Restless Viking – The Metz Fire of 1908
An evening pause: A bit of tragic history.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
May 20, 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.
- Starfish’s second Otter Pup tug will attempt this summer its first docking using the company’s docking technology
The demo mission is aimed at attracting business for either de-orbiting defunct satellites or servicing them.
- SaxaVord touts its spaceport to NATO officials
The tour also showed off Rocket Factory Augsberg’s launchpad.
- Blue Origin shows off “an illustration” of its fuel tanker needed for its Blue Moon manned lunar lander
My heart be still. Blue Origin drew a picture! And it only took two years, since it won the contract!
- Blue Origin officials claim the company will do an unmanned lunar landing demo mission later this year
No one believes this claim, and if you do, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I can sell you cheap.
- Relativity touts the ongoing construction of its facilities at Cape Canaveral
It does appear that things are finally moving for this company, after what appeared to be a four year pause that was coincidentally timed with the increased red tape during the Biden administration.
- China invites India to join its International Lunar Research Station project
The offer is just for PR purposes. It will be a shock if India accepts, considering its hostile relations generally with China. Furthermore, the Chinese alliance includes Pakistan, which is also not a friend to India.
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
More missions to Apophis when it flies past Earth in 2029?
A cartoon (not to scale) showing Apophis’s
path in 2029
There were two stories today that heralded the addition of one real and two potential new spacecraft to rendezvous with the potentially dangerous asteroid Apophis when it flies past the Earth on April 13, 2029.
First, the European Space Agency (ESA) awarded a 1.5 million euro contract to the Spanish company Emxys to build a small cubesat that will fly on ESA’s Ramses mission to Apophis. This is the second cubesat now to fly attached to Ramses, with the first designed to use radar to study Apophis’ interior.
The second CubeSat, led by Emxys, will be deployed from the main spacecraft just a few kilometres from Apophis. It will study the asteroid’s shape and geological properties and will carry out an autonomous approach manoeuvre before attempting to land on the surface. If the landing is successful, it will also measure the asteroid’s seismic activity.
Second, American planetary scientists have been lobbying NASA to repurpose the two small Janus spacecraft for a mission to Apophis. These probes were originally built to go to an asteroid as a secondary payload when the Pysche asteroid mission was launched, but when Pysche was delayed they could no longer go that that asteroid on the new launch date. Since then both Janus spacecraft have been in storage, with no place to go.
The scientists say they could easily be repurposed to go to Apophis, but NASA will have to commit to spending the cost for launch, approximately $100 million. NASA officials were not hostile to this idea, but they were also non-committal. I suspect no decision can be made until the new administrator, Jared Isaacman, is confirmed by the Senate and takes office.
Time however is a factor. The longer it takes to make a decision the fewer options there will be to get it to Apophis on time.
At the moment there is only one spacecraft in space and on its way to Apophis, and that is the repurposed Osiris-Rex mission, now called Osiris-Apex. Japan might also send a craft past Apophis as part of its mission to another asteroid.
Learning as much as we can about Apophis is critical, as there is a chance it will impact the Earth sometime in the next two hundred years.
Space station startup Voyager Technologies about to go public
The Starlab design in 2025. Click
for original image.
The space station startup Voyager Technologies (formerly Voyager Space) has filed its paperwork for its expected initial public offering (IPO) of stock as it competes for a major contract from NASA to build its Starlab space station.
Voyager filed a preliminary prospectus for its planned initial public offering (IPO) with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission May 16. The company previously confidentially filed plans for its IPO with the SEC. The draft prospectus does not yet disclose how many shares the company plans to sell or the amount the company expects to raise in the IPO. It does, though, offer financial details about Voyager.
The company reported $144.2 million in revenue in 2024 and a net loss of $65.6 million, versus $136.1 million in revenue and a net loss of $25.2 million in 2023. The company also reported revenue of $34.5 million in the first quarter of 2025, and a net loss of $27.9 million.
This story actually made me less confident about this company’s plans, with this quote the most revealing:
The company received a funded Space Act Agreement from NASA to support initial design work on the station, currently worth $217.5 million with $70.3 million yet to be paid. … The NASA award covers only initial work on Starlab, and the company will have to compete for a second phase of NASA’s Commercial Low Earth Orbit Development program that will offer additional funding for station development. Voyager revealed in the prospectus that it projects Starlab to cost $2.8 billion to $3.3 billion to develop.
So far it appears Voyager has built nothing. Instead it has used NASA’s preliminary money to do and redo its on-paper design of Starlab (compare the more recent design concept in the image on the right with this older image from 2022), which as a concept is intended to be launched whole on a single Starship launch. No metal has been cut. The company appears to be following the old big space company approach of investing nothing of its own in development.
This does not mean its station will be a failure, but I expect it will not launch as scheduled in 2029 if it wins that major NASA contract. The company will have to build it all in less than three years, something that I doubt it will be able to do.
My present rankings for the four proposed commercial stations:
- Haven-1, being built by Vast, with no NASA funds. The company is moving fast, with Haven-1 to launch and be occupied in 2026 for an estimated 30 days total. It hopes this actual hardware and manned mission will put it in the lead to win NASA’s phase 2 contract, from which it will build its much larger mult-module Haven-2 station..
- Axiom, being built by Axiom, has launched three tourist flights to ISS, with a fourth scheduled for early June, carrying passengers from India, Hungary, and Poland. Though there have been rumors it has cash flow issues, development of its first module has been proceeding more or less as planned.
- Orbital Reef, being built by a consortium led by Blue Origin and Sierra Space. Overall, Blue Origin has built almost nothing, while Sierra Space has successfully tested its inflatable modules, including a full scale version, and appears ready to start building its module for launch.
- Starlab, being built by a consortium led by Voyager Space, Airbus, and Northrop Grumman, with an extensive partnership agreement with the European Space Agency. It recently had its station design approved by NASA, but it has built nothing, and appears unwilling to cut any metal until it wins NASA’s full contract.
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.
Air Force issues draft approval of second SpaceX launchpad at Vandenberg
Air Force last week issued a draft environmental impact statement approving SpaceX’s plans to rebuild the old Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6, pronounced “slick-six”) at Vandenberg that was first built for the space shuttle (but never used) and later adapted for ULA’s Delta family of rockets, now retired.
The plan involves rebuilding SLC-6 to accommodate both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches, including the addition of two landing pads. With its already operational launchpad at Vandenberg, SLC-4E, the company hopes to increase its annual launch rate from 50 (approved by the FAA earlier this month) to as much as 100.
The estimated launch cadence between SpaceX’s existing West Coast pad at … SLC-4E and SLC-6 would be a 70-11 split for Falcon 9 rockets in 2026 with one Falcon Heavy at SLC-6 for a total of 82 launches. That would increase to a 70-25 Falcon 9 split in 2027 and 2028 with an estimated five Falcon Heavy launches in each of those years.
The draft assessment is now open to public comment through July 7, 2025, with a final version expected to be approved in the fall. It appears the Air Force wants it approved, as it needs this capacity for its own launch requirements. It also appears it no longer cares what the California Coastal Commission thinks about such things, as it has no authority and its members appear motivated not by environmental concerns but a simple hatred of Elon Musk.
An annual launch rate of 100 however exceeds what the FAA approved in May, doubling it. In order to move forward either the FAA will have to issue a new reassessment of its own, or some legislative or executive action will be needed to reduce this red tape. Since Vandenberg is a military base, the military in the end makes all the final decisions. The FAA simply rubber-stamps those decisions.
China launches communications satellite
China today successfully placed a communications satellite into orbit, its Long March 7A rocket lifting off from this coastal Wenchang spaceport.
SpaceX was supposed to have launched a set of Starlink satellites last night as well, but scrubbed the launch about two and a half minutes before launch. It plans to try again tonight.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
59 SpaceX
29 China
6 Rocket Lab
5 Russia
SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 59 to 47.
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
May 19, 2025 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who apologies for their lateness. 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.
As I noted to him when he sent these links, I had read all these stories and considered them bottom of the barrel and not worth a full post. They do rate however as quick links.
- Startup Venus Aerospace does successful suborbital test of its “Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine”
Video here. This is still not much more than at the large model rocket stage, but the potential is great.
- Jared Isaacman posts two tweets (here and here) noting how budgets are limited and we must face the reality of NASA budget cuts.
He specifically slams SLS and the issuance of two lunar lander contracts, to SpaceX and Blue Origin. Says we can’t afford it, while robbing NASA of money it could use for “dozens of scientific programs.”He must be confident he has enough confirmation votes in the Senate or he wouldn’t say these things now.
- Headline: “SpaceX launches 1,000th Starlink satellite of the year during Friday morning mission”
This was the May 16, 2025 launch. Jay calls this an “insane headline,” adding “I remember back when there were only about 1000 active satellites total, as in for the whole world.”
- Russia & China ink agreement for Russia to supply a nuclear power source for Chinese lunar base
Anatoly Zak I think correctly notes, “I think that ‘collaboration’ was actually a simple purchase of the Russian hardware with no Russian access to the resources of the project.” Russia has a very limited ability to send much of anything to China’s lunar base. It will deliver some hardware and let the Chinese deliver it to the Moon.
- On this day in 2009 the last shuttle servicing mission to Hubble ended, with the robot arm releasing the telescope after major repairs
At the time Hubble’s engineers estimated the repairs would give the telescope a minimum of another five years of operation (see the afterword in the paperback edition of The Universe in a Mirror for more details). It is now sixteen years later. The telescope is still functioning but it is also definitely on thin ice, with only two working gyroscopes.
Audioslave – Gasoline
An evening pause: Performed live 2003.
Hat tip Doug Johnson.
In telling us why they are fleeing Trump America, three Yale professors prove they are unqualified for their jobs
The “Poison Ivy League” may have finally
gotten better!
Good riddance! In a New York Times op-ed on May 14, 2025, three former Yale professors attempted to explain why they have quit their jobs at Yale and moved to teach in Canada at the University of Toronto.
Unbeknownst to them, their idiotic and ignorant reasons for leaving demonstrated that they are actually completely unqualified to be college professors, and that Yale (and the United States) will be better off without them.
Professor Stanley is leaving the United States as an act of protest against the Trump administration’s attacks on civil liberties. “I want Americans to realize that this is a democratic emergency,” he said.
Professor Shore, who has spent two decades writing about the history of authoritarianism in Central and Eastern Europe, is leaving because of what she sees as the sharp regression of American democracy. “We’re like people on the Titanic saying our ship can’t sink,” she said. “And what you know as a historian is that there is no such thing as a ship that can’t sink.”
Professor Snyder’s reasons are more complicated. Primarily, he’s leaving to support his wife, Professor Shore, and their children, and to teach at a large public university in Toronto, a place he says can host conversations about freedom. At the same time, he shares the concerns expressed by his colleagues and worries that those kinds of conversations will become ever harder to have in the United States.
As noted in this analysis of their actions, all three say they are doing this because they have studied fascism and thus “equate ‘Make America Great Again’ with Adolf Hitler’s ‘Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer.'”
The analogy is so weak and incoherent as to be laughable. As the essayist in this second link notes, it cheapens the meaning of fascism and in fact suggests these three “professors” don’t have the slightest idea what the word means, despite their claim they have studied it.
More important however are the three quirks of personality illustrated by their position and actions that signify why their are unqualified to be professors to begin with.
» Read more
New research suggests the two types of streaks on Mars are caused by dry events
A Martian slope streak caused by a dust devil? From
data taken in 2023. Click for original image.
Scientists using a computer machine learning algorithm to assembly and analyze global maps of all known slope streaks and recurring slope lineae (RSL) — the two different types of streaks found on Mars whose cause as yet remain unexplained — have concluded that these streaks are likely caused by dry processes, not wet brine seeping from underground.
Slope streaks can occur randomly throughout the year, can be bright or dark, can occur anywhere, and fade with time. Recurring slope lineae instead appear seasonally in the same locations and are always dark.
You can read the published paper here. It essentially provides further details on research that was first announced at a conference in March. From its conclusion:
[O]ur observations suggest that slope streak and RSL formation may be predominantly controlled by two independent, dry drivers, 1) the seasonal delivery of dust onto topographic inclines, and 2) the spontaneous activation of accumulated dust by energetic triggers – wind and impacts for slope streaks, as well as dust devils and rockfalls for RSL.
…Our results underline the fundamental differences between slope streaks and RSL, despite their visual resemblance. Streak and RSL populations occur on opposite hemispheres (north vs south), at different topographic elevations (mostly lowlands vs mostly highlands), in opposite thermal inertia terrain (low vs high), in different wind speed regimes (above-average vs below-average), in dissimilar diurnal thermal amplitude and heat flux terrain (above-average vs average), in different WEH, H2O, H, and water vapor column terrain (average vs below-average), and in terrain that provides suitable (theoretical) conditions for liquid water at different seasons (Ls ~90° vs Ls ~ 270°).
This data suggests both types of streaks form in connection with very fine Martian dust, but the researchers also admit that the actual method in which these avalanche-type streaks form remains unclear. In both cases the streaks cause no change in the topography (sometimes even traveling uphill for short distances), produce no debris piles at their base, as avalanches typically do, and do not appear to have an obvious cause or source at the top of the streak.
Ispace borrows $35 million
Resilience’s landing zone in Mare Frigoris
The Japanese lunar lander startup Ispace announced last week that it has obtained a new bank loan totaling $35 million from the Japanese bank Mizuho to help pay its ongoing expenses as its Resilience lunar lander attempts the company’s second try at soft landing on the Moon.
The loan is intended to secure working capital for development of mission and other related expenses. Through this financing, ispace intends to strengthen the company’s liquidity position and stabilize its financial foundation, thereby enabling agile management decisions.
In other words, the company had started to run short of cash, and needed this loan to keep operating. It had previously gotten a government loan of almost $6 million, but that did not have to be paid back for ten years. Back in 2018 it raised $90 million in investment capital, followed by an additional $53 million in 2024.
This loan suggests that Ispace might be in serious financial trouble if Resilience fails to soft land on June 5, 2025, as presently planned. The company already has two future lander contracts, one with NASA and one with Japan’s space agency JAXA, but a second failure now might cause those agencies to have second thoughts.
Chinese pseudo-company completes another launch from sea platform
The Chinese pseudo-company Galactic Energy today successfully placed four communications satellites into orbit, its solid-fueled Ceres-1 rocket lifting off from a sea platform off the eastern coast of China.
To prove how pseudo this company is, China’s state run press did not even mention its existence in the report at the link. The solid fuel of the rocket tells us that it was derived from missile technology, and there isn’t a chance in hell that a private independent company in China could do so without the strict supervision and control from that country’s government.
Nonetheless, this was its 19th successful launch, and its fifth from a sea platform. The rocket has only failed once since since its first launch in 2020.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
59 SpaceX
28 China
6 Rocket Lab
5 Russia
SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 59 to 46.