May 2, 2025 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
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Eli Crystal Glass – Vase with Rectangular Murrine
An evening pause: The art of glass blowing.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
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
May 2, 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.
- Vast touts the gyroscopes it is building in-house to control the orientation of its Haven-1 space station
Thse gyros will only have to function for less than a year, as Haven-1 is not intended for long term use.
- Blue Origin touts its LISTER drill that flew on Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander
Released today, it says nothing about the mission itself, which occurred three months ago. Apparently Blue Origin can’t even get its PR published on time.
- Engineers continue their attempts to regain communications with Lunar Trailblazer orbiter
All contact was lost shortly after launch. They figure they have about a month left before the mission will be considered a total loss.
- On this day in 1925 Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter was born
He was the second American to orbit the Earth.
Trump bypasses Boeing to get an newly refurbished 747 Air Force One
Apparently disgusted with Boeing’s inability to get two Boeing 747s refurbished on budget and before he leaves office in 2028, the Trump administration has now enlisted another aerospace company, L3Harris, to refurbish a 747 formerly used by the Qatar government.
The president hopes to use the refurbished plane by the fall, sources told the outlet, and is regularly checking on its progress . This aircraft will be an interim solution until the Boeing jets are delivered.
The current presidential jets — which have been in service since the George H.W. Bush administration — are nearing their end of life.
Boeing’s conduct here has been truly disgraceful. It got the $3.9 billion fixed-price contract to refurbish two of its own 747s in 2018. Yet, despite having two working 747s — a plane it designed and built — it can’t refurbish them in less than a decade, while going over budget by about $2.4 billion, money it has to lay out because of the fixed-price nature of the contract.
Hat tip to reader James Street.
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.
FAA okays increase in SpaceX launches from Vandenberg from 36 to 50 per year
The FAA today approved an environmental reassessment at Vandenberg Space Force Base that permits SpaceX to increase its annual launches there from 36 to 50.
The reassessment determined (not surprisingly) that there was “no significant impact” on the environment caused by the increased number of launches.
We already have more than seven decades of empirical data at spaceports in both Florida and California that rocket launches do no harm to the environment, and in fact act to significantly protect wildlife and natural resources because they require the creation of large regions where no development can take place.
The real question should be this: Why is the federal government wasting taxpayer money on these reports? They are utterly unnecessary, and only serve to hinder the freedom of Americans while spending their taxes on make work that accomplishes nothing.
Trump administration releases its proposed NASA budget for 2026
The Trump administration today released [pdf] its proposed federal budget for the 2026 fiscal year, calling for an overall reduction in federal spending by about 7.6%, with NASA getting a budget cut of about 24%.
A summary of the budget can be found in this NASA press release. The main bullet points are these:
- SLS and Orion will be retired after flying the two more missions. Whether those flights will be manned or not however is left vague.
- Lunar Gateway will be shut down
- The Mars Sample Return mission will be cancelled.
- The overall manned budget for interplanetary development is increased, and now includes a line item of $1 billion for “Mars-focused programs”.
- Flights to ISS are reduced (cutting a half billion from this budget) to facilitate the “transition to a more cost-effective commercial approach to human activities in space as the space station approaches the end of its life cycle.”
- Eliminates “low-priority climate monitoring satellites”, shifting the focus to getting such data from commercial sources.
- Major budget cuts are proposed for many other departments, and also include a major restructuring of NASA’s entire operation to “streamline the workforce, IT services, NASA Center operations, facility maintenance, and construction and environmental compliance activities.”
Below is a screen capture from the budget proposal detailing these cuts.
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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
Space Force awards twelve companies satellite development contracts worth $237 million
Capitalism in space: The Space Force yesterday announced that it has awarded twelve different aerospace companies contracts worth a total of $237 million for developing a variety of smallsat technologies to be used in future military satellite constellations.
The list of selected companies, announced May 1, includes defense and aerospace firms Lockheed Martin Corp. and General Atomics, as well as specialized space firms such as Blue Canyon Technologies, Loft Orbital Federal, Spire Global, Terran Orbital, and York Space Systems. Also named were Axient, Lynk Global, Orbit Systems, Turion Space, and the Utah State University-affiliated Space Dynamics Lab.
…Under the contract, vendors will build and integrate small satellite buses capable of carrying a variety of military experiments and sensors. These buses, often the size of a microwave or small refrigerator, serve as standardized platforms that can be customized to carry diverse payloads.
These contracts are part of the Trump administrations push to get the military to rely on the private sector for its needs. Though the private sector would general build things in the past for the Pentagon, often the design, construction, and even ownership was held entirely by the government. The companies didn’t have anything they could sell elsewhere. Now the design work is being left entirely to the companies, so that what they develop they will own, and will have the ability to market it to others.
Ursa Major wins contract for hypersonic test flight of its Draper rocket engine
The rocket engine startup Ursa Major has now won a $28.5 million contract from the Air Force Research Laboratory to do a hypersonic test flight using its Draper rocket engine.
The contract, announced May 1, covers both the flight demonstration and integration of the engine into a test vehicle, with work scheduled through early 2027. The project aims to advance U.S. capabilities in hypersonic weapons, a category of defense systems that has become a top Pentagon priority amid competition with China and Russia.
The Draper engine is designed to produce 4,000 pounds of thrust and was developed by Ursa Major with U.S. Air Force funding. Its key differentiator is its use of storable, non-cryogenic propellants — specifically a kerosene and hydrogen peroxide combination — that remain liquid at ambient temperatures. This contrasts with traditional rocket engines that rely on liquid oxygen, which must be kept at ultra-low temperatures and handled with complex cooling infrastructure.
It certainly does appear that the Pentagon is ramping up its hypersonic research with a slew of contracts to many different new commercial space startups. In addition to this deal, Rocket Lab, Varda, and Stratolaunch have won contracts for similar hypersonic testing, with Rocket Lab winning the most. No wonder a new company like Radian (see previous post) is switching its focus toward this research.
Rocket startup Radian now also building commercial reentry capsule
The rocket startup Radian Aerospace, which is attempting to build an orbital spaceplane that takes off and lands from a runway, has announced that it is also building a commercial reentry capsule that can be used for hypersonic testing.
The Seattle based company announced April 29 its intent to develop the Radian Reusable Reentry Vehicle (R3V), a spacecraft for hypersonics testing or returning payloads from space that also gives Radian flight experience in key technologies for its future Radian One spaceplane.
Livingston Holder, chief technology officer of Radian, said in an interview that the company was looking was ways to test Dur-E-Therm, the thermal protection system it is creating for Radian One. The company had recently completed tests of the system in a lab at NASA’s Glenn Research Center. “But, testing in a non-flight environment only gets you so far, so we were crafting how to test it in a more relevant environment.”
It appears the company has recognized that its spaceplane will take years to develop, and more years before it can bring in any revenue. An orbital capsule however can be developed much more quickly, and it also appears there are a lot of commercial and military customers for it.
SpaceX launches 28 more Starlink satellites
SpaceX tonight successfully launched another 28 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The first stage completed its 18th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
51 SpaceX
23 China
5 Rocket Lab
5 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 51 to 40.
Scorpions – Still Loving You
An evening pause: Performed live 1985.
Hat tip Doug Johnson.
May 1, 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.
- Claiming budget uncertainty, NASA delays by a year deadline for relatively small astrophysics mission proposals
There are budget uncertainties, but I have no doubt this decision is mostly aimed at ginning up opposition to any cuts at NASA at all. It’s an old NASA tactic: Threaten cuts in a broad indiscriminate manner to get Congress and the President to retreat from any cuts. Today’s specific decision tells me we really need a new hard-nosed administrator at NASA who won’t let lower management play these games. Whether Isaacman is that man however remains unknown.
- Rocket startup Stoke Space touts static fire tests of two of its engines, both running above 100%
The company had hoped to do its first launch this year, but that will likely slip to 2026, mostly because of environmental red tape at its launch site in Florida.
- India’s space agency touts its astronaut flying on the fourth Axiom tourist mission to ISS
Launch is now scheduled for May 29, 2025.