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NASA Offers $45M to Solve Risks for Astronaut Moon Landing Services

NASA is preparing to establish a regular cadence of trips to the Moon under Artemis. To help the agency fine-tune its approach, NASA will award firm fixed-price, milestone-based contracts of up to $45 million for commercial-led work under a broad agency announcement released Thursday.

NASA is seeking new work to mature designs and conduct technology and engineering risk-reduction tasks for the human landing system (HLS), which will ferry Artemis astronauts from lunar orbit to the surface and back. Prior to opening the call for commercial space lunar transportation on a recurring basis, NASA is asking U.S. companies to hone HLS concepts and safety measures.

Companies awarded work under this research and development procurement, known as NextSTEP-2 Appendix N, will help NASA polish requirements for the future recurring services solicitation, which will secure regular crewed trips from Gateway in lunar orbit to the lunar surface and back.

“We are priming U.S. industry to become reliable service providers in the lunar marketplace,” said Greg Chavers, assistant deputy for Systems Engineering and Integration for human spaceflight at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Riding on American ingenuity, Artemis astronauts will explore new areas of the Moon, where we will unlock mysteries of the solar system for the benefit of all.”

NASA’s goal is to enable the safest and lowest cost long-term approach to accessing the lunar surface, and to be just one of multiple customers purchasing services in the lunar transportation market.

“The approach for recurring Moon landing services is truly a collective effort between NASA and U.S. Industry,” said Lisa Watson-Morgan, human landing system program manager at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “This announcement is a chance for the pioneering private sector to claim their stake in the emerging lunar economy and make history with NASA.”

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‘Violation of First Amendment’ – Judicial Watch YouTube Video Censored at Request of California Government Officials

The California Secretary of State’s office pressured YouTube to remove Judicial Watch’s videos on election integrity.Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch received 165 pages of new documents showing the California Secretary of State directly emailing YouTube to remove Tom Fitton’s videos on election integrity.

The video titled “ELECTION INTEGRITY CRISIS — Dirty Voter Rolls, Ballot Harvesting & Mail-in-Voting Risks!” was removed three days after California government officials made the request.

Judicial Watch had previously sued California over its dirty voter rolls and Los Angeles County agreed to remove 1.6 million inactive voters.

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Media Applaud the New Cold Wars—but Could US Be More Aggressive, Please?

US media are fixin’ for a fight with China, Russia—or both. Commentary on the recent G7 and NATO summits, as well as President Joe Biden’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, was replete with examples of news outlets alternately praising the Biden administration for ramping up new cold wars with China and Russia, and criticizing it for not being even more aggressive. As it propagandized about the US supposedly fighting for democracy, this coverage betrayed a total indifference to the potential costs of these hostilities.

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Facebook bans propaganda expert Professor Nicholas O’Shaughnessy

You may now be able to discuss coronavirus origins on Facebook – because the current US administration happened to say so – but it appears people are still most decidedly banned from discussing their own scientific work – if it happens to be related to how exactly Facebook goes about censoring and canceling people.

That circle is now complete for renowned UK academic Nicholas O’Shaughnessy, an information and propaganda control researcher, who has been presented with an abrupt, but “lifetime” ban on the platform – for posting about his own research that has in the meanwhile been cited by the academic community.

On June 26, reports say, this professor emeritus at two London University colleges and a Cambridge Quondam fellow was informed that his account got banned. Facebook at least was “egalitarian” here in that it provided the noted academic with no more explanation about what he had supposedly done wrong than it does any of its “ordinary” censorship victims – beyond accusing them of violating unspecified “community standards.”

But the note did have a tone of sinister finality to it, reading, “unfortunately, we won’t be able to reactivate it (the account) for any reason. This will be our last message regarding your account.”

And because even after failing in his attempts to pry the reason for his banning from Facebook’s cold censorship hands, the professor, like the rest of us, is now left guessing why this happened.

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British Parliament Discusses Pentagon UFO Report

The much-discussed Pentagon Report on UFOs wound up becoming a topic of conversation in Britain’s Parliament this week as multiple politicians questioned an official with the country’s Ministry of Defense about the potential threat posed by the phenomenon. The enlightening exchange reportedly occurred during a House of Lords session on Wednesday when MP Lord Sarfraz detailed how the DoD assessment “does not rule out that these could be military aircraft with very fast capabilities or even extraterrestrial phenomena.” He then asked defense minister Baroness Goldie if she could “reassure members of the public that the Ministry of Defense takes reports of unidentified objects in our airspace very seriously?”

In response, she acknowledged the findings of the report and indicated that the MoD “holds no reports on unidentified aerial phenomena, but constantly monitors UK airspace to identify and respond to any credible threat to its integrity, and is confident in the existing measures in place to protect it.” Goldie went on to express what appeared to be a fairly skeptical take on the phenomenon, stressing that “the MoD deals with actual threats substantiated by evidence.” The conversation continued when another MP, Viscount Ridley, argued that “the idea that in an era of mobile phone cameras, drones and frequent travel there could possibly be alien spaceships whizzing about undetected in our atmosphere on a regular basis is not, I think, very plausible.”

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DHS warns ‘perfect storm’ of ‘violent extremist-white supremacists’ is imminent

A Homeland Security bulletin obtained by ABC talks about “violent extremists” and the July 4th holiday.

It warned “attacks” against a “range of potential targets.” With no warning, of course. Those “domestic violent extremists” – aka DVEs, the feds said, are motivated by “violent ideologies” and the “ethnically motivated violent extremist-white supremacists,” or those RMVE-WSs, were sharing information about “mass gatherings.” AND “law enforcement officers.”

“We have the perfect storm,” ABC was told by a “senior law enforcement official.”

So the network posted online: “‘Perfect storm’: Bulletin warns of extremist violence as pandemic restrictions lift.”

However, buried down in the report was the perhaps-significant comment that, “no specific plot has been identified for Independence Day,” but that the warning “ominously” said federal officials are seeing “evidence of planning” by radicals.

ABC said it obtained access to the warning “exclusively,” and that it includes that charge, that “34 states will have State of Emergency orders expire” soon, so that “mass gatherings and social distancing restrictions will be largely lifted.”

It expressed, too, that, “As of 16 June, Racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist-white supremacists (RMVE-WSs) were sharing downloadable links to a publication discussing targeting mass gatherings, critical infrastructure, and law enforcement officers.”

The law enforcement official told ABC, “It’s a very volatile moment and it’s about to be a more target-rich environment.”

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French food is now racist, according to professor who studies ‘food whiteness’ and ‘food privileges’

The Times U.K. reported that a video of Mathilde Cohen discussing the issue for a seminar outside Paris is upsetting folks in France, as the paper noted that the country’s cuisine is “seen as a cornerstone of the national identity.”

Cohen, who hails from the University of Connecticut School of Law, suggested that French eating habits reinforce the “dominance” of white people over ethnic minorities, the Times U.K. said.

An academic paper that was part of Cohen’s seminar asserts that France’s “eating culture … has been the central means of racial and ethnic identity formation through slavery, colonialism, and immigration. The whiteness of French food is all the more powerful in that it is unnamed, enabling the racial majority to benefit from food privileges without having to acknowledge their racial origin,” the Times U.K. added.

Here’s Cohen on video discussing “food whiteness in French culture,” which she said also can be defined as “the use of food to reinforce whiteness as a dominant racial identity.”

In the clip, Cohen says “the French meal is often presented as a national ritual to which every citizen can participate equally. But French food ways are shaped by white middle- and upper-class norms … the boundaries of whiteness are policed through daily food encounters.”

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‘I hate whiteness:’ Assistant Dean of university horrifies parents, comes out as a racist

In a four-paragraph diatribe posted to Instagram that champions critical race theory, an assistant dean at Massachusetts-based Brandeis University declared that “all white people are racist.”

She goes on to say in the post that “I don’t hate white people — I hate whiteness.”

The essay was authored by Brandeis faculty member Kate Slater, who describes herself on the social media platform as a racial justice scholar and educator. Her Instagram page has just changed to private status.

Slater, who earned a PhD in educational leadership and policy studies, also claimed that so-called systemic racism is a given and that “all white people have been conditioned in a society where ones racial identity determines life experiences/outcomes and whiteness is the norm and the default and that includes me.”

Slater concludes that “CRT does not create oppression; it names oppression that already exists.”

Tuition plus room and board at Brandeis runs to about $77,000, which is going to require a family to pony up about $300,000 (absent any scholarship funding) to enable their son or daughter to obtain a four-year diploma for education of this kind.

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