An evening pause: The music appears to come from a video game, which this video heavily promotes. No matter. She performs it using both a classic Chinese instrument and a modern electric guitar, and the contrast is striking.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
After a ten day pause in launches, which included one launch abort at T-0, SpaceX yesterday successfully launched 20 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.
The pause is noteworthy because it is possibly SpaceX’s longest pause in launches this year (I haven’t gone back and checked). Consider this fact: A ten day pause between launches would have once been considered a fast launch pace. Now it seems like something is wrong.
The rocket’s first stage completed its fifth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
63 SpaceX (with another launch scheduled for later today)
27 China
8 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads the world combined in successful launches, 73 to 41, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including other American companies, 63 to 51.
An evening pause: Performed live 1990.
Hat tip James Street.
In a press briefing today, Boeing and NASA announced that they have decided to delay the return of Boeing’s Starliner capsule, carrying two astronauts, another four days to June 26, 2024. The landing would take place just before dawn, landing at White Sands in New Mexico.
The decision to delay is related to the results from the hot fire tests of the aft thrusters of Starliner on June 15, 2024. Engineers want to review the data, which included finding that one of the eight thrusters is producing unacceptable results and will not be used for the rest of the flight. The other seven thrusters however produced acceptable results, “good thrust” as noted by one official.
The extra time to review the data is also because these thrusters are on the service module, which will not return to Earth. They want to make sure they understand the issues entirely. The longer time docked to ISS is also giving them better data for future longer missions.
As for the helium leaks, the level of leaking appears to be dropping, and in fact dropped after the hot fire burns, and “appears to be somehow related to the thrusters.” Either way, the safety margins remain sufficient so that the return is not threatened in any way by these leaks.
The valve issue also seems under control, with all the valves now working as expected.
Overvall, engineers have decided they have a safe vehicle that can not only be used to return to Earth as scheduled, they are confident that they could also use Starliner as a lifeboat in a sudden emergency.
Rocket Lab yesterday signed a new 10-launch contract with the Japanese satellite company Synspective, with the launches scheduled for the 2025-2027 timeframe.
Rocket Lab has been Synspective’s sole launch provider since 2020, having already launched four of its satellites, with two other launches already under contract. Thus, the satellite company has bought sixteen total launches from Rocket Lab. Its constellation is designed to provide surface data in any weather condition, using radar.
An evening pause: A magnificent cover of this classic Ennio Morricone film score. If you want to hear a compliation of all of Morricone’s western scores, go here.
For me however Morricone’s score for Cinema Paradiso remains my favorite.
Hat tip Mike Nelson.
Australia’s commercial spaceports. Click for original map.
Because of regulatory delays at the Saxaford spaceport in Great Britain, the German rocket startup Hyimpulse has signed a launch deal with the Australian commercial spaceport Southern Launch.
In May, HyImpulse launched the inaugural flight of its suborbital SR75 rocket from the Southern Launch Koonibba Test Range. The flight had initially been expected to be launched from SaxaVord in Scotland, but delays in the construction of the facility forced the company to look elsewhere for a host.
On 6 June, Southern Launch announced that it had signed a Memorandum of Understanding with HyImpulse for the launch of additional SR75 missions from Koonibba. The agreement also included provisions for the pair to explore the possibility of launching orbital flights aboard the HyImpulse SL1 rocket from Whalers Way Orbital Launch Complex on the south coast of Australia.
According to Hyimpulse’s November 2023 deal with Saxaford, it was to have flown two suborbital flights of the SR75 in 2024 and one orbital flight of SL1 in 2025.
It could very well be that SL1’s first orbital test launch will still take place from Saxavord, but the several years of delays caused by the red tape from the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority in approving Saxavord has forced its customers to seek alternatives. Hyimpulse for example now has agreements not only with Southern Launch in Australia. The French space agency CNES has approved it to launch from French Guiana as well.
In addition, the German rocket startup Isar Aerospace in November 2023 signed a deal with the new Andoya commercial spaceport in Norway. Andoya had come into this spaceport competition very late, but it apparently won this deal because Isar saw the regulatory problems in the UK and decided to look elsewhere.
An evening pause: The hand of man, creating wonders.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
According to information provided to the FAA from Boeing, the documentation from a subcontractor for some of the titanium used on some Boeing and Airbus planes might be faked, suggesting that the titanium is fake as well.
Boeing discovered this possibility when one of its suppliers discovered holes in some metal pieces due to corrosion.
Apparently, Italian parts supplier Titanium International Group found small holes in titanium in December 2023, and also raised suspicions about the authenticity of documentation. It notified Spirit AeroSystems of the issue, which in turn informed Airbus and Boeing in January 2024. According to three anonymous sources close to the matter, affected planes include those built between 2019 and 2023 and involve the Boeing 737 MAX, 787 Dreamliner and Airbus A220 programs.
…The problem has been traced back to a Chinese supplier that sold titanium to Turkish company Turkish Aerospace Industries in 2019. Documentation from this Chinese supplier claimed that the titanium had been sourced from another Chinese firm, Baoji Titanium Industry – however, Baoji Titanium has confirmed that it did not provide this batch of titanium “and has no business dealing with this company.” [emphasis in original]
In other words, no one has any idea where that first Chinese supplier got the titanium, because its documentation was false.
Both Airbus and Boeing have done numerous tests and found no problems, though both have said they will remove any suspect parts. Spirit meanwhile has removed all the suspect parts, even though tests suggested the parts were “of sufficient quality for the aerospace industry.”
The real story here is not that these parts are unsafe (they apparently are not). The real story is the dependence by these airplane companies on so many subcontractors, some of which are subcontractors of subcontractors of subcontractors and also come from a hostile power. It leaves them all very vulnerable to others’ mistakes or malfeasance. During the Cold War it would have been inconceivable to rely on Soviet-built parts. Yet, today American airlines routine rely on Chinese companies when the Chinese government has made it clear it sees us as an enemy to be defeated.
As part of the military’s program for issuing launch contracts, the Space Force yesterday announced that it has chosen SpaceX, ULA, and Blue Origin as its launch providers, allowing them to bid on $5.6 billion worth of planned launched over the next five years.
The NSSL Phase 3 program was structured into two “lanes.” Lane 1 is for less demanding launches to low Earth orbit, while Lane 2 is reserved for heavy lift rockets capable of delivering payloads to nine reference orbits, including some of the most demanding national security missions.
The selection of Blue Origin, SpaceX, and ULA for Lane 1 contracts confirms that no other launch providers met the criteria. Seven bids were submitted, according to the DoD announcement.
The Space Force apparently rejected the other four unnamed companies because they “are still maturing their launch capabilities.” It will allow them to re-submit applications next year, and could approve others for bidding at that time, which is a major change from past policy. Previously the military would name approved companies, but not reconsider others for years, a policy that limited its options and reduced competition. Now it appears it will be doing so frequently, possibly every year, in order to regularly increase the number of companies that can bid on military contracts.
This change is excellent news for the American launch industry, as it means the Pentagon has finally ended its long standing launch policy that played favorites.
NASA today announced that the return of Starliner from ISS, carrying two astronauts, has been delayed again, from June 18th to June 22nd.
It appears engineers want to perform more tests of the the spacecraft’s attitude thrusters before undocking. The failure of some thrusters during docking on June 6th has raised some concerns.
NASA and Boeing teams also prepared plans for Starliner to fire seven of its eight aft-facing thrusters while docked to the station to evaluate thruster performance for the remainder of the mission. Known as a “hot fire test,” the process will see two bursts of the thrusters, totaling about a second, as part of a pathfinder process to evaluate how the spacecraft will perform during future operational missions after being docked to the space station for six months. [emphasis mine]
The highlighted words are kind of a lie. While there is no doubt this test will tell engineers a lot about future operations, such a test, while attached to ISS, would never have been approved had the thrusters all worked as planned during docking. The real reason for this static fire test is to make sure the thrusters will work once undocked.
If they don’t work, there could be a safety issue putting the astronauts in Starliner for return to Earth.
NASA plans a press briefing on June 18th at noon (Eastern) to outline in better detail the situation.
An evening pause: Performed live 2012. A most eccentric performance.
Hat tip Alec Gimarc, who notes about Brown, “Most notable for a 4-octave voice and performing with a lit device on his head at the time [1969]. … Impressed he is still alive.”
