Jonathan Winters Tells Drinking Stories
An evening pause: Seems appropriate to usher in the weekend. From the Johnny Carson Show, 1976.
Hat tip Gene Shipp.
Tag: commercial
Puerto Rico’s Ports Authority is looking for an operator to run the island’s own spaceport
The arrow points to the city of Ceiba
Puerto Rico’s Ports Authority has now issued a call for proposals from potential operators of the spaceport the authority wishes built at an airport in the town of Ceiba on the island’s eastern tip.
The developer — which would operate the Spaceport for several years, depending on the negotiation — would design and build the infrastructure needed for horizontal launches at JAT, using private capital, equity and investment.
…“Vertical launches in Puerto Rico are challenging, considering the population density, among others. However, we want to do a feasibility study for vertical launches in Puerto Rico, with an emphasis on the use of barges and launches in high seas,” the agency stated in the RFP.
Note that the first goal would be to make the airport usable for rocket companies that use an airplane for their first stage, such as Virgin Orbit and Northrop Grumman. The next step would be figure out where a vertical launchpad could be safely and practically established.
ULA now targets May 4th for first Vulcan launch
According to ULA’s CEO, the company has now scheduled the first launch of its Vulcan rocket for May 4, 2023, a delay of about a month from the previous schedule.
The delay to the new date was caused by a variety of factors. First, the launch window for the prime payload, Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander, is only open certain days of the month. Second, that lander is just finishing final testing, and the extra time was needed to get it to Cape Canaveral and stacked on the rocket. Third, the extra time was needed to complete all the dress rehearsal countdown tests prior to launch. However, the biggest reason for the delay appears to have been one of Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engines.
ULA and Blue Origin are finishing the formal qualification of the BE-4 engine, which Bruno described as the “pacing item” for the launch. “It’s taking a little bit longer than anticipated.”
He revealed that, in a qualification test of one of two engines, the liquid oxygen pump had about 5% higher performance than expected or seen on other engines. “When the performance of your hardware has even a small shift that you didn’t expect, sometimes that is telling us that there could be something else going on in the system that is potentially of greater concern.”
ULA and Blue Origin decided to take the engine off the test stand and disassemble it. Engineers concluded that the higher performance was just “unit-to-unit variation” and not a problem with the engine itself, Bruno said.
If Blue Origin was manufacturing and testing these engines as it needs to do, in large numbers, it would have known a long time ago the range of “unit-to-unit variation” in performance. That this is not known at this late time once again tells us that the company is still struggling to build these engines routinely. Yet it will soon need to produce plenty in short order in order to sustain not only ULA’s Vulcan launch schedule but the launch schedule of its own New Glenn rocket.
Eva Cassidy – Autumn Leaves
An evening pause: Performed live 1996.
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
What to expect when SpaceX launches Starship on its first orbital flight
Link here. The article does a careful review of the previous dress rehearsal countdowns and static fire tests, especially the last which successfully fired 31 of Superheavy’s 33 Raptor-2 engines for 7 seconds, in order to understand what will happen during the countdown on the day the rocket does its first orbital launch, now expected within weeks.
It appears right now that SpaceX is preparing to replace one or both of those failed engines, and do it with Superheavy prototype #7 still mounted to the launchpad. Starship prototype #24 has not yet been stacked on top, but work is presently being done to it nearby to prepare it for launch. For example, workers recently have removed the attachment points used by cranes before the chopsticks existed and put thermal tiles there instead.
Based on the pace of work, SpaceX should be ready to launch by mid-March. All that will prevent this will be the FAA, which still has not approved the launch license.
Kathleen Battle – Voices of Spring
An evening pause: By Strauss, conducted by Herbert von Karajan, performed live 1987.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
SpaceX ready to launch Starship prototype #24 into orbit
According to a statement yesterday by one SpaceX official, the company is now ready to launch its Superheavy #7 booster, stacked with its Starship prototype #24, on an orbital test flight, with the only remaining obstacle to launch the launch license, not yet approved by the FAA.
Speaking on a panel at the Space Mobility conference here about “rocket cargo” delivery, Gary Henry, senior advisor for national security space solutions at SpaceX, said both the Super Heavy booster and its launch pad were in good shape after the Feb. 9 test, clearing the way for an orbital launch that is still pending a Federal Aviation Administration launch license. “We had a successful hot fire, and that was really the last box to check,” he said. “The vehicle is in good shape. The pad is in good shape.”
…“Pretty much all of the prerequisites to supporting an orbital demonstration attempt here in the next month or so look good,” he said.
Henry also outlined SpaceX’s overall plans for Starship in the next year or two, beginning with a series of test/operational launches that will iron out the kinks of the rocket while simultaneously placing Starlink satellites into orbit. At the same time, development will shift to creating a Moon lander version of Starship for NASA’S Artemis program, including doing refueling tests of Starship in orbit. These test flights will also lead quickly to the three private manned flights that SpaceX already has contracts for, including two around the Moon and one in Earth orbit.
Japanese startup enters the high altitude balloon space tourism business
A Japanese startup, Iwaya Giken, announced yesterday that it is building a two-person capsule that will carry two persons, a pilot and passenger, on high-altitude stratospheric tourist balloon flights for about $180K per ticket.
The company, Iwaya Giken, based in Sapporo in northern Japan, has been working on the project since 2012 and says it has developed an airtight two-seat cabin and a balloon capable of rising up to an altitude of 25 kilometers (15 miles), where the curve of the Earth can be clearly viewed. While passengers won’t be in outer space — the balloon only goes up to roughly the middle of the stratosphere — they’ll be higher than a jet plane flies and have an unobstructed view of outer space.
The company teamed up with major Japanese travel agency JTB Corp., which announced plans to collaborate on the project when the company is ready for a commercial trip. Initially, a flight would cost about 24 million yen ($180,000), but Iwaya said he aims to eventually bring it down to several million yen (tens of thousands of dollars).
No date for the first launch was mentioned. This company now joins two American balloon companies as well as a Spanish balloon company, all planning to offer rides to the edge of space.
The Allman Brothers Band – Jessica
An evening pause: Performed live 1982.
Hat tip Mike Nelson.
Los Lobos – Don’t Worry Baby
An evening pause: Performed live 1989.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
First orbital tug from the startup Launcher fails shortly after deployment
The first orbital tug, dubbed Orbiter SN1, of the startup company Launcher failed shortly after deployment from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on January 3, 2023.
The vehicle communicated with a ground station on its first scheduled pass after deployment while on battery power. “We also communicated with the vehicle for the duration of expected battery life,” the company said.
However, the Hawthorne, California-based company said the spacecraft could not get into the proper attitude so that its solar cells could generate power, which it blamed on “an orientation control issue caused by a fault in our GPS antenna system.” That, in turn, kept Orbiter from deploying its satellite payloads.
The tug was carrying payloads from eight customers, four of which were satellites to be deployed while the others would remain on the tug, using it as the base of operations.
The company presently has plans to launch upgraded tugs on two different Falcon 9 launches, in June and October respectively.
SpaceX launches an Inmarsat communications satellite
SpaceX tonight used its Falcon 9 rocket to launch an Inmarsat communications satellite from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
This was SpaceX’s second launch today. The first stage successfully landed on a drone ship in the Atlantic, completing its third flight. Both fairings were also previously flown.
The 2023 launch race:
12 SpaceX
5 China
2 Russia
1 Rocket Lab
1 Japan
1 India
American private enterprise now leads China 13 to 5 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 13 to 9. By itself SpaceX leads the world combined 12 to 9.