Year: 2023

October 16, 2023 Quick space links

4:29 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who also deserves a hat tip for the Hubble budget story earlier today, that I had missed.

 

 

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NASA: Budget cuts to Hubble/Chandra under consideration

1:14 pm

In what is likely a negotiating ploy with Congress to prevent any budget cuts at all at NASA, the agency revealed late last week that it is considering cutting the budgets to both the Hubble and Chandra space telescopes in order to meet proposed budget limits.

In an Oct. 13 presentation to the National Academies’ Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics, Mark Clampin, director of NASA’s astrophysics division, said he was studying unspecified cuts in the operating budgets of the Chandra X-Ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope to preserve funding for other priorities in the division.

The potential cuts, he said, are driven by the expectation that his division will not receive the full request of nearly $1.56 billion for fiscal year (FY) 2024 because of legislation passed in June that caps non-defense discretionary spending for 2024 at 2023 levels, with only a 1% increase for 2025. “We’re working with the expectation that FY24 budgets stay at the ’23 levels,” he said. “That means that we have decided to reduce the budget for missions in extended operations, and that is Chandra and Hubble.”

That he provided no details suggests this is merely a lobbying tactic. Essentially he is saying to Congress, “If you don’t give me more money I will be forced to shut down our most popular programs. That won’t sit well with your constituents!”

That the House in its appropriations to NASA for 2024 did not cut the agency’s budget significantly also suggests this is mere lobbying. There should be no reason to trim Hubble or Chandra, which are two of the agency’s most successful projects, unless the cost overruns on SLS/Orion and the Mars Sample Return missions are forcing NASA to grab money from other programs. If so, that problem is not Congress’s, but NASA’s. The agency should reconsider those failed projects in order to keep what works working.

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The public wakes up, but the window for freedom will remain open for only so long

12:39 pm

Is a real house-cleaning about to happen?
Is a real house-cleaning about to happen?

The barbaric massacres committed by Hamas in Israel last week along with the left’s endorsement worldwide of those atrocities has appeared to awaken the long dormant outrage of the general population. Suddenly, people no longer seem willing to accept the lies and slanders of the left. Claiming Hamas was justified in killing babies and children while also taking many women and children hostage is a position that even many leftists cannot tolerate.

If you don’t believe me, watch this short clip from Bill Maher’s show, Real Time. Not only does Maher — a proud self-admitted lefty himself — trash the modern left in academia, the audience joins in to cheer that trashing.

It isn’t however only the left’s recent open support of Hamas that has inspired this disgust. It is also likely inspired by the many other abuses of power by the government (an arm of the power-hungry left) during the past three years. Those abuses, from lockdowns to censorship to blacklisting to mask and medical mandates, accomplished only one real thing: The abuses turned neutral ordinary people into ardent warriors against the left.

This shift was evident in three elections worldwide in the past few days.
» Read more

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Astronomers detect nano-sized quartz crystals in atmosphere of exoplanet

9:33 am

Using both the Hubble and Webb space telescopes in space, astronomers have detected nano-sized quartz crystals in the atmosphere of a Jupiter-class exoplanet orbiting its star every 3.7 days.

Silicates (minerals rich in silicon and oxygen) make up the bulk of Earth and the Moon as well as other rocky objects in our solar system, and are extremely common across the galaxy. But the silicate grains previously detected in the atmospheres of exoplanets and brown dwarfs appear to be made of magnesium-rich silicates like olivine and pyroxene, not quartz alone – which is pure SiO2.

The result from this team, which also includes researchers from NASA’s Ames Research Center and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, puts a new spin on our understanding of how exoplanet clouds form and evolve. “We fully expected to see magnesium silicates,” said co-author Hannah Wakeford, also from the University of Bristol. “But what we’re seeing instead are likely the building blocks of those, the tiny ‘seed’ particles needed to form the larger silicate grains we detect in cooler exoplanets and brown dwarfs.”

These tiny quartz crystals are condensing out in the clouds themselves, due to the high temperatures and pressures there. The exoplanet itself is unusual because though its mass is one half that of Jupiter, its volume is seven times larger. This gives it a very large and deep atmosphere, thus providing the environment for crystal formation.

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Update on Starship/Superheavy: Lots of work, no sign of FAA launch approval

9:20 am

Link here. The article provides a thorough review of the work SpaceX engineers have been doing in the past six weeks since the company announced on September 5th that it was ready to do a second test orbital launch of Starship (prototype #25) and Superheavy (prototype #9), but has been stymied by the refusal of the federal bureaucracy to grant a launch license.

For example, while waiting the company has done some tank tests with Starship prototype #26, which is not expected to fly but is being used for testing. The article outlines a lot of other details, but this is the key quote:

While Ship 26 started its engine testing campaign, SpaceX looks to be gearing up for a Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR) for Booster 9 and Ship 25. Related notices have been posted for the coming week, marking the imminent return to a full stack for the next Starship to launch as soon as November, pending regulatory approval. [emphasis mine]

This source, NASASpaceflight.com, now admits that the FAA and Fish & Wildlife will not issue a launch license until November. Previous reports from it have tried to lay the blame for the delays on SpaceX. It now can no longer make that claim.

In April, after noting at great length the lack of harm done to wildlife by the first test launch (as admitted by Fish & Wildlife itself, the agency that is presently delaying things), I predicted the following:

[I]t appears that both the FAA and Fish and Wildlife are now teaming up to block any future launches at Boca Chica until SpaceX guarantees that the rocket and its launchpad will work perfectly. But since SpaceX must conduct launches to determine how to build and further refine the design of that rocket and launchpad, it can’t make that guarantee if it is banned from making launches.

We must therefore conclude that these federal agencies are more interested in exerting their power than doing their real job. They are therefore conspiring to shut Starship and Superheavy development entirely, or at a minimum, they are allowing their partisan hatred of Elon Musk and capitalism itself to delay this work as much as possible. As Lord Acton said in 1887, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

At that time I thought it very possible no further launches from Boca Chica would ever be approved. In May I refined that prediction, stating that come August the “…launch license will still not be approved, and we will still have no clear idea of when that approval will come. Nor should we be surprised if approval does not come before the end of this year.”

At the time that prediction was poo-pooed, with claims that I did not understand the regulatory process and that the government certainly did not want to stand in the way. It now appears my prediction was right on the money, and worse, my first prediction might be closer to the truth, that while the federal government doesn’t want to come right out and say, “No more launches from Boca Chica!”, it is imposing so many delays and requirements there that it makes the location impractical for SpaceX to use it as a launch test site.

The company desperately needs to get its second Starship/Superheavy launch site at Cape Canaveral operational. Otherwise it is unlikely it will ever be able to complete the development of this rocket.

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China’s Long March 2D rocket launches military satellite

9:17 am

China yesterday used its Long March 2D rocket to place what is believed to be a military weather satellite into orbit, lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in the northwest of China.

No word on where the rocket’s first stage, which uses very toxic hypergolic fuel, crashed within China.

The leaders in 2023 launch race:

73 SpaceX
46 China
13 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successfully launches 85 to 46, and the entire world combined 85 to 74. SpaceX by itself now trails with the entire world combined (excluding American companies) 73 to 74.

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Telecommunications company sues Commerce and Defense Departments $39 billion for theft

12:27 pm

The telecommunications company Ligado yesterday filed a $39 billion suit against the Commerce and Defense Departments for stealing use of the communications spectrum granted to it by the FCC for the establishment of a 5G cell phone network.

Ligado’s suit filed in the United States Court of Federal Claims [PDF] makes a number of allegations, including that the Pentagon has “taken Ligado’s spectrum for the agency’s own purposes, operating previously undisclosed systems that use or depend on Ligado’s spectrum without compensating Ligado.”

Those systems, a source close to the case said, are certain classified radars rather than GPS systems.

The suit cites a high-level DoD “whistleblower” who “revealed internal emails and discussions” that the company claims show DoD and Commerce “fabricated arguments, misled Congress in testimony supporting anti-Ligado legislation, and orchestrated a public smear campaign, which included repeating those false claims to the public and threatening Ligado’s business partners with canceling their own government contracts if they worked with Ligado.”

There had been some disagreement about whether Ligado’s use of this spectrem might interfere with GPS as well as other communications services. Nonetheless, the spectrum was legally Ligado’s. If the lawsuit is correct and these government agencies arbitrarilly took possession and used the spectrum illegally, thus preventing Ligado from establishing its business, it would appear to be another example of the arrogant administrative state ignoring the law to grab power.

Once I would have considered a suit like this to simply be a failed company’s effort to recover its losses by blaming the government. I no longer assume such things. Instead, my first thought is that the allegations are true, that bureaucrats in Defense and Commerce conspirated to steal the spectrum for their own uses, and didn’t care that they were violating the law.

The truth could be a combination of all these things, but if so that still tells us some very ugly things about the people who now work in these federal agencies.

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SpaceX completes second launch today, placing another 21 Starlink satellite into orbit

7:15 pm

SpaceX this afternoon completed its second launch today, its Falcon 9 lifting off from Cape Canaveral and placing another 21 Starlink satellite into orbit.

The first stage completed its fourteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. This launch followed the Falcon Heavy launch in the early morning hours from Cape Canaveral.

The leaders in 2023 launch race:

73 SpaceX
45 China
13 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successfully launches 85 to 45, and the entire world combined 85 to 73. SpaceX by itself is now tied with the entire world combined (excluding American companies) 73 to 73.

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October 13, 2023 Quick space links

2:55 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

  • NASA’s inspector general agrees SLS is too costly and it will be impossible to reduce that cost

    • The report is available here [pdf]. Normally I’d highlight each new IG report that notes these plain facts, but I’ve grown bored with doing so. They (as well as I) have been saying the same thing time after time — going back to 2011 — but nothing ever changes. We keep pouring money into an SLS rocket that costs too much, can’t launch frequently, and in the end won’t accomplish much of anything, while other space projects of greater value (for much less) go by the wayside.

    And despite this report we shall continue to do so, because the federal government is broken utterly, from the White House down to the mail rooms in Congress and every agency in the executive branch. It has entirely abandoned its responsibilites to serve the American people. Instead its goal now is simply to funnel money to itself, even if that funnelling will bankrupt the country.

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California creates segregated system that favors rescuing black children over whites

1:20 pm

The Democratic Party's long held support of racial hate
Segregation: The Democratic Party’s long held #1 goal,
then and now.

“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” In a clear tribute to its long history of racism and bigotry, the Democratic Party that now controls California’s government from top to bottom has created a segregated system for rescuing missing children that favors blacks over everyone else.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 673 into law on Sunday, making California the first state to create an alert notification system — similar to an Amber Alert — to address the crisis of missing Black children and young women.

The law, which will go into effect on Jan. 1, will allow the California Highway Patrol to activate the alert upon request from local law enforcement when a Black youth goes missing in the area. The Ebony Alert will utilize electronic highway signs and encourage use of radio, TV, social media and other systems to spread information about the missing persons’ alert. The Ebony Alert will be used for missing Black people aged 12 to 25.
» Read more

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