January 26, 2026 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.
- Blue Origin late last week flew another New Shepard suborbital tourist flight
It carried six passengers on the 38th such flight.
- SpaceX apparently tested Starship tiles on yesterday’s Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg
It also appears during a test-to-failure tank test a few days ago a Superheavy tank ruptured. Lots of speculation, but this rupture does not appear to be a big deal, because it clearly occurred during a test-to-failure test.
- Anti-ICE protester films a Long March 4C upper stage launched in 2022 burning up over Minneapolis
Being general ignorant (as these anti-ICE protesters are), he speculates it is a meteorite or “something exploded in space,” when it is very clearly appears to be a rocket stage breaking up during re-entry.
- On this day in 1994 Clementine launched to map the Moon, where it detected the first hint of ice in some permanently shadowed craters
Clementine cost under $100 million and took only two years to build and launch. But then, it wasn’t a NASA probe but a Pentagon-financed mission testing new lightweight cameras and control systems that used the Moon and scientific research to do the test. It was also the first U.S. mission to the Moon in more than two decades.
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 or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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.
- Blue Origin late last week flew another New Shepard suborbital tourist flight
It carried six passengers on the 38th such flight.
- SpaceX apparently tested Starship tiles on yesterday’s Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg
It also appears during a test-to-failure tank test a few days ago a Superheavy tank ruptured. Lots of speculation, but this rupture does not appear to be a big deal, because it clearly occurred during a test-to-failure test.
- Anti-ICE protester films a Long March 4C upper stage launched in 2022 burning up over Minneapolis
Being general ignorant (as these anti-ICE protesters are), he speculates it is a meteorite or “something exploded in space,” when it is very clearly appears to be a rocket stage breaking up during re-entry.
- On this day in 1994 Clementine launched to map the Moon, where it detected the first hint of ice in some permanently shadowed craters
Clementine cost under $100 million and took only two years to build and launch. But then, it wasn’t a NASA probe but a Pentagon-financed mission testing new lightweight cameras and control systems that used the Moon and scientific research to do the test. It was also the first U.S. mission to the Moon in more than two decades.
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 or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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
“”It also appears during a test-to-failure tank test a few days ago a Superheavy tank ruptured””
Once again, thanks to G-d that President Trump survived assassination attempts & lawfare, and returned to the Oval Office. The Obama/Biden Regime would have halted any more SpaceX testing/launches until the results of a “full crash investigation.”
I just love explaining to those that will listen the concept of test-to-failure.
”…because it clearly occurred during a test-to-failure test.”
What evidence do you have that the test was an intentional test to failure? The very title of the video you linked to is “Starship B18.3 Unexpectedly Failed during Testing!”
The test was advertised as the qualification test of the Integrated Hot Staging Ring for the V3 booster. Qualification tests are not tests to failure. They are the final tests of a hardware design before approval for flight.
“Female and Minority Pilots Caused 66% of Pilot-Error Crashes Since 2000 . . . Despite Being Less Than 10% of Workforce”
https://notthebee.com/article/women-and-minority-pilots-are-causing-66-of-pilot-error-crashes-despite-making-up-only-10-of-pilots-
“Better to have 10 x $100 million missions and a few fail than a single overdue and costly $1B+ mission.” — Jared Isaacman
That’s not *always* true — a flagship mission can deliver exponentially more science, properly done. But we can’t afford many flagship missions. And the Moon seems to be a place to try the faster, cheaper approach more aggressively. This isn’t Neptune.
Re: the B18.3 test incident
I think it’s hard to say much until we get some official comment on this from either Elon or SpaceX itself. But the usually incisive commentator Avboden at the SpaceXLounge subreddit had this to say, and I tend to think his assessment is correct:
Stay tuned.
To Ronaldus
The break-up the anti-ICE activist filmed was a neutron bomb that failed to explode over that failed state.
Can’t trust the Air Force to do anything right….
“Better to have 10 x $100 million missions and a few fail than a single overdue and costly $1B+ mission.” — Jared Isaacman
“That’s not *always* true — a flagship mission can deliver exponentially more science”
Thank you for that, Richard.
JIMO alone could have outlasted Juno…solar panel degradation and all. We just didn’t have a hoss’ to launch it back then–even if it had been funded.
I think far more of Carlyon Porco anyway–and how that poor lady was abused on the web.
I will say this about Clementine–it proved the anti-BMDO types lied about SDI being a “brain drain”
Case in point:
https://spaceflighthistory.blogspot.com/2016/12/a-vision-of-future-military-uses-of.html
“The pioneer for these missions was Clementine, a joint project of the SDI Organization (later renamed the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization — BMDO), the U.S. Air Force, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the Naval Research Laboratory, and NASA. Stewart Nozette led the Clementine mission. The octagonal 227-kilogram Clementine spacecraft, intended mainly as a BMDO technology demonstrator, lifted off atop a repurposed Titan II missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base on 25 January 1994.”
The only downside? Small packages (made possible by missile-defense spending–the Golden Dome of Reagan, as it were) got JPL used to playing with little toys launched atop Delta II sounding rockets that Dan Golden handed over like lollypops given to brats in the back seat to keep them quiet.
Real space advocates had bigger ideas:
The workshop report noted that military space systems launched from Earth tended to be made as lightweight as possible to reduce launch costs; this made them fragile and thus vulnerable if attacked.
“On the other hand,” the workshop report continued, “if a relatively inexpensive (500-1000 dollars per kilogram) supply of construction materials became available high above Earth, defensive systems would likely be designed very differently, with greater capabilities and greater survivability.” Layered armor for an SDI missile-defense platform with a cross-sectional area of 20 square meters would have a mass of about 400 metric tons; 100 such platforms would thus require about 40,000 metric tons of armor.
Layered metal armor would blunt attacks by kinetic-energy weapons (that is, systems that fired solid projectiles); for defense against particle beams or nuclear explosions, however, radiation shielding would be needed. The La Jolla workshop proposed using water from asteroids or (if any existed) from the lunar poles as neutron shielding for vulnerable electronic systems.