April 11, 2025 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- Ispace signs deal with nuclear energy startup Zeno Power
Zeno is to develop radioisotope power systems for future Ispace lunar landers.
- Trump White House budget proposal eviscerates science funding at NASA
One of several such sob-story articles today in the propaganda press. As usual, cutting any government program will cause disaster and death. What the truth is however is unclear, since all of these stories were based on anonymous sources and reek of political lobbying. I will have more to say on Monday.
- On this day in 1970 Apollo 13 launched, the third American manned lunar mission
It instead became one of the most challenging rescue missions ever.
- On this day in 2019 astronomers released what the claimed was the first image of a black hole
The data was real and the knowledge gained was wonderful, but to call it a real image is an exaggeration, as the data was compiled from multiple telescopes worldwide and massaged into place using computer modeling.
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 or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- Ispace signs deal with nuclear energy startup Zeno Power
Zeno is to develop radioisotope power systems for future Ispace lunar landers.
- Trump White House budget proposal eviscerates science funding at NASA
One of several such sob-story articles today in the propaganda press. As usual, cutting any government program will cause disaster and death. What the truth is however is unclear, since all of these stories were based on anonymous sources and reek of political lobbying. I will have more to say on Monday.
- On this day in 1970 Apollo 13 launched, the third American manned lunar mission
It instead became one of the most challenging rescue missions ever.
- On this day in 2019 astronomers released what the claimed was the first image of a black hole
The data was real and the knowledge gained was wonderful, but to call it a real image is an exaggeration, as the data was compiled from multiple telescopes worldwide and massaged into place using computer modeling.
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 or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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
Popcorn In Bed w/Cassie
First Time Watching:
“Apollo 13” (1995)
https://youtu.be/pkWZ5CabUS8
37:48
I’m still skeptical that the administration is really going to propose a cut this big on NASA science.
But even if Vought really is pushing for this — and the rumors seem to keep having him at the center of these proposals — there are other stakeholders that get a vote even before it gets to Congress. I find it hard to believe that Jared Isaacman would back whacking the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (which is nearly complete now) and DAVINCI+.
But we shall see.
Eric Berger has always been one of my favorite space reporters, but wow, his TDS is getting tiresome.
In another sign that Vought is likely not going to win this fight over cuts to NASA science (or at least, not win a lot of what he seems to want), Elon Musk weighed in on X:
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1910709496382439504
NASA could do a lot more actual science if they stepped away from the while elephant in the VAB. I’m not saying gut Manned Space but lets get real. No one involved in the current planning envisioned the reality we have today. Plus anyone that thinks NASA is an honest player just remember that Congress is their boss.
Think of all the things we could do with that money going into the Old Space rice bowls.
It kind of makes me sick.
Killing SLS just kills SLS—and Jared’s not going to touch it for right now.
Some good news for Starship—stainless steel just got tougher:
https://techxplore.com/news/2025-04-stainless-steel-technique-submicron-anti.html
Researchers have found a way to use nacre-like materials:
https://phys.org/news/2025-04-nacre-ceramic-metal-composite-superior.html
I believe that Mr. Vought of OMB is trying to shock the space science world into a new mode of thinking.
That mode would be, to paraphrase Ernst Rutherford: “Gentlemen, we are out of money, now we must THINK.”
With cheaper, heavier, more frequent lift capability emerging, perhaps the time to think is here.
Richard M,
The OMB hardly has undisputed control of budgets. But if the intent of the recommended cuts is to clap back at the assumed privilege of profligacy that has taken root in the NASA SMD of late, then one hopes it will be successful. Admittedly, the ESMD has been a dreadful example to its sibling mission directorates, but someone badly needs to be “Mom” here and ask, “So if your big brother decided to jump off the roof, you’d do it too?”
In the end, there likely will be at least one SMD project led out at dawn, offered a last cigarette and a blindfold and then shot to, as the French say, encourager les autres. Personally, I’d like to see it be Mars Sample Return.
Doubting Thomas,
I quite agree. As Dr. Johnson said, “Nothing concentrates the mind so wonderfully as the knowledge one is to be hanged in the morning.”
I never even heard of Vought until a week ago–Wiki can’t always be trusted.
Then too–at least bad old Mike Griffin doesn’t think the world is flat, 6,000 years old and that we had never been to the Moon.
Bush 41 on the other hand–wanted a big Lunar push.
Dan Rostenkowski (the anti-Shelby) blocked everything.
He, Vought and Proxmire can all go to Cocytus.
Jeff Wright,
Wikipedia can always be trusted to spin anything the least bit political in a maximally left direction.
But even Wikipedia doesn’t say Vought is a flat-earther, a young-Earth creationist or a Moon landing denier. I figure those are your own embellishments.
Russell Vought strikes me as fairly in the mainstream of evangelical Christian thought. He’s not Cotton Mather and he’s not even Lance Wallnau. Such distinctions are lost on Wikipedia editors these days.
But what drives his zeal for these sorts of cuts isn’t flat earther primitivism. He’s an old Phil Graham staffer: he’s just a plain old hard core budget hawk of the old school. There isn’t anything he won’t cut if you give him the chance.
Hi Dick,
Oh, I completely agree. But you probably already knew that!