BUCKLE UP:

“A republic, if you can keep it,” the wise man once said.

ROCKET REPORT: SpaceX says no thanks to Space Force launches.

The Space Force recently tried to book rides for three future satellite missions, but SpaceX declined to offer its services, Politico reports. No other rocket companies offered to take them either, the publication reported. A top Space Force official, Brig. Gen. Eric Zarybnisky, the acting portfolio acquisition executive, acknowledged growing pains for the government and space industry as demand for rockets increases. “Temporarily, there are some things we’ll need to work through, again, as we get new providers flying,” he said. SpaceX has been declining to sign new Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch contracts for all kinds of customers.

No one else has capacity … The three Space Force missions that didn’t find a ride were listed through the National Security Space Launch initiative. Two of the missions were for the Space Development Agency. The agency is a branch of the Space Force that’s building a network of hundreds of military satellites in low-Earth orbit to provide expanded data services, and missile warning and tracking capabilities. Other potential launch providers, United Launch Alliance and Blue Origin, are both working through setbacks with their launch vehicles. Zarybnisky remained optimistic that Blue Origin and ULA will work through their technical problems and that new competitors will get up and running in time.

Previously: How in the Actual Hell Can We Be Running Out of Space Rockets?

FINALLY, PERHAPS SOME CLARITY:

WHY WOULD THEY WHEN THEY BELIEVE THEY STAND TO BENEFIT?

ANNALS OF CRAZY LEFTIST WOMEN: A Florida Attorney Walks Into a Mississippi Gun Store . . .

White identified herself to an employee as a protester and activist who wanted to buy a gun to kill Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, according to the criminal complaint. White told employees she wanted a firearm for protection at a protest because she believed “ICE agents are becoming crazy and wild,” according to the complaint. She also told employees she was an activist and protester.

During her interactions with employees, White gestured toward her torso and asked whether the firearms for sale would penetrate an agent’s body armor, the complaint says. If they could not, she told an employee she would need to “hit them in the head, shoulder, arm or leg.”

“It probably won’t surprise you to hear that, not only did the dealer not sell her a firearm, but the store contacted ATF.”

CYBERSECURITY: PHP Vulnerability: It’s Really, Really Bad. “This is a huge, huge issue because PHP is everywhere. A vast number of websites use a LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP), and PHP is in all of them. This is worse than the log4j vulnerability (which was bad enough), since in a pinch you can live without logging for a while. Remove PHP from your web server, and just about everything breaks. In theory, you could still serve up static web pages, but I’m betting most sites have PHP involved in that task as well, and anything serving up dynamic content (database call, stock prices, etc.) on a LAMP setup is going to break.”

“Folks, this is a bad one. If you run any sort of website, you need to get this one updated ASAP.”

VOTE EARLY AND VOTE OFTEN:

And don’t fall for the op.

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: Meet the World’s Worst Best Bank Robber. “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news, and this week, we’ll learn how to earn an F for Effort, the worst place to shoot a man, and how they serve time in style in the Great White North.”

WELL SAID:

“This race isn’t about Abdul’s faith. It’s about his extremist ideas.”

EVERY TIME I SEE BILLIE EILISH, SHE’S EITHER LECTURING ME ABOUT CAPITALISM OR TRYING TO SELL ME SOMETHING.

LOTS OF THINGS HAPPENING THIS WEEK:

THE NEW SPACE RACE: NASA Safety Panel Concerned About Artemis IV, Future Access to LEO.

Reporting on their fourth quarter 2026 meeting today, the panel praised NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman for the many positive changes he’s making at the agency. They do have some concerns, however.

The Artemis program to return astronauts to the lunar surface scored a huge success in April with the successful Artemis II mission that flew around the Moon. Next up is Artemis III and the panel is very pleased that shortly after taking office, Isaacman modified that flight, changing it from a lunar landing mission to an earth-orbital flight to practice rendezvous and docking with test articles of the two Human Landing Systems — SpaceX’s Starship and Blue Origin’s Blue Moon MK2.

But ASAP is worried about Artemis IV, now envisioned as that first Artemis lunar landing. Not only has it been more than 50 years since NASA landed anyone on the Moon, but it was with a different type of vehicle and in comparatively safe areas closer to the equator. Artemis IV is headed to the Moon’s South Pole, an entirely dissimilar environment with steep slopes, low Sun angles, and temperature extremes.

The South Pole is where the water is. Are we going to plant another flag and come home, or are we going to stay?

I’M SO OLD, I REMEMBER WHEN SILVER WAS MERELY BIASED:

“RECYCLE,” THEY TOLD ME. “IT’LL SAVE THE PLANET,” THEY SAID:

The morality and/or toxicity of reuse depends entirely on the politics of the re-user.

Also, the replies to the original post are entertainingly brutal.

PEOPLE WANT TO LOOK GOOD: L’Oreal says weight loss drugs are impacting beauty and skincare sales. “Hieronimus said L’Oreal’s brands SkinCeuticals and Kiehl’s have products ‘that have been designed to work alongside and complement GLP-1 and its side-effects on skin sagging’ and other effects related to rapid weight loss.”

SNOPES EXITED THE FACT-CHECKING BUSINESS YEARS AGO IN FAVOR OF LEFTY NARRATIVE ENFORCEMENT: