Tag: engineering

Boeing to cut 30 percent of its management ranks.

2:20 pm

Boeing to cut 30 percent of its management ranks.

This could be good news for the company. If they do this right, they will reduce their costs without hurting their ability to produce. That they made this announcement today, the day after the election, and that the cuts mostly involve their defense work also suggests it is linked to sequestration, despite the company’s denial.

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Sierra Nevada is moving its mini-shuttle, Dream Chaser, into its own facility.

8:43 am

Sierra Nevada is moving its mini-shuttle, Dream Chaser, into its own facility.

This article isn’t really as positive as I’d like. For one, they haven’t even signed the lease for the building. Instead, it appears that the company is using this announcement, and the subsequent media coverage, to pressure the local city council to provide them subsidies. For another, the article mentions that drop tests of Dream Chaser will occur next spring, a significant delay from previous announcements. Both points make things appear far more tenuous than they should be.

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One of the major backers has pulled out of a solar energy power plant plan for Africa and the Middle East.

9:31 am

One of the major backers has pulled out of a solar energy power plant plan for Africa and the Middle East.

“We see our part in Dii as done,” says spokesman Torsten Wolf of Siemens, one of 13 founding partners of the consortium, which is also based in Munich. Siemens also said that it will pull out of the solar-energy business altogether. Its decision was made in response to falling government subsidies for solar energy and a collapse in the price of solar equipment. But to DESERTEC’S critics, Siemens’ exit also adds to doubts about the plan, which is expected to cost hundreds of billions of dollars. “DESERTEC is an ambitious attempt to do every­thing at once,” says Jenny Chase, an analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance in Zurich, Switzerland. “I think it’s something that will be achieved organically, bit by bit, which will probably be cheaper, easier and achieve the same results.” [emphasis mine]

The cited reasons suggest some fundamental problems with this particular project. That Siemens is abandoning the solar energy entirely, citing the lose of government subsidies as one reason, also suggests there is something fundamental wrong with the industry itself.

Then again, it could be just like the new commercial space industry. Some companies are willing to take the risks to make the money even without subsidies, while others are not.

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For the second time, a Progress freighter has launched and, after only four orbits, docked with ISS.

9:09 am

For the second time, a Progress freighter has launched and, after only four orbits, docked with ISS.

This was the fourth Progress launched this year, the second to follow an abbreviated four-orbit rendezvous with the space station. Russian flight controllers normally implement two-day rendezvous profiles, but they are perfecting procedures for single-day flights for possible use with manned Soyuz missions to shorten the time crews are forced to spend in the cramped ferry craft.

The Russians have used the leisurely two-day rendezvous path now for almost a half century. So, why are they suddenly trying to shorten the travel time to ISS to six hours? Though there are many good engineering reasons, I also suspect it is because they are now feeling the pressure of competition. The shorter travel time probably lowers their costs at mission control. It also makes using the Soyuz for manned flights more appealing. Dragon for example is presently using the two-day rendezvous path. And Dragon will soon become a direct competitor to Soyuz, when it begins flying humans in the next three to five years.

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The first results from Curiosity’s soil samples have come back.

1:38 pm

The first results from Curiosity’s soil samples have come back.

“Much of Mars is covered with dust, and we had an incomplete understanding of its mineralogy,” said David Bish, CheMin co-investigator with Indiana University in Bloomington. “We now know it is mineralogically similar to basaltic material, with significant amounts of feldspar, pyroxene and olivine, which was not unexpected. Roughly half the soil is non-crystalline material, such as volcanic glass or products from weathering of the glass. ”

Bish said, “So far, the materials Curiosity has analyzed are consistent with our initial ideas of the deposits in Gale Crater recording a transition through time from a wet to dry environment. The ancient rocks, such as the conglomerates, suggest flowing water, while the minerals in the younger soil are consistent with limited interaction with water.” [emphasis mine]

These results suggest that there has been very little water on the Martian surface for a very long time. They do not, however, mean that there is no water there now.

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