March 26, 2026

NUKES IN SPACE: Here is NASA’s plan for nuking Gateway and sending it to Mars.

The centerpiece of Gateway, called the Power and Propulsion Element, is closest to being ready for launch. NASA’s rejigged exploration roadmap, revealed Tuesday in an all-day event at NASA headquarters in Washington, calls for repurposing the core module for a nuclear-electric propulsion demonstration in deep space.

This is not the first time NASA has announced a nuclear propulsion demo. More than 20 years ago, NASA was working on a nuclear-electric propulsion initiative called Project Prometheus. It was canceled. In 2021, NASA and DARPA, the Pentagon’s research and development agency, started work on a nuclear rocket engine known as DRACO. NASA and the Pentagon canceled the DRACO program last year.
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NASA will cannibalize the core module of Gateway for the SR-1 mission. The Power and Propulsion Element, or PPE, is under construction at Lanteris Space Systems in Palo Alto, California. The module will have the most powerful electric propulsion system ever flown in space, with three 12-kilowatt engines and four 6-kilowatt thrusters. The PPE would have originally relied entirely on solar power. Under NASA’s new plan, it will have solar arrays and a uranium-fueled fission reactor.

The goal for SR-1 Freedom is to “prove the US can build, launch, and operate a nuclear propulsion system,” laying the “foundation” for more capable missions to follow, said Steve Sinacore, NASA’s program executive for space reactors. Launch is just 33 months away.

There’s a lot of work to do in less than three years, but hopefully Isaacman’s reenergized NASA can pull it off.

Posted at 4:53 pm by Stephen Green

GREAT MOMENTS IN ANTI-JOURNALISM:

Posted at 4:44 pm by Ed Driscoll

SEEMS LIKE A NO-BRAINER, ELON:

Posted at 2:33 pm by Stephen Green

BIRDS AREN’T REAL, BUT IN FARSI:

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

DON LEMON BRIEFLY STEPS OUTSIDE THE BUBBLE:

Posted at 1:54 pm by Stephen Green

IT’S GOOD TO BE THE NOMENKLATURA: Chicago, Where The Mayor’s Safety Is Far More Important Than Any Average Citizen’s. “Reports now circulating in Chicago political media and on social media reveal Mayor Johnson’s personal armed security detail includes as many as 150 Chicago Police Department officers at a cost to taxpayers of roughly $30 million a year. That’s almost three times the number of cops that protected Johnson’s predecessor, Lori Lightfoot.”

It’s about reminding the proles where they stand in the hierarchy.

Posted at 12:45 pm by Stephen Green

TUCKER CARLSON HAS BECOME TEHRAN’S MOST EFFECTIVE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE PROPAGANDIST: Tucker Carlson’s sickening praise for Sharia tyranny.

Carlson really has lost it. Also on that pod, he sang the praises of Sharia law. He contrasted a place like New York City – where people are ‘shitting on the sidewalk’ and ‘having sex in ATM vestibules’ – with Sharia-ruled nations like Qatar and Saudi Arabia, where order rules and people are happy. They are? Even the gays, who in Saudi Arabia can be put to death for their acts of love behind closed doors? I’m as opposed to public shitting as the next person, but give me the occasional sight of a crackhead’s stool over the state murder of homosexuals, the forced veiling of women and the outlawing of religious conscience any day of the week.

Carlson comes off like one of those oddball ginger Brits who converts to Islam and then holds forth like a roadman imam on the glories of Sharia. He says the Sharia-governed Gulf states are ‘happy… welcoming of others… tolerant of diversity’. Okay, maybe he can explain why Qatar has not one synagogue(hint: it’s an anti-Semitic hellhole that strictly regulates non-Muslim religious belief). Or why a British grandad was once sentenced to 350 lashes in Saudi Arabia for having some homemade booze in his car. Or why a 19-year-old Saudi woman was flogged and jailed for six months after being gang-raped. I’ll tell you why: because she was rumoured to be having an affair with one of her attackers, and to the Islamo-psychos who rule that kingdom that’s as bad being raped. I bet she isn’t ‘happy’, Tucker.

Carlson’s truthless, childish gushing over Sharia nations puts him on a par with those 1930s Western leftists who bigged up Stalin’s regime and neglected to mention his violent purging of tens of thousands of ‘wrongthinkers’. Like them, it seems his need for a foreign entity he can point to as being morally preferable to the knackered West overrides any duty he might feel towards that old thing called truth. And the truth is this: Sharia law is inferior to the universal law of Western nations. Its emphasis on vengeance, where a criminal’s punishment is sometimes put at the discretion of the victim or the victim’s family, unleashes untold cruelty and clannish point-scoring. Carlson might not like poo in New York City but he should know that New York City is legally, morally and socially a more humane place than Riyadh.

Evergreen question: What Happened to Tucker?

(Classical reference in headline.)

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

THE EV BUBBLE CONTINUES TO DEFLATE: Honda And Sony Are Killing Their Two Afeela Electric Cars.

Sony surprised everyone when it dabbled in the car scene at CES 2020 with an electric sedan, followed a year later by an SUV. The tech giant teamed up with Honda in 2022, establishing the Sony Honda Mobility (SHM) joint venture to bring these concepts to production. However, that’s no longer happening, as neither the sedan nor the SUV will ever go on sale.

Development of both vehicles has come to an abrupt end, although the decision is not entirely surprising. Earlier this month, Honda canceled two of its own EVs and a third model that was supposed to resurrect the Acura RSX. In a joint statement released today, Honda and Sony said the automaker’s sweeping changes to its electric car strategy are also affecting the Afeela-branded models intended for sale by the joint venture.

Afeela? Really?

Posted at 11:43 am by Stephen Green