March 31, 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.
- FAA confirms that it has closed its investigation into the seventh flight of Starship/Superheavy
The FAA also noted the flight’s failure posed no safety issues, something that was clear almost immedately.
- Cuba’s state-run press attacks the arrival of Starlink in Cuba, claiming it is a plot by Trump and Musk to “destabilze” the island
In other words, Cuba’s communist dictators don’t like it that its citizens might now have other options for getting information that those dictators don’t control.
- On this day in 1997 Pioneer-10’s mission ended, 25 years after launch
It continued to send signals back through 2003.
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.
- FAA confirms that it has closed its investigation into the seventh flight of Starship/Superheavy
The FAA also noted the flight’s failure posed no safety issues, something that was clear almost immedately.
- Cuba’s state-run press attacks the arrival of Starlink in Cuba, claiming it is a plot by Trump and Musk to “destabilze” the island
In other words, Cuba’s communist dictators don’t like it that its citizens might now have other options for getting information that those dictators don’t control.
- On this day in 1997 Pioneer-10’s mission ended, 25 years after launch
It continued to send signals back through 2003.
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
“On this day in 1997 Pioneer-10’s mission ended, 25 years after launch…”
Well, almost ended. If the purpose of Pioneer was to teach us to pay attention, then it was revived.
Data started to be questioned as far back as 1980 on Pioneer’s location. A paper in 1999 (arXiv:gr-qc/9903024 v2 9 Mar 1999 – Turyshev) started a 14-year march to find why Pioneer was always closer to the sun than we thought. Measurements were off by 10^-9 m/s^2.
The journey spanned another 14 years to ‘solve this problem’. arXiv:1307.0537 13 Jun 2013 (ten Boom).
Still leaving us to solve the problem of data storage however – if data from 30 years prior was nearly impossible to retrieve, how will we get at original data even 1000 years from now? Need we go back to vellum and ink?
Eric Berger today has a pretty remarkable long form interview with Butch Wilmore about what it was like actually flying Starliner. And it turns out, it was a good deal hairier than we knew. To the point where he felt confident right from the start that he wasn’t coming back to Earth on the Starliner. And Suni Williams felt the same way.
And: Wilmore describes how there was a moment during the docking attempt where he was doubtful that they could either dock with the station, or have sufficient control to get back to Earth, either. Scary stuff.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/04/the-harrowing-story-of-what-flying-starliner-was-like-when-its-thrusters-failed/
Forget Starliner–I’d rather be in an F-104 as a self-driving car.
A Pinto at least has a steering wheel.