It’s the fiftieth anniversary of the last time Chrysler proposed a spaceship to NASA. I’d forgotten about that.
Category Archives: Space
The Real Pucker Factor
For Dragon, it will be early tomorrow morning, when it enters and is recovered.
If Crew Dragon lands (waters?) successfully tomorrow, the U.S. will clearly have human spaceflight capability again. If NASA chooses not to use it immediately, that's a choice, but the notion that we can't get Americans into space from American soil will no longer be true.
— SafeNotAnOption (@SafeNotAnOption) March 7, 2019
[Friday-morning update]
Congratulations, @SpaceX, for what appears to be a flawless test flight. Time to fly now, and flip Putin (and Rogozin) the bird.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) March 8, 2019
[Noon update]
What SpaceX’s success means for America.
Roscosmos
It’s not really acting. They have been left behind.
But, while I like Sandy, this kind of thing continues to drive me crazy.
Oh, Sandy. Is there anyone out there who thinks it's at all important to end our dependence on Putin to get our astronauts into space? https://t.co/dv1IhziJQc
— SafeNotAnOption (@SafeNotAnOption) March 7, 2019
Two NASA Directorates
Compare and contrast. This is why NASA human spaceflight is a mess.
Apollo 11
Amy Shira Teitel has a review of the new IMAX documentary. Looks like the closest one to us is in Century City.
“We’re At The Barnstorming Phase”
An interview about our future in space with Jeff Bezos.
He doesn’t really say anything that I haven’t been preaching for literally decades, but it’s nice to see that (finally) someone with money gets it.
EXOS Aerospace
It looks like they had a successful suborbital test of SARGE today at Spaceport America (after the earlier successful launch of Crew Dragon early this morning).
[Tuesday noon update]
Russ Blink just posted an explanation of the wobble at Arocket:
The wind picked up as we approached launch and the torque due to the fins at liftoff was getting pretty high, that caused the initial pitch angle and the control PID is pretty close to critically damped, which of course needs to be addressed, however it settled down nicely until we hit a high wind shear which it damped out slowly again after passing through. Still she was heavily influenced by the wind which we are addressing.
The fins on this flight were actually hurting us because of weather-cocking. We intend to remove or reduce them in the future when we have good aero data or modeling to tune the control part of our gnc for that condition.
For those curious in comments…
[Bumped]
Flight Of Crew Dragon
The mission seems to have gone flawlessly so far.
But even if it’s a complete success with the recovery on Friday, some will still want to slow walk the first crew flight this year.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Here you go. pic.twitter.com/6X1ODdIRna
— Raumfahrer.net (@Raumfahrer_net) March 3, 2019
[Update a few minutes later]
Lot of links and pics at NASA Spaceflight.
Canada Joins The Gateway
Bob Zimmerman isn’t impressed.
This will make if more difficult to cancel the Gateway, but it’s possible to do a much more effective gateway, and one doesn’t need SLS/Orion to do it.
Space Settlement
A bi-partisan bill has been introduced in the Senate to make it a national goal (and to extend ISS to 2030). More thoughts after I read the draft legislation.