An evening pause: As Diane and I drive south from Glacier National Park, heading to Capital Reef, this travel song somehow seems appropriate.
Hat tip Tim Vogel, who adds that the hat tip should really go “to my mother who keeps playing this for my young kids.”
Capitalism in space: In order to accelerate the launch of a needed satellite, SES
to flip the satellites between contracted SpaceX and Arianespace launches.
Their ability to do this now demonstrates the wisdom of SES’s policy in the past decade of aggressively supporting SpaceX. The result is that the company now has a much greater flexibility in how it gets its satellites into orbit.
Posted as we drove through Bynum, Montana.
Capitalism in space: Sierra Nevada’s engineering test vehicle for testing its Dream Chaser design has completed tow tests at Edward Air Force Base in California and is now being prepared for flight tests.
Posted on the back roads of Montana during our drive from Glacier to Capital Reef.
An evening pause: Hat tip Jim Mallamace.
NASA officials have shut the Johnson Space Center due to flooding from Tropical Storm Harvey, though all essential operations involving ISS and the Webb Telescope continue.
They hope to reopen quickly.
Russia and China appear ready to sign a cooperative agreement involving the joint exploration of the Moon from 2018 to 2022.
The deal is expected to be signed this October and will bring significant benefits to both nations, particularly in manned and future missions to the moon….
The bilateral agreement will cover five areas including lunar and deep space exploration, developing special materials, collaboration in the area of satellite systems, Earth remote sensing, and space debris research.
No details yet. Moreover, the deal itself has not yet been signed, so this might all vanish into the ether. It does appear however that Russia’s financial problems are forcing it to partner with others, and China presently has a very sophisticated but inexperienced space program and lots of cash. Russia’s experience would be a great help to China, until they don’t need it anymore. Thus, the logic of the agreement.
Posted from the lobby of the Swiftcurrent hotel at the Many Glacier area of Glacier National Park. Diane completed a 10 mile hike today early, so we have the afternoon to relax. Tomorrow we make the long drive south to Capital Reef.
Capitalism in space: Orbital ATK today launched an Air Force satellite using its Minotaur rocket.
The launch also reactivated a Kennedy launchpad that hadn’t been used since 1999.
An evening pause: A beautiful performance on the piano of this “Explosions in the Sky” musical piece.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
North Korea has launched another ballistic missile.
Not much information yet about its range or capability.
Update (now that I am off the mountain and back in the lobby, able to post): It appears North Korea successfully launched three short range ballistic missiles on Saturday.
Initial reports had suggested that all were failures. Now it appears that all were successful, flying about 150 miles.
An evening pause: Hat tip Carole Brabham.
Capitalism in space: Firefly Aerospace, the company that was forced into bankruptcy when it lost a Virgin Galactic lawsuit for stealing their proprietary engineering, has emerged from bankruptcy.
The full article is behind a paywall, but it appears that the company includes its same management staff under a new owner.
The uncertainty of science: Astronomers have produced the best image so far of the surface face of a star.
The star is Antares, and it provides some details of the star’s complex outer layers. If I was home and had good internet access, I’d post it here.
At the same time, it should be noted that this is not a real image. It is recreated from four telescopes, using interferometry to combine the images, and also includes it a great deal of assumptions and uncertainties in its creation.
