October 11, 2024 Quick space linksCourtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, except for the first, which came from several readers. 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 ends its grounding of SpaceX’s Falcon 9, allowing launches to proceed
No word yet on whether the FAA will issue a launch license for a Starship/Superheavy launch on October 13th. There will be a lot of Falcon 9 launches however beginning that day to catch up.
- Amazon’s Kuiper constellation appears to be negatively impacting the company’s recent profit margins
If only the company had moved with some speed and gotten these things launched quickly rather than dither for years while SpaceX grabbed the market.
- The consortium building Starlab space station completes a full scale mockup to test its design and usability
It is bringing in astronauts from the U.S. and Europe to give advice and suggestions.
- China successfully recovers a reusable Shijian capsule
Similar in concept to Varda’s commercial capsule, Shijian was used to test a variety of manufacturing technologies in weightlessness that could then be used on Earth.
- ISRO has booked all the remaining flights of its GSLV rocket
To quote the tweet: “Within the next decade, both PSLV & GSLV are going to retire, after which India’s launch demands are to be met by SSLV, LVM3, NGLV & private launchers.” The best plan would be to replace all the government launchers with private ones, but that seems unlikely considering the political strength of India’s bureaucracy.
- Today in 1846, Neptune’s largest moon Triton was discovered.
The tweet includes a photo of the moon taken by Voyager 2 in 1989.
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, except for the first, which came from several readers. 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 ends its grounding of SpaceX’s Falcon 9, allowing launches to proceed
No word yet on whether the FAA will issue a launch license for a Starship/Superheavy launch on October 13th. There will be a lot of Falcon 9 launches however beginning that day to catch up.
- Amazon’s Kuiper constellation appears to be negatively impacting the company’s recent profit margins
If only the company had moved with some speed and gotten these things launched quickly rather than dither for years while SpaceX grabbed the market.
- The consortium building Starlab space station completes a full scale mockup to test its design and usability
It is bringing in astronauts from the U.S. and Europe to give advice and suggestions.
- China successfully recovers a reusable Shijian capsule
Similar in concept to Varda’s commercial capsule, Shijian was used to test a variety of manufacturing technologies in weightlessness that could then be used on Earth.
- ISRO has booked all the remaining flights of its GSLV rocket
To quote the tweet: “Within the next decade, both PSLV & GSLV are going to retire, after which India’s launch demands are to be met by SSLV, LVM3, NGLV & private launchers.” The best plan would be to replace all the government launchers with private ones, but that seems unlikely considering the political strength of India’s bureaucracy.
- Today in 1846, Neptune’s largest moon Triton was discovered.
The tweet includes a photo of the moon taken by Voyager 2 in 1989.
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
1. I always thought it was neat that as soon as we discovered Neptune, we also discovered that it had a Moon!
We are way overdue to pay it a follow-up visit.
2. Christian Davenport just tweeted out that he is hearing that an FAA license for Starship Flight 5 could be granted tomorrow. Meanwhile, Elon is tweeting that Flight 5 will be flying on Sunday, along with shots of a ginormous American flag flying from Orbital Pad B’s tower. Sounds like the dam is ready to burst.
https://x.com/wapodavenport/status/1844866815073173579
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1844840205486043138
https://x.com/SciGuySpace/status/1844877645357490425?s=19
Fingers crossed
The estimable Mr. Berger ought to know why Texas doesn’t slide into the Gulf…
To Richard M
Wasn’t Triton once thought to be larger than Ganymede?
Richard M,
I congratulate Mr. Davenport on the acuity of his hearing.
Jeff Wright,
Triton was thought to be just a bit larger than Ganymede when I was a grade-schooler. Of course Mercury was thought to be tidally locked to the Sun, Venus was thought to have an Earth-tropics surface climate and Jupiter was thought to have 12 moons, Saturn 9 and Pluto none. Science marches on.
To all,
Good move on the part of Starlab Space to get Luca Parmitano as one of the astronaut-evaluators of its interior space station mockup. As the Primo Carnera of human spaceflight, Parmitano is, himself, an ergonomic edge case. His insights should prove invaluable.
Jeff,
Yeah, my experience was the same as Dick’s, despite being younger — that’s what I first “learned” about Triton in school, too, when I was memorizing planets and moons. The trouble was due to Gerard Kuiper, who was the first astronomer to attempt to estimate a diameter for Triton. He came up with roughly 3,700km. It wasn’t until Voyager 2’s approach in 1989 that we figured out that it was rather smaller than that (though still a pretty big moon, obviously).
Still very much worth visiting again, though given how long even a Starship launch would take to get a probe there, I fear we are *all* going to be quite old before that happens, if indeed we live to see it.
Question for the Assembled Masses: Precisely what was the anomaly from the Upper Stage Merlin? Early light? Late light? And then what did SpaceX do to fix it? Cheers –