The competition heats up: Firefly Space Systems has successfully tested its aerospike engine.
They are, like Virgin Galactic and Rocket Lab, aiming for the smallsat market, and hope to fly their first launch by 2018.
Posted from Los Angeles, where I am stranded for the nighr because my flight to Tucson today was cancelled due to bad weather.
An evening pause: Recorded live in London, 1971.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
In the heat of competition: Russia this week announced new space agreements with both China and Europe.
The first describes a deal whereby Europe will pay Russia to use its Bion capsules to launch life science experiments. In addition, the article notes that Europe will continue its agreement with Russia to launch commercial Soyuz rockets from its Arianespace launchpad in French Guiana.
The second and third stories describe a variety of negotiations between Russia and China, whereby the two countries will work together in a number of ways, including the possibiliity that China will buy the same Russian rocket engine that ULA uses in its Atlas 5 rocket as well as maybe jointly build a heavy lift rocket with Russia. In the second article, Russia’s deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin, in touting the excellence of the Russian rocket engine, could not help taunting the United States.
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A new ransomware attack, designed to kidnap your computer and demand money from you before releasing it, has been written entirely in javascript and is thus more dangerous because many email programs, like Gmail, will not block the running of the .js file.
The bottom like is always the same: Don’t run attachments sent to you unexpectedly, even from friends. Check with them to confirm that they meant to send it, and if they don’t confirm, delete it.
I could also label this story as another reason I don’t use gmail, but that really is a different story entirely.
Now available in hardback and paperback as well as ebook!
From the press release: In this ground-breaking new history of early America, historian Robert Zimmerman not only exposes the lie behind The New York Times 1619 Project that falsely claims slavery is central to the history of the United States, he also provides profound lessons about the nature of human societies, lessons important for Americans today as well as for all future settlers on Mars and elsewhere in space.
“Zimmerman’s ground-breaking history provides every future generation the basic framework for establishing new societies on other worlds. We would be wise to heed what he says.” —Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society.
All editions are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all book vendors, with the ebook priced at $5.99 before discount. All editions can also be purchased direct from the ebook publisher, ebookit, in which case you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
Autographed printed copies are also available at discount directly from the author (hardback $29.95; paperback $14.95; Shipping cost for either: $6.00). Just send an email to zimmerman @ nasw dot org.
Nice first stage you got there, be a shame if something happened to it: The Florida port where SpaceX has been offloading its recovered first stages from its barge has announced that it wants to charge the company $15,000 each time.
“We view their cargo passing over our dock just like any other cargo passing our dock,” Port Canaveral Chief Executive Officer John Murray said. “We’re not looking at this as an adversarial relationship. It’s no different than anything else coming across the dock. You have to pay for use of port facilities. That’s how a port makes its money.”
“The proposed wharfage fee is 14 times higher than what any other business is being charged for using port facilities,” SpaceX spokesman John Taylor said in an email to FLORIDA TODAY. “Port Canaveral is an important partner in our recovery operations. But we expect fees to be fair and reflect our actual use of the port. We’re looking forward to participating in the meeting later this week.”The port notes that the size and the weight of the first stages cause significant wear and tear to the port, and thus should pay more. They have a point, but this still looks like they have noticed they have a customer with deep pockets that they now are trying to pick.
Posted from Linthicum, Maryland.
An evening pause: From the Martin Scorsese documentary, The Last Waltz (1978).
Note that if a band tried to write a song like this today, sympathetic to the southerns who died during the Civil War, they would probably find their careers destroyed. So much for artistic freedom, and having empathy for all souls.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel, can be purchased as an ebook everywhere for only $3.99 (before discount) at amazon, Barnes & Noble, all ebook vendors, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big oppressive tech companies and I get a bigger cut much sooner.
"Leaving Earth is one of the best and certainly the most comprehensive summary of our drive into space that I have ever read. It will be invaluable to future scholars because it will tell them how the next chapter of human history opened." -- Arthur C. Clarke
The competition heats up: Vulcan Aerospace now says that construction of its Stratolaunch airplane, the largest ever to fly, will be completed by the end of this year.
Assembly of the plane is 76 percent complete, with the engines, landing gear and one tail section still to be installed. The plane is expected to be finished before the end of the year. Commercial services are expected to begin before 2020.
They still have not determined the second stage rocket they will use with this mother ship to launch satellites, which leaves me increasingly skeptical about their future. It is very late in the game to still not know this detail.
Link here. The videos at the link are especially informative.
Polls have recently shifted strongly in favor of leaving the union, but that is not a certain result. If it happens, however, I will consider that decision by the public to be another example of a growing revolt by the general public against the intellectual elites who presently rule western society, since most of these elites appear to favor keeping the United Kingdom in the European Union.
Posted from Washington, D.C.
In a television interview today Donald Trump softened his position on the use of terrorist watch lists to deny Americans their second amendment rights under the Bill of Rights, aligning his position more closely to that of the National Rifle Association which endorsed him.
This whole kerfuffle illustrates once again the importance of surrounding Trump with trustworthy conservatives who can influence him. Trump is not trustworthy, but he will bend to the will of those who advise him, and he has made it clear that he wants the NRA’s advice.
Thus, it is crucially important to elect a lot of conservative Republicans this November. Such people in Congress, and only such people, can prevent the worst abuses coming from what will likely be a generally confused Trump administration, or a decidedly leftist Clinton one.
Posted from Washington, D.C.
The competition heats up: Blue Origin today completed the fourth test flight of its New Shepard suborbital spacecraft, successfully landing intact its capsule with only two parachutes.
That’s four flights in about seven months, which for a test program seems a reasonable pace. I would expect them to soon begin testing faster turnaround times for the spacecraft, just to see if they can launch and repeat more quickly.
Update on the November Democratic primary: Donald Trump today repeated his support for the idea of allowing the FBI or a bureaucrat in Washington to decide whether Americans will have the right to own or buy guns, essentially denying them their second amendment rights.
Donald Trump reaffirmed his stance on restricting individuals on the terror watch list from being able to purchase firearms, despite Republican objections. “We have to make sure that people that are terrorists or have even an inclination toward terrorism cannot buy weapons, guns,” Trump told ABC’s White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl in an interview that will air Sunday on “This Week.”. [emphasis mine]
So now, according to Trump it is even reasonable for the government to deny you your rights, based merely on what they think you think. Gee, what could possibly go wrong with that idea, especially when such power is handed to government bureaucrats whose political bosses crave power above all else?
I must admit I have been toying with the idea of voting for Trump, because Hillary Clinton is going to be far worse. Trump however is doing his damndest to convince me that this would be a mistake, and a third party vote makes more sense, even if Gary Johnson has his own problems..
NASA scientists have released videos of the fire experiment they ran on Orbital ATK’s Cygnus freighter last week after it was unberthed from ISS.
The videos are at the link. They are not as exciting or as interesting as I think everyone imagined. However, they do confirm that the sample burned for 8 minutes.
Be still my heart: Delivery of the service module for NASA’s Orion capsule, being built by the European Space Agency, will be three months late due to engineering modifications.
Nico Dettman, head of ESA’s space transportation department, said the delay is partly a result of the fact that several components could not yet be assessed in the full critical design review and need more time to be integrated into the design. Dettman said another issue forcing the delay resulted from a reassessment by NASA of the stresses the service module needs to be capable of handling in orbit. These “in-orbit load” specifications have recently been tightened. But any design modifications will not affect the service module’s core structure, he said. “If it has an impact, it will be limited to the solar array wings, not the structure – nothing where flight hardware has been manufactured that we will have to touch,” Dettman said. “It’s a late modification, but not too late.”
Note that George Bush proposed Orion in January 2004. The first full up test flight, unmanned, is now scheduled for 2018. Thus, they only had 14 years to build this single capsule and service module.
It took NASA less than five years to build the first Apollo capsule and service module, and less than 8 years to fly seven to the Moon. Damn, it took the Allies less than four years to defeat Germany and Japan in World War II. Yet somehow the big government space programs of NASA and ESA can’t build a single manned capsule in less than 14 years.
Doesn’t anyone but me see something wrong with this picture?
The competition heats up: Roscosmos revealed today that Russia is negotiating with investors in Australia to buy SeaLaunch.
I’m not sure how seriously we can take this announcement. The sale still has a lot of problems for any investors. Boeing is owed a lot of money by the SeaLaunch partners, specifically Russia, and the SeaLaunch floating launchpad is docked in the U.S. where they can hold it as collateral
The revolt continues: Republican incumbent Congressman Randy Forbes (R-Virginia) was defeated in Tuesday Virginia Republican primary, despite being supported by the party establishment and outspending his opponent, Scott Taylor, 10-1.
Forbes, who started his pivot from the 4th District to the 2nd with an incumbent’s healthy campaign fund, spent more than $1.3 million in the primary compared with the little more than $142,000 that Taylor reported spending as of late May.
Taylor, a former Navy SEAL, ran against much of Virginia Beach’s GOP establishment, with several local elected officials as well as departing U.S. Rep. Scott Rigell endorsing Forbes’ candidacy. Rigell rented Forbes his former headquarters on First Colonial Road and sold him his email lists of supporters.
Redistricting was certainly a factor in the incumbent’s defeat but this article points out something that the newspaper article above as well as all other mainstream articles I’ve read fail to note: Incumbent Forbes had voted to make it almost impossible for Congress to challenge or amend Obama’s the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, also called Obamatrade.
Taylor blasted Forbes for voting to give President Obama fast track authority to ram through Congress the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a sweeping 12-nation international regulatory pact that would merge our economy with some of the poorest and most repressive on earth. This move was especially hypocritical for Forbes, chairman of the House Prayer Caucus. Obamatrade would give special economic privileges to countries that persecute Christians, including Vietnam, Malaysia and the Shariah-law regime of Brunei.
After his disastrous vote for fast track, Forbes tried to tap dance around the Constitution-shredding, religious-liberty-trampling Obamatrade agreement. In a letter to constituents, Forbes recycled the party establishment’s globalist talking points, saying free trade is “crucial to our economy” and to “our future as a country.” Then Forbes said he would support Obamatrade if it were amended, glossing over the fact that his vote for fast track surrendered Congress’ power to amend the agreement. [emphasis mine]
In other words, Forbes had been part of the Republican establishment that has consistently refused to fight any of the Democratic agenda, instead focusing on putting on a show of failure theater, where they act like they are fighting Obama while allowing his legislative goals to pass. The voters saw through this, and kicked him out.
For the past two months I have been very focused on writing what I hope will be a somewhat influential space policy paper for the Center for New American Security, comparing the different approaches the federal government has taken in the past fifteen years toward encouraging a robust launch industry in the United States. Essentially the policy paper, Exploring Space in the 21st Century: How the American space effort since 2000, both private and public, is changing the global aerospace industry, compares the big government rocket launch programs like Orion/SLS and the Air Force’s EELV/ULA with the commercial rocket launch contracts that NASA has signed with companies like SpaceX, Orbital ATK, Boeing, and Sierra Nevada to get cargo and crews up and down from ISS.
The comparison is profound, and is devastating to the supporters of big government programs. Commercial space has literally accomplished ten times more in a third the time for a tenth the cost.
That bears repeating: Commercial space ($4 billion) cost one tenth that of Orion/SLS ($43 billion), took one third the time to go from concept to launch (5 years versus 15 years), and accomplished ten times more (22 rockets/capsules versus 2.5 rockets/capsules). In analyzing these numbers, I also took a close look at why the differences are so profound. Surprisingly, the high cost of Orion/SLS has little to do with its engineering challenges, nor is it caused by any significant overcharges by the contractors. The problem is more fundamental.
The paper also reviews the effect the competition introduced by SpaceX has had on the entire launch industry. Launch costs are dropping and innovation is increasing. This, combined with the lessons learned by NASA in commercial space, suggests that the future of getting into space looks quite bright indeed.
This policy paper should be ready for publication sometime in the next two months. On Monday, however, I will be part of a space policy panel at the Center for New American Security’s annual conference in Washington, DC., where I will give a short overview of my findings to a lot of major players in the upper echelons of the Washington elite community. Their response should be quite interesting.
Thus, I will be traveling to DC this weekend, and am not sure if I will be able to post much on Monday, since I very much wish to attend the entire day’s conference and listen to the other speakers, including Vice President Joe Biden. It is my plan to write about what I see once I get back.
An evening pause: For Father’s Day this coming Sunday.
Hat tip Danae.
Good news: Iraq has retaken Fallujah from ISIS control.
This is their victory, not ours, and stands a very good chance of sticking because of that.
Embedded below the fold. Lots of science in this segment.
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News you can use: Ten scientific reasons owning a cat will improve your life.
I especially like #4.
