The Chantay’s – Pipeline
An evening pause: Performed live on the Lawrence Welk show, May 18, 1963. Note that was a successful rock band instrumental, a decade before art rock became a thing.
Hat tip Rex Ridenoure.
Year: 2023
Watching the second attempt to launch Starship/Superheavy to orbit
Click for original image.
SpaceX’s second attempt of an inaugural orbital test launch of SpaceX’s massive Superheavy first stage with its orbital Starship spacecraft stacked on top has now been rescheduled for Thursday, April 20, 2023, with a 62-minute launch window opening at 8:28 am Central.
I have embedded SpaceX’s live stream of that launch below, which will begin around 7:15 am (Central). You can also see an independent 24/7 live stream from LabPadre, showing the launchpad from many different angles and available here. NasaSpaceFlight.com also has a 24/7 live stream showing multiple angles here. For both, to see links to their many camera angles click on “more” in the text.
Though both of these independent live streams provide alternative view angles of the launch, both will rely on SpaceX’s main live stream, embedded below, for actual updates on the countdown status.
The flight plan is shown in the graphic above. Assuming all goes as planned, most of the action will occur in the first ten minutes, at which time Starship will cut off its engines and be in orbit. It will then coast for a little over an hour when it will re-enter the atmosphere to splashdown in the Pacific north of the Hawaiian Islands.
As I have noted many times, the historical significance of this rocket cannot be overstated. It is twice as powerful as NASA’s Saturn-5 rocket and almost three-times as powerful as NASA’s new SLS rocket, and went from concept to launch in about seven years. Its development was funded entirely by private investment capital, at a fraction of the cost of either of the government’s rockets. And it will be completely reusable once operational, reducing the cost exponentially of getting large 100-ton payloads into orbit.
And most important, it was developed by free Americans, following their own personal dreams.
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The developing trench war in Ukraine
For the original maps, go here (November 16, 2022) and here (April 16, 2023)
In my last update on the Ukraine War on November 16, 2022, I concluded that the stream of territorial gains by the Ukraine in the previous two months suggested that it was on the march and that in the coming months it would slowly and steadily regain territory from the Russians.
That analysis was wrong, at least in the short run. First, I failed to recognize that the Ukraine would need time to consolidate its large gains in September and October. Continuing the push apparently was beyond its capabilities without significant restocking of its troops and their equipment.
Second, by mid-November the Russians managed to halt the panicked retreat of its army, and forced it to re-establish reasonable lines of defense. It soon announced plans for a winter offensive, with the goal of capturing, at a minimum, the remaining territory of both the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts that either had never been taken or had been lost during the Ukraine’s successful fall offensive.
In the subsequent five months, the Russians have pushed hard, and gotten little for their effort. The map above, clipped from detailed maps produced daily by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), compares the frontlines on November 16, 2022 with the present lines on April 16, 2022. Russian-held territory is indicated in pink, Ukrainian territory is either white or blue, blue indicating territory recaptured from Russia. The striped region is territory Russia grabbed in 2014.
Except for some gains in the south, the Russians have moved that frontline almost not at all.
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April 17, 2023 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stinger Jay.
- Blue Origin expects to return its New Shepard rocket to flight by the end of 2023
In the article a Blue Origin official claims the delay in the investigation is because of the FAA’s involvement, but she also says she isn’t allowed to provide details, a claim that FAA officials immediately deny when asked. While we certainly should expect the involvement of a government agency to slow things down, this person’s duplicity suggests that the blame comes as much from Blue Origin.
- India’s space museum, designed to provide view access to launches, touts its next launch
This is essentially India’s version of the visitor’s center at Cape Canaveral, except that it apparently links its museum to a large viewing stand for watching rocket launches.
China launches weather satellite, dumps debris near Taiwan
China’s spaceports
China today successfully used its Long March 4D rocket to put a weather satellite into orbit, launching from its Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China.
A short clip of the launch is available here [Hat tip Jay]. The material falling from the rocket are insulation panels that are intended to fall off in this manner.
Apparently, the flight path took it over Taiwan.
For six hours, air and maritime traffic was disrupted north of Taiwan. The maritime safety administration of Fujian, the Chinese province located opposite Taiwan, warned of a “possible fall of debris from a launcher.”
Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense said it monitored what it described as a military launch and confirmed having “detected some debris falling into the northern waters of Taiwan.” 33 flights were affected, Taiwan’s Civil Aeronautics Administration said, quoted by Reuters.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
24 SpaceX
16 China
6 Russia
3 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise still leads China 27 to 16 in the national rankings, though it is now tied with the rest of the world combined at 27.
A classic spiral galaxy
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and released today as the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Hubble picture of the week.
A large spiral galaxy. It has many narrow arms that are tightly-twisted in the centre, but at the ends they point out in different directions. The galaxy’s core glows brightly, while its disc is mostly faint, but with bright blue spots throughout the arms. A few smaller spiral galaxies at varying angles are visible in front, and it is surrounded by other tiny stars and galaxies, on a black background.
This galaxy is believed to be 260 million light years away, and was home to a supernova in 2020. This image was taken as a follow-up to that explosion.
Perseverance catches up with Ingenuity
Click for original image.
Click for interactive map.
The photo above, cropped, enhanced, and annotated to post here, was taken on April 16, 2023 by the left navigation camera on the Mars rover Perseverance, and looks almost due west at the rim of Jezero Crater and the gap in that rim where the delta on which the rover presently travels poured through sometime in the distant past.
Near the center of the picture can be seen the helicopter Ingenuity, sitting where it landed after its fiftieth flight.
The overview map to the right provides the context. Ingenuity is the green dot, Perseverance the blue dot. The yellow lines indicate the approximate area covered by the picture. The red dotted line marks the planned route for Perseverance. Note how the rover has followed Ingenuity’s recent flight path almost precisely, moving to the north away from that red dotted line.
Ingenuity’s 51st flight is presently scheduled for tomorrow. The plan is to go about 600 feet to the west, landing approximately at the black dot.
Starship/Superheavy launch scrubbed
Because of “a pressurization issue”, SpaceX engineers decided to scrub today’s first test launch of Starship/Superheavy. The launch team then made this launch attempt a wet dress countdown rehearsal, ending at T-40 seconds.
Because of the amount of fuel and oxygen involved, turn-around will take 48 hours, meaning the next launch attempt will likely occur on Wednesday, April 19, 2023, probably at the same approximate time in the morning.
Stay tuned for more details.
Watching the launch of Starship/Superheavy
Click for original image.
UPDATE: Launch scrubbed. To get to new links for watching the live stream in the second launch attempt, now scheduled for April 20, 2023, go here.
Original post:
————-
The first orbital test launch of SpaceX’s massive Superheavy first stage with its orbital Starship spacecraft stacked on top is now scheduled for a launch in a two-and-a-half hour long launch window beginning at 8 am (Central) on Monday, April 17, 2023.
I have embedded SpaceX’s live stream of that launch below, which will begin around 7 am (Central). You can also see an independent 24/7 live stream from LabPadre, showing the launchpad from many different angles and available here. NasaSpaceFlight.com also has a 24/7 live stream showing multiple angles here. Though both of these independent live streams provide alternative view angles of the launch, both will rely on SpaceX’s main live stream, embedded below, for actual updates on the countdown status.
If the launch is scrubbed on April 17th, SpacX has backup dates on April 18th and 19th. The flight plan and time line is shown in the graphic above.
The monumental significance of this rocket cannot be overstated. It is the most powerful rocket ever built, capable of putting more mass into orbit than either the Saturn-5 or NASA’s new SLS rocket.
It took less than seven years from concept to launch. Compare that to SLS, which was proposed in 2004 and only launched last year, two decades later.
It has been been entirely developed with private funds. Though SpaceX does have a NASA contract for building a Starship lunar lander, little of that contract’s funds have yet been distributed to the company. From private funds SpaceX has raised about $10 billion, most of which has been channeled into this rocket’s development, with a small unknown amount used to develop Starlink. Compare that once again to SLS, which has cost about $60 billion to build.
Finally, it is being designed to be completely reusable, thus reducing the cost exponentially for putting large 100-ton payloads into orbit. If successful, Starship/Superheavy will very quickly make the human exploration and colonization of the solar system possible.
And it will do so not as a government project that is part of a government program, but as a private sector product, conceived by individual Americans freely following their dreams, and developed for profit, quickly and efficiently.
Let freedom ring!
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SpaceX successfully launches 51 payloads using Falcon 9
SpaceX tonight successfully used its Falcon 9 rocket to launch 51 payloads into orbit, including a whole range of microsats, cubesats, and orbital tugs.
The first stage completed its tenth flight, landing at Vandenberg Space Force Base. The fairings completed their second and fifth flights respectively. As of posting the satellites have not yet deployed.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
24 SpaceX
15 China
6 Russia
3 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads China 27 to 15, and the entire world combined 27 to 26. SpaceX by itself trails the entire world, including American companies, 24 to 29.
April 14, 2023 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
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SANS ICS HyperEncabulator
An evening pause: Essentially, a detailed and accurate history of the important encabulating technology that has revolutionized all technology, both real and imagined.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.