November 11, 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.
- On this day in 1967 the ATS-3 weather satellite captured the first color picture of the entire daylight side of Earth from space
The take-away for all humanity then was the cloud cover, far more than anyone had imagined, and the dominance of the color blue.
- ULA’s CEO touts his growing stock of BE-4 engines
The images show six engines in total, enough for three Vulcan rocket launches. According to an October 24 report, Blue Origin has so far delivered 30 engines.
- Indications in China’s state-run press suggest an empty Shenzhou-22 capsule will be launched on a Long March 2F to bring the Shenzhou-20 crew home
So far nothing official has been announced, nor has that government-controlled media released any details about the damage to the Shenzhou-20 capsule from “space debris.”
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.
- On this day in 1967 the ATS-3 weather satellite captured the first color picture of the entire daylight side of Earth from space
The take-away for all humanity then was the cloud cover, far more than anyone had imagined, and the dominance of the color blue.
- ULA’s CEO touts his growing stock of BE-4 engines
The images show six engines in total, enough for three Vulcan rocket launches. According to an October 24 report, Blue Origin has so far delivered 30 engines.
- Indications in China’s state-run press suggest an empty Shenzhou-22 capsule will be launched on a Long March 2F to bring the Shenzhou-20 crew home
So far nothing official has been announced, nor has that government-controlled media released any details about the damage to the Shenzhou-20 capsule from “space debris.”
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
”The images show six engines in total, enough for three Vulcan rocket launches.”
ULA reportedly now has seven fully completed Vulcans stacked up waiting for payloads and an additional 30 Vulcans in various stages of production.
And now we have not one but two dishes down?
It’s like somebody doesn’t want us up there.
I think it’s clear that ULA’s production pipeline is no longer hardware poor. There are, of course, uncertainty bars for us spectators in just how *ready* all of this hardware is, exactly.
But skepticism remains the order of the day. Several weeks ago, Tory Bruno was was making this promise:
https://aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org/ula-forecasts-launching-at-least-20-times-a-year-starting-in-2026/
Obviously, they ain’t hitting 9 launches this year! I think we should expect more in 2026, but honestly, if they hit 10-12 for the year, that would still be a pretty creditable achievement for a company that only had 5 or 6 launches in 2025 (I am assuming they will complete the Viasat-3 and one more USSF launch by year’s end).
Blue Origin has to delay (again) the next attempt to launch New Glenn:
“NG-2 Update: New Glenn is ready to launch. However, due to highly elevated solar activity and its potential effects on the ESCAPADE spacecraft, NASA is postponing launch until space weather conditions improve. We are currently assessing opportunities to establish our next launch window based on forecasted space weather and range availability.”
https://twitter.com/blueorigin/status/1988621902881914961
This is spectacular: the collapse of a new Chinese bridge.
In China everyone cuts corners to make a buck. Steal manufacturers add a bunch of junk metal during processing that weakens it. Rebar manufacturers make it thinner than specs. When the cement is mixed they throw in a bunch of dirt to make it go further. Etc.
“Moment newly opened bridge in China partially collapses”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRap7itG2aE
(1 minute)
The Chinese bridge apparently collapsed because there was a landslide, and several hundred tons of dirt hit the bridge supports. Even the most well-built bridge in the world is going to go down when that happens. But of course, in a well-done bridge project, the engineers look at that nearby hillside, and say “we should do something about that.” Apparently in this case, there was no consideration given at all to stabilizing the hillside or directing any debris away from the bridge supports.
Richard M,
Given the fact that the ESCAPADE craft will be mooching around for most of a year near Earth-Sun L2 before even departing for Mars, then spending months in transit, one has to wonder just how well these things were designed if they can’t stand a bit of rougher-than-average space weather starting out.
“The Chinese bridge apparently collapsed because there was a landslide”
You do realize that explanation came from the CCP. They lie about everything.
From the video that could explain it, but with the CCP you never know. There are collapses of major bridges, tunnels and buildings every week that we never hear about.
Here’s an interesting 11 minute video by an American and South African who lived in China for 10 years. In the video they are looking at 3 year old buildings that are falling apart. They had to flee China in the middle of the night when they were tipped that the police were going to disappear them. They now do a weekly podcast from the U.S. about China news.
“Are NEW Chinese buildings really FALLING DOWN?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XopSDJq6w8E
On the hypersonics front
https://techxplore.com/news/2025-11-hypersonic-planes-wont-demand-significantly.html
The paper
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-65398-4
Hello Dick,
Yeah, you know, I wondered about that, too. It seemed like an incongruous rationale.
So I did some digging, and this is how Aerospace America’s article explains the concern with more specificity:
https://aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org/principal-investigator-incoming-solar-flare-created-perfect-storm-for-escapade/?amp=1
So, the problem is that it would be peaking just as they are doing solar array deployment?
I guess I wonder why they wouldn’t just delay it, but maybe the batteries would be exhausted too soon.
P.S. Ah, I should have read on further: Yeah, the battery life is very limited: “We only have six or seven hours to get [the solar arrays] deployed before the battery runs out and we’re dead forever,” Lillis said. “Based on everything we knew, it was just really risky to try to do that.”
Richard M,
Appreciate the extra digging. But it looks as though Aerospace America has its Lagrange points confused. ESCAPADE is supposed to go into a marking-time orbit around Earth-Sun L2, not L1. Other than that, quite interesting. I guess the analogy would be to not wanting to deploy an umbrella just as a particularly heavy gust of wind hits.
Jeff Wright,
What’s the second dish that’s down? I hope big dishes aren’t like famous people, who often seem to die in threes.
Interesting, but not shocking, news about hypersonic airflow.
The late, great Jerry Pournelle used to tell a story about how Boeing lost the USAF’s high-altitude, triple-sonic strategic bomber contract to North American’s XB-70 Valkyrie during his time at Boeing. Boeing, at the time, didn’t have much experience with supersonic vehicles while NA had built the X-15s. Boeing figured the key thing was to make the airframe as smooth as possible so it spent a lot of money developing a fancy new flush-riveting process to use on their prototype. Turned out that NA knew, from X-15 data, that the boundary layer increases in thickness considerably above Mach 2. So its Valkyrie design not only wasn’t especially smooth, it even had some deliberate protuberances, such as antennae, that stuck out a bit from the main mold line. The NA design could be produced much more cheaply so its bid handily beat Boeing’s.
In the event, neither company got a series production contract.
Not bad, actually. Though apparently you have to extend the analogy in such a way that you only get one shot at deploying your umbrella!
The good news is, the solar forecast for today’s launch window looks much better, and improves again tomorrow.
P.S. Loved the Pournelle anecdote.
Richard M,
I see the ESCAPADE launch was rescheduled for three minutes to noon today. Am awaiting launch in less than two hours as I write this.
I was moderately active in organized sci-fi fandom back in the early ’80s. The Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society had its clubhouse not far from where I was living then and I was a regular attendee at weekly meetings. Pournelle, his son Alex, Larry Niven and Niven’s wife “Fuzzy Pink” (nickname based on her favored type of sweater) were there most of the time. Jerry’s son Richard showed up sometimes too. Milton Friedman’s son David was also a frequent attendee. He and Pournelle were both huge Rudyard Kipling fans and used to declaim favorite Kipling poems in unison from memory. I was also editing a computer trade magazine in those days so I would encounter Jerry at the old semi-annual COMDEX shows in Vegas as well. Fun times.
James Street
I follow the China Show also., those guys are pretty good at reporting on China. Not professional but ok for information in general.
The whole Chinese Belt and Road program was built like this also. Its so bad those nations are no longer paying China back. I think it was in Indonesia that a Belt and road government building collapsed even before it was occupied and the Chinese company ran away.
The trump Tariffs are hitting China so hard China is afraid to help Russia anymore.
I don’t agree with the host at all here—but she is pleasant, and I know folks here like Handmer—so:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=10zW384XuoE