Tag: policy

NASA picks three commercial companies to build manned lunar rovers

10:29 am

Capitalism in space: NASA yesterday announced that it has picked three commercial companies, Astrolab, Intuitive Machines, and Lunar Outpost, to begin feasibility design work on its new manned lunar rovers, dubbed a Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV), for its planned Artemis missions to the Moon.

NASA will acquire the LTV as a service from industry. The indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, milestone-based Lunar Terrain Vehicle Services contract with firm-fixed-price task orders has a combined maximum potential value of $4.6 billion for all awards.

The three companies are actually each a partnership of several American companies, as follows:

  • Astrolab is building its FLEX rover in partnership with Axiom Space, Inc., and Odyssey Space. Its contract is worth up to $1.9 billion.
  • Intuitive Machines is building its RACER rover in partership with AVL, Boeing, Michelin, and Northrop Grumman. This initial award is worth $30 million, but future buys from NASA could exceed $1 billion.
  • Lunar Outpost is building its Lunar Dawn rover in partnership with Lockheed Martin, General Motors, Goodyear, and MDA Space.

All three lead companies are essentially startups that have partnered with older established players, a likely requirement imposed by NASA to give their effort some experienced help. Though this system of dividing up the work between all the players follows the old scheme used by NASA and the established big space companies for decades in order to guarantee every company gets steady work and a continuing cash flow from the government, the difference is that the product will be designed, built, and owned by each partnership, not NASA, allowing each to sell that product to others outside the agency.

If this goes as planned, eventually the government money will become somewhat irrelevant, once a real commercial industry starts functioning in space and on the Moon. That’s what happened in the airplane industry in the 1920s to the 1950s.

8 comments

Biden’s anti-Christian Easter proclamation means the Democrats believe their November victory is certain

11:48 am

Biden's proclamation declaring Easter a day to honor the queer agenda
Biden’s proclamation declaring Easter a day
honoring the queer agenda. Click for full proclamation.

The decision by the White House to declare Easter Sunday, the holiest day of the Christian religion, to instead be this year’s “Transgender Day of Visibility”, as shown by the screen capture of his declaration to the right, outraged and insulted millions of religious people throughout the country.

That outrage was further inflamed when the very next day Joe Biden boldly denied he had done any such thing, even though he had done it only one day previously.

“I didn’t do that,” Biden said when asked about proclaiming Easter Sunday ‘trans day of visibility.” Asked about Speaker Johnson’s claim otherwise, the president replied, “he’s thoroughly uninformed.”

Most political analysis of these events has focused on whether these actions suggest Biden is entirely incompetent, or whether it proves that others run things in the White House and that Biden is merely a puppet on a string. In either case, those analyses noted that these actions showed an amazing contempt for the religious community that could only hurt Biden in November.

I see this in an entirely different way. While the decision showed utter contempt of Christians, who consider the queer agenda to be deviant and sinful, it also showed us two things about the Democratic Party leadership, whether Biden or the puppet masters pulling his strings, that should truly terrify every single American who values our democratic republic, its Constitution, and its Bill of Rights.
» Read more

26 comments

An abandoned module from one of China’s manned capsules burns up over California

9:29 am

The orbital module of China’s Shenzhou-15 manned capsule, launched with three astronauts in November 2022 and then abandoned in orbit when those astronauts returned to Earth in the spring of 2023, burned up over southern California yesterday.

The fall created a blazing fireball witnessed by people from the Sacramento area all the way down to San Diego, according to the American Meteor Society (AMS). As of Tuesday afternoon, 81 people had reported sightings of the event to the AMS.

It is unlikely, though not impossible, that any pieces hit the ground. The module is considered small enough to be destroyed during descent. Nonetheless, its uncontrolled re-entry highlights China’s general irresponsibility when it comes to space junk. For example, the Russia Soyuz capsule has a similar design, but based on history Russia has for decades routinely controlled the de-orbit of its abandoned orbital module so that it does not come down over land.

3 comments

Technical issues with Lockheed Martin’s Orion capsule to delay next Artemis mission

9:20 am

It appears that technical issues with Lockheed Martin’s Orion capsule are one of the main reasons NASA has had to delay next Artemis mission, the first to put humans inside that capsule and then take them around the Moon.

In January 2024 it was reported that the mission would be delayed from a launch before the end of 2024 until 2025. We now know why:

NASA is working with Orion spacecraft prime contractor Lockheed Martin to resolve a handful of issues that came up late last year during ground testing, forcing the space agency to delay the launch readiness target date for its Artemis II circumlunar mission to September 2025. The Lockheed Martin assembly, test, and launch operations (ATLO) team at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) is reinstalling some electronics and implementing workarounds for others affected by an electrical circuit flaw found in digital motor controllers on the spacecraft.

While a resolution to that issue appears to be getting closer, the Orion program and contractor teams are also working through the corrective actions process for a problem with how the Orion batteries handle the shock of an extreme abort case.

In other words, Lockheed Martin discovered these two electrical issues only last year, after spending almost two decades and more than $15 billion developing Orion.

As I predicted in January, “None of these dates will be met. I predict that further delays will be announced next year and the year after that, pushing all these missions back again, in small increments.” I also predicted that NASA will be lucky to land a human on the Moon by 2030, a mere fifteen years after its original target date of 2015, set by George Bush Jr. in 2004.

In the meantime, expect SpaceX’s Starship to begin regularly commercial and governmental flights to the Moon in the next five years. Long before SLS and Orion put humans on the Moon, Starship will be doing it privately for less cost.

11 comments

White House tasks NASA to create a clock standard for time on the Moon

9:07 am

In a policy announcement yesterday, the White House has directed NASA to establish a coordinated lunar time standard (dubbed LTC) for time on the Moon, similar to Univeral or Greenwich time (UTC) now used on Earth.

A unified time standard—Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC)—will act as the established standard to enable cislunar operations and can be tied to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the primary time standard globally used to regulate clocks and time on Earth. This policy directs NASA to work with the Departments of Commerce, Defense, State, and Transportation to deliver a strategy for the implementation of LTC no later than December 31, 2026. NASA will also coordinate with other federal agencies as appropriate and international partners through existing international forums, including Artemis Accords partner nations.

As noted in the full policy statement [pdf]:

Due to general and special relativity, the length of a second defined on Earth will appear distorted to an observer under different gravitational conditions, or to an observer moving at a high relative velocity. For example, to an observer on the Moon, an Earth-based clock will appear to lose on
average 58.7 microseconds per Earth-day with additional periodic variations.

While this difference would be utterly unnoticed by people, the difference will become a problem for GPS systems and other very sensitive systems that depend on precise timing. The new policy will attempt to prevent such issues by getting ahead of the problem. It will also work to coordinate this new lunar universal time with other nations doing lunar exploration.

11 comments

China launches a “remote sensing” satellite

8:27 am

China yesterday successfully launched what it described simply as a “remote sensing” satellite, its Long March 2D rocket lifting off from it Xichang launch site in the southwest of China.

No word whether the rocket’s lower stage, using toxic hypergolic fuel, crashed near any habitable areas inside China.

The leaders in the 2024 space race:

33 SpaceX
14 China
5 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the entire world combined in successful launches 38 to 25, and SpaceX by itself remains ahead everyone one else combined 33 to 30.

0 comments

Boeing’s problems are only the tip of the iceberg

1:25 pm

Most of all beware this boy.’
As noted by the Spirit of Christmas Present in Dickens’ The Christmas
Carol, ‘This boy is ignorance, this girl is want. Beware them both,
but most of all beware this boy.’

Since the beginning of this year, following the near disaster when a door of a Boeing 737-Max airline blew off during the Alaska Airlines flight, the media has been obsessed with reporting every single subsequent Boeing airplane incident as attributed to bad management and quality control at Boeing.

The problem with this shallow reporting is that it fails entirely in recognizing the real depth of the problem.

First, in most of the incidents reported, the planes involved were not recent purchases from Boeing, but had been owned by the airlines for years, sometimes decades. Thus, any maintenance issues, such as a wheel falling off after take-off or a landing gear collapsing on landing or the sudden failure of an Airbus plane’s hydraulic system, are not Boeing’s fault, but the fault of the airline the plane belongs to. In the case of these particular incidents, that airline was United, and in every case, the failure was with its maintenance department, not Boeing’s bad management and poor quality control.

A similar string of incidents has also occurred at American Airlines, involving both Boeing and Airbus airplanes. With both United and American, evidence suggests that the quality of its maintenance staff has likely declined significantly since 2020, when both companies decided to abopt Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) hiring practices, which made skin color and sex the most important qualification in hiring, rather than talent, skill, experience, or knowledge.

It is important for readers to recognize this fact when they see new stories about a Boeing plane forced to make an emergency landing, such as the story today about a United Airlines’ Boeing 787. It apparently had a cracked windshield, requiring an unscheduled landing in Chicago. The article at the link focuses a great deal on Boeing, but the focus should instead be on United Airlines, not the airplane maker, since it is United’s responsibility to keep its fleet flightworthy. When an airline fails to do so, future customers should take note, and consider other options when they need to fly.

In other words, you shouldn’t avoid flying on a Boeing plane, you should avoid flying on airlines that maintain their airplanes badly.

Having said this, I don’t want my readers to think I am trying to let Boeing off the hook. Far from it. » Read more

27 comments

Australian spaceport on sourthern coast prepares for launch

11:06 am

Australian commercial spaceports
Click for original map.

According to a report today, the first suborbital launch from a new commercial spaceport on the sourthern coast of Australia is now expected by the end of April or early May.

New launch facilities at the Koonibba Test Range, South Australia’s first permanent spaceport, are almost complete ahead of the impending inaugural launch. Located northwest of Ceduna, the range is a partnership between Southern Launch and the Koonibba Community Aboriginal Corporation. It is the largest commercial testing range in the Southern Hemisphere.

Space Industries Minister Susan Close is today visiting the site ahead of the sub-orbital test launch of German manufacturer HyImpulse’s SR75 rocket, which, subject to final regulatory approval, will go ahead at the end of April or early May. The rocket will reach an altitude of 50 kilometres before parachuting back to Earth where it will be recovered for testing.

Southern Launch, marked on the map to the right, is on south coast of Australia. Two other Australian commercial spaceports also under development are noted on the northern and eastern coasts.

We shall see if this suborbital launch occurs as planned. Recently the evidence has suggested that Australia’s regulatory state is as bad as the United Kingdom, taking forever to issue licenses for private launches.

4 comments

Russia launches Earth observation satellite

10:12 am

Russia early this morning successfully launched a new Earth observation satellite, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from its Baikonus spaceport in Kazakhstan.

The side boosters, core stage, second stage, and fairings all crashed in two planned drop zones within Russia. No word if any landed near habitable areas.

The leaders in the 2024 space race:

32 SpaceX
13 China
5 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the entire world combined in successful launches 37 to 24, and SpaceX by itself remains ahead everyone one else combined 32 to 29.

2 comments

March 29, 2024 Quick space links

3:25 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

 

 

10 comments

Arizona city shuts down church program that fed the hungry for the last 25 years

2:43 pm

Nieves Riedel, mayor of San Luis, Arizona
Nieves Riedel, mayor of San Luis, Arizona, and
very hostile to churches feeding the hungry

They’re coming for you next: In 2022 a new mayor and administration arrived in San Luis, Arizona, and immediately thereafter the food program of Gethsemani Baptist Church in San Luis, Arizona, came under harassment, with repeated citations and bureaucratic demands that it limit its operations, to a point that the threatened fines (more than $4,000) and potential jail terms for its pastor forced the church stop the program, despite operating peaceably and acceptably for a quarter of a century.

After new officials took over in San Luis, the city sent a letter last fall ordering the church to stop using semi-trucks for food delivery at its property. Attempting to resolve the order, the church offered to use smaller trucks. The city denied the request and told the church it must stop the food ministry entirely. These limitations make it functionally impossible to carry out the ministry in the same way.

Since receiving the city’s letter, Pastor Jose [Castro] had to significantly cut back on the food ministry. He’s tried to continue feeding the hungry as best he can under these limitations. But this wasn’t enough for the city of San Luis and its new Mayor, Nieves Riedel. Just a few weeks ago, while Pastor Jose passed out emergency food supplies to a small group of people at the church, a city code enforcer showed up unannounced and issued him four citations. Less than a week later, when a third party parked a truck in front of the church for just five minutes, the code enforcer returned and issued Pastor Jose four more citations. Not only will Pastor Jose have to pay fines in municipal court, each future violation may result in criminal charges.

These aggressive tactics have now forced Gethsemani to pause its ministry, as the church and Pastor Jose cannot afford the heavy fines or to relocate. Because of the City and Mayor Riedel’s intimidation tactics, the church cannot feed the hungry. That means people are going hungry right now.

» Read more

37 comments

China working to save classifed lunar mission from launch failure

9:40 am

Orbital data now suggests that Chinese engineers are attempting to save a classifed lunar mission from the failure of its launch rocket to put the two satellites in their proper high orbit.

The small DRO-A and B spacecraft launched from Xichang spaceport on a Long March 2C rocket March 13. Hours later, the first acknowledgement of the mission came from Chinese state media Xinhua, which announced that the spacecraft had not been inserted accurately into their designated orbit by the rocket’s Yuanzheng-1S upper stage. “The upper stage encountered an abnormality during flight, causing the satellites to fail to accurately enter the preset orbit,” Xinhua stated. “Relevant disposal work is currently underway,” it added, citing Xichang launch center.

Data from the U.S. Space Force’s 18th Space Defense Squadron (SDS) initially showed objects associated with the launch in low Earth orbit (LEO). However, subsequent Two Line Element (TLE) data sets, a mathematical representation of a satellite’s mean orbit, from 18 SDS show an object from the launch (international designator 2024-048A) in a 525 x 132,577-kilometer, highly-elliptical, high Earth orbit. This has since been raised, with the spacecraft tracked in a 971 x 225,193-km orbit on March 26.

This indicates that at least one satellite, and perhaps both—if still attached to one another—separated from the upper stage, and that the object’s orbit has been raised.

It is very possible that further engine burns could put these satellites into lunar orbit, which would then save the mission and turn the March 13 launch failure into a success.

Why China is keeping this particular lunar mission so secret is another question, that still remains unanswered.

2 comments
1 … 138 139 140 141 142 … 838