Confirmed: Saudi Arabia buys two seats on next Axiom commercial flight to ISS

8:59 am

Capitalism in space: Saudi Arabia’s official press yesterday confirmed an earlier Reuters story that it has purchased two seats on an Axiom commercial flight to ISS, using a SpaceX Dragon capsule.

The twist is that the Saudi government says one of those astronauts will be a woman, and the mission should fly in 2023. It will include Axiom’s pilot, two Saudi passengers, and a fourth passenger, all as-yet unnamed.

The mission is part of what the Saudi government calls a new astronaut training program.

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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

September 22, 2022 Quick space links

4:50 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who trolls Tweeter so I don’t have to.

  • Want a NASA rocket engine once intended for SLS? GSA has seven for sale!

The engine is the J-2X, a supposed upgrade of the Saturn-5’s J-2 upper stage engines. GSA is selling the components for seven, the auctions to be found here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Its proposed rocket family will look very familiar to those familiar with SpaceX.

FAST is essentially a larger version of the now-shuttered Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. It is hard to say if it is being used to its full potential at this time, as China right now doesn’t have that many qualified radio astronomers. This is why for a long while it tried to get foreigners to run it, unsuccessfully. With time, however, this will change.

It also appears they plan to fly it past both Venus and some asteroids on its way to the outer solar system.

It is is Chinese, so it would be nice if one of my readers who can read Chinese provides some explanation.

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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.

How private enterprise is solving the vulnerability of satellites to military attack

1:10 pm

Link here. The essay provides a nice overview of the U.S. military’s present conundrum on protecting all American satellites in orbit, not just military ones, and what it is beginning to do to solve it, now that the Space Force exists.

The approach is following three paths, with only the last two having any hope of success. First, the Biden administration is trying diplomacy to convince space-faring nations to ban future anti-satellite tests. This approach has really little chance of success.

The other two avenues involve innovations from private enterprise, launching many small satellites as part of a large constellation and in-orbit servicing, repair, and refueling. The first creates redundancy, making it difficult for any enemy power to easily destroy U.S. assets. The second provides capabilities for both fixing important satellites as well as attacking our enemy’s without causing space junk. Both will become common in the coming years, and thus will become very viable tools for military use.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Google, Paypal, Venmo team up to blacklist a gay organization

12:18 pm

Google loves blacklisting, along with its teammates Paypal,Venmo, and Twitter
Google loves blacklisting, along with its teammates
Paypal,Venmo, and Twitter

Blacklists are back and big tech likes ’em: Apparently because the homosexual advocacy group Gays Against Groomers opposes the exposure of queer ideology to little children, this week the big social media companies Google, Paypal, and Venmo did a coordinated crack down on the group, shuttering its accounts all within one day’s time.

Google, Paypal and Venmo shut down accounts affiliated with Gays Against Groomers, a Twitter account that is critical of gender ideology, particularly in regard to children. Venmo shut down the account early Tuesday morning, and Paypal blocked the account from its services minutes later, according to an email shared by the account’s founder Jamie Michell; Google shut down her account, including her email address, the following morning, according to a screenshot and an email.

Google reinstated the account the next day, but provided no credible explanation for its actions, at all.

In July this same organization had also been suspended by Twitter. The account was only reinstated when the group agreed to replace the letter “o” in “Groomers” with graphic eyeballs. It appears Twitter did not like the use of the word “groomers”, since it described precisely what queer advocates are doing when they espouse their perverse sexual behavior to young children.

The organization had been using its Twitter account to publicize examples where queer advocates performed sexually in front of kids. As it notes on its webpage:
» Read more

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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

Musk: Starship orbital attempt by November, at the latest

10:06 am

According to a tweet yesterday by Elon Musk, SpaceX engineers will likely have the first orbital prototypes of Starship and Superheavy ready for the orbital attempt either late in October, or by November. His full tweet:

Late next month maybe, but November seems highly likely. We will have two boosters & ships ready for orbital flight by then, with full stack production at roughly one every two months. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words are the most significant. SpaceX is not building one rocket for test, like NASA has done with SLS. It is building an assembly line of test rockets, so that it can do a fast series of test launches plus upgrades, leading to quick and reliable operations. Should any one rocket launch fail, the company will speedily move on to the next, with little or no delay.

Should SLS fail in its first test launch sometime in the next month, NASA has no back-up. The entire program will be shattered, with no easy way to recover.

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Roscosmos head: Russia likely to remain ISS partner through 2028

9:57 am

According to a statement made by Yuri Borisov, the head of Roscosmos, during a press conference today, Russia now will definitely remain an ISS partner through 2024, and likely through 2028, assuming the station remains safe and operable.

These statements fit well with the “kinder, gentler” approach that Borisov seems to be taking in his relations with Russia’s international partners in space, compared to the bellicose and often hostile attitude of Roscosmos’s previous boss, Dmitry Rogozin. Borisov has been trying to ease the tension. He quickly signed the barter agreement with NASA allowing for crew exchanges on each other’s spacecraft, and has made it clear almost immediately that the ISS partnership was solid.

I strongly suspect Borisov will eventually offer OneWeb the return of its 36 satellites that Rogozin confiscated. This is not likely to regain Russia OneWeb’s commercial business, but it would do a lot to make it less a pariah in the international launch market.

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Nova Scotia spaceport signs deal with British rocket startup

9:46 am

Capitalism in space: Maritime Launch Services, the company that is building a spaceport in Nova Scotia, has signed an agreement with the British rocket startup Skyrora, naming its Skyrora-XL rocket as one of the launch providers for that spaceport.

As part of the agreement, Maritime Launch will purchase the vehicles and vehicle support staff from Skyrora for their satellite clients. Spaceport Nova Scotia will provide Skyrora a launch pad, ground and operations support, public safety services, regulatory approvals and mission integration facilities and staff. Skyrora will supply the launch vehicle, mobile launch complex, and launch operations support team to Maritime Launch.

Unlike other new spaceports, Maritime is running Spaceport Nova Scotia a bit differently. Most new spaceports simply provide a launch site for rocket companies. Maritime instead wants to offer satellite companies a full service spaceport, including the rocket. Initially the plan was to use a Ukrainian-built rocket, Cyclone-4M, as part of the service, but the Russian invasion of the Ukraine has made its availability uncertain.

This deal gives Maritime a new option to offer satellite companies. However, the Cyclone-4M was already somewhat tested, as it was an upgrade of the Ukrainian Tsiklon-4 rocket, which has already launched. Skyrora is only a startup, and has not yet flown.

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SLS fueling test completed

9:38 pm

NASA engineers today successfully completed the tanking test of the agency’s SLS rocket, completing all objectives after successfully dealing with a hydrogen fuel leak at the beginning of fueling.

The four main objectives for the demonstration included assessing the repair to address the hydrogen leak identified on the previous launch attempt, loading propellants into the rocket’s tanks using new procedures, conducting the kick-start bleed, and performing a pre-pressurization test. The new cryogenic loading procedures and ground automation were designed to transition temperature and pressures slowly during tanking to reduce the likelihood of leaks that could be caused by rapid changes in temperature or pressure. After encountering the leak early in the operation, teams further reduced loading pressures to troubleshoot the issue and proceed with the demonstration test. The pre-pressurization test enabled engineers to calibrate the settings used for conditioning the engines during the terminal count and validate timelines before launch day to reduce schedule risk during the countdown on launch day.

Teams will evaluate the data from the test, along with weather and other factors, before confirming readiness to proceed into the next launch opportunity. The rocket remains in a safe configuration as teams assess next steps. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words are key. NASA has proposed a September 27, 2022 launch date. For that launch to occur, the rocket must remain on the launchpad, where it is impossible to check the batteries for operating the flight termination system used by the military range office to destroy the rocket should it go wildly out of control during launch. To check the batteries they need to roll it back to the assembly building, and one week is simply not enough time.

The vagueness of the highlighted language suggests that NASA has not yet gotten a waiver from the range for that date. Nor should it. Those batteries normally have a 20-day limit. On September 27th they will been unchecked for about 42 days, well past their use-by date.

This will be the first test launch of this rocket. Such first launches very frequently go wrong, and if SLS goes wrong, it would go wrong in a very big way, considering the size of the rocket. To do such a risky launch with a questionable flight termination system would not simply be improper it would be downright criminal.

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September 21, 2022 Quick space links

2:32 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay, who trolls Twitter so I don’t have to.

The powerpoint presentation can be viewed here [pdf]. Lots of interesting details, including the revelation that Rocket Lab is considering the construction of its own manned capsule.

To make sure there is no confusion, the satellite did not break apart. Instead, it appears to have been made of two spacecraft that have now undocked from each other and are testing automatic rendezvous and docking procedures, similar to the tests that Astroscale was doing.

The project is targeting 2030 for launch. The picture of the “hopper” at the link looks more like a Boston Dynamics robot dog.

Based on the deal with the UAE on the lunar Chang’e-7 mission, China is looking for other countries to sign on, and will likely get a few.

The deal doesn’t appear to include anything specific, only for both to explore future cooperation, including flying Canadian astronauts on Axiom’s station. Also, this deal suggests Canada will get the contract to build the robot arm for Axiom.

The company had previously done a 20 second test fire, and is still hoping to launch by the end of the year.

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