April 19, 2024 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.
- Five engines integrated into Rocket Factory Augsburg’s RFA-1 first stage
Testing will take place at the Saxavord spaceport in the Shetland Islands
- Russians jam two commercial satellites for six days, disrupting 39 Ukrainian television channels
The jamming was from March 13th to March 19th, and involved SES’s Astra-4 and Eutelsat’s Hotbird 13E satellites. This suggests Russia (and China) could do the same to other commercial sateliltes.
- Virgin Galactic proposes reverse stock split
Such reverse splits raises the value of each share in a superficial manner, and are usually done to prevent the stock from being delisted for having too low a value.
- Anonymous sources say NASA is considering restructuring the entire Artemis lunar program
One idea is to insert an extra mission before the lunar landing flight, during which Orion and Starship would dock in Earth orbit to test out their systems prior to going to the Moon. Since the whole Artemis program has always been haphazardly planned, this change makes sense, as it should have been considered from the beginning. In fact, it should be flown before the second Artemis flight, which presently intends to take astronauts around the Moon, on the first flight using Orion’s environmental systems.
- JPL releases short video showing all of Ingenuity’s flights, on a map
Since yesterday NASA took down the interactive maps that show where the rovers and Ingenuity have been and are going, this video is kind a slap in the face. Unless the agency restores those maps, the public will no longer be able to travel along with the rovers.
- China reorganizes its space bureaucracy, claiming that because of the change “current launch sites may get more freedom with commercial activities”
More likely this change will give the ChiComs more control over those activities.
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 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.
- Five engines integrated into Rocket Factory Augsburg’s RFA-1 first stage
Testing will take place at the Saxavord spaceport in the Shetland Islands
- Russians jam two commercial satellites for six days, disrupting 39 Ukrainian television channels
The jamming was from March 13th to March 19th, and involved SES’s Astra-4 and Eutelsat’s Hotbird 13E satellites. This suggests Russia (and China) could do the same to other commercial sateliltes.
- Virgin Galactic proposes reverse stock split
Such reverse splits raises the value of each share in a superficial manner, and are usually done to prevent the stock from being delisted for having too low a value.
- Anonymous sources say NASA is considering restructuring the entire Artemis lunar program
One idea is to insert an extra mission before the lunar landing flight, during which Orion and Starship would dock in Earth orbit to test out their systems prior to going to the Moon. Since the whole Artemis program has always been haphazardly planned, this change makes sense, as it should have been considered from the beginning. In fact, it should be flown before the second Artemis flight, which presently intends to take astronauts around the Moon, on the first flight using Orion’s environmental systems.
- JPL releases short video showing all of Ingenuity’s flights, on a map
Since yesterday NASA took down the interactive maps that show where the rovers and Ingenuity have been and are going, this video is kind a slap in the face. Unless the agency restores those maps, the public will no longer be able to travel along with the rovers.
- China reorganizes its space bureaucracy, claiming that because of the change “current launch sites may get more freedom with commercial activities”
More likely this change will give the ChiComs more control over those activities.
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 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
Jay,
It has been a few months, or a year, since I last thanked you for providing these links, so thank you again.
___________________
Restructuring Artemis is probably a good idea. It needs a lot to be rethought, because Orion and its current service module cannot enter into low lunar orbit the way Apollo could. This serious limitation is where the need for the expensive and distracting Gateway lunar space station comes from. Artemis was designed in dribs and drabs, first the rocket, then the capsule, then the rocket was redesigned, then they tossed in a lunar space station, and finally they realized that they would need a lunar lander, too. What a fiasco. It is as though it was all designed to fail.
Oh — No, wait. Artemis was required to use SLS, which was designed by those inimitable rocket scientists: Congress. Steely-eyed rocket men, they are not.
From the Ars Technica article:
A lunar landing in September 2026, however, seems completely unrealistic. The biggest stumbling blocks for Artemis III are the lack of a lander, which SpaceX is developing through its Starship program, and spacesuits for forays onto the lunar surface by Axiom Space. It is not clear when the lander or the suits, which NASA only began funding in the last two to three years, will be ready.
So, I wonder: just where was the Apollo program thirty months before Apollo 11 landed on the moon? Was the lander still in development? Yes. How about the lunar space suits? It seems that the current generation has much less confidence in NASA, its contractors, and the commercial space companies that we have today than the 1960s generation had with their versions of the same teams. Does the current generation have lowered expectations, or are todays entities less capable than in the 1960s?
Oh, that’s right. Congress is more involved, this century, than it was in the last, what with their interference in the design of the rocket.
I wonder how Russia interrupted the Civilian commercial TV transmissions
Did they over power the satellites uplink frequency and just wash out the signal or did they hijack the satellite itself and just turn off the transmission?
More than likely they washed out the transmission.
Which in the end is good because the next time it happens the Ukraine can send in a drone to target the strongest signal and blow it up. With a signal that strong the Russians might not be able to confuse the drone to save the transmission dish.
Interactive rover maps are now here:
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/msl-curiosity/location-map/
https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance/location-map/
Jeff: Thank you. As is usual practice these days, they have simplified the main page to make it harder to find the link to pages like this. Another feature of our modern dark age.
Edward–no Congressmen designed SLS. Engineers did.
Block IB will take double what Starship can for the time being.
pzatchok asked: “Did they over power the satellites uplink frequency and just wash out the signal or did they hijack the satellite itself and just turn off the transmission?”
Most likely the former. This is not the first time that this method would have been used in order to interfere with a satellite’s signals, but usually it has been done maliciously rather than strategically (or is this at the level of tactics?).
Another problem happened about a decade ago when an Intelsat lost control of its Galaxy 15 satellite — it stopped responding to commands and became what some people call a “zombie satellite” or a rogue satellite. It drifted out of its assigned slot and started moving into the slots of other geostationary satellites, risking the same kind of interference that the Russians had foisted upon the Ukrainians, where signals sent to satellites that broadcast into the footprint of a specific country could possibly be broadcast by the zombie into other counties, interfering with their legitimate signals (television, telephone, whatever).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_15#2010_Failure_and_recovery
Measures taken to prevent this interference included: Moving satellites away from the zombie as it invaded (traversed) the slot, using broadcast antennas that were outside the zombie’s view, and amplifiers on authorized satellite were turned way up and the broadcast signal to them was turned way down so that the zombie’s signal was far weaker than the authorized signal — the zombie’s softer signal was more easily overwhelmed by the authorized satellites’ greater amplification. After a few months Galaxy 15’s computer eventually realized something was wrong and rebooted, and it quickly responded to commands and soon went back into service.
Since the Russians hold territory within Ukraine, they probably found it easy to broadcast from that territory, where the satellite’s antennas view, so my guess is that the Russians have free reign of Ukraine’s satellites’ amplifiers, unless the Ukrainians found a way to better protect their satellites (e.g. pointing the footprint away from Russian controlled territory, but that would put the signal partially into other countries’ territories — why is there never an easy solution when you need one).
Jeff Wright,
You are incorrect, sir. Congress designed it with the SSMEs, the Shuttle’s external tank, and the Shuttle’s SRBs. The engineering input was constrained to this congressional design. Congress did not like the engineers’ design, the two Ares launch vehicles, otherwise they would have rescued them from Obama just as they rescued Orion.
Unfortunately (it took me years to come to grips with this sad fact), Congress is using the SLS less for space exploration and more as a jobs program, jobs for the people who had been employed making the Space Shuttle fly. If Congress were interested in space exploration, it would have insisted that SLS be affordable and fly several times a year. It also would not have let the Apollo Applications Program go down in flames, half a century ago.
Back then, Congress was more concerned about controlling spending, but these days Congress is all about rampant spending. SLS costs are similar (in inflated dollars) to the AAP, but its explorative value is less. With all the money Congress spends on paying people to not work, the very high cost of SLS seems much lower than the AAP seemed.
The commercial companies are doing things so much less expensively, because it is their own money that they are spending, but it is our children’s money that Congress is spending. Congress’s priorities have changed dramatically.
Thank you Edward! I try to get relevant and recent stories. Some credit does go to Bob since he keeps me from straying into what I call “Popular Mechanics” mode and showing design concept stories. I always keep an eye out for any nuclear propulsion and foreign space program stories.
Yes, SLS has had quite the history. Starting out as the Ares-V, the changing back and forth between the J-2X vs. RL-10 engines for the upper stage, the Augustine commission, the grassroots Jupiter/Direct proposals, and the new RS-25 engines.
To answer the satellite jamming question, the power of the transmitters on the satellites is not much. As high as 5 watts, but they use a dish to increase the gain. We have all heard of the infamous “Max Headroom Incident” when some kids jammed Chicago’s WGN and its PBS affiliate by their microwave links. It does not take much to do it. There have been a few white papers circulating about this subject of jamming satellite communications from the ground and space over the last three years.
Jay (and also Robert): You observe that “Orion and its current service module cannot enter into low lunar orbit the way Apollo could. What laws of physics / orbital mechanics am I missing here? If this has something to do with the desire to land at the moon’s pole as opposed to nearer the moon’s equator per the Apollo missions, I understand that, but does the upper stage of the Artemis stack carry
so little propellant that such lunar orbital transfers are impossible? (But if so, why not adopt SpaceX’s approach to earth orbital refueling — or linking up with an add-on booster stage* — to allow it to make such maneuvers at the moon?)
*The feasibility of which, if memory serves, was first proven in the Gemini missions of the mid-1960s. (But, *please*, NASA asks, DON’T remember any of this, because it makes the agency look incompetent amateurs today.)
My (limited) understanding was that “FLOP-G” (the lunar gateway) was also mandated by Congress — not by physics and engineering — and SLS-Artemis was then configured to utilize this hardware as apposed to utilizing an Apollo / LEM-like direct descent to the moon’s surface. Or, did the designers of SLS-Artemis never envision having this orbital transfer capacity thus necessitating FLOP-G? Again, what am I missing?
Beyond this, the broader, elephant in the room question remains. If Apollo, using 1960s technology was able to land on the moon and return to earth six times, why can’t SLS / Artemis at least manage replicate *that* achievement in a timely fashion? As laid out by Jay, the ars technica article, and the other comments, the whole SLS-Artemis program has (in planner speak) been such an example of “disjointed incrementalism” (or, if you prefer, the colorful term from World War II) that “making sense” of all of this seems almost impossible. I certainly can’t.
PS — If NASA / congress needs some “hints” about how to go back to the moon, what is *China* doing, and why can’t we simply copy them? At least *they* seem to have a serious and focused space program.
The thing with congress is that they themselves do not come up with any of those ideas they propose.
All of those ideas come from lobbyists who are trying to push their own ideas. If you want to find out who came up with all those ideas think about who is making the money from each project.
Who is building SLS and Orion? Who made the original designs? All the problems that are in those projects are problems designed in by the corporate engineers and big wigs.
All the delays are for extra money to fix the problems that are designed in. Congress does not come up with a single change or modification without it first being proposed by someone NOT in congress. Lobbyists.
Just for fun, go back and read (or reread) Homer Hickam’s Back to the Moon, published in 1999. Sure, it’s fiction, but given some external fuel tanks(s)* why, exactly, *couldn’t* a shuttle be configured in this fashion to fly to the moon and back? Despite their inherent problems, they were certainly man-rated for a larger crew than Apollo carried, and there is an awful lot of room in its bay. (Based on some back of the envelope calculations, an Apollo era lunar lander would fit comfortably there, plus other gear.) Talk about “reusing” shuttle parts, just repurpose the whole darn thing and pull a LEM out of a museum.
*If memory serves, the shuttle was *launched* with an external fuel tank attached. But for some reason — please explain — an external fuel tank couldn’t be attached while it was in earth orbit? Moreover, let me invoke Robert Heinlein’s “halfway to anywhere” principle and observe that once you have done the hard work of putting a shuttle into orbit, it’s not that difficult to send it on to the moon — the background of Mr. Hickam’s speculative fiction.
Now, almost a quarter century later, poor NASA *still* can’t figure out how to return to the moon, and you have to wonder whether or not going back to the moon has EVER been their actual intent since they cancelled the last three Apollo missions. Like the proverbial working fusion power plant, NASA’s plan to return to the moon always seems set in an ever-receding time horizon. Now that, boys and girls, is science fiction. And why so many people call it the Never A Straight Answer Agency.
Back at the time that the Shuttles were flying they could have very easily made a “shuttle’ cargo module
Basically a huge cargo or fuel tank with three engines that took the place of the shuttle on the side of the launcher.
It could have carried everything including all the fuel needed to get a shuttle to the moon. They could have placed it into orbit and docked the shuttle onto it at the “launch leg” points, The points they attached the shuttle to the large fuel tank.
And landers and other supplies could have been carried inside the shuttle and the shuttle used as a lunar orbiter and return craft.
But the large lobbying companies were no longer making much money on the shuttle, did not see much profit in making a lunar mission and thus did not propose such a mission to congress.
They proposed a lunar mission only after the shuttle was canceled due to failures and loss of life.
Milt asked: “You observe that “Orion and its current service module cannot enter into low lunar orbit the way Apollo could. What laws of physics / orbital mechanics am I missing here?”
Actually, that was me. Orion’s service module is too small to carry enough propellants to enter and exit a low lunar orbit.
“(But if so, why not adopt SpaceX’s approach to earth orbital refueling — or linking up with an add-on booster stage* — to allow it to make such maneuvers at the moon?)”
That isn’t the design, it isn’t the plan, they already have so much invested, and Congress easily falls into the sunk-cost-fallacy trap. Even today, we have yet to develop the orbital retanking methods necessary, and Congress did not seem eager to fund that route.
“If Apollo, using 1960s technology was able to land on the moon and return to earth six times, why can’t SLS / Artemis at least manage replicate *that* achievement in a timely fashion?”
The initial SLS rocket can only lift 70 tons to low Earth orbit (LEO), half the Saturn V’s 150 ton capacity. Even the final version of SLS is only supposed to carry 130 tons to LEO. This 20-ton difference is about the mass of the fueled Apollo Lunar Module (Ascent/Descent).
“Or, did the designers of SLS-Artemis never envision having this orbital transfer capacity thus necessitating FLOP-G? Again, what am I missing?”
Memory fades as to whether FLOP-G was mandated by Congress or devised by NASA as a workaround. However, Gateway is so named because not only is it a gateway to the lunar surface, but it is supposed to be a gateway to the rest of the solar system, with deep space probes and interplanetary manned missions stopping over as a waypoint. It is the gateway to the planets.
“… ‘making sense’ of all of this seems almost impossible. I certainly can’t.”
Yeah. NASA management and Congress seem content to do things piecemeal rather than well thought out from the beginning. Perseverance/Mars Sample Return is another multi-billion dollar piecemeal fiasco project.
“If NASA / congress needs some “hints” about how to go back to the moon, what is *China* doing, and why can’t we simply copy them? At least *they* seem to have a serious and focused space program.”
Do we know what China is doing? Is it feasible?
I think this is why it is good for commercial space to lead the way into space. They spend their own money, not taxpayer money. They expect results, not jobs programs. They are motivated to do it right, or they go out of business. As Virgin Orbit and some other companies are showing us, government is a hindrance rather than a help.
“… why, exactly, *couldn’t* a shuttle be configured in this fashion to fly to the moon and back?”
If you think making something designed for the task at hand is expensive and time consuming, try redesigning a system to do something completely different — something so completely outside of its design that everything changes. The Shuttle carries a tremendous amount of weight that is useless for lunar activities, making this configuration worse than the 1960s Earth orbit rendezvous proposal.
A better concept would be similar to what we saw in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey.” A shuttle to a LEO space station, taking the excessive Earth-only structural mass only as far up as needed. Then a lunar shuttle to the moon, taking only the Moon-only structural mass that is needed. Less propellant needs to be taken and more payload can be taken.
“Now, almost a quarter century later, poor NASA *still* can’t figure out how to return to the moon, and you have to wonder whether or not going back to the moon has EVER been their actual intent since they cancelled the last three Apollo missions. Like the proverbial working fusion power plant, NASA’s plan to return to the moon always seems set in an ever-receding time horizon. Now that, boys and girls, is science fiction. And why so many people call it the Never A Straight Answer Agency.”
NASA is hamstrung by Congress’s willingness to fund what they do. NASA is not the decision maker or the policy maker. Congress has chosen to squander the knowledge, talents, and skills of those who work at NASA. Had NASA been the technology development agency that we thought it was, then it would have been free to try out a wide variety of technologies to find the most efficient way to get man and robots around the solar system. Instead, we rely upon commercial space companies to do what they think will pay off. Government is not the benevolent guardian that we are intended to believe. Government spends our tax money on its own priorities and on its own self interests, not ours.
A better answer to the question is: NASA is trying to have a sustainable lunar station, not just go there for a couple of days and come back. this requires a lot of things that they didn’t need for Apollo. For instance, Apollo’s lunar space suits were close to completely worn out after only a few hours on the moon. A new suit is needed in order to survive long durations in the extremely abrasive lunar dust. And that is only a small difference. To get there often and regularly, they need an entire system that can launch far more frequently than SLS can. That is one of the big differences. To build a station, they need a way to get the necessary material to the surface and then built on the surface.
NASA didn’t have Congressional buy in on a complete plan, and I’m not sure that they had a complete plan to present to Congress, or even have one now.
Milt,
I can explain the external tank. Yes, they could have taken it to orbit, and there was residual hydrogen and oxygen in the tank too, but they always dropped the tanks into the Indian Ocean.
So NASA at one time was willing to give a tank in orbit to anyone, but they had to take care of it. There were many station concepts using the tanks as a “wetshop” configuration. I remember seeing one of the concept drawings with the dual keel Space Station Freedom with a tank.
All: Lunar Gateway was a concept developed entirely by NASA, working with the big space contractors Lockhead Martin and Boeing. The idea was to create a project that would both give SLS and Orion a purpose, and give those contractors some big money to keep them funded. NASA then inserted it into its budget proposals to the executive branch, which then inserted it into its annual proposed budget in the mid-2010s, and Congress bought it because Congress no longer runs anything, but rubber stamps anything big that might funnel cash into their local districts. In addition, Congress bought into it because those big space contractors probably funnelled donations (what used to be called bribes) into their campaign coffers.
That is what happened. I wrote about it here at BtB on a daily basis, while it was happening, and complained every step of the way. I knew this plan would significantly delay any mission to the Moon, and cost gigantic amounts doing so.
But who listens to me? I’m just some rightwing nut who believes conspiracy theories like COVID was simply the flu, that the jab didn’t work, that masks don’t work, that social distancing not only doesn’t work it is downright stupid, and that there were serious allegiations of vote tampering in 2020 and 2022. I also documented many other conspiracies that no one would believe, such as the aggressive blacklisting and censorship against conservatives by Democrats, of violence and rioting by the left, and so forth. None are believed by the general public, until it is way too late.
Both Milt and Edward however are falling into the same trap we’ve been falling into for decades, trying to devise a government-run “program” to get to the Moon. I realized the failure of that during the early 2000s. The last thing we want is to devise a “program.” Instead, we need many independent private American companies working independently and freely to achieve their space goals, while making a profit. To hell with the government.
Unfortunately, the government is now in charge. Those free companies are increasingly being constrained, with no sign of positive change. And people keep looking to the government, automatically, even when they don’t know they are doing it.
Robert: You are right of course, but wouldn’t it be useful to have some kind of government “space policy” that at least facilitates — as opposed to hindering — the efforts of the private sector? Or, put another way, is there anything having to do with space exploration / utilization that is truly in the national interest* and ought to be supported? Can we — should we — have “national goals” with respect to space? In reality, of course, our “goals in space” are determined by what SpaceX and its cohorts are planning and building, and we will all be riding on their coattails.
*Such as deflecting a potentially impacting asteroid away from earth.
Edward and Jay: Thank you for your detailed and informative answer; it’s appreciated. It just seems to me that we have endured too many lost years — actually lost decades — with respect to what might have been had the spirit of the “old NASA” continued for a while longer. Instead, as Edward notes, “Congress has chosen to squander the knowledge, talents, and skills of those who work at NASA.”
Very sad, very frustrating.
Milt asked, ” You are right of course, but wouldn’t it be useful to have some kind of government “space policy” that at least facilitates — as opposed to hindering — the efforts of the private sector?”
You might want to reread “Capitalism in Space.”, a free pdf download. This is the policy NASA and the federal government should have. And while NASA has adopted most of my recommendations, it has purposely ignored (or threw out) the second half of recommendation #4, which proposed cutting major sections of NASA as wasteful and unnecessary and even counterproductive.
It is those agencies that helped invent Lunar Gateway, and maintain SLS, Orion.
Robert wrote: “Both Milt and Edward however are falling into the same trap we’ve been falling into for decades, trying to devise a government-run “program” to get to the Moon.”
Oh, my! I thought I have been quite clear these past many years that commercial space is far more efficient and effective than government space. Even in my previous comment I wrote:
“I think this is why it is good for commercial space to lead the way into space. They spend their own money, not taxpayer money. They expect results, not jobs programs. They are motivated to do it right, or they go out of business. As Virgin Orbit and some other companies are showing us, government is a hindrance rather than a help.”
Government does not have to be completely out of the space business, but it has proved itself to be a poor leader. It isn’t the people at NASA that are the problem. They are smart and talented, but they are also constrained by what Congress will let them do. Government is likely to want to own some stuff, because there are things that it will need to control, but it can lease or rent or ride on many launchers or spacecraft. Commerce is the American way. Restricted commerce was one of the grievances in the Declaration of Independence.
The vision of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey clearly had commercial space as a major factor, at least up to low Earth orbit. The passenger shuttle was Pan American (a once great airline) and the rotating space station, at the very least, accommodated commercial tenants, and it used AT&T for videophone service with the Earth.
In the 1960s, we had great visions of what NASA would do to explore space and bring us space-manufactured goods, but that was not to be. NASA is a government operation controlled by politicians, who don’t respond to their constituents as well as the Founding Fathers had expected.
Our expectations of commercialized outer space were only partially realized with the invention of the communication satellite. Other benefits came from space, such as improved weather forecasting, and we fully expected NASA to act in a way similar to its predecessor NACA, which had been founded as a community resource for aircraft companies. The NACA helped American companies stay in first place in the airplane industry, and we expected so much more from American space companies. Only now are we beginning to see the space commerce that we had expected half a century ago.
Except that the government still seems to think it has ownership of space and seems jealous of the commercial space companies that are accomplishing so much more and doing it so much more efficiently. Government has turned itself into an adversary of We the People.