Tag: policy

Firefly raises $75 million, targets May for next launch attempt

9:33 am

Capitalism in space: In announcing that the company has raised $75 million more in private investment capital, Firefly officials also said that it is now targeted May for its next launch attempt of its Alpha rocket.

The launch was partly delayed because of the federal government’s insistence that a Ukrainian businessman, who had saved the company when it went into bankruptcy, divest his ownership. That has now happened, so Firefly has gotten approval to launch.

Firefly CEO Tom Markusic told CNBC that the company “worked methodically and cooperatively with the government” to both complete the divestment, as well as to add “security protocols” at the company.

With the move complete, Markusic said the company now has “full access to our facilities to go back and launch.” Firefly will next transport its second Alpha rocket from its headquarters near Austin, Texas, to California, and aims to launch as soon as it can.

“We think it’ll take us about eight weeks from here to launch — so in May is our target,” Markusic told CNBC.

The company is also aiming to complete its second test launch two months after the first, assuming all goes well.

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SpaceX switches to newer Starship and Superheavy for orbital test

9:25 am

Capitalism in space: According to Elon Musk, SpaceX has decided that the company will no longer use Starship prototype #20 and Superheavy prototype #4 for the rocket’s first orbital test flight.

Instead, the company will fly two more recently built and upgraded prototypes, rumored to be numbers #24 for Starship and #7 for Superheavy. The company has also decided to switch from the first generation Raptor engines to Raptor-2s.

All these changes likely explain Musk’s announcement that the first orbital launch will not happen sooner than May. The changes also further suggest that SpaceX has realized federal permission to launch from Boca Chica will be further delayed, and thus it might has well push forward in other ways as it waits for the right to launch.

I suspect that if the federal government hadn’t moved in to block operations, it would have flown prototypes 20 and 4 two months ago, just to get some data. Now such a flight seems pointless, as more advanced prototypes are now almost ready to fly.

This decision also reinforces my prediction that no orbital flights will occur out of Boca Chica before summer, and are more likely blocked through November. It also increases my expectation that the first orbital flight might not occur at all in Texas. The longer the Biden administration delays SpaceX’s operations there, the greater the chance the entire Starship/Superheavy launch program will shift to Florida.

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Local state legislators introduce bill to disband Camden spaceport authority

9:14 am

Two Georgia state legislators yesterday introduced a bill to disband the Camden spaceport authority, following a county special election that rejected the spaceport by a vote of 72% to 28%.

Whether the bill becomes law or not will likely not make much difference to the spaceport. It is dead, and the law will merely decide whether it dies quickly, or slowly.

This quote by one of the legislators who introduced the bill, however, should be carved in stone in every statehouse and in the Capitol in Washington:

“It’s hard to ignore how the people vote.”

Too many lawmakers nationwide have forgotten this fact.

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NASA: Europa Clipper’s cost rise; Mars sample return delayed

10:10 am

At a meeting this week NASA officials admitted that the cost of its Europa Clipper mission has risen by three quarters of a billion dollars, and that the sample return mission to bring back Perseverance’s core samples will be delayed, as well as now require two landers, not one.

NASA revealed significant changes to two of its flagship planetary science missions at today’s Space Science Week meeting at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. The cost for Europa Clipper, which will gather data as it makes multiple swingbys of Jupiter’s moon Europa, has grown from $4.25 billion to $5 billion. Separately, NASA and ESA are replanning the Mars Sample Return mission. Two landers are needed instead of one to retrieve samples from the surface of Mars and boost them into orbit for their trip back to Earth. The launches will be in 2028 instead of 2026.

The sample return mission itself is also growing in complexity:

A Sample Fetch Rover will be sent to collect them and take them to a Mars Ascent Vehicle — a rocket — that will shoot them into Martian orbit where they will be transferred to an Earth Return Orbiter for the trip back to Earth.

Initially the plan was for the fetch rover and ascent vehicle to be launched together in 2026, and the Earth Return Orbiter in 2027. But Zurbuchen decided to convene an Independent Review Board in 2020 to get an impartial assessment of the plan by outside experts. The Board cautioned that 2026 was “not achieveable” with 2028 a more realistic date, and that the “program’s schedule and cost are not aligned with its scope.”

Consequently, NASA now has replanned the mission with two landers — one each for the fetch rover and ascent vehicle — instead of one. Both landers will launch in 2028. The Earth Return Orbiter will still launch in 2027. The samples will get back to Earth in 2033.

Prediction: The launch of this fleet of sample return spacecraft will be further delayed, and its overall cost will rise, by a lot. In fact, it is very possible that SpaceX’s Starship will have already returned samples from Mars before NASA’s mission gets off the ground.

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Musk says Starship will be ready for first orbital launch in May

9:47 am

Capitalism in space: In a tweet yesterday Elon Musk said that Starship will be ready for first orbital launch in May, a delay of two months from his previous announcements.

“We’ll have 39 flightworthy engines built by next month, then another month to integrate, so hopefully May for orbital flight test,” Musk tweeted in response to CNBC.

While the delay could certainly be because the company needed to prepare enough Superheavy engines, I also suspect it is also because Musk now expects the FAA to not approve the environmental reassessment of Starship’s Boca Chica launch site by the end of March, as has been promised. I predict that sometime in the next few days the FAA will announce another one-month delay in that process, the fourth such delay by that federal agency.

In late-December, when the FAA announced the first delay, I predicted that the first orbital launch of Starship would not happen until the latter half of ’22. I now think that prediction was optimistic. I firmly believe the federal government, controlled by Democrats, will delay that launch until after the mid-term elections in November. It appears to me that the Biden administration wants to reject the environmental reassessment, which would block Starship flights from Boca Chica for years. It just doesn’t want to do it before November, because of the negative election consequences.

I truly hope my cynical and pessimistic analysis is utterly wrong. So far, however, my prediction has proven to be more right than wrong.

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South Korea to build its own unmanned lunar lander

9:31 am

The new colonial movement: The government of South Korea has begun a project to build its own unmanned lunar lander, scheduled for launch sometime in the 2030s.

South Korea presented an action plan to develop a lunar lander weighing more than 1.5 tons that would carry out scientific research on the surface of the moon in the 2030s. The project is to begin in 2024 after a preliminary feasibility study.

The Ministry of Science and ICT would form a working group of industry-academic experts to conduct research on a lunar lander and draw up strategies and detailed plans by August 2022. It is a follow-up project to launch a lunar orbiter in August 2022. The lunar lander will be lifted by a next-generation homemade rocket.

The goal is to encourage the country’s own aerospace industry. The working group will spend the next month recruiting South Korean companies to join the project.

South Korea however has to first get its own homemade rocket, Nuri, to successfully launch. The first launch attempt in October 2021 failed, and the second has been delayed to fix the cause.

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Russia launches military communications satellite with Soyuz-2 rocket

8:57 am

Russia today successfully launched its tenth Meridian military communications satellite from its Plesetsk spaceport in the Russian interior, using a Soyuz-2 rocket.

Like China, Russian launches drop the expendable first stages and boosters on land. From the article:

On March 17, 2022, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced danger zones in three areas of the Komi Republic: the “Vashka” site in the Udorsky District, and “Zheleznodorozhny” site in the Knyazhpogostsky and Kortkerossky districts. According to the warning, the launch of the Soyuz-2 rocket was planned for March 22, 2022, between 15:00 and 17:00 Moscow Time (8:00 – 10:00 a.m. EDT). Backup launch opportunities were reserved for March 23, 24 and 25.

The announced impact sites matched the ground track required for the mission to access an orbit with an inclination 62.8 degrees toward the Equator, which is used by Meridian military communications satellites.

Such danger zones in Russia are the routine for every launch since Sputnik in 1957. And unlike China Russia never made any effort to develop methods for controlling the crash landing of its first stages.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

11 SpaceX
6 China
4 Russia

The U.S. still leads China 17 to 6 in the national rankings.

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Pushback: Judge rules university officials can be held personally responsible for firing a professor for his political opinions

12:36 pm

Speech that is forbidden at the University of North Texas
Speech that is forbidden at the University of North Texas

A major victory for free speech: A federal judge ruled on March 11th that officials at the University of North Texas can be held personally responsible for firing a professor because they did not like his political opinions.

In his 69-page order of March 11, Judge Sean Jordan, of the United States District Court for Eastern Texas, found that university officials should have known that math professor Nathaniel Hiers’ speech “touched on a matter of public concern and that discontinuing his employment because of his speech violated the First Amendment,” before they fired him for going public with his disagreement with the left-wing concept of “microaggressions.”

The university was claiming qualified immunity for school officials in the case, meaning that the school wanted its officials to be excluded from being held responsible for their actions merely because they were acting in their position as state employees. Jordan denied the claim of qualified immunity and also denied the school’s demand to have the case dismissed outright.

You can read the judge’s order here [pdf].

The background: Hiers, having found flyers in math department’s lounge warning faculty against triggering “microaggessions” in their conversations, responded as shown in the picture above, placing one flyer on the chalk rack of the blackboard and wrote his own opinion of it above.

Ralf Schmidt, the Math department’s head, immediately criticized Hiers for doing this, and within a week fired him without notice.
» Read more

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OneWeb signs deal with SpaceX to launch its remaining satellites, replacing Russia

9:07 am

Capitalism in space: Just 18 days after its contract with Arianespace was suspended because of Russia invasion of the Ukraine, OneWeb has now signed a deal with SpaceX to use its Falcon 9 rocket to launch the remaining 200+ satellites in its satellite constellation.

Few details about the agreement were released Monday morning. “Terms of the agreement with SpaceX are confidential,” OneWeb said in a statement.

OneWeb said the “first launch” with SpaceX is expected before the end of this year, suggesting the company anticipates multiple flights on SpaceX rockets.

It appears that launches could start before the end of this year

There are two big losers in this story. The obvious one is Russia, as it has lost OneWeb as a satellite customer. The second, less obvious, is Arianespace, as it appears it has also lost OneWeb as a customer. It will also have to refund OneWeb any payments the satellite company made for launches that have not occurred, even those that Arianespace had paid Russia for which Russia is refusing to refund.

Though no details have been released about the deal, I would not be surprised if OneWeb got a better price than what it was paying Arianespace. I also suspect that Elon Musk was willing to make this deal with OneWeb, the prime competitor to his Starlink satellite constellation, because he favors the Ukraine in this war.

Finally, this deal will not only make Russia look bad, it will make SpaceX look magnificent. Its PR value cannot be measured for the company.

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Rogozin: Lift sanctions by end of March or else!

10:13 am

Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s Roscosmos space corporation that runs all of that nations aerospace industry, yesterday demanded that Europe and the U.S. lift its sanctions against Russia by end of March or he would take further action against them.

“We will wait until the end of March. The lack of response or a negative response would be a basis for our decision,” he said, without specifying what kind of decision it would be.

According to the official, the space corporation was not going to yield to the sanctions.

One immediately asks, what happens at the end of March? Why time further space-related actions then?

Well, the only area in which Russia is still cooperating with the west in space is on ISS. At the end of March, Russia will bring home American astronaut Mark Vande Hei using its Soyuz capsule. This suggests that once Vande Hei comes home, Rogozin will announce that Russia will no longer fly any western astronauts to ISS on its rockets or capsules. He might also further announce actions that will accelerate the end of the ISS partnership, including laying out Russia’s schedule for adding modules to its half of ISS and then detaching it from the station.

If so, good. Such an action will bring clarity to the station’s remaining days, forcing NASA to make sure the station can function after the Russian half is gone. It will probably quicken the development of Axiom’s modules to the station, and might encourage the private construction of other modules to pick up the slack left by the Russian exit.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Man who found Hunter Biden’s laptop harassed, threatened, and driven to bankruptcy

12:24 pm

Today's modern witch hunt
A witch hunt: The mainstream media’s modern approach to discourse.

Persecution is now cool! The computer repair shop owner who found and made public Hunter Biden’s laptop prior to the election has found himself harassed, threatened, and even driven to bankruptcy because of that entirely legal act.

The Delaware computer repair shop owner who alerted the FBI to Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop before ultimately taking it to Rudy Giuliani says he’s faced harassment from Big Tech, the IRS and other government agencies ever since, and now faces bankruptcy.

“I was getting a lot of death threats,” John Paul Mac Isaac said. “I had to have a Wilmington trooper parked in front of my shop all the time.

“There were multiple situations where people came in and you could tell they were not there to have a computer fixed. And if there were not other people in the shop, I don’t know what would have happened,” he told The Post. “I was having vegetables, eggs, dog s–t thrown at the shop every morning.”

The threats and violence got so severe in November 2020 that Isaac had to shutter his shop and flee Delaware and live in hiding for more than a year. When he later tried to file for unemployment Delaware bureaucrats kept closing his case without resolution so that he received no checks and had use some of the money in his 401K to pay his bills. The Delaware unemployment department only finally acted after he sent a letter to the state’s governor.
» Read more

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ESA makes official the split with Russia

9:32 am

At a press conference yesterday officials from the European Space Agency (ESA) officially announced that the partnership with Russia to launch its Franklin rover to Mars has ended, and the launch will not happen in ’22.

The program is not cancelled, but “suspended.” ESA is looking for alternatives to get its Rosalind Franklin rover to the Red Planet. Earth and Mars are correctly aligned for launches only every 26 months, so the next opportunities are in 2024, 2026, and 2028. Aschbacher said it is not feasible to be ready by 2024, so it will be one of the later dates.

Since Russia had been providing both the launch rocket and Mars lander, ESA cannot simply find a different rocket. It needs to come up with its own lander, or find someone else to build it. For example, one of many new private American companies building lunar landers for NASA might be able do it, though ESA would likely prefer a European company. If it did decide to go with an American company, it would certainly not hire one until it succeeds in completing successfully at least one planetary landing.

The officials also outlined ESA’s need to find new launch rockets for many other missions it had planned to launch on Russia’s Soyuz-2 rocket. That need will also be an opportunity for American rocket companies, but more significantly it could be a blessing for Arianespace’s Ariane 6 rocket. The Ariane 6 has struggled to find customers because of its high cost. The loss of Russia as a launch option will likely drive some ESA business to it.

Roscosmos’ head Dmitry Rogozin in turn announced that it will go ahead with its own Mars mission, using the lander on an Angara rocket

“True, we will lose several years, but we will replicate our landing module, make an Angara rocket for it and carry out this research mission from the newly-built Vostochny spaceport on our own. Without inviting any ‘European friends’, who prefer to keep their tails between their legs the moment they hear their American master’s angry voice,” Rogozin said on his Telegram channel.

Whether Russia will actually do this is questionable. For the last two decades Roscosmos has promised all kinds of numerous planetary missions and new rockets and new manned capsules, none of which has ever seen the light of day. To make such a thing happen now seems even more doubtful.

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Russia launches three Russians to ISS on Soyuz-2 rocket

9:08 am

Russia today successfully launched three astronauts to ISS on its Soyuz-2 rocket, the first time the crew on a Russian launch to ISS was entirely Russian.

The docking at the station is expected three hours after launch.

The reason for the all-Russian crew has nothing to do with the Ukraine War. Initially NASA and Roscosmos were negotiating to have an American on this flight as part of a barter deal, whereby astronauts from the two space agencies fly on each other’s capsules in an even trade to gain experience with each. In October both agencies agreed to hold off the first barter flight until ’22. With the on-going sanctions however it is now unknown whether that barter deal will go forward.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

10 SpaceX
6 China
3 Russia
2 ULA

The U.S. still leads China 16 to 6 in the national rankings, with SpaceX having a scheduled Starlink launch this evening.

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Sierra Space signs Mitsubishi as partner in private Orbital Reef space station project

8:57 am

Capitalism in space: Sierra Space has now partnered with Japan’s Mitsubishi for developing technology to be used on the private commercial Orbital Reef space station project.

The companies did not elaborate on the technologies they will consider for Orbital Reef under the agreement. MHI does have extensive experience in International Space Station operations as the manufacturer of the Kibo laboratory module, which was installed on the station in 2008. The company also built the HTV cargo spacecraft and H-2 launch vehicle that launched those spacecraft to the station.

…Sierra Space’s role in Orbital Reef includes providing inflatable modules called the Large Integrated Flexible Environment (LIFE) Habitat. The company’s Dream Chaser vehicle under development will transport cargo and crew to and from the station.

A consortium led by Blue Origin announced Orbital Reef last October. In addition to Blue Origin and Sierra Space, Boeing will provide a science module, CST-100 Starliner commercial crew vehicle and support for station operations, while Redwire Space will handle microgravity research and manufacturing, payload operations and deployable structures.

This deal suggests that the project wants more experience in its stable. Also, by partnering with Mitsubishi, it likely garners political support in Japan.

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Orbit Fab wins contract to outfit U.S. military satellites for refueling

8:48 am

Capitalism in space: Orbit Fab has won a $12 million contract to outfit U.S. military satellites with its refueling port.

The funding includes $6 million from the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force, and $6 million from Orbit Fab’s private investors. The contract is for the integration of Orbit Fab’s fueling port, called RAFTI — short for rapidly attachable fluid transfer interface — with military satellites. The port allows satellites to receive propellant from Orbit Fab’s tankers in space.

At present there are no refueling missions scheduled, simply because the satellites that could be refueled are not yet in orbit. Orbit Fab and the military however are discussing an in-orbit demo mission.

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SLS arrives at launch site

8:43 am

NASA’s SLS rocket finally arrived at its launch site early this morning after an 11 hour journey on its mobile launcher from the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), in preparation for a dress rehearsal countdown on April 3, 2022.

The approximately two-day test will demonstrate the team’s ability to load cryogenic, or super-cold, propellants into the rocket, conduct a launch countdown, and practice safely removing propellants at the launch pad. After wet dress rehearsal, engineers will roll the rocket and spacecraft back to the Vehicle Assembly Building for final checkouts before launch.

The launch is presently scheduled for late May, but we must not be surprised if it is delayed to June, or July.

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Update on the actual state of the Ukraine War

3:31 pm

Much of the reporting about the war in the Ukraine has been either based on individual anecdotal events, or propaganda being churned out by both sides in an effort to influence events and public opinion to their cause.

All of this information is generally useless in determining what is really happening.

A better way to understand the actual state of the war, who is winning and who is not, is to find sources that don’t look at individual events, but try to compile all the reliable and confirmed stories into an overall whole.

One source that does this routinely and with great success is the Institute for the Study of War. I have relied on their maps and reports for a clear understanding of the various Middle Eastern conflicts now for years. One week ago I posted a link to the Institute’s March 9, 2022 update on the Ukraine War, because I believed it provided the best review, well documented and sourced, covering Russia’s entire military operation in the Ukraine, as well as the effort of the Ukraine to fight back. At that time, the known data strongly suggested that though Russia appeared to be very slowly capturing territory, it was also meeting heavy resistance everywhere. Furthermore, Russia’s effort was hampered by a lagging logistics and supply operation. All told, this data suggested that Russia’s take-over of the Ukraine was going to take a lot longer than expected by Putin and his generals, and might even get bogged down into a long quagmire similar to what the Soviet Union experienced in Afghanistan in the late 1970s.

A week has passed, and the Institute has issued several updates since. By comparing today’s March 17th update with last week’s we can quickly get a sense of what has happened in that week.
» Read more

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Pushback: Pilots sue CDC over Biden mask requirement on planes

12:02 pm

How the CDC determines its mask policies
How the CDC determines its mask policies

Don’t comply: Ten pilots from three different American airlines — American, Southwest, and JetBlue — have now sued the CDC over the Biden administrations mask mandate requiring everyone to wear masks on airplanes.

A group of commercial airline pilots filed a lawsuit against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in an attempt to lift the federal transportation mask mandate.

In court paperwork, the 10 commercial airline pilots – who work for American JetBlue and Southwest – argued that the CDC issued an order “Requirement for Persons to Wear Masks While on Conveyances & at Transportation Hubs” on Feb. 1, 2020 “without providing public notice or soliciting comment.”

The pilots are asking the court to “vacate worldwide the FTMM (federal transportation mask mandate)” calling the move an “illegal and unconstitutional exercise of executive authority.”

Biden’s edict was first imposed on February 1, 2021, shortly after he took power. It has been extended several times since, the most recent extension keeping it in force through April 18, 2022. At no time, however, has any data been put forth by the CDC demonstrating that the required masks accomplish anything, while we already have decades of data showing that the masks are useless against viruses like the Wuhan flu.

This new lawsuit is the eighteenth filed against the mandate, though it is the first filed by those who work on the planes.

The pilots claim above that the CDC did not follow federal law when it imposed the mandate is almost certainly correct. » Read more

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The world’s two biggest rockets move to their launchpads!

10:02 am

The real cost of SLS and Orion
The expected real per launch cost of SLS and Orion

The big news in the mainstream press today is the planned rollout from the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) of NASA’s SLS rocket this evening in preparation for its dress rehearsal fueling and countdown planned for April 3rd.

This article by Newsweek is very typical. It glows with facts lauding SLS’s gigantic size and the monumental systems designed to slowly transport it the four miles from the VAB to the launchsite.

At a height of 322 feet (ft), making it taller than the 305ft Statue of Liberty, the SLS will be the largest rocket to move to a launchpad since the Saturn V launched on its last mission in 1973, when it carried the Skylab space station into orbit around Earth. Its size has seen NASA dub it a Mega-Moon rocket.

NASA says that the four-mile journey from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the launch pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the SLS was recently adorned with the NASA logo, will take between 6 and 12 hours. It will be carried on the back of NASA’s 6.6-million-pound crawler vehicle. [emphasis mine]

If that April 3rd countdown dress rehearsal goes well, SLS will be rolled back to the VAB and then prepped for its first launch, presently scheduled tentatively for May ’22, though more likely in June or July.

For NASA the rollout today is somewhat of a relief. SLS was originally supposed to launch in 2015, making it seven years behind schedule. It has also been enormously expensive, costing close to $30 billion to build, if one does not count the $20 billion cost of the Orion capsule it carries. That the agency finally has this rocket assembled and almost ready to launch, after so many delays and cost overruns, means that NASA might finally be able to prove it is a reality, not simply a boondoggle designed by Congress to funnel cash through NASA to their constituents.

The Newsweek article however strangely ignores the launchpad stacking of another equally gigantic rocket that occurred yesterday. » Read more

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NASA adds another antenna to its Deep Space Network

9:04 am

In its on-going project to upgrade and refurbish the antenna dishes of its Deep Space Network communications, used to communicate with planetary probes beyond Earth orbit, NASA yesterday announced that the fourth of six planned new antennas is now online in Madrid.

DSS-53 is the fourth of six antennas being added to expand the DSN’s capacity and meet the needs of a growing number of spacecraft. When the project is complete, each of the network’s three ground stations around the globe will have four beam waveguide antennas. The Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex is the first to have completed its build-out as part of project. Construction on DSS-53 began in 2016.

The Deep Space Network has needed an upgrade for about a decade, and has been especially under strain as the number of missions to Mars increased during that time. After many years of delay, almost all due to budget decisions by both NASA and Congress, the upgrade began in earnest in 2016.

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China launches military reconnaissance satellite

8:48 am

China today successfully launched its second Yaogon military reconnaissance satellite, using its Long March 4C rocket.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

10 SpaceX
6 China
2 ULA
2 Russia

The U.S. lead over China in the national rankings is now 16 to 6. Note too that tomorrow Russia is scheduled to launch another crew to ISS, using its Soyuz-2 rocket, while SpaceX plans another Starlink launch.

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Pushback: Professor sues University of Illinois officials for suspending him for doing his job

12:56 pm

University of Illinois: run by clowns
University of Illinois: run by clowns

Jason Kilborn, a tenured law professor at the University of Illinois who had been suspended and forced to undergo sensitivity training because several unnamed students objected to an exam question that referenced racial slurs and that Kilborn had been using in his tests for a decade, has now sued a number of officials at the university.

University of Illinois Chicago law Professor Jason Kilborn’s recently filed lawsuit accuses administrators of violating his Constitutional rights, as well as defamation, false light and intentional infliction of emotional distress. It seeks damages in excess of $100,000.

Kilborn has been described by students as “top notch.” As his lawsuit against the University of Illinois Chicago moves forward, Kilborn maintains campus leaders engaged in performative retribution against him.

The lawsuit can be read here.

The named officials in the lawsuit are Michael Amiridis, the university’s chancellor, Caryn A. Bills, its associate chancellor, Julie M. Spanbauer, the law schools dean, Donald Kamm, the director of the school’s Office for Access and Equity, and Ashley Davidson, the school’s Title Ix & Equity Compliance Specialist.

I had described Kilborn’s blacklisting back in November 2021, describing in detail how Kilborn’s exam question had been in use for ten years with no objection, and was designed to help his law students uncover facts that would help lawyers defend minorities against racial abuse. I also noted that:
» Read more

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Overview of the impact Russia’s invasion is having on the Ukraine’s space industry

9:57 am

Link here. The summary focuses on the major aerospace regions in the Ukraine, Dnipro and Kharkiv, outlining how they have so far been untargeted by the Russian invasion.

“In Dnipro, Yuzhmash and Yuzhnoye have not been bombed or targeted by missile attacks so far. One of the possible reasons is that Russia’s plan is to take them over as part of their invasion, so they intend to keep these facilities intact,” Usov said. “Because of the Russian attacks in the Dnipro region, these facilities are not operating at full capacities, and they were forced to halt work on their projects. But a share of their employees ensures their operations continue.”

The situation is the same in Kharkiv. No aerospace facilities have been directly targeted, but the war has shut down some operations, while others — especially those partnering with western nations or companies — have gone almost entirely virtual.

The article also describes a Ukrainian startup, Orbit Boy, that is trying to develop an air-launched smallsat rocket in partnership with companies in Poland and Italy. The war is making this development difficult, if not impossible.

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China tests rocket engine for the next Long March 5B launches

9:44 am

China’s state-run press today revealed that a full duration test has been successfully completed of the rocket engine that will be used by the core first stage of the Long March 5B rocket that will launch the next two modules for China’s Tiangong space station.

Developed by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, the engine is designed for the core stage of the Long March-5 carrier rocket series, which will be used to launch two lab modules of China’s orbiting Tiangong space station this year.

The long-range test, lasting 520 seconds, has verified the reliability of the engine, and there will be more than 20 experimental tasks that the rocket engine will undergo to further test its performance, the company disclosed.

Though this short press release does not say, it implies that this new engine is restartable, something that on previous launches of the Long March 5B was not possible for the core stage. This lack meant that once the core stage lifted and deployed its payload into orbit, it no longer had an engine that could control it. It would within weeks crash to Earth, threatening many habitable areas around the globe. This lack also resulted in a lot of very bad press for China.

If this new engine is restartable, it means that China will be able to de-orbit it in a controlled manner, over the ocean. If so, hallelujah! It means China will finally be honoring its obligations under the Outer Space Treaty.

If not, than China will continue to prove that it is an unreliable and dangerous player on the world stage.

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Launching a rocket using atomic explosions?

2:12 pm

Glenn Reynolds and Leigh Outten have just co-written a short paper advocating the use of “pulsed nuclear space propulsion” to launch rockets. You can download it here.

The concept, as first described in the 1950s, is described in the paper as follows:

It is not a tremendous surprise that when you set off an atomic bomb next to something, that something will move. That it could also remain essentially intact, however, was considerably more surprising. The challenge for the Orion team was to produce a spacecraft that could function after being subjected to not one, but many, nearby nuclear detonations, and that could be steered and navigated by an onboard crew.

This turned out to be easier than it sounds. The Orion spacecraft design that resulted involved a large steel “pusher” plate, behind a rather large spacecraft with a total weight of over 4,000 tons. That sort of design is very different from the spaceships we’re used to today.

The bulk of their paper reviews the legal obstacles to launching such rockets, as both the Outer Space Treaty and the Limited Test Ban Treaty put limits on the use of nuclear weapons in space. The paper argues that these limits would not apply to rockets propelled by atomic explosions, since the explosions would not be used as weapons.

The paper also argues that the technical obstacles for building such rockets are also solvable, and might even be easy to solve. This particular quote stood out starkly to me:
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Second-grade child punished for talking about Christianity

1:20 pm

Persecuting Christians is once again cool!
Persecuting Christians, even little children, is once again cool!

They’re coming for you next: A second-grader at North Hill Elementary School in Des Moines, Washington, has been regularly harassed and punished by the teachers and administrators because she likes to talk about her Christian religion to her playmates.

The harassment has included searching her backpack each morning to confiscate any Christian materials before she entered school. The punishment included sending her to the principal’s office ten different times since January 1st for daring to mention the Bible and her Christian beliefs to others. From the press release of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which is threatening to sue the school and its district if this Soviet-type censorious behavior does not stop:
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OneWeb and Arianespace scramble to find a rocket to launch satellites

10:26 am

Capitalism in space: With the cancellation of the last six Soyuz-2 launches for OneWeb and Arianespace due to Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, the two companies are struggling to find an alternative rocket to launch the remaining 216 satellites that would complete OneWeb’s satellite constellation.

OneWeb has already paid Arianespace for the launches, so the responsibility to get the satellites in orbit is at present Arianespace’s. The problem is that its flight manifest for both the Ariane-5 (being retired) and the new Ariane-6 rocket are presently full.

Going to another rocket provider is problematic, even if a deal could be negotiated. The flight manifest for ULA’s Atlas-5 and Vulcan rockets is also filled. Though SpaceX’s Falcon 9 could probably launch the satellites, that company’s Starlink satellite constellation is in direct competition with OneWeb, which makes it unlikely the two companies could make a deal.

There have been negotiations with India to use its rockets, but it is unclear at present whether this will work.

One other option is to buy a lot of launches from the smallsat rockets of Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbiter, and Astra. This will likely cost more because more launches will be required, and that would required a complex negotiation between all parties.

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India successfully tests solid rocket booster for its Small Satellite Launch Vehicle

10:11 am

The new colonial movement: India yesterday successfully completed a ground test of the solid rocket booster to be used in its Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV).

SSLV was originally scheduled for launch in 2020 but was put on hold for two years when India panicked over the Wuhan flu. ISRO, India’s space agency, hopes now to complete the first launch in the next two months.

The two-year delay cost ISRO significantly in the international smallsat market. While American private companies like SpaceX, Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbit, and Astra continued to launch throughout the epidemic and thus garner business from the smallsat market, India’s market share shrunk. Whether it can recover that share once SSLV begins flying remains to be seen. India’s willingness to shut down so easily will I think make satellite companies hesitate before buying its services.

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Mark Vande Hei sets new record for longest American space flight

10:03 am

Mark Vande Hei today set a new record for the longest American space flight, exceeding the 340 days flown by Scott Kelly on ISS in 2012-2013.

Since Vande Hei is scheduled to return to Earth on March 30th, his total record flight time should end up being 355 days, just short of a full year.

Vande Hei arrived at the space station aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft on April 9, 2021, knowing at the time that he would be there for at least for the five to six months that is typical today for expedition crew members. His mission was extended by NASA in September to allow for a Russian movie crew to visit the orbiting complex and, more importantly, protect against a crew rotation schedule that could leave the station without any Americans on board.

Vande Hei’s record will be the fifth longest, behind four other Russians on Mir. Musa Manarov and Vladimir Titov were the first to complete a year long flight in 1987-1988. Valery Polyakov holds the record for the longest flight, 437 days in 1994-1995. Sergei Avdeyev’s flight of 381 days on Mir in 1998-1999 is the second longest.

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Entire Russian communications satellite industry threatened by Russia’s Ukraine invasion

9:12 am

Because almost all Russian communications satellites rely on western components, the sanctions imposed on Russia due to its invasion of the Ukraine will likely prevent the future launch of any such satellites.

The overwhelmingly wide sanctions against the Kremlin left practically no chance for Russia to complete any of its communications satellites in the development pipeline at the time due to their dependency on Western payloads.

Conceivably, Russia could turn to China for necessary components or/and Moscow could try again developing necessary competencies inside the country, but given little signs of progress on both of those fronts in the past, it could probably take years if not decades before all the technological gaps could be closed and it would be even more difficult to do under much harsher economic conditions and export controls. It is also a question whether China would be interested in boosting strategically important industries in Russia with potential military implications or whether it would want to challenge the Western sanctions regime by putting at risk its far more important trade relations with the United States.

The article at the link also notes the generally low quality of Russian communications satellites, which for example generally last only five to six years, compared to the 10 to 15 year lifespan of western satellites. This low quality has meant that Russia has been unable to sell this technology to anyone outside Russia.

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