October 27, 2025 Quick space links
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.
- Welsh space manufacturing startup Space Forge releases video of unfolding test in zero-G of its Pridwen reusable heat shield
The test was on a zero-g plane. The shield design unfolds like an umbrella.
- Video of the launchpad rollout of China’s next manned capsule, Shenzhou-21, and its rocket, Long March 2F
The launch of this next crew to the Tiangong-3 station is scheduled for October 31, 2025.
- The priorities just released by China’s communist party for its next five-year plan (2026-2030) appear to explicitly include space
No details yet released but this is no surprise. For the past two decades China’s government has been using its space program as a training ground for its top political leadership, which means that the leadership it now has is guaranteed to be very pro-space. Stay tuned for more details.
- NASA administrator Sean Duffy tries to claim some credit for Japan’s just launched HTV-X1 cargo freighter
He quickly gets lambasted on X: “HTV-X is a Japanese spacecraft, built by a Japanese company, launched on a Japanese rocket, from Japan, to be captured by a Japanese astronaut driving a Canadian robotic arm. Trump is President of the USA, not Japan, and had no influence over the HTV-X, as Duffy implies.”
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 or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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.
- Welsh space manufacturing startup Space Forge releases video of unfolding test in zero-G of its Pridwen reusable heat shield
The test was on a zero-g plane. The shield design unfolds like an umbrella.
- Video of the launchpad rollout of China’s next manned capsule, Shenzhou-21, and its rocket, Long March 2F
The launch of this next crew to the Tiangong-3 station is scheduled for October 31, 2025.
- The priorities just released by China’s communist party for its next five-year plan (2026-2030) appear to explicitly include space
No details yet released but this is no surprise. For the past two decades China’s government has been using its space program as a training ground for its top political leadership, which means that the leadership it now has is guaranteed to be very pro-space. Stay tuned for more details.
- NASA administrator Sean Duffy tries to claim some credit for Japan’s just launched HTV-X1 cargo freighter
He quickly gets lambasted on X: “HTV-X is a Japanese spacecraft, built by a Japanese company, launched on a Japanese rocket, from Japan, to be captured by a Japanese astronaut driving a Canadian robotic arm. Trump is President of the USA, not Japan, and had no influence over the HTV-X, as Duffy implies.”
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 or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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
Ellie in Space is reporting that Sean Duffy has lost the confidence of Space Twitter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2czL-7JN4k
Based on appearances, I guess Pridwen must be Welsh for “brolly.”
Space Forge seems quite a diverse outfit. Moses Fernandes, from the video clip, has a Latin name but sounds more Oz or Middle Earth than Welsh. If he actually is Welsh, perhaps he is descended from a survivor of the wreck of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Wales would have been within swimming distance for at least the more fortunate such. I’ve often speculated that a similar occurrence might explain why the arguably-most-beautiful Latina on the planet happens to be named Catherine Zeta-Jones.
There is a lovely Asian lady with a thick Oz accent…not the first I have seen. In 1992 I happened to be in LA…I saw an early set for DS9 (a re-use d TNG cave set likely). There was a dude easily six foot four.
That was the only time I was on the West Coast.
Forrest J. still had his original Ackermansion…not far downhill from the Observatory.
I was at the Beverly Laurel Motor Hotel across from CBS…the tar pits just down the street.
Jeff Wright,
The erstwhile British Empire has produced a lot of non-white people with various Brit or colonial accents. A half-century ago when I was an expat working in Brussels, there was a secretary there who was very black but had an accent like Mrs. Naugatuck on Maude. Quite a surprise to a black American manager from San Fran who was assigned there for awhile. Travel can be broadening.
Interesting details about your time in L.A. back in the day. I’ve lived here – except for a couple of years as an expat – for over a half-century. I was a member of organized sci-fi fandom in the area for awhile in the early 80s, but never met Forrie or visited the Ackermansion.