants to the Defending Democracy Together Institute, which is closely associated with the online anti-Trump outlet The Bulwark.
In 2020, Newmark publicly committed to a $200 million media campaign aimed at swaying the presidential election while alleging that “foreign adversaries” were controlling the Trump White House. Relatedly, Google and Facebook are also major donors to The American Journalism Project, and both companies have received heavy criticism for election meddling and censoring information on COVID and various political topics that later turned out to be accurate.
Ironically, perhaps no single man is more responsible for the death of local media than Newmark, as it was Craigslist that destroyed classified advertising, a major source of revenue for newspapers. “I’m very concerned about jobs for journalists, and the future of local journalism, and had always guessed that Craigslist might have an effect,” Newmark told the Press-Gazette in 2021.
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School did not discriminate against student by forcing her to wear a skirt, Queensland tribunal finds
A Queensland school did not discriminate against a female student by forcing her to wear a skirt on formal occasions, a tribunal has found.
The student, who cannot be named for legal reasons, made the complaint to the state’s Human Rights Commissioner, arguing she suffered discrimination by the new uniform policy which requires female students between years 7 and 12 to wear a skirt on formal occasions including outings, ceremonies, events and photographs.
Females are allowed to wear shorts and pants on other days, while male students wear them every day.
The father of the student argued in the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal that his daughter suffered a greater financial burden because she had to buy two school uniforms and that greater care was needed to maintain her modesty in a skirt compared with male students.
The initial complaint also said she had suffered negative psychological effects from “negative gender stereotypes and gendered power relations” but this was not raised at the hearing.
“If the complainant failed to comply with the formal occasion skirt requirement she could face negative consequences of exclusion or suspension or other lesser consequences not faced by a male student,” the decision read.
In a statement the student said when wearing a skirt, “there is an extra level of thinking required about the way I move and sit, as to not expose myself”.
Her father said she had experienced “stress and anxiety” about having to wear a skirt with a large number of people around.
After the complaint was first raised with the school, the student was told she could apply for a formal exemption, but the student argued this was also discriminatory because male students did not need to.
Lawyers for the school argued that there had been no concerns expressed by other parents about any extra expense and they had skirts available on loan. They said the skirts are long enough to touch the ground when kneeling, so there is a low risk of exposure and female students were allowed to wear bike shorts, which would remove the modesty issue.
QCAT member Jeremy Gordon said the school had shown that other schoolgirls were happy to wear skirts.
“If, for one reason or another, the complainant did not want to wear a skirt on formal occasions, this view was not shared by other female students,” he wrote.
He found that the policy did not discriminate against the student.
“The evidence is insufficient to show that the formal occasion uniform policy resulted in, or would have resulted in, less favourable treatment of the complainant as a female student over male students,” he wrote.
“To put this another way, there was different treatment between the sexes, but the evidence does not show that the different treatment was unfavourable to the complainant.”
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Australia is a monarchy -- and it's popular
Australia, where King Charles will return to on Friday, is where the monarch became a man. In 1966, Charles had a memorable half-year at the Timbertop bush campus of Victoria’s Geelong grammar school, where, he once said, he ‘had the Pommy (metaphorically) bits bashed off me’. The following year, his first major adult engagement was representing his mother Queen Elizabeth at the memorial service for the drowned Australian prime minister Harold Holt. Since then, the now King has returned to Australia another 14 times, most recently in 2018. It’s clear that Charles has great affection for the country of which he once almost became governor-general.
This week, the bags are being packed in Clarence House for the King and Queen’s first tour of Australia as head of state, en route to the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Samoa. It’s not really a tour: it’s more a two-stop visit to Sydney and Canberra, a scaled-down itinerary reflecting concern for the King’s health and stamina as he battles cancer. While his doctors agreed to pause his cancer treatment for the trip, the Times reported that two members of his medical team and a supply of the King’s own blood will be on hand, just in case.
Republicans aren’t being subtle in snubbing the royal couple
The King and Queen arrive in Australia on Friday. But if you think there will be enthusiasm for the royal visit on a scale of the late Queen’s first tour in 1954 – when it’s been estimated three-quarters of the then Australian population turned out to see her – think again.
Consistent with the low-key visit, and limited ‘opportunities to meet the public’ – known as ‘walkabouts’ until Australian political correctness kicked in for this tour – there simply won’t be that sort of mass enthusiasm. Indeed, the Australian Republican Movement (ARM) pressure group, known for PR savvy rather than achieving results, has been talking up the visit as ‘reigniting the republic debate’. The group even caught the attention of the British media when it released a private secretary’s standard reply to their letter to the King on the issue, saying that becoming a republic is solely a matter for the Australian public. The ARM is reinforced by a British republican nobody in Australia has heard of, Graham Smith of Republic UK, who plans to photobomb the King’s public events with his group’s yellow placards.
Republicans aren’t being subtle in snubbing the royal couple. ARM’s co-president, former Crystal Palace footballer turned left-wing activist Craig Foster, was invited to the official New South Wales government’s royal reception, but ostentatiously and crassly declined, tweeting: ‘Thanks…but no thanks. I look forward to being “in the presence of” our first Aussie Head of State. When we put our big pants on, as a country.’
Such puerile behaviour is typical of activists, but similar refusals by our state premiers is simply appalling manners. Heads of government of each state and territory were invited to the Australian government’s official reception for the King and Queen in Canberra. Not one accepted. Each of had some ‘I’m washing my hair that night’ excuse of other commitments.
The worst offender was Victoria’s premier Jacinta Allan. It was she who this year appointed a minister for men’s behaviour, and she who last year was the minister responsible for cancelling the hosting of the 2026 Commonwealth Games. Not only has she said she is too busy to meet the King, but she has added insult to injury by sending a junior parliamentary secretary in her stead. She should look to her own behaviour.
Yes, all but one are Labor party premiers, and instinctively republican. But given the equally Labor prime minister Anthony Albanese has the grace and courtesy to welcome Australia’s constitutional head of state, the provincial leaders, whose constitutions also include the Crown as the fount of government, should have done the same.
It appears, however, that left-wing politicians’ indifference to the King and Queen runs against the tide of public opinion. A pre-visit opinion poll, published in Australia’s News Corporation newspapers last weekend, found that support for the Australian monarchy actually has increased since the late Queen’s death two years ago. Almost half of respondents supported the monarchy, with just one third wanting a republic. Even fewer thought Australia ever would become a republic. It also showed approval for Charles and Camilla increasing since the King’s coronation, perhaps reflecting goodwill as the King confronts his cancer.
The survey indicates great interest in, and regard for, the Prince and Princess of Wales too, suggesting the monarchy is safe in Australia for at least another generation. But Australian love doesn’t extend to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, to the point most respondents thought the King need not strive to reconcile with his wayward second son.
The results of this poll are not contradicted by the low-key reception of the King and Queen’s visit. Rather than apparent apathy, it suggests how most Australians accept and are comfortable with the monarchy’s ongoing presence in Australia, and see no need to change anything. Like a successful long marriage, the Elizabeth-mania of 1954 has, over the last 70 years, mellowed into a relationship of easy familiarity between the Crown and the Australian people, making this a quiet family visit rather than a state visit full of Ruritanian pomp and circumstance. No wonder Albanese has quietly dropped his government’s junior minister for the republic.
In fact, the biggest local controversy of the tour is that they won’t be going anywhere other than Sydney and Canberra: the sort of interstate jealousy that gainsays the posturing of state political leaders. Most Australians will make the King and Queen very welcome here, and hope sincerely that their short visit will be happy and, in its own quiet way, glorious.
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