Year: 2020

Breaking: Starship prototype #9 tips over inside assembly building

12:43 pm

It appears from the 24-hour live stream provided by LabPadre that the ninth Starship prototype tipped over inside the assembly building to rest against one wall. You can see it happen at about 8 seconds into the video below:

No word on whether anyone was hurt, nor any information about the cause. My guess is that it occurred during the operations to move this prototype to the launchpad.

UPDATE: It appears no one was hurt, but there is damage to the fins, which might also mean damage to the hull. This in turn might make it unsafe to fly this prototype, as the hull forms the walls of the methane/oxygen tanks.

The day has not been good for SpaceX. Earlier they had to scrub the launch of a commercial communications satellite at T-30 seconds for reasons that they did not provide. High altitude winds had delayed the launch an hour or so, but it appears this was not the reason. According to SpaceX’s website, “SpaceX is standing down from Friday’s launch attempt of the SXM-7 mission to perform additional ground system checkouts.” They are targeting Sunday for the next launch attempt.

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Strange crater in the basement of Mars

12:25 pm

Strange crater in Hellas Basin
Click for full image.

Today’s cool image to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, is intriguing for a number of reasons. Taken on September 11, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), it shows a partially buried crater found in the middle of Hellas Basin, the lowest point on Mars and what I like to call the red planet’s basement.

What makes this crater intriguing is the layered pile of material filling its interior. If I didn’t know any better, I would think some construction crew has used a bulldozer to push debris from the crater’s right half in order to smooth the ground in preparation for building a strip mall, office building, or housing development.

This of course is not what happened. Then what did create those layered piles in the crater’s left half?
» Read more

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Boeing and NASA delay again the 2nd unmanned demo flight of Starliner

12:23 am

Boeing and NASA yesterday announced that they now plan to fly the second unmanned demo flight of Starliner in late March, rather in January as last scheduled.

Though there have been hints for awhile that a launch close to the start of the new year was no longer likely, this announcement confirms those hints. This means that it will have taken Boeing more than a year to fix the software issues that forced the first demo mission to abort its docking with ISS and come back early.

Whether this will delay the manned mission, which they are still targeting for as early as the summer of ’21, remains unclear. I think it will all depend on how well that the demo mission goes.

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ULA’s Delta-4 Heavy successfully launches reconnaissance satellite

6:18 pm

Capitalism in space: After a several month delay, ULA’s Delta-4 Heavy tonight successfully launched a reconnaissance satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

33 China
23 SpaceX
13 Russia
6 ULA
5 Rocket Lab
5 Europe (Arianespace)

The U.S. now leads China 37 to 33 in the national rankings. The U.S. launch total this year matches the number of launches achieved in 1969, and is the most launches by the U.S. in a single year since then.

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Arizona state senate to hold official hearing tomorrow on election

3:23 pm

In a major shift, the Arizona state senate will tomorrow to hold an official hearing, with subpoena powers, on the questions relating to the vote count of the November 3rd election.

The hearing will be live streamed on the Arizona government’s website.

Whether it will be substantive, or designed to obscure the issues, remains unclear. The track record of the Republican leadership nationwide for the past two decades has consistently had them mouth platitudes in order to con their conservative base into thinking they were working in their interest, when in truth that leadership was repeatedly trying to do the exact opposite.

I hope I am wrong. It does appear that the many serious and substantive allegations relating to the vote are forcing the Republican leadership to respond, even if it is against their desire. Such an official Senate hearing would have to be called by the Senate president, Republican Karen Fann, which means it must have her endorsement.

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Morocco agrees to Abraham accords, normalizing relations with Israel

2:23 pm

Today President Trump announced that Morocco has agreed to become the fourth Islamic/Arab nation to sign the Abraham Accords, thus establishing normal diplomatic relations with Israel.

America gave Morocco an important concession as part of the deal. “Today, I signed a proclamation recognizing Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara,” Trump added. “Morocco’s serious, credible, and realistic autonomy proposal is the ONLY basis for a just and lasting solution for enduring peace and prosperity! Morocco recognized the United States in 1777. It is thus fitting we recognize their sovereignty over the Western Sahara.”

Whether these deals will survive a Biden administration remains unclear. What is clear is that unlike any administration since the Carter administration in the late 1970s, Trump has successfully achieved the first peace deals between Israel and its Arab neighbors. His approach, different than the accepted wisdoms of the Washington establishment, succeeded where those accepted wisdoms had failed.

It is a shame that the unmitigated and irrational hate that so many on the left have of Trump has made them incapable of recognizing this accomplishment. The nation, in fact the world, should be celebrating these deals with enthusiastic joy. It is not, for these childish reasons.

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Video: How election officials can cheat with Dominion voting software

1:45 pm

The video is from today’s hearing in the Georgia legislature on the questions regarding the November 3rd election. Just watch. As noted at the link where I got the video:

Elections Supervisor Misty Martin gives a hands on demonstration of how to cheat with Dominion. This video was shown today by Colonel Waldren during his Georgia House of Representatives testimony.

The Dominion voting machines that Georgia and several other states use are open to manipulation during the counting process. This first of two videos shows the weaknesses of the system and the ways in which an unscrupulous election official may alter ballots with virtually no chance of being caught.

The point here is not whether anyone tampered with the results. The point is that the Dominion software used is utterly unreliable and can be used easily to tamper with the results. Any election that depended on this software is thus highly suspect, and should be thrown out.

It also means that if this software is used we cannot trust the results from the runoff of two Senate races in Georgia in January.

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Starship: Old-fashioned American know-how

11:39 am

Starship about 2 minutes into its flight

Yesterday’s truly epic first flight of SpaceX’s giant Starship rocket illustrated several truths that bear repeating, in clear and forceful language.

SpaceX succeeded because its company philosophy is open-minded, fearless, and thus free.

The open-mindedness culture comes from Elon Musk’s insistence that they never settle on any design if they can find a better way to do it. It is this approach that drives the company’s developmental process. The first Falcon 1 rocket made orbit, but despite that triumph Musk quickly abandoned it for the Falcon 9 when it was clear that it wasn’t powerful enough to garner enough satellite business.

The Falcon 9 that first launched in 2008 was a very different rocket from the Falcon 9 that launches today, as shown by the two pictures below. In the 2008 Falcon 9 the engines were configured differently and it had no legs. The modern Falcon 9 has landing legs, a different engine arrangement, and much of the innards have been redesigned to give the rocket more oomph.
» Read more

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Watch ULA try again to launch its Delta-4 Heavy

9:09 am

Capitalism in space: ULA will today try once again, after numerous scrubbed and aborted attempts in August and September, to launch its Delta-4 Heavy rocket carrying a National Reconnaissance Office spy satellite.

The mission is set to take off at 6:15 p.m. EST (2315 GMT) Thursday from pad 37B at the newly-renamed Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Forecasters predict near-ideal weather with a 90% chance of favorable conditions during the launch window Thursday evening.

Many of the launch problems earlier this year were due to issues in the launch pad. The article at the link describes the major refurbishing that ULA has done since then to fix them.

I have embedded their live stream of the launch, below the fold. It is set to go live at 5:55 pm (Eastern).

Note also that the next few days will be very busy for the American rocket industry. Tomorrow (Friday) both SpaceX and Astra have launches scheduled, with the latter making its second attempt to complete its first orbital launch. Then Rocket Lab has another Electron launch from New Zealand scheduled for the next day (Saturday).

That’s four launches in three days. If just two succeed, it will raise the total U.S. launches in 2020 to 38, which would be the most American launches in a single year since 1969, the year the country put men on the Moon.
» Read more

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Smallsat rocket startup Obex raises $24 million

8:52 am

Capitalism in space: The smallsat rocket startup Obex of the United Kingdom today announced that it has raised $24 million in private investment capital to support the development of its Prime rocket.

Conceived and developed as an environmentally sustainable launch system, the Orbex Prime rocket uniquely uses bio-propane, a renewable biofuel that cuts CO2 emissions by 90% compared to traditional kerosene-based rocket fuels. Designed to be recoverable and re-usable, Orbex Prime is intended to leave no debris in the ocean or in orbit around the Earth. The company is constructing the rocket vehicle at factories in Forres, near Inverness in Scotland, and Copenhagen in Denmark.

…Orbex has already confirmed six commercial satellite launch contracts, with the first launches expected in 2022. The company’s preferred launch site will be the Sutherland spaceport on the northernmost coast of Scotland, which was granted planning permission in mid-August 2020.

Whether the Sutherland spaceport happens however remains uncertain. Though it still appears to be moving forward, there is a lot of local opposition to it, some with clout. It appears however that Orbex is aware of this reality, and is developing Prime to allow it to launch from other sites.

That the company is trying to build this rocket as reusable right from the beginning is encouraging. It shows that the rocket industry is finally accepting the new paradigm established by SpaceX. For them to achieve this by ’22 however will be quite challenging.

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Beresheet-2 will have two landers instead of one

8:42 am

The new colonial movement: SpaceIL, the Israeli non-profit company that built the failed Beresheet-1 lunar lander, yesterday announced its plans to build Beresheet-2, this time with an orbiter and two lunar landers, and launch it by ’24.

The two landers would be much smaller than the first spacecraft — about 260 pounds each, fully fueled, compared with a bit less than 1,300 pounds for Beresheet — and they would land on different parts of the moon. The orbiter would circle the moon for at least a couple of years. The three spacecraft of Beresheet 2 would together weigh about 1,400 pounds.

Even though the designs would be new, they would reuse many aspects of Beresheet, and the founders said they had learned lessons that would increase the chances of success for the second attempt. SpaceIL will again collaborate with Israel Aerospace Industries, a large satellite manufacturer.

SpaceIL is looking for funding from both private and Israeli government sources. It is also looking for funds from other nations, a decision which revealed the most intriguing part of this announcement:

SpaceIL hopes that international partnerships will pay for half of the cost of Beresheet 2. Mr. Damari said the United Arab Emirates, a small but wealthy country in the Persian Gulf that has set up an ambitious space program in recent years, was one of seven nations interested in taking part. He declined to name the other six.

If this flight ends up to be a partnership between Israel and the United Arab Emirates it will send shockwaves through the Arab world, most especially among the supporters of the terrorist leaders ruling the Palestinian territories.

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