An evening pause: This appears to a Russian show where drum groups compete, kind of like the cooking competition shows that took over the Food Channel. They don’t tell us who won, but who cares.
Hat tip Jim Mallamace.
Link here. This is a surprisingly accurate and detailed article outlining the present state of the worldwide launch industry and how SpaceX has come to dominate it. It includes a graph that illustrates what I noted in my own summary in January: SpaceX has served to rejuvenate the American rocket industry.
From the Pentagon to financial analysts, many are heralding SpaceX as responsible for bringing the rocket industry back to the United States. For decades, rockets built by United Launch Alliance flew U.S. Air Force and NASA missions on Russian engines or other systems bought overseas. “They’re an all U.S. launcher. For a long time our military and intelligence capability was not launched using all U.S. capability,” Carissa Christensen, CEO of consulting firm Bryce Space and Technology, told CNBC.
The Air Force continues to award SpaceX hundreds of millions of dollars in launch contracts, with Secretary Heather Wilson telling Congress in March that the decreasing cost to launch is “enabling business plans to close in space that never were possible before.”
“For a decade and a half, launch costs were ballooning until SpaceX came in and said, ‘We can do it cheaper,'” Sam Korus, ARK Invest analyst, told CNBC.
SpaceX senior vice president Tim Hughes told Congress in a July testimony that “the U.S. had effectively ceded” the commercial rocket launch market “to France and to Russia.” Hughes showed how, before 2013, the U.S. lacked a foothold in this market. SpaceX helped the United States reclaim not just a portion but a majority in the global launch market in 2017 and represented more than 60 percent of U.S. launches while doing so.
The lower costs introduced by SpaceX has not merely allowed the U.S. to retake market share from the Russians and Europeans. It is also causing a re-awakening of the entire space industry. Satellites are being built and launched now that could not have been financed in the past, solely because the cost to put them in orbit has dropped. As a result the total number of launches is rising, providing more business for everyone.
An evening pause: O that face. Even with this poor recording, you can see why I said, in my very first evening pause, Julie Andrews had “one of the most incredible screen presences of any actor in the history of film.” And the lighting here, reflecting off her features and eyes with a glint, accentuates that presence.
From The Sound of Music (1965).
Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully launched seven satellites, including two NASA science satellites and five Iridium communications satellites.
They did not attempt to recover the first stage, and though they tried to recover the rocket’s fairing it missed the ship and landed in the Pacific.
Intriguingly, all of these satellites were originally going to launch on a Russian/Ukrainian rocket.
Tuesday’s launch came about as a result of Russia’s Dnepr rocket becoming unavailable, in part due to the ongoing political situation in Ukraine. Grace Follow-On had been booked to fly aboard Dnepr, while Iridium had contracted for launches of the Russian vehicle to carry pairs of its spacecraft into orbit for testing, and later replenishment of its constellation. Early last year, Iridium and the GFZ – who are responsible for arranging GRACE’s ride to orbit – agreed to share a launch on SpaceX’s more powerful Falcon 9 rocket, splitting the costs while allowing the GRACE mission to continue and Iridium to get further satellites into orbit.
In other words, SpaceX has taken this business directly away from Russia.
The leaders in the 2018 launch standings:
15 China
10 SpaceX
5 Russia
5 ULA
In the national rankings, the U.S. is now in the lead with 16 total launches (including Orbital ATK’s Antares launch on Monday).
In a newspaper interview the chief of ArianeGroup, the private joint partnership of Europe’s main rocket contractors Airbus and Safran, can’t seem to understand why competition and lowering prices is a good thing.
Rather than give you one or two quotes, it is better that you click on the link and read the whole. thing. Essentially, the heart of the problem is that ArianeGroup is building their new Ariane 6 rocket as an expendable, not reuseable, and thus they it will not be able to compete in the launch market expected in the 2020s. They made this decision based on the political needs of the European Space Agency rather then financial needs of the launch market. As such, the launch market is abandoning them.
What is amazing is this CEO’s complete lack of understanding of these basic economic facts. It suggests some very deep rot in both ArianeGroup and much of Europe’s commercial aerospace sector. If the person in charge does not understand market forces, who else at the company will?
A evening pause: Hat tip Jim Mallamace, who writes, “Before there was Shari Lewis; before there were the Muppets, there was Kukla, Fran, and Ollie. An American television staple from 1947 – 1957, Kukla, Fran, and Ollie demonstrated there would be as large an adult audience for puppetry as there was a child audience. Burr Tillstrom voiced all the puppets. Fran Allison was the host. In this video, they sing their theme song ‘Here We Are Again.'”
Do a quick search on youtube and you can find clips of them singing songs from things like The Mikado and doing satire on television advertising. As primitive as it might seem when compared to modern television, this was a children’s show with a whiff of sophistication.
We’re here to help you! Despite having all charges against him dropped, Homeland Security has arrested the CEO of the smallsat rocket company ARCA.
It’s not over yet. [Dumitru Popescu] was taken into custody by the Department of Homeland Security this morning, without warning.
When Dumitru was arrested in October of last year, The DHS cancelled his business visa, and provided him with a temporary visa, allowing him to stay until his case ended. Despite all charges against Dumitru being dismissed and Dumitru’s immediate efforts to restore his legal status in the US, he was taken into custody before he had a chance to do so.
This is absurd. The guy is very clearly not trying to get into the U.S. illegally. His company has actually won grants from NASA as well as other private companies. When the charges were dropped his business visa should have be reinstated instantly.
The result I think will be to kill his company, and its attempt to launch and test the first aerospike engine. This is a loss for both them and the United States.
Capitalism in space: Orbital ATK successfully launched an Cygnus cargo freighter to ISS with its Antares rocket in the early morning hours today.
Because this was Orbital’s first launch in 2018, there is no change in the launch leader list for 2018:
14 China
9 SpaceX
5 Russia
5 ULA
However, this launch puts the U.S. above China, 15 to 14, in the national rankings.
ULA strikers voted yesterday to end their nearly two week long strike after approving a revised contract.
ULA gave them a slightly higher increase, and some additional rules to protect them from being displaced by subcontractors as well a two week break between work trips. The company in turn got a four year contract.
An evening pause: Performed live, 1988. The magnificent set starts wth “Guitars Cadillacs,” then goes on to “Streets of Bakersfields,” “Buenas Noches from a Lonely Room,” and finishes with a song I simply can’t identify. It’s a bit long for an evening pause, but worth every second. And a great way to end the week.
Hat tip Robert Pratt of Pratt on Texas.
According to a story in the Russian press a tourist on a flight planned for 2019 could be replaced by an astronaut from the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The Russians and the UAE have signed a cooperative agreement, so this is possible. It could also be that the UAE has offered more money and thus moved up the queue. It could also be that this is premature. There have been many such stories in the past decade, but the Russians have not flown a tourist to ISS since 2009.
After a grand jury refused to issue an indictment, all charges have been dropped against Dumitru Popescu, the CEO of the smallsat rocket company ARCA.
I am reminded of the Emily Latila character from the early days of Saturday night life.
Even though he has been entirely cleared, the prosecution served to seriously delay the company’s plans.
At the time the charges were filed last fall, ARCA had been about two weeks from launching a test rocket from Spaceport America, according to Popescu. The criminal case stalled progress. Now, the company plans to carry out the rocket test in Europe. After that, it’s likely the company will launch a test of a second rocket system from NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
It is also possible the company will now exit either New Mexico or the U.S., since it appears the state government here is hostile to it.
The inspector general for NASA, Paul Martin, is testifying today before Congress on ISS. His prepared statement [pdf] includes several blunt assessements concerning the station’s future.
First and most important, he has doubts that transitioning the station to private ownership will work.
» Read more
SpaceX’s first Block 5 first stage for its Falcon 9 rocket, designed to fly a minimum of ten times, has returned to port after its first flight last week.
This is the most interesting detail revealed:
While not visible, the most significant improvements are likely to be found at the base of the first stage’s octaweb – now assembled with bolts instead of welds – in the form of a dramatically improved heat shield around its nine Merlin 1D engines (also upgraded, of course). One of the Falcon recovery technicians showed some exceptional interest in the shield and Merlins, likely documenting their condition in extreme detail to inform engineering reviews of the pathfinder rocket after its first flight test.
The pictures show those bolts quite clearly.
An evening pause: Seems to me that these guys could be Mrs. Hughes’ son from the comedy routine posted in yesterday’s evening pause.
Hat tip Jim Mallamace.
Astra has scrubbed its second attempt in Alaska to complete its first test launch of a suborbital rocket.
They provided no explanation, nor have they said when they try again.
An evening pause: Good comedy should leave you begging for more. This does that.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
Even as China tries to make them move out, the ethnic Miao villagers that have built homes and lived inside a cave for the past century or so refuse to leave.
Why? This explains it:
A cottage industry has popped up in which the cave dwellers earn extra money by renting out rooms in their homes, which over time have clustered within Zhong cave, a limestone cavern big enough to hold four American football fields. The hangar-like cave is so large that their wooden or bamboo-made residences form a small, subterranean village built along its undulating walls.
…Officials say that residents have not taken care of the cave, leaving it unsuitable for inhabitation, and that the government should oversee the village as it is listed as a protected community by the Getu River Tourism Administration, a local agency. They have offered each resident 60,000 renminbi, or approximately $9,500, to leave.
Only five families have agreed to move. The remaining 18 families have held on stubbornly to their homes inside the cave. They say that the new homes are too small, that they fear losing access to their land, and that they alone, because of their historical connection to the cave, should have the right to independently control its small tourism economy.
The Chinese government is simply not offering them enough to leave. And should they leave, I would expect the villagers to come out on the raw end of the deal, while the cave itself, no longer protected by their presence and financial self-interest to preserve it, will also suffer.
Hat tip Willi Kusche.
Capitalism in space: ULA has chosen an Aerojet Rocketdyne engine to power the upper stage of its next generation rocket Vulcan.
The company has not yet made a decision on the engine for the first stage, where Blue Origin’s BE-4 still appears favored over Aerojet Rocketdyne’s AR-1 engine. This decision on the upper stage could partly be a political move, giving Aerojet the upper stage in order to make it easier to give the lower stage to Blue Origin.
ULA is forced to play politics here because politicians are involved. A number of power members of Congress want Aerojet Rocketdyne to get the business, and ULA risks offending these legislators should it abandon that company entirely.
A new computer technique has been developed that uses subtle changes to a document’s fonts to encode secret messages and data.
Using Columbia University’s FontCode system, however, users can hide messages within unrelated text via virtually-invisible changes to the displayed letters.
Developed by a team led by associate professor of computer science Changxi Zheng, FontCode works with commonly-used fonts such as Times Roman, Helvetica, and Calibri, plus it’s compatible with most word processing programs. Additionally, the hidden messages are retained even when the document is printed on paper or converted to a different file type.
The video at the link explains very nicely how this works. The technology has some excellent potentially positive applications, such as providing a method of finding out if an original document has been modified. It also carries with it a great potential for misuse because of its ability to hide information unobtrusively in a written document.
An evening pause: Hat tip Robert Pratt, of the radio show Pratt on Texas, who offers it “to balance the ‘jazzy.'”
Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully placed in orbit Bangladesh’s first communications satellite, successfully using its upgraded Block 5 version of the Falcon 9 rocket, its first stage designed to be reused a minimum of ten times.
They successfully recovered the first stage, and will now take it apart to confirm this new version worked as planned. If so, it will be put back together and returned to service.
The leaders in the 2018 launch standings:
14 China
9 SpaceX
5 Russia
5 ULA
The U.S. and China are once again tied at 14 for the nation lead. SpaceX’s launch rate is presently double what it achieved last year, when it launched the most rockets of any private company ever.
In creating its new Google assistant, called Duplex, and designing it to be able to make phone calls to schedule appointments, the company made it indistinguishable from a human and successfully hid the fact that it was a robot.
The company was then surprised that many were horrified by this and objected.
The demonstration of the technology at the conference was both impressive and startling. The first example showed Duplex calling a hair salon and scheduling an appointment. The second example involved an even more complex conversation, with the system calling a restaurant to try to make a reservation. In the course of the conversation the system is told it wouldn’t need a reservation for that many people on that particular day. Understanding this, Duplex thanks the person on the other end and hangs up.
These examples of a human-sounding AI interacting with a real person are undeniably impressive, but the technology’s ability to so blatantly fool another human being into thinking it is real has left many unnerved. From suggestions Google had failed at ethical and creative AI design to more explicit accusations that the company was ethically lost, rudderless and outright deceptive, it seems something had gone drastically wrong.
You can watch the demonstration at the link. The robocall technology is quite amazing, and it is also incredibly dishonest and morally bankrupt. Google makes no effort to identify its robot to the listener, and is actually proud that it successfully fools them into thinking they are talking to a human.
The article notes that the company has gotten a lot of negative response to this, and has since said it will always make full disclosure in the future. I have my doubts. I also expect that politicians and survey companies will soon take advantage of this as well. I now routinely hang up on surveys that use robots. To discover that they can fool us makes me want to hang up on all surveys, in all cases.
The first launch of SpaceX’s Block 5 iteration of its Falcon 9 rocket was scrubbed today after an automatic abort at T-minus 59 seconds.
The next launch window is tomorrow afternoon. No word yet if they will go for that window.
Because the Air Force wishes to do more testing and review of both its payload and the rocket, the second launch of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy has been delayed several months.
The Falcon Heavy mission for the Air Force will be its first for a paying customer. STP-2 has a number of objectives, including demonstrating the new rocket’s capabilities and launching several satellites.
The launch had been set for June.
That the Air Force is on board Falcon Heavy now indicates that it wants to get this rocket certified for military launches as quickly as possible, thus giving it another heavy lift launch option besides the much more expensive Delta Heavy of ULA. This strategy is good for the Air Force, good for the taxpayer, and good for the launch industry. It will lower launch costs while encouraging competition.
An evening pause: Hat tip Jim Mallamace, who was quite right when he said this nine minute animated film flies by in an instant.
Photos of the ship, Mr. Steven, that SpaceX wants to use to recover its rocket fairings show that the company has installed a new net for catching those fairings.
The article theorizes that this heftier net has actually been installed for eventually catching the Falcon 9’s upper stage.
[T]he newly-installed net is by all appearances magnitudes larger, heavier, and stronger than the minimal mesh specimen it is clearly replacing. Given the fact that SpaceX thus far has self-admittedly failed to catch a gliding fairing half in the net, it seems unlikely that such a drastic upgrade would be necessitated by any field-testing that occurred since Mr. Steven’s debut late last year. Rather, a significantly more capable net seems to more readily fit alongside CEO Elon Musk’s tweet reveal three weeks prior that SpaceX would attempt to close the final major loop of Falcon reusability by recovering the orbital upper stage (S2). Estimated to weigh approximately 4000 kilograms empty, the upper stage is a minimum of four times heavier than Falcon 9’s payload fairing halves, Mr Steven’s current meal of choice.
Judging from the new net’s beefy rigging, broader bars, and general appearance, one could safely argue that it looks at least several times stronger than the mesh net before it. One could also argue that the absolutely massive metal arms installed on Mr. Steven are far larger than what might be required to catch the extremely low mass-to-area ratio payload fairings, with structural heft and bulky netting more reminiscent of safety nets present on naval vessels that are designed to catch aircraft and helicopters weighing five metric tons or more.
This is an interesting theory, but I have my doubts. At the same time, I would not dismiss Musk’s willingness to try daring engineering approaches.
