April 25, 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.
- Startup Radian Aerospace announces its development of a spacecraft coating that can be used “operate repeatedly without degradation”
The company claims this coating surpasses the thermal tiles presently used by SpaceX.
- NASA Dragonfly mission to Titan passes its critical design review
All this means that construction can now begin.
- In answering further questions by science committee senators, Jared Isaacman calls proposed budget cuts to NASA not “optimal”
Of course he did. Congress critters never want any budget cuts, no matter which party they belong to. He needs their votes to get confirmed. He is therefore always going to tell them what they want to hear. What he actually believes remains unknown.
- China touts a pseudo-commercial new cargo ferry for its space station
It is scheduled for its first flight later this year. Jay notes that it is not reusable.
- On this day in 1967 Vladimir Komarov died when the parachutes on the first Soyuz capsule tangled during re-entry and the capsule crashed
The Soyuz really wasn’t ready, and Komarov was having serious technical problems almost immediately after reaching orbit.
Readers!
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As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
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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.
- Startup Radian Aerospace announces its development of a spacecraft coating that can be used “operate repeatedly without degradation”
The company claims this coating surpasses the thermal tiles presently used by SpaceX.
- NASA Dragonfly mission to Titan passes its critical design review
All this means that construction can now begin.
- In answering further questions by science committee senators, Jared Isaacman calls proposed budget cuts to NASA not “optimal”
Of course he did. Congress critters never want any budget cuts, no matter which party they belong to. He needs their votes to get confirmed. He is therefore always going to tell them what they want to hear. What he actually believes remains unknown.
- China touts a pseudo-commercial new cargo ferry for its space station
It is scheduled for its first flight later this year. Jay notes that it is not reusable.
- On this day in 1967 Vladimir Komarov died when the parachutes on the first Soyuz capsule tangled during re-entry and the capsule crashed
The Soyuz really wasn’t ready, and Komarov was having serious technical problems almost immediately after reaching orbit.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
At the risk of being flagrantly obvious, I know a place where Radian Aerospace can go for some real-world testing of its Dur-E-Therm tech. And, if it works, there could be a nice long-term supply contract or licensing deal to follow.
Isaacman’s one-word answer to Sen. Cruz anent Mars Sample Return all but guarantees that MSR, as an all or mostly NASA project, is dead. Good.
The “You’re posting too quickly” thing is out of control. Really needs to be looked into.
Agreed.
It isn’t enough to have a “coating.”
You need “defense in depth,” to steal a military saying.
An unobtainium coating that doesn’t melt is fine–but what about the structure it is attached to?
The Blackbird leaked badly, only swelling to a tighter fit at speed. That’s fine with its special type of jet fuel.
Rocket propellants?
That’s a whole ‘nother ball game.
Jeff Wright,
The Radian Dur-E-Therm technology does incorporate multiple insulation layers between the outer skin and the airframe being protected. It’s not just a “coating” – i.e., it ain’t paint.
I have an astro physics question … light and gravity waves travel at the same speed – the speed of light. And a black hole does not allow light to escape. But when two black holes combine, they cause/emit gravity waves. Why are gravity waves able to escape the bounds of a black hole but light waves are not?
Here is how Grok answers the question:
Gravitational waves and light waves both travel at the speed of light, but they behave differently in the context of a black hole due to their fundamental nature and how they interact with spacetime.
Light waves are electromagnetic radiation, carried by photons, which follow geodesic paths in spacetime. A black hole’s event horizon marks the boundary beyond which the curvature of spacetime is so extreme that all geodesics lead inward, trapping light (and matter) inside. Photons cannot escape because there are no outward paths for them to follow.
Gravitational waves, however, are ripples in the fabric of spacetime itself, caused by the acceleration of massive objects, such as two black holes merging. These waves are not “carried” by particles traveling along geodesics like light; instead, they are disturbances in the geometry of spacetime that propagate outward. The event horizon does not trap gravitational waves because they are not confined to the same geodesic constraints as light or matter. Essentially, the spacetime distortion caused by the merger propagates through the event horizon as a change in the gravitational field, which is not bound by the same rules as electromagnetic radiation.
In short, gravitational waves escape black holes because they are spacetime perturbations, not objects or particles traveling through spacetime, and thus are not subject to the same trapping mechanism that prevents light from escaping.
I remember this awhile back
https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/lightweight-thermal-protection-systems.45071/#post-739418
A vacuum filled gap was called for.
Hypersonics
https://techxplore.com/news/2025-04-simulations-diagnostics-complex-physics-hypersonic.html
Steve R. – a non-answer to your question (but not AI-generated).
“…gravitational waves escape black holes because they are spacetime perturbations, not objects or particles traveling through spacetime…”
If that is true, then quantum mechanics and gravity will never be incorporated into a single theory-of-everything. Gravitons are the theoretical (though as yet undiscovered) exchange particle for gravity. So why should they rate a free get-out-of-black-hole card? Nobody seems to know – yet.
“…caused by the acceleration of massive objects…” – protons are massive objects, i.e. they have mass, though somewhat less than black holes. So a collision of 2 protons should produce a gravitational wave. Maybe it’s 10^-120 smaller than we can measure – yet. But measurABLE. Big difference between measurABLE, and zero. And we are really near to proton collisions, not 10,000 ly away. Maybe there are interferences from solar gravitons, or earth gravitons, or your own body gravitons. The next time you run your experiment at CERN, stay at least 10-feet back from the control panels.
This may all be cleared up when Isaac Asimov publishes his new book “AI, Robot”. Publication date – three days after Artemis III safely lands on the moon. Can’t wait.
I noticed that Grok did not use any math. When it can provide some, any, math to back up its words, then it may be onto something. If you can use math, the language of science, you can prove or disprove most things. English words, not so much.
I think it’s reasonable to think, based on past comments he has made about NASA science missions, to suspect that Jared Isaacman would not have proposed all of the cuts that Russ Vought has. He has tweeted out support for the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope before he was nominated, for example. (But then, I think some of us have sensed that Vought’s proposal is just an opening negotiating position for the White House!)
Now, having said that….this leaves a lot of undefined area for Isaacman’s full views on the SMD to take shape. I think Dick is not wrong to sense that Isaacman is not a fan of Mars Sample Return or how it has been handled, to take one example. I am hoping for a kill shot on that one myself.
Speaking of science missions, I am struck by the fact that Vought zeroed out Roman, a mostly complete probe with quite modest cost overruns over the last decade (how it came to be before that is another question, to be sure) and a very robust customer base, but not the other mission Bob mentions here, APL’s Dragonfly — which as Bob notes, has not yet been fabricated, and which has more than tripled in cost since 2020, and has a more limited science customer base than Roman ever will. Now, I am a fan of the idea of Dragonfly, since I love the idea of a nuclear powered drone zipping through the hydrocarbon skies of the most interesting moon in the Solar System. But it does make me wonder how Vought picked his victims.
But all that said….I think Dick is right that we cannot expect more robust candor from Jared until after he is confirmed.
“… I noticed that Grok did not use any math. When it can provide some, any, math to back up its words, then it may be onto something. …”
a nice software app would be one which found the original, human written, text which the AI engine drew upon to give the answer that it did. Hugging face https://huggingface.co/ contains the trained data sets from which the AI answers are found. In the case of my question about gravity waves not being held back by the black hole from which they originate, would be very helpful to read the original text on that subject.
Physics is written in math. Any English translation will of necessity lose some important nuances. My guess is you lose even more going from jargon to layman’s English. Grok’s answer is an approximation of an approximation. It is not going to be strictly accurate, simply because most of us could not understand a truly accurate answer.
To Don C
Some discussion here that may be of interest
https://forum.cosmoquest.org/forum/science-and-space/space-astronomy-questions-and-answers/3744889-question-about-gravitons-and-black-holes
https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/the-nature-of-the-universe-time-travel-and-more.313265/
Changes inside the event horizon can affect the event horizon’s shape (getting bigger, if nothing else), which will generate a gravity wave because the no-geodesic drop-off/cliff moves. I don’t think we know whether the gravity waves we’re detecting come from inside or not.
In the not-so-distant future, it will probably be possible to collide black holes in a lab. Perhaps we’ll find out then. Or perhaps not because laser-grown black holes are very small so the distinction between singularity and event horizon is proton-sized – and protons are much easier to find and smash together.
Gravity travels at the same speed as magnetism. They are both “forces”, not elemental having mass. Both decrease in strength from their emission point, (inversely proportional to the square of the distance) but the force they exert is “instantaneous”. not at the speed of matter/light. This is why gravity is not contained by the event horizon, it’s instantaneous nature is unaffected by the stopping of time inside the event horizon.
Soho magnetic detectors will pick up a large Solar flair nearly eight minutes before the optics see it. Likewise, gravity detectors will point where the sun is in real space, nearly eight minutes before speed of light optics point at the center of the sun.
When the math was attempted using distant masses orbiting the Sun’s adjusted speed of light/gravity vector, All orbits began to be elliptical untell they were flung into deep space. Orbiting a solar mass who’s actual position changes with distance and gravitational affect changes due to the “lag” in the speed of gravity is unbalanced and prone to rapidly unstable vectors.
Due to the large distances involved, no galaxy could hold together. No galaxies could collide. (except by chance)
Proving gravity is instantaneous is easy, but that would also destroy “dark matter”, and the reason behind many mystical avenues of astronomical theory. billions of dollars of funding would evaporate.
Just as magnetism occurs at a right angle to an electrical current, an increase of gravity occurs at a right angle to a gravitational affect. That’s why low tide is below sea level, and high tide, under the new moon, is above sea level even on the far side of the earth… where intuitive sense tells you “it should be low tide” because of the gravitational attraction of the sun, moon and earth at the same time. It defies logical sense, is it antigravity? Therefore it must be explained through observation and experimentation… The scientific method. Throwing words at it like “caused by inertia” fails to explain. Earth is in freefall, so there must be another force acting upon it to cause this phenomenon. if it happens in nature, man and their technology will discover it’s secrets and reproduce it….
Mass creates gravity, the denser the mass, the greater the gravity. The company I work for, using gravity detectors, have found new ore bodies deep in the earth they didn’t know was there by the changes in gravity over parts of the earth. new technology has led to new discoveries that have led to a “change of thinking”, (The uncertainty of science) it appears we will never run out of resources. (unless the death cult of the anti-technology green party puts us in another dark age)
“You’re posting comments too quickly”, did it post? Do I resend? Push return and try over and over again?
Ah, fourth time‘s the charm. And it only sent once, after altering the bottom, even though I pushed the button four times.
Ah, fourth attempt was the charm. After adding to the bottom of my post, it was excepted without reproduction of posting four times. Good.
from Grok:
The key astronomical event that demonstrated gravitational waves travel at the same speed as light was the neutron star merger observed on August 17, 2017, known as GW170817. Detected by the LIGO and Virgo observatories, this binary neutron star collision produced gravitational waves followed by electromagnetic signals, including a gamma-ray burst detected 1.7 seconds later by Fermi and INTEGRAL. The event occurred 130 million light-years away, and the near-simultaneous arrival of the gravitational waves and light (within 1.7 seconds after traveling for 130 million years) confirmed that both travel at the speed of light, differing by less than a few parts in 10^15. This was a landmark in multi-messenger astronomy, validating Einstein’s general relativity
Steve, this is the discussion we were having in 2016 before grok started making up stuff. (programmed with lies and uncertainties by thousands a fake peer reviewed articles)
https://behindtheblack.com/behind-the-black/points-of-information/another-gravity-wave-detected-by-ligo/
Sorry for late posting, first opportunity in the last five days of long work hours. Sell of our iron and rare earth metals to China have been curtailed by less demand and uncertainties causing temporary/probationary and 1/2 of the company “salary” employees being laid off… Despite The company having paid over $80 billion in taxes. (mostly in Australia… Canada and Mongolia got about a half a billion each but their total in United States is 136 million… Virtually nothing at all)