April 7, 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.
- Propaganda press story using only anonymous sources says Musk and SpaceX violated security reporting rules
Could be true, but the leftist source and the lack of confirmed named sources makes me skeptical. And even if true I suspect the story is overblown for political anti-Musk reasons.
- Long detailed interview with NASA’s Voyager project scientist
No new information but as Jay notes, “A good read.”
- Sierra Space to manage on ISS Honda’s test of a “regenerative fuel cell system [to] continuously produce oxygen, hydrogen, and electricity.”
The equipment will be flown to and from ISS on Sierra’s Tenacity Dream Chaser mini-shuttle.
- Next Soyuz crew to launch to ISS at 1:47 am (Eastern) April 8, 2025 from Kazakhstan
The mission includes two Russians and one American.
- Fifty years ago a botched launch stranded two Russians near the Chinese border
Because of a failure of the first stage the Soyuz capsule never reached orbit, landing on a mountain slope 119 miles downrange from launch. This still ranks as the longest manned suborbital flight.
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.
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3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
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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.
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.
- Propaganda press story using only anonymous sources says Musk and SpaceX violated security reporting rules
Could be true, but the leftist source and the lack of confirmed named sources makes me skeptical. And even if true I suspect the story is overblown for political anti-Musk reasons.
- Long detailed interview with NASA’s Voyager project scientist
No new information but as Jay notes, “A good read.”
- Sierra Space to manage on ISS Honda’s test of a “regenerative fuel cell system [to] continuously produce oxygen, hydrogen, and electricity.”
The equipment will be flown to and from ISS on Sierra’s Tenacity Dream Chaser mini-shuttle.
- Next Soyuz crew to launch to ISS at 1:47 am (Eastern) April 8, 2025 from Kazakhstan
The mission includes two Russians and one American.
- Fifty years ago a botched launch stranded two Russians near the Chinese border
Because of a failure of the first stage the Soyuz capsule never reached orbit, landing on a mountain slope 119 miles downrange from launch. This still ranks as the longest manned suborbital flight.
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.
The story of the Prime Meridian.
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/1267f23e-29e2-4946-a9aa-a00d8738c13b/episodes/8f634278-f675-4473-b0df-9f5f30528851/everything-everywhere-daily-the-prime-meridian?ref=dm_sh_1kol2turcRhA4zcWS4fcFHmNX
For that Soyuz story, 119 miles downrange didn’t seem very far, I was pretty sure Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom went farther than that on their Mercury-Redstone suborbital flights. The link said 1574 km downrange which is 978 miles.
ZULU–on the other side of Earth–it is the International Date Line–at the North Pole or just shy of it, the maximum number.
Where the Prime Meridian intersects with the Equator (watch for tar and feathering crossing o’er the ‘Line)–you are officially… nowhere
zero lat, zero long
That Soyuz mission was a really wild one, and the only one with a hairier landing was Soyuz 23 the following year (1976). The Soyuz 23 capsule ended up landing in Lake Tengiz in -20 deg C conditions in a snowstorm, and it only got worse once the reserve chutes accidentally activated, heeling the capsule over so far that both the radio transmitter and the hatch were underwater. It was so dire that recovery teams assumed the crew was dead.
The communist system that undertook that space program was evil and loathsome. But you have to have mad respect for the cosmonauts of the 60’s and 70’s who executed those missions. They faced crazy risks, and they all knew it.