Category: Behind The Black

NanoRacks and Moon Express team up for lunar missions

8:53 am

Capitalism in space: The private space company Moon Express has signed an agreement with NanoRacks to help manage its planned lunar commercial missions.

Under the agreement, NanoRacks, a company best known for transporting satellites and other payloads to the International Space Station, will handle sales, marketing and technical support for payloads that will fly on Moon Express’ series of lunar lander missions, starting in early 2018. “The primary goal of our alliance with NanoRacks is to ensure a great customer experience,” said Bob Richards, founder and chief executive of Moon Express, in a statement. “Our companies share a culture of customer focus, and together we will be able to provide end to end support from payload concept to mission operations.”

NanoRacks does similar work for researchers and cubesat manufacturers who want access to ISS. They act as the go-between, bundling the different projects and arranging them with NASA.

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The mysterious dark splotches of Mars

11:58 am

The dark splotches of Mars

Cool image time! The image on the right, cropped and reduced in resolution to post here, shows one particular dark splotch in a region with several similar dark areas.

Geologists aren’t quite sure what to make of the dark splotch in the middle of this image, one of several similar dark splotches that extend east and west for over 100 kilometers. From measurements made in infrared, this and other dark splotches have what we call “high thermal inertia,” meaning that it heats up and cools down slowly. Scientists use thermal inertia to assess how rocky, sandy, or dusty a place is. A higher thermal inertia than the surrounding area means it’s less dusty.

The image below the fold shows at full resolution the area indicated by the white box. It provides me no clue as to the cause for the darker color. I think we can speculate all we want, but the truth is that we simply don’t have enough information. We need a closer look, including boots on the ground, to figure this out.
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Why electric cars for interstate travel cannot work

10:49 am

Link here. He does the math, and finds the infrastructure for providing the charging stations necessary to make electric interstate travel possible to be prohibitive.

The bottom line really has more to do with the stupidity of governments banning the use of gasoline cars and dictating the use of electric cars, regardless of what the engineering can do and the economical factors involved. It is much better to leave these decisions up to the free market, with emphasis on the word free. If electric cars are economical, they will eventually replace gasoline. If not, they won’t, and if governments mandate their use all that will happen is that everyone will be poorer, and the environment will likely be worse off.

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Sunspot update for September 2017

9:38 am

On Sunday NOAA posted its monthly update of the solar cycle, covering sunspot activity for September. That graph is posted below, with annotations.

September 2017 Solar Cycle graph

The graph above has been modified to show the predictions of the solar science community. The green curves show the community’s two original predictions from April 2007, with half the scientists predicting a very strong maximum and half predicting a weak one. The red curve is their revised May 2009 prediction.

Last month saw the strongest amount of sunspot activity in a year, thus helping to bring the pace in the decline of sunspot activity back towards the low prediction from April 2007. This also suggests that the ramp down to solar minimum will continue through 2019, with minimum not occurring before then, at the earliest. At the same time, the increase in sunspot activity seen in September seems to have eased in October, with the return of a blank Sun this past week.

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A modern academic looks at the Outer Space Treaty

8:40 am

Link here. I could also label this another sign of the coming dark age. Consider her proposals:

Space laws need to be updated for our time. Extending the Outer Space Treaty or writing a new one is unlikely to work, as US hesitancy to sign the [Treaty on Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space and of the Threat or Use of Force Against Outer Space Objects (PPWT)] shows. ‘Soft law’, driven by need, seems the best option for revising the rules for space operators.

Soft law comprises rules or guidelines that have legal significance but are not binding. It sets standards of conduct for agreeing parties, much like those that protect the environment and endangered species. ‘Rules of the road’ and best practices for space should be developed. These could take a similar form to the navigation guidelines set out in the 1972 Convention on International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea, which govern when one vessel should give way to another, as well as other interactions.

Soft law works when it is in the interest of all parties to abide by it. If countries and companies want to maintain the space environment as a usable domain, then it is in their interests to accommodate a variety of operations. Space is more complex to manage than air, land or sea because of the distance, physics and technology involved. Just as in the cyber domain, technology has preceded regulation, making it difficult to impose after the fact.

The first focus of an analogous set of space guidelines should be environmental protection and debris avoidance, areas that most spacefaring nations agree on. [emphasis mine]

Rather than fix a bad law, the Outer Space Treaty, that is binding on everyone, she proposes the we make the laws “soft,” thus unreliable because everyone can ignore them whenever they want. The result? Utter contempt for the law.

Then she indicates her main interest, which isn’t exploration or the settlement of the solar system, which is the actual interest of the people who are building rockets and spaceships, but “environmental protection.” Above all, we must establish strict regulations that will prevent those pristine lifeless worlds from being damaged by us evil humans!

If anything is a prescription for stunting the growth of space exploration, this is it. Unfortunately, it appears that this prescription is also the dominate intellectual approach of today’s academic community.

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Death threats force journal to remove pro-colonialism paper

8:49 pm

The fascists win: Death threats have finally forced the academic journal Third World Quarterly to take down a paper that had expressed some pro-colonialism ideas.

In a “withdrawal notice” posted on the now-blank “Viewpoint” article page, publisher Taylor & Francis said the death threats were “serious and credible” and “linked to the publication of this essay.” It reiterated against contrary claims that the article had “undergone double-blind peer review.”

Gilley [the author] himself had asked for the article’s withdrawal following a coordinated international campaign to ruin his reputation and blacklist him from other journals, and to shame Third World Quarterly into removing it. Fifteen members of its editorial board resigned in protest of its publication.

What had Gilley said that was so terrible?

Research …often finds that at least some if not many or most episodes of Western colonialism were a net benefit…Such works have found evidence for significant social, economic and political gains under colonialism: expanded education, improved public health, the abolition of slavery, widened employment opportunities, improved administration, the creation of basic infrastructure, female rights, enfranchisement of untouchable or historically excluded communities, fair taxation, access to capital, the generation of historical and cultural knowledge, and national identify formation, to mention just a few dimensions.

He couched this statement with numerous caveats and politically correct expressions of doubt, in the hope the mob would not come after him for stating something that is simply not permitted in today’s modern fascist academic community. I should also note that as a historian who has researched this subject myself, his position is easily documented by numerous papers across the entire field. The colonialism movement of Europe had numerous bad aspects, but numerous benefits as well for the countries colonized.

None of this mattered. Gilley had blasphemed against the leftist anti-western ideology, and had to be destroyed, along with anyone else who even hinted at mild support.

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Twitter blocks campaign ad by Republican congresswoman

5:44 pm

Facists: Twitter today blocked the campaign announcement by Republican Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn that she is running for the Senate seat being given up by Bob Corker (R-Tennessee) because Twitter did not like one of the political positions she was taking.

Blackburn, who is running for the seat being opened by the retirement of Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker, boasts in the ad that she “stopped the sale of baby body parts.” A Twitter representative told the candidate’s vendors on Monday that the statement was “deemed an inflammatory statement that is likely to evoke a strong negative reaction:

Twitter said the Blackburn campaign would be allowed to run the rest of the video if the flagged statement is omitted. While the decision keeps Blackburn from paying to promote the video on Twitter, it doesn’t keep it from being linked from YouTube and other platforms. [emphasis mine]

In other words, Twitter is now giving itself the authority to determine the political positions a candidate for political office is allowed to hold or campaign on.

This is reason 2,453,328 why I do not use Twitter, even though there is no doubt it could increase my web presence. Everything about it is slimy and dishonest, while encouraging the worst in people. I want no part of it.

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Russia and Saudi Arabia sign space agreement

8:55 am

The new colonial movement: This week Russia and Saudi Arabia signed another in a series of space cooperative agreements.

While specific details about the space exploration agreement are not available, it is the result of high level discussions between senior officials from the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research in Moscow.

…Saudi Arabia, along with its ally and neighbour the United Arab Emirates, has been assiduous in its efforts to cultivate close and substantive ties with the space agencies of leading space powers such as the United States, China, Europe, Russia, India, and Japan.

Over the past several weeks alone it has been reported that the UAE and Russia are in discussions about training and launching Emirati astronauts as Abu Dhabi embarks on its own human space flight programme. In the case of Saudi-Russian cooperation, Saudi Arabia brings much needed financial resources to a struggling space programme, while Russia brings potential technology and science transfers in space launch, planetary sciences, space probe technologies, human space flight, and space mission design, planning, architectures, and operations.

It appears that Saudi Arabia has the cash that Russia needs, and Russia has the expertise, rockets, and space station that Saudi Arabia needs. A deal made in heaven.

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The midterm revolt brewing against the Republican leadership

11:35 pm

Link here. Two key quotes:

The movement that is emerging to back candidates nationally in these critical upcoming primaries and general elections—combined with the candidates themselves, almost a decentralized and loosely organized political party in and of itself—is filled with some of the strongest conservative voices and a broad spectrum across the movement.

“What I’m seeing is a lot of anger, frustration, and disappointment from voters around the country,” Jenny Beth Martin of Tea Party Patriots, a key grassroots organization, told Breitbart News. “They are angry at the lack of Republican leadership on Capitol Hill, and many think it’s time to ditch Mitch as the leader of the Senate. What I am beginning to remind people and let people know is I’m meeting incredible candidates around the country who are willing to take on the Republican status quo. I’ve seen candidates from Montana to Mississippi, Missouri, and Tennessee, who are ready to take on the status quo and be the leaders we need.” [emphasis mine]

And this:

In other words, conservatives are considering a full slate of candidates nationally in open races and those with Democrat incumbents—and running or actively seeking out serious primary challengers for every GOP incumbent senator up for reelection next year except for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)—all part of an effort to wrest control of the Republican Party away from failed leaders and hand it to fresh blood. [emphasis mine]

Back in 2015 at the beginning of the presidential campaign I noted a number of factors suggesting that the Republican Party was a house divided against itself and was likely to break up, with the more moderate half likely replacing the Democratic Party.

Right now the party is trying to be too big a tent, including conservatives and many moderate Democrats who find the modern Democratic Party unacceptable. (This is one reason why the Republican presidential field is so large.)

Should the party split, we might also eventually see the withering away of the Democratic Party, which today is very corrupt and far too leftwing for most Americans. If the Republicans split into conservative and moderate wings, many of those disenchanted Democrats would move to the moderate Republican faction. The result would be to cut off the corrupt modern Democratic Party from the reins of power.

We could now be seeing the concrete political beginnings of this process.

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Private company to build its own ISS airlock

9:25 pm

Capitalism in space: The private company NanoRacks has raised the funds necessary to build its own ISS airlock and install it in 2019.

“The reason we want our own airlock is this airlock is going to be five times bigger than the current airlock, and it’s going to be far more commercial,” Manber said in a Sept. 27 presentation at the International Astronautical Congress in Adelaide, Australia. In addition to satellite deployments and experiments, he said the module will be commercial “real estate” on the station, with the ability to mount payloads on its exterior. “It’s getting us more into the real estate business and space station operations,” he said.

Manber said the module was on track to launch in 2019, carried to the station in the trunk of a SpaceX Dragon cargo resupply spacecraft. A formal manifesting of the payload on a resupply flight is now being finalized, he said, while the airlock itself is being manufactured.

What this suggests to me is that ISS might not go away in 2024, but instead slowly shift to private ownership and operation, all for profit. This deal appears to lay the groundwork for this shift.

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Air Force releases request for launch proposals

1:02 pm

Capitalism in space: The Air Force has released a new request for proposals for providing launch services after 2022.

The Air Force has released a request for proposal for its next iteration of the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle, known as EELV, to be used on space lift such as the Atlas V, Delta IV, and Falcon 9 rocket systems. The service said Thursday it plans to award “at least three agreements” for prototype development as part of its Launch Services Agreement strategy.

The news comes amid the Air Force’s attempt to move away from its use of Russian-made RD-180 engines.

Though I doubt Blue Origin will have launched enough to get certified by the Air Force when the contracts are awarded in 2020, expect them to demand a pie of the action soon thereafter.

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Canadian Inuit officials demand halt to rocket launch

8:57 am

The coming dark age: Canadian Inuit officials are demanding that the launch of a European atmospheric research satellite by a converted Russian ICBM be stopped out of fear of the pollution it might cause.

The position of the rocket company is based on calculated engineering:

In a statement to CBC News, the European Space Agency insisted the fuel won’t reach Earth’s surface. “Please remember that under standard pressure, hydrazine boils at 113.5 C,” the agency said. The stage containing the fuel will re-enter Earth’s atmosphere much hotter than that, it said. “The structural parts lose their integrity and by melting the destruction of the stage occurs. The agency said that six kilometres above the ground “the propellant components have completely burnt up.”

The position of the protesters is based on fear and lack of knowledge:

The concern for Inuit is the rocket’s second stage, which contains hydrazine-based fuel and is expected to splash down in the North Water Polynya. Though it’s outside of Canada and Denmark’s international waters, it’s home to a vast array of birds and marine mammals that Inuit rely on for food.

“It’s the birthing ground of all the animals that we eat, that people in the North depend upon,” said Eva Aariak, Canada’s commissioner on the Inuit Circumpolar Council and former Nunavut premier. “I know it’s being played down in terms of the kind of effect it would have, but nobody knows. This is the most concerning part is that nobody really knows. And before people know exactly what kind of effect it can have, we will keep fighting.” [emphasis mine]

The article also interviews a pro-Inuit scientist whose primary evidence apparently comes from a youtube video.

There is no doubt that hydrazine is very toxic, which is why it is generally not used as the launch fuel for rockets. However, these protests appear based on mindless fear, almost like the protesters were primitive tribesman afraid of thunder. Ah, but maybe that is exactly what they are!

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Stratollite completes five day balloon test flight

3:48 pm

Capitalism in space: World View’s first test flight of its stratollite high altitude balloon out of its Tucson launch site has successfully achieved a five day mission.

The vehicle hovered between 55,000 and 75,000 feet, while successfully testing out equipment designed to steer the balloon and keep it relatively stable at the same spot. Onboard were a 50.6-megapixel Canon EOS 5DS camera to do Earth observations, as well as communications equipment from the US military’s Southern Command. The military is interested in using the stratollite to look for human and drug trafficking, as well as maritime piracy.

World View says it’s going to bring down the stratollite sometime today, after hitting all of its critical milestones. “This is an enormous leap in our development program and we are certain the stratollite is going to forge a new path in how we observe, react to and collect data about our planet,” Jane Poynter, CEO of World View, said in a statement.

It is pretty clear that World View has shifted its focus from high altitude tourist flights in a balloon to high altitude reconnaissance and research flights, suggesting that they found the customer demand for the tourist flights at $75,000 each to be weak.

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TeamIndus still searching for funds for Google Lunar X-Prize mission

9:51 am

Capitalism in space: TeamIndus, one of the five finalists in the Google Lunar X-Prize mission, is still searching for the funds it needs to pay for its launch.

Bengaluru-based aerospace start-up TeamIndus is scouting for funds and sponsors to build a spacecraft with a rover for landing and exploring the lunar surface. “The total budget of the moon mission is about Rs 450 crore, out of which we have raised more than half (Rs 225 crore) and have spent. We’re trying to accumulate the rest through sponsors and others interested in this mission,” TeamIndus Fleet Commander Rahul Narayan told reporters here on Thursday.

They have a contract to launch on India’s PSLV rocket, but have been trying to raise the funds needed to pay for it now for months. In July they had raised half the needed funds. Though this article says they have raised more than half (in Indian money: Rs 225 crore), that number remains half of the total budget listed (Rs 450 crore). From this it appears they have not yet found any additional sponsorship.

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MDA becomes Maxar

9:43 am

Capitalism in space: The space company MDA has acquired DigitalGlobe and reorganized itself under the new name Maxar Technologies.

The acquisition and name change appears to be part of a strategy to make this long time Canadian company an international company able to do U.S. military missions.

MDA undertook a major corporate reorganization in May 2016 as part of its “U.S. Access Plan” strategy, including the appointment of Mr. Lance and the formation of SSL MDA Holdings, Inc., with its headquarters in San Francisco, which manages and controls all of the Company’s operations across Canada, the U.S. and internationally. This process was completed under the guidance and approval of the U.S. Department of Defense, whereby SSL MDA Holdings operates under a Security Control Agreement. This structure allows the Company to pursue and execute U.S. government programs that require security clearances.

Maxar’s SSL division is the one building a satellite servicing mission for DARPA, and has been sued (unsuccessfully) by Orbital ATK for getting favorable treatment by the government, including federal monies, even though it is a foreign company. This reorganization apparently is aimed at eliminating Maxar’s foreign status in the U.S.

The name change also succeeds in making the company more marketable. MDA, which stands for MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd, always sounded like an accountant firm. Maxar is much better.

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ArianeGroup struggles with the concept of reusability

10:13 pm

Capitalism in space: ArianeGroup, the company building ESA’s next generation rocket Ariane 6, is debating when and if it should introduce reusability into its design.

[Patrick Bonguet, head of the Ariane 6 program,] said ArianeGroup is studying reusability with Prometheus “in order to be sure to take the right path at the right moment.” Those efforts are mostly to prevent Europe from being caught flat-footed in the wake of other reusable launch systems, namely from SpaceX and now also Blue Origin.

Reusability is far from a primary focus, however. “We still have not understood, would we save money by reusing? At least with our launch rate?” he asked. “We hope to launch 12 times a year. If we reuse 12 times, that means we only manufacture one time per year. It is difficult for us to have that.”

Bonguet said reusability would essentially erase the production efficiencies ArianeGroup is striving for, starving the Ariane 6 industrial base of the work upon which it relies. A smaller tip-toe into reusability could come through salvaging Ariane 6’s payload fairings. Swiss manufacturer Ruag Space is developing reusable fairings, which Bonguet said are of interest to ArianeGroup.

I guarantee that by the mid-2020s they will entirely be “caught flat-footed” if they have not begun by then the use of reusable rockets.

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The first meeting of the National Space Council

9:45 am

The first meeting of the National Space Council just wrapped up. You can see highlights here. I have several thoughts.

The entire event was very carefully staged, with the planned outcomes determined beforehand. The three panels of speakers were organized to match up with the three main actions the council intended to pursue, with the questions from the various high level Trump cabinet members clearly arranged to line up with each panel. Moreover, the fact that all these panel members were there and participating in this staged event suggests that Trump himself is directly interested, and insisted they do so.

The first action was a decision to rework the country’s overall space policy, including its future goals for exploring the solar system. This action item was linked with statements by officials from Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Orbital ATK, and was clearly intended to placate their desire to keep what they all called “sustained” and “reliable” funding. It was also clearly linked to Pence’s opening remarks, which insisted that the U.S. should return to the Moon, permanently, and use that as a jumping off point for exploring Mars and the rest of the solar system.

The second action was a commitment to review, in the next 45 days, the entire regulatory bureaucracy that private companies must face. This was linked to the testimony from officials from SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Sierra Nevada.

The third action was a focus on the military and national security aspects of space, focused on the development of a “space strategic framework” that will apparently link the military needs with the growing commercial space industry. This framework has been under development for several months. The council actually spent the most time questioning the national security witnesses on this issue. This focus also aligns with the main interest in space held by Trump’s nominee for NASA administrator, Congressman Jim Bridenstine (R-Oklahoma). Interestingly, Bridenstine was in the audience, but was given no speaking opportunity, unlike the NASA acting administrator, Robert Lightfoot, who Pence specifically provided a moment to speak.

Overall, this meeting indicates that the Trump administration is likely not going to do much to drain the swamp that presently dominates our space effort. Trump’s interest in reducing regulation remains strong, but it also appears he and his administration is also strongly committed to continuing the crony capitalism that is wasting literally billions of dollars in space and helping to put the nation into unrecoverable debt.

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