September 12, 2024 Quick space links
Like yesterday, reader Gary has stepped in to cover for BtB’s stringer Jay, who is off on a work trip this week. 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.
- Roscosmos had offered help to NASA in connection with the Starliner situation
I am sure this is so, but I am also sure there was little Russia could do, without requiring a lot of cash from NASA as part of the deal.
- We’re all gonna die! SpaceX blew a hole in the atmosphere when it test launched Starship/Superheavy!
For a more sane discussion of this research, which was really only about the increased sensitivity of modern instruments, go here. That some are using it for political purposes to whack SpaceX is disgraceful.
- ArianeSpace CEO Stéphane Israël criticizes billionaires in space
But then, Israel has generally been a head-in-the-sand fool for more than a decade when it comes to reusability and commercial space. His insistence ten years ago that it made no financial sense to make Ariane-6 reusable resulted in that rocket being overpriced in today’s market, which is why Europe is right now pushing Arianespace and Stephen Israel out and replacing both with private commercial rocket companies competing for business. All he does here is provide proof that getting him out of the way is the best thing the European Space Agency has done in years.
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.
Like yesterday, reader Gary has stepped in to cover for BtB’s stringer Jay, who is off on a work trip this week. 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.
- Roscosmos had offered help to NASA in connection with the Starliner situation
I am sure this is so, but I am also sure there was little Russia could do, without requiring a lot of cash from NASA as part of the deal.
- We’re all gonna die! SpaceX blew a hole in the atmosphere when it test launched Starship/Superheavy!
For a more sane discussion of this research, which was really only about the increased sensitivity of modern instruments, go here. That some are using it for political purposes to whack SpaceX is disgraceful.
- ArianeSpace CEO Stéphane Israël criticizes billionaires in space
But then, Israel has generally been a head-in-the-sand fool for more than a decade when it comes to reusability and commercial space. His insistence ten years ago that it made no financial sense to make Ariane-6 reusable resulted in that rocket being overpriced in today’s market, which is why Europe is right now pushing Arianespace and Stephen Israel out and replacing both with private commercial rocket companies competing for business. All he does here is provide proof that getting him out of the way is the best thing the European Space Agency has done in years.
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.
ArianeSpace CEO Stéphane Israël criticizes billionaires in space
It’s not like European elites (of which Stéphane Israël is one) are against conspicuous consumption per se. It’s just that it has to be manifested in certain ways, and it certainly cannot threaten the feathered beds of other elites. And the kinds of things that SpaceX and Jared Isaacman are going right very much threaten the feathered beds of those who run Arianespace.
And obviously, of course, we must push back against the trope that Polaris Dawn is just a billionaire joyride.
“SpaceX blew a hole in the atmosphere”
They said the same thing about…… So many things. The Concorde SST and the Space Shuttle were just two of them. When ‘they’ announced the end of all life on Earth (for the 5,000th time) it was the ozone hole. When technology and observation improved, real scientists discovered a regular thickening and thinning of the ‘hole.’ In other words, it’s normal.
“SpaceX blew a hole in the atmosphere”
Well, it makes a great headlines even if it’s total . . .
HOTOL, Sanger and other RLVs were proposed decades ago–but all the advocates for them got told seven different kinds of “no.”
See the SmarterEveryDay guy visit a bio lab to see how proton gradient powered rotating motors in bacteria work. It will blow your mind.
https://youtu.be/VPSm9gJkPxU?feature=shared
Richard M,
Bingo. The French elite have always looked down on the self-made. Even the ultimately disruptive self-made Frenchman, Napolean Bonaparte, didn’t make his career in business and famously called England “a nation of shopkeepers” as an attempted insult. To the French elite, self-made wealth is gauche. The only respectable wealth, in their eyes, is either inherited or married into.
There was a delightful author fellow named Ted Morgan – who just recently passed away – who was born a French aristocrat with an inherited title of Count and the name Sanche de Gramont. He left all of that behind, renounced his title and became an American citizen in the 1970s and took the new name Ted Morgan, an anagram of his French last name. He was interviewed on 60 Minutes back in 1978 upon the publication of his book On Becoming American. The interview was a delight, but, sadly, seems to be unavailable on-line. I did find a far more recent interview of Ted Morgan by C-SPAN’s late Brian Lamb that covers his life and many of his works. It’s about an hour long. The part that deals with his becoming an American starts at about the 8:15 mark but the whole thing is well worth watching. Morgan is very much in the Elon Musk mold in that he was a man born elsewhere who realized, as time went on, that he was most at home in America.
“SpaceX blew a hole in the atmosphere”
So now will the Earth fly around like a deflating balloon until it ends up flat on the backs of the turtles?
Today, another treat from Polaris Dawn: Sarah Gillis delivers the first violin performance in space.
(Not a big fan of the piece in question, but it was undoubtedly the kind of thing that was going to happen once she got John Williams involved.)
https://www.thestrad.com/news/video-first-violin-performance-in-space/18605.article
The video was transmitted by….<>….Starlink laser links.
Richard M: This is tonight’s evening pause.
SuperHeavy aerodynamics test model
https://phys.org/news/2024-09-starship-super-heavy-breezes-tunnel.html
Aluminum rocket engines?
https://phys.org/news/2024-09-propel-industrial-revolution.html
Laminar flow achieved:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MWoFFoaL5aw