Hauser – Shostakovich’s Waltz No. 2
An evening pause: Performed live 2018.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
Tag: commercial
Sweden’s Esrange spaceport gets its first orbital customer
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Sweden’s Esrange spaceport today announced it has signed its firs orbital rocket customer, Perigee Aerospace from South Korea.
In its 7 May announcement, SSC explained that Perigee Aerospace expected to launch the first Blue Whale 1 mission from Esrange no earlier than 2025 following a successful maiden flight from South Korean soil.
…Blue Whale 1 is a two-stage rocket that will stand approximately 21 metres tall and feature a reusable first stage.
Esrange was originally built by an earlier version of the European Space Agency in 1964, then transferred to Sweden in 1972. Until until a orbital launchpad was installed 2023 it was solely dedicated to suborbital flights. It now is attempting to attract the new commercial rocket industry, as well as compete with the other new nearby spaceports, as shown on the map.
This new rocket from South Korea is also news, as it indicates that the fever for capitalism in space has even reached that country.
Musk: SpaceX and Starlink don’t use artificial intelligence
During an interview at a recent conference Elon Musk admitted that both SpaceX and Starlink have found artificial intelligence (AI) lacking, and don’t use it at all.
The irony was that prior to this admission, Musk had been extolling AI’s potential, predicting it would someday do wonderful things.
Musk, who answered questions during 27th annual Milken Institute Global Conference on Monday, spent a sizable portion of his talk extolling the benefits of artificial intelligence. At one point, he said a “truth-seeking” AI could “foster human civilization” when asked about the role the technology would play in human’s everyday lives.
But when asked whether AI could “accelerate” his efforts in space exploration, he seemed less excited about the technology. …”I mean, oddly enough, one of the areas where there’s almost no AI used is space exploration,” Musk replied. “So SpaceX uses basically no AI, Starlink does not use AI. I’m not against using it. We haven’t seen a use for it.”
Musk continued, saying that he’s been testing improved AI language models by asking them questions about space — and the results have been disappointing. “With any given variant of or improvements in AI, I mean, I’ll ask it questions about the Fermi paradox, about rocket engine design, about electrochemistry — and so far, the AI has been terrible at all those questions,” Musk said.
Here we see the visionary meet the practical engineer/businessman. Musk always looks to the future with grand visions, but when it comes time to build those visions, he never allows his vision to interfere with practicality. AI is still essentially garbage-in-garbage-out. The rush by businesses and tech-firms to blindly use has resulted in more than a few disasters.
Musk doesn’t do anything blindly. He tested AI first, found it wanting, and thus put it aside, despite believing it will someday do wonderful things.
If only more companies used this approach. If they had, they might not have blindly pushed DEI and ESG requirements that have done nothing but harm to their companies, their work forces, and their bottom lines.
SpaceX unveils the spacesuit Jared Isaacman will use to do the first private spacewalk
SpaceX this past weekend unveiled the spacesuit that Jared Isaacman will use on his Polaris Dawn mission, presently scheduled for this coming summer, to do the first spacewalk by a private citizen.
This spacewalk suit is based on SpaceX’s flight suits that astronauts presently wear when inside Dragon, but is much more capable. From SpaceX’s webpage:
Developed with mobility in mind, SpaceX teams incorporated new materials, fabrication processes, and novel joint designs to provide greater flexibility to astronauts in pressurized scenarios while retaining comfort for unpressurized scenarios. The 3D-printed helmet incorporates a new visor to reduce glare during the EVA in addition to the new Heads-Up Display (HUD) and camera that provide information on the suit’s pressure, temperature, and relative humidity. The suit also incorporates enhancements for reliability and redundancy during a spacewalk, adding seals and pressure valves to help ensure the suit remains pressurized and the crew remains safe.
Creating this suit was the main reason Isaacman’s five day orbital Polaris Dawn mission was delayed by almost two years.
I wonder what it cost SpaceX to develop this new suit. I strongly suspect it was much cheaper than the spacesuits NASA has hired Axiom and Collins Aerospace to create. It certainly has been built faster.
Rocket Lab delays first launch of new Neutron rocket
Rocket Lab has delayed the first launch of its new larger Neutron rocket from late 2024 to mid-2025 in order to complete the testing of that rocket’s new methane-fueled Archimedes engine.
Many component, subsystem, and all-up system tests will be conducted throughout the test campaign. These tests will validate Archimedes’ transient start-up, steady-state, and shut down performance. The engine test and development campaign is a key driver of the schedule for Neutron’s first launch, which the Company today confirmed is now expected to take place no earlier than mid-2025.
That testing will also certify it for use in as many as twenty flights, as the Neutron rocket is being designed from the get-go to be reusable.
Starliner launch scrubbed due to valve issue
Yesterday’s Starliner launch was scrubbed before launch because ULA had detected an issue with a valve on the Atlas-5’s Centaur upper stage, causing that valve to flutter because it had not closed in the proper position.
At the press conference that followed, ULA’s CEO Tory Bruno explained that during an unmanned launch, engineers would have simply cycled the valve, which almost always works to get it to seat properly. ULA launch rules however forbids it from doing so on a manned launch, because that would be the equivalent of fueling the tank with people on board the rocket. The Atlas-5 was initially not built for manned flights, and though it has been upgraded to man-rate it, those upgrades did not permit ULA this capability, unlike SpaceX’s Falcon 9, which get fueled entirely after the crew boards Dragon.
They are reviewing the data to see if the valve will need to be replaced. If not, the launch could happen quickly. If it does, the launch will be delayed slightly longer, but not significantly. Right now ULA, NASA, and Boeing are targeting a May 10th launch.
It is worth listening to Tory Bruno’s explanation of the situation because of its clarity. I have embedded his comments below, time-stamped to when he began speaking.
» Read more
Violet Orlandi & Malinda Kathleen Reese – May It Be
An evening pause: A nice cover of an Enya song.
Hat tip Alton Blevins. And thank you all who submitted pause suggestions, almost all of which were really amazing. Stay tuned from some good stuff.
SpaceX launches 23 more Starlink satellites
It just keeps going and going: SpaceX today successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.
The first stage completed its fifteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
47 SpaceX
18 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads the world combined in successful launches, 54 to 30. SpaceX by itself now leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 47 to 37.
Another Starship/Superheavy update
Link here. The report details the extensive work being done by SpaceX engineers and construction crews at Boca Chica, not only upgrading and testing the 30th Starship and 11th Superheavy prototypes that will fly on the fourth orbital test flight but also improving and expanding the launch facilities there.
A static fire test of both vehicles could happen in the next week or so, though this remains uncertain.
Though it appears that SpaceX will be ready to fly by mid- to late-May, the key factor on when that fourth test flight occurs remains this:
…there is still no news on when Flight 3’s mishap investigation will be completed.
That investigation is being conducted by SpaceX. Once submitted to the FAA that agency will have to review it and issue its own conclusions (essentially rubber-stamping it), something that is guaranteed to take time. In the past it took the FAA from two to seven months to do this rubberstamping, with the time shortening after each flight. There have been indications that it hopes to reduce that time even further with this and later flights. We should therefore expect it to take anywhere from one to four weeks this time.
Thus, a May launch remains unlikely, as I predicted from the get-go. Expect the launch to occur in June, which though delayed will still be an improvement over the FAA’s past red-tape approval processes.
Russia to NASA: We’ll wait a bit before putting our astronauts on Starliner
Even though Russia and NASA have a barter deal whereby one astronaut from each country flies free on each flight of its spacecraft, Russia it appears will forego flying any Russians on Boeing’s Starliner capsule for the immediate future.
At the May 3 briefing, though, NASA officials said it was unlikely that a Russian cosmonaut would be assigned to Starliner-1 [the first operational flight after the first manned demo flight launching today]. “We expect, on the Roscosmos side, they’re more likely to want to see a long-duration flight also, so we think they’ll want to start to fly with us on Starliner-2,” said Dana Weigel, NASA ISS program manager.
That would appear to disrupt the ongoing series of seat exchanges between NASA and Roscosmos. “We’re still working through that with our Roscosmos counterparts. It’s our desire to continue to do integrated crew,” she said, adding that NASA and Roscosmos don’t have an agreement yet in place for exchanging crews in the timeframe that will include Starliner-1.
This isn’t a surprise. Russia made the same decision with SpaceX’s Dragon manned capsule, waiting until it had flown a few times before agreeing to allow its astronauts on it. With Boeing Russia might be more hesitant, consider the problems Starliner has had in development plus the overall quality control issues known to exist at Boeing.
German rocket startup Hyimpulse completes suborbital test launch
The German rocket startup Hyimpulse yesterday succesfully completed its first suborbital test launch, launching from the Southern Launch spaceport on the south coast of Australia.
The 12-metre, 2.5-tonne test rocket dubbed “SR75” lifted off shortly after 0500 GMT from a launch site in Koonibba, South Australia. It is capable of carrying small satellites weighing up to 250 kg (551 pounds) to an altitude of up to 250 km (155 miles) while being fuelled by paraffin, or candle wax, and liquid oxygen.
Paraffin can be used as a cheaper and safer alternative fuel for rockets, reducing satellite transportation costs by as much as 50%, according to HyImpulse.
The company hopes to launch its SL-1 rocket on its first orbital test flight next year.
Alpha Divers – Kin Ha cavern in Mexico
An evening pause: To start our weekend let’s go cavern diving in Kin Ha Cavern in Mexico, also called a cenote. This is not exploration, but a commercial cave for divers, following a preset life line.
Hat tip Judd Clark.