Swingrowers – Midnight
An evening pause: A prelude to Halloween. The visuals come from vintage 1920s and 1930s early cartoons, though the bulk comes from Walt Disney’s 1929 cartoon, Skeleton Dance.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
Category: Behind The Black
October 30, 2024 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.
- Blue Origin rolls the first stage of the first New Glenn rocket to launchpad
The upper stage still needs to be stacked. Also, a dress rehearsal countdown with static fire test needs to be done. Still no word on launch date, though it finally appears within sight.
- Chinese pseudo-company AZSpace plans first launch of its cargo capsule to Tiangong-3 in November
It also has unveiled its own New Shepard copycat suborbital capsule. I will consider both real, when they fly.
- Thailand’s government approves signing Artemis Accords
If this happens (it remains unconfirmed from NASA), Thailand would be the first nation to sign on to both Artemis and China’s lunar base project. I wonder if that will fly with the next president.
- Lockheed Martin completes acquisition of smallsat manufacturer Terran Orbital
The final acquisition price was $450 million. Lockheed has been a major investor of Terran since 2017, so the deal made sense in many ways.
- According to Russian officials, Europe has returned its ExoMars lander, minus European components
ESA kicked Russia off the mission to land the Franklin rover on Mars when it invaded the Ukraine. That decision however delayed the rover’s launch now until 2028.
- Short video panning across what the tweet claims is the sharpest image yet taken of the Andromeda galaxy
I think this is a Hubble image, but the tweet provides no information.
- Watch Comet ATLAS (C/2024 S1) evaporate in its close approach to the Sun
This is not Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, which has provided a nice show for viewers, but a different comet that astronomers hoped would be even brighter. Instead, the Sun destroyed it.
SpaceX launches another 23 Starlink satellites
SpaceX this afternoon completed its second launch today, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral carrying 23 Starlink satellites.
The first stage completed its fourteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
The earlier launch was from Vandenberg, also with a payload of Starlink satellites.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
107 SpaceX
49 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 124 to 72, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world, including American companies, 107 to 89.
“What the heck?” lava on Mars
Click for original image.
Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 19, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled merely as a “terrain sample,” it was likely snapped not for any specific research project, but to fill a gap in the camera schedule in order to maintain its proper temperature.
When the science team does this they try to pick interesting locations. Sometimes the picture is relatively boring. Sometimes, like the picture to the right, it reveals weird geology that is somewhat difficult to explain. The picture covers the transition from the smooth featureless plain to the north, and the twisting and complex ridges to the south, all of which are less than a few feet high.
Note the gaps. The downgrade here is to the west, and the gaps appear to vaguely indicate places where flows had occurred.
» Read more
SpaceX launches 20 more Starlink satellites
SpaceX early this morning successfully launched another 20 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.
The first stage completed its fourteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
106 SpaceX
49 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 123 to 72, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world, including American companies, 106 to 89.
JAXA confirms first hop of Callisto delayed until ’26
Callisto’s basic design
Japan’s space agency JAXA has now confirmed what France’s space agency CNES had revealed in August, that the first 100-meter-high hop of the government-proposed Callisto engineering Grasshopper-type test rocket will not take place any earlier than 2026.
This joint project of JAXA, CNES, and Germany’s space agency DLR was first proposed in 2015, and by 2018 was aiming for a 2020 launch. Four years past that target date and they are still not ready to launch. Remember too that even after it completes its test hop program an operational orbital rocket would have to be created. It does not appear this can easily be scaled up to fit Ariane-6.
SpaceX meanwhile conceived its Grasshopper vertical test prototype in 2011, began flying that year, and resulted in an actual Falcon 9 first stage landing in 2015. It has subsequently completed well over 300 actual commercial flights, reusing first stages up to 23 times.
The contrast between these government agencies and that private company is quite illustrative.
Sutherland finally gets the okay from local council
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea.
After multiple submissions of its plan to build a spaceport off the coast of Scotland, the Sutherland spaceport’s most recent proposal has finally been approved by the local council.
Most significant about the decision is that it rejected the legal objections of billionaire landowner Anders Holch Povlsen, who has previously fought the spaceport and is also an investor in the competing spaceport SaxaVord in the Shetland Islands. Povlsen had objected to the spaceport placing small tracking antennas on a nearby mountain where other larger communications antennas already operated.
This decison could still face the veto of the Scottish ministry. It will be no surprise if Povlsen uses his clout to cause difficulties at this level.
Meanwhile, it is more than two and a half years since Sutherland’s prime launch customer, Orbex, submitted its launch license to the United Kingdom’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), with no approval. At the moment the company hopes to launch next year.
October 29, 2024 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
» Read more
Richard Marx – Hazard
An evening pause: Performed live 1992.
Hat tip Doug Johnson.
October 29, 2024 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.
- China narrows its choice for manned lunar rover to two
Both are proposed by different agencies, with one to be selected for the actual mission
- China awards two space station cargo supply contracts to different pseudo-companies
If successful, it will give the Chinese multiple options for getting cargo up to its station.
- Pentagon increases its budget for commercial satellite internet services 13-fold, to $13 billion
The military has found it pays to buy such services from the private sector, rather than trying to build it itself.
- Another study posits another underground ocean, this time within the Uranus moon Miranda
Based on a computer model, so take the claim as serious as you want.
- ISRO revises its proposed Next Generation Launch Vehicle (NGLV)
It has reduced the number of rocket configuations from four to three.
- On this day in 1998, John Glenn returned to space on the space shuttle Discovery
For those who studied politics at the time, it seemed obvious that Glenn got this flight because he did such a good job acting as Bill Clinton’s attack dog in the Senate.
China launches new crew to its space station
China today successfully launched a new three-person crew to its Tiangong-3 space station, its Long March 2F rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.
No word on where the rocket’s side boosters or lower stages, using toxic hypergolic fuel, crashed inside China. The crew will dock with the station mid-day tomorrow.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
105 SpaceX
49 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 122 to 72, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world, including American companies, 105 to 89.
Pushback: Workers fired from San Fran’s subway for refusing jab win $1 million jury award
Fight! Fight! Fight! Six workers who were fired from San Francisco’s
BART subway system for refusing to get a COVID jab have won a $7.8 million judgment from a jury, with each person taking home more than a million dollars in damages.
The employees claimed religious exemptions to the vaccine mandate but say they were not accommodated by the transit agency, and subsequently lost their job.
BART did initially grant vaccine exemptions, but the plaintiffs argued they weren’t accommodated. An accommodation could have meant that they were able to work from home or get tested regularly for COVID. They argued none of that happened and they lost their jobs.
More information here and here. There were not the only fired employees who sued. Another sixteen had sued and then settled in July. It also appears that further suits by fired employees are pending.
Do not expect these stories to stop. Over the next five years we will see story after story of blacklisted individuals winning case after case, because almost all the blacklisting in the past five years due to politics, COVID, and racial bigotry has been blatantly illegal, not only breaking numerous civil rights laws but in direct violation of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the very fundamental principles of American culture. When these cases get before juries, the plantiffs are going to win, and win big, as these former BART employees have.