SpaceX launches an additional 21 Starlink satellites

10:25 am

SpaceX early this morning successfully launched an additional 21 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its 21st flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. Note how a first stage is now used more than twenty times, and it almost goes without notice.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

78 SpaceX
33 China
9 Rocket Lab
8 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 92 to 49, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 78 to 63.

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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

Are these Martian terraced mesas or pits?

2:52 pm

Are these Martian pits or mesas?
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken on July 2, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). I have purposely enhanced the contrast to bring out the strangely shaped and terraced features.

What I cannot figure out from any data available to me is whether these terraced features are mesas rising up, or pits descending down. The resolution in the global mosiac of Mars created both from MRO’s context camera and its elevation data is simply not good enough. It suggests these are pits, but the sunlight is coming from the west, which based on the shadows suggest these could be pits or mesas.

In fact, the dark lines that appear to distinguish the terraces might not be shadows at all, but simply darker material that contrasts with the lighter material on each side.
» 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.

SpaceX’s new Raptor-3 methane-fueled engine is so advanced the CEO of ULA doesn’t understand it

12:31 pm

SpaceX's new Raptor-3 engine
Click for original image.

When Elon Musk on August 2, 2024 proudly tweeted a picture of SpaceX’s new Raptor-3 methane-fueled engine, the third iteration of the engine it uses on this Starship/Superheavy rocket, Tori Bruno, the CEO of ULA, looked at the image (to the right) and complained that Musk and SpaceX were touting pictures of a “partially assembled engine.” As Bruno tweeted:

They have done an excellent job making the assembly simpler and more producible. So, there is no need to exaggerate this by showing a partially assembled engine without controllers, fluid management, or TVC systems, then comparing it to fully assembled engines that do.

It turns out that this engine is so advanced that Bruno — the CEO of SpaceX’s best competitor — didn’t understand it. Both Musk and SpaceX’s CEO Gywnne Shotwell immediately responded with images of this same engine operating during hot fire tests. As Shotwell tweeted, “Works pretty good for a ‘partially assembled’ engine :).”

Musk in one of his first tweets describing the engine’s specifications was also right when he described it as “Truly, a work of art.” Look at it. For what is the most powerful rocket engine ever built it looks as streamlined and a simple as the slant-6 car engine I had in my 1969 Plymouth Valient, built long before environmental regulations caused car engines to become incredibly overbuilt and complicated.

This little anecdote illustrates quite starkly how advanced SpaceX is over its competitors. It is now building rocket engines with technology beyond the immediate understanding of the CEO of the United States’ second largest rocket company.

Almost a decade after SpaceX successfully reused a Falcon 9 first stage, and now does it routinely, no other rocket company as yet to do the same, and only one company, Rocket Lab, is doing flight tests in an attempt to eventually do so.

SpaceX has no competition because too many of its competitors are simply not trying to compete. It is both sad and shameful.

Hat tip to reader Rex Ridenoure.

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Crazily eroded rock on Mars

11:15 am

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

A crazily eroded rock in Jezero crater
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken today by the Perseverance Mars rover, using its SHERLOC-WATSON close-up camera at the end of its robot arm.

The size of this rock is tiny, no more than a few inches across. The many holes remind me of surface limestone on Earth. When it rains, the water dissolves the limestone, and so holes will develop and grow over time. You can see this process if you spray very hot water on top of a block of ice.

The problem is that it doesn’t rain on Mars. Lava can sometimes freeze and look this way, but is it lava? The blue dot on the overview map above shows where Perseverance was two days earlier. The rover team has not updated that map so it is not known exactly where the rover was when it snapped this picture today. Nor has the science team posted an update on their activities since June 27th.

These strange features however mirror somewhat the same surface features seen back in June, when the rover was on the north side of Neretva Vallis, so it is likely this rock was produced by the same geological processes. I will however not guess what those processes were.

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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

NASA inspector general blasts Boeing’s management relating to its work on SLS’s new more powerful upper stage

9:52 am

Boeing's schedule slips in building SLS's upper stage
Boeing’s schedule slips in building SLS’s upper stage

In a report issued today [pdf], NASA’s inspector general harshly criticized the Boeing managment and operations at its Michoud facility, where the company is developing SLS’s new more powerful upper stage. From the report’s executive summary:

Quality control issues at Michoud are largely due to the lack of a sufficient number of rained and experienced aerospace workers at Boeing. To mitigate these challenges, Boeing provides training and work orders to its employees. Considering the significant quality control deficiencies at Michoud, we found these efforts to be inadequate. For example, during our visit to Michoud in April 2023, we observed a liquid oxygen fuel tank dome—a critical component of the SLS Core Stage 3—segregated and pending disposition on whether and how it can safely be used going forward due to welds that did not meet NASA specifications. According to NASA officials, the welding issues arose due to Boeing’s inexperienced technicians and inadequate work order planning and supervision. The lack of a trained and qualified workforce increases the risk that Boeing will continue to manufacture parts and components that do not adhere to NASA requirements and industry standards.

The report also notes that delivery of that upper stage has been delayed from 2021 to 2027 (as shown by the graph to the right, taken from the IG report), and its cost has risen from $962 million to almost $2.8 billion. It also notes quite bluntly that:

Boeing’s quality management system at Michoud does not effectively adhere to industry standards or NASA requirements, resulting in production delays to the SLS core and upper stages and increased risk to the integrated spacecraft. … Boeing’s process for addressing contractual noncompliance has been ineffective, and the company has generally been nonresponsive in taking corrective actions when the same quality control issues reoccur.

Sound familiar? It should. These issues appear to be the same kind of quality control problems that have plagued Starliner, and are also the same kind of problems that had NASA reject Boeing’s bid to provide cargo to its Lunar Gateway station, and state while doing so that it will no longer consider future Boeing bids until the company straightens itself out.

It appears from today’s inspector general report that Boeing has fixed nothing. The report recommends some additional supervision of Boeing from NASA, and more importantly suggests the agency “institute financial penalties for Boeing’s noncompliance with quality control standards.”

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French startup Exploration Company has so far obtained almost $800 million in contracts

9:30 am

The French startup The Exploration Company has so far obtained almost $800 million in contracts to provide cargo ferrying services to space stations using its Nyx unmanned freighter.

During a presentation at the International Space Station Research & Development Conference (ISSRDC), The Exploration Company’s chief commercial officer, Dana Baki, outlined the company’s progress since its founding. According to Baki, the company has raised $70 million in funding and grown to 130 employees across four countries. The headline figure was, however, the $770 million in contracts won, of which 10% came from space agencies and the other 90% from private space station providers Axiom Space, Vast, and Starlab.

This French company recognized early on that if all four space stations get built, they will all need regular cargo deliveries, and that SpaceX’s cargo Dragon and Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus would be hard pressed to fill the need. Thus the demand for its untested capsule. The contracts are likely contingency-based, meaning the stations are not committing any significant money until Nyx becomes operational.

One other interesting note: The only proposed station that did not offer Exploration a contract was Blue Origin’s Orbital Reef. Though one of Blue Origin’s partners is Sierra Space, which will provide cargo ferrying capacity with its Dream Chaser mini-shuttles, it seems signing up a redundant back up would be wise. Another partner, Boeing, is supposed to use Starliner to provide crew ferrying capability, with cargo an option, but that remains an unknown considering the problems with Starliner.

It is unlikely Blue Origin has signed a deal with SpaceX, and I have not seen any news that it signed a deal with Northrop. Thus, it has no known viable backup at the moment.

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Rocket Lab completes first static fire test of new more powerful rocket engine

9:16 am

Neutron first stage deploying second stage with satellite
Neutron first stage deploying second stage with satellite

Rocket Lab yesterday announced it has successfully completed the first static fire test of its new Archimedies rocket engine, designed to be used on its new larger Neutron rocket scheduled for launch next year.

Archimedes performed well and ticked off several key test objectives, including reaching 102% power, anchoring the engine’s design ahead of Neutron’s first flight scheduled for mid-2025 – a schedule that would make Neutron the fastest a commercially developed medium-class launch vehicle has been brought to market. With the hot fire complete and full qualification campaign now underway, the Rocket Lab team is moving into full production of flight engines.

The design of Neuton is clever, as shown in the graphic to the right. In order to reuse as much as possible, the fairing encloses both the payload and upper stage. Before stage separation, the fairing will open, allowing the upper stage and its payload to be deployed. Afterward it remains with the first stage, which will land vertically back at the launch site.

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WISE/NEOWISE space telescope mission ends after fourteen years

9:11 pm

Comet NEOWISE, photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope
Click for full image.

Launched in 2009, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) was shut down today after almost fourteen years of successful observations, with its first years dedicated to creating an infrared survey of the sky. In 2013, after two years of hibernation, it was reactivated and renamed NEOWISE (for reasons that I have always found absurd), with the goal over the next thirteen years of mapping the sky for near Earth objects.

By repeatedly observing the sky from low Earth orbit, NEOWISE created all-sky maps featuring 1.45 million infrared measurements of more than 44,000 solar system objects. Of the 3,000-plus near-Earth objects it detected, 215 were first spotted by NEOWISE. The mission also discovered 25 new comets, including the famed comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE that streaked across the night sky in the summer of 2020.

A Hubble image of that comet is to the right.

The mission was ended because the telescope’s orbit is now too low to provide good data. It is expected to re-enter the atmosphere and burn up before the end of the year.

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Florida proves that too many professors at public colleges might be better employed as dish washers

1:35 pm

Most of all beware this boy.’
As noted by the Spirit of Christmas Present in Dickens’ The Christmas
Carol, “This boy is ignorance, this girl is want. Beware them both,
but most of all beware this boy.” It appears Florida has taken this
warning to heart. Click for movie.

Last year the Republican-controlled state government in Florida passed legislation requiring its public universities to do what are called “post-tenure reviews” on all their tenured professors every five years, as part of an effort to eliminate what Governor Ron DeSantis called “deadweight” and “unproductive tenured faculty.” The bill not only limited the ability of professors to protest termination decisions, it was also aimed at eliminating “diversity, equity, and inclusion” programs across the board.

At the University of Florida the first round of tenure review has now produced some startling numbers, literally proving DeSantis’ claims.

The report said that, out of 262 professors up for review, 31 “either retired, entered retirement agreements or resigned during the review period.” A further 34 didn’t meet expectations and five were dubbed unsatisfactory. Add those categories up, and it’s 27 percent.

In other words, when faced with a real review of their qualifications, more than a quarter of the professors either quit or were removed. Though it is unclear whether those who quit did so because they knew they’d be fired anyway, that conclusion is a reasonable one to make. By resigning, they avoid having a stain on their record and thus increase their chances of getting work elsewhere.
» Read more

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