Tag: spaceflight

Russia ends effort to build a nuclear-powered rocket engine

9:43 am

The competition cools down! The Russian government has decided to shut down its research project to build a nuclear rocket engine for interplanetary travel in space.

The article doesn’t give a reason, but I suspect Russia’s continuing economic problems is the source.

The idea of using nuclear power for propulsion in space has been around since the 1960s, and has shown great promise. It would provide far more power for less fuel than any existing engine. The U.S. unfortunately abandoned this research in the 1960s, partly because of the cut-backs after winning the space race and partly because of environmental protests that fear anything to do with nuclear. If the Russians had followed through, it would have given them an advantageous position in any competition to colonize the planets.

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Russia slashes spending on space

5:22 pm

In the heat of competition: Economic hard times have forced the Russian government to cut spending on its space program by more than a third.

The cuts have mainly come from abandoning their effort to build a heavy lift rocket to compete with SLS. They might not realize it, but I think this will be a blessing in disguise, as they will no longer be wasting money building a giant rocket that will have little value in the competitive launch market. Instead, they will focus their investment on Angara, which has the possibility of earning them a profit.

Meanwhile, however, they still have to deal with the quality control problems and corruption that appears to permeate Russia`s entire aerospace industry: Russian defense rocket fails and crashes immediately after launch. I have posted the video of the crash below the fold. It appears that the rocket was successfuly propelled from its launch silo, but then its rocket engines never ignited.
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New Shepard test flights to begin within weeks

8:21 am

The competition heats up: Blue Origin is expected to begin regular test flights of its suborbital resusable manned spacecraft, New Shepard, within mere weeks.

This news came from a government FAA official involved in approving flight permits. The company itself has declined to comment.

Even if it is a few months rather than weeks, these flight tests will put more pressure on Virgin Galactic in the race to become the first commercial suborbital tourism company to sell and actually fly a passenger. And if I had to bet who’d win the race, I would no longer put my money on Virgin Galactic.

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NASA ISS cargo contracts delayed

8:15 am

The competition heats up: NASA has delayed, for the second time, when it will award its next round of cargo contracts to ISS, pushing the date back from June to September.

Though agency officials said they could not reveal why they had delayed the contract awards, they did say it was to gather more information. My guess is that the agency wants to see how SpaceX’s launch abort tests turn out this year before it makes a decision. If successful, they will then have the option of dropping SpaceX’s as a cargo carrier and pick someone else, possibly Dream Chaser, to provide up and down service to ISS. That way, they would increase the number of vehicles capable of bringing people and supplies up to ISS.

Delaying the award decision until September gives them time to evaluate the abort tests results, as well as give them a cushion in case those tests get delayed somewhat.

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Rosetta records the appearance of a new jet on Comet 67P/C-G

9:21 am

jet appears on comet

Cool image time! Images taken two minutes apart by Rosetta have captured the emergence of a new jet on Comet 67P/C-G.

The two images released today show the remarkable onset of such a jet for the first time. They were taken on 12 March from a distance of 75 kilometres. In the first image, obtained at 07:13 CET, several rays of dust jets frame the upper, illuminated side of the comet. The dark underside shows no such features. Two minutes later, the picture has changed: a spectacular new jet has emerged on the dark side, hurtling dust into space and displaying a clearly discernable fine structure.

This was the first jet observed in a shadowed area, and the scientists think this jet might have started because it was just before dawn there.

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More strikes at Vostochny

9:09 am

Another worker strike has broken out at the new Russian spaceport at Vostochny by workers who say they have not been paid their wages.

The strike itself is not the significant fact here. The significant fact is that even though the project has been under the close supervision of Putin himself since September, the wages were still not paid. Supervisors have been pocketing wages even as very high Russian officials have been publicly demanding that they get the construction back on schedule. And this story suggests that they continue to do so.

The entire situation implies a very extensive level of corruption at all levels of the Russian infrastructure, something that will make it very difficult for them to accomplish much in their future efforts in space.

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Japan to the moon!

8:54 am

The competition heats up: Japan’s space agency has announced plans to send an unmanned lander to the Moon, as early as 2018, as part of a longer range plan to explore Mars.

They also intend to use their new Epsilon rocket to launch it.

Gee, I wonder if the successful efforts of India and China to send probes to both the Moon and Mars had some influence on this decision.

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Incorrectly built SLS welding machine to be rebuilt

9:16 am

You can’t make this stuff up. A giant welding machine, built for NASA’s multi-billion dollar Space Launch System (SLS), needs to be rebuilt because the contractor failed to reinforce the floor, as required, prior to construction.

Sweden’s ESAB Welding & Cutting, which has its North American headquarters in Florence, South Carolina, built the the roughly 50-meter tall Vertical Assembly Center as a subcontractor to SLS contractor Boeing at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans.

ESAB was supposed to reinforce Michoud’s floor before installing the welding tool, but did not, NASA SLS Program Manager Todd May told SpaceNews after an April 15 panel session during the 31st Space Symposium here. As a result, the enormous machine leaned ever so slightly, cocking the rails that guide massive rings used to lift parts of the 8.4-meter-diameter SLS stages The rings wound up 0.06 degrees out of alignment, which may not sound like much, “but when you’re talking about something that’s 217 feet [66.14 meters] tall, that adds up,” May said.

Asked why ESAB did not reinforce the foundation as it was supposed to, May said only it was a result of “a miscommunication between two [Boeing] subcontractors and ESAB.”

How everyone at NASA, Boeing, and ESAB could have forgotten to do the reinforcing, even though it was specified in the contract, baffles me. It also suggests that the quality control in the SLS rocket program has some serious problems.

Update: The original story at Space News that I originally linked to disappeared sometime in the next week, and was replaced with a slightly more detailed and more positive story, now linked above.

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Sierra Nevada and Germany sign agreement

9:00 am

The competition heats up: Sierra Nevada has signed a new development agreement with Germany in connection with its Dream Chaser reusable mini-shuttle.

The agreement does not appear to involve any money and thus is largely symbolic. Nonetheless, it shows again that Germany is interested in having Dream Chaser built, and is throwing its support behind the manned spacecraft.

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Russia delays first manned launch from Vostochny

8:51 am

The Russian government has decided to delay from 2018 to 2020 the first manned launch from its new spaceport at Vostochny because an earlier launch would require them to use equipment they expect to retire anyway.

While the construction problems at Vostochny might be a factory in this decision, I also believe there is truth to the claim above. If they launch in 2018, they will probably have to use the Soyuz rocket to launch crews into space. By 2020 they plan to have Angara completely operational, and will be ready to retire Soyuz. Why build the infrastructure for Soyuz when you plan to retire it in only a couple of years anyway?

The delay however indicates a more fundamental problem with the Russian top-down authoritarian culture. It shouldn’t take them this long to get Angara operational. The rocket was conceived shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s. They’ve had almost a quarter century to build it. Even though they’ve only just done the first two test flights, there is no justification for it to take another five years to get all the configurations of the rocket flying.

If they want to compete on the world market, they are going to have to work faster than this. A competitive private company, rather than delaying the launch, would have pushed Angara to be ready sooner so that the the launch could happen on time, with Angara. That the Russians seem unable to do this indicates that they will not be very competitive in the coming decades.

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SpaceX is considering a ground landing for its next first stage return attempt

9:08 am

The competition heats up: After its second attempt this week to land its first stage on a barge in the Atlantic, SpaceX is now considering landing their next attempt on the ground.

This shouldn’t be a surprise. The reason they have been landing over the ocean in these initial tests was for safety. The last two landings however had demonstrated that they can reliably bring that first stage back accurately and precisely. Since they have the ability to destroy the stage should it go off course, it seems reasonable to shift to land now and simplify their challenge.

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Stratolaunch considers multiple rockets for its giant airplane

8:56 am

The competition heats up: Stratolaunch is now considering widening its options for the upper stage that can be attached to its giant airplane.

[Chuck Beames, president of Seattle-based Vulcan Aerospace, the parent company of Stratolaunch Systems] said the interest in alternative launch options is driven by the growing interest in small satellites, for which the current Stratolaunch system is oversized. A smaller vehicle, he said, could be developed more quickly and less expensively. “It takes a more near-term focus on revenue generation,” he said.

Stratolaunch could eventually support several launch vehicles, he said, with varying payload capabilities to serve different customers. “We’ll likely have multiple launch vehicle options,” he said. “Some will be available earlier than others.”

It appears they are revising their launch system airplane into a modular design with a variety of upper stages, depending on customer. Note also the focus on the growing small satellite industry.

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An engineering analysis of the Falcon 9 first stage landing failure

8:44 am

Link here.

SpaceX founder and chief technology officer Elon Musk tweeted that “excess lateral velocity caused it [the booster] to tip over post landing.” In a later tweet that was subsequently withdrawn, Musk then indicated that “the issue was stiction in the biprop throttle valve, resulting in control system phase lag.” In this statement, Musk was referring to “stiction” — or static friction — in the valve controlling the throttling of the engine. The friction appears to have momentarily slowed the response of the engine, causing the control system to command more of an extreme reaction from the propulsion system than was required. As a result, the control system entered a form of hysteresis, a condition in which the control response lags behind changes in the effect causing it.

Despite the failure of the latest attempt, SpaceX will be encouraged by the landing accuracy of the Falcon 9 and the bigger-picture success of its guidance, navigation and control (GNC) system in bringing the booster back to the drone ship. The GNC also worked as designed during the prior landing attempt in January, which ended in the destruction of the vehicle following a hard touchdown on the edge of the platform.

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Why SpaceX’s first stage failure is really a magnificent success

9:48 am

Yesterday SpaceX attempted for the second time to land the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket on an unmanned barge in the Atlantic. They failed, spectacularly.

I however consider this attempt to be a magnificent success. I also think they could fail at achieving this vertical landing for the next twenty launches and still those failures would each be a magnificent success.

Why? How can an engineering failure like this really be considered an achievement? It is very simple. Even if SpaceX continues to fail in its effort to recover its Falcon 9 first stage and reuse it, the possibility that they might succeed — demonstrated time after time by the company with each launch — has struck terror in the hearts of every other aerospace launch company. Each landing attempt shows SpaceX’s commitment to lowering launch costs while developing cutting edge engineering capabilities. Each attempt shows the world that they are the world’s leading launch company.

The result? Every other launch company in the world, both old and new, are scrambling desperately to lower their own costs as well as improve their own engineering.
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Another successful Dragon/Falcon 9 launch

1:16 pm

The competition heats up: SpaceX has successfully launched another Dragon freighter to ISS.

We await word on whether the first stage was able to successfully land vertically on a barge in the Atlantic.

Update: Musk reports that the first stage landed on the barge but “too hard for survival.” Expect some interesting video to follow. I have posted SpaceX’s video of the launch below the fold. Beginning at about 22:45, after first stage separation, you can see it maintain a vertical orientation as it begins its descent.
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Stratolaunch update

8:48 am

This article about Paul Allen’s Stratolaunch company notes that the payload the system will put in orbit is likely to be less than originally hoped.

Still to be determined are the manned and cargo craft Stratolaunch will eventually send to orbit or even the International Space Station, Beames said. Musk’s SpaceX, an initial partner, is no longer associated with the venture. The rocket produced by Orbital ATK Inc., which replaced SpaceX, will probably be smaller than the medium-lift vehicle with a 6,000 kilogram (13,000-pound) payload that Stratolaunch had initially planned, Beames said. “I think it’s more likely we’ll be targeting a smaller payload class,” Beames said. “We’re not announcing anything on that yet.”

Allen’s company, Vulcan Aerospace, is also demanding that ULA change the name of its new Vulcan rocket, just revealed yesterday.

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ULA has dubbed its next generation rocket Vulcan

1:59 pm

ULA has announced its plans for replacing the Delta and Atlas 5 rockets, dubbing its new rocket Vulcan.

They plan to develop Vulcan’s first stage first and use it initially on Atlas 5 rockets so they can replace the Atlas 5 Russian engines as soon as possible. Also, they plan to recover the Vulcan rocket’s engines by having them separate from the booster after use and then get captured in a mid-air before hitting the ground. (See the graphic at the link to see a launch profile.)

In watching the press conference, ULA officials made it very clear that they are focusing a lot of their effort on lowering the cost of the rocket.

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