February 18, 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.
- Mysterious X-ray flash detected in Chandra X-Ray Observatory archives
The flash occurred in 2020 in the Large Magellanic Cloud, with its source unknown.
- By today NASA’s workforce will shrink by 10%
The layoffs are as per Trump’s order to lay off all new provisional employees, plus the 750 or so who accepted the buy offer. The article is another example of the media wailing over a staffing reduction that private companies do all the time, usually to the benefit of the company.
- Interview with Yao Song, co-founder and CEO of pseudo-company Orienspace
I haven’t watched it, because it is almost 40 minutes long. Jay’s comment is entertaining, “The co-Host mentions Mao more than Yao!” The pseudo-company itself has completed one launch.
- Space News article touting the wonders of China’s pseudo-commercial sector in Beijing
Is it any wonder this industry is booming in the nation’s capital, where all the power resides that also dictates everything these so-called private companies do? The article claims that by ’28 the many pseudo-companies based in Beijing will be doing 100 launches per year. We shall see.
- The next Progress to bring cargo to ISS is now being prepped for launch
Launch is scheduled for February 27, 2025.
- ISRO touts the first completed upper stage that will place its manned Gaganyaan spacecraft into orbit
The stage will be used on India’s HLVM3 rocket (Heavy Lift Vehicle Mark 3), its planned most powerful rocket, presently being developed.
- South Africa rejects Starlink
Actually, Starlink had already rejected South Africa, partly because of its racist policies confiscating land from whites, and partly because the government there was demanding an exorbitant share of Starlink’s profits.
- On this day in 1977 the shuttle engineering test vehicle Enterprise made its first “captive-inactive” flight atop a Boeing 747
Enterprise never flew in space. Instead, it was used to test various shuttle technologies as the fleet was designed and built.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. 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.
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.
- Mysterious X-ray flash detected in Chandra X-Ray Observatory archives
The flash occurred in 2020 in the Large Magellanic Cloud, with its source unknown.
- By today NASA’s workforce will shrink by 10%
The layoffs are as per Trump’s order to lay off all new provisional employees, plus the 750 or so who accepted the buy offer. The article is another example of the media wailing over a staffing reduction that private companies do all the time, usually to the benefit of the company.
- Interview with Yao Song, co-founder and CEO of pseudo-company Orienspace
I haven’t watched it, because it is almost 40 minutes long. Jay’s comment is entertaining, “The co-Host mentions Mao more than Yao!” The pseudo-company itself has completed one launch.
- Space News article touting the wonders of China’s pseudo-commercial sector in Beijing
Is it any wonder this industry is booming in the nation’s capital, where all the power resides that also dictates everything these so-called private companies do? The article claims that by ’28 the many pseudo-companies based in Beijing will be doing 100 launches per year. We shall see.
- The next Progress to bring cargo to ISS is now being prepped for launch
Launch is scheduled for February 27, 2025.
- ISRO touts the first completed upper stage that will place its manned Gaganyaan spacecraft into orbit
The stage will be used on India’s HLVM3 rocket (Heavy Lift Vehicle Mark 3), its planned most powerful rocket, presently being developed.
- South Africa rejects Starlink
Actually, Starlink had already rejected South Africa, partly because of its racist policies confiscating land from whites, and partly because the government there was demanding an exorbitant share of Starlink’s profits.
- On this day in 1977 the shuttle engineering test vehicle Enterprise made its first “captive-inactive” flight atop a Boeing 747
Enterprise never flew in space. Instead, it was used to test various shuttle technologies as the fleet was designed and built.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. 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.
Orienspace’s Yao Song made much of several biographical ways in which he resembles Elon Musk. Extrapolating from that to being a future major success in the space launch business strikes me as getting way too far out over his skis. Besides, if Song is typical of his generation, he’s an only child. Elon has siblings. He’s also got a mom who’s still a sought-after model in her late 70s. I’m going to go way out on a limb here and guess that Song’s mom is not gracing any magazine covers.
The Space News piece might well be an overture by its new owners to get advertising and/or sponsored articles from the PRC’s menagerie of pseudo-private-sector space companies just as they do from our domestic legacy aerospace primes. The comment threads there are already infested with triumphalist PRC trolls.
The people concerned about NASA cuts seem to be invoking, indirectly, the Sacred Cow Defense.
But when asked which cows are sacred, they point to the entire herd.
A couple of articles of interest to share:
“Calculating the energy requirements for using moondust to create rocket fuel”
DOI:10.1073/pnas.2306146122 (IIRC)
“Thermophotovoltaic device turns waste heat into electricity while defying a physical limit.”
They think to have Planck’s Law licked.
We will see if it survives any retractions.
They balked. https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/02/nasa-receives-11th-hour-reprieve-from-probationary-employee-cuts/