Stephen Fleming

My latest op-ed for the @TucsonStar “But ground-based challenges will eventually slow the development of new data centers nationwide. The winners will be aerospace companies who commit to solving the engineering problems quickly for moving data centers to orbit ...” arizonadailystar-az.newsmemory.com/?publink=10afd…

2,000-year-old artifact may be evidence that Romans found New World - a thousand years before Columbus trib.al/Xpg40PY

This is your monthly reminder that congress gave @PeteButtigieg $2 TRILLION to fix infrastructure and nobody knows where the money all went. That’s 135 nuclear aircraft carriers worth of cash. Poof.

Dear Europe, I know you feel outrage. I have talked to many of you on the phone. I know politicians and media on both sides of the Atlantic are furious. I attended a conference with mostly Europeans. The worry and frustration was palpable. I get it too. You are dependent on Middle East oil and aluminum and fertilizer and shipping and LNG. Dubai is a vital travel hub for you. Vital. But don’t worry. Trump will lose the midterms and Congress will flip and side with you. Or maybe not… I live in the bluest town in the bluest state, where protests are practically a seasonal sport. I drove over eight hours across New England this week past the usual corners where outrage normally lives. This time? Nothing. Left, right, center. I’m hearing almost no one talk about this war. MAGA doesn’t even care. Ask someone and you’ll get the expected talking points. But in coffee shops, kitchens, real life? Silence. Hard truth: most Americans just don’t care. And since the weather warmed, not a single keffiyeh in sight. So when Trump says you need to go protect the ships and airports that are vital to YOU, I think he means it. Because the vast majority of Americans don’t care. And it’s not that we want to see you spin into an energy and food shortage. It’s that even the most TDS-inflicted liberal American is getting tired of your BS. Hating Trump is one thing. Almost half of America is OK with that. But your anti-American vitriol and arrogance and weakness is exhausting. Nobody likes a needy person who is angry and thinks they are better than you. It’s literally the worst combination in a person. And you might not want to admit it, but you are needy. You need us to reopen Hormuz. You need our banks and our markets. You need a lot. “We will not participate in this war” is fine. Nobody is asking you to bomb civilians. What’s weak is you won’t surge defensive missiles and planes to protect European-owned ships and property. When exactly did defense make you a participant? Defense of innocent life and property isn’t a “war crime.” And you DO own the majority of ships getting attacked. Ships that you are unwilling to defend maybe because you outsource the labor to Indonesia, the Philippines, and Ukraine. You are the wealthy lords who abandoned the mansion but told the help to stick around and defend it. So you might want to send a few warships and missile defense units to protect YOUR property. Or at least leave them at anchor and send the innocent crews home. You want us to defend the Strait because we started this mess? That’s reasonable. Problem is the reaction from most of America to your demands is: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Gary Zukav pointed out that the dark-adapted human eye can detect single photons in 1979. (“The Dancing Wu Li Masters.”)

Imagine screaming "Death to America" for 47 years and then when no one hopefully notices, send your children to be educated by the Great Satan.

So Caesar Rodney who went on a “midnight ride” to Philadelphia to vote for independence (breaking a deadlock for Delaware) and then became a signer of the Declaration of Independence will be commemorated for the 250th anniversary and this is the headline?

@jamesncantrell @BuenoForMiami The War Between the States. Freedom lost.

@BuenoForMiami Revolutionary war

What was the last war that was legitimately about “our freedoms”?

Star Trek showed us this planet in “The Savage Curtain” (the one with Abraham Lincoln) in 1969.

Organleggers.

This was one of the movies that got me complaining that it was filmed through smoked glass. Turn up the lighting!

Just because you seek a better life does not mean you have a valid asylum claim.

Today, the Islamic Republic hanged multiple Iranian civilians, some of whom were just teenagers. Amnesty International? Silent. The UN? Silent. Human Rights Council? Silent. The Red Cross? Silent.

Baseball is meant to be watched in person Football is meant to be watched on your couch College Basketball is meant to be watched during the day at your cubicle

The biggest game of the first round is on Friday, when Long Island battles Arizona for iced tea supremacy

For some reason, the AC-130 doesn’t generate the internal opposition that the A-10 does. Maybe because it has so much commonality with the other C-130 variants that it gets a pass. Also, being built and maintained by Lockheed-Martin (instead of a defunct vendor that went bankrupt in 1990) probably doesn’t hurt.

@StephenFleming Thank you for your insight. I hate to see such a powerhouse go by the wayside but changes in strategy dictates those things. I suppose that also means mothballing the Ac-130 gunships too.

The A-10 was built by Fairchild Republic, whose assets now belong to Elbit Industries. I’m sure the tooling was scrapped decades ago. But if Israel wanted to build a modernized “Warthog II,” they technically own the design…

@JK_Lundblad @TheOldManPar Last I checked, it’s illegal for NASA to launch SLS without solid boosters built in the state of Utah.

@TheOldManPar I don't get it. What is the point of SLS then? Why does this benefit NASA? Can they remove the SRBs if Orion no longer needs to go to the Moon?

SLS is officially in dire straits.

Alright, the Senate insists we use SLS for the first few Orion flights to the Moon. Whatever. BUT… if SLS is only boosting Orion into LEO, how much delta-V is that leaving on the table? And what could we do with it? Could we stuff a dozen 1-meter space telescopes underneath Orion? Or a couple of Enceladus landers?

Short answer: No. Longer answer: a mix of F-35s (obvious issues), helicopters (obvious other issues) and future drones (which don’t exist yet). Honest answer: all procurements are being driven by a future fight with China. Since that fight probably won’t involve a lot of close air support, CAS is being deprecated. (Then we get surprises like Iran.)

@StephenFleming To your knowledge, is there a proposed "replacement" for the A-10? I've read here and there that the F35 is the replacement. I can't fathom how that's the case.

If birthright citizenship is interpreted to include anchor babies and birth tourism, then Chinese citizens can order ballots from swing states, and vote in every congressional, state, and federal election.