The competition heats up: Excalibur Almaz has announced its plans for a privately funded trip to the Moon.
The competition heats up: A new company has announced plans to use the Gemini capsule design from the 1960s to provide crew and cargo capability to orbit.
“Since this is an existing and proven design we could begin construction six to eight weeks after funding and complete a flying prototype ten to thirteen months later,” said WestWind President Bill Jolly.
The FAA and NASA have worked out their differences concerning their regulation of private commercial space.
Essentially, NASA has finally conceded with this agreement that it has no control over a private space launch that is not flying to a NASA facility. That the FAA continues to have as much regulatory control is bad enough, but getting NASA out of the loop will at least ease the bureaucratic burden for private companies.
Orbital Sciences has delayed the first testing firing of its Antares rocket until late July or early August.
This fact is buried about halfway down in the article, and does not mention what caused the delay. (Hat tip to Clark Lindsey.)
Copenhagen Suborbitals: The crazy DIY spaceflight project that just might work.
A real estate industry group today announced that there was a nine percent jump in foreclosures during the month of May.
RealtyTrac reported that 205,990 U.S. properties received filings last month, including default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions, marking the first monthly increase since January. Bank repossessions climbed steeply, up 7% to 54,844, after hitting a four-year low in April.
The report also noted that foreclosures made up 26% of U.S. home sales in first quarter and that more than 30% of mortgage borrowers were still underwater.
As someone who just moved to Tucson and spent more than six months searching for and finally purchasing a home, I can add a bit of personal experience to these dry statistics. And my perspective is sadly not encouraging.
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Telescope for sale: Unless they can find a buyer the United Kingdom will close down its 3.8 meter infrared UKIRT telescope on Mauna Kea in 2013.
This is a tragedy. A 3.8 meter telescope is no slouch and can do amazing research. The problem is that all the available money in ground-based astronomy is now being eaten up by the construction of giant telescopes in the 20 to 40 meter range.
What astronomy needs are some wealthy philanthropists who would like to buy these mid-sized telescopes, put their names on it, and finance their operation. This is how most big telescopes were made possible before World War II.
Good news: Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Virginia) has backed down and modified the language he had inserted in the NASA budget bill that would have limited the number of commercial space companies NASA could subsidize.
From Clark Lindsey:
Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) , who is Chairman on the Commerce-Justice-Science subcommittee of the House Appropriations committee, put language into the recent House budget for NASA that requiree NASA to down-select immediately to one primary contractor in the commercial crew program. This would obviously eliminate competition on price and rule out redundancy in case one system is grounded. He has now relented and is willing to allow for “2.5 (two full and one partial) CCiCAP awards”.
As I wrote earlier, the success of Dragon is putting strong political pressure on Congress to support the independent commercial space companies over the NASA-built and very expensive Space Launch System (SLS) that Congress had mandated. Expect to see more elected officials back down in the coming year, with the eventually elimination of SLS from the budget.
Want to own your own island? Now you can have it built, and put it wherever you want!
Next up: Taking a look at the test flight planning for Orbital Sciences’ Antares rocket and Cygnus cargo capsule.
Some details and photos of Sierra Nevada’s captive carry test flight last week of Dream Chaser.
The competition heats up: Using video game software, Surrey Satellite has devised a way for nanosatellites to seek each other out and then dock to form a larger satellite.
If the STRaND-2 satellites are able to dock with one another, it opens up a whole new world of space engineering. Instead of building one large spacecraft, as in conventional satellite manufacturing, or using microsatellites flying in formation as is being developed currently, dockable satellites would be modular “space building blocks” according to [Surrey]. Satellites could be made as plug-and-play components that could be sent up in segments using smaller, cheaper rockets or piggybacked with other payloads and then linked together. This would not only be a cost savings, but would allow for much greater design flexibility. It would also make it much easier to repair, maintain, refuel or upgrade satellites. Today, a satellite with a failing power system is an expensive write off. Tomorrow, it would simply a matter of sending up a new power module.
Even the fight against space junk would benefit, since a dockable micro-satellite with a booster pack could easily dock with a dead satellite and either return it to the Earth’s atmosphere or out to a space disposal area.
A new gun range in Texas plans to offer itself for kids’ birthday parties.
An Israeli company has discovered a giant off-shore oil and gas field within Israeli territorial waters.
“The quantity of gas discovered in the licenses, and the high probabilities, make it the third largest offshore discovery to date,” according to Israel Opportunity chairman Ronny Halman, quoted by Globes. He added, ”This quantity guarantees Israel’s energy future for decades, and makes it possible to export Israeli gas, and boost the state’s revenues without worrying about gas reserves for domestic consumption.”
In his first two years in office, Democrats gave Mr. Obama everything he wanted, save for cap and trade and union card-check, which would have done even more harm to job creation. They passed stimulus, ObamaCare, multiple housing bailouts, Dodd-Frank and more.
Even after Republicans took the House, they gave Mr. Obama the payroll tax holiday he demanded first for 2011 and again for 2012. Far from some new fiscal “austerity,” overall federal spending hasn’t declined. Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve has delivered monetary stimulus after stimulus—QE I, QE II, Operation Twist, and 42 months of near-zero interest rates with the promise of 30 months more.
Mr. Obama has had the freest run of policy of any President since LBJ. So maybe the problem is the policies.
Maybe Milton Friedman was right that “temporary, targeted” tax cuts don’t change the incentives to invest or hire because people aren’t stupid. Maybe each $1 of new federal spending doesn’t produce a “multiplier” of 1.5 times that in added output. Maybe the historic burst of regulation of the last three years has harmed business confidence and job creation. And maybe the uncertainty that comes from helter-skelter fiscal and monetary policy has dampened the animal spirits needed for a durable expansion.
As I said yesterday, though no president or Congress is entirely to blame for the state of the economy, they both can do great harm if they make decisions that interfere with the freedom of the market. And sadly, having the government interfere with the freedom of the market has been Obama’s mantra since the day he took office.
Intelsat has reported a delay in deploying one of the solar panels of its new communications satellite launched earlier today.
The wrong side of history: Environmental activists have launched a petition drive to stop SpaceX from building a commercial spaceport near Brownsville, Texas.
“I love the space program as much, if not more, than anyone,” said Environment Texas Director Luke Metzger. “But launching big, loud, smelly rockets from the middle of a wildlife refuge will scare the heck out of every creature within miles and sprays noxious chemicals all over the place. It’s a terrible idea and SpaceX needs to find another place for their spaceport.”
This guy obviously doesn’t know that almost all of the Kennedy Space Center is a wildlife refuge, and a successful one at that. But then, what do facts have to do with most environmental causes?
Not good: The Labor Department announced today that the U.S. economy only added 69,000 jobs in May, the fewest in a year.
The unemployment rate went up slightly as well, Labor also adjusted downward the number of jobs created in the past two months to terribly comparable numbers.
While no president is ever entirely responsible for the state of the economy, Barack Obama’s policies have certainly done significant harm. High regulation, Obamacare, and a clear hostility to private enterprise in all fields except space exploration has helped produce what appears to be the longest period with a floundering economy in my lifetime.
The competition heats up: Sea Launch successfully put an Intelsat communications satellite into orbit today from its floating launch platform in the Pacific.
This is the company’s second successful launch since it was reorganized after bankruptcy.
A rose by any other name: The FDA has rejected changing the name of high fructose corn syrup to corn sugar.
Dragon has successfully fired its engines and released its trunk or service module. Splashdown is expected at 11:44 AM (Eastern).
Dragon has successfully undocked from ISS.
The hatch is closed and Dragon is ready for its return to Earth tomorrow morning.
The competition heats up: The FAA has granted Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic a launch permit to begin rocket-powered test flights of SpaceShipTwo.
From a past SpaceX critic: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy could wipe out its launch competition.
This announcement [of SpaceX’s deal with Intelsat] is an indication that SpaceX is now threatening the dominance of Arianespace and ILS in the commercial launch arena. If a Falcon 9 Heavy can carry two or more large GEO communications satellites for half the launch price of an Ariane 5 or Proton M booking, then this could spell the end of their commercial operations as going concerns. It is not only on the commercial front that SpaceX may dominate. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Heavy launch service promises to be less than half the cost of using equivalent Atlas and Delta rockets. So even the cosy launch provider-governmental relationships that previously benefited the likes of Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Pratt and Whitney/Rocketdyne could now be threatened.
As much of a fan of SpaceX as I am, and as much as I agree with the above statement, we must remember that Falcon Heavy is not yet built. Moreover, I suspect that the deal with Intelsat does not yet include any transfer of funds. SpaceX has a long way to go before any of this happens. Nonetheless, the company’s continued success very obviously is beginning to make its competitors nervous.
The competition heats up: Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser mini-shuttle underwent its first flight test today in Colorado.
The competition heats up: SpaceX has gotten its first contract, with Intelsat, for its not-yet-built Falcon Heavy rocket.
The Falcon Heavy when completed will be the most powerful rocket since the Saturn 5. If SpaceX can get it funded through commercial contracts, it will end forever the need for government subsidies in the aerospace industry. Government as a customer will still exist, of course, but it will no longer be in charge.
Kazakhstan is blocking three upcoming Russian satellite launches from its spaceport in Baikonur because of a dispute over where rocket debris will fall.
I suspect that Russia is now even more enthused over completing its new spaceport in Vostochny.
In related news, a Russian analysis of the consequences of the Dragon docking at ISS. The article also notes some potential changes in the Russian space effort.
Here’s a bit more information on the Excalibur Almaz proposal to launch commercial tourist flights to the Moon using refurbished Soviet-era space stations and capsules.
The rise of leftist eco-terrorism.
A group calling itself the Olga Cell of the Informal Anarchist Federation International Revolutionary Front has claimed responsibility for the non-fatal shooting of a nuclear-engineering executive on 7 May in Genoa, Italy. The same group sent a letter bomb to a Swiss pro-nuclear lobby group in 2011; attempted to bomb IBM’s nanotechnology laboratory in Switzerland in 2010; and has ties with a group responsible for at least four bomb attacks on nanotechnology facilities in Mexico. Security authorities say that such eco-anarchist groups are forging stronger links.
In other words, they can’t persuade with cogent rational arguments, so the answer is violence and terrorism. Nor is this surprising, considering that these violent groups are definitely leftist and therefore believe in a top-down command economy. The idea of letting people decide for themselves what’s best is beyond their ken.
