Ravel – Pavane pour une infante défunte
An evening pause: Serene and profound. Hat tip Danae.
Tag: commercial
Gilda Radner – Miss Emily Litella
An evening pause: She died much too young.
Aerojet Rocketdyne faces the possible loss of most of its business
In the heat of competition: Because of a combination of increased competition, launch failures, political decisions, and quality control questions, the rocket company Aerojet Rocketdyne could lose almost all of its rocket customers in the next few years.
Link fixed! (Once again caused by trying to post while sitting in the passenger seat of the car and typing on a tiny tablet.)
New Shepard test flights to begin within weeks
The competition heats up: Blue Origin is expected to begin regular test flights of its suborbital resusable manned spacecraft, New Shepard, within mere weeks.
This news came from a government FAA official involved in approving flight permits. The company itself has declined to comment.
Even if it is a few months rather than weeks, these flight tests will put more pressure on Virgin Galactic in the race to become the first commercial suborbital tourism company to sell and actually fly a passenger. And if I had to bet who’d win the race, I would no longer put my money on Virgin Galactic.
NASA ISS cargo contracts delayed
The competition heats up: NASA has delayed, for the second time, when it will award its next round of cargo contracts to ISS, pushing the date back from June to September.
Though agency officials said they could not reveal why they had delayed the contract awards, they did say it was to gather more information. My guess is that the agency wants to see how SpaceX’s launch abort tests turn out this year before it makes a decision. If successful, they will then have the option of dropping SpaceX’s as a cargo carrier and pick someone else, possibly Dream Chaser, to provide up and down service to ISS. That way, they would increase the number of vehicles capable of bringing people and supplies up to ISS.
Delaying the award decision until September gives them time to evaluate the abort tests results, as well as give them a cushion in case those tests get delayed somewhat.
Paul Simon, David Crosby and Graham Nash – Here Comes the Sun
An evening pause: A fitting song as we move into the heart of spring. Performed live as a tribute to George Harrison at the 2009 25th Anniversary Rock & Roll Hall Fame Concert at Madison Square Garden.
Hat tip Danae.
SpaceX schedules Dragon pad abort test
The competition heats up: SpaceX has now scheduled the pad abort test for its manned Dragon capsule for no earlier than May 5.
This is three days later than previously scheduled, though the previous schedule was quite tentative. This announcement is more firm.
For the birds
An evening pause: Time for a bit of silliness.
An update on the Falcon 9 landing attempt
Link here.
Lots of interesting details describing the entire first stage landing attempt. Two interesting facts: 1. The barge was not seriously damaged by the landing crash and will be ready for the next attempt. 2. It appears they will try for a barge touchdown again instead of on land.
Japan to the moon!
The competition heats up: Japan’s space agency has announced plans to send an unmanned lander to the Moon, as early as 2018, as part of a longer range plan to explore Mars.
They also intend to use their new Epsilon rocket to launch it.
Gee, I wonder if the successful efforts of India and China to send probes to both the Moon and Mars had some influence on this decision.
Massenet – Meditation from Thais
An evening pause: The violin player, Daniil Bulayev, is especially impressive, being only 8 years old.
Hat tip Danae.
Incorrectly built SLS welding machine to be rebuilt
You can’t make this stuff up. A giant welding machine, built for NASA’s multi-billion dollar Space Launch System (SLS), needs to be rebuilt because the contractor failed to reinforce the floor, as required, prior to construction.
Sweden’s ESAB Welding & Cutting, which has its North American headquarters in Florence, South Carolina, built the the roughly 50-meter tall Vertical Assembly Center as a subcontractor to SLS contractor Boeing at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans.
ESAB was supposed to reinforce Michoud’s floor before installing the welding tool, but did not, NASA SLS Program Manager Todd May told SpaceNews after an April 15 panel session during the 31st Space Symposium here. As a result, the enormous machine leaned ever so slightly, cocking the rails that guide massive rings used to lift parts of the 8.4-meter-diameter SLS stages The rings wound up 0.06 degrees out of alignment, which may not sound like much, “but when you’re talking about something that’s 217 feet [66.14 meters] tall, that adds up,” May said.
Asked why ESAB did not reinforce the foundation as it was supposed to, May said only it was a result of “a miscommunication between two [Boeing] subcontractors and ESAB.”
How everyone at NASA, Boeing, and ESAB could have forgotten to do the reinforcing, even though it was specified in the contract, baffles me. It also suggests that the quality control in the SLS rocket program has some serious problems.
Update: The original story at Space News that I originally linked to disappeared sometime in the next week, and was replaced with a slightly more detailed and more positive story, now linked above.