Tag: spaceflight

Aviation Week looks at the launch challenges facing SpaceX over the next two years.

2:24 pm

Aviation Week looks at the launch challenges facing SpaceX over the next two years.

Though it is very clear SpaceX has a tough schedule of launches coming up, with much of the future of American aerospace riding on their success, this article is strangely hostile to the company. There is no doubt the company has fallen behind schedule, but the list of customers who have been willing to commit to the company is quite impressive, especially considering that SpaceX literally didn’t exist six years ago.

I’ll make several predictions:

  • SpaceX will experience further launch delays.
  • SpaceX will even have one launch failure in the next two years.
  • SpaceX will nonetheless succeed, because its successes will far exceed the failures, and they are clearly offering a better product for less money.
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Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner, aiming to complete a record-setting 120,000 foot dive from edge of space, successfully completed a 71,581 foot practice dive today.

7:47 pm

Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner, aiming to complete a record-setting 120,000 foot dive from edge of space, successfully completed a 71,581 foot practice dive today.

From launch to touchdown, the entire test flight lasted just over eight minutes, officials said. According to Baumgartner, the toughest part of the leap was the extreme cold he experienced high up in Earth’s atmosphere. “I could hardly move my hands,” the skydiver said in a statement. “We’re going to have to do some work on that aspect.”

Baumgartner is gearing up for an even bigger leap — his so-called “space jump” — from 120,000 feet (36,576 m) this summer. The current record for highest-altitude skydive is 102,800 feet (31,333 m), set in 1960 by U.S. Air Force Captain Joe Kittinger.

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Research on ISS has found that prolonged spaceflight causes vision problems and might even damage the human eye.

8:38 am

Research on ISS has found that prolonged spaceflight causes vision problems and might even damage the human eye.

There had been hints of this discovery in an earlier report, but today’s paper is the first published science on the subject.

The results are not only important for finding out the medical challenges of weightlessness. They illustrate once again the need to do long extended flights on ISS. Without that research we are never going to be able to fly humans to other planets.

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The spaceship companies in Mohave are hiring

7:44 am

Want a job building spaceships? The spaceship companies in Mohave are hiring.

There are several hundred open positions in Mojave as companies such as the Spaceship Company, XCOR and Scaled Composites begin to ramp up operations. “It’s ironic that we’re having a recruitment problem in Mojave,” said Stu Witt, CEO and general manager of the Mojave Air and Space Port. He added that this is a good problem to have.

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Robotic refueling demo begins today on ISS

1:06 pm

A robotic refueling demo. designed and built by the same people who ran the Hubble Space Telescope repair missions, begins today on ISS, using Dextre.

This demo is designed to prove that a robot, operated from the ground, can refuel a satellite not designed for refueling. The demo satellite on ISS was built to match the design of several climate satellites already in orbit that will end up defunct in a few years if they can’t be refueled.

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The March 9 launch of Europe’s cargo freighter to ISS has been delayed two weeks so that engineers can climb inside and tighted two straps holding two cargo containers in place.

7:48 pm

The March 9 launch of Europe’s next cargo freighter to ISS has been delayed two weeks so that engineers can climb inside and tighten two straps holding two cargo containers in place.

I suspect the reasons behind this problem are quite embarrassing, which is probably why the press releases are so vague about why the straps were loose and how the Europeans discovered the problem.

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Using its Space Launch System and Orion capsule, NASA is aiming for an unmanned test flight around the Moon in December 2017.

8:56 pm

Using its Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion capsule, NASA is aiming for an unmanned test flight around the Moon in December 2017.

Two important tidbits revealed by this article: First, the first test flight of Orion will use a Delta 4 Heavy rocket. Two, NASA hopes to have its heavy lift SLS rocket ready for the 2017 mission.

Forgive me for being cynical, but I will believe the second tidbit only when it happens.

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What is the International Space Station’s weakest link?

8:45 pm

What is the International Space Station’s weakest link?

Mark Mulqueen, ISS vehicle director for Boeing Co., said keeping the station’s environmental control and life support systems, or ECLSS, functioning over the next decade will likely be engineers’ toughest challenge. “I don’t think it’s sparing or the structure to get to 2020,” Mulqueen said. “It’s probably continued refinement of how we successfuly operate our ECLSS system on-orbit. There has been a lot of effort going into understanding that.”

The article outlines a number of other areas of concern, none of which appear to be serious, for now, but could be a problem as the years pass.

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