SpaceX announces another commerical passenger flight on a Dragon capsule

10:17 pm

SpaceX today announced it will fly a four-passenger commerical flight, using the Dragon capsule dubbed Endurance and flying the first manned human flight to circle the poles.

The private Crew Dragon mission will be led by a Chinese-born cryptocurrency entrepreneur named Chun Wang, and he will be joined by a polar explorer, a roboticist, and a filmmaker whom he has befriended in recent years.

The “Fram2” mission, named after the Norwegian research ship Fram, will launch into a polar corridor from SpaceX’s launch facilities in Florida and fly directly over the north and south poles. The three-to-five day mission is being timed to fly over Antarctica near the summer solstice in the Southern Hemisphere, to afford maximum lighting.

As with the Jared Isaacman’s previous and future Dragon manned missions, the flight avoids any of the NASA bureucracy and costs by not docking with ISS. The flight is targeting a launch date before the end of this year, but that date is not firm.

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Genesis cover

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

August 12, 2024 Quick space links

5:06 pm

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.

 

 

 

 

 

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The strange carbon dioxide ice cap of Mars’ south pole

12:33 pm

The strange carbon dioxide cap of Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on July 1, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The image is labeled simply as a “terrain sample,” which usually means it was taken not as part of any specific research project but to fill a gap in the picture-taking schedule in order to maintain the camera’s proper temperate. When the camera team needs to do this, they try to picture interesting features availabe at that time slot. Sometimes the image is boring. Sometimes it is surprisingly interesting.

In this case the picture is the latter, and certainly quite alien. The curly parallel dark lines appear to be grooves, and seem to have ripple dunes within them, as if the only dust here got trapped in those low spots. It is also possible that the dunes are frozen and ancient, and are only being revealed as the top layer in each groove goes away.

What could possibly explain what we are looking at? The overview map below gives only a clue.
» Read more

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Conscious Choice cover

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.

Trump to sue Justice Department over Mar-a-Lago raid and subsequent indictments

11:36 am

Trump defiant after being shot
Trump defiant

Fight! Fight! Fight! According to a report today by Fox News, Trump’s lawyers are about to sue the Justice Department for $100 million, claiming the Mar-a-Lago raid and subsequent now-dismissed indictments by Jack Smith (who the courts have ruled was appointed illegally) were done with the “clear intent to engage in political persecution.”

Trump attorney Daniel Epstein filed the notice to sue the Justice Department. The Justice Department has 180 days from the date of receipt to respond to Epstein’s notice and come to a resolution. If no resolution is made, Trump’s case will move to federal court in the Southern District of Florida.

…Epstein argued that the DOJ violated Florida law, intrusion upon seclusion, which is recognized as a form of invasion of privacy. Intrusion upon seclusion includes “an intentional intrusion, physically or otherwise, into the private quarters of another person” and the intrusion “must occur in a manner that a reasonable person would find highly offensive.”
» Read more

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FAA cancels scheduled public meetings to review new Boca Chica environmental assessment

9:52 am

For as yet unknown reasons, the FAA today sent out an email canceling all the public meetings that it had scheduled in mid-July and were designed to allow the public to comment on its new environmental assessment of SpaceX’s application to increase its Starship/Superheavy launch rate at Boca Chica from five to as much as 25 launches per year.

The FAA is cancelling the in-person public meetings on the Draft EA scheduled for: Tuesday, August 13, 2024; 1:00 PM–3:00 PM & 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM CDT City of South Padre Island Convention Center, 7355 Padre Blvd, South Padre Island, TX 78597 Thursday, August 15, 2024; 1:00 PM–3:00 PM & 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM CDT Port Isabel Event & Cultural Center, 309 E Railroad Ave, Port Isabel, TX 78578 The FAA is also cancelling the virtual public meeting scheduled for: Tuesday, August 20, 2024; 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM CDT The FAA will provide notice for new dates for the meetings and a new date for the close of the comment period in the future.

The FAA’s email also noted that public comments can still be submitted either electronically here or by mail sent to Ms. Amy Hanson, FAA Environmental Specialist, SpaceX EA, c/o ICF 1902 Reston Metro Plaza Reston, VA 20190. In both cases, the commenter must reference Docket No. FAA-2024-2006. The email also stated that the public comment period would be extended beyond its August 29, 2024 closure date.

This cancellation mirrors the situation in 2021-2022, when the FAA was reviewing its previous environmental reassessment of the Boca Chica site. At that time the agency repeatedly failed to meet its own deadlines, sometimes on a month-by-month basis, so that the final approval process ended up stretching out more than a half year. Similar delays further stalled the first Starship/Superhavy test flight by another full year.

I once again suspect that higher ups in the White House are applying pressure on the FAA to stall this process, for political reasons, probably because those higher ups want no action taken before the November election. I am guessing, but this is how Washington works. Real achievement by American private citizens must always take a back seat to the power lusts of the DC politicos who now rule us.

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Leaving Earth cover

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

A galaxy with a ring

9:34 am

A galaxy with a ring
Click for full image.

Cool image time! The photo to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, and appears part of a long term survey of nearby ringed galaxies. From the caption:

MCG+07-07-072 has quite an unusual shape, for a spiral galaxy, with thin arms emerging from the ends of its barred core to draw a near-circle around its disc. It is classified, using a common extension of the basic Hubble scheme, as an SBc(r) galaxy: the c denotes that its two spiral arms are loosely wound, each only performing a half-turn around the galaxy, and the (r) is for the ring-like structure they create. Rings in galaxies come in quite a few forms, from merely uncommon, to rare and astrophysically important!

Lenticular galaxies are a type that sit between elliptical and spiral galaxies. They feature a large disc, unlike an elliptical galaxy, but lack any spiral arms. Lenticular means lens-shaped, and these galaxies often feature ring-like shapes in their discs. Meanwhile, the classification of “ring galaxy” is reserved for peculiar galaxies with a round ring of gas and star formation, much like spiral arms look, but completely disconnected from the galactic nucleus – or even without any visible nucleus! They’re thought to be formed in galactic collisions.

This galaxy is about 320 million light years away, and is also known as Abell 426. Though astronomers think that these various shapes of galaxies, from barred to lenticular to ringed, are formed from a variety of galactic collusions and interactions with each galaxy’s nucleus, that remains nothing more than an educated guess. The complexity of galaxy evolution, involving billions of years and millions of stars, is barely in its infancy, and requires a lot of assumptions because our observations only involves a mere nanosecond in that grand history.

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Dawn Aerospace completes new round of flight tests of its small-scale rocket-powered airplane

9:17 am

The crew and Mk-II prototype
The crew and Mk-II prototype

The space startup Dawn Aerospace on August 7, 2024 announced the successful completion of a second set of flight tests of its small-scale rocket-powered Mk-II Aurora airplane, reaching speeds just below the speed of sound, with the goal in the next round of flights to set several major records and lay the groundwork of building a reuseable orbital spaceplane that can launch and land on a runway, and do so twice in one day.

The campaign (dubbed Campaign 2-2) saw three flights completed in late July. In flight three, we achieved a maximum speed and altitude of Mach 0.92 (967 km/h) and 50,000ft (15.1km). That is 3x and 5x of what we had achieved in the previous campaign – a massive jump in demonstrated performance.

We are now poised to fly supersonic in Campaign 2-3, scheduled for September. But that is just the beginning. In many respects, the Mk-II is slated to be the highest-performance vehicle to take off from a runway. By the end of 2025, we’re looking to climb faster than an F15, fly higher than a Mig 25, faster than an SR-71, and, ultimately, be the first vehicle to fly above the Karman line; 100km altitude (the generally accepted definition of “space”), twice in a single day.

Some of these records have stood for over 50 years.

The company has so far spent $10 million on this project, and has raised a total of $20 million. Nor is this Dawn’s only effort. It builds and sells thrusters for smallsats, and is also selling to smallsat makers its own docking and refueling port.

The press release at the link is very detailed, and worth perusing. Four of the company’s founders come from the rocket field, with the fifth from aviation. Their goal, to build from scratch a commercial orbital spaceplane using private funds entirely, is quite laudible but incredibly challenging. It remains to be seen whether they can do it. That the company has diversified successfully into the satellite industry is very encouraging however.

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SpaceX launches another 23 Starlink satellites

8:50 am

After a launch abort less than a minute before launch yesterday, SpaceX successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites this morning, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The first stage completed its 17th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The past three days for SpaceX was quite busy, as my readers can easily see: Three launches in three days. It appears the company is working hard to recover its launch pace from the several week pause after an upper stage had a leak on a July 11th launch.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

80 SpaceX
33 China
10 Rocket Lab
8 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 95 to 49, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 80 to 64.

The launch schedule for the rest of the week will be as busy, with the Russians launching a Progress freighter to ISS, India launching its SSLV rocket, and SpaceX having two more launches on its manifest.

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FAA red tape apparently stalling the next Starship/Superheavy orbital test launch

9:37 pm

Superheavy being captured by the tower chopsticks at landing
Superheavy being captured by the tower chopsticks at landing.
Click for video.

Back in mid-June, shortly after 4th orbital test flight of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy rocket, it appeared based on an FAA statement that the company could proceed with the next test flight as soon as it was ready to fly.

Subsequently, Elon Musk said the company expected to be ready by early August. There were also indications that the company wished to attempt a chopstick landing of Superheavy back at the launch tower at Boca Chica. Such an attempt however would require approval from the FAA, as the flight profile would not be the same as the previous flight.

I and others speculated that SpaceX would forego that chopstick landing in order to fly the fifth test flight quickly, while simultanously requesting permission from the FAA for such a landing on a later test flight. My thinking was that this would allow test flights to proceed with as little delay as possible.

Though it remains unknown whether or not the next test flight will include that chopstick landing attempt, it does appear that FAA red tape is blocking the next flight. In an update from NASASpaceflight.com about the work at Boca Chica posted on August 9, 2023 was a link to a SpaceX tweet the day before that said the following:
» Read more

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SpaceX launches two broadband satellites for the Space Force and Norway

8:49 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched two broadband satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The satellites will provide improved broadband service in the Arctic regions for both the Space Force and Norway, which partnered with Northrop Grumman to build the satellites.

The Falcon 9 first stage completed its 22nd flight, tying the record of one other booster for the most reuses. It landed on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

79 SpaceX
33 China
10 Rocket Lab
8 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 94 to 49, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 79 to 64.

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Rocket Lab launches commercial radar satellite

7:52 am

Rocket Lab early this morning successfully launched a radar satellite for the company Capella, its Electron rocket lifting off from its launchpad in New Zealand.

This was Rocket Lab’s fifth launch for Capella. It is also the tenth launch for Rocket Lab this year, maintaining a pace of more than one launch per month. It remains uncertain at this moment whether the company can reach its goal of 20 launches for the year.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

78 SpaceX
33 China
10 Rocket Lab
8 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 93 to 49, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 78 to 64.

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