Tag: government

SOFIA to retire to Arizona museum

9:28 am

NASA yesterday announced that its airborne 747 SOFIA telescope will be retired to the Pima Air & Space Museum in Tucson, Arizona, making its final flight there December 13, 2022.

Pima, one of the world’s largest aerospace museums, is developing plans for when and how the SOFIA aircraft will eventually be on display to the public. Along with six hangars, 80 acres of outdoor display grounds, and more than 425 aircraft from around the world, Pima also has its own restoration facility where incoming aircraft like SOFIA are prepared for museum immortalization after their arrival.

While the idea of SOFIA, putting a astronomical telescope on an airplane to get it above most of the atmosphere, has some merit, this particular NASA project was always too costly and simply produced too little science to justify its expense.

In many ways, this museum display will provide one of the best ways to see a 747 itself, now also retired.

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NASA awards Collins contract to build spacesuits for space station spacewalks

9:22 am

Capitalism in space: NASA yesterday awarded Collins Aerospace a $97.2 million contract to build spacesuits for the agency’s future space station spacewalks.

In June NASA had picked Collins and Axiom as the vendors who would build spacesuits for the agency. In September it purchased its its first Artemis Moon spacesuits from Axiom. This new contract has NASA buying its first new space station suits from Collins.

In both cases, the companies own their designs, and can thus sell them to the other private space stations presently under construction.

This contract award follows NASA abandonment of its own failed spacesuit effort, which spent fourteen years and a billion dollars and produced nothing.

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Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander passes launch tests

9:14 am

Astrobotic’s first demonstration lunar lander, dubbed Peregrine, has passed its vibration and acoustic tests, demonstrating it can survive launch on ULA’s Vulcan rocket, presently scheduled for the first quarter of ’23.

The lander is now undergoing electromagnetic interference testing, which will be followed by thermal vacuum tests. Once those tests are complete, the company said, it will ship the lander to Cape Canaveral, Florida, to be integrated with the Vulcan Centaur for a launch currently scheduled in the first quarter of 2023. That launch will be the inaugural flight of the Vulcan Centaur.

A great deal will be riding on that first Vulcan launch, both for Astrobotic and ULA.

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China completes two launches successfully

8:48 am

China today successfully completed two launches:

First, China’s government used its Long March 2D rocket to launch a classified Earth observation satellite into orbit. The rocket launched from an interior spaceport, dropping its expendable first stages within China.

Next, the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) successfully completed the inaugural launch of its Smart Dragon-3 solid-fueled rocket, putting 14 smallsats into orbit. The rocket launched from a platform at sea, so its expendable stages fell in the ocean. Though the rocket is aimed at launching commercial payloads, it is still a Chinese government project using military missile technology.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

57 China
55 SpaceX
21 Russia
9 Rocket Lab
8 ULA

The U.S. still leads China 79 to 57 in the national rankings, but trails the entire world combined 87 to 79.

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Pushback: Professor wins big against Auburn for punishing him for his opinions

12:08 pm

No free speech at Auburn University
Freedom of speech considered bad at Auburn University!

Bring a gun to a knife fight: After his superiors fired him as chair of the economics department at Auburn University because he had criticized the university’s policy of passing scholarship athletes for doing no work, professor Michael Stern sued, and has now won a $645K court case.

You can read his complaint here [pdf], and the jury verdict here [pdf]. The case hinged on the decision of Joseph Aistrup, the former dean at the College of the Liberal Arts, to fire him as department chair in May 2018 because Stern had publicly raised questions about the high numbers of athletics majoring in “Public Administration,” a program that seemed designed to give them a free ride. This conflict began on February 4, 2014:

Auburn University’s Faculty Athletics Representative (“FAR”), Dr. Mary Boudreaux, put on a presentation in the University Senate wherein she claimed that there was no clustering of athletes by any major at Auburn. Plaintiff [Stern] questioned her in relation to the Public Administration program and football, given the contrasting information Plaintiff was told by a colleague. (During the 2013 Iron Bowl, Dr. Randy Beard (Economics professor and Plaintiffs colleague) noticed that almost all of the star players on the football team had Public Administration as a major).

Dr. Joseph Aistrup (new College of Liberal Arts Dean at the time) ran up to Plaintiff on the way out of the Faculty Senate. He looked green and like he was going to cry. He said, “Oh my God, Mike, I can’t believe you mentioned our program. I’m going to hear about this.”

» Read more

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China’s possible plans for expanding Tiangong-3

9:20 am

Though the plans have apparently not been approved, the designers of China’s Tiangong-3 space station are now considering expanding the station with additional large modules.

“Following our current design, we can continue to launch an extension module to dock with the forward section of the space station, and the extension module can carry a new hub for docking with the subsequent space vehicles,” [Wang Xiang, commander of the space station system at the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST)] told CCTV following the return to Earth of the Shenzhou-14 crew Dec. 4.

With a new docking hub, the Chinese would actually have the potential of doubling the station’s size by duplicating its present configuration with one central module (with the hub) and two side modules.

The station’s design, an upgrade of the Soviet Union’s Mir station, also allows for relatively easy replacement of modules as they age. Though the station only has a planned ten-year life, do not be surprised if it remains operational for many decades beyond that.

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Sweden upgrading suborbital launchsite for orbital business

8:52 am

A Swedish launchsite that the European Space Agency (ESA) has used on and off for decades for suborbital test launches is now being upgraded to make it attractive to smallsat rocket companies.

Founded by the European Space Agency (ESA) in 1966 to study the atmosphere and Northern Lights phenomenon, the Esrange space center has invested heavily in its facilities in recent years to be able to send satellites into space.

At a huge new hangar big enough to house two 30-meter rockets currently under assembly elsewhere, Philip Pahlsson, head of the “New Esrange” project, pulls up a heavy blue door. Under the rosy twilight of this early afternoon, construction machines nearby can be seen busily completing work on three new launch pads. “Satellite launches will start to take place from here next year,” Pahlsson says.

In Europe, Esrange is competing with a new Norway spaceport for the first orbital rocket launch. It is also competing with two spaceports in Scotland. And the one that makes launches easy for the new smallsat rocket companies is going to garner the most business.

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UK regulators block Virgin Orbit launch

8:42 am

We’re here to help you: Bureaucrats at the United Kingdom’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) have refused to issue Virgin Orbit a launch permit in time for its proposed December 14, 2022 launch date, and have thus forced the company to stand down.

Dan Hart, Virgin Orbit chief executive, said the Civil Aviation Authority’s refusal to give the company an operating licence meant the launch would be delayed again. Britain’s first ever space mission was scheduled to take place on the night of December 14, Virgin Orbit announced yesterday.

But Virgin Orbit was forced to row back on its plans within hours. The company will now “retarget launch for the coming weeks”.

The refusal does not mean that the launch will never happen, only that the CAA is not going to hurry its approval for Richard Branson. This delay is thus crushing this company, as it has been unable to launch other customers while this launch is pending, and therefore has been unable to earn any additional revenue.

That the CAA has been working on this permit for more than half a year and still cannot issue, however, does not bode well for future UK rocket launches. Virgin Orbit launches from a runway, using a 747, and has done so successfully four times already. If the CAA cannot figure out how to okay it to launch after doing six months of paperwork, how is it going to okay launches for regular rockets from the two Scotland launchpads now under construction? Based on this situation, it will take forever to get launches off, and thus the CAA is likely going to force satellite customers top migrate to other spaceports outside the UK.

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Why We Fight: The Nazis Strike

6:01 pm

An evening pause: For tonight, the anniversary of the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, I think this documentary created by Frank Capra for the U.S. government in 1943 is most appropriate.

Though created to rally Americans to the war effort, the film is not propaganda. It is a remarkably accurate telling of the history leading up to Pearl Harbor in detailing how Hitler was able to gain control of almost all of Europe, through lies, force, and the weak-kneed opposition of his opponents. Only with Soviet Russia and its secret pact with Germany to divide up Poland does the film fail to tell the facts thoroughly, but here it fails by omission, not lies. In the end, however, it is accurate, because the Soviet Union’s pact, intended to bring it security from German invasion, failed. Hitler had lied once again, and the U.S.S.R. became only another victim of his greed for power.

It is worthwhile for Americans to watch it now, because the same lies and greed for power is eating away at our own country from within. Any honest open-minded viewing of this mid-20th century history cannot help but see the parallels.

I should add that Capra knew how to make movies, and he made sure this history was told in a riveting and compelling manner. You will not be bored.

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Pushback: Judge rules flight attendant must be rehired by Southwest, but reduces her award significantly

1:52 pm

Southwest Airlines: Enemy to free speech

Blacklists are back and the business community loves ’em: Though Charlene Carter, the Southwest flight attendant who was fired because she expressed opinions the company and her union did not like, had won her lawsuit against the company, federal district Judge Brantley Starr has reduced the jury award to her from $5.1 million to $810,000 in order “to comply with federal limits on punitive damages.”

The judge this week reduced that award to $300,000 in compensatory and punitive damages from Southwest and $300,000 from the union, $150,000 in back pay and about $60,000 in interest.

In ordering Southwest to reinstate Carter this week, the judge made a reference to a line in Southwest advertising campaigns. “Bags fly free with Southwest. But free speech didn’t fly at all with Southwest in this case,” Starr wrote.

This story is an update on two previous blacklist columns, the second of which described the ugly email correspondence between company and union officials prior to Carter’s firing. Brian Talburt, an official with the Transit Workers Union (TWU), had written to both his boss, union head Audrey Stone, as well as one Southwest manager as follows about Carter:
» Read more

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Blue Origin-led team bids for NASA manned lunar lander contract

11:09 am

Capitalism in space: Though few details have been released, Blue Origin has teamed up with Boeing and Lockheed Martin to bid for a NASA contract to build a second manned lunar lander, after SpaceX’s Starship.

Blue Origin revealed its team’s submission to that second NASA program in a brief statement posted on its website on Tuesday, saying “in partnership with NASA, this team will achieve sustained presence on the Moon.”

The deadline for proposals was Tuesday. NASA is expected to make an award decision in June 2023.

Blue Origin’s team also includes spacecraft software firm Draper, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based Astrobotic and Honeybee Robotics, a manufacturer of military and civil robotic systems that was acquired by Blue Origin in January.

It will be interesting to see if this proposed lander is significantly different than the previous proposal, which NASA considered overpriced and not as capable as Starship.

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Virgin Orbit schedules launch from the UK, despite no permit

11:01 am

Virgin Orbit has now scheduled its first launch from a Cornwall airport for December 14, 2022, even though the company has not been issued its launch permit from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) of the United Kingdom, even after almost six months of delays.

Spaceport Cornwall was awarded an operators licence by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) last month, meaning the site is licensed for launch operations.

However, Virgin Orbit as the operator needs both launch and range licences from the CAA before the historic launch can happen. Spaceport Cornwall told MailOnline that December 14 is when the window opens for the first launch attempt – although this is ‘by no means a guaranteed flight date’.

According to a BBC report, that license has still not been issued. I suspect Virgin Orbit has set this date to pressure the CAA to finally get its act together and issue the permit.

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