The Diamonds – Little Darlin’
An evening pause: Hat tip Tom Biggar.
Author: Robert Zimmerman
Starship flies!
Capitalism in space: In a spectacular achievement, SpaceX’s eighth Starship prototype today completed 6:42 minute flight that appeared to go practically perfectly, until landing.
At that point it appeared the spacecraft’s last landing burn was insufficient to slow it down enough for landing, and it crashed. However, it crashed on its landing pad, meaning it had maneuvered its way back through the atmosphere exactly as planned.
Below the fold are screen captures from the flight, in sequence.
The flight left several impressions. First, this design is viable. Though we are still looking at a prototype, it is one that works.
Second, the ship appeared to lumber into space, almost slowly. This was partly an illusion because of its size. Nonetheless, it reminded me of the 747, which always flew magnificently but with what seemed like a measured attitude. Starship appeared similar.
Third, the systems for controlling the ship on its return through the atmosphere appeared to work as intended. Though SpaceX obviously has a lot more work to do to achieve an orbital return, they have made a magnificent start.
And they have gotten this far in only two years, for less than $2 billion. Compare that to NASA and Boeing and their SLS, which is half a decade behind schedule and will likely cost $30 billion once launched.
We should expect the ninth prototype to be on the launchpad within days, and the next test flight in no more than few weeks.
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Key legal issues behind the Texas petition to Supreme Court re election issues
Link here.
The author reviews the petition, the logic behind it, and the legal possibilities. She also cogently reviews the worst examples of misbehavior in the four swing states, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Michigan, that justify Supreme Court action. If you are one of those people that refuses to recognize the illegalities in the handling of the election in those states, you should read this article to education yourself.
The key point however is this:
These injuries, Texas asserts, demand a remedy. But the remedy sought is not what some may surmise is the goal—a second term for President Trump.
No, what Texas seeks is for the Supreme Court to mandate that the defendant states comply with the Constitution, and that means that electors are selected by the states’ legislatures. Texas makes this point clear, stressing: “Plaintiff State does not ask this Court to decide who won the election; they only ask that the Court enjoin the clear violations of the Electors Clause of the Constitution.”
Texas is essentially demanding what I suggested several weeks ago: If election issues are not fixed, elected state Republicans must refuse to certify.
Texas is demanding that these four states put the decision to the legislatures, since their election counts cannot be trusted. While the arguments are sound, it remains to be seen whether the Supreme Court will listen.
Watch the attempted first high altitude flight of SpaceX’s Starship
Screen capture from SpaceX live feed during 1st launch attempt.
Click for LabPadre live stream,
from which this image was captured today.
UPDATE: Less than six minutes to launch.
UPDATE: Hold called at T-2:06. They have reset the clock for a 4:40 pm (Central) launch.
Original post:
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Capitalism in space: SpaceX’s live stream is on, with a liftoff in six minutes. I have embedded below the fold the live stream for this first high altitude flight of SpaceX’s Starship.
The LabPadre live stream, to the right, shows that they have already proceeded through most of preliminary stages prior to liftoff.
If all goes right, this eighth prototype of Starship will go about 40,000 feet in the air, turn over and attempt to control its return belly side down, and then upright itself just before landing so it can complete a vertical landing like a Falcon 9 first stage. The company gives themselves a one in three chance of landing the spacecraft. SpaceX has also made it clear that their primary engineering goal on this flight is to test that return through the atmosphere, so that is the part of the flight they most need to succeed. Failing to land afterward but getting that data will make this test a complete success.
No matter what happens, the company has prototypes 9 through 15 waiting in the wings.
UPDATE: This post will remain at the top of the page until the flight occurs, or is scrubbed. Scroll down for new stories.
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Cryptic Terrain on Mars
Click for full image.
Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated and cropped to post here, was taken on September 27, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what is likely a crater that is partly buried by ice and dust and sand near or on the edge of Mars’s south polar ice cap.
It also shows an example of what planetary scientists have dubbed “cryptic terrain,” found generally on the margins of that ice cap. In this case, the location is on a plateau adjacent to the ice cap dubbed Promethei Planum. Despite a lot of searching, I could not locate any research papers describing Promethei Planum, though data outlined in one Mars Express press release from 2008 suggested it was part of the polar ice cap more than two miles thick that is covered by a thin mantle of dry ice each winter.
The strange curlicue cliffs and plateaus seen here are thought to form as part of the arrival and then sublimation away of that seasonal dry ice mantle, but how that process exactly works to create these particular geological features remains I think a mystery. North is to the top. The general grade is also downhill away from the icecap to the north.
Moreover, the overview map below, with the location of this image indicated by the blue cross, illustrates more mysteries.
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ESA funds construction of its own X-37B, dubbed Space Rider
The new colonial movement: The European Space Agency (ESA) has now signed the contracts to fund the construction of its first reusable mini-shuttle, dubbed Space Rider and comparable to the Air Force’s X-37B.
ESA signed two contracts with industry on 9 December at Palazzo Chigi in Rome, Italy in the presence of Italian government representatives. The first contract is for delivery of the Space Rider flight model including the reentry module and the AVUM orbital service module, by co-prime contractors: Thales Alenia Space Italy and Avio. The second contract covers the delivery of the ground segment by Italian co-prime contractors: Telespazio and Altec.
Activities are on track for the first flight of Space Rider in the third quarter of 2023 from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana.
Like the X-37B, Space Rider will provide Europe with a space platform for performing long term experiments in space and recovering them undamaged, though initially the flights will be no more than two months long. While it will launch on a rocket like the X-37B, and will use its body to shed velocity as it returns through the atmosphere, it will not land on a runway but will instead use parachutes to drop it to the ground.
More importantly, Space Rider will be available to the private sector. The X-37B is controlled by the U.S. military, and they have made it available for only a limited number of non-military experiments.
German smallsat startup raises $91 million for new rocket
Capitalism in space: A German startup, dubbed Isar Aerospace, has successfully raised $91 million in private investment capital to finance design and construction of a new rocket aimed at launching smallsats.
It plans to use the money to continue its research, development and production en route to its first commercial launches, planned for early 2022. The launcher is not just significant for its design innovation, but if it proves successful, it would make Isar the first European space company to build a successful satellite launcher to compete in the global satellite market.
The round, a Series B, is being led by Lakestar, with significant contributions also from Earlybird and Vsquared Ventures; additional funding from existing investors like Airbus Ventures, former SpaceX Vice President Bulent Altan, Christian Angermayer’s Apeiron, and UVC; and also new investors HV Capital and Ann-Kristin and Paul Achleitner are also joining the round.
Earlybird and Airbus Ventures led Isar’s previous round of $17 million in December 2019.
There are a lot of such startups right now, the majority of which I expect to fall by the wayside, especially the latecomers. What makes this particular story interesting is that it describes a European company. So far there has not been much activity in the new launch market coming from independent European companies. With the government-run Arianespace dominating the market, it is difficult for private companies to gain a foothold.
This might be changing because of the failure of Arianespace’s Ariane 6 to successfully compete on price with SpaceX, a failure that gives new companies an opening to gain some market share in Europe. The two recent launch failures of Arianespace’s smaller Vega rocket likely helps that new competition as well. Isar’s funding success here might be indicating this.
Starlink dark coating reduces reflectivity by half
Astronomers in Japan have now confirmed that the dark coating SpaceX has been putting on its more recent Starlink satellites has successfully reduced their reflectivity by half.
They looked at the satellites across a range of wavelengths.
Observations conducted from April to June 2020 revealed for the first time in the world that artificial satellites, whether coated or not, are more visible at longer wavelengths, and that the black coating can halve the level of surface reflectivity of satellites. Such surface treatment is expected to reduce the negative impacts on astronomical observations.
Knowing this detail will allow commercial satellite companies such as SpaceX to further refine their coatings to better hide their satellites from ground-based telescopes.
While good news, it doesn’t change the fundamental lesson that astronomers need to learn. They must move their telescopes off the Earth and into space. In the long run ground-based astronomy is a dead-end.
Mysterious object in solar orbit identified as upper stage for Surveyor 2
Since August astronomers have been trying to figure out the nature of a mysterious object in solar orbit that did not match their expectations for either a comet or an asteroid. Dubbed 2020 SO, astronomers have now identified it as the upper stage booster used to send the unmanned lunar lander Surveyor 2 towards the Moon in 1966.
Surveyor 2 was a failure when it began tumbling and crashed into the Moon instead of doing a soft landing. Its upper stage meanwhile was sent on a path that would have it miss the Moon and go into orbit around the Sun. That orbit finally brought it back to Earth this year.
2020 SO was captured by Earth’s gravity in November and came within 27,400 miles from Earth on December 1. That’s when Reddy and his colleagues at the IRTF were able to capture the infrared spectrum of another Centaur D rocket booster—this time from a 1971 launch of a communication satellite. When they compared that spectrum to the data gathered about 2020 SO, the spectra matched. 2020 SO is also a Centaur rocket booster, most likely the one used for the Surveyor 2 mission.
2020 SO is now moving away from the Earth and should escape Earth’s gravity within a few months, at which point it will follow a new solar orbit. But astronomers expect it to return to Earth in 2036, and they will be ready to learn even more when it does.
This booster is essentially an early example of space archeology. Someday colonists in space will go and catch it to bring it back to one of their museums on the Moon or Mars, to be studied and admired as a major marker of their own past history.
Musk confirms he has left California for Texas
SpaceX founder Elon Musk today confirmed that he is selling his homes in California and is moving permanently to Texas.
Musk did not reveal whereabouts in the Lone Star State he has moved to. It’s also unclear whether he will purchase any property there, given that he stated earlier this year that he wants to rid himself of possessions and is only interesting in renting.
Over the summer, the Musk Foundation officially consolidated its headquarters in Austin – a city that also houses a Tesla assembly plant. However, Musk is also known to spend time in Boca Chica, on the southeast coast of the state, where there is a SpaceX facility.
For the time being, both Tesla and SpaceX remain headquartered in California. It is unclear whether Musk will officially move both businesses to Texas at a later date.
I expect that both Tesla and SpaceX in California will soon be leaving as well. Musk is shrewd however. He has been shifting both slowly from California in the past two years as he has found it increasingly impossible to deal with government officials there. Witness Starship for example. Two years ago it was to be built in the Port of Los Angeles. Now, with little fanfare all operations have moved to Texas.
Musk will leave slowly, so as to not stir a political hornet’s nest among the fascist legislators of California. They consider everything everyone owns as belonging really to them, and will not take kindly to any attempt of Musk to escape.
BouzoukXp – Belenos
An evening pause: The wonders of technology: all played by the same person.
Hat tip Bob Roberts.
1st countdown dress rehearsal of SLS core stage scrubbed
The attempt by NASA to conduct a full countdown dress rehearsal of the SLS core stage, including loading its tanks, was scrubbed early in the countdown yesterday when engineers encountered problems loading oxygen into the rocket’s tanks.
An issue with the LOX chilldown process run on Monday meant that the LOX propellant tank couldn’t be filled, which meant that the full WDR test wasn’t possible.
NASA’s post-scrub statement indicated the vehicle systems performed well and that the Core Stage engineering community and the test team at Stennis were working on fixes and determining when the tanking and countdown demonstration parts of the WDR test can be retried.
This dress rehearsal is intended to preparatory to what NASA dubs the Green Run test static fire of the core stage, set to last for the full 500 seconds the core stage would fire during an actual launch. Whether this scrub will prevent that Green Run test from occurring before the end of the year remains unclear. Either way it must happen soon if NASA is to maintain its schedule for the long frequently delayed launch of SLS, now scheduled for November ’21.