When my father-in-law went down this path we are all witnessing, I had to convince everyone that this was a fact. They kept trying to either rationalize his actions or try to steer them. Tried to make sense of it all. That he’d get better.

“He’s brain damaged,” I’d say, “The MRI showed it.”

All we can do is keep him happy and not be a danger to himself or others. Take away the keys, put blocks on the windows, slides on the doors he can’t figure out, behind a door with a keypad. Drive him around the neighborhood now and again. Listen to the rambling stories. Put some meds in his apple pie.

It’s time to just admit it.

This is one of my favorite photos from this mission so far:

Generals getting fired with no explanation. Hegseth needs to make statements about why this is happening:

Hegseth’s War on America’s Military

By Tom Nichols – The Atlantic

The United States is in the middle of a major war, but that didn’t stop Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Thursday from firing General Randy George, America’s most senior Army officer. George was the Army’s chief of staff, and he was cashiered along with another four-star general, David Hodne, and Major General William Green Jr., the top Army chaplain, in what has been a rolling purge by Hegseth of senior officers—particularly those close to the secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll.

Why were these men fired while U.S. forces are fighting overseas? The Defense Department has given no official reason for their dismissals, but likely they are the latest victims of Hegseth’s vindictive struggles with the Army, which he feels treated him poorly—the service “spit me out,” he said in his 2024 book—as he struggles in a job for which he remains singularly unqualified.

Hegseth began his tenure by acting against what he sees as a Pentagon infested with DEI hires. He pushed for the removal of the then–chairman of the Joint Chiefs, C. Q. Brown, who is Black, and he fired a raft of female military leaders, replacing them all with men. But dumping the Army chief of staff in the middle of a war, without explanation, is a reckless move even by Hegseth’s standards. George is a decorated combat veteran who was slated to stay in his job until 2027, and he has never publicly feuded with Hegseth—despite having good reason to do so.

Trump and Hegseth have been on a clear mission to politicize the U.S. military, and to turn it into an armed extension of the MAGA movement. Hegseth regularly proselytizes, both for Trump and for his right-wing evangelical beliefs, from the Pentagon podium. He has intervened in Army promotions, recently culling four colonels—two Black men and two women—from the list for advancement to brigadier general. (This may be the tip of the iceberg: NBC is now reporting that Hegseth has also canceled the promotions, across multiple services, of at least a dozen minority and female officers.) When two Army helicopters buzzed a political rally and then flew to MAGA favorite Kid Rock’s house, Hegseth short-circuited the Army’s suspension of the pilots and squashed an investigation into their actions. Following the best American civil-military traditions, George and other senior military leaders have been remarkably disciplined in keeping their thoughts out of the public eye.

Of course, the tone at the Pentagon was set by the commander in chief. Last June, Trump spoke at Fort Bragg, where he tried to turn his appearance into a political rally. Again, George (and Driscoll) said nothing, at least in public, about this shocking violation of civil-military norms. Trump, after all, is the commander in chief, and his behavior can be curtailed only by the Senate or the American people.

Even in less dangerous times, the public would still have a right to answers about such an unprecedented purge of the senior U.S. military ranks. These officers are all people with long and distinguished records of service; none of them has been charged with any wrongdoing, and none of them has been accused of any kind of incompetence or disloyalty. They all seem to have committed only the offense of being part of a military institution that Hegseth—who still harbors obvious bitterness about his undistinguished and ultimately shortened military career—wants to restock with MAGA loyalists.

These dismissals are not defensible even as the product of some high-minded strategic reform. Rather, as Pentagon officials told The New York Times, they are the “product of Mr. Hegseth’s long-running grievances with the Army, battles over personnel and his troubled relationship” with Driscoll. Hegseth’s beef with Driscoll may be a product of insecurity: When Hegseth was stepping on rakes in the aftermath of Signalgate, Driscoll was an obvious choice to replace him. The Army secretary also took on important tasks that Hegseth either would not—or could not—do. Last fall, Driscoll, not Hegseth, was part of a high-level Pentagon delegation that traveled to Geneva in an attempt to end the Russia-Ukraine war.

Perhaps that was just as well. Hegseth—now scathingly called “Dumb McNamara” by some Pentagon staff—has busied himself with culture-war nonsense rather than substantive defense and security issues. But Hegseth apparently need not worry: Driscoll, according to reporting from my colleagues Ashley Parker and Sarah Fitzpatrick, is now rumored to be one of the next senior appointees facing likely dismissal. (Hegseth may not know much about strategy or leadership, but he knows how to fight a war of attrition.)

The petty vendettas of a passed-over major mattered less until the war in Iran, a conflict that may be escalating beyond American control and is now sinking both Trump’s popularity and the global economy. Pentagon pissing matches are the stuff of legend, and George is not the first general to get an unwanted retirement invitation from an irate civilian leader. But America is now engaged in its biggest conflict in decades, with thousands of troops headed into possible combat on the shores of a country the size of Alaska with more than three times the population of North Korea—and with a president whose only formal speech on the war so far consisted of 19 minutes of jumbled thoughts. The American people deserve to know why so many of their top officers are being tossed out of their jobs.

Pete Hegseth has never shown a willingness to explain himself to the public, nor has he demonstrated the character required to take that kind of responsibility. But now that Randy George, along with other senior officers Hegseth has fired or pushed to resign, are about to be civilians, maybe they can step forward and tell their fellow citizens what on earth is going on in Hegseth’s Pentagon.

After weeks of whiplash 180s, Trump announced he plans to get out of Iran no matter what happens in the Strait of Hormuz or how much our allies in Europe, Asia, or the MidEast are suffering from bombardment or inability to ship or receive petroleum. Our oil blockade of Cuba obviously doesn’t apply to Putin’s tankers, Venezuela is still run by a Communist dictatorship and we are getting out of NATO because it hasn’t obediently jumped to help us in a war we started without even consulting them. And tonight, he plans to speak to the nation with “a very important message”.

In the background, our President seems to be feverishly maneuvering to gain access to state election records so he can determine every American’s political affiliation, and he is desperately trying to abolish birthright citizenship so he can decide who is and isn’t a REAL American, regardless of how long their ancestors have been here. Being a “brown-eyed handsome man” with foreign-born grandparents, I can see that carrying my passport with me every time I leave the house may soon not be enough to keep me from being deported.

The whole nation is suddenly one toke over the line, sweet Jesus. I’m checking out of the Zone, permanently, and I suggest we all do the same. It is no longer safe to speak out publicly without picking your words very carefully. To paraphrase Hemingway, fascism is like bankruptcy: at first it happens gradually, then it happens all at once. Adios muchachos.

I hope our astronauts come home safely, and I hope they still have a country when they get back.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/3/30/2375542/-Dumb-and-disturbing-developments-in-Trump-s-ballroom-boondoggle

link

Key Goals of the Dragonfly Mission:
-Investigate Prebiotic Chemistry: Explore how far prebiotic chemistry has progressed in Titan’s complex organic-rich environment, including looking for ingredients like amino acids and pyrimidines.
-Search for Life Indicators (Biosignatures): Analyze surface material at various locations to identify potential signs of water-based or hydrocarbon-based life.
-Study Habitability: Assess the habitability of Titan’s environment by investigating the interaction of organic materials with liquid water (from past impacts) and potential cryovolcanic activity.
-Explore Multiple Locations: As a mobile lander, Dragonfly will make “hops” to visit dozens of sites across Titan, including dunes and Selk Crater.
-Sample Surface Materials: Use a drill system and mass spectrometer to analyze the chemical composition of surface materials.

Dragonfly will take advantage of Titan’s dense atmosphere—four times thicker than Earth’s—and low gravity to fly, making it the first vehicle to fly its entire science payload to new locations on another planet.

OK, so “search for life indicators” is a step beyond “looking for the condition that could support life” but it is still NOT looking for actual, present-day living microorganisms, plants, or animals. It’s not analyzing a microbe under a microscope or directly imaging of an alien creature. It’s searching for evidence of biological processes, metabolic waste, or environmental alterations that only living things could produce – like methane in a planet’s atmosphere, specific isotope ratios, or fossilized structures in rocks.

This is not a bad thing but why not have the ability to also look for actual lifeforms if and where the biosignitures are present? Have a microscope that analyses the drill sample along with the mass spectrometer? FFS it’s taken years to develop this probe and it will take six years and a billion miles to reach Titan. Let’s take a deep dive and see what we find!

This bullshit makes me want to scream. Maybe we’ll get lucky and a simple camera onboard will spot some Titan spiders running round.

Space policy expert Scott Pace, the director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, describes the long road to launching NASA’s Artemis II mission currently set for April 1.

We’re about to send humans in orbit around the Moon again. What’s had to happen to get to this point?

Pace: Let’s go back to the 1980s and 1990s. After the space shuttle Challenger accident, a lot of people were thinking, “What do we do next?”

The space shuttle program was not an economic success. The recurring cost per flight was very expensive. So there was a lot of thinking about different vehicles that could be the shuttles’ successor. NASA pursued some of the higher-risk options, thinking that if they didn’t work out, they could still extend and use the shuttle. Some of those higher-risk ideas were things like single-stage-to-orbit space planes. When they didn’t work, it was OK because NASA was still working on the shuttle.

And then we had the 2003 space shuttle Columbia accident. NASA figured they could either stop for a decade or so and then try to restart a human spaceflight program once they had better technology, or try to transition the infrastructure and industrial base they had with the space shuttle to a new system.

When the second shuttle accident happened, we examined what we had to build a new system with, and we had solid rocket boosters and external tanks. To make something safer, we needed to build crew capsules. A capsule with an escape system onboard was one of the few immediate ways you could increase the likelihood of a crew’s survival.

If your eventual goal is Mars, you’ll then need a really heavy-lift vehicle to launch more crew and a heavier load. All that deliberation led to the current Space Launch System and the Orion capsule.

Four astronauts will be sent on a 10-day mission orbiting the Moon. What’s exciting to you about this mission, and what will you be looking out for?

Pace: The first thing is the performance of the solid rocket boosters on launch. Boosters are very reliable, but if they go bad, they go bad pretty quickly. The next thing is a checkpoint in Earth’s orbit when they’re going to make a decision about whether to do a translunar injection. During the translunar injection, they fire the engine to escape Earth’s orbit and get on the right path to orbit around the Moon.

Before they decide, they’re going to check the environmental control and life support system to make sure the passengers are safe and healthy inside the vehicle. Once you make the commitment to head for the Moon, that life support system is going to be essential. And they haven’t yet done a full flight test on Orion of the environmental control and life support system.

The translunar injection is actually fairly straightforward. In many ways, this is less risky than Apollo 8, which went to the Moon and then fired its engines to get into a stable orbit around the Moon. Then, it fired the engines again to come home.

Artemis II is more like Apollo 13. They’re going up, looping around the Moon and using its gravity to whip around and then come back. In some ways, it’s a less risky trajectory than Apollo 8 because you don’t have to fire the engines as much.

When the crew vehicle comes back, we’re going to look at its heat shield performance. The heat shield has had a long and complicated history. It looks like it’ll be safe, but this is a flight test. And so we’re going to look at how it reenters the atmosphere and how it handles the heat load put on it.

The SLS does come with challenges. One is the high cost. Every time you build one of these vehicles, it costs several billion dollars. The other problem is flight rate.

Some people will argue that beating China to the Moon is really important. Does that matter to you?

Pace: It matters to me if China is the only one showing up and they drive all the standards and the operating norms on the Moon. But the issue of beating China back in the near term doesn’t quite seize me as much as the longer term.

This is part of the problem I have with the term “race.” The U.S. had a space race in the past, but what we have now with China is a long-term competition.

Space is not yet contentious in the way the South China Sea is, or border disputes with India are. But I can see why some people are worried by looking at China’s behavior in other areas.

Part of the stated goal for Artemis is to secure a lasting presence on the lunar surface. Do you think there’s a rationale for nations to stay permanently on the Moon now?

Pace: Humanity’s future in space depends on two sub-questions. First: Can you live off the land and use local resources, or are you always dependent upon Earth? Second: How are you paying? Are you also financially dependent upon Earth – for example, supported by taxpayers?

If you can both use local resources and do something economically useful, then you can build space settlements and get permanent human activity beyond the Earth.

If the answer is no on both counts, then space is like Mount Everest: It’s a place of adventure and symbolism. People can go there and take pictures. But nobody really lives there.

If you can do something useful in space and generate an economic return, but still have to come home to Earth because the environment can’t support life long term, then space is like a North Sea oil platform. It’s a dangerous and difficult place, but a place where you can go for economic reasons.

If you still have to depend on taxpayer money, space may be similar to Antarctica – like going to McMurdo Station. You can do science there and have a human presence, but it’s a constrained environment.

Part of the purpose of exploration is to find out which of these futures is feasible. Some people have faith that space settlements are possible. But we really don’t know.

If it turns out there are economically useful things to do on the Moon, there may be an eventual transition. Activity on the Moon would go from a government-led effort to one led by private sector activities, including mining helium-3 or shipping water back to refueling stations.

If it turns out that none of that really makes sense, we’d still have some science presence there, but we would press on to Mars. I think there’ll be some sort of scientific presence regardless – but its size will depend on economics and markets that we, frankly, don’t understand yet.

The world today in space is much more globalized, much more democratized. Many more countries and entities are involved in space. While the U.S. wants to be the leader in this effort, it knows that simply doing it with a NASA logo is really not sufficient. The Artemis program is meant as an international and commercial partnership effort with others to voluntarily shape what space looks like.