February 18, 2025 Quick space linksCourtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- Mysterious X-ray flash detected in Chandra X-Ray Observatory archives
The flash occurred in 2020 in the Large Magellanic Cloud, with its source unknown.
- By today NASA’s workforce will shrink by 10%
The layoffs are as per Trump’s order to lay off all new provisional employees, plus the 750 or so who accepted the buy offer. The article is another example of the media wailing over a staffing reduction that private companies do all the time, usually to the benefit of the company.
- Interview with Yao Song, co-founder and CEO of pseudo-company Orienspace
I haven’t watched it, because it is almost 40 minutes long. Jay’s comment is entertaining, “The co-Host mentions Mao more than Yao!” The pseudo-company itself has completed one launch.
- Space News article touting the wonders of China’s pseudo-commercial sector in Beijing
Is it any wonder this industry is booming in the nation’s capital, where all the power resides that also dictates everything these so-called private companies do? The article claims that by ’28 the many pseudo-companies based in Beijing will be doing 100 launches per year. We shall see.
- The next Progress to bring cargo to ISS is now being prepped for launch
Launch is scheduled for February 27, 2025.
- ISRO touts the first completed upper stage that will place its manned Gaganyaan spacecraft into orbit
The stage will be used on India’s HLVM3 rocket (Heavy Lift Vehicle Mark 3), its planned most powerful rocket, presently being developed.
- South Africa rejects Starlink
Actually, Starlink had already rejected South Africa, partly because of its racist policies confiscating land from whites, and partly because the government there was demanding an exorbitant share of Starlink’s profits.
- On this day in 1977 the shuttle engineering test vehicle Enterprise made its first “captive-inactive” flight atop a Boeing 747
Enterprise never flew in space. Instead, it was used to test various shuttle technologies as the fleet was designed and built.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- Mysterious X-ray flash detected in Chandra X-Ray Observatory archives
The flash occurred in 2020 in the Large Magellanic Cloud, with its source unknown.
- By today NASA’s workforce will shrink by 10%
The layoffs are as per Trump’s order to lay off all new provisional employees, plus the 750 or so who accepted the buy offer. The article is another example of the media wailing over a staffing reduction that private companies do all the time, usually to the benefit of the company.
- Interview with Yao Song, co-founder and CEO of pseudo-company Orienspace
I haven’t watched it, because it is almost 40 minutes long. Jay’s comment is entertaining, “The co-Host mentions Mao more than Yao!” The pseudo-company itself has completed one launch.
- Space News article touting the wonders of China’s pseudo-commercial sector in Beijing
Is it any wonder this industry is booming in the nation’s capital, where all the power resides that also dictates everything these so-called private companies do? The article claims that by ’28 the many pseudo-companies based in Beijing will be doing 100 launches per year. We shall see.
- The next Progress to bring cargo to ISS is now being prepped for launch
Launch is scheduled for February 27, 2025.
- ISRO touts the first completed upper stage that will place its manned Gaganyaan spacecraft into orbit
The stage will be used on India’s HLVM3 rocket (Heavy Lift Vehicle Mark 3), its planned most powerful rocket, presently being developed.
- South Africa rejects Starlink
Actually, Starlink had already rejected South Africa, partly because of its racist policies confiscating land from whites, and partly because the government there was demanding an exorbitant share of Starlink’s profits.
- On this day in 1977 the shuttle engineering test vehicle Enterprise made its first “captive-inactive” flight atop a Boeing 747
Enterprise never flew in space. Instead, it was used to test various shuttle technologies as the fleet was designed and built.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Orienspace’s Yao Song made much of several biographical ways in which he resembles Elon Musk. Extrapolating from that to being a future major success in the space launch business strikes me as getting way too far out over his skis. Besides, if Song is typical of his generation, he’s an only child. Elon has siblings. He’s also got a mom who’s still a sought-after model in her late 70s. I’m going to go way out on a limb here and guess that Song’s mom is not gracing any magazine covers.
The Space News piece might well be an overture by its new owners to get advertising and/or sponsored articles from the PRC’s menagerie of pseudo-private-sector space companies just as they do from our domestic legacy aerospace primes. The comment threads there are already infested with triumphalist PRC trolls.
The people concerned about NASA cuts seem to be invoking, indirectly, the Sacred Cow Defense.
But when asked which cows are sacred, they point to the entire herd.
A couple of articles of interest to share:
“Calculating the energy requirements for using moondust to create rocket fuel”
DOI:10.1073/pnas.2306146122 (IIRC)
“Thermophotovoltaic device turns waste heat into electricity while defying a physical limit.”
They think to have Planck’s Law licked.
We will see if it survives any retractions.
They balked. https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/02/nasa-receives-11th-hour-reprieve-from-probationary-employee-cuts/