Capitalism in space: The shareholders of Orbital ATK today approved the sale of the company to Northrop Grumman for $7.8 billion.
I suspect this will mean the end of the Orbital name, to be replaced by Northrop Grumman, once a major player in space but focused elsewhere in recent decades.
According to anonymous sources, the Russian manufacturer of the Freget upper stage that failed yesterday during a Soyuz commercial launch has ordered a review of all Fregets.
The Lavochkin research and production association will check all manufactured Fregat boosters, a source in the space industry told TASS on Wednesday after a recent failed launch. “The Lavochkin Research and Production Association will check all Fregat boosters produced earlier. If defects are found, they [the boosters] will be sent for further development,” the source said.
The Lavochkin Research and Production Association did not comment on this information for TASS.
The problem is that Russia already spent almost a full year beginning in early 2016 checking all its rocket engines for substandard construction done by a corrupt manufacturer. Even though the Fregat is built by another manufacturer, did they not check the Fregat upper stages then also?
Capitalism in space: NASA today confirmed that it has finally approved the use of a Falcon 9 used first stage for the next Dragon launch on December 8.
NASA had said back on November 12 that they were considering this idea. It seems to me that SpaceX has probably been proceeding under the assumption they would say yes, which essentially at this point, only a few weeks from launch, put pressure on the timid NASA bureaucracy to finally get on the bandwagon.
Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab has scheduled a ten day launch window, beginning on December 8, for its second Electron rocket launch test.
Because this test will also carry three smallsats for commercial customers it suggests they have strong hopes it will reach orbit.
An evening pause: Performed live in Japan in 1996.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
David Livingston has begun his annual campaign to show support for The Space Show.
The year 2017 is quickly coming to a close. Now is the time to support The Space Show/OGLF by making a contribution to help maintain and further develop our programming and show access. If you pay U.S. federal taxes, you get a tax deduction for your gift. The same is true for those of you paying California taxes as we are both a federal 501C3 nonprofit corporation and a California Public Benefit Corporation….
Per above, you can make your donation online using Pay Pal at the above links (or click on the Pay Pal logo on the right side of our home page). For those of you who prefer mailing a check, please make your check payable to One Giant Leap Foundation, Inc. and mail it in care of me to P.O. Box 95, Tiburon, CA 94920 USA. Remember, your gift makes possible The Space Show programming and all of the services we provide including our blog
David has most generously permitted me to appear on the Space Show more than any other guest, a gift for which I am deeply grateful. More important, he has led the way in the effort to encourage commercial private space. I hope my readers here will help him continue this effort.
India’s next PSLV commercial launch might slip to 2018, despite months of effort to resume launches in 2017 following the August 31 PSLV launch failure when the rockets fairing did not release.
“We are working towards it. It will be in the end of December or first week of January. In that time frame,” ISRO Chairman A S Kiran Kumar said.
Kumar also said ISRO will try to launch on an average of once a month in 2018. The article also mentions the new and very oppressive Indian space law that has been proposed.
Asked whether the Space Activities Bill, 2017 would come up during the Budget session of Parliament, Kiran Kumar said “We have now put it in public comments. It would have to go through a set of discussions. The process has started.”
The draft of the proposed Bill to promote and regulate space activities of India, along with encouraging the participation of the private sector, has been uploaded on the ISRO website for comments from stakeholders and the public. [emphasis mine]
The highlighted text is typical of all news reports coming from India. The law does no such thing, and in fact will strongly discourage any work by the private sector. It appears that in India reporters either do not read the text of laws they are reporting on, or they really do not have freedom of the press there.
Capitalism in space: SpaceX officials confirmed yesterday that they now expect the first Falcon Heavy launch to slip into 2018.
They still plan to do the initial but critical launchpad static fire tests in December.
Scientists analyzing DNA samples said to come from either the legendary yeti in the Himalayas or sasquatch in North America have found that all come from known ordinary animals, mostly bears.
Of the nine “yeti” samples, eight turned out to be from bears native to the area, the researchers report today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The other sample came from a dog. Similar studies of hair samples supposedly related to North America’s big hairy hominid, the sasquatch (aka Bigfoot), have revealed that those fibers came from bears, horses, dogs, and a variety of other creatures—even a human.
Debunking aside, the new study also yielded lots of scientifically useful info, Lindqvist says. The analyses generated the first full mitochondrial genomes for the Himalayan brown bear (Ursus arctos isabellinus) and the Himalayan black bear (Ursus thibetanus laniger), for example. That could help scientists figure out how genetically different these rare subspecies are from more common species, as well as the last time these groups shared maternal ancestors in the past.
While we must always recognize the uncertainties of science, we must also recognize when it provides us clarity. This is an example of the latter.
An evening pause: This animation expresses well what I often feel and think, as someone who does not use a “smart” phone.
Hat tip Jim Mallamace, who sent it from his own smart phone, which left him “not feeling very high and mighty.”
North Korea today launched another ICBM, landing it in the Sea of Japan.
The Department of Defense said that initial assessments indicated the missile was an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM. In a news conference, Japan’s defense minister also said it seemed to be an ICBM. The missile went higher than any shot North Korea had previously taken, according to Defense Secretary James Mattis.
This was North Korea’s first launch in a couple of months.
Cool image time! The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) image on the right, cropped and reduced in resolution to post here, shows the transition zone between the lower flat plain to the north and the higher but rougher region to the south. What makes it interesting is the north-south aligned mesas. These are yardangs, a geological feature that actually acts like a weather vane.
Yardangs are composed of sand grains that have clumped together and have become more resistant to erosion than their surrounding materials.
As the winds of Mars blow and erode away at the landscape, the more cohesive rock is left behind as a standing feature. (This Context Camera image shows several examples of yardangs that overlie the darker iron-rich material that makes up the lava plains in the southern portion of Elysium Planitia.) Resistant as they may be, the yardangs are not permanent, and will eventually be eroded away by the persistence of the Martian winds.
For scientists observing the Red Planet, yardangs serve as a useful indicator of regional prevailing wind direction. The sandy structures are slowly eroded down and carved into elongated shapes that point in the downwind direction, like giant weathervanes. In this instance, the yardangs are all aligned, pointing towards north-northwest. This shows that the winds in this area generally gust in that direction.
The wind comes from the southeast and blows to the northwest, and is slowly wearing down the southern rougher terrain. Why some of these yardangs are surrounded by dark material remains a mystery, as noted I noted in a previous post.
Meanwhile, the northern plain is not as boring as it seems. Only a short distance to the north is an unusual crater, cropped from the full image to show here on the right. To my eye, when this impact occurred it literally caused a splashlike feature of compressed and more resistant material. Over time, the prevailing wind has eroded away the surrounding less resistant regolith to better reveal that splash, leaving behind a mesa with a crater in its center.
Why the impact created this splash tells us something about the density and make-up of the plain. It suggests to me a surface that was once muddy and soft that over time has hardened like sandstone.
