We’re here to help you: A zoning board and the LAPD have shut down a thirty-year-old successful burger stand, apparently because they think it attracts crime.
Watch the video at the link. The result of this brain-dead action will be an abandoned building in an abandoned neighborhood. Good going, California!
Two teams competing for the Google Lunar X-Prize have now merged.
Moon Express had been considered by some to be in the lead to win the $30 million prize. With this merger I suspect their chances have improved considerably.
More details on Virgin Galactic’s first glide test of SpaceShipTwo with its rocket motor attached.
Now’s here’s a good idea: A petition to have the U.S. withdraw from the United Nations Outer Space Treaty has been submitted to the White House.
Read it. Mark Whittington, who submitted it, is absolutely right. We get out, we can claim territory on the Moon and thus apply U.S. law to that territory. People and companies could thus own land and have an opportunity to make a profit from their property.
SpaceShipTwo has successfully completed its first glide test flight with its rocket motor attached.
Now that they know the spacecraft glides properly with the extra weight of the rocket, this sets the stage for the first powered flight.
Orbital Sciences has begun testing the loading and unloading of fuel for the first stage of its Antares rocket at Wallops Island, Maryland.
This is good, but the questions about the Antares’ system for ejecting its shroud after launch still remain, threatening the rest of the schedule.
NASA used Orbital Sciences’ Taurus XL rocket for the failed launch of its Glory climate satellite in 2011, even though the agency knew the company had not fixed the problem that caused the loss of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory in 2009.
The investigators believed there was as much as a 50% chance the faulty component — a fairing separation system for ejecting the protective shroud that covered the satellite during launch — would fail again. Sadly, it did, destroying Glory. More significant for the future, however is this:
Other Orbital vehicles, including the air-launched Pegasus and a new Antares rocket, use a version of the same fairing separation system that is most likely responsible for the combined $700 million loss of two key climate-study satellites. Orbital’s original name for Antares was Taurus II.
So far, NASA has not accepted the Antares shroud-separation configuration for operational flights. Dulles, Va.-based Orbital says it has made a number of changes to its frangible joint fairing separation system in the wake of the Glory launch failure, including modifications to the frangible rail used on Antares. The company is developing that rocket under NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program to carry cargo to the International Space Station (ISS).
If NASA isn’t satisfied with Orbital’s design changes to this system, it could significantly delay the launch of Cygnus and Antares to ISS.
Update: I had mistakenly referred to the Taurus 2 in the first sentence when the rocket used to launch Glory and OCO was the Taurus XL. This is now corrected.
SpaceX has pinpointed the cause of the Falcon 9 engine shutdown during its October 7 Dragon launch.
At the moment, however, they are not telling anyone what that cause is. They are telling us that the next Dragon launch is going to happen in late February or early March, which is slightly earlier than previous reports.
Glide tests of Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser shuttle are now scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2013.
The vehicle they will be flying is only a prototype built expressly for these unmanned tests. A separate flight model is under construction and will be used for later manned suborbital tests, followed by a third vehicle built for orbital flights.
The competition heats up: If you and a friend happen to have $1.4 billion, the new private company Golden Spike wants to take you to the Moon.
Golden Spike’s news release said the venture would make use of existing rockets as well as commercial spacecraft that are currently under development to send expeditions to the lunar surface, with the estimated cost of a two-person lunar surface mission starting at $1.4 billion.
There will be a lot of press stories about this. And it is good, as it illustrates again the increasing shift from government-run space missions to a robust private industry. The idea of a private company doing this is no longer considered absurd but perfectly reasonable.
Whether Golden Spike itself will do it, however, is another thing entirely. Please forgive me if I reserve the right to be a little skeptical at this point.
The competition heats up: The Pentagon has decided to buy its launch services from more than just Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
Under the new plan, the Air Force can buy as many as 14 launches over the next five years from possible bidders such as Space Exploration Technologies Corp, or SpaceX, and Orbital Sciences Corp . The service may also buy as many as 36 launches from United Launch Alliance, the Lockheed-Boeing venture, with an option to purchase the other 14 launches if the competitors haven’t been certified to launch military and spy satellites that can cost up to $1 billion each.
Originally the military planned to purchase all of its launches from Boeing and Lockheed. Political pressure from SpaceX has now forced them to widen the competition, or at least, make noises that they are doing so. If you read the above paragraph closely the plan still favors the original two companies and is strongly stacked to hand all the launches over to them anyway.
Update: My pessimism above was premature. SpaceX has been awarded a contract for two launches under this new policy.
Space tourism — in a balloon.
A newly successful test of a balloon could allow paying human customers to enjoy stunning Earth views and the weightless astronaut experience by 2014. The test balloon carried a humanoid robot up to an altitude of almost 20 miles (32 kilometers) on Nov. 12 — just a few miles shy of where skydiver Felix Baumgartner leaped from during his “space dive” in October. Startup Zero 2 Infinity wants to eventually offer hours of flight time for space tourists to do whatever they want in a near-space environment.
Ticket prices are $143K. And they have a list of customers who have already plunked down deposits.
SpaceX and Stratolaunch have parted ways.
In the original plan, Stratolaunch would build the first stage, the biggest airplane every built, which would lift the second stage, SpaceX’s Falcon 9, into the air. It appears, however, that the modifications required to make the Falcon 9 work in this configuration were not in SpaceX’s interest, so the company backed out and Stratolaunch has instead made a deal with Orbital Sciences to provide the second stage rocket.
The Russians today announced a reorganization of their space industry.
An obvious attempt to deal with their increasing production and quality control problems, this proposal has both good and bad parts to it.
» Read more
The competition heats up: Echostar signs a multi-satellite deal using the Ariane 5 rocket.
Several points:
» Read more
Real progress: Russia and the U.S. have named the two astronauts who will spend a year in space beginning in 2015.
This mission will also make room for a Russian tourist flight during that same time period.
A Russian Proton rocket, scheduled for launch in late December, is being replaced because of damage sustained during transport from its factory.
This is not the first time this has happened. In 2010 a Soyuz capsule had to be replaced for the same reason. Modern television journalism (if one can call it that) would immediately ask “Is this a trend?” I instead wonder what the details are in both cases, which unfortunately are not available.
Good news: Boeing indicated today that it is considering increasing its investment in its CST-100 manned capsule in order to accelerate its development.
I suspect that, after Boeing in September let leak the idea that they might shelve CST-100 if the space agency didn’t give them more money, NASA management instead told them in no uncertain terms that if they didn’t show a more serious commitment to building CST-100, they might lose the contract altogether.
