Tag: politics

ULA begins stacking Atlas-5 rocket for launching the first manned mission of Starliner

9:26 am

ULA has begun to assemble the Atlas-5 rocket that will hopefully launch Boeing’s Starliner capsule on its first manned mission to ISS, presently targeting a late April lift-off.

The rocket’s main stage was transferred from the nearby Advanced Spaceflight Operations Center to the integration facility Wednesday, Feb. 21, where it will await integration with the rocket’s upper Centaur stage and Starliner. The spacecraft will carry NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore to the orbiting laboratory for a short stay of about one to two weeks before returning to a landing site in the southwest United States.

The late April date appears to be a slight delay from previous announcements.

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FAA announces it has rubber-stamped SpaceX’s investigation of the November Starship/Superheavy test launch

9:56 am

The FAA yesterday announced that it has completed its review of SpaceX’s investigation of the November Starship/Superheavy test launch and has approved the company’s conclusions.

The Federal Aviation Administration has concluded its review of SpaceX’s investigation of the second Starship launch in November, with the regulator saying Monday that it accepted the “root causes and 17 corrective actions” identified by the company.

While this means the investigation is now closed, SpaceX must implement all the corrective actions and apply for a modified launch license before it can fly Starship again. “The FAA is evaluating SpaceX’s license modification request and expects SpaceX to submit additional required information before a final determination can be made,” the regulator said in a statement Monday.

You can read a SpaceX update of its investigation here. As previously reported, when Starship vented the extra oxygen carried to better simulate a payload it caused “a combustion event” and fires that cut off communications.

This resulted in a commanded shut down of all six engines prior to completion of the ascent burn, followed by the Autonomous Flight Safety System detecting a mission rule violation and activating the flight termination system, leading to vehicle breakup. The flight test’s conclusion came when the spacecraft was as at an altitude of ~150 km and a velocity of ~24,000 km/h, becoming the first Starship to reach outer space.

Despite SpaceX’s report, which states the company “has implemented hardware changes” to prevent a reoccurance, the FAA has still not yet issued a launch license. Based on these updates and Elon Musk’s own prediction, it appears a license will be forthcoming in the next two weeks, matching my December prediction of a March launch. Expect SpaceX to quickly launch, as it has “more Starships ready to fly,” and it wants to fly them fast in order to refine the engineering so as to move to operational flights.

It is also possible that the FAA will continue to slow-walk its approvals, and SpaceX might be left hanging for more than two weeks. Had the government not been involved, all signs suggested that SpaceX would have done its third test flight in January, and would have now been gearing up for its fourth flight. That was the kind of pace SpaceX set when it was doing its first Starship test flights during the Trump administration. The government under Joe Biden’s presidency however is not allowing that kind of launch pace.

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India names four astronauts, three of whom will fly on its first manned mission

9:38 am

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India today revealed the four astronauts training for its first manned mission, dubbed Gaganyaan and targeting a launch next year.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday announced the names of four pilots who are undergoing training for the country’s maiden human space flight mission ‘Gaganyaan’. The pilots are – Group Captain P Balakrishnan Nair, Group Captain Ajit Krishnan, Group Captain Angad Pratap, and Wing Commander S Shukla.

Though all four are training for the mission, only three will fly. The mission itself will orbit the Earth for three days. More information about each man can be found here. All have already received astronaut training in Russia.

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Have modern space engineers forgotten the importance of keeping things simple?

5:11 pm

SLIM on its side
The Japanese lander SLIM, on its side.
Click for original image.

In the past four years a number of different companies and nations have attempted eight times to soft land an unmanned lander on the Moon. Sadly, the track record of this new wave of lunar exploration, the first since the 1960s space race, has not been good, and might possibly suggest some basic fundamental design errors, based not so much on engineering but on our modern culture and management. To review:

  • April 11, 2019: Beresheet, built by an Israeli non-profit, failed just before touchdown when a command from the Earth caused its engines to shut down prematurely.
  • November 21, 2019: India’s government-built Vikram lander failed just before touchdown when it began to tumble and ground controllers could not regain control.
  • April 25, 2023: Hakuto-R1, built by the commercial Japanese company Ispace, failed just before touchdown when its attitude sensors mistakenly thought it had reached the surface when it was still three miles high and shut down the engines, causing it to crash.
  • August 20, 2023: Luna-25, built by Russia, crashed on the lunar surface when its engines fired for longer than planned when it began its descent, due to quality control errors during construction.
  • August 23, 2023: India’s succeeded on its second landing attempt, its Vikram lander touching down several hundred miles from the Moon’s south pole and successfully releasing its Pragyan rover. Both operated for about two weeks, until the onset of the harsh lunar night.
  • January 8, 2024: Peregrine, built by the private company Astrobotic, experienced a major fuel leak shortly after launch, making a landing attempt on the Moon impossible. It managed to operate in space for several days, reaching the distance of lunar orbit before coming back to Earth and burning up in the atmosphere.
  • January 25, 2024: SLIM, built by Japan’s space agency JAXA, successfully touched down, though it landed on its side because the nozzle on one of its engines fell off during descent, causing an unbalanced thrust. The spacecraft still functioned, and has now even survived one lunar night, something no one expected.
  • February 23, 2024: Odysseus, built by the private company Intuitive Machines, touched down somewhat softly on the Moon near the south pole, but upon landing then fell over on its side, blocking some antennas so that full communications has so far not been possible (though the spacecraft is functionable and in touch with Earth). This issue has meant that no significant data or images from the lander have so far been transmitted to Earth.

Of these eight attempts, only one mission has been entirely successful, India’s second. Of the seven others, five crashed or failed before even reaching the Moon, while two managed to soft land but with significant problems.
» Read more

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China to attempt 100 launches in 2024

9:47 am

China’s state-run press today announced that the country will attempt 100 launches in 2024, a number that includes launches from official government space agencies as well as a number of pseudo-companies that are supervised closely by that government.

This prediction now gives us a reasonably complete list of predictions from all the major players in the international launch market. Adding them all together, that market is predicting it will complete 366 launches in 2024, a number that would be 58% higher than the record set last year of 213 successful launches in a single year.

Will it happen? Not likely. Every one of those players routinely overstates its goals from year to year. For example, Russia’s numbers are always vastly high, with this year predicting 40 launches, a number that country hasn’t achieved in almost three decades.

At the same time, both China and SpaceX, the biggest players in this market, have been very good in recent years of predicting their output, only slightly missing their stated goals.

Based on these facts, it remains distinctly possible that the world’s global rocket industry will complete more than 300 successful launches in 2024, a number that is more three times higher than the average number of launches per year from the dawn of the space age in 1957 through 2021.

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How park volunteers in Tucson illustrated the growing resentment to unjustified authority

11:23 am

Forest Service discovers it ain't our lord and master
Forest Service discovers it ain’t
our lord and master

Recently the National Forest Service suspended its agreement with a volunteer organization, the Santa Catalina Volunteer Patrol, which had unpaid volunteers wear a forest service uniform with a volunteer patch, rather than a badge, and patrol within Sabino Canyon and other Forest Service trails near Tucson, answering questions for the public.

The reasons why the volunteer patrol was suspended were not described initially, except for vague statements that the volunteers needed “retraining.”

This drastic action is needed because we have patrollers not following our Forest Service Agreement, and any additional violations will result in our charter being removed. All patrollers will be required to go through retraining.

This past weekend that suspension was lifted, with the announcement giving a better explanation as to the cause of the suspension.
» Read more

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SpaceX and China complete launches

9:11 am

Both SpaceX and China today successfully completed launches.

First, SpaceX launched 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. The first stage flew its 19th mission, landing successfully on a drone ship in the Pacific, and tying the record for the most flights for a Falcon 9 booster.

Then, China launched a classified military satellite using its biggest rocket, the Long March 5, lifting off from its coastal spaceport in Wenchang. It remains unclear if China now has the ability to restart the engines on that rocket’s core stage, which reaches orbit, is large enough to survive re-entry, and has previously crashed uncontrolled, with one return barely missing the New York metropolitan area. If not, then this core stage carries a threat, as will the four or so other launches of the Long March 5 that China plans later this year.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

17 SpaceX
9 China
2 Iran
2 India
2 Rocket Lab
2 Japan
2 Russia

American private enterprise presently leads the entire world combined 20 to 17 in successful launches, while SpaceX by itself is tied 17-17 with the rest of the world (excluding other American companies).

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Today is George Washington’s birthday; He is the man we should always honor, not “presidents”

3:01 pm

Washington at the Constitional Convention
Washington at the Constitional Convention

Monday was not “Presidents Day”, celebrating all our past presidents, both good and bad. In fact, it never was.

Originally we celebrated the birthday of George Washington, the Father of our country, on February 22nd, his birthday. Then in 1968 our lovely Congress decided to devalue Washington’s memory by shifting the holiday to the third Monday of the month. The idea was it would give people a three-day weekend, and encourage commerce. What it really did was eliminate the memory of Washington entirely from the holiday.

And yet we mustn’t. Washington not only won the Revolutionary War against Great Britain, acting as general, but he took the lead in writing and establishing the Constitution when the original Articles of Confederation failed to work. Along the way he repeatedly and in no uncertain terms rejected calls for him to take over as king. He then put a final period on his life’s work by serving as the nation’s first president, and most important, refusing to serve more than two terms. He stepped down, and demanded the nation elect a new leader, forcing through what was then a truly unprecedented thing — the peaceful transition of power from one leader to another.

His final public act of importance was his farewell speech upon leaving the office of the presidency, where he made two points for the future that sadly we appear to have decided to forget.
» Read more

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Pushback: Stalinist St. Philip’s College in Texas loses 2nd lawsuit, reinstates teacher fired for daring to teach basic biology

12:43 pm

St. Philip's College, home to blacklisting and censorship
St. Philip’s College, the poster child of academic
blacklisting and censorship

Bring a gun to a knife fight: For the second time in less than two months, Stalinist St. Philip’s College in Texas has lost a lawsuit for violating the rights of a teacher.

First, in late December it agreed to pay fired professor Will Moravits a $185K settlement for forceably ejecting him from the campus and firing him, simply because he allowed open debate in his classroom about the queer agenda. Moravits did not want his job back, as he readily admitted he was now very happy teaching at nearby Texas State University where “his peers treat him with respect.”

Now it has been forced to settle a second lawsuit with another professor, Johnson Varkey, who it fired in January 2023 for simply teaching basic biology in his biology class. Varkey had had the nerve during a November 2022 human anatomy and physiology class to state that human sex is determined by the X and Y chromosomes, a basic fact of biology. Four students walked out of the class in outrage, and then filed slanderous and false complaints to the administration, which then fired Varkey without due process.

According to Varkey’s legal firm, the non-profit First Liberty Institute, the college has reinstated Varkey.
» Read more

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Ariane-6 arrives in French Guiana

9:33 am

Europe’s new rocket, Ariane-6, has arrived by specially-designed ship at the dock in French Guiana and is ready for off loading in advance of its presently scheduled inaugural launch this summer.

On this trip, Canopée brings the central core for Ariane 6’s first flight. Having collected the upper stage from Bremen, Germany, Canopée moved on to Le Havre, France, to load the main stage of Ariane 6. … Canopée’s structure is tailored to carry large, fragile loads as well as navigate the shallow Kourou river to Pariacabo harbour. From here the various Ariane 6 components are offloaded and transported by road to the new Ariane 6 launch vehicle assembly building just a few kilometres away.

Built for Arianespace, the commercial arm of the European Space Agency (ESA). the rocket’s launch is four years behind schedule. It is also not reuseable, which has limited its marketability and explains why ESA as well as its member nations have shifted to encouraging new private rocket companies with competing and cheaper rockets. It has decided it is a mistake to rely solely on a government-owned rocket company.

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Live stream of landing of Odysseus on Moon

8:59 am

South Pole of Moon with landing sites

UPDATE: The engineering team has decided to delay the landing attempt by one lunar orbit, pushing it back to 6:24 pm (Eastern). The live stream begins well before then, so that NASA can get in a lot of blather and propaganda, so feel safe waiting to tune in until 6 pm (Eastern).
——————-
Capitalism in space: I have embedded below the NASA live stream for the presently scheduled 5:30 pm (Eastern) landing on the Moon of Intuitive Machines Nova-C lunar lander dubbed Odysseus.

The green dot on the map to the right marks the planned landing site, about 190 miles from the Moon’s south pole. This will be the closest attempted landing so far to that pole, and if successful it will land on the rim of a crater, Malapart A, that is believed to have a permanently shadowed interior.

Odysseus however has no instruments capable of seeing into that interior. Its main mission is engineering, to test the landing technology of Intuitive Machines’ spacecraft. As part of this effort, it will release a small camera probe, dubbed EagleCam, when it is about 100 feet above the surface, which will to take images of that landing. [Update: That probe is unprecedented for another reason: It will be first student-built probe to land on another world, as it was designed and built by a team of students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida.]

If the landing is successful, Odysseus is designed to last until sunset on the Moon, about another two weeks. It carries a variety of NASA and commercial payloads, including a private small optical telescope. More important, it will allow the company to follow through with its manifest of future missions, including a second lunar landing later this year.
» Read more

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Why the public continues to lose faith with the medical community

1:59 pm

Sudden collapse
One of many sudden public collapses.
Click for full video.

An op-ed today in the New York Post tried to explain why the medical and health community lost the confidence of so much of the public after the COVID epidemic. According to Marc Siegal, a doctor and news pundit (or as described in his bio line at the end of the essay, “a clinical professor of medicine and medical director of Doctor Radio at NYU Langone Health and a Fox News medical analyst”), the distrust was caused by the effort of the Biden administration to force the COVID jab on everyone through mandates while squelching any dissent or discussions of potential risks.

To Siegal, this effort to make believe the jab carried no risks at all was seen from the start as a lie, and has since been proven so. Better to have been honest from the start, Siegal says, so that patients could make up their own minds with all the facts in hand.

The way Siegal couches his language in his op-ed, however, only increases this distrust.
» Read more

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