Google introduces its first prototype of a completely driverless vehicle.

10:17 am

Google introduces its first prototype of a completely driverless vehicle.

The prototype accommodates for two passengers and is missing quite a few of the features you’d expect to see in a standard car. With no need for a steering wheel, mirrors or braking and accelerating pedals, the car comes fully equipped with special software and sensors that feed information into an onboard computer, which then drives the car.

The story and video are very vague about a lot of important details, such as how much programing was necessary for the vehicle to do the specific test drives shown as well as how the passengers tell the vehicle where to go. Nonetheless, as a prototype this vehicle is quite intriguing.

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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, any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, 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

Orbital Sciences has delayed its next Cygnus flight to ISS by at least one week in order to complete its investigation of the failure of a Russian-built rocket engine used by the Antares rocket.

10:05 am

Orbital Sciences has delayed its next Cygnus flight to ISS by at least one week in order to complete its investigation of the failure of a Russian-built rocket engine used by the Antares rocket.

Without doubt, this engine failure highlights the urgent need for American rocket companies to develop their own rocket engines.

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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.

A place on Mars that was possibly habitable only 200 million years ago.

9:43 pm

A place on Mars that was possibly habitable only 200 million years ago.

This article discusses the possibility of liquid water from the melting of the glaciers that scientists think once covered the western slopes of the giant volcano Arsia Mons. I have also written about this area in an article I wrote for Sky & Telescope last year on exploring caves in space. It is thought that there might be caves here in which some of that water from those glaciers might still be found.

As one scientist is quoted as saying in this article, “Arsia Mons would be the next place I would want to go.” Like the south pole of the Moon, it likely has all the ingredients for establishing a habitable colony.

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The FAA is inching closer to approving a license to allow SpaceX to conduct tests in Texas of its rocket-powered prototype of its Dragon capsule.

9:45 am

The competition heats up: The FAA is inching closer to approving a license to allow SpaceX to conduct tests in Texas of its rocket-powered prototype of its Dragon capsule.

Simply, DragonFly is a propulsive system designed to allow the SpaceX Dragon capsule to perform propulsive landings (both with and without parachute assistance). Overall, DragonFly will use eight SuperDraco hypergolic engines capable of producing up to 16,400 lbf of thrust each. …

In all, SpaceX has proposed, and submitted to the FAA for commercial experimental license, a total of 30 DragonFly tests at its McGregor test facility. Four of the test flights involve DragonFly being dropped from a helicopter at an altitude of 10,000 ft with two propulsive assist landings parachutesand engines) and two propulsive landings (engines only). The remaining 26 of the proposed test flights will launch from a specially-built pad that will take between 1-2 weeks to construct (according to the FAA draft environmental report). These 26 flights will consist of eight parachute-assist landings and 18 full propulsive hops (rocket engines only).

We should all be relieved: The 76-page draft environmental impact statement noted that these tests will not destroy the Earth, and that their effect on global warming will be tiny. If the license is finally approved, testing should begin before the end of 2014.

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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

An summary of the past week’s private effort at Aceibo to reactivate ISEE-3.

9:59 am

A summary of the past week’s private effort at Aceibo to reactivate ISEE-3.

They have discovered that the spacecraft is approximately 150,000 miles away from its expected position. This complicates the rescue effort significantly, as all their course corrections have to be recalculated based on this new position and they don’t yet have it refined enough to do those recalculations.

This has become extremely important as there is a solid statistical chance that the spacecraft could impact the moon or even be off course enough to threaten other spacecraft in Earth orbit. We are working with Mike Loucks of Space Exploration Engineering (SEE) our trajectory guy on this issue. An east coast company, Applied Defense (ADS) has also offered their help and engineering support to derive a new ephemeris from our new position reports. ADS and SEE did the trajectories for NASA’s just completed LADEE mission.

Hopefully by the end of this weekend they will have more to report.

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Elon Musk and another watchdog group suggested on Friday that there was a quid pro quo in the awarding ULA its bulk buy military launch contract.

9:42 am

Elon Musk and another watchdog group suggested on Friday that there was a quid pro quo in the awarding ULA its bulk buy military launch contract.

Musk, citing an article by the Washington-based National Legal and Policy Center, suggested Thursday night on Twitter that the Pentagon inspector general should investigate the actions of former Air Force civilian Roger “Scott” Correll. Earlier this year, Correll retired from his post as the Air Force’s program executive officer for space launch, where he wielded enormous influence in awarding a multibillion-dollar contract for 36 rocket launches over the next several years, shooting sensitive national security equipment into space.

The contract went to a company called United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of the nation’s two biggest weapons contractors — Chicago-based Boeing and Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin Corp. Earlier this month, Correll took a job as vice president of government acquisition and policy with Aerojet Rocketdyne, the company that supplies the rocket engines used by United Launch Alliance.

Correll’s hiring certainly illustrates the “old boys” network in operation here. Whether there was direct corruption is not clear. Nonetheless, the bulk buy contract is not in the interests of the taxpayer or the Air Force, at least not at the prices announced.

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Virgin Galactic finally admitted to its engine troubles on Friday.

9:34 am

Virgin Galactic finally admitted to its engine troubles on Friday.

They have dumped the original engine, switching to a different engine design that the rumors have said they have been testing for the past year.

The company press release is here, with commentary here.

Though it is a good thing that the company has finally come clean and made the switch, they probably waited far too long to do it, as the problems with the old engine likely caused several years delay in their schedule, allowing other companies to catch up with them and thus losing the significant technological advantage that they once held.

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The predicted new meteor shower last night was less than hoped but intriguing nonetheless.

9:18 am

The predicted new meteor shower last night was less than hoped but intriguing nonetheless.

Based on a few reports via e-mail and my own vigil of two and a half hours centered on the predicted maximum of 2 a.m. CDT (7 UT) Saturday morning the Camelopardalid meteor shower did not bring down the house. BUT it did produce some unusually slow meteors and (from my site) one exceptional fireball with a train that lasted more than 20 minutes.

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Short of money for astrophysics because of the overruns on the James Webb Space Telescope as well as federal budget woes, NASA has decided to shut down the Spitzer Space Telescope.

9:11 am

Short of money for astrophysics because of the overruns on the James Webb Space Telescope as well as federal budget woes, NASA has decided to shut down the Spitzer Space Telescope.

Other missions, such as Kepler, Chandra, Hubble, NuStar, and Swift got extensions, however.

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While SpaceShipTwo continues to sit on the ground, European space tourism competitor Swiss Space Systems (S3) has initiated zero g flights for its customers.

1:10 pm

The competition heats up: While SpaceShipTwo continues to sit on the ground, European space tourism competitor Swiss Space Systems (S3) is going to initiate zero g flights for its customers.

These are not suborbital flights, but they will provide customers with the experience of weightlessness in a flight similar to that provided by the vomit comet that Zero-G flies. Eventually this company plans its own suborbital spaceship, but this way they get their customers in the air as soon as next year, rather waiting for more than a decade for development to get completed.

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The European partnership building the new Ariane 6 rocket struggles to keep its costs down to compete with SpaceX.

1:01 pm

The competition heats up: The European partnership building the new Ariane 6 rocket struggles to keep its costs down to compete with SpaceX.

Ariane 5 has been a huge triumph, orbiting half of the world’s communications satellites and claiming 60% of the 2012 world market for geostationary launches. But while the rocket is extremely precise and reliable it is also hugely expensive, with a single-payload flight costing €150-200 million. However, even at that price Ariane 5 launches are understood to be loss-making for ESA’s launch operator, Arianespace. Its high cost in in large part blamed on its industrial organisation; while private-sector SpaceX has tailored the Falcon programme for low cost production, the Ariane 5 project is organised in part to satisfy the demands of European multi-national politics.

Speaking exclusively to Flight Daily News, ESA’s Stefano Bianchi, who heads the Vega programme and now spends much of his time dedicated to Ariane 6 development, stresses that the programme is on course as set out by ESA’s member states, and any major change of configuration would require ministerial agreement.

But, he says, he and his colleagues are confident they can bring Ariane 6 to fruition at the target launch cost of €70 million – a level that would match or even undercut SpaceX. [emphasis mine]

This story is in connection with the conflict between France and Germany about how to build Ariane 6. I have specifically highlighted the cost figures to illustrate once again the reality that everyone in the industry knows (except for one commenter on my webpage), that the cost of a SpaceX launch runs in the neighborhood of $60 to $100 million, one third to half the cost of Arianespace and significantly less than the cost of practically every other launch company.

Any company that realistically wants to compete with SpaceX has to be totally honest about these facts. Their customers are honest about them, for certain.

Update: The CEO of ULA admits that the real cost of its military launches averages about $225 million per launch.

He claims they can get the cost down to $100 million per launch, but only if the military makes a bulk buy of 50 launches from them, but even that barely competes with SpaceX’s accepted launch fees ranging from $75 to $100 million, per launch. No need to buy 50 rockets from SpaceX to get these prices.

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NASA reveals that the second flight of SLS in 20210 might not be manned.

12:52 pm

Pigs in space: NASA reveals that the second flight of SLS in 20210 might not be manned.

This project officially started in 2010, which means this second flight will come more than a decade later. They will have spent more than $20 billion by that time, not counting the money spent on Orion. They will have also spent billions developing one engine for the upper stage, only to shelve it to develop another which they will need to test. Hence, the possibility that the second flight will be unmanned. NASA has also admitted that the third flight of SLS won’t come until 2024 at the earliest.

What kind of crap is this? This isn’t a space program or a project to explore the solar system. It is pure pork, a boondoggle designed to spend as much taxpayer dollars as possible for as long as possible. It is time to shut it down.

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SpaceX discovered a lot of water inside their Dragon capsule after splashdown.

12:44 pm

SpaceX discovered a lot of water inside their Dragon capsule after splashdown.

This has got to be fixed. Though it does not appear that any cargo inside was damaged, this is the second time this has happened. More important, it suggests that the capsule integrity cannot yet be trusted in the vacuum of space. If water can seep in, it is just as possible for atmosphere to leak out.

Keep this in mind when you read reports about SpaceX’s unveiling of their manned version of this capsule on May 29. As much as I am supportive of this company, the worst thing anyone can do is be blind to problems such as this.

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On the road

6:00 am

On Thursday and Friday I will likely not be able to do much posting, as I am heading up to Kitt Peak to watch an amateur astronomer do overnight observations using the 2.1 meter telescope on the mountain. I will also be taking a tour of the numerous facilities on the mountain top. All of this is in connection with an article I am writing for Sky & Telescope.

I am unsure if I will have internet service there. If I do, I will continue to post. Otherwise I will return Friday afternoon and pick up from there.

Update, Friday mid-day: I am back. Though I had access to the internet, I was too busy with other business to post. A lot of news stories since yesterday, so there will be a lot of posts in the next few hours.

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A citizen’s group is offering a one million dollar bounty to “anyone who can provide ‘smoking gun’ evidence” that implicates either the IRS leadership or members of the Obama administration as ordering the harassment of conservatives.

10:03 pm

Pushback: A citizen’s group is offering a one million dollar bounty to anyone who can provide ‘smoking gun’ evidence’ that implicates either the IRS leadership or members of the Obama administration as ordering the harassment of conservatives.

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The Sun settling down?

3:43 pm

Two weeks ago NOAA posted its monthly update of the solar cycle, showing the sunspot activity for the Sun in April. I have been remiss about doing my monthly post about this, so here it is now, posted below with annotations.

April Solar Cycle graph

The graph above has been modified to show the predictions of the solar science community. The green curves show the community’s two original predictions from April 2007, with half the scientists predicting a very strong maximum and half predicting a weak one. The red curve is their revised May 2009 prediction.

The Sun continued the drop in sunspots seen the previous month, though the total number remains above the 2009 prediction for this moment in the solar cycle. As already noted, that the second peak of this double peaked solar maximum has been much stronger than the first remains unprecedented.

Overall, the maximum continues to be the weakest seen in a hundred years. Whether this is an indicator of future events or an anomaly can only be discovered after the Sun completes this solar solar cycle and begins the ramp up to its next solar maximum, at least five years away.

The next update is only a few weeks away. Stay tuned.

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The consequences if Russia carries out its threat to shut down the U.S. science GPS stations in Russia will be relatively minimal according to scientists.

9:45 am

The consequences if Russia carries out its threat to shut down the U.S. science GPS stations in Russia will be relatively minimal according to scientists.

Only if the stations, which are essentially nothing more that GPS geological data-loggers, are removed permanently or shut down for a long period will the consequences to geological research become more damaging. The article also points out the stupidity of the American government in this dispute. Its refusal to allow similar Russian GPS geological research data-loggers in the states makes no sense.

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