Why Oil Paint Is So Expensive
An evening pause: Hat tip Cotour.
Tag: commercial
Catalina Vicens – Rondeau
An evening pause: The instrument is a medieval portative organ. The music is not medieval but was written in 2014 by American composer Carson Cooman.
Hat tip Diane Wilson.
Christmas Songs on Steel
An evening pause: Somehow to me this seems more appropriate the day after Christmas.
Hat tip Cotour.
Jennifer Nettles – O Holy Night/Hallelujah
An evening pause: For my Christian readers, from a secular Jew, in good will.
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
U.S. Army Band – Bluegrass Christmas Medley
An evening pause: Hat tip Tom Biggar.
SpaceX completes new round of crew Dragon parachute tests
Capitalism in space: SpaceX this week completed a new round of crew Dragon parachute tests, meeting a goal they had announced in October.
This clearly paves the way for the January 11th launch abort test, followed by the first manned flight, as soon as February or March 2020, according to the article at the link.
Mariah Carey – All I Want For Christmas Is You
An evening pause: I hope we all get our own equivalent of what she wants.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
Boeing fires CEO
Boeing today fired its CEO Dennis Muilenburg, citing the need to “restore confidence in the company.”
The company has had a very bad year, with the grounding of its 737-Max airplane, the cost overruns and delays in its NASA Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, and the failure of its Starliner manned capsule to dock with ISS this past weekend.
Whether this change will accomplish anything is hard to say. The problems above appear very deeply embedded within the company’s culture, and might require the kind of wholesale changes that big bloated corporations like Boeing are generally loath to impose.
Starliner lands safely after failed orbital insertion
Capitalism in space:Boeing’s Starliner capsule successfully landed today in New Mexico, returning to Earth prematurely because of its failure to reach its proper orbit after launch two days ago.
The article quotes extensively from both NASA and Boeing officials touting the many successful achievements of this flight, while trying to minimize the failure that prevented the capsule from docking with ISS properly. And that failure?
The mission elapsed timer issue that cut short Starliner’s planned eight-day mission started before the spacecraft lifted off Friday from Cape Canaveral aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket, according to Chilton. “Our spacecraft needs to reach down into the Atlas 5 and figure out what time it is, where the Atlas 5 is in its mission profile, and then we set the clock based on that,” Chilton said in a press conference Saturday. “Somehow we reached in there and grabbed the wrong (number). This doesn’t look like an Atlas problem. This looks like we reached in and grabbed the wrong coefficient.”
“As a result of starting the clock at the wrong time, the spacecraft upon reaching space, she thought she was later in the mission, and, being autonomous, started to behave that way,” Chilton said. “And so it wasn’t in the orbit we expected without the burn and it wasn’t in the attitude expected and was, in fact, adjusting that attitude.”
I read this and find myself appalled. While I agree that overall the mission proved the capsule capable of launching humans to ISS (which is why NASA is considering making the next Starliner mission manned despite this failure), this failure suggests a worrisome lack of quality control at Boeing. I can’t even imagine how the Starliner software could be mis-configured to “grab the wrong number.” This explanation makes no sense, and suggests they are spinning the failure to avoid telling us what they really did wrong.
Either way, I suspect that NASA will approve a manned launch for Starliner’s next orbital flight, but will do so only after dwelling on the problem for at least six months.
The Starbugs – Mr Tambourine Man
An evening pause: Sung by Jessie Hillel, Sarah Whitaker, Roisin Anderson, Ben Anderson, Rebecca Jenkins. From the youtube page: “We have re-pitched this captivating selection of favourites to suit children’s voices.”
Truly one of Bob Dylan’s most beautiful and poetic songs.
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
Starliner launch fails, spacecraft to return to Earth
After being successfully placed in a preliminary orbit by ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket early this morning, Boeing’s Starliner capsule failed to reach its required orbit for docking with ISS when its own rocket engines did not fire properly at the right time.
The orbit it is in is stable, and the spacecraft is undamaged. Engineers now plan to bring it back to Earth on Sunday, landing at White Sands, New Mexico.
It appears some software issue had the capsule fire its own rockets either at the wrong time or for too short a time. The spacecraft was then in the wrong orbit, and needed to use too much fuel to correct this issue, making it impossible to dock with ISS.
More information here:
However, for reasons Boeing engineers do not yet understand, Starliner’s Mission Event Timer clock malfunctioned, causing the vehicle to think it was at a different point in the mission and at a different time in its mission that it actually was.
…This resulted in Starliner’s Reaction Control System thinking the Orbit Insertion Burn was underway and executing a series of burns to keep the vehicle oriented in the insertion burn attitude; however, the Orbit Insertion Burn was not actually occurring.
When mission controllers realized the issue, they sent manual commands to Starliner to perform an Orbit Insertion Burn in a backup window that came roughly eight minutes after the planned maneuver. However, a known and brief gap in NASA satellite communications caused a further delay.
By the time Starliner was finally able to burn its engines and get into a stable orbit, it had burned 25% more propellant than anticipated.
Boeing is certainly not having a good year. First it has had to shut down production on its new 737-Max airplane due to several crashes caused by software issues. Next its SLS rocket for NASA has had endless cost overruns and delays. Now Starliner fails during its first launch.
For ULA, however, the Atlas 5 rocket performed exactly as planned, so this launch gets listed as a success. They have now completed 5 launches this year.
Why Are 96,000,000 Black Balls on This Reservoir?
An evening pause: Some engineering solutions are simply beyond prediction.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
SpaceX delays launch abort until January 11
Capitalism in space: SpaceX and NASA announced yesterday that they have delayed the launch abort test flight of crew Dragon one week, to January 11th.
The press release provides no explanation for the one week delay.
Rocket Lab begins construction on 2nd New Zealand launchpad
Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab has begun construction on a second launchpad at its New Zealand spaceport.
The new pad, known as Launch Complex 1 Pad B, is due for completion in late 2020. Rocket Lab says LC-1B will support increased launch frequency; enable back-to-back missions within days; and ensure that a pad is always ready to support rapid call-up launch. The existing pad at New Zealand’s Launch Complex 1 will be LC-1A.
This new pad will give Rocket Lab three launchpads total, two in New Zealand and one in Virginia, and when all are operational the company says it will be able to launch more than 130 times per year. That’s more launches than the entire world routinely launches.
Fawlty Towers – Wrongly Shaped Chips
An evening pause: John Cleese at his peak.
Hat tip Phill Oltmann, who noted that the kid reminded him of what we think of as the typical millennial. Is he right? I await some response from my younger readers.
Starliner launch set for Friday, December 20
Capitalism in space: The first orbital flight of Boeing’s Starliner capsule, remains on target for launch this coming Friday, December 20, 2019.
The launch is presently set for 6:36 am (Eastern), with a docking at ISS early the next day.
NASA will be broadcasting the launch and docking.
Original investors sue Firefly
Capitalism in space: The original investors in Firefly Aerospace, cut out when the company went bankrupt, have filed suit against the reborn company.
A group of original shareholders in the defunct Firefly Space Systems have accused co-founder and CEO Tom Markusic of fraudulently conspiring with Ukrainian billionaire Maxym Polyakov to force the rocket company into bankruptcy in 2017 and reconstitute it under a nearly identical name without giving them any stake in the new venture.
Markusic “betrayed the trust of his original co-founders and investors and committed fraud to cut them out of his aerospace company. Instead of managing the operations of the Original Firefly, a revolutionary rocket company with endless potential, Markusic schemed with…Maxym Polyakov…to rob Plaintiffs of their investments and form a new company called Firefly Aerospace, Inc. (the ‘New Firefly’),” the plaintiffs said in a lawsuit.
The article at the link has a lot more information. Read it all.
This is also not the first time Markusic has been sued. He left Virgin Galactic to found Firefly, and was then sued by Branson’s company for stealing proprietary technology. That lawsuit was settled when Markusic agreed to not use that technology in Firefly’s rockets.
Soyuz rocket launches five satellites for Arianespace
A Russian Soyuz rocket, launching from French Guiana for Arianespace, successfully placed five satellites in orbit early this morning, including CHEOPS, a European space telescope designed to study exoplanets.
Though this was a Russian rocket, I count it as an Arianespace launch as that is the company under which the launch operates. I also realize this is open to debate.
The leaders in the 2019 launch race:
30 China
20 Russia
13 SpaceX
8 Arianespace (Europe)
China still leads the U.S. 30 to 26 in the national rankings.
Beverly “Guitar” Watkins – Rock Me Baby
An evening pause: Performed live March 3, 2017, with the Rick Fowler Band. She passed away, aged 80, on October 1, 2019.
Hat tip Tom Biggar.
SpaceX successfully launches commercial satellite
Capitalism in space: Using a first stage for the third time, SpaceX today successfully launched a commercial communications satellite while recovering that first stage.
Fun fact: This first stage recovery today was the 47th time that SpaceX has successfully completed a vertical landing.
The leaders in the 2019 launch race:
30 China
20 Russia
13 SpaceX
7 Europe (Arianespace)
China now leads the U.S. in the national rankings 30 to 26.