Tag: government

Someone in India finally reads its proposed oppressive space law

9:25 am

Link here. The analysis of India’s proposed new space law [pdf] is generally very negative, but strangely it avoids entirely the bill’s worst aspect, its requirement that everything launched by India into space must belong to the government.

Instead, the author focuses on how the bill’s broad language fails to deal with specific issues of insurance, the licensing of different kinds of space activities, and environmental pollution. In other words, it appears he cannot see the forest because of the trees.

In the end, however, in concluding that the bill as written does not serve the private sector he does make one good suggestion that I hope the Indian government takes to heart.

It will not do justice to the entrepreneurial community if this Bill is implemented as is. One of the exercises that can be conducted to align the Bill to enable a competitive ecosystem for commercial space in India is to conduct a review of international best practices in managing the space value chain and inducting them within the Bill.

In other words, read what other nations like the U.S. and Luxembourg are doing to encourage their private commercial space sector. India might find that the last entity allowed to own something in space should be the government.

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Soyuz failed because it was programmed for Baikonur, not Vostochny

8:39 am

It now appears that the Soyuz rocket failure this week occurred because the Fregat upper stage had not been programmed for a launch from Vostochny.

Although the information is still preliminary, it is increasingly clear that all the hardware aboard the Fregat upper stage performed as planned. But, almost unbelievably, the flight control system on the Fregat did not have the correct settings for the mission originating from the new launch site in Vostochny, as apposed to routine launches from Baikonur and Plesetsk. As a result, as soon as Fregat and its cargo separated from the third stage of the launch vehicle, its flight control system began commanding a change of orientation of the stack to compensate for what the computer had perceived as a deviation from the correct attitude, which was considerable. As a result, when the Fregat began its first preprogrammed main engine firing, the vehicle was apparently still changing its attitude, which led to a maneuvering in a wrong direction. [emphasis mine]

This reminds me of the NASA’s epic failure with Mars Climate Orbiter in 1998, where some programming used the metric system and other programming used the English system, and no one noticed.

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NASA confirms next Dragon launch will be on used first stage

6:32 pm

Capitalism in space: NASA today confirmed that it has finally approved the use of a Falcon 9 used first stage for the next Dragon launch on December 8.

NASA had said back on November 12 that they were considering this idea. It seems to me that SpaceX has probably been proceeding under the assumption they would say yes, which essentially at this point, only a few weeks from launch, put pressure on the timid NASA bureaucracy to finally get on the bandwagon.

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India’s next launch might slip to 2018

9:22 am

India’s next PSLV commercial launch might slip to 2018, despite months of effort to resume launches in 2017 following the August 31 PSLV launch failure when the rockets fairing did not release.

“We are working towards it. It will be in the end of December or first week of January. In that time frame,” ISRO Chairman A S Kiran Kumar said.

Kumar also said ISRO will try to launch on an average of once a month in 2018. The article also mentions the new and very oppressive Indian space law that has been proposed.

Asked whether the Space Activities Bill, 2017 would come up during the Budget session of Parliament, Kiran Kumar said “We have now put it in public comments. It would have to go through a set of discussions. The process has started.”

The draft of the proposed Bill to promote and regulate space activities of India, along with encouraging the participation of the private sector, has been uploaded on the ISRO website for comments from stakeholders and the public. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted text is typical of all news reports coming from India. The law does no such thing, and in fact will strongly discourage any work by the private sector. It appears that in India reporters either do not read the text of laws they are reporting on, or they really do not have freedom of the press there.

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North Korea launches another ICBM

2:42 pm

North Korea today launched another ICBM, landing it in the Sea of Japan.

The Department of Defense said that initial assessments indicated the missile was an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM. In a news conference, Japan’s defense minister also said it seemed to be an ICBM. The missile went higher than any shot North Korea had previously taken, according to Defense Secretary James Mattis.

This was North Korea’s first launch in a couple of months.

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Second Soyuz launch from Vostochny a failure

8:50 am

The second Soyuz rocket launch from Russia’s new spaceport in Vostochny ended in failure this morning due to a problem with the rocket’s upper stage

It is presently unclear what happened. One Russian news report suggests “human error,” though I do not understand exactly what they mean by that. Either way, all 19 satellites, including a new Russian weather satellite and 18 smallsats, were lost.

For Russia, this failure comes at a bad time. Roscosmos had been striving to recover from last year’s recall of all rocket engines due to corruption at one of their factories. A new launch failure, especially if it is due to another engine issue, will not encourage sales from the international market. Worse, the lose of the 18 smallsats on this launch will certainly make future smallsat companies more reluctant to fly on a Russian rocket.

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Europe finally begins to realize that reusability cuts costs

11:19 pm

Capitalism in space: Faced with stiff and increasing competition from SpaceX, European governments are finally beginning to realize that their decades of poo-pooing the concept of rocket reusability might have been a big mistake.

In what was likely an unexpected question during a Nov. 19 interview with Europe 1 radio, French Economy and Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire was asked if SpaceX meant the death of Ariane.

“Death? I’m not sure I’d say that. But I am certain of the threat,” Le Maire said. “I am worried.” Le Maire cited figures that are far from proven — including a possible 80% reduction in the already low SpaceX Falcon 9 launch price once the benefits of reusability are realized. “We need to relfect on a reusable launcher in Europe, and we need to invest massively in innovation,” Le Maire said.

Then there was a report out of Germany that has concluded that SpaceX commitment to reusability is about to pay off.

The article also cites those in Europe and with the U.S. company ULA that remain convinced that they can compete with expendable rockets. In reading their analysis, however, I was struck by how much it appeared they were putting their heads in the sand to avoid facing the realities, one of which has been the obvious fact that SpaceX has been competitively running rings around them all. This is a company that did not even exist a decade ago. This year it very well could launch more satellites than Europe and ULA combined.

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New report says WFIRST is “not executable”

11:05 pm

Another Webb! New NASA report has declared the agency’s next big telescope following the James Webb Space Telescope, dubbed the Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) is “not executable” and is significantly over budget.

“The risks to the primary mission of WFIRST are significant and therefore the mission is not executable without adjustments and/or additional resources,” the report states. It estimated the cost of the project at $3.9 billion to $4.2 billion, significantly above the project’s $3.6 billion budget.

Produced by an independent and external team to review the technical aspects of the program, its management, and costs, the report is critical of a series of key decisions made by NASA. The addition of a coronagraph and other design choices have made for a telescope that is “more complex than probably anticipated” and have substantially increased risks and costs, according to the report.

It also offered a scathing review of the relationship between NASA headquarters and the telescope’s program managers at Goddard Space Flight Center. “The NASA HQ-to-Program governance structure is dysfunctional and should be corrected for clarity in roles, accountability, and authority,” the report states.

Did you ever get a feeling of deja-vu? This is the same story that we saw with Hubble, and with Webb. It’s called a buy-in. The agency purposely sets the budget too low to begin with, gets it started, which then forces Congress to pay the big bucks when the budget inevitably goes out of control.

From my perspective I think this is the time to shut the project down. Since Hubble astronomers have apparently begun to take NASA’s cash cow for granted, and need to relearn the lesson that they don’t have a guarantee on the treasury. Once they get over the shock of losing WFIRST, they might then start proposing good space telescopes that are affordable and can be built relatively quickly, instead of these boondoggles that take forever and ten times the initial budget to build.

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California cities charge citizens massive prosecutions fees for minor violations

8:48 pm

Fascist California: Two California cities fine citizens for minor offenses, then force them to pay the exorbitant bills of the lawyers who prosecuted them.

The cities of Indio and Coachella partnered up with a private law firm, Silver & Wright, to prosecute citizens in criminal court for violations of city ordinances that call for nothing more than small fines—things like having a mess in your yard or selling food without a business license.

Those cited for these violations fix the problems and pay the fines, a typical code enforcement story. The kicker comes a few weeks or months later when citizens get a bill in the mail for thousands of dollars from the law firm that prosecuted them. They are forcing citizens to pay for the private lawyers used to take them to court in the first place. So a fine for a couple of hundred dollars suddenly becomes a bill for $3,000 or $20,000 or even more.

In Coachella, a man was fined $900 for expanding his living room without getting a permit. He paid his fine. Then more than a year later he got a bill in the mail from Silver & Wright for $26,000. They told him that he had to pay the cost of prosecuting him, and if he didn’t, they could put a lien on his house and the city could sell it against his will. When he appealed the bill they charged him even more for the cost of defending against the appeal. The bill went from $26,000 to $31,000.

There’s more, including the fact that when challenged it appeared that the officials of one of theses cities were actually proud of what they are doing.

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Nobel laureates demand Iran release scientist sentenced to death

8:57 am

Seventy-five Nobel laureates have written and signed a letter to the Iranian government demanding it release the Iranian scientist who it convicted of espionage and sentenced to death.

The group wrote to Gholamali Khoshroo, the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations, on 17 November, and the letter was made public on 21 November. The Nobel laureates express their concern for the conditions of Djalali’s detention; they deem his trial “unfair” and “flawed”, and they urge the Iranian authorities to let him return to Sweden, where he lived.

The list includes prominent names such as Harold Varmus, a former director of the US National Institutes of Health, now at the Weill Cornell Medicine institute in New York, and Andre Geim, a physicist based at the University of Manchester, UK. They wrote: “As members of a group of people and organizations who, according to the will of Alfred Nobel are deeply committed to the greatest benefit to mankind, we cannot stay silent, when the life and work of a similarly devoted researcher as Iranian disaster medicine scholar Ahmadreza Djalali is threatened by a death sentence.”

The scientist, Ahmadreza Djalali, lived in Sweden and was accused by Iran of spying for Israel. He in turn said the conviction was revenge for his refusal to spy for Iran.

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XCOR bankruptcy leaves behind $27.5 million in debt

9:07 am

Capitalism in space: XCOR’s bankruptcy has revealed that the company owed $27.5 million to creditors, the largest of which are government agencies that gave the company money in the hope its operations would bring business to their regions.

Space Florida is the largest secured credit at $3.6 million. The state-run agency’s has a “blanket security interest in personal property.” XCOR had made a deal to manufacture and operate its Lynx suborbital space plane from Florida.

XCOR estimates it spent $25 to $30 million developing the unfinished Lynx. An additional $15 to $20 million would be required to complete the vehicle, according to the documents.

Midland Development Corporation (MDC) has $10 million in unsecured claims. The funding was provided to XCOR to move from its base in Mojave, Calif., to the West Texas city, a process the company did not complete before it filed for bankruptcy earlier this month.

In addition, a private spacesuit company, Orbital Outfitters, appears to have gone of business in connection with this bankruptcy.

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India proposes new oppressive space law

12:03 am

India’s government has proposed a new space law that essentially places all control of future space projects under the control of the central government.

The proposed law, which is open for comment for the next month, can be read here [pdf]. I’ve read it, and it astonishes me in its oppressiveness and hostility to private enterprise. This clause, one of many similar clauses, sums this up quite well:

Any form of intellectual property right developed, generated or created onboard a space object in outer space, shall be deemed to be the property of the Central Government.

The law would also require anyone who wants to launch a space project to get a license from the government, and gives the government the power to control that license in all aspects, including the power to cancel it for practically any reason.

If this law passes I expect that India’s burgeoning space industry will suffer significantly, especially because it will make it difficult to attract investment capital. Instead, it will be the central government that will run the business, and in the long run such government businesses always do badly.

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Another Navy ship collision in the Pacific

10:51 pm

Another Navy ship was involved in a collision in the Pacific on Saturday, this time with a Japanese tugboat.

The USS Benfold, a guided-missile destroyer, sustained minor damage when a tugboat lost propulsion and drifted into the ship, the Navy said. No one was injured on either vessel and an initial assessment of the damage showed that the destroyer only sustained minimal damage including scrapes.

It sounds as if the majority of the blame falls on the tugboat, though one must still wonder how a Navy destroyer was unable to avoid the drifting tugboat.

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Air Force to shift focus to smallsat constellations

8:54 am

The head of the the Air Force’s Strategic Command revealed this past weekend that he wants the military to quickly shift its focus to buying small satellite constellations.

As one of nine U.S. combatant commanders, Hyten has a say in how the Pentagon plans investments in new technology. With regard to military satellites, STRATCOM will advocate for a change away from “exquisite” costly systems that take years to develop in favor of “more resilient, more distributed capabilities.” This is the thinking of the new “space enterprise vision” adopted by the Air force and the National Reconnaissance Office, Hyten said. “That vision is about defending ourselves. In that vision you won’t find any of those big, exquisite, long-term satellites.”

“I’ve made a call at U.S. Strategic Command that we’ll embrace that as a vision of the future because I think it’s the correct one,” he added. STRATCOM will “drive requirements,” Hyten noted, “And, as a combatant commander, I won’t support the development any further of large, big, fat, juicy targets. I won’t support that,” he insisted. “We are going to go down a different path. And we have to go down that path quickly.”

Makes sense to me. Not only will the Air Force save money, but their satellite assets will be harder to attack and easier to sustain and replace should they be attacked.

For the satellite industry this shift will accelerate the growth of the smallsat industry, and provide a lot more business for the new smallsat rocket industry that is now emerging.

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India and China to reduce launch costs

9:31 am

Capitalism in space: In response to the announcement by Chinese officials that they aim to reduce their launch costs in order to attract more commercial business, Indian officials announced that they plan to do the same in order to compete.

Interestingly, the reduced price that China revealed, $5,000 per kilogram, remains about twice that of SpaceX’s estimate per kilogram price for a launch using a reused first stage.

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China successfully launches two satellites

8:43 am

China’s Long March 4C rocket successfully placed two satellites in orbit today, a weather satellite and a commercial data relay satellite.

This was China’s 11th launch in 2017, well below the 20 they achieved in 2016, the drop caused by two launch failures earlier this year that resulted in an almost four month pause in launches.

At present the race for the most launches in 2017 stands as follows:

17 Russia
16 SpaceX
11 China
10 Arianespace (Europe)
7 ULA
5 Japan
4 India
3 Orbital ATK

Overall, the United States leads with 26 launches, its most since 2000.

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Japan to make second launch attempt of world’s smallest orbital rocket

9:44 am

JAXA, Japan’s space agency, has announced that it will make a second launch attempt in December of what would be the world’s smallest orbital rocket.

The rocket, measuring 10 meters long and 50 cm in diameter, will carry a “micro-mini” satellite weighing about 3 kg developed by the University of Tokyo to collect imagery of the Earth’s surface.

The launch scheduled for Dec. 25 will feature the fifth rocket in the SS-520 series. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is hoping small rockets made with commercially available components at low cost will help fuel the growing global demand for micro-mini satellites. JAXA used components found in home electronics and smartphones for the rocket, which is about the size of a utility pole.

The previous launch failed when vibrations during liftoff caused a short-circuit that cut off communications, forcing them to terminate the flight.

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Saudi Arabia has launched a military strike against Yemen

3:28 pm

Saudi Arabia has launched a military strike against Yemen’s defense ministry.

It wasn’t immediately clear if the attacks were air or missile strikes, but they came following reports that Iran had manufactured the ballistic missile fired by Yemen’s Shiite rebels toward the Saudi capital a week ago.

Remnants of the missile bore “Iranian markings,” the top US Air Force official in the Mideast said Friday, backing the kingdom’s earlier allegations.

This isn’t that much of a surprise, considering the recent purge in Saudi Arabia as well as the recent reports of both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait warning their citizens to leave Lebanon. The military strike today in Yemen appears to therefore merely be a precursor of a more significant escalation.

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United Arab Emirates signs space agreement with Germany

9:43 am

The new colonial movement: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has signed a memorandum of understanding with the German Aerospace Center.

The press release doesn’t say much, other than the agreement will facilitate the exchange of information. Since the UAE can contribute little here but money, and none appears to be offered, I am curious as to exactly what is involved. It could be that Germany is looking at this as a form of inexpensive foreign aid, providing help to the UAE’s nascent space effort in order to establish good will and good relations.

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Washington swamp creature hints that SLS could be in trouble

5:04 pm

Congressman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) today expressed strong disappointment with the repeated delays in the the launch of SLS and Orion, noting that the problems could lead to Congress considering “other options.”

“After all these years, after billions of dollars spent, we are facing more delays and cost overruns,” Smith said. While he noted that some delays were caused by factors out of NASA’s control, like a tornado that damaged the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans in February, “many of the problems are self-inflicted.”

“It is very disappointing to hear about delays caused by poor execution, when the U.S. taxpayer has invested so much in these programs,” he added.

Smith, who announced Nov. 2 he would not run for reelection next year after more than three decades in the House, including serving as chairman of the science committee since 2013, warned about eroding support for the programs should there be additional delays. “NASA and the contractors should not assume future delays and cost overruns will have no consequences,” he said. “If delays continue, if costs rise, and if foreseeable technical challenges arise, no one should assume the U.S. taxpayers or their representatives will tolerate this forever.”

“The more setbacks SLS and Orion face, the more support builds for other options,” he said, not elaborating on what those options would be.

Smith is part of the establishment in Congress that has been supporting SLS and Orion blindly for years. Unfortunately, he is retiring this year, and the other members of his committee did not seem as bothered by SLS’s endless delays.

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Tuesday’s election results

10:47 am

The election results from Tuesday, where Democrats won most of the significant races, has produced a lot of commentary, from both conservatives and liberals, about its significance.

To me, however, these results merely confirmed the increasingly regional nature of today’s partisan politics. This story, about a victory by a Democrat state senator candidate that puts the Democrats in complete control of Washington’s legislature, illustrates this best.

Dhingra’s victory in Washington state over Republican Jinyoung Englund means the West Coast is now the solid center of the resistance, with Democrats controlling legislatures and governorships from Seattle down to San Diego.

The Democratic victories on Tuesday all took place in areas where they strongly dominate (the coasts and urban centers), thus merely solidifying their control over those localized regions. I expect that future elections will show Republicans solidifying their control over their own regions (which is the rest of the country). In other words, people are beginning to choose sides, and we are heading to a regional and political divide that can only be solved in one of two ways: The U.S. splits, or a civil war (in the literal sense) breaks out.

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India’s space agency ISRO hopes to double launch rate

10:02 am

Capitalism in space: ISRO officials said yesterday that the agency plans to double its launch rate next year, while also shifting as much of its space manufacturing effort to the private sector.

Currently, the space agency launches 9 to 10 spacecraft built by it every year. Dr K Sivan, director of Thiruvananthapuram-based Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, said, “Isro is targeting to double the number of launches from 9-10 to 18-19 launches per year.”

On outsourcing of jobs to the private industry, Isro chairman A S Kiran Kumar said the space agency does as much activity as possible with the industry. “Wherever it’s possible to get things done through the industry, we are doing and it will only increase in the coming days because we need to do more frequent activities,” he told a news agency. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted language is patently false. India has never launched 9 spacecraft in a year. Last year it set a record with 7 launches. This false overstatement casts some doubt to me of the sincerity of the second claim, that the agency wishes to shift as much responsibility to the private sector as possible. Government agencies rarely give up power. In the U.S. the decision by NASA to shift from NASA-built rockets to commercially-built rockets took decades (occurring reluctantly in 2008 after years of lobbying), and even a decade after that decision the transition is hardly guaranteed.

Nonetheless, that ISRO officials are setting a goal of 18-19 launches a year indicates that they truly do want to compete with the big launch players.

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Senate kills military “Space Corps”

9:38 am

As part of this year’s military budget bill, the Senate has eliminated a House proposal that the military create a new military branch called the “Space Corps.”

The bill also completely overhauls the management of the military’s space effort, as described in detail here.

The NDAA conference report blasts the Air Force for a “broken national security space enterprise,” strips key authorities from the service and shifts much of the management of military space to the deputy secretary of defense.

The second link focuses on the management changes, while the first reviews in great detail the Senate’s budget proposals, which (surprise, surprise!) give the military more money.

In addition to changes in space-related policy, the bill would also fully authorize a pay increase for service members, increase missile defense, and add additional ships and aircraft. “The bill fully funds the 2.4% pay raise our troops are entitled to under law while blocking the President’s ability to reduce troop pay,” according to the summary.

It authorizes funding for a wide variety of additional military hardware including 90 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters across the service branches — 20 more than requested by President Donald Trump’s initial budget — and three additional Littoral Combat Ships.

The bill also “adds $4.4 billion above the President’s initial budget request to meet critical missile defense needs” — authorizing up to 28 additional ground-based Interceptors and “requiring the Missile Defense Agency to develop a space-based sensor layer for ballistic missile defense,” according to the summary.

However, the bill would also set defense spending well above the $549 billion cap under the Budget Control Act [sequestration] and Senate Democrats have vowed to block major increases to defense spending without equal increases for domestic programs.

I am not sure what to make of the management changes, though I like the elimination of the Space Corps, which was an absurd waste of money. The proposed budget increases are disturbing, however. I am especially appalled (but not surprised) at the push to eliminate sequestration, which has been the only bill passed by Republicans that has done anything to control the federal governments wasteful spending.

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New study confirms the cost effectiveness of commercial crew

8:18 pm

Capitalism in space: A new study shows that the commercial private cargo capsules are far more efficient then the space shuttle was in delivering cargo to ISS.

According to the new research paper by Edgar Zapata, who works at Kennedy Space Center, the supply services offered by SpaceX and Orbital ATK have cost NASA two to three times less than if the space agency had continued to fly the space shuttle. For his analysis, Zapata attempted to make an “apples to apples” comparison between the commercial vehicles, through June 2017, and the space shuttle.

Specifically, the analysis of development and operational expenses, as well as vehicle failures, found that SpaceX had cost NASA about $89,000 per kg of cargo delivered to the space station. By the same methodology, he found Orbital ATK had cost $135,000 per kg. Had the shuttle continued to fly, and deliver cargo via its Multi-Purpose Logistics Module, it would have cost $272,000 per kg.

…The detailed study then attempts to calculate the costs of the commercial cargo and crew programs combined, comparing that total to continued shuttle flights, which could carry both supplies and astronauts at the same time. Zapata’s best estimate is that the commercial programs cost only about 37 to 39 percent of what it would have cost NASA to continue the space shuttle program.

The benefits of the private programs go beyond cost savings, however. With multiple providers, NASA now has redundancy in case of a failure of supply lines to the space station. And there are indirect benefits as well, especially from supporting the efforts of US companies to develop new spacefaring technologies.

None of this is really news. There was once a time in the U.S. where these facts were understood without much thought. Americans once knew that private enterprise, competition, and freedom always work better than government-imposed projects. Today however we live in a post-freedom America, where the idea of depending on Americans to use their innovative talents freely to get things done is considered oppressive and racist, and must be squelched by a much wiser government.

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Surprise! First unmanned launch of SLS might be delayed until 2020

8:05 pm

Yawn. NASA admitted today that the first unmanned launch of SLS, set for December 2019, might be delayed until June 2020.

NASA’s review considered challenges related to building the SLS rocket’s core stage, issues with constructing Orion’s first European service module and tornado damage at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, NASA officials said in a statement.

“While the review of the possible manufacturing and production schedule risks indicate a launch date of June 2020, the agency is managing to December 2019,” Acting NASA Administrator Robert Lightfoot said in a statement. “Since several of the key risks identified have not been actually realized, we are able to put in place mitigation strategies for those risks to protect the December 2019 date,” Lightfoot added.

Gee, only yesterday I thought I was going out on a limb to say that the first manned flight of SLS wouldn’t happen until 2024. It looks like I wasn’t going very far out on that limb. If the first unmanned mission doesn’t happen until June 2020, the next SLS launch (using its own second stage for the first time) cannot happen until around April 2023. That mission will likely be unmanned, launching Europa Clipper. The third SLS flight, as yet unbudgeted by Congress, would then fly humans, and will likely be scheduled for 2024, though I am certain that will be an unrealistic launch date.

More likely the first manned flight of SLS will not occur before 2025, twenty-one years after George Bush first proposed it and fourteen years after the last shuttle flight. By that time the cost for this boondoggle will have risen to more than $50 billion.

2025 is about seven years in the future. I will also bet in that time both SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy and Blue Origin’s New Glenn rockets will have become operational, with both flying manned capsules. In fact, I expect them both to send human capsules to the Moon several times before SLS even gets its first manned flight off the ground. And they will do it for about a tenth the cost.

So obviously, our Congress and President know what to do! They are going to double down on SLS, pouring more money into this black hole, while making another decade of false promises about it that will never be fulfilled. Based on everything I have read coming from NASA and the National Space Council, I would be fooling myself to think otherwise.

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Driverless shuttle crashes on first day

4:24 pm

Only hours after initiating service, a driverless shuttle in Las Vegas crashed.

No one was hurt, nor is the accident described in any detail at the link. However, I think this incident highlights a reality about driverless cars: Either every vehicle on the road must be one, or none of the vehicles on the road can be one. It will be almost impossible to program a driverless car to handle the unpredictability of human drivers. If we want to leave the driving to computers (which I don’t), we will have to ban humans from driving.

Such a ban will be a terrible loss of freedom. And not surprisingly, I think the whole a push for driverless vehicles is a push in that direction.

I found a second article that describes the incident as caused by a truck driver backing into the shuttle, thus blaming the human driver (who was given a ticket by the way) and using the incident to argue against human drivers.

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A review of the Saudi purge taking place this week

9:58 am

Link here. The analysis here is the best I’ve seen, and suggests once again that we might be seeing a significant shift taking place within the Arab Middle East.

It is in the context of Saudi Arabia’s reassessment of its interests and realignment of strategic posture in recent years that the dramatic events of the past few days in the kingdom must be seen.

Saturday’s sudden announcement that a new anti-corruption panel headed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and the near simultaneous announcement of the arrest of more than two dozen royal family members, cabinet ministers and prominent businessmen is predominantly being presented as a power seizure by the crown prince. Amid widespread rumors that King Salman will soon abdicate the throne to his son, it is reasonable for the 32-year-old crown prince to work to neutralize all power centers that could threaten his ascension to the throne.

But there is clearly also something strategically more significant going on. While many of the officials arrested over the weekend threaten Mohammed’s power, they aren’t the only ones that he has purged. In September Mohammed arrested some 30 senior Wahhabist clerics and intellectuals. And Saturday’s arrest of the princes, cabinet ministers and business leaders was followed up by further arrests of senior Wahhabist clerics.

At the same time, Mohammed has been promoting clerics who espouse tolerance for other religions, including Judaism and Christianity. He has removed the Saudi religious police’s power to conduct arrests and he has taken seemingly credible steps to finally lift the kingdom-wide prohibition on women driving.

There’s a lot more, including details about how the Obama administration was dishonestly aiding the wrong side. Read it all

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Arianespace successfully launches Morocco’s first reconnaissance satellite

9:05 am

Capitalism in space: Morocco’s first reconnaissance satellite, built in France, was successfully launched into orbit last night by Arianespace’s Vega rocket.

This was Arianespace’s tenth launch in 2017, one more than its total for 2016 With one more launch scheduled, it appears the company will achieve close to its desired launch rate of one launch per month, despite labor problems in the spring that shut it down for almost two months.

Increasingly, Arianespace’s business (or ArianeGroup, depending on the rocket) seems restricted to European satellites. Its market share of American satellites is more and more being taken by American companies. This doesn’t appear to be reducing the company’s overall launch rate, however, proving once again that competition is not a zero sum game. Introduce it, and instead of the players fighting over a never changing pie of business, the pie grows so that everyone is doing more.

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More SLS delays

3:09 pm

Here we go again! At a three-day meeting this week aimed at resolving some of NASA’s scheduling issues for its Space Launch System (SLS), it appears that managers are faced with further launch delays because of the need to insert an extra SLS launch prior to the first manned flight.

The problem is that the first unmanned flight, presently set for December 2019 (but which I am positive will be delayed) will be not be using the second stage planned for later missions. In order to fly humans on that stage NASA needs to fly at least one more more unmanned mission beforehand. Since Congress has mandated that NASA use the SLS rocket to fly a mission to Europa, managers are now planning to insert that mission into the manifest prior to the manned mission.

At a major three day Technical Interchange Meeting (TIM) at the Kennedy Space Center recently, NASA noted that the Europa Clipper mission has a formal, target launch date of 4 June 2022, the opening of a 21 day launch window that closes on 25 June.

A backup launch option exists in 2023.

The problem with the June 2022 launch window is that the mobile launcher that moves the rocket from the assembly building to the launchpad will likely not be ready by then. If it is not, then the next time Europa Clipper can fly, in 2023, will certainly force more delays on the first manned SLS/Orion flight. And even if it is ready, I am willing to bet that NASA will not be able to fly that manned mission in 2023 regardless. For years the agency has made it clear that they will need at least two years turn-around time between SLS launches.

So, my prediction that the first manned mission of SLS/Orion will occur in 2023 was wrong. I now predict it will not occur prior to 2024, more than 20 years after George Bush first proposed it.

Overall, the entire NASA project to replace the space shuttle with a manned rocket and capsule is the perfect poster boy for government incompetence, waste, and corruption. Twenty years, and all we will get, at most, is a single manned mission and one flight capsule. Worse, by 2024 the cost for this entire effort will likely have exceeded $50 billion. What a squandering of taxpayer money.

What makes this more infuriating is that this is not an exception, it is now the standard operating procedure for the entire federal government. From incompetence in the Navy to the failure of the Air Force to do something as simple as properly registering a person in the FBI’s gun national background check system, our federal government is a disaster. And I see only a token effort by Congress and even Trump to fix it.

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