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To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
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SpaceX tonight successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The first stage successfully completed its ninth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
90 SpaceX
56 China
16 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India
American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches, 102 to 56, and the entire world combined 102 to 90. SpaceX by itself is once again tied with the rest of the world (excluding other American companies) 90 to 90. The fast pace in launches continues, however, with five launches scheduled in the next five days.
An evening pause: When I posted a different version of this song last year, I said this:
This song honoring Jesus I think really speaks of every child born on Earth, and how every parent should see them. As Wordsworth said, they come “trailing clouds of glory.”
Did you know that your baby boy has walked where angels trod?
When you kissed your little baby then you kissed the face of god.
Still applies, to my way of thinking. That there are people in the world that think it good to kill such things means only that those people need to be removed from human existence as quickly as possible, as they represent the worst evil anyone can conceive.
Hat tip Alton Blevins.
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
Virgin Orbit used this plane as the first stage of its LauncherOne air-launched rocket. I suspect Stratolaunch will use it for spare parts for its giant Roc plane, built from two salvaged 747s.
The launch is presently scheduled for December 24, 2023 at 1:49 am (Eastern).
China’s space alliance now includes Russia, Venezuela, Pakistan, Belarus, Azerbaijan, South Africa, and Egypt.
Final totals of House vote condemning anti-Semitism.
Click for source.
This column today might sound familiar, as I have reported similar examples numerous times before (See previous essays here, here, here, here, and here). Yet, it is important to document the inability of the modern Democratic Party to unequivocally condemn bigotry, because so much of its base and membership are actually are in favor of such things.
Yesterday the House passed a resolution condemning the horrible rise of anti-Semitism seen nationwide and globally, mostly expressed during pro-Hamas demonstrations that have often descended into violence and calls for the murder of all Jews in Israel.
The resolution [pdf] is quite clear. After listing numerous examples of harrassment and violence against Jews in the U.S., Australia, Israel, and globally, it condemned such behavior, and made it clear that the term “anti-Zionism” is simply a euphemism for anti-Semitism.
The final vote totals are shown in the screen capture to the right, taken from C-SPAN. As you can see, except for one nay vote and four not voting at all, the entire Republican caucus voted in favor of this resolution.
The Democrats however were not so unanimous. While a little less than half of the Democrats in the House voted in support of this amazingly simple resolution, half voted “present”, following the instructions of Congressemen Jerry Nadler (D-New York), Dan Goldman (D-New York), and Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) (all members of the Democratic Party House leadership). These Congressmen opposed the resolution because it is…
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Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 18, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists dub as “large gullies with infilled alcoves.”
Gullies on Mars were one of the first discoveries by orbiters of small-scalle potential water-caused features on the Red Planet. The favorite explanation for their formation today involves the seasonal freeze-thaw cycle, combined with the deposition of ice and dry ice frost in the winter. When that ice and dry ice sublimates away in the spring it causes collapse and erosion, widening the gullies.
These gullies also exhibit evidence that underground and glacial ice might contribute as well. The material in the largest gullies looks like a mixture of glacial material and dust and debris. It could also be that there is ice impregnated in the ground, which can cause large collapses when it sublimates away.
The white rectangle on the overview map and inset above marks the location of this picture, on the western rim of a 13-mile-wide unnamed crater inside the western portion of the 2,000-mile-long mid-latitude strip on Mars I dub glacier country, since every image from orbit shows evidence of glaciers.
This picture is no different, as the horizontal cracks at the base of the crater rim suggests the glacier that fills the crater floor is being pulled apart by gravity at its edges. The elevation drop from the top of the rim to the floor is about 3,200 feet, so any ice on that slope will definitely be stressed by gravity. Such cracks are therefore not surprising.
The spacecraft Psyche — going to the metal asteroid Psyche — has successfully taken its first pictures, proving its camera and pointing system work as planned.
The pictures, taken on December 4, 2023 from about 16 million miles from Earth, are actually quite boring, merely showing a field of stars. However,
The imager instrument, which consists of a pair of identical cameras, captured a total of 68 images, all within a star field in the constellation Pisces. The imager team is using the data to verify proper commanding, telemetry analysis, and calibration of the images. …The imager takes pictures through multiple color filters, all of which were tested in these initial observations.
At this moment all looks good for Psyche’s eventual arrival at Psyche in 2029.
When the sample return capsule brought OSIRIS-REx’s Bennu samples back to Earth on September 24, 2023, it appeared that the drogue parachute never released prior to the release of the capsule’s main parachutes. Fortunately, those main parachutes were able to do the job, putting the capsule down unharmed but a minute early.
NASA has now completed its investigation into the drogue chute failure. According to its press release:
After a thorough review of the descent video and the capsule’s extensive documentation, NASA found that inconsistent wiring label definitions in the design plans likely caused engineers to wire the parachutes’ release triggers such that signals meant to deploy the drogue chute fired out of order.
The drogue was expected to deploy at an altitude of about 100,000 feet. It was designed to slow and stabilize the capsule during a roughly five-minute descent prior to main parachute deployment at an altitude of about 10,000 feet. Instead, at 100,000 feet, the signal triggered the system to cut the drogue free while it was still packed in the capsule. When the capsule reached 9,000 feet, the drogue deployed. With its retention cord already cut, the drogue was immediately released from the capsule.
In other words, engineers wired the thing incorrectly so it cut its cords before it was released. To further confirm this conclusion engineers will inspect the system thoroughly once scientists have completed removing the Bennu samples from the capsule.
Iran’s Salman rocket lifting off today.
The launch site itself was not disclosed.
According to the official state-run press of each country, both Iran and China yesterday completed successfully launches, both of which appeared to test new capabilities of some note.
First Iran announced that it had used its Salman rocket to put a 500-kilogram capsule that it said was carrying biological samples, and was also “has the ability to carry a human,” though the mass of this capsule makes that highly unlikely. Little other information was provided. Nor has this orbital launch as yet been confirmed by the orbital monitoring services of the U.S. military. The image to the right is a screen capture from the launch video at the link, and appears to show that this rocket has only one stage, thus making an orbital launch impossible.
Assuming this orbital launch is confirmed, it was Iran’s second orbital launch in 2023 and will therefore not show up on the launch race leader board below. If further information is obtained I will update this post appropriately.
China in turn announced the successful launch today of a test satellite, using its new Smart Dragon-3 solid-fueled rocket lifting off from a barge in the South China Sea 1,300 nautical miles off the coast of Guangdong province, where Hong Kong is located. To arrive at this ocean launch location took five days. The launch thus tested the use of this mobile floating platform from remote ocean locations.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
89 SpaceX
56 China
16 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India
American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches, 101 to 56, and the entire world combined 101 to 90. SpaceX by itself now trails the rest of the world (excluding other American companies) 89 to 90, though it has another launch planned for tonight, with the live stream here.
This podcast was specifically to talk about the Apollo 8 mission to the Moon in 1968, and my book, Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8. John Batchelor and David Livingston allowed me to tell a lot of stories, some from the book and some from my private conversations with the astronauts and their families.
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
Note that I will be doing a much longer interview with John Batchelor on the December 23-24, 2023 weekend about Apollo 8 and my book. John scheduled this preliminary short interview so that his weekday audience (different from his weekend audience) could hear about the book.
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Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. Sorry about posting this late.
This high pace is certainly because it needs to get many Starlink satellites into orbit to meet its FCC licesne requirements, and doesn’t yet have Starship as planned. The Falcon 9 however has proven it can do it however.
They had hoped to fly this year but are now targeting a launch from Australia sometime in 2024.
The contract could be extended for up to ten years, and also involves developing other technologies that would use that oxygen, not just for breathing but for engine technology.
The picture isn’t that interesting, but as Jay notes, “This small company is actually building something, the future. This is a view of the first private space station being built.”
Essentially, these officials want to stick their nose into the work of these companies (“We’re from the government and we’re here to help!”), and the companies are telling them to pound sand. I think that’s wonderful, though we should always worry when government officials begin complaining in this manner. The next step is always for them to use the power of government to enforce their desires.
I like Jay’s comment: “Oh for the love of….” To me it seems very predictable and not very interesting. Pure formula.
This continues the shift by the federal government from designing, building, and owning everything to becoming a customer that obtains what it wants from the privately-developed and -owned products of the private sector.
An evening pause: The music from the soundtrack of the Charlie Brown television specials, with sections from “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” The man playing the drums, Jerry Granelli, is the last surviving member of the original group that played Vince Guaraldi’s music for the television show itself.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
Banned at Macy’s
Bring a gun to a knife fight: The pro-bono non-profit legal firm America’s First Legal (AFL) has filed a federal civil rights complaint against Macy’s for its blatantly illegal diversity and inclusion policies that required hiring quotas bases solely on race.
You can read the complaint here [pdf]. AFL’s letter to Macy’s announcing the complaint is here [pdf]. As noted in AFL’s press release:
In a 2019 press release entitled “Bold Vision To Advance Diversity and Inclusion and Ensure The Company Reflects The Diversity Of The Customers and Communities Served,” Macy’s details its five-point plan with specific directives focused on achieving greater diversity for all aspects of the company’s business model.
The plan explicitly instructs Macy’s management to “[a]chieve more ethnic diversity by 2025 at senior director level and above, with a goal of 30 percent,” as well as to initiate a “12-month program designed to strengthen leadership skills for a selected group of top-talent managers and directors of Black/African-American, Hispanic-Latinx, Native American and Asian descent.” Quotas such as these are patently illegal under the law.
The language of that release is quite appalling. » Read more
Click for original image
In 2007, shortly after it began science operations in Mars orbit, the science team for Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) pointed its high resolution camera at the so-called “Face on Mars”, taking a picture that confirmed (as had Mars Global Surveyor several years earlier) that this “face” was a non-face, simply a mesa whose features made it appear roughly facelike in low resolution imagery.
Now, more than sixteen years later, scientists have used MRO to take a new picture of the non-face mesa. That picture is to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here. Compared to the 2007 photo the new photo has far better lighting conditions, revealing many details on the mesa’s eastern half that were mostly obscured by shadows previously.
In fact, these new details strongly suggest that the depression on the mesa’s eastern slopes harbors a decaying glacier. At least, that is what the features there resemble.
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Click for interactive map.
Almost immediately after communications were re-established with Mars after the monthlong solar conjunction — where the Sun stood between the Earth and Mars — the Ingenuity engineering team uploaded instructions for Ingenuity’s 67th flight, and on December 2, 2023, the helicopter successfully completed that flight, traveling 1,289 feet to the west at a height of 39 feet for 136 seconds, almost exactly what the flight planned dictated.
The overview map above shows with the green dot the helicopter’s new position after that flight. It has moved ahead of Perseverance into Neretva Vallis, the gap out of Jezero Crater through which the rover will eventually travel. At the moment however Perseverance sits much farther east, as indicated by the blue dot, where it has been studying the surface geology of the delta that once flowed through that gap into the crater.
Test engineering vehicle attached to Roc during
a flight in October 2022
Stratolaunch has successfully completed the first test captive carry flight with its prototype Talon hypersonic vehicle fueled and powered, carried by its giant Roc airplane.
The flight was the twelfth for the company’s launch platform Roc and the first in which the aircraft carried a Talon vehicle with live propellant as part of a buildup approach for Talon-A’s first powered flight.
The flight lasted a total of three hours and 22 minutes and represented a significant step forward in the company’s near-term goal of completing a powered flight with the Talon-A vehicle, TA-1. A primary objective was to evaluate Talon-A’s propulsion system and the Talon environments while carrying live propellant. A second objective was to verify Roc and TA-1’s telemetry systems, which provides the situational awareness to ensure all systems are ready for powered flight during the release sequence.
The company has two contracts to do hypersonic test flights using flightworthy Talon vehicles, one with the Air Force and the second with the Navy. It is not clear however when those flights will occur.
The Chinese pseudo-company Galactic Energy today successfully launched two satellites, its Ceres-1 rocket lifting off from China’s Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.
China’s own state-run press illustrates how pseudo this company is by not even mentioning its name in its reporting. It mentions the launch was “commercial,” but that’s as far as it goes. China’s press knows the government runs and owns this company, and only allows it the superficial appearance of a private company to enhance competition within its space industry.
No word on where the rocket’s lower solid-fueled stages crashed inside China.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
89 SpaceX
55 China
16 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India
American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches, 101 to 55, and the entire world combined 101 to 88. SpaceX by itself still maintains its lead over the entire world (excluding other American companies) 89 to 88.
An evening pause: This was first posted in February 2019. As I noted then,
The video replays her singing the same thing three times. There is a good reason, as she almost appears to have begun singing as a lark, and the acoustics of the church astonish her. The repeats help bring out this amazing quality.
I think I shall always want to open the Christmas-Hannukah holiday season with it, as it speaks to both religions. And it is one magnificent song, sung here magnificently.
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
Ah, those were the days, when Boeing could actually build something that works.
The mission proved humans could live in space long enough to go to and from the Moon. As the astronauts both explained to me, it was like being locked in a compact car for two weeks, the windows closed and the wheel tied down so that all you could do was go in circles.
The real questions are this: What exactly was the problem, and what is being done to fix it?
As noted at the tweet, all look identical to various SpaceX rockets. Let me add that these designs are nothing more than engineering by powerpoint, and at this moment represent nothing but fantasies.
This achievement is way cool. They used multiple gravity assists over two months to shift the module’s lunar orbit so that crossed back into the Earth’s sphere of influence and thus return back to Earth.
The model presently used by today’s leaders
in the free world
If you wish to understand why the Middle East in general has had relatively few pro-Hama demonstrations — even in the Arab territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank — while the western nations have been largely engulfed by them — some of which have been violent and bluntly anti-Semitic by actually advocating the genocide of all Jews — you need only listen to the leaders of these countries, because those leaders reflect their populations and their overall attitude to the murder, rape, and beheading of innocent civilians, including children, by Hamas on October 7th.
In Israel Benjamin Netayahu made it once again very clear his country’s determination to eliminate Hamas and its terrorist cell in Gaza in a speech to his nation on December 2nd.
I state clearly and unequivocally: We will continue the war until we achieve all of its goals and it is impossible to achieve these goals without continuing the ground incursion. The ground incursion was essential in order to bring about the results up to now, and it is necessary to bring about future results.
I tell our friends around the world, you share our goal of eliminating Hamas and releasing our hostages; therefore, I also emphasize to them that there is no way of achieving these goals except by victory, and there is no way to achieve victory except by continuing the ground incursion. The IDF and the security forces are doing this with determination, strength and while upholding international law.
The second paragraph above was very specifically but carefully aimed at the leaders of Israel’s allies in the west, who from day one of this conflict have repeatedly waffled in their support, constantly looking for a way to stop Israel’s effort, to appease Hamas, and to make believe that an early end to this fighting, with Hamas still intact and in control of Gaza, will somehow bring peace. French President Emmanuel Macron illustrated their weaselly cowardice quite well during a press conference that same day:
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This story is hard to believe but true: The Italian company Avio, one of the subcontractors for Arianespace that builds its smaller rockets Vega and Vega-C, apparently misplaced two rocket tanks that were to be used on the Vega rocket’s last launch, thus preventing that launch entirely.
The two propellant tanks that went missing were housed in an Avio production department in Colleferro that had undergone renovation work. At some point following the completion of the renovations, the two tanks were found to be missing.
According to the initial source, the tanks had not been entered into a company-wide asset management system that tracked the location of all vital Avio components. This ensured that the teams tasked with investigating the disappearance had very little to go on when beginning their search for the missing tanks.
Despite the futility of the search, the tanks were eventually found. This was, however, not the good news Avio had hoped for. The tanks are, unfortunately, not in a usable state. They had been crushed and were found alongside metal scraps in a landfill.
The tanks power Vega’s fourth stage that deploys satellites in orbit. They were to be used on the final flight of Vega, which has been delayed repeatedly for unexplained reasons. We now know the reason.
Because this was the final flight, however, the tanks cannot be replaced because the Vega production line has been shut down. The company is considering using two of the four qualification tanks first built more than a decade ago when Vega was first being tested, but those were test tanks and have been sitting unused for as long. It will be difficult to determine their reliability.
Europe’s government-run rocket program thus at present has no rocket capable of launching. Its Ariane-5 is retired. Its Vega cannot launch. Its Vega-C, which replaces the Vega, remains grounded due to a launch failure in December 2022, with the next launch expected no earlier than late in 2024. And its new Ariane-6 rocket won’t do its first launch until the summer of 2024, at the earliest.
South Korea today successfully launched a new solid-fueled rocket on its third test launch and first orbital flight.
The space launch vehicle was launched from a barge floating in waters about 4 kilometers south of Jeju Island at 2 p.m. and placed a small Earth observation satellite into orbit at an altitude of about 650 km, the ministry said.
The 100-kilogram synthetic aperture radar satellite, made by Hanwha Systems, succeeded in sending signals to a ground station at 3:45 p.m., which means it is operating normally, the company said. The rocket is designed to put a small satellite into a low Earth orbit for surveillance operations.
This four-stage rocket uses solid fuel for its first three stages and liquid fuel for the final stage. That it launched from a barge is as significant, as having this ability gives South Korea an added launch flexibility.
This was South Korea’s second launch in 2023, so the leader board for the 2023 launch race remains unchanged:
89 SpaceX
54 China
16 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India
American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches, 101 to 54, and the entire world combined 101 to 87. SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world (excluding other American companies) 89 to 87.
China successfully launched an Egyptian Earth observation satellite on December 4, 2023, its Long March 2C rocket lifting off from its Jiquan spaceport in northwestern China.
The satellite was built in Egypt with Chinese assistence, and is designed to study water and land resources for Egypt.
No word on where the rocket’s lower stages, which use toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed within China.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
89 SpaceX
54 China
16 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India
American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches, 101 to 54, and the entire world combined 101 to 86. SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world (excluding other American companies) 89 to 86.
It appears that by mutual agreement the Air Force has eliminated Boeing in the competition to build a new replacement for the E-4B Nightwatch, what the military calls its “doomsday” airplane, designed to survive a nuclear war.
Sources told Reuters that Boeing – the incumbent manufacturer of the E-4B Nightwatch – could not agree with the USAF on data rights and contract terms for the replacement plane that began flying in the 1970s. In other words, the planemaker did not want to sign a fixed-price agreement.
…”Rest assured, we haven’t signed any fixed-price development contracts nor (do we) intend to,” Brian West, Boeing’s chief financial officer, told investors in October.
With Boeing out of the competition, Sierra Nevada (the parent company of Sierra Space) is left as the only bidder. It is also quite willing to operate under a fixed price contract.
As I noted in a comment thread after a reader first posted a link to this story,
Boeing is signing its own death warrant. The entire federal defense and space agencies are steadily switching to fixed-price, and will simply go to others if Boeing refuses to accept those terms.
In fact, those agencies will want to go to others, because Boeing is making it clear it can’t meet its contractual obligations.
This decision also tells us a great deal about Boeing as a company. Its inability to fulfill any contract under a fixed price means it no longer has the discipline to do anything right. It seems buying products from it at this point might be a very foolish proposition.
Amazon on December 1, 2023 announced it has signed a three-launch contract with SpaceX to place its Kuiper satellites into orbit, supplementing the launch contracts it presently has with ULA, Arianespace, and Blue Origin. From the Amazon press release:
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 is a reusable, two-stage launch vehicle designed for the reliable and safe transport of people and payloads into Earth orbit and beyond, and it has completed more than 270 successful launches to date. Project Kuiper has contracted three Falcon 9 launches, and these missions are targeted to lift off beginning in mid-2025.
In 2022 Amazon had signed contracts with the other three launch companies, with ULA getting 38 Vulcan launches (in addition to 9 already signed for its Atlas-5), Arianespace getting 18 Ariane-6 launches, and Blue Origin getting 12 New Glenn launches.
The problem however is that, except for the Atlas-5, none of these rockets has yet completed its first flight. Since Amazon’s FCC license requires it to get half of its constellation of 3,200+ satellites into orbit by 2026 or face penalties, the uncertainty of these rockets has probably forced Amazon management to consider SpaceX, despite likely hostility to such a deal from Jeff Bezos (owner of Blue Origin and founder of Amazon).
Amazon management also probably decided to sign this deal because of a lawsuit filed in September 2023 by company stockholders, accusing the management of neglience because it never even considered SpaceX in earlier contract negotiations while giving favoritism to Bezos’s company Blue Origin. At that time Amazon had already paid these launch companies about $1.7 billion, with Blue Origin getting $585 million, though not one rocket has yet launched, with Blue Origin showing no evidence that a launch coming anytime soon.
The impression of a conflict of interest by Amazon’s board of directors appeared very obvious. This new SpaceX contract weakens that accusation.
More important the deal will help Amazon actually get its satellites into orbit. It appears that reality is finally biting at Amazon, and its management has realized that the three companies they have been relying on might not be up to the job (especially Blue Origin).
The beat goes on: SpaceX tonight successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.
The first stage successfully completed its sixth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
89 SpaceX
53 China
16 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India
American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches, 101 to 53, and the entire world combined 101 to 85. SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world (excluding other American companies) 89 to 85.
The next two weeks will be extremely busy in the launch business, as it appears there are launches scheduled for practically single day during that period, with some days having two launches scheduled.
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
» Read more
An evening pause: I think this is the perfect gift for every man this Christmas season. Whaddya say, women?
Hat tip Mike Nelson.
With today’s monthly update from NOAA of its graph tracking the number of sunspots on the Sun’s Earth-facing hemisphere, we find that the Sun continues to confound the experts. As I do every month, I have posted this graph below, with additional details to provide the larger context.
In November the sunspot count rose slightly, but remained well below the highs that had occurred through most of the first half of 2023. Yet, despite that continuing reduction in the number of sunspots, the overall amount of activity remains above the prediction of some scientists, and below the prediction of other scientists.
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Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
The strap-on boosters are for future Vulcan launches, when the rocket needs extra power
My, the Russians really do seem to have jinx when it comes to the coolant systems on all their spacecraft.
Once again, like many similar Chinese concepts, development does not yet appear to have gotten past the powerpoint stage.
