The competition heats up: After a two month delay because of an engine issue on its previous launch, ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket today successfully placed a military communications into orbit.
The revolt continues: The voters of the United Kingdom tonight chose to leave the European Union.
The EU was a great idea, unfortunately spoiled in the past few decades by a crushing regulatory bureaucracy unaccountable to anyone, which is why every single time the question has been put to the voters in recent years the voters have chosen to quit the EU.
The unrest among American voters, fueling the success of outsiders and the defeat of incumbents in recent elections, is based on similar issues and dissatisfactions. I thus expect similar surprises here come November. This essay expresses these circumstances here in the states quite nicely:
This is not about ideology. If people trusted elites and institutions they defend to look out for them, in a non-ideological sense, the breakdown of our systems would have been mitigated or confined. The fact that it is so sweeping is due to a generation of elites who didn’t do their jobs well, or pretended things weren’t their job for too long.
We have breakdown, chaos, and upheaval in our politics today not because the people are “insane”, as Rauch writes, but because they are sane. They know the leadership class which held power for the past generation has not looked out for them. Don’t blame a people for turning on elites who thought they knew better but proved over and over that they didn’t. It is thoroughly rational to want something else instead. Even if that something else turns out not to deliver either, at least you know it’s not the same as what’s failed. [emphasis mine]
Remember, the definition of insanity is doing the same failed thing over and over again, even though it is proven to never work. This what our elites have been doing for the past three decades. The voters, however, are increasingly showing that they are not insane, that they want to try new things. Kudos to them!
The competition heats up: Solar Impulse 2 has successfully completed the first solar-powered flight across the Atlantic in the 15th leg of its journey around the world.
The competition heats up: This update on the status of SpaceX’s manned Dragon capsule also provides this interesting detail about the engineering knowledge gained from the company’s effort to vertically land its Falcon 9 first stages:
The company is also using the propulsive landings as a way to practically and physically test landing systems in a near-Mars atmospheric environment. “Earth’s upper atmosphere is also a really good analogue for Mars’ atmosphere,” noted [Garrett Reisman, Director of Space Operations]. “When you get up high enough, the density and consistency of the atmosphere is very similar to what you face during Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) on Mars. So every time we land, we take one of these rockets and we perform hypersonic retrograde propulsion, the data from which we’re sharing with JPL because it’s the first time this has ever been demonstrated on a major scale.”
To this end, Reisman pointed out that the Falcon 9 first stage landings are really serving as test beds for the EDL systems of eventual Mars missions. “Every time you see one of those rockets coming back, not only is it enabling a whole new paradigm for launching things into space, but it’s also bringing us one step closer to Mars.
As for Dragon, it now appears the company wants to do a full unmanned demo flight to and from ISS before it performs its launch abort test. They will then follow this with a manned demo mission to ISS. All three flights are planned for 2017.
The competition heats up: Sierra Nevada now expects to deliver its refurbished engineering test prototype of Dream Chaser to NASA for new glide tests in August.
“Our version of the shuttle Enterprise is about to be finished for its next phase of flight tests,” [said Mark Sirangelo, corporate vice president.] “Somewhere in the August time frame, it’s going to be shipped off to California, to the Armstrong [Flight Research] Center and to Edwards to be in Phase 2 of flight testing, which is going to be really fun and exciting.”
Sirangelo said lessons learned from the atmospheric flight tests will be applied to the development of the orbital test vehicle, which is now being outfitted in Colorado. That test vehicle, in turn, will blaze the trail for the spacecraft that will carry cargo for NASA under the CRS-2 contract. “We are looking to be launching on time, which is about three years from now, in the second half of 2019,” Sirangelo said.
They get this cargo version flying successfully, and they will certainly get a contract to build a manned version.
The remains of the damaged Falcon 9 first stage that tipped over during its barge landing last week returned to port this past weekend.
Video and images of it can be seen at the link, all of which suggest that there is a slight chance the engines might be salvageable. Regardless, SpaceX once again has valuable used space hardware that no one else has ever had which it can study to improve its future rocket designs.
On Monday I attended and gave a presentation at the one-day annual conference of the Center for New American Security (CNAS) in Washington, D.C., in conjunction with the space policy paper I am writing for them, Exploring Space in the 21st Century.
CNAS was founded ten years ago by two political Washington insiders, one a Democrat and the other a Republican, with a focus on foreign policy and defense issues and the central goal of encouraging bi-partisan discussion. For this reason their policy papers cover a wide range of foreign policy subjects, written by authors from both political parties. The conference itself probably had about 1,000 attendees from across the political spectrum, most of whom seemed to me to be part of the Washington establishment of policy makers, either working for elected officials, for various executive agencies, or for one of the capital’s many think tanks, including CNAS.
I myself was definitely not a major presenter at this conference, with speakers like Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), and Senator Joe Reed (D-Rhode Island). I was part of a panel during one of the lunch breakout sessions, where approximately one third of the attendees came to have lunch while we spoke about space. I only had ten minutes to speak, and used that time to outline (1) the influence SpaceX is having on the entire launch industry and (2) the vast differences in cost, development time, and results between the Orion/SLS program and commercial space. Not surprisingly, the aerospace people from the big established companies appeared to be somewhat uncomfortable with what I had to say, though the Airbus people liked it when I made it clear I thought that the U.S. should allow foreign companies to compete for American business, including government launches.
Their discomfort was best illustrated by the one question asked of me following my talk, where the questioner said that I was comparing apples to oranges in comparing a manned capsule like Orion, intended to go beyond Earth orbit, with the unmanned cargo capsules like Dragon and Cygnus, that only go to ISS. I countered that though I recognized these differences, I also recognized that the differences were really not as much as the industry likes to imply, as demonstrated for example by SpaceX’s announcement that they plan to send Dragon capsules to Mars beginning in 2018. After all, a capsule is still only a capsule. The differences simply did not explain the gigantic differences in cost and development time.
I added that Orion compares badly with Apollo as well, noting that Apollo took about a third as long to build and actually cost less. I doubt I satisfied this individual’s objections, but in the end I think future policy will be decided based on results, not the desires of any one industry bigwig. And in this area Orion/SLS has some serious problems. I hope when my policy paper is released in August it will have some influence in determining that future policy.
My overall impression of CNAS, the speakers, and the people who attended was somewhat mixed. Having lived in the Washington, D.C. area from 1998 to 2011, when I attended many such conferences, I found that things haven’t changed much in the last five years. Superficially, everyone was dressed in formal business suits (something you see less and less elsewhere), and they also got to eat some fancy food at lunch.
On a deeper level my impressions were also mixed.
» Read more
This is encouraging news: The Trump campaign today announced the formation of an executive board of important evangelical Christians to advise the candidate.
The list of members, shown at the link, is decidedly conservative. They were asked to join the board but were not required to endorse Trump to do so.
As I’ve said repeatedly, the most important way to make sure a Trump presidency follows conservative and constitutional policy is to surround Trump with a lot of conservatives.That the campaign has done this is good news, though I must also add that it is no guarantee that Trump will pay any attention to these people once he is elected. Right now this could merely be a move on his campaign”s part to gain the support of these evangelicals.
Posted from Los Angeles, California, a place so wonderful that my hotel has locked doors and security gates everywhere, making my one night here seem more like a night in jail than an overnight hotel stay. Interestingly, the only time I have ever seen the need for this much security has been when I have visited or lived in major urban cities, run by Democrats. I wonder why that is.
The law is such an inconvenient thing: With strong language a federal judge has bluntly struck down the Obama administrations attempt to regulate the fracking industry.
Judge Scott Skavdahl of the District Court of Wyoming already had put a hold on the regulations last year, and in a decision released late Tuesday, he ruled that Congress did not give Interior the power to regulate hydraulic fracturing, indeed it had expressly withheld that power with some narrow exceptions. “Congress has not delegated to the Department of Interior the authority to regulate hydraulic fracturing,” Judge Skavdahl wrote in deciding a lawsuit brought by industry groups and a number of Western states. The “effort to do so through the Fracking Rule is in excess of its statutory authority and contrary to law.”
The judge dismissed particularly the claim by the Interior Department and its Bureau of Land Management that it had inherent broad regulatory authority to pursue the public good on federal and Indian lands, the only place the regulations would have applied. “Congress‘ inability or unwillingness to pass a law desired by the executive branch does not default authority to the executive branch to act independently, regardless of whether hydraulic fracturing is good or bad for the environment or the citizens of the United States,” wrote Judge Skavdahl, whom Mr. Obama appointed to the bench in 2011. [emphasis mine]
That a judge whom Obama appointed, who thus is almost certainly a Democrat, was willing to put aside his partisan loyalties to rule so forcefully against the Obama administration gives me great hope. In recent years Democratic judges have almost ceased ruling based on law and have instead been guided almost exclusively by their political leanings. This judge’s ruling here suggests that there remain some principled judges, even on the left.
Posted from fascist Los Angeles, a place where they make you pay $19 for a five minute two mile taxi ride.
Nice first stage you got there, be a shame if something happened to it: The Florida port where SpaceX has been offloading its recovered first stages from its barge has announced that it wants to charge the company $15,000 each time.
“We view their cargo passing over our dock just like any other cargo passing our dock,” Port Canaveral Chief Executive Officer John Murray said. “We’re not looking at this as an adversarial relationship. It’s no different than anything else coming across the dock. You have to pay for use of port facilities. That’s how a port makes its money.”
“The proposed wharfage fee is 14 times higher than what any other business is being charged for using port facilities,” SpaceX spokesman John Taylor said in an email to FLORIDA TODAY. “Port Canaveral is an important partner in our recovery operations. But we expect fees to be fair and reflect our actual use of the port. We’re looking forward to participating in the meeting later this week.”The port notes that the size and the weight of the first stages cause significant wear and tear to the port, and thus should pay more. They have a point, but this still looks like they have noticed they have a customer with deep pockets that they now are trying to pick.
Posted from Linthicum, Maryland.
The competition heats up: Vulcan Aerospace now says that construction of its Stratolaunch airplane, the largest ever to fly, will be completed by the end of this year.
Assembly of the plane is 76 percent complete, with the engines, landing gear and one tail section still to be installed. The plane is expected to be finished before the end of the year. Commercial services are expected to begin before 2020.
They still have not determined the second stage rocket they will use with this mother ship to launch satellites, which leaves me increasingly skeptical about their future. It is very late in the game to still not know this detail.
Link here. The videos at the link are especially informative.
Polls have recently shifted strongly in favor of leaving the union, but that is not a certain result. If it happens, however, I will consider that decision by the public to be another example of a growing revolt by the general public against the intellectual elites who presently rule western society, since most of these elites appear to favor keeping the United Kingdom in the European Union.
Posted from Washington, D.C.
The competition heats up: Blue Origin today completed the fourth test flight of its New Shepard suborbital spacecraft, successfully landing intact its capsule with only two parachutes.
That’s four flights in about seven months, which for a test program seems a reasonable pace. I would expect them to soon begin testing faster turnaround times for the spacecraft, just to see if they can launch and repeat more quickly.
The competition heats up: Roscosmos revealed today that Russia is negotiating with investors in Australia to buy SeaLaunch.
I’m not sure how seriously we can take this announcement. The sale still has a lot of problems for any investors. Boeing is owed a lot of money by the SeaLaunch partners, specifically Russia, and the SeaLaunch floating launchpad is docked in the U.S. where they can hold it as collateral
The revolt continues: Republican incumbent Congressman Randy Forbes (R-Virginia) was defeated in Tuesday Virginia Republican primary, despite being supported by the party establishment and outspending his opponent, Scott Taylor, 10-1.
Forbes, who started his pivot from the 4th District to the 2nd with an incumbent’s healthy campaign fund, spent more than $1.3 million in the primary compared with the little more than $142,000 that Taylor reported spending as of late May.
Taylor, a former Navy SEAL, ran against much of Virginia Beach’s GOP establishment, with several local elected officials as well as departing U.S. Rep. Scott Rigell endorsing Forbes’ candidacy. Rigell rented Forbes his former headquarters on First Colonial Road and sold him his email lists of supporters.
Redistricting was certainly a factor in the incumbent’s defeat but this article points out something that the newspaper article above as well as all other mainstream articles I’ve read fail to note: Incumbent Forbes had voted to make it almost impossible for Congress to challenge or amend Obama’s the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, also called Obamatrade.
Taylor blasted Forbes for voting to give President Obama fast track authority to ram through Congress the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a sweeping 12-nation international regulatory pact that would merge our economy with some of the poorest and most repressive on earth. This move was especially hypocritical for Forbes, chairman of the House Prayer Caucus. Obamatrade would give special economic privileges to countries that persecute Christians, including Vietnam, Malaysia and the Shariah-law regime of Brunei.
After his disastrous vote for fast track, Forbes tried to tap dance around the Constitution-shredding, religious-liberty-trampling Obamatrade agreement. In a letter to constituents, Forbes recycled the party establishment’s globalist talking points, saying free trade is “crucial to our economy” and to “our future as a country.” Then Forbes said he would support Obamatrade if it were amended, glossing over the fact that his vote for fast track surrendered Congress’ power to amend the agreement. [emphasis mine]
In other words, Forbes had been part of the Republican establishment that has consistently refused to fight any of the Democratic agenda, instead focusing on putting on a show of failure theater, where they act like they are fighting Obama while allowing his legislative goals to pass. The voters saw through this, and kicked him out.
For the past two months I have been very focused on writing what I hope will be a somewhat influential space policy paper for the Center for New American Security, comparing the different approaches the federal government has taken in the past fifteen years toward encouraging a robust launch industry in the United States. Essentially the policy paper, Exploring Space in the 21st Century: How the American space effort since 2000, both private and public, is changing the global aerospace industry, compares the big government rocket launch programs like Orion/SLS and the Air Force’s EELV/ULA with the commercial rocket launch contracts that NASA has signed with companies like SpaceX, Orbital ATK, Boeing, and Sierra Nevada to get cargo and crews up and down from ISS.
The comparison is profound, and is devastating to the supporters of big government programs. Commercial space has literally accomplished ten times more in a third the time for a tenth the cost.
That bears repeating: Commercial space ($4 billion) cost one tenth that of Orion/SLS ($43 billion), took one third the time to go from concept to launch (5 years versus 15 years), and accomplished ten times more (22 rockets/capsules versus 2.5 rockets/capsules). In analyzing these numbers, I also took a close look at why the differences are so profound. Surprisingly, the high cost of Orion/SLS has little to do with its engineering challenges, nor is it caused by any significant overcharges by the contractors. The problem is more fundamental.
The paper also reviews the effect the competition introduced by SpaceX has had on the entire launch industry. Launch costs are dropping and innovation is increasing. This, combined with the lessons learned by NASA in commercial space, suggests that the future of getting into space looks quite bright indeed.
This policy paper should be ready for publication sometime in the next two months. On Monday, however, I will be part of a space policy panel at the Center for New American Security’s annual conference in Washington, DC., where I will give a short overview of my findings to a lot of major players in the upper echelons of the Washington elite community. Their response should be quite interesting.
Thus, I will be traveling to DC this weekend, and am not sure if I will be able to post much on Monday, since I very much wish to attend the entire day’s conference and listen to the other speakers, including Vice President Joe Biden. It is my plan to write about what I see once I get back.
In the heat of competition: Because of leaky o-rings Blue Origin has delayed its next flight of New Shepard to Sunday.
I can still find nothing to indicate the flight time.
In the heat of competition: The review of Orbital ATK’s May 31st static fire test of its Antares rocket has caused the company to delay the upgraded rocket’s first launch until August.
Additional information pointed to data on “vibrations” during the Static Fire test that could be deemed as a problem for the vehicle’s avionics. A “fix” was already understood to have been approved.
Orbital ATK, while admitting the launch is slipping from its early July launch date estimate to a date likely to be in the August timeframe, pointed to trajectory evaluations as a specific relation to the launch date deliberations. “Final trajectory shaping work is also currently underway, which is likely to result in an updated launch schedule in the August timeframe,” added Orbital ATK.
They expect to make a decision on launch date in a few weeks.
The competition heats up: SpaceX has successfully put two commecial satellites in orbit. The first stage hit the barge, but the landing was unsuccessful. More details to come.
The full video of the entire launch is embedded below the fold. One interesting part includes a view from inside the first stage looking back at the second stage at separate, followed with images from the first stage on its way back to Earth..
A deal struck today by Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) will allow ULA to buy 18 more Russian engines for its Atlas 5, instead of the limit of nine that McCain had previously demanded.
The deal also includes a deadline of 2022, after which no more Russian engines can be purchased, even if some of the 18 have not yet been bought.
The competition heats up: SpaceX will attempt another commercial launch on Wednesday morning, this time putting two satellites into orbit.
They will once again try to land the first stage in what they say are difficult circumstances. They are also picking up the launch pace, with this the second commercial launch in less than three weeks. It will also be their sixth launch of the year, matching what they did in each of the last two years, with more than half the year to go.
A fire in space: Orbital ATK’s Cygnus capsule is scheduled to leave ISS on Tuesday, when shortly thereafter it will begin a controlled fire experiment.
“Saffire-I provides a new way to study a realistic fire on a spacecraft. This hasn’t been possible in the past because the risks for performing such studies on crewed spacecraft are too high. Instruments on the returning Cygnus will measure flame growth, oxygen use and more. Results could determine microgravity flammability limits for several spacecraft materials, help to validate NASA’s material selection criteria, and help scientists understand how microgravity and limited oxygen affect flame size. The investigation is crucial for the safety of current and future space missions. – See more at: http://www.space.com/17933-nasa-television-webcasts-live-space-tv.html#sthash.2DjFjJqY.dpuf
The departure is scheduled for 9 am (eastern), and will aired live by NASA.
The competition heats up: Blue Origin’s fourth test flight of its New Shepard suborbital spacecraft will take place this Friday, and will be webcast live.
No time announced yet, but the place to see it will be the Blue Origin website.
The competition heats up: Following through in its commitment to invest funds in futures space industries, the government of Luxembourg has signed an agreement with Planetary Resources in which it takes 49% equity share of the company.
It is clear that Luxembourg’s goal is to make itself the center of the world for all future space-based industries, and this quote illustrates this:
The Luxembourg government investment adds a powerful incentive to relocate some of this development to Luxembourg before Ceres satellite production is too solidly anchored on the U.S. West Coast. In May, health-care and agricultural research giant Bayer of Monheim, Germany, and Planetary Resources announced they had signed a memorandum of understanding under which Bayer “intends to purchase data from Planetary Resources to create new agricultural products and improve existing ones. The collaboration will be part of the Digital Farming Initiative at Bayer.” Schneider has said the spaceresources.lu program would distinguish itself from U.S.-based efforts by being more international. Companies setting up shop in Luxembourg need not prove Luxembourg-based majority ownership to receive the full suite of regulatory advantages.
The competition heats up (but not in the way you think): NASA and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) space agency have signed an agreement to cooperate in space research and technology development.
The agreement covers cooperation and collaboration in space science, operational Earth observation and Earth science, aeronautics, space operations and exploration, education, technology, safety and mission assurance, and other areas with potential benefits to all nations.
The two countries will continue to identify additional areas of mutual interest for possible future cooperative programs or joint activities on Earth, in airspace, or in outer space. These activities may include the joint use of aircraft, scientific instruments aboard spacecraft, ground-based research facilities, spacecraft and space research platforms, as well as ground-based antennas for tracking, telemetry, and data acquisition. Additionally, the two countries will aim to collaborate on the creation and implementation of education and public outreach programs and joint workshops, with the goal of facilitating the exchange of scientific data, scientists, engineers, and views and experiences on relevant regulatory frameworks and standards.
The competition here is not between these big space government programs, who are increasingly teaming up, but between the big space government programs and the profitable and uncontrolled private sector. I fully expect there to be more calls for government supervision and licensing of private space, just to control it better. And what better way to leverage that control but to link every big space program in the world together, so that there are no independent efforts?
The competition heats up: ULA today successfully launched a U.S. National Reconnaissance Office spy satellite, using what is presently the world’s most powerful rocket, the Delta 4 Heavy.
In many ways, this rocket’s launch, which you can see in the video embedded below the fold, gives a rough idea of what a Falcon Heavy launch will look like, since the rockets have somewhat similar configurations.
» Read more
The competition heats up: In an interview with the Washington Post this week, Elon Musk gave some more hints at his company’s future plans to send its Dragon capsules to Mars.
“Essentially what we’re saying is we’re establishing a cargo route to Mars,” [Musk] said. “It’s a regular cargo route. You can count on it. It’s going happen every 26 months. Like a train leaving the station. And if scientists around the world know that they can count on that, and it’s going to be inexpensive, relatively speaking compared to anything in the past, then they will plan accordingly and come up with a lot of great experiments.”
The key to Musk’s effort is that he plans on doing it. He isn’t sitting around waiting for others, or trying to convince others to join him in a partnership before proceeding. He is simply doing it, and is welcoming others to take advantage of the opportunity he is offering.
Coins in space: An auction in May of silver medals carried by astronauts on a variety of Apollo missions has brought in nearly $800,000.
Robbins medallions were minted by the Robbins Co. of Attleboro, Mass. These .925 fine silver medals have been produced for every manned U.S. mission since Apollo 7. The medals were paid for by the crews and available for purchase only by NASA astronauts at the time. Medals that were actually flown on missions are especially coveted.
The competition heats up: One group of mobile broadband companies is fighting another group of satellite-based internet companies for control over the use of a part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
A coalition of 5G terrestrial mobile broadband companies led by Charlie Ergen’s Dish Network on June 8 asked U.S. regulators to strip future low-orbiting satellite Internet constellations of their priority access to 500 megahertz of Ku-band spectrum – spectrum coveted by prospective constellation operators including OneWeb LLC and SpaceX. SpaceX and satellite fleet operator Intelsat, a OneWeb investor and partner, immediately filed separate opposition papers to the FCC, arguing that nongeostationary-orbit (NGSO) constellations are very much alive.
In the middle is the FCC and our hapless and increasingly corrupt federal government. I sadly suspect the side that will win this battle will be the side that gives the most campaign money to the right politicians.
The competition cools down? A regulatory agency in India is proposing eliminating commercial satellite competition and consolidating all satellite television broadcasts onto a handful of government owned and launched satellites.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Make in India” campaign seeks to promote India’s domestic industrial base. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on May 23 published what it calls a “pre-consultation paper” that points to the savings satellite-television broadcasters could realize if they stopped beaming the same programs on different satellites, and instead banded together on one or two spacecraft.
As of March 2015, the latest period for which TRAI has produced figures, there were 76 million DTH subscribers in India, of which 41.1 million were considered active. These subscribers received programming from six pay TV DTH providers and one free-to-air satellite broadcast service. TRAI said multiple DTH providers are broadcasting the same channels even as they compete with each other for subscribers. “There is scope for better utilization of available infrastructure,” TRAI said. “There is a need to examine technical and commercial issues in sharing of infrastructure such as satellite transponders, Earth station facilities….”
There is also this important component to the story:
India has been one of the biggest satellite-DTH growth markets in recent years, but one in which barriers to entry by foreigners remain high. Under Indian law, television broadcasters seeking operating licenses are given preferential treatment if they use India’s own Insat telecommunications satellites, owned and operated by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). Non-Indian satellites are permitted if ISRO’s Insat system does not have sufficient capacity to meet programmers’ demand. This has been the case for years as ISRO has been unable to keep up with the market for satellite television.
In other words, the commercial satellite business in India is doing great, so let’s muck it up by having one government agency create a monopoly for another government agency.
The United States tried this in the 1960s when it banned private companies from launching commercial communications satellites and instead required all such satellites to be built by the government-managed Comsat corporation. The result in the U.S. was a squelched satellite and launch industry that did not recover for more than a decade, and only did so when the Nixon administration forced a change in the rules.
