Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Gasline
2. IFT 14
3. Fairford
4. Hijacking
5. Replay
1. Gasline. The two most important items (to me) last week were the Alaska gasline and Starship IFT-14. We’ll start with the gasline. President Trump announced a strategic investment package by South Korea in the US. The investment is intended to secure exemptions from US import tariffs. $350 billion will be split into three parts. Note that there is some dispute about the dollars to be committed, with the lower end being around $200 billion. There is some argument about the commitment, with RoK not fully committed to the Alaska natural gas pipeline piece until commercial and legal conditions are met. This has led the Usual Suspects to claim that this was a premature announcement. We will see. More on this later.
- The first $22.3 billion will be a gas fired power plant in Texas intended to power AI datacenters with initial commercial operations starting in 2029.
- The second is $120 billion to fund at least 8 large reactors in the US. Two of them will be based on Republic of Korea (RoK) designs. The reactors are described as intended for government installations.
- At least $150 billion will be earmarked for the shipbuilding sector, something near and dear to President Trump as he has been focused on rebuilding industry in the US that has migrated overseas over the last several decades.
- For my part, the most important part of this announcement is $54 billion to underwrite construction of the Alaska natural gas pipeline, currently held hostage by the democrat-led Alaska legislature. There are three expensive pieces for a natural gas pipeline – a treatment and conditioning plant at Prudhoe Bay, the pipeline itself, storage and liquefaction facility at the shipping terminal. Note that the location of the shipping, Nikiski in Cook Inlet, Kotzebue on the Alaska west coast, or Prudhoe Bay itself has yet to be determined.
- The gasline became a political hot potato during the recently ended Alaska legislative term, with democrats and their RINO enablers larding up the enabling legislation with a mind-numbing array of taxes on other oil and natural gas producers, sort of a get even with them for being successful operation. As a result, no legislation, though a clean version did pass out of the House to a recalcitrant senate majority. Democrats are fundamentally opposed like democrats nationwide to oil and natural gas. Decarbonization and renewables are part of their party platform, so anything that will make more natural gas available to Alaskans (or anyone else) is Double Plus Ungood. The taxes are simply poison pill pot shots intended to kill the project under the guise of raising revenue.
- If you believe current polling, democrats are cruising toward control of both houses of the legislature, picking up a few seats to the point where they will no longer have to caucus with RINOs. Their gubernatorial candidate, Jonathan Kreiss – Tompkins (JKT), a former legislator from Sitka, is a young guy whose campaign is mostly funded by Anthropic insiders, is currently leading the race for governor. They have been very quiet following the announcement, though the gasline issue has the potential to be huge. I remain skeptical.
- Final wild card here is President Trump himself. The announcement was made in the Oval Office with three of the four top statewide Republicans in attendance, Senator Dan Sullivan up for reelection, Rep Nick Begich, also up for reelection, and Governor Mike Dunleavy, termed out. Our senior US Senator Lisa Murkowski did not attend, likely due to her near terminal case of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). Trump is reportedly getting very tired of democrat obstruction of what he believes to be a national security project, leading to no small amount of speculation that he might just federalize the project, bypassing the tax and regulatory speedbumps. Should that happen, the lawsuits will be incredible. More importantly, Alaska will no longer have any dog in this particular fight, and as a result, no say on anything associated with the pipeline including the ability to purchase natural gas before (or after) it is loaded for export. For their part, democrats pretend to be unconcerned, simply waiting until the next democrat in the WH to kill it like they did with the Keystone XL pipeline. Should be a very interesting few months.
2. IFT-14. SpaceX finally launched Starship on its 14th flight, Integrated Flight Test (IFT)-14. This was the first orbital flight and delivered 50 tons worth (26 total) of Starlink V3 satellites into orbit, the first money-making flight of the series. The test began what ended up being an impressive week for SpaceX, as it followed with three additional flights Oct 1. They orbited three different rockets, flew every type of payload they fly (commercial, military, manned and Starlink), all successfully. Here’s why this week was important: With a single launch, SpaceX increased the overall bandwidth of the existing 11,000 satellite Starlink constellation by nearly 3%. The 26 V3 satellites are expected to generate $2.6 – $3.9 billion in revenue over a 5-year lifetime. The 26 V3 satellites only cost $31 million to manufacture. SpaceX is shooting for an eventual per launch cost of Starship in the $10 million range. That will get you at least 100 tons into orbit. They are about to make commercial spaceflight a money-making operation, that is until the democrats manage to once again get the government in the way.
- The original launch date of Sept 15 slipped to Sept 28. The last week was spent waiting on the FAA to figure out how to license an orbital flight. Count went reasonably well and liftoff was early in the window. Booster lost an engine before staging. Staging went normally. Booster lost another engine during the first part of the boostback burn. It soft landed in the Gulf offshore Boca Chica. Ship continued into space, losing one of its vacuum engines 40 seconds before that burn was complete. After some discussion, SpaceX decided to complete a burn to place it into orbit some 25 minutes later. Satellites were released into orbit. The next decision point was 1+30 after launch. At that point, they decided to bring it back early, after nearly 2 complete orbits. Reentry went smoothly, with a controlled splashdown NE Hawaii. Ship 41 did not survive the falling over into the Pacific and the upper tank detonated, though most of what remained floated for a bit.
- Several things fall out of this flight. First is that Starship is now an orbital vehicle, capable of inserting at least 50 tons into orbit. This version should be able to handle at least 100 tons, making it the most powerful rocket in the world today (Falcon Heavy is the current leader at 65 tons). In comparison, Saturn V was capable of around 140 tons. The Shuttle was able to put nearly 150 tons into orbit, but never did that. Its maximum payload was around 25 tons, also never flown. The Soviet N-1 was capable of up to 95 tons, but never successfully launched.
- What’s next? SpaceX is going to try to fly two times in October, first Oct 19, second around Oct 30. The second flight will be the first out of Cape Canaveral. They will attempt to catch one or both of those ships. Expect an attempt to catch the Block 3 booster sometime in those two flights. Musk wants to refly a caught ship before the end of the year. If they refly a ship, expect a similar attempt to refly Booster close behind.
- SpaceX is currently limited by launch infrastructure, primarily launch towers. Expect Tower 1 at Boca Chica to be complete in a few months, along with a second one at the Cape. There are anywhere from 1 – 3 more towers at the Cape planned. The new Spaceport Louisiana will start constructing towers next year, with first launch expected by early 2029 or earlier. All three locations, Boca Chica, Cape Canaveral and Louisiana will eventually have the full compliment of Starship infrastructure including natural gas pipelines, air separation and chilling units, testing and launch facilities, booster and ship construction and related facilities. Things are moving very quickly and should accelerate nicely over the next couple years.
3. Fairford. The US removed all bombers stationed at RAF Fairford following discovery of a terrorist plot against the base. The US stationed B-1 and B-52 bombers at the base, operating them in the ongoing war with Iran. Note that there are conflicting stories about this, the first being all B-1s being flown out, the second being all aircraft. A local resident reported odd activity near the base over the weekend with vehicle(s) having fake exterior signage and a number of young Muslim men wandering around in places they weren’t normally seen. This spun up local law enforcement and US military police. As usual, nobody reported the guys as Muslim, though they appeared to be in photos. There was an Iranian connection to the plot. The perps were arrested, charged and then released on bail, shortly after which the US decided to pull the jets out of Great Britain. So much for the former, so-called “special relationship” with Great Britain.
4. Hijacking. The pilot and passengers thwarted an attempted terrorist hijacking of an FlyDubai jet on its way from Dubai to Israel a week ago. The plane was full of mostly Israelis on their way home from holiday. Over 170 passengers were onboard. The pilot was Indian, the co-pilot was Omani, who was radicalized. He had been working for the airline for about a year before attempting to take everyone into Allah Akbar land. Enroute, the co-pilot invites the pilot to pray with him, which he did. The prayer included an attack on the pilot with an axe stored in the cockpit and perhaps a knife. The pilot was badly injured. Co-pilot grabs the controls and puts the jet into a dive, losing 14 – 17,000’ in less than two minutes. The pilot manages to unlock the cockpit door and the passengers manage to subdue the co-pilot and regain control of the jet. There was blood everywhere. But everyone lives, thanks to the example set by Todd Beamer and his fellow Flight 93 passengers some 25 years ago to never go down without a fight. Media is doing its best to tamp down the anti-Muslim news on this one, describing it as a lone wolf attack, and doing their level best to bury the story.
5. Replay. For those of us old enough, the midterm campaign we are seeing seems awfully familiar, with democrats and their media cheerleaders playing the Worst Economy in the Last 50 Years card in their attempt to prevail in the midterms. While there are many similarities between the two campaign years, there are some obvious and important differences. The first of which is that this is a midterm, and midterms are normally turnout driven affairs. Turn out Your Side and you win. Sit home, for whatever reason, and you don’t. Simple. Second is that it is not a presidential year, which would seem obvious, but there is a bit more. First, in 1992, Reagan / Bush 41 had held office for a solid 12 years, with Bush running in 1988 as Reagan’s third term. He wasn’t, and signed onto several pieces of anti-Reaganism legislation, most notably a tax increase and the Americans with Disabilities Act. He pointedly told the Reagan base he wasn’t Reagan, didn’t want to be him, and wasn’t at all interested in maintaining or extending his legacy. Trump, OTOH remains Trump, and is not disappointing the MAGA base by any means at all. All the democrats have this time around are the old standards of burying all positive economic news that the economy is actually doing reasonably well and might instead be roaringl, and doing everything humanly possible to demoralize the MAGA right, mostly with doom and gloom polling. MAGA stays home and they can’t win. Don’t stay home. Trump is up for the fight. Are the rest of us?
More later –
- AG