May 10, 2023 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
- Rocket Lab is selling the helicopter it had planned to use to catch Electron 1st stages
Their decision to reuse the stages after quickly pulling them from the water made the helicopter extraneous.
- China claims completion of an in-orbit experiment on liquid metal thermal management on its space station
I honestly don’t know what this means. Have they used some form of liquid metal to manage the station’s temperature? Or have they figured out a way to control and manage liquid metals in weightlessness?
- Several solar storms are expected to hit Earth in the next few days
I make two predictions: 1) Nothing of significance will happen, though we will have great auroras. 2) Some news outlets will write a story with some variation of this headline: “Were we lucky to dodge a solar disaster this time?”
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.
- Rocket Lab is selling the helicopter it had planned to use to catch Electron 1st stages
Their decision to reuse the stages after quickly pulling them from the water made the helicopter extraneous.
- China claims completion of an in-orbit experiment on liquid metal thermal management on its space station
I honestly don’t know what this means. Have they used some form of liquid metal to manage the station’s temperature? Or have they figured out a way to control and manage liquid metals in weightlessness?
- Several solar storms are expected to hit Earth in the next few days
I make two predictions: 1) Nothing of significance will happen, though we will have great auroras. 2) Some news outlets will write a story with some variation of this headline: “Were we lucky to dodge a solar disaster this time?”
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
Maybe the Chinese are laying the groundwork for Thorium reactors in space, that would be a huge leap for power and propulsion.
The news of the century?
Experimental realization of negative mass.
“Hybrid exciton-polariton particles surprise with negative mass:”
https://phys.org/news/2023-05-hybrid-excitonpolariton-particles-negative-mass.html. by FLEET.
The Age of Dispersion Engineering begins.
Are increasing solar storms caused by SUVs
Another possibility is that the Chinese are considering mercury as propellant.
This is not a good idea in Earth orbit but once outside the planetary well, it should be fine.
David Ross,
I wondered that too if it was Mercury, or using the heat for molten sodium, or gallium. I do not know if this is for a reactor or just looking for a way to replace a radiator on station.