Category: Behind The Black
Starliner launch delayed again, to May 25, 2024
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.
May 17, 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.
- Rocket Factory Augsburg completes successful static fire test of first stage of its RFA-1 rocket
The test took place at the Saxaford spaceport on the Shetland Islands, which also suggests a launch licence from the UK bureaucracy is imminent.
- Eurepean company Aerospacelab breaks ground on new satellite factory in Belgium
The company says it will begin production by 2026, but it is unclear who it will be building the satellites for.
- China proposes mission to Jupiter and beyond by 2029
No real details, other than a single powerpoint graphic.
A Catholic threatened with blacklisting because he gave an unapologetic Catholic speech at a Catholic university to a class of Catholics: How dare he!
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
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
NASA signs new agreement with ESA to partner on Franklin Mars rover
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.
Russia’s Soyuz-2 rocket launches classified payloads
Russia yesterday placed an unnamed number of classified satellites into orbit, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its Plesetsk spaceport in the northern part of Russia.
The flight path went north, so the rocket’s four strap-on boosters and lower stages all fell in remote regions or in the Arctic Ocean.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
51 SpaceX
21 China
7 Russia
5 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise still leads the world combined in successful launches, 58 to 34. SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 51 to 41.
Emmy Russell & Lukas Nelson – Lay Me Down
An evening pause: Performed at an October 2022 concert celebrating the life of Loretta Lynn.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
May 15, 2024 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
» Read more
May 16, 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 touts a proposed New Shepard suborbital copycat
Tourist flights to begin in 2028.
- NASA touts the future assembly of its Lunar Gateway space station
Lots of details and promises here, last updated June 2023.
- ISRO finalizes design of its Shukrayaan Venus orbiter
They are targeting the 2026 launch window.
- On this day in 2011 the space shuttle Endeavour launched on its 25th and last flight
The final shuttle flight followed two months later.
- On this day in 1987 the Soviet Union’s Energia heavy lift rocket launched for the first time
The launch was supposed to put a large module into orbit, but failed to do so when that module’s engines got the wrong software command.
Another “rightwing COVID conspiracy theory” proves to be true
Burning witches: The debate technique used by
those in charge during the Wuhan panic
Since the very beginning of the COVID panic in 2020 many perfectly reasonable people, both inside and outside the medical community, suggested that COVID was artifically created and that the evidence strongly suggested its source was from a lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Worse, the evidence suggested that this work was partly funded by the United States itself — approved by federal bureaucrats like Anthony Fauci — that funnelled government contracts to China to do dangerous infectious disease research which that hostile nation could then use against us.
Unfortunately, those individuals found themselves routinely mocked as pushing a “rightwing COVID conspiracy theory,” with many finding their careers destroyed by blacklisting. During those dark times it was forbidden to ask any questions that went against the leftist government narrative that pushed the myths that COVID was a deadly perfectly natural disease, that lockdowns, masks, and social distancing were the only ways to stop it, and that in the end only the COVID jab could cure it.
We now know without question that those accepted wisdoms, enforced by brutal intolerance, were all wrong, and that the blackballed individuals who advocated otherwise were 100% correct.
Or to put it more bluntly, the only difference between a “rightwing conspiracy theory” and the truth is a few months.
This week we got another proof of this apt saying.
» Read more
NASA versus Isaacman/SpaceX on upgrading Hubble
Link here. The NPR article is a long detailed look at NASA on-going review of the proposal by billionaire astronaut Jared Isaacman and SpaceX to to do a maintenance mission to the Hubble Space Telescope.
The NPR spin is subtly hostile to the mission, because it would be funded privately and run entirely by private citizens, not the government. Like all modern leftist news outlets, it can only imagine the government capable of doing such things properly.
Reading between the lines, however, what I instead sense is that NASA and the scientific community is generally quite enthusiastic about this proposal, but wants to make sure it not only is done safely but does nothing to harm Hubble in any way, both completely reasonable concerns. While there appear to be some individuals who are opposed for purely political and egotistically reasons — a desire to keep control of this turf no matter what — I don’t see that faction having much influence long term.
Whether this project can go forward I think will be largely determined by the success or failure of Isaacman’s next manned flight, dubbed Polaris Dawn and scheduled for this summer. On it he will attempt the first spacewalk by a private citizen, using SpaceX’s Resilience capsule and EVA spacesuit. If that spacewalk is a success, and he can demonstrate the ability to accomplish some complex tasks during the EVA, it will certainly ease the concerns of many about a follow-up repair mission to Hubble.
If it does proceed, the goal appears to be to attach new gyroscope hardware to the outside of Hubble, rather than replace the failed gyroscopes already in place. Such an approach will be simpler and more in line with the capabilities of a Dragon capsule, compared to the repair work the astronauts did on the space shuttle.