Tag: engineering

NASA has granted $45 million to Ball Aerospace to develop a “green” propellent to hydrazine, the toxic fuel used in by rockets, satellites, and even manned spacecraft.

12:06 pm

NASA has granted $45 million to Ball Aerospace to develop a “green” propellent to replace hydrazine, the toxic fuel used in by rockets, satellites, and even manned spacecraft.

Today’s use of hydrazine fuel for rockets, satellites and spacecraft is pervasive. Hydrazine is an efficient propellant and can be stored for long periods of time, but it also is highly corrosive and toxic. NASA is seeking new, non-toxic high performance green propellants that could be safely and widely used by rocketeers, ranging from government to industry and academia. Green propellants include liquid, solid, mono- propellant, which use one fuel source, or bi-propellants, which use two, and hybrids that offer safer handling conditions and lower environmental impact than current fuels.

The “green” terminology is meaningless in this context and is probably a politically-correct gesture to higher ups in the Obama administration. Nonetheless, finding a financially viable replacement for hydrazine would be quite helpful, as its toxic nature adds a great deal of cost to the production of any space vehicle that uses it.

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The Russian Prime Minister has given the Russian launch industry until September to figure out how to improve its quality control.

10:35 am

The Russian Prime Minister has given the Russian launch industry until September to figure out how to improve its quality control.

It also appears from the above article that there is some confusion about whether the head of the company that built the failed upper stage to the Proton rocket has resigned, as reported here and here.

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A test flight of an Air Force hypersonic aircraft failed yesterday when it went out of control before its experimental scramjet engine could be started

12:45 pm

A test flight of an Air Force hypersonic aircraft failed yesterday when it went out of control before its experimental scramjet engine could be started.

Though failures during engineering tests are not really failures, as the goal is to find out if the engineering works or doesn’t, this particular failure is a bit more like a real failure. They never got to test the scramjet engine, which was the point of the entire flight. Instead, they had a failure of a control fin on the aircraft, and it appears that this fin was “faulty.” Not a good sign, especially as the previous flight in June 2011 also failed prematurely.

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The test of Coperhagen Suborbital’s capsule launch abort system failed spectacularly on Sunday.

8:47 pm

The test of Coperhagen Suborbital’s capsule launch abort system failed spectacularly on Sunday. With pictures.

“We had perfect launch, but quickly the entire configuration began to tumble,” said Kristian von Bengtson, co-founder of Copenhagen Suborbitals. “The main chutes clearly did not have complete deployment and the capsule hit water in high speed, buckling the bottom shield.”

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One of Dawn’s reaction wheels, used to orient the spacecraft, shut down last week.

9:16 am

Uh-oh: One of Dawn’s reaction wheels, used to orient the spacecraft, shut down last week.

During a planned communications pass on Aug. 9, the team learned that the reaction wheel had been powered off. Telemetry data from the spacecraft suggest the wheel developed excessive friction, similar to the experience with another Dawn reaction wheel in June 2010. The Dawn team demonstrated during the cruise to Vesta in 2011 that, if necessary, they could complete the cruise to Ceres without the use of reaction wheels.

That the spacecraft can get to Ceres without reaction wheels is good. However, can it be oriented precisely to do science without these wheels? The JPL press release does not say.

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With its most recent glide test on Saturday it appears SpaceShipTwo has successfully fulfilled its glide engineering goals.

9:06 am

The competition heats up: With its most recent glide test on Saturday it appears SpaceShipTwo has successfully fulfilled its glide engineering goals. Hat tip Clark Lindsay at NewSpace Watch. To quote their flight summary:

With this latest round of six flights we have cleared the full glide-flight envelope for airspeed, angle-of-attack, CG, and structural loads!

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Watch the first test flight live this weekend of Copenhagen Suborbitals manned capsule.

5:54 pm

Watch the first test flight live this weekend of Copenhagen Suborbitals’ manned capsule launch abort system.

If all goes as planned, the Launch Escape System will rocket [the capsule dubbed Beautiful] Betty and Randy [the crash dummy] from a seafaring launch platform, loft them to a height between 2,620 and 3,280 feet and then splash down in the Baltic Sea. At that point self-inflating bags will emerge from Betty and right the floating spacecraft.

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Using Google Earth, an archeologist in North Carolina thinks she has discovered two lost pyramid sites in Egypt.

3:39 pm

Using Google Earth, a researcher in North Carolina thinks she has discovered two lost pyramid sites in Egypt.

The researcher’s website, Google Earth Anomalies, is intriguing. It focuses on identifying strange and unexplained features that are seen in Google Earth, such as circular and linear features where none should exist. Often these are artifacts of software processing. Sometimes, as in the Egyptian case above, they are not.

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Dawn has begun its slow departure from Vesta in anticipation of its journey to the solar system’s largest asteroid, Ceres.

11:28 am

Dawn has begun its slow departure from Vesta in anticipation of its journey to the solar system’s largest asteroid, Ceres.

The departure was actually announced two weeks ago, but since this is a very slow process it isn’t like we have missed anything. Dawn’s ion engines are very efficient, but they work at a very leisurely pace. It will take a month for the engine’s thrusters to push Dawn out of its orbit around Vesta.

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After mandating the sale of 15% ethanol gasoline — that can damage engines and lower fuel efficiency — the EPA is now going to require that you buy at least 4 gallons in order to reduce the damage.

5:35 pm

How nice of them: After mandating the sale of 15% ethanol gasoline — which can damage engines and lower fuel efficiency — the EPA is now going to require that you buy at least 4 gallons when you fill your tank in order to reduce the damage.

The entire auto industry has made it very clear its opposition to 15% ethanol because that mixture is harmful to vehicle engines. So, does the EPA back off? No, it instead doubles down, increasing its regulatory control in a manner that is complex, unenforceable, and impractical.

And when this new regulation doesn’t work and vehicles begin to fail, don’t expect the EPA to pay for the repair. Instead, I expect we will soon have EPA regulators standing at every gas station, checking to make sure we use the right gasoline in the right amounts, ready to fine or arrest us if we dare to do something different.

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Despite a 3x increase in the use of gasoline and diesel fuel since the 1960s, the amount of vehicle-related pollution in the Los Angeles area has declined by 98 percent during that same time.

9:50 am

Good news: Despite a 3x increase in the use of gasoline and diesel fuel since the 1960s, the amount of vehicle-related pollution in the Los Angeles area has declined by 98 percent during that same time.

While many on the left will argue that this proves the validity of government regulation, I only see it as evidence that the initial regulations imposed in the 1970s did their job, and that there is no reason for stricter regulation now, something that the EPA, the Obama administration, and the left continue to demand.

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The leading team in the Google Lunar X-Price contest last week successfully tested by remote control the astronomical telescope they intend to include with their lunar lander.

8:46 am

The leading team in the Google Lunar X-Price contest last week successfully tested by remote control the astronomical telescope they intend to include with their lunar lander.

[The Google Lunar X Prize] requires the participants to successfully land a lunar rover on the surface, drive it a minimum of 500 meters (about a third of a mile), and send back high definition video and imagery. Moon Express intends to land this first lunar lander near the Moon’s equator.

Moon Express is planning to send its first robotic lander to the Moon in late 2014. It will be launched atop either SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket or another commercial launch vehicle. It intends to fly ILOA’s shoebox-sized test telescope, called ILO-X, as part of its [X prize] entry. There are additional prizes available which might be won by an educational lunar telescope, such US$1 million prize for the entry which adds the most to diversity within space studies.

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A failed fuel line in the upper stage has been pinpointed as the probably cause of the Russian Proton rocket failure on Tuesday.

8:37 am

A failed fuel line in the upper stage has been pinpointed as the probably cause of the Russian Proton rocket failure on Tuesday.

In related news, the Russian prime minister said today that he intends to name and shame the officials responsible for the rocket failure.

“I would like to hold a meeting on this next week. It will be prepared by the appropriate deputy prime minister and structures. They are tasked with reporting who should be punished and what to do next,” Medvedev told a government meeting in Moscow. He also said Russia’s space failures “could not be tolerated anymore.”

Do tell. With SpaceX’s cheaper prices looming over them, Russia’s government-owned commercial rocket business can’t afford rocket failures as well. If they don’t fix this soon, their business will evaporate, and Medvedev knows it.

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Alvino Rey – St. Louis Blues

6:01 pm

An evening pause: From the youtube webpage:

Alvino Rey is as important to the development of the electric guitar as Les Paul was, but has been criminally uncredited for it–until now. More and more photos, recordings and film clips like these are coming out of the woodwork to show what a genius Alvino was.

This film clip is from 1944 and shows Alvino demonstrating not only his amazing work on the steel guitar, but also his “singing guitar” effect, similar to the Sonovox, manifested in the persona of “Stringy” the talking guitar puppet! Enjoy this and whatever you do, DO NOT TAKE ACID BEFORE VIEWING….we warned you….

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