Tag: engineering

The actual cost to launch

7:30 am

In writing this short post on the efforts of Lockheed Martin and Orbital Sciences to launch rockets for the small satellite market, Clark Lindsey made this comment:

It costs around $50 million to launch a Orbital Sciences Minotaur 4, which can put 1,730 kg into LEO while the Lockheed’s Athena 2 will cost around $65 million to put 1,712 kg into LEO. SpaceX currently posts charges $54M – $59.5M for launching to LEO 10,450 kg (equatorial) and 8,560 kg (polar). If SpaceX is able to sustain these prices in routine operation, it will obviously result in some disturbance to the launch industry.

Let’s deconstruct these numbers again, this time listing them by the cost per kilogram:
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Europe has shut down the production line producing their ATV cargo craft for ISS.

10:39 am

Is this good or bad news? Europe has shut down the production line producing their ATV cargo craft for ISS.

Confronted by parts obsolescence and waning political support, the European Space Agency has shut down subsystem production lines for the Automated Transfer Vehicle as member states debate how they will contribute to future international space exploration efforts, according to top spaceflight officials.

ESA has launched three of the five ATVs it agreed to launch, with the remaining two scheduled in 2013 and 2014. What happens after that remains unclear. It seems from the article the European partners don’t seem interested in upgrading the ATV, and instead seem willing to let the as-yet untried U.S. commercial companies carry the load.

Commercial flights by U.S. spacecraft will make up the rest of the lost capacity with the end of the ATV program.

The pressure continues to build on a successful Falcon 9/Dragon flight on April 30.

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French engineers have designed a tiny ion motor that nano-satellites could use as a thruster to adjust their orbits.

7:54 am

Swiss engineers have designed a tiny ion motor that nano-satellites could use as a thruster to adjust their orbits.

The motor weighs only seven ounces, and could work on satellites as small as four inches cubed.

Up to now, it wasn’t possible to reduce the size of maneuverable satellites below a certain point because of the size of their large thruster engines. If it is now possible to provide nano satellites with thrusters, it will be possible to significantly reduce the cost, and more importantly, the payload weight, of satellites. And with a lower payload weight, it will be possible to create a market for smaller rockets, which are much easier to build and far cheaper.

This kind of news makes me more confident that the new commercial space industry truly has a future.

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The Buzz Lightyear toy that flew on space shuttle has been donated to the Smithsonian.

8:42 am

The Buzz Lightyear toy that flew on space shuttle has been donated to the Smithsonian.

This news item illustrates the sad state of the American space program, when the arrival at a museum of a foot-high plastic toy that had been in space merits major news coverage. Worse, if we instead wanted to bring this toy back to ISS, we can’t, at least not without begging help from someone else.

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A toy company has designed building blocks that make it possible to combine multiple brands, from Legos to Tinkertoys.

8:55 am

A toy company has designed building blocks that make it possible to combine multiple building block brands, from Legos to Tinkertoys.

By downloading free designs and using a 3D printer, you could have your very own pieces to connect ten different brands of building toys to each other and construct even more elaborate contraptions and structures.

As the first commenter on the webpage noted, “This is the next singularity.”

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Boeing vs Boeing.

9:09 pm

Boeing vs Boeing.

The story describes how Boeing is considering upgrading the X-37B to become a manned ferry to ISS, thus putting it in direct competition with the company’s other manned capsule, the CST-100.

At the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’s Space 2011 conference in November, Boeing’s Arthur Grantz revealed that the company is studying a new derivative of the Boeing/USAF X-37B. The new X-37C would be 65-80% larger than the current B version. Launched by an Atlas V rocket, X-37C could carry pressurized or unpressurized cargo or 5-6 astronauts. Grantz is chief engineer in charge of X-37 at the Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems Experimental Systems Group .

Hat tip to Clark Lindsey.

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James Cameron has set a new record for the deepest solo dive, a depth of 35,756 feet.1James Cameron has set a new record for the deepest solo dive, a depth of 35,756 feet.

6:27 pm

James Cameron has set a new record for the deepest solo dive, a depth of 35,756 feet.

And he is still down there at this moment.

Hovering in what he’s called a vertical torpedo, Cameron is likely collecting data, specimens, and imagery unthinkable in 1960, when the only other explorers to reach Challenger Deep returned after seeing little more than the silt stirred up by their bathyscaphe. After as long as six hours in the trench, Cameron—best known for creating fictional worlds on film (Avatar, Titanic, The Abyss)—is to jettison steel weights attached to the sub and shoot back to the surface. Meanwhile, the expedition’s scientific support team awaits his return aboard the research ships Mermaid Sapphire and Barakuda, 7 miles (11 kilometers) up.

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Last night a piece of space junk missed ISS, but not by much.

8:14 am

Last night a piece of space junk missed ISS, but not by much.

The debris was only 8.7 miles from the station when it zipped by at about 16,000 miles per hour. That is very close, and had it hit, it would have done very significant damage.

The fragment was from an old Russian satellite, Cosmos 2251, that collided with an Iridium satellite in 2009, producing hundreds of fragments more than two inches across.

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