Tag: policy

September 13, 2022 Quick space links

4:48 pm

Courtesy of stringer Jay.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Two students harassed and blackballed from a “sexual assault survivor’s club” because they were Jewish

12:33 pm

SUNY-New Paltz: supports blacklisting and anti-Semitism

Two female students attending the State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz, Cassandra Blotner and Ofek Preis, have now filed a federal civil rights complaint because of the vicious and hostile treatment that they were subjected to by “the sexual assault survivor’s club” at the college, simply because both were Jewish and supporters of Israel.

You can read their civil rights complaint here [pdf].

Denise Katz-Prober, a Brandeis Center lawyer who represents Blotner and Preis, said in an interview with The College Fix that the two women were treated horribly. “They essentially have been victimized three times,” she said. “They were victimized first when they were sexually assaulted, then by the community of students and support services they turned to, and then by the university when they reached out for help and the university failed to take steps to protect them.”

When the other members of the club, officially called New Paltz Accountability (NPA), learned that both women were ardent and public supporters of Israel, these club members began a campaign to harass and dox the women continuously.
» Read more

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SpaceX appeals FCC decision that cancelled Starlink subsidy

9:35 am

SpaceX’s Starlink division has now appealed the decision by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to cancel a nearly $900 million subsidy award given to companies providing broadband to rural regions.

Starlink’s appeal is complex, its arguments appearing to all center on what the company thinks was unfair practices by the FCC in cancelling the award.

Starlink told the FCC it was held to “standards that no bidder could meet today.”

“Changing the rules to undo a prior policy is grossly unfair after SpaceX has invested thousands of employee-hours and millions of dollars preparing to meet its [FCC program] obligations on the reasonable assumption that the Bureau would apply the Commission’s rules in an even-handed manner,” the company said.

That one FCC commissioner has publicly questioned the legality of the cancellation gives some weight to Starlink’ complaint.

In the end, this entire FCC program is a rip-off of the taxpayer. No companies, including SpaceX, should get this money. SpaceX is proving that it can get its constellation launched and operating profitably in rural areas, without a dime of federal money. Why should the rest of us help them do it?

Furthermore, the questionable nature of the FCC cancellation suggests the money from this program is possibly being awarded for political reasons, payoffs to companies that give the most campaign contributions to the right politicians. SpaceX doesn’t give much to any politicians, so it could be the cancellation was done as punishment for that lack.

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China’s Long March 7A launches communications satellite; dumps debris on Philippines

9:19 am

China today launched its Long March 7A rocket from its coastal Wenchang spaceport, successfully placing a communications satellite into orbit.

The coastal launch site meant that the rocket’s lower stages would not fall on China’s interior. Instead, it appears the drop zones were located in the Philippines.

The [Philippines Space] agency said it was able to verify the estimated drop zones of the rocket debris from a notice by the Civil Aviation Administration of China. “Two drop zones within the Philippine territory have been identified based on the NOTAM: Drop zone 1 is approximately 71 kilometers from Burgos, Ilocos Norte, while drop zone 2 is approximately 52 kilometers away from Sta. Ana, Cagayan,” PhilSA said in an advisory.

No word on whether this debris caused any damage. Regardless, China is continuing its policy, in violation of the Outer Space Treaty, of recklessly dumping rocket stages on others.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

41 SpaceX
37 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 56 to 37 in the national rankings, but is now tied with the entire world combined 56 to 56. This tie will likely not be long-lived. Though Firefly’s launch has been delayed until next week, SpaceX and Rocket Lab have launches scheduled for today and tomorrow, respectively.

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NASA revises its SLS launch schedule, pending approval of the range’s safety office

6:13 pm

NASA today announced that it is now targeting September 27, 2022 for the first test launch of its SLS rocket and Orion capsule.

Engineers have — on the launchpad — completed the repair work on the hydrogen leak that caused the previous launch scrubs. The plan now is to do a test fueling on September 21st to see if the repair worked.

If all is then well, the agency wants to launch on September 27th. To do so however NASA needs to get the approval of the safety range office to waive the use-by date of the batteries used to terminate the flight after launch, should something go seriously wrong. The rules require those batteries to be checked every 20 days, and as of today they have been in use for 31 days. The range had already given NASA a five day waiver so it could try to launch on September 5. To launch on September 27th will require the range to allow those batteries to remain unchecked for 46 days, more than double their accepted use-by date.

For the range to allow such a waiver would be I think entirely unprecedented, especially for the very first launch of a new rocket. Such test launches are exceedingly risky. A lot can go wrong, and often does when a rocket tries to fly for the first time. To allow such a lift-off with a questionable flight termination system seems completely insane and irrational.

NASA is also proposing an October 2nd launch date. I suspect this date is based on the range safety office refusing to give this waiver. If so, NASA would then do its September 21st fueling test on the launchpad, quickly roll the rocket back to the assembly building to check the batteries, and then try to get it back to the launch pad in time for that October 2nd date.

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September 12, 2022 Quick space links

1:17 pm

Courtesy of stringer Jay.

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The Ukraine’s big victory this past week was no accident

9:01 am

The Ukraine War as of August 30, 2022
The Ukraine War as of August 30, 2022. Click for full map.

The Ukraine War as of September 11, 2022
The Ukraine War as of September 11, 2022. Click for full map.

In the past week the Ukraine has scored a major victory in its effort to drive Russia from its territory, pushing the Russians back across a wide swath in the areas north and east of the city of Kharkiv. The two maps to the right, created by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and simplified, reduced, and annotated to post here, show these gains, with the top map from their August 30, 2022 analysis and the bottom from their September 11, 2022 update. Red or pink areas are regions controlled by the Russians. Blue areas are regions retaken by the Ukraine. Red-striped areas are regions captured by Russian in its 2014 invasion. Blue-striped areas are regions inside Russian-occupied territories that have seen strong partisan resistance.

The green lines on both maps mark rivers that act as important military barriers. The blue arrows on the lower map east of Kharkiv show the Ukrainian military push this past week, first to the east to the river Oskil. From there the forces moved north and south. To the south the Ukrainians used the Oskil river to their left as a wall protecting them from Russian forces. That same river acted to pin the Russians down in the south, forcing them in the past day to quickly retreat to the east across the one remaining bridge under their control, but in the process abandoning large amounts of armaments that the Ukrainians can now use.

In the south, the Dnipro River also acts as a barrier for the Russian occupying forces north of Kherson.
The Ukrainians have spent the last month or so aggressively attacking the handful of bridges that cross this river, thus restricting Russian transport to and from its northern forces. As the Ukrainians made these attacks, they were remarkably public about their plans to follow up with a major campaign in the south to retake Kherson and all territory north of the Dnipro.

In that public campaign lies the key to this whole counter-offensive. As ISW noted in its update of September 11, 2022:
» Read more

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Defense to help Commerce create its own ability to track orbital objects

12:40 pm

The Defense and Commerce departments yesterday signed an agreement where Defense will help Commerce create its own capability for tracking of all objects in orbit, from satellites to space junk.

The agreement, the Commerce Department said in a statement, defines how the two departments will work together to implement provisions of Space Policy Directive (SPD) 3 in 2018 that directed commerce to provide space situational awareness (SSA) and space traffic management (STM) services, such as conjunction warnings, currently provided by the U.S. military.

The result of this is that the federal government is now creating a second bureaucracy to do what the military has been doing quite capably for more than a half century. Commerce intends to obtain its data by awarding contracts to private companies, who will do the actual tracking. The irony is that it is very possible the military will eventually sign similar contracts with the same companies, thus paying them twice for the same service. Meanwhile, Washington has an excuse for hiring more people.

Even more ironic, this policy directive was issued during the Trump administration. It might have intended for Commerce to replace the military, but under the Biden administration the federal bureaucracy is being allowed to interpret the policy more broadly, thus allowing both agencies to do the work.

I also guarantee that the Republicans will almost certainly do nothing to change this, should they take over Congress. For the past thirty years this so-called party of small government has done nothing to earn that title. Instead, it has simply engineered the growth of government, in a more subtle and deliberate manner.

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FAA and NTSB sign deal dividing turf for investigating space accidents

11:46 am

FAA & NTSB agreement

Turf war! The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) yesterday signed an agreement that divides up the responsibilities for investigating accidents that occur in or by space entities.

You can read that agreement here [pdf]. A screen capture of the key clauses is to the right. Essentially, the NTSB will lead any investigation that either causes death or injury, or involves damage to property not related to the space operation itself, while the FAA will lead all other investigations.

The agreement also has a lot of clauses describing how the two agencies will work together in dividing up this turf before, during, and after investigations. Above all, the agreement now authorizes both agencies to “conduct its own analysis and determine its respective conclusions and recommendations in accordance with its authorities.”

The agreement stems from an effort by the NTSB to take over all space-related accident investigations it proposed in November 2021 that both the FAA and industry strongly opposed. This agreement however shows that the Biden administration ignored those objections in order to give the NTSB a wider range of power, while also giving bureaucrats in both agencies more power as well. Under this agreement, every space incident is now going to be investigated twice, with both the NTSB and FAA doing their own investigations.

Expect this agreement to be used by the Washington bureaucracy to slow or shut down innovation and new technology. The NTSB is designed to investigate incidents caused in the long established and robust airline industry, not developing cutting-edge experimental work. It will naturally act to discourage such experimental work.

Meanwhile, the FAA will chime in with its own investigation and analysis. The competing results will only cause confusion and disorder, thus further acting to discourage any new and risky innovations.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Fox blacklists news reporter for not getting jab

12:43 pm

Fox News: eager to blacklist

They’re coming for you next: Her story is not unique in this age of blacklisting and oppression, but it does reveal how bad really things are because the source of the blacklisting happens to be a news outlet that many naively consider against such things. Breanna Morello had moved from Florida to take a new job with Fox News, with the expectation that it would not only get her on-air reporting time but might lead to becoming “a producer for Tucker Carlson.”

After packing up my beautiful Florida apartment in late December, I was relocating back to New York City for work. My remote role as a Fox Business booking producer was going to become an in-person position starting on January 3, 2022.

The day I moved into my new apartment, I was completely caught off guard by an email that was forwarded to me by my Executive Producer. » Read more

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FCC proposes new regulation requiring satellites to be de-orbited five years after mission end

9:53 am

The FCC yesterday announced it is considering a new regulation that would require companies to de-orbit defunct satellites in low Earth orbit no more than five years after the satellite’s shut down.

The order, if adopted by commissioners, would require spacecraft that end their missions in or passing through LEO — defined as altitudes below 2,000 kilometers — dispose of their spacecraft through reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere as soon as practicable and no more than five years after the end of the mission. The rule would apply to satellites launched two years after the order is adopted, and include both U.S.-licensed satellites as well as those licensed by other jurisdictions but seeking U.S. market access.

According to the FCC press release [pdf], this new regulation will be discussed at the next public meeting of the commission on September 29, 2022.

Though in general this rule appears a good idea, there are several legitimate objections to it. NASA’s orbital debris office noted that this rule would only reduce space junk by 10%. Others questioned the FCC’s regulatory authority to do this at all, since its main statutory function is not the regulation satellite operations but the use of the frequencies those satellites use.

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NASA wants to launch SLS in September; needs range safety office waiver to do it

9:39 am

In outlining the status of the repair work on the hydrogen leak on SLS on the launchpad yesterday, NASA officials indicated that they are targeting a September 23rd launch date that will require the Space Force range safety office to okay the use of a flight abort system with batteries that are significantly past their use-by date.

NASA has submitted a request to the Eastern Range for an extension of the current testing requirement for the flight termination system. NASA is respecting the range’s processes for review of the request, and the agency continues to provide detailed information to support a range decision.

The range office had required that the batteries for that flight termination system be checked every 20 days, a process that requires the rocket to be rolled back to the assembly building. It had already given NASA a five day extension to 25 days, but even that was insufficient to get the rocket launched in its previous launch window, expiring on September 6th. Though NASA has not said how long an extension it is requesting, to do a September 23rd launch would require another extension of 17 days, making for a total 23-day waiver for those batteries. Thus, instead of limiting the life of those batteries to 20 days, NASA is requesting the range to allow the batteries to go unchecked for 43 days, at a minimum.

For the range to give that first waiver I think is somewhat unprecedented. To do it again, for that much time, seems foolish, especially as this will the rocket’s first launch, and a lot can go wrong.

NASA officials also hinted during yesterday’s press conference — in their bureaucrat way — that human error might have caused the hydrogen leak.

NASA has not confirmed if an “inadvertent” manual command that briefly overpressurized the hydrogen fuel line caused the leak, but the agency is investigating the incident. Bolger said new manual processes replaced automated ones during the second attempt and the launch team could have used more time to practice them. “So we didn’t, as a leadership team, put our our operators in the best place we could have,” Bolger said. During the Sept. 17 fueling test, NASA will try out a slower, “kinder and gentler” process that should avoid such events.

If the Space Force and the Biden administration demand the range officer allow this rocket, with this team, to be launched with a questionable flight termination system, we should expect public resignations from several range officers. Whether anyone in our present government however has the ethics to do such a thing appears very doubtful.

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September 8, 2022 Quick space links

3:30 pm

Courtesy of string Jay:

2 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Modern Hollywood now celebrates McCarthyism and blacklisting

11:49 am

Hollywood, home of the modern McCarthyism

The modern dark age: Despite a history during the 1950s McCarthy era, when many of its most talented members were blacklisted because of their leftwing political beliefs, Hollywood today celebrates and encourages the blacklisting of conservative talent.

Consider the blacklisting described by comedian Adam Carolla and late night Fox show host Greg Gutfield during one recent podcast:

“Oh, we can’t get the guys who wrote on ‘Conan’ to come into the writers’ room because they’re scared of being blackballed. It drives me insane that they never stop complaining about McCarthyism and they’re more than happy to blackball anybody who crosses the line,” Carolla said.

“They’re the new McCarthy-ites, especially in this woke culture,” Gutfeld said. “I’m counting on this show succeeding without names and creating our own celebrities, which is actually what happens at Fox.”

Both men also described how, even if a writer or performer wanted to work for them, they often backed out because their agent or publicist told them not to, either because of the same fear or because of hostility to their politics.

In addition, Carolla in a different podcast described how this same blacklisting culture is now being used not just against conservatives, but against those who refuse to bow to the absurd COVID edicts.

The story of one actor, Clifton Duncan, is typical.
» Read more

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Arianespace’s Ariane-5 rocket launches communications satellite

5:29 pm

Arianespace today used its Ariane-5 rocket, launching from French Guiana, to successfully place a Eutelsat communications satellite into orbit.

This was the fourth successful launch this year for Arianespace, so Europe still does not make the leader board. The company had predicted it would launch eleven times in 2022. At this moment it appears very questionable it will be able to match that prediction.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

40 SpaceX
36 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 55 to 36 in the national rankings, but is now tied with the entire world combined 55 to 55.

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1-in-5 Democrats and 1-in-3 women Democrats think men can get pregnant

12:41 pm

The uncertainty of science? An online survey has found that large numbers of self-described Democrats now believe that it is possible for a man to give birth to babies.

The online survey, conducted by WPA Intelligence from August 22-25, found 22% of Democrats agreed with the statement, “Some men can get pregnant.” The percentage rose when only including women, and a whopping 36% of white, college-educated female Democrats concurred. [emphasis mine]

There is no uncertainty here. Men cannot get pregnant, and to believe it is possible tells us that you are either insane, or utterly disconnected from the real world.

The highlighted words underline the madness that is overtaking our intellectual upper classes. More than one-third of college educated Democrat women believe this. No wonder these same people wear masks, get triple and quadruple COVID jabs, and want any evidence that they are wrong censored with the speakers blackballed. They have become so divorced from reality that to even let a peep of it enter their brains will cause their heads to explode.

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Pushback: Libs of TikTok threatens Twitter with lawsuit if banning continues

12:25 pm

Twitter: Home for censorship
Twitter: Home for censorship.

Bring a gun to a knife fight: After getting suspended again by Twitter for merely proving that Boston Children’s Hospital was doing sex change operations on children, Libs of TikTok founder Chaya Raichik had her lawyers send the social media company a letter threatening a lawsuit if the suspension was not lifted immediately.

As she notes,

Last week, I was wrongfully suspended from Twitter for seven days after I exposed a hospital that admitted to performing gender-affirming hysterectomies on healthy minors. I say “wrongfully” because the reason given for my suspension was hateful conduct. I did not engage in hateful conduct. I accurately reported the truth

In their letter Raichik’s lawyers made it clear [pdf] that nothing she did was hateful. If anything, her actions caused others on Twitter to spew hate at her. As the lawyers noted also,
» Read more

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Rocket Lab gets contract with military to study point-to-point cargo transport

10:33 am

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab yesterday revealed that the U.S. military has given it a contract to study whether its rockets could eventually be used for point-to-point cargo transport.

This study contract is similar to the one the military gave SpaceX for its Starship/Superheavy rocket. Both are intended not to actual fly missions, but to look at the engineering of the rockets to see if it will be practical to use them for point-to-point cargo transport on Earth.

The deal suggests the military has been impressed with Rocket Lab’s efforts to make its smallsat Electron rocket resusable, as well as its development program for its newer and larger Neutron resusable rocket.

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China’s Long March 2D launches two military satellites

9:40 am

China yesterday successfully launched two military satellites using its Long March 2D rocket.

Launched from an interior spaceport, the rocket’s first stage crashed somewhere in China.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

40 SpaceX
36 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 55 to 36 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 55 to 54.

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September 6, 2022 Quick space links

5:16 pm

Courtesy of Jay, BtB’s intrepid stringer.

  • Sierra Space: Mission: Tenacity Part 1

    • This video is just an empty-of-content commercial for Sierra Space, filled with feel-good “woke” blather but little real information about the actual status of this long overdue spacecraft. It is worth watching however because it reveals this emptiness. Reminds me of the many similar videos from Blue Origin and NASA over the years, filled with big promises but little actual achievement.

  • How does Starlink Satellite Internet Work?

    • This video, almost 30 minutes long, is definitely worth watching if you have any interest in signing up for Starlink, or just have an interest in the coming low orbit satellite constellation boom.

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The evidence continues to pile up: The government’s strongarm policies against COVID were utter failures

2:05 pm

The modern basis of medical research in the dark age
Health policy during the Wuhan panic

Since my last COVID update in June, the number of research papers has continued to show, with increasing force, the total and utter failure of every single one of the draconian edicts imposed on the pubic by leftist governments both in Democratic Party controlled states in the U.S. as well as worldwide.

Below are a small sampling of this accumulating research. Read it and weep.

My sorrow however comes from knowing that this knowledge was patently obvious from day one. This new research really isn’t new, it confirms what was well known, and was confirmed quickly as early as March 2020. However, when skeptics like myself, mostly on the right, desperately tried to stem the panic, it was all to no avail. The government’s edicts were always wrong, but no one wanted to listen. The data below merely confirms what all the data, before and during the Wuhan panic, was already telling us.
» Read more

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South Korea’s Danuri lunar orbiter successfully makes course correction

10:20 am

On September 2nd engineers for South Korea’s Danuri lunar orbiter successfully completed a major course correction, firing its engines to adjust its path towards the Moon.

The science ministry announced Sept. 4 that the maneuver was so successful that the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), which controls the spacecraft called Danuri, has decided to skip an additional correction maneuver planned for Sept. 16.

It will reach lunar orbit on December 16th, then make five more orbital adjustments before reaching its science orbit in January. While the spacecraft has instruments from both South Korea and the U.S. for studying the lunar surface, its main goal is to teach South Korea engineers and scientists how to do this.

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Inouye Solar Telescope begins science operations

10:07 am

The National Science Foundation yesterday announced the inauguration of science operations of the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii.

The sample first images provided at the link are excellent, but rather than show this telescope’s abilities, they instead illustrate the absurdity of spending millions to build a ground-based telescope. None compare with the spectacular high resolution solar images being produced today from the myriad of solar telescopes in space.

Moreover, the history of this telescope tells us much about the bankrupt nature of all modern government projects:

Over 25 years ago, the NSF invested in creating a world-leading, ground-based solar observatory to confront the most pressing questions in solar physics and space weather events that impact Earth. This vision, executed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) through the NSF’s National Solar Observatory (NSO), was realized during the formal inauguration of the Inouye Solar Telescope. [emphasis mine]

It took our modern incompetent federal government a quarter century to build this single telescope. Compare that with the construction of the solar telescopes it is replacing. They were conceived, designed, and built in much less than a decade back in the early 1960s. And cost less too.

The press release at the link also spends a lot of space touting “diversity” and “Native Hawaiian” cultural needs, which really have nothing to do with the study of the Sun. That focus tells us how misguided our government has become, and how it is using its coercive power to drag us all along down that foolish path towards hell.

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China launches two satellites with its Kuaizhou-1A rocket

9:18 am

China today successfully placed what it labeled as “two test satellites” into orbit using its smallsat Kuaizhou-1A rocket.

No information at all was released about both satellites.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

40 SpaceX
35 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 55 to 35 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 55 to 53.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Fire chief fired for attending a Christian-affiliated leadership conference

1:02 pm

Christians banned from Stockton's government

They’re coming for you next: Ron Hittle, who had served as a firefighter in Stockton, California, for more than two decades and was for five years its fire chief, was fired in 2010 because he had had the nerve to attend a leadership conference that happened to be affiliated with the Christian religion.

More than a decade ago, the Deputy City Manager asked Chief Hittle to attend leadership training. Chief Hittle learned about the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit from a business magazine, and he decided to attend because it was a renowned leadership seminar that featured a “pop up business school” with stellar speakers from various backgrounds including his own Christian worldview. Chief Hittle invited three of his staff members who shared his Christian faith to join him, and he put his attendance on the public city calendar so his supervisors would be aware. The firefighters paid for the two-day seminar with their own funds.

But the same supervisor who asked Chief Hittle to attend leadership training told him it was unacceptable that he attended a Christian-affiliated seminar.
» Read more

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September 5, 2022 Space quick links

11:11 am

All courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.

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India’s space agency successfully tests prototype for controlling descent of spent 1st stages

9:38 am

IAD by ISRO

India’s space agency ISRO on September 3, 2022 successfully used a suborbital sounding rocket to test a prototype of an inflatable airbag, which it dubs an Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (IAD), that can inflate at the top of a 1st stage and slow and control its descent back to Earth after launch.

The graphic to the right was adapted from the mission brochure [pdf]. According to ISRO:

The IAD was initially folded and kept inside the payload bay of the rocket. At around 84 km altitude, the IAD was inflated and it descended through atmosphere with the payload part of sounding rocket. The pneumatic system for inflation was developed by LPSC. The IAD has systematically reduced the velocity of the payload through aerodynamic drag and followed the predicted trajectory. This is first time that an IAD is designed specifically for spent stage recovery. All the objectives of the mission were successfully demonstrated

ISRO claims this design can not only facilitate the reuse of first stages, it can also be used for science payloads to Mars and Venus.

I look at this and wonder, wouldn’t parachutes or parasails, already developed and used numerous times in similar applications, do the same job? In fact, Rocket Lab has already successfully used parachutes to control the re-entry of its Electron first stages. Meanwhile, SpaceX uses simple and lightweight grid fins to control the descent of its Falcon 9 first stages, and simply fires that stage’s engines twice to slow it down for landing.

While there may be engineer advantages to this airbag design, the whole thing smacks of many of NASA’S complex test programs that never made it past prototype tests. The ideas always looked good, but they never were practical or cost effective.

7 comments

Indian rocket startup raises $51 million in private investment capital

9:08 am

Capitalism in space: The Indian rocket startup Skyroot has just raised $51 million in private investment capital for the development of its smallsat rocket, Vikram-1.

Operating as a private aerospace manufacturer and commercial launch service provider in the country, the Hyderabad-headquartered startup has been working on its flagship Vikram series of small-life launch vehicles. The first among them, the Vikram 1, is slated to take to the skies by the end of the year and launch small satellites to space.

The $51 million is the most any private aerospace commercial company from India has ever raised in a single funding round.

Though the Modi government has publicly encouraged the development of a private, independent, commercial aerospace industry, India’s bureaucracy has generally acted to block this effort. In 2019 it convinced the government to create New Space India Limited (NSIL), a wholly government-owned entity which is designed to retain as much control over commercial market share as possible. As recently as one month ago, the NSIL webpage described itself as aiming to “capture” that commercial market. That revealed its purpose too obviously, so the website was rewritten to now say its goal is to “spur” the Indian aerospace sector.

Because NSIL gets government money and has full control over all of India’s already developed government rockets and space facilities, it has an enormous advantage, which acts to discourage investment in new private companies such as Skyroot. This is a similar situation that existed in the U.S. for more than a half century following Apollo. NASA had the resources, controlled all launches, and thus made private investment for independent companies hard to obtain.

This only changed when NASA began awarding contracts to private companies in 2008, whereby the rockets and spacecraft produced were not owned or designed by NASA. And NASA was only forced to do so because Elon Musk happened to have enough of his own money to finance SpaceX himself.

When ISRO (India’s agency) or NSIL begin awarding contracts like this, then company’s like Skyroot will begin to blossom.

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NASA to roll SLS back to assembly building, delaying launch by weeks at minimum

3:20 pm

NASA managers today decided they will not attempt another launch of SLS during the present launch window that closes on September 6, 2022, and will bring the rocket back to assembly building for more detailed trouble-shooting.

Engineers not only need to solve the hydrogen fuel leak in a fuel line connection that caused today’s launch scrub, they will also have to replace the flight termination batteries needed in case the rocket has to be destroyed during liftoff because it is flying out of control. These batteries only have a few weeks life, and the launch delays this week caused them to reach their limit.

The next launch windows are either from September 19 to October 4, excluding September 29-30, or October 17 to October 31, excluding October 24, 25, 26, and 28.

At that point SLS’s two solid rocket strap-on boosters will have been stacked for about two years, one full year past what NASA once considered their safe lifespan. The agency has waived that rule for SLS, but waiving it for more than a full year might simply be too risky. If the boosters need to be replaced, that will delay the launch by at least another three months, at the minimum.

Right now the odds remain high this launch will not occur in 2022.

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China’s Long March 4C rocket launches military satellite

9:55 am

China today successfully used its Long March 4C rocket to place a military Earth observation satellite into orbit.

Launched from an interior spaceport, the rocket’s lower stages thus crashed uncontrolled in China.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

39 SpaceX
34 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise still leads China 54 to 34 in the national rankings, and the entire globe 54 to 52.

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