Capitalism in space: The Dragon cargo freighter that arrived at ISS in July 16th has now undocked from the station, with a planned splashdown scheduled for tomorrow.
To show how routine these commercial missions have become, it appears that neither NASA nor SpaceX are bothering to live stream the splashdown. NASA will simply provide updates on the web.
Capitalism in space: The Indian private company, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, yesterday delivered to India’s space agency ISRO the fairing and high altitude launch abort motor that will be used in Gaganyaan, that nation’s first manned spaceflight.
Though the article at the link does not say so, the fairings and abort motor will likely be used in one of two unmanned launch abort test flights ISRO intends to do before the actual manned mission, now set for sometime in ’24.
Hindustan Aeronautics is also a space company in India that will require watching. It not only built these major components for Gaganyaan, it also has built major components for India’s PSLV and GSLV rockets. It would not surprise me if the company eventually decides to build its own rocket, assuming the India government loosens the stranglehold it presently has over space and lets private companies compete against its government space operations. It was a similar stranglehold by NASA from the 1970s to the 2000s that squelched competition and innovation from the American private aerospace industry. When that ended, the renaissance in commercial space finally could begin.
UPDATE: It appears I was in error assuming Hindustan Aeronauts was a private company, as it is owned by the Indian government. I have edited the post above to reflect this. It appears the stranglehold the government has over India’s aerospace industry is no closer to loosening.
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.
"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
Capitalism in space: Having successfully completed both a full dress rehearsal countdown and static fire test of its fully stacked Alpha rocket, Firefly Aerospace has now scheduled the rocket’s launch for September 11, 2022.
These details come from a tweet by the company, so details are very limited. Nonetheless, this will be the company’s second attempt to complete an orbital launch. The first attempt, in September 2021, failed when one of its first stage engines shut down prematurely.
The company had hoped to attempt this second launch ten months ago, but was forced to delay it when the federal government demanded its chief investor, Ukrainian billionaire Max Polykov, first sell off his share in the company.
Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.
Raytheon and Northrop Grumman, working in partnership, have successfully flown a hypersonic missile prototype for the second time in eleven months.
For the latest test, the HAWC prototype was carried under the wing of an aircraft and flown to high altitude, where it was released. A solid rocket booster then accelerated the vehicle to supersonic speed and a scramjet ignited. An engine without moving parts, a scramjet uses its forward motion to compress the incoming air into a shockwave that burns with fuel, producing enough thrust to propel the missile to over five times the speed of sound.
The latest prototype had only minor modifications from the previous flight and met all of its objectives. The data recovered by telemetry will be used to improve the digital models using artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data, which will increase the efficiency and performance as the weapon concept comes closer to practical deployment.
As this is a military project, not many details about the prototype were released, such as its size, speed, design.etc. One shouldn’t even trust the illustrations of the missile, provided by Northrop Grumman. Each shows the missile with a rounded lifting body shape on its bottom side, likely to protect and guide it on its re-entry, but there is no guarantee the illustrations’ shape matches that of the real missile.
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.
“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.
Capitalism in space: Maritime Launch Services yesterday obtained a 20-year land lease for its Nova Scotia spaceport from the province of Nova Scotia.
The lease covers 334.5 acres, and is renewable for an additional 20 years.
Unlike other spaceports, Maritime isn’t merely providing a launch site for rocket companies. Instead the company will also launch smallsats itself, using a Ukrainian-built rocket dubbed the Cyclone-4M. Initially the plan was to fly all launches in this manner, but the invasion of the Ukraine by Russia has caused Maritime to look for other launch providers as well.
Capitalism in space: Sky Perfect JSAT, a Japanese satellite communications company, today awarded SpaceX a launch contract using its giant Starship/Superheavy rocket to put its Superbird-9 communications satellite into orbit in 2024.
Superbird-9 will be launched by SpaceX’s Starship launch vehicle in 2024 to geosynchronous transfer orbit. SpaceX’s Starship is a fully reusable transportation system that will be the world’s most powerful launch vehicle. SKY Perfect JSAT and SpaceX will continue to work together ahead of the launch of Superbird-9 Satellite.
Sky Perfect is the first communications satellite company to choose Starship for a satellite launch. It is however the rocket’s fourth signed customer. Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa made a deal in 2018 for a flight around the Moon, while NASA chose Starship in 2021 as the manned lunar lander in its Artemis program. UPDATE: SpaceX also has a second private manned customer, Jared Isaacman, whose present deal with SpaceX calls for two Dragon flights followed by a Starship flight.
Sky Perfect is not a new company, with sixteen satellites already in orbit providing communications, broadband, and entertainment to Japan and the Far East. It likely made this deal because it got a very good launch price, with options to back out if the rocket’s on-going development gets delayed by too much. It also made the deal because it helps to solidify Starship’s future, something Sky Perfect probably sees as a win considering the significant reduction of launch costs expected from Starship/Superheavy.
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.
"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
An evening pause: Performed live on television 1978.
Hat tip Blair Ivey.
Click for full image.
Today’s cool image falls into what I call my “What the heck?” category. The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, was taken on May 31, 2022 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. It was also picked by the science team as that camera’s picture of the day on July 12, 2022. From the caption:
This seems to belong to a class of craters in the Cerberus Plains that was flooded by lava, which was subsequently uplifted and fractured by an unknown process. This class of filled, uplifted and fractured craters is informally called “the waffle.” A combination of volcanic and periglacial processes seems possible.
In other words, the scientists only have a vague idea what created the broken up floor of this crater. For example, why did only the material in the interior of the crater get uplifted and fractured? Did this uplift occur before, during, or after the lava event?
The overview map below tells us a little about where that lava came from, and when.
» Read more
The uncertainty of science: Using data from the Gemini South telescope in Chile, astronomers have determined that the universe’s most massive star, dubbed R136a1, is actually less massive than previously believed.
By pushing the capabilities of the Zorro instrument on the Gemini South telescope of the International Gemini Observatory, operated by NSF’s NOIRLab, astronomers have obtained the sharpest-ever image of R136a1 — the most massive known star. This colossal star is a member of the R136 star cluster, which lies about 160,000 light-years from Earth in the center of the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf companion galaxy of the Milky Way.
Previous observations suggested that R136a1 had a mass somewhere between 250 to 320 times the mass of the Sun. The new Zorro observations, however, indicate that this giant star may be only 170 to 230 times the mass of the Sun. Even with this lower estimate, R136a1 still qualifies as the most massive known star.
What astronomers are trying to figure out is the highest possible mass a star can possibly have. This new data suggests that this upper limit is smaller than previously believed.
Click for original.
“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” In its upcoming welcoming program in September for new students, the University of California-San Diego plans to hold racially segregated events that specifically excludes whites and Asian students and families from attending.
The flyer ad to the right, announcing the program dubbed Triton Weeks of Welcome, specifically includes two such events, as indicated in red. Both are exclusively for specific minorities, and those minorities only.
The group running the Black Surf week, Black Like Water, explains the purpose of its racially-segregated event as follows:
Through our research and practice, Black Like Water seeks to promote healing, restoration, and sovereignty in ways that do the liberatory work of combating anti-blackness and interrupting structural racism, but in manners that celebrate the Black diaspora, acknowledge ancestral practices and knowledge, and imagine Black futures.
As stringer Jay correctly noted to me in an email today, “Slow news day.” None of the stories below merit a full post, even though they are pretty much all of today’s space news.
The company hopes to complete its first orbital launch before the end of the year.
The press release makes this sound more exciting than it is. All that has happened is the company has completed its first design review. Nothing has been built or tested.
Jay adds, “This company has currently raised ten million Yuan ($US 1.5M) in investments. Tiangong Space Station has these engines but I can not find any specs on it. [For context] the University of Michigan built a 100kw engine and NASA has built a 40kw engine and a 6kw engine that will be used on the Lunar Gateway.”
Wanna bet this doesn’t launch in ’26? Or ever?
However, the graphic NASA uses for its tweet, of Starship on the Moon, indicates that even NASA knows this, and is increasingly expecting its lunar program to shift away from SLS in the near future.
Both are launching from interior spaceports and will, based on the map of their launch paths at the link, dump their first stages on China. One will also fly over Taiwan.
A Russian spacewalk yesterday to continue the configuration of Europe’s robot arm for the Russian half of ISS was cut short after four hours when the power system in Oleg Artemyev’s spacesuit begin producing unexpected “voltage fluctuations.”
“I have a message, voltage low,” Artemyev radioed Russian ground controllers around 12 p.m. EDT (1600 GMT). An engineer at Russia’s mission control center near Moscow warned Artemyev he would lose communications if his suit ran out of power.
Russian flight director Vladimir Solovyov then jumped on the line to tell Artemyev to head back to the safety of the airlock. “Oleg, this is Solovyov,” he said. “Drop everything and start going back (to the airlock) right away. Oleg, go back and connect to station power.”
This problem occurred about two hours into the spacewalk. The second astronaut, Denis Matveev, continued working at the robot arm for another two hours before mission control ordered him to end the walk early.
According to Russian officials, Artemyev was never in any danger, though the urgency in which he was ordered to come inside suggests otherwise. According to another news report, a power loss could have also shut down the spacesuit’s “pumps and the fan.”
