ThatCelloGuy – River Flows in You
An evening pause: A beautiful cover of the Yiruma song.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman
Tag: commercial
Concrete poured for Blue Origin factory
The competition heats up: Blue Origin this week began pouring concrete for its new rocket factory in Florida.
The Florida facility will be devoted to orbital operations, involving a spacecraft currently known as โVery Big Brother.โ The orbital craft could eventually be offered to NASA as a transport ship for cargo or astronauts flying to and from the International Space Station. It could take on other missions as well.
They hope to open the facility by 2018.
Dragon splashes down
The competition heats up: SpaceX’s most recently launched Dragon capsule today returned to Earth and was successfully recovered.
The Dragon is the only spacecraft flying today that can return large amounts of cargo to Earth.
Among the cargo brought back from space Friday were a dozen mice from a Japanese science experiment โ the first brought home alive in a Dragon. Samples from mice euthanized as part of an experiment by pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly also were on board. Results were returned from an experiment that studied the behavior of heart cells in microgravity, and from research into the composition of microbes in the human digestive system, NASA said. Findings from both could help keep astronauts healthy during deep space exploration missions.
Justin Hayward – Forever Autumn
An evening pause: This song, sung mostly by Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues, was written by Jeff Wayne and is performed here as part of his musical concert of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. And yes, that is Richard Burton’s voice for the narrator.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
As always, I am looking for more suggestions for future evening pauses from my readers. If there’s something entertaining that you think will fit, comment here (without giving the link to the piece), and I will email you!
Starliner and Orion drop tests
The competition heats up: NASA and Boeing have begun drop tests on land and water respectively of their Orion and Starliner manned capsules.
Both sets of tests are taking place at Langley. With Orion they are dropping the mockup in water to test how it will respond to a variety of circumstances. With Starliner they have finished the water drop tests and have begun drop tests on land.
ULA wins contract to launch 2020 NASA Mars rover
NASA today awarded ULA the contract to launch in 2020 its next Martian rover.
The contract is for $243 million, which isn’t cheap, but I think NASA decided to pay the extra money because they used an Atlas 5 to launch Curiosity, and they have been attempting to simplify the 2020 mission by duplicating Curiosity as much as possible.
Paul Winter Consort – Icarus
An evening pause: A 1991 live performance..
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
Arianespace sets payload weight record
The competition heats up: Arianespace’s Ariane 5 rocket successfully launched its heaviest payload ever yesterday by placing two Intelsat communications satellite in orbit.
This was also the first launch by Arianespace since the ESA company was taken over by the private joint partnership of Airbus Safran.
Chinese company agrees to buy Israeli satellite company
Wheels within wheels: A Chinese company, managed by a Luxembourg company that in turn delegates management of its satellites to an Israeli-based company, has made a deal to purchase Spacecom, a different Israeli company that operates and owns the Amos fleet of communications satellites.
Observers said the deal could meet up with opposition from regulators, including the Communications Ministry. But Pollack said the transaction would be done in accordance with Spacecomโs license terms, which require the satellites be operated from Israel and that the company remain Israeli. The sale would put Spacecom under the direct control of an Israeli-domiciled company called Big Bird, which is managed by Major General (Res.) Ami Shafran, a former head of the Israel Defense Forces communications branch. Big Bird is 100%-owned by a Luxembourg company, which in turn is owned by Beijing Xinwei.
To say this financial deal is complicated is to understate the situation. Though it appears most everyone here is probably focused on making money, if I was Israeli I would be somewhat concerned that ownership of these crucial communications satellites is now going to be outside the country.
I also note the presence of Luxembourg in this space deal, illustrating again that this small European country is very much a big player in the commercial space industry.
How to Kiss
An evening pause: Heh. After watching this animated short, one might never want to kiss again.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
Virgin Galactic, an expert in diversity!
Private vaporware: Virgin Galactic can’t seem to get its SpaceShipTwo off the ground but, darn it, the company, in partnership with the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS), sure can run a diversity workshop!
While charging each attendee $500 for the privilege! This quote from the link above illustrates where Virgin Galactic appears to be placing its focus:
Virgin Galactic’s Executive Vice President of Spaceport and Program Development, Jonathan Firth, recently spoke to us about the industry’s need to expand behaviours and devise new ways to embrace a more diverse and inclusive workforce. “Presently only 16 per cent of the space industry workforce are female. In order to strengthen our industry and our chances of achieving great things long term we need to change this. We need to refocus on how crucial it is that we, as a company, an industry, a planet, are proactively encouraging a wide ranging of workforce from all walks of life, geographical locations, academia, gender and race. Weโre sure that the event will share some incredibly informative and surprising truths about why some teams thrive and others falter,” said Jonathan.
Then there’s this quote from this news report about the workshop:
Lastly, Virgin Galactic and the ISPCS ask the public to consider โWhat does success look like, without self at the center?โ
To me, success for a space tourism company is flying its ships and passengers in space, not spending its time focusing on the race and gender of its employees. So far, it appears that Virgin Galactic does not yet understand this.
Dooley Wilson – Knock on Wood
An evening pause: Just one of the continuous string of great scenes from the 1942 film, Casablanca, much of which is a silent interplay between the characters that only will make sense if you’ve seen the movie.
Hat tip Edward Thelen.
SpaceX tests parachutes for manned Dragon
The competition heats up: SpaceX last Friday successfully tested the parachute system for its manned Dragon capsule.
A video of the test can be seen here. They did not use an actual Dragon for the test.
Unknown new British company will fly space tourists in five years
Private vaporware: A new and previously completely unknown British rocket company, Starchaser, has claimed today that it will be flying tourists into space within three to five years.
How do I know this is vaporware and won’t happen? Besides the fact that I’ve never heard of this company before and that the story above includes a lot of fishy details (such as the head of the company has apparently most spent his time building large model rockets), there was this one quote:
The flight will only take an hour and will see the rocket reach around 330,000ft โ ten times the average cruising altitude for an aeroplane flight.
An hour is too short for an orbital flight, and is much too long for a suborbital flight at 330,000 feet. In other words, something here is just not right. Regardless, I hope my cynicism here turns out to be wrong, and this company joins the new competition to lower costs into space.
Pink Floyd – If
An evening pause: Animated in a very strange manner, with an unusual mix of artistic styles.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
By the way, I am as always looking for more evening pause suggestions. If you’ve suggested before, you know the routine. If not, place a comment here saying you’ve got something (but don’t include the link), and I’ll email you for it.
The world’s longest and highest glass-bottomed bridge
Link here. Lots of great pictures of this new pedestrian bridge in China, including one of a reporter trying (and failing) to use a sledge hammer to break the glass.
China’s economy might have a lot of holes and might face collapse, as many experts have been telling me for years, but at the same time they seem to be successfully harnessing the success they’ve had in the past few decades to get very creative. That creativity suggests to me the collapse is not guaranteed, and will not be as severe as predicted.
SpaceX’s first recovered first stage placed on display
The competion on display: SpaceX has installed its first recovered first stage on permanent display outside the company’s offices in California.
The link includes a lot of pictures showing the installation process, where they used a crane to place the stage upright.
Astronauts attach new U.S. docking port to ISS
During a spacewalk today American astronauts installed a new docking port on ISS to serve as one of the ports for the manned capsules being built by SpaceX and Boeing.
A second port will be installed in 2018, allowing both capsules to dock at the station simultaneously.
More reasons why I don’t use Windows
A close look at Microsoft’s track record in rolling out Windows 10 suggests the company “blatently disregards user choice and privacy.”
After describing the numerous horror stories of how Microsoft forced Windows 10 updates on people against their will, there was this:
The trouble with Windows 10 doesnโt end with forcing users to download the operating system. Windows 10 sends an unprecedented amount of usage data back to Microsoft, particularly if users opt in to โpersonalizeโ the software using the OS assistant called Cortana. Hereโs a non-exhaustive list of data sent back: location data, text input, voice input, touch input, webpages you visit, and telemetry data regarding your general usage of your computer, including which programs you run and for how long.
You do have to opt-in to Cortana, but even if you don’t, your privacy is still not secure:
And while users can disable some of these settings, it is not a guarantee that your computer will stop talking to Microsoftโs servers. A significant issue is the telemetry data the company receives. While Microsoft insists that it aggregates and anonymizes this data, it hasnโt explained just how it does so. Microsoft also wonโt say how long this data is retained, instead providing only general timeframes. Worse yet, unless youโre an enterprise user, no matter what, you have to share at least some of this telemetry data with Microsoft and thereโs no way to opt-out of it. [emphasis in original]
It is once again time for people to consider alternatives. Here again are the links to James Stephens’ series on Behind the Black for Getting and Installing Linux:
Russia-Boeing settlement in Sea Launch dispute?
According to one Russian news source, Russia has negotiated a settlement with Boeing over their Sea Launch dispute.
Russia says it has a possible buyer of Sea Launch, but they can’t sell it because the floating launchpad is in the U.S. and Boeing has gone to court to block the sale until Russia pays them the $300 million it owes them.