July 20, 2023 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, helps make sure nothing gets missed.
- A reminder that today is the anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing
Just remember, Americans made it point to “come in peace for all mankind.”
- ESA touts its proposed Argonaut lunar lander, to be launched by its Ariane-6 rocket
No launch date revealed, and in fact, few hard details. This is PR. Jay has doubts it will ever launch, and I tend to agree.
- Video of the Kuaizhou-1A launch today
For some reason the tweet includes a picture of cars parked near the rocket, as if it is also a car commercial. Jay also adds this interesting drone photo of the launch, taken from above.
- NASA project to develop lunar fission power systems faces uncertain future
The politics at NASA and in Congress make funding this project difficult, if not impossible. As Jay notes, “They are gun shy politically on this subject. How many times have they started a ‘NERVA Study’ and just moved the money over to another project?”
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, helps make sure nothing gets missed.
- A reminder that today is the anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing
Just remember, Americans made it point to “come in peace for all mankind.”
- ESA touts its proposed Argonaut lunar lander, to be launched by its Ariane-6 rocket
No launch date revealed, and in fact, few hard details. This is PR. Jay has doubts it will ever launch, and I tend to agree.
- Video of the Kuaizhou-1A launch today
For some reason the tweet includes a picture of cars parked near the rocket, as if it is also a car commercial. Jay also adds this interesting drone photo of the launch, taken from above.
- NASA project to develop lunar fission power systems faces uncertain future
The politics at NASA and in Congress make funding this project difficult, if not impossible. As Jay notes, “They are gun shy politically on this subject. How many times have they started a ‘NERVA Study’ and just moved the money over to another project?”
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
Today is the anniversary of the moon landing. The first time a human being set foot on another planet. I hope we go back soon.
On July 20th, 1969, At 10:56 p.m. EDT, American astronaut Neil Armstrong, 240,000 miles from Earth, spoke these words to more than a billion people listening at home: “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” Stepping off the lunar landing module Eagle, Armstrong became the first human to walk on the surface of the moon.
Fission power in space should be easy in two steps. Step 1, secure your heavy lift capability from SpaceX. Step 2, obtain a reactor from https://navalnuclearlab.energy.gov/bettis-atomic-power-laboratory/
The company that makes that SS50 long range source programable rocket with mobile launcher must also make the cars, and they’re advertising.
Love that drone photo…looks like cotton candy
From the Space News lunar fission power article:
This project has aspects that compete with each other? That does not seem like a well thought out project. So, if power on the Moon has to compete with other aspects of this supposedly sustainable program, then we have to wonder what Congress has in mind for its return to the Moon.
We can only launch SLS once a year, eventually, and without overnight power, our people can only spend a couple of weeks on the Moon. So, we are spending Apollo-, Shuttle-, and ISS-amounts of money, but we can only get a two-week visit once a year (4% occupancy)? It looks as though congress is sabotaging its own Artemis project the way it sabotaged the Apollo Applications Program, failed to fix the Space Shuttle project, and let the ISS project become so much less than we paid for (we were going to have twice the occupancy for the ISS and three times the science, but that went away to save 3% to 6% on the construction costs).
If commercial space were going to make a lunar base, I’m pretty sure that it would make sure it gets more use out of it than two weeks of the year. Otherwise, it would be a very expensive operation for the little that it returned.
When we let government be in charge of lunar missions, we only get what government wants — and maybe even not that much.
Edward,
Fortunately, the government isn’t going to be in charge of much having to do with human lunar missions for much longer. Within this decade, we should see the first U.S. private sector entity – SpaceX – achieve a completely reusable end-to-end capability to conduct human and cargo lunar missions at a vastly higher frequency – and vastly lower cost – than NASA. By around the end of the decade, we should see a second U.S. private sector entity – Blue Origin – achieve the same, albeit at a more modest, but still significant scale.
I agree with Jay and Bob that the Europeans are more likely to abandon, than proceed with, their notional Argonaut lunar lander. Still, the odds of their proceeding with it are considerably greater than that they will also proceed with design and production of an all-European human spaceflight vehicle that would also notionally launch on Ariane 6 or the also-notional Ariane Next.
But Argonaut does not appear to be reusable. I think any lunar base(s) established mainly by SpaceX and Blue Origin would not find having to deal with an accumulation of expendable landers a particularly attractive proposition. It could well be the considerably greater expense and complexity of rendering Argonaut reusable that dooms its undertaking as a project in the first place.
Dick Eagleson,
You wrote: “I think any lunar base(s) established mainly by SpaceX and Blue Origin would not find having to deal with an accumulation of expendable landers a particularly attractive proposition.”
I largely agree, but I think that such expendable landers would quickly be cannibalized for parts and materials for use at or inside these bases.