The headline of this piece by Mark Whittington is a perfect example of Betteridge’s Law.
Category Archives: Business
SpaceX’s Busy Weekend
Apparently they test fired the recovered stage last night, as they prepare for tomorrow’s Vandenberg launch:
Elon Musk, the chief executive of SpaceX, confirmed in tweets that the company had just conducted a static test firing of the Falcon 9 first stage. “Data looks good overall, but engine 9 showed thrust fluctuations,” he wrote.
The engine in question, he said, is an “outer engine” on a ring of eight that surround a center engine. Musk suggested “debris ingestion” might be the cause of the thrust fluctuations, with more study of the engine planned.
It will be interesting to see if they have a similar problem on tomorrow’s recovered stage (assuming they succeed, of course), or if it was an anomaly. But they’ll know more after they borescope it.
Also, this is the first I’d heard that they can’t do a land landing tomorrow due to paperwork issues. I think people had been saying it was performance. And it’s pretty silly to worry about the environment, considering all the other activity going on there.
[Update a while later]
SpaceX’s success launches space start ups to new heights.
It’s hard to overestimate the psychological impact of this sort of thing. Ultimately, it will be the death knell for pork projects like SLS.
[Update a few minutes later]
OK, I don’t understand this piece:
Landing on ship at sea offers a greater safety margin, especially as SpaceX ventures farther into space, said Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University. “If you are coming back at higher speed, a small error can mean a large miss distance,” he said. “For safety purposes, you have a wider area to work with with a drone ship.”
A drone ship also offers SpaceX greater flexibility for landings, given the potential for land-based space ports to become crowded, he said. For Sunday’s launch, there’s another, even more practical consideration: SpaceX does not have a landing pad at Vandenberg. In the successful Dec. 21 rocket landing, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 booster came to rest less than 10 minutes after launch at a location about six miles south of the Cape Canaveral launch pad.
Does that make sense to anyone else? As far as I know, the only reason to land on a ship is because you don’t have the performance to come back to the launch site. And Koenigsmann himself said they weren’t coming to Vandenberg because they hadn’t completed environmental paperwork, not because they didn’t have a place to land.
New Nukes
A Canadian company has gotten funding to move forward on a molten-salt reactor. I think a lot of sensible people are realizing that if carbon really is a problem, nuclear is the solution, despite the insanity of people like Naomi Oreskes.
But my question is: Would this be a useful tech for space, either for electric power generation or propulsion? The company could do a spin off called Extraterrestrial Energy.
The SLS Mess
A recognition by NASA that the vehicle has no missions. Too bad Congress doesn’t understand that.
This is what happens when you come up with Design Reference Missions to match a design, instead of the right way around.
@NASASpaceflight Look up the phrase "solution looking for a problem," and you'll see a picture of SLS.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) January 12, 2016
[Update Wednesday morning]
More from Loren Grush over at The Verge:
But the SLS is expensive, and NASA’s budget is at the lowest it has been in decades, even with the new budget allotment of $19.3 billion for the 2016 fiscal year. The cost of developing the SLS through 2017 is expected to total $18 billion. And once the rocket is built, each launch is going to cost somewhere between $500 and $700 million, which makes it unlikely that the rocket will carry astronauts more than once a year.
If they’re only flying once a year, there’s no way the launch cost is that low. It’s at least two billion. I don’t know where that $500-$700M number comes from, but it’s probably marginal cost, which is a meaningless number for a vehicle with such a low flight rate.
[Bumped]
Reforming Space Policy
Rep. Bridenstine is planning a new bill to restructure both military and civil space. I gave him a copy of the book a year ago. I wonder if it influenced him?
Cislunar 1000
A new, visionary video from ULA.
It’s great to see this kind of vision from a major player. Tory Bruno really seems to have shaken the place up. And compare this to the paltry offering from NASA. Also note: Look ma, no SLS!
SpaceX
They had a successful static fire at Vandenberg, in preparation for the JASON 3 launch on Sunday, with the last existing version 1.1. We may go up to Lompoc this weekend to watch.
Meanwhile, they just released a new edit of the landing video from December.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here‘s the story on the static firing.
The Virgin Galactic Mess
It’s not at all clear to me that it’s in their interest to stir this pot of merde with a lawsuit. I have no trouble believing that they’ve been overhyping safety, because it’s always appeared to be the case to anyone who understands rocketry. For example:
Virgin also advertised the “simplicity and safety” of SpaceShipTwo’s hybrid motor, claiming that the nitrous oxide and rubber used in it were “both benign, stable as well as containing none of the toxins found in solid rocket motors.”
This is a straw man, since few, if any, have ever proposed solids for passenger vehicles (other than NASA).
Basically, Branson made some disastrous business and technical decisions a decade ago, and it’s coming back to haunt him on an ongoing basis.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Related: An update on Spaceport America, who (along with the poor taxpayers of the two counties) was also sold a bill of goods by Branson.
Martian Concrete
They should be using nuclear for power, though, not solar.
Two Questions On Climate Change
Put me in the “Maybe/Yes” camp.