November 15, 2022 Quick space links
Note that I have embedded NASA’s live stream of the SLS countdown to a 1:04 am (Eastern) launch tonight here:
Watching the first SLS launch tonight
As I also noted before, I advise waiting until after midnight before watching. Before that everything will be either NASA blather or watching paint dry.
The following quick links are courtesy of Jay, BtB’s stringer.
- Sierra Space touts a ’23 inaugaral launch of Dream Chaser
The picture of Tenacity, the first Dream Chaser cargo spacecraft, is certainly encouraging.
- Europe to begin drop tests in ’23 of small scale prototypes of its own reusable unmanned mini-shuttle, dubbed Space Rider
This spacecraft is comparable in concept to Dream Chaser. It takes off on a rocket and lands on a runway. Its development however is far behind, with the first orbital flight not until the end of ’24, but probably much later. It is also intended for two month orbital missions only, not as a freighter for anyone’s space station.
- Space Perspective buys ship to use as an ocean launch platform for its high altitude balloons
The company claims the ship will give them greater flexibility on where and when to launch their stratospheric balloon flights.
- Today is the anniversary of the only flight of Buran, the Soviet Union’s version of a space shuttle
It completed only two orbits, landed safely, and never flew again. There is a short video at the link showing the liftoff.
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
Note that I have embedded NASA’s live stream of the SLS countdown to a 1:04 am (Eastern) launch tonight here:
Watching the first SLS launch tonight
As I also noted before, I advise waiting until after midnight before watching. Before that everything will be either NASA blather or watching paint dry.
The following quick links are courtesy of Jay, BtB’s stringer.
- Sierra Space touts a ’23 inaugaral launch of Dream Chaser
The picture of Tenacity, the first Dream Chaser cargo spacecraft, is certainly encouraging.
- Europe to begin drop tests in ’23 of small scale prototypes of its own reusable unmanned mini-shuttle, dubbed Space Rider
This spacecraft is comparable in concept to Dream Chaser. It takes off on a rocket and lands on a runway. Its development however is far behind, with the first orbital flight not until the end of ’24, but probably much later. It is also intended for two month orbital missions only, not as a freighter for anyone’s space station.
- Space Perspective buys ship to use as an ocean launch platform for its high altitude balloons
The company claims the ship will give them greater flexibility on where and when to launch their stratospheric balloon flights.
- Today is the anniversary of the only flight of Buran, the Soviet Union’s version of a space shuttle
It completed only two orbits, landed safely, and never flew again. There is a short video at the link showing the liftoff.
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
Ref. Buran: “It completed only two orbits, landed safely, and never flew again.”
And ignominiously destroyed in 2002 when the hanger collapsed on it. I wanted to see Buran succeed, and give Shuttle a run, improving both.
Re Buran:
“It went up; it came down. But it had absolutely no scientific value.”
(Roald Sagdeyev, outgoing director of the Space Research Institute in Moscow, summing up the recent first flight of the Soviet space shuttle; quoted in Science, 23 Dec 1988, Vol. 242, p. 1639)
“It went up; it came down. But it had absolutely no scientific value.”
Wasn’t designed for scientific value. Engineering value, though, was not inconsequential.