JPL requests proposals from the private sector for Mars exploration

9:44 am

Capitalism in space: JPL, which is the lead agency running NASA’s very troubled Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, has now issued a request for proposals from the private sector for doing a variety of Mars missions.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory issued a request for proposals Jan. 29 for “commercial service studies” for future robotic Mars mission concepts. The studies, with a value of $200,000 or $300,000, would be carried out over 12 weeks. The studies are intended to examine four specific design reference missions to explore commercial opportunities to support Mars exploration: delivery of small payloads of up to 20 kilograms to Mars orbit, delivery of large payloads of up to 1,250 kilograms to Mars orbit, services to provide high-resolution imaging of the Martian surface and communications relay services between Mars and Earth.

Missions to provide imaging or communications from Mars orbit could quite easily be provided by numerous private companies. Delivering payloads to the Martian service is exactly what SpaceX proposes with Starship, and is also what several lunar lander companies have now been doing.

Up until now, JPL has always built everything in-house, or if it didn’t it designed and managed everything very closely. The result with MSR is a project that is now poorly managed, vastly over budget and behind schedule, and very likely to fail. This proposal suggests JPL is now recognizing that private enterprise might be able to do it better, as NASA has now proven with its shift from being the builder to becoming merely a customer.

If so, this proposal might be indicating the first step at JPL and NASA in imposing a major change in MSR itself, coming as it does just days after the release of an inspector general report about that project’s many problems.

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Texas approves SpaceX land swap

9:31 am

Despite a concerted effort by a small group of activists to stop it, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission yesterday approved a proposed land swap that would give SpaceX 43 acres of state park land in exchange for receiving 477 acres in a nearby wildlife refuge.

The commission said that the land swap “would create a tenfold return,” allowing the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to begin planning for a new state park that would give the public access to fishing, kayaking, hiking and other outdoor activities.

…The 43 acres it would give to SpaceX are “noncontiguous,” with the commission noting that most of the acres “do not connect to each other or to areas offering public access at Boca Chica State Park.”

“These smaller, noncontiguous tracts do not provide beach access and are dotted among private properties or immediately adjacent to SpaceX’s facilities, meaning they aren’t readily available for public use and provide less cohesive wildlife habitat than offered by a connected and consistently managed tract of conservation land,” the announcement reads.

The opposition came from the same activist groups that have been attempting by lawfare in every way to shut SpaceX down. They claim in the article at the link that “SpaceX has a history of being a bad neighbor, wreaking havoc on the communities and habitat nearby,” but there is zero evidence of this. Even Fish & Wildlife was forced in its own environmental report to admit that there was no reason to block Starship/Superheavy launches at Boca Chica. And the general community is enthused about the presence of SpaceX because of the billions of dollars of new investment and tens of thousands of new jobs it has brought to the Brownsville region.

These activist groups are simply another visible expression of the irrational hatred the left now holds for Elon Musk, because he has dared defy the left in a number of ways. Sadly, these groups routinely get strong help from every media source (also part of that left), always getting quoted and always getting treated as if they are a major political force in the region, when only a tiny minority in south Texas is on their side.

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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

The beat goes on: SpaceX launches twice today

5:36 pm

UPDATE: This post is changed because I missed an earlier launch today from SpaceX, when it launched 53 payloads, including many smallsats using its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. It then followed with a successful launch of another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

On the Vandenberg launch, the first stage successfully completed its fifth flight, landing back at its landing zone at Vandenberg. In the Cape Canaveral launch, the first stage completed its thirteenth flight. landing on a droneship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

22 SpaceX
10 China
3 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the entire world combined 25 to 19 in successful launches, while SpaceX now leads the rest of the world, excluding American companies 22 to 19.

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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.

Real pushback: Faced with a legal requirement to end its DEI programs, University of Florida shuts them down

12:34 pm

Martin Luther King Jr
A real victory for Martin Luther King Jr

Bring a gun to a knife fight: In the past year there have been a variety of bills in state legislatures attempting to rein in or eliminate the racist Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs and departments at state universities. Some have been relatively weak feel-good, failure theater efforts, such as those that merely “ban” the teaching of these ideas, something that the leftist academics in charge easily get around by simply renaming the programs.

Other states imposed stronger legislation, threatening to cut the budgets of these colleges if they didn’t eliminate the programs. A few states have actually followed through.

Florida however took the strongest action under the leadership of Governor Ron DeSantis and its Republican controlled state legislature. It passed legislation that not only banned the teaching of these programs, it cut their budgets as well. No threats of budget cuts, the budgets of DEI programs were cut, right off the bat.

The University of Florida on March 1, 2024 demonstrated the effectiveness of this strong action.
» Read more

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A sunflower crater on Mars

11:33 am

Overview map

A sunflower crater on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on December 17, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the science team labels a “pedestal crater,” a crater that, because the impact smashed the ground to make it more resistent, when the surrounding terrain eroded away it left the crater sitting high and dry.

In this case the crater is only a few feet higher than that surrounding terrain. In fact, though it looks much deeper than the crater to the northeast, both are so shallow that their depth is below the resolution of MRO’s elevation data.

Both craters however suggest the presence of a lot of near surface ice, which is confirmed by overview map above. The rectangle marks the location, inside the 2,000-mile-long northern mid-latitude strip I dub glacier country, as almost every high resolution picture suggests glacial features and near-surface ice. The crater to the northeast appears filled with glacier debris, while the sunflower-shaped apron around the pedestal crater suggests the impact hit soft ice that splashed away and then hardened.

Though this pedestal crater does not appear to sit high above the plain, the rough edges of its apron illustrate the subsequent erosion. The impact likely stripped away the dust/debris layer that protected the glacial and near-surface ice of that splash apron so that sunlight would cause it to sublimate away. Thus we have that knobby surface at the edges.

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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

In the NASA budget now approved, Congress demonstrates once again its utter bankruptcy

9:44 am

Negotiators for both the House and Senate have now released a federal budget for the 2024 fiscal year that includes NASA’s budget, and in doing so clearly illustrates by that NASA budget how utterly incompetent, irresponsible, and useless this Congress continues to be.

First of all, this budget is for this fiscal year, that actually began six months ago in October 2023. That Congress can’t come up with a budget on time has not only become routine, those budgets continue to arrive later and later, or not at all.

The budget itself was an attempt to fix things, because it actually is a detailed budget made up of six appropriation bills that the House began developing last year, rather than a massive omnibus bill that no one had reviewed or read. The goal with each bill was to reduce actual spending across the board — as much as 28.8% — not simply slow the growth of that spending.

However, that effort this year has been a failure. The use of continuing resolutions to keep the government running at previously high levels for the first six months of this fiscal year has largely defeated that effort. Do not expect the budget to shrink in 2024 in any major manner at all.

The budget for NASA also gives us a good window into Congress’s bankruptcy.
» Read more

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SpaceX successfully launches four NASA astronauts to ISS

9:17 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched four NASA astronauts to ISS, its Falcon 9 lifting off from Cape Canaveral on the company’s eighth operational manned mission for NASA, and the thirteenth overall manned mission launched by SpaceX since May 2020.

The Dragon capsule, Endeavour, is flying its fifth manned flight. The first stage completed its first flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral. The crew is expected to dock with ISS on March 5, 2024. The crew is scheduled to fly a standard six month mission.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

20 SpaceX
10 China
3 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the entire world combined 23 to 19 in successful launches, while SpaceX now leads the rest of the world, excluding American companies 20 to 19.

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Watch video from Varda’s return capsule as its comes back to Earth

9:42 am

I have embedded below video taken from inside the capsule of the commercial startup Varda from its release from the Rocket Lab service module throughout its descent back to Earth.

The capsule had been launched in June 2023, carrying equipment to manufacture HIV drugs in space and then return them to Earth for sale. Even though the company had begun negotiations with the FAA and the Air Force two years prior for landing that capsule in the Air Force’s test range in Utah, those agencies blocked its planned return in the September of 2023, and was only able to do it last month. This mission is demo flight, with three others now scheduled.

For the video, Varda included a window looking up outside the capsule, and a camera to film everything that occurred outside that window during descent, release of parachutes, and impact on the ground. It is quite fascinating, as you can see that the capsule initially tumbles, then as the atmosphere thickens its aerodynamic shape causes it to stablize with its heat shield at its bottom.
» Read more

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German rocket startup ships suborbital test rocket to Australia for launch

9:28 am

The German rocket startup Hyimpulse has now packed its SR75 test rocket for shipment to Australia for a suborbital test flight taking off from Koonibba Test Range on that nation’s southern coast.

The launch at Koonibba will also assist HyImpulse as they continue development of their SL1 Orbital Launcher. The SL1 Orbital Launcher will use ten of the SR75 rocket motors to lift payloads of up to 600kg to low earth orbit and could be launched from the Whalers Way Orbital Launch Complex [part of Koonibba] in the future.

The launch campaign is scheduled to begin from mid-April with both companies targeting a launch at the end of April through to early May subject to regulatory approval. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted phrase immediately raises concerns, as Australia is part of the British Commonwealth, with laws based on Great Britain’s. In Great Britain the red tape from those laws has acted to stymie all launches, destroying one company (Virgin Orbit) and threatening the viability of two spaceports. In Australia there have been indications that such red tape is doing the same to new spaceports on the northern coast. We shall see if that April launch happens. If it is delayed because of “pending regulatory approvals” it will confirm that the Australian government is as much a problem as Great Britain’s.

Hyimpulse is one of three German rocket startups, with Rocket Factory Augburg and Isar Aerospace the other two. It however has been very quiet in the past few years, with the other two companies garnering the most publicity as they prepare for their own first test launches. This story suggests however it might actually be the first to fly, despite the lack of news reports about it.

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Lockheed Martin offers to buy startup satellite maker Terran Orbital

9:38 pm

Lockheed Martin now has submitted an offer to buy the startup satellite maker Terran Orbital for $293 million.

Lockheed Martin has submitted a nonbinding offer to buy satellite maker Terran Orbital’s 223 million outstanding shares for $1 each and pay $70 million for its outstanding warrants.

Lockheed Martin also offered to cover about $313 million of the company’s outstanding debt.

Lockheed already owns 28.3% of Terran Orbital, and uses the satellite maker to produce its military satellites, so this deal seems a good fit. It also fits the overall long term strategy of Lockheed, which has been investing in a number of other startups (such as rocket startups Rocket Lab and ABL). The company has clearly seen the future. Rather than continue working like an old-style bloated big space company, it has been using these new companies as models for its future work.

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