Tag: policy

European phone companies demand the FCC stop SpaceX’s cell-to-satellite Starlink plans

10:22 am

Several European phone companies have now submitted a request to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to block a waiver that would allow SpaceX to operate its new cell-to-satellite Starlink satellites at radio frequencies normally not permitted.

This request follows similar requests by Verizon and AT&T to the FCC. The fear is that the use of these frequencies in the low orbit of Starlink satellites will interfere with satellites in the much higher geosynchronous orbits that these phone companies presently use.

While those concerns might be valid (SpaceX says no), these companies also fear the competition of Starlink itself, as its low orbit means it can provide better service, and are clearly hoping the FCC will act to protect them from that competition.

In a more sane world, the FCC would decide this issue on purely technical grounds. It was formed expressly to police the frequencies so that users would not interfere or pirate each others licenses, and had done that job quite well for decades.

Sadly, the FCC no longer confines itself to this one job. For the past four years the FCC has arbitrarily decided its job should include many other things not listed in its statutory authority, such as policing the de-orbiting of satellites and determining the acceptable lifespans of orbiting spacecraft, while also making many decisions based entirely on political factors, sometimes even favoring some companies over others for partisan reasons.

Thus we should have no confidence that the FCC will make this decision on purely technical grounds, especially since it has shown a clear hostility to SpaceX in its recent decisions.

3 comments

Mid-October date for the 5th Starship/Superheavy test orbital launch?

10:01 am

A US Coast Guard announcement issued today includes a notice to mariners of a rocket launch window at Boca Chica from October 12th to October 19th, suggesting that SpaceX has gotten an update from the FAA that a launch license will be issued for those dates, more than a month earlier than previously predicted by the FAA.

It must be emphasized that this notice is from the Coast Guard, not the FAA. The FAA has said nothing new about SpaceX’s launch license application. This notice suggests several possiblilites, all or none of which may be true:

1. The FAA has told SpaceX privately that it expects to issue that license in time for a launch in two weeks, and SpaceX then moved quickly to get the Coast Guard in line.

2. SpaceX and the Coast Guard are working together to increase the pressure on the FAA to get out of the way.

3. The public condemnations of the FAA by SpaceX in the past few weeks have worked to force that agency to back off its hardnosed regulatory over-reach.

All of this is wild speculation. For all we know, this Coast Guard notice is something it always issues prior to major static fire tests at Boca Chica. We shall have to wait to get a better sense of what is happening.

Hat tip to reader Steve Richter.

4 comments

ESA awards Polish rocket startup €2.4 million contract

9:33 am

The European Space Agency (ESA) has awarded a Polish rocket startup, dubbed SpaceForest, €2.4 million to upgrade its suborbital Perun rocket that the company has test launched twice in last year.

Perun runs on modified paraffin, commonly used as candle wax, and so its propellant is non-toxic. The rocket can be launched on a mobile launch pad, allowing for easy deployment at launch facilities around Europe. Last year, SpaceForest launched two full-scale models of its Perun rocket that flew to 22 km and 13 km altitude from the coastal town of Ustka, Poland, on the Baltic Sea.

This company is now the second Polish rocket startup to have successfully tested its rocket. The Łukasiewicz Institute of Aviation has completed suborbital test flights of its ILR-33 Amber 2K rocket, and has a deal to fly its next test from Norway’s commercial Andoya spaceport.

0 comments

ISRO reveals design of its Chandrayaan-4 lunar sample return mission

9:23 am

India’s space agency ISRO yesterday unveiled its design concept for its Chandrayaan-4 lunar sample return mission, requiring two launches and five modules that will dock in Earth orbit before traveling to the Moon.

“After two launches, the stacks will be docked together in elliptical Earth orbit to form an integrated stack. Subsequent to docking, the Integrated Stack will perform the first set of Earth-bound manoeuvres with the PM propulsion system. Once the PM is depleted, it gets jettisoned from the Integrated stack,” Isro said Tuesday.

The integrated stack then performs all the manoeuvres to achieve the lunar orbit, such that the orbit plane has the pre-determined landing site. In the final lunar orbit, the descender module and ascender module get separated from the transfer module and re-entry module. The descender and ascender modules then undergo powered descent to achieve a soft landing on the lunar surface.

Both a robot arm and a drill will then grab samples, deposit them separately in the ascender, which will then launch and redock with the stack. It will then take the re-entry module back toward Earth, where it will be released prior to its return.

This plan is essentially the same as the first proposal last year, but with many more added details.

A landing site has apparently not yet been chosen.

1 comment

FAA grounds SpaceX again

9:10 am

According to a report in Reuters, the FAA yesterday announced that it has grounded SpaceX from any further launches, two days after SpaceX had already paused launches, the action triggered when the second stage of Saturday’s Falcon 9 launch to ISS failed to fire its de-orbit burn properly, thus causing the stage to splashdown outside its target zone in the Pacific.

This action is a perfect example of the FAA’s extraneous interference. SpaceX was already on the case. It doesn’t need the FAA to kibbitz it, since no one at the FAA has any qualifications for providing any useful advice. All the FAA accomplishes here is get in the way.

The FAA’s action also likely falls outside its statutory authority. The stage landed in the ocean, causing no damage or threat to public safety, the only areas the FAA’s authority resides. And if the agency now deems returning equipment part of its licensing requirements, why did it didn’t say anything about the uncertain nature of the return of Boeing’s Starliner capsule, which targeted a landing on land and could have easily ended up crashing in the wrong spot because its own thrusters were untrustworthy?

The FAA is playing favorites here, and needs to be reined in, badly.

7 comments

Course carnage at Harvard as more than 30 queer and Marxist classes get axed

12:39 pm

Harvard: where you get can get a shoddy education centered on hate and bigotry
Harvard: where you can spend a lot of money
and still get a shoddy education

It appears the student body at Harvard is beginning to realize that classes focused on the queer agenda or racist Marxist indoctrination will not teach you much of substance and could even hurt your future career, and are thus increasingly not signing up for these courses.

This fall more than 30 such courses at Harvard have been cancelled, with the History and Literature department losing the most.

According to The Crimson, Hist-Lit Director of Studies Lauren Kaminsky said class offerings dropped from 19 to 13 classes after five lecturers either departed or chose to do something else. The canceled Hist-Lit courses include “British Soft Power from Shakespeare to Dua Lipa,” “Marx at the Mall: Consumer Culture & Its Critics,” “Global Transgender Histories,” “Indigenous Genders and Sexualities in North America,” “The Making of Race across Latin America,” and “Global Histories of Capitalism.”

The course description for “Global Transgender Histories” noted students “will become familiar with some of the global vocabulary of gender identities beyond the binary and will understand the historical impacts of phenomena such as racism, imperialism, and [the] medicalization on gender identities.” Students also would’ve “discovered” the diversity of “gender-variant people” via “religious texts, poetry, art, legal cases, travelogues, newspapers, films […] and oral histories.”

» Read more

8 comments

Proposed commercial spaceport in Azores launches two suborbital demonstration rockets

8:38 am

Santa Maria spaceport

A spaceport startup, the Atlantic Spaceport Consortium (ASC), has successfully launched two small suborbital demonstration rockets from the island of Santa Maria in the Azores of Portugal, where it hopes to eventually establish a spaceport.

The first of the two flights was launched from a mobile platform at 13:04 UTC on 27 September. The rocket reached an altitude of 5,596 metres. The second was launched at 11:49 UTC on 28 September 2024. According to the company, the second launch ‘was not perfect,’ but it did not provide any further details on what occurred during the flight.

The rocket was developed and built by ASC, and was intended to demonstrate its own rocket capabilities as well as provide information to the Portuguese government for establishing its own regulatory guidelines, as per an agreement signed in August.

0 comments

China unveils proposed spacesuit for its planned manned lunar landings

11:24 am

China's proposed moonsuit
Click for original image.

China’s Manned Space Agency (CMSA) yesterday unveiled its proposed spacesuit for the planned manned lunar landings it hopes to achieve by 2030.

As shown on the left, the suit draws its design from the Russian Orlan suit. The large backpack-like unit is also a hatch. The astronaut opens it, drops into the suit, and then a partner closes the unit, locking it shut. The rest of the suit is a single piece, with the central body unit rigid and the arms and legs flexible.

The Russian’s Orlan suit has been upgraded a number of times over the years, but the basic design has proved to be practical, efficient, and reliable, generally the oppose of the unwieldy and complex American suits NASA has been using since the start of the shuttle era.

The announcement was made to initiate a contest for the public to pick a name for the suit. Like all such contests, the real goal is to provide bread-and-circuses to the public so that they can think they have some say in what is happening. In the end the government will pick the name, and find someone who made the same suggestion to “award” for the idea.

7 comments

SpaceX launches two astronauts to ISS, setting new annual launch record for the U.S.

11:17 am

SpaceX this morning launched two astronauts to ISS in the fourth flight of the Freedom Dragon capsule, the Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its second flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral. Freedom will dock with ISS tomorrow.

While most news stories will focus on the rescue aspect of this mission, its crew reduced by two so that the two astronauts launched in June on Boeing’s Starliner capsule can come home on it in February, the real news story is that with this launch the United States set a new record for the number of launches in a single year. With this launch the U.S. has completed 111 successful launches in 2024, exceeding the record set last year’s of 110 launches. And this record was achieved in less than three quarters of the year. At this rate is it very likely the U.S. will double the record of 70 set in 1966 that lasted until 2022.

China meanwhile completed its own launch late yesterday, its Long March 2D rocket placing what China’s state-run press described as “its first reusable and returnable test satellite,” designed to do orbital operations and experiments, return to Earth with those materials, and then later relaunch again. This is very similar to the commercial capsules that the startup Varda is flying and using to produce pharmaceuticals for sale.

The rocket lifted off from China’s Jiquan spaceport in northwest China. No word where its lower stages, using toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

95 SpaceX
44 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 111 to 67, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 95 to 83.

12 comments

Rocket Lab completes new capsule for Varda

9:10 am

Varda's space capsule, on the ground in Utah
Varda’s first capsule on the ground in Utah.

Rocket Lab today announced it has completed testing and intergration of a new recoverable capsule for the in-space manufacturing company Varda, to be used in orbit to produce pharmaceuticals that can only be created in weightlessness.

No launch date was announced. This was the second of four capsules Rocket Lab is building for Varda, with the first having already completed its flight, where it returned to Earth after successfully crystallizng the HIV drug Ritonavir.

The most important tidbit in the press release however was this:

Varda received permission from the FAA under a Part 450 license earlier this month, making them the only company to ever secure a second reentry license.

With the first capsule, the capsule’s return was delayed almost six months because the FAA and the military couldn’t get their paperwork together to approve the return license. Varda now has that return license in hand before launch, meaning it will get the capsule back when it wants.

1 comment

Musk and Shotwell once again blast red tape against the company

12:54 pm

The EPA to SpaceX
The EPA to SpaceX “Nice company you got here.
Sure would be a shame if something happened to it.”

In a follow-up to SpaceX’s blunt critical response to the attacks against it by the head of the FAA, Mike Whitaker during House testimony on September 24, 2024, Elon Musk in a tweet yesterday called for Whitaker to resign.

That blast however was only the start. During a different hearing on September 24th before the Texas state house appropriations committee, Gywnne Shotwell, the CEO of SpaceX, called the actions of the EPA to regulate the launch deluge system for Starship/Superheavy “nonsense.”

“We work very closely with organizations such as the (Texas Commission on Environmental Quality),” she said. “You may have read a little bit of nonsense in the papers recently about that, but we’re working quite well with them.”

…On Tuesday, Shotwell maintained that the the system — which she said resembles “an upside down shower head” — was “licensed and permitted by TCEQ [Texas Commission on Environmental Quality] … EPA came in afterwards and didn’t like the license or the permit that we had for that and wanted to turn it into a federal permit, which we are working on right now.”

…The state agency has said the company received a stormwater permit — a type that’s usually quickly approved — but did not have the permit required for discharge of industrial wastewater produced by launches. That type of permit requires significant technical review and usually takes almost a year to approve. [emphasis mine]

The problem with this demand by both EPA and TCEQ is that SpaceX is not dumping “industrial wastewater produced by launches.” The deluge system uses potable water, essentially equivalent to rain water, and thus does zero harm to the environment. In fact, a single rainstorm would dump far more water on the tidal islands of Boca Chica that any of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy launches.

Thus, this demand by the EPA clearly proves the political nature of this regulatory harassment. The unelected apparatchiks in the federal bureaucracy are hunting for ways to stymie and shut down SpaceX, and they will use any regulation they can find to do so — even if that use makes no sense. And they are doing this because they support the Democratic Party wholesale, and thus are abusing their power to hurt someone (Elon Musk) who now opposes that party.

11 comments

NASA inspector general: Air leak in Zvezda module on ISS increased significantly in 2024

12:14 pm

Figure 3 from IG report
Figure 3 from IG report, annotated by me to show Zvezda location.

According to a new report [pdf] from NASA’s inspector general, the air leaks in the Russian Zvezda module on ISS increased significantly in 2024, reaching “the highest level of risk in its risk management system,” and more than six times the normal planned leak rate for the station (see the box in the lower corner of the figure above).

[I]n February 2024 NASA identified an increase in the leak rate, and the Agency and Roscosmos continue to assess the risk that the increase poses to the module’s structure. In May and June 2024, ISS Program and Roscosmos officials met to discuss heightened concerns with the increased leak rate. The ISS Program subsequently elevated the Service Module [Zvezda] Transfer Tunnel leak risk to the highest level of risk in its risk management system. According to NASA, Roscosmos is confident they will be able to monitor and close the hatch to the Service Module prior to the leak rate reaching an untenable level. However, NASA and Roscosmos have not reached an agreement on the point at which the leak rate is untenable.

To mitigate potential impacts from the air leaks, NASA and Roscosmos continuously monitor leak rates and close the hatch to the Service Module when access is not required, sealing the module to minimize air loss while isolating the leak. While it is possible for the ISS to function if the hatch is closed permanently, it could impact cargo delivery because there would be one less cargo delivery port. Closing the hatch permanently would also necessitate additional propellent to maintain the Station’s altitude and attitude. Although the root cause of the leak remains unknown, both agencies have narrowed their focus to internal and external welds. As of June 2024, there was no indication of other leaks on the Station.

The transfer tunnel is the section of Zvezda that connects it to ISS. Though the report is very careful not to say anything specific about the cause of the leak, the evidence strongly suggests it is caused by stress fractures in the module’s hull, fractures that indicate a serious and dangerous long term issue. The tunnel however cannot be replaced without replacing Zvezda, and Zvezda cannot be replaced without detaching the entire Russian section from ISS, something that is likely very difficult and maybe impossible to do. And even if it could be replaced, Russia does not have the capability or the money right now to build a replacement.

The report also noted that keeping the station operating through 2030 faces other challenges, including the lack of redundancy for getting cargo and crew to ISS, the increasing difficulty of obtaining spare parts for the station, the long term damage from micrometeoroids and orbital debris, and finally, the unknown commitment of Russia, which at this point has not yet decided whether it will remain a partner after 2028.

All these issues underline the need for the four American private commercial space stations to reach orbit and get operational before 2028.

11 comments
1 … 101 102 103 104 105 … 838