Tag: freedom

ESA signs contract for 1st space junk removal

9:39 am

Capitalism in space: The European Space Agency (ESA) has now signed a contract with a private company, ClearSpace SA, for the first dedicated commercial mission to remove a piece of orbiting space junk.

ESA officials signed a contract with ClearSpace on Nov 13. to complete the safe deorbiting of a payload adapter launched aboard the second flight of the Arianespace Vega rocket in 2013.

Unlike traditional ESA contracts that involve the agency procuring and coordinating the mission, ClearSpace-1 is a contract to purchase a service: the safe removal of a piece of space debris. ESA officials said they intend this mission to help establish a new commercial sector led by European industry. The 86 million euros supplied by ESA will be supplemented with an additional 24 million euros ClearSpace is raising from commercial investors. Approximately 14 million euros of the privately-raised funding will be utilized for the mission, while the remaining 10 million will be set aside for contingencies, ESA spokesperson Valeria Andreoni told SpaceNews.

First, that the ESA has decided here to shift from running the mission and to merely being the customer buying the product from a private company is magnificent news. Europe has been, like NASA was in the 2000s, very reluctant to give up its total control in the design, construction, and launch of rockets and spacecraft. That they are now mimicking NASA’s own shift in the 2010s to this private model, as I outlined in detail in Capitalism in Space, means that ESA’s bureaucracy is finally coming around to the idea of freedom, capitalism, and private enterprise. What a thing!

Second, though this mission is commercial, it isn’t really a practical economic solution to the removal of most space junk. The contract will cost $104 million, plus the additional private capital ClearSpace has raised. None of this appears to include the launch cost. Yet, it will only remove one defunct object in orbit.

Such a technology will be useful for removing specific large pieces of space junk that pose a risk should they crash to Earth. It will not be economically useful for removing the small junk in orbit that threatens other working satellites and spacecraft. For that technology to be cost effective it will need to be able to clean up many objects on a single flight.

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Starship 9-mile-high flight now set for no earlier than December 4th

9:13 am

Starship on launch pad
Click for LabPadre live stream from which this still was captured.

Capitalism in space: SpaceX has now scheduled the first 9-mile-high flight of its 8th Starship prototype for either December 4th, 5th, or 6th.

On Wednesday, the Federal Aviation Administration issued a temporary flight restriction for SpaceX to conduct a Starship launch from its facility near Boca Chica Beach in South Texas. The notification allows the company to attempt a Starship hop on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, between the hours of 9am EST (14:00 UTC) and 6pm EST (23:00 UTC) daily. SpaceX must still obtain a launch license from the FAA for this flight.

The company’s founder and chief engineer, Elon Musk, has said SpaceX will attempt to fly Starship to an altitude of 15km to demonstrate the performance of three Raptor engines over the course of several minutes. The company’s previous flights to about 150 meters, in August and September, used a single Raptor engine.

This higher flight profile will take Starship above nearly 90 percent of Earth’s atmosphere, which will allow the company to do several new tests: assess the performance of body flaps on Starship, transition from using propellant from the main fuel tanks to smaller ones used for landing burns, and test the vehicle’s ability to reorient itself for returning to the launch site.

Look closely at the screen capture of Starship above. Note how there is no launch tower at all, and that the launchpad is simply a platform on which the ship sits. This lack indicates two things. First, the ship’s large diameter gives it a much lower center of gravity compared to all other rockets. It doesn’t need the launch tower for support. This is why SpaceX can move it back and forth from the assembly building on the equivalent of a large flatbed truck.

Second, the lack illustrates SpaceX’s lean and mean engineering style. When this spacecraft finally launches to orbit on top of a Super Heavy first stage, it will certainly need a launch tower, not so much for support but to fuel it and allow access to and from while on the launchpad. None of this infrastructure however is needed now for the ongoing development work. Why waste money and time building it when they don’t yet know the exact specifications of the final rocket itself?

SpaceX is taking advantage of the first point to do the second, thus speeding development and lowering its cost.

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Rocket Lab provides detailed update on successful recovery of first stage after splashdown

9:20 am

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab has now provided a detailed update on the company’s first successful recovery of the first stage of their Electron rocket from the ocean on November 19, 2020.

Much of the press release reiterates what the company CEO Peter Beck said on November 24th, but in much better engineering detail. Key finding:

The stage held up remarkably well – not bad after experiencing the trip to space and back in just 13 minutes. The carbon composite structure was completely intact. As expected, the heatshield on the base of the stage suffered some heat damage during re-entry. It was never designed for this load case, but before we strengthen the heat shield we wanted to see just how much heat it could take unchanged. With a wealth of data on this now, our team has already started working on upgrades for future recovery missions.

They also intend to re-fly some components from that stage. I have embedded below the fold their footage taken during from the inside of the first stage during its splashdown.

The next recovery attempt in early ’21 will also splash down in the ocean. Before they attempt a helicopter snatch from the air they want gather more data.
» Read more

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Next Virgin Orbit LauncherOne test flight set for late December

12:22 pm

Capitalism in space: According to Coast Guard notices, the next Virgin Orbit attempt to put its new LauncherOne rocket into orbit should occur sometime between December 18-21.

A Nov. 24 “Local Notice to Mariners” by the U.S. Coast Guard stated that Virgin Orbit “will conduct hazardous operations” offshore from San Nicolas Island, California, between Dec. 18 and 21. Those operations will take place during a four-hour window that opens at 1 p.m. Eastern.

The notice does not explicitly state that a launch will take place, but Virgin Orbit used the same language in a Coast Guard notice for its first orbital launch attempt in May. That earlier notice, which also cited “hazardous operations,” had the same four-hour window and location for the operations.

The company has not officially announced the launch date, but it has said it would fly this mission before the end of this year.

The article also notes that another smallsat launch startup, Astra, has announced its next launch attempt will take place during a 12-day launch window starting December 7th.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

9:44 am

Today is Thanksgiving, a truly American holiday, as unique to history as the United States. No nation before this one ever tried to establish by law a nation dedicated to “the pursuit of happiness” and the premise that sovereignty resides solely in the people, not in an elitist upper class of rulers. This holiday was established to celebrate and give thanks for these ideals, and the blessings of liberty they bestow to Americans.

Those ideals are now threatened by the progressives who dominate the Democratic Party and the weasels in the Republican Party too cowardly to resist. It therefore becomes imperative that, as we American citizens celebrate this holiday today with family gatherings often in defiance of the edicts of these petty dictators, we resolve to defy them in all ways, and to reclaim with courage our heritage of freedom and the individual sovereignty it gives to us.

No one has the right to give us orders. Give thanks for that, and tell those who try they risk terrible things for themselves by doing so.

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Starship 50,000 ft hop now scheduled for Nov 30th

8:35 am

Capitalism in space: Having completed all preliminary static fire tests, SpaceX has now set November 30th as the target date for 50,000 foot high hop for its eighth Starship prototype.

SpaceX is understood to be conducting a Flight Readiness Review (FRR) for the test flight, with this final Static Fire test providing key data to the final go to proceed towards SN8’s big day.

Elon Musk has already calibrated public expectations on the expected outcome of SN8’s test, noting that “understanding exactly how the body flaps control pitch, yaw & roll during descent, such that the ship is positioned well to relight, flip & land, would be a big win.” As opposed to expecting SN8 to land feet first on the landing pad.

Musk’s point is important. The primary engineering goal for this first hop will be to find out whether they truly understand how to control and fly Starship. Their knowledge in this area is only computer based, and thus is very incomplete, and could very well be wrong, resulting in a failure that prevents a proper clean landing.

Such as failure however would actually be an engineering success, as it would give them the data needed to make later prototypes work. As for landing, they know how to do that already. Once they get the flying right, the landing should follow.

SpaceX has said it will live stream that hop. Should be a thrill to watch.

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SpaceX sets numerous launch records in placing 60 more Starlink satellites in orbit

10:23 pm

Falcon 9 booster landing for a record 7th time

Capitalism in space: SpaceX tonight broke a whole bunch of new launch records in launching another sixty Starlink satellites into orbit using its Falcon 9 rocket.

First, the leaders in the 2020 launch race:

31 China
22 SpaceX
12 Russia
5 ULA
5 Rocket Lab

The US now leads China 35 to 31 in the national rankings.

For SpaceX, this launch established the following landmarks for the company:
» Read more

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Chiquita Banana – The original commercial

6:01 pm

An evening pause: This will not mean anything to my younger readers, but this song and commercial seared itself into the brains of everyone who went to the movies or watched television in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. The first version, shown here, was produced by Disney for the United Fruit Company.

I can think of no reason not to sear this song into some new generations.

Hat tip David Nudelman.

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Rocket Lab declares first attempt at recovering a 1st stage a success

9:34 am

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab has announced that the company’s first effort to recover a 1st stage of its Electron rocket during a November 19th launch was a complete success.

On Rocket Lab’s latest launch Nov. 19, the rocket’s first stage made a controlled reentry after stage separation, then released a drogue and a main parachute before splashing down about 400 kilometers downrange from its New Zealand launch site, where it was recovered by a boat.

The recovery itself went as planned. “The test was a complete success,” Peter Beck, chief executive of Rocket Lab, said in a call with reporters Nov. 23. “The stage splashed down completely intact. What it proved to us is that this is a feasible approach, and we’re really confident that we can make Electron a reusable launch vehicle from here.”

Eventually they plan to snatch the stage out of the air using a helicopter prior to hitting the water, but are presently focusing instead on developing the proper thermal protection and attitude control systems for the flight back to Earth. They are presently taking that first stage apart and analyzing what worked and didn’t work in protecting it during that flight.

According to Beck, they will do another splashdown recovery early in ’21 to refine things. They also hope to reuse some of the recovered components from both splashdown tests on later flights.

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Regulators coming after SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility and Starship

9:05 am

Capitalism in space? New FAA documents suggest that government regulators are not happy with the rapid and spectacular development by SpaceX of its Super Heavy/Starship rocket at Boca Chica, Texas, and are eager to impose restrictions and delays.

The issue revolves around revisions to SpaceX’s original FAA approval for its work at Boca Chica because the company has switched from flying Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets to developing and flying Starship and Super Heavy. While the FAA has been cooperative in issuing the necessary revisions, other agencies have raised red flags.

But the most important document of the bunch is the written reevaluation signed by the FAA on May 22. The file spans 26 pages, was required for SpaceX to receive its suborbital launch license from the FAA on May 28, and incorporates concerns from state and federal environmental agencies.

In the reevaluation, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the US Fish and Wildlife Service took issue with several aspects of SpaceX’s plans and ongoing activities. Those criticisms targeted the “fluid nature” of the company’s construction projects, excessive road closures to Boca Chica Beach (which Brownsville locals prize), around-the-clock work that may affect nocturnal threatened or endangered species, prototype explosions, and sprawling wildfires the company has triggered.

The FAA responded to each concern in the document, ultimately determining “there are no significant environmental changes, and that all pertinent conditions and requirements of the prior approval have been met or will be met” with SpaceX’s suborbital test-flight plans.

However, SpaceX does not yet have the FAA’s go-ahead to launch any Starships to orbit from Boca Chica.

In its replies to concerns noted by other agencies — some of which call for a new EIS [environmental impact statement], which could take years to complete (an eternity in Musk time) — the agency repeatedly noted it is working with SpaceX to draft an “environmental review” of those plans.

Should Joe Biden and the power-hungry and controlling Democrats take control of the executive branch of the federal government, expect the FAA’s desire to help SpaceX to quickly end.

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SpaceX launches oceanography satellite

10:26 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully launched an oceanography satellite using its Falcon 9 rocket from the company’s California launch site at Vandenberg Air Force Base..

The first stage, making its first flight, successfully landed back on land near the launch site.

This was also SpaceX’s 21st successful launch in 2020, tying their record from 2018 for the most launches in a single year by a private company, ever. That record should be broken tomorrow, with their next Starlink launch.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

30 China
21 SpaceX
12 Russia
5 ULA
5 Rocket Lab

The U.S. now leads China 34 to 30 in the national rankings.

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Eva Vergilova – Free Bird

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Another guitar piece, but of a very different kind from yesterday’s.

Hat tip Mike Nelson. Note also that this pause was taken from Rumble, an alternative to Youtube. I encourage those who wish to suggest evening pauses to always see if they can find something there first. Reliance solely on Youtube is not healthy, and the competition will do everyone good.

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Successful Rocket Lab launch and descent of 1st stage

10:26 pm

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab today successfully used its Electron rocket to 30 smallsats into orbit from its launchpad in New Zealand.

They also did their first launch test of their planned method for recovering the first stage for reuse. In their case the first stage will use parachutes to slow its descent, and will then be grabbed by a helicopter to be brought back to land. On this launch they were only testing the parachute portion of this plan, and allowed the stage to land in the water, where they then recovered it.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

30 China
20 SpaceX
12 Russia
5 ULA
5 Rocket Lab

The U.S. now leads China 33 to 30 in the national rankings.

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Arizona gov says he will not certify results until all lawsuits are settled

3:36 pm

Arizona’s Republican Governor Doug Ducey today announced that he will not certify the results of the state’s presidential election until all the lawsuits involving issues in the count are settled.

In Arizona specifically, the Trump campaign and state GOP filed lawsuits in Maricopa County in a bid to block officials from certifying the election results due to alleged voter irregularities and improprieties.

“There are legal claims that are being challenged in court and everybody on the ballot has certain access rights and remedies and if they want to push that they are able. Once those are adjudicated and the process plays out, I will accept the results of the election,” the Republican governor said in a news conference on Wednesday.

Based on Ducey’s generally spineless leadership, I have no confidence in his announcement. I think he is playing us. He has done less than nothing to really make sure the vote is accurate, even though it is in his power to do so. For example, he could call the legislature back in session so that its Republican majority could get involved. He has refused to do this, keeping them out of the game. Moreover, his administration apparently chose the questionable Dominion election software used to count the vote, despite questions raised about it from many sources for years.

What I think he is doing is making it seem he cares. Then, when he folds like a house of cards to an untrustworthy recount, he can claim he was there for us. All hogwash.

The only saving grace to his announcement is that if no certification occurs before December 14th, the lack of Arizona’s electoral votes might force the decision into the House of Representatives, where the Republicans will have the votes to keep Trump president. If the Democrats wish to avoid this, they should be moving heaven and Earth to clear up any issues and thus settle the lawsuits.

Not surprisingly, I do not see the Democrats doing this. Instead, they are working to block any audits or proper recounts. Makes one wonder what they might be trying to hide.

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Trump lawyers detail extensive election fraud

12:59 pm

The lawyers for the Trump campaign today held a press conference outlining in extensive detail the evidence they have gathered pointing to election fraud in multiple states, all designed to manufacture fake votes for Joe Biden or to disenfranchise Trump voters.

Yes, I know, it is a press conference. And yes I know, it is run by only one side. To simply dismiss what that side said however is to put one’s head in the sand. Two allegations struck me as particularly damning:

Giuliani offered evidence to show that 15,000 voters in Pittsburgh alone were disenfranchised of their vote, and forced to vote via provisional ballot when they arrived at their polling place. These voters allegedly were told that they had already voted by mail.

Giuliani alleged as well that ballots were trucked into Detroit at 4:30 am on election night to be counted after poll workers believed that Republican observers to the count had left. He claimed that workers said that these were Biden ballots, improperly packaged, and without votes for any of the additional races. He said that the votes were counted three times.

In the first case the allegations apparently came from the voters themselves. If based on actual legal affidavits, the allegations have real merit, and suggest massive fraud in Pittsburgh alone.

In the second case, more details are found here.

Guiliani went on to cite testimony from witnesses to bolster his case, ripped the media for falsely reporting there is “no evidence” of fraud and argued proper oversight was not executed while mail-in ballots were counted.

“Do you know how many affidavits were have in the Michigan case? Two hundred and twenty affidavits,” he said. “What they swear to is that at 4:30 in the morning, a truck pulled up to the Detroit center where they were counting ballots. The people thought it was food so they all ran to the truck. It wasn’t food, it was thousands and thousands of ballots and the ballots were in garbage cans, they were in paper bags, they were cardboard boxes and they were taken into the center. They were put on a number of tables. At that time they thought all of the Republican inspectors had left, all but two had.”

“Here’s what they jointly swear to: that every ballot that they could see, everything that they Ould hear, these were ballots for Biden. When they saw a ballot, these were ballots only for Biden, nothing down ticket,” Guiliani continued. “Many of them were triple counted.”

“Why would you not allow inspections of those ballots? Because you knew you were going to use those ballots to catch Biden up,” Guiliani said, adding that the recount in Georgia will be worthless due to a lack of signature [emphasis mine]

The highlighted text puts the lie to the claim that no evidence of election fraud exists. An affidavit is a legal document that carries I think penalties if found to be a lie. Moreover, when you begin to get a lot of them, all confirming each other, their reliability is strongly reinforced.

The election count in the disputed states needs to be completely reviewed, carefully, by going back to the actual ballots. The computer data is untrustworthy and must be put aside.

If that review finds Joe Biden won, so be it. It would mean the country favored the Republicans overall, but preferred a change in president.

If that review instead shows Trump did win, and that a large amount of voter fraud occurred, then major investigations are in order to find the perpetrators. It must also be the number one priority of Republicans in every one of these states (all controlled at the legislative level by Republicans) to overhaul the election system to prevent such fraud from reoccurring. Better to go back to simple paper ballots that are counted by hand, than the unreliable computer systems we have now.

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Republicans in Wayne County rescind their votes certifying Detroit results

12:05 pm

In a dramatic turn, the two Republicans on the Wayne County election board (which covers Detroit) last night rescinded their votes yesterday certifying the Detroit results, claiming in legal affidavits that these votes were obtained through coercion and false promises.

Their pronouncements come just 24 hours after a chaotic meeting in which the county’s election board initially failed to certify the Nov. 3 election results during a 2-2 deadlocked vote when both Palmer and Hartmann voted against certification. But after hours of contentious public comment and criticism — including Democratic allegations of racism and threats against their safety — the two GOP members struck a deal to certify the elections in return for a promise of a thorough audit.

Palmer and Hartmann said Wednesday they learned that state officials had reneged or would not honor the audit, leaving them no recourse but to oppose certification until more investigation could be performed.

It is now presently unclear what happens next, including which of their votes will be considered legal.

Note however how the Democrats appear totally opposed to even addressing the vote count concerns expressed by these two election board members. No, rather than in good will trying to show the concerns are unmerited, Democrats have instead threatened, slandered, and doxed the Republicans, while apparently reneging on an agreement that would have looked into the issues.

As I have written, if the problems with this election are not resolved, or the Democrats refuse to cooperate in fixing them, then it will strongly imply that a Biden victory is tainted and was stolen. The consequences to the country then will be quite bad.

The best course must be an aggressive effort by both parties to address and fix the concerns, with both parties accepting the results no matter what. It does not appear the Democrats desire this.

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Relativity raising $500 million in new search for investment capital

11:38 am

Capitalism in space: The new rocket company Relativity Space is in the process of raising another $500 million in new investment capital.

The new fundraise, expected to close in the coming days, would jump Relativity’s valuation to $2.3 billion, those people said. In addition to Tiger Global, Fidelity is also joining the round as a new Relativity investor. Existing investors in Relativity are also expected to be contributing — those include Social Capital, Playground Global, Y Combinator, Bond Capital, Tribe Capital, Jared Leto and Mark Cuban.

Tiger Global, the investment firm founded by Chase Coleman, has more than $43 billion in assets under management.

This new funding will supplement the almost $200 million Relativity raised previously.

The company has successfully completed engine tests, and plans its first orbital test launch of its Terran-1 rocket next year.

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The SpaceX fleet of Dragons

11:10 am

The first manned Dragon capsule on the launchpad
The first manned Dragon capsule, on the launchpad

Capitalism in space: During the post-launch press briefing after launch of its second manned Dragon mission on November 15, SpaceX CEO Gwynne Shotwell revealed the company’s plans to build and fly a fleet of Dragon cargo and crew capsules, and reuse them repeatedly over the coming years..

Specifically, Shotwell revealed that SpaceX intends to build three reusable Cargo Dragon 2 capsules, one of which is already completed and in Florida preparing for its December 2nd CRS-21 launch debut. On the crew side of things, SpaceX will build “three more” Crew Dragon capsules on top of the flight-proven Demo-2 and currently orbital Crew-1 capsules. It’s unclear if this means that the new Crew Dragon capsule flown on SpaceX’s January 2020 In-Flight Abort (IFA) test will be refurbished for additional flights.

Excluding IFA Crew Dragon capsule C205, SpaceX thus intends to operate a fleet of at least three Cargo Dragon 2 and five Crew Dragon capsules, representing eight reusable spacecraft each capable of at least five orbital missions.

She also hinted that the company has plans to fly its own missions, using these spacecraft, in addition to its contracted flights for NASA and the private company Axiom.

This private capability, which far exceeds anything ever built by NASA or any government worldwide, is entirely because Elon Musk had the freedom and the will to push for his particular vision. He had a bold idea, and with courage he pursued it.
» Read more

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Sierra Nevada delays first Dream Chaser launch to ’22

1:22 pm

Sierra Nevada officials revealed yesterday that they are delaying the first test flight of their Dream Chaser reusable cargo mini-shuttle from late 2021 to some unspecified time in 2022.

‘’COVID has definitely played a role” in that delay, said Steve Lindsey, senior vice president for strategy at SNC Space Systems. One example he gave involved structural testing of the spacecraft’s cargo module at a contractor’s facility in San Diego. COVID-related restrictions prevented SNC engineers from being on site at that facility to oversee the tests. SNC developed a workaround by using a mission control center it developed for Dream Chaser in Colorado so those engineers could remotely oversee those tests. “That worked great. Unfortunately, it took probably three or four times as long as it should have,” he said.

A related problem, he said, involves suppliers who have had to suspend operations because of COVID-19 outbreaks at their facilities. There have also been technical challenges with Dream Chaser, although he did not go into details about specific issues. [emphasis mine]

I underline the unspecified technical issues, because I suspect they might be the real issue. SpaceX has not been slowed in any significant way due to the Wuhan panic, even though it deals with NASA also. I would therefore not be surprised if they are using COVID-19 as a cover for other issues.

It is a new craft, and problems are expected. I’d just rather they didn’t hide it. It contributes to doubts about the company, which by the way has been much slower in its development than one should expect. NASA awarded this contract in January of 2016, with the first launch then planned for as early as October 2019. It is now 2020, and the launch is still now two years away.

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If election issues are not fixed, elected state Republicans must refuse to certify

4:49 pm

The Preamble to the Constitution

The Constitution is very clear: The actual decision on who should be elected President of the United States every four years is actually made by the state legislatures.

Article II, Section 1, Paragraph 2: Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled to the Congress.

12th Amendment: The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President. … The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed.

In other words, the state legislatures choose the Electors, and only when they are chosen can they vote for President. Furthermore, the winner must win a majority from the expected number of total Electors from all the states, which is presently 270. If not, the vote then goes to the House of Representatives in Congress, which votes not by each representative but by state, with each state’s caucus voting separately to determine the state’s vote (as per the 12th Amendment).

American tradition however for almost two centuries has been for these legislatures to let the popular vote of the state guide them on who to pick as Electors. If their citizens choose the Republican candidate, they picked Republican Electors so their states Electoral votes go to that candidate. If the citizens choose a Democrat, they did the same.

It is because of this tradition that we all assume the popular vote makes the choice. It really does not.

For two centuries, this system worked because everyone trusted the election process. While some fraud has always occurred at some level, at the federal level the counts have generally been carefully done and reliably tabulated. Even in the difficult election battle in 2000 it was clear that the effort was to get the actual count right, by both sides.

This trust is now gone. The number of errors, suspicious actions, and indications of fraud, all designed to steal votes from Donald Trump and give extra votes to Joe Biden, makes every single one of the contested elections in the battleground states of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin unreliable. Let’s take a look a just a small sampling of recent stories from each state, detailing rampant election fraud.
» Read more

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Virgin Galactic cancels its announced November suborbital flight

9:38 am

Capitalism in space: Virgin Galactic announced yesterday that it has canceled its announced November suborbital flight, claiming the cause were new COVID-19 guidelines imposed by the New Mexico Department of Health.

The flight had been scheduled for the November 19-23 time period. It had been announced with the typical hype that comes from Richard Branson.

Personally, I don’t believe Branson or Virgin Galactic as to the cause of this flight cancellation. I think they either never intended to fly, or have known for some time that new technical problems would prevent its launch as scheduled. I think they hyped the launch despite this, which conveniently pumped up the stock price at a time Branson was selling stock. They now announce the cancellation, the stock drops, but Branson has already pocketed his profits.

The timing of this announcement is also most ironic, as it occurred on the same day SpaceX docked four astronauts on ISS. Branson’s company began building its suborbital spacecraft in 2004, promising that it would soon fly hundreds, even thousands of private passengers into space. Sixteen years later it has never flown one passenger, and very few manned test flights. In the interim SpaceX built its Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule, and is now launching passengers to orbit, with its first entirely private launch scheduled less than a year from now.

The comparison is quite stark. Why anyone would invest real money in this fake company at this point baffles me.

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Resilience has docked with ISS

9:52 pm

SpaceX’s Resilience Dragon capsule successfully docked with ISS tonight.

They are in the process of checking the seal of the docking, and the opening of the hatch.

As much as I have been critical of Boeing in recent years, I truly hope they can get their management and engineering problems worked out so they can accomplish the same thing with their Starliner capsule. The competition with SpaceX will be healthy for both companies, the nation, and the future of the human race.

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The Apollo 12 crew’s excursions on the Moon, 51 years ago

8:25 am

In celebration of the anniversary this week of the Apollo 12 mission to the Moon in November 1969, the science team for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) have created a wonderful animation showing step-by-step where and when Pete Conrad and Alan Bean walked during their two EVAs on the lunar surface.

That video is below. It highlights strongly the need of any future short-term mission to any planetary landing to have a vehicle on board. Conrad and Bean accomplished a lot during their two four-hour walks, but nowhere near as much as they could have accomplished if they could have driven about on their EVAs. In fact, in the 1960s NASA had already recognized this, and was to put a rover on the last three Apollo lunar landings.

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SpaceX successfully launches four astronauts to ISS

5:41 pm

Falcon 9 launch on November 15, 2020 with four astronauts

Capitalism in space: SpaceX tonight successfully launched four astronauts to ISS on its Dragon capsule Resilience, using its Falcon 9 rocket.

They also recovered the first stage, landing it on its drone ship in the Atlantic. The routine manner in which SpaceX ran this launch is truly admirable. They make landing and reuse of the first stage so expected it is hard to believe that for fifty years rocket managers and engineers insisted it wasn’t doable.

They had one issue today, a failure of the capsule hatch to hold air pressure after closure. They calmly reopened the hatch, cleared the issue, added some lubricant, and closed the hatch, all in less than ten minutes.

Resilience will dock with ISS tomorrow evening.

The leaders in the 2020 launch race:

30 China
20 SpaceX
5 ULA
4 Europe (Arianespace)
4 Rocket Lab

The U.S. now leads China 32 to 30 in the national rankings.

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First US Rocket Lab launch delayed until ’21

9:46 am

Because of issues in Rocket Lab’s flight termination system (used to destroy the rocket should it go out of control during launch), the company has announced that its first U.S. launch will be delayed until 2021.

One reason for the delay, Rocket Lab said, was that it was waiting on NASA to certify the autonomous flight termination system (AFTS) that will be used on the rocket to provide range safety. NASA controls the launch range at the Wallops Flight Facility, where LC-2 is located. “There’s a very long certification process that, quite frankly, we probably underestimated how long it would take,” Peter Beck, chief executive of Rocket Lab, said in an interview in August.

That certification process is ongoing. In a Nov. 10 talk at a Maryland Space Business Roundtable webinar, David Pierce, director of NASA Wallops, mentioned preparations for Rocket Lab’s first launch as part of an overview of the facility’s activities. “We’re really proud of our work with Rocket Lab,” he said. “We’re working really hard to support Rocket Lab with a launch in ’21.”

Asked later about the certification of the AFTS, Pierce said that engineers had kept on schedule with the development of the system into the summer despite the pandemic. “When they sent the unit out for review of the software, we found some errors,” he said. That review involved teams at NASA’s Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation Facility, the Federal Aviation Administration, Vandenberg Air Force Base and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

While I have no evidence of this, I cannot help being suspicious of these various government agencies. For years numerous people in the government put fake roadblocks up to slow or stop SpaceX’s first manned launch, merely because it threatened their turfs. This autonomous termination system will make the ground crews at Vandenberg and at Cape Canaveral irrelevant, and I would not be surprised if some of these issues were drummed up to delay or block this system because of that.

I know I am being cynical, but based on history it is not unreasonable to be so.

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Most recent engine test on eighth Starship prototype had issues

8:52 am

Capitalism in space: The most recent engine test on November 12th of SpaceX’s eighth Starship prototype had a problem that will delay its planned 50,000 foot test hop.

The Starship SN8 vehicle performed its third brief “static fire” — a test in which engines are ignited while a rocket remains tethered to the ground — at SpaceX’s South Texas facility on Thursday, near the village of Boca Chica.

Shortly after the test, which several outside organizations webcast live, material could be seen apparently dripping from SN8’s base. This looked odd, and SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk soon confirmed that something off-nominal had happened. “We lost vehicle pneumatics. Reason unknown at present. Liquid oxygen header tank pressure is rising. Hopefully triggers burst disk to relieve pressure, otherwise it’s going to pop the cork,” Musk said via Twitter on Thursday night. (Burst disks are single-use devices that, like valves, seal off different sections or systems of a vehicle. They relieve pressure when they open, as Musk noted.)

The cause of the problem is unknown at the moment, Musk said in another Thursday tweet: “Maybe melted an engine preburner or fuel hot gas manifold. Whatever it is caused pneumatics loss. We need to design out this problem.”

The decision to pin down the cause and redesign things so it won’t happen again makes perfect sense, but it also means that the hop will not occur in the next week or so, as hoped for by the company. Expect a delay. Based on the pace that SpaceX works, that delay however should not be longer than one or two months.

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Elon Musk gets contradictory COVID-19 test results

8:40 am

The uncertainty of science: Because SpaceX’s founder Elon Musk had had some minor cold-like symptoms, he decided to get tested for COVID-19, and discovered that after four tests, he still had no idea whether he had it or not.

The Tesla boss and fifth-richest man in the world had initially tweeted Thursday night that “Something extremely bogus is going on” regarding COVID-19 testing. “Two tests came back negative, two came back positive. Same machine, same test, same nurse.”

…Though Musk had initially tweeted that his symptoms were “nothing unusual” and those “of a typical cold,” he gave more detail Friday morning. “Mild sniffles & cough & slight fever past few days,” he told one Twitter user who asked how he was feeling. “Right now, no symptoms, although I did take NyQuil.”

First, the results tell us that the so-called surge going on in new coronavirus cases that is panicking our Democratic Party lords and masters might very well be bogus. At a minimum we should all be more skeptical of the numbers.

Second, assuming Musk does have COVID-19, his symptoms illustrate once again how relatively harmless the virus is to healthy people. In fact, no one seems to notice that of the numbers of people diagnosed with COVID-19 in the general populace, no one seems ever to die from it. Like the flu, they are sick for a week or so, and then recover.

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Weather forces one day delay in launch of Resilience with four astronauts

9:26 pm

Because of high winds and ocean weather interfering with the recovery of the first stage, NASA and SpaceX today decided to delay the launch of SpaceX’s second manned Dragon mission, the capsule Resilience carrying four astronauts, to Sunday, November 15.

NASA and SpaceX are now targeting 7:27 p.m. EST Sunday, Nov. 15, for liftoff of the agency’s SpaceX Crew-1 mission to fly astronauts from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to the International Space Station.

Teams moved the launch by one day because of onshore winds and to enable recovery of the first stage booster, which is planned to be reused to launch the Crew-2 mission next year. The booster is expected to land on the recovery ship about nine minutes after launch.

They now plan to dock with ISS at 11 am (eastern) on November 16th.

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