Tag: engineering

XCOR progress report in construction of Lynx

9:00 am

The competition heats up: In a press release today XCOR announced new progress in the assembly of its Lynx suborbital space plane.

They revealed that they have “bonded the XCOR Lynx Mark I strakes to the Lynx spacecraft fuselage.”

To be honest, my impression of the work at XCOR from the photo at the link is that of one or two guys working in their spare time in their garage on restoring a classic car. Though I wish them well, the progress seems very slow, and piecemeal. In fact, it reminds me much of Richard Branson’s many false promises at Virgin Galactic. For example, back in 2012 XCOR announced a test flight schedule for 2013. None of those flights ever happened. Then in 2014 they said they hoped to begin flight tests before the end of that year. Again, nothing happened.

At least with this most recent release they aren’t saying when they plan to fly, since from the picture it appears they are quite a long ways from doing so. It is far better to make real promises that false ones, and XCOR might have learned that lesson watching the public relations problems Richard Branson has had in recent years.

Even so, I have been consistently very skeptical of this project. In fact, back in October 2013, in describing the effort of Blue Origin in the suborbital tourism trade, I predicted the following:

That the present ship [Blue Origin’s New Shepard] is being designed for suborbital tourist flights makes it a direct competitor of Virgin Galactic and XCOR. And considering the problems that Virgin Galactic has with SpaceShipTwo [written one year before its crash], and that XCOR doesn’t have the big bucks of Bezos, Blue Origin might actually be in the lead in the race to put the first tourists in space.

It appears now that this prediction was right on the money.

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Russian sources confirm their plan to flip launches to ISS

8:31 am

Though not yet officially decided, managers in the Russian space agency are definitely considering switching the launch dates of the next Soyuz and Progress missions to ISS, so that the unmanned cargo flight flies first.

Both spacecraft use the Soyuz rocket, and it now appears that the cause of last week’s Progress failure was a problem in the Soyuz third stage. They want to check out all Soyuz third stages before they put any humans on one. Switching the flights gives them time to do it. It also gets needed cargo to ISS sooner.

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Progress failure causes delay in next manned mission to ISS

5:22 pm

Russian sources suggest that they will postpone the next manned mission to ISS from May 26 to June 11 as they investigate the failure of the Progress freighter last week.

This article also suggests that the Russians might flip the next Progress and Soyuz flights to have the Progress go first. (This schedule change is something I suggested might happen last week, right after the launch failure.)

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The plans for the first Arab probe to Mars revealed

10:17 am

The competition heats up: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) on Thursday unveiled its plans for its first unmanned mission to Mars, dubbed al-Amal (“Hope”).

They hope to launch by 2020.

Forgive me if I am skeptical. Unlike India, which just succeeded in doing this, the UAE has no history or background in space exploration. India has been building satellites for decades. It has its own rockets. It had already launched a successful mission to the Moon. The UAE has done none of this yet. They are starting from ground zero.

Then again, one has to start somewhere.

This UAE effort illustrates again what I call the new colonial movement, where nations across the globe are increasingly pushing to participate in the exploration of space, because they realize that if they don’t, they will get left behind by their neighbors. Whether or not UAE succeeds, their decision to enter the competition proves the competition exists, and such a competition can only add energy to the effort to colonize the solar system.

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A second experiment on the next X-37B flight revealed

5:28 pm

NASA has outlined the materials research it will be conducting on the next X-37B flight, scheduled to launch on May 20.

Known as the Materials Exposure and Technology Innovation in Space, or METIS, the investigation on the X-37B will expose nearly 100 different materials samples to the space environment for more than 200 days, NASA says. METIS is building upon data obtained by several missions of the Materials on International Space Station Experiment (MISSE), which flew more than 4,000 samples in space from 2001 to 2013. For both MISSE and METIS, small samples the size of quarters are used. METIS will fly a variety of materials including polymers, composites and coatings.

Not only does this information, plus earlier information about an Air Force ion engine thruster experiment, probably describe a great deal of what the X-37B is carrying, it also tells us the probable duration of the flight.

I have no doubt there are other classified Air Force experiments on board, but like these, they are likely to be test articles, since the X-37B provides the perfect testbed for exposing new technology to space to see how it fares.

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Dragon launchpad abort test a success

8:27 am

The competition heats up: SpaceX’s first abort test of its Dragon capsule was completed successfully this morning.

The test not only demonstrated the capsule’s ability to escape the launchpad and land safely in the ocean nearby, it proved that its SuperDraco thrusters have the power to lift the spacecraft off the pad, which also means they have the power to lower the capsule to a soft landing on land.

Video embedded below.

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A review of what little we know of Pluto prior to New Horizons’ arrival

9:13 am

The principle investigator of the New Horizons mission to Pluto gives us an overview of what is known, and what we might find, when the spacecraft does its fly-by on July 14.

Pluto has very distinct surface markings, including apparent polar caps, and it has an atmosphere (mostly nitrogen). We know that Pluto’s interior is primarily made of rock — about 70% by mass. Also, Pluto-Charon constitute a true binary planet, with a barycenter (center of mass) situated in the open space between them. We know Charon is a “rising star” among the solar system’s icy bodies, with evidence for recently created surface ices, possible internal activity (hinted at by the spectroscopic discovery of ammonium hydrates a few years ago), and some likelihood of an atmosphere itself — perhaps gas that was siphoned off Pluto! As for the small satellites — Styx, Nix, Kerberos, and Hydra — we know very little about them beyond their orbits and crude colors. Soon all six of those points of light, planet and moons, will be real worlds thanks to NASA’s New Horizons.

He also admits that trying to guess what we might find is quite hazardous, and likely will end up wrong.

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Indecision at Virgin Galactic over engine design

9:53 am

In the heat of competition: Sources at Virgin Galactic suggest that the company has still not made up its mind on the type of engine it will use on SpaceShipTwo.

Messier sums up the situation perfectly:

The lack of clarity about SpaceShipTwo’s main propulsion system is highly unusual. It’s difficult if not impossible to think of another space project that was uncertain about its primary propulsion system after nearly a decade of development.

Increasingly I do not see this spaceship ever flying, which saddens me. They had a ten year head start over everyone else, and have squandered it.

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An update on Sarah Brightman’s astronaut training

9:30 am

The competition heats up: New detailed photos of Sarah Brightman’s training for her September tourist trip to ISS have been released.

The photos appear to dispel the rumors that Brightman might be replaced with her backup tourist for the flight to ISS.

Some might consider this flight nothing more than a publicity stunt. While it surely is that, for Brightman it also is a dream come true. And the publicity will not simply be good for her career, it will do wonders to sell the idea of space tourism and space exploration.

In fact, there is never really any downside to freedom and allowing people to follow their dreams, and this tourist flight to ISS will prove it.

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Furniture for space!

9:31 am

Students at Rice University have built a chair and table expressly designed for use in a low gravity environment like the Moon or Mars.

The students interviewed astronauts to get an idea of what was needed, and did the design under NASA supervision. Their design is clever in that it can be packed easily, but I still wonder about the weight of transport. I don’t see the first explorers to Mars being able to afford bringing their furniture with them. I expect they will instead figure out ways to improvise chairs and tables from the materials on hand.

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New Shepard makes its first test flight

12:23 am

New Shepard launch

The competition heats up: Blue Origin completed on Wednesday its first test flight of its reusable suborbital spacecraft, New Shepard.

After reaching an altitude of 307,000 feet, or 58 miles, the capsule successfully separated from its first stage, what they call the propulsion module, and safely parachuted back to Earth. The first stage, designed to also be recoverable, was not recovered successfully. According to Jeff Bezos’s explanation, they “lost pressure in our hydraulic system” and that they were trying to land it vertically, like SpaceX’s Falcon 9 first stage.

The cropped image on the right of the full resolution image, gives us a close-up of the capsule and propulsion module. The small fins on the propulsion module suggest the capability for a vertical landing, but it is unclear from the image whether the module has legs, though other images and videos strongly suggest there are legs on this module.

The flight itself, getting above 50 miles, reached space according to most definitions. In fact, Blue Origin with this flight has accomplished what Virgin Galactic has been promising to do for more than a decade, a suborbital test flight of its spacecraft. Blue Origin’s flight was unmanned, but it demonstrated that their design works. They will of course have to re-fly the capsule as well as land that first stage successfully to prove the design’s re-usability, but this flight shows that they are off to a very good start. And their webpage clearly shows that they are almost ready to start selling tickets for suborbital flights.

The most significant success of this launch, however, is the performance of the BE-3 rocket engine. Blue Origin has convinced ULA to hire it to build the engines for its new Vulcan rocket. This success justifies that decision.

I have embedded their videos of the full flight below the fold.
» Read more

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Progress freighter declared lost

9:16 am

The Russians have declared lost the Progress freighter that had been launched to ISS yesterday.

They never could regain control of the craft, plus it was in an incorrect orbit. Moreover, the U.S. Air Force has detected debris nearby, suggesting a significant failure of some kind.

The Russians are now considering delaying the next manned launch, scheduled for May 26, while they investigate this failure. Both Soyuz and Progress use some of the same systems, including the radar system that failed on Progress, and they want to make sure the problem won’t pop up on the manned mission.

At the same time, they are also considering advancing the launch date of the next Progress to ISS from August 6.

Based on these reports, I think they might swap the launch dates for the two flights. A Dragon is scheduled to go to ISS in between these missions, though that schedule could be changed as well to accommodate the Russian plans.

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Rosetta team releases almost 1300 images of Comet 67P/C-G

9:01 am

The science team for Rosetta’s navigation camera have released to the public 1297 images taken of Comet 67P/C-G as the spacecraft began its approach on August 1, 2014 through September 23, 2014.

The release also included a video assembled from these images, showing the comet nucleus as Rosetta approached from August 1 to August 22. I have embedded that video below. As you watch, you will think, “How does this thing stay together?” Though the video shows the nucleus’ rotation at a highly accelerated rate, which exaggerates the stresses on the object, the question is a good one, and in fact, is actually predicting the future. Eventually, this nucleus will break up.

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Progress freighter in big trouble

10:09 am

A Progress freighter launched by Russia to ISS on Tuesday was placed in the wrong orbit, has not deployed its radar antennas needed for rendezvous, and is not responding properly to commands on the ground.

Whether it is in the wrong orbit might be an incorrect report, but other sources demonstrate clearly that the spacecraft is tumbling out of control. Based on all these reports, it does not look good for this vehicle. The crew on ISS, including the two astronauts on a year-long mission there, might have to do without these supplies.

Meanwhile Russia is proceeding with its plans to consolidate control of all aspects of its aerospace industry under the banner of a single government “super-corporation” run by Roscosmos. Considering the number of technical failures they have had with spacecraft and rockets in the past five years, it seems to me that this is the worst approach for solving these problems. Then again, Russian culture strongly favors a top-down authoritarian approach, so it might work better under this Soviet-style approach.

I don’t believe it, but we are going to find out in the coming decades.

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Next Falcon 9 launch set for Monday

8:56 am

The competition heats up: The next commercial Falcon 9 launch is now set for tonight, Monday, less than two weeks after the last Falcon 9 launch.

The next two weeks will be especially busy for SpaceX, as they also have scheduled the first launch abort test of Dragon on May 5. The launch will also be the fifth for Falcon 9 this year, putting it in the lead as the busiest rocket in the world for 2015, ahead of the Russian Soyuz.

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Russians cancel effort to fly humans from Vostochny by 2019

8:51 am

The heat of competition? In order to meet a government deadline to launch humans from their new spaceport at Vostochny, the Russians had planned, though now cancelled, a single manned launch there in 2019, using a new rocket.

Their cancelled plans had included two prior test flights of the rocket with Progress freighters.

If cargo missions were successful, the one brave crew would ride into orbit from the new spaceport, knowing that in case of a serious problem with the rocket, the descent module of the spacecraft would parachute into deep forest of the Russian Far East or somewhere in the Pacific.

After “satisfying” this political goal with a single crew, all manned Soyuz and cargo Progress missions would then revert back to Baikonur for a safe ascent trajectory. The Soyuz spacecraft would continue flying two missions annually from Baikonur, until the veteran spacecraft’s final launch in 2025. In 2021, Soyuz spacecraft missions originating from Baikonur would switch from Soyuz-FG to Soyuz-2-1a rocket.

The Russians have now decided, rather than rush this first flight on the new rocket, to hold to the slower schedule.

This story is important to the United States. I think we must definitely end our dependence on the Russians before they make the switch to the new rocket. Based on the levels of poor quality control and corruption seen recently in Russia, I have grave doubts the new rocket will fly reliably at first. It would be a mistake to buy its use to put Americans in space.

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Russia ends effort to build a nuclear-powered rocket engine

9:43 am

The competition cools down! The Russian government has decided to shut down its research project to build a nuclear rocket engine for interplanetary travel in space.

The article doesn’t give a reason, but I suspect Russia’s continuing economic problems is the source.

The idea of using nuclear power for propulsion in space has been around since the 1960s, and has shown great promise. It would provide far more power for less fuel than any existing engine. The U.S. unfortunately abandoned this research in the 1960s, partly because of the cut-backs after winning the space race and partly because of environmental protests that fear anything to do with nuclear. If the Russians had followed through, it would have given them an advantageous position in any competition to colonize the planets.

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Russia slashes spending on space

5:22 pm

In the heat of competition: Economic hard times have forced the Russian government to cut spending on its space program by more than a third.

The cuts have mainly come from abandoning their effort to build a heavy lift rocket to compete with SLS. They might not realize it, but I think this will be a blessing in disguise, as they will no longer be wasting money building a giant rocket that will have little value in the competitive launch market. Instead, they will focus their investment on Angara, which has the possibility of earning them a profit.

Meanwhile, however, they still have to deal with the quality control problems and corruption that appears to permeate Russia`s entire aerospace industry: Russian defense rocket fails and crashes immediately after launch. I have posted the video of the crash below the fold. It appears that the rocket was successfuly propelled from its launch silo, but then its rocket engines never ignited.
» Read more

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