January 2, 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.
- The rough specs of the Chinese Halong re-usable mini-shuttle being built to ferry cargo to the Tiangong-3 space station
It can carry two tons of cargo and stay docked for three months, then return with cargo.
- Chinese pseudo-company Landspace touts completion of nine engines for its Zhuque-3 rocket
The rocket is essentially a copy of the Falcon 9, with a re-usable first stage. The first three launches in ’25 will use an older version, followed by the upgraded re-usable version.
- A detailed survey of the new rockets China will launch in 2025
Most of the rockets are coming from pseudo-companies, with several aiming for re-usability soon thereafter.
- Astronomers now posit that at least one fast radio burst came from the magnetosphere of neutron star
Interesting study, with a lot of uncertainty.
- Eutelsat-OneWeb constellation down for two days, now back in operation
The outage was caused because software did not realize 2024 was a leap year.
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 print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
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.
- The rough specs of the Chinese Halong re-usable mini-shuttle being built to ferry cargo to the Tiangong-3 space station
It can carry two tons of cargo and stay docked for three months, then return with cargo.
- Chinese pseudo-company Landspace touts completion of nine engines for its Zhuque-3 rocket
The rocket is essentially a copy of the Falcon 9, with a re-usable first stage. The first three launches in ’25 will use an older version, followed by the upgraded re-usable version.
- A detailed survey of the new rockets China will launch in 2025
Most of the rockets are coming from pseudo-companies, with several aiming for re-usability soon thereafter.
- Astronomers now posit that at least one fast radio burst came from the magnetosphere of neutron star
Interesting study, with a lot of uncertainty.
- Eutelsat-OneWeb constellation down for two days, now back in operation
The outage was caused because software did not realize 2024 was a leap year.
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 print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. 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
Haolong? 10 meters long! :)
Re: Leap Year software
I thought we’d seen the last of this sort of thing in the late 90s when so much software had to be rejiggered to handle 4-digit year values. My own experience with Leap Year calcs lies more than a half-century in the past when I was writing a library of calendar arithmetic subroutines for a then-cutting-edge on-line hospital system using assembly language on a Xerox Data Systems Sigma-series mainframe. My stuff way back then apparently worked better than what present-day Europeans can turn out.
“Boeing’s 737 Max Software Outsourced to $9-an-Hour Engineers”
“It remains the mystery at the heart of Boeing Co.’s 737 Max crisis: how a company renowned for meticulous design made seemingly basic software mistakes leading to a pair of deadly crashes. Longtime Boeing engineers say the effort was complicated by a push to outsource work to lower-paid contractors.”
“Increasingly, the iconic American planemaker and its subcontractors have relied on temporary workers making as little as $9 an hour to develop and test software, often from countries lacking a deep background in aerospaceーnotably India.”
https://www.industryweek.com/supply-chain/article/22027840/boeings-737-max-software-outsourced-to-9-an-hour-engineers