Tag: competition

France sells Arianespace to Airbus Safran

9:16 am

The competition heats up: In negotiations resulting from increased competition in the launch industry, France and its space agency have agreed to sell their stock in Arianespace to Airbus Safran, builders of the new Ariane 6, giving that private company 74% ownership.

I have reported on this deal earlier. This report makes it clear, however, that Arianespace will essentially become irrelevant after the deal is completed. Airbus Safran will build and own the rocket, and will be in charge.

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Saudia Arabia and Russia sign space exploration agreement

9:01 am

The competition heats up: Saudia Arabia has signed a deal with Russia to work together to explore space for peaceful purposes.

This deal has less importance to the exploration of space. Instead, it signifies clearly the worsening relations between the U.S. and Saudia Arabia. For decades the Saudis would always turn to the U.S. for such deals. They are now looking elsewhere, having found the U.S. to be an unreliable partner during the Obama administration.

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SpaceX – The Blue Danube

6:01 pm

An evening pause: This SpaceX video taken by a camera attached to the fairing of the Falcon 9 rocket is cool not because of the video itself. Cameras on rockets have become routine, even for NASA. What is cool is that they have unveiled it using the same Johann Strauss waltz used in the move 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). It shows that SpaceX is aware of the cultural impact of what they do.

Hat tip Tom Wilson, Tom Biggar, and others.

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75% of Russia’s satellite electronics come from U.S.

2:19 pm

It isn’t just us dependent on them: One Russian aerospace industry expert noted today that three-quarters of all their satellite electronics comes from the United States.

According to [Nikolay Testoyedov], up to 75 percent of the electronic components for Russian satellites come from the US. Consequently, if it retaliates should Moscow refuse to sell RD-180 rocket motors to Washington – which Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin has threatened – Russia’s satellite program would be frozen for at least two years. “The imported electronic components in our satellites represent 25 to 75 percent of the total in communications; in military ones, somewhat less; in commercial ones, more,” Testoyedov says. Of these imported components, approximately 83-87 percent come from the United States thus giving Washington the whip hand.

If we stop providing these electronics he estimates that after their present stock runs out in about a year it would take at least two years before Russia could replace these American-made parts.

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NASA to launch first interplanetary cubesats

9:13 am

The competition heats up: When it launches its next Mars mission, a stationary lander, NASA will piggyback two cubesats, designed to fly past Mars and relay communications during the landing.

As I’ve noted earlier, standardized small cubesats are the future of unmanned satellite operations. Expect them to increasingly replace all types of larger satellites. And because they are small and cheap (both to make and launch), expect them to lead to a burst of new capitalistic activity in space.

Update: In related news, a small private company has delivered to NASA the first thrusters designed for cubesats. Up until now, cubesats have not been maneuverable. These thrusters will change that.

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The truth about bottled water

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Tonight’s pause is a bit different, in that it has a newsy aspect to it, illustrating the uncertainty of knowledge that makes science so difficult. It is also incredibly entertaining and funny, almost like the 1960s TV show Candid Camera. Would you be fooled like these people were?

Hat tip Phillip Oltmann.

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A compilation of robots falling down at the DARPA Robotics Challenge

12:18 pm

More information here. It seems that on the dry run prior to the start of competition, not many robots fell over. Then on Day 1, when the competition was for real, a lot had problems standing up.

The impressive thing about these falls is that, although they look pretty bad, the robots were just fine (well, most of them). After humans got them back on their feet and gave them a reboot, the machines were ready to run again. Team IHMC’s Atlas fell twice during their run and it still scored 7 points (of a maximum of 8). Team MIT’s Atlas had a bad stumble out of the vehicle and also went on to complete most of the course. So it’s a good thing that robots are falling at the DRC Finals—that’s how we’re going to make them better.

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SpaceX begins planning a 4,000 satellite internet constellation

9:46 am

The competition heats up: SpaceX has filed papers with the FCC to begin testing the design and construction and launch of a constellation of 4,000 satellites for providing global internet access.

Musk’s FCC filing proposes tests starting next year. If all goes well, the service could be up and running in about five years. The satellites would be deployed from one of SpaceX’s rockets, the Falcon 9. Once in orbit, the satellites would connect to ground stations at three West Coast facilities. The purpose of the tests is to see whether the antenna technology used on the satellites will be able to deliver high-speed Internet to the ground without hiccups.

It appears to me that Musk’s constellation will be made up of cubesats, small and cheap to build, and easy to launch in large numbers as secondary payloads on every Falcon 9 launch. In other words, as long as SpaceX can get customers to pay for launches of large satellites on its Falcon 9, Musk will be able to launch and maintain his constellation of cubesats for free.

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The collapse of Russian scientific innovation

9:13 am

Link here. This report documents much of what I have been seeing in the Russian space industry: an aging workforce, a lack of innovation, and concentration of power to Moscow and the central government, and an exodus of the best minds to other countries.

It appears that all of the solutions that have been imposed by Putin’s government are exactly the worst things you could do and will only make the problems grow with time.

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Russia announces revised launch schedule for ISS

10:11 pm

As promised, the Russians today revealed their revised schedule of launches for ISS for the next few months.

The next manned launch will be on July 3, and though it will use a Soyuz rocket, it will not use the upgraded rocket version that had a conflict with its Progress freighter during the April launch. They have still not described what that conflict was, or how they plan to fix it on future launches.

Meanwhile, a Soyuz capsule docked to ISS suddenly fired its thrusters unexpectedly during testing of the station’s radio system. The burn changed the station’s orientation, which required other thrusters to compensate.

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Russia completes Soyuz launchpad at Vostochny

10:43 am

The competition heats up: Russia has completed assembly of the Soyuz-2 launch system at Vostochny a month ahead of schedule.

I must say that this story confuses me. Just this past weekend it was reported in the Russian press that they were abandoning efforts to build a Soyuz launchpad for manned flights at Vostochny and would instead focus on Angara. Why then are they finishing this Soyuz-2 launchpad now, and ahead of schedule?

One theory: The new launchpad might be for a new upgraded Soyuz rocket to be used for unmanned missions and thus different than the manned launchpad.

Or it might be that even though the government canceled it, workers continued to work on it and finished it, unaware of the cancellation. It is not unusual in big government projects for the right hand to not know what the left hand is doing.

UPDATE: My first theory was correct. Anatoly Zak of russianspaceweb.com has confirmed to me in an email that they only cancelled manned Soyuz flights at Vostochny. This launchpad will be used for an upgraded Soyuz rocket for unmanned flights.

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Problems at Stratolaunch

10:29 am

In the heat of competition: Stratolaunch and Orbital ATK have quietly parted ways as problems have developed in building Stratolaunch’s giant first stage aircraft.

The company went with a radical engineering idea — using a giant airplane as their first stage — which might turn out great but could just as easily become a disaster and failure. Such ideas are by their nature filled with many unknowns.

In a sense, this story validates SpaceX’s approach to developing new space technology, which is to take known engineering and to upgrade it while refining the production methods for building it to lower costs. With this approach, you lower risks by reducing the number of unknowns you have to deal with.

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LightSail successfully deploys solar sail

9:58 am

Engineers have confirmed that the cubesat prototype LightSail has successfully deployed its solar sails.

This is I think only the second time a solar sail has successfully deployed in space. More significant to me is the fact that it is the first time this kind of complex engineering test has been tried using a cubesat. If cubesats can begin to handle these kinds of tasks, unmanned satellite technology is going to take a gigantic leap forward.

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LightSail deploys its solar sails

10:48 pm

Though full confirmation will not come until later tonight, telemetry from LightSail suggests that its solar sails have successfully begun deployment.

Telemetry received on the ground showed motor counts climbing to the halfway point before LightSail traveled out of range. Power levels were consistent with ground-based deployment tests, and the spacecraft’s cameras were on. “All indications are that the solar sail deployment was proceeding nominally,” wrote mission manager David Spencer in an email update.

They will have to wait until the cubesat comes back in range at 2:46 am (Eastern) to see if the deployment completed successfully, as well as download images.

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Bee die off hasn’t happened

11:39 am

The uncertainty of science: Despite numerous claims by environmentalists and scientists in the past decade that the bee population was dying off, new data from the Agriculture Department suggests that bee populations are now at a 20 year high.

The reason? It appears that beekeepers have been very innovative and creative when faced with disease or other problems that hurt bees. Driven by the profit motive and competition and free to act, they have come up with solutions.

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LightSail back in business?

8:57 am

The Planetary Society’s solar sail engineering test called LightSail has re-established communications with the ground, allowing for the possibility that it can finally achieve its solar sail deployment, the main purpose of the mission.

I had previously reported that the sails had deployed, but a commenter correctly noted that only the panels have deployed, not the sails themselves, which need full battery power. The communications problem has been related to a battery charging problem. They are hoping that the batteries will get charged by mid-day today when they will try to deploy the sails.

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Manned flights from Vostochny delayed

9:02 am

In order to save construction costs at its new spaceport at Vostochny, Russia has decided to delay its first manned flight there until 2023.

They originally were going prepare a launchpad for Soyuz rockets so that they could do a manned launch at Vostochny as early as 2019, but had already admitted this was inefficient and had abandoned the plan. Now they have admitted that it will take until 2023 for them to get Vostochny and Angara ready for manned flights.

That it will still take almost 8 years to prepare a launchpad and get Angara ready to launch manned capsules, however, seems an ungodly long period of time. It should not take that long.

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Airbus unveils its first stage re-useability concept

2:32 pm

The competition heats up: Airbus unveiled today its prototype design to recover and reuse the engines and avionics of its Ariane rockets.

Herve Gilibert, technical director for Airbus’ Space Systems division, said the Adeline propulsion unit — engine and avionics — is where lies most of the value of the first stage. The Airbus team concluded that SpaceX’s design of returning the full stage to Earth could be simplified by separating the propulsion bay from the rest of the stage, protecting the motor on reentry and, using the winglets and turbofans, return horizontally to a conventional air strip. “We are using an aerodynamic shield so that the motor is not subjected to such high stress on reentry,” Gilibert said. “We need very little fuel for the turbofans and the performance penalty we pay for the Ariane 6 launcher is far less than the 30 percent or more performance penalty that SpaceX pays for the reusable Falcon 9 first stage.

Gee, for decades Arianespace and Boeing and Lockheed Martin and everyone else in the launch industry insisted it made no economic sense to try to recover and reuse the first stage of their rockets. Then SpaceX comes along and makes an effort to do so, without as yet even coming close, and suddenly everyone agrees it is economically essential to do it as well.

Isn’t competition wonderful?

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Angara to launch commercial payload on next launch

9:02 am

The competition heats up: Russia has decided to accelerate use of its heavy Angara rocket by launching a commercial payload on its next launch in 2016.

They had initially planned to do more test flights. The technical problems with Proton, combined with increased competition from SpaceX and others, is forcing them to move at a less leisurely pace.

In the meantime, they have concluded their investigation into the Progress/Soyuz rocket failure, issuing an incredibly vague press release that only stated the following:

The damage to the ship during its abnormal separation from the third stage of the Soyuz-2-1a launch vehicle resulted from a particular property of the joint use of the cargo spacecraft and the launch vehicle. This design property was related to frequency and dynamic characteristics of joint vehicles. This design property was not fully accounted for during the development of the rocket and spacecraft complex.

Limitations on further flights of the Soyuz-2-1a rocket with other spacecraft had not been found.

It sounds to me as if they don’t know exactly what caused the abnormal separation between the rocket and the spacecraft, and that they have decided to move on regardless.

I think it would be very wise for the U.S. to get its own manned spacecraft operational as fast as possible.

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Air Force asks private companies to develop new rocket engines

5:47 pm

The competition heats up: The Air Force has issued a request for proposals for the development of new rocket engines to replace the Russian engine used on the Atlas 5 rocket.

The press release is a little vague in that it seems to be calling for the development of this new engine, but it could also be interpreted as calling for the development of an entire rocket system. The amount of money involved is too small for this, however, so I suspect we are only talking about engine development here.

Meanwhile, they will continue to issue launch contracts to ULA and SpaceX while they wait for this new engine to be developed. Note also that this sure is a good deal for ULA, getting the Air Force to pay for upgrades to its Atlas 5 rocket.

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ULA to trim management by 30%

10:31 pm

The competition heats up: In order to make itself more efficient and competitive, ULA has decided to cut its management by 30%.

ULA CEO Tory Bruno has said ULA must shrink to remain successful under reduced U.S. military budgets and with Elon Musk’s SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies Corp.) being certified to compete against ULA for national security mission launches. “To achieve that transformation, we are reducing the number of executive positions by 30 percent and offered a voluntary layoff for those interested on the executive leadership team,” said ULA spokeswoman Jessica Rye. “It is important for ULA to move forward early in the process with our leadership selections to ensure a seamless transition and our continued focus on mission success.”

This news should be looked at in the context of a proposed Senate bill that requires the Air Force to significantly cut funding to ULA.

Not only would the bill cut an annual $1 billion payment from the Air Force to ULA, it would put severe restrictions on the number of Russian engines ULA could use in its Atlas 5, which in turn will limit the number of launches the Air Force can buy from the company.

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LightSail deployment scheduled for Tuesday

7:54 am

Assuming all goes well with the orbital preparations today, LightSail will perform its test deployment on Tuesday at 11:44 am.

If successful, this deployment will achieve several significant engineering firsts, the most important of which will be to have demonstrated that a cubesat can be used for such a task. Proving that fact will increase their commercial usefulness for future space endeavors.

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