Tag: policy

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.
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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.
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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.
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