NOT AN IMPOSSIBLE SHOT: SpaceX pushed “sniper” theory with the feds far more than is publicly known.

As part of my book on the Falcon 9 and Dragon years at SpaceX, Reentry, I reported deeply on the loss of the Amos-6 mission. In the weeks afterward, the greatest mystery was what had precipitated the accident. It was understood that a pressurized helium tank inside the upper stage had ruptured. But why? No major parts on the rocket were moving at the time of the failure. It was, for all intents and purposes, akin to an automobile idling in a driveway with half a tank of gasoline. And then it exploded.

This failure gave rise to one of the oddest—but also strangely compelling—stories of the 2010s in spaceflight. And we’re still learning new things today.

The lack of a concrete explanation for the failure led SpaceX engineers to pursue hundreds of theories. One was the possibility that an outside “sniper” had shot the rocket. This theory appealed to SpaceX founder Elon Musk, who was asleep at his home in California when the rocket exploded. Within hours of hearing about the failure, Musk gravitated toward the simple answer of a projectile being shot through the rocket.

This is not as crazy as it sounds, and other engineers at SpaceX aside from Musk entertained the possibility, as some circumstantial evidence to support the notion of an outside actor existed. Most notably, the first rupture in the rocket occurred about 200 feet above the ground, on the side of the vehicle facing the southwest. In this direction, about one mile away, lay a building leased by SpaceX’s main competitor in launch, United Launch Alliance. A separate video indicated a flash on the roof of this building, now known as the Spaceflight Processing Operations Center. The timing of this flash matched the interval it would take a projectile to travel from the building to the rocket.

The FBI investigated, but with the FAA concluded there was no gunman.

BOOM: Megaquake could trigger land drop, spike flood risk along West Coast, study says.

SCIENCE: Kissing won’t pass gluten, new findings show.

MICHAEL WALSH: Make Universities Great Again.

DEADLY SINS: Columbia Journalism Review editor fired after insisting on ethics, deadlines: report.

RENAME: Harvard rebrands DEI office as Office of Community and Campus Life.

THROUGHOUT WESTERN CIVILIZATION, PEOPLE WHO USED TO BE PILLARS OF NORMAL HAVE BEEN TURNED INTO SHOCK TROOPS OF CRAZY: Unbelievable: British Head Teachers ‘In Turmoil.’

If somebody from 2005 teleported 20 years into the future, they would beg to go back home.

Sure, there are lots more cool toys to play with now, and the televisions are mega huge, but it seems our basic grasp of reality disappeared somewhere along the way. It’s kinda like that Ryan George series of videos where the time-traveling reporter keeps begging to go back home to the 90s.

What got me thinking about this trend is this article explaining how the NAHT–which used to be called the National Association of Head Teachers until it was rebranded–can’t figure out what to do now that the UK Supreme Court ruled that boys and girls are different. . . . The NAHT is deeply confused by the ruling that boys are boys and girls are girls, and are asking for guidance from the government on how to deal with this newfangled idea regarding sexual dimorphism.

Kooks on parade.

I THINK IT’S MORE A SIGN THAT CANCEL CULTURE HAS RUN ITS COURSE: How The Shiloh Hendrix Case Killed Cancel Culture.

MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Will Gen Z Reverse the Baby Bust?

IT WOULD BE A START, BUT IT WON’T HAPPEN:

They can start with begging for forgiveness for a decade+ of attacking checks on separation of power, delegitimizing the courts, and celebrating the executive abuses of Biden and Obama. https://t.co/kkhUkyrjSf

— David Harsanyi (@davidharsanyi) May 5, 2025

YEP: Kurt Schlichter: All GOP Senators Have to Do Is Not Be Dumb, So We’re in Trouble. Well, dumb and/or bought off.

“LEGITIMATELY EMBARRASSING:” Apparently Jane Pratt Doesn’t Actually Read Books; Does the Staff at New York Magazine? “This isn’t a case of some 19-year-old incompetently summarizing a book they were assigned to read but didn’t in college. It’s an adult woman, an editor and writer, voluntarily participating in this feature and plugging a book she clearly cannot have read. Why she would do that, I really can’t imagine; surely there’s a book that she actually finished that she could recommend? Why do this?”

These people like to think of themselves as smart and intellectual, but it’s basically a pose.

OPEN THREAD: Monday, Monday.

IT’S A GROWING FIELD: Army creates space career field for enlisted soldiers.

MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: Will Gen Z Reverse the Baby Bust?

MICROBIOME NEWS: Scientists May Have Found a Natural Alternative to Ozempic.

KATY PERRRY CAN’T BELIEVE SHE WASN’T INVITED TO THE CEREMONY: Trump honors space exploration on National Astronaut Day.

RIGGED: Judge Boasberg Keeps Getting Assigned Trump Cases. Lawmakers Want to Know Why.

THIS SHOULD LEAD TO NEW TREATMENTS FAIRLY QUICKLY: Heart Mystery Solved: Scientists Discover Unexpected Source of Cardiac Inflammation. “Researchers have discovered a surprising trigger for heart damage after a heart attack: surviving heart cells near the damaged area become inflamed due to mechanical stress, not immune cells as previously believed. These heart cells rupture and leak DNA, which sparks a damaging immune response. This breakthrough challenges long-held assumptions and offers fresh strategies for preventing heart failure by calming these stressed heart cells and blocking specific inflammatory signals.”

A UNIFIED THEORY OF TRUMP TROLLING:

Yesterday, in my Sunday Smiles essay, I mused about Trump’s “own the libs” style of trolling.

It drives the liberals nuts, which can be very entertaining to watch, but I think a lot of MAGA converts who were initially reluctant to support Trump for cultural reasons are made extremely uncomfortable by his constantly trolling liberals. . . .

What’s the point, they wonder. Is it presidential? Doesn’t Trump have more important things to do? Is it unnecessarily provocative?

Obviously, what set off my musings was the recent controversy about Trump’s tweet in which he put up an AI-generated image of himself in Papal garb. Liberals went insane. Again.

A year or two ago, these same people applauded when the FBI labeled traditional Catholics “domestic terrorists,” regularly call priests pedophiles (I could write essay after essay about the fact that government-employed public school teachers abuse more children in any given year than priests did in 70 years and liberals work assiduously to prevent kids escaping the public schools), and bash the Church due to its pro-natalism and anti-gender-ideology stances.

But whatever. . . . Trump’s greatest allies are his opposition, who overreact to everything he does and go to ridiculous extremes because he violates the norms they claim (and often do) hold so dear. Liberals will go to the mat to defend wife-beating, human-trafficking MS-13 members rather than agree with Trump on anything, and that reveals them to be insane. . . . Trolling the liberals keeps his base excited, not so much because they love the trolls–some do, some don’t–but we can all unify in defending Trump against the insane attacks. The hypocrisy of the left keeps getting exposed, and the trolling Trump does keep the liberals in a perpetual state of lighting their hair on fire.

Also, it’s funny. And it’s not just about firing up the base. The left has ruled through an unjustified sense of entitlements, and an unearned moral and intellectual deference. Treating them like Groucho treated Margaret Dumont is a very effective way of undermining those characteristics, and of demoralizing the left. He’s constantly hitting them with some variant of Cousin Vinnie’s “You was serious about that?” leavened with doses of “Everything that guy just said is bullshit.”

And you know, he’s loud, he’s uncouth, but everyone is always rooting for Cousin Vinnie.

BECAUSE THEY’RE LYING POLITICIZED HACKS? Mark Judge: Why NPR Refuses to Have Me on the Air.

BIG BULLETS: Ammo: 8.6 Blackout Review. “Unlike .300 BLK and 338 ARC ammunition, which are designed to work with a rifling-twist rate of 1:8-inch, the 8.6 BLK uses a rifling-twist rate of 1:3-inch. This is an incredibly fast twist rate, but what’s it for? Well, it helps better stabilize bullets that are about the size of your little finger, but it also significantly enhances terminal performance.”

SPACE: We finally know a little more about Amazon’s super-secret satellites: Amazon’s Kuiper satellites look nothing like SpaceX’s Starlink. “The employment history of Amazon’s head of Project Kuiper, Rajeev Badyal, makes it all the more compelling to compare the two companies’ designs. Badyal was SpaceX’s vice president of satellites until he was fired by Elon Musk in 2018, reportedly because Musk wanted to move faster with Starlink.” And it seems like Elon was right.

Also, SpaceX is radically transparent.

MY CLASSICAL GREEK PHILOSOPHY PROFESSOR TAUGHT US THIS IN COLLEGE: Study finds flourishing doesn’t always mean happiness.

ILYA SHAPIRO DEBATES Campus Deportations.