Starliner to return unmanned on September 6

NASA today announced that Starliner will undock from ISS on September 6, 2024 at about 6:00 PM (Eastern) and will then land six hours later at White Sands in New Mexico.

The announcement touts Starliner’s ability to fly autonomously, but based on what we know this is really not something to brag about. All Dragons do this routinely whether they are manned or not. Starliner required an upload of software to reconfirgure it for this, since it had originally been configured for a manned return and apparently that original software was not designed for an unmanned return.

In other words, the spacecraft as presently designed doesn’t have the ability to switch from autonomous to manned in a simple manner.

Pushback: Teacher fired for daring to attend rally on January 6th wins lawsuit

Jason Moorehead at the Washington Monument rally on January 6, 2021
Jason Moorehead at the Washington
Monument rally on January 6, 2021.
Click for original image.

Fight! Fight! Fight! Jason Moorehead, who was fired for being in Washington on January 6, 2021 to attend a Trump rally at the Washington Monument (never getting within a mile of the Capitol and thus never participating in any way with any violent events there), has now won a wrongful termination suit from the Pennsylvania Allentown School District as well as two school board members.

On Aug. 16, a jury awarded Moorehead $131,500, most of which will come from the district. Two school board members, Lisa Conover and Nancy Wilt, are liable for $6,000 and $500 respectively. Moorehead had not specified a desired dollar amount for “loss of earnings, loss of career, reputational damage, mental and emotional pain and suffering,” and punitive damages.

Moorehead’s lawyer AJ Fleuhr said in statement that he and his client were happy “a federal jury recognized that the Allentown School District violated Jason Moorehead’s First Amendment rights to free speech, assembly, and political affiliation,” and that the named board members had “maliciously and wantonly attacked him.”

» Read more

Has the FAA grounded SpaceX?

The FAA statement yesterday seemed quite clear — that the agency was grounding all SpaceX launches until the investigation into the failed landing of a Falcon 9 first stage was completed. That clarity was further accepted by numerous news organizations today, all of which clearly described in their reporting the FAA’s action as a grounding of further SpaceX launches for an unspecified amount of time, from days to weeks. (See here, here, and here for just a few examples.)

Nonetheless, there are strong indications that the FAA’s grounding will be very short. For example, though no dates are presently firm, SpaceX continues to list at least two Starlink launches as well as the Polaris Dawn private manned mission as targeting launches over the next few days, with one Starlink launch still aiming for a 10:18 pm (Pacific) launch tonight from Vandenberg. That liftoff might be tentative, but that SpaceX is still pushing for that launch date suggests it is trying to pressure the FAA to back off.

And SpaceX has good reason to expect that pressure to work. The FAA has already admitted there were no public safety issues from the first stage failure. In the past it has allowed launches to proceed under that condition, even if the investigation was on-going. SpaceX is almost certainly making this point known to the FAA, if its managers don’t know it already. We will find out I think by the end of today.

Even if the FAA backs down, that it even attempted any grounding in this situation was an egregious abuse of its regulatory power. There was no rational reason for it to even hint at doing so, even based on its own regulations as well as its statutory authority. If the goal was to do its job and not to harass SpaceX and Elon Musk, it would have immediately announced that no grounding was required because no issues of public safety were involved in the failure. Instead, it pushed its power, forcing SpaceX to push back.

NASA leans toward launching Europa Clipper as scheduled, despite transistor issue

Though the final decision will be made in early September, NASA revealed today in a short post that management is leaning towards launching the multi-billion Europa Clipper mission as scheduled on October 10, 2024, despite a very recently discovered transistor issue where the transistors were not properly hardened in construction for the harsh radiation environment surrounding Jupiter.

The next major milestone for Clipper is Key Decision Point E on Monday, Sept. 9, in which the agency will decide whether the project is ready to proceed to launch and mission operations. NASA will provide more information at a mission overview and media briefing targeted for that same week.

The Europa Clipper mission team recently conducted extensive testing and analysis of transistors that help control the flow of electricity on the spacecraft. Analysis of the results suggests the transistors can support the baseline mission. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted sentence suggests NASA officials have weighed the option between launching on time with a limited ability to do science once at Jupiter versus delaying the launch years to fix the transistors, and are now favoring the former option. The cost of delay would be high and long, and NASA officials might believe the bad press for that option would be much greater than a mission that only achieves its bare minimum results. For example, to admit publicly that NASA installed transistors that were not space-hardened when that necessity has been known about since the 1960s would be as embarrassing to the agency as it was for Boeing when it discovered it had installed flammable tape in its Starliner capsule. NASA management might be leaning to letting a flawed multi-billion dollar project launch, knowing its capabilities are quite limited, in order to avoid that embarrassment.

Chinese pseudo-company launches six satellites from off-shore barge

The Chinese pseudo-company Galactic Energy today completed a launch of six satellites, its Ceres-1 rocket lifting off from a barge off the coast of northeast China.

China’s state-run press once again illustrated how fake these pseudo companies are, in that it made no mention of the company in its official report, stating simply that the launch was completed by “China.” The companies might raise investment capital funds and sign contracts and make profits, but in the end they only do what they are told to do by the Chinese communists, and at any point those communists can confiscate the company for the government’s own purposes.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

84 SpaceX
36 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 99 to 54, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies 84 to 69.

FAA grounds SpaceX because of first stage landing failure early today


“Great business you got there! Really be
a shame if something happened to it!”

They’re coming for you next: Once again the FAA has expanded its harassment of SpaceX by now grounding the company from any further launches while it “investigates” the failed landing of a Falcon 9 first stage last night. The FAA statement is as follows:

“The FAA is aware an anomaly occurred during the SpaceX Starlink Group 8-6 mission that launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on August 28,” the FAA said Wednesday in a statement. “The incident involved the failure of the Falcon 9 booster rocket while landing on a droneship at sea. No public injuries or public property damage have been reported. The FAA is requiring an investigation.”

The FAA’s actions against SpaceX since Biden became president have consistently been unprecedented and biased against the company. » Read more

Today’s blacklisted American: Woman arrested in Arizona for publicly criticizing a public employee

They’re coming for you next: While making a public comment criticizing the town’s attorney at the local city council meeting for Surprise in Arizona, Rebekah Massie was ordered to either shut up or be arrested by the town’s mayor, Skip Hall, because the council does not allow citizens to make such criticisms during the public comment period.

When she had the audacity to note quite correctly that she was entirely within her first amendment rights to say whatever she wanted, Hall then had her arrested.

I have embedded the video of this event below. It is egregious beyond words.


» Read more

Musk: Starlink will be made available to all cell phones in emergencies

Elon Musk has announced that SpaceX will make its Starlink internet constellation available to anyone with a cell phone should they need it during an emergency in remote areas.

The SpaceX CEO made the comments in an X post as the company, in partnership with T-Mobile, currently seeks approval from the Federal Communications Commission to operate its direct-to-cellular Starlink technology commercially. SpaceX says the satellite-based service would provide supplemental cell coverage to Americans from space that would close mobile “dead zones.” Cellular service providers AT&T and Verizon have raised concerns about the technology, including that it would disrupt their own mobile networks.

In a letter to the FCC on Friday, SpaceX said the service would connect first responders in a variety of environments and would be able to send wireless emergency alerts to everyone — not just T-Mobile customers — in places where there is no earth-based cellular coverage.

While this offer is morally correct, it is also good politics, as it acts as icing on the cake to encourage the FCC to approve that T-Moble license request. At the moment the technical details for making the proposal happen remain murky, but SpaceX’s willingness to offer this emergency service at no charge, something its competitors have apparently not, cannot hurt it in its negotiations with the FCC.

Judge: Vanderbilt student protester who violently took over a building can be prosecuted

Leftist protesters break into Vanderbilt building
Anti-Israel protesters assault a security guard (grey jacket)
at Vanderbuilt. Click for full video.

The lawless left: A judge ruled this week that Vanderbilt student protester Jack Petocz, who was one of three who violently attacked and injured a security guard in the process of taking over a building on March 25, 2024, was not exercising his first amendment rights and can be prosecuted for assault and face an almost yearlong prison sentence.

Judge Lynda Jones ruled during a preliminary hearing on Thursday that there was probable cause, and told Petocz he’s facing a possible jail sentence of up to 11 months and 29 days for the assault charge. Jones said Petocz may face more time if state prosecutors charge him with aggravated criminal trespass, a Class E felony.

It appears that Petocz was arguing that he was merely exercising his first amendment rights in breaking into the building and occupying it.
» Read more

NASA IG: NASA’s effort to build new SLS mobile launcher is an epic disaster

SLS's two mobile launchers, costing $1 billion
NASA’s bloated SLS mobile launchers

According to a new report [pdf] from NASA’s inspector general, both NASA and its contractor Bechtel have allowed the cost and schedule for the new larger SLS mobile launcher (ML-2) (on the right in the graphic) to go completely out of control, with the first launch on that platform to be delayed again until 2029.

NASA projects the ML-2 will cost over three times more than planned. In 2019, NASA estimated the entire ML-2 project from design through construction would cost under $500 million with construction completed and the ML-2 delivered to NASA by March 2023. In December 2023, NASA estimated the ML-2 project would cost $1.5 billion, including $1.3 billion for the Bechtel contract and $168 million for other project costs, with delivery of the launcher to NASA in November 2026. In June 2024, NASA established the Agency Baseline Commitment (ABC)—the cost and schedule baseline committed to Congress against which a project is measured—for a ML-2 project cost of $1.8 billion and a delivery date of September 2027. Even with the establishment of the ABC, NASA intends to keep Bechtel accountable to the cost and schedule agreed to in December 2023.

Despite the Agency’s increased cost projections, our analysis indicates costs could be even higher due in part to the significant amount of construction work that remains. Specifically, our projections indicate the total cost could reach $2.7 billion by the time Bechtel delivers the ML-2 to NASA. With the time NASA requires after delivery to prepare the launcher, we project the ML-2 will not be ready to support a launch until spring 2029, surpassing the planned September2028 Artemis IV launch date.

This quote actually makes things sounder better than they are. Bechtel’s original contract was for $383 million, which means the IG’s present final estimate of $2.7 billion is more than seven times higher. The contract was awarded in 2019 and was supposed to be completed by 2023, in four years. Instead, at best it will take Bechtel a decade to complete the job.

The IG notes that this contact was cost-plus, and considers this the main cause of these cost overruns. It also notes that NASA has had the option to convert the contract to fixed-price, but has chosen not to do so.

Possibly the most damning aspect of the IG report is its conclusion, which essentially admits that nothing can be done to fix this problem.
» Read more

D-Orbit newest orbital tug deploys four smallsats

The Italian orbital tug company D-Orbit has now successfully deployed four smallsats from its newest tug, having been launched on August 16, 2024 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The tug still has one more satellite to deploy, after which it will remain in orbit as it also carries four additional customer “hosted” payloads that are using the tug itself as their service module.

This is D-Orbit’s second demo mission, the first flying in 2023. It also appears be completely successful, which puts this company in an excellent position to garner future contracts from many small satellite companies. It is also a partner in a $256 million Italian project to test in-orbit robotic satellite repair.

SpaceX blasts its satellite competitors for lobbying the government to shut down Starlink/T-Mobile partnership

SpaceX on August 22, 2024 responded harshly to the effort by its satellite competitors to get the FCC to shut down the planned partneship of Starlink and T-Mobile, whereby Starlink will fill the gaps in T-Mobile’s coverage.

You can read SpaceX’s letter here. Its language however is quite blunt:

While the petitions from AT&T, Verizon, DISH/EchoStar, and Omnispace lack technical basis or legal merit, their game is clear. AT&T and Verizon seek to hamstring their competitor T-Mobile by talking out of both sides of their mouths, on one hand demanding without technical support that T-Mobile and SpaceX operate at unnecessarily low power levels that will force Americans to sacrifice service, while giving their own partner AST a free pass. AT&T goes so far as to claim to have conducted a secret study it refuses to show the Commission to support suppressing SpaceX’s out-of-band emissions to an interference-protection level ten times below the limit sufficient to protect terrestrial networks, while allowing its partner AST to exceed that limit.

DISH/EchoStar repeats its demand to siphon proprietary information from SpaceX to aid its own flailing ambitions, while stoutly refusing SpaceX’s repeated requests to engage in actual good faith coordination the way a company with actual technical concerns would.

And although it still has no commercial satellite service anywhere in the world, Omnispace continues to make unfounded claims of prospective harmful interference to prop up a decade-old spectrum play that it fears will lose financial value if American consumers can enjoy ubiquitous mobile connectivity using the PCS G Block downlink.

Fortunately, none of these unfounded arguments present any reasonable basis to delay swift grant of SpaceX’s request to bring ubiquitous mobile connectivity to American consumers.

The FCC has not yet responded to any of these demand letters. Nor has it yet issued the waiver SpaceX had requested in June 2024 allowing its Starlink system to operate beyond its licensed radio frequencies in order to facilitate cell surface with T-Mobile.

NASA reveals technical problem during solar sail deployment of test mission

NASA today revealed that a technical problem occurred during the deployment of a demonstration solar sail mission launched in April on Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket.

Upon an initial attempt to unfurl, the solar sail paused when an onboard power monitor detected higher than expected motor currents. Communications, power, and attitude control for the spacecraft all remain normal while mission managers work to understand and resolve the cause of the interruption by analyzing data from the spacecraft.

The goal had been test the boom deployment of a 860 square foot sail from a cubesat only about 4 feet in size.

The concept of the solar sail is simple: Use the pressure produced by sunlight to maneuver and fly controlled throughout the solar system. The idea has been tested successfully several times, with the Japanese IKAROS test solar sail and the Planetary Society’s Lightsail-2 the most successful. Sadly almost all other attempts to test this idea have had technical problems of one kind or another.

Ironically, one test solar sail proved that such a deployment from a cubesat could be done very cheaply, unlike NASA’s effort above. Brown University students in 2023 used cheap off-the-shelf parts to launch a smallsat sail that successfully deployed and was then used to lower the satellite’s orbit in order to de-orbit it more quickly. Total cost, $10,000. And it worked.

The fall of DEI accelerates

Are Americans finally waking up and emulating their country's founders?

Fight! Fight! Fight! In the past two months it has become very clear that if Americans are willing to stand up to the left and its Marxist bigoted agenda, Americans will win.

Since late June, five different university systems have shut down their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion offices. Each is listed below, in chronological order:

And this list does not include the University of Florida, which in March shut down its own DEI office because the state legislature not only banned such offices, it cut the budgets of them.

Though it is true these states are all solidly conservative with legislatures largely controlled by Republicans, this fact on its face proves that voting can make a difference, with Florida the biggest proof. Unlike the other states, Florida had for decades been a swing state between the Democrats and Republicans. Voters however changed that in the past decade, so that today the state legisilature is solidly Republican. The result has been a definitive policy shift acting to eliminate these racist Marxist programs from state-financed universities.

There is no reason similar changes cannot be forced in other battleground states. Nor should we consider it impossible in the coastal states (California, Oregon, Washington, New York, Massachusetts, etc) where Democrats maintain full control. DEI concepts are inherently racist and divisive, and serve only to encourage anger, resentment, and hate across all ethnic groups. Ordinary voters recognize this routinely, when they make the effort to look.

Nor are things changing solely in the unversities because of the willingness of voters to force change. The boycott of Bud Light because of its endorsement of the queer agenda last year is having profound impact on corporate culture. In just the last few months a number of major companies have announced the elimination of their own DEI departments and programs, also listed below in chronological order:

The first three stories are from NPR and CNN, which explains the effort of the headlines to blame the evil “pouncing” of conservatives for this action (thus also implying that conservatives are bigots) . In truth, what these leftist news outlets refuse to recognize is that DEI programs are bigoted by their very nature, designed to favor some races over others merely because of skin color. These programs thus violate numerous civil rights laws, not to mention basic human morality and fair treatment. In addition, it appears the customers of all these companies, not simply conservatives, made it clear they would stop buying these products if company management did not take action to shut down these DEI policies.

Faced with a public backlash and the real threat of lawsuits and legal action against them, these companies are now recognizing that it makes no sense legally, financially, and morally to promote such things.

Trump defiant after being shot
Trump defiant

Increasingly, Americans are no longer willing to make believe that DEI and Marxism has a rightful place on the intellectual landscape. These ideas are garbage and downright evil, and it is a great tragedy that American academia allowed them to flourish on campuses for the past half century. The public is now beginning to make it clear that such ideas need to be sent to the ash heap of history, and legislators, academic administrations, and corporate managements are being forced to listen.

The trend is very obvious. If people actually pay attention and make it clear they will no longer tolerate the imposition of these bigoted leftist policies, those policies can be canceled and eliminated. One simply has to have the courage to fight, as Donald Trump said with such defiance immediately after getting shot.

First high resolution images released from Juice’s fly-by of the Earth & Moon

Juice's high resolution view of the Moon
Click for original image.

The Italian science team that runs the high resolution camera on the asteroid probe Juice have now released that camera’s first images, taken to test its operation during the spacecraft’s close fly-by of both the Moon and then the Earth a week ago.

The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, shows the Moon’s surface during that close fly-by, which got within 435 miles. The camera is dubbed Janus, and was developed by Italy and operated by the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics.

JANUS will study global, regional and local features and processes on the moons, as well as map the clouds of Jupiter. It will have a resolution up to 2.4 m per pixel on Ganymede and about 10 km per pixel at Jupiter.

The main aim of JANUS’s observations during the lunar-Earth flyby was to evaluate how well the instrument is performing, not to make scientific measurements. For this reason, JANUS took images with various camera settings and time intervals – a bit like if you’re going out to test a DSLR camera for the first time. In some cases, researchers intentionally ‘blurred’ the images so that they can test out resolution recovery algorithms. In other cases, they partially saturated the image to study the effects induced on the unsaturated areas.

As can be seen by the sample image above, the test images appear to have demonstrated that Janus will function as planned when Juice arrives in orbit around Jupiter in 2031 in order to study that gas giant’s upper atmosphere as well as its larger icy moons, Ganymede, Calisto, and Europa.

JAXA finally shuts down SLIM operations after four months of no contact

SLIM's last image
Click for original image.

Japan’s space agency JAXA today announced that it has now closed down all further attempts to contact its SLIM lunar lander on the surface of the Moon.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) concluded operations of the Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) on the lunar surface at 22:40 (JST), on August 23, after being unable to establish communication with the spacecraft during the operational periods from May to July*, following the last contact on April 28, 2024.

SLIM was launched onboard the H-IIA Launch Vehicle No.47 (H-IIA F47) on September 7, 2023 from the Tanegashima Space Center and achieved Japan’s first Moon soft landing on January 20, 2024. The landing precision was evaluated with a position error of approximately 10 meters from the target point, confirming the world’s first successful pinpoint landing. In addition, the Multi-Band Camera (MBC) successfully performed spectral observations in 10 wavelength bands on 10 rocks, exceeding initial expectations. Further, despite not being part of the original mission plan, the spacecraft was confirmed to survive three lunar nights and remained operational, demonstrating results that surpassed initial goals.

The lander’s main goal was to demonstrate the ability to do a precise robotic landing within a 100 meter landing zone. And even though one nozzle fell off during landing, resulting in SLIM landing on its side, it accomplished that goal and then survived three lunar nights, exceeding significantly its expected ability to function in harsh lunar environment.

The image to the right, reduced to post here, was taken by SLIM just before it was shut down for its first lunar night. It looks to the southeast across the width of 885-foot-wide Shioli Crater, the opposite rim the bright ridge in the upper right about a thousand feet away.

Starliner will return unmanned; crew will return in February 2025 on Dragon

Starliner docked to ISS
Starliner docked to ISS.

In a briefing today, NASA’s administrator Bill Nelson announced that Boeing’s Starliner capsule, launched in June on its first manned mission, will return unmanned and that the two astronauts it brought to ISS — Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams — will return in February 2025 as part of the crew of the next Dragon manned mission, scheduled to launch in late September.

Nelson made it a point to note that NASA’s past inactions to protect astronauts on two different shuttle missions, thus leading to their deaths, was a factor in this decision. The agency now decided safety must come first, and since Starliner’s return abilities still carry uncertainties that relate directly to safety, it decided to use a more reliable and tested Dragon capsule to return those astronauts back to Earth. During the entire briefing and Q&A session it became very clear that NASA is now paying very close attention to its engineers and their conclusions, rather than dismissing those conclusions because of other management concerns, as it did during those previous two shuttle failures.

Nelson also stated that NASA still wants to use Starliner as a second crew vehicle to ISS. He noted that he has spoken to Boeing’s new CEO, who apparently committed to getting Starliner fixed and operating. It remains undecided whether another test manned flight will be required of Boeing (at Boeing’s cost) before NASA certifies it as an operational vehicle. Whether any other customers will be willing to use the capsule remains unlikely until Boeing has flown a lot of Starliner NASA flights with no problems.

At this moment they are looking to bring Starliner back in early September, using a simplified undocking system to get the vehicle away from ISS quickly. The next Dragon mission will launch no earlier than September 24th carrying two astronauts and two empty flight suits that Wilmore and Williams use during their return.

Robert Kennedy’s speech today, in which he suspends his campaign and endorses Trump

Even Robert Kennedy agrees with this now
Even Robert Kennedy agrees with this now

Below I have embedded in its entirety Robert Kennedy Jr.’s speech today where he announced he has suspended his campaign, endorsed Donald Trump for president, and declared he will campaign for him.

You should watch it, especially beginning from around seven minutes into the speech, when he begins to describe at length the tyrannical anti-democratic nature of today’s modern Democratic Party, and why that nature has forced him to leave that party, the party of his father, Robert Kennedy and his uncle, John Kennedy, to which he has belonged since he was a child. The key quote:

I attended my first Democratic convention at the age of six in 1960 and back then, the Democrats were the champions of the Constitution of civil rights. The Democrats stood against authoritarianism against censorship against colonialism, imperialism and unjust wars. We were the party of Labor of the working class. The Democrats were the party of government transparency and the champion of the environment. Our party was the bulwark against big money interests and corporate power. True to its name. It was the Party of Democracy.

As you know, I left that party in October because it had departed so dramatically from the core values that I grew up with. It had become the party of war censorship, corruption, big Pharma, big tech big ag and big money wanted abandoned democracy by canceling the primary to conceal the cognitive decline of the sitting president.

He now sees Trump as the only way now to prevent this party of censorship and corruption from destroying our great nation.

This quote however does not give you the full flavor of his speech. It is nuanced, thoughtful, educated, and principled. You might not agree with everything he believes, but you will discover that he came to those beliefs based on rational thought, reasoned research, and critical thought. And it is that ability to think critically and openly about the Democratic Party — that he and his family have been an integral part for more than half a century — and to reject it and endorse Donald Trump. It is therefore incumbent upon every American citizen to do the same, to use our brains to make a thoughtful (not emotional) choice in November.

Which means it is incumbant upon everyone to spend a short 40 minutes to watch this speech. If you run it at 1.5 speed you can still understand everything, it will take less time.
» Read more

NASA adds three orbital tug startups to its contract bid list

NASA yesterday added three orbital tug startups to its contract bid list, allowing these companies to bid on projects that require the deployment of NASA smallsats to different orbits after launch.

NASA announced Aug. 22 that it selected Arrow Science and Technology, Impulse Space and Momentus Space for its Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare (VADR) contract. That selection allows them to compete for task orders for launching specific missions, typically small satellites willing to accept higher levels of risk in exchange for lower launch costs.

Arrow provides small satellite companies the deployment equipment used to release the satellite after launch. Impulse and Momentus have orbital tugs that not only deploy smallsats, but move them to their preferred orbit after the tug’s release from its launch rocket.

This NASA announcement allows its smallsats to be launched on either a dedicated small rocket that puts the satellite in its desired orbit or as part of a larger rideshare launch with many satellites that then uses the tug to get the satellite where it needs to be.

Norway approves spaceport license for Andoya

Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea

The Norwegian government announced yesterday that the Andoya spaceport that has been used for decades for suborbital test launches, has been given a spaceport license to conduct orbital launches from the site.

According to a statement from the Norwegian ministry, the license allows the spaceport to conduct up to 30 launches a year, including four during overnight hours. Those launches, to be overseen by the Civil Aviation Authority of Norway, can take place on azimuths between 280 and 360 degrees, supporting missions primarily to polar and sun-synchronous orbits.

The German rocket startup Isar Aerospace already has a 20-year lease to conduct orbital launches from Andoya, and hopes to do the first orbital test launch of its Spectrum rocket there. According to the Norway government, the first launch is planned for this year, but that likely will only be a suborbital test, not a full orbital launch. Of the three rocket startups from Germany, Isar is the only one that has not yet done any engine tests (as far as we know) or suborbital test launches of its rocket engine or design. Hyimpulse has done a suborbital test launch from an Australian spaceport, and Rocket Factory Augsburg have done numerous tests both in Germany and at the Saxaford spaceport. This license to Andoya will likely signal the start of those public tests by Isar.

A fourth European rocket startup, PLD from Spain, is presently prepping its own launchpad in French Guiana, and hopes to conduct its own first orbital test launch next year.

Until this week it appeared that Rocket Factory was in the lead to be the first European rocket startup to attempt an orbital launch. That changed when the rocket’s first stage was destroyed during a static fire launchpad engine test earlier this week. Right now it is not clear who is in the lead.

Rocket Factory identifies cause of failure during rocket static fire test

According to Rocket Factory Augsburg, its investigation into the explosion during the first full nine-engine static fire test of its RFA-1 rocket earlier this week has identified the cause of the failure.

In an update on LinkedIn on 22 August, RFA COO Dr. Stefan Brieschenk announced that the company had completed an initial internal review. In what Dr. Brieschenk describes as “very preliminary” findings, he explains that the company has identified an “oxygen fire in one of the turbopumps” as the root cause of the incident. “That engine and that turbopump have run before without issues, wrote Dr. Brieschenk. “Eight engines ignited. We had multiple back-up and safety systems in place that were supposed to shut everything down – but things did not align on Monday as planned.”

As he notes, this is very preliminary. The company probably still does not know why the fire occurred in that turbopump, and it will need to find out in order to fix the problem. And without that fix, it is almost certain the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) will not issue the company a launch license when a new first stage is built and delivered to the Saxavord spaceport in the Shetland Islands where the launch is planned.

All in all, expect a delay of at least one year before that launch can occur. Base on the CAA’s past history, that delay could easily extend to two years.

Starliner decision expected tomorrow, August 24

According to a NASA update today, the agency will hold “an internal Agency Test Flight Readiness Review” to discuss whether to return Starliner manned or unmanned on Saturday morning, August 24, 2024 and then hold a press conference immediately afterward to discuss the results of that review.

What makes this review and press conference different from all previous Starliner reviews and conferences is that NASA administrator Bill Nelson will attend.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and leadership will hold an internal Agency Test Flight Readiness Review on Saturday, Aug. 24, for NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test. About an hour later, NASA will host a live news conference at 1 p.m. EDT from the agency’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The only reason a politico like Nelson would participate in such proceedings is because he has taken control of the decision-making process, and will make the decision himself. The review is likely to educate him as best as can be done in this short time, and he will then decide whether the two astronauts who launched on Starliner, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, will return on it in the next week or so, or will stay on board ISS until February 2025 and return on the next Dragon crew capsule scheduled to launch to ISS in late September.

Nelson might have decided to get involved on his own, but I am certain that if so it was strongly “encouraged” by officials above him in the White House. There is an election coming up, and the risks involved in using Starliner to return the astronauts must be weighed in connection not just with its engineering concerns but with its political ramifications also.

Nelson’s decision will also provide us a strong indication of a future Harris administration’s attitude toward space.

Trump indirectly tells us the swamp WILL be drained if he is re-elected

Trump defiant after being shot
Trump defiant

Today I saw a short clip of Donald Trump answering a question about whether he is getting the normal intelligence briefings traditionally given to all presidential candidates. His answer was startling:

Well I could [get them] if I wanted them, but I don’t want them. … They come in, they give you a briefing and then two days later they leak it and then they say you leaked it. The only way to solve that problem is not to take them.

On its face Trump is simply telling us he is now being careful with whom in the government he deals with. On a deeper level, he is showing us that he is no longer the naive businessman he was in 2016. At that time he wanted very much to reform Washington, but he thought he had the good will of the people in Washington to help him do it. (Remember, for most of his life he was a dedicated Democrat with many friends on the left.)

Instead, he found himself stymied and back-stabbed and attacked on all levels. » Read more

Chinese scientists find method to extract water from Chang’e-5 lunar samples

Proposed concept for extracting water from lunar regoilth
Proposed concept for extracting water from
lunar regoilth

Chinese scientists have found that by heating Chang’e-5 lunar samples to 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit it is possible to extract a significant amount of water. From the paper’s abstract:

FeO and Fe2O3 are lunar minerals containing Fe oxides. Hydrogen (H) retained in lunar minerals from the solar wind can be used to produce water. The results of this study reveal that 51–76 mg of H2O can be generated from 1 g of LR [lunar regolith] after melting at temperatures above 1200 K. This amount is ∼10,000 times the naturally occurring hydroxyl (OH) and H2O on the Moon. … Our findings suggest that the hydrogen retained in LR is a significant resource for obtaining H2O on the Moon, which are helpful for establishing scientific research station on the Moon.

A video in Chinese (hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay) that describes this research can be found here. (If any of my readers understands Chinese and can provide a translation of this video’s narration, I would be very grateful.) It includes an artist’s rendering (screen capture to the right) showing how such a system on the Moon could work to extract water from the soil. Sunlight would be focused by a lensed mirror into a glass-domed container, heating the ground. The water would evaporate, condense on the glass and be sucked into a tube that would transfer it to a water tank.

This design is of course very simple and preliminary. According to Jay, “They need to heat the soil to 1000℃ (1832°F) to get the iron oxide in the lunar soil to split, the oxygen combines with hydrogen to make water and iron (melting point of iron is about 1500℃). You will need a nuclear reactor to produce that much power for an inductive furnace to get that hot. Doing the calculation, it would take about 245kw to heat up a metric ton of dirt in one hour to a 1000℃ degrees. It could be done slower over 24 hours at 10kw.”

Despite the technical difficulties getting such equipment operational on the Moon, that this research suggests water can be produced practically anywhere on the lunar surface is signficant. It suggests that even if no easily accessible water ice is found in the permanently shadowed craters at the poles, lunar bases still have viable options for obtaining water, and they don’t have even be at the poles.

China launches communications satellite

China today successfully launched a new communications satellite, its Long March 7A rocket lifting off from its coastal Wenchang spaceport.

A short clip showing the launch can be found here. (Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.)

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

83 SpaceX
35 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 98 to 53, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 83 to 68.

New port for big cruise ships dropped in Florida because it threatens space operations

A plan to build a new terminal in Port Canaveral for the large cruise lines has now been dropped because the constant arrival and departure of those ships would hinder launches from both Cape Canaveral as well as the Kennedy spacport.

On Aug. 2, Florida Department of Commerce Secretary J. Alex Kelly and Florida Department of Transportation Secretary Jared Perdue expressed dismay about cruise-terminal plan changes that could affect the space industry. Kelly and Perdue, in a letter, said that unless the port returns to earlier plans for the berth, the Department of Transportation will shift investments to other seaports and spaceports, and the Department of Commerce will halt funding for Port Canaveral projects.

These threats were enough to cause the port to drop its plans.

This story strongly suggests that the Florida state government views the future income from spaceport operations to far exceed that of the tourist cruise business, and does not wish the latter to interfere with the former’s growth in any way.

Proposed commercial spaceport in Nova Scotia teams up with Voyager Space

The proposed commercial spaceport in Nova Scotia that was first proposed by the company Maritime Launch Services in 2017 has now signed a partnership deal with the space station company Voyager Space.

Voyager, through its Exploration Segment, will provide comprehensive engineering, design and fabrication support to Maritime Launch, leveraging more than six decades of combined aerospace and defense technology experience. Voyager will bring its decades of commercial spaceflight engineering, manufacturing, and operations capabilities to provide engineering design and development and buildup of select portions of the launch site on behalf of Maritime Launch. Voyager will work alongside Maritime Launch to analyze launch client requirements and integrate them into the current site layout.

Maritime’s original plan had been to provide a launch location and rocket (produced by a Ukrainian company). Satellite companies would sign with both for launch services. The invasion of the Ukraine by Russia in 2022 killed that arrangement. So did red tape, as the Canadian government only passed a law allowing spaceports to make deals with international partners at the start of August.

It appears Maritime has realized that without that rocket partner, it needs another experienced partner to help build the spaceport itself and make sure launches by many different rocket companies are done safely. It has now hired Voyager to do this, since that company is leading the Starlab space station consortium that includes many very experienced companies, including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Airbus, Mitsubishi, and the European Space Agency.

First SLS/Orion manned mission faces new delays because of Orion heat shield issues

Orion's damage heat shield
Damage to Orion heat shield caused during re-entry in 2022,
including “cavities resulting from the loss of large chunks”

Because the damage to the heat shield on the Orion capsule that flew around the Moon in late 2022 remains somewhat unexplained, NASA is considering delaying the next SLS/Orion mission, presently planned for September 2025 and intended to be the first Artemis flight to carry humans and take them around the Moon.

The heat shield, already installed at the base of the Orion spacecraft, will take the brunt of the heating when the capsule blazes through Earth’s atmosphere at the end of the 10-day mission. On the Artemis I test flight in late 2022, NASA sent an Orion spacecraft to the Moon and back without a crew aboard. The only significant blemish on the test flight was a finding that charred chunks of the heat shield unexpectedly stripped away from the capsule during reentry as temperatures increased to nearly 5,000° Fahrenheit (2,760° Celsius).

The spacecraft safely splashed down, and if any astronauts had been aboard, they would have been fine. However, the inspections of the recovered spacecraft showed divots of heat shield material were missing.

Two years later, despite extensive investigation and analysis, it appears NASA has not yet identified the root cause of the damage. The ablative material used on Orion was similar (though not identical) to the material used successfully on numerous other heat shields since the 1960s, yet it did not perform as expected.

NASA is presently facing three options. Do nothing and fly the next mission as planned, with four astronauts. It could rethink the trajectory used during re-entry, though this would likely not change things significantly unless the astronauts don’t go around the Moon as planned. Or it could change the heat shield itself.

The first two options are very risky, considering the unknowns. The latter involves a major delay of at least two years.

A decision must be made soon however. To meet the agency’s schedule it must begin stacking SLS’s two solid-fueled strap-on boosters next month. Those boosters have a limited life expectancy originally estimated to be one year. In the first unmanned Artemis test flight in 2022, NASA because of other delays stretched that life span to two years, and had no problems with the launch. If it stacks the boosters now and then has to delay for two more years to redesign Orion’s heat shield, those boosters will have been stacked for three years when launched.

Considering how seriously NASA is taking the issues with Starliner, which are likely not as serious as a heat shield that doesn’t work reliably, it would seem insane for NASA to launch Orion manned without fixing its own problem. And yet, for more than two decades NASA has consistently not demanded the same safety standards for SLS that it has demanded for the private commercial rocket startups. We shall see if this pattern now persists.

I continue to believe that the first Artemis lunar landing will not take place before 2030 (at least six years behind schedule). This heat shield dilemma only strengthens that prediction.

Pushback: Parent sues Denver school board and four of its board members for slander

The slanderers on the Denver Board of Education
The accused slanderers still serving on Denver’s Board of Education.
Click for details about each.

Fight! Fight! Fight! Kristen Fry, a parent in Denver, has now sued the four members of the Denver school board who teamed up with a political consultant they worked with to falsely accuse her of assaulting that political consultant at a public board meeting while also using a vicious racial slur against him.

Fry had been part of a group of parents and teachers that were desperately trying to get this board to change its policies in the schools that had were allowing violence to run rampant From Fry’s lawsuit [pdf]

In the period leading up to 2022-23 school year, the BOE [Board of Education] defendants pursued a number of significant changes to DPS [Denver Public Schools] policy that had severe consequences for the educational and safety environment in DPS schools.

Among other things, in an initiative spearheaded by Mr. Anderson, and supported by the other defendants, DPS removed public safety officers from district schools because of purported racial inequities in disciplinary enforcement. DPS further replaced clear behavioral and accountability rules with what are sometimes termed “restorative justice” principles that often have the effect of leaving students (especially low-income students) vulnerable to disruptive and even criminal behavior by their classmates. For example, under the new rules, schools were required to allow potentially violent students, including students facing criminal charges such as robbery and attempted murder, to attend in person, even where against the advice of law enforcement authorities.

These policies were doing nothing but bring chaos and violence to the schools, while seriously degrading the learning environment. The parents, teachers, and even students repeatedly attempted in private and in public to convince the board its policies were not working.

In every case, this effort was met with anger, disrespect, and retailation by the board. In one case the board immediately terminated a principal for expressing dissent about their policies to a television news reporter. In the case of Fry, these thugs not only repeated these false claims against her in many public forums, they teamed up to file criminal charges against her.
» Read more

Astroscale signs deal with JAXA to de-orbit old rocket upper stage

abandoned upper stage, taken by ADRAS-J
Click for original image.

The Japanese orbital tug startup Astroscale has now signed the final deal with Japan’s space agency JAXA to de-orbit the old H2A rocket upper stage that the company is presently flying a demonstration rendezvous and proximity mission dubbed ADRAS-J.

The photo to the right was taken by ADRAS-J in the spring, shortly after it rendezvoused with the stage. The data from this demo mission has not only shown Astroscale’s spacecraft can autonomously rendezvous and fly in close formation to the stage, the stage itself is in excellent condition after fifteen years in space.

The ADRAS-J follow-on active debris removal spacecraft, ADRAS-J2, will similarly attempt to safely approach the same rocket body through [rendezvous and proximity operations], obtain further images, then remove and deorbit the rocket body using in-house robotic arm technologies.

If successful, Astroscale will have the capability to offer this surface to others, both governments and private concerns, thus making the removal of space junk a viable business. Until the past decade, most upper stages ended up in orbit where they remain for long periods. There are a lot of such older stages. Some end up burning up in the atmosphere harmlessly, while others break up in orbit and produce a lot of debris that is a threat to other spacecraft. Astroscale’s mission here will demonstrate the ability to remove such stages.

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