Category: Behind The Black

Israeli fighter pilot to fly on Axiom’s first private Dragon launch in ’21

9:24 am

Capitalism in space: Axiom has revealed that an Israeli fighter pilot, Eytan Stibbe, will be the second passenger on on its first private Dragon launch to ISS in the fall of 2021.

Stibbe will be the second Israeli to fly in space, following Ilan Ramon, who died when the space shuttle Columbia broke up in 2003 during its return to Earth.

The Axiom AX-1 mission is scheduled to launch in the second half of 2021, which the company unveiled in a deal with SpaceX earlier this year. Astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria, who previously worked for NASA and flew to space four times, will be the AX-1 mission commander, with Stibbe set to serve as a mission specialist.

AX-1 would be the first fully private mission to the International Space Station, with Lopez-Alegria and Stibbe flying with two other yet-to-be-named people.

The consistent rumors are that actor Tom Cruise and a movie director will be those other two passengers, but this is not confirmed.

It is important to emphasize that this space mission will be entirely private, with almost no involvement of the U.S. government other than providing coordination, the training of the astronauts, and the use of ISS. The rocket and spacecraft are SpaceX’s, purchased by the customer Axiom. Moreover, Axiom has plans to add its own private modules to ISS where future private space passengers will be housed, which will then reduce the government’s role and contribution even more.

And since this will be a private mission, it means the funds to fly it will come from its passengers, not the government. This also means that as long as there are customers, there will be no slow-down in future flights.

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Arianespace’s Vega rocket fails again at launch

8:55 am

Early today Arianespace’s Vega rocket failed, for the second time in its last three launches, to put two satellites into orbit.

A liquid-fueled upper stage — known as the Attitude and Vernier Upper Module, or AVUM — was supposed to fire four times Monday night to place the Spanish SEOSAT-Ingenio Earth observation satellite and the Taranis research spacecraft from the French space agency CNES into slightly different orbits at an altitude of roughly 420 miles (676 kilometers) .

But something went wrong just after the first ignition of the AVUM fourth stage. “After the first nominal ignition of the last stage engine, an anomaly has occurred, which caused a trajectory deviation entailing the loss of the mission,” said Avio, the Vega rocket’s Italian prime contractor, in a statement. “Data analyses are in progress to determine the causes.”

This is bad new for Europe’s space effort. It will likely but a crimp in the development of their two next generation rockets, the Ariane 6 and the Vega-C, as the upper stage that failed involves all the contractors building those rockets, Airbus and Avio.

The failure of this particular engine also badly damages the future of the two Ukrainian contractors, Yuzhnoye and Yuzhmash, who built it. They have lost all business with Russia because of the war between those two countries, and now have this failure to darken their resume with the rest of the world.

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Resilience has docked with ISS

9:52 pm

SpaceX’s Resilience Dragon capsule successfully docked with ISS tonight.

They are in the process of checking the seal of the docking, and the opening of the hatch.

As much as I have been critical of Boeing in recent years, I truly hope they can get their management and engineering problems worked out so they can accomplish the same thing with their Starliner capsule. The competition with SpaceX will be healthy for both companies, the nation, and the future of the human race.

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Justin Johnson – I’ve been everywhere

6:01 pm

An evening pause: I normally don’t post two suggestions in a row from the same reader, but this particular collapsible (!) guitar contrasts too nicely with Friday’s theorbo. From the youtube webpage:

If the ability to break down and re-assemble wasn’t crazy enough, it actually STAYS IN TUNE when you put it back together, thanks to the air-tight construction techniques and locking tuners!

The song is by Johnny Cash.

Hat tip Jeff Poplin.

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Buried mountain on Mars

2:17 pm

Isolated buried mountain on Mars
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, rotated, cropped, and reduced to post here, was taken on August 8, 2020 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled merely as a “terrain sample,” it is an example of an image taken more for engineering than scientific reasons. No research scientist specifically requested it. Instead, the scientists operating the camera took it because they need to use MRO regularly to maintain the camera’s proper temperature. To do this they periodically take almost random images, but never without trying to pick a location that might have some scientific value.

In this case we get what appears to be an isolated sloping hill. Located at about 15 degrees north latitude, this is not a place where one would expect visible evidence of water, though the gullies on the slopes are intriguing. They almost look like the kind of hillside erosion you see in places where rain falls on desert mountainsides.

Rain can’t be the cause, but nonetheless monitoring these gullies for changes over time would be worthwhile science research. Since it appears no one is presently focused on doing it, anyone interested out there?

This mountain is actually far more isolated than this high resolution image suggests.
» Read more

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The Apollo 12 crew’s excursions on the Moon, 51 years ago

8:25 am

In celebration of the anniversary this week of the Apollo 12 mission to the Moon in November 1969, the science team for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) have created a wonderful animation showing step-by-step where and when Pete Conrad and Alan Bean walked during their two EVAs on the lunar surface.

That video is below. It highlights strongly the need of any future short-term mission to any planetary landing to have a vehicle on board. Conrad and Bean accomplished a lot during their two four-hour walks, but nowhere near as much as they could have accomplished if they could have driven about on their EVAs. In fact, in the 1960s NASA had already recognized this, and was to put a rover on the last three Apollo lunar landings.

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New study: Lockdowns & masks are useless and might even increase COVID-19 spread

12:03 am

A recently completed research study by Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in cooperation with the Naval Medical Research Center and published in the New England Journal of Medicine has found that strict quarantine, tightly controlled social distancing, and continuous use of masks did absolutely nothing to contain the spread of COVID-19, and might even have increased its spread.

First, the study used 1,843 Marine volunteers, individuals well trained to follow orders as well as the required procedures. Second, their quarantine took place at Marine facility under the supervision of the military. Both factors meant that the volunteers were going to follow procedures much more correctly than the general public.

Third, no one could enter the study without undergoing 14-days of quarantine beforehand, plus a test to prove they were negative of COVID-19 at the study’s start. The study itself was held in a tightly controlled quarantine campus run by the Marines.

The volunteers then had to follow this incredibly strict quarantine regiment:
» Read more

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SpaceX successfully launches four astronauts to ISS

5:41 pm

Falcon 9 launch on November 15, 2020 with four astronauts

Capitalism in space: SpaceX tonight successfully launched four astronauts to ISS on its Dragon capsule Resilience, using its Falcon 9 rocket.

They also recovered the first stage, landing it on its drone ship in the Atlantic. The routine manner in which SpaceX ran this launch is truly admirable. They make landing and reuse of the first stage so expected it is hard to believe that for fifty years rocket managers and engineers insisted it wasn’t doable.

They had one issue today, a failure of the capsule hatch to hold air pressure after closure. They calmly reopened the hatch, cleared the issue, added some lubricant, and closed the hatch, all in less than ten minutes.

Resilience will dock with ISS tomorrow evening.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

30 China
20 SpaceX
5 ULA
4 Europe (Arianespace)
4 Rocket Lab

The U.S. now leads China 32 to 30 in the national rankings.

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WordPress goes after politically conservative website

1:36 pm

They’re coming for you next: The politically conservative but very accurate and well documented website The Conservative Treehouse has now been told by its platform WordPress that it is being deplatformed, or to put it more bluntly, shut down, because of its conservative content.

One week after the 2020 presidential election, The Conservative Treehouse received the following notification:

…”given the incompatibility between your site’s content and our terms, you need to find a new hosting provider and must migrate the site by Wednesday, December 2nd.”

What does this mean? It means CTH is being kicked-off the WordPress website hosting platform because the content of our research and discussion does not align with the ideology of those who define what is acceptable speech and what is not.

What was our violation? After ten years of brutally honest discussion, opinion, deep research and crowdsourcing work -with undeniable citations on the events we outline- there is no cited violation of any term of service because CTH has never violated one.

The WordPress company is not explaining the reason for deplatforming because there is no justifiable reason for it. At the same time, they are bold in their position. Perhaps this is the most alarming part; and everyone should pay attention. They don’t care.

I as well as probably millions of others use WordPress as the platform for our websites. This decision strikes directly at freedom of speech, and is clearly an effort to silence conservative political analysis.

Worse is coming. I expect in the next few years to receive the same deplatforming message from WordPress, and intend to be prepared. I also would not be surprised if they transition from giving warnings, to simply shutting down sites they don’t like. Don’t be shocked if you try to come here one day and discover the site has vanished.

Everyone else should be on notice as well. The gloves are off, the intent is to silence and shut down dissent against the left and the Democratic Party, wherever possible.

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Watch today’s launch of SpaceX’s Resilience manned capsule

10:06 am

According to a NASA report yesterday, the weather then stood at 50% for allowing a launch of four astronauts to ISS on SpaceX’s Resilience capsule tonight at 7:27 pm (Eastern).

That percentage was still reported this morning. Part of the issue is that SpaceX wants to recover the first stage, and the weather therefore not only has to be good in Florida, it has to be good in the Atlantic where the stage will come down.

NASA’s live coverage begins at 3:15 pm (Eastern). The link to that live stream is below the fold. As I write this at around noon (Eastern) it is simply NASA TV’s normal feed, which is essentially full time propaganda for NASA. After 3:15 pm it will switch to live coverage, which unfortunately will still be packed with pro-NASA propaganda, even though this launch is entirely being run by the private company SpaceX. NASA’s only part is that of a customer, with the ability to say “no” at any point. The rocket, the capsule, the launchpad, and the countdown, is operated completely by SpaceX and its employees.

I have also added the clean feed from NASA, which appears to carry little commentary or narration.

» Read more

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First US Rocket Lab launch delayed until ’21

9:46 am

Because of issues in Rocket Lab’s flight termination system (used to destroy the rocket should it go out of control during launch), the company has announced that its first U.S. launch will be delayed until 2021.

One reason for the delay, Rocket Lab said, was that it was waiting on NASA to certify the autonomous flight termination system (AFTS) that will be used on the rocket to provide range safety. NASA controls the launch range at the Wallops Flight Facility, where LC-2 is located. “There’s a very long certification process that, quite frankly, we probably underestimated how long it would take,” Peter Beck, chief executive of Rocket Lab, said in an interview in August.

That certification process is ongoing. In a Nov. 10 talk at a Maryland Space Business Roundtable webinar, David Pierce, director of NASA Wallops, mentioned preparations for Rocket Lab’s first launch as part of an overview of the facility’s activities. “We’re really proud of our work with Rocket Lab,” he said. “We’re working really hard to support Rocket Lab with a launch in ’21.”

Asked later about the certification of the AFTS, Pierce said that engineers had kept on schedule with the development of the system into the summer despite the pandemic. “When they sent the unit out for review of the software, we found some errors,” he said. That review involved teams at NASA’s Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation Facility, the Federal Aviation Administration, Vandenberg Air Force Base and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

While I have no evidence of this, I cannot help being suspicious of these various government agencies. For years numerous people in the government put fake roadblocks up to slow or stop SpaceX’s first manned launch, merely because it threatened their turfs. This autonomous termination system will make the ground crews at Vandenberg and at Cape Canaveral irrelevant, and I would not be surprised if some of these issues were drummed up to delay or block this system because of that.

I know I am being cynical, but based on history it is not unreasonable to be so.

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