Year: 2018

Russian launch rate to drop?

9:32 am

More government propaganda, this time from Russia: The head of Russia’s space agency Roscomos today announced proudly that they intend to complete 150 launches by the end of 2025.

“In the period ending 2025 (the period of the newly-adopted federal space program) we plan to fundamentally upgrade the group of satellites in orbit. We plan to carry out more than 150 launches. That done the Russian orbital group will grow considerably,” he said.

The problem is that this number suggests a significant decline in the Russian launch rate. From 1995 to 2015 the Russians averaged just under 29 launches per year. The new prediction today, based on 150 launches through the end of 2025, averages instead less than 19 launches per year, about the number Russia launched in 2016 and 2017 when they discovered serious corruption in one of their rocket engine factories and had to cease launches for almost a year in order to recall all rocket engines and fix them.

It could be that the launch rate being touted today by the head of Roscosmos only counts government launches, and excludes commercial launches for other customers. Even so, it still suggests a significant decline, since Russia is simply not getting as many launch contracts as it had in the past, its market share having been mostly stolen by SpaceX.

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Long March 5B delayed to 2019?

9:18 am

In this article touting the release of a propaganda commercial by China’s human spaceflight center, there was this short tidbit about the status of the Long March 5, grounded since a failed launch in July.

The 1.5 stage Long March 5B, designed for the task, has yet to fly. Its maiden flight was delayed by the failure last July of the 2.5 stage Long March 5, which launches missions to geosynchronous orbits as well as lunar and interplanetary missions.

Should a return-to-flight of the Long March 5 late this year be successful, the Long March 5B will debut in 2019 before then launching the Tianhe core module from the Wenchang Space Launch Centre.

This quote illustrates the techniques used by a secretive Soviet style nation that wishes to hide its problems. Until July 2017, when the Long March 5 failed on its second flight, there was never anything called the Long March 5B. Long March 5 was the rocket that was going to launch China’s space station modules. Now that it appears that significant changes to the rocket are required to fix it, suddenly the Long March 5B is described as the rocket that was “designed for the task” of launching the space station, not Long March 5. Long March 5 was only a first version, and the real rocket that will launch the station will debut in 2019.

“Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.”

Meanwhile, the propaganda commercial being touted, supposedly releasing never-before seen video showing astronaut training, is almost entirely made-up of staged footage, very carefully and dramatically lit. I would guess that it contains less than 15 seconds of live documentary footage, out of the 3:44 minute film.

None of this criticism here is aimed at the Chinese engineering. In fact, it is a good thing that they have recognized the problems with Long March 5 and are fixing them. It is also a good thing that they remain determined to continue their space program. I just think it necessary for everyone to recognize propaganda when they see it. When you do, you find out that the real story here is that they appear to be delaying somewhat the launch of their space station because of the delays necessary to fix Long March 5.

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Sessions: Justice Department to investigate missing text messages

11:35 pm

Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced today that the Justice Department has begun an investigation into the missing text messages between two anti-Trump FBI agents.

“We will leave no stone unturned to confirm with certainty why these text messages are not now available to be produced and will use every technology available to determine whether the missing messages are recoverable from another source,” Sessions said in a statement. “I have spoken to the Inspector General and a review is already underway to ascertain what occurred and to determine if these records can be recovered in any other way. If any wrongdoing were to be found to have caused this gap, appropriate legal disciplinary action measures will be taken,” he continued.

What makes these missing FBI text messages so much more politically flammable than the missing IRS Lois Lerner records is that Lerner was merely abusing the rights of ordinary Americans, while these FBI officials appear to have been trying to abuse the rights of other politicians. While the Republicans might have mouthed outrage over the IRS abuse, they were unable to mobilize their entire party over the issue. I can just hear the response in the Congressional cloakrooms: “What difference does it make? Lerner and the IRS were just messing with some dumb tea party rednecks.”

With the FBI, however, the entire political class is now realizing that they have become the target, and this threat to them cannot be tolerated.

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Air Force reaffirms its SpaceX certification after Zuma

9:40 pm

In another indication to me that SpaceX had nothing to do with the claimed failure of the secret government Zuma mission (assuming it failed at all), the commander of the Air Force space unit said today that SpaceX’s Air Force launch certification remains unchanged.

“Based on the data available, our team did not identify any information that would change SpaceX’s Falcon 9 certification status,” Bloomberg News quoted Lt. Gen. John Thompson as saying in a statement today.

At this moment, we really have no idea whether Zuma succeeded or not. The government might say it failed, but it has provided no evidence to prove that. Moreover, this statement by the head of the Air Force space division makes me very much inclined to believe that not only did SpaceX’s rocket perform perfectly, but that Zuma was a success as well. And that success probably includes an effort to hide the mission’s success with the disinformation campaign that followed launch.

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FBI loses texts from anti-Trump agent covering the exact period of greatest importance

11:19 am

Nothing to see here! The FBI revealed yesterday that it has lost texts between anti-Trump agent Peter Strzok and anti-Trump FBI lawyer Lisa Page for the five month period just prior to the beginnings of the Mueller investigation.

Their excuse?

“The Department wants to bring to your attention that the FBI’s technical system for retaining text messages sent and received on FBI mobile devices failed to preserve text messages for Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page,” said the letter, signed by assistant attorney general for legislative affairs Stephen Boyd.

Citing “misconfiguration issues related to rollouts, provisioning, and software upgrades that conflicted with the FBI’s collection capabilities,” Boyd explained that “data that should have been automatically collected and retained for long-term storage and retrieval was not collected.”

The missing time period, from December 14, 2016 and May 17, 2017, covers precisely the five months leading up to the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel, which happened (surprise!) on May 17.

By any standards of common morality, this should result at a minimum in the firing of numerous people at the FBI, immediately. It should also result in an aggressive investigation by the executive branch to see if these texts were purposely destroyed.

We however do not live in a time where any standards of common morality apply. Just as the IRS agents and the head of the IRS were allowed to lie and destroy evidence to obstruct Congress, with no consequences, I do not expect to see the Trump administration do anything significant to punish anyone here.

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Proposed budget deal lifts all spending caps

9:47 am

It appears that the spending in the budget deals being proposed in Congress include hefty spending increases and would also end up lifting all the spending caps imposed by the 2011 budget deal.

In order to secure more money for national defense, Democrats are demanding an equal amount of extra funding for domestic social welfare programs. So to get an additional $108 billion for the Pentagon, the Republicans may agree to another $108 billion-plus in ransom money for domestic agencies. But when all the emergency funding is included, the ratio could be closer to $2 of additional domestic spending for every dollar of increased military funding. What a deal.

If this treasury raid deal gets cut, the budget caps from the 2011 budget act will be officially and irrevocably washed away. So will any pretense of fiscal discipline and debt control. “Almost no one here on either side of the aisle wants to control spending,” Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky tells me. “It’s sad, but it’s the new reality.”

If he’s right, then any allegiance to spending control has been tossed aside at the very time the debt has been spiraling. The $4 trillion federal budget is expected to exceed $5 trillion within eight years. The $20 trillion debt is already headed to $30 trillion over the next decade — even without this new spending spree.

In other words, the corrupt swamp in Washington, from both parties, continue to win in its desire to empower itself at the cost of the nation.

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Government shutdown and its effects on science

9:31 am

Link here. The article is from Science, which is almost always partisan Democrat, as well as strongly pro-government spending for anything that even hints of science research.

Regardless, the shutdown is definitely causing some confusion, partly because of the partisan differences within the government:

There is confusion among scientists about who, exactly, is affected by the shutdown. Some federal agencies have been slow to issue memos clarifying who should report to work on Monday if the shutdown is still in effect. (Workers often come in for a half-day or so to complete “orderly shutdown activities” and receive furlough notices.) At the Environmental Protection Agency, officials have suggested that all employees should expect to work every day next week, in apparent conflict with the agency’s own shutdown plan. Some federal researchers planning to travel to conferences or study sites over the weekend have been uncertain about whether they should board planes or trains.

Unlike the Obama administration, which spent money to purposely block citizens from visiting public sites while also making life as difficult as possible for the general public, Trump has ordered that all public lands be left open, while minimizing the inconvenience to the general public. It appears however that the management at some agencies are still following the Obama playbook, thus causing confusion.

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Rocket Lab succeeds in placing three satellites in orbit on second test launch

10:26 pm

Capitalism in space: The small rocket company Rocket Lab successfully placed three smallsats in orbit on the second test launch of its Electron rocket yesterday.

I have posted the video of the launch below the fold. Everything unfolded smoothly and without any issues, including the video feed. This success bodes well for Moon Express’s effort to win the Google Lunar X-Prize, which has a deadline the end of March. Though Rocket Lab had said it wants to do three test launches before initiating commercial services, they have already initiated those services with the placement of three satellites by two customers on this launch yesterday. They have also hinted that if this launch was a success they might accelerate commercial operations.

In addition, ULA successfully launched a military satellite on two days ago with its Atlas 5 rocket. The 2018 launch stands are thus as follows:

4 China
2 ULA
1 SpaceX
1 Rocket Lab
1 Japan
1 India

I should add that though the U.S.’s total matches China at the moment, the government shut down prevents any further U.S. launches. It also prevents SpaceX from doing its Falcon Heavy static fire test. (I wonder: would this be an issue if SpaceX was launching from its private launchsite at Boca Chica?)
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