Year: 2017

Fifth mirror for Giant Magellan Telescope has been cast

9:20 am

The fifth mirror, out of seven, for Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) has been cast by the University of Arizona mirror lab.

With its casting this weekend, the fifth GMT mirror joins three additional GMT mirrors at various stages of production in the Mirror Lab. Polishing of mirror 2’s front surface is well underway; coarse grinding will begin on the front of the third mirror shortly and mirror number 4, the central mirror, will soon be ready for coarse grinding following mirror 3. The first GMT mirror was completed several years ago and was moved to a storage location in Tucson this September, awaiting the next stage of its journey to Chile. The glass for mirror 6 has been delivered to Tucson and mirror seven’s glass is on order from the Ohara factory in Japan.

In time, the giant mirrors will be transported to GMT’s future home in the Chilean Andes at the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Las Campanas Observatory. This site is known for being one of the best astronomical sites on the planet with its clear, dark skies and stable airflow producing exceptionally sharp images. GMTO has broken ground in Chile and has developed the infrastructure on the site needed to support construction activities.

If all goes right, GMT will begin its science work using 4 mirrors in 2020, with the use of all 7 mirrors beginning in 2022. This will be several years before the larger Thirty Meter Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope.

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China says Long March 5 will resume launches in 2018

9:12 am

The new colonial movement: Though the details are vague, a Chinese official said earlier this week that they now expect to resume launches of their Long March 5 rocket in 2018.

The article says that the July launch failure of the second Long March 5 was due to “a manufacturing defect affecting one of two YF-77 engines powering the first stage. If officially confirmed, this would mean no major effects such as redesign are required, meaning a relatively swift return to flight.”

The long delay since July however suggests to me that the defect was more serious, and has either required that redesign or a complete recall of all YF-77 engines.

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Local tribe signs deal for Australian spaceport

9:05 am

Capitalism in space: An aboriginal tribe tribe in Australia has signed a lease with a new space company proposing to build a spaceport on their land where smallsat rockets can launch.

The Northern Land Council has granted a 275-hectare lease in northeast Arnhem Land to the Gumatj clan for use as a commercial rocket launching facility. That’ll pave the way for Gumatj Aboriginal Corporation to sublease the site to Equatorial Launch Australia, a firm whose $236 million space base proposal is being considered by federal and NT infrastructure funds.

The 12-year lease has an option for a 28-year extension, and is expected to be finalised later this month.

This is the first I have ever heard of Equatorial Launch Australia. Their website provides little information. Further web searches revealed little as well. My impression is that it is focused on creating a spaceport for the use of new Australian smallsat rocket companies. Whether it plans to launch its own rocket is unclear.

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Saudi minister calls for “toppling” Hezbollah

9:24 am

Intriguing: The Saudi state minister for Gulf affairs has called for the “topplng” of Hezbollah, condemning that organization as “a party of Satan.”

He also said that “The coming developments will definitely be astonishing.”

While there have always been strong differences and hostility among the many Arab nations and movements in the Middle East, rarely have these differences been expressed so publicly and forcefully. Read the whole article. The things this powerful official says could not be said if he did not have the support of his government. I wonder if this indicates some major shifts are about to occur in the Arab world.

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Human errors and lax management caused Navy collisions

9:10 am

A new Navy report blasts bad management, lax standards, poor training, and numerous human errors for the ship collisions that occurred last summer.

The long list of errors by the crews, some as simple as failing to sound the standard warning blasts when it appeared they would approach other ships too closely, suggest that no one in the Navy’s upper ranks is following the Navy’s own operational guidelines. They are improvising wildly, while doing nothing to prepare their crews to act properly.

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Factional bickering dominates nomination hearing for NASA administrator

8:43 am

Quite boring. Factional bickering yesterday between Democrats and Republicans dominated the nomination hearing of Congressman Jim Bridenstine (R-Oklahoma) for NASA administrator.

Today’s contentious nomination hearing for Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-OK) to be NASA Administrator was split along partisan lines. Democratic Senators questioned his credentials and viewpoints about climate change, sexual harassment and other issues that could affect how he runs the agency and its personnel. Republicans defended him and chafed at the tenor of the hearing. The committee could vote as early as next week on whether to send the nomination to the full Senate.

I did not watch the hearing because I knew this would be what I’d see and I didn’t want to be bored for two hours. It ain’t news anymore to find Democrats opposing anything proposed by the Republicans. Furthermore, it doesn’t matter. Bridenstine will almost certainly be approved along partisan lines in the Senate, and nothing I have read about him suggests he is going to do anything significant or radical. He has made it clear, both in recent interviews and articles as well as his testimony yesterday as reported by numerous articles that he does not wish to rock the boat. He supports all of NASA’s current programs, commercial space, SLS/Orion, climate research, everything. I do not expect him to make any radical changes in the direction NASA is going.

In fact, the people who will change NASA are not even in the government. I expect the actions of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos to have far greater impact in the coming years, with politicians and bureaucrats in NASA forced to follow them, as they have been forced to follow Musk during the past half decade.

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Physicists using cosmic rays find hidden void inside the Great Pyramid

8:26 am

Physicists using cosmic rays detectors have located what appears to be an empty space inside the Great Pyramid in Egypt that has never been entered.

To see through the Great Pyramid, the researchers used a technique developed in high-energy particle physics: they tracked particles called muons, which are produced when cosmic rays strike atoms in the upper atmosphere. Around 10,000 muons rain down on each square metre of Earth’s surface every minute. Sensitive muon detectors have been developed for use in particle accelerators, but they have also been used in the past decade or so to determine the inner structures of volcanoes and to study the damaged nuclear reactor at Fukushima, Japan.

In December 2015, physicist Kunihiro Morishima of Nagoya University, Japan, and his colleagues placed a series of detectors inside the Queen’s chamber, where they would detect muons passing through the pyramid from above. The particles are partially absorbed by stone, so any large holes in the pyramid would result in more muons than expected hitting the detectors.

After several months, “we had an unexpected line”, says Tayoubi. To check the result, two other teams of physicists, from the Japanese High Energy Accelerator Research Organization in Tsukuba and the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commision in Paris, then used different types of muon detector placed in other locations both inside and outside the pyramid. All three teams observed a large, unexpected void in the same location above the Grand Gallery. …The space is at least 30 metres long, with a similar cross section to the Grand Gallery. “It was a big surprise,” says Tayoubi. “We’re really excited.”

It is unclear how or even if they will access this void. Right now its purpose remains a mystery, including whether it contains any artifacts.

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Another Vostochny manager on trial for embezzlement

8:19 am

The Russians are prosecuting another manager at Vostochny for stealing more than $10 million.

[O]ut of 765 million rubles ($13 million) allocated under the contract with Federal State Unitary Enterprise Spetsstroytekhnologii, Tolstikov had only 100 million rubles ($1.7 million) left. The rest, according to him, he spent for construction trailers for workers.

It is amazing anything has been built at Vostochny. This case is in addition to the more than half dozen other embezzlement cases totaling almost $200 million, a very significant amount of money in Russia as well as a significant portion of the spaceport’s entire construction budget.

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MIT redwood forest design wins 2017 Mars City Design competition

7:52 am

A MIT design for an early Martian colony based on underground habitats topped by geodesic domes filled with redwood forests has won the 2017 Mars City Design competition.

At first glance, the MIT habitats don’t look very tree-like. They look more like giant glass balls sitting on the Martian plains, each housing 50 people. But, like real trees, much of the habitat is below the surface in the form of intricate tunnels that connect the spheres and provide protection from cold, radiation, micrometeorites, and other surface hazards. “On Mars, our city will physically and functionally mimic a forest, using local Martian resources such as ice and water, regolith or soil, and sun to support life,” says Sumini. “Designing a forest also symbolizes the potential for outward growth as nature spreads across the Martian landscape. Each tree habitat incorporates a branching structural system and an inflated membrane enclosure, anchored by tunneling roots. The design of a habitat can be generated using a computational form-finding and structural optimization workflow developed by the team. The design workflow is parametric, which means that each habitat is unique and contributes to a diverse forest of urban spaces.”

The habitats rely heavily on water, but not just for drinking, agriculture, or public fountains. It’s a key ingredient in making the domes habitable. “Every tree habitat in Redwood Forest will collect energy from the sun and use it to process and transport the water throughout the tree, and every tree is designed as a water-rich environment,” says Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics doctoral student George Lordos. “Water fills the soft cells inside the dome providing protection from radiation, helps manage heat loads, and supplies hydroponic farms for growing fish and greens. Solar panels produce energy to split the stored water for the production of rocket fuel, oxygen, and for charging hydrogen fuel cells, which are necessary to power long-range vehicles as well as provide backup energy storage in case of dust storms.”

This is a very nice concept, and an excellent approach. While they appear to assume the underground habitats will be artificially dug, there is no reason the tree domes can’t be placed over a Martian pit entrance to a cave.

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