Andrea
79.2K posts

Andrea
@FlyingAndrew91
Aerospace Engineering, love for Flight & Space, AS Roma fan. #AvGeek #CinemaAddicted #European









It was inspiring to watch the Artemis II launch yesterday — @NASA’s first crewed mission around the moon since 1972. Our space program has always captured an essential part of what it means to reach beyond what we thought was possible, and I hope the four brave astronauts on this mission will inspire a new generation to follow in their footsteps.

JUST IN: You do not fire your Army Chief of Staff in the middle of a war for no reason. You fire him because of what comes next. Pete Hegseth called General Randy George on April 2 and told him to retire immediately. The Pentagon confirmed it within hours. No reason was given. Not publicly. Not privately. A senior Army official told Fox News that Hegseth offered George nothing: no misconduct, no operational failure, no policy disagreement on the record. Just a phone call and a career ending in the middle of the most significant American combat operation in two decades. George is the 24th general or admiral Hegseth has removed. But he is not the 24th. He is the one that matters. The Army Chief of Staff. The man whose signature sits between a president’s intent and the order that sends soldiers across a beach or into a tunnel complex. The 82nd Airborne is deploying right now. Marines from the 31st MEU are staged on the USS Tripoli. JSOC operators are at forward bases in Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Kharg Island, 90 percent of Iranian oil exports, sits 16 kilometres off a coast that someone will have to decide whether to approach. And the four-star general whose job it was to advise whether that approach should happen was removed 48 hours after Trump told the nation the war would continue for two to three more weeks. The replacement is Vice Chief General Christopher LaNeve. He was Hegseth’s senior military aide before this appointment. The man who carried the Secretary’s briefcase now commands the Army the Secretary is reshaping. The chain of command did not break. It shortened. The distance between a television studio and a combat order just collapsed to zero intermediaries who were not personally selected by the man giving the order. No reason was given. That is the tell. When someone is removed without explanation during a crisis, the explanation is the crisis itself. George either objected to something or was about to. The ground option. The power plant strikes. The Kharg raid. The escalation that turned a highway bridge in Karaj into rubble on the same day he was told to leave. Something in the next two weeks requires a chief who will not push back, and the Pentagon solved that problem by installing one trained as Hegseth’s aide. A former Fox News weekend host just fired a four-star general with combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, replaced him with his own former assistant, and did it during a live war in which the next decision could put American soldiers on Iranian soil for the first time in history. No hearing was held. No misconduct cited. The Army woke up on April 3 with a new chief it did not choose, in a war it did not start, preparing for a phase the previous chief apparently could not be trusted to execute. The question is not why George was fired. Every general in the building knows why. The question is what order is coming in the next fourteen days that required removing the one man in the chain of command who might have said no. The war has no perimeter. The chain of command has no objectors. And the next phase has no one left to stop it. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

Russia declares ultimatum to Armenia. Putin [to Armenian PM]: You can’t trade with both EU and EEU. You have to choose. In the last few years, Armenia started exporting to EU 10 times more goods. We are fine with that. It’s your choice, who you will trade with. 1/

This is from SpaceNews Sep. 15, 2025. Gwynne Shotwell is hoping her own engineers are wrong when they indicate in orbit fuel transfer may be more difficult than she and her boss thought. I guess wannabe engineer Musk knows less than the people who are real aerospace Engineers:

Perspective: when we poll GO for translunar injection (TLI) and the engine(s) on the Orion Integrity service module propel us toward the moon, our actual destination is Earth. The ultimate destination of every human space flight.

Pam Bondi led this Department with strength and conviction and I’m grateful for her leadership and friendship. Thank you to President Trump for the trust and the opportunity to serve as Acting Attorney General. We will continue backing the blue, enforcing the law, and doing everything in our power to keep America safe.


Hegseth's firing of Gen. Randy George "reflects growing hostility between Hegseth and the Army’s leadership," military officials told NYT nytimes.com/2026/04/02/us/…




SCOOP: White House's historic FY-27 defense budget fueled by $350B in reconciliation request -- key details obtained by @insidedefense insidedefense.com/daily-news/whi…

Difference in quality between NASA and SpaceX’s launch livestreams.

NEW: Roughly half of Iran’s missile launchers are still intact and thousands of one-way attack drones remain in Iran’s arsenal despite the daily pounding by US and Israeli strikes against military targets over the past five weeks, according to recent US intelligence assessments, three sources familiar with the intel told CNN. “We can keep f**king them up, I don’t doubt it, but you’re out of your mind if you think this will be done in two weeks,” one of the sources said. w/ @NatashaBertrand @jimsciutto @talshalev1 cnn.com/2026/04/02/pol…


