June 29, 2023 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
- Virgin Galactic completes its first commercial manned suborbital flight
My heart be still. Only two decades late, long after the big market has faded for suborbital tourism and shifted entirely to orbital flights.
- Firefly gets a launch contract from Lockheed Martin
This contract continues Lockheed Martin’s strong support for startup rocket companies, on top of its previous investments in Rocket Lab and ABL
- Europe’s Euclid cosmology space telescope ready for launch July 1, 2023 on SpaceX rocket
This is an example of a launch that SpaceX grabbed because Europe’s Ariane-6 rocket was delayed.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the 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. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
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.
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Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
- Virgin Galactic completes its first commercial manned suborbital flight
My heart be still. Only two decades late, long after the big market has faded for suborbital tourism and shifted entirely to orbital flights.
- Firefly gets a launch contract from Lockheed Martin
This contract continues Lockheed Martin’s strong support for startup rocket companies, on top of its previous investments in Rocket Lab and ABL
- Europe’s Euclid cosmology space telescope ready for launch July 1, 2023 on SpaceX rocket
This is an example of a launch that SpaceX grabbed because Europe’s Ariane-6 rocket was delayed.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the 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. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
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.
A decade late and 15km short. The X prize winner in 2004 went up to 100km.
Still the narrator in the tedious video used the term astronaut. But kudos for safety margins.
I see Twitter now forces you to sign in. Intentionally. It will really reduce the free flow of information. Intentionally.
One work around they haven’t closed yet is to simply replace twitter.com in the URL with nitter.net.
So in the Europe’s Euclid cosmology space telescope link
https://twitter.com/esa/status/1674385214963941377?cxt=HHwWgoC8seqezrwuAAAA
becomes
https://nitter.net/esa/status/1674385214963941377?cxt=HHwWgoC8seqezrwuAAAA
James Street: This decision by Twitter is unfortunate, as I am not a Twitter user and have no intention of signing up for it. I wonder if Jay will have more work arounds.
Interesting to me that one of the passengers, Italian Air Force Col. Walter Villadei, will be a passenger aboard a SpaceX Dragon flight to the ISS next year. So he will have the unique position, not seen since Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom to be a sub-orbital astronaut before he was an orbital astronaut.
Yes, you can quibble about if he is an astronaut now but 60+ years ago, he would have been an astronaut by anybodies measure.
Doubting Thomas wrote: “Yes, you can quibble about if he is an astronaut now but 60+ years ago, he would have been an astronaut by anybodies measure.”
NASA considers its astronauts to be astronauts as soon as they are hired or accepted into the program. They do not need to fly, because that is their job and it is their job title.
Theodore Freeman, Elliot See, Charles Bassett, Roger Chaffee, Clifton C. Williams, Robert Lawrence are NASA astronauts who died before they could fly into space. They are still astronauts.
Some of the crew of STS-51-L were on their first flight, which broke up at 15 km altitude, far below the Karman line and far below the 50-mile line considered to be space by the Americans. Who here would consider any of them to not be astronauts?
Cosmonauts Valentin Bondarenko and Sergei Vozovikov died before they could fly, and I’m sure the Soviets and Russians still consider them to be cosmonauts.
How about all the people around the world who have been selected to be their own nation’s astronauts, yet have not flown? Are they now or are they not astronauts by virtue of their jobs?
I don’t have a list of flights for Michael Alsbury, who died during a SpaceShipTwo test flight, but does anyone here consider him to not be an astronaut, whether or not he was on a flight that went into space?
So I don’t quibble about whether he is an astronaut. He is. So are his fellow astronauts aboard the SpaceShipTwo flight.
I am aware that NASA calls “the people who fly” by two terms. Candidate Astronauts for those in the 1 year training pipeline. Astronauts for those who have completed the 1 year program but have not flown. They have a silver NASA emblem. Astronauts who have flown are still called astronauts but they have a gold NASA emblem for their lapels or collars.
FWIW. I generally agree with you thinking on the subject.
Elon does a photobucket scouring of Twitter…and now wants in the MMA with Zuck.’
He’s going Howard Hughes on us.