Arianespace completes its first commercial launch in 2016
The competion heats up: Arianespace successfully placed a commercial communications satellite into geosynchronous orbit yesterday, its first launch of 2016.
Year: 2016
Private company proposes commercial airlock for ISS
The competion heats up: The private company NanoRacks has proposed building a large airlock for ISS which could be used to launch private cubesates while also allowing NASA to eliminate spacewalks by bringing faulty equipment inside for repairs.
For commercial opportunities, NanoRacks has a small satellite launcher, and it is also designing a “haybale” system to launch as many as 192 cubesats at a time. After the airlock is configured, it would be depressurized and sealed. Then a station robotic arm could grab it, move it away from the vehicle, and deploy its payloads.
NASA is also interested in the opportunity to potentially fix large, external components of the space station. Before the space shuttle’s retirement, NASA used the sizable delivery vehicle to stash dozens of replacement pumps, storage tanks, controller boxes, batteries, and other equipment on the station, known as ORUs. When one of these components broke, astronauts would conduct a spacewalk to install a replacement unit.
However sometimes the problem with a broken unit is relatively minor, such as a problematic circuit card. With a larger airlock, damaged components could be brought inside the station, assessed, and possibly fixed, saving NASA the expense of building and delivering a new unit to the station—or losing a valuable spare. Finally, the space agency could use the airlock to dispose of trash that accumulates on station and can be difficult to get rid of.
It is exactly this kind of technology, spurred by the lure of profits, that interplanetary spaceships need if they are going to be maintainable far from home.
McCain and Air Force question ULA military arrangement
On Wednesday, the military arrangement between the Air Force and ULA came under strong attack.
First, Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-California) introduced a bill in Congress that would re-instate the ban on ULA’s use of Russian engines in the Atlas 5 rocket. The ban had been lifted when Senators Richard Shelby (R-Alabama) and Richard Durbin (D-Illinois) snuck language doing so into the giant omnibus budget bill in December.
Second, at a hearing in the Senate on Wednesday, Air Force, under attack by Senator McCain for its sweetheart deal which gives ULA $800 million annually whether or not it launches anything regardless, admitted that it is thinking of terminating that deal early.
Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James told the Senate Armed Services Committee during a Wednesday hearing the service is considering early termination of the current EELV Launch Capability (ELC) contract, a unique arrangement set up in 2006 to fund the cost of maintaining ULA launch infrastructure. At the time, the arrangement made sense because ULA was the Pentagon’s sole source for military space launch. “I was very surprised and disappointed when ULA did not bid on a recent GPS competitive launch opportunity,” James said. “And given the fact that there are taxpayer dollars involved with this ELC arrangement I just described to you, I’ve asked my legal team to review what could be done about this.”
The McCain bill is not likely to pass. However, the pressure he is putting on the Air Force, combined with the renewed and cheaper competition being offered by SpaceX, could very well lead to the ending of ULA’s EELV deal.
I expect to see a similar scenario play out in connection with Orion/SLS sometime in the next two years. When SpaceX and others begin to fly manned capsules and big rockets for relatively little money, our elected officials are eventually going to notice how much more expensive that bloated government program is, even as it doesn’t accomplish much. Some of them will suddenly realize the political advantage in attacking SLS, and begin to do so.
Computer program learns and then wins at Go
A computer program, dubbed AlphaGo, has successfully beaten a professional player of Go for the first time.
What is significant however is the method used by that computer program to win:
The IBM chess computer Deep Blue, which famously beat grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997, was explicitly programmed to win at the game. But AlphaGo was not preprogrammed to play Go: rather, it learned using a general-purpose algorithm that allowed it to interpret the game’s patterns, in a similar way to how a DeepMind program learned to play 49 different arcade games2.
This means that similar techniques could be applied to other AI domains that require recognition of complex patterns, long-term planning and decision-making, says Hassabis. “A lot of the things we’re trying to do in the world come under that rubric.” Examples are using medical images to make diagnoses or treatment plans, and improving climate-change models.
If computer programs are now successfully able to learn and adapt it means that it will become increasingly difficult to distinguish between those programs and actual humans.
SpaceX successfully tests parachutes for manned Dragon
The competition heats up: SpaceX and NASA on Wednesday released footage of a test of the parachutes for the company’s manned Dragon capsule.
The footage and accompanying story revealed very little about the test, including when it actually happened, so it isn’t that much of a story.
Bing Crosby & Grace Kelly – True Love
An evening pause: From the 1956 film High Society. And for my wife Diane today.
Hat tip Edward Theen.
Two thoughtful endorsements of Ted Cruz
While cable television and the general media goes nuts of the childish feud between Donald Trump and Fox News, Ted Cruz today got two different endorsements that not only supported his nomination for president, but also outlined in detail two completely different reasons for supporting him.
The first, at the website Legal Insurrection, outlined Ted Cruz’s consistent and long term history as a trustworthy constitutional conservative. Not only does the article review Cruz’s history in the Senate, where he did whatever he could to fulfill his campaign promises (often prevented from doing so by his own Republican caucus), the article also looks at his background before becoming a senator. Its conclusion?
In short, Cruz has a long (dating back to his early teens) record of being a conservative in both principle and action. He didn’t bound out of bed one day, put his finger to the wind, and decide to become a conservative (as was charged against Mitt Romney, among others); he’s always been a conservative. [emphasis in original]
Conservatives have been complaining for decades that they can’t get a reliable conservative nominated to run for president. With Cruz, we actually have that chance, and he will be running against the weakest Democratic candidate since George McGovern.
The second article outlines Cruz’s particular advantages for cleaning out the bureaucratic corruption in the Justice Department and elsewhere in the federal government.
» Read more
Hawaii’s governor expresses empty support for TMT
The coming dark age: In his state of the state address on Monday the Democratic governor of Hawaii, David Ige, expressed weak support for the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on the summit of Mauna Kea.
“In its recent ruling, the Supreme Court did not say don’t do this project,” Governor Ige said. “What it did say was that the state didn’t do the right things in the approval process. It told us we needed to do a better job of listening to people and giving them a real opportunity to be heard.
“I am committed to pursuing this project and I hope its sponsors will stay with us. And this time, we will listen carefully to all, reflect seriously on what we have heard and, whatever we do in the end, we will do it the right way.”
These are empty words. Listening to the protesters means the telescope doesn’t get built at all. The protesters made it very clear during their protesters this past year that their’ objective is to stop the telescope, to return to the illiterate native culture that existed before the arrival of the white man and his western civilization. They also made it clear that they are bigots, who want all not-native Hawaiians removed from the island. By saying he wants to “do a better job of listening” to them means that Ige is willing to go along with some of their ideas.
Right now, I am very doubtful TMT will ever get built on Mauna Kea.
Jinan Acrobatics Troupe – Rings
An evening pause: Two things to note: First, they purposely knock the rings down periodically to show that they are not held up very firmly. Second, one of the musical pieces they play is the main theme from the film Exodus (1960). The score won an Oscar for Ernest Gold.
Hat tip Danae.
Trump: “I can be the most politically correct person you’ve ever seen.”
For those who support Trump because they think he is an outsider who will change Washington and the leftwing politics that dominate it, I think the quote above demonstrates that these hopes are false ones. He will do nothing significantly different once he is in power. Or as the writer at the link notes:
He’s aggressive and anti-PC on the trail, in a knife fight with 15 other candidates, because that’s what it takes to win, but if winning at the job of the presidency requires a different tone, then that’s the tone he’ll take. This must be the first time in American history where it’s impossible to predict not only what a major-party frontrunner would do as president — given Trump’s volatile political history, all we can count on is that there’ll be “deals”.
Be warned. Picking Trump as the Republican candidate for president might be the worse decision conservative voters ever made. He might be better than Clinton, but he certainly will not be what conservatives want.
Posted from Tucson International Airport. I am on the way to very cold Michigan to give a lecture for the AIAA, and will be back Wednesday night..
Air Force certifies Falcon 9 upgrade for military launches
The competition heats up: The Air Force has approved use of SpaceX’s upgraded Falcon 9 rocket for use in military launches.
What this means is that SpaceX is increasingly considered an acceptable bidder for future military launch contracts. Moreover, it means that SpaceX will be able to use the Falcon 9 first stage that they are landing vertically, giving them more recoverable first stages for future flights.
Blue Origin to increase New Shepard launch rate
The competition heats up: Blue Origin expects to increase the rate of test flights for its New Shepard reusable rocket in 2016.
“We expect to shorten that turnaround time over time this year, and fly this vehicle again and again,” [Blue Origin President Rob Meyerson] said. Those upcoming tests will use the same New Shepard vehicle that flew the previous two flights, with hardware and software modifications as needed between flights. Meyerson said the company still plans to perform “dozens” of test flights of New Shepard over the next couple of years before the company is ready to carry people on the vehicle. “It really depends on how the flight test program goes,” he said. “It could be a little faster than that, or it could be a little longer than that, depending on what we learn.”
I expect that by the end of 2016, the U.S. will have two proven reusable first stage rockets and two operational orbital cargo spacecraft. And that doesn’t count the likely first demo flight of Falcon Heavy.