An evening pause: Performed live in 1980, around the time that Nelson, who had been working in relative obscurity for years, had suddenly been “noticed”.
Hat tip t-dub for reminding me that Nelson deserved more notice, again.
An evening pause: I normally don’t post performances recorded by only one camera, as the visuals can get boring. This performance, however, is an exception definitely worth viewing.
The competition heats up: SpaceX has begun prepping the construction sites at its private spaceport in Brownsville, Texas.
The county has begun work on a road to where the spaceport command center will be, and SpaceX has established its construction headquarters in a double-wide trailer there. It is expected that actual construction of the command center will begin in August, with the launchpad construction to follow.
The expected cost for building the entire spaceport: $100 million. Compare that to the billions the Russians are spending for Vostochny, or the billions that NASA spends on comparable facilities.
Link here.
An evening pause: A fine performance by James Garner from a Paddy Chayefski screenplay. While I agree that putting soldiers on pedestals is often a misplaced emotion that can lead to future unnecessary wars, I do not agree that all war is immoral. There are times, as a last resort, when good people have to stand up and fight, if only to prevent bad people from dominating the battlefield. In 1964, when The Americanization of Emily was released, Americans could be forgiven for being hostile to war. After World War II the country had gotten itself into a string of wars, the goals of all having been poorly considered. It was also a time when evil people were well restrained by our willingness to stand up to them.
Today, our fear and hostility to war is allowing evil to run rampant worldwide. It will very soon descend upon our heads if we do not begin to fight back.
Having said that, this is a fine and thoughtful scene from a fine and thoughtful movie, raising many profound thoughts about the nature and consequences of war. Hat tip to Phil Berardelli, author of Phil’s Favorite 500: Loves of a Moviegoing Lifetime.
The competition heats up: In a press release today XCOR announced new progress in the assembly of its Lynx suborbital space plane.
They revealed that they have “bonded the XCOR Lynx Mark I strakes to the Lynx spacecraft fuselage.”
To be honest, my impression of the work at XCOR from the photo at the link is that of one or two guys working in their spare time in their garage on restoring a classic car. Though I wish them well, the progress seems very slow, and piecemeal. In fact, it reminds me much of Richard Branson’s many false promises at Virgin Galactic. For example, back in 2012 XCOR announced a test flight schedule for 2013. None of those flights ever happened. Then in 2014 they said they hoped to begin flight tests before the end of that year. Again, nothing happened.
At least with this most recent release they aren’t saying when they plan to fly, since from the picture it appears they are quite a long ways from doing so. It is far better to make real promises that false ones, and XCOR might have learned that lesson watching the public relations problems Richard Branson has had in recent years.
Even so, I have been consistently very skeptical of this project. In fact, back in October 2013, in describing the effort of Blue Origin in the suborbital tourism trade, I predicted the following:
That the present ship [Blue Origin’s New Shepard] is being designed for suborbital tourist flights makes it a direct competitor of Virgin Galactic and XCOR. And considering the problems that Virgin Galactic has with SpaceShipTwo [written one year before its crash], and that XCOR doesn’t have the big bucks of Bezos, Blue Origin might actually be in the lead in the race to put the first tourists in space.
It appears now that this prediction was right on the money.
An evening pause: Performed live, Giants Stadium, June 17, 1979. The song is good, of course, but the improvisations are much better.
Hat tip Danae.
The competition heats up: SpaceX’s first abort test of its Dragon capsule was completed successfully this morning.
The test not only demonstrated the capsule’s ability to escape the launchpad and land safely in the ocean nearby, it proved that its SuperDraco thrusters have the power to lift the spacecraft off the pad, which also means they have the power to lower the capsule to a soft landing on land.
Video embedded below.
An evening pause: The song was written for Lieberman after she saw Don McLean perform in concert, but was made a big hit by Roberta Flack in 1973. Here, Lieberman shows us how its done.
Hat tip Danae.
Shades of Star Trek: In addition to drinking the first home-brewed coffee in space, the astronauts also used a 3-D printed mug, though the printing took place not in space but on Earth.
R.I.P. Grace Lee Whitney, who played Yeoman Janice Rand in the original Star Trek.
The competition heats up: In anticipation of its Wednesday, May 6, launchpad abort test of its Dragon capsule, SpaceX has put out a press release providing an overview of the test and what will happen.
The launch window opens at 7 am (Eastern), but don’t be surprised if it doesn’t happen then. They have a very long launch window, and could do it almost anytime during the day.
The competition heats up: India has successfully completed a full duration test of its upgraded cryogenic rocket engine.
This gets them much closer to not only having the ability to launch all of their own geosynchronous satellites, it gets them closer to building a rocket capable of putting human capsules into orbit.
An evening pause: Bolling, on the piano, and Jean-Pierre Rampal, on the flute, let it all hang out.
Hat tip Danae.
In the heat of competition: Sources at Virgin Galactic suggest that the company has still not made up its mind on the type of engine it will use on SpaceShipTwo.
Messier sums up the situation perfectly:
The lack of clarity about SpaceShipTwo’s main propulsion system is highly unusual. It’s difficult if not impossible to think of another space project that was uncertain about its primary propulsion system after nearly a decade of development.
Increasingly I do not see this spaceship ever flying, which saddens me. They had a ten year head start over everyone else, and have squandered it.
The competition heats up: New detailed photos of Sarah Brightman’s training for her September tourist trip to ISS have been released.
The photos appear to dispel the rumors that Brightman might be replaced with her backup tourist for the flight to ISS.
Some might consider this flight nothing more than a publicity stunt. While it surely is that, for Brightman it also is a dream come true. And the publicity will not simply be good for her career, it will do wonders to sell the idea of space tourism and space exploration.
In fact, there is never really any downside to freedom and allowing people to follow their dreams, and this tourist flight to ISS will prove it.
Students at Rice University have built a chair and table expressly designed for use in a low gravity environment like the Moon or Mars.
The students interviewed astronauts to get an idea of what was needed, and did the design under NASA supervision. Their design is clever in that it can be packed easily, but I still wonder about the weight of transport. I don’t see the first explorers to Mars being able to afford bringing their furniture with them. I expect they will instead figure out ways to improvise chairs and tables from the materials on hand.
The competition heats up: Blue Origin completed on Wednesday its first test flight of its reusable suborbital spacecraft, New Shepard.
After reaching an altitude of 307,000 feet, or 58 miles, the capsule successfully separated from its first stage, what they call the propulsion module, and safely parachuted back to Earth. The first stage, designed to also be recoverable, was not recovered successfully. According to Jeff Bezos’s explanation, they “lost pressure in our hydraulic system” and that they were trying to land it vertically, like SpaceX’s Falcon 9 first stage.
The cropped image on the right of the full resolution image, gives us a close-up of the capsule and propulsion module. The small fins on the propulsion module suggest the capability for a vertical landing, but it is unclear from the image whether the module has legs, though other images and videos strongly suggest there are legs on this module.
The flight itself, getting above 50 miles, reached space according to most definitions. In fact, Blue Origin with this flight has accomplished what Virgin Galactic has been promising to do for more than a decade, a suborbital test flight of its spacecraft. Blue Origin’s flight was unmanned, but it demonstrated that their design works. They will of course have to re-fly the capsule as well as land that first stage successfully to prove the design’s re-usability, but this flight shows that they are off to a very good start. And their webpage clearly shows that they are almost ready to start selling tickets for suborbital flights.
The most significant success of this launch, however, is the performance of the BE-3 rocket engine. Blue Origin has convinced ULA to hire it to build the engines for its new Vulcan rocket. This success justifies that decision.
I have embedded their videos of the full flight below the fold.
» Read more
An evening pause: A remarkable performance, using juggling to play music. Stay with it, it only gets better.
Hat tip Danae.
An evening pause: One of the many classic scenes from the classic Hollywood masterpiece, Adam’s Rib (1949).
Another hat tip to Phil Berardelli, author of Phil’s Favorite 500: Loves of a Moviegoing Lifetime.
The competition heats up: SpaceX has successfully completed its fifth Falcon 9 launch of the year, putting a Turkmenistan’s first communications satellite into orbit.
This was the 18th consecutive successful launch for the Falcon 9, and the 13th in a row for its upgraded design. Not bad for a company that did not even exist a little more than a decade ago.
Having firmed up the May 20 launch date for the next X-37B mission, the Air Force has also revealed one of the experiments the reusable mini-shuttle will carry.
They will be testing in orbit an advanced ion engine. I suspect however that this is not the only experiment on board.
The competition heats up: The next commercial Falcon 9 launch is now set for tonight, Monday, less than two weeks after the last Falcon 9 launch.
The next two weeks will be especially busy for SpaceX, as they also have scheduled the first launch abort test of Dragon on May 5. The launch will also be the fifth for Falcon 9 this year, putting it in the lead as the busiest rocket in the world for 2015, ahead of the Russian Soyuz.
The heat of competition? In order to meet a government deadline to launch humans from their new spaceport at Vostochny, the Russians had planned, though now cancelled, a single manned launch there in 2019, using a new rocket.
Their cancelled plans had included two prior test flights of the rocket with Progress freighters.
If cargo missions were successful, the one brave crew would ride into orbit from the new spaceport, knowing that in case of a serious problem with the rocket, the descent module of the spacecraft would parachute into deep forest of the Russian Far East or somewhere in the Pacific.
After “satisfying” this political goal with a single crew, all manned Soyuz and cargo Progress missions would then revert back to Baikonur for a safe ascent trajectory. The Soyuz spacecraft would continue flying two missions annually from Baikonur, until the veteran spacecraft’s final launch in 2025. In 2021, Soyuz spacecraft missions originating from Baikonur would switch from Soyuz-FG to Soyuz-2-1a rocket.
The Russians have now decided, rather than rush this first flight on the new rocket, to hold to the slower schedule.
This story is important to the United States. I think we must definitely end our dependence on the Russians before they make the switch to the new rocket. Based on the levels of poor quality control and corruption seen recently in Russia, I have grave doubts the new rocket will fly reliably at first. It would be a mistake to buy its use to put Americans in space.
Link here.
Like the author, I remember every single one of these doomsday predictions. I also remember how every single one of these predictions was wildly wrong. Until these fear-mongers can reliably predict things, I see no reason to believe them.
His article however does provide one entertaining tidbit:
You know how old I am? I’m so positively ancient that I remember when one of Jimmy Carter’s big answers to the impending shortage of oil was to increase federal funding for research on how to extract oil from shale. It ended the way you would expect: it went nowhere. But some decades later, private oil companies did find a way to more economically extract oil from shale—and environmentalists promptly made it public enemy #1.
All true. And just one more example of how the government fails at something while private enterprise, fueled by the profit motive, finds a way to make that exact same thing happen.
Link here. It does appear that the hiring of Tory Bruno as ULA’s CEO was the major factor. He seems willing to push the company to take somewhat bigger chances with new technology than it has done previously.
