New Shepard flies six passengers on suborbital hop
Capitalism in space: Blue Origin’s suborbital reusable spacecraft today completed its fifth passenger flight and 21st overall, carrying six people.
Author: Robert Zimmerman
June 3, 2022 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, well worth your time, go here.
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Punch Brothers – Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
An evening pause: Performed live March 2022 in Boston, where it appears things might finally be going back to normal.
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
The oppressive and ignorant blacklisting culture that now dominates politics
As noted by the Spirit of Christmas Present in Dickens’
The Christmas Carol, ‘This boy is ignorance, this girl is want.
Beware them both, but most of all beware this boy.’
While today’s blacklisting essay is mostly about one specific story, what it really does is illustrate starkly the overall ugliness and ignorance that fuels the blackballing, and how that ugliness and ignorance has seeped into every aspect of our political and cultural lives.
In a story that is hardly unique or surprising, the Los Angeles City Council last week passed a new regulation that bans the use of any gas appliances in new construction, both residential and commercial.
The council’s reasons for imposing this ban — as is usual for such bans — was based not on any actual documented problem that presently exists but on a fear that one might someday occur. From the opening paragraph of the actual motion:
As the gravity and urgency of the climate emergency become more apparent with each passing year of rising temperatures, dangerous wildfires, and more severe droughts—all of which disproportionately impact communities of color and the most vulnerable Angelenos—the City of Los Angeles must do all in its power to reduce its carbon emissions and move toward a sustainable, zero-carbon economy. [emphasis mine]
Note the highlighted words. » Read more
A look at World View, one of two balloon companies about to offer high altitude tourist flights
An artist’s impression of a World View tourist balloon in flight
The future of space tourism is not going to be limited to rockets, no matter how romantic those rockets might be. For a lot of people, getting into space might not be a good option simply because of cost. Moreover, even if one could afford the cheaper suborbital flights presently offered by Blue Origin and are promised someday from Virgin Galactic, the short length of the journey, no more than ten minutes in space, could for many people make these flights not worth doing.
There is an alternative however, one that won’t get you into space, but will fly you high enough that you will be above 90% of the atmosphere, see the curve of the Earth, and get to do it for hours for far less money. This alternative comes from the high altitude balloon companies that are now working hard to begin flying tourists sometime in the next two years.
There are presently two American companies on the verge of flying tourists to up about 20 miles altitude. One is Space Perspective in Florida. If all goes as planned, it will begin flying passengers on its Neptune balloon by ’24, at a ticket price of $125K per head. It is presently accepting reservations with a $1,000 deposit.
The second company is Tucson-based World View. Up until 2019 the company had been planning to fly tourists, but a change in leadership brought on by its failure to meet the terms of a local development deal caused it to put those plans aside. Then in 2021 it restarted those plans.
Tickets will cost $50,000 per person, with World View providing what it calls “flexible financing options.” The company expects the first flight no earlier than early 2024.
At the moment about 1000 people have put down a deposit of $500 for a flight.
Both companies will be offering flights lasting most of one day, with additional pre- and post-flight activities.
On May 18, 2022, I attended an event held by World View at its Tucson headquarters. The event showcased the company’s talent, its facilities, and the value of hi-tech high stratospheric balloons. To begin the event, CEO Ryan Hartman gave a short presentation describing his goals for the company and the strategy he is following to reach them. The two graphics below come from that presentation, and provide I think the clearest outline of those goals and strategy.
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Sunspot update: In May we had sunspots, sunspots, and more sunspots!
It is time for another sunspot update! On June 1 NOAA released its monthly update of its graph tracking the number of sunspots on the Sun’s Earth-facing hemisphere. As I do every month, I have posted it below, having added some addition details to provide a larger context.
In May the sunspot activity on the Sun almost literally exploded, producing some of the strongest solar flares in years as well as the most sunspots since the previous solar maximum in 2014. On several days there were as many as eight sunspot groups on the Sun, with one so large that it was visible to the naked eye on Earth (if viewed properly with a protective filter).
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Russia launches Progress to ISS
Using its Soyuz-2 rocket, Roscosmos successfully launched and docked a Progress freighter to ISS, bringing with it three tons of cargo.
The leaders in the 2022 launch race:
22 SpaceX
17 China
8 Russia
3 Rocket Lab
3 ULA
The U.S still leads China 31 to 22 in the national rankings, as well as leading the entire world combined 31 to 28.
Belinda Carlisle – Leave A Light On
An evening pause: Performed live 1990.
Hat tip Dan Morris.
Today’s blacklisted American: Teacher fired in retaliation for speaking out at school board meeting
Blacklisted for opposing her school from giving porno to kids
They’re coming for you next: Brenda Danielle Reprieto, a substitute teacher in Georgia, was fired the day after she spoke out at the Cherokee County School District’s (CCSD) school board meeting, publicly criticizing the board for its policies.
Reprieto attended the meeting both as a teacher and as a parent of one of the district’s students. The topic of controversy was the porno that the school board was allowing in its elementary school libraries — for little kids to read — that was so vile the school board’s chairwoman, Kyla Cromer, would not allow it to be read aloud to adults. It was also considered too obscene for the parent, Chelle Brown, to email the text to the board members. As Brown noted at the beginning of her presentation, all her emails bounced because, as she noted “the content was so vulgar.” Watch her get cut off by the board:
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India’s first private satellite manufacturing facility opens
Capitalism in space: At a ceremony today that included officials from the government, the private commercial company ANANTH opened India’s first private satellite manufacturing facility.
Located at Karnataka Industrial Area Development Board Aerospace Park, Bengaluru, the new establishment is equipped with clean rooms for spacecraft sub-systems manufacturing and is large enough to cater to four spacecraft simultaneously.
This unveiling is part of India’s effort to transition from a government-built space effort to one run by the private sector. In the past all satellite construction in India was designed, managed, and owned by India’s space agency ISRO. This facility will now take over that function, and do so not only for ISRO but for any private company that wishes to have a satellite built.
A rock stows away on Perseverance
Click for full image.
Since early February the Mars Rover Perseverance has been toting with it a small rock in its front left wheel, as shown in the image to the right, cropped and reduced to post here and taken by the rover’s left hazard avoidance camera on February 6, 2022.
From an update today by the Perseverance science team:
Back on sol 341— that’s over 100 sols ago, in early February— a rock found its way into the rover’s front left wheel, and since hitching a ride, it’s been transported more than 5.3 miles (8.5 km). This rock isn’t doing any damage to the wheel, but throughout its (no doubt bumpy!) journey, it has clung on and made periodic appearances in our left Hazcam images.
You can see the most recent photo of the rock, taken on May 26, 2022, here. It is very clear that the rock’s repeated tumbling inside the wheel well has worn away its sharp edges as well as reduced its overall size. Given enough time its surface could even become somewhat smooth.
As the update notes, when this rock finally drops off it will create a potential mystery for future geologists, who if they are not aware that Perseverance moved it, will wonder how it got where it was, being geologically out-of-place in its new location.
NASA awards Axiom & Collins Aerospace contracts to build spacesuits
Capitalism in space: NASA yesterday awarded separate contracts to two different companies, Axiom and Collins Aerospace, to build spacesuits for its astronauts, either when they do spacewalks in space or when they are exploring the lunar surface.
The contract enables selected vendors to compete for task orders for missions that will provide a full suite of capabilities for NASA’s spacewalking needs during the period of performance through 2034. The indefinite delivery and indefinite quantity, milestone-based xEVAS contract has a combined maximum potential value of $3.5 billion for all task order awards. The first task orders to be competed under the contract will include the development and services for the first demonstration outside the space station in low-Earth orbit and for the Artemis III lunar landing.
Each partner has invested a significant amount of its own money into development. Partners will own the spacesuits and are encouraged to explore other non-NASA commercial applications for data and technologies they co-develop with NASA.
More information can be found in each companies’ press release, located here (Axiom) and here (Collins).
These commercial contracts replace NASA’s own failed effort to make its own Artemis spacesuits, which spent fourteen years and more than a billion dollars before being abandoned by the agency because wouldn’t be able to deliver anything on time.
The contracts also continue NASA’S transition — as recommended in my 2017 policy paper Capitalism in Space [pdf] — from a failed space contractor to merely being the customer buying products from the commercial sector. The result is we now have a vibrant and ever growing private space sector with products available quickly and cheaply not only for NASA, but for others. The Axiom press release illustrates these facts with this quote:
The Axiom spacesuit is key to the company’s commercial space services. This new NASA contract enables Axiom to build spacesuits that serve the company’s commercial customers and future space station goals while meeting NASA’s ISS and exploration needs.