The competition heats up: Boeing has successfully dropped a fullscale test vehicle of its Starliner manned capsule into water.
Video below the fold. It isn’t very spectacular, as all they do is lift the capsule up about 35-40 feet and then drop it at an angle into a tank of water. Nonetheless, it shows that construction is moving forward briskly.
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The competition heats up: According to a new report, venture capitalists invested twice as much money last year in commercial space startups than they had in the previous fifteen years combined.
From 2000 through 2015, space startups reeled in $13.3 billion in investment cash, including $2.9 billion in venture capital. A full $1.8 billion—or roughly two-thirds—of that venture capital was invested last year alone. The influx of all that VC cash suggests a shifting perception among investors, Christensen says.
Investment in space-related startups was once largely dominated by “advocacy investors” passionate about space travel (think Elon Musk) and corporations with strategic interests in Earth orbit (telecoms, satellite TV providers, etc.). Now, thanks to a handful of very visible successes from companies like SpaceX, a broader base of investors are looking at space startups as more traditional tech investments—the kind that rapidly bring a product to market and generate revenue in the relatively near term. Those products and revenues generally have less to do with space and more to do with information, Christensen says.
Combine this with the much less significant story yesterday about how NASA received a record 18,000 applicants for a mere 14 astronaut positions and it sure appears that western society is becoming increasingly space happy.
The competition heats up: SpaceX has successfully completed the static test fire of its Falcon 9 rocket in preparation for its Wednesday commercial launch.
The launch window is from 6:46 to 8:23 pm (Eastern) on Wednesday.
The competition heats up: On Friday Virgin Galactic unveiled their replacement SpaceShipTwo, dubbed Unity, replacing the first ship destroyed 16 months ago during a failed flight test.
As is typical of Virgin Galactic, they managed to garner a lot of press coverage of this event. To me, it is a big big yawn. I want to see this ship flying, not towed out from a hanger by an SUV with Richard Branson waving to the crowd.
And until they do, I will consider everything Virgin Galactic does at this point to me nothing more than empty public relations bull.
Below the fold is the podcast from my Friday appearance on the John Batchelor Show. The main topic was the bureaucratic turf war between the FAA and NTSB about how the new commercial space industry should be supervised. (O joy!).
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Battle of bureaucrats: The FAA’s office that regulates commercial space (AST) and the National Transportation Safety Boad (NTSB) are fighting over the procedures AST should use to control and manage the work of private space companies.
The issues deal with how the FAA inspects the work of space companies, prompted by the NTSB’s investigation into the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo crash in 2014. The kerfuffle also illustrates the absurdity of the regulatory responsibilities that Congress forced on AST when it amended the commercial space act in 2004. Somehow it is expected that bureaucrats in Washington will know better how to make sure a private company’s new space designs are safe than the very engineers who are building them. The disagreement here is merely about how the bureaucrats keep watch. The NTSB wants AST’s bureaucrats to hover over them like a worried mother. AST wants to hover from a little farther away, like a proud father.
In either case, the hovering will accomplish little to make the cutting edge engineering more safe except create fake jobs in the government for hovering bureaucrats, while squelching risky innovation since such risks go against the instincts of every bureaucrat.
Though Congress has recently revised the law to ease its regulations, they didn’t really do much to remove them. Expect these kerfuffles to get bigger in the coming years as the Washington bureaucracy moves to impose its will on this industry while simultaneously manipulating the press and Congress to create more useless jobs for themselves.
If they succeed, we should also expect them to succeed in making innovative commercial development in space become increasingly impossible.
The Russian government’s takeover of its entire aerospace industry, plus its war in the Ukraine, has caused an 80% crash in Ukraine’s aerospace industry.
The two largest enterprises are the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau and the PA Yuzhmash manufacturing company, which work closely together on Ukrainian launch vehicles. Yuzhmash produces the first stages of the Zenit and Antares boosters and a fourth stage for Europe’s Vega launch vehicle. The company is also involved in the conversion of retired ballistic missiles into Dnepr satellite launchers as part of a joint program with Russia.
However, Russia is phasing out use of the Zenit and Dnepr launchers. Russia is shifting over to using Angara and Soyuz-2.1v, newer rockets the nation produces domestically. Russia is also switching to domestic manufacturers for space components to reduce their dependence on foreign suppliers.
This destruction by Russia of its neighbor’s aerospace industry doesn’t necessarily bode well for Russia’s own aerospace industry. Consolidated as it is into one giant entity, with no competition, it is very likely it will not produce much that is very innovative or creative at a reasonable cost. Russia was better off with the competition.
Mattel is bringing back an old toy, Thingmaker, but the new version will be a 3D printer for kids.
After wirelessly linking the 3D printer to a mobile device running the ThingMaker Design App for iOS or Android, users decide whether they want to create a toy figure or jewelry, with the option to print ready-designed toys, or mix and match from hundreds of parts which can be popped together after printing thanks to ball and socket joints. After designing their creation, users simply push a button to start printing.
Features of the ThingMaker 3D printer which make it more suitable for children than your typical 3D printer include it being simple to use, and having an auto-locking door. This will stay shut until your toy is at a safe temperature and the hot print head has retracted into a recess, so that it can’t burn eager little fingers.
Simplicity is applicable to adults as well. This gives us a hint where all 3D printing is heading.
And though the article describes as a negative the fact that it will routinely take 12 hours for each toy to print, I consider this irrelevant. I would have loved to have this thing as a kid, and would have gladly tried out a new design each day, just for fun. The toys themselves are what is irrelevant, not the creation process.
The competition heats up: India plans by 2020 to privatize its very successful PSLV rocket.
Not much information on what they plan to do, though the implication is that they want to shift ownership out of the government, a good thing.
Scientists have found a way to use tiny nanoparticles of gold to destroy 100% of the cancer cells in mice.
The engineering is complex, but the nanoparticles tend to cluster around cancer cells, and when heated cause water around them to vaporize, destroying the cells. Human trials expected within two years.
Want to not attract annoying bugs? Use warm LEDs!
The research’s amusing discovery is that bug lights, which are designed to not attract bugs and were proved to work very well, had one failing: They did not repel two species, stink bugs and earwigs. Looks like warm LEDs (red or yellow in color) are the thing to get.
Update: The music video itself has been pulled from youtube for copyright reasons that I don’t quite understand. However, the making of video is still available, and that will give you a pretty good feel for some of the stuff in the original piece.
I was going to make this an evening pause, but then decided it shouldn’t wait. This music video, by OK-Go, is unique and somewhat historic, as it I think is the first to have been done in zero gravity, using an airplane to fly parabolic arcs. It demonstrates clearly the fantastic and as present almost unimaginable possibilities of dance in weightlessness, as it also might be the first time that professional dancers, the two women, are given a chance to do moves in microgravity.
Be sure to also watch the making of video below the fold. And go here for the story behind the video.
