Bullet Train Projects clears hurdle with eminent domain ruling. Landen Kulman, the proposed high-speed railway between Houston and Dallas recently took a big step toward coming to fruition. Texas Central, the Dallas-based company behind the Bullet Train Project, received a favorable ruling from Texas 13th Court of Appeals on May 7th. The appellate court held their Texas Central is both a railroad company and inter-urban electric railway, giving it the right to use eminent domain as the company attempts to secure the land necessary for its 240-mile railway. Texans against high-speed rail, which represents property owners along the proposed route, announced May 8th that it would appeal their ruling to the Texas Supreme Court. Texas Central said last fall that it had secured about 30 percent of the land it would need to construct an elevated railway for the nation's first high-speed train. Last week's ruling overturned a previous ruling by a judging rule only on county who said Texas Central was not a railroad and thus did not have powers associated with them, such as eminent domain. This decision is rooted in state law that allows survey access and use of eminent domain by railroads, pipelines, electrical lines and other industries that provide for the public good and a strong economy. Texas Central CEO Carlos Aguilar said in a news release, the former Northwest Mall site near the intersection at US-290 and Louis-610 is the planned Houston station for the Bullet Train Project, which would take passengers between Texas' tool-largest cities in a matter of about 90 minutes. Despite the favorable court ruling, their remain multiple hurdles to clear before construction can begin as Texas Central also is awaiting approval from the federal government to move forward. The federal railroad administration must issue a final environmental impact statement and devise a custom set of rules for the railway that would be used to ensure its safety and governance system and operations. Texas Central also laid off 28 employees in late March as it was hit by the economic downturn associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Aguilar said at the time that the company, which has international investors and partners, could have its timeline delayed. Texas Central previously said it hoped to start construction by the end of 2020 and have the railway complete by 2026thellatornews.com. The U.S. Air Force's 18th Space Control Squadron, which tracks man-made objects in our bid-around earth, confirmed the rocket's reentry was on May 11 at around 11.33 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Initial reports claimed the spacecraft had plummeted into the ocean off Africa's west coast. Now, two villages in Cote de Voire have reported finding what they believe to be debris from the fallen rocket stage. According to images posted to social media and reported in the French language news organization of Rick Sawyer, Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, tweeted that the location of one fallen object, a nearly 40-foot-long pipe, seen in a number of photos, is directly on the CZ-5B-Reee, entry track, while there's no official word on whether these pieces of debris are actually parts of the fallen rocket stage. It's looking more and more likely. Lassen is Erbo, executive secretary of the comprehensive nuclear test band Treaty Organization, tweeted May 12 that the international monitoring systems in for sound network, primarily designed to detect nuclear blasts in the atmosphere, registered signals of debris traveling at supersonic speeds in the area. What's the precedent here? In 1991, the Soviet-Saviet 7 Space Station tumbled back to earth, breaking up over Argentina, the Mir space station, which was decommissioned in 2001 and broke apart during a controlled reentry above the waters near Fiji, is the largest man-made object to re-enters atmosphere, and NASA Skylapse Space Station famously pungled a small Australian town in 1979. If the long March 5 becarsed age re-entered earths at must for just 15 minutes earlier, chunks of it very likely could have fallen across New York City, as Technico reported, this is in the first time China has played fast and loose with falling rocket parts. In March, when China launched its long March 3B rocket, a booster crash landed down range in the Gizha province. Late last year, another long March 3B rocket ferried two satellites into orbit, but dropped sections of its boosters on a settlement near the launch site. In 2018, yet another booster fell from the sky after the launch of a long March 3B rocket and exploded just outside of a small town in the Guangxi province. Witnesses posted stunning video clips of the fall and booster to social media. In addition to smashing into the ground with unbelievable force, these boosters often still have traces of the toxic propellant hydrazine in them, as tempting as it is, if one falls into your yard. Don't try to get a closer look www.popularmechanics.com