Tag: NASA

SpaceX successfully launches four astronauts to ISS

7:16 pm

At launch
Falcon 9 lifts off from Cape Canaveral.

Capitalism in space: SpaceX tonight successfully used its Falcon 9 rocket to launch four astronauts to ISS on its new Endurance capsule.

SpaceX now has three capsules in its manned fleet, Endeavour, Resilience, and Endurance. This was the company’s fifth manned launch, and its fourth for NASA. The crew will dock with ISS tomorrow in the early evening.

The company also successfully landed its first stage, which was also making its second flight.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

41 China
24 SpaceX
18 Russia
4 Northrop Grumman
4 ULA
4 Europe (Arianespace)

China now leads the U.S. 41 to 37 in the national rankings.

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Viewing tonight’s Endurance launch with four astronauts

9:25 am

NASA has published an updated schedule for the launch tonight of four astronauts to ISS in SpaceX’s new Endurance Dragon capsule.

The launch now is targeted for no earlier than 9:03 p.m. EST Wednesday, Nov. 10, on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The launch follows a successful return of the agency’s SpaceX Crew-2 mission.

The Crew Dragon Endurance is scheduled to dock to the space station at 7:10 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 11. Launch and docking coverage will air live on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website.

You can also watch it on SpaceX’s website, as well as the embedded live stream below, which begins around 4 pm (Eastern).

This will be the fourth manned flight SpaceX has launched for NASA, the fifth overall using three spacecraft.
» Read more

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NASA admits manned lunar landing can’t happen before ’25

3:37 pm

NASA administrator Bill Nelson admitted today that the goal of landing Americans back on the Moon by 2024 was impossible, and that the agency has now delayed that target date one year to 2025.

Nelson attempted to blame the delay on Blue Origin’s lawsuit against NASA for its award of the manned lunar lander contract to SpaceX.

He blamed the shifting timeline on a lawsuit over the agency’s moon lander, to be built by SpaceX, and delays with NASA’s Orion capsule, which is to fly astronauts to lunar orbit. “We’ve lost nearly seven months in litigation, and that likely has pushed the first human landing likely to no earlier than 2025,” Mr. Nelson said, adding that NASA will need to have more detailed discussions with SpaceX to set a more specific timeline.

This however is a bald-faced lie. The Trump 2024 deadline was never realistic. Moreover, delays in SLS and Orion have been continuous and ongoing for years, all of which made a ’24 landing quite difficult and if attempted extremely unsafe. Even as it is, trying this mission by ’25 is risky, especially if it depends on SLS. Moreover, as the article notes, how SLS, Orion, and SpaceX’s Starship will team up to get this mission — designed by a committee — to and from the Moon remains exceedingly unclear.

With great confidence I predict that if the lunar mission depends on SLS in any manner, it will not launch in ’25 either.

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Endeavour undocking from ISS delayed one day; Endurance launch still set for November 10th

9:03 am

Because of high winds, the undocking of Endeavour from ISS was delayed from yesterday until today, with the landing now set for later this evening.

If conditions are favorable Monday, Crew-2 astronauts Shane Kimbrough, Megan McArthur, Akihiko Hoshide and Thomas Pesquet will enter their Crew Dragon capsule currently attached to the International Space Station and depart at 2:05 p.m. ET. Splashdown in one of seven potential landing sites off the Florida coast is expected about eight hours later at 10:33 p.m. ET.

The 24-hour delay from Sunday to Monday, however, didn’t impact the timing for another crew waiting to swap positions. Crew-3 astronauts Kayla Barron, Raja Chari, Thomas Marshburn, and Matthias Maurer are prepping for their Falcon 9 launch currently scheduled for no earlier than 9:03 p.m. Wednesday. Kennedy Space Center’s pad 39A will host.

Both NASA and SpaceX want to get Endeavour back to Earth, as it has already exceeded the six month time it is designed (at present) to stay in space.

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Endeavour and crew to return to Earth tomorrow

9:28 am

UPDATE: The landing and launch have been delayed again because of weather, with the ISS crew now targeting a splashdown tomorrow, November 8th, and the new crew targeting a November 10th launch.

The four astronauts who were brought to ISS six months ago by the Dragon capsule Endeavour will now return to Earth early tomorrow, ahead of the next crew that is now scheduled to launch to ISS on November 10th on the Dragon capsule Endurance.

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-2 mission now is targeting a return to Earth no earlier than 7:14 a.m. EST Monday, Nov. 8, with a splashdown off the coast of Florida. The Crew Dragon spacecraft, named Endeavour, is scheduled to undock from the International Space Station at 1:05 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 7, to begin the journey home. NASA will preview the mission on Saturday, Nov. 6 and provide coverage Sunday of the mission on NASA Television, the NASA app, and the agency’s website.

The agency decided to flip the two events in order to make sure it could get Endeavour back to Earth before it exceeded its seventh-month life limit in space.

A reminder: Both the splashdown of Endeavour and the launch of Endurance will be run by a private company, SpaceX, with the government merely acting as customer. Every worker you see, except for the astronauts, will be employees of SpaceX, not NASA.

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NASA runs out of money for building second SLS mobile launcher

9:37 am

SLS's two mobile launchers, costing $1 billion
NASA’s bloated SLS mobile launchers

NASA has had to halt construction of the second mobile launcher platform for its SLS rocket because the agency has run out of money.

Overall, NASA spent almost a billion dollars on the first launcher (to be used only three times), and now has budgeted almost a half billion dollars for the second.

That’s about $1.4 billion, and apparently it is not enough.

The second Mobile Launcher (ML-2) has a cost estimate of $450 million. However, like ML-1, that cost is likely to rise over time based on the challenges involving ML-1, which ranged from being overweight to suffering from a slight lean. Both of these issues have since been resolved via engineering solutions. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words illustrate more NASA incompetence. The first platform was designed and built badly, being too heavy for its purposes while also improperly tilting sideways The agency had to spend a lot of money and time fixing these problems.

Meanwhile, SpaceX moves its Starship spaceship and Superheavy booster about in Boca Chica using simple truck movers that probably cost the company no more than a million dollars each, if that. And they became operational quickly, and are now in use.

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Astra proposes its own 13,000 satellite internet constellation

9:17 pm

Capitalism in space: Astra, the startup smallsat rocket company that has yet to successfully complete an orbital launch, has filed with the FCC a proposal to launch a 13,000 satellite constellation for providing internet services globally.

Astra said its satellites would be built in-house, and would be launched on Astra’s own rockets. The satellites would be sent into orbital altitudes ranging from 236 to 435 miles (380 to 700 kilometers), and would be equipped with propulsion systems to aid in collision avoidance and post-operational deorbiting.

Potential applications for Astra’s high-bandwidth connectivity would include communications services, environmental and natural resource applications and national security missions.

Though Astra could certainly launch many of these satellites itself, it is unlikely it launch them all with its small rocket. Thus, more launch business for other rocket companies!

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Weather forces another delay for Endurance launch to ISS

9:05 pm

Because of poor weather expected on November 7 evening NASA and SpaceX have once again delayed the launch of the manned Dragon capsule Endurance carrying four astronauts to ISS.

The U.S. space agency and SpaceX have pushed the launch of the Crew-3 mission, which will send four astronauts to the International Space Station, from Saturday (Nov. 6) to Monday (Nov. 8) at the earliest, because of anticipated bad weather over the coming days.

NASA and SpaceX are also now considering whether to bring the four astronauts of the previous mission, Crew-2, back down to Earth before sending Crew-3 skyward.

The reason they might bring the crew home first is because the capsule they will be using, Endeavour, is only rated to stay in space for seven months, and the end of that time period is approaching. If they wait much longer, the mediocre November weather could prevent a return before that end date is reached.

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Dragon manned launch delayed again

3:48 pm

NASA announced today that the manned launch of four astronatus to ISS on SpaceX’s Endurance spacecraft has been delayed again, pushed back to November 6tth because of a “minor medical issue”.

The agency says one of the astronauts has a “minor medical issue.” The issue is not a medical emergency and not related to COVID-19, according to NASA.

The launch is now set for 11:36 pm (Eastern) that evening.

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Hubble in safe mode again

10:50 pm

According to NASA’s Twitter feed for the Hubble Space Telescope, it went into safe mode earlier this week because of “issues with internal communications.”

Hubble’s science instruments went into safe mode on Monday after experiencing synchronization issues with internal spacecraft communications. Science observations have been temporarily suspended while the team investigates the issue. The instruments remain in good health.

Much of the press is using that lovely buzzword of bureaucrats, calling this a “glitch.” The goal of that word is to make the problem seem minor and no big deal.

It can’t be minor and no big deal however if the telescope shut down six days ago and remains out of service. This is not a “glitch.” This is a serious issue that is taking time to resolve.

Furthermore, I get more concerned when no further information is provided. As far as I can so far find, the quote above is the only information NASA has released. And that information is remarkably vague and uninformative.

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Firefly approves design of its unmanned lunar lander

9:08 am

Capitalism in space: Firefly has completed and approved the design of its unmanned lunar lander, and will now begin construction with a launch date targeting 2023.

Firefly said Monday that it has completed the “critical design review” phase of its program to develop a lunar lander. This means the company can now proceed to build and order components for the “Blue Ghost” spacecraft and begin its assembly. Firefly aims to launch the spacecraft as the primary payload on a Falcon 9 rocket in the fall of 2023.

NASA is sponsoring the mission as part of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program, through which it pays private companies to deliver scientific experiments to the Moon. NASA is paying $93.3 million for this Blue Ghost mission, which will carry 10 payloads down to the Mare Crisium lunar basin in September 2023.

In the next three years a plethora of commercial unmanned lunar landers have scheduled flights, all bringing both NASA science as well commercial payloads to the lunar surface. All are being designed and built by private companies. Expect some to fail. Some however will succeed, and will thus establish themselves as the go-to companies if you want to put a payload on the Moon.

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Musk: Starship orbital flight could happen as soon as next month

2:57 pm

Capitalism in space: Elon Musk today announced that SpaceX will be ready to launch the first orbital flight of Starship as soon as one month from now.

“If all goes well, Starship will be ready for its first orbital launch attempt next month, pending regulatory approval,” Musk tweeted today [emphasis mine]

Musk’s tweet came one day after the FAA completed its public hearings on its environment reassessment of SpaceX’s operations in Boca Chica. Before the agency can approve that reassessment it has to digest the comments, then to hold an “industry workshop” on this reassessment.

Thus, while SpaceX is ready to go, our lumbering, oppressive government is not. As I’ve written before, I fully expect there to be pressure from the Biden administration and NASA to slow walk that government approval so that Starship does not launch before February 2022, when SLS is now scheduled for its first launch. Having SpaceX get its heavy lift rocket into orbit before NASA would be very embarrassing, considering that SpaceX has spent about a third the time and about a tenth the money getting it done.

I hope I am wrong, but this is what I expect from the corrupt federal government we now have.

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NASA sets target launch date for SLS in February ’22

2:51 pm

As expected, the first unmanned demo launch of NASA’s SLS rocket has now been scheduled for a February launch window.

The first launch window for NASA’s Artemis I mission opens on February 12 at 5:56 p.m. EDT – yes, we have dates and times for this long-awaited mission. The February window lasts two weeks, with the first half of that window allowing a six-week mission and a four-week mission on the back half.

If for some reason NASA cannot launch in that firs window, they have back up windows in March and April. These windows exist because the plan is to send the Orion capsule to orbit the Moon from four to six weeks, and then return to Earth.

The announcement came the day after NASA had finally stacked the Orion capsule on top of the SLS rocket, essentially completing the rocket’s assembly.

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NASA document: Starship orbital flight in March ’22

9:11 am

Starship orbital flight date?
Click for full image.

According to a NASA proposal to observe and measure the temperatures on Starship’s thermal protection during its return to Earth from orbit, that flight is now tentatively scheduled for March ’22.

The graphic to the right highlights the pertinent language in the poster presentation.

It must be noted that the poster might not be telling us when Starship will first launch, but when the designers of the camera system will be ready to film. The two are different. Still, the slowdown in flight testing at Boca Chica by SpaceX since July suggests there may be some truth to this date. That date also seems more reasonable now in connection with the FAA’s regulatory pace, which still needs to provide the final approval of SpaceX’s environmental reassessment of its Boca Chica launch site.

It also seems to me that the March ’22 date would be very convenient for NASA, as it almost certainly guarantees that Starship will reach orbit after SLS, thus avoiding for the agency a very big public relations embarrassment. I would not be surprised at all if the Biden administration and NASA’s top administrators, led by Bill Nelson, are purposely pressuring the FAA to make sure that Starship orbital flight is delayed until after the first SLS test flight, now expected in the January/February time frame.

There is also the possibility that SpaceX’s targeted launch dates were unrealistically optimistic. The company had a lot of work it needed to do prior to launch on its orbital launch facility at Boca Chica, and that work could not go forward while test flights and static fire tests were taking place. Pausing those tests has allowed the launch facility work to move forward aggressively.

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A Lucy solar panel on Lucy fails to latch properly after deployment

8:40 am

Partly deployed panel

Engineers at Lockheed Martin (the prime contractor) and Northrop Grumann (which built the panels) are now troubleshooting an issue with one of the solar panels on the asteroid probe Lucy, which failed to latch properly after deployment.

The NASA graphic to the right illustrates this issue, though the graphic might not accurately portray the exact circumstance at Lucy. To get more solar power, Lucy’s panels are larger, and thus were designed to unfurl like a fan rather than the more commonly used accordion design. One panel has not completed that unfurling.

NASA’s announcement tries to minimize the issue but this quote from the link makes it clear that this could be a very big problem.

It’s not yet clear whether the array in question is, in fact, fully deployed but not latched in place or whether it did not reach full deployment and is not generating the same amount of power as its counterpart. It’s also not yet clear whether Lucy can safely fire its maneuvering thrusters with an unlatched array.

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Australia to build unmanned lunar rover for NASA

7:06 am

NASA and Australia have signed a deal whereby Australia will provide an unmanned lunar rover on which NASA will put its science instruments, with the package taken to the Moon by a commercial lander.

As part of the agreement, a consortium of Australian businesses and research organizations will develop a small rover that can operate on the lunar surface. The rover would have the ability to pick up and transfer lunar regolith (broken rock and dust) to a NASA-operated in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) system on a commercial lunar lander. Such a rover could fly to the Moon as early as 2026.

While this agreement helps widen the competition in the commercial unmanned planetary aerospace industry, it does so by helping the industry of another country. This policy fits the general philosophy of the Democratic Party and the Biden administration, which generally focuses on aiding other countries before the U.S.

Posted on the road to Phoenix.

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Update on Boeing’s investigation into Starliner valve issue

10:10 am

NASA yesterday issued an update on Boeing’s investigation into Starliner valve issue, noting that progress is being made.

Boeing has demonstrated success in valve functionality using localized heating and electrical charging techniques. Troubleshooting on the pad, at the launch complex, and inside the Starliner production factory at Kennedy Space Center has resulted in movement of all but one of the original stuck valves. That valve has not been moved intentionally to preserve forensics for direct root cause analysis.

Most items on the fault tree have been dispositioned by the team including causes related to avionics, flight software and wiring. Boeing has identified a most probable cause related to oxidizer and moisture interactions, and although some verification work remains underway, our confidence is high enough that we are commencing corrective and preventive actions. Additional spacecraft and component testing will be conducted in the coming weeks to further explore contributing factors and necessary system remediation before flight.

…Boeing has identified several paths forward depending on the outcome of the testing to ultimately resolve the issue and prevent it from happening on future flights. These options could range from minor refurbishment of the current service module components to using another service module already in production. [emphasis mine]

The announcement also confirmed that the next launch attempt of the unmanned demo mission is now being targeted for “the first half of 2022, pending hardware readiness, the rocket manifest, and space station availability.”

The highlighted words raise a very serious question. How is it possible for “oxidizer and moisture interactions” to cause this problem now on Starliner, when the environmental conditions at Cape Canaveral for spacecraft have been understood for better than sixty years? Though this problem might have uncovered a previously undetected fundamental engineering issue related to valves, I am very skeptical. It seems more likely that some quality control issue occurred during this capsule’s assembly. That they are considering using a different Starliner capsule for the demo flight strongly confirms this, suggesting again that the valve issue is not systemic to all valves but is specifically linked to the assembly of this capsule.

If this speculation is correct, it suggests there are some some very disturbing quality control problems in Boeing’s Starliner design and assembly processes. First they missed about sixty software issues that forced the premature landing of the capsule in the first demo flight, issues that should have been fixed during design and construction. Now it appears they have discovered assembly problems with the capsule’s valves, and only did so mere hours before launch.

Boeing has got to get these issues fixed, or it is going to have a serious public relations problem garnering private customers outside NASA once Starliner begins commercial flights.

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NASA shifts Starliner crew to Dragon to get them in space

9:54 am

NASA announced yesterday that it is is changing the launch assignments of two astronauts from Boeing’s long delayed Starliner capsule to SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, thus allowing them to get into space sooner.

Astronauts Nicole Mann and Josh Cassada were supposed to be among the first human passengers on Starliner during its first crewed flights in the coming years. Now, they’ll fly together on SpaceX’s fifth crewed mission to the International Space Station, which is slated to take place in the fall of 2022.

Both had been assigned to Starliner in 2018, but the delays at Boeing have left them stranded on the ground while others are flying. Worse, it is now unclear when Starliner will launch, as Boeing has not yet resolved the serious valve issue that scrubbed the launch of Starliner’s second unmanned demo mission in August.

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NASA issues request for commercially-built spacesuits for its Artemis program

10:39 pm

Capitalism in space: After more than a decade of delays in building its own in-house next generation spacesuits, NASA this week issued a request for proposals from the commercial space industry for new spacesuits for its Artemis program.

Bidders can use the technology NASA developed for [its unfinished upgraded spacesuits] in its proposals, or they can use their own designs, the document states. The suits must be able to meet a variety of requirements, including up to six spacewalks on the lunar surface during initial Artemis Moon missions. They must also be made of materials such that less than 100 grams of lunar regolith is brought back into the “cabin environment” after each spacewalk on the Moon. NASA plans to award a contract by next April.

The plan is comparable to what NASA has been doing across the board now for the last three years, buy the product from the commercial sector in a fixed price contract. The company that builds the suits will retain ownership of the design, and can make money selling its use to others.

This policy approach continues the agency’s acceptance of almost all the recommendations put forth in my 2017 policy paper, Capitalism in Space, a free pdf download.

It also likely means NASA might finally get the spacesuits it needs for future lunar missions quickly and at a reasonable cost, something the agency itself has been unable to do.

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NASA awards Aerojet Rocketdyne contract to build 20 Orion main engines

10:21 am

NASA announced yesterday that it has awarded Aerojet Rocketdyne the contract to build twenty Orion main engines for capsules on missions running through 2032, with the first to be used on the seventh Artemis launch..

This engine is the one that Orion will use to enter and leave lunar orbit.

Based on the pace that NASA expects to launch SLS, once per year, I expect the last engine in this contract will fly in 2048, not 2032, since it will take about 27 years to put that many Orions into space after SLS’s first launch, expected sometime in the next five months.

In other words, this is a contract to keep the jobs at Aerojet Rocketdyne in existence for the next three decades, even if that company’s engineers build little and accomplish less. Nice welfare work I must say.

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Starliner unmanned demo flight likely delayed until ’22

9:20 am

Capitalism in space: The second Starliner unmanned demo flight, repeatedly delayed throughout ’21 due to scheduling and technical problems, is now likely to be delayed until next year.

Apparently, Boeing engineers have been unable to figure out why 13 of 64 valves on Starliner failed to function properly just hours before the last planned launch, causing the launch to be scrubbed.

The quality control systems at Boeing during this entire program have not shined. The capsule is now years behind schedule, and has been dogged by design and construction flaws — from software to parachutes to valves — that in the 21st century should not be problems any longer in building a manned spacecraft.

Like SpaceX and its Dragon capsule, Boeing owns Starliner and will be able to offer private citizens and companies flights on it once it is operational. These failures, however, will not be good for that future business. They make this spacecraft a far less appealing product when compared to the high quality of the engineering at SpaceX. Why would anyone risk their life on Starliner when they can buy a ticket on the apparently much more reliable Dragon?

In other words, Boeing has been doing terrible harm to its brand name with these problems. It needs to get them fixed, and fast.

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NASA reorganizes bureaucracy of manned programs

9:05 am

Moving those deck chairs! NASA yesterday announced that it is reorganizing the bureaucracy of its manned programs, splitting the Artemis program out from the commercial program.

The space agency announced today (Sept. 21) that it’s splitting the current Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate (HEOMD) into two new entities: the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate (ESDMD) and Space Operations Mission Directorate (SOMD).

…ESDMD will be responsible for the development of systems and technology critical for NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to land astronauts on the moon in the next few years and establish a sustainable human presence on and around Earth’s nearest neighbor by the end of the 2020s. ESDMD will also map out NASA’s broader “Moon to Mars” exploration strategy, of which Artemis is an integral part, agency officials said. (NASA aims to land humans on Mars in the 2030s, by leveraging the skills and techniques learned during the Artemis moon effort.)

SOMD, meanwhile, will be in charge of crewed launches and ongoing human spaceflight operations, including activities on the International Space Station and the commercialization of low Earth orbit, a NASA priority over the coming years. SOMD will also be responsible for crewed operations on and around the moon once they get up and running.

Kathy Lueders, who had been promoted from just running the commercial crew program to run all of manned space back in 2020, will once again run just the commercial side. The Artemis side will be run by another long time NASA administrator, Jim Free.

As I noted in 2020, these kinds of reorganizations at NASA happen periodically, and generally accomplish little except to allow NASA’s top managers to make believe they are doing something. In this case the split I think is intended to prevent Artemis from being completely taken over by commercial space, thus giving some bureaucratic clout to SLS and the factions at NASA that favor government control, with NASA designing and building everything rather than simply being a customer. If so, the decision is a bad one for Artemis. It means the Biden administration and those factions want to once again take over the design and construction of the entire Artemis program. Since NASA’s track record in this area has been abysmal for decades, it is unlikely this shift will change anything for the better.

This reorganization also suggests that the Biden administration has had second thoughts about the private and commercial approach as recommended in my policy paper, Capitalism in space and adopted by the Trump administration. If so, the consequences for the new emerging private space industry will not be good. They shall increasingly find the government more eager to micromanage their designs and concepts, rather than allowing the private sector the freedom to create things on its own.

The one silver lining to this change is that by creating these two divisions, NASA will be highlighting the competition between them. As commercial space increasingly succeeds, leaving the cumbersome Artemis program far behind, the split will illustrate clearly to the entire world that a government-built program is not the way to go.

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NASA reviewing a dozen commercial proposals for future government space stations

8:45 am

Capitalism in space: Rather than replace the aging International Space Station (ISS) with an entirely government-designed-and-built new station, NASA is now reviewing about a dozen commercial proposals from private companies.

NASA earlier this year unveiled the Commercial LEO Destinations project, with plans to award up to $400 million in total contracts to as many as four companies to begin development of private space stations. In response to NASA’s request, its director of commercial spaceflight, Phil McAlister, told CNBC that the agency “received roughly about a dozen proposals” from a variety of companies for contracts under the project.

…The ISS is more than 20 years old and costs NASA about $4 billion a year to operate. The space station is approved to operate through the end of 2024, with a likely lifespan extension to the end of 2028. But, moving forward, McAlister says NASA wants “to be just one of many users instead of the primary sponsor and infrastructure supporter” for stations in low Earth orbit.

Based on these initial proposals, NASA officials estimate that the agency’s cost for running this future privately-built station will be about $1 billion per year less than the cost for operating ISS.

The agency will also only pay a part of the development cost for the new station, expecting that since the private company or companies will be making money from it also they should front a significant portion of that development cost.

Essentially NASA is following precisely the recommendations I put forth in my 2017 policy paper, Capitalism in space. And as I also predicted, the result is more achievement faster for far less cost.

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NASA awards small design lunar lander contracts to five companies

9:58 am

In what appears to be an effort by NASA to placate the losers in the bidding for the manned lunar lander contract, won by SpaceX’s Starship, the agency this week awarded small design contracts related to future lunar lander construction to five different companies, totaling $ 146 million and with the large bulk of the cash going to those losers.

The contracts were as follows:

  • Dynetics (a Leidos company) of Huntsville, Alabama, $40.8 million.
  • Lockheed Martin of Littleton, Colorado, $35.2 million.
  • Northrop Grumman of Dulles, Virginia, $34.8 million.
  • Blue Origin Federation of Kent, Washington, $25.6 million.
  • SpaceX of Hawthorne, California, $9.4 million.

From the press release:

The selected companies will develop lander design concepts, evaluating their performance, design, construction standards, mission assurance requirements, interfaces, safety, crew health accommodations, and medical capabilities. The companies will also mitigate lunar lander risks by conducting critical component tests and advancing the maturity of key technologies.

While the distribution of the money suggests NASA wishes to provide the most support to the companies that lost the bid, it also gives us a hint of what the agency presently thinks of those losers. Of the losers, Blue Origin received the least, suggesting that NASA remains skeptical of that company’s effort. It also might be NASA’s signal to Blue Origin that endless lawsuits and protests — rather than actual construction — is not a good way to make friends and influence people. This conclusion is reinforced by the fact that Dynetics received the most cash, even though like Blue Origin it has yet to launch anything into orbit.

This distribution of money is also part of the typical pattern of DC crony capitalism, designed almost like pay offs to capture these companies and make them partners in the Washington swamp.

One big space company, Boeing, however received nothing. The company might not have submitted a proposal, but I suspect that if it did, NASA dismissed it outright based on the agency’s decision last year to eliminate Boeing from such contract considerations because of the incredible weakness of its recent bids. I think that Boeing will remain on the outs until it finally gets Starliner flying and operational.

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Astronaut’s mission on ISS will be extended to almost a year

9:30 am

As expected because the Russian’s have taken his return seat in October to bring home two commercial passengers (a film director and his star actress), the mission of astronaut Mark Vande Hei has been extended to March for a total of 353 days in space, just short of a year.

This time will exceed the previous American record for the longest spaceflight, set by Scott Kelly during his 340 day mission in 2015. It remains below about four Russian flights that lasted a full year or more, including the longest flight so far by Valeri Polyakov of 438 days in 1993 and 1994.

Meanwhile, there is no word on the state of the pinched nerve that forced NASA to replace Vande Hei on an upcoming spacewalk. It is likely that weightlessness is probably helping it heal, but NASA and Vande Hei are presently keeping this personal medical information private.

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Rocket Lab negatively impacted by New Zealand’s Wuhan panic lockdowns

9:07 am

Capitalism in space? Rocket Lab reported this week that not only has its income been slashed because of New Zealand’s draconian lockdowns in fear of COVID-19, the company has had to cut its planned launches for the fourth quarter of 2021 by more than half.

“Operations have experienced disruptions due to some of the most restrictive COVID-19 measures globally, including current stay-at-home orders which prevent launch operations from taking place,” said Peter Beck, chief executive of Rocket Lab, of New Zealand’s current restrictions. “Indications are that the current lockdown restrictions may ease by the end of September with the delta cases dropping in New Zealand, but this, of course, is subject to change.”

Those restrictions have delayed plans by Rocket Lab to perform three dedicated Electron launches of BlackSky satellites that had been scheduled to begin in late August. It could also affect the launch of NASA’s CAPSTONE lunar cubesat, which had been scheduled for no earlier than late October on another Electron from Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand.

Adam Spice, chief financial officer, said that the company has five Electron launches manifested for the fourth quarter of the year, but is assuming only two launches in its financial projections. While those five launches would produce more than $40 million in revenue, the company is forecasting only $17-20 million in revenue for the fourth quarter.

Meanwhile, the company has not been able to launch from its new launchpad at Wallops Island in Virginia because NASA — after almost two years! — has apparently still not approved the company’s flight termination system, used to destroy a rocket that has gone out of control. NASA’s refusal to approve this system is very puzzling and very suspicious, especially because Rocket Lab has launched 21 times with it from New Zealand, and even used it several times to successfully destroy failing rockets.

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NASA now targets December 18, 2021 for launch of Webb

1:12 pm

NASA today announced that it and the European Space Agency have scheduled the Ariane 5 launch of the James Webb Space Telescope from French Guiana for December 18, 2021.

The agency set the new target launch date in coordination with Arianespace after Webb recently and successfully completed its rigorous testing regimen – a major turning point for the mission. The new date also follows Arianespace successfully launching an Ariane 5 rocket in late July and scheduling a launch that will precede Webb. The July launch was the first for an Ariane 5 since August 2020.

Launching before the end of ’21 will allow NASA to claim that Webb is only be ten years behind schedule, not eleven. The cost overruns however remain astronomical (no pun intended). Initially budgeted at $500 million, Webb is now estimated to have cost $10 billion.

Once launched the telescope will take about six months to slowly move to its Lagrange point location about a million miles from the Earth, in the Earth’s shadow. During that time it will also be steadily deploying its many segmented mirror for infrared observations (an important detail as Webb is not a replacement for Hubble, which does most of its observations in the optical wavelengths).

Should deployment and placement go as planned, Webb will undoubtedly do ground-breaking astronomy, especially in the field of deep space cosmology. If anything should go wrong, any repair mission will take at a minimum five years to mount, if ever.

Keep those fingers and toes crossed!

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Report: NASA’s bad management of infrastructure projects routinely leads to cost overruns and delays

12:42 pm

A report released today [pdf] by NASA’s inspector general has found that NASA’s management of its infrastructure projects — designed to replace or upgrade existing facilities — is badly organized and routinely leads to cost overruns and delays.

According to the report, NASA has been spending about $359 million per year on its infrastructure for the past five years, about $1.8 billion. And what have we gotten from this spending? This quote from the report sums it up nicely:

Of the 20 [Construction of Facilities] projects we reviewed, 6 incurred significant cost overruns ranging from $2.2 million to $36.6 million and 16 of the projects are 3 months to more than 3 years behind their initial schedules. Costs increased primarily because requirements were not fully developed by the Agency before construction began, requirements were not fully understood by contractors, and contract prices were higher than originally estimated. Delays occurred because projects faced postponed start times and changing requirements, among other reasons. Finally, NASA did not provide effective oversight to determine whether the Agency’s portfolio of [Construction of Facilities] projects met cost, schedule, and performance goals. [Facilities and Real Estate Division] has failed to consistently keep up with oversight requirements of approved and funded projects and current oversight guidance does not align with Agency facility goals. [emphasis mine]

But don’t worry. Congress is about to pour several more billion dollars into NASA’s coffers for infrastructure work. I am sure the agency will figure out ways to go overbudget and behind schedule with this money as well.

For more than twenty years I have seen government-run projects fail miserably, across the board, Whether it be big rockets, high speed trains, military actions in foreign countries, foreign intelligence, or health policies in response to new viruses, our government routinely fails, its effort quickly falling far behind schedule while costing many times its initial budget. Worst of all, the final product is often useless or completely unable to achieve its initial stated goals.

And yet, Americans don’t seem to notice. We still turn first to government for everything. Too many of us depend on the CDC for our health advice, though its advice has been repeatedly mistaken, inconsistent, or just plain wrong for years. Others think NASA is the only one who can build and launch a manned space mission, though almost all of its in-house manned projects have been disasters for decades.

And above all, we must use our military to shape and reshape nations worldwide, though our military has done poorly in almost every war it has fought since World War II.

There are exceptions to all this, but the overall pattern is clear. As Tucker Carlson said recently, “We are led by buffoons.”
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House NASA budget cuts all funding for lunar lander but adds billions for “infrastructure”

10:13 pm

The House science committee is about to propose a NASA budget that would cut all funding for a lunar lander but add $4 billion so that NASA can build new buildings and facilities.

An updated draft of the bill, dated Sept. 4, offers good and bad news for NASA. It includes $4 billion for “repair, recapitalization, and modernization of physical infrastructure and facilities” across the agency. The bill does not assign amounts to specific projects or centers.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson had made funding for agency infrastructure a priority in any budget reconciliation package, seeking more than $5 billion earlier this year. “There’s aging infrastructure that is dilapidated,” he told House appropriators in May. “They’ve got holes in the roof where they’re putting together the core of the SLS” at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. Michoud suffered additional damage from Hurricane Ida last month.

However, the draft bill includes nothing for the other priority identified by Nelson, the agency’s Human Landing System (HLS) program. Nelson said in May he wanted $5.4 billion for HLS to allow NASA to select a second company alongside SpaceX to develop and demonstrate a lander capable of transporting astronauts to and from the lunar surface.

Congratulations America! This is the Congress we have voted for. They want a space agency tasked with finding ways to explore the solar system but will only fund the “repair, recapitalization, and modernization of physical infrastructure and facilities” on Earth.

In other words, NASA will have gold-plated buildings in which they will be able to do nothing but shuffle paper because Congress has given them no funding to fly anything in space.

What a joke. But then, as I said, this is the Congress Americans have chosen, so that means not only is Congress a joke, so are the American people.

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