Year: 2023

Virgin Galactic sets Oct 5th launch date for its fifth commercial suborbital flight in ’23

4:47 pm

Virgin Galactic today announced that the launch window for its fifth commercial suborbital flight this year and ninth overall will open on Oct 5th.

The flight will include three private passengers, two Americans and one Pakistani, and a crew of five Virgin Galactic employees.

At this point I don’t consider these suborbital flights to be very newsworthy. However, I decided to highlight this news release because of its stark contrast with Blue Origin. Even before last year’s mishap that grounded Blue Origin’s own suborbital spacecraft, New Shepard, it never flew this frequently. Virgin Galactic took far too long to begin flying (two decades), but it does appear that is now wasting no time trying to catch up.

Blue Origin meanwhile continues to drift along, accomplishing little and appearing to do even less with time.

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FAA confirms: No Starship/Superheavy launch license until Interior approves

4:00 pm

The Kafkaesque Interior Department strikcs again!
The Kafkaesque Interior Department
strikcs again!

They’re coming for you next: In an email today, the FAA confirmed what I had reported yesterday, that though it hopes to issue a launch license for the next orbital test flight of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy rocket by the end of October, no license will be issued until Fish & Wildlife in the Interior Department agrees.

Before it is authorized to conduct a second Starship/Super Heavy launch, SpaceX must obtain a modified license from the FAA that addresses all safety, environmental, and other regulatory requirements. As part of that license application determination process, the FAA will review new environmental information, including changes related to the launch pad, as well as other proposed vehicle and flight modifications.

The FAA will complete a Written Reevaluation (WR) to the 2022 Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) evaluating the new environmental information, including Endangered Species Act consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. If the FAA determines through the WR process that the contents of the PEA do not remain valid in light of the changes proposed for Flight 2, additional environmental review will be required. Accordingly, the FAA has not authorized SpaceX’s proposed Flight 2. [emphasis mine]

Tragically, my April prediction is coming true. This launch is almost certainly not going to occur before November, and will almost certainly be delayed until next year.

Note again that until the Biden administration, SpaceX was not required to get a detailed environmental reassessement after every Boca Chica test launch. Fish & Wildlife was not involved, as it shouldn’t be. SpaceX made its engineering investigation, the FAA reviewed it quickly, and the company launched again, at a pace of almost one test launch a month, with almost every launch resulting in a crash landing or an explosion.

Under the Biden administration the rules suddenly changed. Now, all launches are environmental concerns, even though we have empirical data for more than seventy years at Cape Canaveral that rocket launches not only do no harm to wildlife, they allow it to thrive because the spaceport creates large zones where nothing can be developed.

In other words, the Biden administration is playing a raw and cruel political game, designed to kill Starship/Superheavy. And it is succeeding, because it will be impossible to develop this rocket on time for its investors and NASA at a pace of only one test launch per year.

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Today’s blacklisted American finally wins his four-decade-long fight against the federal government

1:52 pm

So Kafkaesque even Kafka would be astonished
So Kafkaesque even Kafka would be astonished

Bring a gun to a knife fight: In 1982 Sidney Longwell bought a federal oil and gas lease from the Interior Department, with the intention of making money from the oil he extracted from Montana’s Lewis and Clark National Forest. Such leases were not unusual up until then, and in this case was obtained in a perfectly legal manner.

It was not to be, at least for the next four decades, as the Interior Department under five different Presidents repeatedly changed the rules and made arbitary decisions in an effort to somehow illegally cancel that lease. The story, as described by his non-profit law firm, Mountain States Legal Foundation, is quite ugly.

Sidney Longwell first bought his federal oil and gas lease in 1982. But after years of back-and-forth, the Clinton Administration suspended his lease indefinitely in 1993, placing it in regulatory limbo. A decade of fruitless bureaucratic review followed. Finally, in 2013, and with help from Mountain States Legal Foundation, he took the DOI to court, where the agency was forced to address Sidney’s lease. When pressed in 2016 for a decision, the DOI canceled the lease! So, Mountain States and Sidney sued them again.
» Read more

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A triangular Martian hill

12:35 pm

A triangular Martian hill
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on May 29, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the science team labels an “unusual shaped hill” that is estimated to be about 20 to 40 feet high.

What makes it unusual? First, it sticks up out of the endless northern lowland plains for no obvious reason, though its shape suggests the existence of bedrock topography that is now buried by the dust and debris that coats the surface of those plains.

Second, the hill itself suggests that it formed after it was covered with debris. Note the crater near its northeast cliff. It appears that the cliff chopped off part of the crater, suggesting that the hill was once level with the surrounding terrain. Some later underground pressure pushed it upward, with its angled sides determined by existing faults.

Why those forces tilted the hill upward as it did, with only its eastern fringes raised, is a question a wide view might answer.
» Read more

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New analysis of Chandrayaan-1’s lunar orbital data might explain its detection of widespread surface hydrogen on the Moon

9:52 am

The Earth's magnetic field, shaped by the solar wind
The Earth’s magnetic field, shaped by the solar wind

One of the significant finds coming from India’s first lunar orbiter, Chandrayaan-1, was the detection of hydrogen in many places across the entire lunar surface, in places where it seemed impossible for hydrogen to be there, even if it was locked in a molecule like water.

Researchers in Hawaii now think they have found an explanation by linking that data to the Earth’s long magnetotail, formed by the solar wind pushing against the Earth’s magnetic field. The graphic to the right illustrates that process. The scientists focused on the kind of weathering processes that occurred both when the Moon was inside that tail, and when it was not.

Li and co-authors analyzed the remote sensing data that were collected by the Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument onboard India’s Chandrayaan 1 mission between 2008 and 2009. Specifically, they assessed the changes in water formation as the Moon traversed through Earth’s magnetotail, which includes the plasma sheet.

“To my surprise, the remote sensing observations showed that the water formation in Earth’s magnetotail is almost identical to the time when the Moon was outside of the Earth’s magnetotail,” said Li. “This indicates that, in the magnetotail, there may be additional formation processes or new sources of water not directly associated with the implantation of solar wind protons. In particular, radiation by high energy electrons exhibits similar effects as the solar wind protons.”

In other words, the evidence suggests that the hydrogen signal seen by Chandrayaan-1 might have been a very temporary implacement of that hydrogen by the solar wind, which ceases during the Moon’s periodic passages through the magnetotail. The Moon’s harsh environment then causes that hydrogen to vanish, only to reappear when it is once again exposed to the solar wind.

None of this is confirmed, so some skepticism is required. If true, however, it would provide further evidence that the hydrogen signal seen at the lunar poles that scientists hope is evidence of ice in the permanently shadowed craters might be nothing of the sort, and we shall find little ice there.

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Germany signs Artemis Accords

9:26 am

Germany today finally signed the Artemis Accords, becoming the 29th nation to do so. More important, its signing puts most of Europe within the accords, as well as all of the major players in space except for China and Russia.

The full list of signatories to the Artemis Accords is now as follows: Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, and the United States.

We now can essentially see the alliance that will compete with China, Russia, and the handful of third world leftist nations such as Venezuela and South Africa. Though there are some nations on this list that have not flown in space and have a very weak infrastructure for space (Nigeria, Romania, and Ecuador for example), most of the signatories have major aerospace industries with a strong space component. More important, while the Biden administration has been deemphasizing the original conception of the accords, aimed at strengthening property rights in space, the members of the alliance are still mostly capitalist countries, with legal systems that support individual rights.

On the other side are nations that have traditionally or are now pushing for communism and strong authoritarian rule.

Thus, we can now see the rough outline of the political competition that will exist as the solar system is explored and colonized in the coming centuries.

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Russia launches 3 astronauts to ISS

9:02 am

Russia today used its Soyuz-2 rocket to launch three astronauts to ISS, one American and two Russians, lifting off from Baikonur in Kazakhstan.

At posting the Soyuz capsule had still not docked with ISS, but should do so shortly.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

64 SpaceX
42 China
13 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 75 to 42, and the entire world combined 75 to 68. SpaceX by itself still trails the rest of the world combined (excluding American companies) 64 to 68.

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Firefly completes second orbital launch

12:35 am

The launch startup Firefly tonight successfully completed its second orbital launch, and the first that reached its intended orbit, its Alpha rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California and placing a Space Force payload on a mission to prove the satellite could be shipped to the launchpad, stacked on the rocket, and launched within sixty hours.

As this was Firefly’s first launch in 2023, the company does not enter the leader board for the 2023 launch race:

64 SpaceX
42 China
12 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 75 to 42, and the entire world combined 75 to 67. SpaceX by itself still trails the rest of the world combined (excluding American companies) 64 to 67.

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September 14, 2023 Quick space links

3:25 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

 

 

 

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One of two major law firms sued for running segregated training programs backs down

2:05 pm

Gadsden Flag - a symbol of unbowing defiance to oppression
Gadsden Flag – a symbol of unbowing defiance to oppression

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Shortly after the Supreme Court ruled in June that racial quotas and affirmative action in college admissions was unconstitutional, the non-profit legal firm the American Alliance for Equal Rights (AAFER) sued two different major law firms, Perkins Coie in Dallas and Morrison & Foerster in Miami, accusing both of illegal discrimination in their segregrated Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) training programs that specifically excluded whites and asians.

Perkins Coie, founded in Seattle, offers “diversity fellowships” that provide stipends of $15,000 to $25,000 and paid positions as summer associates, a position that at major law firms can lead to full-time jobs with six-figure salaries. Applicants must belong to “a group historically underrepresented in the legal profession, including students of color, students who identify as LGBTQ+, and students with disabilities,” according to Perkins Coie, which employs more than 1,200 lawyers in the United States and Asia.

Morrison & Foerster, a corporate law firm founded in San Francisco that has more than 1,000 lawyers worldwide, has a similar program that is open to applicants who are Black, Hispanic, Native American or members of the LGBT community. The fellowship consists of a paid summer-associate position and a $50,000 stipend.

Now, only eight days after the lawsuit was filed, one of these law firms, Morrison & Foerster, has backed down, at least superficially, by eliminating in its applications any mention of race or sexual orientation.
» Read more

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Polygons and scallops in the high mid-latitudes of the Martian lowland plains

12:46 pm

Polygons and scallops in the high mid-latitudes of Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! Only yesterday I posted an image of polygons in the dry equatorial regions of Mars, where little evidence of near-surface ice is found and are thought to be the remnants from a long-dried lakebed.

Today we take a look at some polygons in the mid-latitudes of the icy northern lowland plains, where near-surface ice appears ubiquitous and as it sublimates away with the changing seasons causes all kinds of strange formations, including polygons.

The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, is a good example, centered on a 0.6-mile-wide bright crater that appears to be filled with glacial ice. The image was taken on June 22, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and is located at 44 degrees north latitude on the western edge of Utopia Basin. As noted by the MRO science team in 2006 for a different MRO picture with similar features:
» Read more

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