Category: Points of Information

Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.

Update on continuing engine testing of Starship prototype #8

8:45 am

Link here. The article provides details on the on-going engine tests of SpaceX’s eighth prototype of its Starship reusuable upper stage.

As should be expected, the testing has not gone exactly as planned, though clear progress is being made, especially in the testing of the header tanks in the nosecone..

After several days of test windows come and gone and an aborted attempt on November 9th, Starship SN8 finally ignited one of its three Raptor engines, feeding the engine with liquid methane and oxygen stored in two separate header tanks. Oddly, a second or two after startup and ignition, Raptor’s usual exhaust plume was joined by a burst of shiny firework-like debris. A relatively normal five seconds later, the Raptor cut off, though the engine appeared to remain partially on fire for another ten or so seconds – also somewhat unusual.

It appears that fire was from nearby debris, not the engine itself.

Another engine test is likely later this week. The actual 50,000 foot hop will not happen until they have completed all these engine tests.

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NASA officially approves operational Dragon manned missions

7:03 am

Capitalism in space: NASA yesterday officially certified SpaceX’s Dragon capsule for future operational manned missions to ISS.

NASA officials gave approval Tuesday for SpaceX to begin regular crew rotation flights to the International Space Station with the launch of four astronauts set for Saturday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, signaling a transition from development to operations for the human-rated Dragon spacecraft.

Mission managers completed a two-day Flight Readiness Review Tuesday and issued a preliminary go-ahead for the launch of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon “Resilience” spacecraft Saturday at 7:49 p.m. EST (0049 GMT Sunday) with NASA commander Mike Hopkins, pilot Victor Glover, and mission specialists Shannon Walker and Soichi Noguchi, a veteran Japanese space flier.

The decision means that SpaceX will now be rotating crews for NASA at ISS every six months. It will also be reusing both the first stages and the capsules. Endeavour, the capsule used on the demo flight earlier this year, will be reused in the spring. Resilience, the capsule scheduled for launch on November 14th, will be reused next fall.

Since SpaceX also has a commercial manned flight planned for next fall, that will probably require a third capsule. With those three capsules they will have at least for the next few years a fleet will cover all their initial needs. Don’t be surprised if however the introduce an upgraded capsule or two along the way, based on what they learn on these initial flights.

The article had one other piece of new news concerning Boeing’s Starliner capsule. The second unmanned demo flight has now officially been delayed into the first quarter of next year, rather than late this year.

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Lock down madness prevents approval of cancer drug

9:47 pm

Because the FDA’s irrational fear of COVID-19, it has refused to do inspections required to approve a new drug (effective against non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma). The result: The drug company’s application will expire on November 16, meaning that they will have to start all over, a process that could take years, while tens of thousands die annually unnecessarily.

Liso-cel, manufactured by Bristol-Myers Squibb, originally had its Food and Drug Administration (FDA) application accepted in February, but has yet to have one of its contracted manufacturing sites undergo FDA inspection due to the coronavirus pandemic. Not only is the drug’s approval contingent on the facility inspections from the FDA, according to multiple company executives, but its application expires on Nov. 16, meaning that if the plant is not inspected in the coming days Bristol-Myers may have to completely resubmit the drug’s application as a result.

While the first of two facility inspections occurred, the planned inspection of Bristol-Myers’ contracted Houston facility has not “due to COVID travel restrictions and health risks,” according to a Sept. 8 conference call with Citi biopharma analysts and the company’s chief medical officer.

…The drug, which in clinical trials triggered a positive response in 73% of patients and remission in 53% of patients, according to Bristol-Myers, must receive FDA approval by Nov. 16. If it fails to be approved, it must resubmit its application, further delaying its approval by months, if not years, potentially costing thousands of lives as a result.

Each year, approximately 77,000 Americans are diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and about 20,000 Americans die, according to the American Cancer Society.

I promise you, this story is one of many. A cold rational look at the unnecessary deaths caused by the thoughtless fear of COVID-19 would find without doubt that the cure was much worse than the disease. We are killing many more people from other far more serious illnesses because of our unreasonable terror at something quite comparable to the ordinary flu.

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New Hampshire legislature flips from Democrat to Republican

6:29 pm

Resist! Not only did all parts of the New Hampshire legislature flip from Democrat to Republican, Republicans saw upset victories in state races in Rhode Island, Vermont, and Maine.

The victories included the defeat of the incumbent Democratic Party state house speaker in Rhode Island, the first time that has happened in more than a century. The same thing happened to the incumbent house speaker in Vermont, where voters ended the Democrats hold on a super-majority.

The Republican victories generally strengthen their power throughout much of New England, a region that for years has been assumed to be a permanent Democratic stronghold. It appears that assumption is no longer valid.

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Gateway already behind schedule and mismanaged

11:47 am

Surprise, Surprise! According to a report by NASA’s inspector general released today [pdf], the agency’s Lunar Gateway space station project is already behind schedule, will likely not be available for any 2024 Artemis lunar mission, and apparently has been mismanaged in a manner that is raising costs.

Many of the problems appear to have been caused by NASA’s abrupt decision, ten months after awarding its contracts to Maxar and Northrop Grumman to build respectively the station’s service (PPE) and habitation (HALO) modules, to require that they both be launched on a single rocket, rather than separate launches as originally planned. From the report:

The decision to launch the PPE and HALO together, while avoiding the cost of a second commercial launch vehicle, has contributed to cost increases due to the redesign of several components, an elevated launch risk, and a longer duration flight to lunar orbit. In addition, due to the decision Maxar was forced to terminate its subcontract with Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) for PPE launch services, even though Maxar had already paid SpaceX approximately $27.5 million for this service, a portion of which was paid by NASA prior to the termination. Further, a co-manifested launch increases risk because together the elements may be too heavy for commercially available rockets or too long for the rocket’s fairing, potentially impacting intended spacecraft mass, length, and other requirements.

While the Trump administration had already made the decision to not rely on Gateway for its hoped-for 2024 manned lunar landing, it still hoped to have it available for use. This now appears unlikely. The report today is very clear: “Gateway likely will not be in a position to support a 2024 lunar landing.”

None of this is really a surprise. If anything, it is a feature of Gateway, not a bug. The program was always intended as a big jobs program, funneling money to NASA contractors who would in turn set up operations in various important congressional districts. Like SLS and Orion, it is more important that the program get delayed while costing more than actually accomplish anything.

Even if a Biden administration (still not confirmed) takes over and decides to support this project (which I think will happen), do not expect it to take place as scheduled. At best, Gateway will not be operational for years yet, and in fact it could take until the ’30s to get it built and launched. And that slow and expensive schedule will be exactly what our corrupt politicians and government bureaucrats want.

Meanwhile, China will be setting up its bases on the Moon. And maybe so will SpaceX using Starship.

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Relativity completes testing of rocket engine

9:37 am

Capitalism in space: The smallsate rocket company Relativity has successfully completed, ahead of schedule, the testing of its Aeon-1 rocket engine, and is now moving to completing design and construction of its Terran-1 rocket, tentatively scheduled for its first test flight in 2021.

The successful tests augur well for the ongoing development of the Terran 1 rocket, which represents a challenge as this rocket will now be larger than originally anticipated. In 2019, due to customer requests, Relativity resized its rocket to nearly double the available volume for payloads. It expanded the diameter of the fairing at the top of the rocket to 3 meters and height to 7 meters. While this is smaller than the fairing used in big rockets like the Falcon 9, in the class of “small satellite” launch vehicles it is quite large.

Relativity’s move to a larger fairing necessitated a more powerful engine with a gas generator cycle. The original Aeon engine had a thrust of 17,000 pounds at sea level, and the new version boosts the power considerably to 23,000 pounds. And now the company has been able to validate this larger, more powerful engine design.

The Terran 1 rocket, with a lift capacity of 1.25 tons to low Earth orbit, is powered by a first stage with nine Aeon engines. Success with the engine testing gives the company confidence that it can hit its target of launching the first Terran 1 rocket in 2021, said Zach Dunn, vice president of factory development. The next step is integrated stage testing, which will happen next year, followed by a launch from Space Launch Complex-16 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Right now it appears to me that in the race by American companies to join Rocket Lab in providing launch services for smaller satellites, Virgin Orbit and Astra are in the lead, having completed their first test flights, with Firefly and Relativity close behind.

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Meteorite stolen five years ago from Australian museum recovered

8:45 am

A meteorite that was stolen five years ago from a small Australian museum, only two weeks after it was donated to that museum, was recovered by police two days ago.

While the police have returned the meteorite, they have not yet revealed much else.

On Saturday, Queensland Police executed a search warrant at a Cairns address and recovered the space rock, valued at more than $16,000.

Investigations are underway into the incident, and no charges have been laid, but the sisters are pleased the meteorite is back in their possession.

…Police investigating the incident said they were looking into a number of leads relating to the theft. “I believe it definitely has a story to tell,” Senior Constable Heidi Marek said. “I’ll leave it up to detectives to uncover that story but hopefully we’re able to reveal a bit of information down the track.”

That no charges were file is most puzzling. I hope the full story is soon revealed.

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Second cable failure further disables Arecibo radio telescope

8:28 am

A second cable at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico has broken, further disabling the radio telescope from operation.

A main cable that supports the Arecibo Observatory broke Friday at 7:39 p.m. Puerto Rico time.

Unlike the auxiliary cable that failed at the same facility on Aug. 10, this main cable did not slip out of its socket. It broke and fell onto the reflector dish below, causing additional damage to the dish and other nearby cables. Both cables were connected to the same support tower. No one was hurt, and engineers are already working to determine the best way to stabilize the structure.

The telescope has been badly crippled since the first cable failure in August.

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Jupiter’s stormy southern polar regions

2:46 pm

Jupiter's polar regions
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right shows the southern polar regions of Jupiter. The image, taken by Juno during its 29th close-fly of Jupiter, was enhanced by a citizen scientist who only goes by the nickname Flury-21. This in fact was this person’s first try at enhancing a Juno image. He or she did a nice job, but provided no additional information other than saying that he “used lightroom to enhance the image and mostly used the dehaze effect.”

Works nicely nonetheless to illustrate how the bands that dominate Jupiter’s equatorial and mid-latitude regions disappear at the pole. Instead, the pole is a region of chaotic independent hurricanes, many bigger than North America. Other images from Juno suggest that they change relatively quickly. For example, compare this image of the south pole with an earlier one taken during the 28th fly-by. While we might not be looking at the same hemisphere, it is hard to believe there is no overlap between both images. Yet I can find no corresponding features.

The two images of course were taken months apart, and thus it is not surprising the storms have changed completely. However, I also suspect, given their size, that even over this time span some storms have survived, but changed so much it is hard to link them together. The only way to do this would be to have an orbiter close enough all the time to make movies. Unfortunately, Juno cannot do this, and I don’t expect any orbiter like this to reach Jupiter for many decades.

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Boeing hires former SpaceX software engineer

9:52 am

Capitalism in space: Boeing has hired a former SpaceX software engineer to head software development for the company.

Boeing on Friday announced it hired Jinnah Hosein as vice president of software engineering, a new role at the aerospace giant. The job will lead a centralized organization of engineers developing software across Boeing’s portfolio of products. Hosein will report to Greg Hyslop, Boeing chief engineer and senior vice president of engineering, test and technology.

…Hosein’s resume reads like a defense industry wish list of Silicon Valley stops. He worked as Google’s director of software engineering for cloud networking, helped design Tesla’s autopilot software and most recently worked as software lead for self-driving startup Aurora.

But it’s his experiences at SpaceX — where he was key to software development for the Falcon, Falcon Heavy, Dragon and Crew Dragon vehicles — that Boeing may look to draw from the most. Boeing and SpaceX have fiercely competed over NASA’s manned space programs, and SpaceX is a competitor for military space launches against the United Launch Alliance, which is co-owned by Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

Since software was the main issue that grounded Boeing’s 737-Max airplane as well as caused the serious problems on the first unmanned demo flight of the company’s Starliner capsule, this hire appears to be aimed at fixing these software issues. In both cases the management philosophy behind developing and testing software was very flawed, leaving the product saddled with software that either didn’t work properly or was not tested properly in development.

I imagine Boeing’s top management is hoping Hosein can bring to Boeing some of the agile, focused, and very successful management style found at SpaceX.

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