Category: Behind The Black

Spanish rocket startup PLD gets $34 million loan to build orbital rocket

9:43 am

The Spanish rocket startup PLD has obtained a $34 million bank loan to build its Miura-5 orbital rocket.

On 12 July, PLD Space announced that it had received a €31.2 million syndicated loan from Banco Santander, EBN Banco, and the Instituto de Crédito Oficial. A syndicated loan is provided by a group of lenders to distribute the financial risk among the participating lenders.

…According to the company, the loan amount will primarily be used for the Miura 5 rocket development programme, which includes both the development of the rocket and the expansion of the company’s industrial capabilities. It will also be used to support the company’s growth, with PLD planning to surpass 300 employees by the end of 2024.

For a rocket startup to get significant financing through a bank loan like this is very unusual. Almost always banks are reluctant to loan money for such a risky project. Instead, rocket startups get investment capital from venture capitalists, who are willing to take greater risks. PLD itself has already raised $164 million in this manner, $46 million of which came from the Spanish government itself.

I therefore wonder if some political pressure from the Spanish government helped convince the banks to approve the loan.

Regardless, PLD hopes to do the first orbital test launch of Miura-5 in 2025, with operational flights to follow the next year.

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Europa Clipper mission threatened by faulty transistors

9:31 am

Engineers have learned that transistors installed on NASA’s Europa Clipper mission were not built to the right specifications and could fail in the harsh environment surrounding Jupiter.

The issue with the transistors came to light in May when the mission team was advised that similar parts were failing at lower radiation doses than expected. In June 2024, an industry alert was sent out to notify users of this issue. The manufacturer is working with the mission team to support ongoing radiation test and analysis efforts in order to better understand the risk of using these parts on the Europa Clipper spacecraft.

Testing data obtained so far indicates some transistors are likely to fail in the high-radiation environment near Jupiter and its moon Europa because the parts are not as radiation resistant as expected. The team is working to determine how many transistors may be susceptible and how they will perform in-flight. NASA is evaluating options for maximizing the transistors’ longevity in the Jupiter system. A preliminary analysis is expected to be complete in late July.

This issue could be disaster for the mission, which has a launch window that opens on October 10, 2024. If it is impossible to replace the bad transistors, NASA will be faced with two choices, neither great. It could launch regardless and hope for the best. It could delay the mission to fix the problem, which might involve a delay of years waiting for a new launch window.

This story appears to illustrate once again the decline in quality control that appears to be happening across much of American industry. The technology for building radiation-hardened equipment has been standard for decades. For a company to deliver equipment below standard now suggests incompetence or fraud, neither of which speaks well for it and the entire industry.

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SpaceX launch experiences a failure of upper stage

10:52 pm

Second stage engine with leak

For the first time since June 2015, a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch experienced a failure today after lifting from Vandenberg in California. During a launch tonight of twenty Starlink satellites, the upper stage showed signs of a fuel leak during its initial burn, and according to a tweet from Elon Musk, it exploded when it relit to make a final orbital adjustment.

Upper stage restart to raise perigee resulted in an engine RUD [rapid unscheduled dissembly] for reasons currently unknown. Team is reviewing data tonight to understand root cause.

Starlink satellites were deployed, but the perigee may be too low for them to raise orbit. Will know more in a few hours.

The arrow on the screen capture from the live feed, taken during the upper stage’s initial burn, indicates that apparent leak.

The first stage however successfully completed its nineteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

This failure ended an incredible string of 344 successful launches, a record unmatched by any rocket ever in the history of space exploration. It was also the very first launch failure of SpaceX’s Block 5 Falcon 9, the rocket’s final design that has allowed the first stages to be reused now more than twenty times.

The next SpaceX launch is presently scheduled for July 14, 2024, but we should expect that launch to be postponed while engineers investigate the failure tonight. We should also expect that delay to last no more than several weeks, at most.

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Archeologists find the musket balls fired in the first shots of the Revolutionary War

9:33 pm

Archeologists digging at Concord discover what they think are five musket balls fired in the first shots of the Revolutionary War.

Archeologists believe five musket balls unearthed in Concord’s Minute Man National Historical Park were fired by colonial militia in the famed battle moments that sparked the Revolutionary War. The 250-year-old musket balls were discovered in an area inside the park where historians believe British troops faced colonial forces at the North Bridge.

Analysis of the artifacts indicates they were fired by colonial militia members from across the river, and not dropped from British weapons when troops were reloading.

Since the Minute Men fired over a period of time, routing the British troops, there is no way to know if these musket balls were the first fired, or among the later rounds. Nonetheless, these artifacts are an actual piece of a moment of history that literally changed all of human history.

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A ridge that runs right over a Martian mesa

2:42 pm

A dike in a mesa
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on April 5, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). I have cropped it to focus on the geological feature that likely attracted the interest of the scientists who requested this photo, the mesa that has a ridgeline running over it as if the mesa was not even there.

The mesa is about 80 feet high on its west side, but on its east the ground continues to drop away more than 500 feet as you move 2.5 miles to the east. Based on how the MRO science team interprets the colors [pdf] in the color strip, the orange areas are likely dust while the greenish surface suggests coarser sand and boulders. This conclusion is reinforced if you look at the parallel dunes south of the mesa. The dunes are yellow-orange (dust) while the ground between is yellow-green (sand), exactly what you expect with the larger coarser material settling in lower elevations.

The overview map provides the context, which might help explain the ridgeline.
» Read more

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The real reason the propaganda press is finally reporting Biden’s long-known mental decline

12:47 pm

A free press is only a friend to the people if it is on their side
A free press is only a friend to the people if it is on
their side.

Many people on the right who follow politics have been somewhat astonished and amused at the aggressive and sudden willingness of the mainstream media — which I will from now on refer to as the propaganda press — to report in detail the long-known mental decline of President Joe Biden.

At first most thought, including myself, it was because of simple embarassment when their refusal to report these plain facts for the past four years was starkly revealed during Biden’s debate with Donald Trump on June 28th. For years they had worked hard to hide Biden’s declining mental health, going as far as accusing anyone on the right who reported it to be “spreading disinformation” (the modern catch-phrase for any reporting critical of Democrats) or to have created “deep fake” videos and manipulating footage to exaggerate Biden’s failings.

This past week I realized this conclusion is wrong. It is literally impossible for the members of this propaganda press to experience embarrassment. They weren’t embarrassed when it became clear their endless accusations that Trump had colluded with the Russians to win the election turned out to be a hoax, perpetrated entirely by the Hilary Clinton campaign. They weren’t embarrassed when it became clear that Hunter Biden’s laptop was real, that it wasn’t Russian disinformation as falsely claimed by 51 intelligence officers and then parroted by this propaganda press, and that everything on that laptop proved the depraved behavior of Hunter Biden and the criminal behavior of the entire Biden family, facts this propaganda press still refuses to cover.

Nor were they embarrassed by the numerous other false accusations against Trump that they have aggressively touted since 2017, all of which have been debunked time after time after time after time.

No, the reason the propaganda press is going full bore right now reporting Joe Biden’s mental decline is because these propagandists want a Democrat to win the eleciton in November, no matter what. » Read more

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India picks astronauts to train for manned mission to ISS

10:36 am

India has now reduced from four to two the astronauts it is training for the fourth Axiom commercial mission to ISS, planned for launch no earlier than October 2024.

Only one of these two men will fly on that Axiom mission, with the other being the back-up should a change be required. The decision on who has not yet been made.

The astronauts will have to go to the United States ahead of the mission to train on the specifics of the ISS. “While they have general training for space-fairing, much of their training in India focussed on Gaganyaan modules. They will have to be familiarised with ISS modules and protocols,” the official said.

The names of the two astronauts has not been released, as far as I can find. Either way, this training will be used in preparation for India’s own manned Gaganyaan orbital mission, now scheduled for 2025, since three of these four men will fly on Gaganyaan.

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Axiom signs $125 million deal with startup Gravitics to build a module for its space station

10:22 am

Artist conception of Gravitics' Starmax module
Artist conception of Gravitics’ Starmax
module, designed to fit inside Starship

The space station company Axiom on July 9, 2024 awarded a $125 million contract to the Seattle-based startup Gravitics to build a module for its upcoming space station.

The space station modules Gravitics is designing range from 3 meters (9 feet) to 8 meters (26 feet) in diameter. The largest module, which the company boasts will have the “largest interior volume in a standalone spacecraft,” is dubbed StarMax, a name inspired by SpaceX’s towering Starship rocket.

“We started by looking at Starship and saying, ‘Someone is going to maximize that payload volume,'” Doughan said.

It appears this contract is for one of the company’s smaller modules, though this could change with time.

Up until now, Axiom has hired the European company Thales Alenia to build the modules for its Axiom space station, with the first modules to initially be docked with ISS and then undocked to fly independent when ready. This contract, which is not exclusive, indicates Axiom’s desire to develop resources in America.

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Launch failure for Chinese pseudo-company Ispace

9:57 am

Based on a very terse report in China’s state-run press today, there was a launch failure today for one of China’s pseudo-companies, launched from the Jiuquan spaceport in the northwest of China.

Further research suggests the failure was on Ispace’s Hyperbola-1 solid-fueled rocket. If so, this would be that rocket’s fourth failure out of seven launches.

No other information about the failure has so far been released.

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India now has its own private company building space station modules

9:45 am

Even as India’s space agency ISRO gears up to build its own government space station, a Indian startup is proposing to build and launch its own commercial space station inflatable module, capable of carrying “6 to 16 personnel.”

The company, AkashaLabdhi, says it is negotiations with SpaceX for a launch target in 2027.

Founded in 2023, AkashaLabdhi has prepared its prototype model of the habitat called ‘Antariksh HAB’, according to a report by The Times of India. Antariksh HAB contains features such as an expandable shell that ensures ‘exceptional orbital debris and radiation protection’, the company says on its website. According to AkashaLabdhi, the design has multiple purposes besides space habitation. It can be used for microgravity experiments, satellite maintenance, orbital logistics storage. The company also hopes to see its usage for space tourism, armed forces operations among others.

“With a forward-looking perspective, this adaptable habitat holds potential for long-term lunar surface exploration,” the company said on its website. Built with several layers, the structure is meant to reach its intended orbit of 1,100 km. AkashaLabhi CEO Siddarth Jena told TOI on Wednesday that the structure will take about seven days to fully inflate, once it reaches its desired destination.

How real the plans of this company is unknown. That it exists at all and is proposing such ambitious plans illustrates however the capitalism in space revolution that is going on in India. The country has the technical capabilities to do such things, and is now free to go ahead due to the policies of the Modi government that has forced ISRO to provide aid and support, rather than control everything.

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