China today successfully used its Long March 3B rocket to place two GPS satellites in orbit.
The launch had originally been scheduled for July, but was delayed when a Long March 3B launch in June failed to place its satellite in the correct orbit.
Capitalism in space: Repeating a stock sale he did in May, Jeff Bezos this week sold another million shares of his Amazon stock to raise another $1.1 billion in cash to finance his Blue Origin rocket company.
The stock sale reduced his holdings in Amazon by 1.3% to 16.4% total.
With this much cash available, Bezos has the luxury of developing and building his business with no help from the government and completely free to do whatever he wants. This freedom puts him in a very enviable position.
The stock of Elon Musk’s Tesla electric car company crashed this week, dropping 7% on Wednesday, with the revelation that the Republican tax plan proposes eliminating the $7,500 tax credit for buying an electric car.
Its share price fell more than seven per cent to about $296 apiece from Wednesday’s $321. The draft law emerged as the Elon-Musk-led automaker announced its worst-ever quarter, recording a $671m loss and admitting it had not met its production target for its new Model 3 car, producing just 220 of them against its 1,500 target.
Economists believe that the tax credit is a key driver for electric car sales, and cite the example of when the state of Georgia cut its $5,000 tax credit and saw sales of electric cars slump from 1,400 a month to just 100 a month in response.
What this story highlights is that electric cars are simply not economical at this time, and that the government is distorting the market by pushing them. Without government aid, practically no one would buy them.
It would be far better for everyone to let the market decide. Not only would this save us tax dollars, it would allow the industry to focus its innovative efforts on upgrades that are cost effective and profitable, rather than on pie-in-the-sky fantasies that actually do no good at all.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette for pointing me to this story.
The new colonial movement: The student engineers who built Ghana’s first satellite, GhanaSat-1 and launched in July, are pushing their government to establish the legal framework for future space activities in that country.
Student engineers behind the successful launch of Ghana’s first satellite into orbit have appealed to the government to set up a multi-stakeholder committee to come up with an act, the Ghana outer space act, a key requirement that would enable the country to ratify and sign the United Nations Outer Space Treaty.
They said if the country signed and ratified the treaty, it would give investors the signal and confidence that the country was ready for them to come and establish space science facilities.
The description in the article of what these students want suggests they do not quite understand the ramifications of all the UN space treaties, because it appears they also want Ghana to become signatories to them all. This would be a big mistake. While every country that launches satellites is a signatory to the Outer Space Treaty, very few have signed the Moon Treaty, as its language puts far more serious restrictions on property rights.
The fifth mirror, out of seven, for Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) has been cast by the University of Arizona mirror lab.
With its casting this weekend, the fifth GMT mirror joins three additional GMT mirrors at various stages of production in the Mirror Lab. Polishing of mirror 2’s front surface is well underway; coarse grinding will begin on the front of the third mirror shortly and mirror number 4, the central mirror, will soon be ready for coarse grinding following mirror 3. The first GMT mirror was completed several years ago and was moved to a storage location in Tucson this September, awaiting the next stage of its journey to Chile. The glass for mirror 6 has been delivered to Tucson and mirror seven’s glass is on order from the Ohara factory in Japan.
In time, the giant mirrors will be transported to GMT’s future home in the Chilean Andes at the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Las Campanas Observatory. This site is known for being one of the best astronomical sites on the planet with its clear, dark skies and stable airflow producing exceptionally sharp images. GMTO has broken ground in Chile and has developed the infrastructure on the site needed to support construction activities.
If all goes right, GMT will begin its science work using 4 mirrors in 2020, with the use of all 7 mirrors beginning in 2022. This will be several years before the larger Thirty Meter Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope.
Capitalism in space: An aboriginal tribe tribe in Australia has signed a lease with a new space company proposing to build a spaceport on their land where smallsat rockets can launch.
The Northern Land Council has granted a 275-hectare lease in northeast Arnhem Land to the Gumatj clan for use as a commercial rocket launching facility. That’ll pave the way for Gumatj Aboriginal Corporation to sublease the site to Equatorial Launch Australia, a firm whose $236 million space base proposal is being considered by federal and NT infrastructure funds.
The 12-year lease has an option for a 28-year extension, and is expected to be finalised later this month.
This is the first I have ever heard of Equatorial Launch Australia. Their website provides little information. Further web searches revealed little as well. My impression is that it is focused on creating a spaceport for the use of new Australian smallsat rocket companies. Whether it plans to launch its own rocket is unclear.
The Russians are prosecuting another manager at Vostochny for stealing more than $10 million.
[O]ut of 765 million rubles ($13 million) allocated under the contract with Federal State Unitary Enterprise Spetsstroytekhnologii, Tolstikov had only 100 million rubles ($1.7 million) left. The rest, according to him, he spent for construction trailers for workers.
It is amazing anything has been built at Vostochny. This case is in addition to the more than half dozen other embezzlement cases totaling almost $200 million, a very significant amount of money in Russia as well as a significant portion of the spaceport’s entire construction budget.
A MIT design for an early Martian colony based on underground habitats topped by geodesic domes filled with redwood forests has won the 2017 Mars City Design competition.
At first glance, the MIT habitats don’t look very tree-like. They look more like giant glass balls sitting on the Martian plains, each housing 50 people. But, like real trees, much of the habitat is below the surface in the form of intricate tunnels that connect the spheres and provide protection from cold, radiation, micrometeorites, and other surface hazards. “On Mars, our city will physically and functionally mimic a forest, using local Martian resources such as ice and water, regolith or soil, and sun to support life,” says Sumini. “Designing a forest also symbolizes the potential for outward growth as nature spreads across the Martian landscape. Each tree habitat incorporates a branching structural system and an inflated membrane enclosure, anchored by tunneling roots. The design of a habitat can be generated using a computational form-finding and structural optimization workflow developed by the team. The design workflow is parametric, which means that each habitat is unique and contributes to a diverse forest of urban spaces.”
The habitats rely heavily on water, but not just for drinking, agriculture, or public fountains. It’s a key ingredient in making the domes habitable. “Every tree habitat in Redwood Forest will collect energy from the sun and use it to process and transport the water throughout the tree, and every tree is designed as a water-rich environment,” says Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics doctoral student George Lordos. “Water fills the soft cells inside the dome providing protection from radiation, helps manage heat loads, and supplies hydroponic farms for growing fish and greens. Solar panels produce energy to split the stored water for the production of rocket fuel, oxygen, and for charging hydrogen fuel cells, which are necessary to power long-range vehicles as well as provide backup energy storage in case of dust storms.”
This is a very nice concept, and an excellent approach. While they appear to assume the underground habitats will be artificially dug, there is no reason the tree domes can’t be placed over a Martian pit entrance to a cave.
Capitalism in space: SpaceX has set a date for the first Falcon Heavy launch as no earlier than December 29.
They hope to be able to do a number of dress rehearsal countdowns prior to actual launch, which is what makes this schedule somewhat tentative.
While SpaceX has ample experience lighting all nine engines of the Falcon 9 simultaneously, with every Falcon 9 going through a full duration hot fire at McGregor followed by a static fire on the launch pad before all nine engines are lit a third time for launch, no company in the U.S. rocket industry has experience lighting 27 engines at the same time.
While each of the three Falcon Heavy debut cores – two flight-proven cores for the side-mounted boosters (boosters B1023 and B1025) and a new core for the central core (booster B1033) – have undergone hot fire testing at McGregor, they were all fired separately because the Texas test site is not built to accommodate three cores at the same time.
This means SpaceX will not gain a full understanding of how all 27 engines light until the more-crucial-than-usual static fire at LC-39A at Kennedy.
NASA has issued a request for proposals from private companies or organizations to take over the operation of the Spitzer Space Telescope after 2019.
NASA’s current plans call for operating Spitzer through March of 2019 to perform preparatory observations for the James Webb Space Telescope. That schedule was based on plans for a fall 2018 launch of JWST, which has since been delayed to the spring of 2019. Under that plan, NASA would close out the Spitzer mission by fiscal year 2020. That plan was intended to save NASA the cost of running Spitzer, which is currently $14 million a year. The spacecraft itself, though, remains in good condition and could operating well beyond NASA’s current plan.
“The observatory and the IRAC instrument are in excellent health. We don’t have really any issues with the hardware,” said Lisa Storrie-Lombardi, Spitzer project manager, in a presentation to the committee Oct. 18. IRAC is the Infrared Array Camera, an instrument that continues operations at its two shortest wavelengths long after the spacecraft exhausted the supply of liquid helium coolant.
The spacecraft’s only consumable is nitrogen gas used for the spacecraft’s thrusters, and Storrie-Lombardi said the spacecraft still had half its supply of nitrogen 14 years after launch.
The way a private organization could make money on this is to charge astronomers and research projects for observation time. This could work, since there is usually a greater demand for research time than available observatories.
Capitalism in space: Orbital ATK’s Minotaur-C rocket today successfully launched 10 commercial smallsats.
It appears that they have upgraded the accused Taurus rocket in renaming it Minotaur-C.
After Orbital ATK suffered a series of launch failures with the Taurus rockets — which led to the loss of NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory as well as its Glory climate-monitoring satellite — the company redesigned the Taurus. The new and improved rocket uses newer and more reliable technologies that Orbital ATK had built for its other Minotaur rockets.
This success is a very good thing for Orbital ATK, as the rocket likely gives them a strong position in the emerging smallsat market.
Capitalism in space: SpaceX has completed the installation of two ground station antenna dishes in its Boca Chica spaceport that will be used to facilitate communications with its manned Dragon missions.
A SpaceX spokesman said the antennas will also be used to track flights from Boca Chica once they’re underway. The company acquired the 86-ton antennas from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral and transported them to Boca Chica via semitrailer. The first antenna was installed this summer.
The article also implies that SpaceX plans to eventually launch manned missions from Boca Chica.
Capitalism in space: An industry analysis says that the satellite data market should grow to $8.5 billion by 2026, with the potential to reach $15 billion.
Euroconsult has identified approximately 20 companies that have announced intentions to develop lower-cost constellations to collect data at a high rate of revisit based on smallsat and cubesat technologies. As of 2017, these new operators have attracted more than U.S.$600 million in venture capital to fund their initiatives. None of the newly announced initiatives have yet reached full capacity; for these constellations to come to fruition, additional investments will be required.
Competition is expected to be fierce on the supply side, as companies must differentiate themselves in the marketplace and bring innovative solutions to maintain market share. Consolidation (such as MDA and DigitalGlobe, OmniEarth and EagleView, Terra Bella and Planet) could linger as companies refine business models and continue to seek investments. DigitalGlobe, for example, is aiming to add a lower-cost satellite constellation (Legion) to its portfolio to counter the probable impact of low-priced solutions entering the market. Airbus will also develop its own very high resolution (VHR) optical system, given that the next generation French defence system will not be commercialized.
Capitalism in space: Orbital ATK will try today to successfully launch its renamed Taurus rocket, six and a half years after its previous two launches had ended in failure.
The rocket is now called Minotaur-C and will attempt to launch ten Planet Lab smallsats. As Taurus, the rocket failed 3 times out of 9 launches, and from what I could tell watching the launch industry, was basically a dead product. I am now astonished that it is coming back to life. Apparently, Planet Lab got a good launch price, and can take the risk since its smallsats represent a relatively small investment and can be replaced much more easily than the two research satellites (Orbiting Carbon Laboratory and Glory) that NASA lost in the rocket’s previous two launches more than half a decade ago.
The article outlines nicely the history of this rocket, and how its failures significantly set back the growth of Orbital ATK. Hopefully, it will succeed now, and provide the U.S. another player in the increasingly competitive global launch market.
Capitalism in space: SpaceX yesterday successfully launched a South Korean communications satellite while also successfully landing the first stage on a barge.
This was the company’s sixteenth launch in 2017, doubling their previous high of eight in 2016. This places the company one behind the Russians in the race to complete for the most launches in 2017.
An evening pause: I might have posted this before, but who cares. Modern engineering and smart production management is always nice to watch.
Hat tip Phill Oltmann.
As part of a publicity stunt to encourage investment, Saudi Arabia has given citizenship to a new robot, designed to show human emotions by facial expressions.
A humanoid robot took the stage at the Future Investment Initiative yesterday and had an amusing exchange with the host to the delight of hundreds of delegates. Smartphones were held aloft as Sophia, a robot designed by Hong Kong company Hanson Robotics, gave a presentation that demonstrated her capacity for human expression.
Sophia made global headlines when she was granted Saudi citizenship, making the kingdom the first country in the world to offer its citizenship to a robot.
Below the fold I have embedded the video of Sophia’s conversation with the host. It is obvious that most of the conversation was scripted. It is also obvious that robots still have a long way to go before their facial expressions appear natural to the human eye.
Posted north of Phoenix as we climb up onto the Colorado Plateau. Just saw the last saguaro in the cacti’s northern range limits.
» Read more
Capitalism in space: Chinese company has successful given a live turtle a high altitude balloon flight as prep for future tourism flights.
The news article is somewhat humorous in claiming the following:
Shenzhen-based Kuang-Chi Group said it blasted the yellow-headed turtle, nicknamed “Little Cloud”, to an altitude of 21,000 metres inside a helium-filled craft. The launch took place from western China’s Xinjiang region at about 4am on Wednesday morning.
The craft landed safely at about 8.28am the same day, and the turtle was said to have survived the trip.
The company said it was the first time a live animal had been safely taken into near space, and that the trip paved the way for it to sell commercial flights to humans by 2018 or 2019. [emphasis mine]
The company’s claim, highlighted above, is so incredibly not true it raises questions about their whole story. Humans have been taken by balloon to these elevations several times. This might be a poor translation, but then it indicates some incompetence by the reporter.
Either way, this company is aiming for the high altitude tourism market that World View in Tucson had initially been focusing on, but now seems to have abandoned.
Posted as we slog our way through Phoenix traffic.
Capitalism in space: SpaceX plans to resume launches in December at its second Kennedy launchpad that was damaged in the September 2016 explosion.
This means that after the mid-November launch of Northrop Grumman’s Zuma payload, they will begin the reconfiguration of that launchpad for Falcon Heavy. Initially the company had said it would take two months to complete that work, which would push the first Falcon Heavy launch into 2018. More recently they say they can get the work done in six weeks. Either way, this suggests that the first attempt to launch Falcon Heavy around the first of the year.
Posted on the road from Tucson to the Grand Canyon. This weekend I am running a new cave survey project there, and we are hiking down this afternoon, with the plan to hike out on Monday.]
Government in action! The head of the Marshall Space Flight Center yesterday once again hinted that the first unmanned launch of SLS/Orion, presently scheduled for late in 2019, could be delayed again.
In September, the agency said in a statement that it would announce a new target date for EM-1 in October, citing the need to account for a range of issues, including progress on the European-built Orion service module and shutdowns at NASA centers from hurricanes in August and September.
However, an update in October is increasingly unlikely. “Within a few weeks, I think [NASA Acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot] intends to codify whatever that date is going to be,” Todd May, director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, said in remarks at the American Astronautical Society’s Wernher von Braun Memorial Symposium here Oct. 25.
Bill Hill, deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development at NASA, offered a similar assessment. “Probably in the next month, maybe sooner,” he said in an interview.
These hints have been standard operating procedure for announcing SLS’s endless delays for the past decade. First they make hints that a delay might happen, but reassure everyone that it is very unlikely. Then they follow this up later with announcements about how they need more time to accomplish all their goals. By the third announcement they outline a possible new schedule, including some delay but insist that it isn’t likely. Finally, they release the new dates, often as an aside during some other announcement in order to minimize the news.
It should be noted that the new dates have almost never been realistic. NASA has usually known that the new dates are interim, and that further delays will likely require more of this same dance to make them public.
So, here is my prediction: They are preparing us for the fact that the first unmanned flight will likely slip into 2020, which means the first manned flight slips for certain into 2023, as I have been predicting for the past three years.
