February 22, 2023 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
- ULA’s CEO: BE-4 engines “have successfully completed pre-qual testing, which goes beyond formal qual, providing an understanding of margins and behavior under unusual conditions.”
He also says inexplicably that the engine’s “formal qual is underway now.” Shouldn’t this have been done before Blue Origin shipped the engines to ULA? Or is there something about rocket prep procedures I don’t understand.
- SpaceX: Starlink now available in Rwanda
Jay notes also that his Starlink bill has just gone up 20%, to $120.
- All three Rocket Lab launchpads preparing for launch
Two rockets are at Wallops and one in New Zealand.
- Japan now working for a new H3 rocket launch attempt before March 10th
Engineers have identified the launch failure on February 17th to “an issue with an engine electrical power supply” in the solid rocket boosters.
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.
- ULA’s CEO: BE-4 engines “have successfully completed pre-qual testing, which goes beyond formal qual, providing an understanding of margins and behavior under unusual conditions.”
He also says inexplicably that the engine’s “formal qual is underway now.” Shouldn’t this have been done before Blue Origin shipped the engines to ULA? Or is there something about rocket prep procedures I don’t understand.
- SpaceX: Starlink now available in Rwanda
Jay notes also that his Starlink bill has just gone up 20%, to $120.
- All three Rocket Lab launchpads preparing for launch
Two rockets are at Wallops and one in New Zealand.
- Japan now working for a new H3 rocket launch attempt before March 10th
Engineers have identified the launch failure on February 17th to “an issue with an engine electrical power supply” in the solid rocket boosters.
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.
Jay’s Starlink bill may have gone up (by 9% actually, from $110 to $120) but mine has gone down to $90.
From Starlink, for subscribers in USA:
The Starlink monthly service for residential customers is changing as follows:
$20 decrease in areas with excess capacity. New price will be $90/month.
$10 increase in areas with limited capacity. New price will be $120/month.
Steve Golson: Thank you for the clarification. Does SpaceX provide a map to indicate which areas are which?
Bob: yes there is a map. https://www.starlink.com/map
Alternatively, go to their main page https://www.starlink.com and click the link VIEW AVAILABILITY MAP
Notice the black holes at various locations in the US. These places will never have Starlink. Try and figure out why!
And the more-or-less straight line dividing eastern and western US is due to licensing issues with other satellite providers.
Robert asked: “He also says inexplicably that the engine’s ‘formal qual is underway now.’ Shouldn’t this have been done before Blue Origin shipped the engines to ULA? Or is there something about rocket prep procedures I don’t understand.”
Normally, when all is going well, then yes, they should have done the qualification testing before delivery. However, the BE-4 engine has had a troubled history.
As an example of a qualification test after delivery: I once worked on a payload that had undergone a troubled thermal vacuum qualification test. The test had not been designed correctly and failed to demonstrate that the payload passed qualification testing. The agreement with the customer was that the second, identical, unit would undergo the qual thermal vac test, and that would qualify the first unit. This put some time pressure on us, because the customer needed to have the payload mounted in a timely manner, and there were certain things that were difficult to undo after mounting, should a problem occur during qual testing that required a design modification.* Fortunately, due to the previous test, confidence was high that it would pass the t-vac qual test, and it did.
ULA undoubtedly has similar confidence that BE-4 will also pass its remaining qual test(s).
The darnedest things can happen in the space business, and we want them to happen before launch, because space is far less forgiving than ground testing. In the past couple of months we have seen a couple of spacecraft manage recover from problems, and we saw Launcher’s Orbiter SN1 space tug not recover, and I’m sure it passed all of its qualification tests.
_________________
* To prevent any of the bad design from creeping into the next test, I was asked to write and release, in two months, the 400-page test procedure completely from scratch, except that it was to be exactly like an example procedure (it wasn’t — it was completely different, including a cold cycle before going to the first hot cycle) and exactly like the payload’s ambient functional test (only the order of the several functions tested was the same, everything else was different, including the script names to be run). I also had to include test items from three other tests that had also been previously performed at ambient conditions. And there were lessons learned to incorporate. Fortunately, a year or two earlier a systems engineer had shown me his “map” for tracking various tests and important milestones inside a procedure I was writing, a “map” to make sure the procedure included everything that it needed, and by my making a similar “map” for this rush procedure I was able to accomplish this in the necessary two months without getting lost in all the “samenesses” and all the differences.
Rocket Lab definitely has 2 launch pads at Mahia, and I thought only 1 at Wallops?
Andrew, that is correct.
But they have two rockets staged in Virginia to launch from Wallops (MARS), for successive launch.
And one planned to launch from NZ, at Mahia, using LC-1
We’ve had Starlink service at a remote site in far northern California (western Siskiyou County) for about a year now – but we had to wait on Starlink’s waiting list for a year first to obtain that service. Moreover, we can’t transfer the service to any other location in the area (such as to where we now live vs. what’s presently only bare ground for a future home). Moreover, I see that our monthly bill has just gone up (by $10) to $120, since they don’t regard this area relatively near the west coast as having excess capacity that deserves encouragement.
New Data transport sats
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-concept-satellites.html
A re-think
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-physicists-law-thermodynamics-makeover.html
Forbidden planet
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-forbidden-planet-orbiting-small-star.html
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-life-mars-tools.html
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-early-universe-lumpy-clumps.html
Black Holes
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-physicists-black-holes.html
Oops
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-02-miscalculated-decades-insulin-dose.html
So this is science?
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-climate-geography-spiritual-giant-trees.html
On CO2
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-oceans-capacity-absorb-atmospheric-carbon.html
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-thick-antarctic-ice.html
Are they trying to kill us?
https://www.newswise.com/coronavirus/new-research-reveals-possible-covid-vaccine-blood-clot-connection/?article_id=787417
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-economic-crises-decarbonization.html
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-rationing-fairer-climate.html
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-coli-based-technology.html
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-flint-crisis-social-networks.html
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-team-mtdna-tool.html
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-02-celebrity-tweets-negative-opinion-covid-.html
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-molecular-machine-secret-weapon-exposed.html
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-02-papers-outbreakinfo-one-stop-online-source.html
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-early-grades-poorer.html
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-wildfire-exacerbates-disparity.html
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-misogyny-policing-male-officers-abuse.html
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-racial-stereotypes-vary-digital-interactions.html
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-linguistic-diversity-english-language-fiction-reveals.html
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-02-years-stem-cell-transplant-patient.html
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-02-wearable-gadgets-implantable-cardiac-electronic.html
https://techxplore.com/news/2023-02-census-vulnerable-privacy.html
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-02-pain-burdens-link-chronic-dementia.html
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-02-evidence-ivermectin-ineffective-covid-.html
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-02-remdesivir-effective-covid-.html
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-corporate-frauds-undetected.html
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-science-historythe-pandemic.html
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-misinformation-necessarily-bad-behavior.html
The real Proteus
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-twin-bioengine-self-adaptive-micronanorobots-gastrointestinal-inflammation.html
Solar emissions
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-scientists-oscillations-filament-driven-two-sided-loop.html
New microscope
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-mobie-enables-modern-microscopy-massive.html
Anti-dust tech and corrosion fighter
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-corrosion.html
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-anti-dust-tech-paves-self-cleaning-surfaces.html
The Earth
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-earth-hemispheres-equally-bright-viewed.html
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-earth-global-reverse-long-term-cooling.html
Hydrogen
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-2d-janus-materials-harvest-abundant.html
PETA and deportations
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-meat-shaming-tags-shown-likelihood.html
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-immigration-demographics-deportations-presidential-administrations.html
2A
https://up-ship.com/blog/?p=51662
Don’t tell Picard
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-meteorite-crater-french-winery.html