An evening pause: I’ve posted an evening pause previously about making art from an aluminum casting of an anthill, but this video is worth watching because it really shows how relatively easy it is to do. Moreover, they used soda cans as their material!
Hat tip Rocco.
Last night’s podcast is embedded below the fold. This time we spent a good amount of time discussing the smart way Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk publicity their brands.
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The investigation into the corruption during the construction of Russia’s new spaceport Vostochny has been completed, with four Russians to be charged.
It also appears a fifth is on the lam and “has been put on the international wanted list.”
The competition heats up: ULA has awarded XCOR a design contract for building an upper stage rocket engine for the Vulcan rocket.
This is good news for XCOR, though there is one important caveat: A close reading of the press release at the link shows that the contract does not guarantee that ULA will use this engine in Vulcan. XCOR must deliver, and ULA must be satisfied with what they produce.
The competition heats up: The chief designer of China’s human space program revealed more details today about their planned space station in talking with reporters at China’s on-going parliamentary sessions.
Zhou Jianping, speaking to state media on the sidelines of China’s ongoing parliamentary sessions, explained that the project will include three modules, two 30m solar panel ‘wings’, two robotic arms and a telescope dubbed ‘China’s Hubble’. Zhou, who is a member of China’s top consultative body currently in session in Beijing, said the space station will comprise of a core module and two labs forming a T-shape, each weighing about 20 tons.
The core module is scheduled to be launched in 2018, by the new heavy lift Long March 5 rocket, which will make its maiden flight in September and be capable of lifting 25 tonnes to low Earth orbit.
“China’s Hubble” will be a module flying near the station so that if it needs maintenance the station astronauts will be able to do the work.
The competition heats up: Afraid of more delays in SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, Inmarsat has booked a Russian Proton rocket for a 2017 commercial satellite launch.
London-based Inmarsat is the second Falcon Heavy commercial customer to have sought a Plan B given the continued uncertainties in the launch schedule of Falcon Heavy, whose inaugural flight has been repeatedly delayed. Carlsbad, California-based ViaSat Inc. in February moved its ViaSat-2 consumer broadband satellite from the Falcon Heavy to Europe’s Ariane 5 rocket for an April 2017 launch, securing what may be launch-service provider Arianespace’s last 2017 slot for a heavy satellite.
In the first game of a best of five for a $1 million prize, the computer has beaten professional Go player Lee Sodel.
The competition heats up: Jeff Bezos gave his first tour of Blue Origin’s facilities for eleven journalists on Tuesday.
The article is chock full of interesting details about the company’s plans. To me these details about their New Shepard test program are the most interesting:
“We’re going to fly it until we lose it,” he said. The plan is to test the spaceship many, many times without humans aboard. At some point, Blue Origin will run a test in which the crew capsule will have to blast itself clear from the propulsion module at maximum dynamic pressure – a scenario during which the propulsion module will almost certainly be destroyed.
Not to worry, though: More crew capsules and propulsion modules are already under construction at the factory. “By the time anybody gets on, I think you should be willing to bring your mom,” Bezos said.
They also hope that this test program will proceed to launching humans by 2017.
The competition heats up: In successfully placing a commercial communications satellite in orbit last night, Arianespace also did its second consecutive single satellite launch.
The Ariane 5 rocket is designed to carry two satellites, and normally does so in order to maximize its profit per launch. That they have done two straight commercial launches without a second satellite suggests to me that the competition from SpaceX is taking customers from them. The scheduling of the secondary payload usually suffers because priority is given to the primary satellite. Those customers thus might be switching to SpaceX in the hope they can gain better control over their own launch schedule, while also paying far less for their launch.
Then again, considering how unreliable SpaceX’s own launch schedule has been, it is unlikely these customers will have yet gained any scheduling advantages.
An evening pause: To start the week, here’s an interesting way to make a living. Hat tip Rocco.
The competition heats up: Though there is no word yet on their attempt to land the first stage on a barge, SpaceX today has successfully launched a commercial communications satellite.
Update: The barge landing did not succeed.
Crony capitalism: Even though ULA prefers Blue Origin’s engine for its Atlas 5, the Air Force continues to fund Aerojet Rocketdyne’s new engine.
The U.S. Air Force announced Feb. 29 it was investing $115 million this year, and with options, as much as $536 million over the next five years, in [Aerojet Rocketdyne’s] AR1, a new liquid oxygen- and kerosene-fueled main-stage engine. The contract award is part of an Air Force initiative to end reliance on the Russian-built RD-180 engine that powers ULA’s Atlas 5 workhorse rocket.
Aerojet says it has two potential other customers to use the engine, but will not name them. In reviewing the field, the only customer I can think of that might be interested would be Orbital ATK (for its Antares rocket), and even there I have doubts. Thus, it appears to me that these funds are really being distributed to prop up a company that is failing, not to build anything useful the government needs.
In its new budget approved by India’s government the country’s space agency ISRO was the only science agency to get a significant budget increase, approximately 7.3%.
In the short run this is good, as ISRO has been using its funds wisely and accomplishing a lot for a little, while trying to encourage private development in India’s aerospace industry. In the long run, however, this will not be good, as government agencies always grow more than they should while sucking the innovation and creativity from the private sector. This is what NASA did in the U.S.
Hopefully, India will see how things are changing in America with private enterprise reasserting itself after a half century of government stagnation in space development and copy what we are doing.
In the heat of competition: SpaceX has once again scrubbed the Falcon 9 launch of a commercial communications satellite, this time due to high altitude winds.
They say they are now aiming for Friday.
The competition heats up: The next Chinese manned mission will occur in the fall of 2016 and will have the astronauts remain in space for 30 days on a new space station launched during the summer.
After the astronauts have completed their flight, China will then launch their first unmanned cargo craft, dubbed Tianzhou-1, to dock with the station, using a new medium-lift rocket, Long March 7, which will get its first test flight this coming June.
The competition heats up: In an effort to lure space tourism companies to Georgia, the state’s House has passed a law that would ban lawsuits by space tourists against the space companies that flew them.
The bill still needs approval from the state Senate.
The competition heats up: The Air Force today awarded developmental contracts worth $160 million total to both Aerojet Rocketdyne and the partnership of ULA/Blue Origin for the development of an American-built rocket engine to replace the Russian engines in the Atlas 5 rocket.
Here is the ULA press release.
In the heat of competition: SpaceX has set Tuesday, 6:35 pm (Eastern) for its fourth attempt to launch a commercial communications satellite.
This time the launch abort occurred at T-0, when computers detected that the rocket’s fuel was not cold enough and would not produce the thrust required.
I was caving all day today and only returned late tonight.
SpaceX has scheduled their next Falcon 9 launch attempt for 6:47 pm (eastern) on Sunday, February 28.
