September 26, 2025 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
» Read more
The Beach Boys – God Only Knows, a cappella
An evening pause: No visuals, no instruments, just their voices singing to heaven.
Hat tip Mike Nelson.
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.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"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
September 26, 2025 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 Lab touts its proposed Mars Telecommunications orbiter
The company is one of several bidding for this contract. Hence the repeated X tweets plugging it.
- Nineteen and a half minute Dragon engine burn to raise ISS’s orbit cuts off prematurely at 3.5 minutes due to “being on unexpected tanks”
Both Dragon and ISS are safe, but it is not yet clear exactly what the problem was.
- On this day in 1992, the Mars Observer mission was launched by a Titan III rocket
The orbiter was lost three days before it was to enter Mars orbit from a catastrophic failure in its propulsion system.
Leftist mob attacks conservatives at Tennessee State University
Click for full video
If you think the left is tamping down its violent rhetoric and terrorist murder attempts of conservatives, think again. Earlier this week an independent group of conservatives wearing MAGA hats decided to set up a table at Tennessee State University (TSU), inviting anyone to debate the merits or failures of DEI.
Very quickly a mob formed, stealing their signs and becoming increasingly threatening, with at least one carrying a screwdriver in a threatening manner. The police arrived, but did literally nothing to protect the students.
Eventually the students closed up their table and attempted to drive away, only to have their car surrounded by the mob and blocked from leaving. It took an extensive effort for the police to clear a path to let these students escape.
Watch for yourself below. And note, such mob violence against conservatives on campuses is not new. I have been reporting such events now for years. The only difference now is that the mobs appear to becoming more violent and aggressive.
» Read more
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.
Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space, is a riveting page-turning story that documents how slavery slowly became pervasive in the southern British colonies of North America, colonies founded by a people and culture that not only did not allow slavery but in every way were hostile to the practice.
Conscious Choice does more however. In telling the tragic history of the Virginia colony and the rise of slavery there, Zimmerman lays out the proper path for creating healthy societies in places like the Moon and Mars.
“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.
Astronomers detect the spiral motion of the accretion disk surrounding a star 515 light years away
Click for movie.
A team of Japanese astronomers have used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile to detect for the first time the rotation of the spiral accretion disk that surrounds a young star, rotation that showed the spiral was in the process of forming new planets.
Observations have revealed a spiral pattern in the disk of gas and dust around the young star IM Lup located 515 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Lupus. Spiral patterns are thought to be one of the signs that a new planet will form soon, but other things, such as an already formed planet, can also form spirals. These different types of spirals cannot be distinguished by visual inspection, but they are expected to move differently over time.
To determine the origin of the spirals around IM Lup, an international research team led by Tomohiro Yoshida, a graduate student at The Graduate University for Advanced Studies, SOKENDAI and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), created a stop-motion animation of the spiral pattern using four observations taken by ALMA over the course of seven years. The motion of the spirals in the stop-motion animation shows that they were not caused by an already formed planet, and instead the spirals might be helping to form a new planet.
The two images to the right, taken from the movie, show the spiral’s shift over seven years. I have added the vertical line down the center to help highlight that change.
This discovery once again illustrates the increasing sophistication of our astronomical tools, able to observe such changes at such a great distance.
Canadian rocket startup Nordspace postpones first suborbital test launch
Proposed Canadian spaceports
After trying twice earlier this week to launch its first suborbital test rocket from its Atlantic Spaceport in Newfoundland, the rocket startup Nordspace has decided to postpone that launch for at least several weeks, while it investigates the fuel leaks on the launchpad that caused fires during both launch attempts.
After detailed review over the last 15 hours, the root cause has been discovered to be related to our propellant quality slightly differing between vehicle tests at our test facility in Ontario, compared to our first launch test in Newfoundland and Labrador at our spaceport. This led to a fuel-rich scenario. All systems on the rocket and ground performed nominally after careful review. Personnel, rocket and the launch pad are perfectly safe and secure, and our safety systems operated nominally. As our company’s manufacturing and testing facilities are located in Ontario, there’s no expedient way to make the necessary modification with the temporary infrastructure and suppliers we have in place at our launch site.
This company is only about three years old, so this delay is hardly systematic to its operations. In that time they have established their own private spaceport, have built their first demo satellite (set to launch in June 2026), and developed a test suborbital rocket, Taiga, that is on the cusp of its first launch. The company is also developing its own rocket engines, as well as an orbital rocket dubbed Tundra.
Its speed puts to shame Canada’s other proposed spaceport in Nova Scotia, which was first proposed in 2016, and has far accomplished little. Many of its problems stemmed from the Ukraine War, which lost it the rocket it had hoped to market. Even so, it only signed its first launch customer in August of this year.
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.
Winner of the 2003 Eugene M. Emme Award of the American Astronautical Society.
"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
Germany’s military commits to spending $41 billion on space through 2030
In another sign that the member nations of the European Space Agency (ESA) are increasingly going their own way, Germany’s defense minister announced yesterday that his agency plans to spend $41 billion on space through 2030.
According to a 25 September Bundeswehr (German Armed Forces) release published following the minister’s address, the €35 billion investment will cover five main priorities: hardening against data disruptions and attacks, improved space situational awareness, redundancy through several networked satellite constellations, secure, diverse, and on-demand launch capabilities, and a dedicated military satellite operations centre.
This commitment is going to definitely benefit the three German rocket startups, Isar Aerospace, Rocket Factory Augsburg, and Hyimpulse. It will also likely benefit the North Sea launch platform — based in Germany — that is being built by a German consortium that has already received almost one million from the government.
While the European partners in ESA have generally kept their military spending separate from that agency, in the past a large bulk of this defense spending would have been committed to ESA joint projects, such as funding the agency’s commercial launch operation, Arianespace, to do the launches. No more.
NASA cancels Sierra Space’s contract for Dream Chaser cargo missions to ISS
Tenacity grounded in a warehouse, with the
Shooting Star small cargo capsule attached to
its aft port.
NASA today announced it has modified its fixed-price cargo contract with Sierra Space, canceling the planned seven cargo missions as well as a demo docking mission, replacing this with one test flight that will simply go into orbit and then return to Earth.
After a thorough evaluation, NASA and Sierra Space have mutually agreed to modify the contract as the company determined Dream Chaser development is best served by a free flight demonstration, targeted in late 2026. Sierra Space will continue providing insight to NASA into the development of Dream Chaser, including through the flight demonstration. NASA will provide minimal support through the remainder of the development and the flight demonstration. As part of the modification, NASA is no longer obligated for a specific number of resupply missions, however, the agency may order Dream Chaser resupply flights to the space station from Sierra Space following a successful free flight as part of its current contract.
The first launch of Tenacity, the only Dream Chaser so far constructed, has been repeatedly delayed for the past two years, with no explanation from either the company or NASA. Those delays started in 2023 as engineers began the final ground testing before launch, so though we do not know what the issue is it is likely that testing found something fundamentally wrong with the spacecraft that Sierra could not afford to fix.
According to Sierra’s own press release, the company will target a late 2026 launch for that free flyer mission. The company still hopes that mission will make further flights possible, either purchased by NASA or by others wishing to use Tenacity for in-orbit manufacturing, something it first proposed last year.
In the past two years, Sierra has shifted its focus away from commercial manned space and more towards winning military defense contracts. Part of that decision might have come from the problems with Dream Chaser. The decision might have also been fueled by the company’s generally unsatisfactory experience working with Blue Origin on their proposed Orbital Reef space station. While Sierra committed cash to develop and test its LIFE inflatable module, including a full scale prototype, Blue Origin appeared to do nothing at all. As early as September 2023 there were rumors the partnership was falling apart.
SpaceX launches 24 more Starlink satellites
SpaceX this evening successfully placed 24 additional Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
The first stage completed its 28th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific, moving it up into the top rankings for the most reuse by a rocket:
39 Discovery space shuttle
33 Atlantis space shuttle
30 Falcon 9 booster B1067
28 Columbia space shuttle
28 Falcon 9 booster B1071
28 Falcon 9 booster B1063
27 Falcon 9 booster B1069
As for the 2025 launch race, this is the present leader board:
125 SpaceX
55 China
13 Russia
12 Rocket Lab
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 125 to 95.
Elvis Presley – Burning Love
An evening pause: Taken from the album Viva Elvis, which is the soundtrack remix of Presley’s Cirque du Soleil show. From the youtube webpage:
Viva Elvis features new backing instrumentation on each track in an attempt to modernize the arrangements. This has met with a mixed critical response, with some reviewers praising the production quality and others opining that Elvis’s music is best left untampered with.
Hat tip Cotour.
On the radio tomorrow with Robert Pratt of Pratt on Texas
For those interested in hearing Robert Pratt and I discuss the non-stop ugliness we are presently seeing from the left side of the political spectrum, I will be on his show, Pratt on Texas, starting tomorrow at 5 pm (Central).
We taped the show today. Three out of the four segments focused on that tragic and very horrible madness that seems cool with the idea of killing people because of their opinions. The last segment focused on the space industry.
You can listen live at either the “listen live” button at the website of the country station KORQ 96.1, or here, or at the Pratt on Texas website.
If you can’t listen live, the podcast is now embedded below.
» Read more
September 25, 2025 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.
- CEO Chris Kent of rocket startup Astra calls Firefly’s engines garbage during presentation
Firefly has put an unmanned lander on the Moon. It also has a rocket that has had launch successes. Astra doesn’t have anything at the moment. You decide the credibility of Kemp’s statement.
- Isar Aerospace gets multi-launch contract from satellite startup R-Space
The first launch in ’26 will put two satellites in orbit, with later launches through ’27.
- Vast touts its partnership with watch company IWC, its “Official Timekeeper”
Mostly vapid PR, except that almost as an aside during the video Vast revealed that it now plans to keep its demo Haven-1 single-module station operational for three years during which it will be visited by four 2-week manned missions.
- NASA touts the credentials of one of its new astronauts named this week: Dr. Lauren Edgar
Edgar spent 17 years working on various Mars rover operations, including Curiosity.
- Yesterday was the anniversary of the discovery of Neptune by German astronomer Johann Galle in 1846
He found it using French astronomer Urbain-Jean-Joseph Le Verrier’s calculations predicting its location.