Category: Behind The Black

Sierra Space’s Tenacity mini-shuttle arrives at the Cape

9:30 am

Capitalism in space: Sierra Space’s Tenacity Dream Chaser mini-shuttle has finally arrived at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for its final testing and assembly onto ULA’s Vulcan rocket.

Upon arrival at Kennedy, teams moved Dream Chaser Tenacity to the high bay inside the Space Systems Processing Facility, where it will undergo final testing and prelaunch processing ahead of its launch scheduled for later this year.

…The remaining pre-flight activities at Kennedy include acoustic and electromagnetic interference and compatibility testing, completion of work on the spaceplane’s thermal protection system, and final payload integration.

If all goes right, Tenacity’s first mission will last 45 days, delivery about 7,800 pounds of cargo to ISS, and prove out the reusable mini-shuttle for up to seven more flights to ISS.

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ESA narrows Ariane-6 launch date to first two weeks in July

9:24 am

In an announcement today, the European Space Agency (ESA) narrowed the launch window for the first launch of its new Ariane-6 rocket to the first two weeks in July.

It also stated that the final launch date will be revealed in the first week of June, during presentations at an air show in Berlin, Germany.

In the next month the rocket will undergo a full dress rehearsal countdown on the launchpad. It will then be “drained of fuel in preparation” for the actual launch.

This rocket is built and mostly owned by the private consortium ArianeGroup, made up of a partnership of Airbus and Safran, and working in conjunction with ESA. Though Arianespace, ESA’s long time commercial arm, is mentioned as ESA’s “launch service provider” for this launch, it is very clear that it is being pushed aside and will soon become irrelevant. The rocket is four years behind schedule and being entirely expendable it is too expensive to compete in the modern launch market. The member nations of ESA have rejected it, and so they are shifting to a capitalism in space model, whereby they no longer have a government commercial “launch service provider” like Arianespace, but instead buy launch services from competing private European rocket companies.

Europe’s problem is that it will take time to develop these private companies. In the interim it will be forced to use Ariane-6, but likely only for a few years. There are at least five new rocket companies in Europe, with three (Rocket Factory Augsburg, PLD, and Hyimpulse) having already completed their first launch tests.

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May 20, 2024 Quick space links

4:12 pm

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.

 

 

 

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Solar storms are simply no longer a threat

3:39 pm

The sunspot cycle as of May 2024
The sunspot cycle as of May 2024. Click
for full details.

Today’s Chicken Little Report: When NOAA predicted on May 9, 2024 that a powerful solar flare had erupted from the Sun and was aiming a major solar storm directly at the Earth, the scientists at the federal government’s Space Weather Prediction Center could not help underlining the disaster potential, and were ably aided by the mainstream press. This CNN report was typical:

“Geomagnetic storms can impact infrastructure in near-Earth orbit and on Earth’s surface, potentially disrupting communications, the electric power grid, navigation, radio and satellite operations,” according to the Space Weather Prediction Center. “(The center) has notified the operators of these systems so they can take protective action.”

The center has notified operators in these areas to take action to mitigate the potential for any impacts, which include the possibility of increased and more frequent voltage control problems. Other aspects operators will monitor include a chance of anomalies or impacts to satellite operations and frequent or longer periods of GPS degradation.

And as always, the news report has to end with this warning of doom:
» Read more

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Court rules COVID jab mandate unconstitutional

11:55 am

One more COVID story to start the week: Earlier this month the 10th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled unequivocally that the mandates requiring the jab and limiting who could be exempted that were imposed by the University of Colorado were unconstitutional.

The University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in 2021 required COVID-19 vaccination of all students and employees. It initially offered religious exemptions to anyone who checked a box, but it later stated that administrators would “only recognize religious exemptions based on religious beliefs whose teachings are opposed to all immunizations.”

Officials, for instance, said Christian Scientists would qualify for an exemption but Buddhists would not. They also said exemptions would be granted only to people who never received any vaccinations.

Medical exemptions, on the other hand, were available if a doctor said the prospective recipient’s health or life would be endangered.

College officials would also reject exemptions solely on their own opinion on whether the applicant’s religion was really against vaccinations or not.

The court’s ruling now allows the lawsuit of seventeen students and employees to go forward.

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Former head of NIH admits 6-foot social distancing rule had no scientific basis at all

11:12 am

It was all a lie: In the transcript of a closed-door interview of former NIH director Francis Collins that was released on May 16, 2024, Collins admitted under questioning that there was absolutely no science research or justification behind 6-foot social distancing rule that the government imposed during the Wuhan panic.

“We asked Dr. Fauci where the six feet came from and he said it kind of just appeared, is the quote,” the majority counsel on the committee told Dr. Collins, per the transcript. “Do you recall science or evidence that supported the six-feet distance?”

“I do not,” Collins replied.

Counsel then asked, “Is that I do not recall or I do not see any evidence supporting six feet?”

To which Collins replied “I did not see evidence, but I’m not sure I would have been shown evidence at that point.”

“Since then, it has been an awfully large topic. Have you seen any evidence since then supporting six feet?” Counsel replied.

“No,” said Collins.

None of this is a surprise to those who were paying attention. Back in August 2020 I reported how there was no scientific evidence backing up the six-foot social distancing rule, and that in fact it appears it came from a high school research project that was not based on actual data but on a computer simulation comparable to SIM City.

Even now, the CDC continues to recommend the 6-foot spacing rule, though those rules are based on nothing more than the opinion of some petty dictator in the bureaucracy.

During the entire COVID panic I complained repeatedly about the lack of scientific evidence. Every time the CDC or the government would change its rules, I’d ask, “What new research has appeared to justify this change?” Of course, there never was any new research. These petty goons simply made it up as they went along.

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Pushback: NJ gym wins total victory in court after refusing to obey illegal COVID mandates

10:45 am

Bring a gun to a knife fight: The owners of the New Jersey gymnasium announced on May 18, 2024 that they have now won a total victory in court against the numerous citations and penalties the state government attempted to impose upon them and their operation because they refused to obey any of the insane and illegal COVID mandates imposed by New Jersey governor Phil Murphy.

ALL OF THE 80+ municipal citations of violations of a governor’s order, public nuisance, disturbing the peace, and operating without a license against us have been dropped by the courts WITH prejudice. This means the State has NO ability to revisit or refile these charges.

This victory opens the battlefield again and gives us options to continue to push back and bring justice to the treasonous actions of Phil Murphy and his lackies.

The first paragraph above suggests the owners now have legal grounds to sue Murphy and the state for illegal harassment and false prosecution. The second paragraph says that they intend to.

The owners in 2022 had already gotten their business license reinstated. In the interim they had managed to keep the gym functioning by asking, and getting, donations from those who used it.

I pray they proceed in court with as many lawsuits as possible against all the government officials involved in this bad behavior, including the local police, who at one point changed the locks on their building and boarded up the gym, thus allowing the plumbing to back up.

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Blue Origin resumes manned suborbital New Shepard flights

9:09 am

Blue Origin yesterday flew its first suborbital New Shepard flight since a failure during an unmanned flight in 2022, flying six passengers on a short ten-minute jump.

This suborbital flight got a lot of press yesterday and today, but I consider these suborbital tourist flights somewhat old news. Had they occurred two decades ago, in the 2000s as promised, they could have helped trigger the commercial space industry. Instead, both Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic took another two decades to get started, and by that time orbital tourist flights were taking place.

There might be money to be made in suborbital hops like this, but the future of space exploration lies elsewhere.

As for Blue Origin, this flight confirms that the company has fixed the nozzle issues that caused the September 2022 launch failure. During ascent just after launch the spacecraft’s abort system activated, sending the New Shepard capsule free from the first stage booster, which subsequently crashed. The capsule landed safely with parachutes.

The investigation then stretched out over more than two years. It remains unclear why it took so long, though the FAA’s regulatory burden appears to have been one factor, with Blue Origin’s own sluggish pace of operations another.

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China launches four satellites

8:47 am

China early this morning successfully launched four satellites, its Long March 2D rocket lifting off from its Taiyuan spaceport in the northwest of China.

No further information about the satellites was released. Nor did China’s state-run press provide any information about where the rocket’s lower stages, using toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed within the country.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

52 SpaceX
22 China
7 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the world combined in successful launches, 59 to 35, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world, including other American companies, 52 to 42.

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Piece from SpaceX Dragon service module falls on Canadian farm

9:12 am

Though not yet confirmed a 90-pound piece of burned debris that crashed on a Canadian farm and found in late April appears to be a section from the trunk section of a SpaceX Dragon service module.

Jonathan McDowell, who tracks space launches and re-entries, posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the trunk from the private Axiom Space Ax-3 mission fell over Saskatchewan on Feb. 26.

This incident, along with several others over the last few years, tells us that not everything engineers thought would burn up upon re-entry does so. A major rethinking of how objects are de-orbited could be necessary.

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NLRB suspends case against SpaceX

9:04 am

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has agreed to suspend one of its cases against SpaceX while the company’s lawsuit challenging the board’s constitutional authority proceeds.

SpaceX alleged that the NLRB’s in-house enforcement proceedings violate its constitutional right to a jury trial. It also said limits on the removal of the NLRB’s board members and administrative judges violates the Constitution. Amazon, Starbucks, and Trader Joe’s have asserted similar claims in recent months.

A second NLRB case has already been suspended by the federal 5th Court of Appeals, for the same reasons.

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SpaceX launches another 23 Starlink satellites

10:50 pm

This bunny never stops. SpaceX today successfully launched 23 more Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage set a new record for reflights, completing its 21st flight after landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The company has said it is upgrading these stages to last for 40 launches instead of 20, and this launch clearly is the first step in that direction.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

52 SpaceX
21 China
7 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the world combined in successful launches, 59 to 34, while SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 52 to 41.

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Starliner launch delayed again, to May 25, 2024

3:36 pm

Boeing, ULA, and NASA have decided to delay the first manned flight of Boeing’s Starliner capsule another four days to 3:09 pm (Eastern) on May 25, 2024.

The additional time allows teams to further assess a small helium leak in the Boeing Starliner spacecraft’s service module traced to a flange on a single reaction control system thruster. Pressure testing performed on May 15 on the spacecraft’s helium system showed the leak in the flange is stable and would not pose a risk at that level during the flight. The testing also indicated the rest of the thruster system is sealed effectively across the entire service module. Boeing teams are working to develop operational procedures to ensure the system retains sufficient performance capability and appropriate redundancy during the flight.

It appears they simply want to give themselves extra time to review their data thoroughly, with no rush, before lighting the rocket.

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May 17, 2024 Quick space links

3:11 pm

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.

 

 

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A Catholic threatened with blacklisting because he gave an unapologetic Catholic speech at a Catholic university to a class of Catholics: How dare he!

2:47 pm

Harrison Butker committing leftist heresy
Harrison Butker committing leftist heresy
by simply stating his basic Christian beliefs

They’re coming for you next: This week’s blacklisting kerfuffle centers on a graduation speech given by football player and Super Bowl champ Harrison Butker at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas on May 11, 2024.

It appears a lot of leftists and advocates of the queer agenda didn’t like what he had to say, and are pushing to have the Kansas City Chiefs fire him. A petition at change.org has already collected nearly 200,000 signatures to have the “Kansas City Chiefs management … dismiss Harrison Butker immediately for his inappropriate conduct.” On social media and within the media the outrage was just as sharp. Several tweets on X attempted to dox both Butker and his family, with one (immediately deleted) coming from the office of the mayor of Kansas City.

It got so bad that the NFL disavowed Butker, stating publicly that “his views are not those of the NFL as an organization. The NFL is steadfast in our commitment to inclusion, which only makes our league stronger.”

But what did Butker do that was so terrible? You can find out for yourself by reading the full text of his speech here. I can sum it up however quite simply: » Read more

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A really really big landslide on Mars

1:22 pm

A really really big landslide on Mars
Click for original image.

Sometimes the cool geological features I find in the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) image archive are so large they are difficult to present on this webpage. Today is an example. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on March 13, 2024 by the high resolution camera on MRO. It shows the distinct run-out of debris from a landslide that flowed downhill to the north as a single unit of material. Along the way it carved its track in the ground, almost like a ramp.

The full picture however suggested something much more spectacular. In that full image this landslide is merely a small side avalanche to a landslide many times larger. And that high resolution picture only shows what appears to be a small section of that giant slide. Obviously, this required a look at the global mosaic produced by MRO’s context camera to find out how far that avalanche actually extended.
» Read more

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NASA signs new agreement with ESA to partner on Franklin Mars rover

9:41 am

NASA yesterday signed a new agreement with the European Space Agency (ESA) that confirmed its previous commitment to help land ESA’s Franklin rover on Mars.

With this memorandum of understanding, the NASA Launch Services Program will procure a U.S. commercial launch provider for the Rosalind Franklin rover. The agency will also provide heater units and elements of the propulsion system needed to land on Mars.

Previously NASA had committed $30 million to pay for that launch provider, as yet undetermined. It now wants $49 million for the Franklin mission, with the extra money likely to pay for the new additional equipment outlined in this agreement.

Whether NASA gets this money from Congress however remains unknown. It has not yet been appropriated.

This overall European project has been fraught with problems. It was first designed as a partnership with NASA. Then Obama pulled NASA out in 2012, and ESA switched to a partnership with Russia, which was to provide the rocket and lander. Then in 2022 Russia invaded the Ukraine and Europe broke off all its partnerships with Russia.

Since then ESA has signed a deal with the company Thales Alenia to build the lander.

As these political foibles were going on, the rover also had parachute issues that forced ESA to cancel its original launch date in 2022, using the Russian rocket.

It is likely Congress will approve this additional funding, though it seems to me that Europe should be able to afford paying for its own launch, especially if it is buying that service from the much cheaper U.S. market.

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