Tag: politics

ULA recovers nozzle debris that fell off during second Vulcan launch

9:05 am

ULA has recovered some of the debris that fell to earth after the nozzle on one of Vulcan’s two solid-fueled strap-on boosters fell off during the early stages of the rocket’s second launch on October 4, 2024.

Julie Arnold, a ULA spokesperson, confirmed to Ars that the company has retrieved some of the debris. “We recovered some small pieces of the GEM 63XL SRB nozzle that were liberated in the vicinity of the launch pad,” Arnold said. “The team is inspecting the hardware to aid in the investigation.”

The booster was built by Northrop Grumman. Vulcan can use from from two to six on each flight (in pairs), depending on the mass of its payload and the mission requirements. At the moment ULA has 35 of these boosters in storage awaiting future flights. It is expected that once the company has an idea of the root cause of the failure, it will have to inspect each booster to avoid a repeat of the problem.

Though ULA has not announced any changes in its plans to launch twice more before the end of the year, both for the Pentagon, that schedule is now uncertain due to this problem. For example, there as yet is no word on whether the military is willing to certify the launches. It had required ULA to complete two test flights of Vulcan before doing so, and the nozzle issue has cast a cloud on that plan.

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Sinwar’s elimination is merely one small win in Israel’s new quest for total victory

1:39 pm

Hamas vs Israel
The obvious reasons why killing the leaders
of Hamas and Hezbollah is a good thing.
Courtesy of Doug Ross.

The confirmation today that Israel had finally killed Hamas leader Yahha Sinwar, considered the main architect behind the October 7, 2023 murder, rape, and torture of more than a thousand Israeli men, women, children, and babies near Gaza is good news, but it only is one small victory in what is now clearly Israel’s decision to go for nothing less than total victory against the terrorists who have been hounding and killiing its citizens wantonly for decades.

You see, since the 1973 Yom Kippur war, all of Israel’s responses against terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah have been limited and targeted, and ended quickly with fake ceasefires that allowed those terrorist groups to not only regroup, but actually expand their capabilities.

The most blatent and best example of this what happened in connection with Israel’s 2006 month-long invasion of Lebanon, launched in an attempt to defeat Hezbollah. The invasion bogged down, and as a result Israel and Hezbollah ended up agreeing to UN resolution 1701, which had Israel evaculate southern Lebanon and the UN take on the task of keeping the peace. The agreement also created a demilitarized zone in southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah was forbidden.

That agreement was an utter failure. Neither the UN nor Lebanon had the ability or even the desire to limit Hezbollah, and so before long it had made that demilitarized zone a launchpad for rocket attacks into Israel. In Israel’s most recent campaign to clear out that zone, it has also discovered tunnels and large weapons caches clearly designed for Hezbollah’s own planned October 7th-type invasion.

After October 7th, what I labeled Israel’s Pearl Harbor, Israel was clearly no longer going to accept this failed piecemeal and limited negotiating approach, administered by dishonest third parties like the UN and even the United States. Instead, it decided to go by an old American concept of “unconditional surrender,” first made plain by Grant during the Civil War and then underlined by Eisenhower and Roosevelt in their insistence on “total victory” in World War II.

In other words, Israel would only accept a ceasefire or peace treaty if it involved the surrender and capture of the leadership of Hamas and Hezbollah. If they refused to do this, then Israel resolved to kill them.

It has now demonstrated its ability to do so, with gratifying success.

Israel’s military actions since October 7th however also illustrate a major change in strategy and tactics. » Read more

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NASA assembles two new panels to review its Mars Sample Return mission plans

10:38 am

NASA yesterday announced that it has assembled two new panels to review its Mars Sample Return mission plans, dubbed the strategy review and the analysis team, to be done in conjunction with the proposals the agency has already received from the private sector.

The team’s report is anticipated by the end of 2024 and will examine options for a complete mission design, which may be a composite of multiple studied design elements. The team will not recommend specific acquisition strategies or partners.

The strategy review team has been chartered under a task to the Cornell Technical Services contract. The team may request input from a NASA analysis team that consists of government employees and expert consultants.

The analysis team also will provide programmatic input such as a cost and schedule assessment of the architecture recommended by the strategy review team.

The first panel contains a mixture of NASA officials and scientists, while the second is mostly made up of NASA managers.

Whatever these panels decide, it is very clear that major changes are required to this project in order to get the Perseverance core samples on Mars back to Earth within a reasonable amount of time and at an acceptable cost. The present project design is chaotic, confused, and running significantly overbudget and behind schedule, with no indication anything will change in the near future.

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Musk: We will attempt to catch Starship like Superheavy, “hopefully early next year”

10:23 am

According to a tweet by Elon Musk on October 15, 2024, SpaceX is targeting early 2025 for the first attempt to recover Starship after launch, and to do it the same way it recovered Superheavy, by catching it with a set of launch tower chopsticks.

To do this will require getting that second launch tower at Boca Chica operational. It will also require SpaceX to successfully restart Starship’s Raptor engines in space, something it has not yet done. Once this is demonstrated to work, the company would also have to do another orbital test where Starship is put in a full orbit and then de-orbited precisely to a point over the ocean, demonstrating that such a return can next be done reliably over land.

In other words, a tower catch can only happen after at least two more test flights. Thus, to do it early next year means SpaceX will have to establish a test launch pace of a launch every one or two months. This is actually something Musk has said repeatedly he wants to do, but has been stymied repeatedly by FAA red tape from doing it.

I suspect Musk’s tweet is expressing his unstated hope that a Trump victory in November will force the FAA to ease its bureaucratic interference.

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NASA to phase out its government-built communications satellite constellation, rely on commercial services

9:41 am

Capitalism in space: NASA yesterday announced that beginning on November 8, 2024 it will begin the phase out of its government-built TDRS communications satellite constellation, requiring all future missions to use commercial services for communications and data transmission.

As of Friday, Nov. 8, the agency’s legacy TDRS (Tracking and Data Relay Satellite) system, as part of the Near Space Network, will support only existing missions while new missions will be supported by future commercial services.

…While TDRS will not be accepting new missions, it won’t be retiring immediately. Current TDRS users, like the International Space Station, Hubble Space Telescope, and many other Earth- and universe-observing missions, will still rely on TDRS until the mid-2030s. Each TDRS spacecraft’s retirement will be driven by individual health factors, as the seven active TDRS satellites are expected to decline at variable rates. 

NASA in 2022 already issued contracts to six commercial communication companies to provide these services, Inmarsat, Kuiper Government, SES, SpaceX, Telesat, and Viasat. Yesterday’s annoncement involves NASA’s long term plan to retire the TDRS constellation.

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SpaceX sues California Coastal Commission

9:30 am

Wants to be a dictator
Wants to be a dictator

As promised by Elon Musk, SpaceX has now filed suit against California Coastal Commission, and its commissioners, accusing it of violating Musk’s first amendment rights and using its regulatory power against the company simply because those commissioners disagree with Musk’s political positions.

You can read SpaceX’s lawsuit filing here [pdf]. From its introduction:

[The Commission has engaged in naked political discrimination against Plaintiff Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) in violation of the rights of free speech and due process enshrined in the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution. Rarely has a government agency made so clear that it was exceeding its authorized mandate to punish a company for the political views and statements of its largest shareholder and CEO. Second, the Commission is trying to unlawfully regulate space launch programs—which are critical to national security and other national policy objectives—at Vandenberg Space Force Base (the Base), a federal enclave and the world’s second busiest spaceport.

The lawsuit stems from the comments made by the commissioners when then voted against the military’s plan to allow SpaceX to increase its launch rate at Vandenberg spaceport to up to 50 launches per year. In those comments, the commissioners made it clear that the main reason they were voting against the motion was because they were offended by Elon Musk and his political positions, not because the company was doing anything wrong. In fact, the commissioners knew SpaceX was doing nothing wrong. As noted at the first link above:
» Read more

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Axiom unveils its spacesuit design

2:57 pm

Axiom's moonsuit
Click for original image.

Axiom today unveiled its proposed spacesuit for NASA’s Moon missions, designed in partnership with the fashion company Prada.

The graphic to the left, cropped and reduced to post here, shows the suit. The letters refer to detailed descriptions contained in the full image.

The suit accommodates a wide range of crewmembers, including males and females from the first to 99th percentile (anthropomorphic sizing). It will withstand extreme temperatures at the lunar south pole and endure the coldest temperatures in the permanently shadowed regions for at least two hours. Astronauts will be able to perform spacewalks for at least eight hours.

The AxEMU incorporates multiple redundant systems and an onboard diagnostic system to ensure safety for crewmembers. The suit also uses a regenerable carbon dioxide scrubbing system and a robust cooling technology to remove heat from the system. It includes advanced coatings on the helmet and visor to enhance the astronauts’ view of their surroundings, as well as custom gloves made in-house featuring several advancements over the gloves used today. The spacesuit architecture includes life support systems, pressure garments, avionics and other innovative systems to meet exploration needs and expand scientific opportunities.

It appears the suit follows the design concept of the Russian Orlan suit, with access in and out using the backpack as the access hatch.

Axiom had won the $228 million contract to build this suit in 2022. In two years it is now testing the suit as it nears what it calls “the final development stage.” Compare that with NASA’s failed effort over fourteen years and a billion dollars to create its own suit, never getting much past powerpoint presentations.

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Proposed commerical spaceport in Nova Scotia signs launch deal with rocket startup Reaction Dynamics

10:50 am

UPDATE: My first version of this post was fundamentally incorrect. I had confused the new Canadian rocket startup Reaction Dynamics (RDX) with the renamed Raytheon (RTX). Because some of the content relating to Raytheon and the comments is still relevant, I have placed that content below the fold so that readers will understand the context of those comments..

Maritime Launch Services, the company that has been trying to build a commerical spaceport in Nova Scotia since 2016, has now signed a launch deal with a small new Canadian rocket startup, Reaction Dynamics, to do a suborbital test launch.

This new partnership between the two Canadian space companies will begin with a pathfinder launch designed to reach the edges of space. The low impulse launch will push the limits toward a future orbital launch by reaching the Karman Line, the internationally recognized edge of Space.

Under the terms of the MOU, Maritime Launch and Reaction Dynamics [RDX] will work towards a Pathfinder mission that will enable a first ever orbital launch of a Canadian vehicle from Canadian soil on the coast of Nova Scotia. These missions will be supported by RDX’s patented, cutting-edge hybrid rocket technology. Building on the success of the first launch, both companies will work toward the first commercial missions of the Aurora vehicle.

This Nova Scotia spaceport has had a complex and difficult history. Initially it was going to offer launches using a Ukrainian-built rocket, but that plan fell through with Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. It then opened the spaceport to any rocket company, but it appears it has gotten few takers. Now it is working with Reaction Dynamics to once again provide its own launch services. We shall see how this plays out.
» Read more

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NASA appears to be about to drop Boeing’s Starliner from its manned mission schedule in 2025

10:17 am

In a short announcement outlining its planned two manned ISS missions for 2025, NASA by omission revealed that it now does not expect Boeing’s Starliner capsule to be ready for the second manned flight in July 2025, as previously planned.

Previous updates had noted what capsule would launch the astronauts, with the plan to have Dragon launch the February 2025 crew and Starliner the July 2025 crew. It was assumed in those earlier updates that Starliner would be certified for operational use after the completion of its first manned demo this past summer. This new update does not provide this capsule information, instead saying the following:

The timing and configuration of Starliner’s next flight will be determined once a better understanding of Boeing’s path to system certification is established. This determination will include considerations for incorporating Crew Flight Test lessons learned, approvals of final certification products, and operational readiness.

Meanwhile, NASA is keeping options on the table for how best to achieve system certification, including windows of opportunity for a potential Starliner flight in 2025.

It appears NASA is pulling back from that certification, based on the various technical issues experienced by Starliner during that demo mission, issues that eventually forced NASA to return the capsule unmanned. As such, this announcement yesterday suggests that there is serious negotiations going on between Boeing and NASA as to what will happen next. It appears the agency wants Boeing to fly another demo mission — on Boeing’s dime — before putting astronauts on board and paying for a mission. The Starliner contract was fixed price, and until Boeing successfully completes that manned demo mission NASA is not obligated to pay it any additional funds.

I suspect Boeing is telling NASA it can’t afford to do this, and if NASA doesn’t pony up some bucks for that demo flight it will simply not do it, and NASA will be stuck with just SpaceX as its manned ferry to ISS.

Unconfirmed reports had suggested NASA was considering issuing Boeing a separate contract to do a cargo mission to ISS using Starliner, thus allowing it to pay the company to fly a test mission outside of the fixed price contract. This NASA update yesterday suggests these negotiations are on going, but likely cannot be completed until after the election. A new administration might balk at such a deal.

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China launches “Earth observation satellite”

8:56 am

China today successfully launched what its state-run press described as an “Earth observation satellite,” its Long March 4C rocket lifting off from its Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

No word on where the rocket’s first stage, using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China. As for the satellite, it was described as something to “be used in a variety of fields including land surveys, urban planning, road network design, crop yield estimation and disaster relief.”

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

100 SpaceX
47 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 117 to 70, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 100 to 87.

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The evidence strongly suggests FAA top management is working to sabotage SpaceX

2:44 pm

FAA administrator Mike Whitaker today said this to SpaceX:
FAA administrator Mike Whitaker to SpaceX:
“Nice company you have there. Shame if something
happened to it.”

After SpaceX’s incredibly successful fifth test flight of Starship/Superheavy on October 13, 2024, I began to wonder about the complex bureaucratic history leading up to that flight. I was most puzzled by the repeated claims by FAA officials that it would issue no launch license before late November, yet ended up approving a license in mid-October in direct conflict with these claims. In that context I was also puzzled by the FAA’s own written approval of that launch, which in toto seemed to be a complete vindication of all of SpaceX’s actions while indirectly appearing to be a condemnation of the agency’s own upper management.

What caused the change at the FAA? Why was it claiming no approval until late November when it was clear by early October that SpaceX was preparing for a mid-October launch? And why claim late November when the FAA’s own bureaucracy has now made it clear in approving the launch that a mid-October date was always possible, and nothing SpaceX did prevented that.

I admit my biases: My immediate speculation is always to assume bad behavior by government officials. But was that speculation correct? Could it also be that SpaceX had not done its due diligence properly, causing the delays, as claimed by the FAA?

While doing my first review of the FAA’s written reevaluation [pdf] that approved the October 13th launch, I realized that a much closer review of the history and timeline of events might clarify these questions.

So, below is that timeline, as best as I can put together from the public record. The lesser known acronyms stand for the following:

TCEQ: Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
NMFS: National Marine Fisheries Service (part of NOAA)
FWS: Fish & Wildlife Service (part of the Department of Interior)

My inserted comments periodically tell the story and provide some context.
» Read more

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China launches “satellite group” using Long March 6A rocket

11:23 am

According to China’s state run press, it today successfully launched what it simply describes as “a new satellite group,” its Long March 6A rocket lifting off from its Taiyuan spaceport in northeast China.

This tweet appears to show video of the launch, though once again there is little information.

First, we have no idea where the rocket’s lower stage and four strap-on stide boosters crashed inside China, doing so at night when no one can see them coming down. Second, we have no idea whether China has made any upgrades to the Long March 6A upper stage, which on four previous launches has broken apart and scattered space junk after deploying its payload in orbit.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

100 SpaceX
46 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 117 to 69, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 100 to 86.

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1 … 97 98 99 100 101 … 988