The competition heats up: An update on SpaceX’s effort to resume flight after its June Falcon 9 launch failure.
Lots of interesting details not only about the failure investigation but on upgrade plans for Falcon 9.
The competition heats up: Boeing has announced that it will reveal the name of its CST-100 manned capsule on Friday.
The competition heats up: SpaceX is now aiming for a spring launch of the first Falcon Heavy.
That first launch will be a demonstration mission without a paying customer. That launch will be followed in September by the Space Test Program 2 mission for the Air Force, carrying 37 satellites. Rosen said the company was also planning Falcon Heavy launches of satellites for Inmarsat and ViaSat before the end of 2016, but did not give estimated dates for those missions.
Though no one should bet a lot of money on this launch schedule, if they get even half this accomplished they will be doing quite well. This, combined with the possibility that they will safely land the first stage of the Falcon 9 by then as well, will put SpaceX in an undeniably dominate position in the launch market.
More guns, less crime: According to federal government data Americans have purchased more than 170 million guns since 1991, and in that time violent crime has dropped 51 percent.
This evidence strongly suggests that the presence of guns in the hands of honest Americans helps to reduce violence. And while there are many factors contributing to the fall in crime, many which have nothing to do with the purchase of guns by Americans, the statistics here should not be ignored. Gun control advocates always argue that if gun limits are reduced, a blood-bath will follow. This claim has always been proven false, and these statistics do so again.
The competition heats up: Local county officials in Florida have awarded Blue Origins $8 million in grants to encourage it to set up launch operations in Florida.
The money comes from property tax revenue from new commercial and industrial construction in North Brevard, under a process the Brevard County Commission created in 2011 to help spur economic development in North Brevard. Blue Origin plans to build rockets on the Space Coast, and launch them from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The company, founded by Jeff Bezos, the billionaire chief executive officer of Amazon.com, would create 330 jobs with an average wage of $89,000, and plans to make a capital investment of $205 million to $220 million.
The company is being referred to as “Project Panther” in county documents, because Blue Origin has not officially disclosed its plans. Bezos is scheduled to be in Brevard County on Sept. 15 for a major announcement on the commercial space industry.
This news helps indicate what Bezos’s September 15 announcement will be about. They are likely to announce that the company is completed its arrangements for building its spaceport in Florida, and is now going to proceed. Up until now the company, which keeps its plans very close to its vest, has been vague about its future launch plans, especially after it lost its competition with SpaceX for leasing a launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center.
With 8 days left in its campaign to raise $10 grand so that the Space Show can upgrade its website and make its archives searchable, the campaign is 70% funded.
As a regularly guest on David Livingston’s excellent show, I ask all my readers to consider donating to this campaign. For the past decade and a half The Space Show has probably provided the best and most complete coverage of the aerospace industry. The success of this campaign will allow the show to continue while also making the wealth of information buried in its archives more easily available to everyone.
SpaceX has decided to delay its next launch for several additional months as it continues its investigation into the June Falcon 9 launch failure.
The next mission on SpaceX’s launch calendar had been a U.S. government ocean-monitoring satellite called Jason 3, but Shotwell indicated that a commercial communications satellite would move to the front of the line. Luxembourg-based SES SA has a contract to fly on the first Falcon 9 rocket that features an upgraded first-stage engine. The upgrade will allow SpaceX to attempt to land its rockets back at the launch site from high-altitude missions so they can be refurbished and reused.
They had originally hoped to return to flight in September. This is now probably delayed until November. However, that their next flight will include the upgraded Merlin engine and it will be a commercial flight means they will once again likely try for a vertical landing of that first stage. Moreover, SES has already said that if the landing is successful it wants to buy that first stage for a future launch. SES hopes to save money this way, while also encouraging innovation in the launch market which it sees as a long term gain for putting its payloads into orbit.
I normally don’t bother reporting on polls. They are notoriously unreliable and often force one to the wrong conclusions. Nonetheless, this poll appears significant because it indicates that it isn’t just Trump that the voters are turning to in their disgust of the establishment political elite community.
First, it is the first poll since late July that does not show Trump with a lead. Instead, Ben Carson ties him. Second, Carly Fiorina with 10% and Ted Cruz with 9% come in second and third.
Finally, and most important, Bush, Kasich, and Rubio, politicians who have demonstrated by their actions that once elected they cannot be trusted get little or no support.
For months I have strongly believed that Jeb Bush was going to go nowhere once the voting began. The Republican base does not want another Bush. Similarly, Rubio’s betrayal of the tea party voters who got him elected by his support of the Gang of Eight comprehensive immigration bill is well remembered by those tea party voters. They do not trust him.
Instead, I believe that it will be reliable conservatives or brash outsides like Cruz, Fiorina, Carson, and Trump who will get the votes. This poll suggests I might be right.
Having said this, I must emphasize again my mistrust of polls. It is just as likely this poll is a waste, and tells us nothing.
A Florida prosecutor has dropped all charges against a man who was arrested by police for playing the Star-Spangled Banner on July 4th for his neighbors.
That the police even considered arresting him was beyond reasonable. And three cheers for the player, Lane Pittman, for refusing to plea bargain.
Hawaii’s Supreme Court on Thursday heard arguments for and against the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope on the summit of Mauna Kea.
Based on reading the various news reports of the hearing and the questioning by the judges, it appears to me that the judges have already decided against the telescope. Race, ethnicity, and hatred of western technology must take precedent over all else.
I repeat: If the court shuts down TMT astronomers should consider moving out entirely. Furthermore, Americans should maybe consider other places for their tourism, considering how hostile Hawaiians now appear to be.
Boeing on Monday told its satellite workers that it will eventually lay off hundreds because of lost contracts due to the failure of Congress to renew the Export-Import Bank.
Boeing Co (BA.N) on Monday told its workers that it expected to cut as many as “several hundred” jobs in its satellite business through the end of 2015 due to a downturn in U.S. military spending and delays in commercial satellite orders. Multiple commercial orders were being delayed by recent failures of launch vehicles and uncertainties about the future availability of financing from the U.S. Export-Import Bank, whose government charter lapsed on June 30, the company told key managers in an internal communication.
Boeing spokesman Tim Neale confirmed the reductions and said the total number of people affected would be finalized in coming months. Some could find work in other parts of Boeing, he said. [emphasis mine]
This announcement is pure lobbying, no more. They might have to lay off workers, but they haven’t done it yet, and when they do the numbers are likely to be far less than they are implying. And even so, the layoffs will probably be good for the company, making it more lean and efficient.
The reason they have made this public now is to generate support for a renewal of the Export-Import Bank, which Congress allowed to expire last month. Boeing wants it back, because the company uses the low interest loans it provides (using government money) to get contracts abroad. However, they really don’t need it to do that. They could trim costs, work more efficiently, and get loans in the private sector, as every other private company is expected to do.
This announcement is really no different than the doom that was predicted prior to the arrival of sequestration. Those budget cuts were going to cause the destruction of the defense industry and the American military, while causing the airline industry to collapse because the TSA and the FAA wouldn’t have the staff to keep the planes in the air. Twas all a lie. Nothing happened, and by some miracle the government still had plenty of cash to keep things running smoothly. Similarly, Boeing can compete without the help of the government. They just have to stop whining and do it.
An experiment to test how whiskey ages in weightlessness is about to begin on ISS.
H-II Transfer Vehicle No. 5, commonly known as “Kounotori5” or HTV5, was launched on Wednesday from JAXA’s Tanegashima Space Center carrying alcohol beverages produced by Suntory to the Japanese Experiment Module aboard the International Space Station, where experiments on the “development of mellowness” will be conducted for a period of about one year in Group 1 and for two or more years (undecided) in Group 2.
Don’t worry, the astronauts on ISS won’t be getting drunk. After the test period is complete the samples will then returned to Earth, untasted, where they will then be compared with control samples.
